Shouldering their bikes up the plywood stairs, Chevette telling him about the Japanese girl, how she fell out of that elevator. How she, Chevette, wouldn’t even have been at that party if she hadn’t been standing right there, right then. Sammy grunting, his Fluoro-Rimz gone dead opal now they weren’t turning. ‘Who was it throwing this do, Chev? You think to ask anybody that?’ Remembering that Maria. ‘Cody. Said it was Cody’s party…’ Sammy Sal stopped, his brows lifting. ‘Huh. Cody Harwood?’ She shrugged, the paper bike next to weightless on her shoulder. ‘Dunno.’ ‘You know who that is?’ ‘No.’ Reaching the platform, putting the bike down to wheel it. 130 ‘That’s some serious money. Advertising. Harwood Levine, but that was his father.’ ‘Well, I said it was rich.’ Not paying him much attention. ‘His father’s company did Millbank’s PR, both eleclions.’ But she was activating the recognition-loop now, nt bothering with the screamers from Radio Shack. Sammy’s FluoroRimz pulsed as he set his bike down beside hers. ‘I’ll loop it to mine. Be okay here anyway.’ ‘That’s what I said,’ Sammy said, ‘last two I bst.’ He watched her pull the ioop out, twist it around his bike’s frame, careful of the pink-and-black enamel, and seal it with her thumbprint. She headed for the yellow lift, glad to see it there, where she’d left it, and not at the top of the track. ‘Let’s do this thing, okay?’ Remembering she’d meant to buy Skinner some soup from Thai Johnny’s wagon, that sweet-sour lemnon one he liked.
When she’d told Sammy she wanted to mess, wanted her own bike, he’d gotten her this little Mexican headset taught you every Street lfl San Francisco. Three days and she had it down, pretty much, even though he said that wasn’t like the map in a messenger’s head. You needed to know buildings, hcw to get into them, how to act, how to keep your wheels fron getting stolen. But when he’d taken her in to meet Bunny, :hat was magic. Three weeks and she’d earned enough to buy her first serious bike. That was magic, too. Somewhere around then she started hanging out after work with a couple of the other Allied girls, Tami Two and Alice Maybe, and that was how she’d wound up at Cognitive Dissidents, that night she’d met Lowell.
‘Nobody locks their door here,’ Sammy said, on t~c ladder below her, as she lifted the hatch. 131 Chevette closed her eyes, saw a bunch of cops (whatever that would look like) standing around Skinner’s room. Opened her eyes and stuck her head up, eyes level with the floor. Skinner was on his bed, his little television propped on his chest, big old yellow toenails sticking out of holes in his lumpy gray socks. He looked at her over the television. ‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I brought Sammy. From work.’ She climbed up, making room for Sammy Sal’s head and shoulders. ‘Howdy,’ Sammy Sal said. Skinner just stared at him, colors from the little screen flicking across his face. ‘How you doin’?’ Sammy Sal asked, climbing up. ‘Bring anything to eat?’ Skinner asked her. ‘Thai Johnny’ll have soup ready in a while,’ she said, moving toward the shelves, the magazines. Dumb-ass thing to say and she knew it, because Johnny’s soup was always ready; he’d started it years ago and just kept adding to the pot. ‘How you doin’, Mr. Skinner?’ Sammy Sal stood slightly hunched, feet apart, holding his helmet with both hands, like a boy saying hello to his girlfriend’s father. He winked at Chevette. ‘What you winkin’ at, boy?’ Skinner shut the set off and snapped its screen shut. Chevette had bought it for him off a container-ship in the Trap. He said he couldn’t tell the difference anymore between the ‘programs’ and the ‘commercials,’ whatever that meant. ‘Somethin’ in my eye, Mr. Skinner,’ Sammy Sal said, his big feet shifting, even more like a nervous boyfriend. Made Chevette want to laugh. She got behind Sammy’s back and reached in behind the magazines. It was there. Into her pocket. ‘You ever seen the view from up top here, Sammy?’ She knew she had this big crazy grin on, and Skinner was staring at it, trying to figure what was happening, hut she didn’t care. She swung up the ladder to the roof-hatch. 132 ‘Gosh, no, Chevette, honey. Must be just breathtaking.’ ‘Hey,’ Skinner said, as she opened the hatch, ‘what’s got into you?’ Then she was up and out and into one of the weird pockets of stillness you got up there sometimes. Usually the wind made you want to lie down and hang on, but then there were these patches when nothing moved, dead calm. She heard Sammy Sal coming up the ladder behind her. She had the case out, was moving toward the edge. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘lemme see.’ She raised the thing, winding up to throw. He plucked it from her fingers. ‘Hey!’ ‘Shush.’ Opening it, pulling them out. ‘Huh. Nice ones…’ ‘Sammy!’ Reaching for them. He gave her the case instead. ‘See how you do this now?’ Opening them, one side-piece in either hand. ‘Left is aus, right’s em. Just move ’em a little.’ She saw how he was doing it, in the light that spilled up through the hatch from Skinner’s room. ‘Here. Check it out.’ He put them on her. She was facing the city when he did it. Financial district, the Pyramid with its brace on from the Little Grande, the hills behind that. ‘Fuck a duck,’ she said, these towers blooming there, buildings bigger than anything, a stone regular grid of them, marching in from the hills. Each one maybe four blocks at the base, rising straight and featureless to spreading screens like the colander she used to steam vegetables. Then Chinese writing filled the sky. ‘Sammy.. .’ She felt him grab her as she lost her balance. The Chinese writing twisted into English.