Gregory Bear: Blood Music

He shook his head. She was perhaps twenty-eight, golden-blonde, slender to the edge of skinny, with a pretty but not gorgeous face. Her eyes, large and clear and brown, were her best feature—except possibly for her legs, he amended, looking down on instinct.

“You don’t come in here often,” she said. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Or do you? I mean, I don’t either. Maybe I wouldn’t know.”

He shook his head. “Not often. No need. My success rate hasn’t been spectacular.”

She turned back with a smile. “I know more about you than you think,” she said. “I don’t even need to read your palm. You’re smart, first off.”

“Yeah?” he said, feeling awkward.

“You’re good with your hands.” She touched his thumb where it rested on his knee. “You have very pretty hands. You could do a lot with hands like that. But they’re not greasy, so you’re not a mechanic. And you try to dress well, but… “ She giggled a three-drink giggle and put her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. You do try.”

He looked down at his black and green checked cotton shirt and black pants. The clothes were new. What could she complain about? Maybe she didn’t like the Topsiders he was wearing. They were a little scuffed.

“You work… let’s see.” She paused, stroking her cheek. Her fingernails were masterpieces of the manicurist’s art, thick and long and shiny bronze. “You’re a techie.”

“Pardon?”

“You work in one of the labs around here. Hair’s too long to be Navy, and they don’t come here much anyway. Not that I’d know. You work in a lab and you’re… you’re not happy Why’s that?”

“Because—” He stopped. Confessing he was out of a jolt might not be strategic. He had six month’s unemployment coming; that and his savings could disguise his lack of gainful labor for a while. “How do you know I’m a techie?”

“I can tell. Your shirt pocket—” She slipped her finger into it and tugged gently. “Looks like it should hold a nerd pack of pencils. The kind you twist and the lead pokes out.” She smiled deliciously and thrust the pink tip of her tongue out to demonstrate.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And you’re wearing argyles. Only techies wear argyles now.”

“I like ‘em,” Vergil said defensively.

“Oh, so do I. What I’m getting at is, I’ve never known ; techie. I mean… intimately.”

Oh, Lord, Vergil thought. “What do you do?” he asked, immediately wishing he could suck the words back.

“And I’d like to, if you don’t think that’s being too forward,” she said, ignoring his question. “Look, the bar’s closing in a few minutes. I don’t need any more to drink, and I don’t much like the music. Do you?”

Her name was Candice Rhine. What she did was accept advertising for the La Jolla Light. She approved of his Volvo sportscar and she approved of his living quarters, a two-bed room second-floor condominium four blocks from the bead in La Jolla. He had purchased it at a bargain price six year ago—just out of medical school—from a UCSD professor who had departed to Ecuador shortly after to complete a study on South American Indians.

Candice entered the apartment as if she had lived there for years. She draped her suede jacket on the couch and he blouse on the dining table. Her bra she hung with a giggle on the chrome and glass light fixture over the table. Her breast were small, amplified by a very narrow rib cage.

Vergil watched all this with awe.

“Come on, techie,” Candice said, standing naked at the bedroom door. “I like the furs.” He had a baby alpaca rug over his California king-sized bed. She posed with her finger tips delicately pressed near the top of the door jamb, one knee cocked wide, then rotated on one heel and sauntered into the darkness.

Vergil stood his ground until she turned the bedroom lamp on. “I knew it!” she squealed. “Look at all the books!”

In the darkness, Vergil thought all too clearly of the perils of sex. Candice slept soundly beside him, the sleep of three drinks and making love four times.

Four times.

He had never done so well. She had murmured, before sleep, that chemists did it in their tubes and doctors did it with patience, but only a techie would do it in geometric progression.

As for the perils… He had seen many times—most often in textbooks—the results of promiscuity in a well– and frequently-traveled world. If Candice was promiscuous (and Vergil couldn’t help but believe only a promiscuous girl would be so forward with him) then there was no telling what sort of microorganisms were now setting up shop in his blood.

Still, he had to smile.

Four times.

Candice groaned in her sleep and Vergil jerked, startled. He would not sleep well, he knew that much. He wasn’t used to having someone in his bed.

Four.

His brown-speckled teeth gleamed in the dark.

Candice was much less forward in the morning. She solemnly insisted on making breakfast. He had eggs and Beef-strips in his antique round-cornered refrigerator and she did an expert job on them, as if she had once been a short-order cook—or was that simply the way women did things? He had never caught the knack of frying eggs. They always came out with broken yokes and crackling seared edges.

She regarded him with her wide brown eyes from across the table. He was hungry and ate quickly. Not much on delicacy and manners, he thought. So what? What more could she expect from him—or he from her?

“I don’t usually stay the night, you know,” she said. “I call a lot of cabs at four in the morning when the guy’s asleep. But you kept me busy until five and I just… didn’t want to. You wore me out.”

He nodded and wiped up the last perfection of semisolid yoke with the last bite of toast. He didn’t particularly care to know how many men she had been to bed with. Quite a few, by the sound of things.

Vergil had had three conquests in his entire life, only one moderately satisfactory. The first at seventeen—an incredible stroke of luck—and the third a year ago. The third had been the satisfactory one and had hurt him. That was the occasion that had forced him to accept his status as a hell of a mind but not much for looks.

“That sounds horrible, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, about the cabs and everything.” She kept staring at him. “You made me come six times,” she said.

“Good.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two,” he said.

“You act like a teenager—in bed, I mean. Stamina.”

He hadn’t done nearly so well as a teenager.

“Did you enjoy it?”

He put his fork down and looked up, musing. He had enjoyed it too much. When would the next time be? “Yes, I did.”

“You know why I picked you out of the crowd?” She had barely touched her single egg, and now chewed the end from her lone Beefstrip. Throughout the night, her nails had emerged unmarred. At least she hadn’t scratched him. Would he have liked that?

“No,” he said.

“Because I knew you were a techie. I’ve never screwed—I mean, made love with a techie before. Vergil. That’s right, isn’t it? Vergil Ian Ull-am.”

“Oo-lam,” he corrected.

“I would have started sooner if I’d known,” she said. She smiled. Her teeth were white and even, if a touch large. Her imperfections endeared her to him even more.

“Thank you. I can’t speak… or whatever for all of us. Them. Techies. Whoever.”

“Well, I think you’re very sweet,” she said. The smile faded, replaced by serious speculation. “More than sweet. Honest to God, Vergil. You’re the best fuck I ever had. Do you have to go to work today?”

“No,” he said. “I work my own hours.”