Cyberpunk

middle of the night, did it matter? No, it did not. And not a soul in sight. Like everybody said, let’s get Gina drunk and while she’s passed out, we’ll all move to Vermont. Do I love New England? A great place to live, but you wouldn’t want to visit here.
    I smeared my hair out of my eyes and wondered if anyone was looking for me now. Hey, anybody shy a forty-year-old rock ’n’ roll sinner?
    I scuttled into the doorway of one of those quaint old buildings where there was a shop with the entrance below ground level. A little awning kept the rain off but pissed water down in a maddening beat. Wrung the water out of my wrap pants and my hair and just sat being damp. Cold, too, I guess, but didn’t feel that so much.
    Sat a long time with my chin on my knees: you know, it made me feel like a kid again. When I started nodding my head, I began to pick up on something. Just primal but I tap into that amazing well. Man-O-War, if you could see me now. By the time the blueboys found me, I was rocking pretty good.
    And that was the punchline. I’d never tried to get up and leave, but if I had, I’d have found I was locked into place in a sticky field. Made to catch the b&e kids in the act until the blueboys could get around to coming out and getting them. I’d been sitting in a trap and digging it. The story of my life.
    They were nice to me. Led me, read me, dried me out. Fined me a hundred, sent me on my way in time for breakfast.
    Awful time to see and be seen, righteous awful. For the first three hours after you get up, people can tell whether you’ve got a broken heart or not. The solution is, either you get up real early so your camouflage is in place by the time everybody else is out, or you don’t go to bed. Don’t go to bed ought to work all the time, but it doesn’t. Sometimes when you don’t go to bed, people can see whether you’ve got a broken heart all day long. I schlepped it, searching for an uncrowded breakfast bar and not looking at anyone who was looking at me. But I had this urge to stop random pedestrians and say, Yeah, yeah, it’s true, but it was rock ’n’ roll broke my poor old heart, not a person, don’t cry for me or I’ll pop your chocks.
    I went around and up and down and all over until I found Tremont Street. It had been the pounder with that group from the Detroit Crater—the name was gone but the malady lingered on—anyway, him; he’d been the one told me Tremont had the best breakfast bars in the world, especially when you were coming off a bottle drunk you couldn’t remember.
    When the c’muters cleared out some, I found a space at a Greek hole in the wall. We shut down 10:30 A.M. sharp, get the hell out when you’re done, counter service only, take it or shake it. I like a place with Attitude. I folded a seat down and asked for coffee and a feta cheese omelet. Came with home fries from the home fries mountain in a corner of the grill (no microwave garbazhe, hoo-ray). They shot my retinas before they even brought my coffee, and while I was pouring the cream, they checked my credit. Was that badass? It was badass. Did I care? I did not. No waste, no machines when a human could do it, and real food, none of this edible polyester that slips clear through you so you can stay looking like a famine victim, my deah.
    They came in when I was half finished with the omelet. Went all night by the look and sound of them, but I didn’t check their faces for broken hearts. Made me nervous but I thought, well, they’re tired; who’s going to notice this old lady? Nobody.
    Wrong again. I became visible to them right after they got their retinas shot. Seventeen-year-old boy with tattooed cheeks and a forked tongue leaned forward and hissed like a snake.
    “Sssssssinner.”
    The other four with him perked right up. “Where?” “Whose?” “In here?”
    “Rock ’n’ roll ssssssinner.”
    The lady identified me. She bore much resemblance to nobody at all, and if she had a heart it wasn’t even sprained a little. With a sinner, she was probably Madame Magnifica. “Gina,” she said, with all confidence.
    My left eye tic’d. Oh, please. Feta cheese on my knees. What the hell, I thought, I’ll nod, they’ll nod, I’ll eat, I’ll go. And then somebody whispered the word, reward.
    I dropped my fork and ran.
    Safe enough, I figured. Were they all going to chase me before they got their Greek breakfasts? No, they were not. They sent the lady after me.
    She was much the