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Amanda had one pigeon's egg. So did I. Zeb had three, plus Lucerne's. He needed more than us because he was bigger, Lucerne said: if we ate like him we'd get fat.
"See you later, warrior maidens. Don't kill anyone," said Zeb as we went out the door. He'd heard about Amanda's knee-in-the-groin and eye-gouging moves, and her piece of glass with the duct tape; he made jokes about them.
26
We had to pick up Bernice at the Buenavista before school. Amanda and I had wanted to quit, but we knew we'd get in trouble from Adam One if we did, for being un-Gardener. Bernice still didn't like Amanda, but she didn't exactly hate her either. She was wary of her the way you might be of some animals, like a bird with a very sharp beak. Bernice was mean, but Amanda was tough, which is different.
Nothing could change the way things were, which was that Bernice and I had once been best friends and we weren't any longer. That made me uneasy when I was around her: I felt guilty in some way. Bernice was aware of this, and she'd try to find ways to twist my guilt around and turn it against Amanda.
Still, things were friendly on the outside. The three of us walked to and from school together, or did chores or Young Bioneer collecting. That sort of thing. Bernice never came over to the Cheese Factory, though, and we never hung out with her after school.
On the way to Bernice's that morning, Amanda said, "I've found out something."
"What?" I said.
"I know where Burt goes between five and six, two nights a week." "Burt the Knob? Who cares!" I said. We both felt contempt for him because he was such a pathetic armpit-groper.
"No. Listen. He goes to the same place Nuala goes," said Amanda.
"You're joking! Where?" Nuala flirted, but she flirted with all men. It was only her way, like giving you the stone-eye was Toby's way.
"They go into the Vinegar Room when no one's supposed to be there."
"Oh no!" I said. "Really?" I knew this was about sex -- most of our jokey conversations were. The Gardeners called sex "the generative act" and said it was not a fit subject for ridicule, but Amanda ridiculed it anyway. You could snigger at it or trade it or both, but you couldn't respect it.
"No wonder her bum's so wobbly," said Amanda. "It's getting worn out. It's like Veena's old sofa -- all saggy."
"I don't believe you!" I said. "She couldn't be doing it! Not with Burt!"
"Cross my heart and spit," said Amanda. She spat: she was a good spitter. "Why else would she go there with him?"
We Gardeners kids often made up rude stories about the sex lives of the Adams and Eves. It took away some of their power to imagine them naked, either with each other or with stray dogs, or even with the green-skinned girls in the pictures outside Scales and Tails. Still, Nuala moaning and flailing around with Burt the Knob was hard to picture. "Well, anyway," I said, "we can't tell Bernice!" Then we laughed some more.
At the Buenavista we nodded at the dowdy Gardener lady behind the lobby desk, who was doing string knotwork and didn't look up. Then we climbed the stairs, avoiding the used needles and condoms. The Buenavista Condom was Amanda's name for this building, so I called it that now too. The mushroomy, spicy Buenavista smell was stronger today.
"Someone's got a gro-op," said Amanda. "It reeks of skunkweed." She was an authority: she'd lived out there in the Exfernal World, she'd even done some drugs. Not much though, she said, because you lost your edge with drugs, you should only buy them from people you trusted because anything could have anything in it, and she didn't trust anybody much. I'd nag her to let me try some, but she wouldn't. "You're a baby," she'd say. Or else she'd say she had no good contacts since she'd been with the Gardeners.
"There can't be a gro-op in here," I said. "This building's Gardener. It's only the pleebmobs who have gro-ops. It's just -- kids smoke it in here, at night. Pleeb kids."
"Yeah, I know," said Amanda, "but this isn't smoke. It's more of a gro-op smell."
As we reached the fourth-floor level, we heard voices -- men's voices, two of them, on the other side of the landing door. They didn't sound friendly.
"That's all I got," said one voice. "I'll have the rest tomorrow."
"Asshole!" said the other. "Don't jerk me around!" There was a thud, as if something had hit the wall; then another thud, and a wordless yell, of pain or anger.
Amanda poked me. "Climb," she said. "Fast!"
We ran up the rest of the stairs as quietly as we could. "That was serious," said Amanda when we'd reached the sixth floor.
"How do you mean?"
"Some trade going bad," said Amanda. "We never heard this. Now, act norma
l." She looked scared, which scared me too because Amanda didn't scare easily.
We knocked at Bernice's door. "Knock, knock," said Amanda.
