CHAPTER 53: AND WE'LL FORGET ABOUT TODAY UNTIL TOMORROW
In which Reno isn't sleepy, and there is no place he's going to.
All four Turks stood speechless, staring at the flattened remains of Zack's uniform, the gloves whose fingers were still bent to the shape of his hands, and the empty boots, standing to attention, held upright by the thick mud.
Reno was the first to break the silence. "Bloody hell," he muttered between clenched teeth, "I thought only monsters did that."
Mink's head jerked round. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Hey, back off," he bristled. "I'm just saying. You ever seen a human being evaporate before?"
She could not say she had, so she pressed her lips together and glared at him.
"All that mako in his blood," Rude ventured. "Breaks flesh down."
"Yeah. Could be," Reno nodded. "So… anyway, it looks like our little moral dilemma has taken care of itself. Think anybody'll believe it?"
"Oh, shut up," Mink snarled. Her hands clenched into fists. Turning her back on her colleagues, she strode off towards the edge of the butte, heading for the same path Zack's sick friend had taken.
"Hey!" Reno called after her.
She did not slacken her pace or give any sign that she had heard him. He turned to Rude, saying, "Well, I'm not fucking running after her – "
"Don't try it!" Mink shouted over her shoulder. "Come anywhere near me, and I'll punch your face in, I swear it."
The three remaining Turks watched her walk away. She never once looked back. For several minutes after she was lost to sight, nobody spoke. Aviva glanced at Rude, then at Reno, and finally said, "Maybe I – "
"No," said Reno. "Just leave her."
He took out his official phone and called the duty desk. He and Skeeter spoke briefly; Reno's side of the conversation consisted mostly of uh-huh, uh-huh. Closing the phone, he said, "Tseng's all tied up with debriefings. Guess he won't be needing us for a while. Right, then…" He shoved the phone back into his pocket and fixed his eyes on Aviva. "Don't know about you, but I could do with a beer. Fuck report writing. Right, Veev? Let's clock off early for once in our shitty little lives."
Rude said, "The choppers have to go back."
Reno gave Rude the finger and turned on his heel, heading for the helicopter. Aviva heard Rude curse under his breath. He shoved her roughly in the shoulder, and jerked his chin in Reno's direction. "What?" she exclaimed. "You want me to go with him?"
"He shouldn't be alone."
But he's so angry, and I don't understand what's going on. Why are we coming apart like this? "You're his partner," she objected.
"Better if it's you."
"Why?"
"It just is."
This was starting to sound like a dream conversation. "Why is he angry with you?" she asked.
"It's not important."
Is it because of Cissnei? That was what Aviva really wanted to ask. She was afraid Reno might start talking to her about Cissnei – about Zack and Cissnei - and she knew she'd make a fool of herself if he did.
"I'll take your chopper back," Rude added, holding out his hand for the keys.
He sounded as if the thing were already decided. She didn't know how to refuse.
Reno had started the engine. The blades were turning.
"Go," said Rude.
Feeling she had no choice, Aviva began to run across the damp desert soil. "Keys!" Rude called after her. Briefly she turned, throwing them back to him, pleading as she did so, "You'll come find us, won't you?" He nodded. She sprinted the rest of the short distance to Reno's helicopter, yanked the door open and jumped into the co-pilot's seat.
"Nearly left without you," he said. "So, where to?"
"I don't know. Where do you want to go?"
"I dunno. Who cares? Just fuckin' pick somewhere, it's not hard."
Aviva thought fast. Somewhere noisy and lively would be best, somewhere full of distractions, somewhere like – "Wall Market?"
Tseng's first objective, upon leaving the boardroom, was to get Cissnei out of the building, for her own sake as much as anyone else's. Bringing her back to HQ had been a mistake on his part. He couldn't predict what would happen next, or how soon, but it was probably going to be bad, and there was no reason for Cissnei to get caught up in it.
He found her waiting for him in the surveillance room. Knox and Rosalind had given her coffee and were keeping her company. She looked terrible: exhausted, bedraggled, stunned. He told Rosalind to take her to the lockers for a shower, and then dress her in whatever clean civvies they could find. Twenty minutes later she reappeared wearing a rolled-up pair of Skeeter's jeans, loosely belted round the waist, a baggy hoodie, sneakers, and cheap sunglasses. Her uncombed curls had been pulled into a ponytail and stuffed under a Shinra mailman's peaked cap. With her slender build, even from quite close up she could pass as a post-room boy. Tseng gave her money and directions to Augusto's, and said he would meet her there within the hour.
Leaving Rosalind in charge, he went to the lockers and collected a holdall containing a set of his own civilian clothes. Getting himself to Augusto's was a complicated business. First he had to ditch his tail, a process that involved a circuitous route, several smallish windows, one little known back entrance, and the scaling of a wall in a dead-end alley. On any other day, the childishness of playing hide and seek with Scarlet's spies might have afforded him a little comic relief. Today he felt only mounting frustration at the time being wasted. Once he was sure he was alone, he went into the public toilets at the back of Robson's and changed into his street clothes: tan corduroy trousers and a cream polo-neck, a tweed blazer with brown leather patches on the elbows, wire rimmed spectacles, and a homburg hat under which he coiled his hair. He knew the disguise was a good one when Augusto's daughter opened the door and stared at him for several seconds before realising who he was.
Cissnei burst into frantic laughter when she saw him. "Oh, Tseng!" she cried when she could speak, "My god, what do you look like?" She pressed a hand to her mouth. "Oh, shit, it's not funny. Is this what we've come to? Afraid to show our faces in our own city?"
The laughter turned to sobs. She covered her face with both hands. "All this time… everything we did… it was all for nothing. I failed, Tseng. He was always too far ahead of me. I failed him. I failed you. I'm so sorry."
The odds had been against her from the start, but one did not say such things. They smacked too much of excuses. Tseng thought of what Reeve had said - or rather, Reeve's robot cat: They'll die no matter what you do. A prescient remark, for an automaton.
In hindsight, his greatest mistake had been his arrogant refusal to believe it. Today's outcome was probably the best anyone could have reasonably hoped for. Aerith was out of immediate danger, Zack had been spared a return to Hojo's labs, and one could argue, if one wanted to split hairs, that Tseng had been spared another innocent life on his conscience, since he had not personally wielded a sword or fired a gun up on that butte this afternoon. But the fact remained that more than one man had died today, and many more had died in the weeks and months leading up to this day, all of them men, like Tseng, bound to Shinra. In the Turks' utilitarian terms, Zack had deserved to die as much as anyone did.
Tseng's many errors of judgement were obvious to him now. When Zack broke out of Nibelheim he should have sent Rude and Rosalind after him – or Reno – instead of Cissnei. Having failed to do that, he should have gone to Heidegger when Zack reappeared in Gongaga, and apprised him of the target's whereabouts. It would have been no more than what his job required him to do. He should never have left Cissnei to shoulder the burden alone; once Genesis was dead and the Old Man had given his last order regarding the runaways, he ought to have mobilized the Turks in force and ensured that they beat the army to the prize. Since, in hindsight, Zack was doomed to die, Tseng should have done what the Turks did best and used him as a tool for redeeming the department – or, if redemption was out of the question, then at least he could have bought them a little time.
His personal, emotional stake in Zack's survival had blinded him to the bigger picture. He'd turned his conscience into an excuse – used it as his justification for failing to make, in a timely manner, the hard decisions his team needed. Rufus had put his unerring finger on it when he said Tseng was being self-indulgent, and now, perhaps, they were all going to pay the price.
Augusto brought them the decanter of sherry. Tseng poured her a glass. "Drink this," he told her. Obediently she sat up, wiped her eyes with the cuff of her hoodie, and took a sip. Tseng said, "You did everything I asked you to do. Don't blame yourself."
"I know exactly who's to blame," she replied, "and it's not me. And it's not you either. Sometimes I think they – " she rolled her eyes upwards, meaning those old men in the boardroom - "get off on watching us die. They've run out of wars to kill us in, so they make us fight each other instead. And the awful thing is, there's a kind of method in their madness. It's like what they did to the science department when Gast was running the show. By keeping the Turks and the army and SOLDIER at each other's throats they make sure we won't band together against them. I'm sorry if that sounds like treason." Realising how perfunctory her apology sounded, she pulled a face and said, "Yeah, actually, I'm not sorry. And I don't feel like a traitor, either. Loyalty has to go both ways if it's to mean anything."
Tseng, thinking of Rufus, made no comment. Cissnei finished her sherry, put the glass down, and asked, "What's going to happen now, Boss?"
The wire-frame spectacles were pinching his nose. He took them off and said, "Hard to tell. Today's events have put Heidegger in a stronger position. I'm operating on the assumption that Scarlet will soon make a move against us, but I don't know whether her alliance with Heidegger is as solid as it used to be. So much depends on the Old Man. It's impossible to predict what line he's going to take from one day to the next. There are times when I get the sense that he's protecting us. We were 'his Turks' last week. I don't know if we still are. He was in a strange mood today. I expected… I thought he'd be pleased that the business with Zack had finally been resolved, but he went off on a tangent about the Commander. And Lazard."
"What did he say?"
"He asked if I thought Lazard was dead. I said yes."
"I'd feel sorrier for him," said Cissnei, "If he hadn't driven both of them to it."
"Sometimes, I pity him," Tseng admitted.
She stared at him as if he'd lost his mind. "I hope you don't let him see you feel that way," she said at last. "He won't thank you for it."
Conscious that he had let too much slip, Tseng poured her another sherry and steered their conversation back to practicalities. "Let's talk about what you're going to do now," he said. "You can stay here for the next couple of days, but no longer. Get as much rest as you can, and stay indoors, away from the windows. Augusto's an old friend of Charlie's; he's very valuable to us, and I don't want him or his family put in danger. Here – " He pulled an ID pass from his pocket and handed it over to her. "For the train. When you leave this place, go down to Wall Market and take a room there. Corneo won't readily tolerate P.S.M. conducting their business on his turf, so you shouldn't run into any trouble. All the same, don't do anything that might draw attention to yourself. That ID has a bank account attached to it, so money shouldn't be a problem. Call me when you have an address. Whatever you do, do not, under any circumstances, come back to the building."
Cissnei looked down at the ID in her hand. "Cicely Naylor," she read aloud. "Automotive Marketing? Seriously? Tseng, please – don't do this to me. I'm still part of this department, and what happens to one of us, happens to all of us. Don't send me away again. If we're in trouble, I don't want to run and hide."
"You're not hiding," Tseng replied. "You're being held in reserve. And that's an order."
She didn't try to argue with him further. Probably she had no energy left. Her eyes were bloodshot from exhaustion. Sleep was what she needed now, more than anything. No doubt she felt as if she'd never sleep again, but she was young and healthy, and nature would have its way. When she woke, Zack's death would have receded a little bit further into the past, and she would have moved just that little bit forward. For now, Tseng had done all he could. It was time for him to go; time to talk to Rufus. He stood up, legs feeling suddenly leaden. "Get some rest," he told her.
"You too, Boss."
"I'll sleep when I'm dead. Cissnei, I don't know when I'll see you again, so… take care."
At the front door he stopped to prepare himself. The wire-rimmed glasses went back on his nose. He turned up his collar. Opening the door, he gave the homburg one final tug, pulling its brim lower to cover the mark on his forehead. Then he stepped out into the street.
Reno put the helicopter down in a patch of cleared ground just outside the gates to the Market. He and Aviva climbed out, and he locked it. A thuggish-looking teenager was leaning idly against a nearby wall, his hair partly shaved and partly braided in a style that proclaimed his allegiance to Don Corneo. Reno called him over. "Watch the old girl for me," he said. "And there better not be any parts missing when I get back. Give him some money, Veev. More than that; jeez, make it worth the guy's while." A hundred gil changed hands, and the two of them set off at a fast clip, Aviva breaking into a trot to keep pace with Reno's loping stride.
"Do you really think we ought to just leave it like that?" she asked, meaning the helicopter.
"Like I give a shit," he replied.
Aviva swallowed a retort, and decided to concentrate on keeping up with him. He moved as if he had some specific destination in mind. As soon as they passed through the Market gate he led her left, then right, then left again into a lane dominated by the flashing neon lights of a pachinko parlour. Its heavy plate glass doors were fitted with chrome handles; Reno's fingers closed around one, and he began to pull. "You wait out here," he told her. Before she could object, or ask how long he intended to be, he had gone inside, the long tail of his hair flicking through the door as it closed behind him.
Aviva pressed her nose against the glass, following him with her eyes as he made his way between the rows of pinball slot machines. The place was almost empty. She counted five customers, all men, sitting far apart from each other, bodies slumped in their seats, watching the movements of the dropping balls with a quiet desperation. When Reno reached the far end of the shop, an elderly woman came out of the back room. She greeted the Turk like a long-lost child, kissing him on both cheeks, then ushered him into her office and shut the door.
There was nothing for it now. Aviva would have to wait. Never mind that every gut instinct was warning her to run, run away as fast as she could from the trouble she could sense bearing down on them like an express train; Reno was expecting her to be here when he came out, and she wasn't going to let him down, even if she had to wait all night.
Turning around, she folded her arms and began to take stock of her surroundings. This part of the slums was deep under the plate, close to the pillar. It was too late to be afternoon, too early to be evening; most of the bars were not yet open. Up the street to her left Aviva could see a chemist's, and beyond it, a pawn shop. To her right was a barbershop, its red and white pole spinning hypnotically. Across the road, a large, stuffed Nibel bear stood guard outside a tobacconists. The shop next door was a tattoo parlour called 'Magnolia Body Art', where, according to the sign in their window, she could have her nipples pierced 'while-u-wait'. Aviva longed to show that sign to Reno. Hopefully, when he came out again he'd be more in the mood to laugh with her at such absurdities.
Hopefully he won't keep me waiting here so long that I'd have time to get my nipples pierced. Then again, she had no idea how long nipple piercing took. Maybe it was quick and painless, like having your ears pierced. Did they even bother with anaesthetic? She wondered what kind of gun they would use, and how much blood there would be. Zack Fair had shed a lot of blood, but still, she would have expected more. Had he felt the pain of each bullet as pierced his body? Did someone like him even feel pain like a normal person? She hoped not, because if he did, it must have been an agonizing way to die, slowly bleeding to death while his flesh kept healing over and over and over -
Aviva was freed from this train of thought by the sound of her phone ringing. It was Rude, calling to tell her he'd arrived back at HQ. He said he'd be coming down to join them as soon as he could get away, but he sounded like he wished he didn't have to.
He hung up. She put the phone away. The pachinko parlour door opened behind her, emitting a burst of jangling noise. She turned around. "Where to now?" asked Reno. He wasn't enunciating too clearly. A nut-sized lump distended his cheek, and a smouldering roll-up dangled from his lower lip. It smelt of loco weed.
Aviva wanted to say, 'I don't know, Reno. Where do you want to go?' but that hadn't gone over so well last time. Food would be good, she thought: something greasy and stodgy to line his stomach. Down the road beyond the porno shop she could see a sign for a pizzeria. She took him to it, and he seemed perfectly happy to be led.
He let her do the ordering. She chose things she knew he liked: anchovies, pepperoni, hot chili peppers. He asked for a beer. It came in the largest mug she had ever seen, at least a quart, if not more. When the food arrived he took a slice and pushed the rest over to her, saying, "Eat up, runt." Aviva stole a quick glance at his face. She was trying to monitor his eyes for signs of intoxication without appearing to do so, but so far, he looked as sober as ever. The lump in his cheek was gone. She wondered what it had been.
"Good?" he asked, meaning the pizza she was struggling to eat. She hatedanchovies. She hoped he wouldn't notice.
"Too much," she said. "Help me out here."
He took another slice, but he didn't really want it, and left it on his plate after a couple of bites. Soon the giant mug of beer was empty. Reno set it down with an air of finality and said, "Any more of those and I'll be pissing all night. You done, Veev?"
Half the pizza had been eaten. "Done," she said.
"Then let's go find a bar. I'll let you pick the first one."
These, she felt, were ominous words.
He would start getting snarky if she didn't make a quick decision, so she chose a place at random in the very next street they came to, a tiny bar not much wider than the door through which they entered, with room for about a dozen patrons. Reno and Aviva were the first: the bartender had just opened up. Reno ordered a double vodka. Aviva ordered a tonic water.
"Fuck that," he said, fixing her with his penetrating stare. "Are you babysitting me?"
"No!" she lied indignantly.
"Then don't be a wet blanket. Bartender, put shot of vodka in it."
The bartender looked at her. She nodded, wishing now she'd asked for a lager. Reno would have let that pass. She could see this night was shaping up to be a marathon, and she couldn't hold her liquor like he could. She'd be passing out on the floor long before he lost the ability to shoot straight. In fact, Aviva could not remember the last time she'd seen Reno well and truly plastered. After so many years of drinking and smoking and potions and drugs and so much exposure to materia, his body must have developed an inhuman degree of resistance. Probably he was so pickled nothing could knock him off his feet. Probably you could shoot him full of holes and his body would just suck up those bullets, and when he died he'd dissolve in a haze of corrosive green -
"Veev." Reno's hand closed round her wrist. "Think about something else. Talk to me."
"About what?"
"I dunno. Anything. Like… read any good books lately?"
"I don't really read much."
"C'mon, you can do better than that."
"I saw a movie last week," she offered.
"Yeah? Who'd you go with? A hot date, I hope."
"Just Roz and me. It was that war movie. 'Adamantine.'"
"Any good?"
"Not really. The guy playing Sephiroth was all wrong. He didn't give off that, you know, presence. And the plot was so stupid. I got bored and fell sleep. I don't know why, but for some reason I always sleep really well in cinemas. I think it's the combination of the darkness and the voices. It's sort of soothing - like, you know, when you're a little kid tucked up in bed and the grownups are down in the kitchen talking? And the seats are so velvety and cosy. Sometimes I think what would be really nice would be to go to one of those all-night back-to-back moviethons and just sleep right the way through it."
Reno didn't reply. Aviva realised he'd stopped listening. His glass of vodka was empty; she'd barely started on hers. From his top pocket he took another roll-up of weed and lit it. His fingers drummed on the countertop.
"This place is too quiet," he said. "There's a pool hall round the corner. Drink up and let's go."
The clientele at the pool hall were mostly men, and from the looks of them Aviva was pretty sure that they'd been drinking steadily ever since lunchtime. Their loud voices echoed off the low ceiling, punctuated by the clack of ball against ball. Clouds of smoke hung in layers over the green baize tables. Aside from Aviva, the only women in the place were two long-legged teenagers sitting at the other end of the bar, dressed in short skirts, spangly tank tops and impossibly high heels. They looked her up and down and giggled together; she felt acutely conscious of the stained suit she was wearing, the dried sweat in her armpits, the badlands dust streaking her face.
"I'm going to the ladies," she told Reno.
Using her fingers, she combed the worst of the grit from her hair, and washed her face and hands with cold water. When she returned, the old jukebox beside the bar was playing a song that had been popular before she was born, and Reno was halfway through a game of pool with one of Corneo's flunkeys. A drink was waiting for her. Aviva picked it up, took a sip, and cursed inwardly. He'd ordered her a double.
Several hours passed. Aviva perched on a barstool, spinning out her vodka tonics while Reno won game after game. He moved so fast he was lining up the next shot before the previous ball had dropped into the pocket. His calculation of trajectories was impeccable: he pulled off strings of doubles, and almost never missed a plant. "You're just showing off," she told him when he came to join her in one of the breaks between games. "You'll need to hustle more if you ever want to make a living at it."
"I do enough hustling in my day job, thanks," he replied with a grin. His pool cue lay cradled against his shoulder. In his hand was another double vodka, his seventh tonight – or maybe it was his eighth; Aviva was finding it difficult to keep track. She wondered what could be keeping Rude so long.
A hungry-looking young man with tattoos up both forearms came lounging over to them, walking on the balls of his feet. She assumed it was Reno he wanted, but instead found herself being challenged to a game. Reno barked with laughter. "Man, you don't know what you're letting yourself in for. This one might look small, but she's a firecracker. Well, go on, Half-Pint, knock 'im dead. The pride of the Turks is at stake here." Leaning so close that she could smell the alcohol on his breath, he added in a loud whisper, "I think that guy fancies you, Veev."
Embarrassment burned right to the tips of her ears. The youth threw a look at his friends, who were sitting together, sniggering, at a table not far away. They dared him, she realised.
With a grin and a thumbs up, Reno handed her his cue. Aviva hopped down from the barstool, and discovered she was drunker than she'd bargained for: her knees felt distinctly wobbly. Don't be a wimp, she scolded herself. He's watching you. Normally the thought would have been enough to turn her into a fumbling mess of nerves. Tonight, fortified by four vodka tonics, she was beginning to feel indestructible. She potted two balls straight off the break, and in less than a dozen turns she had won her game. Reno was the only one who didn't look surprised.
"You're a credit to my teaching, little one." He gave her shoulders a congratulatory squeeze. "Okay, this was fun, but I'm done here. Want some food? Ho-Chu's not far. I could murder a curry. Come on."
Wall Market had woken up while they were inside the pool hall. All the bars were open now, and the streets were filled with people. The air smelt of hot cooking fat and caramelised sugar, unwashed bodies, woodsmoke, sweet pungent loco weed. Here and there tight-knit gaggles of salarymen in suits, come to the slums on a corporate adventure, clustered round restaurant windows, reading the menu cards. A lone foolish tourist with a camera round his neck – an out-of-towner, by the look of him – stood in the middle of the road trying to take a picture. Aviva reckoned that expensive camera would be in someone else's hands before the night was done. Around him flowed a stream of locals: workers stopping for a drink on their way home, friends out window-shopping, families with kids eating hot dogs or licking ice creams. Lovers of every gender and pairing walked along holding hands, or made out in darkened doorways. Everywhere Aviva looked she saw street hawkers and beggars, shoplifters and pickpockets, feral children with sticky fingers, pimps, drug-dealers, black-marketeers, white-slavers, and every sort of prostitute imaginable. Even if she couldn't actually see them, they were certainly visible to her imagination; she knew they were lurking somewhere close by.
At the top of the street a blind busker was making music, blowing into his harmonica and shaking a tambourine. Aviva dropped a coin into his cup. Someone who knew Reno's name (but who didn't know Reno's name?) called to them over the hubbub of the street. She looked round, and saw a hairy, barrel-chested man, wearing nothing but a black satin jock-strap, a leather gimp mask, and some chains, standing at the entrance to a bondage shop on the other side of the road. Shouting at the top of his lungs, he invited the Turks to come inside, offering them a two-for-one discount. "You still couldn't afford us," Reno shouted back. The tout thought this was hilarious: he roared with laughter, and slapped his great round beer belly, making it quiver like a furry blancmange.
"You know what's great about this place?" said Reno to Aviva. "The way the people here don't shit themselves at the sight of us." Suddenly he stopped in his tracks. "Oh, hey – look!"
"What?"
"Crane game – " And he was off, darting through the crowds to press his face against the window of an amusement arcade. Aviva elbowed her way after him. "Look," he said. "Moogles. Want me to get you one?"
"It's okay – "
"C'mon, you're a sucker for those things. You name the colour, I betcha I can get it on my first go. For I am the master of the claw…"
Five minutes later they were back on the street, one powder-blue plush moogle tucked under Aviva's arm, where it pressed uncomfortably against her gun holster. But Reno wasn't finished with his detours yet. First he nipped down an ally to relieve himself. Then, as they were passing a Wutaian herbalist's, he muttered, "Oh, yeah," to himself, like he'd forgotten something, tapped her on the shoulder, said, "Hang on," and ducked inside through the banners hanging in the shop doorway. Aviva thought about following him, but decided against it. She didn't want to be an aggravation. Instead, she took out her phone and called Rude.
"What's taking you so long?" she demanded.
He told her Shinra had shut down the railway system due to a terrorist alert. He'd been forced to disembark, and was taking the service stairs down the central pillar. "We're going to Ho-Chu's," she told him, "Please hurry. Gotta go - " She managed to get her phone out of sight just before Reno rejoined her.
The clapboard front of the curry house was painted candy pink, with the words "Ho-Chu Hungry Hungry" drawn over the doorway in big purple letters. Reno shouldered his way inside through the bead curtain, followed by Aviva, who immediately felt the change in temperature: the place was heaving with customers, the curry–laden air sweltering from their body heat. By the time she and Reno reached the bar, the proprietor, Ho-Chu himself, a stout, swarthy Mideelian with a wide mouth and a handlebar moustache, had been told of their arrival, and came out to greet them. If they would give him five minutes, he said, he could arrange a private room away from the crush. Meanwhile, would they care for something to drink? On the house?
"I'll have a bottle of Pfeiffers," said Reno. "And a vodka tonic for the little one."
Ho-Chu bustled off. The bartender produced Reno's bottle from under the counter, and gave him a glass. Then he mixed Aviva's drink, added a miniature paper umbrella, and presented it to her with a elaborate flourish that set her off in a fit of giggles.
"Hey, you know what would be really funny?" said Reno, unscrewing his bottle cap.
"What?"
"What?" he mimicked. "Hey, what are you looking at me for, Half-pint? I'm asking you."
"But I don't know. I thought you did. "
"Me?" he laughed. "I got no fucking idea. That's what's funny."
While Aviva was still puzzling over this, Ho-Chu reappeared on the other side of the bar. "Come this way," he said, lifting the counter for them to pass through. They followed him into the back of the restaurant, where their room had been prepared. It was warm and windowless and very small, about the size of the departmental broom cupboard. Ho-chu apologized profusely for these deficiencies. "It'll do," said Reno, putting two hundred gil into his hand. Ho-chu bowed, went out, and shut the door.
"I like it," said Aviva. "It's cosy." A low rattan table with a glass top stood in the middle of the room, and the remainder of the floor was completely covered by plump cushions in mismatched, colourful patterns. A single lightbulb, painted red, dangled overhead, filling the small space with a gentle pink glow. Everything smelt spicy. Aviva took off her shoes, stepped over the table and sat down crosslegged with her back against the wall, cuddling the plush moogle in her lap.
Reno sat opposite her and started emptying his pockets. A crumpled packet of Malboros, loose tobacco, skins, weed, a box of Shinra 'Imp' brand matches, two Shinra X-Tra-Strong potions, ether tablets, a baggy of what looked like clay marbles but which she knew were Dragon Fangs, and thirty prescription-strength hypers in a bottle with a child-proof cap: he lined them all up on the table in front of her. Aviva wondered why he was doing this. Maybe if she had another drink, she would feel brave enough to ask.
He opened the bottle of hypers, shook two into his hand, offered them to her.
She shook her head vigorously. "No, thanks."
"Suit yourself." Reno swallowed them, then shrugged off his jacket, threw it into the corner, and flung himself full-length on the pillows, arms crossed behind his head. He lay like this for perhaps thirty seconds, jiggling his foot. Then he said, "Fuck. I need to pee again," and was up and out the door with the fluidity of an eel. Ten seconds later a waitress came in with a bowl of poppadoms. She put them on the table and left. Aviva pulled out her phone.
"Rude? Where are you now?"
"Look, I'm doing my best."
"He's got all this stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Everything. He's been taking hypers and weed and I don't know what all else."
"How many?"
"I don't know. Lots."
"Can he still walk?"
"He seems okay, but – I'm worried. I feel like he's going to do something. Can't you hurry?"
"I'll be twenty minutes."
This time she didn't manage to get her phone out of sight before Reno slipped back into the room. "Who was that?' he asked as he set to work on a roll-up. "Tseng?"
He asked this in such a strange tone of voice, as if he was telling a joke but didn't expect her to get it, a private joke that only he would find funny. Or maybe… maybe it only sounded strange because she wasn't used to hearing him call Tseng 'Tseng' instead of 'Boss'.
"No," she said.
"Yeah, didn't think so. He's got bigger fish to fry. Was your boyfriend checking up on you?"
"I don't have a boyfriend."
"Well, why the fuck not? You're fit and you're not ugly. If Hunter can get a boyfriend, you can too. You're letting the side down, Veev. What's the problem? Are you too picky?"
"I guess… something like that." Hastily she grabbed her drink and tossed it down.
"Oh, god, you're not into chicks, are you?"
"No!"
"Yeah, I didn't think so. But I've been wrong before."
The carefulness with which he pronounced each word - the slow deliberation of his movements as he assembled the spliff – his slack facial muscles, and his glassy eyes – all these things betrayed the fact that he was much more thoroughly wasted than she'd originally supposed.
"Yeah," he said. "I got it all wrong. What an idiot, eh? I guess the joke's on me. But here's the thing, Veev. Here's the thing. You spend half your life working with someone, you'd think there'd be no secrets left, right? You think you know them inside out. In any given situation you can predict exactly what they'd do. You know them so well you could practically finish their fucking sentences for them. And you know that whatever shit happens, whoever else screws you over, they'll always have your back. And then they go and do something that's so far outside of anything you'd ever have thought possible that it blows your fucking world apart."
She wanted to say, is that why you're being like this?, but she couldn't wrap her tongue around the words. More drink might help. She reached for her glass. To her surprise, it was empty. She had no memory of drinking it, and looked at Reno, wondering if he'd somehow stolen it without her noticing. He pushed his bottle of vodka her way. Aviva poured out two fingers and drank it in one gulp.
Very slowly and solemnly he told her, "I think I may have to kill someone."
"Who?"
Reno tried to look her in the eye, but failed. His own eyes wouldn't stay focused. "God," he slurred, "You've got no idea what I'm talking about, do you?"
Not exactly, but she had a shortlist. Cissnei was right at the top of it, and Zack Fair, too - except he was dead already. Was Rude the culprit? Had he and Reno had some kind of bust-up? Was that why Rude had forced her to come with Reno tonight? Must have been one hell of a fight. Maybe that's why Rude was taking so long to get there. Maybe the fight had been so bad, and Rude was so pissed off, that he wasn't planning to show up at all. Ever. She was going to be all alone with Reno for the rest of the night. A frightening prospect, but also… exciting.
Reno took a match from the box, struck it, and lit his spliff. Closing his eyes, he inhaled deeply. She thought his face looked beautiful when he did that.
"Reno," she began, "I – "
"Want some?" He held out the joint.
Aviva shook her head. She'd seen what he'd put into it: tobacco, dope, loco weed, and half a tranquilizer crumbled to dust under his thumbnail. The mere thought of having all that coursing through her bloodstream was enough to make her feel dizzy. Very dizzy.
"You're so naïve, Veev," he laughed. "I used to think you'd grow out of it, but now…. Now, I think you know exactly what you're doing. It's like your version of Rude's shades. There are some things you just fucking refuse to see."
Her head was spinning. Her ears were ringing. Damn. What had Reno just said? She'd had a reply on the tip of her tongue, and now she'd forgotten it.
"It's so hot in here," she said.
"Take your jacket off, nitwit."
The jacket didn't come off without a fight. Somehow the sleeves kept tying themselves into knots. Once she'd finally beaten it into submission she decided to get rid of the tie as well. This was more of a challenge. Her hands seemed to have grown an extra pair of thumbs, and Reno's giggling was throwing her off her stride.
"You are so drunk," he informed her.
The door opened and the waitress came in carrying a tray of food. She put one bowl of curry in front of Reno, the other in front of Aviva, and added a large carafe of very cold water and two tall tumblers filled with ice cubes. Aviva grabbed for the water, poured off a glassful and drank it noisily, thirstily. Reno shook his head.
"You'll make yourself sick if you do that," he said. "Eat."
It might have been the smell of the curry, or it might have been all the second-hand smoke she'd absorbed from his spliffs, but Aviva suddenly realised she was starving. Eagerly she began to tuck in. So consumed was she by the pleasures of eating that she'd almost finished her bowl before she looked up and realised Reno hadn't touched his.
He was leaning back on one elbow, the long red tail of his hair falling across his chest. With his other hand he held a ball of dragon fang up to the light, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger. Then, like a magician, he made it disappear. He showed her his palm – empty – and the sinewy back of his hand. He wiggled the tips of his long fingers. "Nothing up my sleeve," he grinned.
"Where's it gone?" she asked.
Reno spread his hand wide, and the little ball of crude materia dropped with a dull plunk onto the table. He'd hidden it in the fold of skin between his ring finger and pinky.
"Prestidigitation," he told her, licking the residue from his thumb. "Mozo taught me that."
The strong chilies in the curry had cleared her head a little. She remembered now what she wanted to say. "Reno, can't you stop?"
"Stop what?"
"This. I know what you're trying to do, but honestly, I don't think you can. Any normal person would be in a coma by now if they'd taken everything you've taken tonight. That's the body's natural defenses, isn't it? If you start filling it with toxic gunk it'll react by knocking you out before you can do too much permanent damage. But you – all the stuff you've been taking all these years means you've built up too much tolerance. It's like people who can't feel pain. They don't know when they're hurt. I'm afraid that if you don't stop now, you'll pass the point of no return. Like, soon. You could actually kill yourself."
"That," said Reno, taking out a match and striking it, "Is the stupidest fucking theory I ever heard."
"Is it?"
"You don't understand anything."
Aviva bowed her head. "I'm sorry."
"Oh god, don't start apologizing."
She bit her lip so as not to say 'sorry' again.
Reno brought the burning match closer to his face, his eyes crossing a little as he stared into the heart of its flame. The heat and light flowed upwards; the flame could not find its way down the thin splinter of wood. It sputtered and went out.
"I've got a stupid theory for you," he said. "Get this: the V.P. says that when we die our souls all flow together into some big planet-sized soul and then we get reborn as a fucking tree or sahagin or some bollocks like that."
"That's the Lifestream theory."
"So it is, little miss smartypants. And guess what else the V.P. says? He says the mako is the Lifestream."
"He thinks it's real?"
"Am I a fucking mind-reader? I have no idea what the little shit thinks, all I know is that's what he told Tseng and Tseng, apparently, not that you can ever be sure what's going on behind that mask he calls his face, believes it. Unless he was lying, which he easily could have been. Rude says he believes it. And Knox. And Roz. I wasn't supposed to tell you."
She had no idea how to respond to any of that.
"Veev," said Reno earnestly, "What do you think happens to people when they die?"
"I don't know -"
"I didn't ask what you know. Fuck, nobody knows. I asked what you think. Do you think that people have souls?"
"I don't - well, I guess, maybe…."
"Because it's not like switching off a car, is it? Or turning off a light. Dead things look different. Empty. Used up. Like this match here." With a flick of his thumb he sent it across the room.
"I think maybe some people have souls," she decided.
"You think Zack did? You think that's what we saw?"
Now that Aviva came to think of it, those swirls of steam coming off Zack Fair's dissolving body had looked a lot like mako fumes boiling up from the depths of a reactor. "Well…maybe."
Charlie had a soul, she thought. I know that for sure.
"You think I do?" asked Reno.
But yours wouldn't look like mako. Yours would be a bolt of lightning.
"Yes," she said with certainty.
"And what about this planet? Do you think the planet has a soul?"
"A planet's not a person."
"I touched it," said Reno, "I put my hand on it, this afternoon – "
The door opened. A bulky figure stood in the doorway, blocking the light. "Here you are," Rude rumbled.
Reno turned an indignant face to Aviva. "That's who you were calling? Why? What do we need him for? We were having fun."
"I'm hungry," said Rude, sitting down. The tiny room that had been so intimate moments before suddenly felt cramped. Rude pointed at Reno's bowl of curry, cold and congealed. "Are you eating that?"
"We were about to leave," said Reno.
"Where to?"
"The Honeybee. I feel like getting laid."
"What about Veev?"
"I was going to buy her a lollipop. She can watch the floorshow. She prefers chicks anyway, she just told me so."
"Trains aren't running," said Rude.
"You want the chopper keys?" asked Reno as he threw them.
Rude had anticipated his partner's move: his hand was already poised to plucked the keys from mid-air. He stowed them in his top pocket. "Still coming with you," he said. "Just let me eat."
Rude shoveled a heaped spoonful of curry and rice into his mouth and began to chew it with the same slow thoroughness he applied to all his actions. Reno sighed theatrically. Reaching for the vodka bottle, he poured three fingers into Aviva's glass, adding some half-melted ice that he'd dug out of the water carafe. He unscrewed the hyper pills, dropped two into his hand, put them on the back of his tongue, and washed them down with vodka straight from the bottle. Aviva saw the muscles working in his throat as he swallowed. She also saw that behind those sunglasses, Rude was keeping a close eye on every move Reno made.
Yes, I'm a Bob Dylan fan.
This chapter and the next two were originally one big chapter. They are mostly a single continuous flow of events, and should be taken together, which is why I'm posting them all at the same time.
Thank you all for reading, and many thanks for the reviews, alerts and favourites. They're very encouraging.
