Virtual Light (Bridge, #1)

by William Gibson

But now the street door banged open behind her, a pair of muddy size-eleven neon sneakers came pounding down the stairs, and Samuel Saladin DuPree, his cheeks spackled with crusty gray commas of road-dirt, stood grinning at her, hugely. “Happy about something, Sammy Sal?” Allied’s best-looking thing on two wheels, no contest whatever, DuPree was six-two of ebon electricity poured over a frame of such elegance and strength that Chevette imagined his bones as polished metal, triple-chromed, a quicksilver armature. Like those old movies with that big guy, the one who went into politics, after he’d get the meat ripped off him. Thinking about Sammy Sal’s bones made most girls want him to jump theirs, but not Chevette. He was gay, they were friends, and Chevette wasn’t too sure how she felt about all that anyway, lately. “Fact is,” Sammy Sal said, smearing dirt from his cheek with the back of one long hand, “I’ve decided to kill Ringer. And the truth, y’know, it makes you free …” “Ho,” Chevette said, “you musta pulled a tag over 456 today.” “I did, dear, do that thing. All the way up, in a dirty freight elevator. A slow dirty freight elevator. And why?” “ ’Cause Ringer’s ’graved his tag in their brass, Sal, and their rosewood, too?” “Eggs-ackly, Chevette, honey.” Sammy Sal undid the blue and white bandanna around his neck and wiped his face with it. “Therefore, his ass dies screaming.”