Two bored policemen wandered in while he was doing so; the door, of course, was no longer on lock. He plugged in his hearing aid, taking plenty of time about it. He said to them, "Well?"
They told him he had plenty of time; they weren't in any hurry. Take an hour if you need it, bub. They'd tote him and his family and their stuff out to Belly Rave, help him pick out a good place. And—uh—don't take this too hard, bub. Sometimes when people got busted out of contract status they—uh —got panicky and tried to, well, knock themselves off.
The moving had one golden moment. One of the cops helpfully picked up a suitcase. Alexandra told him to remove his filthy hands from—
The cop clouted her and explained what they didn't take none of off of Belly Rave brats. The police car handed Norvell a jolt. It was armored. "You—you get a lot of trouble in Belly Rave?" he guessed. The friendlier of the cops said, "Nah. Only once in a while. They haven't jumped a squad car in six months, not with anything but pistols, anyway. You'll be okay." And they pulled away from Monmouth G.M.L. Unit W-97-AR. There was no sentiment to the parting. Norvell was sunk in worry, Alexandra was incandescent but still. And Virginia had not said two words to anyone that morning.
The car paused at the broad beltway circling the bubble-city, motor idling and the driver impatiently talking into his radio. Finally two more police cars rolled up and the three of them in convoy left the city roads for the cracked asphalt that led to Belly Rave. Once the road they traveled had been a six-lane superhighway, threading a hundred thousand commuters' cars morning and night. Now it wound through a scraggly jungle, the toll booths at the interchanges crumbled into rock piles and rust.
They bumped along for a couple of miles, then turned off into a side road that was even worse. The first thing that hit Norvell was the smell. The second thing was worse. It was the horrible feeling of betrayal as he looked on Belly Rave. A man can reconcile himself to anything. If life is doomed to be an eternity of agony with duodenal cancer, or the aching and irremediable poverty of the crippled and friendless, he can manage to survive and make the best of it. But when he has steeled himself to disaster . . . and the event is a thousandfold worse than his fiercest nightmare ... the pockets of strength are overrun and nothing remains inside him but collapse.
And Belly Rave, in its teeming ruin, was worse than anything Norvell had dreamed.
The police cars swayed around a corner, sirens blasting, and stopped in the middle of a long, curving block. The convoying cars pulled up ahead and behind; a cop got out of each and stood ankle-deep in weeds and refuse, hand idly resting on his gun.
Norvell's driver said, "This one will do. Let's go."
The act of moving their possessions into the house in the driving rain, ringed by an audience of blank-faced Belly Ravers, was mercifully blurred in Norvell's mind. At one moment he was sitting in the police car, staring in disbelief at the wretched kennel they offered him; at the next, the police cars were gone, he was sitting on a turned-up suitcase, and Alexandra was whining, "Norvell, I've got to have something to eat before I absolutely die, it's been—"
Virginia sighed and stood up. "Shut up," she said levelly to her daughter. "Norvell, help me get the big suitcase upstairs."
She kicked a heap of rattling cans out of her way and headed for a flight of steps, ignoring her daughter.
Norvell followed her up the narrow stairs, the treads, ancient and patched with a miscellany of boards and sheet-metal, groaning under them. The upper floor (Expansion Attic for Your Growing Family) was soggy with rain, but Virginia found a spot where no water was actually dripping in. He dumped the suitcase there. "Go on down and watch the other stuff," she ordered. "I'm going to change my clothes."
Before she got down they had company.
First to arrive were three men in ragged windbreakers. "Police," one of them said, flashing something metallic in Norvell's face. "Just a routine check. You people got any valuables, alcoholic beverages, narcotics, or weapons to register?"
Norvell protested, "The police just left."
"Them's bubble-town police, buster," the man said. "They got no jurisdiction here. If you want to take my advice, you won't give us arguments. Come on, buster, what've you got to register?"
Norvell shrugged feebly. "Nothing, I guess. Unless you count our clothes."
The men moved purposefully toward the bags. "Just clothes?" one of them flung over his shoulder. "No guns or liquor?"
Virginia's high, clear voice came down the stairs. "You're God-damned right we have guns," she said tensely. "You bums turn around and get out of here before you find out the hard way!" Norvell, eyes popping, saw an old fashioned revolver in her hand.
"Just a minute, sister," one of the "police" objected.
"Beat it!" she clipped. "I'm counting to five. One, two, three—"
They were gone, swearing.
Virginia came down the stairs and handed the gun to Norvell. "Keep it," she said coldly. "Looks better if you use it. Just in case you were wondering, there aren't any cops in Belly Rave."
Norvell swallowed. He hefted the gun cautiously. It was surprisingly heavy, far heavier than his unskilled imagination, not considering the mass needed to contain bursting gunpowder, would ever have guessed. "Where did you get this thing?"
Virginia said drearily, "I've always had it. Used to be Tony's, before he died. There's lesson one for you: You don't live here without a gun."
Alexandra came forward with shining eyes. "You were wonderful," she breathed. "Those detestable brutes—heaven only knows what would have happened to me if only Norvell had been here."
She started to plant a wet kiss on her mother's cheek. Virginia shoved her daughter away and studied her coldly.
She spoke at last, in a strange, dry voice. "We'll have no more of that cack, Missy. From now on you're going to level with me—and with Norvell, too. Hear me? We can't afford lying, faking, doublecrossing, or temperament. You'd better learn it, and learn it fast. The first bad break you make and I'll sell you like a shot."
Alexandra's face was a study in terror.
Her mother said dispassionately, "Sink or swim—you're in Belly Rave now. You don't remember; but you'll learn. Now get out of here. If you can't scrounge something to eat, go hungry. But don't come back here until sundown."
The child stood blankly. Virginia took her by the shoulder, pushed her through the door; slammed it behind her.
Norvell looked through a chink in the boarding of the cracked picture window and saw Alexandra plodding hopelessly down the battered walk, weeping.
He uncertainly asked Virginia—the new Virginia—"What was that about selling her?"
She said, "What I said. I'll sell her. It's easy, you can always find a fagin or a madam for a kid. I don't know how prices run; when I was thirteen, I brought fifty dollars."
Norvell, his hair standing on end, said, "You?"
"Me. Not Wilhelmina Snodgrass or Zenobia Beaverbottom. Me. Your wife. I guess I was lucky—they sold me to a fagin, not into a house. He ran a tea pad; I helped him roll the clientele. That's where I met Tony. Now, if there are no more useless questions, help me unpack."
Norvell helped her, his head whirling. Without shame or apology she had demolished the story of her life—the story he had painstakingly built up from her "accidental" hints and revelations over the years. She "hadn't wanted to talk about it" . . . but somehow Norvell knew. The honest, industrious parents. The frugal, rugged life of toil. The warmth of family feeling, drawn together by common need. The struggling years as a—as a something she had never exactly specified, but something honorable and plain. The meeting with Tony Elliston—glamorous cad from the Field Day crowd. Not a bad fellow. But not love, Norvell—not what we have. . . .