Orr tried to speak again, but found no words. He backed out, and the orderly, right with him, closed and locked the door.
“I can’t,” Orr said. “There’s no way.”
“No way,” the orderly said.
Going down the corridor, he added in his soft voice, “Dr. Walters tells me he was a very promising scientist.”
Orr returned to downtown Portland by boat. Transportation was still rather confused; pieces, remnants, and commencements of about six different public-transportation systems cluttered up the city. Reed College had a subway station, but no subway; the funicular to Washington Park ended at the entrance to a tunnel which went halfway under the Willamette and then stopped. Meanwhile, an enterprising fellow had refitted a couple of boats that used to run tours up and down the Willamette and Columbia, and was using them as ferries on regular runs between Linnton, Vancouver, Portland, and Oregon City. It made a pleasant trip.
Orr had taken a long lunch hour for the visit to the asylum. His employer, the Alien E’nememen Asfah, was indifferent to hours worked and interested only in work done. When one did it was one’s own concern. Orr did a good deal of his in his head, lying in bed half-awake for an hour before he got up in the morning.
It was three o’clock when he got back to the Kitchen Sink and sat down in front of his drafting table in the workshop. Asfah was in the showroom waiting on customers. He had a staff of three designers, and contracts with various manufacturers who made kitchen equipment of all sorts, bowls, cookware, implements, tools, everything short of heavy appliances. Industry and distribution had been left in disastrous confusion by The Break; national and international government had been so distraught for weeks that a state of laissez faire had prevailed perforce, and small private firms that had been able to keep going or get started during this period were in a good position. In Oregon a number of these firms, all handling material goods of one kind or another, were run by Aldebaranians; they were good managers and extraordinary salesmen, though they had to hire human beings for all handwork. The Government liked them because they willingly accepted governmental constraints and controls, for the world economy was gradually pulling itself back together. People were even talking about the Gross National Product again, and President Merdle had predicted a return to normalcy by Christmas.
Asfah sold retail as well as wholesale, and the Kitchen Sink was popular for its sturdy wares and fair prices. Since The Break, housewives, refurnishing the unexpected kitchens they had found themselves cooking in that evening in April, had come in increasing numbers. Orr was looking over some wood samples for cutting boards when he heard one saying, “I’d like one of those egg whisks,” and because the voice reminded him of his wife’s voice he got up and looked into the showroom. Asfah was showing something to a middle-sized brown woman of thirty or so, with short, black, wiry hair on a well-shaped head.
“Heather,” he said, coming forward.
She turned. She looked at him for what seemed a long time. “Orr,” she said. “George Orr. Right? When did I know you?”
“In—” He hesitated. “Aren’t you a lawyer?”
E’nememen Asfah stood immense in greenish armor, holding an egg whisk.
“Nope. Legal secretary. I work for Rutti and Goodhue, in the Pendleton Building.”
“That must be it. I was in there once. Do you, do you like that? I designed it.” He took another egg whisk from the bin and displayed it to her. “Good balance, see. And it works fast. They usually make the wires too taut, or too heavy, except in France.”
“It’s good-looking,” she said. “I have an old electric mixer but I wanted at least to hang that on the wall. You work here? You didn’t use to. I remember now. You were in some office on Stark Street, and you were seeing a doctor on Voluntary Therapy.”
He had no idea what, or how much, she recalled, nor how to fit it in with his own multiple memories.
His wife, of course, had been gray-skinned. There were still gray people now, it was said, particularly in the Middle West and Germany, but most of the rest had gone back to white, brown, black, red, yellow, and mixtures. His wife had been a gray person, a far gentler person than this one, he thought. This Heather carried a big black handbag with a brass snap, and probably a half pint of brandy inside; she came on hard. His wife had been unaggressive and, though courageous, timid in manner. This was not his wife, but a fiercer woman, vivid and difficult.
“That’s right,” he said. “Before The Break. We had... Actually, Miss Lelache, we had a date for lunch. At Dave’s, on Ankeny. We never made it.”
“I’m not Miss Lelache, that’s my maiden name. I’m Mrs. Andrews.”
She eyed him with curiosity. He stood and endured reality.
“My husband was killed in the war in the Near East,” she added.
“Yes,” Orr said.
“Do you design all these things?”
“Most of the tools and stuff. And the cookware. Look, do you like this?” He hauled out a copper-bottom teakettle, massive and yet elegant, as proportioned by necessity as a sailing ship.
“Who wouldn’t?” she said, putting out her hands. He gave it to her. She hefted and admired it. “I like things,” she said.
He nodded.
“You’re a real artist. It’s beautiful.”
“Mr. Orr is expert with tangibles,” the proprietor put in, toneless, speaking from the left elbow.
“Listen, I remember,” Heather said suddenly. “Of course, it was before The Break, that’s why it’s all mixed up in my mind. You dreamed, I mean, you thought you dreamed things that came true. Didn’t you? And the doctor was making you do more and more of it, and you didn’t want him to, and you were looking for a way to get out of Voluntary Therapy with him without getting clobbered with Obligatory. See, I do remember it. Did you ever get assigned to another shrink?”
“No. Outgrew ‘em,” Orr said, and laughed. She also laughed.
“What did you do about the dreams?”
“Oh... went on dreaming.”
“I thought you could change the world. Is this the best you could do for us—this mess?”
“It’ll have to do,” he said.
He would have preferred less of a mess himself, but it wasn’t up to him. And at least it had her in it. He had sought her as best he could, had not found her, and had turned to his work for solace; it had not given much, but it was the work he was fit to do, and he was a patient man. But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger, forever to be won again.
He knew her, he knew his stranger, how to keep her talking and how to make her laugh. He said finally, “Would you like a cup of coffee? There’s a cafe next door. It’s time for my break.”
“The hell it is,” she said; it was quarter to five. She glanced over at the Alien. “Sure I’d like some coffee, but—”
“I’ll be back in ten minutes. E’nememen Asfah,” Orr said to his employer as he went for his raincoat.
“Take evening,” the Alien said. “There is time. There are returns. To go is to return.”
“Thank you very much,” Orr said, and shook hands with his boss. The big green flipper was cool on his human hand. He went out with Heather into the warm, rainy afternoon of summer. The Alien watched them from within the glass-fronted shop, as a sea creature might watch from an aquarium, seeing them pass and disappear into the mist.