$19.95
My name was Alisha Nureyev. I was a fool to take the job. And today I went by some of my old haunts, saw some of my old friends. They refused to recognize me, thinking perhaps I was some rich bitch slumming on the Avenues, that I had bought this body at the corner dimestore, just like ten thousand other women…
I guess I expected too much from a bunch of poor thieves and whores, merchants and madmen. My friends. Left without a dream. After all, the world was made for making other people’s dreams real. We were just there as props. We were the actors, the models, and the crime was there for titillation. A thief among many is just a thief among many. Do a job, even if it is an illegal one, and the world applauds and assumes you are there for that purpose, even if all you do is scare. Even if the only point in your existence is to make others feel bad that you do. That’s a nice idealistic view of the world. We all have it. We can’t explain ourselves any other way. We try to be different by explaining it that way. Yes, the Avenues are hard on idealists, hard on those who try to become an individual. In the City we are all the crowd.
I had wanted a modeling job. My mother was probably a whore who gave birth to me in her cubicle, then left me for the rats, eager to get back to earning money. I did not want to get trapped into that life, even if it did have its philosophical purpose. It was a dead-end job, one which left you living as an oddity past twenty-five. Left you as a tool for the perverts who like women that way. At sixty, a drunk and blubbery blubbering bitch, with children who run the alleys and die. The cubicles are tight, narrow things where the extras cost money, even when tax-subsidized. The gymnastics are taxing. The life is a bad one. The lowest you can go as a normal female on the Avenues.
I had been left young. A burden, or maybe my mother felt I was too tempting as a competitor. Pimping for kids is not healthy on the Avenues, the people Downtown dislike it. No, I grew looking at myself in mirrors, trying to figure out which of the many cubicles held my mother. Which one had the hollowed out look that I did not want. Which one looked like me. Maybe the mirrors were addictive. I do not know why, they never talked back to me. A fluttering piece of paper did.
The ad was posted all over the Avenues, on yellow paper, looking quite professionally done. Some agency from the Streets, looking for lower-class talent and cute bodies.
Life in the City. Maybe if you came from another one, you could get the point, but you can’t, it’s too hard, the life is too strange. The world is lines, you know, lines, and you live in your lines. Downtowners live east-west lives, on the Avenues full of gaudy shops and exotic signs promising whatever you could ask for. Nobody there can afford to do more than live and work there, they can’t play there, they don’t play anywhere, and what could they do? You know, I have never seen the forest, but it must be a lot like the City. Little furry animals scurry across dead leaves, while big monsters shoot them and take them for cages and pens and feel their fur and let them roam just so they can watch them. Raccoons, you know? Ugly things. Masked, thieves and loved for it, and killed whenever men can. Do you think the animals get to play like they are played with? They are too innocent to know how.
Rich men and women are from the big buildings, the technological heavens. Uptown. Way above their entertainments. They live on Streets, running north and south, elevated above us. They come down to play. They come Downtown. But they always go back up there, to the mystery, to the strange place they always say is so clean and so orderly and so quiet, where they sleep, they breathe their air and look down on us… And we see them, looming, and we feel the way we should, like animals to men, like men to gods. Money. We know it’s just money. There are elevators that go back and forth, there are ways. We could get there. We could. The yellow ad was asking me to. To go Uptown, to take an Elevator, to rise. All I had to do was to choose the upward pointing arrow. The down arrow led to the Underworld, the despicable and dirty place that gave us our energy. Underground.
Of course I went.
As I rose above the buildings of my Avenue, I was struck by how dark it looked. Lights were flickering, pale, evanescent. Scurrying figures were lost quickly in the press of bodies that was constantly flowing and stopping; flowing and stopping. A block or two down the way I could see some commotion- perhaps a thief caught, or an accident of some kind.
My fellow passengers were ignoring me with skill, and reserving their contempt for a smudge of a man who had come up from the Underworld, dirty, smelly, ugly. He bore their stares with an odd sort of pride, as if saying, Look at me. I am the man who gives you the electricity you love, the air you breathe, the lives you live. You cannot be contemptuous, for you are beneath contempt. I cheered within myself even as I inched away from him. The man was dangerous, an isolated element of his society. He could do anything.
Once I was sitting in my favorite snack bar, Rosalinda’s. She called it El Mapache Maldito, the damned raccoon. She said that when she lived in the country, a raccoon used to eat all the garbage from her back yard and spread what it didn’t eat all around the driveway. I didn’t know what a driveway was, so she had to explain it. After her lengthy explanation that led to reminiscences of her life in the country, I asked her why she ever moved to the City. Her life sounded like an Uptown dream. “Ay, bendita,” she said, “either here or there life is una porquería. There it was the raccoon. Here it is the people, the police, the Avenue’s trash that comes in my door. At least here I can damn the raccoon to hell, ¿no?” Then she laughed her hearty laugh and served me more french fries. Mamá Rosalinda weighs some three hundred pounds, and only cooks good food for her friends.
I thought that this woman was foolish. I think now that this woman is one of the wisest people I know.
Uptown is not like any other place in the world. The Streets are not as wide as the Avenues, yet are less crowded. People wearing glistening, translucent robes with upswept shoulders, owning invisible feet, walked along the edges of the road; and silent blue and gold ovoids swooped through the air. Many men had their heads shaved. Many women had hair to their knees. My hair, honey-blonde and ragged, felt dowdy compared to the shining colors around me. I stumbled out of the Elevator onto a soft pad. The rest of the passengers filed silently out, except the Underworlder, who swaggered. I stood, having lost my place.
An official, somehow dirtier than the courtesans who promenaded idly about, walked up to the two of us.
“Hello,” he said politely, with a click of the heels and a miniscule bow. “May I see your papers, please?” He held out his hands expectantly.
The Underworlder dug in a pocket that grime had rendered undetectable, and produced some worn and filthy identification of some sort. The Official took it and flipped quickly through it. Snapping it shut, he handed it back.
“Thank you very much, Citizen Helms. Enjoy your stay Uptown.”
The Underworlder gave a swift nod, and ambled away. I lost him soon, due to the fact the official was now regarding me with a close scrutiny that made me think of my mother.
“I don’t have any papers,” I said faintly. He just looked at me. I was prepared to head down the shaft again, back Downtown, when the official broke into a large smile, let out a big breath, and seemed to relax suddenly .
“Okay, no problem. Come this way.” He led me into a small office on the side of the Elevator and told me to take a seat. There was only one chair in the room, and that was behind the desk, so I sat on the overflowing papers that nestled within bursting folders that covered that desk. It was uncomfortable, and both papers and I shifted frequently.
“Well, what are you doing here?” he asked, idly, fingering some fold in his uniform. He was short, looked like a type of man who smoked- but that would be taboo in the sterile Uptown- and his fingers were short, stubby, calloused. A handsome head, with a face that was less so. He needed what Rosalinda would call a woman’s touch.
“I came in response to an ad posted Downtown. For a modeling agency.” My voice felt out of place.
“Well,” he said. And, “Well,” again. “Another bright-eyed girl looking for fame and fortune. What is your name, girl?” He reached for some papers on the desk. I worked hard not to flinch.
“My name is Alisha Nureyev. I am a model.”
He laughed. “All right, Alisha. If you say so. What do you do?” He was busily scribbling away at his little piece of paper.
“Sorry?”
“What do you do for a living? To earn money?” A trifle impatient, now.
“I’m a model!”
The official seemed disgusted. “Okay, so you’re a model. If such a thing exists Downtown. Where are you going to be staying on the Streets?”
“I don’t know. Wherever the agency is, or I’ll go back downtown. The address is right here.” I handed the quickly outstretched hand the creased, folded, diminutive yellow scrap of a poster, and he examined it.
“Fourteenth Street, Block K, #22435a,” he read off. “Well, that’s awfully close to Thirteenth. Tell you what, I’ll find out something about this place for you. Wouldn’t want a sweet girl like you to get stuck with a nasty employer. A lot of these places are involved in porn, cloning, and other assorted illegal things.” He ambled over to a console buried under notices and reports, casually throwing his name over his shoulder. Official Marcus. Harold Marcus. I came to stand behind him, watching his fingers rattle over the keys, playing them. My name entered, then the contents of the ad, described in true bureaucratese: Modeling, Jobs Offered; Yellow poster. The computer regurgitated two items from the abyss of judgement.
Alisha Nureyev: Pornographic Display
Modeling, Jobs Offered: Anderson, Citizen J. 14th Street, Block K, # 22453a.
A duplicate of the yellow ad followed, glaring and fluorescent on the screen.
“There you go,” Officer Marcus said. No change in his expression. “Fourteenth is only two Streets away. Go down a block and turn left. The crosswalk will take you there, but make sure you go two blocks. Thirteenth Street really is a bad neighborhood- don’t stop there. Keep going.”
“Bad neighborhood? I thought…”
“…That Uptown didn’t have bad Streets?” he interrupted smilingly, coldly. “We’re just like any other City- bad elements and good. Thirteenth Street is where all the sex is Uptown: prostitutes, peep shows, porn shows and stores. Ladies of good breeding don’t go there just for fear of being mistaken for a professional.”
“As opposed to an amateur?” I rejoined, not liking his tone.
The Officer laughed, humor hitting his complexion and melting it. “Yes,” he said, “we all dabble in that art, don’t we.” And looking at me: “Some more than most.”
I flushed and looked away. “To the left here, you said?”
“No, go right here, then left a block down. Got that?”
I nodded assent. He turned back to his computer and re-entered my name. Under profession he entered “Model”. He carefully copied the agency’s address into the temporary residence space; and so went down the list of required information for a stay Uptown. I was given three days to complete my business. A printout that I was told to sign solemnly stated that any stay past the permitted date (above, line xii) will render the holder liable for air damage, taxes (as permitted by Statute 17, USC § 101), and may also result in prosecution according to the Immigration and Imports regulations detailed in Statute 174, USC § 23 parts a, b, d, and e. It then thanked me in computer print for obeying local customs and wished me a pleasant stay.
As I collected my newly issued documents, Officer Marcus’ fresh autograph upon them, he grabbed me by the arm. “Sit back down,” he invited.
I wrested my arm away. “No, thank you. I have to go now.” I was turning away, more quickly than I had come, when the front door closed. Whirling, I saw the Officer’s hand on a button on his desk. I backed away. “What do you want?”
“Nothing really,” he said amiably. “Just wondering if you know your way around Uptown.”
“I can get to where I’m going, if that’s what you mean.”
He came around the desk. “No, that’s not what I mean. You are in for a shock up here.” Thinking back on it, I think he was trying to avoid talking about my job. He seemed not to know what to say. Finally, he said, “Things are different here,” Not knowing how to respond to bare-faced truth, I simply didn’t.
“For instance, your clothes.” He gestured expansively, and off flew papers from his desk. “You’re wearing what a whore would wear up here. You look like a Downtowner. You look different. People up here are afraid of that. You flaunt your sex. You look like you might strip at any time, in the Street. People are scared that you might do it while they are watching, while they are trying very hard not to care about anything, to be like everybody else. We see more of ourselves in you than we care to, and it scares us. It scares us.” He paused for a breath.
“Don’t you like living Uptown?” I asked. It seemed to me that only a fool would choose to live according to philosophical ideas rather than practical ones. If he disliked my profession, he should stay away from it, and live away from it. As he did.
“Yes, I do. I feel kind of ashamed about that, I guess. I shouldn’t be here. Neither should you. Go home, before you remind us of what we are. We all have our perversions, Thirteenth Street is here for that, but we don’t show them in public; we don’t like knowing other people’s vices; we don’t want to believe there are any. You Downtowners talk a lot, but aren’t as dirty or as depraved as we claim. I know- I’ve been on a Cleaning of the Avenues. You recognize perversions- cater to them. But you are a puritanical lot. ”
“Well, we are just doing it for the money. You have the money. We have the sin.” I was surprised to hear my words, but I had to say them- arguing Devil’s Advocate is always worthwhile. I didn’t do it for the money.
“Shut up,” He said. “Please, just, shut, up. You are just another one of many, you know that? You are coming up, just like anyone else could, just like that foolish man who goes Underworld, for a change of pace. You think you’ll do something special, there is nothing special. You want fame, you little fool. It’s idiotic to want to be a familiar face. You will be in everyone’s mind, on everyone’s tongue, in everyone’s hand. I will hold you and fondle you. So will any man who sees your nude picture splayed across the screen, hanging from the walls, hawking the latest craze. Why don’t you just find someone who will touch you instead? Instead of touching your picture? If it’s touching you want, hell, I can do it!”
I was astonished, and did not make a sound, afraid that the madman would attack me, kill me, drink my blood or chew my bones. He was right, of course. He knew what he was talking about.
“Never mind,” he said. I saw his grimace reduce past a grin into grimness. “Go to your big shot at life here in the skies. If you get a permanent contract, come back here and I’ll extend your Living Permit. You’ll probably want to go home. People here are so plastic, fake, empty. Empty on the surface, full of themselves and shit on the inside.” He laughed bitterly, even as he made an obscure gesture with his left hand and pressed the door button with his right. “I guess that’s why I’m a Borderguard.”
A more palpable gesture this time, a pointing finger out. I went, expecting darkness, perhaps flashing light, and found shades of gray. Air wavered, rather than breezing or rushing by.
As I set off, to the right, along the sandpapery walk, I heard Official Marcus’ voice wishing me a wailing, faltering, “Good luck.” He had not said anything about my being a peep show girl.
It was then I realized that life was hated here as well, and it made me feel more at home.
It is hard to understand life Downtown.
Once I was running an alley, going to a neighboring Avenue. It was exhilarating to be able to cast off the ordinary directions of movement and head off to the north or south for a long distance, rather than just across the way. Soon the thrill paled, the excitement dulled, as realization set in that no matter which way I ran, I was still going along the cardinal compass directions. Even an elevator could only carry me at right angles to my reality. I could go as far as I wished along my alley, and I would still be treading roads traveled before, by other teens with rebellious streaks, or by smugglers bringing spicy foods from Avenue 16 or clone girls from whatever cradle they were stolen from.
I stopped there, where I was, in a puddle that was oily and streaked with the rainbow, and watched myself follow myself follow myself. I then turned around and left the alley at the first Avenue I came to. I never went back to my Avenue of birth. The first place I came to was a snack bar, and Rosalinda gave me food.
I lived on many Avenues after that, but worked near Rosalinda’s. Life had new vistas for me. My biggest problem was that my vistas were walled ones, with clear direction arrows pasted on the walls, and people scrambling all around.
Cloning is a dirty business. I had a childhood friend, a girl who was as bright and pretty as she deserved to be. She vanished one day from the Avenue, and we all assumed she was running alleys. I saw her again a few weeks later, and she offered to do anything for a few dollars. I asked her who she was, if not my friend, and she gave me her clone number, authorization all in order, and again offered to do anything for a few dollars. Piping voice, sweet smile, good earner.
We found the body in the alley next to the Children’s House. She hadn’t even gotten away from the Avenue, and now she pervaded it. In a month she was out of date, and a new clone was the rage- from a different supplier, for the one who took my friend was found and beaten to death.
I didn’t know about that until later, but in a distant way I approved. He tried to make my friend into somebody well known, and you deserve death for that.
The interview took place in a cavernous room. I had found it past a nondescript door I had nearly missed, embedded as it was in a featureless wall, with no bright stall awnings, no luminous sign. Stepping in, I found the darkness I had craved, circadian rhythm satisfied.
Echoes abounded. The room was deserted, empty and receptive. Mirrors hung on one wall, what appeared to be huge, limp sheets on another. Some sticklike camera equipment and lights stood and shadowed a few inches of ground.
As I entered, lights came on. The place was white.
Out of an unseen door behind the sheets came a man with cameras ringed ’round his neck, a stereotype if I ever saw one. He approached, circled, examined, considered, greeted me.
“My name is Anderson, Citizen J. You may call me Citizen Anderson. I am the head of this little operation we’ve got going. What is your name?”
I told him.
“And you are from Downtown?”
I told him.
“Ah. Well, I must say you look quite suitable. Would you kindly strip, please?”
I told him no.
A frown crossed his lovely face, and he seemed perplexed for a moment. Finally his face cleared, and he said, “May I see your identification, please, miss?”
Upon examining it, he heaved a sigh, and dramatically said, “I’m afraid there’s been a misunderstanding. I see by this paper that you are a professional model. I wasn’t aware that there were such people Downtown.What I, we, are looking for is an amateur, a beginner, an unknown face that we can elevate from obscurity into familiarity. I’m afraid you have made the trip here for no good reason at all.”
“Actually,” I began diffidently, “I am a beginner. This would be my first job.”
“Ah. I see. Well, in that case, your documentation is in error- but I am prepared to dismiss that. In any case, welcome to our organization. Perhaps we should set the rules about now, eh? We need some pictures of you without your clothes on.”
“No, no nudes,” I insisted feebly. Flesh is common. I didn’t want to be common.
“No naked shots? Whyever not?”
“Nudes, not nakeds. And, no, none. I don’t want to be a porn star.” I prepared to leave, but he stopped me with a shake of his head as soon as he perceived my intention.
“Perhaps I should explain what we are all about. We don’t want just a model. We are trying to create a new industry. We will want not only nudes, but also tissue samples.”
“Then the deal is off. No cloning. Goodbye.”
“It isn’t cloning, Alisha. We won’t need brain samples. A common scrape from your cheek would do for most of it. A bit from a bone is also needed. But it isn’t dangerous. It isn’t. It isn’t cloning, not at all, at all.” He was very earnest.
My name was Alisha Nureyev. I was a fool to take the job.
It was a scary concept, and a brilliant one. Nobody is ever happy being themselves forever. They want to try being someone else. They would try to be me.
I saw the first girl. She was about twelve. They injected her with something, sprayed her with something, irradiated her, and let her lie. She hurt- we could see it, but from behind the glass (I pampered and needed still, as samples to be taken), from a safe vantage point. She twitched, then screamed, and it took hours, but she changed.
A virus can affect genetic structure. If exposed to a tailor designed virus, or even a sequence of them, human genetic structure can be altered. New, different cells replace the old. The person undergoes agony as the old body is absorbed by the new, rejected like an unsuited organ, killed like an invader in an invaded land.
I watched as that girl became a woman with honey-blonde hair, a creature of the Avenues. Age snatched awkward adolescence from her. Her eyes moved to the wrong place. Her flesh grew seams. Her nose lengthened and her forehead steepened. Her lips grew too much and her legs just broke.
Something had gone wrong, and inside that body the girl was screaming. She had been drugged. Where did they get her? Another alleyrunner, probably, looking for new vistas.
They bustled about, Citizen Anderson having returned to his native lab coat, cameras shucked off as an inconvenient disguise. They could cure her, they said, it could be done, just a flaw in their reasoning.
Someone paused to observe that the girl looked like Hell.
You know, there was a soul lost in that Hell.
In time they cured her, even set her back to her old self, once the process was perfected. It took just two hours and forty-five minutes, when they got the hang of it. She was let loose Downtown, on the Avenue upon which they found her. But she was insane already.
The commercialization of Alisha Nureyev:
Have you ever wanted to know what it is to live the life of a fast, lively, lovely, and loose young lady? Now you can experience it to the fullest, with complete anonymity. With absolutely no cloning or transplants involved, Anderson Inc. can transform your body to this lovely specimen of womanhood, Alisha Nureyev. Honey-blonde, agile, healthy, and stunningly beautiful, her body will be yours to wear and live in for as long as you wish. And when you have experienced this wonder, return to your own self easily, at no extra expense. This process is safe, painless, and costs only $19.95!!!!!!
Soon other ‘models’ were available, but the market was already flooded. The process was simple, even stupidly obvious, and soon rival companies had Do-It-Yourself Kits, pirated copies of myself with tissue taken from an Alisha who had gotten the process done. I was a best-seller, the latest thrill, the ultimate escape. A thriving market existed in the transsexual customers. Women soon pressured the suppliers of genes for custom designed bodies.
In less than two months I was outmoded. In a year, I was a classic, like a golden oldie off the piped-in radio in doctors’ waiting rooms.
Rosalinda told me a story about the first time she saw one of my twin sisters. She had to serve it french fries and a hamburger, because it asked for them; but she was tempted to kill it. It had come in, looking like me, and I had not been in for so long, that Rosa was worried. But I had been seen around Downtown increasingly of late, and so they assumed I was safe.
I understood Rosalinda completely. She had wanted to kill this other Alisha. So did I. That was why I left, eventually. They offered to give me a new body, even one that was not available on the common market, a new identity. But I had never felt that comfortable in my own, or satisfied that I had one; and so I declined the offer, fearing to be lost in a part I assumed.
I wandered Thirteenth Street once in a while, after leaving. Nobody ever questioned me anymore. Only Uptownies could get an Alisha body- I had one, therefore I was from Uptown. My papers shocked some people, but I was a celebrity, and so no-one ever questioned my expired Living Permit.
I was looking into a window once, seeing undulations in vague shadows, amidst a crowd of myself, when a clone-girl came up to me. She spat on me. She smelled me, she said. She smelled that I was the true Alisha, that I was the one who ruined all the business, that eliminated her purpose from life, that took her place and her soul and coldly cast them down to the Underworld. I had heard stories of how the clone girls and clone boys, lacking a mind, seemed to have gained something in the senses. This odd recognition proved it to me.
I ran from Thirteenth Street and didn’t return. I did not want to face the fact that I had created a group of outcasts, people who would now stand out from the rest. I grew up in a Children’s House, a place for orphans of the Avenue, a place where the informal education in learning how to steal and beg and pose was as good as any literacy courses in the City College. I learned to read because of Rosalinda- she taught me to reach beyond my peers; and thus I left my peers behind, read a yellow ad, ascended into Heaven…
My livelihood was my body. In the mornings I went to the College- in the evenings, the nights, the afternoons, I was a show. I posed. I modeled for other kinds of cameras. I flaunted my sex. I was a peep show girl, a star in my own way, seen by the whole Avenue. My name never went up in lights, but I was known. I was somebody. I was some body. I was me.
I never minded the lights, the stares. I couldn’t see them. I just was my part: and my part was that of a woman, whose body was exhibited to herself only, and who was enjoying being the owner of that body. I would caress myself, stare at my mirrors, and I could feel an indefinable sense of self. It became overpowering sometimes, and I had to remind myself that in the booths next to me were other girls, and in cubicles across the way were other women letting men worship their bodies for the same purpose: to let watchers arouse theirs. I had to step outside sometimes, get pushed by some pedestrians, get grabbed by some walking insult, and feel my smallness.
I did not mind the nudes then. It was only for me.
Yesterday I ran across the girl who went insane. She is not wearing my body anymore, but perhaps she thinks she is, because she wanders the streets naked, wild, mad, running, twelve or maybe thirteen now. She is a public peep show, and is no less ashamed of it than I was, but I am ashamed for her.
Official Marcus said that those who live for their sins must indulge in them, while those that live in sin can refrain. Downtown caters to Upper vices. That girl catered to no-one, and for that in her, I am proud.
Do you know what it was like, to walk into the theater and hope to be recognized? There I was, I swear, alone, the red lights crashing into my face and hanging there like rotten tomatoes, when I saw myself for the first time. There were three of me, in a huddle, probably giggling, perhaps teens enjoying the potentials for adulthood residing in their new bodies. I walked into the midst of them, into the standing crowd, there where the dancers on stage bore little resemblance to me, and waited for recognition. It was the Avenues. It was my home. They should have known me. I waited, and soon a man came up to me and asked what I could do for him. I just glared at him. He responded with anger…. “Not a transsexie, are you? No? Sheesh, why get a slut body unless you wanna be one?” He walked away. I yelled, hey, come back here, but he didn’t listen, he walked away, and I just didn’t follow him, I couldn’t. I looked at my admiring public, and they were drooling… The girls had picked up some guys, were heading off into a corner, and I was standing there, face looking down at the feet I had thought were mine. The floor was covered with tiny speckles of stardust, the air bore traces of smoke and age, and the taste in my mouth was not bitter, it was absent. It just wasn’t me, you know? It wasn’t me… They had coarse hair, well-cut, and the skin was a different shade, and the eyes! The eyes just slid along, blank- I brought myself to touch one, and recoiled, feeling the cold skin, the cold cold cold cold….
So much for fame. Oh my God, so much for fame.
Sometimes I contemplate suicide, but I would have to kill about ten thousand other women in order to get rid of myself.
At the Elevator, before I descended, I encountered Officer Marcus. He looked glad to see me. A Cleaning of the Avenues had occurred only days before, and I am sure that he was ordered to help whitewash Downtown’s sins.
“Hello,” I said. “This is Alisha, the real one- do you remember me? You look much better.” And he did: the uniform pressed and politely staying within its creases’ boundaries.
“Thank you,” he replied gravely. “I’ve been meaning to apologize, but I never could get up the nerve to approach such a celebrity. Life is much better since I met you. Back then I was fooling myself into thinking I could be different too. Finding a perfect girl, or something.”
“Well, don’t give up on that,” I said, encouragingly.
“I didn’t.” He smiled, and I took a closer look at his face.
“Congratulations,” I said. I walked away. He just waved a man from the Underworld and I into the Elevator. I had said goodbye to Rosalinda already, and was going all the way down. I think he knew that. With no papers, I would be damned to the Underworld, to discover how our awesome construct of highs and lows was maintained and fed.
So I went. And I am still going down… I am thinking of him.
Goddamn the raccoons. Goddamn this woman. But God bless the air I breathe and the life I live and the people who are not me: here in the City I am the crowd.
