LIKE BEAUTY
She might have been beautiful. “Beautiful” was of course an approximation. An earthly term. The nearest word in her language was “keeram,” which more or less meant “better than useful.” It was as close as her people came to a lofty abstraction. The bulk of their vocabulary pertained to weather conditions, threats of various kinds, and that which could be eaten, traded, or burned for fuel.
She was by Earth standards a four-and-a-half-foot-tall lizard with prominent nostrils and eyes slightly smaller than golf balls. But Simon believed she might have been glorious on her own planet. She might have been better than useful there.
He saw her every evening, walking the children through the park. She always came at the same time, just after his shift started. She was modest but certain in her movements. Her skin was emerald. It had a clean gemlike shine rare among the Nadians. Most were mossier-looking. Their skins were more mottled, prone to splotches of ocher and dark brown. This was why people insisted that they were oily and that they smelled. They were not oily. They did not smell. They did not smell bad. All creatures smelled. The Nadian smell was sweet and cleanly fermented. Most people never got close enough to know that.
The children, both blond, appeared to love her. Human children tended to love them, especially the younger ones. She guided her two small blonds along the pathways of the park with competence. She spoke softly to them. She sang intermittently, that low whistling sound they all made, a five-note progression: ee-um-fah-um-so. Were the Nadians affectionate? It was a subject of continuing debate. Did they love human beings, or was it simplicity tinged with desperation? The children didn’t seem to care.
He watched her as she guided them toward his bench. The older one, a boy, probably four, ran ahead. He would find something—a stone, a leaf—and bring it back to her. He and she would examine it, confer quietly about its worth. The rejects were tossed back. The others she slipped into the pocket of her cape. As soon as a decision had been made, the boy went off in search of a new prize, tireless as a spaniel. This was witnessed with skeptical interest by the little girl, no more than three, who kept herself close to the Nadian. She toyed with the hem of her nanny’s cape. Occasionally she reached up and took hold of the long, thin fingers of an emerald hand. She appeared unconcerned about the two-inch pewter-colored nails.
When the nanny and the children were within earshot, Simon said, “Hey.” He’d been saying hey to her for several days now. It had been incremental: no acknowledgment, then a smile, then a smile and a nod, then a greeting.
Today she responded.
“Bochum,” she said. Her voice was soft. It had that whistle. She sounded like a flute that could speak.
He smiled. By way of response, she dilated her nostrils. The Nadians were not smilers. Their mouths didn’t work that way. Some of the less assimilated still panicked when smiled at. They thought the showing of teeth meant they were about to be eaten.
“What’s he finding?” Simon asked. He inclined his head toward the boy.
“Oh, many thing.” She spoke English, then.
The boy, who had wandered off a little, saw that his nanny was addressing her attention to another. He came running.
“Park’s full of treasures,” Simon said. “People have no idea.”
“Yes.”
The boy inserted himself between Simon and his nanny. He stared at Simon with frank and careless hatred.
The Nadian laid a taloned hand on the miniature blond head. It wasn’t surprising, really, that some people still considered it liberal to the point of recklessness to hire them for child care.
“Tomcruise,” she said, “we show what we find?”
Tomcruise shook his head. The little girl wrapped herself in the folds of the Nadian’s cape.
“Is shy,” she said to Simon.
“Sure he is. Hey, Tomcruise, I’m harmless.”
The Nadian knelt beside the boy. “We show him marble?” she said. “Is nice.”
Tomcruise shook his head again.
“Creelich,” she said to the boy. Her nostrils sucked in like irritated anemones. She must have been forbidden to speak Nadian to the children. Quickly she added, “Come, then.”
She rose. She prepared to walk on with her brood. To Simon she said, “Is shy.”
She was bold. Many of them never dared to converse. Some could not even bring themselves to answer a direct question. If they were silent, if they were as invisible as they could make themselves, misfortune might be averted or at least forestalled.
“What’s your name?” Simon asked.
She hesitated. Her nostrils flared. When a Nadian was unnerved its nostrils expanded and offered a glimpse of green-veined mucous membranes, two circles of inner skin juicy and tender as a lettuce leaf.
“Catareen,” she said. She said it so softly he could barely hear her.
“I’m Simon,” he answered. His voice sounded louder than usual. The Nadians could make you feel large and noisy. The Nadians were darting and indirect. They were quiet as plucked wires.
She nodded. Then she looked at him.
He had never seen a Nadian do that. He had not been sure they made eye contact even with one another. They reserved their main attention for whatever might be just off to the side or creeping up from behind. This one stood holding the hand of a human child with each of her emerald claws and looked levelly into his face without fear or servility. He had never traded gazes with one before. He could see that her eyes were fiery orange-yellow, with amber depths. He could see they were shot through with little flashing incandescences of an orange so deep it bordered on violet. The slits of the pupils implied a calm, regal intelligence.
You are somebody, he thought. You were somebody. Even a planet like yours must have princesses and warrior queens. Even if their palaces are mud and sticks. Even if their armies are skittish and untrainable.
She nodded again. She moved on. The little girl continued to robe herself in the hem of the Nadian’s cape. The boy glanced back at Simon with an expression of pure triumph, his treasures unsullied by a stranger’s gaze.
As they walked off across Bow Bridge, Simon could hear her soft little song. Ee-um-fah-um-so.
He pulled the scanner from his zippie, double-checked his schedule. General menacing until his first client, a level seven at seven-thirty. Followed by two threes and a four. He hated sevens. Anything above a six (or a five, really) was difficult. He had to refuse nines and tens outright. They were beyond his capabilities. They paid well, and he needed the yen. But he knew his limits.
Simon did his menacing until seven-twenty. The time between clients was minimum wage, and most players naturally wanted as many bookings as possible. Simon preferred his in-between hours. The park was green and quiet, strung with pale yellow lights. Sometimes on a slow night a full twenty minutes might pass with no tour groups—no one and nothing but grassy twilight, chlorophyll-scented breezes. As mandated, he stayed in character even when alone. He prowled and glowered. He sat on a series of benches with his muscles flexed and his tatts demonstrating their phosphorescent undulations. Sporadic tour groups and their guides skittered by, murmuring among themselves. They never strayed far from the green-gold lightglobe that hovered over their guide’s head.
Simon passed Marcus twice on his rounds on the edges of the Ramble. He risked a wink the second time, though fraternization was cause for dismissal. Park thugs were not friendly. You could jive with your brothers if you were part of a gang, but white players weren’t eligible for gang work. Because there was a steady if modest demand for Caucasians among the general clientele, Dangerous Encounters Ltd. kept a handful on the payroll but insisted they work alone. Roving gangs of white men terrorizing Central Park was too inaccurate. Old New York had built its reputation on historical fidelity. So Marcus and Simon and the other white players worked solo, as lone wolves who had gone—so the brochure said—from drunken and abusive families to this scabrous forest kingdom, where their addictions m
ultiplied as their options dwindled, desperate men who scrounged for whatever easy prey might wander innocently into their sectors. He and Marcus and the other singles were the cheapest items on the menu. Getting worked over by a gang cost five times as much.
His seven-thirty level seven would be at Bethesda Fountain. He headed in that direction.
The plaza was empty when he arrived. He was not sorry, even though no-shows paid only their 20 percent deposit, of which his share would be ten. Still, he’d be glad enough to skip the seven, perform his threes and fours, and go home to bed. Maybe he could make it up with some extra bookings tomorrow.
He had to stay for the required fifteen minutes. He stationed himself off to the side, in the shadow of the colonnade, where the client would not see him when he entered, as arranged, from the western stairs. He snarled at a passing tour group. He eyed their adolescent daughters with lupine appetite, muttered about how Chinese snatch was the tastiest, in case any of them understood English. They usually loved something like that. Maybe they would tip him, via their guide, once they were safely out of the park. Maybe the guide would pass the money along.
Thirteen minutes. Fourteen minutes. Then, just before he was officially entitled to walk off and collect the deposit, his level seven arrived.
He was Euro. He was corpulent, fiftyish, maidenly in his ruddy, well-fed baldingness. He looked nervous. Was it his first time? Simon hoped not—not at level seven. Bennie from Dangerous Encounters escorted the client as far as the plaza’s edge. They had a whispered conversation at the base of the stairs, and then the client stepped into the plaza, unaccompanied. He had blue Astrohair. He wore a mercury suit. He was German, probably, or Polish. The Germans and the Poles loved their novelty hair. They loved their liquid suits.
He was a strider. He had listened carefully to what Bennie would have told him about walking with purpose, about letting it come as a surprise. Relatively speaking.
Simon let the client get past the halfway point, just beyond the blind gaze and outstretched hand of the angel. Then he took off after him. He could see the man tense up. He continued obeying instructions, though. You’ll hear footsteps. Don’t turn to look. A New Yorker would never do that. Hurry along.
The client hurried along. Light from the halogens sparked in his cobalt hair.
Simon got to his position, beside the client but slightly behind. He said, “Hey, friend. Can I ask you a favor?”
The client kept walking, as a New Yorker would.
“Hey. I’m talking to you.”
Still nothing. He had paid careful attention.
Simon took the client’s elbow. A mercury suit was always strange to him—that watery quality, that faint heat they put out.
Now the client turned to face him. Once physical contact has been made, you’re free to respond.
“Was wollen Sie?”
No English, then?
“I need a little loan,” Simon said. “I’m down on my luck right now.”
“I can’t help you,” the client answered. Spoke English after all. Good.
“Oh, I think you can.” Simon took firmer hold of the client’s elbow, as if he were a dance partner. He took a fistful of suit lapel. They were about twenty feet from the colonnade. Simon partially lifted the client, danced him into the dimness, pushed him up against a column.
Simon said, “Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female.”
The client said, “What?”
Fucking poetry chip.
Simon got in close. He could smell the man’s sweat. He could smell his verbena cologne. Many Euros liked a flowery scent.
“I think you can,” he said again.
“What do you want?” the man asked hoarsely.
“You know what I want,” Simon answered. He decided to push the sex with this one. It was a tricky call, but his instincts were good. Most of them wanted more than pure violence.
“You want my money?” the man gasped.
Simon moved in closer. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I want your money.”
I want your sweet, fat ass, too. I want you to stick it high in the air for me so I can plow it with my big tattooed dick. Never spoken, of course. Implied.
“I don’t want to give you my money.”
First refusal. As instructed. Good.
“It’s not about what you want, big boy.”
“What will you do to me if I don’t give it to you?” he asked, in a tone of desolate coquettishness.
Not as instructed. The client was edging over into porn. He was probably a sex customer looking for variations. The mugging was meant to be sexy, but there were limits in that department. This had been clearly spelled out to him.
“I think you know.”
“No. I don’t.”
Could that be counted as second refusal? According to the contract, yes. The client might complain. But he had signed the paper.
“I’d slap you around a little. Like this.” Simon administered a quick slap, open-handed. Fingertips against the soft white cheek. “But harder.”
“You’d hurt me?”
“Blind loving wrestling touch! sheath’d hooded sharp-tooth’d touch!”
“Was?”
Focus. Concentrate.
“I’d hurt you, daddy,” he said. “Yes, I would. You going to pass me some yen now?”
There was a pause. Again Simon said, “I want the money. I need it. Now.”
The client said, “No. I’m not going to give you anything.”
Third refusal. Initial engagement fulfilled.
“Yeah,” Simon said. “You are.”
Second slap, full palm. Hard enough to draw a thread of saliva from the client’s lips. It connected his mouth to Simon’s hand like a strand of liquid spiderweb.
“No. Please. Stop.”
This was always a tricky moment. The novices sometimes forgot about the safe word. They forgot that “no” meant yes. They had signed the paper. It had all been clear. Still, a disgruntled customer was never good news.
This client didn’t seem particularly innocent, though. He might be new to mugging. It seemed unlikely that he was new to paying for play.
Simon administered another slap, backhanded. His knuckles crunched painfully against the client’s jawbone. The client’s head snapped back and struck the stone column with a hollow sound.
“Please,” the client said. “Please, leave me alone.”
“Not until you give me what I need.”
Simon took two handfuls of shimmering suitfront. He hauled the client up off his feet and bashed him semihard against the column. Level six now. Almost done.
“What if I don’t have money?” the client panted. His voice was high with excitement. “What will you do to me?”
Simon tried sending a telepathic signal. It’s not sex, sir. This is robbery. Sex is more expensive than this.
“I will waste your sorry ass,” Simon said. He offered no note of S&M seduction this time. He spoke in the breezy monotone of a genuine killer.
The client’s eyes were tearing up. A lot of them cried. It was time to take it one notch higher. It was time to finish the job.
The client said nothing. He looked down at Simon, breathing, bright-eyed. Unmistakable signs of arousal. The client was being satisfied, he thought. The client would have a story for his friends back in Frankfurt or Berlin.
“I. Will. Kill. Your. Fat. Sad. Ass,” Simon said. “You follow?”
“Yes,” the man gasped.
There were variations at levels seven and up. You had to improvise. It was a dance. There was no reliable way of telling what your partner really wanted until you got out on the floor. There would be no bloodletting. There would be no weaponry. It could be a punch, though. It could be a head butt. It could be…
Simon decided. He hoped he was correct.
He grabbed the client’s crotch. The client had a hard-on, as Simon had expected. He took hold of the client’s package and squeezed.
&n
bsp; “No,” the guy squealed deliriously. “I will never give you anything.”
It was over now. Simon had delivered. He let go of the client’s lapels. The client slid downward. He would have fallen, but Simon snatched him up under his armpits, turned him, and pulled the wallet from his back pocket. The man’s breath came in stifled gasps. Simon held his collar in one hand and bumped his head rhythmically against the column. These were called love taps. He extracted the bills from the wallet, did a quick scan. Yes, it was the exact amount. Simon pocketed the bills. He threw the wallet on the ground.
“You’re a lucky boy,” he whispered. “You’re lucky you aren’t fucking dead right now.”
He let go of the client’s collar. The client was panting, clinging with both arms to the column, his face squashed against the stone.
“Repeat after me,” Simon growled. “I am a lucky boy.”
“No. I won’t.”
Simon gave him a final slap across the back of his bright blue head. “Say it.”
The client wheezed. His voice was barely audible: “I am a lucky boy.”
“You got that right, sport.”
Simon decided to give him a bonus. He hooked his thumbs under the client’s belt, pulled his pants down to his knees, and smacked him across his shivering, naked buttocks.
“I swear I think there is nothing but immortality,” he said. At this point, the client did not appear to notice the incongruity.
Simon walked off. He thought hopefully of his tip, though experience indicated that Germans were not reliable in that area.
He returned to his crash at twenty past four. He poured himself a shot of Liquex, paused over its aquamarine glow. It was a glassful of brilliant blue serotoninade, about to be downed by a man who had done a day’s work. Beautiful? Probably, in a minor way. It had, of course, been designed to be beautiful, to attract the buyer. Various color possibilities had been considered and rejected before the company arrived at this one, the precise color of a swimming pool at night.
Corporate intention diminished the liquid’s beauty, shallowed it out. The most potent incidences of beauty were the ones that felt like personal discoveries, that seemed to have been meant specifically for you, as if some vast intelligence had singled you out and wanted to show you something.