Demolition Love, Page 2

1. DEMOLITION

  Tonight, I will talk to him.

  Of course I tell myself that almost every night and I never do. Sometimes, it’s because he’s not here. Most times, he is here but surrounded by tribe. Real Dealers form a wall around him three-people thick, as impregnable to someone like me as the glass edifices of Three Street. They’re chatting, drinking, laughing, and hanging, and I’m standing at the bar with Kylie, or Sam, or Kylie and Sam, pretending to chat, pretending to laugh, pretending I’m drinking something other than flat soda pop.

  I tell myself I’m waiting for my moment to catch him alone, but the chance never comes.

  I just want to say thank you. And ask his name because, in my head, I’ve started referring to him as That Guy, like he’s something more than human, and that’s just ridiculous. He’s a Real Dealer, that’s all, not a bodhavista. He certainly hasn’t given up the temptations of the flesh, because while some nights he’s away from The Dance, and most nights he’s surrounded by tribe, other times, like tonight, he’s with someone.

  In The Dance, where the crowd packs in so tight it’s one moving mass of bodies, dancing with someone means so close the denim of your jeans tries to fuse together, and sweat-damp shirts become little more than an extra layer of skin keeping you apart. So it’s hard for me to tell the shape of the in-between pressed up on him.

  We in-betweens are hard to tell in general, but in a situation like this? Nearly impossible. And, anyway, everybody knows that an in-between is an in-between. So it shouldn’t matter.

  But then everyone also knows that most people, whether they go for in-betweens or guys or femmes, have a preference for tits or dicks. So I’m staring through the sweat-drenched haze of The Dance, craning my neck for a clear sightline, when That Guy catches me looking.

  He smiles and does something with the hand that’s wedged between his hips and those of the in-between pressed against him. Something I can’t see, but the movement of his bicep betrays it. Something that inspires his partner to press lips to the skin of his shoulder, maybe muffling a moan, maybe giving him a hickey. I’m leaning against the wall, one foot propped up, trying to seem relaxed, aloof, removed.

  I swallow hard.

  He lowers his face to meet the lips in front of him, and my hand drops to the waistband of my jeans. Why not? I wouldn’t be the only one doing it. Just a couple meters down the wall, a Love Child femme has her long skirt pulled up all the way for better access. She catches my eye and gives me a lazy smile.

  “You know you want to,” she mouths before her lids drift down again.

  I try to focus on the metal strut of the wall digging into my back. I wouldn’t be the only one doing it, true, but I would be the only Bee, and…without thinking, I’m staring again. At him. At them. Still trying to make out the subtle swell of breasts or something extra in the jeans.

  Like if the in-between has the same parts I do it makes my obsession more sensible. Like That Guy is a fellow Bee or at least from a friendly tribe. A Cross Bearer, perhaps. Someone whose hands I haven’t seen covered in blood, whether in my defense or otherwise.

  Because, knowing what those hands are capable of, why would I want them touching me? A traitorous inner-voice whispers that hands aren’t the only parts of him that could touch parts of me and I push the thought away, shove away from the wall, thrust myself into the moving bodies, becoming one with the dance, with the other D-towners—friends and enemies alike—and, by extension, with That Guy, and I tell myself that’s close enough. As close as I’ll ever get. That, in fact, it’s as close as I truly want to be.

  For the remaining hours til dawn, the pounding rhythm and the hot press of D-towner shoulders and hips and thighs almost make me believe it.

  I wake on the filthy cement dance floor with my head on Sam’s stomach. Sam lies curled against Kylie’s thigh, while an in-between I don’t know sleeps with my shoe for a pillow. I move my foot, and the stranger’s head lolls to the floor. That one sits in a rush, displaying a bleached out shirt with a red anarchy symbol, the uniform of the A.

  The A glances at me and looks away because in a few minutes we’ll all be outside, and if that one is not alone, and if Kylie and Sam and I don’t run, me and mine will be up against the shoes and fists of the A and friends. That’s just the way it’s done in D-town.

  I get my feet under me and turn to rouse Sam, but a commotion at the door does it for me. Sam sits, rubbing eyes, and nudges Kylie.

  Kylie could sleep through The Dance being taken over by a metal band jamming through an earthquake, but somehow always wakes at the softest touch from her younger sibling. We three dust each other off and go see what’s happening.

  D-towners crowd the entrance, talking at one another.

  “The GeeGee can’t do that.”

  “Yeah, right. We don’t even exist to them.”

  “When? Does it say when?”

  “Bloody G-spots.”

  G-spot has to be the stupidest dirty word ever, but voices are rising in pitch, smashing over each other. Beneath the louder voices, and the never-stopping boom of The Dance, quieter conversations buzz. Swears and insults for the Global Government flow freely as Kylie, Sam, and I weave through the snarl forming in the doorway.

  Kylie and I are stick thin. She and I slip to the center of the group to stand in front of the thing that’s caught everyone’s attention.

  It’s a sign. A round sign, of course. Everything the GeeGee makes, from signs to houses—to school notebooks, probably—if it can be round, it’s round. They do it to represent the never-ending circle of life, or some such crap. Crap because this sign, in all its glossy green perfection, doesn’t serve life at all, not our lives.

  DEMOLITION.

  In smaller print below, the message continues.

  THIS BUILDING HAS BEEN SCHEDULED FOR DEMOLITION. PLEASE REMEMBER THAT ENTERING A CONDEMNED BUILDING IS A CRIMINAL ACT. THIS IS FOR YOUR SAFETY.

  The sign has been attached to the building in such a way that it blocks half the door, so we have to go out of our way to slip around it. But it doesn’t stop traffic completely. The door isn’t boarded over. Because they know we’d tear that shit down, make fun of it in any way we can.

  There was a round sign here in the beginning of D-town. It said CONDEMNED. We pulled it down and, after rolling it around town for a few months, someone stashed it in the back of The Dance. On those rare occasions when tribes can get along for long enough to take it out and prop it up on makeshift legs, we use it as our Council table.

  “Well, let’s stop them.” The voice issuing the challenge is rich, confident. And familiar. That Guy stands a few feet back.

  Sometimes when I’m dancing or just leaning against the bar, I think I catch him watching me. I tell myself I’m imagining it. There’s no telling myself that now, though, because he stares right at me.

  “Aidan,” he says. “Would you be willing to facilitate a discussion?”

  I have only one thought, which to my utter humiliation, my mouth opens and shares with everybody. “You asked someone my name.”