Chapter #73A Meeting with Mata Hari by: Seuzz   It's a tempting thought: Make a fembot and whore it out. But life is complicated enough. You delete the thought and return to the conversation, which mostly consists of Call and Spencer and Horner fantasizing lewdly about Jelena Petrovich and Sienna Goldman and other girls of the tattooed persuasion. When talk turns to Andrea Varnsworth, though, you suddenly feel shy and even a little sick, and abandon them with a quick "Later." They don't even give the courtesy of a return farewell.
* * * * *
You are feeling ragged and bleary the next morning as you trudge across the parking lot toward the school. You were up until three in the morning doing and homework and finishing up a trio of mind bands for Trantham.
But there's a quickness to your step nevertheless, for you are keenly anticipating the minutes between 9:00 and 9:10, when the apparition of Andrea Varnsworth is due to appear outside the windows that look toward C wing. Yes, it's Joe Thomason inside that lovely body now. But still, that means you'll be able to talk to that body now, to stare at it openly when you meet to talk about business. So with increasing impatience you shift in your seat as the clock edges closer to the usual time. The tension become nigh intolerable.
And then she appears. Walking slowly, eyes down. She's wearing light purple shorts and flip flops and some kind of sweatshirt. Her hair, as always, gives the impression of being damp. What's her schedule, you wonder, for now you can ask why she always appears this way at this time of day. Does she have study hall first period, and she spends it in the natatorium? But if so, why does she always take this route back into the school? It would be the long way around, wouldn't it?
"Gary, Steve," says Ms. Gladstone. "Put your eyes back in your heads and turn them this way."
* * * * *
During lunch you make a circuit of the school to spy out the state of your various replacements. In the cafeteria you spot Gordon Black sitting at a table with some of the football players—including Kevin Hall—laughing and making goofy faces, apparently without a care in the world. At another table—the alpha table—sits Chelsea Cooper, wrapped inside the arm of Seth Javits. She's laughing and talking a mile a minute; the other cheerleaders at the table look very uncomfortable, though, and you don't even spot Cindy. You guess that "snap vote" must have gone off as Chen wanted.
Then you make a pass through the hallways and outside the wings, peering into classrooms for those who don't have fourth period lunch. Inside Gladstone's classroom you spot three of them: Will Prescott, Caleb Johansson, and Andrea Varnsworth. All three are gazing attentively at the front of the room. So is Matthias when you scope out Walberg's room. Today's he's wearing a snazzy-looking sweater. Where is he getting the money to buy this stuff? You assume he's buying it, since you've never seen Matthias in these clothes before, and you don't remember finding them in his closet when you briefly played his part.
You catch up briefly with Evans and Mendoza. "Where's Thomason," you ask, and they shrug.
Fucker. He's also not in fifth period. Andrea must be too scared or too freaked out by her new life. You wonder if she's hurt herself, but bury the thought before it can fester into guilt.
The rest of the day passes without excitement, though not without some interest. The girls in Orchestra are buzzing excitedly in a corner, then explode when Eva Garner comes in. They practically swarm her. She is tight-lipped, however, and most of her responses are just variants on "I don't know" and "That's not my business." But from the content of the questions you gather that something even bigger than the snap cheerleader vote happened.
Eventually you glean the facts: Cindy Vredenburg, having muffed her coup, quit the squad. That was followed by a housecleaning of sorts: Lin Pol and Yumi Saito are also out, and so is Michelle Estrich. And to Audrey Briscoe's horrified, "What about you and Jessica, are you still going to be on it?" Eva will only answer with a very clipped, "We haven't decided."
You'd be interested in hearing more, maybe from Chelsea herself, but you've not got the time, and there's another girl you have to talk to.
But you don't have her number, so you stop by her locker after the final bell. The sidelong look she gives you is a little more tremulous than you'd expect from this self-confident girl. "I wanna meet at four," you tell Andrea. "Where?"
She doesn't immediately answer, and before she can Charles Hartlein appears at her other shoulder. "Oh my God, Drea," he gushes. "I know you're not interested but it's too delicious not to share!" He catches sight of you, and his chortle turns soft and malicious. "Hey Gary, there's a freshman disrespecting you over in A wing. Better go find him and flush him down the toilet."
Andrea stares into her locker.
She won't say anything in front of Hartlein, so you speak: "Text me later, girl. Lookin' forward to it."
You catch the phrase over-compensating, obviously from Hartlein as you move off.
Ten minutes later comes a text: CVS by McD's.
Weird, but it'll work.
* * * * *
The pharmacy is just across the corner from the McDonalds where you'd parted with her yesterday. You recognize Andrea's car out front; inside, you find her looking over some hair care products. "Prepping for a date?" you say as you fall in next to her.
She gives you that same brief, sidelong glance as at the locker. "You're really not the kind of guy I'd be talking to," she says quietly. "I figure here it looks like we ran into each other if someone sees us."
"Like in a spy movie, huh? What's wrong with your place? Your mom and dad wouldn't like my face either?"
"Dad's someplace west, mom's working, they wouldn't care," she says as she picks up a box of hair coloring. "But Hartlein's always popping in over there." She clucks with distaste: possibly over Hartelin, possibly over the hair coloring, possibly over both or over some third unnamed thing.
"What was he dishing about at your locker?"
"Do you care? I didn't. This girl didn't. Cheerleader shit."
"Yeah, that's a hot topic. You got anything to report? You looked fine this morning on your way from— Where were you coming from at the end of first?"
"Swim practice. I didn't know you could see me."
"Whole line of guys in two fucking wings get an eyeful of you every day, girl. Power of their erections could run a fucking factory for most of a month."
"Don't be disgusting. But I don't have a lot to report. I'm settled in pretty good." She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, a little self-consciously. "Andrea's mom isn't around much, works strange hours. I've got people always coming and going from the house, though." She moves down a few feet, kneels to examine some more products. "Give me a few eighths tomorrow and I'll start your advertising campaign."
"Sweet, but you gotta pay for 'em. Is this girl good for it?"
"Easily."
"Really? She get a big allowance?"
"Mom's a waitress/manageress at Ristorante Locarno. She leaves tip money all over the house."
"Interesting. How much of it could go missing without her noticing?"
"If you want that kind of action, shouldn't you have gone for Kelsey Blankenship instead of Andrea Varnsworth?"
"Don't sass me, bitch. I just mean, would this baby's mama miss thirty-two dimes?"
"No. Most of it would go right back into her kitchen drawers after I sold the shit, right?"
"You're not selling, remember? But, uh, how much is laying around at her place?"
A pause. "Between twelve and thirteen thousand."
Your knees buckle, and you drop into a crouch beside her. "Seriously? Doesn't her mom believe in banks?"
"She does on the fifth of the month. And even then only if she's started losing the silverware inside all the loose cash. The money that's there now is what's left after she dumped a lot of it in the bank last week."
You grab a shelf to keep from falling over. "God damn, she could finance our whole expansion!" You've been worried about how to buy more stuff from Dwayne without increasing the debt to Mathis.
"As long as most of it gets paid back within a few weeks," Andrea says. She gets to her feet again.
"Well, this is great to know anyway. Meet me tomorrow in the library before class, I'll pass a baggie to you."
"I have swim practice at seven. How about after first?"
"That'll work too." You look her up and down. "The exercise looks good on you."
"And it feels even better," she says with a slight groan.
* * * * *
Maybe rockbot orders have an expiration date: Grandfather is being quarrelsome when you get home. But he's not too loud, and you don't want things looking suspicious, so you leave him to the nurse and to your mother as duck into the bedroom with some leftovers from Panda Garden. You want to glance through the grimoire before going in to work.
You find confirmation that grandfather is now a –bot of some kind, like the one still in the elementary school basement. Meanwhile, the next spell uses the same ingredients as the previous two, but with some significant twists: It uses only a few ounces of graveyard dirt, but no body; and the product is to be painted onto the inner surface of a mask—one that has a brain band attached. There is no explanation for what it will do. But there never is.
Hmm. You've got lots of masks around, but they're riding around on people. You could experiment with one of those, even with the mask you're wearing now. But what if you break it?
Maybe you should wait until you can meet with Caleb again.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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