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We went ascorbic for three days straight, and when the veil fell, Toby was a
nervous wreck and Angela had disappeared altogether.
"Where the fuck is Angelina?" I said to Toby.
Toby pulled the skin back from his eyes and
wriggled out a response. My eyes were still a little skinned, so I missed it.
"Speak up, for fuck's ache Toby."
"I don't know. She's gone. We were ascorbic too
long this time Billy. Too fucking long."
Too long. Your fault, in other words. It was
three days back to where we started, and I didn't have enough ascorbic to get
us back even one. I know Toby didn't have any. The only one who might have had
enough - or had the brains to earn us some - was Angey.
But Angela had disappeared.
"We're toast then. We're happy as clowns in an
upside down turtleneck-fucking church-bell-ringing skip-smoking bluff stroker."
"We're ghost balled," Toby agreed.
I looked around at where we were. A booth at an
eatery, a hamburger joint most likely. The Tofu Police were hardly like to find
us here - the place had none of their style. That didn't mean we could let our
guard down though. They had an annoying habit of turning up just after the veil
fell while your eyes were still skinned and you couldn't do anything about them.
Toby sat with his back to the wall and his head
in the shroud.
My seat pressed uncomfortably against my coccyx.
Made of the new Anyshape metal, it supposedly contoured to any body shape. I
hoped it stayed solid long enough for us to finish whatever we were doing and
get out of the place.
"You got some ascorbic though, right?" Toby
said, as if he had only finished penning the dots in his mind.
"Not enough," I said.
"Then where the fuck is Angelina?" Toby never
was so sleek on the uptake.
"Our eyes were skinned and we were ascorbic for
three days. Angey's gone."
"We're fucked then."
A man plastered in a nearby booth looked over.
"Mind your language."
"You fucking what?"
"That talk about the eyes and the skinning. I
won't have my waif and chillin listen to that kind of talk."
"Fuck you, old man, we're sorry."
"Fuck, it's all right," the man said. "Just keep
it down."
I leaned closer to Toby. The ridges on the metal
seat squirmed beneath my buttocks. "Toby, how did we go ascorbic for three days
and wind up in a family restaurant?"
Toby shrugged. "Angelina would know."
But Angela had disappeared.
"Man, that's a crucial ligament," I said, and
sat back.
"Maybe we'll find another Angey here," Toby
said. His eyes were fully peeled now, the lids open and the balls lined with
eyeish nectar.
I almost snapped back at him - find another
Angey, was he fucking joking? - but he stared at me too long, and I realised he
was scared. I knew what scared him the most. He thought I might leave him now
that Angela wasn't around to weave us together, skin our eyes, raise the veil
and let us go ascorbic. So I said, "We'll find someone, Tobe. Someone will help
us find our Angelina."
Toby blinked and visibly relaxed, although I
didn't know how me saying it and he listening made things any different.
"Angey's gone," I whispered to myself.
Fuck. Angela has disappeared.
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After a while I slipped outside and picked at the
locust dust with my toes.
I looked around. A highway. And nothing else.
The locust fields stretched off as far as I
could see in both directions, flatter than an ace of spaces. Only the hamburger
joint broke the mow knot any.
Toby wandered on out behind with his hands
knotting yellow brick roads. "Staple me, what a fuck," he said when he saw the
desert.
The air played fiddlesticks in my lungs. It had
the smell of plane glass, a sand-on-the-window kind of smell that tickled the
ventricles.
I coughed and spat out a doughnut-shaped
organism.
"So where are we?" Toby said. "Beyond the veil?"
I gave Toby a withering look. "The veil fell,
remember. We're on the tourniquet highway I suppose." In the distance, against
the dazzle of a pie floater sun, something moved. It came closer, fast, and
soon resolved to a lipstick blue convertible stroking it down the highway.
"Why would anyone drive a car when they could
just go ascorbic?" Toby said.
"Maybe for the same reason we would." I stuck
out my thumb.
The driver jumped on the brakes hard, and slid
to a stop only a metre away. Dust showered us. Toby coughed and spat out
tarantula-shaped goo that overlapped my own effort and sank into the hungry
ground.
When the dust cleared, the driver became
visible. She was a she, near as I could tell. Dark hair, pheromone eyes, pale
skin that winked and said, 'touch me if you want your face slapped'.
"You boys look like you need a ride," she said.
Toby leapt into the back seat. I followed a more
conservative route and opened the door, slid into the front seat with a
corduroy versus leather slink.
The driver hit the excel aerator, and we were
flying down the highway faster than notoriety.
"I'm Serena." Her voice swirled around my head
before the road snatched it away.
"We've lost Angelina," Toby shouted from the
back. "Have you seen her?"
Serena smiled, shook her head. "I guess you guys
are out of as, to be stuck at the Random Diner." She glanced over at me, then
back at the road.
"Angela always took care of our ascorbic," I
said, and it sounded so lame I could have pushed myself under the veil.
Serena laughed. "And without her you've no
purpose, no will, and no desire. Poor little boys."
I looked back at Toby. He smiled and nodded, as
if he didn't hear the sarcasm in Serena's voice. Back there with the wind of
the willing swirling around his head, he might not have heard anything.
"I can help you though," Serena said then.
"You've got some as?"
Again she shook her head, but I got the
impression it wasn't a negative this time. Her eyes peeled the road. "I can
take you to your friend."
Toby leaned forward, telescoping his head
between the front seats. "I thought you said you hadn't seen Angey." I guess he
could hear back there.
"Not seen, no. But I know where she is."
Serena's eyes flicked towards me again. "I don't think you're going to like it
though."
Toby sat back, a bemused look on his face.
Not like seeing our Angelina? I couldn't think
why.
The hum of the car, cheese platter tyres over
sandpaper road, numbed my head. I felt ovoid. Three days ascorbic did take it
out of you.
I woke some time later. The car had stopped. We
were in a city, parked outside a nightclub. The sun pranced high in the sky -
early afternoon - but the club was active.
I heard the thump of cryogenic music with its
unchanging beat. I had never liked cryo. It always seemed too cold and distant
to me.
Then I saw the sign above the entrance with an
unmistakeable symbol, two people twisted together in loops. "This is a Hedon
club. What are we doing here?"
"We don't like Hedons," Toby added.
"You'll have to go in. See for yourself."
I popped the convertible's door and started to
get out.
Serena's light touch stopped me. "Don't say I
didn't warn you. I'll be waiting."
I slipped out of the car and walked up the steps
to the front door of the club. Toby clinked along right behind.
In the foyer the autobouncer scanned our
retinas, decided we weren't undesirable, and granted entry.
The interior of the club lay in bogey-man
darkness. I was blind after the strength of the mescaline sunlight. After a few
moments, red light sorted its way through the black.
Toby and I walked through the rough carpeted
room. The cryo belted my taste buds into submission. Here inside the club it
was so loud it became part of my body.
I began to make out faces, bodies. Little
alcoves contained seated figures. Some writhed in tortellini poses. I passed an
alcove crammed with bodies, all plucking each other's cherries in a delight of
hedonistic anonymity.
Then I saw Angela.
Our Angey, dressed up in Hedon gear. Finger-thin
leather straps concealed the basics of her body. One pink nipple peeked out
from beneath the strap across her breasts. It was the first time I'd seen
Angela anywhere near naked.
A large guy - white as a dead fish, even in the
dull red light - sat next to Angela. He looked up, nudged her. I had to hold
myself back from jumping that piece of lemon dandy and crushing his skull into
the floor for touching my Angelina.
I sensed Toby behind my shoulder bristling like
a toy-nosed masochist.
Angey looked up.
"Billy." I saw her mouth move but didn't hear
any sound over the music.
"Fuck, Angela. What are you doing in a place
like this?" I had to shout.
Angelina shook her head, her eyes focussed
behind me. I noticed two other Hedons had closed up. The big whale began to
rise, but Angey grabbed his arm and he lowered himself back to the seat.
"How did you find me?"
"Some chick called Serena drove us here," I said.
Angela said something under her breath that
might have been "sump oil bitch".
"We need you Angey. What happened to you? The
veil fell and when we peeled our eyes, you were gone."
"This is where I want to be." She said it so
plain faced and inch-to-the-wall that I had to believe her.
"Want? Among these loam-brain Hedons with their
pimple pillows and polka dot dildos? They're stitches - facials with no zone."
Angela stood. "What future did we have though?"
She shouted now too. Her flushed cheeks pulsated to the thump of the cryo.
Three days since I last saw her, and she was a
different person.
"How long have you wanted…this?"
"A turtle's life."
"And you never beat the ship?"
"What good would it do? You two are roped into
limb and high tilt for life. I don't want to skin anymore. I don't want to go
as anymore."
I let out a deep breath. I felt claustro all of
a sudden - more Hedons behind, crowding and stuffing strep-laced attitude in my
arse.
I had a little ascorbic, enough to beknight them
a few times over to get Angey out of there. It needed her to cooperation to
work though. If she didn't want to come it wasn't worth it.
Our Angelina had disappeared.
"We need some more as," I said.
Angey shrugged, filched empty imaginary pockets.
"Sold it."
"You sold it?"
Behind me, Toby chimed, "What the fuck?" like a
priest who'd heard a blasphemy.
"Don't use that kind of language here - we're
not friends," the man beside Angela said. His deep voice had a bowling ball
finality to it. "Why would Diamond need ascorbic now that she's here?"
It took Angey's cringe at 'Diamond' to work out
that was the Hedon name she had been given. Like some cult owned her now.
"I think you should glide," Angelina - Diamond?
- said.
"Have a life of scones and cream then," I said,
though I didn't really mean the curse. Thinking back over the past couple of
months, the signs were all there. Toby would say something stupid and Angey
would turn up her mouth but not even look at me to share the joke. Angela going
off to buy ascorbic and coming back with none. Angelina searching telephone
directories like they were paperback thrillers.
I sparked my way through the gathered mob of
Hedons. They were all big boys, wax-chested and punchy-spoken. I re-evaluated
the amount of ascorbic I would have needed to take them out. Not enough.
I stepped back out into the broadside sunlight,
ignoring the thankyou chime from the autobouncer.
I saw the pair of Tofu police at the same moment
they saw me. They stood either side of Serena's car, and from the look on her
face, they'd been giving her a four hundred gram T-bone grilling.
The one closest to me pointed. "That's them."
I reached behind, grabbed Toby by the front of
his shirt, and took off, dragging him down the street.
The pair of them gave chase, waving Botox sticks
like deranged circus clowns.
Toby and I shaved a close corner into a dead-end
alley.
"We're ghost balled," Toby said.
I took out my tiny sachet of ascorbic, sprinkled
half in my hand, and thrust the rest upon Toby. "Not yet we're not."
"Go as now? But Billy, without Angey -"
"It'll be short and rough. Just do it."
I swallowed my share and waited for the veil to
rise. The ascorbic melted and vaporised with my saliva. Without Angelina there
it was a different experience, all edges and barbed wire rather than soft
crushes.
Still, my eyes peeled and I went ascorbic. I
assumed Toby had done the same, but once the veil rose everything stretched
into infinity.
I could smell the heels of the Tofu police
before they bowled into the alley and met a temporary ascorbic brick wall.
Tofu police and their Botox sticks or peppercorn
spray don't mean much against two guys gone as, even with the little amount I
had.
The infinite stretch soon collapsed into a
pickle of normality.
The police lay in front of us, heads caved in
but still salvageable by one of their medical units. The majority of the
population held the Tofu police in little regard, since the Tofus were only a
quasi-legal law enforcement group. I didn't think anyone would care much that
two of them would have to be regrown.
Toby stood beside me, his chest rising and
falling as the veil fell. "Fuck, that was brittle."
"Ashtray," I agreed.
Serena pulled up at the alley, glanced at the
police and turned up her nose. "Get in. We can't stay here any longer."
I bucked into the front seat, slamming the door
a little harder than I needed to. With my eyes still a little skinned, the
recent meeting with Angela stuck hard in my mind like a blanket full of rocks.
Toby bobbed up from the back seat, his eyes
peeled and twinkling with moisture in the afternoon sun. "So who's Diamond?"
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Serena and I sat in the Random Diner again, warming cold coffee with our
fingers. Toby lay asleep in the car - the trip back had lulled him into the
land of coma again.
"He doesn't know, does he?" Serena said.
"Who Toby? No, I don't think he knows we've lost
our Angelina for good."
Serena nodded, took a sip of coffee.
"She knew you," I said. Angey had laid suspicion
of Serena's motives on me. "She knew your name. It was no accident you picked
us up."
"No, there are no accidents."
"Why? How did you know we would be here?"
"Angey's always been Angey. She uses up her boys
and then moves on. Normally she doesn't go Hedon, but she's always been a
little weird."
"What will we do?"
"I've got as. Lots of it. Years worth." Serena
put on a shy look for the first time since we had met. "You could come with me."
I looked at her - really looked - for the first
time. She was white wine pale, chiselled out of a gold statue, glowing like a
Pekinese on heat. Nothing at all like Angelina's walnut tan and bold strength.
It would be no shame to go ascorbic with Serena.
"I get the feeling there's a price though," I
said.
Serena shifted ever so slightly. Maybe the
Anyshape moulded chair had partially liquefied beneath her, but I didn't think
so. "I want you to come with me. Just you."
I nodded. Toby had hooked me up with Angela. I'd
been going as with him for so long now I didn't know if I could do it without
him there. Good old Toby, so slow that he could even stabilise the trip
ascorbic.
"But…but…I can't."
"Why not? Before Angela and he found you what
did you do?"
I ignored her question. I had drifted through
torrents of futile drugs and criminations with a vague anti-Bolshevik feel
about them. Swung from towers in a King Kong suit and haunted a little house on
the prairie in which lived a little woman who called herself mum. Nothing I
wanted to return to.
"What will he do though?" I said. "He's not the
kind of guy who can take care of himself."
"He'll have the car. I won't need it anymore.
That'll take him a long way. He's holding you back, Billy."
I stuck my fist in my mouth. I chewed until I
hit bone. I felt like a real shit, a castrated bovine, a practical joker who
had given a friend bowel cancer. I think I felt that way because I'd already
made up my mind.
Serena pressed on. Her hands enfolded my free
hand. She lowered her voice. "Please. My eyes need skinning. It's been…so long."
My fist plopped out of my mouth, a wet fish on
the table. "I'd better leave him a note. How much ascorbic do you have, really?"
"Enough to get a long, long way from here."
I wrote a note, folded it and laid it on Toby's
chest. I couldn't look at his face. 'Toby, the car is yours - it'll take you a
long way. You'll be fine. Gone as. Billy.' Would he ever get his head in the
shroud again? Maybe, but I didn't think so. I left him there gathering dust
from the locust fields, under the buzz of the Random Diner lights.
Serena smiled when I walked back into the diner.
"Let's go, before I change my mind."
We initiated the transaction that only a man and
a woman together properly can. We drew the veil, skinned our eyes. We went
ascorbic. We went as for what seemed like light years.
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