Probably in the morning |
I can't stay in the company apartment and let the system watch me, but the place doesn't have to go to waste.
In the Effective Disorder days, we lived by our wits. Anything we could scrounge or steal was ours. I had to know if that was really an alternative to going back to work, if it's possible to survive out here alone without compromising to take a job, without sacrificing our old way of life.
When I found our guitar player in the park, I wasn't sure whether to be sad for him or respect him for holding to his principles. I stood and listened to him sing one of our old songs, "They Killed Plato." The chords were the same, but the music was a pathetic imitation of the experience I remembered. Out of time with his own guitar, Ricky's weak voice recited someone else's words with the soullessness of the Dude, straining to recreate a fraction of Casimir's emphasis.
I walked up to Ricky, and he gave the same instinctive nod he would give to anyone passing by. His hair was matted down with the same sweat that covered his face. It was hard to tell if he even knew where he was.
As I listened to the song, my hands remembered the beat that went with it, and I started drumming it out on my chest.
Ricky stopped singing mid lyric. His hands kept strumming, but the chords grew harder, more visceral. His eyes searched the empty air in front of him.
My feet stomped in time. He hummed the melody, and I pounded my ribs hard enough to bruise, sacrificing future pain for the intensity of the moment. It was a rush. By the end of the song, I wanted to jump over a drum set and kick somebody's ass.
His eyes almost focused on me. "Oscar?" I heard the fight in his voice just to be alive, to make a sound at all. I had the same feeling in the hospital. He smiled, showing a missing tooth in front.
"Yeah, it's me. How are you, Ricky?"
"Hungry." The vacant stare never completely left his eyes. The guitar had an irregular pattern of burn marks matching the sores on his exposed arms. I didn't know what he might be on. "Can I have some money for breakfast? I need a taco."
I was pretty hungry too, but I could give him something better than food. "You have a place to stay?"
"Over there." He pointed back into some bushes. "You?"
"I used to, but you can have it. Come with me if you want to have a place to live."
"Okay." He started putting his guitar away in the case. I didn't see more than a few coins in there. "This reunion is crazy random. You ever run into Harry?"
I didn't want to admit all the time we spent working together. "I've seen him. Yeah, you?"
"Not in a long time."
Later that morning or early afternoon |
I was tense going back to the company apartment. I wasn't even sure my card key would open the door, but it did.
Inside, the apartment was getting dusty for the first time I ever saw. It was clean the whole time I lived there, which confirms what Harry told me about the team of cleaning robots. I tried to get the programmers to pay attention to the stuff going on around them, but I never realized going home to a clean apartment was something the system let me take for granted. I wondered how often they came, if they were still there, hiding in the bathroom, ready to jump me. Good thing I didn't show up alone.
I turned to Ricky and saw him looking in through the front door like a wild animal into a cage. The concept of walls seemed foreign to him. "You coming in?"
He stepped inside.
I held out the white key card with the word "winston" half peeled off. "Use this to get in. You lose it, you're out on the street again."
"How did you get this place?" He scratched his cheek with quick strokes of his hand.
My smile gave away my embarrassment. "From Harry and my old boss."
"You son of a bitch." He shook his head. "You sold out."
"Yeah, I did, for a while. Now I'm off the grid, like you."
He picked an empty wine bottle off the table. "I guess I could stay here for a while, as long as you don't want anything from me."
I shook my head. "Nope." I remembered that attitude.
He took the key. "I'm not giving this back."
I started the tour, pointing all around us. "There's hidden cameras somewhere in here, but Harry said the system's not keeping a log anymore."
"The system never cared about me." Ricky wandered into the bedroom. "I been outside it for years and nobody in the system seemed to care if I lived or died."
"Except me." I followed him. "And Harry. He'll find out you're here."
"So either he kicks me out and I'm back where I was...." He flopped backwards onto my bed with a huge exhale, only it wasn't mine anymore. "Or he doesn't and I get a place to stay."
I sat down next to him on the bed. "I guess so." I reached underneath it and pulled out the half empty wine bottle I left down there.
"I have some of that?" When I handed it over, he pulled out the cork with his teeth and chugged.
"What are you on, Ricky?"
He took the bottle from his lips and smiled at me, showing that missing tooth again. "Whadya got?"
Ricky never met a drug he didn't like. He didn't compromise that part of our old lifestyle either. "You really haven't changed." I laughed, but I worried what he was doing to himself. I took the bottle and sipped. It was chalky from sitting, but I didn't spit it out.
Ricky's laugh held nothing back. "You definitely changed. You're all serious, or something." He took the bottle back and chugged the last of it.
I leaned back, knowing how true that was. "Harry's the one that really changed. He got clean, took over a company. Now he's running the system that watches this place." I wondered if Harry was looking for me using that system.
Ricky ran his fingers through his hair. "Shit, man, that's not a change. That fucker's been trying to run things since the first time I met him, and he doesn't care what it takes to get there."
"I guess." I thought back. "But he got me a job when nobody should have hired me."
"Don't make excuses for him. He's probably on his way here right now."
I stood up. "Yeah, I should go." I tried to think of anything else I needed from that place. The drum set in the living room was too big to take with me. Actually, nothing there was really even mine, except my wine glass from the storage space. It was there by the bed, layered with all the wines I scrounged and stole for.
"Don't be like him, man."
I froze. "What, because I had a job for a while?"
"Taking everything seriously, acting like you need to find the solution to everything, a solution for me. I'm fine. You gotta learn to let go."
I left without anything from that place, even my wine glass.
