“Now what are you doing?” Devereaux asked a little later. “Brain surgery?”
Exacto in hand, David nodded. “You might say so. Occurred to me this fellow might have big blinking eyes instead of the glass buttons he came with. But if he’s going to get them, I’ve got to open up his head.”
He used the knife to slice up hollow plastic balls, and colored them with the pens in his shirt pocket. They required another little motor, this one inside the head. Jack Devereaux clicked his tongue between his teeth at the result. “If I saw anything with eyes like that, I’d run like hell.”
“It’s a prototype, dammit,” Goldfarb snapped. “It lets me know what I can do and what I can’t. The next one will be prettier.”
He installed the infrared sensor in the Furry’s nose, and some sound chips and a little speaker behind the mouth. When he aimed an infrared beam at the revamped teddy bear, it spoke in muddy tones: “Here, piss off.”
“Hmm,” Hal Walsh said. “We may have to work on that just a bit.”
Everybody laughed. Then Walsh asked, “Do you suppose you can make it move its lips while it talks, the same way it moves its eyes?”
“Hadn’t thought of that,” Goldfarb answered. “I can try. By the time we’re done with the bloody thing, it’ll do everything but make tea.” He paused. “But maybe that’s not so bad. The more it can do, the longer Junior will take to get bored with it.”
Some more tinkering provided the Furry with plastic lips carved from another ball. They didn’t move in a very lifelike way, but they moved. Walsh nodded. “That’s better-or busier, anyhow.”
“I think he’s ugly as sin, myself,” Jack Devereaux said.
David eyed him. “Some people might say the same about you, old chap. The Furry’s a first try. He’ll improve.” He didn’t spell out the implications. Devereaux made a horrible face at him just the same.
“Mutilate another teddy bear, would you, David?” Hal Walsh said. “See if you can do a neater job on this one. I’m going to get on the phone and talk with a couple of manufacturers I know-and with an advertising agent, too. With something like this, we want to make the biggest splash we possibly can.”
“Right,” Goldfarb said, and got to work. Somewhat belatedly, it occurred to him that he might have made more money had he developed this project on his own, not under the auspices of the Saskatchewan River Widget Works. He shrugged as he slit open the belly of a second plush bear. Walsh hadn’t had to hire him, and had backed him up during his troubles with Basil Roundbush. His boss deserved recompense for that-and, if the Furries did even a quarter as well as the men of the Widget Works dreamt they would, there’d probably be plenty of money to go around.
Walsh said, “I just called Jane, too. She can come by and record some prettier phrases than the one you used there.”
“Fair enough,” David answered. Jane Archibald’s voice wasn’t so smashing as her looks, but it was an improvement over his lower middle class, East End London accent.
He was just affixing the second set of plastic lips when Hal Walsh’s fiancee came in. The men from the Widget Works put both prototype Furries through their paces. Jane’s eyes went wide. “Every little girl in the world will want one,” she breathed, and then, “If you have them saying things in a man’s voice-and maybe if they were different colors-you could sell a lot to boys, too, I think.”
“I like that,” Goldfarb said, and scribbled a note.
The toy jobber who came to the Widget Works the next day also liked it. He stared in astonished fascination at the second prototype Furry-by then, the first one was safely out of sight. “Oh, yes,” he said once he’d seen it put through its paces. “Oh, yes, indeed. I think we’ll be able to move a great many of these, provided the manufacturing costs aren’t too high.”
“Here.” Hal Walsh handed him a sheet of paper. “This is my best estimate. Most of the parts are right off the shelf.”
“Oh, my,” the jobber said after glancing over it. “Well, I can see it’s going to be a great deal, a very great deal, of pleasure doing business with you gents.”
“David here gets the credit for this one,” Walsh said; he was, sure enough, a good man to work for. He patted the Furry on the head. “David gets the credit-and, with a little bit of luck, we all rake in the cash.”
Reuven Russie wondered when he’d last been so nervous knocking on a door. It had been a while-he knew that. When he’d come here to look at the widow Radofsky’s toe, that had been business. Now he was coming to look at all of her, and that was anything but.
How long had he been standing here? Long enough to start worrying? He’d been worrying since before he left home, and the “helpful” advice from his twin sisters hadn’t made things any better or easier. Had anybody inside here heard him? Should he knock again? He was just about to when the door opened. “Hello-Reuven,” Mrs. Radofsky said.
“Hello-Deborah,” he answered, at least as tentatively; he’d had to check the office records to find out her first name. “Hello, Miriam,” he added to the widow Radofsky’s daughter, who clung to her mother’s skirt. Miriam didn’t answer. She probably didn’t like him much; he was the fellow who gave her medicines that tasted nasty and shots.
“This is my sister, Sarah,” Deborah Radofsky said, nodding back toward a slightly younger woman who looked a lot like her. “She’ll watch Miriam while we’re out.”
“Hello,” Reuven said. “We’ve spoken on the phone, I think.”
“Yes, that’s right, Doctor,” the widow Radofsky’s sister said. “Have a good time, the two of you. Come here, Miriam.” Reluctantly, Miriam came.
Deborah Radofsky stepped out onto the sidewalk. “Shall we go?”
“Yes, let’s,” Reuven answered. He cast about for what to say next, and did find something: “How is your toe doing?”
“It’s getting better,” she replied. “It’s not quite right yet, but it is getting better.” They walked on for a few paces. The night was clear and cool. It was also peaceful; the Muslims in Jerusalem, and in the Near East generally, had been calm of late, for which Reuven was very glad. Mrs. Radofsky also seemed to be looking for something more to say. At last, she asked, “Where are we going for supper?”
“I had Samuel’s in mind,” Reuven replied. “Have you been there? The food’s always pretty good.”
“Yes, I have.” She nodded. “But not since…” Her voice trailed off. Not since my husband was alive- that had to be what she wasn’t saying.
“Would you rather go somewhere else?” Reuven asked. “If eating there would make you unhappy…”
“No, it’s all right.” The widow Radofsky shook her head. “It wasn’t a special place, or anything like that. It’s just that I haven’t been out to eat anywhere much since he…died. Things have been tight, especially with Miriam.”
Reuven nodded. Samuel’s was only about four blocks away; nothing in Jerusalem was very far from anything else. They had no trouble getting a table. Reuven ordered braised short ribs; Deborah Radofsky chose stuffed cabbage. He ordered a carafe of wine, too, after a glance at her to make sure she didn’t mind.
The wine came before the food. Reuven raised his glass. “L’chaim!”
“L’chaim!” Deborah echoed. They both drank. She set her glass down on the white linen of the tablecloth. After a moment, she said, “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Go ahead,” he answered.
Her smile flickered, as if uncertain whether to catch fire. She said, “You’re the son of an important man-a famous man, even. You’re a doctor yourself. Why haven’t you been married for years?”
“Ah.” Reuven had expected something like that, if perhaps not quite so blunt. But he liked her better for the bluntness, not worse. He said, “Up till I left the medical college, I was very busy-too busy to think a whole lot about such things. I was seeing somebody at the college for a while, but she emigrated to Canada as soon as she finished, and I didn’t want to leave Palestine. I have a cousin in the same town she moved to. He says she’s getting married soon.”
“Oh.” The widow Radofsky weighed his words. “How do you feel about that?”
“I hope she’s happy,” Reuven answered, much more sincerely than not. “She’s always done what she wanted to do, and I don’t think this will be any different.” He looked up. “Here comes supper.” Even if he didn’t wish Jane any ill whatsoever, he didn’t feel altogether comfortable talking about her with Deborah Radofsky.
She dug into her stuffed cabbage, too. For a while, they were both too busy eating to talk. Then she found another disconcerting question: “How do you like taking out one of your patients?”
“Fine, so far,” he said, giving back a deadpan stare he’d learned from his father.
She didn’t quite know what to make of that; he could see as much. After a sip of wine, she asked, “Do you do it often?”
“This makes once,” Reuven said, dead pan still. He threw back a question of his own: “How do you like going out with your doctor?”
“This is the first time I’ve been out with anyone since Joseph…died,” Mrs. Radofsky said. “I would be lying if I said it didn’t feel a little strange. It doesn’t feel any more strange because you’re my doctor, if that’s what you mean.”