To Joan Mott Evans,
Let's talk.
Rye.
She kept her head down for a good half minute, as if reading the short inscription all that time. Then, sighing, she looked up at him. "I'm sorry," she said.
Ryerson, seeing her embarrassment, extended his arm welcomingly. "No," he said, "I'm sorry. That was unfair. Please, come inside. I'm sure there's a lot we have to say to each other."
~ * ~
In Buffalo
Irene Sabitch scowled at her computer monitor in the Buffalo Police Department Records Division. Her coworker, Glen Coffman, sitting behind his own computer monitor a few feet away, said, "You look like you just chomped down on a clove of garlic, Irene. What's the problem?"
She glanced at him, still scowling, then looked back at her monitor. She said tightly, "The problem is this new system." She guffawed. "Foolproof, my ass!"
Glen got up, went over, stood behind her, and scanned her monitor. "Just punch in the user number, Irene. It's 001.BPD," and he started for his seat.
"I tried that," she said.
He stopped, looked back, shrugged. "Try it again."
"I tried it six times, Glen."
He went back and put his hand on her shoulder to coax her from her chair. "Let me give it a try, okay?"
She stayed put. "For God's sake, Glen, I can punch in user numbers just as well as you can.
He hesitated, looked at the screen again. He was reading the computer's "file directory."
It showed him a list of files on that particular computer disk which were available for inspection by the computer operator. It read:
FILE DIRECTORY
CURTIS L.BAK
JME.BAK
HAWKINS.LET
LET.BAK
FORMAT.CMD
STAT.CMD
OPER.CMD
JME.OPE
USER NUMBER?
He reached over Irene's shoulder and punched in "001 .BPD." The screen cleared. A moment later these words appeared on it:
INVALID USER NUMBER.
RETURNING TO FILE DIRECTORY
He scowled. The file directory and its maddening "user number?" request came back on the screen. He said, "Well, someone's screwed up royally here. That user number is locked into the system-"
"I know that, Glen," Irene said, and glanced around at him. "You don't have to shout."
He looked back at her. "Was I shouting? I'm sorry." He studied the screen. "Where'd you get this disk?"
"From the hard disk subsystem. I was updating files, this appeared, and I made a copy of it."
"Uh-huh. That explains it then. Those files"-he nodded at the screen-"were in the system before it was restructured. So it's got a personal user number on it."
"Oh, yeah?" Irene teased. "Whose?"
"Whose?'' Glen said. "I don't know. We should have a list of personal user numbers around here somewhere. Find it and input every one till this damned file opens up."
She rolled her eyes. "Glen, do you know how many user numbers that could be?"
"Not many. A few thousand. But, hell, you type pretty fast." He chuckled, went back to his own monitor, sat down, looked back. "Hey, have you seen my games disk? I was halfway through Space Wars yesterday."
~ * ~
Lilian Janus
At thirty-three, Lilian Janus had what she considered a more or less perfect life. Her home was comfortable, she kept it neat; her children were nicely behaved and did well in school; her husband, Frank, was handsome and a good provider.
She had a part-time job as a cosmetics salesperson at Sibley's Department Store, in Buffalo. She liked the job because it enabled her to meet women she felt were much like herself, women whose only real concerns in life had to do with the inexorable approach of middle age, and, she assumed, the bothersome and sometimes unreasonable sexual overtures of their husbands. Because (everyone knew it) sex, or the promise of it, was merely something "that enables a woman to catch a husband and keeps a husband at home." Her mother, rest her sainted soul, had drilled it into her since she was twelve years old.
Chapter Four
In Boston
"I like your dog," Joan said. Ryerson had brought her a cup of coffee and some of his homemade brown Betty. She had never had brown Betty before but had developed an instant passion for it "He's just a pup, right?"
Ryerson, looking like a proud father, said, "Yes, he is. Six months old. He's a Boston bull terrier, you know."
Joan, seated in the same gray love seat that Coreen had used, nodded. "I had one when I was a kid. My brothers hated him, but I think I was just perverse enough to really appreciate him." She stopped suddenly, thought about what she'd said, and hurried on. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to imply-"
Ryerson, shaking his head, said, "No, please, don't apologize. I know exactly what you mean; they're like … fruitcakes, aren't they? Everyone says you're supposed to hate them, but I don't."
Joan smiled slightly and inclined her head in acknowledgment; actually, she hated fruitcake. "Yes," she said, "I know what you're talking about." She realized then that during the ten minutes or so she'd been in his apartment her anxiety had vanished because he was so easy to be with. So far, they'd talked primarily about the city, and it was clear that he felt the same kind of paternal love and pride for it that he felt for Creosote. She liked that feeling of paternalism she saw in him. She knew that it was not the overbearing, domineering kind of paternalism that so many men harbored, but more a sort of protective affection and understanding. And when she had gotten glimpses into his psyche, she'd seen that although he was now a stable and happy man, he'd had a very troubled past. She wanted to peer at some of those troubles, but when she tried, it was like looking through ten feet of clear lake water at a half-dozen dark, amorphous shapes swimming about.
He hadn't yet asked her the reason for her visit, not, she thought, because he was baiting her with friendliness, waiting to spring it on her-to surprise some sort of confession out of her-but because he genuinely wanted to get to know her a little better.
So she was at ease when he asked, "Can you tell me about Lila?" He was sitting in a big brown wing chair facing her at the other side of the small, cluttered room. Books composed most of the clutter. There were also loose manuscript pages here and there around his huge roll top desk, various doggy chew toys scattered about, most of them in perfect condition, because Creosote's favorite chew toys were Ryerson's argyle socks. And there was a raft of unopened mail on a small cherry table near the door. Ryerson had Creosote in his arms, and his legs loosely crossed. He put Creosote on the floor, leaned forward, and added, "Were you and Lila friends?"
Joan answered at once, nodding vigorously, "Yes, we were friends. We were the best of friends, Rye." The name flowed freely from her lips, as if she had been calling him "Rye" for years. ("Mr. Biergarten," he'd told her, "kind of stumbles around in the mouth, doesn't it? And Ryerson doesn't fit me at all, I hope. So please call me Rye.") Joan went on, sighing first, happy to be on the verge of letting some of her awful secret out at last. "She was like a sister to me. A little sister." She leaned over, picked her coffee cup up from the hardwood floor-there were no tables near the love seat, and she'd noticed, anyway, a profusion of condensation rings on the floor from other cups-sipped the coffee, set the cup on the floor again, continued. "We were not nearly the same age, as you know. She was sixteen. I'm twenty-three. So I guess you could call it a big sister/little sister relationship."
Ryerson cut in gently, "It was nothing more than that, Joan?"