Strange Flesh (37 page)

T
he train is right on time. I see her step off the escalator and start scanning the station.

“Rosita?”

She examines me, a little startled, as though she hadn’t expected to be met. In case someone is monitoring this exchange, I’ve disguised myself in a woolen cap with tinted glasses. A real human-hair mustache rounds out my “I drive at night until the art world evolves enough to understand my work” look.

Rosita’s dressed in a dissonant combination of a nice suit, a casual blouse, and fuck-me heels. She seems young and nervous underneath it. Like she’s going to a business meeting, but no one’s ever told her how to dress. The way she squints at her surroundings tells me that she hasn’t been to Penn Station before. But she marshals an edgy smile and puts out her hand.

“Rosa de la Cruz,” she says. She’s carrying a beat-up duffel bag, which I move to take, but she shifts away and says, “I got it,” her accent second-generation Hispanic. We assess each other for a moment. She says, “You’re with Sweetest Taboo?”

Her question resolves in my head too late to prevent me from saying, “What?”

“The Sweetest Taboo” was a hit single from the British-Nigerian singer Sade Adu. Her name is pronounced Shah-day, but the connection is clear. Rosa rocks back on her heels, reconsidering me.

I try to recover. “Oh, right. Yeah. I’m just the driver.”

She thinks about this for a second and then hands me her bag. “So where are we going?”

Her second query also throws me. Unless Rosa’s the consummate actress, she honestly doesn’t know the answer. I can’t bring myself to say that I’m taking her to a graveyard in the middle of the night, so I go with, “Downtown.”

She relaxes somewhat in the front seat of my rented Lincoln Town Car. As I drive her down the West Side Highway, I wonder what happens once we get to our destination.

I start with small talk about her trip. Whether she’s ever been to New York before. She gazes avidly at the bright skyline. I ask what brings her to the city.

“Business.”

“You look a little young to be doing business. How old are you?”

“Twenty-one.” She doesn’t hesitate, but she paints her answer with an emphatically blasé shade that destroys the realism. “I’m a fashion designer. Your company wants me to do a line for them. That’s why they invited me up here.”

“A whole clothing line?” I take in her tone-deaf outfit. “For real?”

“No, man, it’s virtual clothing. I design for NOD avatars.”

“Oh, like one of those video games?”

“It’s not a game. I get paid real money. Here, I’ll show you.”

She extracts a sketch book from her portfolio, flipping to a section pasted with color pictures taken from NOD. Rosa’s designs range from belle époque confections of satin and lace to fanciful barbarian marmot brassieres. They’re good enough to make me want to commission some RL pieces. I give her a soft wolf whistle.

She brightens at the compliment. “Yeah, I like that stuff. But Taboo’s new store is on this island where all the
desviados
hang. They spend a lot more money than normal people. So . . .” She fans through several pages. They contain drawings of buxom women wearing unicorn blindfolds, the business ends of which are circumcised to match their dildo-spurred boots. She’s got supervillain men with tentacle hands and some animal outfits that flip by too quickly for me to make sense of. Again I see that
for fauna fetishists, the beast itself isn’t always sufficient. We have to go one better and put Bowser in a latex nun’s habit.

I tilt my head at her. She shrugs.

“I’m saving up to go to the Fashion Institute of Technology.”

“Your parents know you’re here?”

She gives me a hard look. “My dad is in Afghanistan. I’ve been all over the world. This is no big deal.”

Of course she’d be an army brat: Rosette, the daughter of a general. I glance at her as she stares out the window, arms crossed over her chest. A trail of holes runs down the edge of her left ear. Evidence of a rebellious stage? But oddly her ears aren’t pierced in the normal place. Instead a short vertical scar notches each lobe, as if she once wore earrings but . . . had them violently jerked out. Then the torn flesh was stitched back together. Maybe this one is a fighter. Or maybe she’s been abused. I notice she didn’t mention her mother.

I decide to risk trying to slip past the fourth wall. “Ah, this may sound crazy, but let’s just say that you weren’t really going to a meeting.”

“What?”

“Just bear with me. Let’s say that someone offered you some money to come up here and pretend like you were going to meet with this company.” Her frown deepens. “All I’m saying is I know some people who would pay you a lot more if you could provide any other information about why you’re here.”

She shifts away from me, her hand inching toward the door handle. “Man, what are you
talking
about?”

I back off. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I must have you confused with someone else. Forget I said anything.”

She eyes me warily. “I thought you said you were just the driver.”

“That’s right. I am.”

“Then why don’t you just drive?”

Our arrival at the graveyard goes more smoothly than I expected. While a lot of New Yorkers find Wall Street’s emptiness at night spooky, Rosa just sees a bunch of nice buildings, any one of which could be a hotel. I park along Trinity Place across from the Amex building. The church is perched on a knoll right above us. A hoary, now eccentric brick wall lines
the embankment. An archway is carved into it midway down the block, and a steep stone stairway leads to an oak door that doesn’t look like it’s been opened in the church’s four-hundred-year history. Tonight we find it unlocked, and the door loudly protests our disrupting its repose. The gloomy climb up into the churchyard finally breaks Rosa’s composure.

She jerks on my sleeve. “Hey . . . Where are we? Why’d you take me here?”

I pretend to check something in my cell phone. “This is the address I was given. I think someone is supposed to meet you.”

“No. That can’t be right. This . . . This place is a
graveyard
.”

“It’s right. Trust me. Someone’s coming to get you. Just sit on that bench over there. It’ll be fine.”

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“Well, I was just told to bring you here. So now . . . I have to go.”

She can’t believe what I’ve just said. “You’re leaving?”

I relent. “Look, I have . . . my orders. I’ll tell you what.” I write my cell number on a twenty-dollar bill. “Stay here for fifteen minutes. If they don’t pick you up by then, call me. I’ll come get you, and I’ll check you into any hotel you want. The Ritz-Carlton is a couple blocks away.” I give her the twenty and walk briskly back toward the stairs.

“The Ritz . . . Wait, no, don’t leave.” She trails after me. “Hey man, don’t leave me here.” She’s on the verge of tears.

But my orders are clear: “Don’t look back.” I shut the door and hear it latch.

“Come back . . . Please.” The last word is a high-pitched cry.

I get into my car and head slowly down the street.

My instructions implied that I would be watched, but I can’t see how he’d pull it off. The street around me is empty, no cars, no pedestrians. I make a couple quick turns. Billy could have stationed someone in a building with a view of the churchyard, but there’s no way an observer could see to the adjacent streets through the cluster of skyscrapers.

Don’t be an idiot. You’re buying into his absurd atmospherics. And no matter how well-run his game is, you cannot leave a scared teenage girl alone in that graveyard at two in the morning.

I swerve right up Liberty Street and then dart the wrong way down
William to head back toward Trinity Place. Turning right, I park on Pine Street two blocks above the church. After slinking down another block among the columns of a temple to commerce, I take refuge in the entry to a Citibank with a good view of the churchyard. I’m hoping Rosa sat on the bench, because then I’ll have a perfect view of her through the statuary.

But Rosa is gone.

I survey the area, but there’s no trace of her. Other than her bag sitting abandoned on the bench. That doesn’t seem good.

Stop it. This is just overproduced street theater. She’s gone because Billy can’t have his audience follow the actors into the wings.

But I can’t help thinking about the awful fate visited upon poor Rosette in
120 Days.

Come on. She’ll be fine. They’re probably taking her out for dinner tonight.

All the same, Sade’s infernal images have colonized my head.

T
hat uneasiness makes me log back into
Savant
as soon as I get home to see if I can discover some clue to clarify what just happened. But I merely wander around the eerie castle battling the creeping, sub-rational feeling that I’ve done something terrible.

Maybe that’s why I start so violently when I hear a familiar voice say, “Congratulations . . . Jacques.”

The voice is right behind me, and I spin around so violently that my knees bang into the right trestle of my desk. But there’s no one there. Just my rear channel speakers. I realize the voice must have come from
Savant
. Run through my audio system, it sounded like he was in the room with me.

It dawns on me that I didn’t have NOD’s voice chat feature turned on. For some reason people generally prefer regular text chat to voice. And yet someone just started a session with me without my permission. In NOD, the only person who could do that would be the guy
who owns the sim
.

I mash keys to turn my av, and at last I behold the virtual alter ego of Billy Randall.

But I can tell right away that’s not quite right. The av in front of me is a dashing rake in all the finery of a pre-revolutionary aristocrat, and Billy has made him tall, athletic, and extremely fair. A faithful image of his brother Blake. And now I know why the voice was familiar. It’s a spot-on
impression. Confirmation that Billy’s virtually impersonating his brother to place him as a member of his fake Pyrexians.

His NODName, Fedor_Sett, stumps me at first, but eventually I work out “Feed Durcet.” Of Château de Silling’s four Friends, Curval the judge and Durcet the banker have the most pronounced appetites for ingesting filth. If Billy’s assigned Blake the latter role, then I can see why the freelance waiter at Demeter looked surprised when his offering was rejected.

I take a deep breath to settle myself and say into my desktop mic, “Ah, thanks. I’m glad to finally meet you.” While speaking, I start a trace on the IP address from which Billy’s av is connecting.

But Fedor_Sett doesn’t respond. With an impressive flourish of animation, he extracts a card from his jacket pocket. This av is merely a messenger.

I’m surprised Billy hasn’t masked the originating IP address for his NoBot, which comes back as 192.0.2.133. The first domestic one I’ve seen from him. But those numbers feel familiar as well . . .

Because he’s spoofing the connection record to appear as though it came from IMP. So Billy’s impersonation goes even more than skin deep. When I take the item he’s offering, the NoBot rezzes out.

The card reads:

For the favor you’ve done
From our collection here’s one
So to discharge our debt
Please enjoy this
vignette

Fedor_Sett’s “vignette” link leads to the first of the videos Billy stole from his sister. A clip that stars him and the twins as young children. Blake sits on top of Billy, force-feeding him a dark mushy substance that sadly does not look like chocolate pudding. Billy repays Blake’s culinary exertions by vomiting all over him.

A charming childhood scene that should really appeal to the Sade fans’ interest in bodily fluids. The video makes clear where the roots of Billy’s rage against his brother were planted.