Nicklin glowered at him with purest malevolence, wondering how anybody could be dim enough to stage the identical accident so often without learning to avoid it. Just think of it, he told himself, appalled, unless I do something really drastic Maxy and I could grow old together—with him gradually wearing that rock down to a frigging pebble.
“Good morrow, Jim,” Maxy bellowed, grinning hugely, as he came into the shop. “Did you see that one? I nearly deballed myself.”
I wish you had, Nicklin thought. “You’re late again.”
“Yeah.” Maxy was totally unabashed. “Didn’t get to bed till all hours last night. A couple of the boys and me went over to the travellin’ show, just to see what sort of things was going on, then we went down to the White Spot for a few beers. Seen you at the show.”
“I didn’t see you.”
“Naw, but I seen you, all right,” Maxy said triumphantly. “You seemed to be doing okay for yourself. I was nearly going to butt in and tell snake-hips how she was wasting her time on you, and she oughta come along for a few beers with me and the boys, but my generations of good breeding stopped me.”
It has just told me it thinks I’m a homosexual—to my face!—and I go on meekly standing here. “I’m sure Danea will be deeply disappointed when she hears what she missed,” Nicklin said. “I’ll break the news to her tonight—as gently as I can, of course. We mustn’t have the poor woman bursting into tears.”
“Are you saying you’ll be seeing her tonight?”
“No, we’ve arranged to communicate by carrier pigeon! What do you think I’m saying? Of course I’m seeing her tonight.”
Maxy hopped from one foot to the other, grinning in gleeful disbelief. “Is that a fact, Jim? You’ve got yourself a hot date? Me and the boys’ll watch out for you—maybe pick up a few tips.”
Knowing that Maxy, who had remarkably little to do in his spare time, was quite capable of maintaining surveillance on him for an entire evening, Nicklin shrugged and turned away. How was he going to get out of this one? Was he going to have to plead illness and stay home? Brooding on this new annoyance, he went to the square metre of work surface which was referred to as the kitchen, and began to brew coffee. Starting the job while Maxy was present would be interpreted as an invitation for him to share. That was not what he wanted, but it was much preferable to letting Maxy prepare the drinks. He had an unfortunate habit of handling the cups by putting two fingers deep inside them, even when they were full—fingers which if examined under a microscope, Nicklin was sure, would register as a seething mass of bacteria.
“Just what I need,” Maxy said, following him. “Hey! Know who else I saw at the rent-a-freak last night?”
“No, but perhaps you’ll be good enough to tell me.”
Impervious to sarcasm, Maxy nodded vigorously. “A black man! Strewth, Jim—they’ve got a black geezer working for them! He’s as black as… as…”
As your fingernails, Nicklin supplied mentally.
“…as your boot,” Maxy concluded.
Although Nicklin did not want to encourage Maxy by showing any degree of interest, he was quite intrigued. He had seen only one black person in his entire life, and that had been when he was a child. Now he found it quite difficult to visualise a human being who had black skin.
The old Orbitsville syndrome again, he thought. So much for all that ancient stuff about the universal brotherhood of man! With living space equal to five billion Earths available, like had gone off into the wild green yonder with like. Nobody was going to hang around to be persecuted, discriminated against, tolerated or even cultivated by liberals merely because of having the wrong shade of epidermis or politics, speaking the wrong language or having wrong ideas about religion, having been born to the wrong parents or in one of the vast selection of wrong places. Regardless of all teachings and preachings, the ordinary Joe had decided it was best to be with his own…
“Anyway,” Maxy said. “I’ve decided I don’t like black people.”
“That was quick.” Nicklin took two plastic cups from the dispenser. “May I ask why?”
“They’re too short-tempered, too touchy. Me and the boys was just standing there—friendly, like—looking at this guy, and all of a sudden, for no reason at all, he tells us to bog off.” An indignant expression appeared on Maxy’s tallowy face as he relived the incident in his mind. “I mean, if you can’t just stand and look at somebody!”
“What’s the world coming to? That’s what I always say.” Nicklin poured coffee into the two cups, picked up his own and moved to the front end of the shop. It was a vantage point which gave him a good view of the stream, the small bridge and the road. Beyond the building’s wide eaves the sunlight was a silent, vertical torrent of platinum-coloured rays, hammering down on the bleached-out scene with almost tangible force. The world was embedded—preserved and hermetically sealed—in the clear rigid plastic of that light. Dayton, Ohio, where it was forever 1910. Nothing was ever going to happen in Orangefield, and he was going to be right there, through all of it. The thought was enough to make him want to sit down and weep. Dismayed to feel his lower lip give a preliminary tremble, he took a sip of his coffee and winced as the near-scalding fluid coursed down his throat.
Lost in his melancholia, Nicklin had been gazing at the approaching blue Unimot convertible for several seconds before he realised it was slowing down to stop at his place. It was lost to view behind the stand of whistle trees, reappeared and turned right, coming to a halt when its driver was confronted by the footbridge. A moment later the driver got out and Nicklin’s heart gave a giddy lurch as he saw the woman. The woman.
She was no longer the Lady in Black, but was wearing a similar outfit—glistening blouse, slimfit pants, high-heel boots and flat stetson—in which the predominant colour was primrose. Glancing about her with evident interest, she came towards the shop. She was walking almost like a ballet dancer on stage, with one foot going down directly in front of the other in a way which emphasised the economical curvatures of thighs, calves and ankles.
Nicklin felt a cool prickling on his brow as he analysed the possibilities. The chances that she was coming to borrow a book or to have an eggbeater mended were just about zero—which meant that the visit was personal. Could it be—could it really be—that she wanted to take up where they had left off last night? But nothing actually happened between us last night, Nicklin reminded himself. It was all a product of my fevered imagination. This sort of thing only happens to me in the opening phases of an erotic dream.
He set his cup down, found the presence of mind to wink at Maxy, and went out of the shop without taking time to pick up his sun-hat. When the woman saw him advancing to meet her she gave him a smile which was so fleeting that it would have been possible to miss it, then her expression became severe.
“What happened to you last night?” she said abruptly.
“I…” Nicklin was lost for words. “What do you mean?”
“Jim, you know very well what I mean.”
Her use of his first name excited and encouraged him. “I assure you, Danea, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“At least you remember my name,” she said, beginning to look mollified. “I suppose that’s something, but don’t think it lets you off the hook, Jim Nicklin. Why didn’t you come back to see me last night, the way we arranged?”