Jon Grimwood - reMix

Lady Elizabeth Alexandra Fabio. Fixx hadn’t believed Lady Clare at first Hadn’t believed that the kid with the kohl-rimmed eyes, wearing a crushed purple coat really was corps noblique. He should have known, of course, even back when he first met LizAlec. Her arrogant self-confidence was clue enough. But people assume artists are observers, when most are just self-reflective, self-obsessed...

Fixx had drained his glass of marc, feeling the cheap grape-pip brandy burn in his throat. Fifty people in a filthy bar in Bastille and, because of who he’d once been, all of them respected the cerebral exclusion zone he’d erected around himself. Except her.

There was blood on the ballerina’s blade and this time when he looked Shiori was smiling, her eyes bright with expectation. Punching the button that shut the toilet door, Shiori crossed her hands over her front and in the same elegant move Fixx had watched earlier, stripped off her black vest in a single movement to bare small elegant breasts.

It was the opposite of a striptease, quick and clean, but all the raunchier for its bald matter-of-factness. Unclicking the wall cupboard marked lovedrugs , Fixx grabbed an ampoule of amylNite8 and snapped it under his nose, inhaling its sour chemical stink. Without waiting to be asked, Fixx broke another glass straw under the nostrils of the bare-breasted woman standing opposite him — and watched as her eyes exploded, pupils widening into black holes.

He wanted to suggest Shiori put down her knife, then decided not. The last thing Fixx wanted to do was ruin her mood. Instead he kicked off his boots and scrabbled at his buttons. Getting out of a jumpsuit wasn’t elegant but at least it was fast.

She had the inner stillness of a predator, with eyes to match. And as the Japanese woman watched him, Fixx got the feeling she was putting a value on him. It wasn’t a sensation he liked.

“You’re not really here to find LizAlec, are you?” Fixx kept his voice steady, his eyes on her wide face.

Shiori shook her head, then shrugged. “Maybe it’s LizAlec, maybe it’s someone else. I need to check.”

For a moment, Fixx wanted to take LISA’s advice and walk out of there, do what he should have done instead of coming to find her. Taken a hike, got sensible. But his wasn’t that kind of life and this wasn’t that kind of sex. The twisted smile on her hungry face told him that. Most people needed ice to get that wired, but all Shiori needed was...

Fixx glanced at the ceramic blade still balanced in her narrow fingers and knew exactly what Shiori needed. Hell, just looking at the blade put him on edge. So instead of walking, Fixx reached for her belt and slowly undid the heavy buckle. Unpopping the waist button to her Levis, Fixx ran his fingers down her fly, releasing it.

The kid had been watching him all evening, again. Not out of the corner of her eye, but openly — until he frowned at her and she glanced away or pretended to be looking over his shoulder at one of the faded holoposters on the sand-blasted brick wall behind. As if anyone would be interested in bands that had folded, circuses that had never been more than virtual, in the whole tired Nouveau Bastille theatre of cruelty. Fixx doubted if she even knew Artonin Artaud had existed, never mind which century he’d lived in. But, in the end, he’d sent a drink over, telling the sad-eyed little rent boy behind the bar to take her a bottle of marc.

Fixx slid Shiori’s jeans and thong carefully down to her ankles, moving back to let her step lazily out of them. The Levis were lined with some kind of polymer micromesh bonded to the inner surface. It looked like the vat-grown fabric DuPont produced to bomb-proof hover windows.

“Where’d you train?” Shiori’s question came out of nowhere. At least nowhere Fixx knew about.

“Juilliard, Lincoln Center Plaza,” said Fixx, remembering the best six months of his life. Not that he’d thought that back then.

It was Shiori’s turn to look blank.

“Music school in New York.”

“You’re not...”

“Trained in all this?” Fixx nodded towards the lavatory door that had been shut on the tortured clone, “No,” said Fixx, “strictly fucking amateur.”

Shiori was about to say something else but Fixx stepped in close to stop it and cupped his hand around her mons, his fingers closing over fine body hair. This was the point he loved most, always had done. The split second before his fingertips found her labia. He could feel Shiori go tense as she waited for his fingers to slide into her. She wanted to push forward, to hurry him, but wasn’t going to allow herself the indulgence.

Leaning forward, Fixx gripped the back of Shiori’s head with his free hand and pulled her face roughly towards him. As she twisted her mouth away, Fixx let his fingers find her clit. Shiori arched backwards, mouth opening, and Fixx kissed her hard.

That was when Shiori bit into his lower lip, breaking skin: blood and saliva mixing between them. It was enough to give any sexual-health assessor a heart attack, not that Fixx had health insurance these days: some risks were just not good.

Fixx grinned and slicked his wet fingers up over her body, finding one breast. It was swollen like ripe fruit, the nipple gorged and purple, but it was still smaller and more elegant than even LizAlec’s breasts had been. Clutching Shiori’s nipple between his fingers, Fixx tugged gently, watching the dark circle around it pucker and tighten.

There’d been a time when he’d been proud of his capacity for empty sex and pointless drugs, when staying wasted was an end in itself, something that required real ingenuity. And given the Sony-trained bodyguards, therapists and minders who had glued themselves to him like leeches, that wasn’t even an understatement. There’d been a period back there when getting the wherewithal to get wasted had turned into a full-time job.

Fixx dipped his head, tugging again at Shiori’s left nipple and curling his tongue around it. Slick with her own juices, her nipple tasted tart and sour. Sliding his hand back between her legs, Fixx opened the Japanese woman’s swollen vulva with his fingers and then took his hand back to his mouth, sucking his fingers one after the other.

Not quite up there with crystalMeth, but close enough.

Fixx dropped his other hand and closed thumb and first finger over her full lips, squeezing until Shiori moaned through gritted teeth and closed her hand tight around his penis, so hard Fixx thought he’d burst.

It was a straight stand-off.

The girl was younger than he’d first thought. Fixx realized that as soon as he got close to her table. She was holding the bottle he’d sent over, looking doubtfully at a label etched into its bubble-blown green glass. Fixx didn’t blame her. The contents described on the label were cheap enough as it was, and the bar they were in was notorious for refilling empty bottles with crude ethanol brewed up by étudiants from the Sorbonne nearby. He wouldn’t have wanted to touch it at her age either.

She drank all the same. Twisting off the top and swallowing two huge gulps before her throat closed in protest. By the bar, the rent boy was grinning. Phillipe didn’t like girls, especially not little rich ones who were out slumming.

As he thumped the girl between her thin shoulder blades, Fixx tossed the words “rich” and “slumming” around in his head. And then he handed her his own glass.

“Drink this.”

“Water...” LizAlec sounded surprised, which marked her out as a newcomer to the bar. Everyone else knew Fixx’s routine, even if most of the younger ones didn’t know his name. Monday drunk, Tuesday hung-over, Wednesday sober, Thursday drunk, Friday hung-over, Saturday and Sunday sober. Fixx resented having to stay sober over the whole weekend, but when God designed the week he hadn’t allowed for drunks running a six-day cycle. Although maybe he had, when he let someone discover freebase ...