Lev Rosen - Depth

DRIFTER’S ALLEY OPERATED OUT of an old building so far downtown that Simone was pretty sure it had been in Brooklyn, back when there were boroughs. It used to be a product-testing facility and still looked like it; the hallways branched off into small rooms that had once been used for focus groups and now contained private lanes. The lobby was small and worn looking, with walls painted a rough black and a vinyl floor. Besides the desk, the only decoration was a neon sign of a bowling ball knocking down pins, the pins returning upright, and then the ball knocking them down again, over and over. The man behind the desk was tall, scruffy, and tired. He looked up at Simone with undisguised boredom. Simone hesitated. She could walk out, come up with an excuse to cancel. She didn’t want to see Caroline, didn’t want to have to smile to her face while wondering if Caroline was faking her smile, too. But how could she ask if her friend was mixed up in this trouble without making it sound like an accusation?

“I have a lane reservation under the name Pierce,” she said. He looked down at the tablet in his hand, typed in the name Pierce, and nodded.

“Lane twenty-six. Gloves are in the room. You need me to show you how to use it?” He asked this in a way that made it clear he hoped she would say no.

“We’ll be able to figure it out,” she said. He handed her a keycard and looked back at the tablet, done with her.

“My friends will show up soon,” she said. The man didn’t look up, and Simone glanced down the hallway. It was poorly lit and marked with bright yellow signs showing lane numbers. The doors themselves were blank, except for the occasional no-smoking sign. From behind the doors, she could hear the sounds of pins striking and people cheering. Lane twenty-six was a small, windowless black room with a pile of gloves on a shelf next to the door. Simone flipped a switch, thinking it was the lights, and there was a sudden humming as the room changed. One wall zoomed backwards into a long lane, pins all set up, and another wall became an empty scoreboard. A panel next to the switch glowed, asking her to choose from a variety of lane options. She scrolled through them, from “Arctic,” where the pins were penguins that shuffled around and the room became chilly and windy, to “Blackout,” where the room was totally dark and the pins just neon outlines. She settled on “Classic,” which was clean nostalgia with red-and-white pins and Elvis playing from a jukebox that materialized on the far wall.

She was looking for a mute button when Danny came in. He smiled at her, his eyes not quite focused, his head cocked to one side. She waited a few seconds more for his hello.

“Hello to you, too,” Simone said. “This lane okay for you?”

Danny shrugged. “Old, but cute. Sure. Do you know how this works?”

Simone motioned at the row of gloves. “I think we put those on.” She picked one up and pulled it over her right hand, almost to the elbow. It was comfortable, despite being coated in something like white plastic, and her fingers flexed easily. The scoreboard flashed, “Player One.” The glove flashed on the forearm, turning into a screen. She entered her name, and “Pierce” appeared on the scoreboard over the lanes. “Danny-Boy” quickly popped up below it as Danny got the hang of his glove. Next it asked her to choose a ball, and suddenly her hand was so heavy that she let it fall. It actually felt like she was holding a bowling ball. She looked down. It looked like she was holding a bowling ball. The screen on the now downward-facing forearm asked her to adjust her ball’s weight and color. She lightened it slightly but kept it black. Danny’s ball was changing color from neon green to pink to purple to blue and back again. It seemed decidedly out of place in the vintage lane.

“Maybe I should rig my crystal ball to do this,” Danny said, staring at it.

“Are you high?”

“No. I’m just trying to keep my mouth shut unless it’s about the bowling.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise I’ll ask you if you’ve asked Caroline about The Blonde yet.” Simone glared, but Danny just grinned at her. “You really aren’t going to, are you? Come on! She’s your friend. Just ask her. Be like—” he cleared his throat and then began speaking in a low monotone: “Hey, I was tailing this petite and viciously attractive blonde and saw her meeting with you and I was wondering if you’d be willing to tell me her name?”

“Okay… ,” Simone said, her free hand on her hip, “then she says, ‘Why would you want to know that? Is she connected to a case?’ ”

“Why, yes she is.” Danny was doing what, Simone now realized with horror, was supposed to be an imitation of her. “But I can’t tell you much about it. Confidentiality and all.”

Simone played along, but didn’t even attempt to imitate Caroline’s voice. “But she’s my best pal, and anything that involves her must involve me. You need to tell me what this is about, or else I can’t trust you.”

“Well, it’s just that I saw a man pay her some money.”

“And she waved a gun at me,” Simone said. Danny raised his eyebrows.

“Then you should definitely ask,” he said, dropping his imitation.

“I’ll figure it out. Maybe I can ask without asking…” Simone shook her head. It was an awful idea. “Was that voice supposed to be me?”

“Too femme?”

Before Simone could give him the finger, the door swung open, and Caroline came in, dressed all in black like a coated blade. “I am so ready to kick both your asses,” Caroline told them.

“Long week?” Simone asked.

“Yeah, but that thing for my parents is nearly settled, and the other thing with the guy who sailed into town is done, so I am free and I am on a winning streak and I am going to use said streak to beat both of you into mindless bloody piles. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”

“You spend too much time around politicians,” Danny said.

“You spend too much time with their wives,” Caroline responded, turning her eyes on Danny for the first time. Danny laughed nervously.

“Business is business,” he said. “Why don’t you put on a glove?”

“I don’t mind you peddling your faux-voyance to Ms. Seward,” Caroline said, gingerly taking a glove and putting it on. “But when it becomes a news item, it lands on my desk, and then I start to get ever so annoyed. You kept me in the office, Danny. Later than I needed to be.”

“Hey, some reporter spotted her coming out of my studio. That’s not my fault.”

“You gave him a comment!” Caroline barked, choosing a bowling ball. She went for blood red. “You said your consultations are confidential, and you’d never betray the confidence of a woman just looking for some answers.”

“So?”

“So you confirmed she was seeing you.”

“Well, yeah. It’s good for business.”

“Not mine. They even have a photo of her waiting in your parlor or whatever you call it—with all the bullshit magic symbols and crap. Not great press. Can’t you invest in some Privilux or something?”

Danny glanced over at Simone. Privilux was a spray made for windows, filled with invisible nanochips that gave off a signal to blur any attempt to digitally record past them; it was the ultimate in privacy screening for a window. Of course, it was insanely expensive, and you could always get mirrored glass, so few people in New York used the stuff. Simone had sprayed every window in her apartment with it, and when Danny visited, he always complained it made the inside of his head itch. Explaining that to Caroline would be difficult, as she didn’t know about Danny’s unique relationship with the wireless world.