The Savage Girl - Alex Shakar [58]
It’s just another one of Ivy’s paranoid delusions, she tells herself. One that simply happens to be true.
“She . . . she talks about Chas to you?”
Sonja nods.
After the initial shock Ursula decides that maybe this is a good thing. Maybe it’s a sign that Ivy really is getting better.
“Speaking of our Grand Inquisitor,” Couch announces, “I’ve just come from a meeting with him. For the last three hours he’s been telling me how he wants this presentation thing to go. And I was wondering, has either of you . . . um . . . seen this year’s trendbook yet?”
“Why?” Ursula asks. “Did it surprise you?”
He looks at each of them, his smile widening tooth by tooth. “That’s certainly one way of putting it.”
“Javier says he’s making a new man out of Chas,” Ursula explains.
Couch looks at Javier askance. “Reeeeealllly. A new man, you say? How so?”
Javier doesn’t reply. Couch seems to be making him even more uncomfortable than usual. Ursula picks up the slack.
“He’s making an optimist out of him,” she says.
Couch looks genuinely amused, then holds up a finger and takes a sip of his drink so he can spit it out in a simulated paroxysm of hilarity.
“Chas! An optimist!” He turns off the uncontrollable laugh, wipes the imaginary sweat from his brow. “Now that’s funny.”
“You’ve . . . seen the trendbook?” Javier asks, a note of poorly disguised trepidation in his voice.
“Oh, no,” Couch replies, lacing his fingers across his chest. “The man trusts no one. I just listened to him talk about it.”
“Oh,” Javier says, clearly relieved. “Well, you know the way he talks.”
The two men stare each other down for a minute, Couch with his phony smile and Javier with forced bravado. Ursula begins feeling uncomfortable and looks off at the dance floor. A new deejay has taken over, a stocky kid with hair in his eyes and a gold tooth who has started fading recent movie tunes into and out of a backdrop of house music. The composition of the dance-floor crowd shifts accordingly, the boys and girls with horn-rimmed glasses and big, clunky shoes departing, the boys and girls with wire-framed glasses and linen jackets tied around their waists arriving. The core constituency of heavyset black men with shaved heads and skinny, androgynous-looking women with close-cropped hair remains constant.
She looks back to find Couch and Javier watching her. She has no idea why. The two of them are beginning to make her paranoid.
“So,” she says, trying to grease the social wheels. “What new leads are you guys tracking down tonight?”
“Please,” Couch protests, holding up his hands. “I’m just in town to have fun. Streetwork is so outmoded.” He leans over and says to Sonja with a vague air of conspiracy, “I work virtually nowadays.”
Sonja looks at her lemon drop.
“Satellites,” Couch says. “I get a thousand channels beamed to my lake house.”
Couch has already described his research station to Ursula in painstaking detail: six computers continuously scanning the Web for trendy keywords, a bank of twelve television screens set to switch channels randomly every minute. He watches them all simultaneously, looking for patterns as he rides his Exercycle or his rowing machine or his ski machine.
“I should have you all up to my lake sometime,” Couch says. “It’s very private. I’m sure you like to get away from your adoring fans now and then, am I right, Sonja? It must get to be a strain for you, being adored all the time.”
He places a limp hand on her arm and leans close to her as he speaks. Sonja looks at him confused; perhaps she has never until this instant considered the possibility of adoring fans.
It takes Ursula a moment fully to process Couch’s invitation.
“Your lake?” she exclaims.
“Well, it’s a small lake,” Couch says, oozing mock modesty. “Not one of the Great ones, you know. But it has its charms. Once Ivy’s all better, you must bring her along, too. Oh, and speaking of Ivy”—Couch aims his smile first at Javier, who looks ashenly into his drink, and then at Ursula