Trust

Lydia was a torrent of chaotic Gen Beta terror, but Sam’s fear of her had melted into a sense of liberation. This was the first time he’d been out in the city unsupervised by Sebastian; it was the first time in years he’d been out with someone who wasn’t either his wife or some friend of hers.

Three months ago, everything about his life had been different: unemployed, living in his home town, reliant on Virginia for food and shelter. He never left the house, he slept in the guest room of his own home. Now he was in San Francisco, on some kind of adventure with a stranger, after working a double shift as a bartender. Of course, he was on a dodgy work permit and sleeping on his friend’s sofa. Baby steps.

He smiled as he pictured Virginia checking up on him. She’d ask Aida what he was up to, where he was working now, if he was okay. All fine of course, he thought. He’d not revoked her access, even after she’d taken away his free Magenta Plus. He was there if she wanted, via Magenta Mate, just a question away. If she wanted she could even see his location, right this very moment. Even who he was with.

“Hey!” Lydia shouted back at Sam from up the block. He’d already been behind, and now he’d stopped to rootle around in his bag.

“Sorry, I just need to find my Ring.” He pawed through the bag frantically.

She’d landed with a thud right in front of him, her hands planted on her hips. “Want me to find it, mijo?”

“It’s my bag, how could you find it?”

She scoffed as she thrust her hand straight into the bag. Their hands touched in the darkness, which gave him a bit of a stir. “Got it! Hold still.” He stood there holding the bag with one hand, his other still inside. Lydia’s brow furrowed and her tongue peeked between her lips with cartoonish determination. He felt her other hand clasp his, followed by the Ring sliding onto his finger. “There.”

“Um.”

“This is a service I provide, Sam.” She pulled her hands out of the bag and did a little flourish. “But only to cute boys.”

“Ha. Thanks.”

“And old man bartenders, I suppose. I’m growing the business.”

“Funny.” He slung the bag back on his back, more flustered than he let on. He was a yo-yo on her finger and she’d only begun her tricks. It was a familiar feeling, and brought with it a certain nostalgia. But it also lent fresh urgency to what he needed to do next. “Aida?”

“Wait.” Lydia brought her hand up to Sam’s face, and he recoiled away from it reflexively. She burst into a giggle. “Relax.” The cold tip of the Ring’s earpiece manoeuvred into his ear, and Lydia waggled her eyebrows before poking it hard to send it the rest of the way in.

“Hey! Gentle.”

“Never.” She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out.

Sam rubbed his ear, which throbbed in dull pain. “Aida?”

“Hi, Samir.” The crisp voice of Magenta’s ubiquitous assistant whispered in one ear. He preferred having both earpieces in, but Lydia struck him as someone who would be annoyed by that.

Lydia mouthed be quick, we’re here, then wandered away–either to offer some privacy, or because she was bored.

“Aida, can you turn off all tracking please?”

“Here’s what I understood. You’d like to disable the ability for Virginia Rose to access your current location via Magenta Mate, including your location history and who you’ve been associated with. Is that correct?”

“Yes, please.”

“Do you wish to unpair from Virginia Rose, or pause tracking?”

“No,” he stammered. “No. Just pause the tracking.” He could just turn it back on later. It seemed rash to fully unpair right now. Pairing was a huge pain: there was a fee, you had to be physically near them, you both had to consent. Hell, people have ceremonies to celebrate pairing on Magenta Mate. It was better to wait until he was really sure before going through with an unpair.

“Great, Samir. I’ll leave that paired for now. Anything else?”

Sam bit a piece of skin off his bottom lip and crunched his knuckles. Okay, that’s done. It’s not like anything is going on. But she might worry if she checked, which she won’t. He nodded to himself.

“Samir, was that it?”

“Well…” The words formed in his brain. Ask whether Virginia’s accessed his tracking already tonight. It would remove the doubt, and he’d know she’d want an explanation. Not that I owe her an explanation. She threw me out. She’s probably with Carlos from her work right now. Maybe I should ask where she is?

“Yes, Samir?”

“Nothing, Aida. That’s all.”

“Here if you need me!” A classic Aida sign-off, followed by the chime that meant she’d stopped listening. Why torture himself with the knowledge, he’d thought. She could reach out if she wanted, and he could explain then.

He walked another half-block or so to catch back up to the waiting Lydia, who idled on the sidewalk like a video game character waiting to offer Sam a quest. The street was empty save for them, and in every direction he saw the windowless concrete walls of massive tower blocks, with an occasional gap for a doorway or car park. If he looked straight up he could see the light of the city reflecting off a thick layer of storm clouds that hung just above them. Grey skies, grey buildings. Magenta had obviously done well to build San Francisco up, and in doing so had squeezed out every ounce of charm.

“Hey, sorry.” As he caught up, he realised she stood at the threshold of a narrow gap between two of the adjacent towers, partly covered by some orange netting. He’d wager the two of them would have to go single file or sidle uncomfortably close to one another, if they fit at all. “What’s this?”

“Our destination.”

“Really.”

Lydia gave a huge nod. “Mmmhmm. Reconsidering whether you trust me enough to follow me down a dark alley?”

“I absolutely don’t trust you.”

“What!” Lydia gasped. “But I’m so trustworthy!”

“Do we…” He stared at the orange netting, limply hanging, some authority figure’s attempt to warn, if not prevent. “Should we at least tell someone where we are?”

“Nobody’s got you on Mate?” Lydia crossed her arms and wiggled her nose at him.

“Nope.”

“W-Y-M?” She recoiled, confusion on her face as she said each letter. Lydia was a greatest hits of irritating traits picked up from Millennial parents.

“Nope. I’m not paired with anyone on Magenta Mate.”

“Um.” She stared at him, puzzled. He could feel the giant bead of cartoon sweat in mid-air next to his face. “Can I get a poll in the chat? Is this guy really married?”

“Me, what? No, not married.” He felt naked under her gaze. She seemed to size him up, to determine whether she’d let his obvious deception go in order to preserve the vibe she’d cultivated over the course of the day.

“Well, guess we’re alone together.” She stuck her tongue out again. The vibe remained intact for now. Sam’s mind was still on his newly-disabled tracker. “You’ll have to trust me.”

“I…” He stared at this wiry girl, ghostly pale, still swimming in the dirty UCSF jumper that she was wearing when they met at City Hall. Her acid wash jeans were ripped, her blonde hair looking a bit unwashed under the street lights. He was a stranger in a dark alley, but she didn’t have a flicker of fear. Why?

“I don’t want to come off like I’m some kind of creep,” he started while staring down at his feet. “But I worry about you trusting me, too?” He rubbed his shoes together, dragging them across the bright white concrete of the sidewalk.

“Are you coming?” Lydia had to shout, because she’d just walked off during his speech and was already at the far end of the alley. Sam fired off a series of awkward laughs then ducked under the barrier.

Lydia led them down the alley, sandwiched between two of Magenta’s depressing concrete hell-towers, to a suspicious seam. The wall turned from concrete to brick, but not for very long. And smack in the middle of that brick, stood a door-shaped piece of wood. No signage, no warnings, no indicators of what might be behind it. Just a boarded-up door. And she’d wasted no time pulling it away from the wall. It had clearly been taken down before, and was leaning against the door behind it rather than being secured in any way. Where is this possibly leading, he thought as he watched her toss the board aside. Are we about to wander into some sort of drug den? Do they even have those in this city?

Lydia clicked on a torch, and Sam couldn’t help but giggle as he saw what actually lay before them.

“Is this a…”

“They just built right over top of it.” Lydia shined her torch at her face, then waved it around the room. A pile of old bar stools sat in the middle of the dusty, low-ceilinged room, and at the back stood a decaying wooden riser you might charitably call a stage.

“Wait. What?” His eyes locked on the hand-carved sign, still mounted to the wall behind the stage. In large block letters, it read: The Prospector. “Holy shit.” While Sam had never been to San Francisco, anyone who worked in music knew of The Prospector.

“I knew you’d lock in on this.” Lydia shined her torch right at him. “I’ve known you ten minutes and I already figured you out.”

“Who wouldn’t lock in on this,” Sam replied. “It’s the fucking Prospector! I can’t believe it’s just sitting here. Can’t you see it from the street?”

“Nope,” she answered as she worked her way over a pile of glass and debris. “Concrete, just filled in on all sides. We’re totally boxed in by support pillars. They just didn’t bother knocking this down.”

“Maybe they couldn’t bring themselves to do it. It’s the fucking Prospector! I can’t believe I’m here.”

“Do you actually know this place?” Lydia leaned around behind the bar, and with the flick of a small switch, floodlights attached to the ceiling sprang to life.

“Wow.” The sight of it jolted Sam. Given its legacy, it was hard to tell how much of the decay was from being abandoned, and how much of it was just how it had always looked. The bar itself was steel pipe and sheet metal, the tables unpainted plywood on saw horses. An old refrigerator sat behind the bar, a couple of long-expired bottles of some IPA cracked and half-leaked into the bottom. A grime-covered Marshall amplifier stood watch on stage.

“I thought you could make pictures of it,” Lydia added. “Like the other ones you had made.”

Sam was pushed downward by the weight of history, and he landed safely on the one barstool that hadn’t either been thrown in the pile or tipped where it was. “This is too much.” Thoughts of Gemma gushed into his mind. She’d been here dozens of times, he was sure. Who had she seen here? Maybe she’d sat on this very stool, and watched some wretched country act. It’s the bloody epicentre of the y’all-ternative movement, Samir, and I want to fucking vomit.

“Too much?” Lydia’s tone was one of concern. It was the first time she’d expressed a genuine emotion in the twelve hours he’d known her. “Not enough spoons? You good, tío?”

“It’s just this place. It’s powerful. Do you not know The Prospector?”

Lydia had her elbows on the bar, her head in her hands. She stuck her bottom lip out in a ridiculous pout and shook her head.

“It’s this legendary bar. It became almost a superstition. If you wanted to break, you had to play The Prospector. It was owned by a grumpy old woman who booked all the acts herself, and she wouldn’t let you charge for tickets, and she wouldn’t promote that you were playing here. You were just her house band for the night.” Sam joined Lydia in leaning on the bar–partly because he was exhausting himself from excitement, and partly to say he’d leaned his elbows on the bar of The Goddamn Prospector.

“Sam, I don’t understand. Any of it.” She pouted her lip out again and slid her elbows out toward him, her face ever-closer to his. “Was it kind of like Maelzel’s?”

“Kind of, but, no. Seb wishes Maelzel’s was like this place. I mean, look at it. The acts that have played on that stage, that have been discovered in this room. Label reps lined the back wall, influencers camped out all day to make sure they got in. There was all this rumour and misdirection about who might be playing that night.” Sam was beaming, and he couldn’t help but do it. Not just being here, but feeling that connection to his old world, his old life. Lay lines passed through the room, a spiritual energy connected them to some ethereal plane of creativity. “It was incredible.” He pressed his hands against his face as the dread crept in. “The Hammer was a bit like this place.”

Lydia flung herself away and crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her posture immediately hostile. Her ratty hair whipped around as she shook her head. “Don’t.”

“What?”

“Samir, don’t.”

“It was a fucked up thing to say.”

“So was yours.”

“What?”

“To say you knew people in the bombing, asshole! Stupid thing to claim. You want sympathy?” Her shouts were pointed, crisp, her eyes went every direction but his. “Want to make me regret my joke, feel bad about myself? Fuck you!”

“I really did know someone.” He crossed his arms as well, mirroring her posture, and the brass pole along the bar pushed uncomfortably against his lower back. He winced as each image struck: Rebecca on the screen with her inhuman stare, the death toll, read off as if it was a liability needing offset. He felt the sweat start to drip down his temples, made cold by the frigid air.

Lydia pulled her arms higher, as if shielding herself from the words. “Tell me who.”

“Tobias Klostermann.” His mouth tasted of metal. He shivered as he said the name, and pulled his arms even more tightly together.

“Chingada.” She let out a guttural groan. “Mijo, he’s no martyr. He was a combatant. And you!” She flung her arms wide, gesturing at the room all around them. “You act like this is some holy place, but you mourn a devil’s death? Make it make sense.”

“I can’t. We weren’t friends, we were coworkers. I’m not saying I knew what kind of person he was, just that I knew him at all.”

They studied each other for a moment, but Sam couldn’t bear the sight of her. He knew he should go, and could envision himself storming out. How had she even known the name? Would she have said that even if he made up a name?

She drew her hands down, fingers pinched, and let out a long, measured breath. “If you’re going to work at the Exhibition you need to be careful who you stick up for, mijo. You trigger the wrong person and it could go badly for you.” She clicked her tongue and smirked. “Nobody’s going to tip some Magenta stooge.”

“Hey! I don’t care about Magenta. I just knew people who were in the building. That’s all.” His finger touched his Ring, the cold metal grounding him in reality. It was true, he abhorred Magenta. But killing people wasn’t going to get anyone anywhere. And, he’d argue, it hadn’t.

She took a step forward and held her hands out, seeming to welcome him back in. “You’re new here. You can learn.” Her lips parted as he exhaled, his tension releasing with her permission. Her smirk grew into a wide smile. The change in energy was instant: her playfulness wasn’t on a dimmer, it was all or nothing.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” Sam said. “Really. It’s great to see, even like this.” As he looked around, he could picture the decline that presaged the fall: the throngs of people queued for watered-down drinks they couldn’t afford and didn’t want, bored teens on their phones wondering how they’d been duped into coming, an influencer on stage with a tablet plugged into the soundsystem, cynically passing a generated song off as their own.

“So what happened, anyway?” Lydia’s question cut through his reverie.

“Nobody made music anymore. I don’t know. Not like this, anyway. My coworkers and I argued about it all the time. It all kind of happened at once. My boss would talk about the flywheel stopping. ‘Ecological collapse’.”

“Your boss sounds like he was a bit dramatic.”

“She was,” Sam corrected, which made Lydia huff. “But it was a hard loss. It just made her crazy. I think about her sometimes. I hope she’s okay.”

She giggled and boxed him in with her arms, pushing him against the bar. “You’re pretty cute when you’re all excited like this, old man.” Her elbows slid across the metal of the bar top until the tip of her nose touched the tip of Sam’s. “I’m glad you stayed up past your bed time to come see it with me.”

Sam fought to hold back a smile. His head was swimming. How had she put the fight behind them so fast? “I’m glad you brought me here.” A feeling fluttered in his chest, one he reached into the past to remember the word for: butterflies.

“So,” Lydia whispered, her eyes locked on his.

“So.” Sam felt her warmth when she spoke.

“Are you going to make photos of it?” He watched her lips move and felt a rush as he noticed the little dimples in her cheeks. Her use of make, instead of take, was intoxicating for reasons he couldn’t explain.

“I should.”

“Yeah?” She tilted her head, only just, and they came together perfectly. Her lips met his, and he felt as if he might faint from the sensation. The first kiss was tender in a way he hadn’t expected. His hand cradled her cheek and they kissed again, their lips sliding together, and they exhaled. Her hands clasped his face and with a grin she bit down hard on his lip. They became a blur, ravenous: pressure erupting after a day of teasing, the rawness of the performance, and the power of this place.

He was carried away by her energy as she scrabbled onto the bar top. He joined her soon after, the stool proving itself useful again. Neither of them said a word, the moment tracked only by scrapes, thuds, and grunts. His hand worked up the leg of her threadbare jeans, crossing coarse denim and soft skin to find the button at the top. Her jumper hit the floor with his pants close behind as they worked to remove only what was in the way. It all happened at unbelievable speed with little care, their hands and lips doing what was needed as they fumbled and pawed their way through, pulled inexorably toward their fate, unwilling and unable to stop.

But time began to stretch and slow as they approached the event horizon. Sam looked down at Lydia, her back against the cold steel of the bar. She looked up at him hungrily, a lust he almost recognised. Was it ever like this with her? He tried to lock his thoughts away, though he could only hide from them until the next time he was alone.

“Ya,” Lydia sliced the tension breathlessly. ¿Qué esperas, chulo?” Her hands gripped each side of the bar. He squeezed her hips and closed his eyes to lighten the load on his senses. Her back arched, in time with another moan, passionate whispers in a language he didn’t know. She was trying to pull him forward in every possible way, and it would only be a few seconds more before she felt vulnerable—or at least confused. But the drawer was bursting now, the thoughts too numerous, impossible to contain. The Prospector, Magenta, Virginia, Gemma. Voluminous regret.

“I can’t.”

They collapsed into a heap. The tenderness of the moment had broken him. Sam closed his eyes, his face buried in her chest, their limbs a tangle, his balance precarious. Neither of them said a word.

“No agarro la onda,” she heaved as she spoke, her breathing laboured. “No me cae el veinte.”

“I’m sorry,” he replied, hopeful that he sounded sincere. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m not. I’m simple, Sam. Let me show you.”

“I’m sorry.”

Lydia writhed and wriggled underneath him. “You said she was your ex.” Her gyrations, the random brushes of fingertips against his skin. Still so eager to salvage the moment.

“It’s not that.”

“Tell me what you want,” she insisted, with a slap to his head. “Get Virginia out of there.”

“Hey!” Virginia would never have set foot in The Prospector to begin with. He lifted his face from Lydia’s chest. The sweat between them turned frigid in the brisk air and sent a shiver down his bare back.

“What?” Another smirk crossed her blurry face, once again inches from his own. His scolding, meant to dissuade, was instead met by her biting his bottom lip. He climbed off the bar, the moment ending as gracelessly as it began. The playfulness drained from her face and she turned away, her arms pulled tightly against her chest and stomach, her back now a wall between them.

“I’m…” Sam offered a limp consolation, half-expressed.

“Don’t.”

Their composure returned once they’d dressed, though Lydia kept her distance and stayed quiet. “I really do like this place,” Sam blurted out, desperate to ease the unbearable stress. It was why she’d brought him here after all—to see this place. “I want to take some photos of it.” His hands were tucked safely in his pockets, his eyes back on the ground. “If that’s okay.”

“Yeah?” Lydia rolled her eyes, a faint smirk on her face.

If he was anxious and desperate to ignore what had happened, she’d instead decided to pocket it with a sly nod. More dirt, he thought as he took her in from a few paces away. Her jumper, as well as the rest of her, was even more sullied from their recent encounter. A hundred different innuendo rode a tilt-a-whirl in his head, but he wouldn’t dare risk reigniting something he had just finished smothering. He shuddered to think of how he looked in all this, in any sense.

“I think so, yeah.”

“So, what? Gonna hang pictures of a different bar in your bar? Gen Z is ridic.”

“Well, honestly,” Sam replied as he looked through the viewfinder. “I know someone who would love to see what became of this place. And I’d love to show them someday.”