The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel Read Free

Ambyr Systems detectives? Is this doable? Because if it is…
    “Interested?” Gavin asked.
    “What are we talking?” She knew how to be crisp. Don’t ever let them see your tongue hanging out. Hold the drool. Besides, it sounded too good to be true.
    “A quick documentary. Couple of talkers, a little corporate shit, how this bastard can’t be trusted. That type of thing. Of course, you … you, Sylvia Cho … you can hide the pill in the peanut butter. You could slip the real message in under the corporate one without their lifting an eyebrow.”
    She could. She knew she could. Let Public Affair’s coifed, tailored models talk while the whole time she gets to tell the world about some wacko who is actually beating the system. Amazing. It didn’t even matter if the guy existed. Just the chance to prance the idea around was golden. This could be a masterpiece— redemption for all the propaganda she had to film. Art. Meaning. A difference.
    “Who has sign off?” She asked.
    “That’s the best part. I bundled. Lots of private savings and surplus. Corporate has little to say.”
    “Little’s not nothing.”
    “Such is the world,” Gavin said. “Such is the world you can change.”
    That was a bit strong, but the sentiment was right. She loved the Milkman. Three minutes in and she was in love.
    “What do you need from me?”
    Gavin glanced at the empty wine glass, then up to her.
    “An abortion. Then you’ll be clear to work.”
    * * *
    Emory Leveski sat at his kitchen table, in the dark. He wanted a glass of water. Warm. Body temperature. Nothing too cold. He just wasn’t sure he could handle a glass. He still shook. Maybe if he concentrated. Maybe if he used both hands, like a little kid. Yeah, that gave him another idea. Emory stood, went to the cupboard and took out a plastic sippy cup, with a lid and a stopper, hiding a tiny membrane. The cup had cartoony butterflies and frogs and bent green cattails on it. He got the lid off, water in and the lid back on without too much spillage. He sat back down to suck on the little spout.
    The water felt so good in his mouth. He could feel cell walls cheering the rush of liquid, imagined them opening their gates and welcoming water like a hero returning from battle. Dry spots cracking and surrendering across his palate and down his throat. This is better , he thought. The sippy cup makes me drink more slowly . You had to work at it, suck… like that girl, wheezing in her last breath.
    The tremors returned. He set the cup down and pressed his palms to the table. No matter what he tried thinking about — sex, long division, picturing the most perfect brook rolling over speckled, polished stone — his mind replayed the same scene. That girl, the jelly coat, the stab, the stab, the stab.
    Crazy. He had to get control. Emory was a compact person. He understood that. That didn’t mean fragile. He could do better than this. What about those Lamaze techniques? Those classes weren’t that long ago. Breath in through the mouth, out through the nose? No.
    “What are you doing?” Lillian’s voice, from his right. He turned and looked at her, arms folded across her chest. A T-shirt and long, flannel pajama-pants. She looked so cute in her short, new-mom hair.
    “I don’t know,” he answered.
    “It’s creepy.” She turned on the kitchen light and strolled to the refrigerator. “How did things go?”
    “I don’t honestly… I saw a girl get murdered.”
    “What? You’re kidding me.”
    “No,” Emory said. “Right where I was going. Right at my meeting spot. I was still in the car and…”
    Lillian plunged into the chair next to him.
    He said, “God, it was awful.”
    “Did you… what did you do?”
    “Nothing. I couldn’t. It was like… like when you’re running up a beach, in the water, you know? You can’t move half as fast as you want. It was like that. By the time I figured out what was happening, it was the past. I’m so freakin’