Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

'Jules,' he began, then gave up and looked at Lil.

Lil had, by that time, figured out that I was back online, that their secret messaging had been discovered.

'Having fun, Lil?' I asked.

Lil shook her head and glared at me. 'Just go, Julius. I'll send your stuff to the hotel.'

'You want me to go, huh? So you can bang him till he limps?'

'This is my house, Julius. I'm asking you to get out of it. I'll see you at work tomorrow-we're having a general ad-hoc meeting to vote on the rehab.'

It was her house.

'Lil, Julius-' Dan began.

'This is between me and him,' Lil said. 'Stay out of it.'

I dropped my papers-I wanted to throw them, but I dropped them, flump, and I turned on my heel and walked out, not bothering to close the door behind me.

***

Dan showed up at the hotel ten minutes after I did and rapped on my door. I was all-over numb as I opened the door. He had a bottle of tequila-my tequila, brought over from the house that I'd shared with Lil.

He sat down on the bed and stared at the logo-marked wallpaper. I took the bottle from him, got a couple glasses from the bathroom and poured.

'It's my fault,' he said.

'I'm sure it is,' I said.

'We got to drinking a couple nights ago. She was really upset. Hadn't seen you in days, and when she did see you, you freaked her out. Snapping at her. Arguing. Insulting her.'

'So you made her,' I said.

He shook his head, then nodded, took a drink. 'I did. It's been a long time since I …'

'You had sex with my girlfriend, in my house, while I was away, working.'

'Jules, I'm sorry. I did it, and I kept on doing it. I'm not much of a friend to either of you.

'She's pretty broken up. She wanted me to come out here and tell you it was all a mistake, that you were just being paranoid.'

We sat in silence for a long time. I refilled his glass, then my own.

'I couldn't do that,' he said. 'I'm worried about you. You haven't been right, not for months. I don't know what it is, but you should get to a doctor.'

'I don't need a doctor,' I snapped. The liquor had melted the numbness and left burning anger and bile, my constant companions. 'I need a friend who doesn't fuck my girlfriend when my back is turned.'

I threw my glass at the wall. It bounced off, leaving tequila-stains on the wallpaper, and rolled under the bed. Dan started, but stayed seated. If he'd stood up, I would've hit him. Dan's good at crises.

'If it's any consolation, I expect to be dead pretty soon,' he said. He gave me a wry grin. 'My Whuffie's doing good. This rehab should take it up over the top. I'll be ready to go.'

That stopped me. I'd somehow managed to forget that Dan, my good friend Dan, was going to kill himself.

'You're going to do it,' I said, sitting down next to him. It hurt to think about it. I really liked the bastard. He might've been my best friend.

There was a knock at the door. I opened it without checking the peephole. It was Lil.

She looked younger than ever. Young and small and miserable. A snide remark died in my throat. I wanted to hold her.

She brushed past me and went to Dan, who squirmed out of her embrace.

'No,' he said, and stood up and sat on the windowsill, staring down at the Seven Seas Lagoon.

'Dan's just been explaining to me that he plans on being dead in a couple months,' I said. 'Puts a damper on the long-term plans, doesn't it, Lil?'

Tears streamed down her face and she seemed to fold in on herself. 'I'll take what I can get,' she said.

I choked on a knob of misery, and I realized that it was Dan, not Lil, whose loss upset me the most.

Lil took Dan's hand and led him out of the room.

I guess I'll take what I can get, too, I thought.

Chapter 6

Lying on my hotel bed, mesmerized by the lazy turns of the ceiling fan, I pondered the possibility that I was nuts.

It wasn't unheard of, even in the days of the Bitchun Society, and even though there were cures, they weren't pleasant.

I was once married to a crazy person. We were both about 70, and I was living for nothing but joy. Her name was Zoya, and I called her Zed.

We met in orbit, where I'd gone to experience the famed low-gravity sybarites. Getting staggering drunk is not much fun at one gee, but at ten to the neg eight, it's a blast. You don't stagger, you bounce, and when you're bouncing in a sphere full of other bouncing, happy, boisterous naked people, things get deeply fun.

I was bouncing around inside a clear sphere that was a mile in diameter, filled with smaller spheres in which one could procure bulbs of fruity, deadly concoctions. Musical instruments littered the sphere's floor, and if you knew how to play, you'd snag one, tether it to you and start playing. Others would pick up their own axes and jam along. The tunes varied from terrific to awful, but they were always energetic.

I had been working on my third symphony on and off, and whenever I thought I had a nice bit nailed, I'd spend some time in the sphere playing it. Sometimes, the strangers who jammed in gave me new and interesting lines of inquiry, and that was good. Even when they didn't, playing an instrument was a fast track to intriguing an interesting, naked stranger.

Which is how we met. She snagged a piano and pounded out barrelhouse runs in quirky time as I carried the main thread of the movement on a cello. At first it was irritating, but after a short while I came to a dawning comprehension of what she was doing to my music, and it was really good. I'm a sucker for musicians.

We brought the session to a crashing stop, me bowing furiously as spheres of perspiration beaded on my body and floated gracefully into the hydrotropic recyclers, she beating on the 88 like they were the perp who killed her partner.

I collapsed dramatically as the last note crashed through the bubble. The singles, couples and groups stopped in midflight coitus to applaud. She took a bow, untethered herself from the Steinway, and headed for the hatch.

I coiled my legs up and did a fast burn through the sphere, desperate to reach the hatch before she did. I caught her as she was leaving.

'Hey!' I said. 'That was great! I'm Julius! How're you doing?'

She reached out with both hands and squeezed my nose and my unit simultaneously-not hard, you understand, but playfully. 'Honk!' she said, and squirmed through the hatch while I gaped at my burgeoning chub- on.

I chased after her. 'Wait,' I called as she tumbled through the spoke of the station towards the gravity.

She had a pianist's body-re-engineered arms and hands that stretched for impossible lengths, and she