DIVE
by Harry Cheadle

	I got the job through Ronny, a drug dealer I had known since ninth grade. Even back then he was serious about his work, more organized than the average high-school sleazeball. He used to pass around a menu in second period, take orders before third, and hand the drugs out at lunch. Ronny was the best-connected person I knew, so when I needed to find work a year and a half after graduating, I called him up.
	"You're not picky, are you?" he asked me.
	"You kidding?" My stepdad had been trying to kick me out since I got fired from the Stop 'n' Eat. I had found a cheap apartment, but I needed to earn the first month's rent. 
	"Well, I know a guy who needs someone right away," Ronny said. "It's not for the squeamish. But it pays, and they don't ask for references. Can you work nights?"
	"Christ, you aren't setting me up to be a sex slave or something like that, right?" It was a fair question, considering the people Ronny knew.
	"Nah. Kind of the opposite actually. You'll find out. I'll text you the address. Ask for Sol when you get there, and tell them I sent you." He wouldn't tell me anything else. Ronny got a kick out of keeping people in the dark.
	I took the bus down the next day to the address - a narrow brick building, wedged between a run-down drycleaner and a store that still sold CDs, amazingly enough. Piles of garbage bags lounged on the curb, soaking up the sun. A video billboard at the end of the block showed a clip of an actress enjoying an Oscar Meyer hot dog in slow motion.
	There was no sign advertising the place, just a door and one of those old-fashioned buzzers with no intercom screen. I buzzed into what looked like a waiting room, only grungier - a desk, two benches, sticky wall-to-wall carpeting, dimly lit by a single fluorescent bulb overhead. A hallway led off into shadow, doors on either side. A bulky man with a shaved head was coming out of one of the doors humming to himself, a beautiful woman's naked body slung over his shoulder.
	The woman had blood stuck to her chest and smeared in her hair, and her head was slumped at an odd angle. The guy noticed me staring and nodded hello. "I'll be right with you," he said.
	"I'm here about the job?" I said. "Ronny sent me?" I was ready to bolt the fuck out the door if he came at me with a knife. "I was supposed to ask for Sol."
	"Oh, yeah, hey." He must have noticed me staring at the corpse, so he slapped her tit and laughed. "Don't worry. She ain't real. One of the boys got a little excited is all. Sol's in the back."
	I went down the hall towards him. The body he carried sure looked real, even the eyes, which stared wide open and glassy. "I'm Ryan," I said.
	"Oh, sorry. I'm Lon. I'd shake, but..." He let the body drop and showed me his red-stained hands. "Gets a bit messy around here sometimes." He laughed again. Lon seemed to have a sense of humor about his work, at least. "Just go all the way back, to the spare parts room."
	 The spare parts room was dark and cramped with stacks of boxes, marked "heads," "legs," "arms," and so on. Sol turned out to be a leathered, white-haired man carrying a clipboard, organizing a set of ten hands spread out on the table before him. 
	"You the kid Ronny called about?" He looked me over. You know that look that some people have, where they make you feel like some scum that just washed up at their feet? He had that kind of look.  
	"Yeah. Ryan."
	He didn't introduce himself, didn't even ask me any questions. "You'll be working the desk out there," Sol said in a voice that meant You might be a little better than nobody. "It's real easy. A fucking monkey could do it. You sit at the desk, buzz customers in, assign 'em a room and a girl - that's what we call 'em, girls. Take the customers' money when they're through. We charge based on wear and tear, Lon'll explain it. You meet Lon?"
	"Yeah."
	"Good. You'll work with him. Any trouble, hit the button under the desk, and Lon will take care of it. That's what he gets paid for. After we close, you need to clean up. Now, we get a lotta guys who like to play rough, do stuff they maybe couldn't normally do. We got all different kinds of ways for them to enjoy themselves, and we don't judge here, got it? The customer is always right. Sometimes, a girl will burn out, you might have to help get rid of her. No problem, right? Pay is fifteen an hour. You show up high or drunk or you don't show up, or you steal, you're fired. Any questions?"
	"When do I start?" A lot of it had gone over my head, but I needed that fifteen an hour. 
	"Monday. Eight sharp, got it?"
	"Got it."
   	The first couple days were easy. I had run a register at Stop 'n' Eat, too. The men came in furtively, maybe a little embarrassed, they would tell me what they wanted, and I'd shout it back to Lon. A monkey really could have done it.
	"Hey, get me a small-titted Asian in room 3!" I'd holler.
	"I need a blonde with a big ass, room 12!"
	"You get the redheaded rape victim in 9 yet?"
	The customers had to leave a deposit or a credit card with me at the desk, then they'd take a complimentary condom and go back to their room and do whatever they did. When they finished, Lon would check on them and see how badly the girl was damaged. It cost fifty bucks for no injuries, seventy if you bruised the girl, one hundred if you broke or dislocated a limb, one-fifty if you cracked a head open, and five hundred if we had to replace the whole girl. The bruises faded after a couple hours, but we charged extra anyway. Almost everyone left at least a few red marks or pulled some hair out.
	Mondays and Tuesdays were always slow, Lon told me, but I didn't know what he was talking about until Thursday. Right around eleven, droves of customers staggered in and a line formed in front of my desk. Pretty soon it got so hectic Sol had to come storming out of the parts room, where he was putting girls back together, and take over. 
	"Goddamit kid," he said. "My dick can work faster than you. Go help Lon out back there, and pick up the fucking pace, huh?"
	 So I had to go into the back, into the closet where we kept all the girls. It looked like a teenaged wet dream, crammed full of boobs and legs and exposed skin. The girls all wore underwear, near-nudity being sexier than full nudity, I guess. You would think a twenty-year-old kid would have considered it his dream job, but it was hard. Lon threw the girls over his back like it was nothing, but I had to grapple with them, get these limp, smooth-skinned bodies into my arms. They felt real, warm and soft. The heavier ones I had to drag on the floor, and I couldn't even deal with the biggest girl we had in stock, the one reserved for hardcore chubby chasers. After a half hour, I had touched more thighs, asses, and tits than I had in my entire life. 
	I hustled back and forth down that hallway for hours, carrying girls to rooms, checking for damage, carrying bloodied girls out of rooms - I couldn't finish one task before Sol was screaming at me for something else, to hurry the fuck up, pick up the fucking pace.
	When I put the girls in the rooms, I had to turn them on. The switches were on the backs of their heads, beneath their hair. I just pressed down in the right spot and they came alive. What they said after turning on depended on their programming. Mostly it was stuff like, "Hey big boy, where do you want to start?" or "Oh, please, I want it so bad." The ones programmed to act like it was a rape went, "Oh my god! Who are you? Get away from me!" The voices sounded real, convincing, even sexy, although the mouth movements didn't really synch up to the words. 
	Finally, at four that morning, we closed. I was sticky from my sweat and the girls' blood, and my back was killing me, but we still had to clean up. That meant hosing down the rooms with blood on the walls, making sure all the girls who needed repair were in the spare parts room for Sol to fix later, and disposing of the four girls who had broken down completely. Lon and I lugged the burnouts to the alleyway dumpster and chucked them in. My muscles burned everywhere, and I couldn't even look at what I was carrying. Lon went through the process casually, mechanically. He tossed the last girl into the trash and grunted, "Yeah, usually there aren't so many to throw out on Thursdays."
	"Great," I said.
	Walking home to my mom's drained and battered after that night was strangely peaceful. Five in the morning is one of the quietest times - too late for parties or work, too early for anyone to be up. Everyone is where they'll be for the rest of the night. The streets are barren except for the automated garbage trucks lumbering along and the occasional crackhead delivering his version of the morning news. You can pretend everyone in the world is gone, if you want to.
	I came in the back door to find my mom passed out on the couch, as usual, bottles lining the table, the light from the  Tri-D thrown over the whole scene. Roger, my mom's asshole husband, sometimes woke her up to bring her to bed, but that had been happening less and less. A commercial was on for Doctor Jake's Pet Cloning Service, the one where you give them a sample of your dead pet's cells and a chunk of money, and they regrow it for you, good as new according to the ad. 
	I turned off the Tri-D and fell into to bed. Just one more week and I could get my paycheck and move out.
	
	The apartment I picked out for myself was a shithole. It squatted right next to an abandoned lot and had a sign on the front: "Attention! This area monitored at all times for gang activity!" Below that, a smaller sign: "Apartments for rent. Call 764-4376. Cheap!"
	Still, it beat living at home. Roger had lived with us for three years. At first, it wasn't so bad. My mom cut back on the liquor and his construction job brought in some money. Even though he was a dick who told me I didn't have a chance of amounting to anything I could put up with him. Then my mom figured out how much of a jerk the guy was and started drinking worse than before. She either did whatever he said or got into scream-fights with him that ended in crashes, sobbing. As soon as I finished school, Roger came out with all this shit about how he would never let his kid mooch off of him and not pay rent. He came home and announced, "I earned my paycheck today, how about everyone else?" I know it's cliche to have an asshole for a stepdad, but what can you do?
	I started packing as soon as I got the job. A lot of the stuff I had in my room was junk: old school work, clothes I didn't wear anymore, computer games I had never played in the first place. It kind of sucks to have all you own packed up - you think, that's all I got? Everything fits into five cardboard boxes?
	Roger drove me and my boxes to the apartment when I moved. The only favor he ever did me, and he only did it because it meant I would be gone. Not that I needed the guy's favors. His goodbye began, "Well Ryan, it's about time." My mom helped me carry my stuff and then stood awkwardly around in the empty, one-room home that was now mine. When sober, she always looked brittle, like she had just finished crying.
	"I think this will be really good for you," she said. "Out on your own. I'm proud of you. Roger's proud of you."
	I didn't say anything. I hadn't told her where I worked. Seemed simpler to avoid the whole ordeal. She knew I went to work at nights, and that was it. We hadn't talked much since Roger came.
	"You know, I'm always here if you need me. A phone call away."
	"I know."
	"I wish things had turned out differently. Between you and Roger. Everything."
	"It's okay." 
	Then she hugged me, and I think we were both a little surprised by it. I couldn't remember the last time she had done anything like that. On her neck was the smell I always thought of as mom's - hand lotion and stale whiskey.
	"Roger's probably waiting," she said.
	"Yeah. Thanks for helping me with this stuff."
	"Stay in touch, okay?" She looked like she was going to say more, and we both probably could have. Like, I'm sorry or I love you or have a nice life. But what would be the point?
	"Bye."
	"Bye."
 	I heard their car pull out of the parking lot, and then it was quiet.
	That was Saturday. I had Sunday nights off, so the next day I went out with Ronny to celebrate my new job and my new place. I should explain that Ronny wasn't exactly my best friend, but he was practically the only person around. Everyone I had known from high school had disappeared - they had the money and the grades to leave to colleges with names like "Varner," and "Atlantic," usually on one of the coasts. The kids all knew that this city wasn't where you wanted to spend your life. It wasn't the ghetto or anything, it wasn't a total wasteland like the country, but there wasn't shit to do. All the buildings were concrete and grey steel, office buildings and giant apartment complexes that felt like prisons. The city sprawled, neighborhoods were connected by freeways, but they were all boring, stamped from the same mold. You left as soon as you could, if you could. I stayed, so Ronny was the one I went out with.
	We went bar hopping. I didn't usually go to bars, but there I was, going from bar to bar to bar until I couldn't notice the differences between them. Ronny knew someone everywhere we went, or at least they knew him. He clenched hands with people, a little baggie or glass tube swapped places with rolled-up bills.. I watched Ronny's business, drank a few beers and then some more. By the end of the evening, I was drained. There's the feeling at the end of a night of drinking when you feel like all you've done is squat on stools and stare straight ahead, and you don't feel drunk anymore, just empty. By the time we got to the last bar, I was ready to go home. Then Ronny nudged me.
	"Hey man, you see that?" he said. "Bartender's checking you out." 
	I looked up from my nearly finished beer. She seemed young for a bartender, and girlish. I would have expected her short blonde hair in a school hallway or a pep rally. Kind of cute, I thought.
	"No she wasn't," I said.
	"Yeah, man, she was. You should go after that. Get something out of tonight, huh?"
	"What do you want me to say to her? 'Hey, were you checking me out?'"
	"I don't care. Game her however you want. You gotta get yourself out there."
	Well, I did sort of want another beer. I raised my hand and caught her eye.
	"Oh, I'm sorry. Did I forget to say last call?" She sounded genuinely apologetic. "I can get you a can, but I turned off the taps..."	
	"It's alright, I don't need one that bad."
	"Are you sure? There's still some, I can-"
	"No, don't worry about me, I'm barely even here. Think of me as nothing."
	She smiled at me, unexpectedly. I noticed her eyes. Somehow, that always happens, I never notice a girl's eyes until she smiles. They weren't bartender eyes, and call me corny but I knew that she wasn't a bartender, even if she was serving drinks. 
	"Hey, are you old enough to serve beer anyway?" I asked her.
	"Barely. I'm eighteen. I can't drink it, but I can sell it. An apparent paradox. Are you old enough to drink?"
	I shrugged. "Close enough, maybe?"
	I think that's like how it went. I don't remember what I said after that. My brain tends to shut down around women, and drunk and tired as I was, I must have fumbled my way through the conversation pretty badly. But I had her number in my phone when I left.
	I called her two days later. Luckily, we both worked nights, so we had time during the afternoon. Our first date was a virtual reality hike I had seen ads for. You put on the suits and were in Yosemite, circa 1985, before the casinos were there. The views were panoramic, the graphics were incredible, and then a voice announced, "TOUR ENDING," and it cut to black. Afterwards, over coffee, we made small talk, cautious statements about how nice the hike had been. Then we both admitted we hadn't liked it and told each other how phony the rocks had felt, how the grass had been too sharp and the air had been too cold.
	"Remember those deer we saw?" she said.
	"Do you think they were preprogrammed?"
	"I'm sure they were. And the eagle flying right across the view from the top of that rock?"
	"I saw that and I thought, 'Wow, this is such bullshit.'"
		"Yeah."		
	             After coffee, she gave me a kiss goodbye, and I caught myself actually humming on the walk home.
	
	It didn't take me long to learn the rhythms of my work week. On slow days, Mondays or Tuesdays mostly, it was no problem. Customers trickled in and I could slack off, play some video solitaire on my phone. Most of the guys coming in early in the week were regulars, and I got to know them a little. First names and preferences at least - none of them were exactly chatty. Elias liked his girls on the chunky side, Dave liked the ones that fought back, Lars only went with blondes, and Chris always asked, very politely, for "one with a lot of hair everywhere."
	As the weekend neared, business got more hectic. Wednesdays and Thursdays varied, but every Friday was a guaranteed madhouse. A drunken crowd would form in front of the register, fights would flare, and Lon would have to storm in and break them up. One of my favorite groups of customers came in every Thursday, this gang of Mexicans who weren't the usual crop of loners and perverts. They tipped me every time and boasted constantly, yelling and laughing like it was a party. "Give us the one with the big tits," they would told me, making motions with their hands. "We want the ones with the tight pussy, man. You know, the tight pussy?" They went in three or four at a time - it was cheaper that way.
	Weekends could get pretty hairy. One Saturday, not long after I started seeing Lauren, a mob of salesmen came through, oily types with class rings and loud jackets. They were all drunk and obnoxious, teetering around challenging each other to fights and arguing over the prices. This one fat fuck with cum stains on his plaid sports coat kept saying that he knew he didn't break the girl's leg, so why the fuck were we charging him a C-note. Yeah, he called it a C-note. He and Sol yelled back and forth for a while, then the guy got too close and Lon appeared from nowhere, running the salesman into the wall face-first and twisting his arm behind him at a bad angle. After a couple minutes, the guy realized the logic of Lon's argument and paid his bill. That quieted the others down a bit.
	Finally, four rolled around and we kicked out the few salesmen still in the rooms. A scrawny, waspy-looking guy was lying on the floor of room 5, crying and sucking his thumb. He was with the fattest girl we had in stock, a huge black one with literally folds of fat, saggy nipple-less tits.  Not a very popular model. It stood over the wimpy guy, saying over and over, "You okay honey? You need some lovin'?" Lon said she was caught in a loop - that happens sometimes, they get stuck on one preprogrammed response and freeze up. Lon and I both cracked up over that one.
	My nights were hectic, but my days were wide open. I normally went to bed at five in the morning and woke up at noon. Lauren and I took walks in the park which were less scenic than virtual Yosemite but let us swish our way through real-life leaves. We saw a lot of movies, 
taking full advantage of matinee prices. She introduced me to a dilapidated theater near the edge of the city that showed old-style flatscreen movies, all these classic sci-fi flicks that Lauren loved even though the special effects were cheesy as hell.
	"Look at all those smokestacks," she told me while we watched Blade Runner, a practically ancient film about a future where everything was dark and flickery. "What do you think they're supposed to be doing, shooting fire randomly into the sky like that?"
	"I thought you said this was one of your favorites." We could talk easily because the theater was empty except for us. Hardly anyone came there, especially at three in the afternoon. 
	"It is. That's what I love about this, the way you get to see what people imagined the future would be. Did people back then think the smokestacks would shoot fire by 2016?"
	"I'd put up with the fire smokestacks if we could get the flying cars."
	"So would I," she said, leaning back against my arm.
	The past fascinated Lauren. She wanted to be an archaeologist, and was going to take classes at the community college. She had a whole plan laid out, how she would transfer to a four-year school afterwards, and how she was saving up money from her bartending, living with her parents so she didn't have to pay rent. I envied her sense of direction - I didn't have a plan, just a vague idea that I would do something better than what I was doing. Maybe it was more like a hope. She said to me sometimes, what are you going to do? I told her, I was going to get some money in the bank, sort of keep my head above water and then I would decide.
	Lauren started coming over to my apartment pretty regularly as the days went by. We'd order Chinese food, or we'd cook something in the microwave. I had a used Tri-D set, and we watched it curled together on the couch. We were the night shift. We'd go out during the day, have dinner, then go to our respective jobs and work all night. That fall, I was home and in bed by the time the streetlights turned themselves off.
	The first few times we had sex were clumsy, amateurish. We knocked over a lamp, and it seemed like we were always in danger of falling off my narrow bed. She admitted it was her first time afterwards. I wasn't a pro at it myself - my experience amounted to a few scattered back seat encounters with girls I lost track of afterwards. Her body was asymmetrical -  one breast larger than the other, a scar ran jagged along her upper thigh. I remember one afternoon when she fell asleep in my bed, snoring nearly inaudibly. I watched her and thought, what is this? Could this possibly be love? There was a comfort with Lauren, a closeness. Neither one of us had many people, we had reached out and found each other. There were times when we wouldn't talk at all on our walks, long minutes of silence when we watched the scenery around us.
	It was on one of those quiet walks she turned to me and said, "You know, my parents want to meet you. They want you to come over on Sunday."
	"This Sunday?" It was sudden. We had been going out for a month or so, and Lauren had mentioned her parents, how protective they could be, how conservative. I got the sense her parents didn't really like me. Or maybe she thought they wouldn't like me.
	"They want to scope you out. All their idea, be sure to note. We both have the night off Sunday, so I figured it would be nice."
	"Well, shit, how bad could it be."
	"They are weird, I want to prepare you."
	"Everybody's weird."
	"Not like them. This isn't some trial to see if your fit husband material or anything horrible like that. They just want to be friendly. I think."
	"I should dress nice? Make sure all my gang tattoos and needle marks are hidden?"
	She smiled. She hardly laughed, but her smile was just as good. "You'll be fine."
	I took the bus over that Sunday, checking my appearance every few minutes in the window. They lived in one of those buildings subsidized by the ad companies. Cheap rent, but commercials everywhere. There was a projection by the main door that I had to watch before I could be buzzed in, a three-minute Coca-cola attack ad on Pepsi. On the elevator ride up, an announcer's voice told me that City Councilman Pete Horowitz had willfully denied rights to minority voters and solved every problem by raising taxes.
	The hallway was covered in logos of various chip and cookie brands. It looked almost festive. I knocked on their door, and for a second I felt the impulse every guy has probably felt in the same situation - I seriously considered bolting for the elevator, getting the hell out of there. Then the door opened.
	"Hey," Lauren said, hugging me hello.
	The apartment, unlike the hallway, looked straight out of a time capsule. The furniture -  real furniture, couches made out of cloth, wooden bookshelves -  seemed to be covered in a thin layer of dust. They had honest-to-god books, too, pages and everything, displayed on the shelves. It smelled like old people, like mothballs.
	"These are my parents, Edward and Susan," Lauren said. "Mom, dad, this is Ryan."
	"Nice to meet you," I said, wavering at the end, not sure if I should tack a sir or a ma'am on the end. Her parents were the type of people you seriously consider calling sir or ma'am. They were older than I would have thought, white-haired and distinguished, with that dry-paper skin old people get. 
	"Nice to meet you, young man," Susan said. "We've heard so much about you from Lauren." The only time on record I ever got called young man, by the way.
	"Oh, yeah, I've heard a lot about you, too." That sounded lame, but I couldn't think of anything else.
	"Come on in, stay a while," Edward said. "Sit down, dinner will be ready in a few minutes."Susan had gone back into the kitchen.
	I sat gingerly. I felt like I was going to break the couch. Then, abruptly, there was click  from inside the wall, and a voice flooded the room: "Coming soon, for theaters, the largest epic adventure yet from the producer who brought you Island of Waste and Homicide: the Beginning. Nick Page and Heather Sampson star in Quandary II. This time, there will be no survivors. In theaters November 7." 
	"Sorry about that," Edward said. "It's on a timer. After a while, you get used to it, although it does tend to interrupt conversation. At least they stop at night so we can sleep."
	"I don't even really hear it," Lauren said.
	"Apartments have become so expensive," Edward said. "Especially living on a pension, it is nearly impossible to find a decent place in a good neighborhood." He sighed. " Sacrifices, you can see, have to be made." 
	We made agonizing small talk. I'm pretty sure I mentioned the weather at least twice. Edward quizzed me about where I lived, my family. I said I didn't get along with my family and left it at that.  He talked about his books, his antique furniture, told me that old things have more character than the new junk being produced today. He told me about  the woodwork on his cabinet, the lamp he had inherited that still worked, and although the bulb had to be purchased over the internet, he said, it provided "healthier" light.  I learned that nothing is more boring than listening to someone talk about antiques.
	When dinner made its appearance, I realized why it had taken so long - they actually cooked the chicken in the oven. They actually had an oven. I felt like an imposter, putting a napkin on my lap and complimenting Susan's green rubbery beans.  I hadn't had training in how to eat a meal that didn't come ready-made in a box. Still, everything was going fine until Susan asked me how my job at the bank was going.
	"My job at the bank?" I repeated, shooting Lauren a glance like, should you have told me something?
	"You work at the bank on Lexington, right? The big glassy building?"
	"Oh, yeah. Yes." I thought furiously. "Well, it's going day-by-day. It isn't that exciting, but it pays good." 
	"How long have you been there?" Edward asked. "Is it a long-term kind of situation?"
	The booming ad voice broke in from above: "Coming soon, for theaters, the largest epic adventure yet..." and that bought me some time to get my story together. 
	The next five minutes were me lying,  more and more elaborately, about my imagined bank job: the lack of room for advancement, my friendly coworkers, even a recent robbery attempt. I said I had to get up early and got out before I screwed up my delicate web of lies. Lauren walked me to the door.
	"Sorry," she said out of her parents' earshot. "I should have told you, but-"
	"Why didn't you tell them where I worked?" 
	"They would have freaked. Look, they already don't like me going to your place so often, and I had to tell them you worked at a bank and were saving money to go to school. I'll call you tomorrow."
	"Look, I'm not ashamed of what I do," I said, in maybe the firmest tone of voice I had ever used on her. "If you are..."
	"Can we talk about this tomorrow? I'll call you, okay?"
	"Okay."
	The elevator ride down featured the sounds of someone enjoying a hamburger, followed by a smarmy "Stop 'n' Eat...want one?"I had no idea how they put up with that shit every day for years. I guess you can get used to anything if it lasts long enough.
	I got lunch with Lauren the next day. She said she was sorry, but she knew that her parents weren't going to let her see anyone who was involved in what I was doing. I said, what the hell? They let her work at a bar, and how was that any different? She said of course it's different, she was saving for school, what was I saving for?  She asked me how long I was planning on working there, anyway, and I told her a while, at least until something better came up, and she said that wasn't much of a plan. Who the fuck said I had to have a plan? I asked her. Who the fuck said I had to save for something? She said I was being "abusive," and left. Our first fight.	
	We apologized a couple days later. I told her I was sorry, but I needed this job to have time to figure things out. I still didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. She said she was sorry for all the deception, for forcing me to lie. She never said she didn't mind my job.
	"Are we good?" I asked her.
	"We're okay," she said.
	It was different after that. Lauren started classes at the community college, and wasn't always free during the days. She was switching shifts, going back to the people who worked when it was light and slept when it was dark, with me still on night duty. We saw each other, we went on walks, but we didn't mesh as easily, didn't come together as naturally. I wondered, in the back of my mind, if we had anything in common besides loneliness.

	Winter came. Cold wind in cities can be vicious, the skyscrapers creating valleys that channel the wind somehow, amplify it so it stings your face. Waiting for the bus in the winter can be like getting hit with thousands of tiny chunks of ice. I spent December huddled in bus stops for evening or early morning rides across the frozen concrete waste. Lauren told me how great her classes were, how she was on her way. "Great," I said. "Good for you." We still found the time to see each other two times a week.
	One Monday I had a rough time. I expected an easy night, but around ten an entire wave of Japanese businessmen came in - I guess you could call it a tsunami. They were being shown around town, they had just gotten in from Tokyo and they wanted a good time. Well, their good time was my hell. Those guys were machines, tossing money around like crazy, yelling at me in knife-like Japanese and screaming violently whenever they came. They wanted four and five girls at once, all in one room, and it was such a tangle of tits and legs and sweaty Japanese guys that it took twenty minutes to decide how much they owed. Not that they cared. One must have had a knife or something, because I came in and found a girl sliced to ribbons. We charged them five hundred for that and they didn't blink. By the time we closed, they had destroyed seven girls, a new record, and the assholes didn't even leave a tip.
	I got back to my apartment around six, exhausted from the cleanup and caked with fake blood. I emptied my pockets before crawling into bed and found a tit. Just one. I don't know how it got there. Smallish, white, petite areolas, like a lot of the girls' tits. It looked sad, somehow, if a tit can look sad, separated from its body and its partner. Still felt real though, firm but soft, exactly the way a well-made tit should. I tweaked the nipple and it hardened - whoever made them was thorough, that's for sure - and I tossed it on the floor and passed out.
	I woke up the next day to an ugly gray sky and a message on my phone. It was Lauren, and she wanted to meet for coffee, to talk. The way she said "talk," somehow, gave me  a premonition, a sinking feeling.
	I'll spare the details of the actual breakup. Highlights include her telling me that she felt like she was moving forward and I was standing still, her desire for a freedom that she couldn't get with me, and my grunted agreements. I don't know if I said ten words the whole time. I wanted to do it quick and painlessly. Still felt like getting punched in the gut. We hugged and I think she might have been crying a little. I remember getting home, sitting down and thinking, now what?
	 Lauren and I had built a flimsy shelter together against the world, and now it was gone, leaving me exposed to the elements. Melodramatic maybe, but that's how it felt and  I worked more efficiently than before - Sol even stopped yelling at me as much. I had nothing to do but work. The Tri-D showed recycled Christmas messages of cheer and togetherness and I stopped watching Tri-D. I considered not paying my phone bill because I didn't make enough calls.
	Finally, weeks after the breakup,  I got in touch with Ronny. I needed to see someone I knew, if only to keep myself sane, and he wasn't doing much - one great feature his job had, he always said, was that he could set his own hours. We met at a crowded a sports bar with a Tri-D display showing all the football games. The men watched eagle-eyed for injuries, hoping
 to see a leg or arm get snapped. Ronny and I drank a couple beers and talked about people we  both knew, the new drug he was hawking called Zwiggy, normal stuff like that.  He mentioned a girl from our high school he had run into, Terese, who now had silver hair and orange eyes.
	"It wasn't anything though," he said, taking a pull from his beer. "Just a novelty. Didn't even fuck her."
	"You didn't? If I remember her right, you should have."
	"Nah. She was not an attractive person mentally. Too much interest in causes. She kept trying to talk about religion or politics or some shit, especially after I gave her some Zwiggy. You want some, by the way?"
	"Man, you have all the luck." I hadn't had a drink since Lauren - I never wanted to drink alone - so the beer was hitting me pretty hard. "I need to meet some real girls. The hours on this job are killing me. I never go anywhere, never meet anyone."
	"What do you want? Me to set you up with some for-profit ladies I know? You take free samples at work, right?"
	"What? No. I'm not really into that."
	"Why not? Easy access, good times, no side effects."
	"I don't know about no side effects. You should see the guys who come in. I'm not trying to be them, you know? They're a little scummy."
	"Ah, you're full of shit. Hell, I fuck those things sometimes, and I'm not scummy."
	"You do?"
	"Once in a while, sure. It's not like the real deal, but it isn't that bad either. Kind of like tofu that way. A lot better than hookers anyway. With hookers, you have to worry about hurting them, maybe she won't do something you want. And knowing you, you'd probably feel guilty about it. With your devices, or whatever you call them, it's win-win for everybody."
	"A machine jacking you off? Sorry if I don't find the idea all that attractive."
	"You're telling me you never get a stiffy on the job? C'mon. A hole's a hole."
	The cluster around the Tri-D started hollering about a big hit - "Did you see that? Right through the fuckin' wall!" We turned and watched the replay, saw the receiver get pounded, as the announcer described it, right as the ball hit his hands. He broke through the boundary, and a stretcher had to be brought out, to roaring applause. The pass was ruled incomplete.   
	"Damn!" Ronny said, giving an impressed whistle. "That's a hit, right there."
	"Would have been a hell of a catch."
	"Listen," Ronny checked his watch. "I've got to leave in a minute. Business deal, you know."
	"Sure. One more round?"
	"Fine." We finished our current beers and got fresh ones. "What you have to remember is that things are getting better all the time," Ronny said. "The science of pleasure is getting revolutionized, completely, in our age. We're lucky motherfuckers, you know? Used to be if you wanted to get high, you had to deal with addiction, pain, all these side effects. New drugs now, the ones being invented every day, are getting better and better. Non-addictive, no ugly down period, just a golden high."
	"I think I've heard this before," I said, and took a sip of my beer. 
	"Yeah, I got it from some website. Can't remember what it's called, but it's my bible. Anyway, the old morality is gone, the whole feeling-bad-for-yourself thing. You can be great all the time, no guilt, no consequences. All you have to do is lighten up, alright?" He finished his beer in a single jerk. "Man, this Zwiggy is really kicking in now. I'll see you, okay?"
	"See you." He threw his coat on and swept outside. 
	I stayed around, watched some more football, had more beers. A couple close games, and their Tri-D set was amazing - you could see the sweat on the players' faces, feel the explosion of impact on every tackle. I paid my tab at some point and stumbled home. Later, I ordered a pizza and went to bed early. My day off.

	As New Years passed, business slowed to a crawl. Lon said it was because people were trying to keep their resolutions. "They'll be back," he said. "They always backslide." Sol didn't even come in for a couple nights, leaving Lon and me in charge. One shift, I had literally nothing to do. The only customer was Dave, the guy who liked to really fight the girls. Lon set him up and took a rest on the waiting room bench. 
	"Hey, could you watch the desk for a second?" I asked him. He looked up. "I need to go to the back, check on some stuff." 
	He raised an eyebrow. "Sure. Go do what you gotta do." Lon's best feature was he didn't ask many questions.
	I slipped a condom into my pocket and went back to the closet to look the girls over. I hadn't decided to do anything yet, but I was considering it. Not because of Ronny's arguments, mostly because of boredom. Deep boredom. I had an itch for some sort of action, some kind of physical contact, which I hadn't had since Lauren. I don't really know. 
	In any case, the girl I picked out was a pretty standard model: blonde, perfect tits, great legs, taut tan skin, programmed to enjoy absolutely anything. I carried it to a nearby room and sat it down on the bed, which was really just a stained mattress resting on a steel frame. 
	I stopped before I turned her on, feeling nervous, frayed, almost in a trance. The room seemed  muted, far away. Did I want this? I had no idea. I could hear Dave in a room not far away, the muffled high-pitched screams from his girl. He really had his routine down - did some damage, let steam off, but hardly ever cracked a head and never broke the girl entirely.
	I reached over and turned the girl on.
	"Hey baby, how's it going?" she said - it said. It looked me straight in the face. I had gotten in the habit of not looking them in the eye after activating them. I wish that was because they had some dead-eyed inhuman stare, but the truth is their eyes looked  real, too real -   I couldn't tell the difference.
	"You looking for some fun?" She stood up and sidled over, slowly, not taking her gaze off me. It really was incredible how smoothly they moved, how naturally they swayed. She licked her lips. "'Cause I'm looking for some fun, that's for sure."
	 It was odd, handling a girl this way after getting used to treating them as objects, loads to be carried from one room to another. Her skin, warm and inviting, pressed against mine. I took her bra off and toyed with her perfect, perfectly symmetrical breasts. The nipples stiffened in my hands and she murmured encouragement.
	"Yeah baby," she whispered into my ear. "I like that. I want you. I want you to fuck me, hard."
	Jesus, I thought, they can't come up with better dialogue? Lauren would never have said anything that dumb.
	She slipped her hands under my shirt and rubbed my chest. She was pressed close and I could feel her breath - even that felt natural, hot. I twisted her nipples and she said, "Oh, you like it rough, big boy?" I ran my hands over her, down her legs, up her back, over her ass, looking for flaws. Everything was firm, solid, no trace of machinery anywhere. Lauren had felt more fragile, pointed, her hipbones used to stab me. The girl had no bones, was only a flesh-like receptacle.
	I can't lie - I got into it. Some part of me watched, commented on the strangeness of this, but that part became a passenger carried along for the ride. I pressed her against the wall - no way I was touching that mattress - and she moaned convincingly. "You're so strong and big," she said. "I want you inside me, right now." She took my pants off and stroked me. She smiled at me, a devastating white smile. "You are big. Come on, big boy!" Lauren had communicated so much better with only her smile.
	I slid her panties down - incidentally, most of the girls are bald down there - and the part of me that watched from the sidelines thought, here goes nothing. Wonder if inside will  feel any different. 
	Then I must have leaned in the wrong way, gotten too close, triggered a programmed response, because she opened her mouth and kissed me. Fiercely, unexpectedly. I had never thought about the girls' tongues before, and now one was in my mouth, moving like a human tongue. The taste was sudden, foreign. It made me gag, I couldn't breathe, I froze. There is no way to describe it. It felt like a line had been crossed. 
	I should have just turned her off. The switch was inches away on her head, but I panicked, pulled back, threw her away from me. Her head hit the bed frame on the way down, making an audible bang.
	"Ohhhh, baby, you do like it rough," she said, picking herself up. "I like it that way too." Still as encouraging as ever. "Hit me harder!"
	Whatever trance I might have been in had snapped away. I pulled on my pants awkwardly, clumsily - I was still hard -  my hands fumbled with the fly. She approached me, her head bleeding a little, a streak of pink in her golden hair. "Go wild on me," she pleaded, looking at me. I backed off, trying to get my fly shut. She lunged, grabbing at my shirt, and I shoved her back again.
	"Yes!" she exclaimed, rebounding off the wall. "Hit me harder!" I scrambled the hell out, the girl behind me yelling, "Hit me harder! C'mon!" 
	I slammed the door in her face and stood for a moment in the darkened hallway, panting, my heart drumming in my chest. "Jesus," I said out loud. "Fucked up." Muffled yells still came from Dave's room - "Bitch! Bitch!" is what I think he was saying. I leaned against the wall. "Jesus," I said again.
	I went to the bathroom at the back and composed myself. Counted to ten and all that. I drank some of the water from the filthy tap. Probably polluted and rust-filled, I knew, but I needed to wash the taste out of my mouth. I spent a while in front of the mirror. I didn't know exactly what was looking back at me.
	When I came back there were still no customers and Lon was still on the bench. "You alright?" he asked. I must really have looked like crap. 
	"Fine," I said. "I think I need to quit though."
	"For tonight? I can probably deal with it."
	"No. I can stay until you find someone else, a week maybe, but I need to quit."
	Lon frowned. Another man might have asked questions. He shrugged, like he wasn't sure why anyone would quit but it wasn't any skin off him. "Okay kid, sure."
	Sol didn't like it when I told him the next day, but I could barely even look at the girls without gagging so I didn't have much of a choice. My excuse was I couldn't work nights anymore.
	"Well this is shitty, kid," he said. "Quit when you're almost fucking competent. Whatever. Don't ask me for any favors. I don't write letters of recommendation, got it?"
	"Got it."
	
	I had savings I could live on while I looked for a new job - the advantage of being alone is you never spend any money going out. I didn't call Ronny, and I wasn't going to go back to Stop 'n' Eat or some crap like that. What I did was sign up for "career counseling," where you go into a booth and take a test and that somehow determines what you are good at. Kind of dumb, but I didn't have another idea.
	In the test booth there was a chair, a keyboard, and a Tri-D set projecting  a smiling man in a suit. "Hi there!" he said. "Welcome to career counseling! First, I'm going to ask you some questions, and you try to answer them as honestly as possible, all right? Just type in your answers on that keyboard there. We'll then take your answers and use a highly scientific, tried-and-true system to determine what job will make you as happy as you can be. Just go ahead and get settled in the chair, and hit any key when you're ready to begin."
	I hit any key.
	"Question one: where do you see yourself in five years?"
	That should have been an easy one, the type of bullshit question they ask you at every job interview. Everyone should probably have an answer for that, but when I saw myself in five years - or even one year - I couldn't see what I would doing or where I would be or who would be around me. The future was a blank.     
	"In five years," I typed, "I hope to know where I'm going."