Sex (10 page)

“Okay.”

Loki looked back to his laptop, making sure they'd covered all the necessary bases. “Good,” he said, trying to suppress the wave of excitement running through him. “That's very good. Everything seems to be very much in order.”

“Definitely,” Josh said.

“Regarding Tom and Gaia, our new field agent is now firmly in place. We should now have full inside access to both of them. When the time is right, our agent removes Tom… and we have no further impediments to this operation.”

Memo

From:
G

To:
L

Subject is still unconscious in the clearing behind the Met. Should some action be taken? Please advise.

Memo

From:
L

To:
G

Be patient. As long as the subject is under your supervision, everything will be fine. Obtain as much information as possible and provide a full report.

FIRST THERE WAS JUST THE DIRT under her nails. That was all she could feel. And then against her face, scraping her cheek and her ears, crusty dirt crawling into the corner of her mouth. The smells were green like earth and spoiled like garbage. But as her eyes began to flutter open…

Four

No, that's certainly not possible. That's not right. More hallucinations? Oh God, please tell me I'm through with the hallucinations. Maybe a dream?

The more her eyes began to focus, the less she was able to deny it.

Ancient Egyptian ruins were towering over her. They were glowing in golden shades of sand and stone. Somehow she was floating between two worlds. All around her it was night, and she was surrounded by grass and filthy earth. But in front of her… sand and Egyptian temples lit up by the sun.

Welcome to La La Land, Gaia. You've finally lost it.

No, wait. Glass. A huge wall of glass between her and the Egyptian ruins. What did that mean? A wall of glass… was that some kind of symbol? She knew she should have studied those goddamn Freudian dream books.

Her focus improved a little further. It was about thirty more seconds before she branded herself an idiot.

The museum, you idiot. You're staring at the back of the museum.

Of course. The Temple of Dendur at the back of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art She must have seen it at least five times from the inside the museum. She'd just never seen it from outside the huge glass wall of windows. She put the pieces together as she rolled herself over in the filthy grass. That had been the light coming through the trees when she'd first heard Genevieve screaming. They obviously left the lights on in this part of the museum overnight The scariest thing was that she hadn't even noticed this huge Egyptian temple the whole time she'd been dealing with Genevieve's Guido would-be rapists.
Get a clue, Guia. Maybe you need to look around you once in a while.

She took her own advice and opened her eyes a bit wider, checking in her immediate vicinity. The first thing she saw was Genevieve, still sitting on her rock, drinking a bottle of something. How long had Gaia been out? She couldn't believe Genevieve had waited with her the entire time.

“Hey,” Gaia croaked from the ground. “I'm back.”

Gen had one of those pager/text messenger things open, and she seemed to be totally engrossed in the message she was reading. She slammed her pager closed and shoved it in her pocket. “Hey,” she said, taking a swig from the bottle and making a face of utter disgust. “Ugh. Man,” she complained, spitting into the dirt. “Couldn't they drink a freakin' beer just once?”

“Who?” Gaia asked as she picked herself up and dusted the dirt off her already filthy clothes.

“The richies,” she said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out her pack of cigarettes. “All the Upper East Side private school kids like to have their little ‘hide from Mommy and Daddy' parties behind the Met. They think it's
way cool.
But they never drink any good freakin' beer. All they ever drink are
wine coolers.
I mean,
man.
Come on, people. Leave me something I can drink. Have you ever
had
one of these things?” She extended the bottle to Gaia. Gaia was still pretty queasy, and the sight of the bottle alone almost made her vomit.

“No, thanks,” she said, wrapping her arm around her stomach and pushing the bottle away.

“I know, right?” Gen muttered, hurling the bottle into the bushes. She lit another cigarette and started to sift through the few other pieces of junk the “richies” seemed to have left behind. A crumpled-up bag of chips, a few more wine coolers, and the box to a Dave Matthews CD. “Now there's a good time,” she said. “Wine coolers and Dave Matthews. Can rich kids party or
what?”

Gaia huffed out a little laugh as she found another rock to sit on. Something about Gen's joke sparked a little memory in the back of Gaia's mind. It had an oddly endearing ring to it….

Mary. That's
who Gen reminded her of. It was the exact kind of joke Mary would have made. With just the same ironic inflection.

Gaia watched as Gen made sure she'd found everything the kids had left behind. When she was through
searching, she picked up the crumpled Dorito bag and peeked inside, pulling out the few chips that were left and munching on them. She extended the bag to Gaia, who once again declined, fighting off another wave of nausea.

Gaia wasn't sure if Gen would be offended by the question that kept running through her head, but she had to ask it. “Do you… live here?” she asked cautiously. “I mean… in the park…?”

Gen took her time before answering the question. Which was just about all the answer Gaia needed. Now she felt even worse about asking. Gen popped open another wine cooler to wash down the chips. “I live lots of places,” she said, pretty successfully avoiding the question. “Ugh,
disgusting.”
She threw yet another wine cooler into the bushes.

Gaia was admittedly a little thrown. If Gen did live in the park, then she didn't fit the description of a homeless person that Gaia was accustomed to. She was far too pretty and far too young to not have
someplace
to go.

“So…,” Gen began, looking Gaia in the eye for pretty much the first time, “are we asking questions now?”

“Whatever,” Gaia replied with a shrug.

Gen let out a loud and massive belch.

“Was that your question?”

“No.” Gen laughed Ugh, that was spooky. She even had Mary's laugh. “My question,” she went on, “as long as we're asking questions… How long have you been using?”

“Using what?” Gaia asked.

“Yeah, right” Gen laughed. “That's my line, too. ‘Using what, Officer?'”

Gaia was still drawing a blank.

“Drugs”
Gen laughed again. “How long have you been using drugs? And don't even bother trying to tell me you're not a junkie.”

Gaia didn't even know how to respond to such a ridiculous accusation.

“Oh,
come on”
Gen jabbed. “You're gonna try to tell me that's not why you came up here tonight? To buy from Casper?”

“Casper?
Who the hell is
Casper?”

“Casper,” Gen said, as if it were obvious. “Casper, the dude you flipped on his ass, Casper?”

“You
know
him?” Gaia squawked.

“Yeah, I know him,” she replied with a look of disdain. “I know that asshole. He thinks he's such hot shit with his leather jacket and his Sugar Ray *NSync ass. That was just beautiful when you kung fu'd him and his meatheads. Beautiful. You know, he's not so tough when you take away that knife and his thugs. Then he's just another punk dealer, you know? But he so deserved what you gave him. He so deserved it.”

Gaia had never in her life thought of herself as unintelligent, but as she put all the pieces together, she couldn't believe how blind she'd been to the abundantly obvious. She hadn't saved Gen from getting raped in Central Park. She'd just saved her
from her pissed-off
dealer.
Ugh. Her dealer. Now she was too
much
like Mary.

Gaia took a much closer look at Gen and realized how completely strung out she was. How could she have missed it? This girl was, without question, a full-blown junkie. She was thin as a rail, pale and gaunt, with dark circles under her eyes, chain smoking, and digging around Central Park for leftover junk food. So how could a homeless junkie living in Central Park afford to pay for that pager? Who knew? Maybe
Casper
paid for it. Keep those customers coming back. That was probably why he'd gone off on her. Probably just pissed about some money she owed him or something.
Jesus.
Casper was just Mary's dealer Skizz come back to life. All dealers were Skizz. Greedy, pathetic assholes with nothing better to do than prey on helpless addicts.

The Mary connection suddenly made Gaia far more ill than it had at first. She couldn't help thinking… what if Mary hadn't had money? What if she'd had the same drug problem minus the incredible supportive family and the beautiful apartment on Central Park West? She'd probably be living the exact same life as Gen. And she probably would have died even sooner.

“So, come on,” Gen said. “How long have you been hooked?”

“No, no” Gaia began, shaking her head.

“It's okay.” Gen laughed. “I'm not a narc. Don't even try to lie.”

“No, listen—”

“You're coming up here behind the Met all alone in the middle of the night. You were here to buy….”

“No—”

“You're nodding out on me for twenty minutes. You're all pale and nauseous and shit. You're a freakin' junkie.”

“No!”
Gaia hollered finally. “No, I'm not a junkie and I
don't
do drugs! I'm not that stupid!”

The smile immediately dropped from Gen's face. She began to shoot hollow-tipped bullets at Gaia with her eyes.

Oh, no. All Gaia had wanted to do was set the record straight for herself. But she'd done a little more than that. Maybe, just for a second there, she'd kind of started yelling at Mary by accident. Now she'd ended up deeply offending this girl she didn't even know.

Gen took a long, slow drag from her cigarette.
“Relax,”
she spat coldly. “I'm really
sorry.
I didn't mean to call
you
a junkie. A pretty girl like you? Little Kung Fu Barbie? A pretty girl like you could
never
be a junkie.”

“No, that's not what I meant.” But it was obviously too late.

“Are you rich, Gaia?” Gen suddenly asked, looking her over with a piercing stare.

“No, I'm not rich.” Gaia sighed, wishing there were some way to take back her stupid outburst.

“No? 'Cause I'm thinking you might be rich. I'm
thinking you might be one of those wine cooler kids who really ought to be getting her ass home to Mommy and Daddy right now.”

Gaia dropped her head and scoffed at that suggestion. Gen didn't even know just how ludicrous it was.

“No,” Gaia said with a smile that was so bitter, she could almost taste it, “there's no Mommy, and there's no Daddy. Mommy died. And Daddy disappeared. In fact, if you're really interested, there's
nobody.
No boyfriend. No friend. No polite acquaintance. Not even a dealer who beats me up. Just me, myself, and yours truly… and I guess
you
at the present moment…. Do I qualify for pity now?”

Gen went silent. Her eyes softened as a modicum of sincerity returned to her voice. “You don't know where your dad is?”

“No clue,” Gaia said.

“Well, when's the last time you saw him?” she asked. Not the question Gaia would have expected.

“I don't remember.”

“You don't remember the last time you saw your father?”

Gaia then remembered that she'd sort of seen him yesterday… or the day before or was it the day before that? But she'd been in such a feverish, hallucinogenic state that it had barely even counted. Gaia assumed Gen meant seeing him while conscious. “No,” she replied. “I don't remember.”

“Well, is he in New York City?” Gen pressed.

“I don't know.”
Gaia, groaned, baffled by Gen's sudden weirdness. “Why are you asking me all these questions about my father?”

“Whoa, there, buddy.” Gen threw her hands out defensively. “I was just trying to be friendly. God knows where my pops is at. Maybe they're hanging together in deadbeat daddy day care.”

“Sorry,” Gaia mumbled. “Yeah, maybe they are.”

Gen gave Gaia a once-over again with her eyes and then took another long drag, blowing it off to the side so as not to blow smoke in Gaia's face. “Hmmm,” she uttered. “An orphan but not an addict” She stood up from her rock, flipped the red streak of hair off her pale, angular face, and stomped out her cigarette on the ground “Well… I guess one out of two ain't bad Are you hungry?”

Gaia looked up at her suspiciously. “Not for chips and wine coolers, I'm not.”

“No, we can probably do a little better than that.”

“Then yes, I'm starving.”

“Do you have any money?” Gen asked.

Gaia sighed and shook her head. “Actually, no.”

“Good,” Gen said. “It's more fun that way. Tonight we eat like queens!” she pronounced as if a chorus of trumpets would follow. “Come.” She beckoned with a grand sweep of her hand. Follow me, Kung Fu Barbie. Let's be
friends”

Well,
I've mulled it over for the past twenty-four hours. In fact, that's all I've done for the past twenty-four hours. That is to say, I haven't eaten. I haven't slept. I haven't exercised, spoken, taken a walk or a shower. I haven't done a thing but pace my room and try to understand what went wrong. Try pacing on crutches in a relatively small bedroom, and you'll begin to understand the extent of my twenty-four-hour purgatory.