Crowe and Coyote

Crowe and Coyote V

At Moll's place, Bobbit had interfaced her implants with the blank silver screen in the living room wall so they could all watch The Happy Lucky Soy Hour together. Moll sat curled on a ratty brown armchair, eyes following the program but mind miles away. Bobbit lay across from Elaine on the couch, rubbing the thinner woman's feet for her, trying in vain to get circulation back into her blue-veined toes.

This week, on HLSH, the guest was Mandi Caradino, one of the hologloss personalities currently in the reigning set of the Upper Level movie sector. Her glossy blonde hair was twisted upwards in a single gravity-defying spike--a hairdo Moll had seen more and more commonly on the more expensive glittergirls streetways. Soon, she thought idly, there would be another hairdo. And another, and another. And each hairdo, as the one after attained supremacy, would slip slowly into the peculiar grave of Glossland had-beens.

As would this little Mandi Caradino, after her three months or so of fame were up. She'd be living in an econospace somewhere, watching grey cloud roll over grey cloud, no longer able to afford the SoYou treatments that kept her skin dewy and tight.

The thought, which would usually have afforded Moll a gleeful cackle or two, made her sad tonight. Perhaps it was the presence of Elaine--who, before work and bad air had turned her hair white and her face grainy, must have looked uncommonly like this pretty plaything on the screen.

"So," the interviewer was saying, leaning a little closer into Caradino's personal space than was strictly necessary, "we've all heard you have a new single out, Lonely and Lovely. Number three on Utopia National charts. Want to tell us a little something about it?"

Mandi Caradino batted her glitter-encrusted lashes. Her face, under its coating of dayglo makeup, was cow-stupid. "Well, Don, I think everybody understands that with true love comes a certain, well, loneliness. Bein' with one person and only one means our whole life has this single direction--and what do you do when that person isn't there? You either pick yourself up and move on or you're lonely forever."

And suddenly, in a surprisingly smooth alto, she burst out in a single a capella verse.

Well darlin' I'm thinkin'

'Bout you and me together

I'm missing the old days

In sun or rainy weather

I'm thinkin' 'bout you

Whatever the weather is, I'm blue

And lonely

And lovely

Without you....

The song faded: the interviewer cleared his throat. It was obvious from the way his eyebrows were raised that this had not been a scripted part of the broadcast.

Stupid girl, Moll thought, with a certain grey sort of pity. With your stupid song. They won't let you live like you're living if you don't stick to the script.

"Moll," Bobbit said lazily from the couch, "you okay?"

"Fine," Moll muttered, wiping away her tears as casually as possible. "Just fine."

She had to find Crowe.

For her own sake--for the sake of this dusty, utterly manufactured world--she had to find him.