Michael Smith - One of Us

The clock knew that time was running out, and spoke very quickly. ‘I was trying to tell you something down in that smelly place. Something important.’

I aimed right at the AM/PM indicator. ‘Like what ? That I have a haircut booked at four?’

‘That I'm good at some things. Like finding people. I found you, didn't I?’

Finger on the trigger, one twitch away from sending the clock to oblivion, I hesitated. ‘So? What are you saying?’

‘I know where she is.’

I got into it the same way as most people, I guess. By accident.

It was a year and a half ago. I was staying the night in Jacksonville, mainly because I didn't have anyplace else to be. At the time it seemed like whenever I couldn't find a road to take me anywhere new, I wound up back in that city, like a yo-yo bouncing back to the hand that threw it away in the first place. I was planning on getting out of Florida the next day, and after my ride set me down I headed for the blocks round the bus station, where everything costs less. Last time I'd worked had been two weeks ago, at a bar down near Cresota Beach, where I grew up. They didn't like the way I talked to the customers. I didn't care for their attitude towards pay and working conditions. It had been a brief relationship.

I walked the streets until I found a place going by the inspiring and lyrical name of ‘Pete's Rooms’. The guy behind the desk was wearing one of the worst shirts I've ever seen, like a painting of a road accident done by someone who had no talent but an awful lot of paint to use up. I didn't ask him if he was Pete, but it seemed a fair assumption. He looked like a Pete. The rate was fifteen dollars a night, Net access in every room. Very reasonable – yet the shirt, unappealing though it was, looked like it had been made on purpose. Maybe I should have thought about that, but it was late and I couldn't be bothered.

My room was on the fourth floor and small, and the air smelled like it had been there since before I was born. I pulled something to drink from my bag, and dragged the room's one tatty chair over to the window. Outside was a fire escape the rats were probably afraid of using, and below that just yellow lights and noise.

I leaned out into humid night and watched people walking up and down the street. You see them in every big city, mangy dogs sniffing for a trail their instincts tell them must start around here someplace. Some people believe in God, or UFOs: others that just round a corner will be the first step on a road towards money, or drugs, or whatever Holy Grail they're programmed for. I wished them well, but not with much hope or enthusiasm. I'd tried most types of MAKE $$$ FAST!!! schemes by then, and they had got me precisely nowhere. Roads that begin just around corners have a tendency to lead you right back to where you started.

Though I grew up in Florida, I'd spent most of the previous decade on the West Coast, and I missed it. For the time being I couldn't go back, which left me with nowhere in particular to be. It felt like everything had ground to a halt, as if it would take something pretty major to get my life started up again. Reincarnation, maybe. It had felt that way before, but not quite so bleakly. It was the kind of situation that could get you down.

So I lay on the bed and went to sleep.

I woke up early the next morning, feeling strange. Spacey. Hollow-stomached, and as if someone had put little scratchy balls of crumpled paper inside my eyes. My watch said it was seven o'clock, which didn't make sense. The only time I see seven a.m. is when I've been awake straight through.

Then I realized an alarm was going off, and saw that the console in the bedside table was flashing. ‘Message’ it said. I screwed my eyes up tight and looked at it again. It still said I had a message. I hit the receive button. The screen went blank for a moment, and then fed up some text.

‘You could have earned $367.77 last night,’ it read. ‘To learn more, come by 135 Highwater today. Quote reference PR/43.’

Then it spat out a map. I picked it up; squinted at it.

$367.77 is a lot of nights' bar tending.

I changed my shirt and left the hotel.

By the time I reached Highwater I was already losing interest. My head felt fuzzy and dry, as if I'd spent all night doing math in my sleep. A big part of me just wanted to score breakfast somewhere and go sit on a bus, watch the sun haze on window panels until I was somewhere else.

But I didn't. I have a kind of shambling momentum, once I'm started. I followed the streets on the map, surprised to find myself getting closer to the business district. The kind of people who spam consoles in cheap hotels generally work out of virtual offices, but Highwater was a wide road with a lot of grown-up buildings on either side. 135 itself was a mountain of black plate glass, with a revolving door at the bottom. Unlike many of the other buildings I'd passed, it didn't have exterior videowalls extolling with tiresome thoroughness the virtues and success of the people who toiled within. It just sat there, not giving anything away. I went in, as much as anything just to find some shade.

The lobby was similarly uncommunicative, and likewise decked out all in black. It was like they'd acquired a job lot of the colour from somewhere and were eager to use it up. I walked across the marble floor to a desk at the far end, my heels tapping in the cool silence. A woman sat there in a pool of yellow light, looking at me with a raised eyebrow.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her tone making it clear she thought it was unlikely.

‘I was told to come here and quote a reference.’

I speak better than I look. Her face didn't light up or anything, but she tapped a button on her keyboard and turned her eyes to the screen. ‘And that is?’

I told her, and she scrolled down through some list for a while. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Here's how it is. Two options. The first is I give you $171.39, and you go away with no further obligation. The second is that you take the elevator on the right and go up to the 34th floor, where Mr Stratten will meet with you presently.’

‘And you arrive at $171.39 how, exactly?’

‘Your potential earnings less a twenty-five-dollar handling fee, divided by two and rounded up to the nearest cent.’

‘How come I only get half the money?’

‘Because you're not on contract. You go up and meet Mr Stratten, maybe that will change.’

‘And in that case I get the full $367?’

She winked. ‘You're kind of bright, aren't you?’

The elevator was very pleasant. Tinted mirrors, low lights; quiet, leisurely. It spoke of money, and lots of it. Not much happened during the journey.

When the doors opened I found myself faced with a corridor. A large chrome sign on the wall said ‘REMtemps’, in a suitably soul-destroying typeface. Underneath it said, ‘Sleep Tight. Sleep Right .’ I walked the way the sign pointed and ended up at another reception desk. The girl had a badge which said she was Sabrina, and her hair was done up in a weirdly complex manner, doubtless the result of several hours of some asswipe stylist's attention.

I'd thought the girl downstairs was a top-flight patronizer, but compared to Sabrina she was servility itself. Sabrina's manner suggested I was some kind of lower-echelon vermin: lower than a rat, for sure, maybe on a par with a particularly ill-favoured vole, and after thirty seconds with her I felt the bacteria in my stomach start to join in sneering at me. She told me to take a seat, but I didn't. Partly to annoy her, but mainly because I hate sitting in receptions. I read somewhere it puts you in a subordinate position right off the bat. I'm great at the pre-hiring tactics – it's just a shame it goes to pieces afterwards.