TVA BABY and Other Stories (3 page)

I stood up and emptied a clip and sent a bunch of shit flying, and that quieted them down again. They are kind ofchicken, really. But there was a bunch of them and they were getting closer. I really needed to get out of there.

Oprah was still yakking away. I crouched down and flipped around till I got Ellen. That’s more my kind of show anyway. I watch it all the time. You can’t even tell she’s a lesbian, not that that matters to anybody anymore.

“You,” Ellen said. “What do you want?” She didn’t look pleased to see me, but I’m used to that. I’m a TVA baby.

“I want to be on your show,” I said.

“I told you, I don’t arrange that,” she said. “That’s all arranged through the producer.”

“It’s an emergency,” I said. “Can’t we make an exception just this once?”

I pointed toward the front of the store, where the Darth Vader types were still filtering in, all crouched down. But of course, Ellen couldn’t see
out of
the TV.

“It’s not up to me,” she said. “It seems to people like it is, but actually it’s not.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Try
Wild Kingdom
.”

That was an idea. I flipped around till I found it. Two lions were eating an antelope, one from the front and one from the back.

I flipped back to Ellen. “No way,” I said. I told her what I had seen and she gave a little shudder. “I can’t believe that’s what they call appropriate programming for children,” she said.

“Meanwhile, we have a problem here,” I said. “They’re closing in and there’s at least a hundred of them.” That was an exaggeration but not by much. Down every aisle I could see crouching shapes, darting here and there.

“I have a guest,” Ellen said. Sure enough, she was standing up to hug some guy in jeans and a sport coat. Some lucky dude.

“What about me?” I asked. “What am I supposed to do?”

She shrugged. “Shoot it out?”

That was no help. Oprah would have said the same. I was beginning to see that they were all cut out of the same piece of cloth. They want no surprises on their shows. I could even understand their point of view but meanwhile I had enough to worry about, with the Darth Vader types showing up down almost every aisle.

I fired off another clip, my last.

“You’re trapped,” said the girl in the bikini. She was peering out the window of the tent. I made her zip it shut from inside and told her to shut her pie hole while I went to the guns & ammo section. I had to crawl. I had to break the glass. I was reloading with hollow points when I heard a voice over the store’s PA system:

“Drop the gun and come out with your hands on your head!”

It’s usually used to announce sales and such. I guess they figured it made them sound more official, and to be perfectly honest, it did. It gave me a shiver.

I was getting worried.

I crawled back to the TV section. A guy tried to stop me on the way but he was too slow, and I wasted him with one shot. The hollow points expand. Somebody pulled him out of the way, sliding him back in his own helpful blood. The dudes were everywhere.

I had a sinking feeling when I saw the tent, and when I picked up one side to look underneath, sure enough, the girl was gone, bikini and all. She had somehow split the scene.

Now there was just me and the kid, who was still in the shopping cart, and dead besides. “Ned” was no help. Another TV exploded but there were still plenty left.

I tried Ellen again. “What about the studio audience?” I suggested.

She ignored me, as was often her wont. Meanwhile, bullets were flying all around. Not one to stand on ceremony, I squeezed on through, and just in time. Bullets were smacking into my flesh.

The chairs for the studio audience were arranged in rows, on low risers. None had arms. Everybody was watching Ellen, who was holding a puppy on her lap.

“Scoot,” I said, but all I got were blank looks. Scoot, it turns out, was the name of the puppy.

“Scoot over!” I said in a loud whisper, to which I added a snarl, and over they scooted, all of them at once.

And just in time for the commercial break. The lights went weird. I took my seat just in time as Ellen looked up from her puppy and asked, pretending to be interested (they are always pretending), “And how many TVA babies do we have in our studio audience today?”

Mine was, as always, as ever, the only hand raised.

“S
pare one of those?”

“Of course.” I shook a Camel out of my pack, which was sitting on the bar as a reminder of better days. She was wearing a raincoat—Burberry; we notice such things—over jeans. It matched her hair, almost; it wasn’t buttoned, only belted at the waist. She was three stools away, but I caught a glimpse of a narrow black strap on a narrow pale shoulder when she leaned down the bar to take the cigarette from my fingers.

We notice such things. Especially in a quiet bar on Eighth Avenue, on a rainy Thursday autumn-in-New York afternoon.

She was careful not to touch my fingers; I was careful not to touch hers. I have a lot of respect for cigarettes, these days.

“Thanks.”

Her hair was what they used to call dirty blonde, cut short. Full, red lips and a low, smoky voice with eyes to match: dark, deep Jeanne Moreau eyes, filled with a certain sorrowful something. Regret? Loss? Perhaps. She was coasting, like me, on the high side of forty and her face looked it, which I found appealing, and her body didn’t, which we find appealing. So many young girls have empty eyes.

“You’re welcome,” I said.

She sat back and examined the cigarette as if it were a fish she’d caught. Holding both ends in long fingers, very deft. Great hands. A dancer’s hands.

Then she lit it!

She tapped it on the bar and put it between her lips and struck a match and lit it.

Inhaled.

Exhaled.

I turned on my stool, alarmed, but the bartender was paying no attention. The little faux bistro—there’s one on every block in the west twenties—was empty except for us.

“Excuse me,” I said, sliding my drink down the bar and taking a seat next to hers. “But I thought you couldn’t smoke in New York bars anymore.”

“You can’t,” she said. “But Lou cuts me a pass every afternoon at about this time, when the lunch crowd’s gone.”

It was ten after two.

“Extraordinary,” I said, tapping a Camel out of my pack. “Perhaps if I pretended to be with you, Lou would cut me a pass, too?”

“Depends.” She eyed me sideways. “Are you a good pretender?”

“Good?” I contrived to sound like I was trying to sound insulted. “I’m the Great Pretender. Plus you’ll probably want another anyway.” I laid the pack down like a high card. Maybe even a trump, I was thinking.

“As long as we are pretending,” she said. “Just don’t get any ideas.”

“Ideas?” My head was filled with ideas. “I never get ideas.”

“I’m here to take a break,” she said. “Not to get hit on. As long as you understand that, we can pretend we are friends. I’ll even pretend to enjoy your company.”

Not to mention my Camels.

“Not to mention your Camels,” she added.

Lou did, indeed, cut me a pass. And she did enjoy my company, or at least pretend. And I hers. She was an “Internet worker bee” (or so she called it, then) who worked at home, right around the corner. I was, well, whatever I told her I was.

“Burberry,” I said. “An old boyfriend?”

“All my boyfriends are old,” she said. “The young are too needy.”

“So many young girls have empty eyes,” I said, and ordered us both a wine. White for her, red for me.

Her coat fell open when she leaned forward to pick up her glass. I saw the top of a slip, black silk, or something very like it. The strap was loose which told me that her breasts were probably small. But we couldn’t see enough to tell.

“What is it with you guys and straps?” she asked, lighting another Camel off the one she was smoking. “It’s not like you’re actually
seeing
anything.”

Busted. Even honesty is, sometimes, the best policy. “Extrapolation,” I said.

“Beg your pardon?”

“Each part suggests the whole. That inch and a half of narrow strap, seen as if by accident, suggests the lacy cup to which it leads, which in turn suggests that which it cups, shapes, presents. That little strap takes the mind’s eye to where the eye alone can’t, quite, yet, go. Extrapolation.”

“Well said,” she said. I thought so too. She blew analmost-perfect smoke ring, then looked me straight in the eye and asked: “How many of you are there?”

Busted again. I glanced at my Fauxlex. “Sixty-seven, as of now. They come and go. How’d you know?”

“I read about it in
Wired,”
she said. “Cyberhosting. Private Eyes. It’s the new new thing. And a girl can tell. There’s a certain—intensity of regard.”

“Well said,” I said. “And you don’t mind?”

“On the contrary, it’s kind of appealing.” She leaned forward and the Burberry fell open, just enough. “Especially since
regard
is all that’s involved.”

“There are Protocols,” I said. There was that lovely intimate little strap again. “Appropriate for just such an occasion.”

“Well said,” she said, sliding off her stool. “It’s almost three. Tell you what: you may come up till five.”

She picked up my Camels and left the bar. Scarcely believing our luck, I touched my Fauxlex to the bill strip, beeped Lou a fifty to cover the tip, and followed.

Her name, she told me in the elevator, was Eula. I didn’t realize, then, what it meant. Her place was a mess. It was a studio filled with computers, monitors, cables, drives, all the apparatus with which I am, ironically, so unfamiliar. One high window (dirty), one houseplant (dying), one futon couch facing a cluttered coffee table on a faded fake Persian rug.

With a nod, she sat me down on the rug. Then she slipped off her Burberry, hung it carefully on the back of a chair stacked with computer manuals, and disappeared intoher tiny kitchen. She came back with two white-wine glasses and a bottle to match. Pinot Grigio.

She sat on the couch with her long legs tucked underneath her. “So you are cyberhosting,” she said. “There was an article in
Playboy
too. What’s it like, being a Private Eye? Been at it long?”

The strap, both straps, led down to a black slip with lacy cups tucked into tight, faded jeans. High-end tank top.

“A few months,” I said. “Nobody’s been doing it long. It’s a new technology, the nanobiotech thing. My clients log in and they see what I see.”

She lit a Camel and tossed me my pack. “And that’s it?”

“Private Eyes operate under very strict Protocols,” I said. “No physical contact. My clients would be bounced off immediately, were I to touch even your fingertips. And I would be out of a job.”

I had been wrong about her breasts. No bra, as far as we could tell. And we could almost tell.

“And that suits them—your clients?”

“It seems to. My clients are all lookers. See-onlys. Perhaps they have been disappointed in love. Perhaps a look is all they want.”

“And yourself?” She shrugged one strap off one narrow shoulder. That made both shoulders, somehow, even more appealing.

“I’m kind of a looker myself.”

“So I see.” She blew a smoke ring. “But isn’t it weird?”

“Being a looker?”

“Having all those strangers lurking inside you.”

“They’re not actually inside me,” I said. “It’s virtual. A Private Eye is just a sender, that’s all.”

“They watch on a screen?”

“You must not have read the whole article; they just close their eyes. It’s all bio, like I said. They suck on a chip and close their eyes and see what I see. Satellite link.”

“A chip. Like hard candy. What if they swallow it?”

“They don’t. All the sensories are in the mouth. You don’t taste with your stomach, do you? Besides it’s rather expensive.”

“I like that part,” she said. “And where do you find them? These clients?”

“I don’t have to. I have no idea who they are. They buy the chip and surf all the different Private Eyes.”

“So it’s a kind of competition.”

“I suppose. I do OK. All I have to do is find a pretty girl to talk to.”