Read Online Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: William Gibson
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get a SIN, if you didn’t have one, but it stood to reason you’d have to
go into a building somewhere and talk to a suit, and that was a long way from Mona’s
idea of a good time or even normal behavior.
She had a drill for getting dressed in the squat, and she could do it in the dark.
You got your thongs on, after giving them a quick knock together to dislodge possible
crawlies, and then you walked over to where you knew there was a roll of old fax on
a Styrofoam crate beside the window. You peeled off about a meter of fax, maybe a
day and a half of
Asahi Shimbun
, folded and creased it, put it down on the floor. Then you could stand on it, get
the plastic bag from beside the crate, undo the twist of wire that held it shut, and
find the clothes you wanted. When you stepped out of the thongs to put your pants
on, you knew you’d be stepping on fresh fax. It was an article of faith with Mona
that nothing was going to wander across the fax in the time it took her to step into
a pair of jeans and get the thongs back on.
You could put on a shirt or whatever, carefully reseal the bag, and get out of there.
Makeup, when required, went on in the corridor outside; there was some mirror left,
beside the derelict elevator, a Fuji biofluorescent strip glued above it.
There was a strong piss smell beside the elevator this morning, so she decided to
skip the makeup.
You never saw anybody in the building, but you heard them sometimes; music through
a closed door, or footsteps just gone around a corner at the far end of a corridor.
Well, that made sense; Mona had no desire to meet her neighbors either.
She took the stairs down three flights and into the gaping dark of the underground
garage. She had her flashlight in her hand, found her way with six quick little blinks
that steered her around stagnant puddles and dangling strands of dead optic cable,
up the concrete steps and out into the alley. You could smell the beach, sometimes,
inthe alley, if the wind was right, but today it just smelled of garbage. The side of
the squat towered away above her, so she moved fast, before some asshole decided to
drop a bottle or worse. Once she was out on the Avenue, she slowed, but not too much;
she was conscious of the cash in her pocket, and full of plans for spending it. Wouldn’t
do to get taken off, not when it looked like Eddy had wrangled them some kind of ticket
out. She alternated between telling herself it was a sure thing, that they were practically
gone, and warning herself not to get her hopes up. She knew Eddy’s sure things: hadn’t
Florida been one of them? How it was warm in Florida and the beaches were beautiful
and it was full of cute guys with money, just the spot for a little working vacation
that had already stretched into the longest month Mona could remember. Well, it was
fucking hot in Florida, like a sauna. The only beaches that weren’t private were polluted,
dead fish rolling belly-up in the shallows. Maybe the private stretches were the same,
but you couldn’t see them, just the chainlink and the guards in shorts and cop shirts
standing around. Eddy’d get excited by the weapons the guards carried and describe
each one to her in numbing detail. He didn’t have a gun himself, though, not as far
as she knew, and Mona figured that was a good thing. Sometimes you couldn’t even smell
the dead fish, because there was another smell, a chlorine smell that burned the roof
of your mouth, something from the factories up the coast. If there were cute guys,
they were still tricks, and the ones down here weren’t exactly offering to pay double.
About the only thing to like about Florida was drugs, which were easy to come by and
cheap and mostly industrial strength. Sometimes she imagined the bleach smell was
the smell of a million dope labs cooking some unthinkable cocktail, all those molecules
thrashing their kinky little tails, hot for
go into a building somewhere and talk to a suit, and that was a long way from Mona’s
idea of a good time or even normal behavior.
She had a drill for getting dressed in the squat, and she could do it in the dark.
You got your thongs on, after giving them a quick knock together to dislodge possible
crawlies, and then you walked over to where you knew there was a roll of old fax on
a Styrofoam crate beside the window. You peeled off about a meter of fax, maybe a
day and a half of
Asahi Shimbun
, folded and creased it, put it down on the floor. Then you could stand on it, get
the plastic bag from beside the crate, undo the twist of wire that held it shut, and
find the clothes you wanted. When you stepped out of the thongs to put your pants
on, you knew you’d be stepping on fresh fax. It was an article of faith with Mona
that nothing was going to wander across the fax in the time it took her to step into
a pair of jeans and get the thongs back on.
You could put on a shirt or whatever, carefully reseal the bag, and get out of there.
Makeup, when required, went on in the corridor outside; there was some mirror left,
beside the derelict elevator, a Fuji biofluorescent strip glued above it.
There was a strong piss smell beside the elevator this morning, so she decided to
skip the makeup.
You never saw anybody in the building, but you heard them sometimes; music through
a closed door, or footsteps just gone around a corner at the far end of a corridor.
Well, that made sense; Mona had no desire to meet her neighbors either.
She took the stairs down three flights and into the gaping dark of the underground
garage. She had her flashlight in her hand, found her way with six quick little blinks
that steered her around stagnant puddles and dangling strands of dead optic cable,
up the concrete steps and out into the alley. You could smell the beach, sometimes,
inthe alley, if the wind was right, but today it just smelled of garbage. The side of
the squat towered away above her, so she moved fast, before some asshole decided to
drop a bottle or worse. Once she was out on the Avenue, she slowed, but not too much;
she was conscious of the cash in her pocket, and full of plans for spending it. Wouldn’t
do to get taken off, not when it looked like Eddy had wrangled them some kind of ticket
out. She alternated between telling herself it was a sure thing, that they were practically
gone, and warning herself not to get her hopes up. She knew Eddy’s sure things: hadn’t
Florida been one of them? How it was warm in Florida and the beaches were beautiful
and it was full of cute guys with money, just the spot for a little working vacation
that had already stretched into the longest month Mona could remember. Well, it was
fucking hot in Florida, like a sauna. The only beaches that weren’t private were polluted,
dead fish rolling belly-up in the shallows. Maybe the private stretches were the same,
but you couldn’t see them, just the chainlink and the guards in shorts and cop shirts
standing around. Eddy’d get excited by the weapons the guards carried and describe
each one to her in numbing detail. He didn’t have a gun himself, though, not as far
as she knew, and Mona figured that was a good thing. Sometimes you couldn’t even smell
the dead fish, because there was another smell, a chlorine smell that burned the roof
of your mouth, something from the factories up the coast. If there were cute guys,
they were still tricks, and the ones down here weren’t exactly offering to pay double.
About the only thing to like about Florida was drugs, which were easy to come by and
cheap and mostly industrial strength. Sometimes she imagined the bleach smell was
the smell of a million dope labs cooking some unthinkable cocktail, all those molecules
thrashing their kinky little tails, hot for
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