Kalifornia Read Free Page B

almost
weightless, and couldn’t have crushed a puppy. The sidewalk was padded to
cushion her fall, though at the moment she’d hit, caught up in the tropes of
the chase, it had felt cruel and hard as real cement. So much unreality made
the hotel look fake; its bricks seemed to turn soft and waver in the damp night
wind. This whole back alley, with its lights and revelers, could have been just
another set.
    “You look way tawdry,” Clarry said. “Way pale. Here, have a twist
and tan out. ‘Grats, by the way. You did a great job as a mommy.”
    He handed her a cool silver vial. She started to push it away, but
he folded her fingers around it. His large, black, long-fingered hand dwarfed
her small, pink one. “Go on, you deserve a break. I’ll take care of the
cleanup.”
    “I don’t want a twist tonight, Clarry. I want my baby.”
    “That’s tan. I’ll go get her. You stay right here.”
    He walked off past the studio van. The street was busier than it
had been during the recording, but down here in the midst of the crowd it all
seemed two-dimensional, as if pieces of cardboard were cut into people shapes,
all sliding past each other in shifting planes. She felt a bit flat herself
tonight. Painted eyes followed her. Recognition. Everybody knew Poppy. Her spin-off
was scaling the ratings, though it might never be as popular as the “Figueroa
Show,” in which her whole family had been wired and continually live. She
should bask in the recognition, not cringe from it. But tonight fame didn’t
satisfy her. Was this any kind of life for a child? Poppy had been brought up
for the wires, but not born in them. Her youth had been inviolate; she’d been
neither sender nor receiver. The media surgery, the teasing growth of
polynerves, had been (more or less) elective on her seventh birthday, which was
older than most kids were when they got their wires. But then, most kids were
RO—receive only—and she had been a sender all the way.
    But Calafia never had a choice.
    She sank back in an alley between a drug shop and a sushi-taco
stand, twisting the halves of the silver vial. Clarry was right. A twist would
help clear her thoughts. She glanced up at the hotel across the street, seeking
out the broken window of the room where Calafia had been born. Maybe she would
get a room and sleep up there with the baby tonight. She didn’t want to stay
with the cast and crew again. The baby deserved better.
    Clarry found her again just as she was setting the twin halves of
the twist against her temples. He slapped one arm down before the current could
hit her wires.
    “Hey,” she said, mildly irked. Then she saw his face. “What is it,
Clarry?”
    Clarry was a smiler: he rarely quit grinning unless something
awful had happened. Now his face looked as gray as old cloth. He was chewing on
his vitamin-fortified tobaccorish rope at an alarming rate, unspooling hanks of
it from his deep vest pocket.
    “Poppy, I don’t know how to say this. There . . . there
was some mistake.”
    “Oh my God. The baby.” She started past him, but he caught her by
the elbow.
    “Where you going?”
    She spun about to face him. “What do you mean? Where is she? I
want to see her.”
    He shook his head. “Poppy, when you tossed her  . . .  where
did she go?”
    She felt herself collapsing inwardly. Everything coming apart.
Alone. The wires carried none of this; no one could share the fear she felt,
the growing panic. What was happening?
    “What do you mean?” she asked. “I dropped her in the wagon, right
on the padding.”
    Clarry shook his head. “It wasn’t our wagon, Poppy. I told you
there’d be coordination problems in this crowd. Our wagon got stuck in traffic half a block away. No one knows where
the other one came from—or where it went.”
    Clarry caught her to keep her from falling.
    “Hold on now, babe. It’s gonna be tan, totally tan. We’ll find
her.”
    “You lost her?” she whispered.
    He sighed, drawing her into