Chapter Forty-Eight - A Date

“Pick your Battles.”

--Bloodsuck 2027

***

I wanted to do something nice for Lucy. Not for any reason in particular, it was always...

I’d had a dream once, while scrolling through my media feeds and looking at videos of some celebrities living the high life. People with a lot of money and a lot of fame, just doing things and probably not realizing that there were people like me, so, so far below them wishing they were in their shoes.

It was a stupid sort of day-dream at the time. A ‘what if I could go to that kind of place?’ or ‘what if I pulled up somewhere in that kind of supercar?’ Idle fantasies to forget that life was shit, if just for a moment.

Life wasn’t so shit anymore though.

“Ready to go home?” I asked Lucy.

She turned, coat swirling around her, and for a moment clinging to her sides and hips in a way that made my heart skip. “Aren’t we home here?” she asked with the kind of dimply smile she always had when she was being cheesy.

I looked past her and to the museum, our home. “Yeah, but not yet,” I said. I wouldn’t say something like ‘wherever you are is home.’ She’d poke me and call me sappy.

“Alright. Do you know if the kittens are alright?”

I blinked a few times, navigating through the menus in my augs until I found the status screens for my new cat-mecha. They were all green, and the preview windows that showed me what the robots were seeing revealed glimpses of the kittens in the penthouse, playing games and being lazy little shits. “They’re fine,” I said. “C’mon, food!”

“Food!” Lucy agreed with a cheer. She brought her arms up and made a familiar grabby gesture. With a roll of my eyes I turned around and didn’t protest when she jumped onto my back.

“You’re not twelve anymore, you know,” I said as I grabbed her under the knees and pulled her up.

“I refuse to believe that,” Lucy said. “I am eternally youthful and adorable.”

I laughed as I carried her out the front of the museum.

Our ride, the Charon Limo-Taxi, was still waiting for us on the roof. It was a bit of a pain getting up there with Lucy weighing me down, especially since she kept complaining about my back-mounted guns digging into her stomach. Not that that was enough to get her to let go, of course.

“Alright, now get off,” I said as I stopped next to the taxi.

“Not gonna tuck me in?” she asked as she leaned her chin onto my head.

“Nope, but I might drop your skinny ass.”

She mock-gasped. “My ass isn’t skinny, it’s perfect and plump and all that is right in the world.”

We got in the back seat, and I gestured for Lucy to give me a minute. “Just need to check something real fast,” I said. “Here, play with Myalis.” I placed Myalis’ little drone on Lucy’s lap.

“Are you using super-advanced alien technology to distract me?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” I said.

I flicked through my augs and found a text box to write in. “M. I want to bring Lucy somewhere nice.”

I see. What sort of place are you thinking?

Glancing at Lucy from the corner of my eye, I held back a smile. “Someplace with good food,” I wrote. “Something fancy.”

Understood. There are a few reservation-only places in the region, all within half an hour’s driving distance from your current location. Cross-referencing reviews, and dismissing those that were paid-for or solicited, then eliminating places with menus that wouldn’t agree with either of you leaves you with four options. Might I suggest La Maison des Rois?

I nodded. “Sounds good,” I said aloud. “Okay, we’re heading out now. What do you want to grab for the kittens?”

“Oh, we should go to one of those nice places, the ones that give you a little toy with your meal. You know, Choking Hazard or something?”

I nodded. That was a favourite of some of the kittens, though mostly for the ads. We couldn’t exactly afford that kind of food ourselves. “Sounds good,” I said.

Leaning back, I listened to Lucy prattle on about this and that while the taxi took off and led us out of the incursion-zone and back into the flows of traffic around New Montreal. We climbed higher and higher, into the nicer, faster lanes usually reserved for people a dozen tax brackets above normal folk.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

We started arguing over how to decorate the house. I was almost more keen on low-tech, old school decor. Nice and square and simple, but Lucy liked things curvier. If I let her have it her way, the place would be colourful and bubbly. It would still look great, because Lucy had an eye for that kind of thing, but it was really not my style. “What if we invite some samurai over?” I asked. “It’ll look like a kid’s place.”

“It’ll look awesome,” Lucy corrected. “And so what if they think it looks a bit immature. It’ll basically be an orphanage.”

“Well, yeah, but those aren’t cool.”

Lucy snorted. “Your idea of cool is graffiti on the walls and, like, a decorative dumpster in the corner.”

“That would be kinda cool, in a sort of, ironically tasteless way.”

“You just know some of the kittens would put actual trash in it,” she said.

I crossed my arms. “Grunge is a perfectly acceptable style.”

“It’s not a style, it’s what happens when you can’t afford anything nice, but still look good under all the clothes,” she said.

“You saying I look good under all the clothes?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’m only with you because of your looks,” she said without an ounce of sarcasm.

The taxi slowed to a stop behind a really fancy car, some fire-red Italian thing that looked fast while standing still. Lucy started to look around, but by the time she knew to start searching for clues we were pulling down and onto the pavement on a covered driveway built into the side of a skyscraper. It was near the top-most floor too, one of the bigger ones. The restaurant looked like it took up most of the floor, which was something I’d come to appreciate the cost of a little more in the past few hours.

“Um?” Lucy asked.

I grinned. “I thought we could grab a bite, you know, before grabbing burgers for the kittens.”

Lucy looked out the windows. Some men in nice suits and women that had to be models were waiting in a line to enter, a serious looking man at the door checking them off on a floating tablet. “This place looks a bit extra.”

My grin wavered a little. “You’d rather go somewhere else?” I asked.

Lucy hesitated, eyed me, then smiled back. “Nah, this is fine. Wish I’d come dressed for the occasion.

“You look fine,” I said.

“You’re biased.”

I jumped out of the car and ran around the back to open the door for Lucy and to give her a hand out. She giggled at the gesture and stretched. Our little taxi was fancy, but it was out-fancied by all the rides parked around the multi-level parking machines on the other side of the driveway. It was one of those with glass sides so that people could gawk at everyone’s hundred-million credit supercars.

I entwined my fingers with Lucy’s, and we skipped up the steps to the front. “Do we have a reservation, Myalis?” I asked.

Of course.

“Cool!” I said as I walked past all the fancy sorts and up to the waiter-guy at the front. “Yo!” I said. “Reservation for Stray Cat and Lucy,” I said.

The man paused in the act of talking to someone important looking. “Um, the line is right there, ma’am,” he said.

The dude in front of him, some chubby guy in a suit with a New Montreal pin on his lapel glared at me. “Rather rude,” he said.

“I’ve been called worse,” I said. “So, we got seats?”

“Ma’am, you’re supposed to wait in line,” the waiter said.

“I don’t do great with lines,” I explained.

The man nodded. “I understand. La Maison des Roi can be a very exciting place. Nonetheless, regardless of status, we ask that all of our guests have the common courtesy to wait their turn. Please.”

I pouted and Lucy giggled, but the guy was right. So I went to the back of the line and pretended not to notice some folk smiling at the bit of drama.

“You’re an idiot,” Lucy said.

“I thought we could cut in,” I said.

“This isn’t some cinema,” she said. “It’s a proper fancy place.”

“Yeah yeah, laugh it up. We’ll see if you think it’s all that when you can’t read the menu on account of its fanciness.”