|
Chapter 9
Ruth Rae's
apartment appalled Jason Taverner with its luxury, It must cost her, he
reasoned, at least four hundred dollars a day. Bob Gomen must be in good
financial shape, he decided. Or anyhow was.
"You didn't
have to buy that fifth of Vat 69," Ruth said as she took his coat,
carrying it and her own to a self-opening closet. "I have Cutty Sark and
Hiram Walker's bourbon -"
***
She had
learned a great deal since he had last slept with her: it was true.
Emptied, he lay naked on the blankets of the waterbed, rubbing a
broken-out spot at the rim of his nose. Ruth Rae, or rather Mrs. Ruth
Gomen now, sat on the carpeted floor, smoking a Pall Mall. Neither of them
had spoken for some time; the room had become quiet. And, he thought, as
drained as I am. Isn't there some principle of thermodynamics, he
thought, that says heat can't be destroyed, it can only be transferred?
But there's also entropy.
I feel the
weight of entropy on me now, he decided, I have discharged myself into a
vacuum, and I will never get back what I have given out. I goes only one
way. Yes, he thought, I'm sure that is one of the fundamental laws of
thermodynamics.
"Do you have
an encyclopedia machine?" he asked the woman.
"Hell, no."
Worry appeared on her prunelike face. Prune-like - he withdrew the image;
it did not seem fair. Her weathered face, he decided. That was more like
it.
"What are
you thinking?" he asked her.
"No, you
tell me what you're thinking," Ruth said. "What's on that big
alpha-consciousness- type supersecret brain of yours?"
"Do you
remember a girl named Monica Buff?" Jason asked.
"'Remember'
her! Monica Buff was my sister-in-law for six years. In all that time she
never washed her hair once. Tangled, messy, dark-brown ooze of dog fur
hanging around her pasty face and dirty short neck."
"I didn't
realize you disliked her."
"Jason, she
used to steal. If you left your purse around she'd rip you off; not
just the paper scrip but all the coins as well. She had the brain of a
magpie and the voice of a crow, when she talked, which thank God wasn't
often. Do you know that that chick used to go six or seven - sometimes,
one time in particular - eight days without saying a word? Just huddled up
in a corner like a fractured spider strumming on that five-dollar guitar
she owned and never learned the chords for. Okay, she did look pretty in
an unkempt messy sort of way. I'll concede that. If you like gross tail."
"How'd she
stay alive?" Jason asked. He had known Monica Buff only briefly, and by
way of Ruth. But during that time he and she had had a short, mind-blowing
affair.
"Shoplifting," Ruth Rae said. "She had that big wicker bag she got in Baja
California ... she used to stuff stuff into that and then go cruising out
of the store big as life."
"Why didn't
she get caught?"
"She did.
They fined her and her brother came up with the bread, so there she was
again, out on the street, strolling along barefoot - I mean it! - down
Shrewsbury Avenue in Boston, tweaking all the peaches in the grocery-store
produce sections. She used to spend ten hours a day in what she called
shopping." Glaring at him, Ruth said, "You know what she did that she
never got caught at?" Ruth lowered her voice. "She used to feed escaped
students."
"And they
never busted her for that?" Feeding or sheltering an escaped student meant
two years in an FLC - the first time. The second time the sentence was
five years.
"No, they
never busted her. If she thought a pol team was about to run a spot check
she'd quickly phone Pol Central and say a man was trying to break into her
house. And then she'd maneuver the student outside and then lock him out,
and the pols would come and there he'd be, beating on the door exactly as
she said. So they'd cart him off and leave her free." Ruth chuckled, "I
heard her make one of those phone calls to Pol Central once. The way she
told it, the man -"
Jason said,
"Monica was my old lady for three weeks. Five years ago, roughly."
"Did you
ever see her wash her hair during that time?"
"No," he
admitted.
"And she
didn't wear underpants," Ruth said. "Why would a good-looking man like you
want to have an affair with a dirty, stringy, mangy freak like Monica
Buff? You couldn't have been able to take her anywhere; she smelled. She
never bathed."
"Hebephrenia,"
Jason said.
"Yes." Ruth
nodded. "That was the diagnosis. I don't know if you know this but finally
she just wandered off, during one of her shopping trips, and never came
back; we never saw her again. By now she's probably dead. Still clutching
that wicker shopping bag she got in Baja. That was the big moment in her
life, that trip to Mexico. She bathed for the occasion, and I fixed
up her hair - after I washed it half a dozen times. What did you ever see
in her? How could you stand her?"
Jason said,
"I liked her sense of humor."
It's unfair,
he thought, comparing Ruth with a nineteen year-old girl. Or even with
Monica Buff. But - the comparison remained there, in his mind. Making it
impossible for him to feel attraction toward Ruth Rae. As good- as
experienced, anyhow - as she was in bed.
I am using
her, he thought. As Kathy used me. As McNulty used Kathy.
McNulty.
Isn't there a microtrans on me somewhere?
Rapidly,
Jason Taverner grabbed up his clothing, swiftly carried it to the
bathroom. There, seated on the edge of the tub, he began to inspect each
article.
It took him
half an hour. But he did, at last, locate it. Small as it was. He flushed
it down the toilet; shaken, he made his way back into the bedroom. So they
know where I am after all, he realized. I can't stay here after all.
And I've
jeopardized Ruth Rae's life for nothing.
***
"Wait," he
said aloud.
"Yes?" Ruth
said, leaning wearily against the wall of the bathroom, arms folded under
her breasts.
"Microtransmitters,"
Jason said slowly, "only give approximate locations. Unless something
actually tracks back to them locked on their signal." Until then -
He could not
be sure. After all, McNulty had been waiting in Kathy's apartment. But had
McNulty come there in response to the microtransmitter, or because he knew
that Kathy lived there? Befuddled by too much anxiety, sex, and scotch, he
could not remember; he sat on the tub edge rubbing his forehead, straining
to think, to recall exactly what had been said when he and Kathy entered
her room to find McNulty waiting for them.
Ed, he
thought. They said that Ed planted the microtrans on me. So it did locate
me. But -
Still, maybe
it only told them the general area. And they assumed, correctly, that it
would be Kathy's pad.
To Ruth Rae
he said, his voice breaking, "God damn it, I hope I haven't got the pols
oinking their asses after you; that would be too much, too goddamn much."
He shook his head, trying to clear it. "Do you have any coffee that's
super-hot?"
"I'll go
punch the stove-console. " Ruth Rae skittered barefoot, wearing only a box
bangle, from the bathroom into the kitchen. A moment later she returned
with a big, plastic mug of coffee, marked KEEP ON TRUCKIN'. He accepted
it, drank down the steaming coffee.
"I can't
stay," he said, "any longer. And anyhow, you're too old."
She stared
at him, ludicrously, like a warped, stomped doll. And then she ran off
into the kitchen. Why did I say that? he asked himself. The pressure; my
fears. He started after her.
In the
kitchen doorway Ruth appeared, holding up a stoneware platter marked
SOUVENIR OF KNOTTS BERRY FARM. She ran blindly at him and brought it
down on his head, her mouth twisting like newborn things just now alive.
At that last instant he managed to lift his left elbow and take the blow
there; the stoneware platter broke into three jagged pieces, and, down his
elbow, blood spurted. He gazed at the blood, the shattered pieces of
platter on the carpet, then at her.
"I'm sorry,"
she said, whispering it faintly. Barely forming the words. The newborn
snakes twisted continually, in apology.
Jason said,
"I'm sorry."
"I'll put a
Band-Aid on it." She started for the bathroom.
"No," he
said, "I'm leaving. It's a clean cut; it won't get infected."
"Why did you
say that to me?" Ruth said hoarsely.
"Because,"
he said, "of my own fears of age. Because they're wearing me down, what's
left of me. I virtually have no energy left. Even for an orgasm."
"You did
really well."
"But it was
the last," he said. He made his way into the bathroom; there he washed the
blood from his arm, kept cold water flowing on the gash until coagulation
began. Five minutes, fifty; he could not tell. He merely stood there,
holding his elbow under the faucet. Ruth Rae had gone God knew where.
Probably to nark to the pols, he said wearily to himself; he was too
exhausted to care.
Hell, he
thought. After what I said to her I wouldn't blame her.
Go to Next
Page |