James Kelly - Rewired - The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology

“Stop it,” I said, finally, pushing her arm away. “What’s going on? I’m not supposed to still be here. I was supposed to see the whole show and then leave.”

“No shit, Einstein. Been tryin’ to wake you for half an hour.” She frowned into my face, this very pretty young woman with long, thick, straight, dark hair and lots and lots of make-up. The make-up made her look even more tired than she was. Or maybe as tired as she was. “Come on, come on, now. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

I took the coffee cup from her, got up, and walked toward where Larry was sitting at the end of the bar. There was a can of something that said Schlitz in fancy script by his elbow, and cigarette smoke was rising in skinny curlicues from the ashtray next to it. The bartender and the waitress helping him watched me but didn’t say anything. The bartender just looked bored — he wasn’t really old but he wasn’t young anymore either. His face was starting to sag around the corners of his mouth and under his eyes, although his hair was still dark. The waitress was like something out of a fairy tale, with her wispy blonde hair pulled back except for the perfect ringlets framing her very pale, round face. She had a blue velvet ribbon around her neck with a cameo attached to the front, and I knew it was A Fashion Look as, to a lesser extent, was her form-fitting, almost-off-the-shoulder flower-print shirt. I looked back at the waitress who had woken me; she didn’t look any older than the little blonde one, but she felt older. Her name was Nora, something told me, and the little blonde was Claire. The bartender’s name was Jerry or Georgie, and Little Latin Larry’s real name was — was —

I stopped with one hand up, pausing in the act of tapping him on the shoulder because I had wanted to call him by his real name but it wouldn’t come to me. It felt as if it might be right there in my next breath but every time I exhaled it came out silent. The hell with it, I thought, I’ll just call him Larry.

“What,” Larry said, not turning around, before I could touch him.

“What?” I repeated, sounding stupid even to myself.

“Yeah, what,” Larry said, still with his back to me. “As in, ‘What do you want?’ Or even, ‘What the fuck are you bothering me for?’”

“How’d you know I was here?” I asked.

“Saw your reflection outta the corner of my eye.” He turned his head to look at the mirror behind the bar. I followed his gaze and then jumped; there was no one standing behind Larry in the mirror, no one and nothing at all except empty space where I should have seen whoever I was.

“‘S’matter, you see something scary?” He finally looked over his shoulder directly at me. “Or just not what you expected you were gonna see?”

“That can be scary,” I said, trying to sound light. “The unexpected.”

“That’s for sure.” He swiveled around on his stool and studied me. I was still so startled that I couldn’t imagine what he was seeing. I looked over at the stage where the Loopy Louies and the Latinettes had been, but they were gone. Now Larry followed my gaze. “What you lookin’ for?”

“I — well, I just saw the Loopy Louies and the Latinettes — they were — ”

“You saw them?” Larry said, and laughed incredulously. “You fuckin’ saw them?”

I floundered for a few moments. “Was it wrong to look?” I asked him finally.

“Where did you fuckin’ look that you fuckin’ saw Loopy Louies and Latinettes?”

I gestured at the stage area, which was a lot emptier than I thought it had been a few minutes ago. Now even the last of the microphone stands were gone.

Larry shook his head and laughed some more. “Tell me you heard that, Jerry,” he said, smoothing the back of his hair. Very greasy hair, not terribly clean.

“I heard it,” the bartender said obediently. “Now tell me you paid this joker to come in and say that in fronna me and the girls.”

Larry shook his head. “Man, oh, man. Have I ever seen you before, joker?” He stared at me expectantly.

I looked over my shoulder at the bartender and the blonde waitress. The dark-haired one joined them behind the bar; she looked extremely nervous. “Me? No, no, I guess not.”

“OK. NOW, you wanna explain how you happened to see something that’s only in my head?” Larry took a last drag on the cigarette and smashed it out in the ashtray.

“You’re Little Latin Larry,” I said, not getting it. “Little Latin Larry and His Loopy Louies — ”

“Stop it,” said the dark-haired waitress, sounding angry.

“ — His Luscious Latinaires,” I said, turning toward her briefly, “and His — ”

“Stop it!” she shouted.

“ — Lascivious Latinettes?”

“You oughta be strung up.” The dark-haired waitress glowered at me and then stalked off to clean some other tables.

I looked at Larry questioningly. He just kept smiling a funny little amazed smile. “Little Latin Larry,” he said, and it sounded as if he were savoring each syllable. “Jesus H. I’m just glad you had the courtesy to come in here and say it where someone else could hear you.”

“Why?” I looked at the bartender and the blonde waitress. The bartender had this sort of bored expression. Sort of bored and sort of skeptical, as if he thought I was lying about something. The waitress just looked mildly unhappy.

“Because maybe, just maybe,” he said slowly, “it means that there’s some world somewhere, even some time, where it’s all true.”

I stared at him for a moment and then looked at the bartender again for some kind of sign or explanation. He looked past me to Larry. “You ask me, I think this’s a setup from your ex-wife. She wants to see if you’re still taking your medicine. You are still taking your pills, aincha?”

“Sure,” Larry said, and laughed some more. “Hell, I ain’t the one seein’ Loopy Louies and Latinettes and all that.” He jerked his thumb at me. “Right here, this is the prize-winner tonight.” He leaned back and looked at me out of the corners of his eyes. “Some people think insanity’s contagious. You think maybe you drank outta the same glass I did but old Jerry here didn’t wash it too good in between? Or maybe it was a toilet seat….”

I admit it: at that point, I panicked and drained the whole experience.

OK, it hit my secret fear — that I could possibly catch someone’s delusion or psychosis. Don’t say it’s not possible, because it’s happened. It’s on record, it’s documented. I don’t knowingly go near anyone with a psychosis, I don’t care how good the hallucinations are. If I want to hallucinate, I take drugs, the way Nature intended.

Anyway, I would have poured the whole batch down the drain except I couldn’t, legally, since it wasn’t my property. And since Ola and her sidekick knew the batch existed, I didn’t want to force them into the position of having to choose between testifying that I had disposed of the Larry people’s property or committing perjury and saying that it hadn’t come together. So I gritted my teeth and requested a private meeting with Carola.

She came down to my editing room and things got ugly right away. How dare I accuse her of being crazy and I told her that I wasn’t, just that her ancestor was prone to delusions and the memory had come through extra strong.

Well, that couldn’t possibly be true, she insisted, raising her voice some more, because all the rest of the band was there, including a member of the audience, and how did I explain that?

Tainted samples, I said, forcing myself not to cringe (I really was afraid she was going to start throwing things at me). Her memory factors infected theirs, much like a virus —