Sam worried about Max. The cat had been with Sam for almost three years. Nobody had said a word about Max, but still Sam worried. As well as his sole act of rebellion, the cat was also his main source of companionship. Sometimes Sam wondered how he would survive without Max.
When those thoughts started, he would take a Serenax. The room was drab and as clean as it was possible to make a cheap-lease, where the war against roaches alone was a full-time occupation. The yellowing walls didn't bother Sam. He found them kind of restful. It actually was not hard to keep the room neat. Sam didn't have very much. Aside from the bed, two chairs, a small table, a built-in wall TV, and a selection of cooking utensils, there was just a small nest of shelves that held the meager mementoes of a life of very limited expectations. There was a blue plastic lunch box from an ancient TV show called "The Galaxy Rangers" that Sam had watched as a child, a Michael Jackson funeral mug, a glow-in-the-dark figurine of Batman with one arm missing, a group of lead spacemen, a neat row of books, and a framed black-and-white photograph of May Marsh, the star of "Penal Colony." He really didn't know why he kept that picture. He didn't actually like "Penal Colony."
Sam wondered if he should fix himself a meal. Somehow he couldn't be bothered. He had taken too many pills already. He just didn't have the motivation. Instead, he went to the same cupboard that held the Kitty Krunch and took down a jar of cookies. The cat looked up at him. Max had a keen interest in anything to do with food. Sam looked at him sadly.
"I only saw her once today, the girl in the vault, the one I told you about."
He munched absently on a cookie, carrying the jar with him as he went back to the bed.
"I have to go and see her when Ralph's off drinking, otherwise he gives me a hard time."
The cat sat down and began to wash himself.
"It's difficult with Ralph. I mean, he's my partner, and I like him, but when he drinks, he can get real mean. I tell myself it ain't his fault, but it still ain't easy. I like to look at the girl."
The cat was totally involved in its toilet. Max always did a thorough job.
"I sure hope nothing happens to her."
Sam started on another cookie. As he chewed, he stared at the cat.
"You're just not interested, are you?"
Sam reached out and turned on the TV. One of the consolations of a cheap-lease was the way almost everything could be reached from the bed.
The screen came to life. It was channel 45, "Earth News." It was in the middle of an item about a subway riot. Sam was glad he didn't use the subway. It was worth the extra fare to take the monorail and know he was fairly safe. On the subway, anything could happen.
The picture on the screen seemed to be proving Sam's point. It was shaky and hand held. It showed a seven-man CRAC squad clubbing a subway car full of fighting passengers into some semblance of order. The commentary mentioned Lincoln Avenue station.
"I hope Ralph wasn't involved."
Sam flipped the channel. On 48 someone was getting his head kicked in an ancient western. Sam turned off the set. He didn't like violence.
He reached for the bookshelf. Sam was reading two books at the moment. One was The House at Pooh Corner, the other was Moby Dick. Sam didn't feel like dealing with Herman Melville, so he picked up Pooh Corner. He opened the book, took out a marker, and settled back to read. The cat climbed on his chest and rolled onto the open book. Sam smiled and poked the cat in the stomach.
"What's the matter, don't you want me to read?"
The cat waved its legs in the air and tried to bite him.
"Maybe you want to watch television?"
WANDA-JEAN SAT UP IN THE HUGE BED. She felt a little dizzy. She had drunk too much, earlier in the evening. Over on the other side of the bed, Bobby Priest was fast asleep.
She looked over at him. In repose, he was very different from the character she had come to know on the studio floor. Without the surface layer of fast-talking energy, he looked weak, vulnerable, almost petulant, more like a spoiled little boy than the big TV star.
Beneath the drunkenness, Wanda-Jean felt empty and far from satisfied. In bed, he was a long way from a superstar.
The whole evening had been an awful disappointment. Wanda-Jean had imagined he would take her to one of the city's most exclusive restaurants or nightclubs. She had picked out a luxurious white evening gown from the wardrobe that the network had given her when she started on the Dreamroad.
To her amazement Priest had shown up in a faded but well-tailored work suit. He announced that they were going to Old Town.
"Old Town?"
Priest had grinned. "Sure, what's wrong with Old Town?''
"Nothing, but…"
"I go over to Old Town a lot. It's one of the few places in town where either you don't get recognized, or the ones who do ain't interested."
Wanda-Jean wasn't too happy about his plan. She had rather wanted to be recognized, particularly with Bobby Priest.
Old Town was, strictly speaking, part of the twilight area. Unlike Lincoln Avenue, which had just been left to decay, Old Town had been cosmeticized into a rather cutesy bohemian neighborhood. It was where poets, painters, and musicians lived side by side with trendy executives who filled their apartments with bric-a-brac from the fifties and sixties and pretended they were nonconformist and artistic.
Wanda-Jean had looked down at her dress with an expression of horror. "I can't go to Old Town dressed like this."
Bobby Priest had laughed. "You can go to Old Town dressed any way you want to."
"With you done up like a truck driver?"
"We'll make a very striking couple, and anyway, there isn't time for you to get changed all over again."
Still protesting, Wanda-Jean had been hustled into the lift and down to the waiting car. They drove across the city, alone with just the chauffeur and bodyguard.
Bobby had been right about two things. Nobody had seemed to recognize them, and nobody took much notice of Wanda-Jean's overelaborate dress, although she had still spent most of the evening feeling slightly ridiculous.
One mercy was that the place they went to was very dark, almost dark enough to forget about the bodyguard who sat like a squat, broad-shouldered boulder at the next table.
When you got down to basics, the place was a small, nondescript cellar. The walls were probably damp but, mercifully, hidden in the gloom. The decor was a loving, if grubby, re-creation of the beatnik era. The furniture was mismatched. The crowning glory of each table was a red and white checked tablecloth and a candle stuck in a wax-encrusted Chianti bottle. These were the only source of light, except for a couple of spotlights that were trained on a small stage.
For maybe the first hour, all Wanda-Jean could think of was why Bobby Priest had brought her to a place like this. The tables were crammed with an assortment of standard weirdos. Some were so far into the part that they sported long lank hair and beards, or black and white existentialist makeup-what was the name of the chick who started the whole thing? Juliette something?
The food wasn't all that bad. It had a loose base in Italian cooking. Wanda-Jean suspected that it was loaded down with illegal flavorings, and maybe other illegal ingredients, as well.
With just about anybody else Wanda-Jean would have come right out and demanded he explain what he thought he was doing bringing her to a cruddy place like this. With Bobby Priest, she just didn't feel able to.
It was made doubly difficult by the fact that somebody seemed to have hit the man's off button. The stream of patter appeared to have totally dried. He sat in silence, pushing food into his mouth with a kind of mechanical enthusiasm. Every now and then he'd pause and tap his fork in time to the resident jazz trio. Conversation was zero. Wanda-Jean had become angry and confused. First of all he'd brought her up to this dump in Old Town, and then he treated her as if she wasn't even there.