CHAPTER 1

It was worse than catching somebody naked: they caught him broke. Nobody knew where to look.

The door to Henry's apartment was open just a little, and just a little was more than enough to be eclipsed entirely by Henry's buddha-like countenance. His arm was slung strangely over his forehead and his fingers played against the jamb in the world's worst approximation of nonchalance. "Wow, this is so cool," claimed Henry, smiling intermittently. "A meat-space visit, right out of the blue. Wow. Guys, hey."

The four friends were fresh from the convention. They still smelled like cotton candy and cigarettes as they hovered in the close corridor.

Aaron said, "Did we interrupt your penis time? I'm sure you can let us in -- your screen-saver will've come on by now. Whatever kinky shit you're into remains a safely guarded secret."

"Shut up, Aaron," said everybody else.

"A lot of shit's gone on lately," explained Henry, sweating a bit.

Even through the barely open door it was evident that Henry was wearing his usual outfit: a Romulan military uniform, silver and broad-shouldered. His eyebrows were typically shaved and drawn back in on a sharp angle, but today he had no make-up, and his eyebrows were a thick stubble. He wasn't wearing his ear extensions, either, but the tips of his lobes were pale from the habit.

Scott saluted in the Romulan manner and crisply declared, "Eugene wants to see the bridge, Commander."

Eugene nodded.

"That's just it," admitted Henry sadly. "The bridge is gone, man."

"What!" cried Lansing. He couldn't help it, and blushed after making the noise. He sidled over to hide behind Eugene, but Eugene was trying to hide behind him.

"Like I said, a lot of shit's gone on," repeated Henry heavily.

The next moment of awkward silence was broken by Aaron. "So, my socially retarded cherub, are you going to invite us into your non-bridge or do I have to hold my piss until we get to the airport?"

"Shut up, Aaron."

"Seriously, though."

Henry sighed and opened the door.

Henry's apartment was famous for being a lavishly appointed replica of the bridge of a Romulan B-type Warbird, as seen in Star Trek. It had twinkling banks of blinkies, a swiveling command console with arm controls, and an embedded giant-size Japanese plasma television serving in place of the standard holographic viewscreen. The lighting motif was green and everything was labeled with cryptic Romulan runes. At all times of the day or night hidden sub-woofers gave voice to a subtle rumble of shipboard ambiance.

"Cold damn," said Aaron.

Nobody told him to shut up. They were similarly stunned to see Henry's apartment torn out of the twenty-fourth century and dashed, bereft of imagination or dignity, into the ass end of the twentieth. His place kind of looked like a house in Whoville after a visit from the Grinch: screw-holes in the walls, sun-stains outlining vanished furniture, the dull echo of emptiness.

"Yeah," agreed Henry, sitting down on a milk-crate that bowed dangerously under his generous bottom. A second milk-crate in front of him held his ThinkPad. "I sort of had to hawk some stuff," he said, dusting crumbs from his command jersey.

"Oh man," said Scott sympathetically. "What happened?"

"Lots of shit," said Henry.

"I bet you got dumped by that girl, too," chuckled Aaron. "If she ever existed, that is."

"She existed alright," replied Henry somberly, looking up to meet their eyes with his, hooded and bloodshot. "She ran all my cards up to the limit and then disappeared. She screwed me over, guys. I'm totally, totally screwed."

"Dude!" squeaked Lansing, his brow creased with pity.

"My credit is destroyed," continued Henry. "I had to auction everything. My entire paycheque goes to collection agencies. I eat dinner at the homeless shelter."

"Jesus," said Scott, who was Jewish.

Aaron's parents were Presbyterians but his exclamation was Klingon: "Dor-sho-gha!"

Everyone nodded agreement. Even Eugene's heart ached for poor Henry, even though they had never before met in the flesh and only fleetingly brushed shoulders over Internet Relay Chat -- still, Eugene could not ignore the inconceivable pain of losing a woman. He had trouble, in fact, conceiving of having a woman in the first place: this made his compassion all the more acute, catalyzed by envy.

Eugene was dressed in the black slacks and stiff, rusty red tunic of a cinema-version Starfleet captain, and he solemnly undid the cream-white strap from his shoulder to let the double-breast flap open as a symbol of mourning. He said, "Truly, the worst of times," and then took a hit from his inhaler.

Henry nodded. "Thanks, man."

"Women are crazy," said Scott. Nobody would debate this wisdom, as they all knew Scott had had not one but two genuine girlfriends. Scott had blonde hair and bright, flecked brown eyes that looked like chocolate chip cookies. He wore the grey-epauletted jumpsuit of a Deep Space Niner, his collar crimson to indicate command. He was their indisputable Kirk, ever radiating an air of confident authority. "Better to have loved and lost..." he sighed.

"In the future," contributed Aaron, "I predict that women will be twice as powerful, ten thousand times larger, and so expensive that only the five richest geeks in Silicon Valley will own them." He was dressed as a Klingon warrior, complete with creaking leather, a mottled foam forehead ridge, and two long, greasy, black braids.

Lansing wore the classic Spock: blue tunic, black boots, elfin ears. "The convention was really good," he said, attempting clumsily to change the subject. "Nichelle Nichols spoke."

"Wow, cool," said Henry.

"It was awesome," agreed Scott. "She's an inspiring speaker. Really great speech."

"She's still even a little bit hot," said Aaron thoughtfully, stroking his fake goatee. "You know, for a mature."

"Cool," said Henry, who wasn't really listening. "Um, so you want to grab some sushi or something? How long are you guys going to be here in San Fran?"

Aaron shot the cuff of his furry Klingon sleeve and consulted an Indiglo watch. "About two more hours. Do you have the number for a taxi?"

"We thought we'd see you at the convention," offered Lansing by way of apology.

"Yeah, cool, no problem," said Henry quietly. "I've got a lot of shit to do anyway."

During the cab ride to the airport the four friends were quiet. They shifted their feet idly, making their bags of convention swag rustle. They stared out the windows, watching San Francisco slide by. Nobody wanted think of Henry but they couldn't help it.

They had all looked up to him because he was getting laid.

As they pulled up outside the terminal Eugene closed his Starfleet blazer primly and said, "If it ever looks like I'm about to screw up my life for a woman, you guys would stop me, right?"

Aaron snorted. "If it ever looks like a woman would look at you, Eugene, we'll tell you."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Lansing shook his head and chuckled. "I guess women are just trouble, huh Scott?"

Scott shrugged as he climbed out of the car. "I'd ride again, given the opportunity."

Lansing was a twenty-five year old virgin. To him, Scott was a hero. "Me too," he agreed.

Aaron rolled his eyes.

Their luggage did not levitate but it did have little wheels. The terminal doors split automatically before them, and sighed closed after. They pulled their wheeled bags along as they craned their heads in search of information screens, consulting their hand-held computers which tweeted and beeped in imitation of familiar props.

People around them snickered. They whispered things to one another like, "Hey, those nerds think they're on Star Wars." Women blushed and looked away while men stared them down with queer sneers.

A loud Texan with a deer-hide golf bag walked into Eugene while talking on a cellular phone, causing both of them to stumble. "Watch it, fag," said the Texan.

"Well, double dumb-ass on you!" retorted Eugene.

They almost missed their flight on account of the nosebleed Eugene got from over-exerting himself when he ran away from the Texan and hid in the duty free shop. Scott found him stuffed behind a display of snow-globes, wiping his bloody nostrils on a towel that said FUN IN THE SUN: CALIFORNIA STYLE!

"I guess I have to buy this now," Eugene said sadly.

"Make it so," nodded Scott, pointing to his watch.

CHAPTER 2

It was winter in Toronto and the snowflakes flew like stars at warp speed. "Christ, Aaron!" cried Scott. "Slow to impulse power -- the roads are slippery."

"Belay that order," said Eugene from the back seat. "We're going to miss George Takei."

Aaron's green Jetta spun its wheels through a bank of heavy chop and then fishtailed diagonally across the parking lot. Aaron counter-steered deftly and then popped the handbrake, the car grinding through a half-controlled slide directly into a snowbank beside the last open spot. A minor avalanche tumbled over the windshield. Aaron yanked the keys and tripped the locks. "Everybody remember where we parked."

"I can't open my door," complained Lansing.

"Climb over Eugene," suggested Aaron blithely as he squeezed his belly past the steering wheel to climb out.

"Oof," said Eugene.

Once inside the Metro Convention Centre the four friends stuffed their parkas into lockers and rearranged their costumes with care, flattening insignias, smoothing out folds. Lansing carried a leather satchel filled with pictures he hoped to have autographed, including a framed glossy of William Shatner himself. "How much do you think his autograph costs?" wondered Lansing as they hurried toward the hall.

"Shatner's? I think you have to blow him."

"Shut up, Aaron."

They found seats at the back of the main hall. George Takei stood at the podium in front of giant picture of his younger self, preening at his silk scarf as he tried to make heads or tails of a question being mumbled at him by a blue-skinned Andorian wearing a T-shirt that said, Trekkers do it boldly.

"Um, yes," replied George in his trademark baritone. "Matt and I have chatted about doing some voice work for the movie when and if it finally happens, but nobody from Fox has officially approached me yet."

"Follow up question, Mr. Takei: will any of the Futurama characters appear in The Simpsons Movie?"

"I honestly have no idea."

"What about Bender?"

"Next question, please."

Aaron swore in Klingon and rolled his eyes. "Why don't these dipshits understand that this isn't SimpCon? Stay on topic, morons."

Scott shrugged. "George is a multi-talented actor."

"Qu'vatlh," grumbled Aaron. "This is worse than when Chekov talked about comic books for an hour."

"His comics are kind of cool, actually," said Lansing quietly.

"Man," sighed Aaron. "Where do I sign up for friends who are less lame?"

"Shut up."

They attended a mock-Klingon luncheon where egg-noodles were done up to resemble plates of live gagh and there were Kirk-era pastel food cubes for desert. After that they split up to visit exhibits of personal interest. Aaron waddled off to a seminar on invented languages; Eugene went to check out a gallery of movie props and international versions of familiar posters. Scott and Lansing found themselves strolling through the carpeted mezzanine, their winter boots leaving little clods of melting slush in their wake. They stopped idly by a giant plexiglas case containing the actual Borg cube model used by Paramount. The lights had gone out on the model so a janitor was kneeling at the base of the display, fussing with wires.

Scott tapped him on the shoulder and politely suggested that the ground wire was loose. The janitor pressed it into place and the cube illuminated from within with an eerie green glow. "Thanks, kid," said the janitor, dusting off his pants.

Scott frowned. "I'm twenty-seven years old. I'm hardly a kid."

The janitor smirked. "You're dressed in pajamas in public, obsessing over a TV show," he said. "My mistake."

"This is a uniform," corrected Scott haughtily.

"Uh-huh," agreed the janitor, walking away.

Lansing put his hand on the taller boy's shoulder. "People are such assholes," he said sympathetically. "Forget about it: I bet that guy loves Raymond."

Scott sneered. "Why is it that people can be into whatever goofy crap they want, but it's us that end up the butt of the jokes? I mean, you can be foaming at the mouth crazy about pop singers or sports teams or Xenu, but if you like Trek you're automatically the world's biggest douche."

"People are assholes," repeated Lansing somberly.

"It's not like we're into Battlestar Galactica or something lame like that. Trek has something to say."

"You're preaching to the choir, dude."

Scott scratched at his blonde hair thoughtfully. "Actually, some things about Battlestar were sort of cool -- for the seventies."

"Yeah," agreed Lansing. "I think so too."

"Still, you see my point."

"Totally."

At the other end of the mezzanine was a smaller hall decked out with shiny pink banners that read, Women of Trek TorCon 1999. Scott and Lansing exchanged glances and then sidled up to the doors and peeked inside: Grace Lee Whitney was holding a tinny microphone, addressing the scattered audience on the subject of the gender gap in technology- and science-oriented university major programmes. She went on explain how everyone could gain a greater appreciation of the issue by buying a copy of her book on getting over drug addiction.

A pasty-faced, heavily pimpled girl dressed as a crinkle-nosed Bajoran elbowed her companion and whispered, "She's just shilling her book. This is such a rip-off. I thought Captain Janeway was going to be here."

"Some of the boys are cute, though," said her wall-eyed friend, fidgeting with a brassiere strap so tight it made her back look as if she were melting.

Scott and Lansing scanned the room: the mostly female audience was interspersed with three or four creepy guys trying to covertly check out the girls with painfully obvious peripheral flicks of their eyes. They were each of them alone, and they strained to appear casual. One of them quietly switched seats to put himself closer to a skinny, hard-faced black woman dressed as a curveless version of Deanna Troi; a moment later the woman switched seats to move further away from him again.

"This is sad," whispered Scott. "It's a fine line between courting and stalking when you're socially retarded."

Lansing nodded. "That's why I just don't even try."

Scott shook his head dismissively. "You're a good looking guy, Lansing, and you're sweet. You should be more confident. Girls are really into confidence."

Lansing considered this. "You want to go talk to some of them?"

Scott's forehead became immediately shiny with perspiration. "Um, no. No, they're probably sick of being hit on all the time. I mean, I don't want to be mixed up for a guy like that, right?"

"Right," agreed Lansing, relieved.

Later in the afternoon they congregated outside the front doors so Aaron could smoke a cigarette. Eugene bummed one from him in an effort to enhance his coolness, but all he did was cough a lot. "The trick is not to inhale," Aaron pointed out, spitting on the sidewalk.

"I thought only losers smoked without inhaling," said Scott.

Aaron sneered. Lansing giggled. Traffic along Front Street thickened as an ocean of sports fans were released from some event at the SkyDome. The smoking conventioneers stepped back to make room on the sidewalk, unwilling to risk brushing shoulders with people wearing jerseys. Some of them sheepishly pulled their coats closed over their Starfleet jumpsuits. The sports fans were in a celebratory mood, and they swore and punched each other playfully, the parade swelling over the curbs and against the doors of the convention centre.

"Maybe we should go back inside," suggested Eugene, holding his cigarette aloft like a pencil.

"You're such a pussy," snorted Aaron, turning to spit.

He spat on a broad-shouldered man in a Maple Leafs sweater, the phlegmy wad dribbling down the logo. The man and his friends stopped, eyes wide. "What the hell?" he shouted. "Did you just spit on me, you fucking nerd?"

"Oh shit," said Scott quickly. "It was just an accident. Sorry, man!"

"Don't apologize for me," interrupted Aaron. "This human is fortunate I do not kill him where he stands for mocking me so."

"Let's just go inside," said Eugene again, backing toward the doors and stumbling into a garbage can.

The man in the Leafs sweater lunged at Aaron but stopped short. When Aaron flinched and fell over backwards the man and his friends guffawed and starting walking away. Scott helped Aaron to his feet. The husky Klingon shook off his friend's arm and yelled, "You are now an enemy of the Klingon Empire, foul bIHnuch!"

"Shut up, Aaron!" hissed Scott. "I don't want to die here."

The man in the Leafs sweater paused in his tracks and turned around. "What did you say, you fucking homo?"

Aaron shook his head slowly, squinting with determination. "No, Scott -- today is a good day to die!" He leaned down and scooped up a handful of snow, packed it, and lobbed it across the sidewalk. It struck the man in the Leafs sweater on the chest, wet slush splattering up into his square-jawed face.

Eugene turned pale. Lansing gasped.

There came a brief second of inaction before the four friends spun in place and scrambled over one another to pull open the glass doors and get inside. They fell onto the rubber mats in the lobby and squirmed to their feet clumsily, desperate to get away.

"Red alert, dude!" squeaked Lansing.

The doors were flung open behind them and they were collectively pelted by a volley of ice balls flung with vicious velocity. Aaron crashed into a pillar and then dove behind it. Lansing covered his head with his arms and tried to back away blindly. Scott held up his hands and cried, "Okay, you got us -- you got us guys, ha ha. You win. Can we just forget about this now?"

The man in the Leafs sweater shook his head, wound up, and launched a tight ice ball directly at Scott. Scott ducked and the ice struck Eugene in the face. His nose immediately began to bleed.

The sport fans chortled as they let the doors swing closed again. "Dorks!" they laughed, rejoining the stream of pedestrian traffic.

Scott sighed and helped Aaron to his feet again. "Happy now?" he asked darkly.

"You should know better than to interfere in Klingon affairs."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Lansing moved to attend to Eugene but someone was already there, and her appearance shocked Lansing into immobility. "Oh God, you poor thing!" she cried, fishing a tissue out of a tiny purse at her hip and dabbing tenderly at Eugene's nostrils. "Are you hurt?" she wanted to know, brushing away a lock of long auburn hair that had come loose from her bun.

Eugene shook his head wordlessly, eyes riveted.

The girl was costumed in the sleek, curve-hugging silver unitard of Seven of Nine, tiny clusters of mock-circuitry glued to her angelic face. Her brow was furrowed with worry, her green eyes shining as she examined Eugene's nose critically. "I don't think it's broken, do you?"

Eugene shook his head again, mouth slightly ajar.

"Hey," croaked Scott awkwardly. "Thanks. Are you okay, Eugene?"

Eugene's gaze flicked over to Scott. He blinked as if clearing away a dream. "Um, yeah, absolutely," he stuttered. "It's nothing, man. I'm cool."

"Eugene's a nice name," said Seven of Nine.

"Um, yeah," replied Eugene, turning pink.

She giggled. "I'm Melody," she said, her accent smooth and southern. "Pleasure's mine."

"Hi Melody," said the four friends in rough unison, coughing to clear the cracking from their voices.

Melody straightened and tucked the stray hair back into her bun, the effect of her outstretched arms causing the boys to avert their eyes bashfully. "I just wanted to help," she explained.

"Thank you," mumbled Eugene.

"You've got ice in your hair, Eugene," she pointed out. Eugene tried not to flinch as she reached out and tussled her fingers over his head. "What was up with those assholes, anyways?"

"Maybe they don't like Trek," suggested Scott.

Melody sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. "I guess we Trekkers have all got to stick together, huh?"

The friends nodded, their palms damp. Eugene couldn't wipe the idiotic smile from his face. "You're really pretty," he blurted suddenly. Aaron groaned and rolled his eyes.

Melody smiled back. "You're cute," she told Eugene.

Lansing forgot all about getting Shatner's autograph. In fact, he forgot about seeing Shatner speak at all. Though he couldn't understand quite how it happened, the next thing he knew they were all sitting in the food fair having fries with gravy. Eugene paid for Melody's which inspired her to give him a little kiss on the cheek. The look on his face was priceless.

"What do you guys all do?" Melody asked, sipping a Coke.

"We code," said Scott. "Well, except for Eugene -- he's in tech support."

"Second tier tech support," Eugene clarified.

"I'm writing a graphics rendering engine for a gaming company," added Lansing.

"I'm a database programmer," said Scott.

"I'm saving the world from the Y2K crisis," said Aaron. "One line of code at a time."

They talked about the convention for a while, each of them interrupting the others in order to get in his bit to define his knowledge. They feigned nonchalance, ached to appear urbane. They fell over themselves other in competition to bus her tray. "What about you?" asked Eugene, putting his elbow in a small pool of gravy. "What do you do?"

"I just moved here," said Melody. "I don't really know anyone in this city so I figured the best way to make friends would be to go hang out where the kind of people I like get together. And, well, I'm really into Trek so when I heard about this con I knew I had to go."

"Wow," said Eugene, frowning at his moist elbow.

"And it worked, see?" laughed Melody. "Here I am, my second day in Canada and I already have four friends. I'm sorry you had to take a snowball to the face in for that to happen, Eugene."

"Don't worry about it," grinned Eugene, forgetting about the gravy. "Best. Snowball. Ever."

She laughed again. Aaron shot his cuff and checked his watch. "We should get going," he said.

"What's your hurry?" asked Scott.

"There's a new Voyager tonight."

"I don't want to hold anybody up," said Melody.

"No, no no, no," protested Eugene. "You're not. Don't worry about it, Aaron. I'm totally taping it."

"I love Voyager," said Melody.

"It's awesome," agreed Eugene.

Aaron grunted. "VHS is a bane to my eyeballs."

Scott cleared his throat. "Well, why don't we all watch it together? We can go to my place."

Eugene narrowed his eyes dubiously. "My TV's bigger."

"Dude, you live in a basement," Lansing pointed out. "Let's go somewhere we won't bump our heads. Scott's is good."

"Sounds great," said Melody, cheeks dimpling as she smiled beatifically. "Did y'all drive?"

"Yes," said Scott. "We're parked in a snowbank around back, thanks to Goggles Pizano here."

"Hey," snapped Aaron, "you can't even drive, asshat."

"I choose not to drive," Scott shot back.

"That's a natural decision after failing the road test four times."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Melody giggled. "You guys are hilarious," she said, touching Scott's sleeve.

Eugene glowered. Scott blushed. "Let's go," he stammered, standing up quickly and making a show of fishing around in his pocket for the little orange locker key. He was buying time for his erection to flag.

Melody led the way out, the locomotive of a short train of boys, her bum moving beneath the silver unitard a lure in equal parts frightening and hypnotic.

"Kobayashi Maru," muttered Aaron under his breath.

CHAPTER 3

Scott's condominium faced south, overlooking the stacked squares of Bay Street's tall financial fingers. The rows of greenish fluorescents inside them always made Lansing think of Borg cubes.

"Wow," said Melody. "Nice view!"

Aaron snorted. "It's just a matte painting."

Scott flipped a row of switches on the wall and banks of track lighting came alive, reflecting off the granite kitchen counters and casting a bright vignette over the glossy, blue and white computer on his desk. The screen displayed the machine's progress rendering blocks of telescope data for the SETI project, software for which Scott was a beta tester.

The hour was near so the boys scrambled into their usual seats in the livingroom. Scott turned on the television and hopped to the correct channel, then turned around and furrowed his brow. "Hey Aaron, why don't you scooch over so Melody can sit somewhere?"

Aaron frowned rebelliously, then shifted over on the couch.

Lansing went to the kitchen and dished out a couple of bowls of pretzels and chips from Scott's cupboard and brought them to the coffeetable, which was covered in old issues of Wired and MacAddict. Aaron lit a cigarette and put his feet up on the coffeetable, his red and white sports socks standing in stark contrast to his Klingon regalia.

Eugene coughed.

"How did you get yourself a place like this, Scott?" asked Melody. "It's amazing."

Scott blushed, fumbling with the remote control. "It's a pretty affordable deal, actually. And my company's good to me, I guess."

"Plus he supplements his income by selling buttsex on Church Street."

"Shut up, Aaron."

"Don't deny it, streetwalker. I've seen how you work those glutes."

They hushed one another as the screen dipped to black to begin the second part of a cliffhanger, opening with a review of last week's drama -- the return of the Borg Queen, the kidnapping of Seven of Nine, the reedy vibrato of Captain Janeway declaring her fearless commitment to the poor drone's rescue against all odds...

Eugene and Melody reached into the pretzel bowl at the same time and their hands touched, which caused Eugene to knock over the bowl, scattering pretzels across the carpet. "Oh crap, I'm sorry," he mumbled, dropping to his knees to pick up the mess.

"Dude," said Lansing, "relax."

This was easy for Lansing to say because he was seated as far away from Melody as possible. He could, with minimal effort, pretend she wasn't there at all.

During a commercial break she got up to use the washroom, and the second the door closed the boys found themselves in a huddle. "Holy shit!" whispered Scott. "How did we somehow find ourselves in the company of the hottest girl in the world?"

Aaron shrugged. "She could stand to lose some weight."

Scott raised his brow critically. "So could you."

"Do you think she's into me?" asked Eugene, his forehead wrinkled with worry. "I'm trying not to say much so I don't ruin it by saying the wrong thing."

Scott groaned. "I don't think she's into anyone. She's just lonely."

Lansing was sceptical. "Hot girls don't get lonely, dude."

"Yeah, that's bullshit," said Eugene. "I mean, she's being really nice to me. I don't think that's coincidence."

"Coincident with what?" frowned Aaron.

"Just because a girl is nice to you does not mean she's into you, Eugene. It may just mean she's friendly. You know -- friendly? How people act when they want friends?"

"There is no word in Klingon for such behaviour," claimed Aaron.

"She said I was cute," argued Eugene, biting his lip and wringing his hands.

"That's cute as in pathetic, you fool."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Scott waved his hands for order, shaking his head. "Girls are human beings, just like us. Everything they say and do is not predicated on how it relates to your penis. They get lonely, they act friendly, they compliment people -- it's normal."

"But how do we know for sure?" asked Eugene.

"When the show comes back on try to cop a feel," suggested Aaron.

Eugene's eyes went wide, then he shoved his inhaler in his mouth and took a hard hit. The boys slowly turned around to see Melody standing right behind them, one hand on her hip. "I don't mean to interrupt y'all," she said, a wry little smile playing over her lips.

"We were just, uh, joking around," stammered Scott, breaking out in a sweat.

"I couldn't find the light in the bathroom," she said.

"Here, I'll show you."

As soon as Scott and Melody disappeared around the corner Eugene and Lansing started punching Aaron in the shoulder, repeatedly hissing, "You Klingon bastard!" When Scott returned Aaron was rubbing his arm ruefully.

"You do realize her naked ass is touching your toilet seat, right now, as we speak," Aaron said to Scott. "Got wood?"

Scott ignored him. "Listen, if she is into Eugene the least we can do is try not to screw it up for him, right? Let's get a grip, guys. Try to act like regular people if that's at all possible. I know that's a stretch for you, Aaron, but just try, okay? For Eugene's sake: try."

Aaron farted ponderously. "What's in it for me?"

"We'll keep being your friends."

"I'm not convinced. Can you sweeten that deal?"

"No."

They stared at each other for a moment, then Aaron began to nod. "Oh, alright," he conceded, ruffling Eugene's hair. "If it's for the little guy."

"I'm not little," grumbled Eugene, brushing his hair back into place frantically with his hand, inadvertantly covering his scalp with pretzel salt. "I'm just skinny. And I'm going to start working out soon. You know, build up some muscle mass."

"You will be so sexy."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Melody returned as the commercials ended and squeezed herself back onto the couch between Eugene and Aaron. Scott took drink orders, offering cans of pop or beer -- Jolt, Dr. Pepper or Heineken. At Melody's request he mixed up a gin and tonic for her, and then one for himself. Eugene looked at his can of Jolt sadly, suddenly feeling like a kid at an adult party. "Maybe I'll take one, too, instead," he said. "Um, Scott."

"Whenever you drink, you barf," warned Aaron.

"I'm not going to barf."

"Well, it's Scott's carpet."

"Of course you can have a gin and tonic, Eugene. Anyone else?"

Lansing shook his head. Aaron didn't answer, eyes glued to the screen. "Keep it down," he muttered. The episode wound to a climactic but familiar conclusion, the starship Voyager cruising off into space beneath the producers' credits, all members of her crew restored thanks to some strategic sub-atomic emissions from the warp drive.

The boys then debated the relative beauty of various starships, with Eugene coming down in favour of Voyager while Aaron argued that it looked like a "space fish." Scott, as usual, insisted that the pinnacle of starship design came with the Galaxy class 1701-D, while Lansing shook his head and chuckled sceptically. "From fish to whale," he weighed in.

Melody listened to rapt interest but contributed little. She sipped her drink and crossed her legs, watching each speaker attentively as they argued, giggling at their jokes and barbs. Finally, in a lull, she said, "I know you guys are really into the ships and stuff, but for me what makes Trek compelling are the characters."

"Oh yeah," agreed everyone quickly. "Totally."

"Take Seven of Nine, for example," she continued. "She's my favourite. She's such an interesting mix of human and non-human, but very different from, say, Spock's mix or Data's mix. She's out of her element and she wants to learn, but she has her own way of doing things and she's not going to change who she is."

"I think she's like a metaphor for the struggle of immigrants," said Eugene.

"Or lesbians," added Aaron.

"Well, I'm an immigrant but I'm not a lesbian," laughed Melody.

"That's good," said Eugene.

Melody laughed again. "Is it?"

"Um," said Eugene.

"I for one think you're integrating into Canadian culture very smoothly," said Scott boiterously. He raised his half-drained gin and tonic. "A toast -- to Melody's new life here in the country of real Trekkers."

They tinked glasses to cans and drank. "Cheers!"

Aaron bellowed, "ReH nay'meylIjyIn Dujablu'ja!" and then crushed his empty can of Dr. Pepper against his leather armour.

Eugene drained his glass, paused, and then got up and ran to the washroom. A moment later came the sound of enthusiastic retching. "Oh, crap," sighed Scott.

"I told you!" cried Aaron.

"At least he made it to the washroom this time," said Lansing.

"I'd better go see if he's okay," Scott said, getting up from his armchair. Melody followed him.

Scott knocked. Eugene's muffled voice sounded after a moment: "Don't open the door."

"Why?"

"I don't want Melody to see me like this."

"Are you covered in barf or something?"

"No," called Eugene. "...I just feel stupid."

Melody sidled up next to Scott and put her face near the door. "Don't feel stupid, Eugene. We just want to help. Are you okay?"

"I'm cool," claimed Eugene, and then he noisily threw up again.

Scott worked to maintain his focus despite the awareness of Melody's sweet, warm breath on his neck. "Can we get you anything, man? Water, a towel, Tylenol?"

"I'll be out in a minute."

Back in the livingroom Aaron and Lansing were watching The Simpsons, snickering as Homer was ludicrously injured. When Scott and Melody walked in Aaron said, "So is pukey catching a lift home with us or what?"

More noises of digestive distress sounded from the washroom. "Or what, I think," said Scott. "You guys can get going. I'll call a cab for him when he settles."

Lansing tossed his empty pop can into the blue bin and picked up his parka. Aaron wrestled himself into his coat and felt around until he found his keys. He looked up. "Am I giving her a lift, too?"

Scott looked to Melody. She shook her head. "I'm going to stay on to make sure poor Eugene's okay...so long as Scott doesn't mind playing host a while longer, that is."

"Of course I don't mind," said Scott.

Aaron looked back and forth between the two of them for a long moment, then shrugged, wandered over to the door and shoved his feet into his boots without tying them. "Let's go, asswad," he called over his shoulder to Lansing as he opened the door and stepped out.

"He's a charmer," noted Melody, smiling wrily.

"Live long and prosper," said Lansing, waving. He turned and scurried out after the grumpy Klingon. The door sighed closed as their footfalls thudded away down the corridor.

When Eugene came out of the washroom looking pale and forlorn, Scott escorted him into the bedroom and ordered him to lie down until he felt less dizzy. He put a plastic bowl and a glass of water on the night-stand and then quietly pulled the door shut.

Eugene slept fitfully for an hour and then sat up in the dark bedroom and struggled to remember where he was. All he could see were the numbers on Scott's clock-radio skewed and refracted through the glass of water. He picked up and glass and drained it, then spat some of it out as he noticed the time: it was past midnight and he had to get up for work tomorrow. "Shit, shit, shit," said Eugene, rubbing his temples.

He got out of bed and banged into the dresser, then moved slowly along the wall, feeling out with his hands until he discovered the doorknob. He released himself into the dark, silent apartment.

The television was still on but it was muted. David Letterman was going through his Top 10 list.

Eugene figured Scott had fallen asleep on the couch and when he peeked over he did indeed see an irregular human mass in the shadows. As quietly as he could he stole by to collect his parka and lace up his boots. He decided he should say thanks to Scott before disappearing, so he crept over to the couch and searched the darkness for a shoulder to gently shake. "Scott?" he whispered. "You awake, man?"

A sort of wet, smacking sound came from the mass on the couch. Eugene furrowed his brow. Then the mass groaned.

"Scott?"

Eugene opened his mobile to shed a little light from its glowing blue screen just as a pillow dropped aside and Melody sat up, her long auburn hair in disarray. Without conscious effort Eugene tilted the phone down and cast the dim blue light lower, revealing her swaying bare breasts, beauty-marked and plump.

"Oh my God!" said Eugene, dropping the phone.

"Eugene!" cried Melody, pulling a pillow over her chest.

"Eugene?" echoed Scott, sitting up suddenly from the opposite end of the couch and then, mid-flail, falling off of it onto the carpet. He wasn't wearing any pants, his pale bum faintly blue from the dropped mobile's light. "Shit!" said Scott.

"What the fuck?" gasped Eugene. "Scott -- what the fuck?"

"Um, you fell asleep," muttered Scott.

Eugene knelt down, scooped up his phone, then turned on heel and starting walking to the door. "Eugene, hey -- wait -- don't go," Scott called, stumbling to his feet. "Eugene, man -- come on."

Eugene threw open the door to the corridor and paused, Scott blinking against the influx of light. Eugene turned calmly and looked into his friend's face with an expression of bilous contempt. "From Hell's heart, I stab at thee," he hissed icily. "For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee."

"What?" stammered Scott, one hand cupped over his genitals.

Eugene walked out and slammed the door in his face.

CHAPTER 4

Spring executed. The slush turned to rain, and then the sun came out and dried up all the rain.

Lansing, Aaron and Eugene wandered down sunny, gum-stained College Street, popping in and out of cramped Chinese shops chocked with bins of low-priced computer components as they sipped tall coffees and argued about which Linux distribution was the least user-friendly to install.

"Slackware," claimed Aaron, "is the mark of a man. You sweat trying to wrestle that fucker into shape, I swear."

Eugene shook his head. "You're a baby. Slackware installs like butter."

"Install, yes -- compile without borked dependencies, no."

"You're retarded."

"I think I'm going to go with Debian," said Lansing thoughtfully.

In the next shop Lansing bought a graphics card for the machine he was building and was almost ripped off before Aaron slipped it out of the box, scrutinized the components on the circuit board, and then complained that it carried only half the promised onboard memory. "Oh so sorry I make mistake," said the proprietor, quickly swapping the box for another.

"Yeah, same mistake every chinsy crook on this strip makes," mumbled Aaron, examining the new card. "You guys are sharks."

The proprietor frowned. "You call me chinky?"

"No, chinsy. It means cheap. It means you're a grifter."

"Ah okay, ha ha," chuckled the proprietor. "I give no gifts, I am a business man. Nothing for free, hey? Ha ha ha."

Aaron rolled his eyes. Lansing slapped his cash on the counter, replaced the graphics card into its box and slid it into his already strained plastic bag of hardware goodies. "Let's go to Active Surplus next," he said.

"No no Active Surplus -- I have everything they have there here," gushed the proprietor. "You buy from me I give good deal, okay? I have what they have but better, and less expensive."

"No thanks," said Aaron, leading the way out of the dark little store. Eugene and Lansing followed, squinting against the sunlight.

The boys were dressed in their civvies: T-shirts and Dockers, button-down shirts open and billowing in a warm breeze that smelled like soil. They tucked down sunglasses that were the wrong shape for their faces, adjusting the positioning by making their noses squirm. They wore bright white sneakers and had electronic devices hanging from their belts.

"I've started working out," said Eugene, palpitating his own stick-like bicep. "Can you tell yet?"

"Maybe," said Lansing supportively.

"No," said Aaron.

Active Surplus Electronics was crowded, clusters of geeks hovering over every bin and quizzing or debating one another on form, function and price. The three friends pushed in from Queen Street's glare and shoved their sunglasses up on their foreheads, making their hair stick up goofily. They wormed their way between the aisles in search of an Ethernet interface and cabling for Lansing's new machine, stopping to cluck over the piles of discount parts and drawers of shiny, tiny sub-components suitable for self-soldering by the geek's geek.

Lansing turned to say something to Eugene but stopped short as Eugene spun on heel and suddenly squirmed away, disappearing hurriedly around the end of the aisle. Lansing raised his brow curiously. "Eugene?"

Someone tapped him the shoulder. Lansing turned. "Scott!" he exclaimed.

"Look what the cat dragged in," declared Aaron.

"Hey guys," said Scott sheepishly.

Lansing hovered, feeling awkward. "Um, how've you been, dude?"

"We're fine, we're good," said Scott.

"We?" echoed Lansing.

"Are you a Borg now?" asked Aaron.

"I mean me and Melody," explained Scott, gesturing to the next aisle where Melody was browsing through the bins, carrying a glossy tangerine iBook by its plastic handle. "Uh, we're just looking for parts to mod her new laptop," concluded Scott lamely.

"You bought her an iBook now?" said Aaron, shaking his head. "Tell me, Scott, what is it like being a woman's bitch?"

Scott started to say something that started with "shut" but stopped. Instead he said, "Look man, her job kind of fell through and we were always fighting over who got to use my G3, so it just made sense."

"Is she living at your place?"

"We live together, yes."

"She paying you rent?"

"That's none of your business. Come on. Why do you always have to be such an asshole, Aaron?"

Aaron snorted. "I'm the asshole? You're the dick who dropped all his friends to be full-time salt vampire feed."

Scott groaned. "I haven't dropped anyone --"

"You didn't even show up for my big season finale TiVo party," accused Aaron.

Scott blinked. "What's TiVo?"

Aaron looked sideways at Lansing. "You see, Lansing? A guy gets sucked into pussy-space and he loses his edge. He's totally out of it. His finger is so far from the pulse of technology that he doesn't even know what TiVo is." He shook his head and smirked. "It might be a lost cause, but I have to try..."

Scott flinched as Aaron reached over and placed his fingers splayed out on the side of Scott's face, then leaned in and whispered, "Remember."

Scott knocked Aaron's arm away, irritated. "Give me a break, man. I've got a lot of shit going on right now."

"You know who you sound like?" asked Aaron belligerently. "You sound just like fucking Henry, man. And you know what happened to him: he got womaned to death."

"Henry was robbed," argued Scott. "That didn't happen to him just because he had a girlfriend."

"The only difference between Henry and you is that you're enjoying being sucked dry."

Scott pinched the bridge his nose, closing his eyes for a moment. "Guys, we've been friends for years. I feel badly that you're upset, and I want to make it up to you. Let's not fight."

"You're no friend of mine, foul taHqeq," spat Aaron. He turned around and escaped the aisle, heading over to Eugene.

Scott looked at Lansing sadly. "Is that how you feel, too?"

Lansing shook his head. "Whatever, dude. We've missed you. Aaron's just kind of bitter and Eugene...well, truthfully, Eugene hates your guts. He's hurt."

"I know, I know..." mumbled Scott.

Lansing put a hand on Scott's shoulder. "I know you didn't mean to piss everybody off," he said. "It's not the same without you. Aaron keeps getting into trouble because you're not there to tell him to shut up." Lansing cleared his throat awkwardly and looked down, saying, "Scott, dude, you have to know -- I have been, and ever shall be, your friend."

Scott rubbed his eyes. "Thanks, man," he said quietly.

"Why don't you come to the Buffalo convention with us next week?"

"Oh, I don't know..."

Lansing fidgeted, casting a quick glance over at Melody's turned back. "You can bring her. It'll be okay."

"I'll ask her," promised Scott. "Look, I should probably get going."

"Yeah."

"I'm glad we bumped into each other."

"Yeah."

"I'll mail you about Buffalo."

"Cool."

Lansing watched as Scott dipped out of the aisle and walked up beside Melody. She looked over at Lansing and waved, so Lansing waved back timidly. She smiled which made it hard for Lansing to ignore her beauty, so he looked away. Scott took up her hand and they left the store together, the tangerine iBook swinging at her side, her waggling bum a siren call to every set of eyes in the place.

When Lansing turned around Aaron and Eugene were close by again, the latter's face brooding and pinched. Aaron was shaking his head. "What did the traitor have to say?" he grunted.

"He might come with us to Buffalo," said Lansing.

"Oh yeah? Is he taking the bus?"

"Um, no. We'd go in your car, like always."

"Is that a fact? I'm so glad you're here to volunteer my services to our enemies."

"Don't be like that, Aaron. Scott's not our enemy and you know it."

Eugene grimaced. "I'm not coming to Buffalo, then. Fuck that. I'm not riding with that dickweed."

Lansing sighed, his shoulders dropping. "Eugene, stop it, seriously. I know Scott pissed you off but you've got to take a moment to remember this is the same Scott who pulled you out of that dumpster at the semi-formal. Remember? This is the same Scott who took a punch in the face for you after you spilled your lunch on Trowhill in the caf that time. This is the same Scott who --"

"Enough, enough!" said Eugene, holding up his hands. "I don't want to hear you defend him. I don't trust Scott, and I never will. I can never forgive him for stealing my girl."

Lansing's eyes popped open wide with incredulity. "Are you joking? Eugene, you're crazy. She wasn't your girl -- you just thought she was into you when she was actually into Scott the whole time. Get over it! I've been listening to you complain for two months and, seriously dude, it's got to stop."

Aaron said, "Lansing, why are you grinding him down for sticking to his principles? You know as well as I do that Scott crossed a line. He sucker-punched his friend in the balls so he could be a cunt-slave. That's not friendship. Scott has no honour."

"Yeah," agreed Eugene, jaw tight.

Lansing looked at them both, his eyes riveted despite being continuously jostled as people tried to squeeze past him in the narrow aisle. "Fine," he declared at last. "You losers do whatever you want. I guess I'll take the bus with Scott."

He pushed by his friends and left the shop, hurrying aimlessly along Queen past punks and skaters, buskers and madmen. He didn't care that he hadn't bought an Ethernet interface. He didn't care if he never spoke to Eugene and Aaron again.

A few blocks later Lansing bought a hot dog and a ginger ale. He sat on the curb beside a sidewalk chalking artist who was outlining a large square illustration of lovers kissing under a full moon.

By the time he had finished his hot dog he felt like a heel. He flipped open his phone. "Aaron," he said. The phone dialed.

"What?" crackled Aaron's voice.

"I'm sorry I freaked out," said Lansing. "I don't want you guys to be mad at me. You're...you're like my only friends."

"Oh, I thought Scott was your big gayness friend now."

"Come on, dude. We shouldn't let that shit come between us. If Scott wants to disappear into girl-world, that's whatever -- we can't let that fuck up our friendship, too."

There was a long pause, the receiver muffled by Aaron's pudgy palm. At last Aaron returned, saying, "Eugene's a pussy so he wants to forgive you. I don't forgive you, but I'll let you hang around me anyway because my Klingon heart has been tainted by human ways."

"That's, uh, real big of you, dude."

"Meet us at Seven West. We're getting beers."

"Okay. Lansing out."

Seven West was crowded. Seven West was always crowded. Lansing wormed past people much cooler than himself with downcast eyes until he found the dark, corner table where Aaron and Eugene sat hunched over their pints. Speakers hidden in the fake plants played an unspeakably glib pop song.

"Hey," called Lansing, sitting down.

Aaron nodded to him and said, "Eugene and I have been talking, and we think maybe it'd be alright if Scott came to Buffalo."

"Really?" said Lansing. "How come?"

"I've decided I don't even care anymore," said Eugene. "Like, why should I? If Scott's a backstabbing dick then he's a backstabbing dick. At least I know now. And besides, I've pretty much got my own girlfriend."

Lansing blinked. "You do?"

"Yeah, Cassie-Ten."

Aaron rolled his eyes. "You mean that guy you talk to on IRC?"

"She's not a guy," snapped Eugene.

"So why won't she send you her pic?" asked Aaron sceptically.

"I already told you, it's because she's embarrassed about her weight."

"Or her penis."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Lansing ordered a pint of Creemore and when it arrived he spent a moment swirling his finger around in the thick cap of foam riding on the surface. "So, hypothetically, what if Scott did come, and he wanted to bring her along, too?"

He looked up, brow open.

Aaron was glaring at him. Eugene's expression was blank and robotic. Lansing tried to smile, faltered, and then hid behind his beer as he took a swig. "Hypothetically," he repeated, putting the glass down on the table again.

Aaron sipped his own beer thoughtfully. "So, what you're telling us is that you, Lansing Mississauga, are hoping that if you're nice enough to Scott he'll let you touch Melody's boobs or something?"

"Not at all! Jesus, Aaron. What's wrong with you?"

"Cassie-Ten says she has pretty big ones," opined Eugene.

"Yeah, man boobs."

"Shut up."

Lansing closed his eyes and ran his fingers through his hair. He sighed. "Dudes, Scott is my friend. I don't want to never talk to him again just because he did something stupid. So he's hypnotized by a girl, so what?"

"She's going to bankrupt him. She's a predator," said Aaron.

"Again, so what? Let's say she did screw him over. Doesn't that just mean that Scott'll eventually realize how dumb he was being and apologize to us?"

Aaron smirked. "Will he buy us iBooks?"

"I don't want an iBook," said Eugene. "Macs suck."

Lansing shook his head morosely and took another pull of beer. "If you guys are just going to act retarded..."

"No no," said Aaron. "Seriously, we won't. Right, Eugene? We can handle it. We're big boys. Who gives a shit if Scott wants to bring his slut along?"

Lansing winced. "Do you think you can avoid calling her that when she's around?"

"Only if she fucks me."

"Wouldn't that just reinforce the assessment?"

"Maybe, but then I wouldn't care anymore."

"You're a class act."

"You can touch me for a dollar."

"I don't want to touch you, dude."

"Are you sure? The peasants say it's a blessing."

"What peasants?"

"Like Eugene and shit."

"I don't want to touch you either, man."

"Ghay'cha'," swore Aaron. "My kingdom for a holodeck."

CHAPTER 5

Aaron coasted his green Jetta to a shuddering halt behind the last car in line at the American border, then held out his hand and barked, "Your papers, please!"

Scott and Lansing passed him their birth certificates. Melody fumbled with her purse, keeping her card palmed. "I'll just hand it over myself," she said, unrolling her window and admitting a pungent breeze flavoured by automotive exhaust.

"Older than you look, huh?"

"Shut up, Aaron," said Scott wearily.

When they pulled up to the gate the customs officer appraised their identification critically, eyes flicking up to each of their faces with a hard look. "You folks headed for the Star Trek convention?" he asked.

Aaron looked down at his Klingon armour, the plastic ridge along his forehead flexing. "Yessir," he confirmed.

"Do you have any fruits or vegetables in the vehicle at this time?"

"Nossir," replied Aaron crisply. "Eugene stayed home."

"I'm sorry?"

"He's just making a joke," explained Scott. "He's not very funny, is all."

"Huh," said the customs officer flatly. He handed over the birth certificates, stepped smartly back and then waved them through. Aaron popped the Jetta into gear and accelerated, dangling the cards over his shoulder blindly. Lansing, Scott and Melody each took theirs and tucked them away.

They trundled along for a while in silence until Lansing said, "This has got to be the most boring road-trip in history. Doesn't anybody have anything to say? Dude! Let's have a conversation or something."

"So, Melody..." began Aaron, "are you a spit or swallow girl?"

Scott punched him in the arm. "Je-sus, Aaron. Were you raised by wolves?"

"Did you just call me a son of a bitch?"

"Yeah, I think so. Jesus fuck."

"I should kill you where you stand."

"I'm sitting."

"It's a figure of speech, cock-knocker. Somebody hand me my bat'leth so I can cut down this human baktag."

"Keep your eyes on the road, dude," said Lansing.

Melody snickered and exchanged a glance with Scott in the front seat. Scott took a deep, frustrated breath and turned his gaze out the window. Lansing shrugged apologetically at her. She smiled, then leaned forward toward Aaron's seat and said into his ear, "I swallow."

Aaron nearly swerved out of his lane, causing nearby cars to honk in alarm. Everyone laughed except Aaron. "Don't distract the driver!" he bellowed angrily.

Melody smirked. "Don't ask if you don't want to know."

"Got wood?" teased Scott, tittering.

"Shut the fuck up, man," grumbled Aaron. "We almost died."

Scott did a passable imitation of Aaron as he said, "Perhaps today is a good day to die!"

"Seriously, though. Don't."

They eventually wound into Buffalo, cruising through the clone-stamp suburbs and into a decaying urban core dotted by the garish hope of big box retail. Aaron pulled onto Walden and ordered everyone to keep their eyes peeled for any sign of the hotel. "There it is!" cried Lansing, pointing. "Sheraton off the starboard bow, my lord."

They parked underground and filed upstairs through an echoey concrete well. Nobody said much while they waited in the registration line. Aaron gave Lansing a significant look, however, when Scott handed over his credit card to pay admission for both himself and Melody. Aaron silently mouthed, "Freeloader."

Once inside they carefully straightened their costumes: Aaron as a Klingon warrior, Scott in his Deep Space Nine command jumpsuit, Lansing done up like Spock, and Melody in her svelte Seven of Nine outfit.

"I'm totally getting Shatner's autograph this time," swore Lansing. "Come hell or high water."

"Good luck, Commander," nodded Scott. "Make it so."

"Do you guys want to meet back here for lunch?" asked Melody.

"Sure," said Lansing.

"Nah," said Aaron. "You kids go do your thing. I'll see you later. Call me on my cell when you're ready to leave."

Aaron turned his back abruptly. Scott, Melody and Lansing watched him lumber away. "Is Aaron always grumpy?" asked Melody.

Scott and Lansing nodded.

"Why do y'all stay friends with him?"

Scott and Lansing looked at one another and shrugged. Scott said, "We've known him since middle school."

"You do realize he's gay, don't you?"

Lansing blinked. "What?"

Melody bit her lip. "You couldn't tell?" she said. "He's in love with Scott. It's so obvious. That's why he's such a jerk to me."

Scott frowned sceptically. "Truthfully, babe, he's a jerk to everyone."

Melody did not look convinced. "Trust me," she said seriously.

An hour later Lansing had moved sufficiently forward in the line to see William Shatner that he could actually catch the glimpses of the actor's hair if he pushed himself up on his tiptoes. His heart started to beat faster, and the hand holding his cherished framed photograph became moist.

His first moment of crestfall came when he drew near enough to see the sign declaring the prices for Shatner's attention: $70 cash per autograph. Lansing peeled through his wallet, doing quick calculations to convert colourful Canadian to American greenbacks. "Shit," he muttered, realizing that if he paid that much he wouldn't have any cash left over for lunch. At least he could put his homeward share of the gas money on his credit card.

The second moment of crestfall came when he drew near enough to overhear conversations between fans and handlers at the front of the line: the talent would not be signing pre-supplied items, but only copies of publicity photographs on sale at the signing counter.

Lansing looked at his framed picture forlornly. It had been in his bedroom for over a decade, and he had always dreamed about how complete he would feel once it was signed by Captain Kirk himself. "Shit," he said again.

Suddenly depressed he sidestepped out of the line and fled. He wandered out of the crowded, noisy ballroom and into the hotel bar, hopping up on a stool and slapping his cherished photograph on the counter with a sigh.

"What can I get for you, Spock?"

"I'll have a Heineken, please."

"That's logical. Bottle or can?"

"Bottle, please."

"Sure thing."

Lansing handed over his money and then took a hit from the cold green bottle morosely. He figured that when he was done he'd seek out an automated bank machine that understood Canadian debit cards so he could pull out more cash. The bartender was not helpful in this respect, but encouraged him to pester the front desk.

Lansing sighed, his chin in his hand, and retreated into a daydream about warp speed.

An older woman sat up at the bar next to him and ordered the special: a glass of whiskey with blue food colouring in it. "One Romulan ale coming right up," said the bartender, flipping the liquor bottle playfully.

She accepted her glass and sipped at it. Lansing sipped at his beer, staring over his own head in the mirror behind the bar.

In his peripheral vision he saw that she was wearing a coquettishly short red miniskirt as seen in the original Star Trek series, her brown hair done up in an era-accurate beehive. She saw his eyes move in the mirror and turned toward him. She said, "Having a good time, Spock?"

Looking in the mirror was like watching a movie, and it took Lansing a slow moment before recognizing that he was obliged to respond.

"Um, sure," he said, his mouth suddenly dry. When he looked at her more directly he was surprised how pretty she was. She must have been forty years old but her skin was creamy, her hazel-flecked green eyes bright, her lips drawn into a frank smile. Her good looks made Lansing nervous and he averted his eyes, a drop of sweat trickling down his torso beneath his blue tunic.

"Do you come to a lot of these things?" she asked. "Conventions, that is."

Lansing shrugged. "I've been to a few. I went to the San Francisco convention last year, and the Toronto one in February. What about you?"

"Sure," she said breezily. "Been coming for years. I've been a fan since TOS."

"Wow."

"Did you see Brent Spiner speak this morning? He's hilarious."

"No, I've been lined up to get Shatner's autograph since I got here."

The woman glanced over at the framed photograph on the bar. "This?"

Lansing shook his head. "I don't know if I can afford it. Apparently you have to buy one of the photos on sale there or he won't sign it. I think it's kind of a scam, if you ask me."

"Oh," she said, "I'm sure Bill would bend the rules for you. It looks like this picture's pretty special to you."

Lansing blushed. "It's just Star Trek. It doesn't really matter."

The woman gave him a look. "Hey, think about who you're talking to here. I'm a grown woman in a Star Trek uniform. And I think it matters if it matters to you."

"I didn't mean to offend you."

"You didn't," she replied quickly. "I'm saying it's a matter of perspective. It's just Star Trek but Star Trek can be a vehicle for our dreams. That matters, doesn't it?"

"Sure."

"So don't sell yourself short. If it matters to you, it matters. Does it matter? Do you care?"

Lansing smiled. "I care."

"Well then," said the pretty lady, "I say we march right back there and get him to see the light."

Lansing chuckled but from the expression on her face it was apparent that she was quite serious. "Um," he said.

She tossed back the end of her drink, stood up and held out her hand to him. "Come on, Spock," she said, her smile creasing fine lines around her eyes.

Lansing looked at his half-full beer and then back at the lady. He dropped off his stool, hesitated, and then took her hand. It was strong and warm. He picked up the framed picture and tucked it under his arm. "Okay," he said breathlessly. "Let's do it."

They swung their entwined hands like schoolkids as they strolled purposefully into the ballroom. She tugged him away from joining the end of the line, navigating right up to the side of the signing counter. Lansing's breath caught in his throat as they hovered at Shatner's elbow, ignoring the two handlers who were rushing over to them with frowns on their faces.

"I just wanted to say that you're awesome," said a fan as Shatner signed a photograph with a flourish. "Thank you so much."

"Thank you," he said with a jolly chuckle, then glanced up at Lansing and his new friend. "Why, hello," he said. "It's you!"

The lady in the red miniskirt smiled. "Hi, Bill."

Lansing opened his mouth but no sound came out. It occurred to him with strangely mixed feelings that Captain Kirk smelled like Polo after-shave.

"You're everywhere, aren't you?" continued Shatner as he put down his pen and massaged his signing hand.

"I'm hoping you can do me a favour."

"Name it."

"My friend here would like to get a signing, but he's brought his own picture. I know it's against the rules but it would mean a lot."

The handlers hesitated, watching Shatner consider. "I'd be happy to," he said. "What's your name, son?"

"Lansing," croaked Lansing.

Shatner held out his hand for the framed picture and when Lansing didn't budge his new friend pried it out from under his arm and passed it over. Shatner flexed his fingers, picked up the pen and dashed his name across the bottom. "There you go, Lance. Enjoy!"

Lansing looked down and started fumbling at his wallet.

"Forget about it," said Shatner, waving dismissively. "It's a favour."

"Thank you," whispered Lansing, taking the picture with shaking hands and then standing there with a goofy grin on his face.

"Thanks, Bill," said the lady. She took a hold of Lansing and hauled him away, his feet struggling to catch up.

"Holy crap," gasped Lansing. "You know Shatner? Like, personally?"

"Like I said, I go to a lot of conventions."

"Holy crap."

She laughed. "So, what do you want to do now?"

"Um, I was going to see the Enterprise model. I'm, uh, building my own virtual version and I want to take some notes on colour detailing. The ship's been repainted since the last time I saw her."

"Great," said the lady. "Let's go."

Lansing didn't have time to question it. They were on their way. Inside he nursed a giddy patch, allowing himself to fantasize that some lonely woman attracted to brains had come to scoop him up and rescue him as Scott had been. He was determined not to pull a Eugene, however, and thus kept himself grounded with a mental mantra of "she's just friendly, gender is irrelevant, she's just friendly, gender is irrelevant..."

And then there they were standing before it, the actual USS Enterprise built for Robert Wise's Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1978, a carefully engineered refit of the ship from the original series designed to bring an added level of industrial realism to the model. The spotlights hanging above winked highlights across the pearlescent plating of the hull as Lansing circumnavigated the display with reverence.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he said. "They never managed to produce anything this elegant ever again."

The lady smiled. "It's a work of art."

"Notice how clean the surface is -- it's not cluttered with a bunch of pointless gizmos like the later ships. It looks like the space shuttle. It looks like something people could really travel in."

"That's what it's all about, isn't it?" she said. "It's about being able to imagine that you're there. Out there, I mean. In actual space."

"Yeah," agreed Lansing emphatically. "That is what it's all about."

His gaze traced along the sweep of the narrow pylons supporting the warp nacelles, lingered on the tiny round decals outlining the shuttle ports, admired the miniature floodlights that served to illuminate the ship's registry. "The Motion Picture," he continued, "for all its flaws, was the only movie that actually enhanced the credibility of the Trek universe. Do you know what I mean? Everything after that was just a little more cartoon than it needed to be."

She pulled a disposable camera out of her bag and snapped a picture.

Lansing took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then slipped a little notebook out of his pocket and jotted down some notes as he studied the shade of tan applied around the manoeuvring thrusters. He tucked the notebook away again and looked up.

"Do you want to get some lunch?" the lady asked.

"Yeah," he said. "That would be nice."

In the commissary they found Scott and Melody sitting beneath a banner advertising the space as 10 Forward Buffalo. It was loud with babble, the various subjects covering all branches of the Star Trek panoply. "Lansing!" called Scott, waving them over to the table.

"Are those your friends?" asked the lady, holding Lansing's elbow.

"Yeah, that's Scott and Melody," said Lansing as he dodged a duo of irritable Ferengi. "I don't know where Aaron got to."

Melody narrowed her eyes at the newcomer suspiciously. "Who's this?" she asked, her voice bright.

"Oh, uh, this is my new friend. She helped me get Shatner's autograph," said Lansing, holding out the framed picture for their appraisal.

Scott examined the picture, grinning. "You finally got it, man; congratulations!" Then he turned and offered his hand to shake. "Nice to meet you. I'm Scott, and this is Melody."

"Hi Melody."

"Hi."

"Your costumes are great. Do you mind if I get a picture?"

"For sure," said Scott, standing quickly. He shuffled around the edge of the table and lined up beside Lansing. "Come on, babe," he called to Melody. "We don't have any pictures of us together. Do you think we could get a copy?"

"Definitely."

Melody dawdled over her club sandwich. "I don't really like having my picture taken."

"Don't be shy -- that's a fabulous Seven of Nine costume."

"I'm not photogenic. I always look dreadful in pictures."

"Pretty thing like you? I don't believe it for an instant. Come on, stand up now."

Scott dragged Melody to her feet and put his arm around her waist as he turned toward the camera and grinned. Lansing held up his signed picture. Just as the lady's finger moved down toward the contact Melody buried her face in Scott's neck to kiss him. The flash flashed, the camera clicked.

"Oh poo," said Melody. "Did I do that at just the wrong time?"

Before an answer could come she broke formation and sat down again, pulling Scott with her. "Are you from around here?" asked Scott, biting into a pickle.

"Can I put my purse here?" asked the lady, slipping it off her shoulder and kicking it over next to Scott's satchel. She sat down and raised her brow. "Where are you guys from?"

"Toronto," said Lansing, taking a seat beside her.

"Me too! Isn't that funny?"

"It's a Canuck party," agreed Scott, smiling. "Er -- I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name..."

Lansing flushed, suddenly embarrassed. How did he neglect to even ask her name? He wished for just one tenth of Scott's social skills, his easy ability to make people feel welcome.

The lady crossed her long legs beneath her short skirt. "Sandy," she replied breezily. "You can call me Sandy."

CHAPTER 6

It started on a lazy Sunday.

Lansing woke up late and from his bed called out various pronunciations of the word "coffee" until the speech recognition software in his bedside PC finally decided to play along and trip the switch on the coffee machine. A few moments later the smell of warm brew wafted in from the kitchen.

"Radio," he called next, and then, "Ra-di-o!" The CBC clicked on: a concert of chamber music.

Lansing slipped out of bed and pulled on a robe with a faded Starfleet insignia on the lapel. It smelled a little bit like damp towels so he contemplated doing laundry. He pulled at the shade until it rolled up, admitting a bright shaft of springtime sunshine that illuminated a constellation of dust motes roiling slowly through the air.

He prepared his coffee and wandered into the livingroom, slapping at spacebars to awaken his machines. An overnight render of the Enterprise filled his largest monitor and he squinted at the latest tweaks critically, frowning over some geometric artifacting where two sets of facets were fused along the midline of the engineering hull.

"Goddamn non-rational B-splines," muttered Lansing.

He stretched and yawned, then stood over the toilet and peed while he thought about different ways to define the curves that were giving him trouble. As he always did when thinking about the project he found himself whistling Jerry Goldsmith's syrupy shiplove theme.

He was startled out of this musical reverie by a knock at the door.

Lansing frowned, shaking off his willy. Who would disturb him on a sleepy Sunday? The super?

He washed his hands, tucked his robe closed and crossed the apartment. He put his eye up to the spy-glass and saw a wildly distorted image of a brunette with a massive nose and tiny little feet. With a shock he recognized Sandy, the attractive older lady from the Buffalo convention.

Lansing opened the door. "Sandy," he said. "Hi."

"I didn't get you out of bed, did I?"

"Um, no. I was just, uh..."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. Um, come in."

He escorted her into the livingroom and cleared a space on the couch, casting computer parts and starship blueprints into a pile beside a dead fern. In her civvies Sandy made an even sharper impression; she looked just like a legitimate grown-up citizen in her blue jeans and red silk shirt, open at the top to showcase a trinket of Star Trek jewellery at her breastbone.

Lansing felt very self-conscious in his natty robe. "Can I get you a coffee?" he asked. "I'm just going to run into the bedroom and change."

"I like your robe."

"Yeah, I'll just be a sec."

"Cream and sugar, please."

"Coming right up."

He returned a moment later, dressed, carrying a steaming mug shaped like the head of Lieutenant Jadzia Dax. Sandy was leaning over the computer monitor admiring the rendering. Lansing tried not to stare at her denim-hugged bum. "So, to what do I owe the honour?" he asked, trying to sound suave but failing in several respects simultaneously.

Sandy straightened and turned, accepting the mug. "Thanks. Well, first of all I wanted to bring you a copy of those photos I took at Buffalo," she said, slipping an envelope of duplicates from her purse. "I told Scott I would," she explained.

"That's very thoughtful," said Lansing. He opened the envelope and flipped through the pictures, noting absently how in every one Melody always managed to appear with her face buried in Scott's neck or hidden behind a veil of hair. "They're nice," he added dumbly.

"Second of all," continued Sandy, "I just thought you were a nice guy and my brunch date cancelled, so I thought you might consider filling in. Do you know The Senator?"

"Uh, yeah," said Lansing, blinking. "We go there a lot, actually."

"Are you hungry?"

"Sure."

"Great," said Sandy with a bright smile. "I'll drive."

Sandy drove a rust-speckled mustard yellow '84 Camaro with an engine that sounded like a rabid bulldozer. She pushed it hard through the narrow sidestreets, slamming it between gears expertly as she dodged meandering Sunday drivers and streams of pedestrians. The interior smelled like cigarettes and perfume.

"You smoke?" asked Lansing conversationally.

"I shouldn't," she told him, barreling around a corner and accelerating down Church Street. "Does that bother you?"

"No," lied Lansing.

The Camaro trundled over the curb into a parking lot across from the Pantages Theatre, greasy smoke billowing from its shaking tailpipe. She pulled into a spot, jammed the brake and killed the engine in one smooth set of motions. "Let's eat," she declared happily.

With minor effort Lansing unpeeled his white-knuckled fingers from the edges of his seat and hopped out.

They ordered poached eggs with ham, beans, and Challah toast. Their waiter was a chiseled-jaw homosexual with purposeful bed-head and extravagantly loose wrists. "Your necklace is fabulous, honey," he coed to Sandy. "Where's it from?"

"Vulcan," she said.

"Is that in Italy?" he asked.

"No, it's in space."

The waiter considered this for a moment, brow furrowed. "I'll be right back with your orange juice," he promised and sallied off.

Sandy took a soft package of Camels out of her purse and knocked one free, offering it to Lansing. For some reason Lansing took it. She knocked out a second for herself and lit it with a stubby pink lighter. Lansing put the cigarette into his mouth uncertainly and then jutted his chin forward as she held out the flame. She smiled. "You don't usually smoke, do you, Lansing?"

Lansing stopped coughing briefly enough to croak, "Just sometimes."

"You're cute," she said, and then paused when she saw the look on his face. "I'm sorry," she added. "Does that annoy you?"

"No," he wheezed, slapping his sternum and grimacing. "No, it's just that that's what Melody said when she first met us. I mean, she said it to Eugene and then Eugene got a bunch of stupid ideas in his head. It's nothing. It's not your fault. It has nothing to do with you."

"He thought Melody was flirting with him?"

Lansing nodded, taking another careful experimental pull on the cigarette. "Exactly. He's a spaz about girls."

"But maybe I am flirting with you," said Sandy with a smirk, her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. She blew at a tendril of smoke as it wafted too near her face.

"Um," said Lansing before launching into another coughing fit.

"Maybe you should consider the fact that smoking just isn't for you," she said, plucking the cigarette from his fingers and squinching it out in a black ashtray. "Are you okay?"

Lansing nodded, eyes watering.

She drew on her own smoke pensively. "Have you ever wondered how hard it might be to find a man your own age who doesn't think you're a nut-job because you're into Star Trek?"

Lansing shrugged nervously. "I'm sure you don't have any trouble with men," he said. "Um, you're a very attractive woman."

"Hey Lansing, are you flirting with me now?" she laughed.

Lansing blushed. "Um, no -- no, no. I'm not some creepy guy who hits on anything that moves."

"You don't have to be defensive. What's so bad about flirting?"

"I'm not very good at it, for one thing."

"I think you're very sweet. I think you come off better than you imagine."

"Eugene always makes girls feel weird. I don't want to be like that."

"You don't make me feel weird."

"No?"

"No," she confirmed, blowing a smoke ring. "Personally, I find it flattering when a good looking younger man tries to butter me up."

"I'm not good looking," mumbled Lansing.

"I beg to differ," she argued pleasantly. "For one thing your complexion is exquisite. Are you native?"

"Uh, yeah, but nobody ever guesses that."

"I'm good at sizing people up. Which nation?"

"The Mississauga."

"I'm one-eighth Mohawk."

"That's cool. I went to school with some Mohawks from Montreal."

"Did you grow up on reserve?"

"For a while," said Lansing quickly, looking away. "Where's our food?" he wondered awkwardly. "I'm getting pretty hungry."

Sandy touched his hand tenderly. "You can tell me about it some other time, if you feel like it."

"Yeah," agreed Lansing, daring to look into her eyes. "Maybe I will."

In the afternoon they went to 80 Spadina and toured the art galleries, tromping up and down the creaky wooden stairs between floors and talking or laughing about what they'd seen. The highlight for both of them were the works of an artist who used shellac to seal lumps of real food onto the surface of paintings: fried eggs, rib-eye steaks, squiggles of noodles.

Lansing's phone vibrated a couple of times but he didn't look at it.

"Is that your friends calling?" asked Sandy.

Lansing nodded. "You can hear that? Yeah, it's probably Aaron. He probably wants everyone to come over to his place to watch Simpsons tonight."

"Don't dodge him on my account," said Sandy, holding open the door for the two of them as they stepped out into the sun.

"Oh, that's okay," shrugged Lansing, jamming his hands in his pockets. "I don't really need another dose of Aaron this weekend."

"It must be nice to have friends to do things with. Do you guys hang out a lot?"

"Well, we all used to until Melody came into the picture and sort of stole Scott away. We hardly see him anymore."

"A lot of people do that when they get into a relationship," opined Sandy. "They neglect their friends."

"I guess so," agreed Lansing.

"But we won't do that, will we?"

Lansing coughed. "...Are we in a relationship, Sandy?" he asked timidly.

She took his hand and held it as they walked back to the car. "We're on our way," she said. "Unless, of course, the age difference disturbs you too much."

"No, no no no," said Lansing. "It doesn't bother me at all. I mean, you're...no, it doesn't bother me."

"What were you going to say?"

"Nothing."

"Come on."

"I was going to say you're out of my league."

Sandy stopped him, turned him toward her, and put her hands on his shoulders. "Lansing, you need to believe in yourself a little more. I don't know who convinced you that you're some kind of a loser, but they're wrong. Totally, totally wrong. You're intelligent, handsome and sensitive. Any girl would be lucky to have you, and I'd like to be that lucky girl."

Lansing began to sweat. His mouth worked for a moment and then he blurted out, "I'm a virgin."

Several of the passersby on Spadina paused to giggle. Lansing's face flushed, his cheeks feeling warm and tight. Sandy didn't even flinch. "Yeah?" she said. "I'm forty-three, single, and I love Star Trek. Who's more undatable? Another few years of this and I'll officially be ready to give myself over to becoming the crazy cat lady."

Lansing shrugged. "Cats are nice."

Sandy cracked up laughing. "I prefer the company of good people," she told him. "Even if for only a spell."

They picked up Thai food for supper and ate it in Lansing's livingroom while he gave her a guided tour of his virtual starship, clicking the mouse down computer-generated corridors and dragging the point of view into various locations of interest, like the transporter room and crew mess hall. "The thing that's frustrating about the officers' lounge," he explained, "is that there aren't any windows on the exterior that correspond to where the lounge is actually supposed to be, right here, at the front edge of the saucer section."

"They introduced that set in one where they go to see God, right?"

"Right, The Final Frontier. Shatner's baby. It's such a ridiculous movie." Lansing smiled self-effacingly as he struck a pose and cried out in his best imitation of Kirk: "What does -- God need -- with a starship?"

"I always liked it, actually," admitted Sandy with a giggle. "But I'm a sucker for camp."

"Even when it's not on purpose?"

"Especially."

Lansing had some liquor left over from Christmas so he mixed up some drinks. In an effort to create a more romantic atmosphere he spun the rheostats and yelled at the radio until it elected to turn on. He passed Sandy her glass and then flopped down on the couch, facing her. "Should we toast something?" he asked.

"Us," she suggested.

They knocked glasses and drank. Sandy asked if the second bedroom were an office but Lansing said it was a library, which Sandy then naturally asked to see. They carried their drinks in, bumping into one another's hips only half by accident. "Wow," she said.

The second bedroom of Lansing's apartment was stuffed from floor to ceiling with bookshelves, each shelf in turn crammed from end to end with dozens upon dozens of faded, dog-eared paperbacks. Sandy ran her finger along their spines, reading aloud random titles that formed a sampling through the annals of science-fiction grand mastery: The Caves of Steel, The Stars My Destination, Childhood's End...

"You have everything," marveled Sandy. "This edition has to be sixty years old! Where did you find it?"

Lansing shrugged, smiling. "Garage sale."

Sandy shook her head. "What an amazing collection -- The Weapon Shops of Isher, The Man Who Sold the Moon, Shakespeare's Planet, The Snows of Ganymede, Gateway, Wasp, Norstrilia, The Runaway Robot, To Your Scattered Bodies Go, The Elliptical Grave, Children of the Lens, Star Songs of an Old Primate, The Black Star Passes, The Endless Voyage, From the Dust Returned..."

Lansing shrugged again, simultaneously sheepish and proud. He sipped his drink. "I like my pulp."

She pulled a couple of random books from the shelf and turned them over, examining the gouache painted illustrations of silver cigar spaceships and Michelin Man spacesuits. "The cover art is hilarious," she said, shaking her head.

Lansing chuckled. "To me it doesn't matter how cheesy they seem now. They're a celebration of imagination. All these guys were amazed and overwhelmed by what was happening in the world, and their response was to imagine even wilder possibilities. They lived in a time when space was new, and they couldn't help but be ignited."

"They were optimists," observed Sandy, sipping her drink. "They thought we'd be living on the Moon by now."

"Maybe, maybe not. Science-fiction isn't an attempt at prophecy -- it's a way to cope with change. It's a way to underscore the dizziness that comes from having your world-view turned on its ear every decade or so."

"I think you're sexy when you're passionate."

"I think I'm just tipsy enough to take that comment in stride," replied Lansing smoothly, grinning. "The point is that science-fiction isn't about the future, it's about the present. In the sixties the only way you could get away with an interracial kiss on prime-time television was by setting it in space."

Sandy carefully inserted the paperbacks back on the shelf. "Whereas today we could have an interracial kiss any time we like," she said, batting her eyelashes playfully. "Wanna?"

They did.

Back in the livingroom they moved on to second and third rounds. They were both feeling flushed so Lansing cranked open a window, admitting a breeze that smelled like damp grass, hot grease and fresh pizza. Sandy undid a few more buttons on her shirt, then stumbled against the couch. "Oh my," she said and then laughed.

Lansing laughed too. "Oh crap, tomorrow's Monday, isn't it?"

Sandy nodded. She slid down the side of the couch and sat on the parquet flooring. "Call in sick," she suggested with a lopsided grin.

"Maybe."

"I'm going to."

"I've never even asked you, Sandy -- what do you do?"

She cradled her glass, swirling the contents absently. "I'm a superhero," she said, and then cracked up laughing again and let her head flop back against the couch.

Lansing smiled uncertainly. "Do you wear a cape?"

"No," she said, lifting her head again and looking at him levelly. "The fact of the matter is boring as Hell, Lansing. It's boring to me, at any rate. I manage a Toronto Dominion branch."

"Oh come on, I've heard the banking industry is a laugh-riot."

Sandy giggled. "Ooooh yeah." Then the smile dropped off her lips and she grew serious. "Lansing, do you think I'm pathetic for wanting to date somebody twenty years younger than me?"

"My answer may be biased."

"I like the way you don't stammer when you're drunk."

"Um."

"Sorry."

"I feel good around you."

"Let's take a shower."

"What?"

"It's stuffy in here. Take off your clothes."

"You're not going to rob me, are you?"

She paused, her brow furrowed. "Why did you say that?"

"I'm sorry."

"No, really. Why?"

Lansing spread his hands apologetically. "I guess this just seems to good to be true. I keep waiting for the punch-line."

Sandy looked into her drink with a strange, faraway look and then decisively drained it. She met his eyes. "Lansing," she said, "I am not here to rob you. I promise. Like I said: I'm a superhero -- I toil for good."

"I thought you said you manage a bank. You toil for service fees."

"That's day-toil. This is night-toil."

"I still want to see your form-fitting super costume."

Sandy smiled again. "Sure," she said, putting her empty glass on the floor next to her. She unbuttoned her red shirt and shrugged it off, working her shoulders as she peeled her arms clear. "This," she explained, "is my super bra."

"It is form-fitting," admitted Lansing, his eyes wide and his mouth dry. He focused on not stammering. "Does it have special abilities? Like, is it bullet-proof or fire-proof?"

"It both lifts and separates."

"Cool."

"You're shaking."

"I'm shaking in a good way."

"Put your drink down before you spill."

"Okay."

"Come here."

When Monday arrived Lansing was no longer a virgin. After sun-up he groggily reached out of his bed and called in sick at work using a telephone shaped like a Starfleet communicator. Sandy nodded her approval and took the phone to call the bank, her voice husky, then settled her head back down on Lansing's smooth brown chest and fell asleep again. Lansing ran his fingers through her hair with a content sigh.

He'd forgotten to pull the shade. His eyes flicked up to the corner where a fresh span of spider's silk flashed in the dawn light, swaying faintly as its lithe owner crossed from one end to the other.

Spiders made Lansing uncomfortable, but he was unwilling to break the moment -- unwilling to separate himself from Sandy's warm nudity -- to deal with it.

He made a mental note to buy some Raid.

CHAPTER 7

The pot-luck dinner party was set to kick off at seven. Lansing and Sandy were the last to arrive.

Scott opened the door with a flourish and pinned them with a red laser attached to the side of his face. He said, "We have analyzed your dietary distinctiveness and it shall be added to our own. Your dish will be adapted to service us."

"Well, resistance is futile," reasoned Lansing.

Sandy obediently handed over the tinfoil-sealed plate of sugared yams, which Scott awkwardly balanced between one arm encrusted with electronics and the other encased inside a bulky prosthetic with a clamp on the end. "Come on in," he smiled.

Sandy followed the Borg drone into the kitchen to lend a hand.

Aaron was sprawled out on the couch, smoking a cigarette in his familiar Klingon garb. Melody as Seven of Nine was passing out cups of blue punch. Commodore Eugene balanced on the arm of an easychair filled amply by a round-faced girl whose corpulence strained against her tight costume: she was dressed as a green-skinned belly-dancing slave from Orion. Everything she had recently touched, including parts of Eugene, were clouded by muddy green fingerprints.

"Cassie Ten, I presume?" said Lansing with a courteous bow.

"Greetings, Commander Spock," she giggled, then gave Eugene an affectionate slap. "Hey, Eugene didn't mention that you were brown, huh."

Lansing tried to smile. "Yeah, well. He didn't mention that you were green."

"I'm not really green," Cassie Ten explained.

Lansing nodded politely. "Nice to meet you," he said, looking around for somewhere to go.

"Eugene!" she barked suddenly, startling everyone. "I need more punch, huh."

Eugene scampered off the arm of the easychair, scooping up her cup. "I'm on it, smoochikins."

Lansing exchanged a look with Aaron, whose eyes rolled with such severity that he seemed briefly possessed. He blew out a cloud of smoke disdainfully and put his brow up. "So I see you brought your pet cougar, Lansing. Nice. Now I'm officially the only man in the joint who still has his balls."

"There's cheese sauce on your armour."

"That only enhances my manliness."

"If you say so."

Melody sauntered over and gave Lansing's arm a squeeze. "I'm glad you came, Lansing," she said, her cheeks dimpling. "We're going to watch The Undiscovered Country on laserdisc, extended cut."

"Cool."

She snuggled up against him, her bosom pressing on his hand, but Lansing wasn't disturbed the way he would have been a couple of weeks ago. In light of Sandy Melody was less of a goddess and more of a girl, tethered safely to Earth by Lansing's newly found sense of security and confidence. "Can I get y'all a drink?" she asked with a saucy drawl.

"Sure -- thanks, Melody," replied Lansing easily. "Oh, and could you get a cup for Sandy, too?"

Melody frowned briefly but recovered in a blink. "No problem," she said brightly.

Sandy and Scott came out of the kitchen laughing, and Melody quickly inserted herself between them in order to hand Sandy her drink. "We've got quite a feast lined up," said Scott jovially. "I hope everybody's hungry."

"I'm sure it's good but I'm not going to eat," piped up Cassie Ten. "I'm on a diet, huh."

Scott muttered quietly, "That would explain why she didn't bring anything, I suppose," and then in a louder voice invited everyone to sit up at the diningroom table.

"I'm just going to stay over here," said Cassie Ten, patting the easychair. "No point in sitting at the table if I'm not eating."

"Um, okay," said Scott.

"Eugene!" called Cassie Ten. "You come sit here with me."

"But I'm hungry, smoochikins..."

"You can eat later. Don't make me sad."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

"Kiss-kiss."

Aaron stabbed out his cigarette, lumbered to his feet with a grunt and squeezed past the happy couple on his way to the diningroom, leaving a smear of cheese sauce on Eugene's tunic amid the green fingerprints. Melody and Scott fetched the final dishes and added them to the spread as Sandy and Lansing found their seats beside one another. "Dig in!" commanded Scott, and they did.

For a few moments all anyone said was "please" or "thank you" as they exchanged bowls or platters and served themselves or their partners. Cutlery clicked and napkins rustled.

Scott opened with, "I read a Usenet rumour that Data dies in the next movie. Somebody said there's been a script leak from Berman's office."

"Rick Berman is killing the franchise," declared Aaron. "I would cut his heart from his chest with my daqtagh, were it not for the fact that he is a hu-mon coward whose death whines would be too pathetic to bear."

Lansing said, "We're all grateful for your restraint."

"And let's be fair," said Scott, wagging his fork, "the man did some good things with DS9."

"I would eat your liver, were I not bound by Federation law."

Melody held up a hand, smiling sweetly. "Let's not fight, boys. Come on now: why don't we just talk on something other than Trek for a while?"

There was an awkward silence.

"Hey," said Scott, "last week at the Molson Amphitheatre we saw Cherry Nuk-Nuk live."

"Indeed," replied Aaron with an effete, effected lilt. "I do so hate it when you show up for a concert at an amphitheatre and all they do is play a CD."

Scott ignored him. "She was awesome -- I mean, totally wild on stage. Do you know her music, Sandy?"

Sandy shook her head as she ate a piece of barbecued chicken.

"Don't worry, that doesn't make you seem old," said Aaron. "I don't follow that pop crap either."

Scott dragged his hand down his face. "I'm glad you're an asshole, Aaron, because with tact like that you'd make a lousy anything else."

Lansing said, "I think you're misquoting the line, dude."

"I stand by my interpretation."

"We didn't get to see Cherry's encore, though," interjected Melody sharply, "because Mr. Professional here was all worried about staying out too late."

Sandy washed down her food with a slug of blue punch. "Speaking of which, how's your job hunt coming along, Melody?"

"Oh, fine," replied Melody dismissively. "Have you tried the yams?"

"I cooked the yams, actually," said Sandy. "So, when do you start?"

"Well," admitted Melody with an annoyed flick of the eyes, "it isn't going that fine. I don't, as such, have a new job to be starting at. But I've handed out a million resumes and I'm just sure something's going to work out for little old me sooner or later."

"Maybe I could pull some strings and get you an interview at my bank," offered Sandy, smiling toothily.

"I don't know if I'm cut out to work in a bank," said Melody. "But thank y'all for thinking of me."

"Don't be so quick, babe," said Scott, helping himself to a second serving of cheese-coated broccoli. "Work is work, after all."

"Numbers aren't really my strong suit."

"Don't worry about that," Sandy assured her. "The counting's all done by computer these days. The support positions are mostly clerical. You know -- filing, processing forms, that sort of thing. It's dead easy. I'll put in a call for you tomorrow."

Melody approximated a smile. "Wow, thank you so much, Sandy."

"Don't mention it."

The telephone rang and Scott glanced at the handset. "I have to take this," he said apologetically, putting his napkin beside his plate and standing up. "I've been having some trouble with my credit card lately and the investigator's finally calling back. Please excuse me for just a sec."

Melody's arm whipped out and snatched his elbow. "Honey, y'all know it's rude to take phone calls over supper. Let's be civlized -- it's our dinner party."

"Babe, this is kind of important. I told him he could call late if he needed to. I said I'd be home."

"He'll call back, silly. Sit down. Let's enjoy everything while it's hot."

Scott hesitated, then nodded and sat back down. "You're right, you're right," he said, putting the handset aside. "Of course, with my luck he'll call right in the middle of the movie."

"We'll unplug the phone," suggested Melody.

"You don't understand -- I want to talk to him."

Aaron snorted. "You can stop dancing around it, Scott. We're already well familiar with your life-crippling gay phone-sex habit."

"Shut up, Aaron."

"Do you picture white guys or Asian guys? I always had you pegged as being into Asian guys."

"Shut up, Aaron."

Cassie Ten shouted, "Hey, can you guys speak up or something? We can't hardly hear you from over here. You're making Eugene and me feel excluded, huh?"

Scott glowered. Aaron made a bovine sound and Scott elbowed him. "Sorry!" he called over to the livingroom, his expression darkly sardonic. "We'll try to shout."

"Thanks," Cassie Ten called back, oblivious to his tone.

"Eugene's found himself...a special lady," observed Sandy quietly.

"She's a prize," agreed Lansing with a mischievous smile.

"I still can't hear you!" bellowed Cassie Ten.

Scott's head drooped wearily. "Jesus fuck," he mumbled.

Aaron chuckled. "It sucks when a friend becomes a pussy on account of some skenk, doesn't it?"

All eyes turned silently toward the Klingon.

"What?" he said. "I'm just saying what we're all thinking."

"Shut up, Aaron," said everyone at the table in chorus.

"Dor-sho-gha," he muttered, wilting a bit and seeming to melt into his armour. "Tough room."

After dinner came another round of punch as everyone lined up their seats to face the television. Scott fussed over the sound settings and then fed the silvery platter into the laserdisc player. Melody dimmed the track lighting and then squirmed in next to him on the couch. Scott held the remote aloft like a wand, asked "Is everybody ready?" and then hit Play.

Babble died as the Paramount Pictures logo rolled on screen. They became immersed, hypnotized by Cliff Eidelman's ominous opening march, snare drums and cellos on stars, slowly mounting toward the lensflare-cracked explosion of the Praxis moon, computer-generated ejecta blasting outward in sizzling rings...

Somewhere in the second act Lansing turned to whisper something to Sandy and realized that she wasn't on the couch anymore. He blinked, confused. "Is Sandy in the washroom?" he asked out. "Maybe we should pause the movie."

"We've all seen it before," argued Eugene, eyes glued to the screen.

"Still..."

"Stop talking, I'm missing it."

Lansing got off the couch and shuffled past Scott and Melody. He found the washroom empty so he wandered around to the bedroom where a line of lamp-light was projecting out into the dark hall. "Um, Sandy?" he called. "Are you back here?"

He pushed open the door. Sandy was sitting at a small desk, peering into the screen of Melody's tangerine iBook. She looked up. "Oh," she said, smiling, "it's you."

Lansing walked in and put his hands on her shoulders, rubbing gently. "What's up?"

Sandy closed all the windows on the desktop with a quick key combination. "I just thought of an e-mail I forgot sent the woman who's opening the branch tomorrow morning. It's her first time unlocking."

Lansing kissed the hair on the top of her head. "Shall we go back?"

She rotated around in the swiveling chair, nodded and stood up, taking Lansing's hand. They both stopped short, however, when they turned to face Melody standing in the bedroom doorway, her face pinched in anger. "What the devil do all y'all think you're doing here on my computer without asking any kind of permission of me?"

"I'm sorry," said Sandy.

"She just had to check her mail," added Lansing. "It's no big deal, Melody."

"That is so arrogant," snapped Melody, pointing a shaking, accusatory finger. "This is an invasion of privacy. I'm asking you to get out of my private bedroom this very second, you hear? I can't believe your nerve. Get out!"

"I'm sorry for any misunderstanding --" began Sandy, sidestepping toward the door.

Melody blocked her. "What's wrong with you anyway, lady? First it's pestering me with questions and trying to take my picture, then it's trying to make me look foolish in front of my own guests, and now it's this -- snooping into my things when my back is turned. Are you after my boyfriend? What's wrong with you?"

"Calm down, Melody," urged Lansing desperately. "You're blowing this all out of proportion."

Scott came to the door, his brow furrowed and his drink in his hand. "What's going on, babe?"

"This bitch," said Melody acidly without looking away from Sandy.

"Jesus!" cried Scott.

"I'm honestly really not sure what you're upset about," plead Sandy.

Melody seethed, her gaze locked, hot and burrowing. "Let's us not play dumb. I don't know what your game is, but I'm telling you now you had better quit, honey. You do not want to be in my bad books, you hear?" Her eyes narrowed. "You do not want to be in my way."

Sandy smirked, but said nothing.

Scott put his arm around Melody's shoulders. "Take a deep breath, babe. Can you explain to me what you're so mad about? What happened?"

"I'm feeling ill," replied Melody, leaning into Scott's side. "I'm going to have a lie down. Would y'all mind leaving the bedroom?"

Scott looked to Lansing, who shrugged, perplexed. They all started to move toward the door and Melody sat down on the edge of the bed. Sandy snapped her fingers and said, "Oops, I left my drink on the desk," as she scooted over and scooped it up from beside the computer.

Scott closed the door after them. "What was all that about?" he whispered.

Lansing explained. Sandy shook her head sadly. "I'm very sorry, Scott. I didn't mean to cause any upset. Please tell Melody I'm sorry, won't you?"

"Yeah, for sure. This is so weird. Maybe the punch is hitting her the wrong way or something."

Lansing scratched his head. "Is she usually so touchy about people using her computer?"

"No," said Scott. "I use her computer all the time and she couldn't care less. It's not like she's got a stash of child-porn to hide or anything."

"I feel badly," said Sandy. "Maybe Lansing and I should just call it a night, to remove the source of irritation."

"I don't want you guys to have to do that."

Lansing touched his friend's shoulder. "Don't worry about it, dude. We've seen the movie. Melody has clearly got something against Sandy -- at least tonight she does -- so maybe she's right and we should just head out. I hate to leave you stuck between Aaron and Cassie Ten, but..."

Scott sighed. "Shit. Did you guys drive or do you want me to call you a cab?"

"We cabbed it so we could drink."

"Okay, okay," said Scott, picking up the telephone handset as they walked back into the livingroom. He toggled it on and held it up to his hear, then frowned. "No dial tone?"

After grumbling on his hands and knees for a moment in the corner of the diningroom he found that the unit had been unplugged. "Jesus, Melody," he muttered. "I told her not to do that."

"Quiet down!" yelled Aaron from the livingroom. "There's a movie on, you inconsiderate pigs."

"Shut up, Aaron," Scott called back wearily. He ordered a cab and then tossed the handset aside. "This evening is working out splendidly, wouldn't you say?"

"Please note," said Lansing, "Romulan ale no longer to be served at diplomatic functions."

As they passed through the livingroom again Aaron was having a smoke while wearing a repulsed expression as he watched Eugene and Cassie Ten make out in the creaking easychair. Aaron looked up. "It's like watching Fox," he claimed, his cigarette ash tumbling down his arm onto the carpet. "Hoo, hoo, hoo!"

"Well," said Lansing drily. "We'll leave you to this, then."

Scott looked pained. "I'm sorry Melody flipped out on you, Sandy. I really don't understand it."

Sandy leaned in and gave Scott a peck on the cheek. "Don't worry about it. People have mood swings. Thanks for a wonderful dinner."

"Yeah..." said Scott absently. "Are you sure you guys want to leave?"

Lansing nodded. "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Take it easy, dude."

"Yeah."

They took one more look into the livingroom where Cassie Ten appeared to be wetly consuming Eugene's face. Aaron farted and lit a fresh cigarette. Scott turned back to his friends. "Maybe I'll walk you out. I think I need some air."

In the elevator Lansing said, "Are you sure you're good, Scott? This really seems to be bumming you out."

"It's not just tonight," said Scott quietly.

"Do you want to talk about it?" asked Sandy.

"Not now," he said. "But thanks."

They waved from the backseat of the cab, watching Scott standing alone by the bushes with his hands jammed in his pockets. He gave them a friendly nod as they pulled away, his eyes clouded with thought an instant later. "Do you suppose he's okay?" Lansing asked Sandy.

"No," she said glumly. "I don't think he is, no."

Lansing sighed. "I just wish there was something we could do to help."

Sandy nodded but said nothing, the lights from the streetlamps playing across her face in alternating bands of tint and shadow.

CHAPTER 8

Aaron's apartment smelled terrible, a pungent melange of stale tobacco and marijuana, perished food, old beer and solder. This much impressed Lansing before he'd even knocked on the door.

He knocked.

"Come!"

Lansing let himself in. It was murky inside both on account of the thick ribbons of smoke twisting through the air and the heavy blankets draped over the windows to keep unwelcome daylight at bay. "Aaron?" he called, stepping gingerly over a stack of pizza boxes and then navigating a minefield of pop cans, plastic wrappers and discarded shoes.

"I'm in the command centre," Aaron called back.

"Where?" blinked Lansing, trying to penetrate the gloom.

"Second star to the right, and straight on till morning."

Lansing spotted a bundle of Ethernet cables snaked along the floor and followed them as one might follow a stream to find its source, carefully picking his way through the wilderness, fording runs of dirty laundry and hummocks of kipple. He tracked his way down a dark corridor and into the spare bedroom where the cables split to reach their respective devices. Those devices were arrayed around Aaron like a technological nest as he sat at the nexus of six glowing cathode ray tubes, their buzzing innards exposed and hot. Aaron wore a robe bearing the emblem of the Klingon Empire.

He looked up. "Thank you for coming, Lansing. Come over and grab a seat."

"What's this about, Aaron?"

"Hold on, hold on -- all in good time, hu-mon."

"You said it was urgent."

"It is."

Lansing waded through a pile of collector toys, detailed replicas of cinema's most famous aliens, obviously fallen from a shelf that appeared to have been smashed in a rage, left to lay where it splintered. More toys could be discerning sticking out of various piles of wires. Aaron had always maintained an unparalleled menagerie since his family owned a toy company and he got access to all the newest products for free.

Aaron manhandled a cracked plastic chair out of the chaos behind him and planted it in a low-ebb pond of ash-stained debris at his right elbow. "Sit thee doon," he commanded. "Welcome to Casa Baron."

"I love what you've done with the place..." muttered Lansing. "Buried it, that is."

"I keep the livingroom clear for guests," Aaron replied defensively, rolling a joint in his lap and apparently oblivious to the sticky green crumbs dropping into his keyboard. "Don't chew my chaps, bitch. I never claimed to be Martha Stewart." He licked the paper, sealed it, and brought a lighter out of nowhere to spark it up. "Feel like a toke?" he mumbled around the joint.

Lansing shook his head, easing himself into the plastic chair.

Aaron shrugged and drew heavily, exhaling blue-grey wads of fume. "Now, I'm sure you're beginning to wonder why I've called you here today to my top secret research facility."

"Yeah," agreed Lansing, "hence my asking that first off." He looked around uncomfortably. "Do you offer any kind of anti-biohazard guarantee?"

"Here at Aaron Baron Co we make no guarantees, we only make important discoveries."

"Like what?"

"Like this, for instance," said Aaron, slapping the spacebar. The two monitors directly in front of him winked on to display a grain-choked, blurry photograph of a woman getting into a muscle car. Despite the low photographic fidelity the identity of the woman was immediately apparent.

Lansing frowned. "Have you been spying on Sandy?" he asked, irritated and confused.

"No," said Aaron. "But others have been."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Behold," continued Aaron, keying the slide show forward to another crusty, noise-filled image of Sandy dressed in her red Star Trek miniskirt. It looked like a frame grab from a security camera. "San Francisco, autumn of nineteen ninety-eight."

He looked at Lansing significantly. Lansing furrowed his brow. "So?"

Aaron advanced to the next image. "Detroit, winter of ninety-nine." He advanced again. "Buffalo, spring of ninety-nine."

"Are these convention photos?"

Next came an image that looked like it was ripped from the lobby camera of Lansing's apartment building. "Summer nineteen ninety-nine," declared Aaron, watching Lansing's face. "Toronto."

"Enough with the cryptic bullshit, Aaron. Are you trying to say that somebody's stalking Sandy?"

"No," said Aaron, tight-lipped. He advanced the slide show again, displaying a discoloured scan of a faded Polaroid that featured a younger version of Sandy smiling on a tropical beach, her face splotched by a wide pink birthmark. "Cancun, nineteen eighty-eight."

Lansing said nothing, frowning.

"Acapulco, nineteen eighty-seven. Sint Maarten, eighty-six -- notice the blonde hair here, and the cane. Havana, also eighty-six -- notice the red hair and Coke-bottle glasses..."

Lansing banged on the desk with his fist. "Enough already! What the fuck is all this about, Aaron?"

Aaron chuckled mirthlessly. "Don't you get it, Lansing? She's an operator. She changes identities, hair colour, her details...like changing her socks."

"You think she's a fugitive?"

"No, Lansing," said Aaron heavily, turning away from the computers. "Sandy is a spider."

"What?"

"She's a trap-door spider. She burrows into a hole, caps it with camouflage and then, when you least expect it, she snaps out to claim her prey."

Lansing scoffed. "What the fuck kind of prey, Aaron?"

"You," said Aaron seriously. "You, my friend, are her prey."

Lansing shook his head, clouded by a strange mix of amusement and worry. "I don't know what's in that shit you're smoking, Aaron, but you've totally lost touch with reality. Where did you get these pictures, anyway?"

"Usenet," said Aaron. "There's a group for the victims of con artists. I started reading there after Henry got screwed over, digging around to see what I could find out. I met a guy named Brian Spelling, the sort of unofficial moderator, and we started talking. Turns out he was very interested in Henry's story."

"Victims of con artists?" Lansing echoed, baffled.

"Yes, you epsilon: Henry was the victim of a con artist. He didn't just get dumped and robbed, he got owned. He was a toy."

"I don't see what that has to do with Sandy, unless your fear of girls has now extended to branding all of them with the same brush...the same paranoid, crack-baby brush."

Aaron snorted, leaned toward the computer and flipped back to the first slide. "Again, for your edification: San Fran, ninety-eight. Please note the apartment in the background -- it's Henry's building."

Lansing started to say something but stopped, squinting at the screen. "Maybe," he conceded. "It's pretty hard to tell."

"I wrote to Henry and asked him to send me a picture of his ex, and you know what he tells me? He says he doesn't have any. Not a single damn photograph."

"Maybe she was shy, like Melody or Cassie Ten."

"No, he says she was happy to have her picture taken -- but when she left she cleaned out his system. Low-level format, scrambled bits, secure delete."

Lansing wasn't impressed. "I think any girl with half a brain would delete photos of herself when breaking up with a guy, otherwise she's liable to see herself all over the Web."

"You're reaching."

"I'm not. This is ridiculous."

"To be candid, I did send these photos to Henry. He said she didn't look like his ex."

"Well there you go."

Aaron shook his head firmly. "We're talking about a woman who changes her appearance on a regular basis."

"She looks pretty much like Sandy in all these pictures, even the ones with different colour hair."

"Of course she looks 'pretty much' like Sandy in the photos I've found, otherwise how would I know what to look for? The set has a built-in selection bias. In any photos in which she didn't look at all like Sandy I wouldn't recognize her. You follow?"

"I've heard similar logic used to explain UFO sightings."

"There's more. What you're failing to appreciate here is that I've been in contact with an actual victim. Spelling got fleeced by her down in Mexico about fifteen years ago, and he's dedicated himself to helping out other victims ever since. He knows her, man. He even knows her real name."

"What's her real name, then?"

"Justine Schalen."

"That sounds made-up."

"Your name sounds made-up."

"At least mine doesn't rhyme."

"I think you're losing sight of the point here, you stupid buttfucker. Did you happen to notice the USB keychain-drive she slipped into her purse after the blow-up over Melody's computer?"

"Um, no..."

"I did. You ever follow her home?"

"What? No, of course not!"

"I have."

"What!"

"Where did she tell you she lives?"

"Some condo on Bloor."

"Wrong. She lives at the Fairbrook Hotel, registered under the name Darlene Peabody."

"You are stalking her!"

"Incidentally, did you know Red Vicious the punk singer works the front desk there?"

"Who cares?" cried Lansing, standing up and pacing through the garbage around Aaron's nest. "This is nuts, Aaron. You've lost it. I can't listen to any more. I'm leaving."

Before he made it to the door Aaron stopped him by saying, "There's something else."

Lansing hesitated, sighing as he leaned into the jamb. He didn't turn around. "What?" he muttered sharply.

"Your uncle called me yesterday."

Lansing blinked, startled. He spun to face Aaron who was sitting smugly behind his monitors, polishing off the end of the joint and squinching it dead against the metal chassis of one of his computers.

"Uncle Miss?" asked Lansing.

Aaron nodded. "Now, you know I don't think much of that creepy old fuck --"

"Hey man, that's my uncle you're talking about!"

"Be that as it may, you'd be hard pressed to argue that he's not a creepy old fuck."

Lansing chewed his lip irritably. "He's not really old."

"Uh-huh," agreed Aaron sardonically. "So, as I was saying, your creepy fuck of a legless uncle called me yesterday."

"Why would he call you?"

"Why does he do anything? He's a creepy fuck. Is there anyone in your family who even pretends to understand that guy?"

Lansing shook his head.

"Right," continued Aaron. "But, as you've bored us all to tears yapping on about many times before, Uncle Miss has a sick habit of sticking his nose into shit only when there's something strange about it. Do you deny it?"

"No. He's a PI, though. PIs are supposed to stick their nose into shit."

"Well, he's sticking his nose into our shit."

"What do you mean?"

"He calls me up and all he says is, 'Do you have a girlfriend right now, Aaron?' and I'm like, 'No,' so he says, 'Good, good.' I go, 'Are you trying to pick me up?' and he says, 'What about Lansing? Does Lansing have a girlfriend?'"

"He could've just called me directly," said Lansing.

"Again, you miss the point. I told him how you'd met some cougar and he goes all quiet, and he's like, 'Oh dear,' and he hangs up on me."

"I don't know what to make of that. Uncle Miss is weird."

"No, man, Uncle Miss is into weirdness. When weird shit happens, suddenly Uncle Miss is there, right? How many times has that happened in your life?"

"Okay, well yeah. So?"

"So, you hu-mon imbecile, Uncle Miss is interested in who you're dating. How can I make this more clear for you? Do you think it was a social call?"

"Uncle Miss doesn't make social calls."

"Right," agreed Aaron, staring down his nose at Lansing. "Right, Lansing. With him, everything's business, isn't it?"

Lansing turned away. He licked his lips nervously.

"Isn't it?" prompted Aaron again.

"Yeah," said Lansing. "That's true."

Aaron grinned darkly and crossed his legs under the desk. "Let's review, shall we?" he said, counting off his points on stubby fingers. "Fact: photos of your mysterious girlfriend are posted to a newsgroup for victims of con artists. Fact: the moderator recognizes her as a known criminal with a history of sweetheart cons. Fact: your girlfriend lies about her name and where she lives. Fact: your girlfriend surreptitiously steals data from other people's laptops. Fact: your batshit-crazy uncle the private detective is worried that you might be getting laid."

Lansing didn't know what to say. After a moment his shoulders slumped. "When you put it all together that way it is sort of bizarre."

Aaron stood up slowly and worked his way out from behind the desk to drop a heavy arm on Lansing's slight shoulders, apparently a gesture of comfort. Aaron's Dorito-breath words were equally ambiguous: "I know it's been fun to imagine that you're attractive enough to score a hot older woman, but you know as well as I that it strains credulity. You're a fucking Star Trek geek, man. Think about it."

Lansing glanced down at the Starfleet insignia sewn onto his jacket. "She likes Trek, too," he offered lamely.

"Does she?" questioned Aaron, clucking his tongue. "Lansing -- you have to face it, buddy: you don't even know the real her."

Lansing cast off Aaron's arm and paced across the room again, rubbing his temples ruefully. "Maybe this is all bullshit, Aaron. Maybe you're just pulling my dick because you're so bent out of shape because we all have girlfriends and all you've got is bitterness and porn."

Aaron spread his hands. "I'm trying to help you."

"Are you, dude? Seriously? Is that why you're taking such pains to make me feel better about all this?"

"I think you deserve to know the truth. I don't sugar coat it. I'm just trying to look out for my friends."

"Maybe, or maybe Melody's right and you're in love with Scott and you'll do or say fucking anything to get us to turn against our girlfriends so you can make it like the old days again, when we just hung out together like a bunch of losers."

Aaron's eyes narrowed menacingly. "Hey, you know what?" he said after a pregnant pause. "Fuck you, Lansing. Get the fuck out of my apartment. Go home. Get conned. See if I care."

"Listen, Aaron --"

"Shut up!" Aaron bellowed, red in the face and breathing hard. "Eh? How do you like it, being told to shut up? I get told to shut up every fucking day, and you assholes just laugh. Well, if you don't want to listen me try to save your ass, to Hell with you."

"Aaron --"

"Like I said, get the fuck out of my apartment you dickless wonder," said Aaron acidly, turning his back and wading back into his nest. He bent over the keyboard and did not look up again.

Lansing stood there for a moment, hovering indecisively, and then reluctantly shuffled away to climb over the garbage and let himself out the front door. On his way down in the elevator he called his sister to ask if she had a contact number for Uncle Miss, but she didn't. "Why do you want to talk to him?" she asked. "He's crazy."

"Yeah," agreed Lansing. "Thanks anyway, sis."

He hung up. He checked the time and saw that he had only fifteen minutes left of his lunch break -- not even enough to get back to the office on time. Still, he did not get underway; he leaned against a pillar of the carport outside of Aaron's building, tapping his folded phone against his thigh and clenching his teeth.

It took him a while to recognize his own feelings: he was angry. He was very angry. He wasn't sure exactly at whom or for what, but nevertheless the fury boiled inside of him, flavouring his throat with bile and making his head pulse in sympathy with his aching heart.

Lansing reached a decision. Frowning purposefully, he hailed a cab.

CHAPTER 9

"Can I help the next customer, please?"

Lansing stepped up to the teller's counter. "I'd like to speak with the manager," he said, his sweaty hands clutched behind his back.

"Is there a problem?" asked the teller.

"No, I'd just like to see Sandy."

"Sandy?"

"The manager?"

"Ms. Markovitz is our manager here, sir. Are you sure you have the right branch? Maybe I can help you: can I get you to swipe your bank card here please?"

"I'd just like to see the manager."

"Ms. Markovitz isn't in today, but if you'd like I'd be happy to mark a meeting request on her calendar and she'll call you back to arrange the details. Is this about a loan?"

Lansing turned around wordlessly and rushed out of the bank. In the parking lot he found himself loitering on the stretch of curb where he'd met Sandy after work, and as he searched up and down the row of placards reserving employee spots he noticed for the first time that none of the names were hers. Her job, then, was also a lie.

He didn't know what to do: he was too distracted to return to work, too upset to mope alone.

He decided he needed company, and perhaps counsel. The only person he knew who was at home during the day was Melody. Perhaps a woman's perspective would help him see things more clearly, he reasoned, hailing a fresh cab and giving the driver Scott's address...

He called work, told a lie. He hung up with shaking hands.

When the cab jerked to a halt he was startled out of a thoughtless place, overpaid for his ride, and then climbed out onto the sidewalk. He immediately had to dodge a moving crew carrying a bed between them up the ramp of a large trailer. The lobby doors were propped open for the movers so he didn't have to buzz up.

He craved sympathy. More, he craved an alternative explanation. He wanted somebody to hold his head and tell him not to worry, that it was all a complicated misunderstanding.

It should've been Sandy, but the thought made him ill and hungry and mad.

He strode the corridor with purposeless purpose, faltering when he turned the corner to see Scott's door wide open, the threshold being trampled by two movers wrestling a heavy chest of drawers between them.

Lansing blinked.

The movers squeezed past him down the corridor and then he stepped up to the jamb and called, "Scott...? Melody...?"

Melody appeared from inside the unit looking disheveled and tired, a stained tank-top and jogging pants hanging off her carelessly. "Lansing?" she replied, furrowing her brow. "What are you doing here?"

Lansing was baffled. He felt numb and surreal. "What's going on?" he asked, peering past her into the denuded condominium.

"Didn't Scott tell you that we're moving?"

"You're moving?"

Melody nodded cheerfully. "We found the most amazing place. I can't wait for y'all to see it! Waterfront view and everything. And we're going fifty-fifty on it so I don't have to feel like such a heel."

"Did you get a job?"

"What?"

"A job -- how are you going fifty-fifty without a job?"

"Oh yeah, I got a job. It's great."

"Where at?"

"Just some place. Pretty boring stuff, really -- just reception work. But you've got to tell me: why are you here now, Lansing? Aren't you supposed to be at work? Oh my God, y'all didn't get laid off, did you?"

"Uh, no."

"What's wrong, sweetheart? You look like somebody just ran over your dog."

"Can I sit down?"

"Sure thing, pudding. There's some furniture in the livingroom. I'm still packing up in there. Come on in."

She disappeared inside and Lansing followed. Melody's bum was no longer hypnotic to Lansing -- it just reminded him of Sandy's. The livingroom was full of cardboard boxes but there remained in place an easychair and the television, currently tuned to the lobby camera. As Lansing sat down the movers carrying the chest of drawers passed by on the screen.

"Can I get you a drink?" asked Melody, wiping her sweaty brow ineffectually against her sweaty forearm. "Lord knows I need one. Packing's hard work."

Lansing nodded gratefully. "Water, please."

He sat down in the easychair, gawking at the emptiness.

When Melody returned from the kitchen they gulped from their glasses, draining them. She took his glass, put it aside, and then crouched next to the easychair and rested her chin on his arm. "Now are you going to tell me what's eating you, Lansing dear, or do I have to work it out of you?"

Lansing smiled fleetingly. "No, I'll talk, I'll talk."

She smiled fleetingly back. "What's the matter?"

"It's Sandy," said Lansing. "Or it's Aaron. I don't even know. No, I do -- it's Sandy."

"Honey, you're not making a lick of sense."

"I know."

Melody sat up on the arm of the easychair, which was still faintly green with Cassie Ten's paw-prints. She ran her fingers through Lansing's short, black hair and made an exquisitely feminine, soothing sound. "There, there," she whispered. "You're all bent out of shape now, aren't you?"

Lansing closed his eyes, the afterimages throbbing. He licked his lips and said, "Aaron says he has reason to believe that Sandy is a con artist who's setting me up to be fleeced."

Melody's hand froze, stopped still on Lansing's scalp. "...What?"

"He says she's been doing it for years -- something called a sweetheart scam," continued Lansing, opening his eyes and feeling them well up against his will. "He had pictures and everything. I think...I think it might be true."

"Lord Jesus!" breathed Melody, her face stricken. "What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Lansing sadly. "It doesn't seem real. I'm very confused. I should be at work. Fuck. And then just to make the day weirder than weird I come here to find somebody to talk to...and you guys are moving? Like, right out of the blue?"

Melody looked down, then continued running her fingers through Lansing's hair. "I think Scott may have kept all y'all in the dark for fear that the news might get a bad reception. There's been some tension, we can't deny it, can we?"

"I suppose we can't."

"We're getting more serious, and I think he worries that not everyone thinks that's such a good thing."

"Nah," said Lansing dismissively. "Everybody likes you, Melody."

"Aaron doesn't."

"Aaron doesn't like anyone. But more to the point, you're not the one he accuses of being a scammer. No, Scott gets a real girlfriend and I'm the loser who's duped into thinking someone might be into me. Why am I even surprised?"

"Why say a thing like that, kitten?"

"Are you kidding me? Scott can talk to people. He's good looking, he makes good money, and he doesn't look like him mom dresses him. He's always been about a thousand times cooler than I've ever been on even the best day of my life. He fucking deserves a girlfriend."

"And you don't?"

"I should just move in with Aaron and turn myself gay. Why fight?"

"That's ridiculous."

"Yeah, well, I'm ridiculous. A ridiculous loser, getting owned by a cougar. Just kill me now." Lansing mimed a self-execution with his thumb and index finger. "Pow."

"Aw, Lansing, don't be that way. You're not a loser."

Lansing shook his head hard, his near-tears quickly replaced by another flush of indignation. "I am a loser, Melody. Even my best friend is keeping secrets from me -- not about little things, but big shit going on in his life. He's too fucking worried about getting ragged on that he won't even give me the benefit of the doubt. I'm not even worth that, evidently."

"I'm sure he has his reasons, pudding. Don't get all mad."

"Fuck it," declared Lansing, fishing in his pocket for his phone. "I'm calling him right now. I'm not staying mum. This is bullshit. Is he my friend or isn't he?"

Melody reached out and grabbed Lansing's wrist. "Don't call him at work, sugar, he's all stressed about the deadline he's on."

"But I want to tell him how --"

"Hush now," she said softly, gently easing the telephone out of his hand and placing it aside. "I know you're hurting," she told him, continuing to stroke his head, "but going off on Scott ain't going to make things right. Not like that. You need to find a calmer place."

"I don't have a calm place today. Will you pass me my phone back please? I have to do this."

"Don't, Lansing. Let's you and I just chat a while longer until you feel more even keeled."

"Okay, fine -- I won't shit on him for keeping secrets. But I still need to ask him what he thinks about this whole Sandy thing."

She pressed her lips together sceptically. "What's he going to be able to tell you?"

"I don't know, but Scott's always been there to tell me something. We're best friends. He has a way. He knows how to cut through the crap. He...cares about me. I know that sounds sort of gay, but it isn't. The truth is that Aaron's not the one in love with Scott: I am -- because I've fucking wanted to be him since I was twelve."

Lansing trailed off and they both sat in stony silence as the movers tromped through the livingroom on their way to the bedroom to start disassembling the computer desk.

Lansing sniffed back tears, feeling stupid. "Fuck," he said dully.

"Lansing..." said Melody soothingly.

He suddenly leaned forward and scooped up his phone, unfolded it and started thumbing through his numbers. He gasped in surprise when Melody struck it out of his hands. The phone bounced across the carpet and meeped. Before Lansing could react he found himself pressed into a warm and wet kiss and Melody was sitting on his lap.

"What...?" he mumbled.

"You need this," Melody said, pushing her lips into his again.

Despite the embrace Lansing managed to squeak out, "Scott!"

"You need attention," whispered Melody, her breath hot on his face. "Don't worry about Scott. Let me give this time to you. He doesn't ever have to know."

"No, I can't."

"You're hard. That means you can. Come with me to the bathroom. We can lock the door. I know how to make you relax, Lansing. Trust me."

She took his hand and dragged him from the chair. He stumbled after her, resisting but without zeal. She pushed him up against the washroom doorjamb and kissed him again, her hand stroking over his pants. "Melody..." he protested weakly.

She shoved him into the washroom. She glanced over toward the bedroom and then back again. A coy smirk played over her features and then she rolled off her tank-top and tossed it aside, leaving her chest bare and shiny with perspiration.

Lansing gasped. Melody winked saucily.

And then she slammed the washroom door, casting Lansing into darkness. He heard a sliding, knocking sound as Melody hauled over a diningroom chair and jammed it under the knob. Her light footfalls retreated.

"Melody?" called Lansing. And then again: "...Melody?"

A blurry, negative impression of her nipples and beauty marks drifted untethered across Lansing's scintillating shadow-blindness.

He stumbled into the door and tried to open it, but he could not. He stumbled backward again and barked his shin on the toilet, then set to slapping his hands along the wall in search of the lightswitch. Then he remembered that the lightswitch was on the outside.

He sat on the toilet, his heart hammering.

"Melody what the fuck?" he bellowed. His voice echoed dully. He smelled pineapple shampoo.

He became quiet. He heard Melody suggest to the movers that they break for lunch, listening to their heavy boots clomp past the washroom and toward the front door.

Lansing was more bewildered than ever, and it made him furious. What was the term Aaron had used -- a toy?

Unbidden, rage rose and his eyes burned. He leapt up and threw himself against the door, repeatedly smashing it with his rapidly numbing shoulder until, at last, he managed to collapse the upper section with a loud crack. An adrenalin powered kick bashed out the bottom half of the door and then he tore the diningroom chair away and tumbled out onto the splinter-covered carpet.

Melody was closing the front door behind the movers. Lansing screamed, "What the fuck, Melody?" as he barreled up behind her.

She turned around. Without premeditation Lansing punched her in the face.

Melody fell back against the wall, striking her head, and then slid down to the floor with a stunned expression. A trickle of blood showed from one nostril.

"Oh my God!" cried Lansing, suddenly aghast. "I'm sorry!" he blurted.

He knelt down in front of her and then, without warning, she kicked him in the testicles with both feet at once. Lansing toppled over backward with a pitiable moan, clutching at his groin. Melody climbed over top of him, got to her feet and ran.

Unwilling to play prey, Lansing played predator. He let his anger wash through him as he plunged after her.

He caught up with her on the far side of the diningroom, tackling her sideways against a box of plates that rattled alarmingly. She dragged her nails down the side of his neck as she scrambled to get free. Lansing howled, squirming after her.

At the mouth of the hall he caught the back of her jogging pants and yanked them down, tangling around her ankles. She fell hard and uncontrolled, her ass sticking into the air, her face pressed against the carpet with pink friction burns blazing on her chin. Her underwear had little hearts on them.

She kicked him in the forehead, entangling him in her jogging pants. She pulled her legs clear and dashed into the bedroom.

Lansing got to his feet, winded and aching, and threw the pants aside. He started making for the bedroom when Melody appeared on the threshold. Lansing looked down at the device she held in her hand and winced in anticipation an instant before she jammed the taser into his midriff and engaged it.

He was overwhelmed by a brief but sharp-edged pain, a cruel cramping that hit him everywhere at once, his muscles suddenly jellied and utterly out of control. Lansing pissed all over himself and dropped to the carpet, twitching and moaning feebly.

Melody hovered over him, weapon trained. Lansing didn't, and couldn't, move. He wondered in a disconnected way whether he were about to die.

He could see up her shirt. Not a bad last sight, he reasoned in a disconnected, giddy way.

Without taking her eyes off of him Melody leaned down to scoop up her jogging pants, pulling them on awkwardly as she kept the taser leveled. "Now," she said, all traces of her smooth Southern drawl suddenly gone, "you're going to lie there like a lamb or I'm going to stick this thing in your ass, got it?"

Lansing nodded from the floor, pins and needles tickling uncomfortably throughout his body.

He watched as Melody crossed the room and picked a roll of duct tape out of one of the cardboard boxes. She straightened and pulled out a long strip, the tape croaking in its particular way. To Lansing the mundane sound was filled with new threat, and it made him jump.

And then the television showing the lobby camera went to static. Then the screen went dark, crackling quietly.

Melody looked over, frowning. A second later the lights died and the refrigerator went quiet, leaving them in the uncomfortable wake of sudden silence. Lansing lay in a narrow shaft of sunlight spilling in from the windows, trying to regain his breath, his ears ringing, the urine making his pants feel cold.

"It's a goddamn blackout," muttered Melody distractedly.

She knelt down next to Lansing and bound his wrists behind his back. Lansing felt he might have the strength to resist just as she finished. Then she set to tearing off another strip to bind his ankles, heralded by the tape's ominous croak. "Why are you doing this?" he managed to whisper.

"You got in the way, kid," she said. "This is business."

"You..." he said, his chin quivering, "you're the spider."

"Spider?" she chuckled, pulling the tape around his ankles. "You're mental."

The front door banged open, startling them both. Melody jumped up. Lansing craned his head to see. "Oh Scott please save me..." he prayed. "Please."

But it wasn't Scott who walked into the livingroom next: it was Sandy.

She glanced at him but did not react, her face a steely study in determination, the taut muscles a kind of harsh masque that transformed her to the edge of Lansing's recognition. She said, "This is finished, Dana," and in that moment Lansing realized that he was caught in the middle of something bigger than himself. He lay helpless at the crosshairs of a brewing battle.

Whatever Melody was up to, it was not surprising to Sandy.

"I told you to mind yourself, old lady," said Melody, her chin high. "I can't even begin to tell you how sorry you're going to be for coming here today. My people are on their way."

"No," said Sandy with coldness and precision, continuing to advance slowly into the room. "They are not, Dana."

"You don't know anything."

A tiny smile curled the corners of Sandy's lips. She said, "You are utterly transparent to me, Dana, in every respect. There is no line in your inventory that will dissuade me, Dana."

"I have a gun."

"No, Dana, you do not."

"Stop fucking saying my name!"

"No, Dana, I will not."

Melody suddenly ran at Sandy with the taser extended but stopped short when Sandy blasted her in the face with pepper stray. "Fuck!" screamed Melody, her face contorted as she staggered blindly backward. She tripped over Lansing and hit the floor, pawing at her eyes.

She wasn't hit as bad she made out, apparently, because when Sandy walked over Melody jumped to her feet. Through red-rimmed, squinting eyes she saw enough to rake her nails down Sandy's face, then threw all her weight into the other woman and both tumbled, knocking over the easychair with a percussive double thump.

Lansing managed to roll over and sit up, his tied feet pinned beneath him. Melody and Sandy were tumbling over one another, hitting and shrieking, clawing and grunting, leaving half-crushed cardboard boxes in their wake.

He wondered what he would do if Melody won. The idea of Sandy being hurt horrified him, which only served to further confuse his feelings. He bellowed, "Kick her fucking ass, Sandy!"

Sandy grunted as Melody clubbed her in the temple with a die-cast Excelsior-class starship. She raised it to strike again but was bucked aside. In the ensuing scuffle Lansing lost track of whose limbs were whose.

"Sandy!" he cried out desperately.

And then Sandy was up again, straddling Melody, smacking the girl's head back and forth repeatedly. Blood was now running from both of Melody's nostrils and dotting her cheeks as it sprayed laterally with the impact of Sandy's swinging, careless blows.

"Sandy, stop!" Lansing shouted. "You'll kill her!"

Sandy stopped, her chest rising and falling heavily as she panted. She looked at the red on her palms, then looked down at Melody's running eyes and bloody nostrils. Melody stirred faintly, her lids fluttering.

For a second Sandy's face softened and Lansing could see the her in her, but it was quickly gone and she was hard again, eyes narrow and lips pressed into a thin, grim line.

Sandy stood up abruptly and walked out of the livingroom. She returned with a large canvas knapsack, which she opened and extracted from it a neatly coiled bundle of white silk rope. She sat down cross-legged on the floor and began to industriously and expertly tie Melody up. Without looking over she asked, "Are you alright, Lansing?"

"I don't know," he said lamely.

"Did you get tased?"

"Yeah."

She grunted as she pulled Melody's bindings tight, then set to gagging her. Melody was awake but offered no meaningful resistance, her eyes bleary and her cheeks red. Sandy said, "I'm sorry I flipped out on her. I...wasn't expecting to find you here. When I thought you were hurt I -- lost it."

"What are you going to do to her?"

Sandy pursed her lips. "I'll take her back to my lair and give her some education, then she has a date with the police."

"You're not going to hurt her, are you?"

Sandy snorted, her eyes on her work. "Why should you care? Who knows what she would've done to you if I hadn't arrived when I did? She's a predator, Lansing. She's very dangerous. Trust me."

"Trust you?" he spat, shaking his head wearily. "That's what she said."

Sandy scooted across the carpet and deftly cut the duct tape with a butterfly knife. Lansing carefully peeled the remaining strips away from his wrists, cringing as they caught the hairs. He watched Sandy as she cut his legs free. A strand of her hair had fallen loose from her bun and she blew at it, then flipped the knife closed and stashed it in her jeans with a practiced motion.

"What are you?" he asked.

"I told you," she said, eyes flicking up only briefly. "I'm a superhero. I clean up scum."

"Jesus Christ. This can't be real."

She reached out to touch his face but Lansing whipped his head out of the way. "Don't fucking touch me," he said.

"Lansing..."

"Just get away," he shouted. "You and Melody -- you're both monsters. You're both something awful. I don't want anything to do with you. You fight your fights but you leave me the fuck out of it, you understand?"

Sandy stood up. She unfolded a long, Naval duffel bag out of the knapsack and then put the mouth around Melody's feet and covered her up, drawing the string loosely at the top. "Don't worry," she said quietly. "She can still breathe. I'm not a killer."

"So you say."

Sandy flinched but did not immediately reply. She went into the corridor again and returned with a shopping cart, which she then loaded Melody into. Melody moaned. Sandy threw the knapsack on top of her unceremoniously and then hefted the handle experimentally, testing the weight. The cart rolled clumsily on the carpet, wheels twisting.

"Listen, Lansing," she said, dabbing at a cut on her temple. "I know this is fucked up. Don't presume to tell me, because I live it. And don't even ask me why, because the answer is longer than we've got."

"Fucked up is an understatement."

She considered this. "I think you'll agree that it's better than being taken for everything you have. I've been doing this a long time, Lansing. I know these people. They're ruthless and they're heartless. Dana here has been busy working up a pattern of spending on Scott's accounts that was going to come to a head today, leaving him penniless and his credit ruined. Look around -- she was even taking the furniture. Everything he had. Everything. Do you get it, Lansing? That's what I'm fighting against. So what I do may be fucked up, but it's less fucked up than the alternative."

"That's not as clear to me as it is to you," he said, and then, against his will, he started to cry. "How could you use me like this?" he begged, his voice catching in his throat.

"I never meant to hurt you, Lansing. Honestly, I didn't. I think you're a really great person. And maybe you think I'm horrible, but what we shared together was special."

"Bullshit," he blubbered.

"I mean it, Lansing. I'm going to miss you."

Lansing shook his head in disgust. "You're the same as her. You two are exactly the same. You exploit people -- Melody for money, you for some insane idea that you're a superhero and you're somehow doing something good. But you're not, Sandy. You're destructive. You're just a sick vixen with delusions of grandeur."

"Would you rather get robbed?" she asked sharply.

"Maybe, I don't know," shrugged Lansing, looking her in the eye. "Being violated is being violated. Maybe you took my virginity but you also took my trust. I don't know what the fuck you've really done to me, in the end. I guess I'll find out. But I do know one thing, Sandy or Justine or whatever you name is."

"What's that, Lansing?"

"I wish I'd never met you."

Sandy's face froze, and then she slowly began to nod, the skin under her eyes quaking. She hung her head sadly and said, "I understand."

And then she turned and wheeled the shopping cart filled by a bound and gagged girl out the front door of Scott's naked condominium, and away. Lansing leaned into the overturned easychair, hearing the squeaking of the shopping cart's wheels echo off the corridor walls and diminish.

He cried.

Far down the corridor, so did Sandy.

CONNECTED STORIES
Sandy is a Spider | The Secret Mathematic | Stubborn Town | The Taste of Blue | The Extra Cars

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