Asimov's SF, January 2012 by Dell Magazine Authors

Author:Dell Magazine Authors
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Dell Magazines

Short Story: FRIENDLESSNESS by Eric Del Carlo

Eric Del Carlo's fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Futurismic, and many other venues. He has written novels in collaboration with the late Robert Asprin, including the pre-Katrina New Orleans mystery NO Quarter (DarkStar Books), and on his own, such as Nightbodies (Ravenous Romance). Readers can find out more about his work at www.ericdel carlo.com. Eric tells us that “Friendlessness,” a story of social isolation that is his Asimov's debut, is inspired by that rusty old saw: “Write what you know."

Daric Dandry spent the final forty-two minutes of his fifty-five-month Friendship with Maddox Colburn pleading, with rapidly dwindling dignity, for Maddox not to leave him. Daric knew his last payment was running out. He couldn't afford Maddox anymore. But even so, he begged and sniveled at their familiar table at the retro coffeehouse.

Maddox, of course, professionally maintained their Friendship for every one of those forty-two minutes, and so tried to comfort Daric. He flashed his dazzling, assured smile. He encouraged Daric toward nostalgic reminiscences—that wild trip to Reno they'd taken on impulse, the all-night movie and pizza marathons with gales of laughter interspersed by sober grace-note profundities. Those many poignant instances of intense camaraderie had been unsullied by bickering, rivalry, oneupmanship—in fact, untouched by disagreement of any kind. Remembering these interludes just wrung Daric's heart all the worse, knowing they were gone, never to be repeated.

He made a spectacle of himself, and knew it, and couldn't help it. He had never been suave or socially adept. It was why he had engaged such an aggressively cheerful and confident Friend.

"What am I going to do without you?” was what he was saying, for maybe the hundredth time since they had sat down, when time was up. Daric looked longingly with swollen eyes across the authentically graffiti-scarred wooden tabletop, catching a final glint of Maddox's consoling smile and gleefully shrewd eyes. Then the broadcast inhibitors kicked in, and that face fuzzed into static, and Maddox turned away, and Daric was simply unable to stare at him any longer, even if he had wanted to.

He sat where he was for another minute, breathing in the burnt root smell of the “coffee,” feeling a weightlessness—an absence—in his chest. He looked around and saw other heads turn away, embarrassed for him.

Palming his cheeks, Daric Dandry belatedly remembered to engage a Privacy. His socweb ‘plant emitted a nullifying field. He was, therefore, literally faceless as he slunk away from the table and his erstwhile Friend.

* * * *

He had juggled his finances to keep Maddox as long as he could. Well past the time, really, when he could even conceivably afford him. Three nights ago, at one-thirty a.m., a tow truck had slammed across the lip of Daric's driveway and scooped up his car. Utilities were final-noticing him. Next, of course, would be the house.

And yet he had done everything to retain Maddox Colburn just a little while longer, a little . . .

* * * *

They couldn't fire him from his job for his low socweb score, nor for being Friendless.

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