The Year's Best Science Fiction, Vol. 20

What I do next is deliberate. I turn to Curtis and shrug and apologise with my eyes. That’s all it takes. Secret Squirrel snaps his head round at Curtis’s, and narrows his eyes.

“24 by 7 by 365, huh?” Armament says in a quiet little voice.

He’s got it. I shrug an apology to Curtis again, just to drive my point home.

Curtis goes edgy, jumpy, mean. “Well. Well, if that means what I think it does, you cannot continue to be a guest here, Mr. Brewster.”

After that, things moved quick.

I told Bill about the hack and the police and it was decided. I would live with my boy. It’s just a beaten-up old bungalow on the Jersey side. Like the kind of house I grew up in, when computers were new and cool, and everything was new and cool from shoes to playing cards and you had takeaway pizza for dinner. Even Mom was cool with headphones. Hot in summer with screen doors for the flies, and dry and warm in winter.

I’m on the phone to Bill and I say, “At least I’ll get out of this goddamned dump.”

There’s a minute silence and then Bill says. “Dad. They’ve worked miracles for you.”

And I think about the neurobics and how my legs are learning to walk, and I have to acknowledge that. So I guess I can lose being mad at the Farm. I guess I can feel I got a pretty good deal.

I go to see Mandy. I fill her in. She says. “You’re the only man here with any cool whatsoever.” She’s got a face like the badlands of Arizona. And I don’t know why but right now, that’s as sexy as fuck.

Remember that transcoder jammed into my dick? Found a new use for it.

So I’m lying there with all the teddy bells and the scent of Miss Dior and I say to Mandy. “Come to Jersey with me.”

She looks down and says, “Oh boy.” Then she says, “I gotta think.”

I ask her, “What’s to think?”

“Baby. If I wanted a bungalow in Jersey, I could have had it. Here, I got a Solarium, I got quiet, I got my own room.”

“You dumb cluck. You’ll be alone.”

I see her looking at different futures. I see her get the fear. It makes all the skin of her face sag like old chamois leather. I hold her and hug her and kiss the top of her dyed conditioned perfumed hair. I try to open up things for her. “Come and be part of my family, babe. Bill’s a great kid; he’ll let us stay up late drinking whisky. We’ll watch old DVDs. They’ll be people round at Thanksgiving.”

And her head is shaking no. “I’ll be stuck in one tiny bedroom, with someone else’s family. That’s where I started out.”

She grunts and slaps my thigh. “I can’t do it.” She sits up and lights a cigarette and then she lets me have it straight.

“I danced for fat old men. I’d get into a bath with other women and they’d look at our cunts through a pane of glass. I was that far from being a whore. I took the money and I got smart with it, and I kept it. Even though asshole after asshole man tried to take it away from me. This, here, fancy pants Happy Farm is my reward.”

She takes a breath and says. “I’m too scared to go to Jersey.”

“I’ll come and see you,” I say. She doesn’t believe me, and I’m not entirely sure I do either.

So suddenly I’m standing outside the Happy Farm, and thank God they’re not currently microwaving anybody, and I’m saying goodbye to the place and you know, I think I’ll miss it. Mandy isn’t there. Gus is there, which is big of him, and he shakes my hand like maybe he thinks he’ll get Mandy back. But I can see. His arms are thin like sucked-on pens, and his tummy is big like a boil. Gus isn’t going to be with us long.

The Kid comes, and he brings his sweet tiny little wife with him. She’s rehearsed something to say in English. She says it with her eyes closed and giggles afterwards. “Thank you very much Mr. Brewster you have been so good to my Joao.” And then she holds up her beautiful new baby daughter for me to see.

Life goes on. And then it doesn’t. It doesn’t mean anything. Which means that death doesn’t mean anything, either. It means that while you’re here you can do what the hell you want.

I took off the callipers. I wanted to show them that I could do it. I walked for all of us old farts with no money, all the way to the bus. Bill caught me and helped me up the steps.

I looked around for Jazzanova, but he wasn’t there, and never will be.

One thing those bastards don’t know about is the hack that pays Jazza’s bills. It’s a one-off on the bank’s system. It’s not on my machine or on Jazza’s. Curtis doesn’t know that and the Armament doesn’t know that. We’re gonna keep Jazza cared for.

And all I’m feeling is one solid lump of love. I give the Farm one last wave goodbye and go home.

Total buzz.

Winters Are Hard - STEVEN POPKES