Charlie Huston - Sleepless

He finished the bottle of water he’d been sipping at, his tense stomach resisting, and set it on a cocktail table crowded with empty glasses stuffed with cigarette butts.

“I want to meet him.”

Beenie finished his drink, set the glass aside, rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, and bounced on the balls of his feet.

“Let’s go see the prince.”

The low tables and couches in the VIP section were littered with gadgets; minivideo recorders, gaming handhelds, ultraportable DVD players, a small stack of phones that someone appeared to have been using for an improvised game of Jenga, thumb drives, a fistful of memory cards, and all the attendant detritus of instillation disks, twist-tied USB cables, styro-foam and cardboard packing materials, rebate cards, and low-quality AA and AAA batteries.

Parsifal K. Afronzo Jr., perched on the edge of a slate leather ottoman, was apparently oblivious to this clutter or to the entourage scattered in his orbit. They sucked from bottles of raspberry vodka frozen in blocks of ice while unwrapping and almost immediately tiring of the electronic swag that had been piled there in tribute by the event’s sponsors. Messaging their friends in the other rooms of the club to determine if they were missing anything good, they honed their nonchalance, as aspiring paparazzi caught them in the background of their Cager cell shots.

Trailing Beenie, Park took note of a crew-cut duo of alert young women wearing skintight head-to-toe ensembles of various nonreflective black tactical materials. A style that extended to the assault rifles slung on their backs and the pistols strapped to their thighs. That they had been costumed for roles as cannon fodder in a B-grade action picture didn’t seem to interfere with their expertise. Spotting Park and Beenie approaching the VIP ropes on a direct line, one of them moved to intercept while the other shifted subtly to put herself in a position to offer cover fire or throw her body in front of her client.

The bodyguard who had stepped to the rope directed them toward a line of shoe gazers lining a nearby wall.

“Please take a spot at the back of the line. If Cager does any signing this evening, it will done on the line only.”

Beenie raised a hand.

“Cager.”

The bodyguard placed a hand on the butt of her sidearm.

“Please do not address Cager, sir.”

“Cage, it’s Beenie.”

“Please move away from the rope, sir.”

Beenie lifted himself on tiptoe, trying to see over her shoulder.

“Dude, it’s Beenie; just wanted to discuss what we talked about that last time.”

The bodyguard came down a step and jutted her face into Beenie’s.

“Hey, asshole, you don’t understand polite English? I said leave Cager the fuck alone and fuck off to the back of the line. Better, just fuck off out of the club before I Taser your ass and drag you out to the street.”

“It’s all right, Imelda.”

She drew back.

“Sir?”

Cager’s fingers paused, and he pointed.

“It’s all right. Just go stand by Magda and keep looking hot and dangerous.”

She flared perfect nostrils.

“Sir?”

He tapped a message to elsewhere.

“Pose. You come over here, it throws the tableau out of balance. The bouncers can take care of this kind of thing. Unless it’s something serious, I want you and Magda to maintain the composition up here. If we have a situation like when we were in Tijuana and those guys tried to kidnap me, you can break their knees and Magda can shoot them in the hands like you did there. Otherwise, I really want to uphold the integrity of the image.”

Imelda gave half a nod.

“Yes, sir.”

“And please call me ‘boss’ from now on.”

“Yes, boss.”

“Thank you.”

She moved back to her position, her partner countering, giving themselves maximum coverage of the perimeter.

Cager’s typing had subsided into a single action, repeatedly stabbing one key.

“Beenie.”

“Hey, Cager.”

“Beenie, have you got my Aspiration Codex?”

Beenie looked at Park, gave him an I-told-you roll of the eyes, and shook his head.

“No, man, I don’t.”

Cager jabbed the single button violently three times, then held it down.

“Then why are you here bothering me? Why did I just keep Imelda from Tasering you? I want to break into the Apex Foundation, and I can’t begin without the codex.”

“Yeah, I know, man. And I thought I’d have one by now, but I got held up because a deal I was trying to make is still in escrow. As soon as it clears, as soon as I hear from Hydo that that deal is sealed, I’ll be able to make a move and get your Codex.”

“Fuck!”

Cager raised his arm and threw the phone at the floor. The screen went instantly dead, tiny numbered and lettered keys flew, and a ripple of silence circulated through his hangers-on.

“Loganred. I’ve been bidding on that Hammer of Ultimate Wrath for a week. That lurker pulls a speed bid and wins the auction in the last possible nanosecond. What is the point of bidding if you use software to place your bids for you? I can’t even understand a mentality like that. Loganred. Does that feel like victory to him?”

On the banquette, a boy wearing a black frock coat over red jeans tucked into black motorcycle boots flipped up the smoked clip-on lenses from over his rectangular glasses.

“You don’t need a Wrath Hammer, Cage. I got mine.”

Cager picked up the wreckage of his phone and used a clipped thumbnail to pry open the SIM card door on the back.

“Yes, Adrian, I know. The whole point of getting my own hammer is so I don’t need you and your hammer in the war party anymore.”

He slid a chit of gilded blue plastic from the slot.

“That’s why I’m so upset. Because now I have to be subjected to your derivative steampunk style for another night.”

He turned his head toward the boy, the comb coming from its pocket, gliding across his head in sharp strokes.

“Do you know that everyone is laughing at you, Adrian? That clockwork lapel pin and that ascot, they are pretentious. Just, why can’t you wear jeans and a T-shirt? You’re not cool. It’s okay not to be cool. Just stop trying so hard. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

Adrian flicked the dark lenses back into place over his eyes, but not before tears were clearly seen there.

“Fine, you don’t need my hammer. Fine, man.”

He stood up.

“Just go into the Tesseract Fold without me and see what happens.”

Cager shrugged.

“Take it personally if you want. That’s not how it was meant. I’m just trying to help.”

He pointed at a little shaft of knobbed plastic that Adrian was holding.

“You can keep that night-vision scope you’ve been fondling. And you can stay.”

Adrian fiddled with a dial on the side of the scope.

“Thanks, Cager. I didn’t mean to be a dick or anything.”

Cager shook his head.

“Sit down, Adrian. Even if you wanted to act like a dick, you couldn’t. You’re nice. For what that’s worth. And I don’t have my own hammer yet. So I need you in the picture until then.”

Adrian dipped his head.

“Okay, man, you’ll see. You’re gonna need me in the Tesseract.”

Cager had turned away, reaching inside a creased and cracked leather shoulder bag that rested between his feet.

“Hydo doesn’t have a Codex, Beenie. If he did, I would have bought it from him. I always buy from Hydo first. He’s reliable. I buy from Hydo. Then I buy from other people. Then I come to you. As a last resort. And you don’t have my Codex.”

Beenie played with the Velcro straps on the back of his biking gloves.

“I know Hydo doesn’t have one. But he’s brokering a package deal on a bunch of artifacts I bundled for one of his customers. Once that comes through, I’ll have what I need to do the deal on the codex.”