The whole fuckbuddy thing didn’t work, Rich muses as he picks shards of heart from the porch mat, because neither of them really wanted it to. Distracted by the memory of her chest when she cried, he manages to jam one sliver deep in his palm.
It was an arrangement founded not on lust but on greed: he and Allany were perfectly capable of orgasms alone. They wanted the treasure map, the kernel hack, the shortcut to unearned intimacy. Cruelty turns out to be as quick a path as sex.
Rich tugs the sliver from his hand. It bleeds; he doesn’t.
“Ooah,” says Captain Van der Decken, pacing the poop deck, “it’s der doom what I feel upon me, ah, der crushing despair of immortality!”
“You’ve been doing it for like seventy years,” groans Longinus, and pauses to vomit. “I’m sixteen hundred and I still get seasick.”
The captain switches to his native tongue. Unfortunately, Longinus can pretty much comprehend it.
“I don’t care if this is the only ship we can both ride,” he growls at his fellow traveler, “it’s not worth the dinner show.”
Up in the crow’s nest, Ahasuerus manages to grin maddeningly right through his mouth harp solo.
The velcro elves clamber by night up Euler’s winter jackets and weave hair and dirt in among the nylon loops. It’s not even his hair, it’s hair from dogs or tweed or, once, threads of real corn silk. Sometimes it’s the exact color of hair that will make your girlfriend so angry she leaves.
Most have forgotten the old ways of assuaging the fair folk, but Euler remembers: a bowl of milk and a piece of chalk by the door, and a little dry bread in his pocket.
This completely fails to work on the velcro elves, because they are dicks.
See Me is a silver fish flitting through mangrove shallows. Sometimes he sees other places: the future, or the past, or old friends long gone. Ships skim. Dog Shouting screams. Ratio Tile and Reaching the West Reaches converse, watched by a little green man.
As his wrist heals, they wean him gently off the opium, and the dreams give way to the glowing braziers of the hospital cave. Finally, he finds himself fully awake. The Princess is there, in the darkness: her breath in his ear, her hand beneath the sheets.
“It’s good,” she whispers, “to see you fully functional again.”
It’s very difficult to be a node with more than two vertices in a Mexican standoff, but this is more or less the role for which he was born.
“It doesn’t have to be this way, Pistolero.” Rodrigo’s sweating but his hands don’t shake. “We can figure out how to split the loot, and I’ll lower my weapon, and so will Nahuel, Adelmo, Cai, Pichi and Huenu.”
“What about Luis?”
“I sort of hoped you hadn’t seen Luis,” Rodrigo admits.
“As if I can’t count hammers cocking,” snaps the Man Made of Guns, and shoots all ten of them at once.
“We’ve already discussed this. Strike here.†Proserpina tiredly raps Ernestine’s first two knuckles. “Keep your left hand out to guard and uncurl your right arm as you extend it–”
“I’ve told you, I’m left-handed.”
“Not yet you’re not. You’ll learn to do this the proper way first, and then you’ll be able to switch if you must.”
“When do I get to spar with the two of you?” Ernestine complains. “Why do I have to spend all my time just hitting your musty oatmeal bag over and over?”
“Because over the last fortnight,” Proserpina grates, “the bag has learned more than you.”
Widlow goes out bald and alone on a muggy evening, green shorts on pale legs and socks under sandals, and when his racket swats the ball toward the green back wall of the empty court it is the saddest thing.
Down the street a couple stop eating and talking, their mouths full of unspoken regret. Dogs lie down and sigh; children pause in their pretending, struck by the dread of a summer soon gone.
Widlow isn’t crying. Crying would imply catharsis. He shuffles over to where the ball has stopped and leans down for it, and drops it the first time.
“A nameless kill is without glory,” hisses the tattooed man, “and rest assured that today you die. So this I tell you: I am Amadeus Faust.”
“Really?” says Alex.
“That’s kinda semiotically loaded, man,” says Tyler.
“Tyler,” says Toe. “Gross.”
“You don’t even know what semiotics is.”
“I know I don’t want to see you two load each other with it.”
“Is your surname really Faust?” asks Daniel curiously. “I thought the preferred transliteration–”
“I chose it myself,” snaps Faust.
Alex smirks. “If we’re picking our own names, I want Einstein Tyrannosaur.”
“Dude!” says Toe. “You know that one was mine!”
Rondo dreams that he’s completely on top of the whole Pittsburgh situation: everyone coordinating perfectly, grudges sidelined, signatures of approval piling up in his in-tray. On waking, he’s deeply disappointed that it wasn’t real. This is alleviated by the discovery that he can fly.
Rondo whoops through barrel rolls; he scatters geese and skims the center line down I-95. It’s so easy. There’s no wind noise or bugsplatter, and to accelerate he just bites his lip and squints and tries.
The next night he has a dream about money, and when he wakes up all his teeth fall out.