Location: Dicky Twister, Vista Del ReyTags:
Music: Radio Station
Germaine had never been particularly forthcoming when it came to the nature of gigs. Oh sure, he'd give the deets, whispered words slithering out from a forked tongue and lips so unusually large, they'd have to be synthetic. But when it came to the methods and the ways in which means of vigilante justice were dished out, well he cared about as much as a fixer should when the client carried no such considerations. Might as well have asked him his opinion on his preference between Constitutional Arms and Tsunami. It all comes out in the wash.
He was a cacophony of cosmetics, sycophant fixation on assembling all the various flashy appendages and pieces to make the perfect thing. He was that persistent pursuit, a skin suit meshed together by neural streamers, chrome flesh, double irises, and enough jewelry and metal to set off an Arasaka AIT weapon sensor from over a mile away. He wasn't that bad though, once you got past the facade and the implications of his perspicacity. He had a means for maneuvering the bureaucracy of fixing, the interrelationships between the various gangs and pseudo-corpo agencies and resistances. And for matters such as that, my gain might has well have been turned down to zero. It simply didn't blip the radar.
"You know where it is?" He whispered, lips jostling distractingly underneath the faintest black mustache that parted at a tear drop piece of chrome, nested in his pronounced philtrum. He had refashioned his hair into some even mixture between a frost topped mohawk, propped up by a god's serving of wax or whatever product stacks the racks in Venetian styled stores like Giovanni Brizzi, and the flowing stream of thin black hair that he proudly called his fashullette. A young man hung on his side, playing with a tassel on Germain's purple blazer that was strategically placed where his nipples likely resided. If he even considered keeping those these days.
"Of course I know where it is…" Any merc worth the eddies knew the locale around All Foods, they just avoided going. It's one of the main hubs for the booster gang, Maelstrom, and base of operation for their illegal exports, security forces, and the not so occasional execution style events often memorialized by songs, affair, and juices running so thick that it lacquers the dance floor of Totentanz. "Speaking of what you know. You know I fucking hate this bar."
"Darling…" He cooed, flirtatiously slapping his friend's hand away from the tassel. I suddenly felt like an uninvited guest to a bit of foreplay. "You need to lighten up. What's a little flesh to help push along the process?"
Flesh, right. It was all bleached and glossy mannequins with members that were comical in size and shape. Dancers pressed against chrome poles on the striptease platforms, in varying degrees of nudity. It all was enough to keep my attention firmly at the bottom of the cup that I had cradled for the past few minutes. Bottom shelf bourbon, watered down with chips of dirty ice.
"Of course…the eddies are low on this one." He pouted his lips, feigning some display of sadness. But it just gave the impression of a retired advertisement for Bottoms Up, The Prequel. Kiss me here, I'll kiss you there.
"You know that's not important." I'd jump at the chance to disrupt Maelstrom and Germaine knew that. Even if he pretended like he didn't, my penchant for causing havoc in corpo funded gang interactions would always trump other factors. The icing on the cake was that this gig had roots running back to Arasaka. The sort of gig to report back home, make the trumpets sing and the brass clatter.
I stood up from the table which up until now, I hadn't realized was as sticky as it was. I massaged my concern by convincing myself it was from spilt drinks and crumbs from what passed for food here. Sliding the cup over to Germaine, the sound of chips rattling against glass like dice thrown in Dogtown, I adjusted my high collar and gave him a nod. "NCT forecast says it's supposed to rain today up on the Northside."
"And when it rains, does it pour?"
I let the answer hang in the thumping air, resonating with the modern electronic beats of 99.9 Impulse. Another reason to hate this bar. I saw myself out through the neon beams, gyrating flesh, and taffy tinted smoke.
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