William Gibson - Virtual Light

Chevette just sort of grunted.

“Call that an amphalang” the woman said. She started flipping through the album. “Barbells” she said. “Septum spike. Labret stud. That’s a chunk ring. This one’s called a milkchurn. These are bomb weights. Surgical steel, niobium, white gold, fourteen-carat.” She flipped it back to the jim with the bolt, sideways through the end of it. Maybe it was a trick, Chevette thought, a trick picture.

“That’s gotta hurt” Chevette said.

“Not as much as you’d think” this big deep voice, “and then it starts to feel jus’ good…”

Chevette looked up at this black guy, his big white grin, all those teeth, a micropore filtration-mask pulled down under his chin, and that was how she’d met Samuel Saladin DuPree.

Two days later she saw him again in Union Square, hanging with a bunch of bike messengers. She’d already put messengers down as something to watch for in the city. They had clothes and hair like nobody else, and bikes with neon and light-up wheels, handlebars carved up and over like scorpion-tails. Helmets with little radios built in. Either they were going somewhere fast or they were just goofing, hanging, drinking coffee.

He was standing there with his legs over either side of the cross-tube of his bike, eating half a sandwich. Music was coming out of the black-flecked pink frame, mostly bass, and he was sort of bopping to it. She edged up to get a better look at the bike, how it was made, the intricacy of its brakes and shifters pulling her straight in. Beauty.

“Dang” he said, around a mouthful of sandwich, “dang, my am-phalang. Where did you get those shoes?”

They were Skinner’s, old canvas sneakers, too long for her so she’d stuck some paper in the toes.

“Here.” He handed her the other half of his sandwich. “I’m full already.”

“Your bike” she said, taking the sandwich.

“What about it?”

“It’s… it’s…”

“Like it?”

“Uh-huh!”

He grinned. “Sugawara frame, Sugawara rings ‘n’ ’railers, Zuni hydraulics. Clean.”

“I like the wheels” Chevette said.

“Well” he said, “that’s just flash. Lets some motherfucker see you ’fore he runs you over, y’know?”

Chevette touched the handlebars. Felt that music.

“Eat that sandwich” he said. “Look like you need it.”

She did, and she did, and that was how they got to talking.

Shouldering their bikes up the plywood stairs, Chevette telling him about the Japanese girl, how she fell out of that elevator. How she, Chevette, wouldn’t even have been at that party if she hadn’t been standing right there, right then. Sammy grunting, his Fluoro-Rimz gone dead opal now they weren’t turning.

“Who was it throwing this do, Chev? You think to ask anybody that?”

Remembering that Maria. “Cody. Said it was Cody’s party…”

Sammy Sal stopped, his brows lifting. “Huh. Cody Harwood?”

She shrugged, the paper bike next to weightless on her shoulder. “Dunno.”

“You know who that is?”

“No.” Reaching the platform, putting the bike down to wheel it.

“That’s some serious money. Advertising. Harwood Levine, but that was his father.”

“Well, I said it was rich.” Not paying him much attention.

“His father’s company did Millbank’s PR, both elections.”

But she was activating the recognition-loop now, not bothering with the screamers from Radio Shack. Sammy’s FluoroRimz pulsed as he set his bike down beside hers. “I’ll loop it to mine. Be okay here anyway.”

“That’s what I said” Sammy said, “last two I lost.” He watched her pull the loop out, twist it around his bike’s frame, careful of the pink-and-black enamel, and seal it with her thumbprint.

She headed for the yellow lift, glad to see it there, where she’d left it, and not at the top of the track. “Let’s do this thing, okay?” Remembering she’d meant to buy Skinner some soup from Thai Johnny’s wagon, that sweet-sour lemon one he liked.

When she’d told Sammy she wanted to mess, wanted her own bike, he’d gotten her this little Mexican headset taught you every street of San Francisco. Three days and she had it down, pretty much, even though he said that wasn’t like the map in a messenger’s head. You needed to know buildings, how to get into them, how to act, how to keep your wheels from getting stolen. But when he’d taken her in to meet Bunny, that was magic.

Three weeks and she’d earned enough to buy her first serious bike. That was magic, too.

Somewhere around then she started hanging out after work with a couple of the other Allied girls, Tami Two and Alice Maybe, and that was how she’d wound up at Cognitive Dissidents, that night she’d met Lowell.

“Nobody locks their door here” Sammy said, on the ladder below her, as she lifted the hatch.

Chevette closed her eyes, saw a bunch of cops (whatever that would look like) standing around Skinner’s room. Opened her eyes and stuck her head up, eyes level with the floor.

Skinner was on his bed, his little television propped on his chest, big old yellow toenails sticking out of holes in his lumpy gray socks. He looked at her over the television.

“Hey” she said, “I brought Sammy. From work.” She climbed up, making room for Sammy Sal’s head and shoulders.

“Howdy” Sammy Sal said.

Skinner just stared at him, colors from the little screen flicking across his face.

“How you doin’?” Sammy Sal asked, climbing up.

“Bring anything to eat?” Skinner asked her.

“Thai Johnny’ll have soup ready in a while” she said, moving toward the shelves, the magazines. Dumb-ass thing to say and she knew it, because Johnny’s soup was always ready; he’d started it years ago and just kept adding to the pot.

“How you doin’, Mr. Skinner?” Sammy Sal stood slightly hunched, feet apart, holding his helmet with both hands, like a boy saying hello to his girlfriend’s father. He winked at Chevette.

“What you winkin’ at, boy?” Skinner shut the set off and snapped its screen shut. Chevette had bought it for him off a container-ship in the Trap. He said he couldn’t tell the difference anymore between the ‘programs’ and the ‘commercials,’ whatever that meant.

“Somethin’ in my eye, Mr. Skinner” Sammy Sal said, his big feet shifting, even more like a nervous boyfriend. Made Chevette want to laugh. She got behind Sammy’s back and reached in behind the magazines. It was there. Into her pocket.

“You ever seen the view from up top here, Sammy?” She knew she had this big crazy grin on, and Skinner was staring at it, trying to figure what was happening, but she didn’t care. She swung up the ladder to the roof-hatch.

“Gosh, no, Chevette, honey. Must be just breathtaking.”

“Hey” Skinner said, as she opened the hatch, “what’s got into you?”

Then she was up and out and into one of the weird pockets of stillness you got up there sometimes. Usually the wind made you want to lie down and hang on, but then there were these patches when nothing moved, dead calm. She heard Sammy Sal coming up the ladder behind her. She had the case out, was moving toward the edge.

“Hey” he said, “lemme see.”

She raised the thing, winding up to throw.

He plucked it from her fingers.

“Hey!”

“Shush.” Opening it, pulling them out. “Huh. Nice ones…”

“Sammy!” Reaching for them. He gave her the case instead.

“See how you do this now?” Opening them, one side-piece in either hand. “Left is aus, right’s em. Just move ’em a little.” She saw how he was doing it, in the light that spilled up through the hatch from Skinner’s room. “Here. Check it out.” He put them on her.