Cyberpunk

Sam was approached by a beautiful black Asian woman, the men couldn’t stand it. “Y’all have seen this one before!” Ghost cried.
    Johnnie sputtered over the bottle, struggled to swallow. “No way! Experience counts, man, that’s all.”
    “And Johnnie has watched one hell of a lot of Sam Spade,” Ramon added.
    Lee said, “I wonder why they’re always Afro-Asian.”
    Steve burst in, laughed. “So they can fuck all of us at once, man!” He dribbled on the image, changed the channel. “— army command in Los Angeles reports that the rioting killed at least —” He punched the channel again. “What else we got here—man!—what’s this ?”
    “Cyborgs Versus Androids,” Johnnie said after a quick glance at the blue shadows. “Lots of fighting.”
    “Yeah!” Steve exclaimed. Distracted, some of the watchers wandered off. “I’m a cyborg myself, see, I got these false teeth!”
    “Shit.”
    Lee went for a walk around the block with Ramon, who was feeling good. “Sometimes I feel so good, Robbie! So strong! I walk around this city and I say, the city is falling apart, it can’t last much longer, like this. And here I am like some kind of animal, you know, living day to day by my wits and figuring out all the little ways to get by . . . you know there are people living up in Rock Creek Park like Indians or something, hunting and fishing and all. And it’s just the same in here, you know. The buildings don’t make it no different. Just hunting and scrapping to get by, and man I feel so alive—” He waved the rum bottle at the sky.
    Lee sighed. “Yeah.” Still, Ramon was one of the biggest fences in the area. It was really a steady job. For the rest . . . They finished their walk, and Lee went back up to his room. Debra was sleeping fitfully. He went to the bathroom, soaked his shirt in the sink, wrung it out. In the room it was stifling, and not even a waft of a breeze came in the window. Lying on his mattress sweating, figuring out how long he could make their money last, it took him a long time to fall asleep.
    The next day he returned to Charlie’s Baseball Club to see if Charlie could give him any piecework, as he had one or two times in the past. But Charlie only said no, very shortly, and he and everyone else in the bar looked at him oddly, so that Lee felt uncomfortable enough to leave without a drink. After that he returned to the Mall, where the protesters were facing the troops ranked in front of the Capitol, dancing and jeering and throwing stuff. With all the police out it took him a good part of the afternoon to sell all the joints left, and when he had he walked back up 17th Street feeling tired and worried. Perhaps another purchase from Delmont could string them along a few more days . . .
    At 17th and Q a tall skinny kid ran out into the street and tried to open the door of a car stopped for a red light. But it was a protected car despite its cheap look, and the kid shrieked as the handle shocked him. He was still stuck by the hand to it when the car roared off, so that he was launched through the air and rolled over the asphalt. Cars drove on by. A crowd gathered around the bleeding kid. Lee walked on, his jaw clenched. At least the kid would live. He had seen bodyguards gun thieves down in the street, kill them dead, and walk away.
    Passing Fish Park he saw a man sitting on a corner bench looking around. The guy was white, young; his hair was blond and short, he wore wire-rimmed glasses, his clothes were casual but new, like the protesters’ down on the Mall. He had money. Lee snarled as the sharp-faced stranger approached him.
    “What you doing here?”
    “Sitting!” The man was startled, nervous. “Just sitting in a park!”
    “This ain’t no park, man. This is our front yard. You see any front yard to these apartment buildings here? No. This here is our front yard, and we don’t like people just coming into it and sitting down anywhere!”
    The man stood and walked away, looked back once, his expression angry and frightened. The other man sitting on the park benches looked at Lee curiously.
    Two days later he was nearly out of money. He walked over to Connecticut Avenue, where his old friend Victor played harmonica for coins when he couldn’t find other work. Today he was there, belting out “Amazing Grace.” He cut it off when he saw Lee. “Robbie! What’s happening?”
    “Not much. You?”
    Victor gestured at his empty hat, on the sidewalk before him.