“I’d forgotten it, too,” Hubert, Etc said.
“I hope nothing important fell out when I hit the guy,” she said. Her purse—medium-sized with a gitchy abstract pattern printed on its exterior vinyl—was slung across her body. She gingerly opened it, made a face, peered at its revolting depths. “I don’t know how the hell you start to clean this up. I’d throw it away except it’s got some stuff that should be washable.”
Seth wrinkled his nose. “Gloves and a mask. And someone else’s sink. Dude, what did you eat?”
She glared at him, but a little grin played at her lips. “Came in handy, didn’t it? Steve, we’ve had a shitty night. Do you think you could keep it low-key? Not picking fights?”
He had the grace to look ashamed. Hubert, Etc felt a spurt of jealousy jet from asshole to appetite, wanted to shove Seth down the escalator. He said, “None of us’re in the best shape. Some food will help. And coffium.”
Seth and Natalie both jolted at the mention of coffium. “Yesss,” Natalie said. “Come on.” She vaulted up, two big steps at a time. They cleared the turnstiles, stepped out into a blinking-bright morning, bustling with turned-out people doing Saturday morning shopping in turned-out showrooms. The rebuilt Fran’s had a narrow glass frontage between a bathroom remodeler’s salon and a place that sold giant concrete sculptures.
“Remember the Fran’s neon?” Hubert, Etc said. “It was such an amazing color, wild red.” He pointed to the LED-lit tube. “Never looks right to me. Makes me want to tweak reality’s gamma slider.”
Natalie gave him a funny look. They found a booth, the table lighting up with menus as they sat. The menus in front of each of them grew speech-bubbles as the automat’s biometrics recognized them and highlit their last orders, welcoming them back. Hubert, Etc saw Natalie had ordered lasagna with double garlic bread the last time, and it had been four years since she’d placed that order. “You don’t eat here often?”
“Just once,” she said. “Opening day.” She tapped the menu for a while, ordering a double chocolate malt, corned beef hash, hash browns, extra HP Sauce and mayo, and a half grapefruit with brown sugar. “I was a guest of the Weston’s. It was a family thing.” She looked him square in the eye, daring him to make a deal out of her privilege. “The neon sign? My dad bought it. It’s hanging in our cottage in the Muskokas.”
Hubert, Etc kept his face still. “I’d like to see it someday,” he said, evenly. He waited for Seth to say something.
“My name’s Seth, not Steve.” The shit-eating grin was unmistakable. He reached across the table and twiddled Natalie’s order, dragging a copy of it over to his place setting.
“What the hell.” Hubert, Etc grabbed Seth’s order and copied it to his place setting, too. He tapped the large-sized coffium-pot, and Natalie smacked her palm down on the submit.
“Come on,” Natalie said. “Say it.”
Hubert, Etc said, “Nothing to say. Your family knows the Westons.”
“Yeah,” she said. “We do. We’re foofs.”
Hubert, Etc nodded as if he knew what that meant, but Seth had no shame. “What’s a foof?”
“Fine old Ontario family,” she said.
“Never heard the term,” Seth said.
“Me either.”
She shrugged. “You probably have to be a foof to know what a foof is. I got a lot of it at summer camp.”
The food arrived then, atop a trundling robot that docked with their table. They cleared its top layer, and it rotated its carousel for the next tray, then a third. The fourth had the coffium. Natalie set it on their table, and Hubert, Etc couldn’t help but admire her arm muscles as she set it down. He noticed she didn’t shave her armpits and felt unaccountably intimate in that knowledge. They sorted out the dishes and poured the coffee.
He plucked the nuclear-red cherry from the top of the whipped-cream mountain on his shake and ate it stem and all. Natalie did the same. Seth scalded his tongue on the coffium and spilled ice water in his haste.
Natalie used the edge of her plate as a palette and swirled together a beige mixture of HP Sauce and mayo. She forked up small mouthfuls of food swirled in the mixture.
“That looks vile.” Seth said it, not him, because he didn’t want to be a jerk. Seth was a portable, external id. Not always comfortable or appropriate, but handy nevertheless.
“It’s called the brown love.” She dabbed with a red-and-white striped napkin, waited for Seth to make an innuendo, which didn’t come. “Invented it in high school. You don’t want to try it, your loss.” She forked up more hash and pointed it at them. On impulse, Hubert, Etc let her feed it to him. It was surprisingly good, and the clink of the fork on his tooth made him shiver like an amazing piss.
“Fantastic.” He meant it. He prepared his own smear, using Natalie’s for color reference.
Seth refused to try, to Hubert, Etc’s secret delight. The food was better than he remembered, and more expensive. He hadn’t budgeted for the meal and it was going to hurt.
He pondered this, standing at the urinal and smelling his asparagus-y active-culture piss. Thinking of money, smelling the smell, he almost clamped down and ran out to get a cup to save some. Free beer was free beer, even if it did start out as used beer. All water was used beer. But it was down the drain before the thought was complete.
When he got back to the table, an older man sat next to Natalie.
He had shaggy hair, well cut, and skin with the luster of good leather. He wore a fabric-dyed cement-colored knit cardigan, with mottled horn buttons sewn on with hot pink thread. Beneath it, a tight black t-shirt revealed his muscular chest and flat stomach. He wore a simple wedding band and had short, clean, even fingernails, a kind of ostentatious no-manicure.
“Hi there,” he said. Hubert, Etc sat down opposite him. He extended a hand. “I’m Jacob. Natalie’s father.”
They shook. “I’m Hubert,” he said, as Seth said, “Call him ‘Etcetera.’”
“Call me Hubert,” he said, again. His external id was a pain in the ass.
“Nice to meet you, Hubert.”
“My father spies on me,” Natalie said. “That’s why he’s here.”
Jacob shrugged. “It could be worse. It’s not like I have your phone tapped. It’s just public sources.”
Natalie put her fork down and pushed her plate away. “He buys cam-feeds, real-time credit reports, market analytics. Like a background check on a new hire. But all the time.”
Seth said, “That’s creepy. And expensive.”
“Not so expensive. I can afford it.”
“Dad’s made the transition to old rich,” Natalie said. “He isn’t embarrassed by money. Not like my grandparents were. He knows he’s practically a member of a different species and can’t see why he should hide it.”