Drink for the Thirst to Come Read Free Page A

you…?”
    “Are working Boss stuff.”
    And Chris was down the torch-lit stairwell, tallow-black smoke spinning in the suck, rising to the busted roof.
    …to the Vendateria. Early. Good.
     
    The Girl stood out.
    Vendors lazed, looking, scratching. A couple kickers leaned by the door, giving little heed—slinky pricks! There were newsons come from here and there looking to make a name. There were oldsters and Eustaces looking to ramp their worth, hold on a few more. They milled, filled the ’coves and looked plain miserable. The air was full of sweat and need.
    When the place had been just the City of Chicago Office of Emergency Management Center, the Vendateria was a long low room at the far end of the first level of the pie-shaped building, the spot for soda pop and candy, machines dispensing goods and change. There were sofas to lounge on, alcoves where to sack out through long shifts, when snows, floods, riots were managed there.
    That crap went crash on The Day. On The Day, the Center fried and died like the City. Now the Vendateria was a grotto off the main floor, the machines stripped and long gone but the place still vended. Newsons gathered there, women, Bits and boys, whoever the hell, those who’d been traded off by little Daleys of the ’hoods, folks who’d wandered in from north or south, from West or Wet. An occasional kink from Niggertown showed, or those who’d just dragged it in from the far Dust like Chris ( Christ, what was it, four years gone? ). They all showed there, wanting.
    Chris could about tell for looking, from where a newson hailed. Didn’t matter, newsons were for sale, for use, for gathering worth. They were grabbing root like everyone.
    The ’teria was for goods too. The left-outs. Whatever crossed the border, after the Boss and his kickers, admin boys, and special bits had dips, what was left was left-out for vending. But, hell, after The Day, everything had some worth—in the dipping or the vending—and everyone needed worth.
    The Girl was fresh. That alone was worth. Third alcove in, there she was. Sitting. Calm. Waiting. Like someone had told her, just go there and wait. Chris couldn’t peg her. Not out of Wrigley or the Heaths and Hollows, not from the ’burbs, surely not from Niggertown. Didn’t look like from anyplace he’d seen except Dolph Station, Texas, day before The Day. First, she was damn-near plump. Where’s a girl get her plump these days? It gave Chris pause.
    Then the threads. She was wrapped in style, good stuff and mostly clean, tough wearing but nice. She looked, cripes, like the bunnies on the bus back in old Dolph Station. Pretty girls, the ones who rode, same times, to Perrytown Mondays-through, busy, white wires trailing to pretty little ears, pretty faces stuck in the news, pretty shoes in jimmy bags and sneaks on pretty feet. His bus, the street, the town, not good enough for pretty shoes and Cripes! He was stroking the busted cell in his jacket pocket.
    Boss must have had a good peek and plink over her. Boss had looked but had not bit. Nor had let his kickers bite. Chris strolled by, didn’t gaze, didn’t sniff. To the far end of the room. He picked and touched at nothing much, fingered stuff he’d no notion what. In the meander he gave kicker Stosh a peek.
    Stosh gave a snort.
    Snort’s good as a nod . Chris shopped some, then wandered back. No care, no goal till there he was at the ’cove where the girl was propped, showing color, style, and self.
    She was not a bit. Might be one who’d do it for love or fun or if you were someone special, like what Jaycee was studying to be back… Enough. Fuck them and Jaycee too.
    “You,” he said.
    She didn’t blink.
    “Where the hell’d you come from, you?”
    “Why, you are charming!” she said, almost a little bunny song.
    Close-to, she wasn’t so young, thirty maybe, hiding age. Like him. Knew how, too. Kept her skills. More amazing, she still had stuff to do it. And now he sniffed, girl had