He saw. He nodded.
“Even men like you,” Kathy said, “who’re more magnetic than him, even you can’t take me away from Jack.”
“I don’t want to.” It seemed a good idea to make that point.
“Yes—you do. On some level you do. It’s a competition.”
Jason said, “To me you’re just one small girl in one small room in one small building. For me the whole world is mine, and everybody in it.”
“Not if you’re in a forced-labor camp.”
He had to nod in agreement to that, too. Kathy had an annoying habit of spiking the guns of rhetoric.
“You understand a little now,” she said, “don’t you? About me and Jack, and why I can go to bed with you without wronging Jack? I went to bed with David when we were at Morningside, but Jack understood; he knew I had to do it. Would you have understood?”
“If you were psychotic—”
“No, not because of that. Because it was my destiny to go to bed with Mickey Quinn. It had to be done; I was fulfilling my cosmic role. Do you see?”
“Okay,” he said, gently.
“I think I’m drunk.” Kathy examined her screwdriver. “You’re right; it’s too early to drink one of these.” She set the half-empty glass down. “Jack saw. Or anyhow he said he saw. Would he lie? So as not to lose me? Because if I had had to chose between him and Mickey Quinn”—she paused—“but I chose Jack. I always would. But still I had to go to bed with David. With Mickey Quinn, I mean.”
I have gotten myself mixed up with a complicated, peculiar, malfunctioning creature, Jason Taverner said to himself. As bad as—worse than—Heather Hart. As bad as I’ve yet encountered in forty-two years. But how do I get away from her without Mr. McNulty hearing all about it? Christ, he thought dismally. Maybe I don’t. Maybe she plays with me until she’s bored, and then she calls in the pols. And that’s it for me.
“Wouldn’t you think,” he said aloud, “that in four decades plus, I could have learned the answer to this?”
“To me?” she said. Acutely.
He nodded.
“You think after you go to bed with me I’ll turn you in.”
At this point he had not boiled it down to precisely that. But the general idea was there. So, carefully, he said, “I think you’ve learned in your artless, innocent, nineteen-yearold way, to use people. Which I think is very bad. And once you begin you can’t stop. You don’t even know you’re doing its—”
“I would never turn you in. I love you.”
“You’ve known me perhaps five hours. Not even that.”
“But I can always tell.” Her tone, her expression, both were firm. And deeply solemn.
“You’re not even sure who I am!”
Kathy said, “I’m never sure who anybody is.”
That, evidently, had to be granted. He tried, therefore, another tack. “Look. You’re an odd combination of the innocent romantic, and a”—he paused; the word “treacherous” had come to mind, but he discarded it swiftly—“and a calculating, subtle manipulator.” You are, he thought, a prostitute of the mind. And it’s your mind that is prostituting itself, before and beyond anyone else’s. Although you yourself would never recognize it. And, if you did, you’d say you were forced into it. Yes; forced into it, but by whom? By Jack? By David? By yourself, he thought. By wanting two men at the same time—and getting to have both.
Poor Jack, he thought. You poor goddamn bastard. Shoveling shit at the forced-labor camp in Alaska, waiting for this elaborately convoluted waif to save you. Don’t hold your breath.
That evening, without conviction, he had dinner with Kathy at an Italian-type restaurant a block from her room. She seemed to know the owner and the waiters, in some dim fashion; anyhow, they greeted her and she responded absentmindedly, as if only half hearing them. Or, he thought, only half aware of where she was.
Little girl, he thought, where is the rest of your mind?
“The lasagna is very good,” Kathy said, without looking at the menu; she seemed a great distance away now. Receding further and further. With each passing moment. He sensed an approaching crisis. But he did not know her well enough; he had no idea what form it would take. And he did not like that.
“When you blep away,” he said abruptly, trying to catch her off guard, “how do you do it?”
“Oh,” she said tonelessly. “I throw myself down on the floor and scream. Or else I kick. Anyone who tries to stop me. Who interferes with my freedom.”
“Do you feel like doing that now?”
She glanced up. “Yes.” Her face, he saw, had become a mask, both twisted and agonized. But her eyes remained totally dry. This time no tears would be involved. “I haven’t been taking my medication. I’m supposed to take twenty milligrams of Actozine per diem.”
“Why don’t you take it?” They never did; he had run across that anomaly several times.
“It dulls my mind,” she answered, touching her nose with her forefinger, as if involved in a complex ritual that had to be done absolutely correctly.
“But if it—”
Kathy said sharply, “They can’t fuck with my mind. I’m not letting any MFs get to me. Do you know what a MF is?”
“You just said.” He spoke quietly and slowly, keeping his attention firmly fixed on her … as if trying to hold her there, to keep her mind together.
The food came. It was terrible.
“Isn’t this wonderfully authentically Italian?” Kathy said, deftly winding spaghetti on her fork.
“Yes,” he agreed, aimlessly.
“You think I’m going to blep away. And you don’t want to be involved with it.”
Jason said, “That’s right.”
“Then leave.”
“I”—he hesitated—“I like you. I want to make sure you’re all right.” A benign lie, of the kind he approved. It seemed better than saying, Because if I walk out of here you will be on the phone to Mr. McNulty in twenty seconds. Which, in fact, was the way he saw it.
“I’ll be all right. They’ll take me home.” She vaguely indicated the restaurant around them, the customers, waiters, cashier. Cook steaming away in the overheated, underventilated kitchen. Drunk at the bar, fiddling with his glass of Olympia beer.
He said, calculating carefully, fairly, reasonably sure that he was doing the right thing, “You’re not taking responsibility.’’
“For who? I’m not taking responsibility for your life, if that’s what you mean. That’s your job. Don’t burden me with it.”
“Responsibility,” he said, “for the consequences to others of your acts. You’re morally, ethically drifting. Hitting out here and there, then submerging again. As if nothing happened. Leaving it to everyone else to pick up the sweltering moons.”
Raising her head she confronted him and said, “Have I hurt you? I saved you from the pols; that’s what I did for you. Was that the wrong thing to do? Was it?” Her voice increased in volume; she stared at him pitilessly, unblinkingly, still holding her forkful of spaghetti.
He sighed. It was hopeless. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t the wrong thing to do. Thanks. I appreciate it.” And, as he said it, he felt unwavering hatred toward her. For enmeshing him this way. One puny nineteen-year-old ordinary, netting a fullgrown six like this—it was so improbable that it seemed absurd; he felt on one level like laughing. But on the other levels he did not.