In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

different knobs and sliders.
"I am, can I take a siesta here?"
"Sure, but like you said it makes for lousy sleeping."
"Yes, long live Italian design." He pulled out the bed and
stretched out on it.
"Mask?"
"Grazie."
When she turned around, he was asleep again under the
Concorde sleep mask, his ear and sinewy neck a graceful abstraction.
Blue veins strained under the yellow skin of the hand that rested on his
chest. Snaking out from the black mass of hair at his temple was a
strand of white.
Numb, she turned off the lights and sat down with the Angele
Dei, on the vocoder program of her trusty Control Freak Midi Control
Center. Dissatisfied with that, (of course he was right, analog man's
voice needed to breathe) she fed it to the formant synth, smeared the
gel and slapped on the trodes, letting her brain waves do the work.
Later, when the city was asleep, he woke her with a kiss,
removed her headphones and the gooey connectors.
"Come sleep with me."
Around dawn he snuck back upstairs. The room still smelled of
five spice and frying oil, so she opened the door to get some labyrinth
air into the room. Not even a ghost of patchouli haunted the hall. She
got in her seat, applied her gear, fired up the machines, and started
where she had left off the night before.
"Hi."
She turned around. Ula's odor and silhouette were in the
doorway.
"Hi, I'm busy, okay?"
Ula sat down in the middle of the couch with her arms crossed.
Behind the patchouli lurked another fragrance.
"What can I do for you, Ula?" Penny asked, backing up her
work to disk, then off site, just to be sure.
"Where is he?"
"Dunno, you lookin' for him?" She pulled off the phones, the
trodes, and wiped her brow with her sleeve.
"Yes. As a matter of fact, I believe this is his."
Ula pulled an old rag from her bag. Even in the semi obscurity,
Penny knew it was the shirt, retrieved from the public trash can.
"What the hell is that?" Penny said without getting up.
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