LINC didn't know if it was his imagination, but the streets seemed to have gotten older and dirtier—more so, surely, then was possible in the time that had gone by. What he remembered as the center of where the action was, and where all of life happened had turned into tired and shabby remnants of an age that was running down. Had the storefronts always been so grubby with their cloudy windows, halfhearted displays, the paint around the doors dulled and peeling like the once-high hopes of some forgotten opening day long ago? Had trash always stunk like this, piled in alleys and strewn along the gutters?
Above it all, high-rental buildings that had once thrust proudly toward the sky crumbled silently amid the winds, the rain, and the corrosive fames eating into them. They had degenerated into cheap hotels and apartments while business fled the cities for manicured office parks by the interstates. But the people no longer stopped to gaze at these buildings, in any case. The figures on the sidewalks hurried on, avoiding each other's eyes, enwrapped in their own isolation. Even those who stood or walked together aimed words at each other from behind facades that had become so second nature that even they themselves now mistook them for the persons atrophying within. A city of brooding shells, inhabited by beings who hid inside shells.
"Hey, don't tell me that's . . . It is! Hey, Linc! How's it been going?" One of the two hookers standing outside Ozzie's Bar stepped forward as he approached—except that it was no longer Ozzie's but had been given a face-lift and become the Paradise Lounge. Linc recognized her as Irene, who used to be a cocktail waitress at The Domino along the next block, and before that, in some other city, a clerk in a shoe shop whose owner had packed the shelves with empty boxes so customers wouldn't know how run-down the stock was.
"Say, Irene, get a look at you!"
"We heard how you got pulled after that sting they set up. I guess you're back out now, then, huh? Did they slice you some time off or something?"
Linc smiled faintly. The girls liked to stay friendly with neighborhood muscle who carried pocket phones. You never knew when a trick might turn nasty or decide he was due extra time. "Yeah, I suppose you could say that," he said.
Irene put a hand on his shoulder and looked him up and down. "It can't have been too bad. You're looking in good shape, you know that? . . . Although, I can't say the clothes are really ya know what I mean? Is that something they gave you? The haircut too. You musta just got out."
Linc had on a low-key, regular-cut navy jacket, blue-gray pants, and a dark-blue shirt with tie. It was just a casual combination that felt comfortable to travel in. Although there was no bar on wearing uniform, he had preferred not to flaunt one. It would have felt like advertising a big difference that existed between himself and everyone else now—as if he had somehow risen above them all. At least, he hadn't wanted to risk their seeing it that way.
"I'm just kinda visiting before moving on," Linc said. "I have to go back. Then they'll be sending me a lot farther." He waited for a hint of curiosity, a question, maybe? . . . But Irene's eyes left him to scan a man walking past in a business suit, automatically assessing for signs of a potential client. Linc decided to let it drop. "So how's it been with you?" he asked. "Moving on to a different neck of the woods too, eh?"
Irene shrugged, pouting a mouth that had too much lipstick. "The money and the hours are better, and it's easier on the feet," she said. "What can I tell you? It's just like any other job after a while. You wake up, you make money, you owe it to somebody for this or for that, you eat, you go to sleep again, and one day you die. What else is there?"
What else is there? The words repeated themselves in Linc's mind. What can I tell you? Irene had said. What was there for him even to have begun telling her.
He looked at her more closely. It probably wouldn't have been so obvious to him before, but he could still see behind the purple lips, the paint, and the overdone mascara, the shoe-shop girl who had run away from home to do better. Like Ozzie's bar with its gaudy new front and colored lights, she was fooling the world that didn't know her with what the outside pretended to be.
Irene indicated her companion, who was staring across the street vacantly, chewing a wad of gum. "This is Orla. She's new around here—sharing with me till she gets her own place."
Linc nodded. "Hi." Orla smiled back. She was young, and from the look of her, probably tripped out on something. Not a word, not a thought. Neither necessary nor relevant, so why bother? Available merchandise on the block.
"Linc's one of the guys from around. He's been away for a while, you know—like out of circuit. He's okay."
Orla blew a bubble of gum and popped it. "I'm getting hungry," she said.
Linc glanced away along the street. "Well, I've got things to do and not a lot of time. It was good running into you."
"You going back soon?" Irene asked.
"'Fraid so—out of here tonight." Linc and the others had allowed time for a little last-chance-on-Earth-for-a-while relaxation before shipping back. Marlene, still in an up-again, down-again, on-again, off-again relationship with Arvin, had been added to the party at the last moment to make up a foursome, and Rocky and Liz would be joining them after a quick trip to Liz's hometown in Connecticut.
Irene looked disappointed. "Oh, that soon, huh? Well . . . . let's hope they don't keep you out there too long. So, take it easy, eh?"
"And you . . . . Good meeting you, Orla."
Orla blew him another bubble with her gum.