"Eight letters, starts with T, a Western Union wire. Good lord, child, haven't you ever read about Flo Ziegfeld? He used to send them from stage right to people standing at stage left, because they made an impact. I want to send a written message. A fax, if you please."
"Okay." She shrugged. "But you can get voice and picture at the same price."
"Polichinelli dislikes telephones," I said.
"Polichinelli?" she whispered. Apparently she had heard of Polly, because her lovely fawn-colored orbs grew even wider. "You're sending a fax to Kaspara Polichinelli?"
I sighed, and lifted the flap in the counter and came around to stand beside her. I selected a pen from a great pot full of them, and pulled a sheet of white paper from a cubbyhole. I held them up for her to see, then pushed up my sleeves and rested my elbows on the counter. I chewed on the end of the pen for a moment. She leaned close to watch as I wrote the following:
Kaspara Polichinelli
c/o Directors Guild of Luna
1750 The Alameda
King City, Luna.
We two alone will sing like birds in the cage. When thou dost ask me blessing I'll kneel down and ask of thee forgiveness. So we'll live, and pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh at gilded butterflies. You have found your Lear, and he draws nigh.
K. C. Valentine
I handed the paper to her, and she read it unabashedly. Then she read it again. When she looked up her eyes were misty.
"That's beautiful," she breathed. "Did you write this yourself?"
Perhaps she should consider a career in hotel management. Drama school hadn't taught her much. I took the paper from her and put it on the desk, placed a bill on top of it.
"This should cover the cost of the telegram," I said. I took her tiny hand and kissed the back of it, then turned it over and pressed a shiny new ten dollar piece into it, folded the fingers over the coin. "This is for your trouble. And this"—I put my arms around her, gabled my eyes down into hers for a moment, and said—"this is for me." I gave her a long, black-and-white kiss: that is to say, no tongue. Her lips were very warm. She made no resistance. How could she resist, and call herself an actress?
It begins to be silly in a minute, with nothing to fade out to, so I broke the kiss, and smiled at her.
"Wish me luck," I said.
"Break a leg," she whispered.
There was going to be no chance at all of getting any more sleep.
The room had no chair. I dragged the bed over to the single, narrow window, which I cranked open. I sat on the edge of the bed and looked out over Pandemonium's neon hell.
This was the notorious Thirteenth Avenue. Two blocks to my left was Pluto's equivalent of the Great White Way, the Rialto. It was six blocks of exclusive shops and restaurants, and about a dozen legitimate theaters. If I stuck my head out the window I could almost see it. But what was the point? It was late; the last show had let out hours ago, and the tasteful marquees were dark. Most of the restaurants were empty, too, their patrons on the trains to the suburbs or already snuggled in bed. Anyone who still wanted to party had to come here, to 'Teenth. If you want a parallel, think of Forty-second Street in little old New York. Naughty, gaudy, bawdy, sporty; the 'Teenth was all of that, and more. Here the lights still flashed, urging one in to baser amusements. At one end was the slash-boxing arena. Ten blocks away, beyond the Rialto, was the Motorpsycho racetrack. In between were dozens of orgy rooms, virtuality dens, rough bars and spike bars and squeeze bars and cyberpunk bars, dance halls, bordellos, live sex shows, and the Salvation Army mission. There were other theaters, too, the stepchildren of the glittering palaces around the corner, our modern equivalents of vaudeville and burlesque, revues and skit houses and stand-up comedy stages. There was an actual old-fashioned strip show. There were three or four experimental theaters, though most of that was farther downtown, sub-Rialto. Across from my room was the menacing edifice of the Grand Guignol, granddaddy of the Theater of Cruelty. Headlined in flashing lights: The Garden of Torture. I decided to skip that one.
It was "summer" in Pandemonium. The bright, hot overheads were out, but the air was still balmy. My room was on the fourth floor, just one below the roof. I sat on my bed and watched the traffic in the street.
It was a colorful bunch. I saw people being led around on leashes. A group of motorcyclists thundered by, on their way to a competition at the velodrome. Directly below me, two naked whores laughed and chatted with a beat cop, cool in his summer khaki.
I looked at the clock with the skull face and the skeletal hands across the street at the Grand Guignol. It had been three hours since I sent the wire. At least another three hours to go. With any luck, Polly should be getting my message just about then.
I can't imagine why no one has yet done anything about this speed-of-light business. To think that in this day and age we have to wait three hours for a message to crawl to Luna, and three hours for an answer to return. No amount of bribery will get it there any faster. My father, for one, never believed that. All his life he was convinced that rich people had a faster way, and that they kept it from the populace out of spite.
My thumb caressed the little frog-and-skull netsuke there in the semidark. At the last moment I had decided not to set it on Roy's desk. Don't ask me why. I opened my hand and looked at it, pulsing red and blue, pale washes from the neon outside. A truly evil little thing. The frog looked back at me impassively. He wasn't impatient. He had plenty of time. A fly would drift by sooner or later.
I heard the door creak behind me, then a soft sound as it closed. I knew I wasn't alone.
"I don't much feel like talking, Elwood," I said.
"Who's Elwood?" came the soft whisper. "Are you gay?"
"How can you ask that of a man who kisses like that?"
"Good." I heard soft footsteps, and looked to my left. She was across the room, by the dresser, nude, with some sort of wrap in her right hand. With her left she was placing something on the dresser, something that glinted in the next flash of blue neon that turned her from a gray shadow to a magical dolphin girl. I saw the sway of her hanging breast as she bent over the dresser, and again as she straightened and turned toward me, dropping the gown, hips moving, a bit pigeon-toed, her pubic triangle bold and black as her skin now burned the red of smoldering coals. I looked back out the window. I'd seen enough; I was in love. She'd put the ten dollar coin on the dresser so there would be no question of the nature of the coming transaction.
I heard springs creak and felt the bed move as she put first one knee, then the other, on the mattress. I felt soft hands on my shoulders, massaging gently.
"My name is Margaret Sawyer," she whispered. I wondered if she always whispered, or just around me. "People call me Peggy." Everyone has a cross to bear. "Are you having a hard time waiting for your answer?"
I gestured at the dark room. "These luxurious surroundings go a long ways to soothe my anxieties."
"Mine enemy's dog," she said, "though he had bit me, should have stood that night against my fire; and wast thou fain, poor father, to hovel thee with swine and rogues forlorn, in short and musty straw? Alack, alack!"
Alack indeed. "Do not laugh at me, for as I am a man, I think this lady to be Cordelia." I tried to look at her over my shoulder, but she kept massaging me. "And not the ignorant bumpkin I took her for."
"I've been reading the last few hours," she admitted. "And I've been wondering if you're old enough to play King Lear."
"Pray, do not mock me," I quoted. "I am a very foolish fond old man, five score and upward, not an hour more nor less."