The real thing fell out just about when I really got into it. Hard times found Liam, me and Quiet Con who went for the inner planets and started hitting institutions and collaborations to end up in a shooting out somewhere in Oren III, or at least that’s what we heard. I was out of it then and trying to get by doing some edgy honest jobs. Liam lost his status as a smuggler and he became a conman. It was the times I was moving around a lot and most of the time unemployed.
I went mercenary for a while, touring around the limits of inner space and even worked for a guy who was dreaming to liberate planets from their oppressors. Anything for the credit.
I was sitting in Broker’s just because it was a bar, and bars are places to sit in. Perhaps it was just me getting sentimental and wanted to get the feeling of the good old days. Or perhaps things had turned around and now I was piloting a fancy yacht called the Purple Lady and a working pilot needs a good amount of gold drinks in the end of the daily struggle with all those neo-rich hippies.
For any of these reasons I was at Broker’s.
And not to see Liam, because when I came back to New Bayou and to Broker’s I hadn’t heard of him for years. Neither because I had any idea that Ingrid was going to be there.
Definitely not.
But she came out of the ladies room, all purple with her antennas sniffing the air and crossed over to a table at the end of the room. Her hair were black just like her snake shaped eyes, lumps of coal in purple snow. But neither was what got you in the end.
The first time I saw her down on the dock, I thought that was what it was. It wasn’t. Medium height, good looking from afar and close but the main thing about her was something you couldn’t put your finger on. Maybe she was the kind of woman who was going to get big and fat later in her life and she wasn’t yet. There was just an aura of incredible ripeness about her. It was as if she existed now at an apex of evolution; and aspect of complete and perfect repose which suggested that somewhere behind there, there was a powerful and contradictory existence waiting to emerge in any minute.
She reached her table and a man with orange hair and statuesque looks stood up and seated her. His face was like that too, orange and statuesque, only more stylized. He was just under three meters, handsome and he knew it. His name was Blad and I hated his guts. I hated him because of her.
Her name was Ingrid Chen. She was my boss, my employer and my true love. I can see that there are some contradictions there, your boss cannot be your own true love but… nobody is perfect.
She saw me and waved and I got up and went over.
“You want to dance?” I asked her.
Blad looked up at me. His face was still blank as a monument. But the eyes weren’t like that. The eyes were mad. It made me feel really good. I’d seen him plenty at the yacht or around Ingrid when no other guy was around her. I guessed he felt the real insider, the lousy prick, or he thought he was. Or perhaps he thought that the help should stay in its place.
Ingrid saw how it was with him and I suppose it amused her. She got up from the table and we got out into the dancing area and allowed ourselves to be pushed around.
She was a good dancer. I guess she could do anything good that girl. She felt just right in my arms dancing. I knew that she knew, just like I knew that first day at the ship and there didn’t seem that there was anything I could do about it.
Looking down at her face I could see that look of faint amusement. It beat me. “Must be a new experience for you dancing with the help,” I said.
Read all Blood Bayou chapters in order, HERE!
Thanos' Pulp Fiction 