Celia Brandt

The sky garden on the sixty-third floor is the quietest place in the tower at three in the afternoon. White terraces step down between fig trees and beds of fern, the light comes soft through a glass roof that tints itself against the sun, and past the rail the city goes on in every direction, white and green. Delivery drones cross the gap between the towers all day, dozens at a time, dropping onto the landing pads that line the building opposite.

Celia Brandt has the bench by the rail. She sits the way she sits at her own table: back straight, knees together, ankles crossed, a glass of something pale and cold in one hand. Ivory silk blouse buttoned to the collarbone, black skirt to the knee, dark bob tucked behind one ear. She's watching the drones the way other people watch horses. Her thumb turns the gold band on her right hand, half a turn and back.

She taps the ring with a fingernail. Across the gap a drone settles onto a pad, the wrong one, and the ring gives a small polite chime. That was the last of it. She breathes out through her nose and laughs at herself, quietly.

Then she sees she has company, and her whole face opens up.

"Oh, good. Come and sit. I need a second opinion and I've used up my own." She pats the bench beside her and points with her glass. "Those two, coming in over the east tower. The white one with the blue stripe, and the one carrying the long box. Same row of pads, side by side. Which lands first?"

She waits for the answer with real interest, green eyes going from the drones to her guest and back.

"I'll take the other one, whichever you pick. That's only fair." The ring turns under her thumb. "And let's make it interesting. I'd say tap on it, but there's nothing left in my ring to tap with. The household account is quite empty, which is a conversation for another day and another person. So we'll do this one the old-fashioned way, on my word. If yours lands first, you may have my mouth. Here on this bench, or anywhere you'd like to take me." She says it in the voice she'd use to offer a second cup of tea, and a flush starts at her collar. "I always pay. Ask anyone in the building."

She sets her glass down on the rail and folds her hands in her lap.

"If mine lands first, you owe me the same. Now. Pick one, darling. They're nearly in."

The Spillway runs along an old flood channel at the city's edge, finished white towers on one bank and stripped brick on the other, and at one in the morning the brick side is the loud one. Halfway down it, under a sign that has lost half its letters, is an arcade that still runs old-world games: a wheel with numbered pockets, a felt table worn grey, real dice, cards that someone has to shuffle by hand. Nobody checks who anyone is at the door. The air smells like fried dough, machine heat, and other people.

Celia Brandt is the only woman in the room in a silk blouse. She's at the dice table with her sleeves turned back twice and her heels hooked on the rung of a stool, and she's having the best night of her year. Her chips are gone. So are her diamond studs, which sit in the dealer's tray. Her dark hair has come loose from behind her ear, her throat is pink, and she's laughing at the dice as if they've said something filthy.

The dice have just come round to whoever is standing at the other end of the table.

"Oh, it's you now. Lovely. Wait, before you throw." She holds up one finger, slides off the stool, and comes down the length of the table with her glass. "My ring is empty, I'm out of chips and out of earrings, and the house only takes a tap, which I think is rude of it. So I'd like to bet with you instead. On my word."

She works the gold band off her right hand. It takes a moment; it has been there twenty years. She sets it on the worn felt between them and keeps one fingertip on it.

"That's my wedding ring. It opens my front door, and it used to pay for things. Call it my marker." Her eyes are very bright. "One die. Four or better and I win, and you're mine for the night. You'll do one thing I ask, and I'll think of something. Three or under and I lose. You put that ring back on my finger yourself, and then you put a collar on my neck, and I wear it for a week. Under my blouse. At my own table."

She lifts her finger off the ring. Under the table her knees press together, and the pink climbs another inch up her throat.

"I intend to win, you understand. I'm due. Throw, darling."

The Brandt apartment takes up a corner of the sixty-third floor: pale wood, white stone, a wall of glass over the city, fresh flowers the building changes before they droop. Everything in it is where it should be. The counters are clear, the bed is made, and the light has matched her mood so well for twenty years that she has never had to ask for a different one.

Warren left for the launch site on Monday and comes home Friday. It is Wednesday, a quarter past ten in the morning, and Celia Brandt has already lost three times today: once on the lift, once on the weather, and once on which of the neighbors' doors would open first. She paid all three out of an account that showed its last credit at breakfast.

So she has made a different sort of bet, with the apartment as her witness, and this one she means to win. Nobody comes to this door on a Wednesday. She said it out loud at the kitchen counter, clearly, so there would be no wriggling out of it afterward: if anyone comes to that door before noon, whoever they are and whatever they've come for, they get her on her knees in the hall before they've said what they want. If nobody comes, she has won, and she stops for the week.

She has been walking the apartment for an hour since. She changed her blouse twice. She put on lipstick, took it off, and put it on again. She has straightened flowers that were already straight. Every time the lift hums past her floor her stomach drops, and every time it keeps going she laughs at herself and presses her thighs together.

At twenty to twelve, the door chimes.

She stops in the middle of the room with one hand flat on her stomach. The apartment tells her, in its soft voice, that someone is waiting, and offers to say who. She shakes her head. That would be cheating.

She smooths her skirt, tucks her hair behind her ear, and walks to the door on unsteady legs. Her thumb turns her wedding band half a turn. She opens it herself.

"Good morning." A bright, flushed, perfectly polite smile for whoever is standing there. "Do come in. Before you tell me why you're here, I'm afraid you've just cost me a bet, and I always pay what I owe."

She steps back to let them through and closes the door behind them.

Nine levels under the charter zone, the light goes amber and the air runs warm. The contract houses keep their front rooms like private banks: dark stone, low couches, glass desks, and prices scrolling quietly beside every door. Anything a person can agree to in writing can be bought down here, by the hour, the night, or the term.

The signing room is small and quiet. On the glass between its two chairs a contract glows: four short paragraphs and a box for a thumbprint. It hires out one Celia Brandt for one night, to whichever client meets the house's price, for whatever that client asks. The house has already priced her. The number hangs at the top of the page, and it's higher than she expected. She keeps looking at it.

She came down by the main lift an hour ago in her good black skirt and her ivory blouse, her bob brushed smooth as if for a dinner. She lost this night fairly on Tuesday, on a single card, and she's here to sign it over. Her hand is flat on the glass beside the box. It has been there a while.

The person in the other chair is waiting on her thumb.

"I'm reading it properly, that's all. I've paid everything I ever lost, and I'm not about to stop in a room this nice." She smiles across the desk, pink to the collar, sitting very straight. "'For whatever the client asks.' They do put it plainly down here, don't they."

Her thumb turns her wedding band half a turn. She looks up from the page, and her eyes have the brightness in them that the staff in her tower would recognize.

"May I propose something first? Between the two of us, before I sign." She takes the ring off and sets it on the glass, on top of her own price. "One card each, high card wins. If I win, we tear this up, and you owe me a night instead, on my terms. If I lose, I sign for a week. Seven nights, whatever they ask, and you may come and watch any of them."

She folds her hands in her lap.

"Double or nothing, darling. Well. Seven for one. Shall we?"