Engineman - Eric Brown [8]
With luck, she told herself, Europe will become so impoverished that the 'face will no longer be viable and Keilor-Vincicoff will relocate it...
She returned inside, wiping the soles of her sap-sticky feet on the filthy carpet. In the tiny, overcrowded kitchen she found her own chipped mug and boiled some water. She never bothered with breakfast, but drank cup after cup of real coffee - her one luxury - to sustain her through the nights while she worked. She'd become nocturnal on moving in with Eddie Schwartz. Enginemen were night creatures, and it didn't bother Ella when she slept - she could create just as well at three in the morning or three in the afternoon. She'd soon got used to never seeing the sun. In her down cycles, she told herself that darkness suited the state of her psyche; when she was up, high on the buzz of creating, she knew that she liked the night because it reminded her of the long, balmy twilight phases on the planet of Hennessy's Reach, where she'd spent the happiest years of her life.
She poured herself a black coffee and left the kitchen, holding the mug in both hands and taking tiny sips. She paused outside Eddie's room, deciding to try and wake him. He'd be blitzed on the gold dust he'd stolen, but she could have fun watching his confusion as she asked him nonsense questions. Ella had finished a painting the night before; she was feeling good. She pushed open the door with her toes and saw that his bed was empty.
No doubt he'd be up on the roof, staring at the interface. He'd been spending a lot of time up there, lately.
She stared around the room. Like her, Eddie was not materialistic. He had few possessions. The walls were bare - no pix or graphics to remind him of his time pushing for the Chantilly Line; no ornaments, books or discs. Just a bed, a chair, and a crate containing his clothes.
Ella stepped inside, unable to suppress the feeling that she was trespassing. She could not recall the last time she'd been in his bedroom, nor when he'd last been in hers. Although they'd been together for the last seven years, in real terms they lived very much apart, Ella spending all her time painting and sculpting, and Eddie working nights at the food-irradiation plant in north Paris. Their relationship was very much platonic. She was like an elder sister to him - even though Eddie in his mid-forties was twenty years older than her - advising him, and looking after him during his periods of sickness, both physical and mental.
Even in the early days there had been a certain distance between them. Ella had needed someone she could rebuild her life around - someone who could have looked after and protected her would have been ideal, but the alternative, a man she could look after and protect, was better than nothing. Eddie had needed, though he probably hadn't realised it at the time, someone to keep him alive in the dark years after the closure of the shipping Lines. He was a physically big man, solid and greying, not at all imaginative or artistic, and Ella's friends had said that they were ill-matched, that it couldn't possibly work, and given them a year at best. As things turned out, her friends were right on two counts - they were ill-matched and it hadn't worked. But here they were seven years later, still together, mainly due to the fact that Eddie still needed someone, and Ella had found no-one else.
She left the room and closed the door behind her. At the end of the hall she was confronted by her image in the wall-mirror. She set little store by how she looked, and was often surprised when she encountered her reflection. She was short and thin, permanently drawn and tired-looking - even when she was on a high and felt energised. She shaved her head regularly, and this, together with the lines that delta'd from the corners of her eyes, made her look ten years older than she was. And yet today, she told herself, I feel young and confident, full of life. She smiled at herself. She'd just completed a piece she was happy with, which