A Rage for Revenge

I grabbed her in a hug so tight she didn't have room to punch. I rolled her over on her back and looked down into her eyes. "KNOCK IT OFF!"

She suddenly ceased all resistance. She went limp in my arms. "I can't . . . " she said. "I can't fight it any more." And then she started crying.

I held her while she cried. Her body shook. She gasped and coughed. She was racked with spasms. She screamed. I was terrified for her, but I didn't let go.

And then the worst was over and she began crying softly in little weak gulps. "I'm sorry, Jim."

"For what?"

"For everything." She wiped at her nose. "For screwing everything up."

"You didn't screw up!"

"I dropped the A-bombs. I'll never be me again. I'll always be 'the one who dropped the bombs."' She sniffed. "They'll probably make up some nasty name for me. Like, the Mad Bomber of Colorado."

I thought about it. "That's not nearly nasty enough. Or clever enough."

"Well, it's the best I can do," she said. "After all, I'm still upset."

"You want to kick the robot again?"

"Oh! Did I break him?" She tried to sit up.

I pushed her back down. "That's what they're going to call you-the Robot Killer!"

"They will not. Let me up. I want to see-" I sat up with her. Eye-gor had a vicious dent in its side, but it had somehow righted itself and was wiping the rest of Lizard's drink from the wall. It rolled with a wobble.

"They will not call me the Robot Killer-I only winged him."

"You want to try again?"

"Naw. If at first you don't succeed, the hell with it." She turned to me and became more serious. "Do you really love me?"

"Why do you keep asking?"

"I guess I find it hard to believe," she admitted. "I'm so used to people not loving me-" She added, "Or loving me and leaving me."

I said, "Lizard, sweetheart. It's easy to love someone when everything is wonderful. The proof of someone's love is that they still love you when everything is awful. I do love you-though I couldn't begin to tell you why. I don't care how many atom bombs you drop. I don't care how many robots you kick to death. I do love you. I will always love you."

"Even if they call me Lizzy the Hun?"

"Even if they call you Lizzy the Hun."

She sniffed. "I probably don't deserve you."

"Yes, you do. I pick my nose, I eat crackers in bed, and I fart in the bathtub. You deserve every bit of me. People who drop atom bombs don't deserve any better than me. I'm your punishment."

She laughed gently, and pulled me to her in a hug. When we finished kissing, she said, "Let's get out of these clothes. I want you to hold me close and I want to fall asleep in your arms, and I want to wake up in your arms. I want to have breakfast in bed with you, and then I want you to fuck my brains out. I want you to stay with me, Jim, and I want to have it be all right to love you back."

"Mm," I said, unzipping her jumpsuit. "Who am I to argue with Lizzy the Ripper?"

"You're a brave man, that's who." She was already undressing me.

"Mm," I said. "Do that some more. Mm, I like that. You can kick my robot to death any time."

The fame of our Mame was her tushy,
and the front of her cunt. (It was bushy.)
But I heard that her Mike preferred for his spike
the place in her face that was skwooshy.

68 A Large Piece of Truth

"Love is when you look into your lover's eyes and see God smiling back at you."

-SOLOMON SHORT

But we didn't fall asleep. Not right away.

First we made love. It was frenzied, almost desperate. I could feel her need. I abandoned myself to her and we rode the whirlwind. For a while, we weren't there-only the need, only the frenzy, only the desperate rush to release.

Afterward, I lay there gasping for breath, listening to the blood pounding in my head, wondering if my heart would burst, wondering if this was what it was like to die.

After a while, she curled up in the crook of my left arm and reached across my stomach and took my right hand in hers, and just lay there for a while and made little purring noises in her throat. After another while, she let go of my hand and began to play with the hair on my chest-there wasn't a lot, but she made do.

Then she began to talk.

"I was so scared. Ever since this thing began, I knew we might have to use the nukes. We've been talking about it for a long time. It's only these past few months that we've let it be real. And I've been so scared, because I knew that I would have to fly one of the first missions. I just knew-you know how that is? You just have this certainty about something and sure enough, that's how it happens." She took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. "Do you want to know the truth? I wanted to do it. I wanted to know what o would feel like."

I didn't say anything. I knew the feeling. I had experienced it myself. I reached up with my left hand and stroked her hair. She said, "This is all so stupid. This should be one of the most ocredible days of my life. It's everything I trained for. I knew it this morning. They said, 'We want the most dramatic video possible for the president's briefing. This is it.' I knew what that meant. I said, 'I'll go.' And I did." She looked up at me, "Except, you weren't part of the plan-" She blushed. "Well, you were. I told a lie. I told you I wasn't there to pick you up. I was. I'd been lallowing you for a long time, trying to figure out what you were up to. I read the report on Family. I know what happened there. You had to know something about the renegades, about their rclationship with the Chtorrans. That's why I picked you up.

"But what I didn't count on-I mean, the part that wasn't planned-was that we would end up here." She started giggling.

"What?" I asked.

"Tonight is the night I've waited for all my life. I've just dropped two atom bombs and fallen in love and I don't know which scares me more."

"Being in love," I said.

"Yeah," she agreed. "I mean, why the hell should I love you? Do you know when I first met you and whatsisname, I thought the two of you were fags. I even still thought it this morning. I don't know when I stopped thinking it."

"Do you want to know something funny?"

"What?"

"All my life, when people would call me names, that was always one of the first things they would call me. I used to hate it. I knew it wasn't true. But I was always afraid it was true, that they knew something I didn't. I hated it."

"So what's funny about that?"

"Wait, I'm getting to it. When Ted and I came to Denver that time, I did everything I could to prove I wasn't. Now, you want to know the joke?"

"Yes."

I told her about Ted. I told her about the trick he played on me. "That little shit," she said.

"Yeah. What pissed me off the most was that I got off on it. And he knew it. And he called me on it. I just hate that. But he was right. You know what he said? He said, 'Get off it. Every new advance in technology also opens up a whole new range of sexual possibilities. Go for it.' "

"And you did?"

"No! I was raised old fashioned. Except . . . "

She levered herself up on one elbow to watch my face. She was definitely interested.

"Stop that," I moved her hand away.

She slapped my wrist and put her hand back where it had been going. "Go on with your story."

"Well . . . I kept finding myself in situations." I told her about Tommy. Then I told her about the hallucinations. "Only, he was too real to be a hallucination. But if he was, what does that say about me? I mean, if I'm hallucinating homosexual experiences? So, I guess you-and all those other people-were right all along. Can you love a faggot?"