The band and a tangle of wires his brother had rigged up hung inside the right boot. Conner looked for a way to unplug the thing. He glanced into the bedroom, but the glorious Cocoon-of-Rob had not opened and sprouted its precious little butterfly, so he didn’t ask. He saw how the band split in two, little metal contacts soldered into snaps, and took it apart. Each half went up a leg of his shorts and out at his waist, snapped back together, and then the band went into his pocket. It was eerie how well the boots fit. He felt a little older as he grabbed his ker, stepped outside, and shook the sift out. He left the door open to let in the light and keep Rob from oversleeping, then set off toward Springston.
His first stop would be the Honey Hole. Palmer would’ve hit their mom up for money, no doubt. And then he’d try the dive school. As much as he dreaded visiting the Honey Hole, morning was the safest time of day. Not because he minded the patrons and bar fights and the slosh of beer downstairs, but because it presented the best chance of catching his mom when she wasn’t working.
The Hole was on the edge of Springston, right between town and the sprawl of shacks and shops that made up Shantytown. The location kept the riffraff who worked and drank there out of the town proper while also keeping the alluring fruit upstairs well within reach of the Lords and the wealthy. No one wanted to walk through Shantytown to find a good time. It would annul the effects of the carnal visits during the long stagger home.
Beyond Springston loomed the great wall where Conner had been born. The towering edifice of concrete rose nearly a hundred meters above the sand, had been erected generations ago by a rare union of Lords in the most massive of public work projects. It was said that this wall was bigger than any of the last and would stand for all of time. It now leaned noticeably westward over Springston, had angled itself toward the nicest parts of town. Any view of the wall reminded Conner of the first six years of his life. The good years. There were the baths he could submerge in, covering his whole body and even his head. There had been electricity and toilets that flushed—no going out to shit in the sand and having to dig his own hole only to find two other shits already buried there. These luxuries he remembered that Rob would never understand, luxuries he had to share with his brother like stories about their dad. They were half-memories of things blurred by childhood and by having taken those years for granted.
Nearer to him, rising up between two of the sandscrapers, was a column of black smoke. The top of the column sheered off into wisps as it rose past the lip of the wall and met the wind. Conner thought he’d heard a rumble in the middle of the night. Another bomb. He wondered who the fuck this time. The self-styled Lords of Low-Pub? The brigands up north? The dissidents there in the city? The FreeShanties out in his neighborhood? The problem with bombs when everyone was making them was that they no longer stood for anything. You forgot what the fuck for.
He rounded a low dune and approached the Honey Hole, a building no one would ever bomb, not in a million years. The various brothels along the edges of Springston had to be among the safest places across the thousand dunes. Conner laughed to himself. Probably why the Lords spend so much time in them, he thought.
He kicked the scrum out of his boots before pulling open the door and stepping inside. Heather was behind the bar, drying a jar with a rag. A lone man sat on a stool in front of her, bent over with his head on his arms, snoring. Heather smiled at Conner before glancing up at the balcony that ran clear around the second floor. “She should be up,” she called out, not bothering to lower her voice. The man in front of her didn’t stir.
“Thanks,” Conner said. Up was where he liked to find his mom. Standing. He headed for the stairs and nearly tripped over a drunk sleeping on the floor. Foreman Bligh. Conner resisted a dozen spiteful urges and stepped over the man. It was easy to blame people for the misery of life rather than blaming the sand. Yelling at the sand got you nowhere. People yelled back, and at least that was a response. An acknowledgment. Being tormented and simultaneously ignored was the worst.
He marched up the stairs toward the balcony, old wood creaking with each step, and couldn’t imagine being one of the drunks who took this walk in full view of their friends. But then men bragged about whom at the Honey Hole they’d bagged the night before. Enough trips up those stairs, and maybe it feels normal. Fuck, he didn’t want to get a day older. He imagined sitting down there getting hammered out of his skull one day, a beard down to his navel, smelling like a latrine, then paying someone to lie still while he fucked them.