James Corey - The Churn

Still, she hung warm-colored silk across her windows and wore the silver bells at her ankles and wrists that were the fashion among much younger women. Life, such as it was, was good.

The evening sun hung over the rooftops to the west, the late summer heat thickening the air. Lydia was in the little half-kitchen warming up a bowl of frozen hummus when the door chimed and the bolts clacked open. Timmy came in, lifting his chin in greeting. She smiled back, raising an eyebrow. There was no one with him, and there never would be. They had never allowed someone else to be with them when they were together. Not since the night his mother died.

“So, how did it go?”

“Kind of fucked it up, me,” Timmy said.

Lydia’s heart went tight and she tried to keep her voice calm and light. “How so?”

“Burton told me to get what I could out of this guy. Looking back, I think he just meant money. So.” Timmy leaned against the couch, hands deep in his pockets, and shrugged. “Oops.”

“Was Burton angry?”

Timmy looked away and shrugged again. With that motion, she could see him again as he’d been as a young boy, as a child, as a baby. She had known his mother when they’d worked together, each watching out for the other when they turned tricks. Lydia had been there the night Timmy was born among the worn tiles and cold lights of the black-market clinic. She’d made him soup the night Liev had turned him out the first time and while he ate told him lies about her first time with a john to make him laugh. She’d picked music with him for his mother’s memorial and told him that she’d died the way she’d lived, and not to blame himself. She had never been able to protect him from anything, so she’d helped him live in the jagged world, and he gave her something she couldn’t describe or define but that she needed like a junkie craved the needle.

“How angry is he?” she asked carefully.

“Not that bad. I’m gonna be watching Erich’s back for a while. He’s got some things need doing, and the boss doesn’t want anything going pear-shaped. So that’s all right.”

“And you? How are you?”

“Eh. I’m good,” Timmy said. “I think I’m coming down with something. Flu, maybe.”

She walked out from the kitchen, her food abandoned, and put the back of her hand to his forehead. His skin felt cool.

“No fever,” she said.

“Probably nothing,” he said, pulling his shirt up over his head. “I got the shakes a little, and I got dizzy a couple times on the way back. It ain’t serious.”

“What happened to the man Burton sent you to?”

“I shot him.”

“Did you kill him?” Lydia asked as she walked back to her bedroom. The ruddy light of sunset filtered through yellow silk. An old armoire stood against one wall, its silver finish stained and corroded by years. The bed was the same cheap foam queen-sized she’d had when she was working, the sheets old and thin, softer than skin with wear.

“Used a shotgun about a meter from his chest,” Timmy said, following her. “Could have stuck your fist through the hole. So, yeah, pretty much.”

“Have you ever killed a man before?” she asked, lifting her dress up over her thighs, her hips, her head.

Timmy undid his belt, frowning. “Don’t know. Beat some guys pretty bad. Maybe some of ’em didn’t get back up, but no one I know about. You know, not for sure.”

Lydia unhooked her bra, letting it slide to the cheap carpet. Timmy took his pants down, kicking them off with his shoes. He didn’t wear underwear, and his erect penis bobbed in the air like it belonged to someone else. There was no desire in his expression, and only a mild distress.

“Timmy,” she said, lying back on the bed and lifting her hips. “You aren’t getting ill. You’re traumatized.”

“Y’think?” He seemed genuinely surprised by the thought. And then amused by it. “Yeah, maybe. Huh.”

He pulled her underwear down to her knees, her ankles. “My poor Timmy,” she murmured.

“Ah shit,” he said, lowering his body onto hers. “I’m all right. At least I’m not getting sick.”

Sex held few mysteries for Lydia. She had fucked and been fucked by more men than she could count, and she’d learned things from each of them. Ugly things sometimes. Sometimes beautiful. She understood on a deep, animal level that sex was like music or language. It could express anything. Love, yes. Or anger, or bitterness, or despair. It could be a way to grieve or a way to take revenge. It could be a weapon or a nightmare or a solace. Sex was meaningless, and so it could mean anything.

What she and Timmy did to and for and with each other’s bodies wasn’t a thing they discussed. She felt no shame about it. That other people would see only the perversion of a woman and the boy she’d helped raise pleasuring one another meant that other people would never understand what it mean to be them, to survive the world they survived. They were not lovers, and never would be. They were not surrogate mother and incestuous son. She was Lydia, and he was Timmy. In the bent and broken world, what they did fit. It was more than most people had.

After, Timmy lay beside her, his breath still coming in small, reflexive gulps. Her body felt pleasantly tender and bruised. The yellow over the window was fading into twilight, and the rumble of air traffic was like constant thunder in the distance, or a city being shelled two valleys over. A transport ship for one of the orbital stations, maybe. Or a wing of atmospheric fighter planes on exercises. So long as she didn’t look, she could pretend it was anything. Her mind wandered, delivering up what had been nagging at her since Timmy had told her all that had happened.

Burton had sent Timmy to collect a debt, Timmy had killed the man instead, and Burton hadn’t cut him loose. Two points defined a line, but three defined the playing field. Burton didn’t always have need of boys like Timmy, but sometimes he did. Right now, he did.

Lydia sighed.

The churn was coming. It was the name Liev had given it, back before. All of nature had its rhythms, its booms and busts. She and Timmy and Liev and Burton were mammals, they were part of nature, and subject to its rules and whims. She had lived through perhaps three, perhaps four such catastrophes before. Enough that she knew the signs. Like a squirrel gathering food before a hard winter, Burton collected violent men before the churn. When it came, there would be blood and death and prison sentences and maybe even a curfew for a time. Men like Timmy would die by the dozen, sacrificed for things they didn’t know or understand. Maybe even some of Burton’s lieutenants would fall the way Tanner Ford had back when she’d been Liev’s lover. Or Stacey Li before him. Or Cutbreath. The history of her corrupted world echoed with the names of the dead; the expendable and the expended. If Burton had kept Timmy on, it was because he thought it was coming. And if Burton thought it was coming, it probably was.

Timmy’s breath was low and deep and regular. He sounded like a man asleep, except his eyes were open and fixed on the ceiling. Her own skin was cool now, the sweat dried or nearly so. A fly swooped through the air above them, a gray dot tracing a jagged path, turning and dodging to avoid dangers that weren’t there. She lifted her first two fingers, cocked back her thumb, and made a thin cartoon shooting sound with her teeth and tongue. The insect flew on, undisturbed by her small and violent fantasy. She turned her head to look at Timmy. His expression was blank and empty. He was still, and even in the warmth that followed orgasm, there was a tension in his body. He wasn’t a beautiful boy. He’d never be a beautiful man.

Someday , she thought, I will lose him. He will go off on some errand and he will never come back. I won’t even know what happened to him . She probed at the thought like a tongue-tip against the sore gum where a tooth has been knocked out. It hurt and hurt badly, but it hadn’t happened yet, and so she could bear it. Best to prepare herself now. Meditate upon the coming loss so that when it came, she was ready.