Katharine McGee - The Thousandth Floor

AS THE LAST guests stumbled from Cord’s party into a waiting hover, Rylin heaved a sigh of relief. The night had felt endless—cleaning up all those drunk kids’ messes, pretending not to notice how some of the guys looked at her. She was exhausted, and her head still pounded from being yanked out of the communal. But thank god she was finally done.

Stretching her arms overhead, she wandered to the windows in Cord’s living room and gazed hungrily at the horizon line in the distance. The view screens in her apartment were so old that they didn’t even look like windows anymore, more like garish cartoons of a fake view, with a too-bright sun and overly green trees. There was a window along the side of her monorail stop at work—Rylin’s snack stand was at the Crayne Boulevard stop, between Manhattan and Jersey—but even that was too close to see anything except the Tower, squatting like a giant steel toad that blocked out the sky. Impulsively she pressed her face to the glass. It felt blissfully cool on her aching forehead.

Finally Rylin peeled herself away and started upstairs, to check in with Cord and get the hell out of there. As she walked, the lights behind her turned off and the ones ahead of her clicked on, illuminating a hallway lined with antique paintings. She passed an enormous bathroom, filled with plush hand towels and touch screens on every surface. Hell, the floor was probably even a touch screen: Rylin was willing to bet that it could read your weight, or heat up on voice command. Everything here was the best, the newest, the most expensive—everywhere she looked, she saw money. She walked a little faster.

When she reached the holoden, Rylin hesitated. Projected on the wall wasn’t the action immersion or dumb comedy she had expected. It was old family vids.

“Oh, no! Don’t you dare!” Cord’s mom exclaimed, in vibrant 3-D.

A four-year-old Cord grinned, holding a garden hose. Where was this , Rylin wondered, on vacation somewhere?

“Oops!” he proclaimed, without an ounce of contrition, as he turned the hose on his mom. She laughed, throwing up her tanned arms, her dark hair streaming with water like a mermaid’s. Rylin had forgotten how pretty she was.

Cord leaned forward eagerly, sitting almost on the edge of his leather armchair. A smile played on his lips as he watched his dad chase his younger self around the yard.

Rylin retreated a step. She would just—

The floor creaked under her feet, and Cord’s head shot up. Instantly the vid cut off.

“I—I’m sorry,” she stammered. “I just wanted to let you know I’m finished. So I’m heading out.”

Cord’s eyes traveled slowly over her outfit, her tight jeans and low-cut shirt and the tangle of neon bracelets at her wrists.

“I didn’t have time to go home and change,” she added, not sure why she was explaining herself to him. “You didn’t give me much notice.”

Cord just stared at her, saying nothing. Rylin realized with a start that he hadn’t recognized her. Then again, why should he? They hadn’t seen each other in years, since that Christmas his parents had invited her family over for presents and cookies. Rylin remembered how magical it had seemed to her and Chrissa, playing in the snow in the enclosed greenhouse, like a real-life version of the snow-globe toy her mom always got out for the holidays. Cord had spent the whole time in some holo-game, oblivious.

“Rylin Myers,” Cord said at last, as if she had stumbled into his party by chance rather than been paid to work it. “How the hell are you?” He gestured to the seat next to him, and Rylin surprised herself by sinking into it, pulling her legs up to sit cross-legged.

“Aside from being groped by your friends, just great,” she said without thinking. “Sorry,” she added quickly, “it’s been a long night.” She wondered where Hiral and the gang were, if they’d finally noticed her disappearance.

“Well, most of them aren’t my friends,” Cord said matter-of-factly. He shifted his weight, and Rylin couldn’t help noticing the way his shoulders rippled under his button-down shirt. She sensed suddenly that his carelessness was deceptive, that beneath it all he was watching her intently.

For a moment they both stared at the dark screen. It was funny, Rylin thought; if you’d told her earlier that her night would end here, hanging out with Cord Anderton, she would have laughed.

“What is that?” Cord asked, and Rylin realized she was playing with her necklace again. She dropped her hands to her lap.

“It was my mom’s,” she said shortly, hoping that would end it. She’d given the necklace to her mom as a birthday present one year, and after that her mom never took it off. Rylin remembered the pang she’d felt when the hospital sent it back to her, folded in plastiwrap and labeled with a cheerful orange tag. Her mom’s death hadn’t felt real until that moment.

“Why the Eiffel Tower?” Cord pressed, sounding interested.

Why the hell do you care , Rylin wanted to snap back, but caught herself. “It was an inside joke of ours,” she said simply. “We used to always say that if we ever had the money, we would take the train to Paris, eat at a fancy ‘Café Paris.’” She didn’t bother explaining how she and Chrissa used to turn their kitchen into a snooty French café. They would make paper berets and draw mustaches on their faces with their mom’s paintstick, and adopt terrible French accents as they served her the “chef’s special”—whatever frozen food packet had been on sale that week. It always made their mom smile after a long day’s work.

“Did you ever end up going?” Cord asked.

Rylin almost laughed at the stupidity of the question. “I’ve barely left the Tower.”

The room sounded with sudden shouting and water spraying, as the screen lit back up with the holovid. Cord quickly shut it off. His parents had died years ago, Rylin remembered, in a commercial airline crash.

“It’s nice that you have those vids,” she said into the silence. She understood why he would be possessive about them; she would have done the same if she and Chrissa had any. “I wish we had more of my mom.”

“I’m sorry,” Cord said quietly.

“It’s fine.” She shrugged, though of course it wasn’t fine. It wouldn’t be fine ever again.

The tension was broken by a sudden rumble sounding in the room. It took Rylin a moment to realize that it had come from her own stomach. Cord looked at her curiously. “You hungry?” he asked, though the answer was obvious. “We could break out the leftovers, if you want.”