Clade Read Online Free Page A

“I’m listening.”
    “It’s the same kind of shit you took to Mama.” Beto runs a hand over his glossy pate. “The same kind of situation.”
    “A sick person?”
    “Right.” Beto straightens, starts to pace. “No insurance. Can’t afford to pay for treatment. The usual.”
    “Sick with what?”
    Beto pauses. “What difference does it make?”
    “I want to know.”
    “Aphasia,” Beto says. Then, “It’s when your brain starts to shrink and you start to lose all motor control. Can’t walk. Can’t talk.”
    Rigo sucks on his teeth. Thinks about his mother. The pinch she’d be in if there was no one to help her.
    “Who is it?” he asks.
    Beto sighs. “You don’t need to know. It’s better that way. Safer. What’s important is that if the person doesn’t get help, that’s it. End of story.”
    Rigo rubs his face with both hands, massages the tension from his forehead with blunt fingertips.
    “Why me?”
    “Because something else has come up. Talented as I am, I can’t be in two places at once.”
    Rigo peers through the gaps in his fingers, as if looking at Beto from between the bars of a cage. “There must be someone else you can get.”
    “There isn’t, bro. If there was, I wouldn’t be asking you.” Beto spreads his hands. “To be honest, you were not my first choice. But I don’t have a choice. That’s how desperate I am.”
    “Where’s the delivery?” Rigo cradles his head. He can’t believe he’s thinking of doing this. He must be out of his mind.
    “Salmon Ella’s.”
    Rigo looks up. Blinks. “Word?”
    “Word. I shit you not.”
    “What time?” If he’s lucky, maybe he won’t be seen by anyone he knows from work or his aplex.
    “Tonight. Nine-thirty.”
    Rigo lowers his hands, shakes his head. “I can’t. I’m supposed to hook up with Anthea.”
    “You should dump that bitch,” Beto says. He’s never warmed to Anthea, keeps their relationship civil but cool. “How’d you get so hooked on that scrawny
puta
, anyway? It’s like you have an addictive personality or something, bro.”
    “I can’t help it, bro. I’m in love.” What else can he say? He shrugs, stands, too agitated to sit.
    “It’s a sickness, man. A sexually transmitted disease.” Beto grins. “You should cure yourself.”
    “And end up like you?” Rigo asks.
    The grin widens with playful malice. “There’re worse things that could happen.”
    “Yeah?”
    Beto flips him an obscene gesture. “Look at yourself, bro. You’re turning into a fucking
tutumpote
. Oppressing the poor so you can be a success, a big-time
sucio
.”
    An asshole. Rigo’s heard it all before: anybody who extricates himself from the ghetto to improve his socioeconomic standing is a sellout. It’s the kind of inbred, self-defeatest attitude that gets passed down the germline, ad infinitum, and keeps the working class downtrodden. “At least I’m legit,” he says.
    Beto snorts. “You’re a prisoner of the establishment, bro. You just can’t see the bars.”
    Rigo gestures to the surrounding cubes. “Like you’re any freer than I am.”
    “At least I’m not busting my
cojones
like some dumbass dog at a track. Chasing after some rabbit I’m never going to catch. Isn’t even real.”
    The repartee has a cathartic effect. Calming. It clears the air, eases some of the friction between them. As kids, they always felt better after a fight. Closer.
    “You’re really stuck on that
jeva
,” Beto says.
    Rigo shrugs. “No problem. I’ll tell her I have to go back to work, finish up some stuff before we do our thing. She’ll understand.”
    Beto gives him the drop instructions and the drug, then punches him hard in the right biceps. “Remember, it’s for a good cause. Just don’t get caught and you’ll be all right.”
    The Monterey shuttle pod, capable of carrying up to thirty passengers, is mostly empty. Rigo sits in back, near a young businesswoman wearing a cardboard stiff suit-
cum
-flamboyant green