Counting Heads

2.18

Reilly Dell arrived at the party at last. He was wearing motorized exoassist braces on his legs and had difficulty negotiating the crowded room. Fred blanched when he saw him. To Mary’s eyes, Reilly had the blissful expression of a man feeling no pain. He must have been hurt so bad that they doped him up with painkillers. He was hurt much worse than Fred, apparently.

Alice jumped up to pull a chair out for him and to help him sit. He grinned drunkenly at her. Are you hurt? she asked him and leaned in close to sniff him. Reilly’s been dry-cleaned too, she announced to the group.

Gwyn said, Reilly, you look loopy. Do they have you on opioids?

Reilly didn’t respond, and Alice said, Can anyone tell me if Reilly and Fred were in the same brawl today?

Everyone turned to the three jerrys, but their eyes were tracking left and right in creepy synchronization. They were back at the tournament.

Reilly, are you hurt? Alice repeated.

Mary scolded her friends. Can’t you see he’s off-line, like Fred? Mary leaned across the table, cupped her hands around her mouth, and shouted, “Reilly! How do you feel?”

It was a dumb question, she knew, but she was becoming flustered. Reilly gazed at her stupidly.

What does he say? asked Alice.

He’s not saying anything, Mary replied.

You know what I mean, Alice chided her.

And she did know what Alice meant. Mary was an evangeline. She was supposed to have genetically enhanced empathy for other people’s feelings. She was supposed to be able to read people’s expressions like words off a page. But all she could read in Reilly’s face was loony tunes.

“Reilly! Are you hurt?” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

A flicker of understanding crossed the big man’s face. He clenched his teeth and seemed to be struggling up from the depths. He opened his mouth and formed a word—“Gawh!”

“Gawh?” Mary repeated, encouragingly.

He shook his head in frustration. “Gawh!” he shouted. “Gawh! Gawh!”

“God?” Mary shouted back. “You’re trying to say God?”

He nodded vigorously. “Gawd!”

“God what, Reilly?” Mary could feel everyone’s attention riveted on them.

But Reilly lost it and began to choke with laughter. The dopey look left his face, and he appeared as clearheaded as ever. Mary couldn’t believe the transformation. The jerk had tricked her.

Reilly grinned wide and said, Gawd, Mary, you’re sexy when you’re like that.

Everyone laughed with relief. Reilly stood up and took a motorized bow. He parted his hair to show Mary the skullcap he was wearing, a temporary interface until he could install new implants.

Mary, blushing, joined in the merriment. What else could she do? At least Reilly was all right, and his practical joke had done some good for Fred. She watched all the lingering stress of Fred’s day melt away. Now he and Reilly were mugging at each other like two happy baboons.

Then it occurred to her to wonder why Fred hadn’t also put on a skullcap to be able to communicate with the rest of them. Because he felt too fragile? Perhaps hers was the more damaged russ after all.

THE LULUS JOINED them at the table. “Guys!” shouted Mariola. “Watch this!”

“It’s called the shimmy!” shouted Abbie. “We learned it in school!” The two women started clapping their hands while nudging aside neighboring chairs with their hips. People at the next table cleared a little space for them.

“Come on, you slugs, clap!” Mariola shouted. Fred and Reilly picked up the rhythm and clapped. So did the jennys, Alice, Peter, and the rest. Even the jerrys. People at nearby tables joined in. Mary clapped too. The lulus were exceptionally sexy-looking tonight in their membrane-thin skirts and tube tops. Both were red-heads at the moment with green eyes and luminous brown skin.

Abbie raised her head and sang out, “That’s it, that’s right. Everybody ready? Let’s go!” and she and Mariola began to uh-huh in syncopated time. On a count of five, six, seven, eight, they danced a very peculiar step. They each stomped their right foot down way out in front of them and dragged it back, as through sticky syrup. Then they stomped their left foot out and dragged it back; then the right, right; then left, right, left, left. And the most amazing effect: as they stomped and dragged their feet, they shook their hips and shoulders with just enough force and in just the right rhythm so that the biceps and triceps of their lanky, outstretched arms danced off their bones. And their full breasts quivered like jelly. Even Mary held her breath.

The lulus performed a quick, loping break and took a bow. Everyone cheered and begged for more. But the girls sat down. Abbie slurped the last of her mostly melted tangerine daiquiri and glanced around at her friends.

Why’s everyone so glum?

Two arbeitors arrived, clinging to the spiderweb of cables overhead and lowered trays of candy-colored daiquiris for the lulus from admirers at other tables, many more than they could drink. They passed the glasses around to their friends, after playing the sentiments attached to them.

“’Lo, lulu! I’m a love-starved steve,” said a glass. “How ’bout we shimmy a little in my room?”

That’s rather unimaginative, said Mariola. But then, what can you expect from a steve?

“Hi there,” said another glass, “I think you’re the toots!”

“I know some Twen Cen dances too,” said another. “How’d you like to do the horizontal boogie with me?”

Alice said, Hey, waiter, where’s our dinner? We’re starved.

“Yeah!” the others shouted at the arbeitor above their heads. But they were drowned out by the clapping and foot-stomping coming from neighboring tables. The lulus’ fans wanted an encore.

Abbie and Mariola rose at last. Come on, folks, Mariola said. We’ll teach you to shimmy. They led an exodus to the dance floor shouting, “Free shimmy lessons!” The jennys followed them, as well as Sofi, Heidi, Mack, and most of their gang.

Mary went too, but before she did, she poured Fred a glass of ice water and shouted, “You’re supposed to stay hydrated!” When she left, he sniffed the water—Chicago Waterworks tap water. He set the glass aside and ordered more ginger ale.

Their table was abandoned except for the joan and jerome, two russes, and the three jerrys. With so many from nearby tables gone to the dance floor, it was suddenly possible to carry on a voice conversation, but Fred was content to sit and watch. Alice and Peter snagged a couple of the untouched daiquiris.

“I think I love you,” said one of the glasses.

“My name’s Johnny Case,” said the other. “Ask around about me, then give me a call. You’ll be glad you did.”

Fred said to Alice, “You should go out there and shimmy too.”

Alice snorted, “Joans don’t shimmy.”

“Sure they do. It looks like fun.”

Peter said, “Joans don’t do fun.” Then, to be fair, he added, “I guess neither do jeromes.”

Alice patted Fred’s hand. “Thank you, Fred, but I’d rather sit here quietly with you and watch them. My, aren’t they gorgeous?”

Abbie and Mariola had marshaled enough dancers to form two lines across the dance floor, and twice as many to watch. They walked them through the steps. Michelles, jennys, kellys, isabellas, laras, ursulas, helenas, ruths, dorises, and evangelines. All of them gorgeous. But none so physically stunning as the lulus. From their goddesslike toes and chiseled knees; their frank round asses and innocent bellies; to their poke-you-in-the-eye breasts; long, sculpted throats; and slightly too large noses, lulus were the very pulse of desire. And the most appealing thing about them was their unquenchable thirst for merriment. No matter what they were doing, from waiting for a train to screwing your lights out, for them, everything was too much fun.

Which made Fred think of the hinky Inspector Costa. No matter how much she may have resembled a lulu physically, she was no fun at all.

Fred closed his eyes and shook his head. Was he still obsessing? What was wrong with him? When he opened his eyes again, Reilly was studying him.

The two russes calmly contemplated each other for several moments until Alice said, “Stop that, you two! Why do you do that, that russ mind meld? It gives me the creeps.”

“I’ve noticed russes doing more of it lately,” said Peter. “I hear it’s related to the clone fatigue.”

Wes, miraculously, had overheard this and tore himself from the tournament long enough to declare, “That’s a racist statement, Peter. There’s no such thing as clone fatigue. You should be ashamed of yourself.”

“It was a joke,” Peter protested, but Wes’s attention had already flown.

“What’s a racist statement?” said a new voice. Fred looked up and saw Shelley approaching the table.

Upon seeing his wife, Reilly crowed, “Petey thinks I got the clone fatigue, dear.”

“Lucky you,” Shelley said. “All I have is plain old body fatigue.” She sat on Reilly’s lap, only to rise again. “What is that?” she said, touching the exoassist brace under his jumpsuit. “And that smell?”

Alice said, “Our russes ran into some bad foo-foo today, but nobody wants to tell us about it.”

“Oh, Reilly,” Shelley said and sat in the chair next to him.

“It’s nothing, really,” Reilly said, which caused Fred to snort.

Shelley peered at Fred, and he fell instantly silent under the spell of her all-consuming scrutiny. Now, that was sexy, Fred thought. But Shelley did seem fatigued. Her shoulders drooped. Her smile sagged. What with her West Coast commute and all, she worked twelve-hour days. Ah, the price of success. He would have liked to discuss her job with her, but of course the confidentiality oath prohibited it. The only reason the gang knew where and for whom she worked in the first place was because her client broadcasted her life—or rather her drawn-out deaths—on her own Evernet channel.

Shelley took one of her husband’s big hands in hers, brought it to her nose to sniff, and kissed it.

Peter slurped the last of a daiquiri and started another. “Ah-hem,” he said. “The presence of a certain Fred Londenstane is requested on the dance floor. Paging Fred Londenstane.”

Alice squeezed Fred’s arm. “To be desired is Fortune’s blessing.”

Fred rose and threaded his way to where Mary was waiting for him. The dance floor was a maelstrom. Couples and triads progressed counterclockwise around the periphery in a variety of steps: the fox-trot, merletz, and waltz. Because each set of partners danced to the music of its own private orchestra, there were many collisions. Closer to the center of the floor were sets of cha-cha, zoom, and rhumba. Through all of this wove a conga line, led by the lulus. Another artifact of their History of Dance course.

Mary wanted to waltz. Because Fred couldn’t hear the music she chose, she hummed it to him, and he obligingly ONE-two-three, ONE-two-threed through the traffic. He did more steering than dancing, but it felt good holding Mary. He wondered what the world would be like if everyone danced to the same music for once.

Mary, meanwhile, was decorating a dance-floor-sized, many-tiered cake in her imagination, and she and Fred were waltzing on the topmost tier.