Mona Lisa Overdrive Read Online Free PDF Page B

screamed about the bugs, the roaches they called palmetto bugs,
     but it was because the goddamn things were mutants, half of them; someone had tried
     to wipe them out with something that fucked with their DNA, so you’d see these screwed-up
     roaches dying with too many legs or heads, or not enough, and once she’d seen one
     that looked like it had swallowed a crucifix or something, its back or shell or whatever
     it was distorted in a way that made her want to puke.
    “Baby,” she said, trying to soften her voice, “I can’t help it, this place is just
     getting to me.…”
    “Hooky Green’s,” he said, like he hadn’t heard her, “I was up in Hooky Green’s and
     I met a
mover
. He picked me
out
, you know? Man’s got an eye for talent.” She could almost feel his grin through the
     dark. “Outa London, England. Talent scout. Come into Hooky’s and it was just ‘You,
     my man!’ ”
    “A trick?” Hooky Green’s was where Eddy had most recently decided the action was,
     thirty-third floor of a glass highstack with most of the inside walls knocked down,
     had about a block of dancefloor, but he’d gone off the place when nobody there was
     willing to pay him much attention. Mona hadn’t ever seen Hooky himself, “lean mean
     Hooky Green,” the retired ballplayer who owned the place, but it was great for dancing.
    “Will you fucking
listen
? Trick?
Shit
. He’s the
man
,he’s a connection, he’s on the ladder and he’s gonna pull me up. And you know what?
     I’m gonna take
you
with me.”
    “But what’s he want?”
    “An actress. Sort of an actress. And a smart boy to get her in place and keep her
     there.”
    “Actress? Place? What place?”
    She heard him unzip his jacket. Something landed on the bed, near her feet. “Two thou.”
    Jesus. Maybe it wasn’t a joke. But if it wasn’t, what the hell was it?
    “How much you pull tonight, Mona?”
    “Ninety.” It had really been one-twenty, but she’d figured the last one for overtime.
     She was too scared to hold out on him, usually, but she’d needed wiz money.
    “Keep it. Get some clothes. Not like work stuff. Nobody wants your little ass hanging
     out, not this trip.”
    “When?”
    “Tomorrow, I said. You can kiss this place goodbye.”
    When he said that, it made her want to hold her breath.
    The chair creaked again. “Ninety, huh?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Tell me.”
    “Eddy, I’m so tired.…”
    “No,” he said.
    But what he wanted wasn’t the truth or anything like it. He wanted a story, the story
     that he’d taught her to tell him. He didn’t want to hear what they talked about (and
     most of them had some one thing they wanted real bad to tell you, and usually they
     did), or how they got around to asking to see your Woodwork tickets, or how every
     other one made that same joke about how what they couldn’t cure they could put in
     remission, or even what they wanted in bed.
    Eddy wanted to hear about this big guy who treated her like she didn’t matter. Except
     she had to be careful,when she told it, not to make the trick too rough, because that was supposed to cost
     more than she’d actually been paid. The main thing was that this imaginary trick had
     treated her like she was a piece of equipment he’d rented for half an hour. Not that
     there weren’t plenty like that, but they mostly spent their money at puppet parlors
     or got it on stim. Mona tended to get the ones who wanted to talk, who tried to buy
     you a sandwich after, which could be bad in its own way but not the kind of bad Eddy
     needed. And the other thing Eddy needed was for her to tell him how that wasn’t what
     she liked but she’d found herself wanting it anyway, wanting it bad.
    She reached down in the dark and touched the envelope full of money.
    The chair creaked again.
    So she told him how she was coming out of a BuyLow and he’d hit on her, this big guy,
     just asked how much, which had embarrassed her but she told him anyway