Steven Harper - Dreamer

Anyway. Jesse looked at the two coins in my hat and tossed in fifty kesh. I stopped playing.

“Glory. What the hell is that?” I asked. I don’t talk the same at the market as I do at home. Mom would have a moon fit if she knew how much I swear and how bad my grammar is when I’m on the street-or in this journal.

“Glory. It’s your share.” Jesse hooked his thumbs in his pockets.

I just gave him a blank stare.

“You see that guy across the street?” He jerked his head. “The one in the red shirt.”

Automatically I glanced across the street. An older guy in red was leaning against one of the buildings. Traffic buzzed between us. The guy was lean and looked maybe forty, but for all I knew he had just left a fresh-up and was older than Grampy Lon. He looked nervous.

“What about him?” I asked.

“He asked if I knew anyone for a three-way. Pays fifty each. You in?”

I grabbed the kesh from my hat and thrust it at Jesse. “Forget it.”

“Come on, guy,” Jesse said. His thumbs didn’t leave his pockets, so I was left holding the kesh. “I haven’t had a jobber all day, and he won’t do just me.”

“No.”

“It’s not like he’s gonna fuck you or anything,” Jesse said. “All you got to do is lay back and relax. I’ll do the work.”

“I’m not into guys, okay?”

“What’s that got to do with it? It ain’t sex, Sejal. It’s money. M-O-N-E-Y.” He glanced at my hat. “You been busking here all day for that?”

“Yeah,” I admitted.

Jesse sidled closer. He smelled like sweat and cheap leather and suddenly I flashed on him. I do that sometimes. It started about six months ago, and it isn’t anything I can control or shut off. It scares me shitless. It’s hard enough dealing with my own feelings without someone else’s crowding in, and right then Jess was a real jumble-up. He was hungry for food and he was really hungry for jay-juice. He was nervous and he was hopeful. One thing he didn’t feel was lust. The flash faded.

“Listen,” Jesse said. “This guy’ll give you fifty kesh for half an hour. He probably won’t even last twenty minutes.”

My mouth had gone dry and I snuck another glance across the street. The guy was still there. I tried to sense what he was feeling, but the flash didn’t work. It never does when I’m trying.

“Fifty kesh, Sejal,” Jesse repeated. “You ever earn fifty kesh in twenty minutes?”

“No,” I answered, but not as loud as last time.

Jesse gestured at my flute. “You’ve been playing the wrong instrument, man.”

I looked at him. In that moment I could have pushed him away with my mind. That’s something else I can do, and it always works. It’s like I’m reaching out and pulling strings that make the other person dance, and I can do it to a bunch of people all at once. I’ve been able to do that for about three months now.

The first time was by accident. I was on my way home from busking with two kesh in my pocket when a big guy grabbed me and another one put a knife to my neck. A third one was with them. I was too scared to even think. I just shoved at them with my mind. I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like I could feel this… place around me, and I reached through it to them. I reached hard at two of them, and they just froze where they were. The third one got scared, and I reached through that place and flipped his switches and make him really scared. He ran away.

I haven’t told anyone about that, either. Not Jess or Grampy Lon, and definitely not Mom. I don’t know if it’s related to flashing on what people feel. It probably is, but who can I ask?

“Listen, just help me this once, okay?” Jesse said. “You don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again, but you’ll still have that fifty. Twenty minutes, man.”

I looked at the guy. His hair was lighter than mine, almost brown. At least he wasn’t ugly. Jesse had told me about some jobbers who were really fat or who didn’t wash, but this guy looked okay. Fifty kesh. More than a month’s rent.

“What’s he want us to do?” I asked.

Jess grinned and lead me across the street.

At least the guy didn’t want anything strange. Jess was right-all I had to do was lay there with my eyes shut. I didn’t know whose mouth was on me or who was making the bed shake. The hotel room was stuffy and musty-smelling and the sheets were a little damp. The mouths and the motion seemed to go on and on, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

And then I reached out with my mind the way I did to those two guys. I didn’t want to touch this guy like that, but I did. I reached through that place and found him all hot and horny. I flipped his switch and gave him the mother lode of all orgasms. He yelled, and something warm spattered my leg. Then he flopped down to the mattress. I kept my eyes shut. My teeth were clenched so tight my whole head hurt.

“Shit,” Jess muttered. “He fainted.”

Jess wet a washcloth from the bathroom, wrung some water over the jobber’s face, and then wiped my leg. When I opened my eyes, the guy was up and dressing. He had a big smile on his face.

“Any time you boys are up for that again,” he said, “I’ll pay double. Glory.”

He gave me and Jess another twenty kesh each and left. I glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes. Seventy kesh.

“What the hell happened?” Jess almost whispered, staring down at the kesh in his hand. He was still naked.

“I don’t know.” I pulled my clothes on. “Look, is that it? Are we done?”

“We’re done, man, unless you want to file for taxes.”

I didn’t laugh. I just left.

Now I’m in my room. Mom’s getting ready to go to a meeting. Her whole life is meetings. She’ll probably want me to go and take care of the little kids, but I think I’ll tell her to fuck off.

Well, probably not like that. I love Mom and all that, but sometimes she’s a real pain. She’s always dealing with some neighborhood disaster at some neighborhood meeting. She acts like the whole place will fall to pieces if she doesn’t keep it up.

I wonder what she’d say if she knew what happened? I bet she’d throw a cat. So how the hell am I going to tell her about the money?

I’ll save it. If I get enough, maybe I can buy us passage of this rockball and we can move someplace where the wind doesn’t smell like fish.

Huh. The only way to get that kind of money is to keep tricking, and I’m not doing that again. Not in a hundred years.

Mom’s coming. Better sign off.

DAY 8, MONTH 10, COMMON YEAR 987

I did it again. I shouldn’t have, probably. What if I got caught? It isn’t just the Unity, but the houses, too. The houses have it all staked out-who can trick where, what they can do. And they beat the shit out of anyone who bugs in on their territory.

Anyway. I started off down in the market with my flute, not planning to trick. It was a good day-got two kesh in less than three hours. But every time someone dropped a coin in my hat, I kept thinking about how I got seventy kesh in twenty minutes.

Jesse was tricking a ways up the street from me. He saw me and gave a little wave. A couple minutes later a guy-not the same jobber as before-walked up to him. They talked for a minute, then went off together, Jesse still limping. I looked down at the little coins in my hat. Then I thought, The hell with this.

I collapsed my flute and shoved it into my pocket, then sort of casually walked over to the spot where Jesse had been standing. I left my hat where it was. Someone grabbed it and ran, but I didn’t care. My heart was beating hard enough to choke my throat. I leaned against the wall and hooked my thumbs in my pockets like Jess did. After a second I realized he did that to tighten his pants across his crotch. I felt like everyone was staring at my privates, but I didn’t move my hands.