“You doing this because you’re in love with him?” she asked.
Hazel’s stomach twisted. “With Byron?” She could imagine him watching her with directorial zest on a spy camera as she left her father’s house, imagine him removing every bartender at every local bar in a five-mile radius and replacing them with Gogol employees who would ask Hazel about her relationship with Byron immediately after serving her a beer. “The guy who left that glass?” the woman clarified. “You really into him?”
Hazel could not imagine Byron leaving the glass; no programs or images were moving on its surface. “Oh,” she replied. “No. I just didn’t want a clean one.”
The bartender set a lukewarm pint down in front of Hazel; its top few inches of foam seemed to have been excreted by a Tooth-Flash. “If you don’t want a clean one, you came to the right place,” the bartender said. She was looking past Hazel, winking at someone. “That goes for the glasses and the patrons both.” The bartender took out a pack of cigarettes and Hazel started to ask for one, but she saw the woman was almost out. Hazel thought about how when she’d married Byron, she’d been so excited at the thought of leaving notions of scarcity behind—she was sure all feelings about not having enough, any worries of when or even if she might be able to get more of something, would disappear with the type of unlimited money Byron gave her access to.
She had really, really believed in money. It had been the central fairy tale of her suburban childhood. And many of the myths about it had been true, sort of: because of Byron’s wealth, Hazel had gone to many hotels in beautiful places.
But Byron would go to work, and she wouldn’t leave the room; security never advised it (after the third or fourth trip to a foreign metropolis, their skylines from her hotel window all began to look the same for some reason. “I thought the world would be bigger,” she told one room-service attendant, who responded by silently opening her bottle of wine.). She could, technically, buy whatever she wanted, but Byron somehow found time to analyze and comment on every purchase, to the point that she grew to hate buying anything because it was fodder for conversation, and she wanted to talk to him as little as possible. Money had made aspects of her life approach a level of supernatural comfort—the furniture, the bath and shower, the lack of routine inconvenience and struggle. But her marriage, her extremely wealthy marriage, had also been the beginning of her true education in scarcity. Byron had just about smoked her all up. How little she had left, how low she was getting never preoccupied him. He always had a new request for her to summon enthusiasm for, increasingly less palatable than the last. Just use this machine. Just wear this monitor. Just put this chip into your brain.
The man on the stool next to her was wearing a leather cowboy hat and a strange vest with no shirt underneath. The vest looked like skin that had accidentally peeled off his body long ago, and he’d saved it and eventually glued it back on for nostalgic reasons. It took Hazel a moment to understand his outfit because his skin was the same texture and color as the clothes. The whites of his eyes were entirely pink though. He appeared to be in the middle of a secret stage of death, a bonus level most players aren’t able to unlock.
The thought occurred to Hazel: she didn’t have to get sick to play sick—if her father could have a pretend girlfriend, couldn’t she wear pretend lesions? Prosthetic open sores? Maybe that would help her feel less Byron-coated in a more instantaneous way. In the meantime, though, she wanted to try being social enough to tempt contagion.
“Is anyone sitting here?” she asked the man.
He turned and looked her up and down. He was the type of smoker who didn’t use his hands once he’d placed the cigarette in his mouth. Keeping ahold of it made him talk with the locked-down jaw and pinched lips of a ventriloquist.
“This doesn’t seem like your usual place,” he offered. “You in the midst of a personal crisis?”
“Totally,” said Hazel. She scanned the liquor bottles lined up on the wall; a few of their labels seemed to tickle a waterlogged lobe of her brain. Gogol excepted, Byron didn’t allow branding in the house—it was a bizarre tic, one of the many things that made The Hub seem like its own planet. The food staff removed all outer packaging of foods and beverages; housekeeping discarded any product labels. Images and logos, he said, were visual energy drains. “I just left my husband and moved in with my father,” Hazel continued. “I’m destitute.”
The man smiled, extinguished his cigarette, extended his palm. “That’s my favorite quality in a woman. Pleased to meet you. Call me Liver.”
“Is that your legal name?”
“Legal’s not my thing.”
Liver had tough skin; his handshake was an exfoliant. “I’d like to buy you some strong drinks,” he said. Liver heralded the bartender with a sharp whistle; it reminded Hazel of the tropical rain forest birdcall setting on her meditative sound machine. She’d left it behind, of course, along with everything else. Her new sound, she decided, would be no sound. Her new possessions would be no possessions.
“This will make your feet go numb,” Liver stated, lighting up a new cigarette. The short jar he slid over to her appeared stolen from a surgical museum. It seemed like a medical specimen had been steeping inside it until the bartender removed it prior to serving.
“I appreciate it,” Hazel said, “but I have to stay a little alert. I’m in some trouble and might need to think fast.”
“No obligation,” Liver said. She noticed there was a spot on the side of his head where hair didn’t grow. It was shaped like the round cigarette lighter in old cars. “How long were you married?”
“A robot officiated at my wedding,” Hazel said. “Let me start there.”
THE ROBOT HAD BEEN AT BYRON’S INSISTENCE. IN MOST WAYS THIS had been a relief to Hazel; it meant the wedding would be a showcase for Byron’s programming as opposed to her brideliness. More specifically it meant that tech and industry business magazines would send photographers, and photographers from these venues would not care whatsoever about her unfortunate dress.
Some medical considerations arose during the dress-purchasing process (hives), and they ended up being the deciding factor when it came to selection: she’d chosen the least itchy model without even trying it on, then guzzled enough antihistamine to guarantee she’d pass out on the ride home.