I woke the next morning with less headache than I deserved. The nose hurt worse. I was alone in the bedroom. I heard distant kitchen sounds, smelled something burnt. I found I was irritated. I had not cleared Karen for solo flight yet. That made me laugh sourly at myself, and any kind of laugh will do to get a morning started.
I found her sitting on a pillow in the dining area adjacent to the kitchen. She did not acknowledge my arrival. She was staring expressionlessly at what she had intended to be an omelet. It was the toast that had burned, and these days it's hard to burn toast.
Breakfast with a stranger is always awkward. You come upon each other before you have had time to buckle on your armor. And so the question becomes, how urgent is the need? Even if you made love the night before it doesn't necessarily help: you can get to know someone better than you wanted to over first breakfast. Neither of us was capable of making love, but I knew Karen fairly well, in terms of the pattern of her history. But the Karen I knew had died, had committed suicide. The new Karen I had created by aborting her suicide I did not know at all.
I found that I wanted to know her. As a man who has accidentally caused an avalanche cannot prevent himself from watching to learn the full extent of the damage, I needed to know, now that it was too late, what I had done by my meddling. I wanted to like her. That would make me a hero.
I took the omelet and toast from in front of her. She started indignantly, a good sign. I dumped the stuff down the oubliette and took new ingredients from the fridge. On a hunch I went back and took a sip of her coffee. I pitched that too and got the beans from the freezer.
I mixed and sliced and grated, assembled and seasoned the resultants, and arrayed them in the cooker. I studied the controls. The combination she had programmed was straight out of the owner's manual, with one plain error. I had figured out the quirks of this particular model—extensive ones—the first day I had been in the apartment. She was a rotten cook. I set it correctly and initiated.
"I think I'm going to move out of this dump," she said.
I nodded. I did not ask where she would go. I prepared cups to receive coffee. Her sugar had been stored in a cabinet, so she didn't take any. Expensive cream was on her shopping list, so she used it.
"Hey, that smells good."
I dealt out onion-and-cheddar omelets, bacon, crisped English muffins. I put two straws in a quart of orange juice and poured Javanese coffee. The shopping-list program had been her own. She was in the habit of ruining some very expensive food. Well, she earned her money. She started to dig in, pulled up short. "You think I'm ready for a meal this size?"
I had reoriented her stomach with tea, soup, and other soft foods. "If it looks good to you, you should certainly have at least a little of everything."
She fell to at once, but ate with some caution. She did not talk while she ate, which suited me. We paid respectful attention to the food. She made occasional small sounds of enjoyment. I found this remarkable. It did not seem that any of the jelly of her hypothalamus had been boiled away. Her pleasure center was functional. Remarkable.
While the food occupied her attention, I studied her. Her hair had been washed, dried, and brushed. She looked squeaky clean. She wore a glossy fluff-collar robe that covered her to the chin. She wore no makeup, no jewelry. Her hands were reasonably steady, her color okay.
After a while she caught me studying her. Without hesitation she began to study me right back. For a few seconds it got like two kids trying to outstare each other, but there is a limit to the amount of time two chewing people can do that and keep a straight face. We shared a small explosion of laughter, then smiled at each other for a few seconds more and went back to our food.
I had given her a portion a third the size of my own. Though she chewed much more slowly, she finished first. At once she reached for a nearby package of Peter Jackson. I did not react, kept eating. She looked down, saw her fingers taking a cigarette from the pack, and put it back. Though I still gave no sign of noticing, I chalked up a point for her.
When I was done, she took the cigarette back out and touched it alight on the side of the pack. "Gasper?" she asked, offering me the pack.
"Don't use it, thanks."
"Grass in the freezer."
"That either."
She was surprised. "You don't get high?"
" 'Reality is for those who don't have the strength of character to handle drugs,' " I quoted. "That's me."
She pursed her lips, nodded. "Uh-huh." She took a deep drag. "You're a good cook, Joe. Thanks. Very much."
"Yeah."
She held her cigarettes down between middle and ring fingers. It seems like one of those meaningless affectations, until you notice that with each puff, half of the face is hidden. The inverse is to hold the cigarette like a home-rolled joint between thumb and forefinger tips, minimizing facial coverage. Now that I saw her with her hair brushed, on a head held upright, I saw that the hair too was styled for maximum concealment, in long bangs and forward-sweeping wings. If she'd been a man she'd have worn a full beard.
"Joe what? I forget."
Embarrassing. So did I. "Nixon," I tried at random.
"Temple something. Templar . . . Templeton."
"Well, I knew it was a rat's name," I said. She didn't laugh, of course. She had been a small child when the pack brought Nixon down, and nobody reads Charlotte's Web anymore these days. But she could tell that I thought I'd said something witty, so she smiled. She had manners.
"You don't have to tell me the real one," she lied. "It doesn't matter."
Do you ever learn things from your mouth? I have a hundred glib evasions and outright lies on file for the question "What is your name?" To my astonishment I heard myself tell her the truth.
"There is no real one."
"Eh?"
"I don't exist."
She could tell I had stopped kidding, even if she still didn't understand. "You lost me. I'm dumb in the morning."
Nothing to do for it now. "I'm not on file. I'm not on tape. The government and I don't recognize each other. I'm a non-person. I have no Social Security number."
"No shit?" Though she had hidden it well, she had been just a trifle annoyed, thinking I was withholding my real name out of mistrust. Now she was realizing how much I did trust her. So was I. "God, that's fantastic. How did you do it?" She caught herself. "I'm sorry. That's not a proper question."
I was beginning to like her. "It's okay, Karen. I have told two people what I just told you. Both of them asked me how I pulled it off, I told them both the truth, and neither one believed me. Not at first, or ever. So I don't mind telling you."
"Okay. How'd you do it?"
"I haven't the faintest idea."
She thought about it. "Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of hard to get a handle on, all right." She puffed on her cigarette. "I take it there's about a two-hour rap that explains it."
"Yeah. It gets less probable with each sentence."
She nodded. "And you don't especially feel like going into it right now?"
Definitely beginning to like her. "Another time. Why'd you stop dealing coke?"
Her eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. "Tossed the place, eh? I liked it too much. The toot and the loot. Contentment is not in my pattern, if you dig. I'm a Pisces. When the situation's been comfortable too long, I find some way to kick it apart. There are so many. In this case I got involved with my supplier, and when the relationship went sour, so did the career. Of course I couldn't have predicted this without going to the trouble of thinking about it for a second. I believe you, by the way."
"I know."
There went her no-hitter. I hate people who do that, look you in the eye and tell you matter-of-factly how screwed up they are. I have this conviction that screwed-up people are supposed to be embarrassed about it. It's as common a vice as smoking these days, and at least as much nuisance to those around you. It lowers the general morale.
On the other hand, I make a habit of bitterly criticizing every aspect of reality except myself—which is also bad for general morale.
"After a while I found myself owing considerable money to some very sandy people," she said. "Well, I'd always told myself I could hook if times got bad. I thought it out and made my move, and it didn't work out very well. I mean, I got paid all three times, but I could tell they weren't real happy. They weren't repeat business, they weren't word-of-mouth. A girl could starve that way.
"The fourth one set me straight. We talked afterwards, and he was nice. I told him just a little about me, just that my first time was a rape. 'That's it,' he says. 'You're not a bad little actress, but Señorita, no way will you ever convince anyone that you like it.' About a day and a half later it hit me that that wasn't a drawback, it was an advantage, and I changed my PR and tripled my price. I paid off my people in a week. So that's"—she grinned bitterly—"that's what a bimbo like me is doing in a class joint like this." She took a last puff, pinched the filter harder than necessary, and tossed the butt, before it had quite finished going out, in the general direction of the oubliette.
I sat perfectly still. I had scrubbed that floor on my hands and knees—but not by invitation. You don't own the place, I reminded myself, you're just robbing it.
But if I had not been irritated (I'm embarrassed to admit), if the effort of not wrinkling up my nose hadn't made it throb, I might have been humane enough to save the obvious next question for another day or two.
"What will you do now?"
She visibly flinched, and dropped her gaze. Of course I felt like a jerk at once. Of course that irritated me more. She rose suddenly from the table. I was between her and one exit, so she took the other. Into the living room.
When she stiffened, I opened my mouth, slapped myself in the forehead, and raced after her. I was days too late. There in the same position between the lamp and the plastic table, from which I had never thought to move it, was the God damned armchair. Framed and lit like a tableau at Madame Tussaud's, lacking only a waxy body . . .
A moist noise in her throat decided not to be a word after all. She looked around, hesitated. She was not going to sit those bedsores on the chair that had put them there. But if she sat on the couch she had to look at the chair. I stepped past her, turned the chair so that it faced away from the window, and tilted it back as far as it would go, bringing up the footrest. With some throw pillows from the couch, the result was a cushioned flat surface about thirty degrees from horizontal, the high end facing the window.
"Come here," I said in what I hoped was a kindly but firm tone. She did not move. "I'll clear the window. Lie on your belly and watch the sun try to brighten the Hudson Sewer." She still didn't move. "What do you do when you fall off a horse, Karen?"
She nodded, crossed the room, and stretched out without further hesitation. I dialed the window transparent and fetched her cigarettes. She lit one gratefully. "Joe?"
"Yah."
"Would you rub some more of that anesthetic gunk on my ass? And could I have some rum?"
"Just what your system needs. How about some aspirin? If I can find any in that haystack."
She sighed. "Okay."
I fetched cream, aspirin, and water from the bathroom and pulled a footstool near her chair. She lay with her face toward me while I applied the cream, and though she sucked air a few times she didn't cry out. One excellent test of trust is the ability to receive a butt-massage unselfconsciously, and she paid me that compliment. As I worked up to the sores on her back I looked around the room. I had given her story CDs a B-minus. A boxed set of historical romances had cost her points. On the other hand, she kept a handful of real books, good ones. Maybe the set was a gift. She had a fairly good multipurpose music collection, deficient in classical but otherwise sound; there were items I had already stolen. Her video library was strictly tape-of-the-month club, but with the incongruous addition of some classic early Emsh. An overall rating was hard to decide. A C-plus would have been strictly fair, but a B-minus could have been justified to the . . .
Hiatus.
I was sitting on the couch with half a drink in my hand, and she was looking out the window, smoking a cigarette I didn't remember her lighting. The sun was high over the river now. It looked hot out there. I saw a gull make a dead-stick landing on a distant roof and lay where it hit. What boils up off the Hudson at mid-day would take pages just to catalog. How come pigeons have adapted to pollution and gulls haven't?
After a while she pinched out a cigarette, dropped it on the rug. She got up and put the robe back on. She walked over to the window and stood staring out over lower buildings, watching faraway boats trying to slice the water. "One thing for sure, I've gotta get out of this pit. I always wanted to live in a place like this. My old man's life savings couldn't have bought a month in a place like this. The week before last I found myself sitting in front of the video with the stereo playing and a story on the reader on my lap. I looked around and on the table next to me was a burning cigarette, a burning joint of Supremo, a couple lines of coke, and a drink with the ice all melted. Four kinds of munchies. It came to me that I was bored. I couldn't think of one thing on earth to do that I would enjoy." She turned around, leaned back against the window, and surveyed the room. "It's kind of like that now. I need to change the channel. This just isn't the kind of place where you figure out what to do with the rest of your life."
She was as close as she could come to asking. I was reluctant. "What about, uh, Jo Ann?"
"She lives with two other girls, it's like Times Square."
So think about it. Crazy little hooker with a socket in her scalp, miserable cook, slob, sexual cripple, two kinds of smoker.
Tough as a Harlem rat, in both mind and body. With pretty good manners. She had respected my privacy considerably more than I had respected hers. And she knew what you do when you fall off a horse. In many ways she was the ideal roommate for someone like me, at least for a while. Maybe my own life had gotten a little boring.
"You can crash at my place," I said. "I'll put up with tobacco, but no grass. I do all the cooking, you do all the dishes, I do all the rest of the housework. You can bring five percent of the contents of that medicine cabinet."
Relief was plain on her face. "I'm grateful, Joe. Really grateful. You're sure it's okay," she added, not quite making it a question. I answered it anyway.
"Sure."
"I won't be putting you out any?"
"Karen, why don't you just figure out what questions you want to ask me and ask me? I don't promise to answer any, but we'll save time that way."
She smiled. "Fair enough. You live alone?"
"Yeah."
"Involved with anybody?"
"No."
"Born New Yorker?"
"I don't think so."
She blinked, but let it pass. "Got any family?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"Next question."
"How come you burgle?"
"It's the only job my background has prepared me for. I'm trying to furnish a flat."
"How'd your nose get all broke up like that?"
"I don't know how I got the first break. You broke it the second time, when I unplugged you."
"Jesus wept and died. I'm sorry, Joe, I—how can you not know how you broke your nose?"
"I wish to God I knew."
"Jesus."
That ended the Twenty Questions for a while. She paced and thought about what I had said, absently lighting another smoke. I could see her working it out. Most of what I had told her made no sense. Lord, who knows better than I? But I had not been smiling when I had said it, so she believed me implicitly. Therefore there had to be a startling but logical explanation, and I must have reasons of my own for not wanting to go into it.
I wished that were so.
It was a little annoying, how implicitly she trusted me. Perhaps it is vaguely unflattering to be considered harmless. Or a little too flattering: more responsibility than I liked.
I was just as annoyed at how implicitly I seemed to trust her. I depend on my instincts—I have to in my position—but sometime soon I was going to have to sit down with them and ask them exactly why they had had me offer my two most dangerous secrets to her. I must stand to gain something from the ultimate risk—but what?
"Look," she said, still pacing, "maybe there's one thing more we should—" She saw my face and stopped. "No," she said thoughtfully. "No, I guess I don't have to discuss that with you. Okay, look. Can you wait another day or two? I know I promised to help you with these speakers, but honest to God I don't think I could make it to the corner right now. If I don't lay down soon, I'll—"
"Go to bed, Karen. I'll get the dishes. Maybe the day after tomorrow, maybe the day after that. My time is my own." Something made that last sentence taste bitter in my mouth.
"Thanks, Joe. Thanks a lot."
"Take two more aspirin."
After she left I got up from the couch and selected one of her CDs. I intended to steal it, or at least dub it onto my home system, but my subconscious felt like hearing it now: Waits's classic Blue Valentine. I adjusted the headphones and sat back.
His courageous version of "Somewhere" made me smile sadly as always. For all us losers and thieves and junkies and nighthawks there is a place, somewhere. But: my place? The next track also seemed apropos, "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis," but only in that Karen could have written such a letter. It did not explain why I had answered as I had. I drifted through the next track, and then my ears woke me up again in the middle of the hypnotic blues "$29," and I had it. Waits's whiskey-and-Old-Gold rasp filled my head.
When the streets get hungry baby
You can almost hear 'em growl
Someone's settin' a place for you
When the dogs begin to howl
When the streets are dead
They creep up and take whatever's left on the bone
Suckers always make mistakes
Far away from home
Chicken in the pot
Whoever gets there first
Gonna get himself $29 and an alligator purse . . .
I had already taken all her cash myself, and planned to take other items. Still, there were other thieves on the street who would consider me shockingly wasteful. If I left her here to work out her destiny, I was morally certain that she would drift back to hooking within a week or two. The money is addictive. But she had been working as an independent for a surprisingly long time. Such luck could not last; luck had never lasted for Karen. One day soon she would come to the attention of an entrepreneur. When his training period was over, even a woman as tough and strong as she would be docile, obedient, and tremblingly eager to please. In this largest city in the land of the free, it happens every day.
I could not leave her to the slavers. I hated and feared slavery too much myself.
But it was more than that.
I had meddled. I had forcibly prevented her from ending her life when and as she wished. Stated that way, my action was morally repugnant to me; as a kid I had canvassed and petitioned vigorously for Right to Death, and cheered when it became law of the land. I had no defense now, no excuse: I had acted out of "instinctive" revulsion, which is never an excuse for overriding morality. She had been fleeing from a life that was misery occasionally leavened with horror. If I simply returned her to that life and washed my hands, I was a monster.
I hoped it would not take her too long to find some new kind of direction, some kind of plan or purpose. Because I was stuck with her until she did.
I found myself cursing her for having been so inconsiderate as to pick a slow, pleasant death, and laughed out loud at myself. And went to do the breakfast dishes.
It was actually three days before I clouted a delivery van over on Broadway, and drove us and the plunder I had selected to my place. What I didn't want she left behind. The rent would keep paying itself, the lights would go on and off in random patterns simulating inhabitance, the rugs would clean themselves once a week, from now until her lease ran out in another two years or her credit balance dropped too low. That was the rent she paid to stay at my place: the maintenance of a legal address elsewhere on all the proper databases.
I had told her almost nothing about the place. So few people ever see it that it's fun to savor the reactions.
She was neither impressed nor dismayed when we pulled up behind the warehouse. It was a moonless night and there were no lights, but a warehouse does not look impressive even in the daytime. The daytime appearance of mine is, in fact, particularly weatherbeaten and long-abandoned, even for the neighborhood.
It was probably just about what she had expected, and I would guess she had lived in worse circumstances before. "Do we unload now?" was all she said.
"Yeah."
We took the swag in the back way and by candlelight we stacked it, for the moment, where burglar's plunder should be stored, in a corner where casual random search of the warehouse would probably not find it.
An office module formed a block in the center of the warehouse. I led her toward it through the black maze by memory, having left the candles where they would be useful. Most people being led through total darkness are a pain in the ass, but she knew how to move in the dark. As we rounded a stack of packing crates something subliminal warned me. I tightened my grip on her hand and flung her bodily into an aisle between two rows of boxes. That changed the position of my head, so the sap came down on the point of my extended shoulder. My right arm died. There is no good way to get a gun from under your left armpit with your left hand. For me to have tried it would have presented my one remaining elbow to that sap. I back-pedaled, spun, and bugged out.
He followed. Not many could have followed me through my own turf in the dark, but he was one of the few. I tried angling toward the crowbar pile, but he guessed it and moved to cut me off. He pressed me too closely to give me a chance to spill the gun and pick it up. I took us to a cleared space large enough to allow room to work and spun at bay, feeling pessimistic. He pulled up just out of reach and puffed and chuckled. I kicked one shoe up into the air, sent the other in another direction, hoping to misdirect him. He flinched as the first one hit, but by the second he had figured it out. He chuckled some more.
"I couldn't get in your place . . . this time either, Sammy," he puffed. "But you'll take me in . . . won't you? You'll beg for the chance."
His sap arm would be behind him; no matter where or how I hit him, he'd have a terrific shot at my head. I should have saved one shoe to flip into his face. Dumb.
"Hey, thanks for throwing in the fem, Sam. She'll never find her way outta here in the dark. You saved me another twenty bucks."
I had to make my move soon, he was getting his breath back. Go for the gun? Try to yank my belt free left-handed? Charge and hope for a break? They all sucked.
"Hey, no hard feelings, huh?"
A shinbone was the least risk; I got ready to try a kick, rehearsing what I would do after he broke my leg. "No hard feelings, Wishbone."
If it is possible to grunt above high C, that is what he did then. He came at me in a shambling walk, hissing, and when he cannoned into me he embraced me. I was too startled to react. The hiss ended in the word "Shit," and then he slid slowly down me.
God damn it, was my whole house full of armed hostiles? I stepped out of his arms, bent and searched hastily for the sap without success.
"Twenty bucks, huh?" Karen said. "Mother fucker."
I got slowly to my feet. "What the hell did you do to him?"
"Put a fist through his goddam kidney. Son of a bitch. Help me find his crotch, I want to kick it."
"Take it easy. Your honor is satisfied."
"But—"
"He sapped me. It's my turn."
"Oh. Are you okay?"
"I'll be okay for another couple of minutes, until this arm comes back to life. Then I will be very disconsolate for a long time."
"How can I help?"
"Help me drag him over here."
We arranged him on a low flatbed handtruck. He was making mewing sounds. He wanted to scream, but he would give up the idea long before he had the breath. I was glad she had hit me only a glancing blow that first day; full strength and she might have killed me, and wouldn't that have made interesting copy for the Daily News?
"Who the hell is he?"
"Wishbone Jones. Small-time mugger and a little of this and that. Skinny as a stork and stronger than I am. Lives down by the wharf. Not bright, but a good fighter. We've tangled." By now I had my gun out. I gave it to her and sat down on the handtruck beside him. My arm and shoulder were just beginning to catch fire, but that was mitigated to some extent by the exhilaration of survival. "Hello, Wishbone."
"H—hi, Sam." He was getting back under control.
"Bad day at the track, Wishbone?"
"Nuh . . . no."
"Then it's got to be basketball or poker."
"Neither one. My ex from Columbus caught up with me."
"Yep. That's karma for you. Well, I believe we discussed this the last time?"
He grimaced. "Aw, shit, Sam. If I go to the hospital they give me the cure."
"We did discuss it."
He shook his head. "Ah, shit. Yeah." He gave me his arm.
"No hard feelings." He closed his eyes and I broke the arm across the edge of the handtruck as quickly and cleanly as I could. He screamed and fainted.
Karen had not uttered a sound when I had suddenly flung her into the darkness, but she yelped now.
I slumped, exhausted and unutterably depressed. I wanted to vomit, and I wanted to scream from the pain in my shoulder, and I wanted to cry. I stood up. "Let's go inside."
It took one metal key and a five-number combination to get us into the office module. The windows are not boarded, they're plated. The door is too heavy to batter and the roof is reinforced. Still, it is no more secure than the average New York apartment. A cleverer cracksman than Wishbone could have opened it in fifteen minutes with the right tools. There is no such thing as an unbeatable lock, just incompetent craftsmen.
"What about him?" she asked as we stepped in.
"Wishbone will find his way home. To the hospital if he's smart. But Wishbone's not smart. Damn his eyes." I sealed the door and turned on the light.
She was looking at me expressionlessly. She came suddenly close, took my face in her hands, and studied it. Nearly at once she nodded. "You hated it."
"God damn you, did you think I enjoyed it?" I yelled, flinging her hands away.
She shook her head. "No. Not for a second." She backed away one step. "But for just a minute there I was scared to death that you didn't give a damn, one way or the other."
I dropped my eyes. "Fair enough," I turned around and walked a few steps. "Simulating total ruthlessness is, I guess, the hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life. Sometimes it's necessary."
"Yeah, I know."
I whirled, ready to flare up at any sign of pity or sympathy, but there was neither. Only a total understanding of, and agreement with, what I had said.
"Come on," I said. "I'll show you around." My shoulder ached like hell, but as I said, I wanted to see her reaction.
The room we were in had not been substantially altered since the last time it was used as an office, perhaps fifteen or twenty years ago. The alterations I had made had not involved cleaning. There wasn't much to see that was worth looking at, unless she had a thing for busts of President Kennedy the Second. I led her into the back, throwing on lights as we went.
It was obvious that a bachelor burglar of no great fastidiousness lived here. Three inner offices were converted to living space, furnished with things too rickety, threadbare, or ugly to fence. Empties lay here and there, and all the wastebaskets were overflowing. The "kitchen" could produce anything from peanut butter on moldy white bread to a tolerable mulligan, and not much in between, if you didn't count the beer. The office with the toilet had perforce become the master bedroom. A truly astonishing calendar hung on the wall. The mattress lay on the floor, and the sheets had that lived-in look. A rancid glass of orange juice sat beside the bed, next to a sound-only phone and a disorderly pile of recent newspapers all opened to the society page.
She really did have manners. She kept a poker face, made no comment at anything she saw, just looked around at each room and nodded. Perhaps she had lived in worse. Finally my shoulder hurt too much. I decided I had milked it for all it was worth and took her back to the outer office.
She lit a Peter Jackson. "By the way, how many names have you got, Sam?"
"How many are there? Sit over on that desk, 'Sharon.' "
She complied.
"Now lift your feet off the floor, completely, and keep them there."
I waited until she had done so. Initiating dislock sequence while there is additional human-size mass anywhere in the room except on the four places where those desk legs meet the floor will cause the room to be blown out of the warehouse. When she was seated correctly I turned to the desk nearest me. I opened the middle drawer. Then I crossed the room and flipped the switch for the ventilation fan that no longer works. On, off, on. I went back to the desk and closed the drawer. What looked just like a battered old Royal manual typewriter sat on a rubber pad on the desk's typing shelf; I typed some words. Karen watched all this without expression, but I could tell that she was wondering if I had sustained any head injuries in the scuffle with Wishbone.
I walked over in front of the bust of Kennedy and smiled at it. Its right eye winked at me. A large section of floor hinged back and up like a snake sitting up, soundlessly. Carpeted stairs led down into a place of soft lights.
"Now I'll show you where I really live."
"You bastard," she said.
I bowed and gestured: after you.
"You bastard," she said again softly. "This you did enjoy."
I lost control and grinned hugely. "Bet your ass." I gestured again. "Come on. You can get down off there now. Or do you want to spend the night up here?"
She came off the desk with a you'll-get-yours grin, tugged her skirt around, and whacked dust from it. "The secret temple of Karnak. Do I have to take my shoes off?"
"Not even your dress." Perhaps an indelicate joke, but I had found that she liked being kidded about her occupation.
She grimaced. "That's another buck for ironing, chump." She came to the stairs and went down. I followed. I didn't crash into her on the bottom step because I was expecting her to stop dead. I waited while she stared, and when she finally stepped into the living room I moved past her.
She was still staring around her, with an astonishment that refused to fade. No matter where she looked, she could find nothing unremarkable. I drank her astonishment thirstily.
Perhaps I am excessively houseproud. But I have some reason to be. The location is a large part of its value, of course—but as a conventional apartment it was worth two and a half of hers, and she had not been living cheaply by any means. I seldom indulge my weakness; Karen was the fifth person to come down those stairs with me. Almost all of the others had lived with me upstairs for at least a week before I let them into my real house.
She would not say a word.
"This is the living room," I said, and she jumped. "If you'll step this way . . . ?" Oh, I was disgusting.
She remained resolutely silent during the rest of the tour, but it cost her. It took a good ten minutes; my house has a little more than twice the cubic of the office complex that sits on it.
As we walked I flipped switches and brought the house back up to active status, started the coffee program, and turned up the fans to accommodate her inevitable cigarettes.
The message light on the phone panel was not lit. Maybe one day I will come home and find it lit. When that happens I will drop to the floor and pray that the end is quick.
At last my shoulder made me cut it short. I led us back to the living room and dropped into the nearest Lounger, drawing its attention to my shoulder. "Excuse me," I said. "This won't wait any longer."
She nodded. The chair began doing indescribable things to my shoulder girdle, and I closed my eyes. When I could open them again, she was standing on the same spot in the same stance, looking at me with the same lack of expression. My chair cut back to subliminal purring. I tried the shoulder and winced, but decided against repeating the massage cycle.
"Joe," she said finally, "you are a good burglar."
"I'm a very good burglar."
"If that grin gets any bigger, you're gonna split your face clear back to your ears. Just before that happens, would it be all right if I were to ask some of the obvious questions?"
"I'll tell you anything I can."
"All right." She took out cigarettes and lit up. Then she put her fists on her hips. "What the fuck is this place?"
"Are you familiar with the expression, 'to go to the mattresses'?"
"Sure. Are you trying to tell me that all this"—she swept her hand around the room—"is some kind of gangster's command post?"
"No. But I am telling you that big multinationals sometimes have to go to the mattresses too."
Her eyes widened. "But—that's silly. Multinationals don't have shooting w—well, yes they do, but not in New York."
"Not on page one, no. They tend to be much neater, much subtler."
She thought it through. "So it's a corporate command bunker. What corporation?"
"I don't know."
"It looks like it would make a great fortress. How come the original owners aren't here?"
"My guess is undeclared war, a sneak attack. The secret of this place would naturally be known only by a few—presumably 'one grenade got them all.' I estimate that it has been abandoned for almost fifteen years, since about '97. I found it about ten years back, and nobody's come around since, that I know of. Could happen any time, of course."
"So how the hell could you happen to 'stumble across' that song-and-dance routine you did upstairs to open the door?"
"I can't imagine."
She frowned. "Conversation with you certainly has a lot of punctuation. Forget I asked." She looked around again. "Who pays the utilities? Since you don't exist, I mean."
"Nobody."
"What do I look like, an idiot? That's a full-service phone over there, and two powered chairs, and your tape console computer alone must draw . . . not to mention that computer in the bedroom, and lights and climate and—don't tell me. There's an inconspicuous solar collector on top of the abandoned warehouse, no bigger than Washington Square."
I smiled. "I misspoke myself. I should have said 'everybody.' I get my power and phone from the same place you do—I just don't pay for it."
"But they've got hunter programs monitoring for unmetered drain—"
"Programs written and administered by corruptible, fallible human beings. Whoever built this place built it well. I never get a bill."
"I'll be damned." She stared at the phone. "But how can anybody call you? You can't have a number, the switching syst—"
"Nobody can call me. It's the perfect phone."
Her grin was sudden. "I'll be go to hell. So it is." She took off her rucksack and checked to make sure she had broken or crushed nothing when she fell. "Where should I stash my stuff?"
"I'll do it. Sit down."
I gestured toward the other Lounger. She put down the sack and went to it, stroked the headrest reverently. "For years I've wanted one of these. Never could afford it." She shook her head. "I guess crime pays."
"No, but the perks are terrific. Go on, try it."
She sat, made a small sound as she realized that it did not hurt her sores, then made another as the chair adjusted to her skeletal shape and body temperature. I set it for gentle massage and took her bag to the spare bedroom. When I got back I had her chair mix a Preacher's Downfall for me and a rum-and-rum for her. (I had satisfied myself by then that wireheading had cured her of compulsive overboozing. A marvelous therapeutic tool, save that its side effects included death.)
She did not see me at once; her eyes were rolled back into her head. But after a while her ears told her that ice cubes were clinking nearby, and she came slowly back to the external world. "Joe," she said, smiling happily, "you're a good burglar."
It was nice to see her sitting back in a chair, with a smile that I liked on her face.
We drank and talked for an hour or so. Then on impulse I put on some Brindle to see if she knew the difference between music you talk over and music you don't. Sure enough, three bars in she shut up and smiled and sat back to listen. When the CD was through she was ready to admire my bathroom, and then I showed her her bedroom. By then she was too tired to admire anything. I started to head for my own room, but she caught my arm.
"Joe . . ." She looked me in the eye. "Would you sleep with me tonight?"
I studied her face until I was sure the question was meant literally. "Sure."
"You're a good burglar," she murmured, peeling out of her tunic.
It did feel almighty good to have arms around me in bed. I fell asleep no more than five seconds after we had achieved a comfortable spoon. She beat me by several seconds. From that day on, if we slept at the same time it was together.
I introduced her to the bust of Kennedy, who filed her in his permanents. I showed her the defense systems and emergency exits. I showed her my meditation place down by the river, and how to get there and back safely. She started spending a lot of time alone there, even though she couldn't smoke while filtered and goggled. She did not discuss what she thought about there, and I did not ask. I could search her home, rifle her strongbox, and milk her computer—but some things are personal. Four days went by this way.
I was sitting in the Lounger having my neck rubbed and planning my next job when I heard the dislock sequence initiate. I glanced up, expecting Karen. But when the door cycled up it was the Fader who came down the stairs, with a tape in his hand.
Fader Takhalous is fiftyish and just as nondescript as a man can be. I have mistaken half a dozen strangers for him, and once failed to recognize him until he spoke to me. He could mug you in broad daylight and rent a room from you the next day. I held much the same relationship to him that Karen held to me, except four years further along. I only saw him two or three times a year, and was surprised to see him now; I hadn't been expecting him for another few months.
But the tape explained it. He nodded hello on his way to the stereo; I nodded back, but he didn't see it. He fed the tape to the heads and turned the treble back to flat. He sat in the other Lounger, leaving it turned off, and stared at the ceiling. I dialed the lights down and shut my own chair off. The music was almost unbearably good, a synthesizer piece that was alternately stark and lush, spare and majestic; that took chances and succeeded. It reminded me of early-period Rubbico & Spangler. The Fader smoked a joint while we listened, and for once I didn't mind the faint buzz that breathing his waste smoke brought; the music made it okay.
And about the time I could tell that the unknown composer was building to the finish, Karen did come home, the music masking the noise of her arrival. I had not thought this through. As she came down the stairs she took in the scene, threw me a hello smile, and headed for the kitchen, carrying groceries.
When she returned she sat on the couch without a word and listened, staring at the ceiling. The Fader raised an approving eyebrow, then returned his own attention to the music.
When it had ended we awarded it ten seconds of silence. Then the Fader rose from his chair. He bowed to Karen. "You listen well, Miss—"
"Karen Shaw. That was worth listening to."
"They call me the Fader. Which is what I'm about to do. A pleasure to meet you." She offered her hand and he kissed it. Then he turned to me. "Pop me that tape, son. I'll bring it back for duping another time. I just remembered I left the kettle on."
I got the tape and gave it to him. "What's your hurry?"
"A small matter of business." His eyes slid briefly to Karen.
"She's okay, Fader. She's a friend. She's here, right?"
He relaxed slightly. "I've got a mark up to Phase Two, and I just now thought of a way I could take him straight to Phase Four in one jump. If it works it cuts down the seed-money investment substantially—but it has to happen now. I'll let you know how it turns out."
I grinned. "Ah, the delicious urgency of the creative impulse. Good luck." He smiled and nodded at Karen again, and was gone.
"Nice old duck," she said when the door had closed behind him. "I get the funny feeling maybe I . . . frightened him away somehow. I'm sorry if I did, that music was nice."
"You're the sorriest thing I've seen all day," I said. "What did you buy us for dinner, and why aren't you pouring it?"
"Whups." She left and came back with whiskey and cashews and raisins. "I'm cooking stew."
"The hell you say."
"God damn it, Joe. I know I'm no good with a microwave. My folks were too poor to have micro. But you've got that old-fashioned stove that still works in there, and a perfectly good pressure cooker, and that's what I learned at my mother's knee. So shut up and wait till you taste it before you—"
"All right, all right, I'll take a chance."
She found the Fader's joint on the rug, which thank heaven is burnproof, and looked up inquiringly. I nodded, and she toked it back to life. After two or three deep puffs, she set it down on what we still call an "ashtray"' even though it's been years since cigarettes or joints produced ashes, probably because "buttrest" seems indelicate. "Hey, Joe. Guess what? I think I figured out what I want to do when I grow up."
I sat up straighter and felt myself smiling. "Tell me about it." It was the best news I'd had in a long while. I hadn't been sure whether her meditation was helping or hurting her.
"You remember that conversation we had back at my place, back on Day One? About joy? As distinguished from pleasure?"
"Sure."
"So there's two kinds: the kind from doing a good thing, and the kind from passing up a real tempting chance to do a bad one. The second kind's easy. It is really tempting to go back to the life, the money's fabulous—and it's giving me great joy not to, because the life is a bad thing."
"You don't rationalize that it's therapeutic for the customers?"
"If acting out aggression drained it, there'd be fistfights before football games instead of after. I did my customers no favor, and I charged 'em plenty for it.
"But dumping that is only a kind of negative joy. I've been looking for a good thing to do. Something really worthwhile, something to benefit the world in a significant way, and commensurate with my talents and background."
"Uh-huh."
"Well, that's the hard part. I've never learned how to do anything really useful except fuck and fix motorcycles, and I can't go back to bikes because I can't stand working on the junk they make nowadays. Besides, the existence of motorcycles in good running order isn't all that great a boon to mankind. I figure I can do better than that."
"I'm sure of it," I agreed. "What have you selected?"
"Well, I got to thinking about this socket in my skull. I got to thinking about people who have 'em put there, and why. Self-destruction's too quick an answer. I've been over it in my head a lot, and I can't be certain, but I think if that option hadn't been there—if there hadn't been a friendly neighborhood wireshop all of six blocks away—if wireheading hadn't come along and presented itself, I do not think I would have just found some other way to suicide. Other than tobacco and a risky lifestyle, I mean.
"I mean, I don't think dying is what I wanted at all. I don't think hardly any of the people the juice has killed wanted to die, as such, exactly. I think we just . . . just wanted to have it all, just for once, just for a little while to have it all and not be hungry anymore. And if dying was the ticket price, well, okay."
I wasn't certain I agreed, but then I'd never asked a wirehead's opinion. Very few people ever get to. I remembered the great lengths she had gone to with the water bottle to prolong her own last ride as far as possible.
"So it seems to me, now, that the existence of that option is an evil thing. An attractive nuisance, like the swimming pools and old refrigerators little kids get into. It makes it so that people past a certain point of instability are unbearably tempted. Maybe I'm rationalizing, trying to shift some blame for what I did from myself."
She finished her drink and lit a Peter Jackson, masking the last fragrances of the Fader's joint. "So what I'd like to do is everything I can to remove that option."
I sat there trying not to frown. "How, exactly?"
"I haven't exactly got detailed plans yet—"
"Phone your congresscritter? Write a letter to The Village Voice? Shoot every wire-surgeon in town?"
"The shock docs don't matter one way or another. They'd just as soon be botching abortions and faking draft deferments. It's the corporations that make and market the hardware that are the real villains."
"Anybody can put together a juice rig."
"The wire and transformer, sure—but the droud itself, the microfilaments and the technology to place them properly, that's not workbench stuff. Without the corporations, wireheading just wouldn't happen."
"Do you have any idea how many corporations are involved?" I asked sarcastically. I had no firm idea myself.
"Three."
"Nonsense. There have to be at least—"
"Three. The shock doc I picked took it out in trade, and he felt talkative afterward. I didn't think I was listening at the time, but I was. There are over a dozen juice-rig models on the market, but they all get their basic modules from one of three corporations. There used to be five, but two of them went under. And the doc said he had his eyes and ears open, and he had a hunch that two of the three were really different arms of a single outfit that nobody knows."
"How could a juice-head company go broke?"
"How should I know? Sampling the merchandise, maybe. Anyway, all the basic patents are held by a Swiss outfit, so that makes a total of three targets and four avenues of approach."
"Infiltrate and destroy, huh?"
"Something like that. Free-lance industrial espionage."
"I repeat, what's your plan? See how many executives you can poison before they get you?"
"I thought of it," she admitted.
"Pointless and stupid. Honey, you start killing sharks, they just start showing up faster than you can kill them."
"Yeah, but that's not why I gave up the idea. I don't think I've got it in me to kill."
That impressed me. Most of the children of television are convinced that they have in them what it takes to murder in cold blood. The overwhelming majority of them are wrong. Surprisingly few have what it takes to murder in hot blood, or even self-defense. "Congratulations."
"But there are other ways. There's no such thing as an honest corporation. A hooker often learns things, without even trying, that the IRS would love to know. Or the Securities and Exchange Commission. Or the Justice Department, or—"
"Or Newsday, right. They pay the best, you might as well get a terrific coffin out of the deal. I'm certainly glad to hear that you have no death-wish."
"I'm not especially afraid of death. Not anymore. Someday, no matter what I do, random chance is going to strike me dead. I might as well be doing something worthwhile at the time. It should be a shame that I died."
"It sure will be. Karen, the kind of people you're talking about have all the access they could ever want, and more leverage than you can believe. There is no way you can sell that kind of information and not be traced. Hell, they'll be able to follow the path of the check."
"I won't sell the information, then. I'll give it away."
"Don't be silly. Who'd trust free information?"
"But I could—"
"Damn it to hell, listen to me. I was professionally trained to infiltrate and destroy once, by experts. I've been on the con for a long time now, and I have a unique advantage you don't share. I can't be traced. If my life depended on it, I wouldn't get within a hundred miles of a scam like this. With a crack team of about a dozen, and an unlimited bankroll, you could maybe put a big bruise on people like that and live to admire it. No way is anybody going to bring them down. Let alone a single commando, let alone a crusading hooker with a hole in her head. Get serious, will you—"
"Shut the fuck up!"
I am not used to being outshouted. I hadn't even known I was shouting.
"Don't talk down to me! I don't care how old you are, don't talk down to me. I'm sick of that shit. I don't have to listen to that. I have been around, chump. I've been in on enough scams to know what I can do. I'm pretty smart and I'm pretty tough, and I don't scare worth a damn. God damn it, I've been hooking for almost a year in this town and nobody owns me. I'm a fucking independent, do you know that? Do you know what that means?"
Of course I did—but I had never thought it through, never considered the cleverness and strength it implied. She saw me working it out and grinned. "There's a sucker out on the street now with three new creases on his face. One that I put there, and two from worrying about where I might put the next one. Joe, I know the way things are. I know this job is too big for me, and I expect to enjoy it right up to the end, and I don't need any lectures. Oh, Jesus, the stew!"
She leaped up and galloped to the kitchen. I sat there with my empty glass, listened to the squeal and hiss and clatter of the silly obsolete pressure cooker, listened to oh-shit noises turn to dubious mmms and finally to mollified nnns and a last triumphant ha.
Once I blew a radiator hose on the highway. A Good Samaritan stopped to help me. He acted very knowledgeable about cars. While I was getting the spare hose out of the trunk, he helpfully topped off my transmission fluid for me. With the brake fluid I kept behind the right headlight. "Oh, it's all the same stuff," he assured me. "They just put in different dyes and charge you more money." It took me three days to get a tranny shop to flush and refill the system, and for those three days the transmission slipped so badly that I nearly went crazy. The engine would roar smoothly in response to the accelerator, while the car crept along in fits and starts as it slipped in and out of gear. It was a helpless, frustrated feeling. I had all the horsepower in the world, and it took me two city blocks to coax her up to thirty.
At the moment that was the inside of my head. High revs, but it wouldn't go anywhere. I attributed it to the pot smoke I had breathed. The thought train went like so:
(I'm much too agitated.) (Well, sure I am, my new friend is planning something dangerous and stupid.) (No, there's more to it than that.) (Something else?) (Yes.) (What else?) (. . . my new friend is planning something dangerous and stupid.) (No, there's more to it than that.) (What else?) (. . . my new friend is planning . . .)
Pull back on the accelerator and try again.
(Why must there be something else?) (Because I'm much too agitated.) (Why?) (Because my new . . .)
Same loop. Try again.
(Why do I feel my agitation is "too much"?) (Because if I were only concerned about my friend, I'd be trying to persuade her to drop her plans.) (And . . . ?) (And getting agitated is the wrong way to persuade her.) (Sure?) (Yes; it will only strengthen her resolve.) (Conclusion?) (I'm not really trying to talk her out of it.) (What am I doing, then?) (Getting very agitated.) (Why?) (My new friend is planning something . . .)
Christ.
The aroma of stew struck like a symphony, disrupting the inner loop. I heard silverware being assembled, bowls being ladled full. I saw the cigarette she had left burning give one last puff of smoke and expire. Stop the brain, put it away, maybe after dinner . . .
(What should I be doing?) (Talking her out of it.) (How?) (By going along with the gag.) (By—?) (Wait for her own doubts to emerge, wait for her to falter—and she will—and then nudge.) (Con my friend?) (That, or stubborn her up and send her out there alone. There's no third choice.) (I can't do that.) (Why not?) (It's dangerous.) (What do you mean, dangerous?) (It makes me very agitated.) (Why?) (My new friend is planning to . . .)
(I'm trying to talk myself out of it!)
She brought two bowls into the room, and the symphony of smells crescendoed. She put them on the coffee table, left, and reentered with a jug and two glasses. She poured for us. She left again for garlic-and-butter-toasted French bread, and then she sat opposite me. I started to dig in.
"Joe? It should cool a little first."
"Right."
"Look . . . I just did some thinking. I had no call to blow up at you that way, no right. It's just that you came on kind of . . . paternal, and you're about forty." That made me wince. In my head I'm twenty-eight. "About the same age as he was when . . . I'm sorry I yelled at you."
"I'm sorry I yelled too. I don't know why I did."
We ate the stew. It was superb, and I told her so.
"Joe?"
"Yeah."
"Look, you've done an awful lot for me. You saved my life, you put me—"
"Please."
"—back together again, let me say it, you gave me this place to come to and a warm bed every night, you never ask when I'm gonna get it together and do something, you give me all this and I give you bupkiss."
"My ass. I got all your cash and a terrific pair of speakers."
"You're a good man, Joe, and only a selfish bitch would ask you for anything more."
"The way you're about to?"
"The way I'm about to."
I tried to sigh, but a belch spoiled it. "Ask away, honey. Your stew has softened my heart."
"Your terminal has just about all the access there is. I want you to get me readings on all my targets."
The fear was back, a muffled yammering in a distant compartment of my skull.
"Just give me a deep reading of each one. That's all. I'm not asking you to come in on the scam. It's not personal with you, it's not your crusade. But you could save me weeks of legwork—maybe months."
"I'm sorry, Karen. I can't."
"Why not?"
(Why not?) "The kind of information you're talking about is ringed around with alarms, tricky ones. If I trip one, a tracer program could start hunting me back."
"So what? You don't exist, not in the Net."
"Exactly. How come you're still an independent? Forget about how tough and smart you are—what's the main reason?"
She frowned. "Well . . . my johns don't talk much. Not even to their best friends."
"Bullseye. How long do you think you'd last in this town if The Man heard about you and decided he could use you? A couple of gentlemen would call on you, and when they were done you'd be terribly, terribly anxious to do any little thing that might please them. Now suppose that you're a big-time corporate shark. The kind whose attention The Man himself tries not to attract. Somebody tries to crack your shields, and when you investigate you discover that the interloper has no legal existence. Could you not find uses for such a person? Important uses? Would it not be worth a lot of time and trouble to track him down and enslave him? Honey, I continue to exist as an independent for the same reason you do, or anybody else with something special to offer. The bastards haven't noticed me yet. Should I stick my nose in their window and start sniffing?"
We both listened to the argument as it came out of my mouth. It convinced her, and it should have convinced me. My subconscious had done a good job on it. It was a pretty good argument, with only a couple of holes in it, and it was indeed something to be afraid of. But it wasn't what I feared. I could tell.
But she bought it. She didn't even bother poking at the holes in the logic to see what I had them stuffed with. If a good friend doesn't want to do you a favor, there's no point in arguing.
"I guess you're right. I hadn't thought it through." She sat crestfallen for a moment, then squared her shoulders. "Well, there are other keyboard men in town."
"Sure. Professionals with equipment almost as good as mine. Better connected, better protected. But Karen . . . listen, no matter how you go about this, it's suicide city, I'm telling you. Give it up."
"Two weeks ago I was willing to die just to find out what pleasure was like."
"If all you want is a socially useful kamikaze mission, just stop paying off your draft board. You'll be on the New York police force the next day, and stiff in the South Bronx before the year is out."
"And chase guys like you? And chippies like me? Don't be silly. Look, I've got to piss—you stay here till I get back. Surprise dessert in the kitchen." She leaped up and was gone.
I sat there trying to figure out what I was really afraid of.
It was astonishingly, frustratingly difficult. I knew that the answer was in my possession, that some part of my mind held the knowledge. I could even tell in what "direction" that part lay. But every time I steered that way and gave her the gas, the transmission slipped. It could run away faster than I could pursue. Stubbornly, hopelessly, I stalked it, knowing only that it tasted like nightmares.
Something yanked me out of my brown study; the outside world was demanding my attention. But why? Everything looked okay. I smelled nothing burning, all I heard was the distant sound of Karen urinating . . .
I played back the tape, and discovered that I had been hearing that sound for an impossibly long time.
I didn't even bother to run. She had found a small length of hose under the sink, and used adhesive tape to run a siphon from the toilet tank, to simulate the sound of urination. Then she had left, by the second of my two emergency exits. The one I had not told her about. On the face of the lid she had left a lipstick message: "Enjoy the speakers, Joe. I'm glad that fucker landlord didn't get them. Thanks for everything."
I nodded my head. "You're welcome," I said out loud. I went to the kitchen, made a pitcher of five-to-one martinis, frowned, dumped it in the sink, made a pitcher of six-to-one martinis, nodded and smiled, brought it into the living room, and hurled it carefully through the television screen. Then I rummaged in the ashtray for the Fader's roach, and got three good deep tokes out of it before I burned my lip. I had not smoked in many years; it smacked me hard.
"Lady," I said to her empty stew bowl, "if you can con me that well, maybe—just maybe—you've got a snowball's chance."