Eastern Standard Tribe, Cory Doctorow [reading e books TXT] 📗

at him as he commed into the lobby
and extended his hand to Linda, who took it, put it on her shoulder, grabbed his
ass, crushed their pelvises together and jammed her tongue in his ear. "I missed
you," she slurped, the buzz of her voice making him writhe. "I'm not wearing any
knickers," she continued, loud enough that he was sure that the receptionist
heard. He felt the blush creeping over his face and neck and ears.

The receptionist. Dammit, why was he thinking about the receptionist? "Linda,"
he said, pulling away. Introduce her, he thought. Introduce them, and that'll
make it less socially awkward. The English can't abide social awkwardness.
"Linda, meet --" and he trailed off, realizing he didn't actually know the
receptionist's name.

The receptionist glared at him from under a cap of shining candy-apple red hair,
narrowing her eyes, which were painted in high style with Kubrick action-figure
faces.

"My *name* is Tonaishah," she hissed. Or maybe it was *Tanya Iseah*, or
*Taneesha*. He still didn't know her goddamned name.

"And this is Linda," he said, weakly. "We're going out tonight."

"And won't you have a dirty great time, then?" Tonaishah said.

"I'm sure we will," he said.

"Yes," Tonaishah said.

Art commed the door and missed the handle, then snagged it and grabbed Linda's
hand and yanked her through.

"I'm a little randy," she said, directly into his ear. "Sorry." She giggled.

"Someone you have to meet," he said, reaching down to rearrange his pants to
hide his boner.

"Ooh, right here in your office?" Linda said, covering his hand with hers.

"Someone with *two* eyes," he said, moving her hand to his hip.

"Ahh," she said. "What a disappointment."

"I'm serious. I want you to meet my friend Fede. I think you two will really hit
it off."

"Wait," Linda said. "Isn't this a major step? Meeting the friends? Are we
getting that serious already?"

"Oh, I think we're ready for it," Art said, draping an arm around her shoulders
and resting his fingertips on the upper swell of her breast.

She ducked out from under his arm and stopped in her tracks. "Well, I don't.
Don't I get a say in this?"

"What?" Art said.

"Whether it's time for me to meet your friends or not. Shouldn't I have a say?"

"Linda, I just wanted to introduce you to a coworker before we went out. He's in
my office -- I gotta grab my jacket there, anyway."

"Wait, is he a friend or a coworker?"

"He's a friend I work with. Come on, what's the big deal?"

"Well, first you spring this on me, then you change your story and tell me he's
a coworker, now he's a friend again. I don't want to be put on display for your
pals. If we're going to meet your friends, I'll dress for it, put on some
makeup. This isn't fair."

"Linda," Art said, placating.

"No," she said. "Screw it. I'm not here to meet your friends. I came all the way
across town to meet you at your office because you wanted to head back to your
place after work, and you play headgames with me like this?"

"All right," Art said. "I'll show you back out to the lobby and you can wait
with Tonaishah while I get my jacket."

"Don't take that tone with me," she said.

"What tone?" Art said. "Jesus Christ! You can't wait in the hall, it's against
policy. You don't have a badge, so you have to be with me or in the lobby. I
don't give a shit if you meet Fede or not."

"I won't tell you again, Art," she said. "Moderate your tone. I won't be shouted
at."

Art tried to rewind the conversation and figure out how they came to this pass,
but he couldn't. Was Linda really acting *this* nuts? Or was he just reading her
wrong or pushing her buttons or something?

"Let's start over," he said, grabbing both of her hands in his. "I need to get
my jacket from my office. You can come with me if you want to, and meet my
friend Fede. Otherwise you can wait in the lobby, I won't be a minute."

"Let's go meet Fede," she said. "I hope he wasn't expecting anything special,
I'm not really dressed for it."

He stifled a snotty remark. After all that, she was going to go and meet Fede?
So what the hell were they arguing about? On the other hand, he'd gotten his
way, hadn't he? He led her by the hand to his office, and beyond every doorway
they passed was a V/DT Experience Designer pretending not to peek at them as
they walked by, having heard every word through the tricky acoustics of O'Malley
House.

"Fede," he said, stiffly, "This is Linda. Linda, this is Fede."

Fede stood and treated Linda to his big, suave grin. Fede might be short and he
might have paranoid delusions, but he was trim and well groomed, with the sort
of finicky moustache that looked like a rotting caterpillar if you didn't trim
it every morning. He liked to work out, and had a tight waist and a gut you
could bounce a quarter off of, and liked to wear tight shirts that showed off
his overall fitness, made him stand out among the spongy mouse-potatoes of the
corporate world. Art had never given it much thought, but now, standing with
Fede and Linda in his tiny office, breathing in Fede's Lilac Vegetal and Linda's
new-car-smell shampoo, he felt paunchy and sloppy.

"Ah," Fede said, taking her hand. "The one you hit with your car. It's a
pleasure. You seem to be recovering nicely, too."

Linda smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, a few strands of her bobbed hair
sticking to his moustache like cobwebs as she pulled away.

"It was just a love tap," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Fede's from New York," Art said. "We colonials like to stick together around
the office. And Linda's from Los Angeles."

"Aren't there any, you know, British people in London?" Linda said, wrinkling
her nose.

"There's Tonaishah," Art said weakly.

"Who?" Fede said.

"The receptionist," Linda said. "Not a very nice person."

"With the eyes?" Fede said, wriggling his fingers around his temples to indicate
elaborate eye makeup.

"That's her," Linda said.

"Nasty piece of work," Fede said. "Never trusted her."

"*You're* not another UE person, are you?" Linda said, sizing Fede up and giving
Art a playful elbow in the ribs.

"Who, me? Nah. I'm a management consultant. I work in Chelsea mostly, but when I
come slumming in Piccadilly, I like to comandeer Art's office. He's not bad, for
a UE-geek."

"Not bad at all," Linda said, slipping an arm around Art's waist, wrapping her
fingers around the waistband of his trousers. "Did you need to grab your jacket,
honey?"

Art's jacket was hanging on the back of his office door, and to get at it, he
had to crush himself against Linda and maneuver the door shut. He felt her
breasts soft on his chest, felt her breath tickle his ear, and forgot all about
their argument in the corridor.

"All right," Art said, hooking his jacket over his shoulder with a finger,
feeling flushed and fluttery. "OK, let's go."

"Lovely to have met you, Fede," Linda said, taking his hand.

"And likewise," Fede said.

15.

Vigorous sex ensued.

16.

Art rolled out of bed at dark o'clock in the morning, awakened by circadians and
endorphins and bladder. He staggered to the toilet in the familiar gloom of his
shabby little rooms, did his business, marveled at the tenderness of his
privates, fumbled for the flush mechanism -- "British" and "Plumbing" being two
completely opposite notions -- and staggered back to bed. The screen of his
comm, nestled on the end table, washed the room in liquid-crystal light. He'd
tugged the sheets off of Linda when he got up, and there she was, chest rising
and falling softly, body rumpled and sprawled after their gymnastics. It had
been transcendent and messy, and the sheets were coarse with dried fluids.

He knelt on the bed and fussed with the covers some, trying for an equitable --
if not chivalrously so -- division of blankets. He bent forward to kiss at a
bite-mark he'd left on her shoulder.

His back went "pop."

Somewhere down in the lumbar, somewhere just above his tailbone, a deep and
unforgiving *pop*, ominous as the cocking of a revolver. He put his hand there
and it felt OK, so he cautiously lay back. Three-quarters of the way down, his
entire lower back seized up, needles of fire raced down his legs and through his
groin, and he collapsed.

He *barked* with pain, an inhuman sound he hadn't known he could make, and the
rapid emptying of his lungs deepened the spasm, and he mewled. Linda opened a
groggy eye and put her hand on his shoulder. "What is it, hon?"

He tried to straighten out, to find a position in which the horrible, relentless
pain returned whence it came. Each motion was agony. Finally, the pain subsided,
and he found himself pretzelled, knees up, body twisted to the left, head
twisted to the right. He did not dare budge from this posture, terrified that
the pain would return.

"It's my back," he gasped.

"Whah? Your back?"

"I -- I put it out. Haven't done it in years. I need an icepack, OK? There're
some headache pills in the medicine cabinet. Three of those."

"Seriously?"

"Look, I'd get 'em myself, but I can't even sit up, much less walk. I gotta ice
this down now before it gets too inflamed."

"How did it happen?"

"It just happens. Tai Chi helps. Please, I need ice."

Half an hour later, he had gingerly arranged himself with his knees up and his
hips straight, and he was breathing deeply, willing the spasms to unclench.
"Thanks," he said.

"What now? Should I call a doctor?"

"He'd just give me painkillers and tell me to lose some weight. I'll probably be
like this for a week. Shit. Fede's going to kill me. I was supposed to go to
Boston next Friday, too."

"Boston? What for? For how long?"

Art bunched the sheets in his fists. He hadn't meant to tell her about Boston
yet -- he and Fede hadn't worked out his cover story. "Meetings," he said. "Two
or three days. I was going to take some personal time and go see my family, too.
Goddamnit. Pass me my comm, OK?"

"You're going to *work* now?"

"I'm just going to send Fede a message and send out for some muscle-relaxants.
There's a twenty-four-hour chemist's at Paddington Station that delivers."

"I'll do it, you lie flat."

And so it began. Bad enough to be helpless, weak as a kitten and immobile, but
to be at the whim of someone else, to have to provide sufficient excuse for
every use of his comm, every crawl across the flat... Christ. "Just give me my
comm, please. I can do it faster than I can explain how to do it."

In thirty-six hours, he was ready to tear the throat out of anyone who tried to
communicate with him. He'd harangued Linda out of the flat and crawled to the
kitchen floor, painstakingly assembling a nest of pillows and sofa cushions,
close to the icemaker and the painkillers and toilet.