Joshua Gayou - Commune - The Complete Series - A Post-Apocalyptic Survival Box Set (Books 1-4)

“No, Gus, let’s get a Minni over to settle up, hey?”

“You got it.”

He trotted off to fetch a tallyman.

“Do you want to take this to Ronny now?” Danielle asked when the kid was out of earshot.

Riley shook his head seriously, grinned like a cartoon wolf at a woman passing their table, and then looked back at Danielle. “Let me cook him up a bit, right? I want to make sure Steve’s locked in.”

“Oh, fine,” she scoffed.

Gus returned not long after with Corina’s resident Minni-Johnny and they all put their heads together as the accounts were settled. When the notebook was closed, Riley grasped his new friend Gus by the shoulders and kissed him briskly on each cheek. He made it perhaps three steps away when the young man called out.

“Hey, uh, Mr. Hall? You, uh… you mentioned something about a tip, sir?”

Riley turned to look at him, eyebrows raised high enough to brush his hairline. He walked back and stood very close, very close indeed until the young man felt obliged to lean away. Riley looked searchingly into his eyes, bottom lip pushed out into a drooping bow like a seabass. He leaned in even closer towards the young man, fixed his eyes directly on the kid’s right shoulder, and whispered, “Don’t be pushy, Gus.”

Riley straightened up and smiled, lips pulled back beautifully to expose every possible tooth in his mouth. He extracted his own little notepad from a pocket, pulled a much-gnawed pencil from behind his ear, and scribbled on a sheet of paper. He glanced up briefly at the kid as he did so, then back down at his pad. Clamping the pencil in his teeth, he ripped the paper from the pad and presented it happily. The muscles of his jaw tightened, causing his teeth to sink into the wood as he continued to smile and nodded happily.

The kid looked down at the paper. It read:

“I O U 5 HUNDERED CREDETS :)”

Stacy Morris announced his presence the same way he always did on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when most common folk had gone off to bed after a long, tiring day of scraping, when even the drunks had to find a quiet place to be—a place to be quiet so as not to violate the noise ordinance. The whore tents were out on the edges where the light was always low, out in the patches where the light strings didn’t reach, and the generators didn’t burn, where people still found their way by lantern light. A person who came by frequently, being knowledgeable of the area and the subtle ways it changed from week to week, might pick their way through by feel and memory; Stacy had become gifted at such navigation.

He crept around the back edge, where the common customers rarely went—those folks who had no reason to hide, being satisfied with the facile anonymity of the tents’ remove. He circled around the little encampment, approached Heather’s tent quite silently from the rear, and brushed his fingertips down the flap. She was there almost immediately, having known the hour of his arrival.

Stacy smiled at her; bowed politely at the neck. “Good evening, Miss Heather,” he said. She still refused to share her surname, no matter who asked.

She grabbed his shirtfront and pulled him in.

“Did anybody see you?” she hissed. She poked her head outside briefly before dropping the flap. As she turned to regard him in the low light, he was reminded again how young and pretty she was.

“They did not. As always, we’re safe. Did you… acquire the things I requested?”

“Yeah,” she muttered, bending over to rummage in a footlocker. “I don’t see why you couldn’t bring it, though.”

“It would have looked suspicious had I requested extras.”

She sat down on the small cot. “Sure, I guess.” She stared down at the tips of her fingers, thumbnail scraping compulsively over a knuckle.

“What is it?” Stacy asked.

After a moment’s silence, she said, “We… we really shouldn’t be doing this here. Isabelle would have me out on my ass if she found out.”

“You know we can’t do this at my place.”

“Yeah…”

“Moira wouldn’t understand, Heather. She… well, she has her own problems. She’s not convinced I’m going to stick with her. It doesn’t matter how much I try to explain, she’s certain I’ll leave her.”

“You will, though, won’t you?”

Shocked, Stacy asked, “What?”

“She’ll wear you down eventually. I’ve seen it happen before. You’ll get tired of trying to convince her, and at some point, that’ll be that.”

Stacy sat in a chair across from her and looked down at a point between them in the dirt. “No. I won’t.”

“Have her go out and do something when I come over, can’t you?”

“Heather, no.”

She sighed. “Isabelle goes on about it all the time. She always tells us how we can’t owe anyone. Ever, right? Owing leads to liberties. ‘Nothing ever for free.’ She’ll… she really will kick me out, Stacy. And I don’t know what else I can find; I don’t know how to do anything. Most of the people around here aren’t going to take on a whore!”

“Stop it.”

She swallowed hard and sighed.

“You’re doing a good thing, here. You’re elevating your station, remember? We’ll continue to be careful, and we will continue on. I’m fairly sure I can make the necessary arrangements, but we must have you up to speed.”

“Yeah, I guess…” she muttered.

“You guess? You did come to me, remember?”

She nodded.

“Look at me, Heather.”

She did.

“It’s scary, and right now you don’t know what will happen. I get that. But this is right. Your instincts are right. And you have my word: this does not get out to anyone until you’re ready to make the move. Count on it.”

Heather took a deep breath and nodded. A few seconds later she pursed her lips and nodded again.

“Let’s get started,” he said, holding his hand out to her. She gave him the notebook retrieved earlier from the trunk and struggled not to squirm as he thumbed through its pages.

Finding the entry he desired, he began to scroll down the page with an index finger. As he did so, Heather absentmindedly started flicking her fingernails together, which he imagined he could feel in the back of his skull; each and every click.

“Stop that, please,” he muttered.

“Sorry…”

After a few minutes of review, he said, “These are very good. It’s clear you’ve got it, except… except your third series, here, does not balance.”

“I know,” she moaned. “I fucked around with it for something like a half hour before I gave up. I got so frustrated I couldn’t see straight.”

“Yes, that’s probably why you couldn’t get it to balance.” He took a pencil from his shirt pocket, made a few corrections, and handed the notebook to her.

“Goddamn it!” she spit.

“Easy. I made the series difficult on purpose. You got caught up because the transaction occurred across four different parties. You have to be ready for these things. It gets more complicated all the time as more people come on board, new services spring up, new methodologies are tried… But remember, the basics—those things we’ve been drilling—they’re always there. And remember also: this isn’t Walmart! You don’t have your computer anymore to do all the thinking for you. You must be the computer now.”

“Well, you’re not gonna get me with that again,” she grumbled, scribbling her own notes in the margin.

Suppressing a laugh, Stacy reached across the tent and tapped her on the kneecap with a knuckle as though he were knocking on a door. “That is exactly the attitude to have, Miss Heather!”

She smiled despite herself and blew a wisp of hair from her eye.