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It's an overripe evening in May, which means hot rain is falling, which means everyone and their ill-mannered cousin is clamoring to get indoors at any cost.
It is Thursday, which means he's working the door at the Electric Orgasm. Too many wet, drunk people are standing in his line. He waves them through based on the shine of their chrome, the condition of their shoes, and their level of drunkenness. Other variables of interest are their history at the establishment and the total of their last bar tab. Not so much of interest: gang affiliation or criminal record. This is one of Dino Dinovic's clubs, after all.
Next up in the queue is someone wearing a band tee that looks like it's been dragged through the Devil's backyard by hellhounds. Her jacket's not weatherproof, her hair's wet and clinging to her cheekbones like pink seaweed, and she's not a bad-looking girl. But she's just not the kind of clientele they're hoping to host this evening. Not when an overturned bushel of corpos with company credit chips is queued behind her.
And certainly not, he thinks to himself, in those shoes. He glances down at her filthy trainers. "Dress code," he says to the wet cat, cocking his thumb in the direction of the mudslick streets from whence she emerged.
Exasperation pulls the girl's lip back and creases her brow. "Are you fuckin' for real, man?"
He stifles a sigh and settles his hands before him, palms crossed in a prayer for peace. "Yep."
Pinkie's sneer fizzles, and she glares from his thumb to the street and then to the door of the club, past which the sound of buoyant bass and the epileptic flash of lasers and the rolling clouds of artificial fog taunt those unlucky enough to be waiting to get in.
"Look. I just…" A faultline runs through her voice. Breakage in the tough-girl facade — concrete weakens in the rain, too — as her eyes shift from indignant to imploring. She needs a place to be.
Well, so do lots of folks. "Get yourself some new kicks," he says, "and then we'll talk."
Indignation again. "Fuck you, buddy."
He waves her off. Next up: a trio of tittering Arasaka interns. Their shoes are nova, credit chips are legit; he waves them all in. He doesn't see Pinkie's middle finger as she floats back toward her gutters.
It's June, and the phone rings. The sleeper agent blinks his tired eyes at a new day.
When he sees Pinkie, lonesome and anxious beside the basketball court, the shock of recognition only goes one way. Of course she wouldn't recognize him. She wouldn't remember another power-tripping bouncer in a city filled with velvet ropes. So why does he remember her, another lip-glossed Heywood girl in a city of sad creatures trying to escape the rain?
It's his job to, is why. Is what he tells himself. He's trained to notice, remember, and recognize.
So Mi, he knows, is whispering in her other ear. He knows all too well how convincing that girl — that woman, now, he supposes, not that she wasn't a woman when he met her, but she must be full-fledged now, wings spread, fallen from her nest and wobbling back up to the sky — how goddamned persuasive that woman can be. How sympathetic Song's story is when seen in the right light, when sung in the right key.
Well, he will do what it takes to tell the better story.
In the heart of the Sapphire, he swirls his whiskey. The best way to look like you're having a good time at a party is to simply have a good time at the party. Whiskey helps. Wearing a sequined blazer is another handy shortcut. He adjusts the spangled lapels and tries not to feel foolish. The way people look at him when he enters the ballroom helps: dozens of lingering glances let him know he's doing his job well.
The outfit they've selected for Pinkie was a bit of a joke. It was supposed to be, anyway. It surely wasn't supposed to look like this on her, he thinks, as his vision's seized. Those crocodile scales weren't supposed to stretch as taut as a drum skin over her ass.
"Are you sure that's her size," he mutters to Xenakis.
"Heh. You know damn well it is," Alex grins.
Twenty minutes ago, it was hard to believe that wet-haired street kid was the same person who perched in the sniper's nest, barking orders in his ear, saving his old hide. Now, it's even harder to believe the barking sharp-eye is this woman, primly coiffed, hot pink on her lips, making the croc suit look like a real problem. Like a clear and present danger. He beckons the barkeep for another pour as she sidles up, smiling.
He leans an elbow on the bar and the streetkid is reflected in his shades, all pink and green like spring in Tokyo. Prissy hairdo aside, her laugh is all Heywood; it can't be faked. She's doing her job well, too, which he admires.
He's having a good time.
But somewhere above them on the mezzanine floats their target: a feathered reminder of his failings. There won't be any more of those. He's sworn it to himself.
Observe.
Turns out the nightclub gig has some parallels to his life as an agent. In the course of both jobs, you observe and intervene when necessary. You manage risk.
When you're deep undercover, you live two lives. Not in the way someone having an affair lives two lives, though; no, your lives don't run parallel like train tracks. They're arranged concentrically instead, one life subsumed by the other. Your second life is a story within the story you tell yourself about your first life, and you keep a brass compass in your fist to guide you and keep you heading due north.
You stay too deep for too long, though, and that compass of yours goes on the fritz. You stop managing risk. Your two lives start to cannibalize one another, the boundaries blurred and obliterated. You're heading north by northwest, now, headed straight into the Pacific on a starless night.
Once they're alone together in the boiler room, is it the bouncer or the spy who holds her gaze in his like a sprung trap?
Those concentric circles can start to trip you up. You cannot read the palimpsest; the compass face is shattered. You might wake up one day to find your two lives have coalesced into one brutish chimera and it's slipped past your control.
Is it the federal agent or the guy from the nightclub door whose hand finds hers?
Observe. Intervene when necessary.
Now: is it Sol, minimum-wage door huscle at the Electric Orgasm, who kisses her — or is it Solomon Reed, the twenty-odd-year FIA veteran?
"Been a long time for me," he tells the side of her neck, once the kiss breaks into strangled gasps and their hands have begun to run riot like martial law's just been declared.
She bites back, low and husky, "well lemme tell you, there have been some major developments." This version of her voice wasn't in any of his briefings. Her kitten's teeth glint at him. "I mean, d'you even remember how to…"
Before she finishes the thought, before her fingers find the back of his head to steer his face down, he nods. Yes, he remembers. By the end of this evening, she'll feel like a stone gonk for even asking.
When he kisses the fragrant lace that rides the crease of her inner thigh she melts up against his mouth, needy. Damn. His vision swims with four whiskeys and the two fingers he's got inside of her and the one little freckle that dances on her sternum as her chest, sweat-glossed, heaves. Hell, it's been ages since he ran this playbook. It's one of the oldest plays in the espionage canon, and if the look on her face is to be believed, he's still damned good at it, too. Oxytocin's a hell of a drug.
He can't believe there was a time he took eating pussy for granted.
(If he'd had a daughter during his one brief attempt at marriage, she'd be just about V's age now. The thought is ninety-seven percent disgusting and three percent something else — he won't name or acknowledge that part, not directly. Neither Sol nor Reed wants any part of that.)
Intervene when necessary.
Is it Sol or is it Reed who's mouthing these words against her cheek?
It's June, still.
In the end, he told the better story. He shouted the final words of his story through sheets of rain at the Tycho terminal. She gets to live, and he gets to leave, and the NUSA gets to stay in power, and, he thinks to himself as she collapses to her knees (just a wet cat, again), she gets to live.
Two years, though. It will take two years.
In the hospital room, it's Sol who says goodbye, and it's Reed who doesn't tell her it will take two years. Doesn't tell her what she'll give up when she closes her eyes; that she'll open them to a life diminished, flattened. That they're going to pull her claws out by the root and leave her on a shelf to rot for two years; that the life she knew will fade away. Her friends will drift into the slipstream and, in the process of self-preservation, will forget her. She'll wake to nothing but her own bones.
It's a managed risk.
But for two years, Sol feels it. Feels it like a slug of bad medicine in his coffee every morning. It's a deep-roasted guilt that burns on the way down and stings when it tries to climb back out of him.
Reed likes his desk job, though. His chair is ergonomic. Not like the hard, backless stools they give to bouncers. His desk raises and lowers with the press of a button. Guilt doesn't need to translate to regret. Guilt can be managed like anything else.
He stands at his raised desk in the morning, and when the sun goes down, he lowers the desk and sits in his ergonomic chair. At work, he's efficient and straightforward. Reed signs birthday cards for coworkers and brings macaroni and cheese to potlucks.
It's a decent job, this one. There's a pension at the end of this job. There's a light at the end of this tunnel. There's a pair of her panties in the bottom drawer of his desk. Sorry, what? There is a pair of her panties in the bottom drawer of his desk. Reed forgets how they got there. The drawer has a lock on it. He sits, once the sun goes down, in his ergonomic chair. When the office is empty and her revisits her scent, he triple-checks the drawer is locked when he's done.
It's January 1, 2079. Januaries never seem to end. The older he gets, the faster the months fly by, except for January, which only grows longer each year.
At the white elephant gift exchange, he selects a new desk calendar, the paper kind with a spiral binding. He's old-school like that. They all get a kick out of his choice: that's so Solomon Reed, they say, ha, ha, and they are correct.
There are three hundred and sixty-five "Far Side" comics in the calendar, one for every day of 2079. He flips the calendar to a date in July. Reed makes a face at the comic: he doesn't understand this one. With a dot of highlighter, he marks the incomprehensible day in July.
He works a desk job now; it's easier to live one life than two. But he's still got his playbooks. Knows how to observe, manage risk, and intervene when necessary. She'll be awake again come July. She will wake to nothing but her own bones, and to him.