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dreading their reaction.
Coretti was in the back seat, beside her.
The man with silver temples spoke to the driver.
The driver muttered into his hand mike, changed gears, and they flowed away
into the rain and the darkened streets. The cityscape made no impression on
Coretti, who, looking inwardly, was seeing the cab stop, the gray man and the
laughing woman pushing him out and pointing, smiling, to the gate of a mental
hospital. Or:
the cab stopping, the couple turning, sadly shaking their heads. And a dozen
times he seemed to see the cab stop-
ping in an empty side street where they methodically throttled him. Coretti
left dead in the rain. Because he was an outsider.
But they arrived at Coretti's hotel.
In the dim glow of the cab's dome light he watched closely as the man reached
into his coat for the fare.
Coretti could see the coat's lining clearly and it was one piece with the
angora sweater. No wallet bulged there, and no pocket. But a kind of slit
widened. It opened as the man's fingers poised over it, and it disgorged
money. Three bills, folded, were extruded smoothly from the slit. The money
was slightly damp. It dried, as the man unfolded it, like the wings of a moth
just emerging from the chrysalis.
"Keep the change," said the belonging man, climb-
ing out of the cab. Antoinette slid out and Coretti followed, his mind seeing
only the slit. The slit wet, edged with red, like a gill.
The lobby was deserted and the desk clerk bent over a crossword. The couple
drifted silently across the lobby and into the elevator, Coretti close behind.
Once he tried to catch her eye, but she ignored him. And once, as the elevator
rose seven floors above Coretti's own, she bent over and sniffed at the chrome
wall ashtray, like a dog snuffling at the ground.
Hotels, late at night, are never still. The corridors are never entirely
silent. There are countless barely audi-
ble sighs, the rustling of sheets, and muffled voices speaking fragments out
of sleep. But in the ninth-floor corridor, Coretti seemed to move through a
perfect vacuum, soundless, his shoes making no sound at all on the colorless
carpet and even the beating of his out-
sider's heart sucked away into the vague pattern that decorated the wallpaper.
He tried to count the small plastic ovals screwed on
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file:///F|/rah/New%20Folder/Burning%20Chrome.txt the doors, each with its own
three figures, but the cor-
ridor seemed to go on forever. At last the man halted before a door, a door
veneered like all the rest with im-
itation rosewood, and put his hand over the lock, his palm flat against the
metal. Something scraped softly and then the mechanism clicked and the door
swung open. As the man withdrew his hand, Coretti saw a grayish-pink,
key-shaped sliver of bone retract wetly into the pale flesh.
No light burned in that room, but the city's dim neon aura filtered in through
venetian blinds and al-
lowed him to see the faces of the dozen or more people who sat perched on the
bed and the couch and the arm-
chairs and the stools in the kitchenette. At first he thought that their eyes
were open, but then he realized that the dull pupils were sealed beneath
nictitating mem-
branes, third eyelids that reflected the faint shades of neon from the window.
They wore whatever the last bar had called for; shapeless Salvation Army
overcoats sat beside bright suburban leisurewear, evening gowns beside dusty
factory clothes, biker's leather by brushed
Harris tweed. With sleep, all spurious humanity had vanished.
They were roosting.
His couple seated themselves on the edge of the
Formica countertop in the kitchenette, and Coretti hesitated in the middle of
the empty carpet. Light-years of that carpet seemed to separate him from the
others, but something called to him across the distance, promis-
ing rest and peace and belonging. And still he hesitated, shaking with an
indecision that seemed to rise from the genetic core of his body's every cell.
Until they opened their eyes, all of them simul-
taneously, the membranes sliding sideways to reveal the alien calm of dwellers
in the ocean's darkest trench.
Coretti screamed, and ran away, and fled along corridors and down echoing
concrete stairwells to cool rain and the nearly empty streets.
Coretti never returned to his room on the third floor of that hotel. A bored
house detective collected the linguistics texts, the single suitcase of
clothing, and they were eventually sold at auction. Coretti took a room in a
boardinghouse run by a grim Baptist teetotaler who led her roomers in prayer
at the start of every overcooked evening meal. She didn't mind that Coretti
never joined them for those meals; he explained that he was given free meals
at work. He lied freely and skillfully. He never drank at the boardinghouse,
and he never came home drunk. Mr. Coretti was a little odd, but always paid
his rent on time. And he was very quiet.
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