Jul '02 [Home]
Fiction
Vintage
Stephanie Hammer
Wednesday. Some lowerdown calls Saunders and five minutes later a Fox tele-net corporate helicopter lands at the corner of Ivars and Vine. To fly her above the whole broken and crumbling city, towards Griffith, surrounded by barbed wire, private armies, and tanks. The tranquil homes of the rich.
Saunders smiled as she flew, lips drawn back over shark-sharpened, black obsidian teeth, her latest and last micro-surge after scoring a cache of 40's cotton handkerchiefs in an abandoned Screaming Meemie's warehouse in Manhattan a couple of years back. The teeth had been a good investment. If she was attacked and the Uzi and the razor blade and the roundhouse to the solar plexus all failed, she still had her black beauties.
But they didn't do her any good this time. Two armed guards in latex remote-controlled the lid, popped her out before the heli even landed, and then grabbed her ass the minute she fell to the roof. Bruised and pissed off. They brought her to the witchy one's hilltop complex near the old Observatory.
'I've heard that you're good at sniffing out Vintage,' she breathed. 'I have even heard you have your own cache, which, as you know, is now illegal.' The woman's red hair looked tired, but she was tall and big-breasted, muscled in that enhanced way that costs far more than Saunders's teeth had. Frustrated, Saunders couldn't use them now: not with her jaw in a leather padded vise and the guards restraining her limbs.
'I need some things,' mused Red Woman, and Saunders shivered, knowing that Red was one of the twinklies on the power grid of this town, this country. 'And perhaps more things after that. For a film I'm making, starring in.' She smiled, 'We'll see,' and produced a list.
'I'll give you two days. At the end it's the big bucks, a contract with me and my people, or else it's just the end of the line. For you, sweet girl.'
Saunders took the deal—not like she had much choice—and set out.
Friday. So far, she had assembled the following:
1. One black crepe mandarin collar evening gown with train—snatched from an old fop in a pearl-pinned ascot who was sitting on the floor of the Lexington Avenue 4 train. Gown was in a Bloomies' bag, of course. The bonus: the bag was ancient, circa 1960.
2. One turquoise silk sundress—gotten off the dentist who did her teeth, who said she should be a model, who asked her to wear it while he worked on her. She returned after hours and shot him with the mini-mite shotgun strapped to her inner thigh.
3. One yellow silk negligee and matching peignoir—from her personal heirloom collection, her mother's and her grandmother's before her; the two of them had been dancers back before live performances were abolished.
4. One Garbo style blue suit—with big blue buttons, also her mother's, but was there really, in this day and age, any room for sentiment?
All that remained were the 1950's French frame eyeglasses. The real deal they had to be. Nothing else would do. Oh yes, and Red Woman preferred virgin dead stock—the hardest kind of Retro to find. Never worn, never used. Perfect and pure. 'But,' she had said, fingering Saunders's left nipple ring as the guards performed the strip search, 'sometimes I take what I can get. Yes, sometimes I am grateful for that. Particularly if it's nice. Particularly if it's well tended and cared for.'
Saunders had looked everywhere for the glasses, threatened everyone, and tapped all her usual and unusual sources, not just in LA, Manhattan and Seattle, but in unlikely places too: Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Tampa. Eyeglasses were fragile and highly prized. There was a collection of 50's glasses at the fucking Met Museum for chrissake.
© 2002 Robert Dunn
That stuff had all become black market long before the Act, hard to get, quasi-legal, and Saunders made some good money for a while. But the stack of credits she'd gotten from the Screaming Meemie's hankies was long gone: blown on an impulse trip to Palm Springs she could hardly remember afterwards. Mostly for all the psycho-meth. She'd come back with a sunburn, a pesky STD, and a vague feeling that she'd done far too many 3-way's with people she didn't even like. Happily, she didn't care if there were nudies of her circulating on the Net. She was unblackmailable. No shame, baby.
Now with the Protection of the Past Act, Saunders had a whole new set of chances: the makings of a multi-jillion or whatever business going.
That is, if someone didn't kill her for her stuff, collected carefully and stashed in the basement of the Barracks, what used to be the library on Ivars, until Congress passed the Act and consigned all twencen books to the Pentagon.
That is, if she could find what Her Awfulness, the bitch on the hill wanted, by the time the orange/green sunset came down today, throwing the smogometers up high on red.
Saunders bladed past the store fronts on Sweetzer. Out of ideas. Eying the nons. Who waited for the slow choke to the hospital—or dropped dead in the street. Who lived out of crates and Patagonia pup tents scavenged from Beverly Hills dumpsters. Or nowhere, out in the open, naked in the alleys or squatting on curbs, alongside carcasses of Mercedes and Fords and Fiats abandoned when they ran out of juice. So few people could get it anymore, except for people like Red.
Saunders was feeling down and out and on her way to non-ship, when Mom called on the cell. 'Honey Bunch,' she said, in her squeaky, crabbed voice, 'can you come today? I want to see the paper, and I need my toenails clipped and the nurse won't do it unless I pay the supplement and, Sweetie Pie, you know…'
'Mom, I'm kinda…,' said Saunders. 'Oh, what the hell? Yeah, I'm coming. But just for a moment.' And she hunched her shoulders, tightened her jet-blades against the setting acid sun, and headed over to Midway.
Saunders hated the smell there of almost death, the smell of the old, a smell like dirt, like shit, but even the stink was faded, musty and vaguely rotten. And all those gnarled hands coming to life, vacant eyes suddenly glinting: Are you here to see me - me - me? So many of them neglected, but not her mother. Mom trailing around in a corduroy house coat. Now, that actually might have been worth something if it hadn't been so stained by tomato juice, cheddar cheese, chocolate, things she loved to eat to excess whenever she could wangle them. Making her not only very old, but very fat.
When Saunders zoomed through the door of Midway with The Inquirer under her arm, the elder hostel guard shrank back a little, then asked blandly, 'Name?'
'Wether,' said Saunders. 'Wether 263549.'
'Surrender your weapons,' said the guard, and indicated the bank of video cameras all trained on the front entrance. 'Shit,' sighed Saunders. Time was short. She gave up the Uzi, the mini-mite and the two-inch razor blade that dangled from her right ear.
Today was different; Mom had someone with her. 'This is my friend,' she said, 'my first friend since I got here. Her name is Maizie and she used to be on the stage and screen.' Incredibly wrinkled and practically lying in her wheel chair, the woman had a lazy eye that seemed to fix on Saunders's bare ear. A portable respirator wheezed in her lap.
'She's feeling poorly today, but she's really very… Maizie dear, put on your specs.'
Like a floppy puppet, Maizie fumbled for her bag, and pulled out an old pink leatherette case.
And goddamnit, there they were! Silver blue cat-eyes with lightning bolts on either side.
'Can I look at those?' said Saunders and grabbed them.
Maizie started. Seeing and then not seeing was too much for her, and she howled.
'Maizie? Saunders, what in the world?'
The video cams started rotating, looking for the source of the sound. Saunders pulled the howling puppet close. 'Poor poor Maizie,' she said loudly. 'There there.' The cameras veered away to a man screaming for water in another room.
When Saunders sank her obsidian incisors into the crumpled flesh, it tore like organza. The blood, though, tasted salty, fresh. She wiped her chin on Maizie's hospital gown.
'Got a delivery, Mom. Your nails'll have to wait.'
'But…'
Saunders was gliding out the door, blades hopping down the stairs, leaping the turnstile. With a cheery 'Hi!' to the guard, she licked the side of his face as she grabbed her guns and razor. 'Gotta run, Hon,' she winked, and flew down Olympic.
Blood from the neat puncture wounds trickled down Maizie's chest, as the respirator sputtered and went out. 'Shit,' Mom cursed softly, and hobbled away from the body into the telly room.
Saunders bladed towards Los Feliz: I'm cool. I'm good. Enough money for all the mistakes I could ever make. A contract with Red Woman. Or else references and credits. Or maybe just cold cash. Good!
The bright glasses in her hand stared back, dazed and dying. Like the eyes of people realizing for the first time that they never really were quite alive. And never will be.
They weren't strictly virgin dead, untouched, as Her Awfulness wanted. But so what? she thought. A little bit of life's got to be allowed. And they were cared for.
Photos: © 2002 Stephanie Hammer; Big City Lit, licensee.