Cyberpunk

promised.”
    “Nothing,” I said. “I’m lucky, I guess. I don’t need to worry about money. If you didn’t need to work, would you?”
    “Everybody needs work to do,” Mrs. Joplin said. “Work makes us real. Unless you have work to do and people who love you, you don’t exist.”
    Talk about twentieth-century humanist goop! At another time in another place, I probably would have snapped, but now the words would not come. My brain had turned into a flower; all I could think were daisy thoughts. The Joplins were such a strange combination of fast-forward and rewind. I could not tell what they wanted from me.
    “Seventeen dollars and ninety-nine cents,” said Mr. Joplin, returning from the storefront. “What’s going on in here?” He glanced at his wife, and some signal that I did not catch passed between them. He circled the table, came up behind me, and laid his heavy hands on my shoulders. I shuddered; I thought for a moment he meant to strangle me.
    “I’m not going to hurt you, Peter,” he said. “Before you go, I have something to say.”
    “ Daddy .”
    Tree squirmed in her chair. Fidel looked uncomfortable too, as if he guessed what was coming.
    “Sure.” I did not have much choice.
    The weight on my shoulders eased but did not entirely go away. “You should feel the ache in this boy, Ladonna.”
    “I know,” said Mrs. Joplin.
    “Hard as plastic.” Mr. Joplin touched the muscles corded along my neck. “You get too hard, you snap.” He set his thumbs at the base of my skull and kneaded with an easy circular motion. “Your body isn’t some machine that you’ve downloaded into. It’s alive. Real. You have to learn to listen to it. That’s why we smoke. Hear these muscles? They’re screaming.” He let his hand slide down my shoulders. “Now listen.” His fingertips probed along my upper spine. “Hear that? Your muscles stay tense because you don’t trust anyone. You always have to be ready to take a hit, and you can’t tell where it’s coming from. You’re rigid and angry and scared. Reality . . . your body is speaking to you.”
    His voice was as big and warm as his hands. Tree was giving him a look that could boil water, but the way he touched me made too much sense to resist.
    “We don’t mind helping you ease the strain. That’s the way Mrs. Joplin and I are. That’s the way we brought the kids up. But first you have to admit you’re hurting. And then you have to respect us enough to take what we have to give. I don’t feel that in you, Peter. You’re not ready to give up your pain. You just want us poor stiffs to admire how hard it’s made you. We haven’t got time for that kind of shit, okay? You learn to listen to yourself and you’ll be welcome around here. We’ll even call you Mr. Boy, even though it’s a damn stupid name.”
    No one spoke for a moment.
    “Sorry, Tree,” he said. “We’ve embarrassed you again. But we love you, so you’re stuck with us.” I could feel it in his hands when he chuckled. “I suppose I do get carried away sometimes.”
    “ Sometimes ?” said Fidel. Tree just smoldered.
    “It’s late,” said Mrs. Joplin. “Let him go now, Jamaal. His mama’s sending a car over.”
    Mr. Joplin stepped back, and I almost fell off my chair from leaning against him. I stood, shakily. “Thanks for dinner.”
    Tree stalked through the greenhouse to the rear exit, her hairworks glittering against her bare back. I had to trot to keep up with her. There was no car in sight, so we waited at the doorway and I put on my clothes.
    “I can’t take much more of this.” She stared through the little wire-glass window in the door, like a prisoner plotting her escape. “I mean, he’s not a psychologist or a great philosopher or whatever the hell he thinks he is. He’s just a pompous mall drone.”
    “He’s not that bad.” Actually, I understood what her father had said to me; it was scary. “I like your family.”
    “You don’t have to live with them!” She kept watching at the door. “They promised they’d behave with you; I should have known better. This happens every time I bring someone home.” She puffed an imaginary pipe, imitating her father. “Think what you’re doing to yourself, you poor fool, and say, isn’t it just too bad about modern life? Love, love, love— fuck !” She turned to me. “I’m sick of it. People are going to think I’m as sappy and thickheaded as my parents.”
    “I