Free Wetware by Craig Nova Page A

car pull up in front of the theater, she paid her check and went out, running a little, glad to have the cool air on her face and to see the lights of the theater. She heard the voices of an after-theater crowd, a laugh or two, a shout of recognition, and then a general wash of sound made up of rustling skirts, the click of high-heeled shoes, the sound of satin liners hissing over a dress, and through it all she could smell the perfume and the lingering whiff of champagne. Carr saw Blaine and the Russian musician coming across the sidewalk. Jimmy got out of the car and moved toward the rear door and opened it. Just as the young woman got to the curb, she looked up at Blaine, her eyes filled with light, like diamonds, and before she slipped into the car she put her lips together and gave him a kiss, the intensity of which was somewhere between a suggestion and a promise. Carr stood at the edge of the crowd, wanting to speak, or to shout, but she did neither. She heard the heavy, armored door close. This sound had changed too, like everything else around her. Whereas before it had been a sign of powerful elegance, it was now just a thud, a signal that she was no longer wanted.
    At home, she took a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and held it against her eyes, which were swollen. The cork broke when she tried to get it out, and then she was reduced to pushing it into the bottle. This just showed how inept she had become. She poured the wine, flecked with pieces of cork, into a glass as she came into the living room and sat down in front of the TV. After flipping back and forth, she found a channel that showed nothing but storms. A big one was moving across Central America, and she watched as brown water washed down a hill, slowly undermining the shacks with corrugated tin roofs that stood on the bank. Palm trees swayed back and forth in the gales, and at the height of the hurricane the debris from the disappearing roofs of buildings looked like black birds, like bats, like shreds of funeral bunting blowing in the wind. Dead creatures, all black in the current, were being carried down to the ocean. She listened to the sound of the hurricane and thought,
Yes. Listen.
    She looked out the window at the city. It had changed too, no longer the impossibly romantic collection of lights, but just the rankest physical phenomena. Electrons in a void, absolutely indifferent to her or to anyone else. She had an overwhelming desire to go back to those afternoons when she and her father had broken computers into bits, when they had worked until they were out of breath. Her father was long dead, but she now realized that he had been trying to warn her. He had resisted hope, and now she wondered if he had had a night like this one, and in a moment of recognition that came with a sense of weight, she was certain that he had. Of course, in her innocent beliefs she hadn’t been able to understand him, or to do anything but disapprove of his brutality. Her innocence had shown everywhere, and in particular she now saw that it had been in her notion, which she had just accepted at face value without a moment’s thought, that if she just worked hard enough, hid who she really was long enough, spent enough time alone, did without, at least in any part of her existence that could have been warm and delicious, she would turn into someone admirable and even grand. She sat there and thought,
And look at me now. Just look.
    The odd thing was how flimsy this entire construction of herself seemed now, just a bunch of fraudulent habits and gestures that had probably fooled no one. She had built herself up, bit by careful bit, and now this analog of a person, this thing made by years of blinding effort, seemed like a dress that had at one time seemed fashionable but was now obviously just a knock-off of the real thing. She hated what she had been and yet didn’t have a clue of where to go, of what to do.
    She closed her eyes now and realized her father had