sold to friends. So what if he made friends by selling dope?
Still, he had to suck up to her. She had Flex, and edible ’mancy was nearly a rumor. Most ’mancers went crazy, got Unified, or blew a hole into the demon dimensions… and the survivors rarely felt like bottling ’mancy for sale. All ’mancers had an obsessive-compulsive fixation so strong, their desire bent the universe around them. The one in a thousand crazy cat ladies who tipped over the edge into felimancy didn’t want steady incomes. They wanted housefuls of cats.
Julian finally understood why ’mancers didn’t care about money. Anathema was right: this art was bullshit. Yet a noseful of magic had changed tedious pretention into dazzling flitter-blurs of statistics. All the patrons here were wreathed in mesmerizing flickers of potential futures, interlocking rings shrinking as their decisions contracted to a single point of action.
“Come on, little lamb.” Anathema smiled, then smiled wider when she saw Julian flinch. “The wolves must feast. Choose your devourer.”
“…what?”
“You know,” Anathema purred. This reassured Julian not at all; Anathema was so comfortable with this Flex high, it made him wonder how many times Anathema had ’mancy-tripped before. ’Mancy was illegal, a terrorist attack upon the laws of physics.
Julian started to protest that no, he did not know what Anathema was talking about, when he noticed the woman his eyes thirsted for.
She was a brunette in her late thirties, a lush body housed in a provocative green cocktail dress – but sagging slightly in that MILF way that Julian found so cock-achingly appealing. She sipped a martini ($14) with a staid grace, so thoroughly bored by the exhibit’s pretentiousness that she was ignoring it all to read an eight-dollar book of Margo Lanagan poetry.
Julian’s heart was devoured.
All-male Addison held mixers – but the school supervisors treated women like they were nitroglycerin, packing everyone in tight so no one could react; strictly slow-dance affairs. Oh, Julian had gotten laid thanks to the coke, but it had been a sorry thing: fevered orgasms in broom closets. And the women? Sad, yelping inheritance kittens who waggled their asses to Flo Rida and giggled at Tosh.0.
This statuesque beauty laughed at only the cleverest of jokes. The odds swirling around Green Dress told Julian exactly how unlikely he was to impress her. She’d been hit on by callow boys all her life; her affections could only be won by a man of intellect, spirituality, confidence. The sort of man who genuinely deserved Wall Street.
Why hadn’t he read The Great Gatsby instead of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People?
Anathema clutched his shoulder, her meat-flecked breath hot in his ear. “Even in this artificial hellhole, the laws of nature still apply: to fuck is to conquer. You want to ejaculate her full of your hollow desperation. And for one night, I’ve given a little lamb the teeth of a great – big – wolf.” She flicked calloused fingers towards the opal brooch on Green Dress’s chest. “’Ware her protection.”
’Ware? Julian thought. Who speaks like that? But Anathema was right: the opal ($6,999 at Tiffany’s) signaled both caution and wealth – real opals were rare, as most shattered black in the presence of ’mancy. Julian loved Green Dress’s willingness to protect herself.
Julian grabbed the bartender’s arm. “Two of your best.” ($36, plus tip.)
The bartender dropped the drinks on the table, did not push them over. The risk of him asking for Julian’s ID contracted to a certainty. Enwebbed in those potential futures were the probability fields of the bouncers, the patrons, the musclemen–
– the musclemen–
–Flex–
Julian squeezed probabilities; a muscleman shifted into a straight-armed lunge, accidentally punching a waitress. Expensive drinks flew into the air.
The bartender moved to see who was hurt.
Julian snagged a martini and headed over. Green Dress looked up with a grimace.
“This is the tough part,” Julian stammered, trying to remember the Pick-Up Artist books he’d read. Her cool gaze squeegeed them from his mind.
“What is?” she asked.
He swallowed. “Breaking the ice.”
Green Dress put down the book. Her opal brooch danced upon on her pale cleavage. “Look, kid, I’m flattered, but I’ve got a boyfriend.”
“You did, yes.”
–Flex–
Distracting the bartender was one thing. This change flexed back, a shark thrashing on the end of a fishing line.
Julian needed this. He needed her. He bore down, strangling uncountable odds until they condensed into one necessary future.
The opal cracked from shimmering silver into jagged black.
The woman’s cell phone rang ($499 plus a twelve-month Verizon contract). She plucked it off the table. “Why