“And also, I never want to find you in my office when I walk in,” she said. “I don’t want to make a big issue. But you sit in the waiting area, period.”
“I was looking for you,” Carl said. The nurse began writing. Stepping into her office when he saw it was empty had been the latest in a recent line of bright ideas. He was having too many bright ideas. He had foreseen not getting pills. The possibility that he might spot some lying around loose in the empty office had suggested itself. Then there had been a vague idea that he might be able to do something against the dogs with a syringe, if he had a syringe. He had seen disposable hypodermics in Rita’s wastebasket more than once. One dog, a big orange bitch, seemed almost like the choirmaster of the pack. Whether dogs could die from an air-injection, he didn’t know. Would it have been feasible to creep up on the bitch while she was rooting around near the fence and jab her? Probably not. He had taken a stupid chance. He felt pale.
Rita handed him the appointment card for his next shot. She reminded him to use the stress cassette she had given him, and said maybe he should try earplugs again. He got up, putting on his sunglasses. Lately his eyes were on the reddish side. The whites of Lo’s eyes were clear, like stationery. There was a problem connected with sunglasses, which he had to keep in mind. Apparently, older Batswana resented sunglass-wearing. A Member of Parliament had criticized young Batswana for wearing sunglasses, because it was disrespectful to conceal your eyes when you were in conversation. It had been in the Daily News. There was probably no special dispensation for expatriates.
He left. Rita was dense about earplugs. From his standpoint, there were two things wrong with earplugs. He could hear through them — any that he had tried. And earplugs forced him to listen to his own heartbeat. He had a functional murmur. It was impossible not to listen for irregularities. Listening to his heartbeat was like listening to the drum in a Roman galley. He had explained all this, but she was still pushing earplugs. He forgave her. She still gave the best gamma-globulin shots in the foreign service. She always warmed up the ampule first in her bra and then had you toe-in to loosen up your gluteus muscle. The bruising was always minimal.
He was yanked from sleep. The barking was on.
Someplace he had seen a movie where the hero is dragged into the air on ropes attached to hooks in his flesh. This was similar, except that the movie ordeal had been an initiation for an English lord who wanted to be a Comanche brave for some unknown reason. So there was a point to it.
The moon was full. It would almost be worth it to be a werewolf. After all, he would have his little problem only once a month, like women. Then he could take care of Letsamao’s dogs, either all at once or a few per month. But did werewolves eat dogs? He would.
Normally, he would go to mind force now. But he had given up on mind force, permanently. That was clear. Mind force was the only form of warfare that would let him lie immobile and not wake Lois up. Unfortunately, it was a delusion and stupid. He had tried hard to give mind force the benefit of the doubt. After all, there was a Russian medium who could make matchsticks hop around under a bell jar, supposedly. Poltergeist cases seemed to reduce to something real — certain adolescents sending out streams of invisible energy able to smash crockery and empty ashtrays on their parents’ heads. Freud once made Jung faint through sheer hatred during an argument, according to Jung, and so on.
Doing mind force, he had imagined white fire flowing up from the root of his spine and out between his eyes, where it would take weaponlike forms and destroy the dogs. He had started out with benign visualizations, such as sleep-inducing fog banks. Then he had escalated to winged nooses, blunt instruments, and on to spikes and blades. Sometimes he had accompanied his visualizations with body English, like tensing his neck cords or clenching his teeth.
He was beginning to resent all the slow motion getting in and out of bed. He realized it was making him feel old. This time, he got out of bed normally. Lo murmured, but was asleep again by the time he had frozen. He picked up his bathrobe and went out into the breezeway to sit until daybreak.
Diabolically, the barking stopped.
Lois said good morning, startling Carl. She was in the kitchen doorway. There was something in her expression. It was possible he’d been thinking out loud about the breakfast he’d made, because, seeing it all laid out, he realized it was excessive.
“Hey, please don’t interrupt me when I’m talking to myself,” he said, getting a weak smile out of Lo.
There were poached eggs, four slices of toast, broiled tomatoes, kippers, sliced peaches in maas, cornflakes, the last of their decent coffee. There was a reason for the extravagance. He had something urgent to get across. He felt that a leisurely breakfast would set up the right mood.
Lo excused herself. She would never come directly from bed to the breakfast table. Even if breakfast was brought to her in bed, she would insist on getting up to rinse her face before eating anything. She was inflexible about it. That was an example of what was worrying him about her. He had a feeling that she’d made up her mind to appeal to the ambassador for a change of housing. Carl had to prevent that. He had already explained why, and she had seemed to be listening. But there was a reservation in her attitude that had him worried. She had a naïve conception of the ambassador and his powers. He sensed she was planning to do something. It wasn’t that Lois was aggressive by nature. Lo wasn’t even a feminist. But Lois loved him, and because of the dogs she was a potential fanatic on getting assigned to another house.
They sat down together. There was no reference to the extent of the breakfast. She ate a little of everything, praising everything.
Over coffee, he began. “Lo, I need you to promise me something.” He reached across the table for her hand. “I need you to swear on my life you won’t go to the ambassador about our housing.” She was silent. He knew that he had been right.
He explained it all again, watching his tone. There were no alternative houses to be had. The housing shortage in the capital was grave. The Government of Botswana was going so far as to turn down any project that required it to provide housing in the capital for experts. The ambassador was not a god, and he was helpless on this issue. There was no way anyone in his right mind would trade quarters with them, because everyone knew about the dogs. Americans were doubling up in houses meant for one family. Contract people were stuck in hotels for months.
She came back with her experience in hotel work. Desk clerks might say there was nothing available, but if you were important enough there would always be a room. She reminded Carl that they were official Americans in Botswana, not contract people.
He explained again that the ambassador saw himself as a new broom. Under the previous ambassador, the housing committee had been a circus, an uproar, a black mark for the ambassador when the inspectors came through. As a sign of strength, the new ambassador had killed the whole appeal process in the housing committee. Now it was policy that people took the housing they were assigned and liked it, or they were sent home.
Finally, he had to explain about Elaine and housing — something he had minimized until now. He was under an emotional injunction from Lois against speaking ill of Elaine, which he accepted. But there had to be exceptions. Elaine had made a hobby out of challenging their housing assignments. She had become notorious. It had gotten into his efficiency rating reports. In short, there was a negative history to be lived down. He recognized that Elaine had needed to assert herself as a person, under what she probably saw as difficult overseas conditions. Nevertheless, there had been a difficult result. Lois seemed to be understanding all this. He finished by saying that going to the ambassador, besides being absolutely not in their own interest, would make her look childish — like someone who couldn’t appreciate facts. It would look like a tantrum.