The MaddAddam Trilogy (57 page)

We always got huge tips on Painball nights, though none of us regular Scales girls had to do plank duty with the new vets because we were skilled artists and any damage to us would be pricey. For the basic bristle work they brought in the temporaries – smuggled Eurotrash or Tex-Mexicans or Asian Fusion and Redfish minors scooped off the streets because the Painball guys wanted membrane, and after they were finished you’d be judged contaminated until proved otherwise, and Scales didn’t want to spend Sticky Zone money either testing these girls or fixing them up. I never saw them twice. They walked in the door, but I don’t think they walked out. In a shoddier club they’d have been used for the guys acting out their vampire fantasies, but that involved mouth-to-blood contact, and as I said, Mordis liked to keep it clean.

That night one of the Painball guys had Starlite on his lap, giving him the signature twist. She was in her peagret-feather outfit with the headdress, and maybe she was terrific from the front, but from my angle of vision it looked like the guy had a big blue-green duster working him over – like a dry carwash.

The second guy was gazing up at Savona with his mouth open and his head so far back it was almost at right angles to his spine. If her grip slips, she’ll snap his neck. If that happens, I thought, he won’t be the first guy to be carted out the back door of Scales and dumped in a vacant lot with no clothes on. He was an older guy, bald on top, with a ponytail at the back, and a lot of arm tattoos. There was something familiar about him – maybe he was a repeat – but I didn’t get a very good look.

The third one was drinking himself into mud. Maybe he was trying to forget what he’d done inside the Painball Arena. I never watched the Painball Arena website myself. It was too disgusting. I only knew about it because men talk. It’s amazing what they’ll tell you, especially if you’re covered with shiny green scales and they can’t see your real face. It must be like talking to a fish.

Nothing else was happening, so I called Amanda on her cell. But she wasn’t answering. Maybe she was asleep, rolled up in her sleeping bag out there in Wisconsin. Maybe she was sitting around a campfire and the two Tex-Mexicans were playing their guitars and singing, and Amanda was singing too because she knew the Tex-Mex language. Maybe there was a moon up above and some coyotes howling in the distance, just like an old movie. I hoped so.

Things changed in my life when Amanda came to live with me, and they changed again in the Saint Euell’s Week when I was almost thirteen. Amanda was older: she’d already grown real tits. It’s strange how you measure time that way.

That year, Amanda and I – and Bernice as well – would be joining the older kids for Zeb’s Predator-Prey Relationship demonstration, when we’d have to eat real prey. I had a faint memory of meat-eating, back at the HelthWyzer Compound. But the Gardeners were very much against it except in times of crisis, so the idea of putting a chunk of bloody muscle and gristle into my mouth and pushing it down inside my throat was nauseating. I vowed not to throw up, though, because that would embarrass me a lot and make Zeb look bad.

I wasn’t worried about Amanda. She was used to eating meat, she’d done it lots of times before. She used to lift SecretBurgers whenever she could. So she’d be able to chew and swallow as if there was nothing to it.

On the Monday of Saint Euell’s Week, we put our clean clothes on – clean yesterday – and I braided Amanda’s hair, and then she braided mine. “Primate grooming,” Zeb called it.

We could hear Zeb singing in the shower:

I’d come to find this morning singing of his a comforting sound. It meant things were ordinary, at least for that day.

Usually Lucerne stayed in bed until we were gone, partly to avoid Amanda, but today she was in the kitchen area, wearing her dark-coloured Gardener dress, and she was actually cooking. She’d been making that effort more often lately. Also she was keeping our living space tidier. She was even growing a raggedy tomato plant in a pot on the sill. I think she was trying to make things nice for Zeb, though they were having more fights. They made us go outside when they were fighting, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t listen in.

The fights were about where Zeb was when he wasn’t with Lucerne. “Working,” was all he’d say. Or “Don’t push me, babe.” Or “You don’t need to know. It’s for your own good.”

“You’ve got someone else!” Lucerne would say. “I can smell bitch all over you!”

“Wow,” Amanda would whisper. “Your mom’s got a foul mouth!” and I didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed.

“No, no,” Zeb would say in a tired voice. “Why would I want anyone but you, babe?”

“You’re lying!”

“Oh, Christ in a helicopter! Get off my fucking case!”

Zeb came out of the shower cubicle, dripping on the floor. I could see the scar where he’d got slashed that time, back when I was ten: it gave me a shivery feeling. “How’re my little pleebrats today?” he said, grinning like a troll.

Amanda smiled sweetly. “Big pleebrats,” she said.

For breakfast we had mashed-up fried black beans and soft-boiled pigeon’s eggs. “Nice breakfast, babe,” Zeb said to Lucerne. I had to admit that it was actually quite nice, even though Lucerne had cooked it.

Lucerne gave him that syrupy smile of hers. “I wanted to be sure you all get a good meal,” she said. “Considering what you’ll be eating the rest of the week. Old roots and mice, I suppose.”

“Barbecued rabbit,” said Zeb. “I could eat ten of those suckers, with a side of mice and some deep-fried slugs for dessert.” He leered over at Amanda and me: he was trying to gross us out.

“Sounds real good,” said Amanda.

“You’re such a monster,” said Lucerne, giving him her cookie eyes.

“Too bad I can’t get a beer with it,” said Zeb. “Join us, babe, we need some decoration.”

“Oh, I think I’ll sit this one out,” said Lucerne.

“You’re not coming with us?” I said. Usually during Saint Euell’s Week, Lucerne would trail along on the woodland walks, picking the odd weed and complaining about the bugs and keeping an eye on Zeb. I didn’t really want her to come this time, but also I wanted things to stay normal, because I had a feeling that everything was about to be rearranged again, as it was when I’d been yanked out of the HelthWyzer Compound. It was just a feeling, but I didn’t like it. I was used to the Gardeners, it was where I belonged now.

“I don’t think I can,” she said. “I’ve got a migraine headache.” She’d had a migraine headache yesterday too. “I’ll just go back to bed.”

“I’ll ask Toby to drop around,” said Zeb. “Or Pilar. Make that mean ol’ pain go away.”

“Would you?” A suffering smile.

“No problem,” said Zeb. Lucerne hadn’t eaten her pigeon’s egg, so he ate it for her. It was only about the size of a plum anyway.

The beans were from the Garden, but the pigeon’s eggs were from our own rooftop. We didn’t have any plants up there, because Adam One said it was not a suitable surface, but we had pigeons. Zeb lured them with crumbs, moving softly so they felt safe. Then they’d lay eggs, and then he’d rob their nests. Pigeons weren’t an endangered species, he said, so it was okay.

Adam One said that eggs were potential Creatures, but they weren’t Creatures yet: a nut was not a Tree. Did eggs have souls? No,
but they had potential souls. So not a lot of Gardeners did egg-eating, but they didn’t condemn it either. You didn’t apologize to an egg before joining its protein to yours, though you had to apologize to the mother pigeon, and thank her for her gift. I doubt Zeb bothered with any apologizing. Most likely he ate some of the mother pigeons too, on the sly.

Amanda had one pigeon’s egg. So did I. Zeb had three, plus Lucerne’s. He needed more than us because he was bigger, Lucerne said: if we ate like him we’d get fat.

“See you later, warrior maidens. Don’t kill anyone,” said Zeb as we went out the door. He’d heard about Amanda’s knee-in-the-groin and eye-gouging moves, and her piece of glass with the duct tape; he made jokes about them.

We had to pick up Bernice at the Buenavista before school. Amanda and I had wanted to quit, but we knew we’d get in trouble from Adam One if we did, for being un-Gardener. Bernice still didn’t like Amanda, but she didn’t exactly hate her either. She was wary of her the way you might be of some animals, like a bird with a very sharp beak. Bernice was mean, but Amanda was tough, which is different.

Nothing could change the way things were, which was that Bernice and I had once been best friends and we weren’t any longer. That made me uneasy when I was around her: I felt guilty in some way. Bernice was aware of this, and she’d try to find ways to twist my guilt around and turn it against Amanda.

Still, things were friendly on the outside. The three of us walked to and from school together, or did chores or Young Bioneer collecting. That sort of thing. Bernice never came over to the Cheese Factory, though, and we never hung out with her after school.

On the way to Bernice’s that morning, Amanda said, “I’ve found out something.”

“What?” I said.

“I know where Burt goes between five and six, two nights a week.”

“Burt the Knob? Who cares!” I said. We both felt contempt for him because he was such a pathetic armpit-groper.

“No. Listen. He goes to the same place Nuala goes,” said Amanda.

“You’re joking! Where?” Nuala flirted, but she flirted with all men. It was only her way, like giving you the stone-eye was Toby’s way.

“They go into the Vinegar Room when no one’s supposed to be there.”

“Oh no!” I said. “Really?” I knew this was about sex – most of our jokey conversations were. The Gardeners called sex “the generative act” and said it was not a fit subject for ridicule, but Amanda ridiculed it anyway. You could snigger at it or trade it or both, but you couldn’t respect it.

“No wonder her bum’s so wobbly,” said Amanda. “It’s getting worn out. It’s like Veena’s old sofa – all saggy.”

“I don’t believe you!” I said. “She couldn’t be doing it! Not with Burt!”

“Cross my heart and spit,” said Amanda. She spat: she was a good spitter. “Why else would she go there with him?”

We Gardeners kids often made up rude stories about the sex lives of the Adams and Eves. It took away some of their power to imagine them naked, either with each other or with stray dogs, or even with the green-skinned girls in the pictures outside Scales and Tails. Still, Nuala moaning and flailing around with Burt the Knob was hard to picture. “Well, anyway,” I said, “we can’t tell Bernice!” Then we laughed some more.

At the Buenavista we nodded at the dowdy Gardener lady behind the lobby desk, who was doing string knotwork and didn’t look up. Then we climbed the stairs, avoiding the used needles and condoms. The Buenavista Condom was Amanda’s name for this building, so I called it that now too. The mushroomy, spicy Buenavista smell was stronger today.

“Someone’s got a gro-op,” said Amanda. “It reeks of skunkweed.” She was an authority: she’d lived out there in the Exfernal World, she’d even done some drugs. Not much though, she said, because you lost your edge with drugs, you should only buy them from people you trusted because anything could have anything in it, and she didn’t trust anybody much. I’d nag her to let me try some, but she wouldn’t. “You’re a baby,” she’d say. Or else she’d say she had no good contacts since she’d been with the Gardeners.

“There can’t be a gro-op in here,” I said. “This building’s Gardener. It’s only the pleebmobs who have gro-ops. It’s just – kids smoke it in here, at night. Pleeb kids.”

“Yeah, I know,” said Amanda, “but this isn’t smoke. It’s more of a gro-op smell.”

As we reached the fourth-floor level, we heard voices – men’s voices, two of them, on the other side of the landing door. They didn’t sound friendly.

“That’s all I got,” said one voice. “I’ll have the rest tomorrow.”

“Asshole!” said the other. “Don’t jerk me around!” There was a thud, as if something had hit the wall; then another thud, and a wordless yell, of pain or anger.

Amanda poked me. “Climb,” she said. “Fast!”

We ran up the rest of the stairs as quietly as we could. “That was serious,” said Amanda when we’d reached the sixth floor.

“How do you mean?”

“Some trade going bad,” said Amanda. “We never heard this. Now, act normal.” She looked scared, which scared me too because Amanda didn’t scare easily.

We knocked at Bernice’s door. “Knock, knock,” said Amanda.

“Who’s there?” said Bernice’s voice. She must’ve been waiting for us right inside the door, as if she was afraid we might not come. I found this sad.

“Gang,” said Amanda.

“Gang who?”

“Gangrene,” said Amanda. She’d adopted Shackie’s password, and the three of us used it now.

When Bernice opened the door I had a glimpse of Veena the Vegetable. She was sitting on her brown plush sofa as usual, but she was looking at us as if she actually saw us. “Don’t be late,” she said to Bernice.

“She spoke to you!” I said to Bernice once she was out in the hall with the door closed behind her. I was trying to be friendly, but Bernice froze me out. “Yeah, so?” she said. “She’s not a moron.”

“Didn’t say she was,” I said coldly.

Bernice gave me a short glare. Even her glaring power wasn’t what it used to be, ever since Amanda had come.

When we got to the vacant lot behind Scales for our Outdoor Classroom Predator-Prey demonstration, Zeb was sitting on a folding canvas camp-stool. There was a cloth bag at his feet with something in it. I tried not to look at the bag. “We’re all here? Good,” said Zeb. “Now. Predator-Prey Relations. Hunting and stalking. What are the rules?”

“Seeing without being seen,” we chanted. “Hearing without being heard. Smelling without being smelled. Eating without being eaten!”

“You forgot one,” said Zeb.

“Injuring without being injured,” said one of the oldest boys.

“Correct! A predator can’t afford a serious injury. If it can’t hunt, it’ll starve. It must attack suddenly and kill quickly. It must choose the prey that’s at a disadvantage – too young, too old, too crippled to run away or fight back. How do we avoid being prey?”