Unsoul'd Read Free Page B

amounted to a purple metal bikini. Resplendent, full-flare wings made of what appeared to be black leather feathers. It was as though Hieronymous Bosch had decided to draw manga.
    The tattoo did strange things to me. I had never been one for body modification (save for the misguided nose ring I wore for eight months in college), but the right tattoo on the right flesh could sometimes stir deep longings in me.
    Fi had the right flesh, and the tattoo made me suddenly yearn for her all the more.
    "That's new," I said off-handedly, lamely.
    "What?" She craned her neck, trying to look at her own back. "Oh, right. Yeah. I got that last month."
    It was huge. "Didn't it hurt?"
    "I don't remember, to be honest. I was totally baked. The whole thing's a blur."
    "But why--"
    "To celebrate."
    "Celebrate?" I did not want to ask, but did anyway.
    "Celebrate, yeah." She faced me again, hands on hips. "You really think this looks all right?"
    "It's great," I said, suddenly less interested in the dress and more interested in the celebration. "What are you celebrating?"
    "I didn't tell you?" Fi had a way of posing that particular question that made it impossible to determine if she was genuinely surprised with herself or simply overselling it to ramp up expectations. "I signed Kiki Newman."
    Fi was a Hollywood agent and a successful one at that. Successful enough that her agency let her work out of New York, not L.A., where she had a niche specialty in finding local stage talent and primping and grooming them to TV and movie stardom. Variety once did a smallish story on her headlined, "The Trend-Bucker." She earned way more money than I did, hence my move to the cramped apartment after our break-up. Fi still lived in our massive brownstone duplex, where I had paid a mere quarter of the rent. Landing Kiki Newman took her to an entirely different level.
    "I had no idea," I said as neutrally as I could, then smiled to show her how happy I was pretending to be for her.
    "It was all over the place."
    "I don't really keep up with the movie stuff anymore."
    "Right. Of course," she said, shrugging as if to say, Why would you?
    Because, yeah, why would I? I'd had a book optioned once -- years ago -- but that was it. The option money ran out long before the option itself. When Fi left me, any impetus I once had to keep abreast of the movie business left with her.
    Managing to avoid being entirely self-absorbed, Fi shouted to me from the bedroom as she took off the dress, asking how I was doing.  
    "There's some buzz for the new book." I hated myself as soon as the words were out of my mouth. How many times had I answered that exact same question with that exact same statement, delivered in that exact same tone of faux confidence commingled with faux humility. There was no "buzz" for the new book, nor would there ever be, if the past was any indicator.
    I didn't mention selling my soul to the devil. How do you bring that up to someone naked in the other room?
    "I'll see if I can pimp it a little bit on the blog," she shouted.
    Fi had an incredibly popular blog -- "Why, Fi?" -- in which she held forth on matters not merely filmic, but also alcohol-related, Fi being something of a bartender savant . She's as likely to blog about the perfect martini recipe as she is about the next It Girl.
    It occurred to me after she left that Kiki Newman was more than Fi's newest and biggest client. She also held the number one spot on my list of Celebrities to Have Sex With. And Fi, of course, was deeply conversant with that list, the two of us having shared each other's numerous times over the course of our relationship. I had, to the best of my memory, been repeatedly and effusively honest about Kiki's physical charms. And about how badly I wanted to bone her.
    Oh, God. My ex-girlfriend was now representing my celebrity crush.

Wherein I Make My Way Back to Construct
    Despite the food poisoning that had stolen a day of my life, I returned the next day to Construct.