Necropolis by Michael Dempsey Page B

furnace. Somewhere, my alarms went off again. Her lids fluttered. “It’s so hot,” she said. Then she was sagging against me. I grabbed her to keep her from sliding to the floor. Her breath washed across my neck. I pushed her back, but she clung, lips rubbing across the angle of my jaw. I pushed her away more strongly. Her feet found purchase and she took a step back, straightening her blouse. She reached out and wiped lipstick from my cheek. I flinched like I’d been touched by a snake.  
    “Something to remember me by,” she said.
    “The money’s enough.”
    She smiled then, unreadable, and slipped out the door.
    Slowly, very slowly, I leaned against the door jam.
    I didn’t kiss her, Elise, I didn’t kiss her.
    I walked over to the cracked mirror, found an intact piece, and scrubbed the remaining lipstick from my face, feeling like territory that had been marked by a predator.  
    I stood that way for a while, smoking and looking at my shattered reflection.

10
    DONNER
    A spaceship showered sparks from its ass. It jerked and shuddered across the cardboard set, swaying back and forth from black thread. The stars were glitter, glued onto velvet.
    A drawn-out timpani roll. “Buck Rogers in the 25th Centureee!” Organ music, cheesy strings. “When we last saw Buck,” the announcer continued, “He’d just discovered that the evil Dr. Huer had invented an atomic disintegrator ray that would DESTROY THE ENTIRE WOOORLD!” A cartoon beam of light hit a model of the Earth, which exploded, showering the universe with papier-mâché.
    The announcer’s voice dropped abruptly from its melodramatic heights. “But first, Solar Scouts, have you sent in your labels from Cocomalt, the most delicious drink in the entire WOORLD!?”  
    I hit a stud on the armrest. The show dissolved, clearing the Plexiglas divider between myself and the cab driver.
    The hackie laughed. “Don’t like Buck? It’s the hottest with the youngsters.”
    “I don’t get it, I guess. In my day, if a show’s special effects were even a couple years old, no self-respecting kid would be caught dead watching. Now, the cheesier the better.”
    The hackie shrugged, the padded shoulders of his uniform bouncing. “In Buck’s world, there’s always a happy ending. Not like ours.”
    I blinked. Since when did cab drivers talk like sociologists? Since when did they wear neat little wool uniforms with duck-billed caps? It didn’t matter. I was just grateful for the ride. Seven cabs had refused me when they got close enough to see what I was.
    I looked out the window. Soot-encrusted tenement buildings and tarpaper roofs rushed past. Laundry lines, satellite dishes and chimneys. The autumn sun was bright but weak.  
    Then we were on the Brooklyn Bridge. The bridge itself was pretty much as I remembered, although it was augmented by high-speed lanes in clear tubes that made me think of hamsters. Across the divider, vehicles shot past like bullets.  
    In the distance below the rebuilt Statue of Liberty sat, no longer the metaphor of a nation; instead, a melancholy footnote of greatness past. Her remade face looked different somehow. Pissed.  
    “Air’s clear today. You can see the guys up there,” said the hackie.
    I craned my neck to the Blister construction half a mile up. The arching girders looked too thin to support their own weight, let alone a structure that covered almost a hundred square miles. I’d read that they started construction from four sides—Englewood Cliffs and Inwood to the north, Secaucus to the west, Bayonne to the south, and Flushing Meadows Park to the east, with the goal of joining in the middle over Times Square. The interior Manhattan segments had finished and gone online early. Money had its privileges.
    “Fullerite,” said the driver.
    “Huh?”
    “The Blister frame. Actually, it’s a type of ultra-hard fullerite called aggregate nanorods. Harder than diamonds. The grid between each section is electromagnetic