A Break in the Sunlight

7. Waiting

It was Pallas Patrik who had taught Jaren to fresco–on Firedown, while they waited for the transverter.

He hadn't started out as a teacher––that was for certain––even though it had turned out that way. He had started out as a client.

Patrik was the Kellian who owned the spaceport bar. He had first been a client of Kaski's, but switched to Jaren when she'd started, because he preferred her lighter skin. It reminded him, he said, of the women from Kell. His own skin was a bluish shade of white, topped with a disheveled mop of thinning grey hair. His frame was solid, with the beginnings of a potbelly.

Patrik was an outspoken man, with a lazily exotic accent that gave him an academic sound, like a musician or historian––though as far as Jaren and Kaski knew, he was neither. He kept a Frieckian stunner behind the bar, and used it to settle the few intellectual debates he couldn't win with logic. He'd run the bar on Firedown for over thirty years, and was a fixture by now, master of local facts and fictions. Knowing him had eased the way for the girls, in the first few weeks. More than once he had chased off some dangerous looking characters with his acid wit or a wave of the Friek.

Jaren didn't know his age, but she thought he must be pretty old, considering the longevity of Kellians. His screwing lacked some of the intensity of the younger men on Firedown. He took longer, lingering over her in a weird way, and was always trying to talk to her afterward. At first it had annoyed her, and she'd asked Kaski to take him back. But after a while he'd grown on her. He paid well, and she found that if she just let him talk, he didn't ask her too many questions. Sometimes he even amused her, drawing from her a rare laugh.

They'd been on Firedown for three months now, and seemed no closer to getting off. She'd had a dust-up with Mitchevish about the eighth week, but hadn't done much more than piss him off, she knew. The transverter was ordered, he told her, they could wait it out, or they could take their business elsewhere. Jaren could do no more than snarl at him. He knew damned well he was their only source. He was the only commercial mech on this godforsaken rock.

Patrik had calmed her down. Mitch wasn't a cheat. It was the suppliers who were f'ing around. They were on a work slowdown on account of some lime tariffs or some such crap. He'd explained the whole thing to Jaren, but she hadn't really listened. She had jack shit interest in local politics, at this point. She just wanted off the planet. Whoring wasn't disastrous, but neither was it terrific fun. She didn't much care for having to let any flatliner with the equipment and the money paw her over on the cheap. It was messy, it was loud, and frankly, she resented the intrusion. And if she hadn't been real big on screwing before–well, whoring hadn't done much to improve it.

So she'd folded herself away in the corner of the bar and pulled a pen and book from her satchel. Kaski was working this afternoon. They alternated afternoons when business was slow. A strip place across town had got a lunch license and was drawing away a lot of the afternoon business. But that was the territory of the local whores, and they had made it clear that new goods were not welcome.

Kaski was seated at the bar now, wearing an aluminum chain link minidress with a low back and slits up the thighs. It was obvious that there was nothing under it. She was chatting up a soldier with a wedding ring on his finger, and he was growing more interested by the moment. Kaski had slid a knee between his legs, and her hand up his thigh. His face grew pink.

Jaren sketched them from the back of the room, her pen choosing a comic book style this time, and moving quickly over the page. Kaski became a superhero, accentuated breasts straining against the chain mail, calves rippling with muscle and sinew, expression fierce and sexual, even predatory. The soldier's nervous gaze grew bold under her pen, his chin squared, his ring disappearing. His hand was on the small of Super-Kaski's back, where the chain dipped down provocatively, pressing her in toward him.

"Not bad." Came a comment from behind Jaren's shoulder. She slammed the sketchbook shut and glared.

"Clear off, Patrik."

He was wearing his half apron, and set down the glasses he'd been clearing, motioning for her to hand over the book.

"No way." She flipped the book up under her folded arms. "Bugger off."

"Now, Maggie, is that any way to talk to an old friend? Come on, give us a look see." His fingers wiggled at her coaxingly.

She let him take the book. It still unnerved her a little to be called Maggie, or Magdalene, even though she had chosen the name, so in a way it was more truly hers than Jaren was.

"Say now, these are a fair good set of drawings, Pet." He sat in the empty chair beside her. "Who is this?"

"Some prick of a Lidan Kaski screwed." Jaren replied, "The asshole who brought us to this dump, actually."

Patrik chuckled. "Yes, the drawing doesn't look particularly complimentary."

"It is, actually," Jaren smiled, despite herself. "He was one ugly bastard. Of course, I was in a bit of a temper when I drew that. And it's only from memory."

"It's good. Very good." Patrik flipped back through the pages, "And who is this?"

Jaren looked over his shoulder and her smile shut down. "My mother." She pulled the book back. "That's enough show and tell."

At the bar, Kaski and the soldier had come to an agreement, and they were walking toward the concourse entrance. Jaren and Patrik watched them go, leaving them alone in the bar, and then Patrik got to his feet.

"You aren't much on your profession, are you, Lass." It was as much a statement as anything.

"Not really, no." she shrugged, "But you do what you have to, I guess. Use what you have."

He put a foot up on the chair. "Well, I'll tell you what, Mag, my girl. I have a proposition for you."

She put her hand on his canvas-covered thigh. "Oh yeah?" she replied, a twist of a smile on her face as the recently born whore took over. "What's that?"

He laughed, it was a smart, lively laugh, and the edges of it echoed around the bar as he removed her hand. "No, no... not that kind. Though I'll take you up on it tonight, perhaps." His finger came up under her chin and thumb smudged across her lips gently. "Something that you'd perhaps like a mite better than your current work."

"What?" She frowned.

"How about you work just for me."

"Screwing, you mean?"

"I suppose that, aye. But its rather about this place. It needs a little livening up." Patrik dropped his hand from her face and his foot from the chair, and indicated the west wall of the bar. It was lined with cheap press-rock tables and chairs, and hung with a few old holos of the mining operations.

"How about you fashion us a picture? A fresco, yes? We've got the lime coming out our arseholes and mucking everything up... let's make something nice with it."

A fresco? Jaren's eyebrows knitted. "Screwing, I can do, if you can afford it. But I know jack about how to make a fresco."

He was smiling broadly, knowing he had caught her. "Can you paint? I know you can draw. How about a couple of lovely ladies? Something to get the locals staring? Pull some of the soldier business away from Zurich's? You can draw ladies?"

She nodded. "Yeah..."

"Then I can teach you the rest."

And so he had.

All rights reserved. Copyright Jae Darcy 2016