Lyle bit his lip. “Originals,” he said. “Not the celebrity stuff like her, the real NewYew stuff. Does your guy have any of that?”
“Probably,” said the man. His voice was conversational, but always with a hint of professionalism. “How much you looking to spend?”
Lyle spoke carefully, hoping that any thieves listening in would be fooled by a simple misdirection. “I don’t have it on me, but say … a thousand.”
The man laughed. “What the hell kind of ReBirth you think you’re gonna buy with one thousand dollars?”
“That’s not enough?” Prices had gone up.
“If you ever find a place where that is enough you let me know, and I’ll shop there, too.”
“Who carries around more than a thousand dollars?” asked Lyle. “Especially on a street like this?”
“Smart people,” said the man, his deep voice rich with authority. “People who care about the product they’re buying. You want to go cheap on something that alters your DNA, you be my guest; you go across the street there and that kid in the red hat’ll sell you a drop of ReBirth for a hundred bucks—but you get what you pay for. You’re playing Russian roulette with him and everyone like him: might end up with any kind of face, any kind of body, maybe a woman, maybe nothing at all. A hundred bucks for a drop of L’Oréal. Or like as not these days, you’ll end up as Joe.”
“Who’s Joe?”
“Joe Average; some no-name that’s been cropping up all over these days. Don’t know why they’d make a lotion of him, but there’s an awful lot of him on the market.”
Lyle frowned, concerned. He didn’t remember anyone in their list of imprints who could be considered average. He’d have to follow up on it later; for now, he steeled his courage and looked the salesman in the face. “I can go as high as five, but for that I want the real stuff—the blank stuff.”
The man shook his head. “Five won’t get you blanks, but it’ll get you a pretty face. Something Latino maybe, or Asian. Good bone structure.”
“Latino?”
“You wanna retain the benefits of racial privilege you gotta pay a little more. Eight at least for a white guy, seven if you’re buying for a lady friend, or if you swing that way yourself. I don’t judge.”
Lyle glanced up the street again, then back at the man. “Where do they get it?”
“You are like a stupid question machine.”
“ReBirth was seized by the government,” said Lyle. “They have all of it, or they’re supposed to, so where does your ‘friend’ get the stuff he’s selling?”
“I don’t have time to sit and chat about stuff I don’t know anything about.”
“But of course you know,” said Lyle, dropping his voice and leaning in closer, “we’re just both pretending you don’t, so please … stop pretending and tell me.”
“This conversation is over,” said the man, and he rose to full height, towering over Lyle, and turned and walked away without another word. Lyle cursed himself for pushing too hard. I need to know where they get it, he thought, especially the new stuff, this “Joe Average.” The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if maybe he knew exactly who this Joe Average really was. What if that’s me? What if the Lyle lotion got out, somehow, and more Lyles will be cropping up left and right? He looked back down the street, saw Victoria Carver again, and wondered how she could possibly afford that kind of black market DNA. He made a quick decision and started back toward her. She was standing in a pool of lamplight, dressed in a too-short skirt and a jacket that would have looked expensive if he wasn’t comparing it to the cost of her face. She saw him coming and looked away, trying to catch the eye of a car passing by on the street.
“I changed my mind,” he said.
“Too late.”
“I don’t want…” He fumbled for words, having no idea how to pick up a hooker. “I just want information, but I’ll pay for your time.” She stepped away. “I’ll pay double,” he said. She stopped and turned back slowly.
“What kind of information?”
“Do you have somewhere private we can go?”
She thought a moment, then nodded. “I got a place.” She turned and started walking, without waiting to see if he followed. He hurried to catch up, terrified that someone would see him, wondering at which point, exactly, what he was doing became illegal. Surely walking down the street with a prostitute wasn’t illegal all by itself? He wanted to ask about her rates, realizing that he had no idea how much money he’d just promised to double, but was too scared to do it in public. The woman led him to a cheap motel, not far from the cheap motel he was staying in himself, and stopped at the front desk. The man there was drab and sagging; he looked at her, glanced disinterestedly at Lyle, and handed the woman a key. Lyle looked away, cursing himself for letting the man see his face, and followed the fake movie star to a first-floor room in a dark back corner of the parking lot.
Lyle spoke the instant the door closed: “How much, exactly, are your rates? I need to get the money.”
The woman rolled her eyes. “You don’t have it on you?”
“I do,” said Lyle, “I just…” He didn’t want to show her where he was hiding it, or inadvertently let her see how much he had. “Give me a minute, I need to use the bathroom first, just tell me how much.”
She stared at him flatly. “Four hundred bucks.”
“Four hundred dollars?”
“You said double,” said the woman, gesturing at her body, “and this doesn’t come cheap.”
“Fine,” said Lyle, “just … I’ll be right back.” He slipped into the dingy motel bathroom, locking the door behind him, and carefully pulled off his right shoe. Inside his shoe, under the orthopedic insert, was a slim stack of hundreds, and he counted out four of them. This is too much, he thought suddenly, I could live for weeks on this, and she won’t know anything anyway, but I … He remembered her scorn from before, and imagined her rage if she found out he’d just wasted more of her time. She probably had to pay for the room, and the man at the front desk didn’t look like the kind to be happy with a cut of zero dollars. I’ve already got her here, he thought, I may as well ask her. He replaced the insert, tied the shoe tightly back on, and flushed the toilet, just for appearances. He unlocked the door and stepped back out to find the girl still standing by the door, her jacket still on.
“You didn’t wash your hands.”
“I … didn’t actually do anything, I was just getting money.”
“You flushed.”
“Look, here it is, four hundred dollars.” He walked across the room and handed her bills; she looked at him just a moment before taking the bills, counting them, and tucking them into her purse.
“I could just leave now,” she said, gesturing at the door. “Nobody pays up front.”
“Call it a professional courtesy,” said Lyle, too tired to keep arguing. “Now, I won’t pretend that neither of us knows the realities of prostitution, so I’ll just say it: you have a … pimp, a business manager, who paid for that DNA. Is it the guy at the front desk?”
“A business manager?”
