can clean it out.
– Yeah, sure, she told me that, but I mean in a normal way she can’t get drunk. Because she’s an alcoholic. So she doesn’t drink. That’s what I really meant, she can’t drink. Alcohol, I mean. Not the other stuff. She drinks that.
I drink whiskey, pretend to watch the street while I look at her reflection in the glass, next to mine.
She crosses to the Eames and drops into it.
– But she has to drink that.
I keep my back to her.
She opens a box on the table next to the chair and takes out a clove cigarette.
– Which, it doesn’t gross me out or anything, but I do think it kinda sucks. No pun or anything. I mean, really, when you think about it, people eat cows and chickens and pigs and whatever they want, so what’s the dif? Especially with someone like Sela who’s totally got her shit together. I mean, with what I pay her as my trainer and my bodyguard, she can just buy what she needs. She never has to think about hurting anyone. It would just be so much easier if she could go to a store or something.
She lights her clove with a silver table lighter shaped like a thorn-circled sacred heart.
– Can you imagine, like, blood boutiques? People would get all sniffy about where they bought their blood and stuff. And someone would be making money. And, like, anyone could sell their blood and make some money and it wouldn’t matter if they were sick or anything because you guys can’t get sick.
She blows a cloud of smoke without coughing.
– But it will probably never happen that way.
She sticks her tongue out, an onyx stud dots its tip.
– Because most people are such fucking prudes. They don’t get anything. They think that if something’s different, that means it’s like it’s abnormal. Like there’s any such thing as normal.
She leans back in the chair.
– Like when people see me and Sela out. If they see us having dinner together, a teenage white chick and a big black woman, they can’t help but think it’s all fucked up. And if they notice her Adam’s apple? If they’re clued in enough to know she was born with a penis, you can see the freak-out all over their faces. And the way they love it. The way they just love staring and whispering and thinking how much better than her they are. People just suck that way.
I don’t argue with her about it.
She pulls her bare feet up on the chair.
– So it will probably never be like that. Like with all of you getting to live like everybody else.
She hugs her legs to her chest.
– Not unless someone finds a cure.
I turn around.
She rests her cheek against the tops of her knees.
– Did you know I just won a lawsuit? It was kind of a big deal. In the Journal and everything.
– Must have missed it on my way to the funny pages.
– Uh-huh. Well, I won and I got the terms of my trust altered.
She winks at me.
– You’re right, you know. I mean, I’m kind of surprised you remembered, but you’re right, I am seventeen. But in a couple months, I’m gonna be eighteen. Know what that means?
She bites her lower lip.
– It means that since I won my suit, I start to come into my inheritance. It means all the lawyers and all the board members and all the presidents and the CEOs and everybody has to get out of my ass. It means that all the business and finance classes I’ve been taking at prep, all the biochem courses I’ve audited online, all the tutors I’ve run circles around because they can’t keep up with how smart I am, it means that’s all gonna pay off.
She smiles ear to ear.
– Because when I’m eighteen, I’m gonna exercise my voting shares and take over Horde Bio Tech Incorporated. And I’m gonna put it to work finding a cure for the Vyrus. Because, you know what?
She takes a drag.
– I’m not just my mom’s daughter. I’m also my daddy’s little girl.
She blows smoke out her nostrils.
– And he was a genius.
I polish off my drink.
– He was a fucking loon.
She flutters her fingertips.
– Well, yeah.
I head for the bar.
– And you’re following right in his footsteps with that crap.
She puts her feet on the floor.
– Where are you off to?
I put my glass on the bar and look at her.
– Figure I know now what you wanted to talk about. Figure I know you’ve grown up spoiled as your mother and whacked as your father. Figure my curiosity is sated and I’m leaving now.
– No, that’s not it.
I snag the bottle I’ve been drinking from off the bar and turn my back to her. I’m on my way out.
– Mind if I take this for the road?
– Oh, Joseph, you’re just afraid.
I hear her stand behind me.
– Is it the girlfriend thing?
I stop.
I turn.
She drags off her clove.
– Cuz I get that. Sela says that Lydia says that you have a girlfriend and Lydia thinks that she has AIDS and that you take care of her. Which Sela says Lydia can hardly believe and she thinks you must be using her as a Lucy or something, but I totally believe it because I know what you can be like. I know you like to have something to take care of. But what I don’t get is, Do you really not fuck her? Because that’s what
