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hums when
she’s nervous, and I can make out a faint tune under the Aquaship Down song
oozing through the air.  Back at Wishful Thinking, she’d hum whenever she was
in the weeds on a full section of tables, even though she’d rather give every
level higher than her a glass of gasoline instead of Cashew Lemonade.
    She says, “I want to help,” and
before she even finishes the sentence, Forklift is saying no and vibrating from
tooth to boot tip.
    “That’s a negative,” he says.  “This
is too Bigfoot for you to skinny dip in it.”
    “I don’t want any money.”
    “No issue there, babycakes.  I just
don’t want to peep you nosebleeding from a manmade hole.”
    She glares at me, hand on her waist,
hip cocked.  “Chris, let me in.”
    I mumble, “Okay,” through half-open
eyes and a half-open mind. 
    Forklift throws his hands in the air
then pushes the glass of water up to my mouth.  Perturbed, he says, “Would you
drink more of that, please ?  Get your head out of the tar pits.”
    I drink some of the water and burp,
leaving a taste like Wishful Thinking’s Vanilla Cottage Cheese Loaf on the back
of my throat.  “I’m gonna hurl,” I say. 
    Forklift rolls his eyes and like a
rabbit out of a hat, two white pills show up in his palm.
    “Take these.”
    “What are they?”
    “Necessary.”
    Bingo watches me swallow the pills
with a concerned, strained look on her face.  Eyebrows cinched, the corners of
her mouth like dual divining rods pulling toward the ground.  I wish she could
find me some more water down there, but I don’t ask, because I don’t want to
seem too weak.  Pride has Reasoning in checkmate. 
    Confident I’m not going to launch
them back out, she turns to Forklift and says, “Look, Forky, I want in on this
so I can stick it to Dorna.”
    “What for?”
    “Because she fired me.”
    “I thought you took a high dive?”
    She says, “Nope,” and plays with a
zipper on her pants leg. 
    I watch her, remembering the last
day she was at Wishful Thinking.  There’d been shouting in Dorna’s office,
followed by Bingo storming through the dining room, throwing a bowl of Kiwi
Hazelnut Penne Pasta through the pick-up window that landed on Fireball’s feet,
and then yelling at the patrons that they were drones humping a fat, ugly queen
before she left.
    I say, “You told me that you quit
because you couldn’t take the stress.”
    “Yeah, well, I lied,” she says.
    “Why do you care?”
    “I don’t like her.  Dorna fired me
because she found out I’d Rescinded.  She said having some pixie rebel on her
staff would botch her chances at going R9.  I don’t care that I got fired.  I
just want to slow down her Ascension plans.  Toss a little anarchy into her
secret ingredient.”
    “I hate to tell you, but she made
it.  Almost has R8 now.”
    Bingo huffs, looks up at the
ceiling, then back to me.  “That bitch.  I want in.  R8, R9.  It’s all the
same,” she says.  It seems forced, like she doesn’t believe it herself.
    The pills, whatever they were, are
kicking in quicker than expected.  I can feel my head clearing up some, but not
in a rush, like when you open the bathroom door after a steaming hot shower.  Some
rationality remains in my thought process, so I say, “Wait...you know we’re doing
this so we can Ascend, right?  I know I was slammed, but I told you that much,
didn’t I?”
    “Yeah.”
    Forklift says, “Then why hoe the
garden with us?”
    Speaking his language, she replies,
“Because you’ve gotta skin the cow to get the leather, true?”
    “Ah,” he says.  “Blue sky.”  He pops
a couple pills of his own and chomps them like candy.  Head tilted, chew
function in overdrive, buckteeth pumping like a sewing machine, he thinks.  And
thinks.  And then he says, “Okay.  You’re greasy.”
    She smiles.  “Thanks, beaver face.”
    “Whatever,” he says.  “Let’s shimmy
with Boy Meets Girl over there before I waffle