90 Deg. 5 H. II – VIII

In the taxi he slouched into the headrest and enjoyed the novelty of a taxi where the upholstery wasn’t pealing or absent. The rumbling of the engine was too loud, especially in comparison to the low easy hum of the air taxi’s motors, but the air taxi was an outlier, not an extravagance he’d start considering as anything but an out-and-out exception. His driver gave an obnoxiously loud snuffling in front. The access to on-hand luxury still threw him. He wasn’t going to get comfortable with decadence.

He held up an arm against the window and admired the fine stitching on his new suit, the high quality of the threads, the vibrant dye, the brilliant fit. It was easily the best piece of clothing he owned. He looked past the jacket arm and out of the window at the three junkies perched on a series of upturned crates, drinking cheap cider from brown cans on a corner next to a closed-down shop, windows now obscured with chunks of particle board. His driver sniffed again, turned on the radio. Perhaps he had a cold. Not uncommon this time of year. He considered getting out and hiring a new cab – he didn’t want this guy’s germs. Then he squashed the thought.

Last night the winking lights and soft shadows of the sky had put an almost compelling filter over the chaos of tower and platform and he looked down on the horizon-spanning sprawl in the darkness, as the air taxi banked over the dour foam-flecked waves below, crashing against the quays like an omnidirectional siege engine.

He shifted his head, saw the taxi driver in the mirror wrinkle his nose and frown. He shifted his attention back to the street where a driver had pulled their car around through an inside lane and was trying to join the traffic headed in the opposite direction. Behind him, car horns screamed, other drivers rolled down their windows and screamed and…

His attention was yanked back to himself as the taxi filled with a overpowering chemical scent. Not bad, necessarily, but pungent enough that he jerked his head back involuntarily. What the hell was the smell and where was it coming from. He suppressed a slight cough. Something leaking in from outside? All the windows were closed. The air freshener? What the hell were they putting those now? Perhaps the dice hanging from the front mirror were perfumed? The cabbie’s cologne? Did the cabbie wear cologne? Maybe. Why not? It was a long day in a hot car and clients didn’t want to ride in a moving sweatband. The driver caught his eye for a split second in the window then immediately refocussed on the road. Whatever it was he was wearing, he was wearing far too much of it.

Strange, the scent was familiar. Only vaguely. He rifled around searching for the catch. Was there an event? Some buried memory? The association was unknown, alien. A fruit? Flowers? Herbs, even? He didn’t know.

“Coming up on Chart 805 live to you as you drive. Coming up next is Gail with ‘The magic trick’” said the man on the radio with a voice like gelled hair.

“The magic trick is my dick, the magic trick is my dick…” crooned Gail.

The retro synth-pop groove pounded through the speakers, keyboard squeals spasming over them.
Gail continued, voice rising into a semi-crescendo and then falling like fluttered eyelashes.

Come to think of it, what had that stuff he’d bought the other day contained? Six different ingredients in some foreign language or another, none of which he’d ever heard of. The bottle was a nice pale blue chunky glass affair with a tall silver nozzle. He’d sat there in his pod just admiring the way the angles caught the light from the lamps embedded in the ceiling of his pod.

Caleb’s eyes widened. He lifted his left wrist to his nose, gave an inquisitive sniff. Recoiled, nostrils stinging. Squeezed his eye closed for a couple of seconds. He let the breath out, long and slow and quiet. He cocked one eye at the front mirror. The driver was frowning at the traffic ahead of him. He wrinkled his nose again, turned his head briefly towards the open window and back.

No mistaking it. He patted himself down. Nothing. A new cloud of scent burst from him, it was like being hit with a beanbag chair. He reeled, blinked, recovered. Hard on the heels of this, the sensation of a hundred beanbag chairs settling on his shoulders made him slump in his seat. He started to take a deep breath and then thought better of it.

He hadn’t applied that much, had he? Maybe there was some secret method of applying this cologne that he was generally too poor to worry about. Maybe It involved special pads and a measurement of water and some sort of preparation. Not applying it in this arcane fashion resulted in application backfiring spectacularly, and the situation he was in now: launching random olfactory beatings on the general public. The driver continued to sniff. Forcefully cleared his throat once or twice as the cloud of scent boiled around the cabs interior. Caleb squirmed in his seat, pretended not to notice. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. The driver coughed to himself.

No matter how long the cab ride took, he would be at the convention centre long before the cologne faded enough. He could turn up late. Maybe there was a bar he could duck into and ride out a couple of hours. Bother the people in there with his vapour cloud. It seemed to defeat the point of the night. Maybe he could just walk around for a while. What if it rained? Was it worse to try to make connections smelling like a jug of cheap brothel potpourri, or to offer a soggy handshake and drip all over the floor while making idiotic small talk and pretending to find their jokes funny?

He licked his lips. Then he had an idea. He flicked a glance at the mirror, but the driver was studying the traffic. He covered his mouth with one hand, faking a yawn, and ran his tongue in circles around his palm. It didn’t seem to be wet enough, so he withdrew it back into his mouth, tried to recoat it with saliva, and repeated the process. He flicked his eyes to the mirror again, but the driver was still studying traffic and unaware of his passenger sitting in the back clamping his hand over his mouth for an unusual length of time.

Finally satisfied, he took his wet palm away and moved it down to his neck, rubbing at it as if working a knot out of the muscles. He assumed he looked plausibly natural doing this. He was conscious of the rapidly cooling layer of spittle smeared across his skin. Unconvinced that this was enough, he returned his hand to his mouth and licked at his palm again. This time he choked back a cough and recoiled – his palm tasted of concentrated cologne. It was like snogging a bath bomb. He grimaced and began rubbing at his neck a second time. When his hand dried out, and his neck was thoroughly slathered in his own saliva, he raised his hand for a third lick, remembered the explosively floral taste and lowered his hand again.

He lunged for the window controls and waited, uncomfortably aware that he was holding his breath, while the gears whirred and clicked and the window slid into the door at a geological pace. He leaned, mouth partly open, inhaling fresh air for as long as he thought he could get away with without it becoming weird.

Finally, he righted himself, sat back in his seat and, just to check, flicked his gaze to the driver. To his discomfort, the driver had also rolled his window down and had turned his face outward, as if studying the passing traffic. Again, the driver seemed to realise he was being watched, and met his eyes in the mirror. Caught in the act.

Caleb forced a laugh, “It’s getting a little hot today, huh?”
The driver stared dead-eyed at him in the rearview, gave him a broad all-tooth smile, but said nothing. 

He gave up, resigned himself to subjecting the world to sporadic bouts of olfactory brutality, and took his phone out. On Placement, people all-capsed at each other about the upcoming climbing competition and why their favourite climber was going to win, why the other climbers were going to lose, and why everyone who disagreed should be murdered with spectacular brutality. He sighed, closed the phone, stuck it back in his pocket, and went back to staring at the world outside with its pools of darkness interrupted with stabbings of neon, blurring by like a drunk night.

“Be a better person: Make more. Take more,” said the radio. “Make more of your time. Make more choices. Take more chances. Make the greater advance. Make the greater community. Take the greater leap. Make the greater trade. Take the greater risk. Make the greater profit. At Paragon Inc. we know you’ll agree with us that great people make more. More connections. More opportunities. More money.
Paragon Inc. – because bad people are average.”

The light flickered in the front of the cab. A soft electric chime looped from a speaker. The driver, not turning his head, called over his shoulder, “here we are, boss.”

He paid, got out, giving the door a half-hearted shove behind him as he looked around. The ragged grumble of the engine faded as the cab pulled away behind him. He threw a glance over his shoulder and watched it’s shabby bulk trundle down the wide glossy road bathed in the antiseptic sheen of fluorescent light from lamps, billboards, and windows at all angles. All the lines seemed overly sharp. He fought against the urge to squint. The cab pulled around an immaculate corner and out of sight, both scratched windows still fully down.

He turned his attention from the corner and stared across the broad clean carpark at the steel and glass edifice blocking out the mottled grey expanse of the grey plate ceiling far above. The entrance was a towering tapering rectangle, thin at the top and broad at the bottom. The violent glare of acid light gurgled from within, backlighting the massive silhouette of the doorman. This was the way into the Gilded Cage. Inside there were connections and money and a way out. He took a deep breath and started off towards it.