about Jimmy Sky?
Moon shrugged. I can scrape some funds out of petty cash. Mad money.
Mad money, I said. Oh, boy.
Yeah, baby. You’re gonna have the time of your life.
I nodded, sinking onto the couch. There was one small thing that troubled me. Maybe it was nothing. But I was lying, earlier. I had never heard of a cop named Jimmy Sky. It sounded a lot like the name of a comic book hero, like someone’s secret identity. It sounded like a lame superhero, some second-rate character like the Green Lantern. Now there was a pussy if ever there was one. The Green Lantern. A prettyboy with a magic ring.
Goo:
Limping, she was limping. What time was it. The sky had gone red and pink, like an exposed membrane. It couldn’t be much past midnight, could it. But it felt like dawn, like the sun was rising. The air against her face had the warm kiss of fever. She crossed the street, barely aware of passing cars.
She told herself to slow down.
It couldn’t be morning yet.
When she reached the other side, there was a faraway noise in her head like a hushed whisper, a ghost of fingers in her hair. Goo became Eve. Her apartment building loomed ahead, black. As ever, there was the knife of disappointment. The regret. She didn’t want to share herself with Eve.
Eve bore new bruises, fresh cuts.
Her apartment was empty and the air brittle.
She took off her coat and hung it carefully on a hook, then stepped out of Adore’s green dress and let it fall to the floor. Her body was numb, as usual. The transition wrecked her sometimes and she would easily sleep for fifteen hours without dreaming. The game was swallowing everything around her with the silent fury of a televised hurricane. Eve had no friends, no family. She had no job anymore and school was a pale, foreign memory. Three classes, she had paid tuition for three classes. Maybe four. One of them was Logic, she thought. Logic, yes. She had chosen it because it satisfied a Math credit, which seemed funny at the time. But she couldn’t remember the last time she even went near campus. At least five, maybe six weeks ago. Dizzy. She was a little dizzy. It might not be such a bad idea to withdraw from the game for a while, to catch her breath. Eve glanced over her shoulder. There was no one to hear her disordered thoughts, no one but Goo.
She went into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna. Walked back to the living room and stood in the dark, eating tuna straight from the can. Her face in a black window, looking back at her. The sheen of oil on her lips. She might not want to leave the game, she might not be able to.
What had the Redeemer said? It’s okay to be two people, two people.
Bone-white curtains swirled around her and she realized slowly that Phineas was gone. There were crumpled bits of paper on her floor. She picked them up and each one bore her given name.
I wondered dimly what time it might be. I had reluctantly sold my watch two weeks earlier in Memphis, to a nervous, razor-thin guy named Duke in a downtown pawnshop. Forty bucks for my father’s antique diving watch. And Duke had insulted me. He said the watch was barely worth ten dollars, because there was no way it was still waterproof. I was fucking lucky to get forty, according to Duke. There had been a wide, unfriendly silence as I wondered how much the watch was worth to me and how badly I needed to get to Denver. A black fly buzzed past my face, then landed on my wrist. It strolled up my arm, looking for a bite to eat. Duke had stared long and hard at the fly, his head bobbing as I tried in vain to explain that water resistance was really not the point. The watch was a valuable relic, an ode to an earlier age. At which point Duke had wiped his bright red nose and glared at me and said that the forty was about to fucking disappear. Duke had the bright, acidic stink and glow of a meth addict and I had to admit that I could live with forty.
Now I was awake. I was damp and hungry on Moon’s couch and I had
Moon shrugged. I can scrape some funds out of petty cash. Mad money.
Mad money, I said. Oh, boy.
Yeah, baby. You’re gonna have the time of your life.
I nodded, sinking onto the couch. There was one small thing that troubled me. Maybe it was nothing. But I was lying, earlier. I had never heard of a cop named Jimmy Sky. It sounded a lot like the name of a comic book hero, like someone’s secret identity. It sounded like a lame superhero, some second-rate character like the Green Lantern. Now there was a pussy if ever there was one. The Green Lantern. A prettyboy with a magic ring.
Goo:
Limping, she was limping. What time was it. The sky had gone red and pink, like an exposed membrane. It couldn’t be much past midnight, could it. But it felt like dawn, like the sun was rising. The air against her face had the warm kiss of fever. She crossed the street, barely aware of passing cars.
She told herself to slow down.
It couldn’t be morning yet.
When she reached the other side, there was a faraway noise in her head like a hushed whisper, a ghost of fingers in her hair. Goo became Eve. Her apartment building loomed ahead, black. As ever, there was the knife of disappointment. The regret. She didn’t want to share herself with Eve.
Eve bore new bruises, fresh cuts.
Her apartment was empty and the air brittle.
She took off her coat and hung it carefully on a hook, then stepped out of Adore’s green dress and let it fall to the floor. Her body was numb, as usual. The transition wrecked her sometimes and she would easily sleep for fifteen hours without dreaming. The game was swallowing everything around her with the silent fury of a televised hurricane. Eve had no friends, no family. She had no job anymore and school was a pale, foreign memory. Three classes, she had paid tuition for three classes. Maybe four. One of them was Logic, she thought. Logic, yes. She had chosen it because it satisfied a Math credit, which seemed funny at the time. But she couldn’t remember the last time she even went near campus. At least five, maybe six weeks ago. Dizzy. She was a little dizzy. It might not be such a bad idea to withdraw from the game for a while, to catch her breath. Eve glanced over her shoulder. There was no one to hear her disordered thoughts, no one but Goo.
She went into the kitchen and opened a can of tuna. Walked back to the living room and stood in the dark, eating tuna straight from the can. Her face in a black window, looking back at her. The sheen of oil on her lips. She might not want to leave the game, she might not be able to.
What had the Redeemer said? It’s okay to be two people, two people.
Bone-white curtains swirled around her and she realized slowly that Phineas was gone. There were crumpled bits of paper on her floor. She picked them up and each one bore her given name.
I wondered dimly what time it might be. I had reluctantly sold my watch two weeks earlier in Memphis, to a nervous, razor-thin guy named Duke in a downtown pawnshop. Forty bucks for my father’s antique diving watch. And Duke had insulted me. He said the watch was barely worth ten dollars, because there was no way it was still waterproof. I was fucking lucky to get forty, according to Duke. There had been a wide, unfriendly silence as I wondered how much the watch was worth to me and how badly I needed to get to Denver. A black fly buzzed past my face, then landed on my wrist. It strolled up my arm, looking for a bite to eat. Duke had stared long and hard at the fly, his head bobbing as I tried in vain to explain that water resistance was really not the point. The watch was a valuable relic, an ode to an earlier age. At which point Duke had wiped his bright red nose and glared at me and said that the forty was about to fucking disappear. Duke had the bright, acidic stink and glow of a meth addict and I had to admit that I could live with forty.
Now I was awake. I was damp and hungry on Moon’s couch and I had
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