Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (40 page)

In the pause that followed Dean’s manic
drumming stirred the air to an oppressive din. Emma realized they
had almost been shouting.

“
So what’s next?” she
wondered. No one said anything for a bit, then Ione muttered
something under a crescendo of percussion from down the
hall.

“
What?” Mark said, and she
replied in a louder tone, but Emma still couldn’t hear, and from
Mark’s reaction it seemed important.

“
What was that?” she
repeated, to Ione’s irritation.

“
We have to find another
place to stay
!
”
she piercingly clarified.

“
Just because of the noise?”
she rhetorically confirmed. Dean, now thoroughly warmed up, aspired
to yet mightier feats of amplitude as they conversed. Emma thought
he was showing off.

Ione shook her head. “Not that alone.” She
stared out the salon window onto the immensity of the City. “As
accidental guests of a man we barely know in a complicated new
environment, our strategic position is untenable. We have to have
more than one option when it comes to our living arrangements, even
if we don’t immediately exercise it.”

Mark shrugged. “That makes
sense to me. I can easily foresee a time when we might not
want
anyone
to
know our whereabouts.”

“
Okay. So how do we go about
it?” Manassa wanted to know.

“
Well… I suppose we have to
find someplace suitable
first
, then convince
someone t
o let us stay
there,” Ione hesitantly
speculated.

“
It could get back to Dean
pretty quickly if we did that right around here,” Emma theorized.
“Might hurt his feelings.”

“
Not to be unduly cynical,
but are we even sure he
wants
us around long-term?” Mark questioned.

“
Maybe not,” said Ione. “In
which case it’s crucial we look for other quarters.”

“
Should we walk down the
hill, then?” Emma suggested. “There’s lots to see. It could be
fun.”

Ione shook her head.
“This isn’t the Lap. We need
a vehicle
. I already talked to Dean,
and he said
we
could
borrow
his convertible if we want to see the City
. I gather he normally uses another one, anyway.”

Mark blinked.
“Uh… ‘borrow the convertible,’ you said?
We’re
just gonna
hop
in and drive
it
?”

Ione couldn’t suppress a
defiant expression.
“Why not?”

He
shrugged. “I dunno. Just seems like the kind of thing you
might have to
practice
.
Dean didn’t talk to you about
that?”

Ione faltered. “Well… I may have let him
assume a few things.”

Mark
chuckled
, but for Emma the decision
was already made. If Ione said she could do
something,
then she
could
. Emma had never seen
otherwise.

Manassa rose from the sofa as a cacophonous
wave of percussion advanced down the hall. “Well, we’re off to…”
she yawned and stretched magnificently.

“
Wherever,” Mark
phlegmatically concluded, heading for the door.

Ione
pulled
on
to
the broad avenue
spiraling down
the hill, almost ramming a
sedan
in the next lane
over
. She
twisted
the wheel
violently and they straight
ened
out
just in time,
arresting with a screech. C
ars
behind them
halted
in a cascading pattern of
deafeningly attested indignation, a chorus of bleating
gnomes
. She carefully accelerated again,
aware for the first time just how much power was available from the
go gnome next to her on the front seat, magnifying her will with
its sturdy legs.

“
This is going to be
interesting,” Mark decided.

Dean’s hill proved to be a
good place to practice, as their stop and go progress down its busy
spiral avenue allowed her to rehearse the relevant procedures and
responses at a lenient velocity
.
When
they had circled it
a few times
she could
already
conduct the vehicle with some
skill, and by the time they reached the base Ione
had driven long enough for the novelty of the
experience to be displaced by their original purpose.

Manassa cheerfully bounced
around on the
cushions
, head periodically issuing out the
window
to confront anyone bold enough
to address them. Emma
made wondering
observations
about
the City that Ione scarcely bothered to
audit.
They were all nude at the moment,
but she had
brought clothing
for
other
circumstances
as
required.
People of the City were clearly
long adapted to
frequent
changes of appare
l
.

“
There,” said Mark,
pointing. “That’s what we’re looking for.”

A small complex of
mint-colored apartments faced the avenue,
several
doors
signed
with a
circle
,
indicating
availability. An expansive park graced with lush grass, picturesque
ponds, meandering streams and scattered groves of shade-conferring
trees dwelt beyond it, one of many such havens they had seen
scattered about the metropolis.

Ione pulled them out of
traffic and parked without complication
.
They assumed casual clothing, bumping around in the limited space
available
, then
exited the convertible and walked to the foyer.

The doorman stood
at once
when they
entered
, politely barring
their way.

“
May I ask
w
ho you
’re
visiting
?
”

“
Looking for a place
to stay
, my friend,” Mark
cordially explained, channeling all his formidable charisma through
an engaging grin.

The doorman
stared them up and down, shook his head in
negation.
“You don’t
have
the status to live
here
.”

They turned to each other in dismay.

“
How do you know?”
Ione
blurt
ed
following an awkward pause.

“
It’s my
business
to know,” he replied,
brusquely terminating the exchange
.

They exited the foyer under his stolid
surveillance, confused and intimidated.

And so it went where they
attempted
at
three
other
locations
to
procure
lodgings
,
denied for the same reason in each case; no
status
. No standing, no stature.
W
ith each new judgment their perception of
this intangible quality grew more acute, and as the day wore
on
Ione
felt her
customarily bold personality compress to a less extroverted shape.
She found herself
subtly
giv
ing
way to other drivers
on the road,
particularly those in high-status cars
,
hating what it did to her image in front of Emma. But if they
couldn’t even find a place to stay,
who
knew what might happen if they
made
trouble…

They
searched
about the various territories
of the City till evening arrived, carefully skirting the enormous
fog-shrouded park at the center of the metropolis where mannermen
lurked in numbers
, knowing the convertible
might be easily identified again.
They
dressed as required for each situation till it became second nature
to do so. Rumpled clothes were strewn all about the
vehicle.

Chance
took them close to the Gnomon’s round Tower
and
its stark
shadow,
sweeping around the City
like a commandment
.
As
it
fell on the
car a preternatural awareness of all things mechanical blanketed
Ione’s mind
by some uncanny means,
rendering the
angular,
blue
-tinted gnome next to her subtly
threatening in the dimmed immanence of its
creator
.
Ione
stared at
its clean, muscular form at
work
, hands clenching lateral struts for
stability as it exaggerated the delicate movement of her legs to a
shuddering motivation of their whole party.

Her courage failed, and she
turned before coming any closer to the Gnomon’s cloud-high
redoubt,
depressed
to see the bold ambitions of the day raveled to
nothing
.

As
darkness
settled
she became increasingly concerned
for
their safety
.
The
sky tendered a moonlit roil of vapor, and the air was suffused with
a warm humidity. It would rain soon, she knew. No one was talking
now.

They rolled
along
ill-lit, winding
neighborhoods
of the Dowser’s
persuasion
,
assaulted at intervals by the insufferable
clanging of his bucket, momentarily fixing their distance and
direction. She had steadily ascended toward the circumscribing edge
of the desert, where
apartments and
motels
of a
very
undiscriminating
sort could be found. Ione
drove past
several
before at last, in a narrow, unkempt
alley
w
here
shifty,
unsmiling
men lurked, she pulled into a two
-
story tenement with a multitude
of
vacancies
.

“
C’mon. We have to
get
something
.”
Her competence to lead the group was in question now, and she
wouldn’t return to Dean’s noisy hospitality unless she absolutely
had to.

The
doorman
leered
in interest
as they entered, and Ione
stepped forward
with a baseless, jittery
confidence, tactically expending the last of her bravado in a
brazen attempt to simply take what they needed
.

“
We’ll have a room,” she
imperiously informed him.

The doorman
slowly looked them
over
,
the
first to grant them such a promisingly ambiguous reaction,
lingering on their borrowed clothing and the bottle peeping out of
Emma’s bag.

“
Expecting
guests?”

“
No.”

He smiled thinly. “Alright, then.” Ione hid
any sign of elation, hoping the others had sense to do
likewise.

“
Follow him,” said the
doorman, pointing to an associate lingering nearby.

They trailed him up
a set of stairs onto the second floor and down a
long hall. From the silence and sense of disuse Ione guessed no one
had been assigned to the rooms they passed. The hotel functionary
opened a room
near the end
and gestured inward.
They
entered and he departed with a meaningless smile.

Ione stared. There were two
rumpled beds
situated athwart a crouching
glow gnome, a ramshackle cluster of drawers under a counter with an
embedded sink, and a curtainless shower installed in one corner. A
premonitory roll of thunder issued high over the City, conspiring
with all the other uncertainties of the moment to finally deplete
her reservoir of self-belief. She knew they should not have come to
this place. They could still leave…

“
Well, here we
are
,”
Emma tiredly
declared.

Ione crossed the room, brushed curtains aside
to stare out a large window overlooking the parking lot below,
wanly lit by a pole-mounted gnome in the alley. “Quite a reduction
from Dean’s hospitality,” she skeptically observed, about to
suggest their removal to the safety of his lodgings.