The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [130]
She and Dellaqua step through the open door into the front room of the loft. The furniture Couch picked out for the place almost makes her laugh: a sofa upholstered in bright-blue fur; bulbous silver floor lamps on long, bending stalks; a round dining table topped with a mesmerizing black and white spiral. The granite counter actually shows signs of use—on it are a large porcelain mortar and pestle, a mixing bowl, and a couple of empty sugar bags. For a moment she savors the marvelous image of the two girls placidly baking something, but then she spots the electric drill and the duct tape and remembers the bombs. Next to the drill stands a small cardboard box, opened at the top, on which is printed a scene of cartoon weeds fleeing a plot of neatly furrowed soil in bug-eyed, mouth-agape panic. Beneath the surface of the soil, the product’s brand name, KaOX, sends off shimmering tendrils of radiance in all directions. More empty boxes and sugar bags litter the floor around the counter.
“Don’t forget,” Dellaqua whispers. “Take any opportunity. Get her against the far wall and hold her. We’ll radio the men and they’ll be in there in no time.”
“I hear you out there!” Ivy screams from behind her bedroom door.
“Your big sister’s here,” Dellaqua calls out. “She wants to come in and talk to you.”
“Ursula? You out there?”
She takes a breath.
“I’m here, Ivy,” she says. “Will you let me in?”
She and Dellaqua stand unmoving, waiting for her response.
“Hey, dickface!” Ivy shouts. “I’m unlocking the door for my sister. Don’t try any funny business! I’ll blow this place sky-high!”
Funny business, sky-high, Ursula thinks, wondering exactly which of a thousand interchangeable TV dramas Ivy thinks she’s in. Doubtless, she’d be pretty disillusioned if she could she Dellaqua or his strangely alienated and maladjusted crew face-to-face. They fit Ursula’s idea of substitute high school teachers more than of law-enforcement agents.
She hears the sound of locks’ being undone.
“OK, Ursula, come in slowly. Slowly!”
Ursula walks across the room and opens the door. Inside, Ivy squats over one of the plaid thermos bottles, holding her lit cigarette above it. The light from the window above her is blotted out by a thick blanket hung from the curtain rod. The piles of money eddy slightly in the draft from the open door.
“Lock it behind you,” she says.
Ursula turns. Across the main room Dellaqua stands with his arms folded. None of the other men is visible. She closes the door and locks it.
“OK,” Ursula says, turning back around. “We’re safe now. You can get away from that.”
Ivy leans her head back against the windowsill and takes a drag on her cigarette, the bomb centered on its plate between her bare, skinny ankles. She’s in her usual webcast attire: white cotton panties, a V-necked undershirt, and no bra, her nipples clearly outlined above her folded arms. Her bangs hang raggedly over her eyes, and the rest of her hair has grown out enough to be gathered in back with an elastic band. She uses the gathered hair as a kind of bandoleer for her pastel-colored cigarettes, several of which are lodged loosely above either ear.
“Ivy,” Ursula says, stepping gingerly over the mounds of bills and sitting down on the edge of the bed, “that thing could go off by accident with you so close to it. Come and sit on the bed with me.”
Ivy doesn’t move, “You look nice, Urse,” she says.
At once Ursula remembers the cameras. She looks around and locates them, six in all—one in each corner, a small one on top of the computer monitor, and one bracketed to the ceiling and angled down at the bed. Almost against her will her posture straightens, and she feels her face muscles go rigid; millions of people, she thinks, are evaluating her skin, lips, breasts, hips. Ivy, in contrast, scratches her underarm unself-consciously. A couple weeks’ worth of hair is visible