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evaporated like piss on hot metal.
    This does the trick, though not in the way he intended. Her eyes soften. “Me, too.” As if he’s just turned down a winning lottery ticket. With a sigh, she releases him and closes her fingers around the napkin. Before he can do anything, she eases out of her seat and leaves.
    Podding to Anthea’s, it occurs to him that what she bought from the pharm might not have been intended to prolong life.
    Shit, Rigo thinks. He’s shaking, convulsed by something he can’t explain that makes him feel five years old again.
    It’s after ten-thirty by the time Rigo gets to Anthea’s ap. Josué, Anthea’s seven-year-old nephew, is still awake and throwing a tantrum in the bedroom. Anthea watches Josué five or six nights a week, while her sister Malina works graveyard down at a desalination plant a little farther up the bay.
    Malina. Mal for short—
bad
. But not to her face, unless Rigo wants to get his ass kicked. Her temper can be as short as her truncated name, so he avoids her whenever he can. If it weren’t for him and Beto, he’d find it hard to believe that Malina and Anthea are related. On the surface they have almost nothing in common. What’s amazing is that despite their personality differences, they still get along. But maybe it’s different for sisters than it is for brothers.
    “One more game,” Josué wails, his voice sulky. “Please? I’m not tired.”
    Anthea talks to him at length. Rigo can’t hear the words, only the soft dovelike cooing of quiet logic and reason. He knows that voice, cajoling. She’s used it on him before.
    Josué’s having none of it. He stamps his feet. Cries. The racket is only partly muffled by the parchment thin walls. One thing about fights is that they cut down on the electricity. Rigo can feel the ap vibrating, all that sonic and mechanical energy being converted by embedded piezoelectrics.
    Rigo snags a Corona from the fridge, flops on the couch, and turns on the wallscreen to drown out the noise. It’s an interactive setup, so Rigo links his IA into the display.
    Grainy flitcam images from
ION
, an independent netzine that Anthea subscribes to, fill the wallscreen. Currently, during a news segment called subversION, the site is broadcasting undercover from an Indonesian sweatshop. An image of twelve-and-under kids pixilates. The kids are doing piecework, assembling riboware in the sweltering humidity of a sheet-metal hothouse.
    Rigo shifts uneasily on the couch, takes a full swig of beer to wet his dry mouth and wash away the unease left by the dying woman. He resists the urge to scratch the spot where her embalmed fingers clutched his hand and wrist.
    “See if you can dig up something else to watch,” he tells Varda. “Something more relaxing.” The download Anthea has the screen tuned to is relentlessly depressing. An electronically fuzzed voice-over of an ICLU rep talks about efforts being made to free the sweatshop kids and place them in foster homes.
    While Varda mines the mediasphere for Woody Allen reruns, Anthea walks in. It’s hard to tell if the scratches on her face and arms are from Josué or some kid at the counseling center who went ballistic on her. It looks like she’s gone ten rounds. There are black half-moons under her eyes, penumbras of fatigue. She’s wearing skimpy red shorts and a sleeveless white cotton blouse. She grabs a beer from the kitchenette, plops down beside him, sharp elbows and hips denting the cushion.
    “What’s up with Josué?” he asks.
    “I’ll tell you later, after I calm down.” She’s bird thin, looks too skinny at the age of thirty to ever have a kid of her own. Which is too bad, because she’s mad crazy about kids, super with Josué, and would make a great mother. “How’s your mom?” she says.
    Rigo strokes her leg while he tells her about his mother’s steadily deteriorating condition, the pharm-bred drug, and his thoughts about what to do with her if it doesn’t work.