Free To Sleep Gently by Trent Zelazny

she looked. Her soft, clear and pale skin, the only make-up a small bit of lipstick, red to match her hair. Her blue eyes tired and frustrated, giving them an air of indifference that Dempster found appealing. The way she moved, slowly and with a certain poise that went well with the rest of her presentation. She stirred something ferocious and primitive inside him, and he wanted her in incomprehensible ways that brought about an unsettling ache which started in his chest and went down to his knees.
    Contradictory to this, however, he also felt fear. There had been something that drew him like a magnet, while at the same time repelled him.
    He climbed out of the car, pocketed his keys, and made his way to Essentials.
    The music hadn't changed since the day before. Still the same terrible dance song. The lighting was still awful, the atmosphere worse. Instead of heading straight for the book department, this time he took the long way around, through the video section, moving slowly, deliberately, browsing the new releases and others around him. Not a sign did he see of her.
    Mike was in the literature section with some sort of beeper gun, using it to scan barcodes on the backs of books. When the gun made one sound, he placed that book back on the shelf, and when it made another sound, he tossed the book onto a cart.
    "Hey, Perky."
    Mike scanned another book, tossed it onto the cart and looked up. "Hey, Jerky. You have a good night?"
    "Could've been worse." He pulled a copy of The Moviegoer from the shelf. "What about you?"
    "Wasn't bad," Mike said. "Mostly spent the night watching TV."
    "Anything good?"
    "Is there ever anything good on TV?"
    "I dunno. I haven't really seen it in years."
    "There's nothing other than crappy reality shows these days," Mike told him. "Even worse are the reality game shows, where they do things like have ten women each pick an envelope that could have anywhere from zero to a million dollars in it. Then they all date the same guy, and if the guy rejects them, they're out of the game. No love, no money, nothing. If the guy falls in love with one, then that girl has to pick between the love of this man or the envelope." He shook his head and tossed another book onto the cart. "Lame."
    Dempster replaced The Moviegoer on the shelf. "Guess I haven't missed much in that area," he said.
    "You haven't."
    "Say, Mike, I wanna ask you something and it's gonna sound stupid."
    "Won't be the first time."
    "That's true." He reached for a Chuck Palahniuk book then stopped and let his hand drop. "There was a girl working over in the video section last night. Real cute redhead."
    Mike scanned another book, put it back on the shelf. He nodded slowly as he reached for yet another. "That would be Carly," he said.
    Carly. He liked the name.
    "What's her story?"
    "I don't know."
    "What'd you mean you don't know? You work with her, don't you?"
    "Lots of people work here, Demp, and just about everyone hates working here. As a result, we all associate with each other as little as possible."
    "That seems weird."
    "Yeah, maybe, but that's how it is."
    "So you don't know anything about her?"
    "I know her name is Carly. Carly Whittaker." He shrugged. "She seems pretty cool." He threw another book onto the cart and looked up at him. "She's a bit younger than you."
    "She can't be that much younger than me."
    "Don't forget, you did age while you were locked up."
    The statement struck a painful chord inside him. He realized he had no choice but to brush it off.
    "So that's all you can tell me about her."
    "Unfortunately, yeah, I don't have anything else to offer on the subject." He scanned another book. "Sorry."
    Suddenly Dempster's mind clouded with guilt for pushing Mike unfairly.
    "All right, cool," he said. "Whatever. You get your lunch any time soon?"
    "In another twenty or thirty minutes, yeah. Where you wanna go?"
    "So far I've eaten at the pizza place and that's it. We could go there again, or you could pick something else.