Kim Robinson - The Gold Coast

Virginia gets back in the water, she and Jim are pressed together flank to flank. Bubbles cover the scene below. Passing an eyedropper their fingers touch and it seems to complete a circuit of some sort. Slick bodies are everywhere, sliding together like a pod of dolphins. Across from them Angela, who has an angelic body, hormonic aid making it lusher than standard but who’s complaining, stands, legs apart, arms overhead to hold the eyedropper to upturned face: a vision. The image .…

A breast shoves into his arm. “I live in SCP north,” Virginia says suddenly, under the crowd noise. “Want to come over?”

Jim, master of wit as always, says “Twist my arm.”

Their wet hair cools in the breeze blowing scrap paper around the parking garage. A two-minute drive to the north side of South Coast Plaza, where there is a set of condos that match the aps Sandy and Angela live in. Up to Virginia’s place, inside, a laughing race to the bedroom.

Virginia flips on the lights, turns on the video system. Eight little cameras mounted high on the walls track them with IR sensors, and two big sets of screens on the side walls show Virginia undressing, from both front and back. Jim finds the images arousing indeed, and by the time he gets his pants off half the screens show him with a hard-on waving about wandlike; Virginia cracks up and pulls him by it onto the bed. They maneuver into positions where they can both see a wall of screens. Images of Virginia—

Smooth curve of thigh; it’s spent a lot of time on the bike machines.

Blond wash of hair above.

Black pubic hair below, shaved to an arrow pointing down and in.

Blink! Blink!

Swinging breasts (the Image).

Lats, standing out from rib cage—

—pierce him utterly. She straddles him, slides onto him. Ah: the vital connection. She’s on top and she plays at holding down his wrists, so that her biceps bulge and her face is in exquisite profile as she looks to the screens to her left, and her breasts… well, it’s almost enough to distract Jim from the screens, but on the wall he’s looking at there is a view from above his head, so he can still see breasts falling from taut pectorals, while the screen next to it has the reverse angle, and shows the obscene, pornographic, not to say anatomically improbable image of his cock sliding in and out of her: concealed by the big muscles of her bottom, revealed pink and wet, concealed—

The screens flicker and go blank. Glassy gray-green nothingness.

Virginia jumps off Jim. “What the fuck!” Angrily she punches the buttons of the control panel over by the light switches. “It’s on! ” But no pictures. The cameras are not following her as she moves, either. “Well, what the hell!” She’s flushed with exertion, exasperation, she tries the buttons again, hitting them hard. “The damn thing must be broken!” Something in her tone of voice makes Jim start to go limp, despite the way she looks standing there. Besides, he’s distracted himself. What happened to them? “Can you fix it?” she asks.

“Well…” Dubiously Jim rolls off the gel bed and looks at the control panel. Everything appears to be in order there.… He looks up at all the cameras; cables still extend from them into the walls. “I don’t think so.…”

“Shit.” She sits on the bed, bounces beautifully.

“Well, but…” Jim gestures at the bed. “We’ve still got the major piece of equipment.”

Her mouth purses into a moue of irritation. She glances up, flips his deflated cock against his leg. “Oh yeah?” She laughs.

Now Jim, who is beginning to get a bit concerned, cannot afford a decent bedroom video system himself, and his little set is always breaking down. So he’s used to ad-libbing in difficult situations like these. He takes a look in the bathroom. “Ah ha!” There’s a free-standing full-length mirror in the great skylighted expanse of the bathroom, and full of hope he pulls it out into the bedroom. Virginia is draped out on the bed like a centerfold, looking for eyedroppers in the bedside table drawer. “Here we have it,” says Jim. “Early version of the system.”

She laughs, gives him directions as he positions the mirror. “Down a little. There, that’s good.” Quickly they are back at it, across the bed so they can both look to the side and see the mirror, where their twins thrash away. It’s disconcerting to have the twins looking back at them, but interesting too, and Jim can’t help grinning lasciviously at himself. The image itself is different also, the video’s softness and depth of field replaced by a hard, silvered, glossy materiality, as if they’ve got a window here and are spying on a couple in some more glassy world.

When they’re done, Jim drawls “Pret-ty kink-y.” And can’t help laughing.

Virginia isn’t amused. “I’ll have to get the repairmen by to fix it, and I hate that. It’s always, ‘Excuse me, ma’am, but we need a test of some kind to see if the system’s working.’”

Jim laughs. “You should tell them to fuck themselves, make that the test.”

Virginia scowls. “They probably would, the perverts.”

Well, okay. Now that they’re done, Virginia gets restless. Appears she still wants to party some more. Jim’s agreeable, whatever this beautiful new friend likes is fine by him. He likes to party too. So soon they’re up, dressed, back to Sandy’s.

On the way up to Sandy’s they run into Arthur Bastanchury, who is returning to the party’s end carrying a big over-the-shoulder bag. Jim is uncomfortable, here he’s just gone to bed with Arthur’s ex-ally and who knows what’s still going on between them, really. But both Virginia and Arthur are cool, and after they go inside and sit in the video room and chat for a while about what’s on the screens, Jim relaxes too. We’re in the postmodern world, he reminds himself, alliances are no more than that: every person is a sovereign entity, free to do what they want. No reason to feel any unease.

Sandy and Angela, Tashi and Erica come out of the jacuzzi room wrapped in big thick white towels, steaming faintly. They go on into the kitchen to rustle up a late-night snack. Arthur puts his bag on the floor and opens it, begins to arrange things inside. “So are you coming with me?” he shouts into the kitchen.

“Not tonight,” Sandy calls back in. “I’m beat.” No word from the others. Arthur makes a face. “Ginny?”

Virginia shakes her head. “’Fraid not, Art. I told you before, I think it’s a waste of time.”

Arthur looks disgusted with her, and abruptly she gets up and walks into the kitchen, where their friends are laughing over something Sandy has done or said. Ruefully Arthur shakes his head: he’s going to have to go it alone again, the expression says.

“What’s a waste of time?” Jim asks.

Arthur pins him with a challenging stare. “Trying to make a difference in this world. Virginia thinks that trying to make a difference is a waste of time. I suppose you think the same. You all do. A lot of talk about how bad things are, how we have to change things—but when it comes to a question of action, it turns out to be nothing but talk.”

“Don’t be so sure!”

“No?” Arthur’s tone is careless, his grin sardonic; he looks down to arrange the papers in his bag. Offended, Jim rises to it.

“No! Why don’t you tell me what you have in mind?”

“I’ve got some posters in here. I’m going to do an information blitz in the mall. Here—” He pulls one out, hands it up to Jim without looking at him.

From one angle it’s a holo of a wave at the Pipeline, a perfect tube about to eat some ecstatic goofy-footed surfer. Shift the poster just a bit, though, and it becomes a holo of a dead American soldier, perhaps taken in Indonesia. The legs are gone. Under this apparition bold letters proclaim: