The city was mad, dizzying, glittery. From this rooftop height, Carmela could see everything practically. In the rising sunlight, its shadow loomed large and long. A second shadow draped over her.
"Don't jump," the shadow said. Then, before Carmela knew what was happening, soft lambskin slid onto her shoulders; faux fur tickled at her nose. "I don't care what your asshole brothers said to you in there. It's not worth it."
"Graves," she said, wiping her cheeks clean of any tear tracks remaining and twisting her head to look at the boy. A few years older than her, he was the kind of boy mothers warned their little girls about. Carmela had barely known her mother. She smiled at him, a little half-smile. Then, remembering herself, she scowled. "Don't you have more interesting things to do in the party?"
"Nah." He sat down beside her with a groan. His long legs curled up to his chest. "The main attraction is outside."
"Snake charmer."
"I meant the sunrise, you twit," he said. Then, "But your new nose looks pretty good, too."
"Thanks. It's not the only thing that's new."
"Oh yeah? What else did you upgrade?"
"Maybe someday I'll show you."
Silence spread between them as the golden-green glow of dawn stretched over the city. Energy crackled in the air. But as energy does, it burned up quickly. The two of them looked out on the city. Below, the club thrummed with bass.
"How many years d'ya think we got before the sun stops rising?" Graves asked.
"Sampling your own stash, crazy?"
"Nah, I'm serious. Sunrise used to be different colored. Now, look at it. It looks sick."
Carmela looked out at the city and shook her head. Then, agitated, she reached into her purse for some cigarettes.
"Got a light?" she asked.
"Those'll kill you if the Z doesn't first."
"It's all recreational. I can quit whenever I want."
"They all say that." He pulled out a lighter anyways. "Gimme one."
He lit her cig for her and then one for himself. Carmela took a deep drag off of hers and exhaled through her nose.
"Daddy wants to ship me to boarding school," she told him. "For college. All girls. On the mainland."
"Well, shit."
"You gonna miss me?"
"Not as much as you're gonna miss me."
They shared drunken laughs and Carmela put her head on his shoulder, nestling into him. He smelled like cigarettes and dirt and sweat. So alive compared to the deadbeats in the nightclub they were escaping.
She missed him already.
"I got an extra hit," he said, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans.
"What about your bottom line?"
"The bottom line is you're leaving in - what? - a week? Let's make some good memories before you leave this shit hole. You got a kit in that wonder-bag of yours?"
She rummaged for a syringe. He shook his long hair from its ponytail and used the rubber band to tourniquet her arm. Giddiness flooded her stomach and the fuzzy kiss she put on his lips is the last thing she would remember from that night.
—
She came back from college a woman. No longer Carmela Largo. Amber Sweet. Her soft brown hair was the color of jet and her kohl-rimmed eyes seemed somehow less lively. Still more lively than anyone else in Sanitarium.
Anyone else, that is, except him.
Graves' shoulders were broader. The coat fitted him looser around the waist, tighter in the chest. It swished after him when he walked, made him regal. More regal than Amber remembered. She approached him one night, trembling.
"Jesus, Carmela," he said. "You got the shakes bad."
"I can pay," said Amber through chattering teeth. "Need Z."
"What happened to 'recreational use only'?" he asked.
It wasn't the time for teasing. Her hands like claws grasped the front of his jacket.
"Graves, please. Don't fuck around. Just…"
He pulled her hair aside and placed the tip of his Z-gun at her neck. A spark and then she slid down, dropping like a sack of flour at his feet. Prostrate. Worshipful. Grateful.
"First hit's free," he told her, squatting and stroking her hair. "C'mon. Let's get you home."
He guided her – stumbling, incoherent her – home. She pressed a sloppy kiss to his jaw. If she could have felt, she would have felt his skin grow hot and his pulse flicker under her lips.
"Such a gentleman," she teased. Her words blurred together.
From the window above, Rotti Largo watched his only daughter paw at the bastard son of a surGEN and his whore. The no good delinquent. The charity case. Just one of the reasons he sent his little girl far away. When she stumbled inside, Daddy kept Amber home and grounded, indoors locked up for the rest of the week.
—
Her Zydrate-addled dreams – vivid, glowing dreams – kept her company. Staff passing outside her door whispered that Miss Amber was going crazy or else she was talking to someone hidden in her room.
—
Amber found Graves again upon her release, sober and clear eyed with a proposal. She smoothed her hands over the stiff faux-fur of his coat and smiled.
"You, me, the pier," she said. "Tonight. At midnight."
"I got work," he told her.
"Work?" she wrinkled her nose. "Did you finally get a real job?"
Graves smirked his wouldn't-you-like-to-know smirk.
"Define 'real'," he said. "I ain't a bank teller or some shit, if that's what you're thinking."
"You doing a deal, then?" Amber asked. His silence seemed a 'yes'. She sighed. "Fine. After you Z 'em up. Meet me."
She waited for him on the dock until two AM. When he appeared, he smelled like death. Like dirt and sweat and something stale and odious. Amber wrinkled her nose.
"The hell took you so long?" she snapped. "You stink!"
"I told you I had work."
"Where? A sewer?"
"Good guess. Not quite."
"You need a bath."
"You need to cool off."
Neither knew who pushed who but they tumbled into the sea together to wash off. They made love on the shore during low-tide. Sand and salt clung to their skin as they lay together, breathing ragged. His heart beat ebbed and flowed like the waves. Amber placed a kiss to his bared chest. And then she noticed red, raw scarring.
"What the hell happened?" she asked, tracing the skin. A chill shuddered through her spine. She'd seen what those cattle prods the GeneCops carried could do.. If she didn't know any better—
"Nothing. Nothing you gotta worry about."
He kissed her furrowed brow.
—
She sought him out again a week later, this time, illing.
"You could have all the Zydrate you want," he grumbled, counting the credits she forced into his hand. "Why bother paying for my street shit?"
"Z first, questions later."
"You won't be able to answer a damn thing once I Z you."
"Daddy cut me off," she said. "From the Z. He wants me clean."
"What if I want you clean?"
"Graves… Don't even joke. Please. I hurt. So bad."
He saw the surgical scar running the length of her throat. It stirred him. Tempted him. He imagined for a moment running his tongue along its length, drinking in the salt of her skin, hearing her mewl under his touch, healing the place with soothing kisses… Instead he readied the Z-gun and said, "Spread your legs. I can't use your neck for this one."
Her legs bowed, like a dancer's. The tip of the Z=gun kissed her skin and she gasped, moaned, collapsed.
If he didn't know better, GraveRobber would have sworn the mumbled words on her lips were "I love you."
—
He sought her out next. In his hand, Graves carried a copy of The Evening Slice.
"Who is he?" he asked, jabbing a finger at the cover.
"Did you scale the wall to get in here?"
Amber's bedroom could have belonged to a preteen girl instead of a college-aged girl. Daddy hadn't anticipated pulling her out of school. Hadn't gotten around to changing it. Posters of musicians lined the deep purple walls. White furniture softened everything.
"Who cares what I did? What did you do?"
He threw the magazine at her. Amber didn't have to look to know what the headline said.
"We're just fooling around," she said. "He's nobody. Nobody important. Just some ambassador's son. Barely speaks English."
"Uses his tongue other ways, I bet."
"So what if he does?" Amber snapped. "I had to do something!"
"Whaddya mean?"
"The city's buzzing about where street grade shit comes from. Dead bodies! I can't be connected to that! I thought you were fucking kidding when you said-"
Her voice broke. Her head fell limply into her hands. Her hair – fire-truck red – shook on her shoulders. No tears, though.
For a moment, GraveRobber considered touching her.
But she was no better than any other scalpel slut. Worse maybe, for leading him on all these years. For pretending like she gave a shit when all she ever wanted was a hit of the glow. For acting like everybody and everything should do as she said.
For making him care about her.
"What did you hook me on?" She looked up at him. And in her eyes, GraveRobber only saw Carmela. Not Amber Sweet, not at all. Carmela the betrayer, Carmela the betrayed. "What the hell have you been shooting me up with?"
"The name 'GraveRobber' didn't come outta nowhere, sweetheart. You gotta rob a couple of crypts to make a living."
"You make me sick."
"The feeling's mutual, babe."
He kissed her then and her hands knotted into his hair. They fell onto the bed and within minutes, he got out of his trousers and up her skirt. They crashed together and she screamed out his real name when she came. A name no one called him anymore. Her nails bit into his back, digging in and claiming him, holding so tight she might never let go. Some sort of elation took over his face before he reached his own seraphic height.
—
In the fall, she didn't return to college. Instead, she spent her time heavily made up and so frequently surgeried the media went ballistic trying to pinpoint the "real" Amber Sweet.
"That's the kicker," she said, sitting on the dumpster lid, swinging her legs idly. "There really is no Amber Sweet."
"Mm."
GraveRobber pursed his lips and experimented with the side paneling on his Z-gun. He wasn't so sure that was true. Sometimes, she was still Carmela, the wild little rebel he loved; sometimes, she was this other thing, the spoiled rich bitch he hated. And sometimes, the two fused into a combination he'd swear would be deadly in a smarter woman. In time, she could become that smarter woman. Fear was not in GraveRobber's vocabulary. He couldn't afford it. Fear meant you had the luxury of analysis. More often than not, when the GeneCops had him cornered, GraveRobber didn't have the time to be scared. Fight or flight.
Sometimes, Amber thought he'd changed in that way. The boy she used to love had never been cautious, but he'd always been smart. Savvy. Not the sort to goad GeneCops for the hell of it. She did not tell him how sure she was that he'd get a bullet through the brain one of these days. Instead she said, "I'm bored."
"You could go anywhere in the city," he said. "No one asked you to hang out in my alleyway."
"Fuck you." She slid off the dumpster. "Z me."
"You don't even need it right now," he said without looking up.
"Oh for fuck's sake," she said. "You're a dealer, aren't you? Who cares if I need it?"
"I'm not shooting you up because you're bored."
"Why the fuck not?"
"You're not one of my Z-whores."
"That's a hell of a way to speak about your clients."
"It's a hell of a thing to pretend you wanna spend time with me, only to ask for drugs."
"It's not my fault you're more interested in that little thing than me." Amber pouted. "C'mon. I'll pay you double."
He hesitated, then screwed the panel back in place. A beckoning finger made her spread her legs to a hit. When the drug overtook her and Amber passed out in the slimy alley, GraveRobber put his jacket under her head like a pillow and went back to work. He didn't win the argument, but he won silence and peace enough to finish his modifications.
—
When she comes to him now, each time with a new face and the same request, GraveRobber searches for traces of Carmela Largo behind her ever-changing eyes. Sometimes, he remembers the cocksure curl of her lip, the sweet softness of her body curved on his, the sound of her sleeping sighs in the dark. But that's all gone in a flash. To him, her eyes seem dark, cold and vacant, no matter the color or size or shape. Hollow. Some people say the Zydrate did that to her. And maybe they're right. Maybe he destroyed her.
Amber disagrees. She needs him, her savior. He's not the boy she used to love anymore. Sometimes, she catches herself trying to find him under the makeup and sarcasm. But he's not there. Instead, he's the man who gives her the only escape in this shitty, fucked up world. When she rides the glow, she remembers in vivid flashes the salty tang of his skin, the sound of his drunken and splintering laugh, the color of his healthy callused skin. She craves him that way, but needs him as he is now. Maybe she pushed him to this.
Neither says a thing of this. Instead, he readies his gun for her and her voice rolls around the alleyway like marbles.
GraveRobber, sometimes I wonder why I need you at all…