Read Warp for Free Online Page B

manual typewriter—the whole rectangle of words was palpably impressed into the paper.
    â€œShe’s still writing you poems?” Eileen looked over at him, then reached out and took the piece of paper.
    â€œIt’s not to me just because she gave it to me.”
    â€œDon’t you think it’s time you and she had a frank conversation, Hollis? I’m trying to make an honest man of you here.”
    She walked over to the couch, sat down on the arm, and flopped backwards onto the old vinyl seat cushions. Air whooshed out of them, a little maelstrom of dust in the sunlight from the window. Her dress slid part of the way up her pale thighs. The folded piece of paper rested on her stomach.
    She stared up at the ceiling, blankly.
    â€œI can’t read it,” she said.
    â€œIs there anything to drink?” Peters said. He stepped out of the bedroom into the kitchen alcove. Blake was looking through the stacks of tapes on the floor.
    â€œYou just asked me that,” said Hollis. “There’s water.”
    He heard the sound of water running and Peters shifting dishes in the sink. Then it stopped. Peters opened the freezer.
    â€œJesus,” he said. “You’re holding out on me, Hollis—there’s gin back here.”
    â€œOh. Sorry, I forgot it was there.”
    â€œLook at this stuff: Crystal Palace. You want some?”
    â€œMaybe a shot. With some water.”
    â€œThe police are so weird,” Peters said, over the sound of his mixing drinks. “I was watching some of those transit police guys the other day. Just hanging around. Pounding the beat. I have this theory that about a hundred years from now it’s just going to be different kinds of police, fighting it out in the nuclear rubble—nomadic tribes of highway patrolmen and state troopers, roaming around in the ruins of our nation’s shattered infrastructure. Troglodyte subway police who surface at night to steal our children and raise them as their own.”
    There was a long moment of silence.
    â€œOr not,” Blake said, from the bedroom.
    â€œPolice are on the way out,” said Hollis. “I read it on Usenet. In the future it’s supposed to be all multinational corporations. Zaibatsus. Then they’ll all have their own private paramilitary forces.”
    â€œYeah. True.” Peters stirred. “I guess that nuclear holocaust stuff is pretty passé anyway.”
    He did a fake computer-voice: “Let’s play … Global Thermonuclear War.”
    When he came back into the room he brought the drinks with him, a gin and water for himself and a shot and a glass of water for Hollis. He sat down heavily on the futon next to Blake, and Hollis came in from the anteroom and sat at the desk. From outside in the street the sound of the trolley drifted in, rumbling past with its bell ringing.
    â€œWhat are you thinking about, Hollis?” said Eileen.
    He looked up at the ceiling without answering.
    â€œYou know,” he said, after a few seconds, “whenever you say something incredibly clich é like that, I can’t help thinking about all the other people you’ve probably said it to after you had sex with them.”
    â€œWell, I never think about them.”
    â€œI think my favorite’s that one you met on the subway.”
    â€œChrist, Hollis, must you be so psychotically fucking jealous all the fucking time?” she said, sitting up, the sheet slipping down off her bare breasts. “God knows you’ve slept with some lovely individuals in your own time, and you don’t hear me whining about it!”
    She flopped back down again, and the bed creaked.
    â€œBesides, I haven’t seen him in years.”
    â€œYou’re right you haven’t seen him,” Hollis said. “He’s dead. I killed him.”
    Blake yawned.
    â€œDamn,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “I didn’t go to bed till around five this