He was Reno of the Turks, eighteen and a half years old. She was - well, he didn’t know who she was until she introduced herself. Body-guard duty had taken him to the art gallery opening. He stood with his back to the wall, keeping one eye on the President and doing his best to act invisible, like the Chief kept telling them to do. His collar was making his neck itch. The guests sipped champagne and chattered. Reno wondered if any of them understood what this “art” was supposed to be about, or if they were all just faking it to impress each other. The artist had done something weird with chairs - chairs he’d salvaged from the dump, according to the card on the wall. Like that detail meant something. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, amirite? The chairs had been sawn apart and then stuck back together in unexpected combinations. Hojo did the same thing with the monsters in his labs. Maybe these people would think Hojo was an artist too. Reno snickered at the thought. He was dying for a cigarette.
That was when he noticed her watching him.
Nothing unusual in that. Women at these society dos were always eyeing him up. Sometimes they approached him. Phone numbers had been slipped into his pockets. Notes: cloakroom. Fifteen minutes. He always ignored them. Veld had made it abundantly clear that the President’s friends were not to be fucked, or fucked with. Apparently, before Reno’s time, there had been An Incident. Scandal. Divorce. Reno wasn’t about to risk one of the Chief’s beatings - or worse - for the sake of ten minutes humping in the fur coats with a millionaire’s bored wife. He hoped he died before he ever got that desperate.
They could look all they liked. Looking was free. Anyway, what else were they going to rest their eyes on? Those freaky chairs? Reno of the Turks was the only real work of art in this gallery. Fuck being invisible. You might as well tell the sun not to shine.
Now she was coming over to him. Maybe she didn’t know any better? She didn’t look like the kind of woman he normally saw at these functions, the red-lipped ones with their tits spilling out of their cleavage and their thousand-gil nails. Her clothes were kinda boring, to be honest: tan suede trousers, white blouse, low heels. Pearl necklace. If he’d passed her in the street he wouldn’t have given her a second glance. She didn’t look like a barrel of laughs. Maybe it was the horn-rimmed glasses. In one hand she carried a champagne flute. She offered him her free hand to shake. Slim hand, natural nails, nice firm grasp. “I’m Caroline,” she said.
“I’m on duty.”
She smiled, but didn’t make the obvious quip. He saw that she had pretty teeth: small, pearly, even. “I know you are. I would have offered you a glass otherwise. This is my father’s gallery. My mother’s on call at the hospital, so I’m your hostess tonight.” She gestured at the chairs. “What do you think of Fenellon’s latest work?”
Since he couldn’t say what was really in his mind - I think your dude’s got a sweet scam going on here, and you’re taking a cut of it - he played it safe. “I don’t really understand this stuff.”
She took that as an invitation to explain it to him. He was watching the President, so at first he only listened with half an ear. There was something about her voice that was hard to tune out, even though what she was saying didn’t make any sense to him. It was all just words. Her voice was nice, though. Easy to listen to. Low, husky, earnest. She really seemed to want him to understand. Like it mattered to her. It was kind of - it made him feel kind of funny. Normally the people he met at these functions only wanted something from him.
He saw that she had lovely hair, dark and glossy like a shampoo ad, piled on her head in a way that drew attention to her slender neck.
Suddenly he realised he’d taken his eyes off the President. For five panic-stricken seconds his eyes searched the room - thank fuck, there he was, chatting amiably to a small crowd of sycophants, blowing cigar smoke in their faces.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“You’re distracting me.”
“Am I?” She didn’t sound sorry.
The President announced that it was time to go. Reno followed him to the car. They got in, drove away, and Reno didn’t give the girl another thought, until three days later he ran into her at the Goblin’s Bar in Sector Eight. He was with Cissnei and Rude. She was sitting with a group of what he assumed must be her friends, tweedy intellectual types drinking half-pints of insipid lager. When she saw Reno she got up from their table, came over to him, and kissed him on both cheeks like a friend. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She asked him how he was and made a joke about chairs that was quite witty and not smutty at all. Reno couldn’t think of anything to say in reply. She wished him a pleasant evening and went back to her friends. As she walked away, Reno couldn’t help noticing what a fine round arse she had.
Cissnei pinched his arm, hard, and stood on tiptoe to hiss in his ear, “She is so out of your league, fuckwit.”
“I don’t even know her,” he protested.
A split second later he realised he’d said the wrong thing. The correct comeback line, the one Cissnei and Rude would be expecting, was Baby, I’m in a league of my own . That damn girl had thrown him off his groove. How? She wasn’t even all that hot. Maybe a seven at best, with some level 9 features. Those glasses, man, were really ugly.
The next day in the office he took the big book of Midgar’s Who’s Who off the shelf and leafed through the gold-rimmed pages until he found her: Babbington, Caroline, eldest daughter of Sedgwick Babbington, professor of art history and TV personality, and Dr Ottoline Hughes-Babbington, pediatric cardiologist. Old money; wine and mithril money. Estates in Lucania and Boeotia. She was twenty-two years old, had a first class degree in Philosophy and Economics, and was studying for her Master’s at the Patricia Shinra Memorial Institute for Global Affairs.
He put the book back on the shelf and resolved to think no more of her.
Midgar was a big town. Reno of the Turks and Caroline Babbington ran in different circles. By the law of averages, their paths should not have crossed again for many months, or even years. Yet fate kept throwing them together:
In the winner’s enclosure at the Rufus Shinra Senior 10,000 Gil Memorial Stakes (her mother owned the winning chocobo);
At the Annual Presidential Charity Drive (she had come to bid on the silent auction in support of Shinra’s orphanages);
In the university bookshop (He’d gone to pick up a package for the Chief. When he saw her approaching, he noticed there was some kind of bulge in her trouser pocket, and the only phrase that sprang to his mind was Is that a gun or are you happy to see me? At least he didn’t say it out loud. The bulge turned out to be a book. She showed it to him: a little paperback that she had written, a book of poetry. Just a kitchen-table press, she said, run by a friend of hers. Her cheeks flushed as she spoke. She had fucking beautiful skin, just flawless);
In Fountain Square (he was checking the messages on his phone, she had her nose in a book: they literally bumped into each other and he had to grab her round the waist to stop her falling. They remained nose to nose for about five seconds, time enough for Reno to see that her eyes were the same rich brown colour as her hair and the bridge of her nose was lightly dusted with freckles. Then she laughed, extricated herself, apologised gracefully for her clumsiness and went on her way. After she’d gone, he realised he hadn’t uttered a single word through the entire encounter - unless “Whoops” and “Gotcha” counted);
In the ShinraCoffee shop on the ground floor of the Shinra Building (she’d popped into the building to buy her baby brother a guide to Shinra avionics. He was crazy about helicopters. Reno’s mouth opened all by itself and the words I can take him up sometime came out, which a total lie, unless he did it behind Veld’s back, and if he did that and got caught Veld would skin him alive. What was it about this chick that turned him into a tongue-tied idiot whenever he got within ten feet of her?);
Reno could never say exactly when it happened, but at some point during all this path-crossing and bumping-into, the realisation came to him that she was beautiful. Once he could see this, he wondered what had taken him so long. He thought of all the men who passed her by every day without noticing just how beautiful she was, and it felt as if she’d let him in on a cherished secret.
Why, though? Why did she like him? Because she did like him: that was obvious. All these ‘random’ encounters were no accident. She knew he was a Turk. His slum-rat origins were literally written on his face. The girls he normally screwed around with didn’t care about that, because they were ambitious jumped-up slum rats too. The million-gil women who undressed him with their eyes at social gatherings just wanted to fuck a Turk. But Caroline - she was different. She wasn’t like any girl he’d ever met before. She saw deeper than the suit and the tattoos. Reno felt she saw right through to the truth of who he was, and (even stranger) liked what she saw.
Rude, in whom he had confided, asked him straight: “Are you in love with this chick?”
“Is that what it sounds like? Am I doing that thing?”
“What thing?”
“That talking about her all the time thing. Do I talk about her all the time?”
“Only to me,” said Rude.
“Shit.”
“So, are you?”
“I dunno. No? But maybe I could be. Like I’m kinda on the edge.”
“Teetering.”
“Yeah.”
“Not falling.”
“Not yet.”
“Be careful,” said Rude.
But it was too late for that.
About a month after they first met, he was sitting on a park bench in sector 8, taking a break from patrol duty to enjoy a smoke and a rare ray of Midgar sunshine, when she came along and sat down beside him like he’d been keeping the seat for her. “Can I have one?” she asked, pointing at his packet of Malboros.
Reno didn’t need a degree in psychology to know what that meant. His normally deft fingers fumbled a little tapping the cigarette out of the carton. He lit it from his own, put it between her lips. She sucked on it, cheeks hollowing, conjuring such visions in his mind that he had to shift in his seat, awkwardly crossing his legs. Smoke curled from the corners of her mouth. She wasn’t inhaling. Reno realised that this was her first cigarette. He plucked it from her lips.
“Hey!” she coughed.
“It’s bad for your skin.” He ground it out beneath his heel. “Your skin is beautiful - “
Aw, fuck . Did he really just say that?
She was smiling at him.
Quickly, before he lost his nerve, he said, “So, uh, d’you think maybe we could go have dinner together sometime?”
If Veld ever found out, he’d get more than a swift clip round the ear. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. She was worth it.
She said she would love to. She said she was free tomorrow. “I want you to take me to your favourite restaurant. You must know a side of this city that I never see.”
They agreed to meet the next evening, right there, on that bench, at seven o’clock.
.
And now it was the next evening, ten to six, and all the Turks were still in the office. The Chief and Tseng were up at the Board meeting, which had run way past its allotted time. Nobody could leave till the Chief came down. Reno had been for a shower and come back, his towel-dried hair standing up madly all over his head, his feet bare. A streak of blood coloured his freshly-shaven chin.
Mozo sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?”
“Is that a clean suit you’re wearing?” said Rosalind. “I didn’t know you owned such a thing.”
“I recognise that smell,” said Mozo. “That’s Tseng’s aftershave.”
Reno sat down in the nearest empty chair, which happened to be next to Mozo. Mozo clapped his hands over his nose and made a show of gagging.
“Oh har har,” said Reno, taking a pair of socks out of his jacket pocket.
He hadn’t wanted it to be like this. Only his fellow juniors, Rude and Cissnei, knew about Caroline. If the Board meeting had ended when it was supposed to, if the Old Man and his Directors weren’t all so full of self-importance and hot air, everybody else would have gone home by now - but it hadn’t, and they hadn’t, and now he would have to run the gauntlet of his seniors’ pisstake. What a crappy start to the evening. Still, at least that meant things could only get better.
“Did you ask Tseng if you could borrow his aftershave?” said Rosalind.
“Of course he didn’t,” said Mozo. “Because Tseng would have said no. He’s going to bloody kill you, Reno. Do you know how much that shit costs?”
Reno did know; that was precisely why he’d borrowed it. Since he couldn’t borrow Tseng’s aura of aloof sophistication or his talent for standing with his arms folded and his eyes half shut, looking like he was contemplating mysteries far too complicated for mere mortal understanding (when in fact he was probably just calculating how much longer he could hold it till his next dump) - well, borrowing his smell seemed like the next best thing. He’d borrowed Tseng’s zahara oil shampoo, too, but the aftershave drowned out everything else.
“Tseng won’t know if you don’t tell him.”
“Oh, he’ll know,” said Rosalind ghoulishly. “He can probably smell it from the Boardroom right now.”
“You’re supposed to use a splash, man, not half the bottle,” said Mozo.
A fresh wave of self-doubt washed over Reno. Maybe he should have asked Mozo’s advice sooner. Their resident ex-private eye was an ugly brute - broken nose, heavy law, beetle brows, bottle-brush hair - but when it came to women, nobody could deny that Mozo was The Man. Women loved him and he made it look effortless. What was the word? Suave . Yeah, Mozo was suave. You’d never catch him sitting on a bench in the sunshine with a beautiful intelligent young woman and looking like a complete and utter moron because he couldn’t think of anything to say to her that wouldn’t sound totally retarded.
“Does it really smell that bad?” he asked anxiously, beginning to pull on his socks.
“If we struck a match you’d probably ignite,” said Rosalind.
Mozo gave his shoulder a pat. “It’ll wash off. Most of it.”
“Ah, fuck it,” Reno sighed. His big toe was poking through a hole in the sock. “Look at that. Fuck. Fuck. They were new last week. Why does this keep happening?”
He glanced over at Cissnei, who was sitting quietly at the corner desk (the best desk), chewing the end of her pencil. Normally she was a reliable ally, despite her fondness for brutal home truths. Right now, though, she seemed blind to his sufferings, absorbed in her paperwork.
He turned to Rude. “Lend me yours, partner.”
Rude obligingly toed off his shoes and began to roll down his regulation blue wool socks.
“Why not just go without?” said Rosalind. “Like you usually do.”
“I don’t want her to think I’m a slob.”
“But you are a slob.”
“I’m making an effort, okay?”
“She must be special,” said Mozo.
“I just - don’t want her to be disappointed.”
“Clean underpants?” said Rude.
“For fuck’s sake - “ Of course his underpants were clean. What was wrong with these people?
“Because you never know,” said Rosalind, “you might get run over by a van on the way there. You wouldn’t want the casualty nurses seeing you in your old tonberry boxers.”
“I don’t even have tonberry boxers - “
“Look, he’s nervous,” said Mozo. “This is new.”
“Trembling hands,” said Rosalind.
“Sweating palms,” said Rude.
“Could you all maybe just shut the fuck up?”
“She is special,” said Mozo. “Who is she, Reno?”
Knox, the tall Gongagan, chose that moment to stroll in from the materia room. “Who is who?” he asked.
“Reno’s hot date,” said Rosalind.
“Reno has a hot date?” Knox came a little further in, then stopped dead, sniffing. “Is that Tseng’s aftershave? Fucking hell, Reno, did you pinch Tseng’s aftershave? He’ll fucking kill you. Do you know how much that stuff costs?”
“I sure do. Ten gil at the Drug-o-mart. He buys it in bulk. Who can lend me a tie?”
Rosalind’s eyes boggled. “Did you say a tie? ”
“Who is this chick?” said Knox.
“Caroline Babbington,” said Rude, tugging his loosened tie over his head.
“Babbington as in the Babbingtons? The art guy on TV?”
“That’s the one.”
Knox whistled. “Impressive.”
“Nice work, rookie,” said Mozo. “Hobnobbing with the bluebloods.”
“Knobbing, anyway,” Knox laughed. Mozo fist-bumped him, and even Rude chuckled, the traitor.
Reno felt his face grow hot. Whatever his hopes for this evening might be, he didn’t want them talking about her like that. She was better than that - and it wasn’t because she was old money or even because she had a degree and wrote poetry and understood weird art. She was a good person. And she liked him.
Rosalind , who disapproved of smuttiness on principle, gave the men a quelling look. “So,” she said, “Where are you taking her? Not one of your usual dives, I hope.”
She'd asked to go to his favourite restaurant, but his favourite restaurant was Ho-Chu’s Hungry Hungry Curry House down in Wall Market, behind the Honey Bee Inn, and there was no way he could take her there. He’d never even considered it. For one thing, he was already bending the rules just by taking her out to dinner, the daughter of one of the Old Man’s friends. If he took her to Wall Market, and the Chief found out (and the Chief always found out), he’d be skinned alive.
And for another thing, even if the Chief didn’t find out, the problem with the Hungry Hungry was that all the regulars knew him. The waitresses especially knew him. Old Ho-Chu could tell some stories about Reno of the Turks - and would, given half a chance. Reno didn’t want Caroline to hear Ho-Chu’s stories. Not yet, anyway; not before she’d had a chance to really get to know his good side.
“He’s taking her to the Constellation,” said Rude.
Red velvet drapes and diamond chandeliers.
Mozo threw up his hands. “Whoa! Big spender!”
A grand piano, vases filled with roses and lillies.
“I hope she’s worth it,” said Rosalind.
He’d let her choose the wine. No, he’d order champagne. Champagne was supposed to be chilled. Maybe he should have ordered it ahead of time -
“You ever eaten there before?” asked Knox.
Reno had been inside the Constellation a few times, but never to eat, only on duty. A couple of times with the Chief, and once with the Old Man.
“Wait,” said Mozo. “Is that what you’re wearing? Your work suit?”
“They have a dress code. This is my only suit.”
“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Mozo pushed back his chair and stood up, taking a firm grip of Reno’s elbow. “We can’t have you letting the side down. Come with me. I’ve got a dinner jacket in my locker.”
Rosalind laughed. “Of course you do.”
“It won’t fit,” Reno protested. Mozo was broad shouldered and barrel chested. Reno - well, as Rosalind had once expressed it, you could slide him under a door and call him a post-it note.
“We can pin the waistband and I’ll put a tuck in the seams,” she said excitedly. “It’ll only take a minute.”
By twenty to seven Reno was finally dressed to his colleague’s exacting standards. Mozo’s boxy dinner jacket with its satin lapels sat a little awkwardly on his narrower frame - Rosalind hadn’t been able to do anything about the shoulders - but the excess aftershave had been washed away, his socks matched, and his tie was neatly knotted. His hair had been slicked down, his goggles put away in a desk drawer.
“Though it pains me to say it, you do clean up quite nicely,” said Rosalind.
“Yeah, you really look the part now,” Knox agreed.
Reno checked out his reflection in the glass of the framed Shinra logo. Knox was right - in this suit and tie he did almost look as if he belonged in a high-class joint like the Constellation. Almost. For the first time in life, Reno felt a twinge of regret over his tattoos. Still, it wasn’t like Caroline hadn’t seen them already.
Cissnei chose this moment to break her silence. “Playing the part. You said it.” Her voice was scornful.
“Come on, Ciss,” said Rude. “Be nice.”
“Just look at yourself, Red,” she exclaimed. “Do you even recognise yourself? Borrowed socks, borrowed tie, borrowed jacket - If she wanted a stiff in a skeeskee suit she didn’t have to go all the way to the slums to find one.”
Mozo’s heavy brows furrowed. He moved to put himself between them, as if to shield Reno from her words. “That’s uncalled for,” he told her.
“No. It is called for. He’s deluding himself and you’re encouraging him. What exactly d’you think you’re doing, Reno? You think you can fit into her world? D’you really think that’s what she’s after? She doesn’t want you to take her to the Constellation, you dumb fuckwit. She goes there all the time. It’s boring . She wants you to take her slumming, so she can come back and make all her posh friends jealous about her dangerous adventure on the dirty side of a town with this tame Turk she’s got running on a leash. She’ll probably fuck you just so she can tell them after. What a great story that’ll make, huh? She’s using you, Reno. Because she’s bored. Bored and rich and bored and you’re just a - a - cheap thrill.”
Out of breath, Cissnei fell silent, chest heaving as if she’d run up a dozen flights of stairs.
“She’s not like that,” said Reno. His own chest was hurting. After Rude, Cissnei was his closest friend.
“Oh, just go. If you’re so set on making a fool of yourself, go and get it over with.”
“You’re wrong about her.”
“Yeah, well - I hope I am. For your sake.”
“It’s ten to seven,” said Rude. “You gotta hurry, man, or you’ll be late.”
Panic seized him. What if he didn’t get there on time? What if she didn’t wait? He ran for the elevator, but Cissnei’s words stayed with him.
At half past one in the morning he was back, drunk enough to make walking a straight line impossible, but not too drunk to string a sentence together. Cissnei was manning the duty desk. He staggered past her, down the corridor to the lounge; she got to her feet and followed. With a loud groan he collapsed on the closest sofa. She sat on the sofa opposite, hands folded in her lap.
“Did you lose Rude’s tie?” she asked.
“Nah.” He pulled it out of his pocket and waved it in the air.
“So? How’d it go?”
“You were right, Ciss.”
“I’m sorry.”
“S’not your fault.”
“What happened?”
“She laughed when she saw me.”
“Bitch.”
“Ah, you can’t say that. She really thought I was joking. Like, pulling her leg.”
“After all the trouble you went to.”
“Guess where she wanted me to take her. The fuckin’ Honeybee.”
“Girl doesn’t know she’s born,” said Cissnei.
“I told her I couldn’t do that. The Chief’d kill me. Her old man’s our Old Man’s buddy. She tried to sweet-talk me into it. Like, ‘I’ll know I’ll be super safe with you’,” he trilled.
Cissnei’s giggle was balm to his sore heart. She was a good friend.
“You’re the best, Ciss. You know that?”
“Yeah, I know. Now go on. What happened next?”
“Well, when I wouldn’t do what she wanted she started to get a bit pissy. I said I’d take her anywhere on the plate but I couldn’t take her to the slums. Rules is rules. She said she was disappointed in me. She didn’t think a Turk would care about breaking rules. Then I guess we had a fight. Then she got in a taxi. Then I went and got drunk.”
“Did you go to Wall Market?”
“In this get-up? I’d have nutters picking fights me with every five minutes. Nah, I went to the Goblins and shot pool. I won a thousand gil, look - “ Reno dug deep into his pocket, pulled out a thick wad of notes and brandished them triumphantly.
“Lucky in money, unlucky in love,” Cissnei murmured.
Reno heave a gigantic yawn. “Dinner’s on me tomorrow. You, me, and Rude, huh, Ciss?”
“Let’s go to the Constellation. Fuck them all.”
“Anywhere you like, babe. I’m loaded.” Reno yawned again, eyelids fluttering.
“Oh, by the way,” said Cissnei. “The Chief noticed your absence. We told him you had a hot date but he didn’t think that was an acceptable excuse. He wants to see you in his office at eight sharp tomorrow - that is, today.”
“Ah, fuck,” said Reno drowsily.
“You better get some sleep. Close your eyes. I’ll fetch you a blanket.”
She was only gone a minute, but by the time she came back he was out cold, snoring loudly. She tucked the blanket round him so it wouldn’t fall off, then stood for a moment just looking at him - the stiff spikes of his gelled hair, his mouth soft in sleep, his creased cheeks - before stooping to brush a kiss on the top of his head.
“Sleep well, dear fuckwit,” she whispered in his ear.
As if he’d heard her, his lips twitched, and slowly curved up into a smile.