Part 10 (1/2)

And so Suzanne got on an airplane that night and flew back to San Jose and took a pricey taxi back to her place. The marketdroids had left it in pretty good shape, clean and tidy, clean sheets in the linen cupboard. She made up her bed and reflected that this would be the last time she made this bed -- the next time she stripped the sheets, they'd go into a long-term storage box. She'd done this before, on her way out of Detroit, packing up a life into boxes and shoving it into storage. What had Tjan said? ”The self-storage industry is bigger than the recording industry, did you know that? All they do is provide a place to put stuff that we own that we can't find room for -- that's superabundance.”

Before bed she posted a cla.s.sified on Craigslist for a couple helpers to work on boxing stuff, emailed Jimmy to see if he wanted lunch, and looked up the address for the central police station to swear out her complaint. The amp, speakers, and A/V switcher were all missing from her home theater.

She had a dozen helpers to choose from the next morning. She picked two who came with decent references, marveling that it was suddenly possible in Silicon Valley to get anyone to show up anywhere for ten bucks an hour. The police sergeant who took the complaint was sympathetic and agreed with her choice to get out of town. ”I've had it with this place, too. Soon as my kids are out of high-school I'm moving back to Montana. I miss the weather.”

She didn't think of the marketdroids again until the next day, when she and her helpers were boxing up the last of her things and loading them into her U-Haul. Then a BMW convertible screeched around the corner and burned rubber up to her door.

The woman marketdroid was driving, looking crazy and disheveled, eyes red-rimmed, one heel broken off of her shoes.

”What the f.u.c.k is your problem, lady?” she said, as she leapt out of her car and stalked toward Suzanne.

Instinctively, Suzanne shrank back and dropped the box of books she was holding. It spilled out over her lawn.

”Fiona?” she said. ”What's happened?”

”I was *arrested.* They came to my workplace and led me out in handcuffs. I had to make *bail*.”

Suzanne's stomach shrank to a little pebble, impossibly heavy. ”What was I supposed to do? You two took off with my home theater!”

”What home theater? Everything was right where you left it when I went. I haven't lived here in *weeks*. Tom left me last month and I moved out.”

”You moved out?”

”Yeah, b.i.t.c.h, I *moved out*. Tom was your tenant, not me. If he ripped something off, that's between you and him.”

”Look, Fiona, wait, hold up a second. I tried to call you, I sent you email. No one was paying the rent, no one told me that you'd moved out, and no one answered when I tried to find out what had happened.”

”That sounds like an *explanation,* she said, hissing. ”I'm waiting for a f.u.c.king *apology.* They took me to *prison*.”

Suzanne knew that the local lockup was a long way from prison. ”I apologize,” she said. ”Can I get you a cup of coffee? Would you like to use the shower or anything?”

The woman glared at her a moment longer, then slowly folded in on herself, collapsing, coughing and sobbing on the lawn.

Suzanne stood with her arms at her sides for a moment. Her Craigslist helpers had gone home, so she was all alone, and this woman, whom she'd met only once before, in pa.s.sing, was clearly having some real problems. Not the kind of thing she dealt with a lot -- her life didn't include much person-to-person hand-holding.

But what can you do? She knelt beside Fiona in the gra.s.s and took her hand. ”Let's get you inside, OK?”

At first it was as though she hadn't heard, but slowly she straightened up and let Suzanne lead her into the house. She was twenty-two, twenty-three, young enough to be Suzanne's daughter if Suzanne had gone in for that sort of thing. Suzanne helped her to the sofa and sat her down amid the boxes still waiting to go into the U-Haul. The kitchen was packed up, but she had a couple bottles of Diet c.o.ke in the cooler and she handed one to the girl.

”I'm really sorry, Fiona. Why didn't you answer my calls or email?”

She looked at Suzanne, her eyes lost in streaks of mascara. ”I don't know. I didn't want to talk about it. He lost his job last month and kind of went crazy, told me he didn't want the responsibility anymore. What responsibility? But he told me to go, told me it would be best for both of us if we were apart. I thought it was another girl, but I don't know. Maybe it was just craziness. Everyone I know out here is crazy. They all work a hundred hours a week, they get fired or quit their jobs every five months. Everything is so expensive. My rent is three quarters of my salary.”

”It's really hard,” Suzanne said, thinking of the easy, lazy days in Florida, the hackers' idyll that Perry and Lester enjoyed in their workshops.

”Tom was on antidepressants, but he didn't like taking them. When he was on them, he was pretty good, but when he went off, he turned into... I don't know. He'd cry a lot, and shout. It wasn't a good relations.h.i.+p, but we moved out here from Oregon together, and I'd known him all my life. He was a little moody before, but not like he was here.”

”When did you speak to him last?” Suzanne had found a couple of blister-packs of anti-depressants in the medicine chest. She hoped that wasn't Tom's only supply.

”We haven't spoken since I moved out.”