M. T. Anderson (2 page)

The whole time was like that. The moon went on and on. It was me and Marty and Link and Calista and Loga and Quendy. The three girls had one room at the hotel, and the three of us boys had another room. There were a lot of people there for the break, and kids were all leaping up and down the halls and making their voices echo. It was a pretty crummy hotel, and there weren’t enough sheets, and there was hardly any gravity, and no one had a fake ID so they put a lock on the minibar. I was like, “This is a crummy hotel,” but Marty was all, “Unit, this is where I stayed last time. It’s like meg cheap, and all the staff are made from a crystalline substance.”

Our feeds were clear again from all the moon banners, so for a long time we all watched the football game while the girls, they did something else on the feed. They were chatting each other and we couldn’t hear them, but they kept laughing and touching each other’s faces. I wanted to go to sleep, but every time I tried,
bam!
Link and Marty would suddenly go all fission on me, saying, “Titus! Did you fuckin’ see that? Did you see Hemmacher?” I tried to tell myself that being here was not re: sleeping but re: being with your friends and doing great stuff. I tried to concentrate on all the stimulus, and the fun, all of it.

There was not always too good fun, though. We ordered some fancy nutrient IVs from room service but they gave us all headaches, and we went out to this place that Marty said served the best electrolyte chunkies but it had closed a year before. It was dinnertime, so we had dinner at a J. P. Barnigan’s Family Extravaganza, which was pretty good, and just like the one at home. We got some potato skins for appetizers. It was at least good to get out of the hotel, because most of the rest of the city had pretty good artificial gravity, so if you dropped things, at least they fuckin’ fell. It was almost like normal, which is how I like it.

Then we went back to the hotel. There were parties there, but it was mostly college kids. Usually we can get in, because me and Link and Marty and Calista, we can turn on the charm. Calista is blond and she can do this sorority-girl ice-princess thing, which she does with her voice and her shoulder blades, which makes people think she’s older than she is and really important. Link is tall and butt-ugly and really rich, that kind of old rich that’s like radiation, so that it’s always going
deet deet deet deet
in invisible waves and people are suddenly like, “Unit! Hey! Unit!” and they want to be guys with him. Marty, his thing is that he’s good at like anything, any game, and I just stand there silent and act cool, and we’re this trio, the three of us guys, being like, total guys, which usually makes people let us in and give us beer.

That didn’t work this time. We tried to get in and we were standing in the doorway and they were all, “Who the hell are you?”

We looked at ourselves. We all looked kind of bad. We looked tired and sleepy, and even though we’re all pretty good-looking, except Link, we were all pale and our hair was greasy. We had the lesions that people were getting, and ours right then were kind of red and wet-looking. Link had a lesion on his jaw, and I had lesions on my arm and on my side. Quendy had a lesion on her forehead. In the lights of the hallway you could see them real good. There are different kinds of lesions, I mean, there are lesions and lesions, but somehow our lesions, in this case, seemed like kid stuff.

Later after some showers we went to the Ricochet Lounge. It was very lo-grav/no-grav, and it was all about whamming one person into another in big stuffed suits. The place had been hip, like, a year and a half ago. The slogan was “Slam the Ones You Love!” Now the place just looked old and sad. The walls were all marked up from people hitting them.

Even with his impact helmet on, Link stood out. He’s much taller than anyone else, because he’s part of a secret patriotic experiment. In the low gravity, his arms seemed like they were everywhere. He swung them around and spun. I was being a little careful when I ran into other people, because of the arm lesion. It had broke open and it was oozing. Still, it was pretty fun at first, launching ourselves off the walls and going like
vvvvvvvvvvvvv
and hitting other people and wrestling while floating to the floor.

I was watching Loga real close. She and I had gone out about six months before, until we had this big argument. Then it was this big thing. She was like,
I never want to see you again,
and I was like,
Fine. Okay? Fine. Then get some special goggles.
But now we were friends, which was good. I think it’s always really limp, when guys can’t talk to girls they went out with. Plus, I was thinking that maybe Loga and I could hook up again, if we didn’t find anyone else, like on the moon or whatev.

I didn’t have a thing for Calista or Quendy or even completely a thing (anymore) for Loga. But I was watching Link slamming into them, and when he slammed, it said that he and the girls all knew what each other’s bodies would be like, and that was part of the game.

I was unhappy because Loga and I had been a diad, and now when I ran into her at high speeds it wasn’t anything like when Link ran into her at high speeds. I thought she and I should have a little secret way of collision. But usually we sailed right past each other.

Marty, who can do anything good, he was off in a corner doing these gymnastics in midair. He had a ball and he was somehow kicking it in a circle so it came back to his foot. Link said, “Over here,” and Marty popped the ball to him, and he kicked it to me.

For a while we played a game with the ball, and we were twirling all over the place, and we were like, what it’s called when you skim really close over the surface of something, we were that to the floor, with our arms out, but of course Marty started winning all the time, and Link, who doesn’t like to lose, was like, “This is null. This sucks.”

“Pass,” said Marty. “What’s fuckin’ doing?”

“That this place sucks,” said Link.

Marty said, “Give it a chance, unit.”

But Link was like, “No. Play by yourself. Play with yourself,” and suddenly everything seemed really stupid.

And then I saw someone watching. I wasn’t glad. I looked again.

She was the most beautiful girl, like, ever.

She was watching our stupidity.

There was a valve that led into the food bar. She was in the valve. She had her crash helmet under her arm. She had this short blond hair. Her face, it was like, I don’t know, it was beautiful. It just, it wasn’t the way — I guess it wasn’t just the way it looked like, but also how she was standing. With her arm. I just stared at her. I was getting some meg feed on the food bar and the pot stickers were really cheap.

I stood there wondering what it was that made her so beautiful. She was looking at us like we were shit.

Her spine. Maybe it was her spine. Maybe it wasn’t her face. Her spine was, I didn’t know the word. Her spine was like . . . ?

The feed suggested “supple.”