Noir

always was, given enough time. “I wasn’t even working for you this time-you were just stringing me on with the possibility of a job-and you nearly got me killed.” She reconsidered the words. “‘Nearly’… shit. You did get me killed. Cooked up like a connecting flounder.”

“Seems rather a harsh way to put it…”

“Deal with it, pal.” November felt the back of the hospital gown pull open against the pillow as she folded her arms across her breast. “You left me hanging out there, looking like yesterday’s burnt toast. The only reason I’m alive-the only reason I’ve been brought back from the dead at all-is because somebody else popped for the bill here. Somebody who had a lot less reason to do it than you should have.”

“Please.” Harrisch sighed elaborately. “You might like to try to see these issues from my perspective. DynaZauber corporate practice is a strict implementation of Denkmann’s Pimp-Style Management™ philosophy-or to put it another way, PSM is the codification of what we just do as a matter of course. We really wrote the book on a lot of those things, almost more than Denkmann did. The ego annihilation, the perpetual screw; all that stuff.” A note of pride sounded in Harrisch’s voice. “So you can just dispense with any notions about loyalty being anything other than a one-way street when you deal with DZ. We take, we don’t give-even when you’re on the payroll, that’s how it works out. Anything else would violate the essential sadomasochistic underpinnings of our management style, and then the whole system falls apart. And we’ve got too much invested in it to let that happen.”

“Aw, man. Spare me.” I’m lying here with a new skin stitched on because of these jerks-she didn’t need a lecture on why getting connected by them was supposed to be such a wonderful thing. “If getting connected by you people comes without lubricant… I’m a big girl now. I’ll deal with it. Easier than listening to you sonsabitches.”

“You know-” Harrisch sat down on a corner of the bed; November had to draw her feet up beneath the blanket to avoid him. “Some people come through experiences such as you’ve been through… and they’re better people for it.”

“Oh, I am; believe me.” November glared at him. “I’m just not going to waste it on you.”

“I see.” The expression on the exec’s face was one of sly assessment. “And who does get the benefit of your transformed nature? Or let’s put it another way: who are you hoping will get it?” Harrisch leaned closer to her; he smelled of expensive cologne and adding-machine printouts. “Maybe it’s that poor bastard McNihil. Because you’re so grateful to him.”

“Hardly.” November wished she had found something to throw at this smiling apparition. “He’s taken- remember? Even if I was interested in him, which I’m not. He’s got that major bent for his dead wife. Not exactly the kind of thing it’s possible to walk in on.”

“True.” Harrisch gave a shrug. “Unless… he wanted you to.”

“Give it up.” Her short laugh held contempt. “This shows why you were having such a hard time recruiting him. You don’t know how his mind works.”

“And I suppose you do? Tell me then: why’d McNihil pay your bill, for the skin grafts and all the rest of it? He must’ve had a reason.”

She regarded the DZ exec warily, then shook her head. “I don’t know why.”

Harrisch slowly nodded, deep in his own thoughts. “I don’t, either,” he said after a moment. “Kind of a mystery. I was really hoping that you might be able to clue me in on it. Because there’s always a reason.”

Like there is for your coming around here. The act wasn’t fooling November. She could see inside Harrisch’s skull with the same abstract X rays she used to turn on the men in the trains, the ones who’d wanted to press themselves on and into her previous skin. They always want something, she thought. Harrisch was no different in his wanting, his lust for connection, even if his eventual orgasm was wired into something other than his fleshy genitals, some part whose up-and-down movements were more accurately charted on a stockbroker’s report.

“Like I said.” November wasn’t scared of the exec any longer; the twinge of fear had been rooted in some vestigial organ of her own body, childish and irrational; it would probably be a long time before a lit match wouldn’t make her bladder tremble. “I don’t know why he did it. Maybe McNihil thought he was responsible for what happened to me-”

“I doubt it,” said Harrisch. “Asp-heads don’t feel guilt. Everything’s justified to them.”

“Then he really should’ve gone to work for you. Without being pushed.” She regarded the exec without flinching. “But I don’t know the why of that, either. If the guy’s got his reasons, he keeps them to himself. After all-” She tilted her head and looked at Harrisch from the corner of her eye. “He didn’t tell you why he was picking up my tab, did he? He just did it, that’s all.”

“True.” Harrisch watched his own hand smoothing out a section of the bedsheet, then glanced back up at her. “But you’d like to know, wouldn’t you?”

She felt as though she were looking down at the exec from some lofty mountaintop. “And somehow you’re going to make that possible, I take it.”

“Perhaps.” Harrisch shrugged. “I just came to offer you a little… travel assistance. To go somewhere… interesting.”

“With you?”

“Not necessarily.”

Her eyes narrowed, as though sharpening her gaze enough to see into the DZ exec. “Is this a job offer? Because if it is, you’re wasting your time.” November had already made her decision, before this clown had shown up. “I’m not doing any kind of work you might be looking for. Not anymore.”

“No-this is a freebie. Both ways.” Harrisch stood up from the bed. “Let’s just say that I’m the kind of person who likes to have things witnessed. Sometimes important things. Sometimes just…” He let his unpleasant smile show again. “Sometimes just personal things.”

November’s skin had stopped prickling; the sharp-pointed needles had gathered into a ball near her heart. “Which is it this time?”

The smile didn’t fade. “It’s both.” Harrisch stepped around to the side of the bed, closer to her than when he’d been sitting down. “Of course,” he said, “we can make it as personal as you want.” He leaned down toward her, before she could react. One arm encircled November’s shoulders, pulling her up from the stacked pillows; Harrisch brought his face right up against her, tight enough that she could feel his teeth through the thin lips pressing against hers. Harrisch drew back just a fraction of an inch. “Or it can be a job. You pick.”

Her movement was one of instinct. She seized Harrisch’s skull, hands on either side above his ears. November pressed as hard as she could, her eyes squeezing tight with effort, but nothing happened. Except Harrisch’s laughter.

“Come on.” He pushed himself away; standing beside the bed, brushing off his jacket lapels, he regarded her with amusement. “As long as that much work was being done on you, I didn’t mind paying for a little extra. A little something to be removed. A pretty girl like you shouldn’t have those kinds of nasty toys wired into her.” Harrisch nodded slowly and judiciously. “Gives people the wrong impression about you.”

Shit, thought November as she looked at her hands, with their now-ineffectual fingertips. “I spent a lot of money for those TMS implants-”

“Well, then.” Harrisch shrugged. “Maybe you will be interested in a job. Or… some other arrangement.” His ugly smile was like a bad kiss, overly familiar and nauseating. He stepped toward the room’s door, pulled it open, then glanced back at her. “Soon as you’re out, give me a call. Even if you just want to do a little traveling. You know where to find me.”

Not where you should be, jerk. She went on glaring at the closed door long after the man was gone.

When November finally closed her eyes-it made more sense to get as much rest as she could, before they booted her out of the hospital-she saw again, without dreaming, the burning End Zone Hotel. This time, she realized something about it that she’d missed before.

That’s where he is, thought November. One way or another-the burning hotel was where McNihil was at. Whether the hotel even existed or not; it didn’t matter. That was why she’d dreamed about the hotel, seen it burning as it had been long ago, caught in that fiery moment. Maybe, she thought, when he paid my bill, he bought my dreams as well…

Not dreams, but visions. She knew that now. With her eyes closed, she could feel the distant heat on her face.