Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (18 page)

Finally, he noticed me. The smugness slid off his face, replaced by an irritated sneer.

“What are you doing here, Rica?”

“Just stopping in for a sandwich.”

Why had I said that? Now I’d have to actually eat something there. I’d had lunch a little over an hour before and even if I’d been hungry I doubted I could choke down one of Xavier’s creations.

When Xavier came back out with a cup and saucer, setting it almost reverently before Waldo, I asked him for a chicken sandwich.

I took one tiny bite. The bread was stale, the chicken boiled to dust, but I didn’t have to eat it after all. Waldo drank his coffee quickly, without saying another word to me, and limped back out the door.

I waited a solid minute, letting him get a good head start, pretended I’d just remembered a very important engagement— “Oh, darn, got to go mumble mumble”— and said goodbye.

At Blackjack, Waldo went straight to the restaurant. He passed both the bar, where Jo was talking to the bartender, and the stairs to the Mezzanine, where he might have found Judith. The money seemed to be all his.

The dealers at the two open poker tables were people I’d seen around the casino— a woman I’d noticed dealing blackjack once or twice, and a man named Quinn who worked in the cashier’s cage. War-games fill-ins for Samm and Zack. It was not quite three o’clock and the army wasn’t back yet.

I had two hours until my first shift at the restaurant. Just enough time for a mail check, a shower and a nap. I was just about convinced by then that Hannah had told no one about seeing me at the war games.

I headed right for the hallway and the stairs to my room. I was passing the roulette wheel when I noticed Jo walking toward me. The doubt returned. Did she know? Had Hannah told her she’d caught me spying? Was Jo coming after me? Why would she do it alone? I held my breath.

She smiled, nodded, and passed right by, heading up toward Judith’s office.

Hannah’s work on the elevator had been interrupted that day for more important things. I wondered how long it would be before she had the time to finish it. Resigned to using the stairs for the rest of my stay, I showed them my contempt by taking them two at a time. At a quick glance, my room didn’t look tossed or even touched. My sys was where I’d left it, rolled up in the pants. I couldn’t see any signs that anyone had been there.

Shower first. I’d done a lot of sweating that day. As the water ran down my back, I thought about Hannah Karlow. She was an urgent problem. I had no idea where she stood on anything, or what it meant that so far, she’d let me get away with spying on the training session. But I couldn’t rely on her keeping the secret no matter what her reason was. I could say I wanted to join and was watching to see what it was like. Pretty weak, though. I couldn’t imagine the Colemans falling for that one. And I couldn’t imagine them being foolish enough to let a spy live.

I considered gunning Electra down the road to Redwood and home, but only briefly— a merc who runs away from danger loses the pay for that job and runs the risk of losing that client forever, possibly even losing the reputation that brings in future work and keeps her in vax.

So I would take a chance and stay, keep the Hannah problem to myself and give her no excuses, and let the chief message me if she wanted the rest of what I’d seen that day— what kinds of weapons, who was involved, where they held the maneuvers.

I dabbed disinfectant on the blackberry scratch, wrapped a robe around myself, pulled out my sys and punched up my mail.

Nothing much new. Some Middle chief I’d never heard of who had some kind of problem with godders; his message was pretty vague and he sounded angry, arrogant, and in a big hurry. I didn’t answer him. Gran had sent me a meditation that consisted mostly of repetitious statements about how happy I was. She must have been right because I caught myself smiling as I read it.

Thinking about my happiness, I went to bed. I had an hour and a half to sleep.

I got nearly all the way through the first part of my shift at the restaurant with no one coming to haul me away and toss me in a casino dungeon. Waldo was his usual surly self, Lizzie was friendly in a self-absorbed adolescent way, and Jo came in for a quick dinner and didn’t shoot me. On the contrary, she gave me a very sweet smile, asked me to sit with her for a moment, and told me the piano player would meet me half an hour before show time so we could run through the music. Since she hadn’t mentioned an accompanist before and I had been so preoccupied I hadn’t thought to ask, I’d been ready to bring in some instrumental capsules. This was better, if he was any good.

She also said she’d heard from a lot of customers that they’d be there for the show.

“Word’s getting around, Rica. You’re bringing us business even before your show opens. We may want to do two shows a night soon.” Timmy— she was sitting at one of his tables— overheard that last line when he brought her a glass of red wine and a menu. He beamed like I was his daughter. Fredo came in and started doing setups at my tables. He was going to be filling in for me during my performance.

A little while after Jo had left the restaurant, Drew showed up. His clothes were dusty, his face pale; he looked tired and was holding his injured arm stiffly. While Timmy was bringing him his dinner, Samm walked in and dropped into a chair next to Drew. And ten minutes behind Samm, Hannah, who sat alone across the room, at one of my tables.

The warriors were back from the front— hungry, dirty, and exhausted. Samm looked broody, Drew happy and a little sick. Hannah gave me a sly smile, and asked for a half-bottle of Sonoma Merlot. I studied her eyes, looking for a clue. She smirked and examined the plain white tablecloth as if she were reading it.

When I came back with the wine, she glanced toward Samm and Drew and spoke softly to me, still smiling.

“Rica, you need to be more careful.” Sly and conspiratorial. I handed her the menu, she passed it back to me without looking. “I’ll have the chicken.”

The parking lot will be private enough

Drew was worn out. His arm hurt; he was hungry and sick to his stomach all at once. He’d tried to take it easy, not push too hard, do more observing than fighting, but during the last attack on the outpost he’d forgotten he was wounded, thrown himself on a Red soldier and fallen right on his bad arm. It hadn’t stopped throbbing ever since. Blue had won and Zack had complimented him on that last run for the shed, but maybe Mother was right and it was too soon to be out there abusing his messed-up body.

Lizzie came to his table with a basket of bread.

“You look like shit, Drew.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re an asshole. You should have waited.” She slammed the bread down and marched away.

She was just jealous. It was really chewing at her that everyone said she was too young to be a soldier. And she was getting more snappish every day.

She’d always been edgy, prone to trouble, but it seemed like killing the merc had cut something loose in her. Something that went deeper. She was fierce. Wild. Had she always been that way, underneath? She’d been upset enough when she’d killed the man, but then she seemed to settle in and accept it. She could be dealing with guilt by making it normal to be violent. Or it could be pride. Maybe she felt she had something to live up to. If everyone thought she was a killer, she had to be one. He knew that sometimes people took their own reputations too seriously.

He wished he could make her understand that she’d killed because she had to, and leave it at that, but she absolutely refused to talk about it.

Rica was still working, not time for her show yet. He’d sat down at the first table he came to, sick, unthinking, and instantly regretted it. He’d sat at one of Timmy’s stations. That blew his chance to have a casual word or two with Rica. Oh, well. He didn’t feel too dashing anyway. Not up to impressing her. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder what she’d think if she’d been able to see him training that day. He’d run fast, knocked down several opponents with a staff, shot a pistol with some accuracy. All with one arm. All with pain weighing him down. But when he’d landed on the bad arm tears had poured down his face, and he was glad she hadn’t seen that.

He sighed. Who was he kidding? She probably thought he was way too young for her, if she thought of him at all. She smiled over at him, a beautiful smile, just a moment before Samm came stumping in and threw himself down next to Drew.

“Good work today, Drew. How’s the arm?”

* * *

I stared at Hannah, willing her to say more. She didn’t. And I couldn’t drag her out of the restaurant and demand she tell me what was going on, what kind of game she was playing. I’d have to talk to her later, somewhere private.

“You want chicken. Sure. Fine. I want to talk to you.”

“I’m flattered.”

More games.

“Meet me at my car in the parking lot after my second shift. About one o’clock.” I described the Electra and where it was parked.

She gave me another coy smile. “Your car? What about your room?”

I shot her my best glare. What did the bitch have in mind, sexual extortion? “The parking lot will be private enough.”

World on a string, ass in a sling

The long midnight blue sequined dress was not one I wore often. I preferred to perform in a light, floating blouse and pants, usually. But I thought my debut at Blackjack, and the debut of its lounge called for something slinkier. I was doing mid-20th Century standards, including World War Two. It wouldn’t hurt to look like a chanteuse from a noir film.

Of course, those chanteuses were always in big trouble and sometimes got murdered.

Gran had started her movie collection when she was a teenager and the noirs were already creaky with age by then; she’d pushed me to watch some of them when she thought I was old enough. Art, she said, the art of black and white cinema.

At first I’d hated them. They were, as the name implied, dark. I was a sad little kid to start with and I didn’t understand why Gran, whom I loved absolutely and who I knew absolutely loved me, would want me to be even more depressed. The clothing in the movies was strange and formal, with the men in those baggy suits and the women wearing spiky-heeled shoes and tight skirts that must have made it hard to walk. The language was archaic, so I didn’t always understand what the characters were saying. But gradually, the eerie combination of low-key passion, bitterness and danger took hold of my imagination, and the crowds of people on the streets, the miles of huge buildings, none of them in ruins, the easy and casual movement through a world that was treacherous and primitive and civilized at the same time, worked on my imagination and helped me to understand Gran’s sense of loss. I fell in love with the sleaze and the music and the stars. Lupino. Stanwyck. MacMurray. Ladd. Bang Bang you’re dead.

I turned to the mirror in my tiny dressing room. The midnight blue looked good. I practiced looking noir, world-weary, Twentieth Century, until I thought I had it right, and made my way backstage.

Curiosity and novelty had, as Jo promised, brought a pretty decent crowd to the lounge for its opening night. Peering out from behind the curtain, I counted twenty-nine customers in a room that could hold 40. If they liked the show they’d come back and bring their friends.

I noticed Drew in the doorway. He slid into a chair at the back, disappearing into the shadows holding his wounded arm close to his side. Hannah Karlow was there, too. You’d have thought that after a hard day on the battlefield they’d have both been ready for bed by now. I could barely see Drew, but Hannah’s worn-out face didn’t look any different than usual. She’d agreed readily to the meeting later and now she’d come early enough to get a table up front. Once again, she was by herself, drinking a glass of red wine. I was surprised by a stab of pity. I’d disliked her almost at first sight and I guessed a lot of other people felt that way, too. That made her even more alone than I was.

The piano player, Andy, was also a bartender. He was a big, bald man who stood out in a crowd. I hadn’t seen him at the clearing the day of the war games. More the indoor type, I guessed.

He was wearing a jumpsuit that was all wrong for this night’s show, but he was good enough so the half hour Jo had given us to get used to each other— he told me she’d only talked to him about it late that afternoon— was almost enough. We’d run through some songs together. I’d asked him if he had anything period to wear next time, one of those suits or a tuxedo or something, and he’d looked at me like I’d asked him to drink from a dead-pond. I shrugged and smiled to show that it didn’t really matter, and he relaxed.

To my relief he was a good musician, knew several of the songs, and picked up the others quickly from the sheet music and by ear, so I was happy enough to go with the yellow jump that made him look like a big round piece of bald lemon candy.

Because this was opening night, Jo had said she’d do the introductions. And there she was, suddenly, striding toward the stage, lace collar and cuffs, purple knickers. She got the crowd’s attention by walking in; she didn’t have to quiet them when she jumped up onto the stage wearing a wider, friendlier smile than I’d seen before. Jo liked an audience.

The intro was short and sweet, just like Jo herself.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I want to welcome you on behalf of the Coleman family to the new Blackjack lounge.” Hannah Karlow applauded, and the others joined in. Jo held up her hands.

“You’re going to love what we have for you. Andy Woolly, at the piano— a lot of you know him from the bar.” Laughter and enthusiastic applause all around. “And a really exciting talent, first time in Tahoe— Rica Marin!” She waved me onto the stage and hopped down. The crowd, again led by Hannah, applauded, but only politely this time. After all, they might not like me. They didn’t know yet. Jo had stopped at the door and was standing there watching, her arms folded across her pretty ruffled chest, making me feel nervous.

Once I got into the first song or two, I settled down. I glided through “I’ll Be Seeing You,” slow and soft, and they loved it. All romance and tragedy for the next hour. Andy and I had only a couple of rough spots, a near miracle considering how little rehearsal we’d had.