A couple of delivery robots rolled by. Trashcans on wheels, covered with screens. One of them tried playing an ad at me, but they never slow down unless something’s blocking them so I didn’t hear much of it. That’s the nice thing and the problem all at once. The robots tend to just fuck off, they’ve got deadlines. But they don’t respond to awkward silence as predictably if you happen to end up awkwardly stuck around one. That said, I heard that if you nudge it with your foot— which may have been code for kick it— that it’d shut up. Honestly, I’m too much of a pussy to try. Thing’d take like twenty pictures of me and I’d owe somebody a bunch of money for molesting robots or something. Not really worth testing shits you read online.
I heard crap getting moved around in the shop so I knocked again. She seriously not going to open the door?
“Hey, Marine. Stop being a slut and open the door.”
Nothing. Slut usually got her motivated to come complain. Maybe she was in a bad mood. Whatever, I had nothing better to do so I went back to waiting. The rustling stopped after a few minutes so it was back to leaning pointlessly against the wall. Probably… twenty minutes later or so, I heard the locks running down on the other side of the door so I turned around to wait for the door to open up.
The top half of the door cracked open.
“You finally remember I knocked?”
“Huh?” She sounded groggy. “The fuck is you talking about? I saw you on the cameras.”
She leaned over and looked down the alleyway in both directions. It was a pretty half-hearted check. She was in a loose shirt that’d had the neck cut off it. Now, and I can’t stress this enough, I tried to look at her nipples. I didn’t see them, but I tried. Too hard. She saw me, and scoffed. The top of the split door shut and then the whole thing opened.
“I’m never going to fuck you.”
She was wearing brown… I don’t know… yoga pants? But they weren’t the tight kind. Upscale sweat pants without elastic on the ankles? I don’t fucking know what girls call pants. Just pants, maybe. She turned and headed in so I followed her.
“Yeah, I wasn’t really worried about it.”
“Bullshit. You want this whole deal. Pervert.”
I didn’t say anything. Felt like I could have carried on with the banter but the options laid out didn’t really leave me in a good position conversationally speaking. Sure, I’d love to lay a jizz in just about anything willing but sex just seemed like so much effort lately. It’s not like in porn. If you don’t want to be called an asshole, you either have to get the girl off or date a chick who had a bad series of high school boyfriends and doesn’t understand what orgasms are. Really, I just wanted to see her nipples. She was some kind of half Asian, I think, and I wanted to know if they were brown or not. This shirt seemed like my best bet on getting a look. She was pretty short. Still, it wasn’t a thin shirt so I couldn’t rule out brown just based on the light getting through.
She moved behind her little counter and sat down. The shop was the same mess it always was. Parts, half-finished projects on work tables, the skeletons of robots of two dozen different makes and models.
“So what were you doing in here before you finally decided to open up?”
“What are you talking about? I opened the door as soon as I got down.”
“Guess it was thieves then.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but Marine went pale. Paler, I guess. She stood up and looked around the shop.
“Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Are you fucking sure, I said?!”
She didn’t wait for an answer out of me, it was straight to the racks behind the counter, sliding things over. She got more frantic as she poured over the contents of each shelf in turn.
“Oh no, no… come on.”
She was tearing things off shelves now. Nothing that hit the floor seemed to give her any satisfaction. She grabbed her head, groaning. Marine turned and walked to me. She grabbed my bag and unzipped it.
“What did you hear?”
“Nothing in there but my busted VR rig.”
She threw my bag on the ground. Really wanted to say something about it, but she seemed pretty upset and when she calmed down she’d probably feel bad anyway.
“What. Did. You. Hear?” It wasn’t quite screaming, but it was certainly louder than I’d have preferred to be spoken to.
The pizza guy never treated me like this. Maybe I’d misjudged him.
“Nothing specific. Just rustling. Blame your giant door. Hard to eavesdrop through that thing.”
Her shoulders dropped and she looked around the shop. There was an expression slowly working its way on to her face, like a kid realizing they can’t fix that vase before mom gets home. She sort of dragged her feet back over to the chair behind the counter and sat down.
“So, this is bad?”
She did not look at me in a kind way after asking.
“Don’t you have cameras in this place?”
I’d forgive her for forgetting. She was probably still pretty tired. She thought a minute after I said it then stood up.
“Come on.”
She went up the stairs behind the counter. My hands felt greasy. I should have dabbed the pizza. I take it back. Fuck the pizza guy.
Chapter
TWO
I did a sort of twee little jog to catch up before Marine got too far up the stairs. I felt that little sense of weird pride when I dropped my bag behind the counter. There’s a sort of singular joy in getting to go into staff only places when you’re not staff. Sort of like being the President’s kid or something. That unearned status
