Contractual Obligations

Part Three

“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m cautiously optimistic,” Reynard said, smiling slyly at Anlek. The two of them were walking down the street outside Luciano’s makeshift office, Reynard with his hands in his jacket pockets, Anlek with his gamma gun strapped comfortably once again across his shoulders. This particular road was lowered, so the two of them were safe from traffic as they walked down a paved sidewalk 5 meters above the floatcars whirring by below.
Anlek chuckled. “Yeah, I guess I am at that. A life working for the mafia, just imagine it! We drink expensive wine, you get introduced to women with negotiable morals, we both go home smelling like cheap cologne every day . . . “
Reynard prodded his partner with an elbow. “Hush up about that while we’re in this part of town. Everyone knows it’s actually incredibly expensive cologne and they pay extra to get it smelling like it cost five credits.” Reynard grinned, then looked up speculatively at the day-night line, looming only a few miles away. “So, I guess we’ve got the rest of the day off. That’s, like, at least four or five hours until your bedtime, right?”
Anlek gave Reynard a flat stare. “Quit beating around the bush. I know you want to go looking for Frankie. Just come right out and say it!” 
Reynard looked sheepish. “Well, I didn’t want to jinx it . . . And I didn’t want to l--” Reynard stopped himself midsentence, his mouth agape. “I mean, I 
Know you can entertain yourself, right? Why don’t I go out to her place and I’ll meet you back at the hotel.”
Anlek shrugged. “Sounds good to me. Don’t wait up for me if you get back before I do. I’m gonna go see the sights a bit.”
Reynard looked at him sideways. “Sure, have fun on this bullshit moon, don’t fall into any tourist traps you’re too big to pull out of.”
Anlek made a rude gesture that required more than two arms, then headed toward a gleaming metal bridge built across the highway labeled ‘bus stop’. A few seconds later, a large floatbus came to a stop along the side of the road, and a hatch built into the top of the vehicle folded back to reveal an escalator that lined up perfectly with the bridge. “See you later, Reynard. Good luck with the girl.”
Back on the sidewalk, Reynard tucked his hands further down into the pockets of his grey jacket, feeling a chill in the nightside air a lot more acutely than he had before. Yeah, he thought, Good luck.


Reynard took stock of his situation as he neared Frankie’s apartment building, a nondescript but clean metal building constructed to look like a light grey stone, with copper-colored front doors and windows. He shifted the bouquet of flowers to his left hand and flipped open his Com3, checking to make sure it was the right building, then stepped into the lobby. Except for a bored-looking custodian and a couple of chatting female residents, the place was empty. Reynard walked across the room and stepped up to a terminal, where he entered the 5-digit entry code Frankie had given him on his last visit to her, nearly four months past. 
Reynard wasn’t as confident as he’d been when they’d started seeing each other. He wasn’t nearly as confident as he’d been the day they’d met, but then that had been more bravado and bluster than anything else. There were several problems that had sprung up, though the majority of them were probably creatures of Reynard’s imagination. For one thing, Reynard had no clue what to do with a woman, in every possible sense. The pathetic types who had clung onto him now and then back on Anu, where he’d lived since about the time he’d hit adolescence, were very easy to anticipate--they would give him free access to their imaginary virtues in exchange for access to his imaginary wallet, until the latter turned out to be an illusion, at which point they would leave, sometimes quietly, sometimes angrily. It was a cycle Reynard was used to. He knew he cared for Frankie, not to mention found her exponentially more attractive than anyone he’d ever been with, but had no idea how to go about it. Reynard and Anastasia (or was her name Indira now?) had made it clear enough to him that he was ham-fisted when he wasn’t downright offensive. 
Reynard entered the elevator, punching in the appropriate level. And then there’s the matter of getting her attention, he thought glumly to himself. Frankie was busy, and from what he could tell her work was her passion. After all the more impressive one’s reputation is, the more time and effort it takes to keep it up. Which is why up until now I’ve never had to spend much time grooming my public face. They messaged each other, they talked over the phone, he’d even re-opened an old account on an online fantasy game to spend time with her, but even with all of this effort there were days, sometimes weeks, at a time when she would simply disappear. Whether these Frankie blackouts were caused by travel or serious Net immersion Reynard didn’t know, but he did know he’d been running scared that he wouldn’t hear from her again every time she disappeared. 
He walked toward her door, raising his fist to knock, making sure one last time that he had the right apartment. And then there’s Anlek, he thought. He doesn’t deserve to be a third wheel.
Reynard knocked, then waited. Nothing happened. He ran his fingers nervously through his hair, realizing that if she was even there she would probably be running Fourth Plane, or at least listening to music loud enough to drown out the physical world. To his surprise, the door opened almost immediately. He nearly dropped the flowers when he saw that it was a man answering the door, but regained his composure when he noticed it was an older man with a lethargic droop to his face, leaning heavily against the door frame.
“Can I help you?” the man asked, a suspicious glare on his face. 
Reynard paused for a moment, gaping, then held out his hand. “Oh, yeah, hi, you must be Frankie’s mentor, Joshua Macomb, isn’t it?” 
The man smiled, but the smile was a little patronizing. “I guess if you know about me that narrows the possibilities of who you could be. Since you don’t look like an Aztec hitman, then I’m guessing you must be from the Net.”
Reynard tried to hold his smile, but he had a feeling it came off looking more like a grimace of pain. “Well, I’m not really from the Net. I go there, but I’m really from . . . Anyway, my name is Reynard, Frankie’s boyf--uh, friend.” I sincerely wish I were dead right now, Reynard thought as the older man clapped him on the back.
“Pleased to meet you, Reynard, I’ve heard a lot about you. Sorry I didn’t recognize you.” The man stepped aside, letting the door swing open. “Frankie was a little distracted, I’d better let her know you’re here, and then, ah, I was on my way out anyhow, all right?” Reynard nodded his head. As the door swung shut, his eyes glanced across a spare room with a hardwood floor. On the other side of the room, Frankie sat in the floor, oblivious to the world around her, dressed in nothing more than a white t-shirt and black shorts and sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of her computer. She was sitting hunched forward, the small of her back uncovered, and while he couldn’t see any detail, Reynard was surprised, and more than a little intrigued, to see that there was an enormous round tattoo covering the entire lower half of her back.
The door clicked shut, and Reynard leaned up against the opposite wall for a few minutes before the back of Macomb’s head appeared, blocking the open door. “Be good Frankie,” he said, “I’ll see you next week.” Reynard couldn’t hear the reply, but he could tell it was a defensive response. Macomb chuckled, then turned to Reynard and said, “She’s all yours, son.”
Suddenly, Frankie filled the doorway, and Reynard barely had time to smile before he was wrapped up in an enthusiastic hug. It was the first time he’d been this close to her that wasn’t an accident. He had to fight the idiotic urge to make a crack about how comfortable it was to hug someone with her measurements, but to his surprise he didn’t have to bite his tongue too hard. It dawned on him that it might be the first hug he’d gotten since his orphanage had been raided by slavers, but it didn’t make him sad to think that it was probably the best. He realized, too, that she hadn’t put in her bow--the canny piece of technology that changed her appearance in any number of ways--meaning she must have listened to him when he told her what he thought of it. Her wild blonde hair was obscuring his vision. The blue couture dress she wore was freshly pressed and expensive, but she smelled like three days of sweat and salty snacks with a flimsy spritz or two of something that smelled like orange blossoms over it. It was really the best smell he could think of.
Frankie pulled back. “Reynard!” she screamed, pulling him into the room and shutting the door. “What the hell are you doing on Isis? And why didn’t you call me?” 
Reynard smiled a lopsided grin, his cheeks flushing a little. “Well, I’m here on business, but I wanted to surprise you. I hope it’s all right.”
Frankie smiled, her eyes growing distant for a moment before snapping back into focus. “No, it’s great. Come on in and I’ll get ready, we can go out someplace.”
“Sure,” Reynard said. “Maybe someplace Mafia-friendly?”
Frankie gave him a puzzled look. “Apparently we have a lot to catch up on.”




Anlek sat at a dive bar on the edge of a dark town, quietly watching the races, silently criticizing the barkeep’s technique. A couple of hours later, he wandered drunkenly down the small side road, headed for he and Reynard’s hotel. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice the black floatcar following him down the street, nor did he notice when it quietly parked less than a block away from their hotel, watching him stumble into the lobby.