John Varley - Red Thunder

But I think we were both a little insecure about it. All sorts of awkward questions came up. Is he just after me for my money? Is she just trying to stick it to her asshole of a racist father by dating a half-Cuban? Does he secretly think I’m a dumb rich bitch? Is she enjoying slumming when she comes down here and dresses as a whore?

No, can’t make that one stick on her. We both enjoyed sexual games, surprises, role playing, and she had gone to a lot of trouble for her little trick-or-treat tonight. Slumming? If volunteering two evenings a week at a battered women’s shelter was slumming, then I think we need more slummers.

That’s where Kelly met Alicia and since Dak and Alicia had been together for about a year, it was inevitable that Kelly and I would meet. It was also inevitable that I’d be greatly impressed by her. There’s a lot of impressive things about Kelly, and her body is only one of them.

I couldn’t see a thing she had to gain by being my girl other than the pleasure of my company and some damn good sex, so it must be love, right? She said it was, and Kelly always knows her own mind.

But did I love her? Jerk that I am, I was still trying to figure that out.

So far Kelly had never even hinted at matrimony… which made me even more nervous, because she was an incredible catch and I liked her boundlessly, I was pretty sure I loved her, if I could put aside the marriage anxiety. But… what if, by the time I was ready, she had found someone else? What if she didn’t wait for me? I might be throwing away my only chance at happiness by not grabbing her now , when she seemed to like me so much.

It sure wouldn’t be hard for her to find another lover more in keeping with her social position. Kelly worked as chief bookkeeper at her father’s dealership. Guys her age were always coming in to trade up from last year’s model, and plenty of them didn’t need financing, they just wrote a check.

I don’t know why it never occurred to me that a family and kids would get in the way of her goals just as much as it would screw up my college aspirations.

[68] I found her car parked where she said it would be. I always worried a little when I saw it. It stood for all the things I couldn’t give her for another decade, if ever.

I put the top down and slid in on the leather seat. The engine growled at me and I wheeled around the lot and out onto the road. It would get up to sixty in about four seconds, I knew because I’d tried it. No chance to unleash the beast in the spring break traffic, though. I crawled down the highway, getting some very interested looks from some of the snow bunnies, parked in our lot, put the top up, grabbed the indoor silent car alarm, and carried her small suitcase up the stairs and into my room.

LATER THAT NIGHT, just before we finally got to sleep, I took out the silver bubble and showed it to her. I put it through its paces, showed her its tricks. I’d been a little worried that her reaction would be, more or less, So what?

But it impressed her even faster than it had fascinated me.

“It’s light as a soap bubble, and harder than a ball bearing,” she summed it up. “I don’t know of anything like that. You’re the science student, do you?”

“Nothing even close,” I told her.

She held it in her hand and frowned at it.

“Manny,” she said at last, “you know I’m not the type to worry about nothing or get premonitions. But there’s something frightening about this. Do you get a sense of great power from it?”

I had felt exactly that, but couldn’t put my finger on it.

“I think it has a lot of power, and it might mean a lot of money.”

“Really? Why?”

“Well, something new, something really new, it just turns the world upside down. Think of what the world was like before electricity. Or television, or cars.”

“That big?”

“Maybe bigger.”

I HAD PLANNEDto get out to Rancho Broussard the next evening, but we were just too busy. Spring break is one of the few times of the year we actually do some pretty good business. We had already been sold out twice that week, for the first times that year.

Mom and Aunt Maria had been working all day, every day. I’d been helping with the chores even though both of them said Let us handle this , you go study every time I picked up a mop. So that night I worked the late shift on the desk, and the night after that as well. The night after that Kelly had something, I think it was some of her volunteer work, and the night after that wasn’t good, either.

All in all it was a week before I got out there again.

This time it was in Kelly’s car. She offered to let me drive but I waved it off. I’d taken the Porsche through its paces once, right up to 150 miles per hour, and then I hung up my racing gloves. To tell the truth, I was terrified of getting into a fender bender that would cost more to fix than the city budget.

This time I saw the Autopike from the supersonic lane, at the head of a drafting pack of twenty vehicles no more than two inches apart. Dak says that’s no accident, that the software is set to always move the [70] bitchin’est car available to the head of the draft. Noblesse oblige , he says, and Kelly agrees with him… Me, I don’t have enough data, but it sure seems that way.

Not far from the gate of Travis’s place we got behind a flatbed truck with a big farm tractor on the back. The thing was too wide and the road too rutted for us to risk passing, so we settled in at a stately twenty-five miles per hour, the Porsche’s engine growling in frustration. We followed it for three miles, hoping for a turnoff. It did turn… right into the Rancho driveway.

We followed it in a cloud of dust until it reached the clearing, then it turned right toward the barn and the row of junked cars and we turned left toward the house.

Off to one side of us a dump truck had just spilled its load of crushed shell next to half a dozen other hills of shell. There was a guy using a weedeater to destroy the grass that had sprouted in the cracks of the tennis court concrete. He was wearing a blue coverall with a patch on the back that said HIAASEN LANDSCAPERS AND YARD WORK. So was another guy working in close among the plantings that surrounded the house. Already he’d rescued a few sick-looking rhododendrons and hibiscus from strangulation by morning glories and other vines.

“Are they tearing this place down, or building it up?” Kelly wanted to know.. “Don’t ask me. This is all news to me.”

We got out of the car and headed for the patio, where I could see Travis and Dak relaxing with tall drinks. The long hoses of an industrial carpet shampooer went from a van through the open patio doors and inside the house.

“Spring cleaning,” Travis announced, as we reached the patio. He raised his glass in a toast. “You want a Virgin Mary?”

“Are you on the wagon, Col… I mean, Travis?” I asked.

“You bet he is,” said Alicia, coming outside with another nonalcoholic cocktail in her hand. How do I know it was nonalcoholic? Because Alicia would have flung it as far as she could if it had any liquor in it. Alicia is death on alcohol.

[71] I introduced Travis to Kelly, and he turned on his good smile and natural charm, leaning over to kiss her hand. Kelly smiled and let him.

Travis took the girls inside for a drink and a tour of the house, leaving me alone with Dak and two empty cans of Coke.

“So when did all this happen?”

“All this what?”

“The spring cleaning. You trying to take over the man’s life?”

“Let me tell you, Manny. Dude’s life can use some cleaning up.”