In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

around, slamming on their brakes, trying to squeeze past each other in
the narrow street. Still running, he stopped under some signs, the words
"Republic Alley" spanned the way in round letters and above it, an
obnoxious "Gibu 5" whatever that was, stuck out like a gas station sign.
Above that blared a sleazy sign of a top hat. They slid into the covered
alley of grimy glass block window walls and exposed steel struts that
crisscrossed up and over the glass roof. The center of the alleyway was
jammed full of awkwardly parked cars and three wheeled delivery
trucks, and smelled of motor oil and paper. A swarm of insectoidal dot
com types clutching cell phones and laptop cases were pooled like ants
in front of the entrance of the place with the blinking black and purple
top hat. They were all wearing those black framed glasses that make
even morons look smart. The place was probably a club or a bar, and
with all those pale dark shaded characters hanging out in front could've
been the entrance to "The Rabbithole" in "The Matrix." Towards the
end of the alley, through a jumble of haphazardly parked delivery
trucks, Alessandro spotted the blue and black letters of Cyber Ciné
emblazoned on one of the doors. He ran up to it and rang the bell, his
hair plastered to his forehead. A squat Asian man with a pushed in face,
greasy ponytail and the requisite goatee of the dot com world opened
the door and brusquely ushered them into a room crammed with
electronic gear.
Squinting up at Alessandro, he said in a cooler than thou
California drawl, "Oh, ri-ight, you wanted to see Ula, well, uh, you're
too late, she's gone, flew the coop, man. Yeah, so adios, amigos." He
started to push them back out.
Behind the hyper hip door Ng Van Hung made no pretense of
order. The tiny reception area and the rooms visible beyond the orange
plywood counter were a wonder of electronic chaos. Extension cords
crisscrossed the floor from sockets hidden behind towering piles of
CD's and tapes. Some chords were spliced and bound with black
electrical tape, others were just taped in bunches to the floor with
different Dayglo colored duct tapes. Even the walls had generations of
electrical wiring attached to them. Silicon Allée itself probably dated
from sometime between the world wars, but there were even
antiquated fabric covered wires peeking through the mesh of rubber,
vinyl and PVC coated arteries that crawled up the corners, along the
glass block wall, and across the ceiling.
"Ya know where she mighta gone?" Penny figured she had a
better chance at getting something out of him than Alessandro, who
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