Chapter 8 - Future

Lupe exhaled wistfully as the Atlantic Express pulled out of Little Eden Plaza. Her second class seat wasn't luxurious by any stretch of the imagination but it wasn't oppressively awful. Or perhaps it was just her good mood making the wooden bench comfortable.

The confidence she had displayed in the fitting room had surprised her. She had never been that confident with a lover before. Perhaps it was this oppressive city, with it's frigid cold cage of glass and metal that had awoken something in her. The pressure was literal and figurative. She could feel it's chill in her bones from the moment she opened her eyes each morning.

Or perhaps it was the scherm she had mentally placed between herself and Richard that provided her. Helena's words of warning had been echoing in her ears. Richard had no feelings for her except for physical desire. So it would be very foolish of me to think otherwise.

But that didn't preclude her from having fun. Just a little bit of fun. She had Richard by the throat. She could almost feel his soft neck in her hands. It made her feel powerful and wanted. What price could I put on giving it up? Twenty thousand?

Lupe didn't want to though. Maybe if Richard wasn't Richard she would already be eagerly plotting her mercenary cash exploitation, but the fight wasn't in her for it. Had she met someone who wasn't a handsome and considerable war hero, then perhaps she'd already be counting her bills, but not with Richard. She wanted to keep playing with him for her own sake. She had enjoyed their encounter.

Lupe wasn't dumb. The moment she saw him at the café she knew he had been waiting for her and that he had overheard his wife's instructions that morning. It was flattering. The memory of his hands on her skin made her moan to herself. She wanted to feel them on her without a slip between. Soon. Or maybe not so soon. It would be fun to toy with him a little more.

The dress he had picked out for her was a little old-fashioned. It was the sort of dress beautiful women had worn when she was a little girl. It was an ankle-length bright red day dress with flowing sleeves that were bunched at the wrist. Unlike the other two dresses it fit her like a glove.

Little bubbles formed in the windows of the train as it whisked through the water, only to be swept away into oblivion seconds after forming. The multicolored glow of the neon lights of the city gave an unnatural pallor to the dark sea that it touched. But for the first time in a year Lupe didn't think about escaping.

She was so engrossed in her own thoughts and needs that she hadn't even noticed the middle aged man in a battered fedora and dingy overcoat step onto the train behind her. Nor did she notice the man at all when he sat behind her on the train. And even if she had, she probably wouldn't have thought much about it until-

"Lupe Cervantes?"

Lupe automatically turned at her name, but the moment she did she realized it was a bad idea.

The man grinned. "You ran out on your contract with Van Der Graf. You either got to pay me the seven thousand you owe now, plus some interest and punitive damages, or you got to come back with me to his agency."

Lupe averted her eyes. "I'm not Lupe," she weakly offered. "I just know her, that's all."

The man just laughed. "You're getting off with me at Apollo Square, understand? Or there's going to be trouble."

"I am not going with you," Lupe fiercely said. "You can tell Van Der Graf to pound sand."

The man chuckled. "So there's going to be trouble, hm? Well I've gotten back every girl that I've found. Sometimes they come back with black eyes and bruised bottoms, but they come back, do you get me? How's it going to be sister?" Lupe grabbed the stamped aluminum ashtray and hurled it and it's contents into the man's face and turned to run. Olympus Heights was still a few stops away so she needed to buy time. As she bolted she heard the man swear as he wiped the ashes out of his eyes. She ran down the carriage to the next car, which was about half full.

She dared not spend the time looking behind her. Spying a large suitcase on an aisle seat, Lupe grabbed it and threw it behind her to hopefully slow the man down. The next carriage was also a second-class carriage, but the one after that was a first class carriage with plush, velvety seats, dimmed recessed lighting, and attractive ornamental brass fixtures.

Lupe passed a pair of chatting women. No, that won't do, she hastily decided and moved on. She passed a solitary young man, staring out the window with a dreamy look on his face. No good either.

Three men roughly her father's age were sitting and talking in their own compartment. Perfect. Lupe pulled the door open, thought of how wonderful it had felt when Richard kissed her, and used that juice to make them want to kiss her as well. "Good afternoon gentlemen," she cooed with a sly smirk. "I'm just dying for some male company. Can I sit here?" Without waiting for approval she sunk into the available seat.

"Well hello there, madame," chuckled one of the men. "What are you doing out today?"

Lupe shrugged. "I just had to get away."

The man next to her was about to say something but the door to the compartment was yanked open. "Get out here," her pursuant barked at her.

Lupe said nothing and sunk into the seat as much as she could.

"Excuse me, is there some problem here?" As to which man said this Lupe wasn't certain as she was too busy trying to figure out what she would do if this didn't work.

The pursuant glared at Lupe. "I ain't going to ask you nicely again."

Lupe pointed at the pursuant. "He's drunk or something, I don't know, he's been following me all over the train asking me for some spare change. Some sort of parasite, looking for a handout. I had to get away from him, he's making me nervous."

The men next to her turned their gazes to contemptuous steel. "Get out of here, you leech," one of them shouted at him.

"You and your lot out to be pushed out the airlocks, you're going to ruin our dream down here!"

Lupe let out a breath she wasn't aware she had been holding. Her pursuant did look the part of a down on his luck beggar. Evidently Van Der Graf wasn't paying him too terribly much for his bounty hunting. "You heard them," Lupe chimed in. She dismissed her pursuant with a flick of her wrist. "You get off at Apollo Square, it's the next stop, isn't it? I think you'll maybe be a bit more comfortable there."

The man glared at her harshly. "This isn't over," he said slowly. "I'll find you."

"What you need to find is a job," scoffed one of the men. "Get out of her and leave this young lady alone, you leech."

Lupe followed her pursuant with her eyes as he left the carriage. "Thank you," Lupe said to the men in the compartment. "He had been harassing me for a while. Are any of you going to Adranos Place? It's the stop before Olympus Heights? I would very much appreciate an escort."

"Oh course, madam, anything for a lady," assured the man sitting next to her. "He really got you rattled, hm?"

Lupe nodded and pressed her lips together in a not completely false display of concern. A large part of her job was running errands for Dorothy. It was going to be hard to dodge this man. Hopefully he didn't dare show his face in the more respectable neighborhoods.

Would you kindly imagine a page break here.

Richard circled yet another alloy formula with his red wax pencil. Finding an alloy that was sufficiently bullet resistant, light, and cost-effective was turning out to be a much more involved task than he had originally supposed. There were at least a dozen contenders at this point and the lab reports that were due in next week were likely to add only more choices. It was going to take months to finally move into production for the next generation of turrets.

His office door pushed open and Richard put his pencil down. The only person in the building who had the audacity to enter without knocking was Rollie. Even their father had the decency to knock.

"Knock knock little brother," Rollie announced himself as he strode in. "How's the alloy business treating you?"

Richard gestured to the pile of papers on his desk. "Fantastic," he sarcastically answered. "A real barrel of laughs."

"You want to get some lunch?"

Richard got up without any further provocation. He needed a break. "Lead the way," he said as he picked up his cane from it's usual resting place on the side of his desk.

"You're going to love this place, it opened just last week," Rollie began as they walked past the dozen or so desks for the draftsmen. Rolle slapped the shoulder of one of them. "Gundersen, you dog, don't think I didn't see you last night at Eve's Garden. What's your wife gonna think, huh?"

"Speaking of wives, how's it going with the missus," Rollie said in a lower voice to Richard once they reached the atrium of Stone and Sons. The atrium displayed every model of turret they made, a few prototypes they never moved forward with, and a large water fountain. Richard hated the water fountain. You'd think people would get enough of seeing water down here as it was.

"Wonderful," Richard sarcastically answered. "Everything's great now." In reality they had another fight the night before when Richard told her to stop harassing Lupe for no good reason. Dorothy had called him the usual insults and Richard had threatened her with poverty. All in all it was a typical exchange for them. "I had an appointment with a divorce lawyer this morning. Actually, the only divorce lawyer down here, at least the only one with teeth."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, there's really no actual legal divorce it turns out, as there's very little in the way of government. Contracts from the surface are more or less enforceable down here, but that's a case by case basis. Marriage is considered to be an economic contract, and to break that economic contract without the consent of both parties I would need to have some actual muscle behind me. It's not as though I can leave town to avoid her, now can I?"

"Hm," Rollie offered. "What can you do then?"

"Thurmond Merrill, that's the lawyer I saw this morning, he has an exclusive contract with Persephone Penal. I pay enough and if she doesn't leave me in peace after I sign the forms, bam, off she goes for a stay in the cooler." Richard laughed shortly. "I'd like to see it come to pass, but maybe Dorothy doesn't even deserve it."

"Wait, they can do that?" Rollie inquired, stunned at the possibility. "She didn't commit any crimes."

"Rollie, you've been down here long enough to know you can buy anything. Literally anything."

Rollie whistled. "How much is this going to cost you?"

Richard frowned. "A lot. A quarter of a million dollars for Merrill's fees alone. Of course the threat of prison should be enough to convince her to sign an agreement, so whatever alimony she wants, I'd be glad to pay to get rid of her. I suppose I would have to purchase a new apartment as well, she'll want the one we have now."

"Can you afford it?" Only his brother would ask such a blunt question.

Richard shrugged and lit a cigarette. "In theory. It's a lot of money and would put me in a tough spot for a few years. And you don't want to be in a bad spot down here."

"How long are you going to put up with Dorothy though?" Rollie lit a cigarette as well.

Richard didn't know the answer. "I don't know. I'm going to have to think about it."

"Wait just a minute here Richie," Rollie suddenly exclaimed. "Your limp, it's nearly gone! You're almost walking like you did on the day you graduated high school."

Richard nodded excitedly. "It's this new medicine my doctor's been giving me lately. I don't know what it is exactly, it's got this weird sort of greenish glow to it, but I'll be dipped if it isn't anything short of a miracle." He had been instructed to inject it near his wounds each morning and night. That morning he could have sworn that the wounds looked less empty and gaping than they usually did. Perhaps it was just his imagination, perhaps he was just getting fat, but it did look like flesh was returning.

"How about that, huh?" Rollie commented. They were now strolling down the avenue at a brisk pace. Well, for Richard it was a brisk pace, it was a normal pace for an able-bodied man. "Maybe for all the bullshit down here there really is something special."

"Unlimited potential, unlimited future," Richard muttered to himself. That was what their father had told them to get them to come. But inky blue 'outside' mocked that statement. He and Rollie and Lupe and Dorothy and everyone else in Rapture were extremely limited.

But Richard was accustomed to working with limitations.