Emma Bull - Bone Dance

I had a lot of people to choose from. The place seemed to have filled up suddenly; but that only meant I’d been absorbed in what I was doing. Then, on one of my video strafing runs, I noticed a hand waving, an oval of face looking straight at the camera. I zoomed in, startled. “My God,” I said aloud, “it’s Sher.” Sherrea’s pointed chin and big, shadowy eyes, under a mass of black-and-purple headwrap, filled my monitor. Just then she turned to glance at the screens and saw her own profile ten feet high. She turned back to the camera and gave me the finger. “What?” Theo asked.

“It’s someone I know,” I said, loud enough to be heard this time. “I didn’t know she ever came here.”

Theo looked over at the monitor, where Sher was now making some shrugging, inquiring motion. “Oh, Sherrea,” he said, nodding. “Groovy. Take the mix, and I’ll send her up. I need a break.”

And he left, while I was still trying to ask how he knew her, and trying to figure out why I was surprised that he did.

One person can handle all the hardware on the balcony; you just can’t do as much, and it’s not as much fun. I cued up the next song: “They Want My Four-Wheel Drive,” by Los Blues Guys, copy of tape courtesy of my archives. I’d gotten the original from someone who’d brought it from northern Texas, who knew the recording engineer and half the band members. A fine example of the new record distribution system.

Much of the material at the Underbridge was of my providing. It was another thing I weighed on the scales of the Deal: Robert provided the opportunity and a cut of the door, and I repaid him with fresh antique marvels for the customers. Besides, like most collectors, I couldn’t quite keep it all to myself. I needed some appreciative audience to ooh and ahh over the gems.

I was showing the car chase from The French Connection when Sherrea came up. It had taken her too long, and I wondered if Theo had waylaid her and mentioned my personal problems. Joke on Theo—she had the advantage of him on a few points.

“ ‘Lo,” she said. “You want me to take audio or video?”

“You know how to run these?” I asked. I had assumed she was a technophobe; most adivinos were. Or at least, I thought they were.

“ Santos ,” she sighed. I’d never heard anyone sigh that loud before. “You hardware heads all think you need lessons from God to do this. Next time your significator’s gonna be the High Priestess. Audio or video?”

“Video,” I said weakly. “Theo’s had the tunes all night.”

She slid into the chair in front of the A/B switcher, pulled her headwrap off in a heap, and began rummaging for tapes. I began to think of the 27 Various, Reptile Zoo, and pre-detox Lilly Guilder. Or—what kind of music did Sherrea like, anyway? The candlelight caught the embroidery on her rusty-black denim jacket: silks, beads, and metallic thread in Celtic knots, runes, warding symbols. They didn’t seem to have worked against the weather; her shoulders were damp. “How’s the storm?” I asked.

“Just rain, but a helluva lot of it. Theo says somebody’s after you for something.”

Good guess, me. “Did he say that? Not exactly. It’s nothing serious.”

She popped a tape into the B deck and turned to me. “Sure. Robby says you showed up white as a bar of soap and looking like you slept in your clothes. Nothing serious.”

Well, I had slept in my clothes. I noticed, too, that she called him Robby. I felt as if I were looking in the window of some place I used to live in. “Spangler dropped a wrench,” I said.

“Oh, excuse me for asking. I just figured if there was something I could do, maybe you’d like to mention it.” This sounded like Sher being acerbic, which she did often. It also sounded like Sher being hurt. I looked up and met her eyes. Sher wasn’t the sort to avoid eye contact at a moment like that. But I was.

“It’s no big thing,” I said, changing the tape bias on one machine, then changing it back. “It’s taken care of.”

She brought up B deck: a series of shots of the head of a daisy, a chambered nautilus that came apart into animation. There were fractals right after that, I knew. I ought to cue up something trippy. “Sparrow,” she said, “if you really don’t want anybody to give a shit about you, say so, and we’ll just let you go to hell.”

I almost cracked wise. If it had been any conscious impulse that stopped me, I would have overridden it. “It’s important to me,” I said instead.

“Why? What’s so private that you have to make an enemy of the whole world to keep it that way?”

Just for that instant, I was tempted to tell her.

But Theo came in, a beer in each hand, and kicked the door shut behind him. “Who needs a fresh one?”

“You take it,” I said. “It’s my turn for a break.” Then I caught a look at the third monitor. The camera, which wasn’t feeding to either screen, was on the front door. I saw Robert leaning on the frame, a pack of nightbabies newly arrived and staring just in front of him, and behind them a head of pale curly hair, a big white smile, shades—no, not shades.

I grabbed the camera remote and zoomed in. Dana’s friends hadn’t found me. The other ones had. It was the man in the silvertones.

At the corner of my eye I saw the shift in room light that meant the picture had changed on the screens. “Sher, no!” I cried, but it was too late. The camera feed was up on the left screen. I panned the camera away so fast it must have made the drunks sick, and

Sher hit the switcher, but it was too late. I’d seen him look at the screens. He knew somebody on the balcony was watching him.

Sher was chalky, and her eyes were big. “I’m sorry,” she said faintly. Theo stood as still as I’d ever seen him.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’ll use the back stairs.”

“And we’re gonna handle it?” Theo asked politely.

Sher looked at him. “Yeah,” she said. “We are.” She stood up and stretched, flexed her hands, glanced over the edge of the balcony at the dance floor.

“Then I guess we are.” Theo shrugged, picked up a heavy flat-bladed screwdriver from a box by the sound board, jammed the blade between the stairway door and the door frame, and pounded it in as far as it would go. “Door’s sticking again. Bummer.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was, but I didn’t know what to do.

“Get out of here,” Theo said to me, his face blank as tape leader. I plunged through the door in the rear wall of the balcony and shot the bolt home.

I said before that I had a place at the Underbridge. This was it. I passed through without really registering it, beyond deciding that nothing in the closet-sized space could help them find me: a mattress, a couple changes of clothes, a toothbrush. Maybe the barrenness of my life-style would move them to pity, and they’d leave me alone. I began to feel more than guilty. The guy with pink hair seemed like a dangerous sort, and I was leaving Theo and Sher to make my apologies. Well, what could I do? I yanked open the outer door and stepped onto the fire escape.

It was raining steadily, steamily, and everything shone. Somewhere many blocks away, a fire alarm was wailing. I heard the Underbridge’s sound system from the open front door. Water gushed over the dam in the river in front of me. The storm, stalking away to the east, gave a long, low rumble like an empty stomach. I hoped the accumulated noise was enough to cover the sound of me running down all those metal steps.

I ran down most of them, actually. Five of them I fell down, loudly, because I forgot that things are slippery when wet. And the last three I skipped entirely and just jumped to the pavement. I was feeling hopeful when something small and hard settled against my skull over my right ear, and a cheerful female voice said, “Darlin’, you must think we’re awfully thick. Were you hoping we’d forget to look for another exit?”