Tears were running down her cheeks. Cooper realized his mouth was open. He was leaning toward her, too astonished at first to say anything.
"You and me..." he finally managed to say.
"Shit, Cooper, obviously you and me."
"And you thought that... that what we did last night... did you really think that was worth a tape? I knew it was bad, but I had no inkling how bad it could be. I knew you were using me—hell, I was using you, too, and I didn't like that any better—but I never thought it was so cynical—"
"No, no, no, no, no!" She was sobbing now. "It wasn't that. It was worse than that! It was supposed to be spontaneous, damn it! I didn't pick you out. Markham was going to do that. He would find someone, coach him, arrange a meeting, conceal cameras to tape the meeting and in the bedroom later. I'd never really know. We've been studying an old show called Candid Camera and using some of their techniques. They're always throwing something unexpected at me. trying to help me stay fresh. That's Markham's job. But how surprised can I be when you show up at my table? Just look at it: in the romantic Bubble, the handsome lifeguard—lifeguard, for pete's sake!—an Olympic athlete familiar to millions from their television sets, gets pissed at my rich, decadent friends... I couldn't have gotten a more cliched script from the most drug-brained writer in Television City!"
For a time there was no sound in the room but her quiet sobs. Cooper looked at it from all angles, and it didn't look pretty from any of them. But he had been just as eager to go along with the script as she had.
"I wouldn't have your job for anything," he said.
"Neither would I," she finally managed to say. "And I don't, damn it. You want to know what happened this morning? Markham showed me just how original he really is. I was eating breakfast and this guy—he was a lifeguard, are you ready?—he tripped over his feet and dropped his plate in my lap. Well, while he was cleaning me up he started dropping cute lines at a rate that would have made Neil Simon green. Sorry, getting historical again. Let's just say he sounded like he was reading from a script... he made that shitty little scene we played out together yesterday seem just wonderful.
His smile was phony as a brass transistor. I realized what had happened, what I'd done to you, so I pushed the son of a bitch down into his French toast, went to find Markham, broke his fucking jaw for him, quit my job, and came here to apologize. And went a little crazy and broke your door. So I'm sorry, I really am, and I'd leave but I've busted my sidekick and I can't stand to have people staring at me like that, so I'd like to stay here a little longer, until the repairman gets here, and I don't have any notion of what I'm going to do."
What composure she had managed to gather fell apart once again, and she wept bitterly.
By the time the repairman arrived Galloway was back in control.
The repairman's name was Snyder. He was a medical doctor as well as a cybertechnician, and Cooper supposed that combination allowed him to set any price he fancied for his services.
Galloway went into the bedroom and got all the clean towels. She spread them on the bed, then removed her clothes. She reclined, face down, with the towels making a thick pad from her knees to her waist. She made herself as comfortable as she could with her arm locked in the way, and waited.
Snyder fiddled with the controls in his tool kit, touched needle-sharp probes to various points on the sidekick core, and Galloway's arm relaxed. He made more connections, there was a high whine from the core, and the sidekick opened like an iron maiden. Each bracelet, chain, amulet and ring separated along invisible join lines. Snyder then went to the bed, grasped the sidekick with one hand around the center of the core, and lifted it away from her. He set it on its "feet," where it promptly assumed a parade-rest stance.
There was an Escher print Cooper had seen, called "Rind," that showed the bust of a woman as if her skin had been peeled off and arranged in space to suggest the larger thing she had once been. Both the inner and outer surfaces of the rind could be seen, like one barber-pole stripe painted over an irregular, invisible surface. Galloway's sidekick, minus Galloway, looked much like that. It was one continuous, though convoluted, entity, a thing of springs and wires, too fragile to stand on its own but doing it somehow. He saw it shift slightly to maintain its balance. It seemed all too alive.
Galloway, on the other hand, looked like a rag doll. Snyder motioned to Cooper with his eyes, and the two of them turned her on her back. She had some control of her arms, and her head did not roll around as he had expected it to. There was a metal wire running along her scarred spine.
"I was an athlete, too, before the accident," she said.
"Were you?"
"Well, not in your class. I was fifteen when I cracked my neck, and I wasn't setting the world on fire as a runner. For a girl that's already too old."
"Not strictly true," Cooper said. "But it's a lot harder after that." She was reaching for the blanket with hands that did not work very well. Coupled with her inability to raise herself from the bed, it was a painful process to watch. Cooper reached for the edge of the blanket.
"No," she said, matter-of-factly. "Rule number one. Don't help a crip unless she asks for it. No matter how badly she's doing something, just don't. She's got to learn to ask, and you've got to learn to let her do what she can do."
"I'm afraid I've never known any crips."
"Rule number two. A nigger can call herself a nigger and a cripple can call herself a cripple, but lord help the able-bodied white who uses either word."
Cooper settled back in his chair.
"Maybe I'd better just shut up until you fill me in on all the rules."
She grinned at him. "It'd take all day. And frankly, maybe some of them are self-contradictory. We can be a pretty prickly lot, but I ain't going to apologize for it. You've got your body and I don't have mine. That's not your fault, but I think I hate you a little because of it."
Cooper thought about that. "I think I probably would, too."
"Yeah. It's nothing serious. I came to terms with it a long time ago, and so would you, after a bad couple of years." She still hadn't managed to reach the blanket, and at last she gave it up and asked him to do it for her. He tucked it around her neck.
There were other things he thought he would like to know, but he felt she must have reached the limits of questioning, no matter what she said. And he was no longer quite so eager to know the answers. He had been about to ask what the towels on the bed were for, then suddenly it was obvious what they were for and he couldn't imagine why he hadn't known it at once. He simply knew nothing about her, and nothing about disability. And he was a little ashamed to admit it, but he was not sure he wanted to know any more.
There was no way he could keep the day's events from Anna-Louise, even if he had wanted to. The complex was buzzing with the story of how the Golden Gypsy had blown a fuse, though the news about her quitting her job was still not general knowledge. He was told the story three different times during his next shift. Each story was slightly different, but all approximated the truth. Most of the tellers seemed to think it was funny. He supposed he would have, too, yesterday.
Anna-Louise inspected the door hinges when they got back from work.
"She must have quite a right hook," she said.
"Actually, she hit it with her left. Do you want to hear about it?"
"I'm all ears."
So he told her the whole story. Cooper had a hard time figuring out how she was taking it. She didn't laugh, but she didn't seem too sympathetic, either. When he was through—mentioning Galloway's incontinence with some difficulty—Anna-Louise nodded, got up, and started toward the bathroom.