Gredel had never admired Lamey so much as at that moment. He behaved with a strange delicacy, as if he were a Peer himself, some lord commander of the Fleet cleaning up after a confidential mission.
The doorman wouldn't let them stay. On the way out, Gredel saw that Caro's apartment was a terrible mess, with clothes in piles and the tables covered with glasses, bottles, and dirty dishes.
“I want you to come back here tomorrow,” Lamey said as he started the car. “I want you to become Caro Sula's best friend.”
Gredel fully intended this, but she wondered why Lamey's thoughts echoed her own. “Why?”
“Peers are rich,” Lamey said simply. “Maybe we can get some of that and maybe we can't. But even more than the money, Peers are also the keys to things, and maybe Caro can open some doors for us. Even if it's just the door to her bank account, it's worth a try.”
It was very, very late, almost dawn, but Lamey wanted to take Gredel to one of his apartments. There they had a brisk five minutes’ sex, hardly worth taking off her clothes for as far as Gredel was concerned, and then Lamey took Gredel home.
As soon as she walked in the door, she knew Antony was back-he'd been gone for four months, working in another town, and Gredel had got used to walking in the door without fear. Now the apartment smelled different, a blend of beer and tobacco and human male and fear. Gredel took off her boots at the door so she wouldn't wake him, and crept in silence to her bed. Despite the hour, she lay awake for some time, thinking of keys and doors opening.
Lamey didn't know what he wanted from Caro, not quite. He was operating on an instinct that told him Caro could be useful, give him connections, links that would move him upward in the Fabs. Gredel had much the same intuition where Caro was concerned, but she wanted Caro for other things. Gredel didn't want to stay in the Fabs. Caro might show her how to do that, how to behave, perhaps, or how to dress, how to move up, and maybe not just out of the Fabs but off Spannan altogether, loft out of the ring station on a tail of fire to Esley or Zanshaa or Earth, to a glittering life that she felt hovering around her, a kind of potential waiting to be born, but that she couldn't quite imagine.
She woke just before noon and put on her robe to shower and use the toilet. The sounds of the Spring Festival zephyrball game blared from the front room, where Antony was watching the video. Gredel finished her business in the bathroom and went back into her room to dress. When she finished putting on her clothes and her makeup, she brushed her hair for a long time, delaying the moment when she would leave her sanctum to face Antony, but when she realized what she was doing, she got angry at herself and put the brush down, then put her money in the pocket of her jacket and walked through the door.
Antony sat on the sagging old sofa watching the game on the video wall. The remains of a sandwich sat on a plate next to him. He was a man of average height but built powerfully, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest and long arms with big hands. He looked like a slab on legs. Iron-grey hair fringed his bald head, and his eyes were tiny and set in a permanent suspicious glare.
He wasn't drinking, Gredel saw, and felt some of her tension ease.
“Hi, Antony,” she said as she walked for the apartment door.
He looked at her with his glaring black eyes. “Where you going dressed like that?”
“To see a friend.”
“The friend who bought you those clothes?”
“No. Someone else.” She made herself stop walking and face him.
His lips twitched in a sneer. “Nelda says you're whoring now for some linkboy. Just like your mother.”
Anger flamed along Gredel's veins, but she clamped it down and said, “I've never whored. Never. Not once.”
“Not for money, maybe,” Antony said. “But look at those clothes on you. And that jewelry.” Gredel felt herself flush. Antony returned his attention to the game. “Better you sell that tail of yours for money,” he muttered. “Then you could contribute to your upkeep around here.”
So you could steal it, Gredel thought, but didn't say it. She headed for the door, and just before it swung shut behind her, she heard Antony's parting shot. “You better not take out that implant! You get pregnant, you're out of this place! I'm not looking after another kid that isn't my own!”
Like he'd ever looked after any kid.
Gredel left the building with her fists clenched and a blaze of fury kindled in her eyes. Kids playing in the front hall took one look at her and got out of her way.
It wasn't until the train was halfway to Maranic Town that the anger finally ebbed to a normal background buzz, and Gredel began to wonder if Caro would be at home, if she would even remember meeting her the previous night.
Gredel found the Volta Apartments quickly now that she knew where it was. The doorman-it was a different doorman this time-opened the door for her and showed her right to the elevator. Clearly he thought she was Caro. “Thank you,” Gredel smiled, trying to drawl out the words the way a Peer would.
She had to knock loudly, several times, before Caro came to the door. Caro was still in her short dress from the previous night, and tights, and bare feet. Her hair was disordered, and there was a smear of mascara on one cheek. Her slitted eyes opened wide as she saw Gredel at the door.
“Earthgirl,” she said. “Hi.”
“The doorman thought I was you. I came over to see if you were all right.”
Caro opened the door and flapped her arms, as if to say, I am as you see me. “Come in,” she said, and turned to walk toward the kitchen.
The apartment was still a mess, and the air smelled stale. Caro went to the sink in the little kitchen and poured herself a glass of water.
“My mouth tastes like cheese,” she said. “The kind with the veins in it. I hate that kind of cheese.”
She drank her water while Gredel walked around the apartment. She felt strangely reluctant to touch anything, as if it was a fantasy that might dissolve if she put a finger on it.
“So,” she said finally. “You want to go and do something?”
Caro finished her water and put down her glass on a counter already covered with dirty glasses. “I need some coffee first,” she said. “Would you mind going to the cafй on the corner and getting some for me while I change?”
“What about the coffee maker?” Gredel asked.
Caro blinked at the machine as if she were seeing it for the first time. “I don't know how to work it,” she said.
“I'll show you.”
“I never learned how to do kitchen stuff,” Caro said, as she made way for Gredel in the kitchen. “Till I came here, we always had servants. I had servants here, but I called the last one a cow and threw her out.”
“What's a cow?” Gredel asked.
“They're ugly and fat and stupid. Like Berthe when I fired her.”
Gredel found coffee in a cupboard and began preparing the coffee maker. “Do you eat cows, or what?” she asked.
“Yeah, they give meat. And milk, too.”
“We have vashes for that. And zieges. And swine and bison, but they only give meat.”
Gredel made coffee for them both. Caro took her cup into the bathroom with her, and after a while, Gredel heard the shower start to run. She sipped her coffee as she wandered around the apartment-the rooms were nice, but not that nice, Lamey had places just as good, though not in such an exclusive building as this. There was a view of the Iola River two streets away, but it wasn't that nice a view, there were buildings in the way, and the window glass was dirty.
Then, because she couldn't stand the mess any longer, Gredel began to pick up the scattered clothes and fold them. She finished that and was putting the dirty dishes in the washer when Caro appeared, dressed casually in soft wool pantaloons, a high-necked blouse, and a little vest with gold buttons and lots of pockets slashed one on top of the other. Caro looked around in surprise.
“You cleaned up!”
“A little.”
