In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

DISTURBING DISCOVERIES
A greenish glow oozed from under Max's door. He opened it
just as the elevator rattled to a halt. Max's narrow eyes bore into hers.
"Maia à ses règles et elle me casse les pieds! Bref. Entrez, make yourself
at home."
Inside, the open live-work space was painted matte black,
including the ceiling, and all the electronic paraphernalia was lost in the
blackness, except for the lights. His bicycle was mounted to the wall
next to the door like a sculpture, and was probably worth as much. His
flat panel displays glowed with moving video. He rolled from one
machine to the other, propelled by his long powerful legs. The chair
was a vehicle, not a repository. He moved around, pressing the enter
key on one, spinning volume wheels on another, a giant black spider
checking on its glittery web.
Against one wall was a black leather futon riveted to a tubular
aluminum frame that made it look like a piece of sports equipment.
Surrounding the coffee table were more of those mystery fur ottomans
like the ones at Maia's place. Across from the sofa a ghostly white
African mask loomed, guarded by an assortment of fully functional
spears. Below it were some drums and several low carved stools. Above
the stereo and the shelves of CD's hung a large, framed psychedelic
poster of Jimmy Hendrix. The place smelled of tires, old socks and
cannabis resin.
Penny pulled her laptop and peripherals, wires, and converters
out of the bag, and set up on the yellow Lucite table next to Max's
laptop as was probably intended. This was, after all, what she had come
across the Atlantic for.
Max had organized the loot by medium with a number sticker
when the title was undecipherable. Audio CD's in one stack, CD ROMs
in another, floppies, Data CD's together, and a low stack of DVD's on
top of two video cassettes. The material running on his machines now
were copies, he'd first run the originals through a crappy system to test
for bugs and booby traps. Penny usually did this too, but her crappy
system was a big old CRT desktop.
"Hey, Max, have you checked in this stuff over here? I only
want to run the clean ones."
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