William Gibson - Pattern Recognition

“Oh.” And remembers her hand finding the pistol behind Donny's bedstead. “Another date, you might get the whole address?” Immediately wishing she hadn't said it.

“That makes me sound pretty shitty, Cayce.”

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean for it to. But I've got to go. I'm meeting someone at five. We'll talk. Bye.”

“Well… Bye.” He doesn't sound happy.

Click.

She sits there in the dark, wondering what just happened.

Then her watch starts to beep, and the room phone rings, a strange foreign ring she's never heard before.

Bolshoy Kamennii Most, Big Stone Bridge, is big indeed, though probably many incarnations on from the bridge that had originally acquired the name.

No trouble finding it, and no trouble finding Caffeine, either, with the map she'd copied from the attachment on that last e-mail. She'd drawn it on a sheet of President letterhead, folded in quarters.

Definitely the place here, though Caffeine is КОФЕИН.

“He took a duck in the face…“ she whispers, as she does a walk-by, checking it out.

It looks more like a bar filled with high-backed armchairs than a coffeehouse, but then she remembers coffeehouses in Seattle, when she'd started in board-wear. More like that, but without the Goodwill sofas.

It's crowded.

Yet another of those undercover police cars goes bombing past, blue light flashing, maybe the fifth she's seen, all of them shiny and new and expensive.

The duck mantra doesn't seem to be helping, tonight.

“Walk through the fear,” she tells herself, something Margot had said a lot when she'd still been going to her codependency group. That doesn't seem to help either.

“Fuck it.” An older, deeper invocation perhaps. That gets her turned around and headed back through the door.

A cozy, crowded room, highlights of copper and polished wood. Where every table is occupied, it seems, except for one, flanked by two enormous, empty, wingback armchairs, and there, quite clearly, is the fish: a large, freestanding sculpture, its scales cut from one-pound Medaglia d'Oro coffee cans like the ones Wassily Kandinsky used, but assembled in a way that owes more to Frank Gehry.

She's moving too fast to get a read on the crowd here, but is aware of a number of glances as she beelines through and seats herself in one of the wingback chairs.

A waiter materializes instantly. Young and quite beautiful, white-jacketed, a white cloth folded across his arm, he looks none too happy to see her there. He brusquely says something, in Russian, that clearly isn't a question.

“I'm sorry,” she says, “I only speak English. I'm meeting a friend. I'll have coffee, please.”

As soon as she speaks, there's an instant change in his demeanor, and not, she senses, out of any love of the English language.

“Of course. Americano?”

Guessing that Italian is the default language of coffee here, and that she's not being queried as to her nationality. “Please.”

When he's gone, she does a crowd-scan. If there were visible logos on the clothes these people are wearing, she'd be in trouble. Lots of Prada, Gucci, but in a Moneyed Bohemian modality too off-the-shelf for London or New York. LA, she realizes: except for two goth girls in black brocade, and a boy gotten up in impeccable High Grunge, it's Rodeo Drive with an extra helping of cheekbones.

But the young woman crossing from the entrance now wears nothing that isn't matte and the darkest of grays. Pale. Dark eyes. Center-parted hair, unfashionably long.

Her white face, angular yet somehow soft, eclipses everything. Cayce realizes that she's gripping the arms of her chair so hard that her fingers hurt.

“You are the one who writes, yes?” Only lightly accented, a low voice but very clear, as though she were speaking with perfect enunciation from a distance.

Cayce starts to rise, but the stranger waves her back and takes the other chair. “Stella Volkova.” She offers Cayce her hand.

“Cayce Pollard,” taking it. Is this the maker? Is the maker named Stella? Is Stella a Russian name?

Stella Volkova squeezes her hand and releases it. “You are the first.”

“The first?” Cayce feels as though her eyes are about to pop out of her head.

The waiter arrives with coffee for two, pouring it into fine white china cups.

“The coffee is very good here. When I was a child, only the nomenklatura had good coffee, and that was not as good as this. You take the sugar? Cream?”

Unable to trust her hands, Cayce shakes her head.

“I too. Black.” Stella raises her cup, inhales the fragrance, then sips. She says something appreciative, in Russian. “Do you like it, Moscow? You are here, before?”

“No,” Cayce says. “It's new to me.”

“I think it is new for us. Every day, now.” Unsmiling, eyes wide.

“Why are there so many police cars?” It's all she can think to ask, this pathetic attempt to prevent a silence that she somehow fears might kill her. Ask the next question. “They're always speeding by, but no sirens.”

“Police cars?”

“Unmarked. With blue lights.”

“Police cars, no! Those are the cars of important people, of the rich, or those who work for them. They have purchased a permit allowing ignorance of traffic regulations. Blue lights are courtesy to others, a warning. It seems strange, to you?”

Everything does, Cayce thinks. Or nothing does.

“Stella? May I ask you something?”

“Yes?”

“Are you the maker?”

Stella tilts her head. “I am twins.” If she demonstrates some literal power of physical bilocation, now, it won't surprise Cayce. “My sister, she is the artist. I, I am what? The distributor. The one who finds an audience. It is not so great a talent, I know.”

“My God,” says Cayce, who doesn't think she has one, “it's really true.”

Stella's eyes, already large, widen. “Yes. It is true. Nora is the artist.” Cayce feels herself starting to lock up again. Next question. Anything. “Are Stella and Nora Russian names?”

“Our mother was great admirer of your literature. Particularly of Williams, and of Joyce.”

“Williams?”

“Tennessee.”

Stella. And Nora.

“My father lived in Tennessee,” Cayce says, feeling she sounds like a talking doll whose string has been pulled.

“You write he died, in the fall of the towers.”

“Went missing, yes.”

“Our parents died. A bomb. In Leningrad. My sister and I, my mother as well, lived in Paris. Nora studied film, of course. I, business. My father would not have us in Russia. The dangers. He worked for his brother, my uncle, who had become a powerful man. He told us in Paris we should be prepared never to return. But our grandmother died, his mother, and we returned, for the funeral. Three days only, it was to be.” Her great sad eyes stare darkly into Cayce's. “The bomb is in a tree, as we leave our house, all of us in black, to the funeral. They detonate it with a radio. Our parents die instantly, a mercy. It hurt Nora badly. Very badly. I had only dislocations, my shoulders, my jaw, and many small wounds.”

“I'm sorry…”

“Yes.” Stella nods, though in affirmation of what Cayce isn't sure. “Since then, we live in Moscow. My uncle is often here, and Nora needs many things. Who are your friends?”

“Pardon me?”

“You write you look for Nora's art with your friends. Passionately.” The smile, when it breaks through Stella's pale calm, is a miracle. Or not calm, Cayce thinks, but some hyper-vigilant stillness. Do not move and they will not see us. “Who is 'Maurice'? It is a beautiful name.”

“He works in a bank, in Hong Kong. British. I haven't met him, but I like him a lot. You understand we do this through a website, and e-mail?”