Thirty-Six
THIRTY-SIX
Nine months ago
It had been a long time since Martim had been out to a bar, not counting his trips to the Epic Vibe to pick up drugs or information from Vincent. It had been even longer since he’d tried to pick up a pretty woman.
When he thought about how pathetic that was, he felt sorry for himself.
Here he was, in the supposed prime of his life, and his only regular interactions were with colleagues in SoCon GasPro, around whom he could never really let down his guard and who he avoided getting too close to because there was always the chance he might have to fire them.
His childhood friends in the Supply Logistics division might as well be on another planet.
As for getting some—simdates with hotties on the offnet and his own right hand didn’t take much time or effort.
Tonight, though, was a rare and important exception.
He dressed to appear just the right amount of effortlessly casual, which was a challenge, as he didn’t own all that much that fit the bill.
He settled for straight-leg seacell-fabric khaki chinos and a maroon long-sleeved bambooknit thermal polo shirt.
Instead of his favorite double-breasted overcoat, he threw on an old bomber jacket from his trainee days.
He considered shaving, but decided the shadow on his jaw made him look a bit more insouciant, like a regular guy out for a good time before Freeday.
Venturing all the way to the south end of Tenacity, he walked into the Stargazer Tavern around 2230, just as things were starting to get lively.
Twentysomething students from the nearby College of Astrosciences were out enjoying their end-of-term freedom.
A group of wagemen from Satellite Operations clustered around the high-top cocktail tables, celebrating a colleague’s birthday.
Martim slid onto one of the seats at the bar and ordered an amber ale.
He didn’t generally like beer, but a quick glance around suggested that was the vibe of the crowd.
Look relaxed. Be normal. He rubbed his left thigh self-consciously.
Only now, having taken off his triggersheath and left it behind in his apartment, did he wish he had it.
Not because he’d had any occasion thus far to draw it while on the job, or because he expected he would be in any danger tonight, but because Isako was right—the longknife set atiers apart.
Without its ever-present weight on his leg, he had a sense of being anonymous and naked.
He felt as if he sat funny, walked funny.
Martim slouched forward, elbows on the counter, pretending to watch the futsal game on the screen hanging over the bar taps.
He tried to imagine what it would be like to fit in here, to be a regular wageman who clocked in and out of work at the same time every day and had hours afterward to spend as he wished.
At last, he spotted her at the other end of the bar: a young woman about his own age, with wavy chestnut-brown hair and adorable freckles that bunched together on her cheeks when she laughed.
She was with a friend, naturally—a short-haired blonde in a sleeveless black top.
Martim waited until the blonde was engrossed in another conversation before making his way over.
“Quite the party. Whose birthday is it?” he asked conversationally.
She looked over at him, clocking him as a stranger, and Martim hit her with the smile he’d been working up to for the past ten minutes. He hoped he got it right: warm but not overly friendly, intense but unthreatening, looking at her with his body angled so he wasn’t intruding on her space.
He was gratified, stupidly relieved really, to see the slight widening of eyes, the parting of lips, the curious tilt of her head.
Oh. He could almost hear the word in the slight intake of her breath.
Martim didn’t consider himself especially handsome, and he would say he was too short, but the part of Earth his ancestors hailed from had been a vibrant ethnic melting pot that produced beautiful people, so at the very least his features were interesting , and being well groomed and well dressed counted for a lot.
It was nice to know that women still took notice, when he tried.
“Birthday. Right. It’s my friend Jamison’s.
” She waved vaguely in the direction of the celebrant.
Martim found her sudden awkwardness amusing and kind of hot.
She was wearing plain black slacks that you could find in any Company scripstore and a sparkly red scoop-neck top that was not particularly flattering to her figure.
He suspected she’d swapped out a work shirt for the top in a simple but careless day-to-night outfit transition, but at least she’d made an effort.
“You’re not in SatOps, are you?” she queried, maintaining eye contact as she sipped her mojito.
“No. Am I going to get kicked out of the party?”
“Only if you’re from Astrocom,” she teased. “Where are you from?”
“Supply Logistics,” he half lied. “I’m Marty, by the way.”
“Addison,” she replied. “Or Addy, if you like. Logistics, hmm? What brings you over here?”
“Visiting a friend. Who ditched me for someone he met an hour ago.” Martim shrugged a cheerful what-can-you-do and took the sudden increase in the bar’s music volume as an opportunity to move a little closer.
He was wearing a subtle but expensive cologne; if Addy was really thinking, she might question why an ordinary wageman from Supply Logistics would possess that kind of luxury, but she didn’t.
Her nostrils flared slightly and she leaned toward him.
“How inconsiderate of him,” she said. “You’ve got a long way to go to get home tonight.”
“Maybe I’ll just stay out all night. This joint is hopping and you SatOps people seem like a fun group.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes we’ve got to take a break from staring into space.” She laughed.
“I wish my neighborhood had more spots like this, but Logistics isn’t exactly known for its bar scene unless you enjoy places with sticky floors.
” It was remarkably easy to slip into the fiction of this other life that he was making up on the spot.
He was half believing it already—this version of Dragonfly Martim who never passed the atier licensing exam but instead became an ordinary wageman in the division where his kithmembers worked, starting straight out of school and climbing to a shift supervisor position that allowed him to live in a room with a private bath, buy a few nice pieces of clothing, and take a girl out to dinner once in a while.
The more he talked as if he were someone else, the easier it became to relax and not be himself, like taking off and putting on a different coat.
“Hey, Addy, I’m going to the bathroom, you want to come?” The perky blond wingwoman appeared beside them, right on time to give her friend a questioning look and offer a convenient escape should one be desired.
Addison waved her friend away. “No, I’m good,” she said distractedly.
Martim concealed a wave of relief. He didn’t know what he would do if she was uninterested.
Leave and try someone else? He didn’t have that kind of time.
She turned back toward him and he began to worry that she would engage him in a longer conversation—not that he wasn’t enjoying this game, but she might get the wrong impression that he was interested in a real relationship.
“This is a great song,” he declared, though it was not. “Do you dance?”
He was a good dancer, always had been. Maybe it was in his blood, or just another one of those skills that came from watching people and being a quick study.
She was okay, and she got better the more drinks she had.
He pretended to keep up with her, nursing his second beer until it was lukewarm.
The small dance floor grew crowded and they danced closer and closer together; she slung her arms over his neck and he slid his own around her waist. She smelled spicy and carefree; when he pulled her hips tight against his own, she wriggled her ass, inviting his hands to wander.
He was lit up and smug and desperately horny—but he also felt as if he were watching from the back of his own brain, hitchhiking along in the life of this other version of himself.
“Let’s get out of here,” that other Martim whispered.
He didn’t even have to convince her to go back to her place.
She was a local, after all, and he’d already mentioned that he was far from his place in Supply Logistics.
She even issued a reassuring goodbye to her blond friend, who eyed Martim slyly and waggled her eyebrows at them in encouragement.
It was past midnight and they ran through the breathtaking autumn cold to the nearest ground car.
Is this what normal people do on a Terrasday night? Martim wondered.
Addy lived in a cookie-cutter townhouse apartment that she shared with a kithcousin who was away for the weekend.
They fell to kissing on the stairs and stumbled up to the bedroom pulling off their clothes.
A sudden fearful realization struck Martim’s addled brain halfway up the stairs—he’d taken off his triggersheath, but not his black badge.
If she noticed that the ID disc around his neck was the wrong color, she would know he’d been lying the whole time about who he was.
Fucking idiot. How could he have failed to consider such an obvious thing?