She was frowning at him. “Freelance.”
“That’s right.”
She swayed expertly on her stacked heels, fishing a box of Russian 10 Marlboros from her pink patent purse. Passing cars were already honking at the sight of the Lucky Dragon security man talking to this six-foot-plus boygirl, and now she was deliberately doing something illegal. She opened the red-and-white box and pointedly offered Rydell a cigarette. There were two in there, factory-made filter tips, but one was shorter than the other and had blue metallic lipstick on it.
“No thanks.”
She took out the shorter one, partially smoked, and put it between her lips. “Know what I’d do if I were you?” Her lips, around the tan filter tip, looked like a pair of miniature water beds plastered with glittery blue candy coat.
“What?”
She took a lighter from her purse. Like the ones they sold in those tobacciana shops. They were going to make that illegal too, he’d heard. She snapped it and lit her cigarette. Drew in the smoke, held it, blew it out, away from Rydell. “I’d fuck off into the air.”
He looked into the Lucky Dragon and saw Durius say something to Miss Praisegod Satansbane, the checker on this shift. She had a fine sense of humor, Praisegod, and he guessed you had to, with a name like that. Her parents were some particularly virulent stripe of SoCal NeoPuritan, and had taken the name Satansbane before Praisegod had been born. The thing was, she’d explained to Rydell, nobody much knew what “bane” meant, so if she told people her last name, they mostly figured she was a Satanist anyway. So she often went by the surname Proby, which had been her father’s before he’d gotten religion.
Now Durius said something else, and Praisegod threw back her shoulders and laughed. Rydell sighed. He wished it had been Durius’ turn to do curb check.
“Look,” Rydell said, “I’m not telling you you can’t stand out here. The sidewalk’s public property. It’s just that there’s this company policy.”
“I’m going to finish this cigarette,” she said, “and then I’m calling my lawyer.”
“Can’t we just keep it simple?”
“Uh-uh.” Big metallic-blue, collagen-swollen smile.
Rydell glanced over and saw Durius making hand signals at him.
11 Pointing to Praisegod, who held a phone. He hoped they hadn’t called
LAPD. He had a feeling this girl really did have herself a lawyer, and
Mr. Park wouldn’t like that.
Now Durius came out. “For you,” he called. “Say it’s Tokyo.”
“Excuse me,” Rydell said, and turned away. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey what?” He looked back. “You’re cute.” 12 3. DEEP IN LANEY hears his piss gurgle into the screw-top plastic liter bottle. It’s awkward kneeling here, in the dark, and he doesn’t like the way the bottle warms in his hand, filling. He caps it by feel and stands it upright in the corner that’s farthest from his head when he sleeps. In the morning, he’ll carry it under his coat to the Men’s and empty it. The old man knows he’s too sick now to crawl out, to walk the corridor every time, but they have this agreement. Laney pisses in the bottle and takes it out when he can.
He doesn’t know why the old man lets him stay here. He’s offered to pay, but the old man just keeps building his models. It takes him a day to complete one, and they’re always perfect. And where do they go when he finishes them? And where do the unbuilt kits come from?
Laney has a theory that the old man is a sensei of kit-building, a national treasure, with connoisseurs shipping in kits from around the world, waiting anxiously for the master to complete their vintage Gundams with his unequaled yet weirdly casual precision, his Zen moves, perhaps leaving each one with a single minute and somehow perfect flaw, at once his signature and a recognition of the nature of the universe. How nothing is perfect, really. Nothing ever finished. Everything is process, Laney assures himself, zipping up, settling back into his squalid nest of sleeping bags.
But the process is all a lot stranger than he ever bargained for, he reflects, bunching a fold of sleeping bag to pillow his head against the cardboard, through which he can feel the hard tile wall of the corridor.