"Well, I like that!" she said indignantly. "I'm only trying to help you!" Her eyes got deadly. She stamped her foot. "The trouble with you, you (bleepard), is pretty plain! You're a JERK! I try to give you a hand and what do you do? You spit on me! You don't know what decency is! Where the hell are your manners? Listen, you (bleepard), you've got the finest sex equipment I've ever seen in my life and believe me, I'm an expert! And do you know what to do with it? NO! You're cruel, obscene, selfish, rotten, mean, perverted, depraved, sadistic, vicious and STUPID!" She stopped. She had run out of adjectives. Her large eyes glared like a panther's. "And besides that," she finished, "you're no gentleman!"
I tried to find something to say. Every word had gone into my skull like a sledgehammer. I wanted to strangle her. But the room was spinning.
"So you haven't got a thing to say," she said. "Well,
that's good, because I have! I came over here today, thinking that in my plight, you could help. You're rich. I haven't even got a job now. I got no job because I'm uneducated. I came over here thinking that out of decency you would give me enough money to go to school. But you're so rotten, you don't have the slightest God (bleeped) idea of anything but wrecking people's nerves. So there's only one thing I can do."
I was horrified that she might put on another record. What came was far worse!
"And you know what I'm going to do?" she demanded. "I am going to stay right here and reform the hell out of you until you are decent enough to at least associate with mangy dogs! I'm going to nag, nag, nag you until you decide there is somebody else in the world besides yourself. I'm going to– – "
"Wait," I pleaded, for I could stand it no more. "What would it take to get you to leave and never come back and never see you again, ever?"
"Five thousand dollars," she said. "I got to finish my education. I live in an attic by myself so living don't cost much, but tuition does. There's a Hong Kong whore that runs a special school that teaches all the ins and outs of sex. I can buy a crash course. Then I'll know what I'm doing! I've got to unlearn everything the psychiatrist and psychologist taught me and everything in the grammar-school sex textbook. And I got to get me some real education! I'm a fast learner: you got to learn fast if you live on the streets of New York and want to stay alive. So I'm quick. She'll take me as a pupil, despite my age. But I need five thousand dollars. Then I can find some satisfaction and succeed in life. I can grow up and amount to something. I can make people happy and..."
Her voice had been literally smashing what was left
of my brain cells into ragged, mangled pulp. I said, "If I do that, will you promise faithfully, swear, attest, affirm that I will never in all my life, ever, ever, lay eyes on you again?"
"Cross my heart and hope to die!" she said.
Oh, Gods, it was worth it. I crept to my money hoard. I counted out five thousand dollars.
She took it. She counted it. Then she put it in the pocket of her cloth coat and pinned it there with a safety pin.
Before I could stop her, she gave me a moist kiss. She pulled back. She smiled happily. "I'm sorry I had to tell you the truth about yourself," she said. "But sometimes the truth pays. Are you sure I can't do anything else for you? Fix you another bhong? Play you some more records? Go down on you so you will have a calm afternoon?"
"Get out of here," I wept.
"Well," she said. "I'm not as ungrateful as you are. If you ever change your mind about seeing me, I live in the garret of one of the old houses in Tudor City." And she gave me the exact number. "All you have to do is climb the fire escape and slide in the window. It's permanently stuck open. Tudor City, you know, is just south of the United Nations and you get there over a bridge from 42nd Street. The buildings used to be kept up and they had little parks of their own and private footpaths, but the last couple of years they've gone to hell and the parks are used to grow marijuana, mostly. At least that's what I use them for. Now, please remember the number." And she gave it again twice. "If you don't mind climbing a fire escape and if you don't mind dust and old trunks, we can just lie there and do it for hours and hours the right way, or if your back gets tired I can use my mouth
on you while you rest up. I'm used to that, you see, and I don't mind a bit, really. And then when your back gets rested, we can do it the right way again. And then you can rest while I– – "
"Get OUT of here!" I wailed.
"I'm going," she said. "I keep my bargains. But don't forget the number." And she pve it to me again. "In case you change your mind. Good-bye, now, although it is a shame with us alone in the house not to use the rest of the afternoon..."
I got my hands over my ears.
She picked up her coat and put it on. She went out the back door and climbed the garden fence. She waved from the top. And at last I was left to my fuddled misery.
How often in life does one go through the first tremors of a catastrophe and never realize that they were but the unheeded warning? Ah, but if only one could change the fleeting moments of a yesteryear. How different would life be. I should have killed her when I had the chance!
The following morning, I had twice the head I had had the day before.
The reason was not hard to isolate. Preparing me for the proper execution of my duties, Adora had unfortunately heeded my plea that I must have something to drink. My throat had been dry as dust itself. She had found the bhong set up.
"You've been at the Acapulco Gold," she said. "That is what is making you so thirsty." She had come in with a full tumbler of beautifully cold liquid. It looked like water. I had drunk it gratefully, gulp, gulp, gulp.
VODKA!
The effect was almost instant. I not only had no headache, I had no head. It had blown off!
Consequently, I have no slightest recollection of what had gone on that evening. If there were two lesbians who had then become ex-lesbians, I could not tell you to this day. Since, when I woke, I had no bruises on me nor daggers sticking in me and no one was arresting me for bigamy, I could only assume that I had performed.
I felt so bad that even my loss of memory did not disturb me.
I pottered about in the midmorning empty apartment. I got an aspirin. I went out into the garden and gazed with distaste at the sunlit day. I went back in and glanced at the viewers.
Crobe was busy giving electric shocks and the emotion digitals in his viewer kept flashing
SATISFACTION
every time a patient was carted away, sheet over his face, en route to the morgue. Normal Earth psychiatric duties. One never would have suspected that he was an extraterrestrial. Not very educational. I turned it off after a while.
Krak's viewer was completely blank, so I was not disturbed at all. This evidence showed to me she must be miles and miles away, even the North Pole, perhaps.
Heller's was a view of the sea. He was leaning on a
rail, puffing. "Wow," he said, "the lady was right. I've gotten out of condition."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that, Mr. Haggarty. Anyone who can run up to the top of the mainmast and down ten times without stopping can't be said to be in serious shape." It was a gravelly voice and Heller looked sideways. The man had a broken nose and the words Spans Director were on his T-shirt. "I think you've achieved a remarkably fast recovery from those multiple injuries. CIA agents are seldom so resilient."
Heller swept a hand toward the sea. "Where are we, anyway?"
"See those high, towering clouds? Shaped like castles? Now look at the water. See the little scraps of seaweed? And look at its color: indigo blue. We're in the Gulf Stream. That's what makes the weather feel so balmy."
"How long a swim to get ashore?" said Heller. •
The sports director laughed. "You'd have to swim awfully fast to beat the tropical sharks. You're not going anywhere, Mr. Haggarty. The next item on your schedule today is a hundred laps in the sun pool. It's just been refilled with warm Gulf Stream water. So let's go."