The Years of the City

by Frederik Pohl

  For the first time the doctor showed interest. “No murder fantasies? No acting out antisocial impulses?”

  “No nothing, including a decent lawyer,” Jimper groused.

  The doctor studied his face more carefully. “You think you got an unfair trial? You want to take it to the Supreme Court, maybe?”

  “Doctor,” said Jimper, “I don’t even have that fantasy.”

  The doctor shrugged. “Heaven knows where the Supreme Court is, anyway—Houston, last I heard.” He scowled at his memo plate. “What’s the matter with this thing? Did I spell your name wrong?” Scowling, he reached to key the name in again, and then drew his hands back, his expression scandalized. “Oh, God,” he moaned, “that’s the last straw. First case I get all day that isn’t some kind of wacko, and somebody else steals him away.”

  “Steals me?” Jimper asked.

  “Volunteered to take you off my list,” the counselor said bitterly. “I should have known! Always look a gift horse in the mouth, right? And she’s such a sweet little thing—”

  Jimper said, “Look, friend. I was told to report here for counseling, because that’s the way the law is for second offenders. Outside of that I’m not interested in your problems. Counsel me and get it over with, will you?”

  “If only it were that easy!” The counselor shook his head mournfully. “Your new doctor, in the next office. Name’s on the door, Dr. J. Redfan. Move along, please. Next!”

  J. Redfan. The name was familiar, in a sort of way, but it wasn’t until he had worked his way up the second line—mercifully shorter—and was allowed into the office that he attached the name to the face. “Hello, Jimper,” said Jo-Ellen Redfan. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”

  He sat down, feeling suddenly relaxed. “This I didn’t expect,” he admitted. “I thought you were in private practice.”

  “When you’re working off a conviction,” she said, “you do whatever you have to do. Listen. The reason I took your case on, I understand you’re a painter, right?”

  “Well—I wish I were, anyway. Actually I’m a fabric designer mostly. Not enough talent to get into the Met, I’m afraid.”

  “But you do know how to paint?”

  “Well, sure—” But she wasn’t listening. She was dialing the phone, and spoke into it as soon as it answered.

  “Hello, Willy? I’m bringing company home for dinner, so go out on the balcony and catch us about a dozen big ones and I’ll make chirpy chili. See you in about half an hour.”

  “Chirpy chili?” Jimper asked, baffled.

  “I’m taking you home for dinner,” she explained. “There’s no problem. You’re a recidivist so you need some therapy, right? The best therapy is work therapy—and, Jimper, have I got a painting job for you!”

  Home for Jo-Ellen Redfan was a really nice apartment, high up in the twenties, three big rooms and a wide balcony. It was what they called a Canadian co-op, meaning that she paid a quarter of her income for the apartment and it was hers forever. Or until she stopped paying, or decided to move away. “But I won’t do that,” she explained, putting water on the stove to simmer, “because they gave us the apartment in the first place when there were two earners in the family, and now with just me it’s a real bargain. Will! I’m ready to blanch!”

  The bedroom door opened and Will peered out. He was holding a keyboard in his hand and had all the look of a young man doing his homework. “They’re on the balcony, Jo.”

  “So bring them in from the balcony!”

  The boy sighed, set down the keyboard and marched through the living room, past the kitchen and out on the balcony. Jimper wandered after him, admiring the view and listening to the cricket song that came from the cage at one end of the terrace. A smaller cage was near it; the boy picked it up, delivered it to his mother with an aggrieved air and said, “Now can I finish my algebra?”

  “Go,” said Jo-Ellen, cautiously opening the top of the little cage. One by one she fished the lively crickets out and dropped them into the boiling water for a moment, then took the pot off the stove, drained the contents and began to shell their dinner. “So you got caught by the old net trick,” she said over her shoulder. “Don’t feel too bad. Every farmer gets caught once. When you open the window it cocks the net and rings an alarm.”

  “I didn’t pick the place,” Jimper said defensively, looking for something he could do to help. But Jo-Ellen seemed to have dinner under control; there was a pot of onions, beans and tomatoes already beginning to heat up, and as she shelled and diced the cricket meat she dropped it in.

  “What happened to your little friend?”

  “Her father sent her home,” said Jimper. “I think she’s getting married over there.” He had lost something, but he didn’t feel particularly bad about it; he seemed to be gaining something else, if the indications were trustworthy, and this something had her own apartment. Well, almost her own. But the kid probably went to sleep early?

  “Pity,” said Jo-Ellen. “Listen, do you know how to pick palm hearts?”

  “I’m afraid not, Jo-Ellen.”

  “You farmers! Well, come along and I’ll show you.”

  Jo-Ellen Redfan was quite a farmer herself, Jimper decided, and enviously studied her home. The balcony turned out to be a cornucopia of food far better than anything you could buy in the super-suqs. Coppiced palms yielded their tender hearts, along with tender young lettuce to make a salad to go with the chili. For dessert there were papayas, picked ripe and put in the freezer for a moment to chill them; for the table, there were flowers from the borders around the balcony. The important thing, she told him, was to get a balcony with southern exposure and a low railing, so that the sun could get at the crops even in winter—and, of course, to plant the varieties that would thrive under the diffuse glow that came through the dome. There was wine with the meal and thick, sweet coffee out of a copper pot after it; but then the time for relaxation was over. The time for the painting job had begun.

  The painting job was the kitchen. “See, Jimper,” said Jo-Ellen, putting away dishes and swabbing the wall where the water vapor from the hydrogen stove had dampened it, “we’re not quite tall enough. You’re nice and tall. Will? Where’s the drop cloth? Jimper, go give him a hand, will you?”

  Jimper went willingly enough. An hour or so of painting a kitchen was not a bad tradeoff for a good meal, not to mention the prospective fringe benefits. His calculating eye could not, however, figure out just where the fringe benefits were likely to be found. There was only one bedroom with two beds in it—one obviously apiece for the two occupants of the apartment. There was no other bed in the place. Not even a couch; the living room had only chairs, and most of them simple uprights. The third room was fitted up as a sort of a doctor’s office—evidently Jo-Ellen practiced at home sometimes—and it did have a sort of examination pallet, yes. But nothing that one could very well share. The balcony? But surely you would crush the plants. It was a puzzle—but, Jimper was confident, Jo-Ellen would have solved that puzzle before, in spite of all the things she had said. It would be interesting to see how she worked it, but that it would work some way or another Jimper had very little doubt. No woman invites a man to paint her kitchen without further plans for the evening.

  With the three of them at work the job went fast, Jo-Ellen moving the drop cloths around as Jimper moved with the spray cans, Will shaking them to have them ready as the old ones wore out and catching little misaimed spatters where they didn’t belong. With the skies still shaded from the remnants of the dust storm Jimper lost time, and was surprised when, as soon as the last cloth was picked up and the painting equipment stowed away, Jo-Ellen said, “Good lord, Will, it’s past your bedtime. I hope you finished your homework.”

  “I’ll finish in the morning,” the boy promised, yawning. “Good night, Jo. Good night, Jimper.” And Jo-Ellen brought out the last of the wine and a couple of joints, and when the boy had finished in the bathroom and closed the bedroom door behind
him, she leaned back as far as she could in the straight-backed chair, lit up, passed the cigarette to Jimper and said:

  “Listen. This is a little embarrassing.”

  “What is, honey?” he asked.

  “Well, calling me honey is, for one thing. Remember, I told you I don’t date.”

  It was the very worst of bad manners to scowl and sulk when a woman let you know she wasn’t interested, and Jimper had always tried to be polite. So he maintained the smile as he inhaled the joint, but when he spoke his voice was less friendly than he had planned. “It’s your decision, Jo-Ellen,” he said.

  She sighed in exasperation. “Look, it’s not you. You’re not a bad guy. You might even be a really nice one. And it isn’t a moral question, and I’m not in love with anybody else, and I don’t have a communicable disease.”

  “Then—”

  “What I do have,” she said bitterly, “is an ex-husband.”

  It was also bad manners to look as though the person you were talking to had just said something incredibly stupid, but Jimper couldn’t help himself. Half the people he knew had ex-husbands, or ex-wives, if not indeed current ones who were not working at it. He said something of the sort, and Jo-Ellen shook her head.

  “Not like Dinny. He didn’t want the divorce, Jimper, and he’s never accepted it. He follows me around. Half the time when I go out I see him hanging around the elevators. He’s got field glasses, and he found some landings in the buildings across the square where he can see right into this apartment; and if I pull the drapes I start getting phone calls where there’s nobody on the other end when I pick up. And—” she frowned in embarrassment—“the bad part, Jimper, is that if I actually get, uh, involved with somebody else, he beats them up.”

  It was not the best news Jimper had ever heard, not to mention that it was hard to believe. He could not help darting a quick look at the open drapes and the lighted windows beyond them.

  “But tonight he’s in Chicago,” Jo-Ellen observed.

  Jimper reached for the joint and started to relax.

  “But I never know whether or not he’s got somebody else watching when he isn’t around,” she finished, and then laughed. “Look at you! You’re all relaxed and ready, then you tighten up, arms across your chest and knees together, then you close up, then you open again—”

  “Jo-Ellen,” said Jimper, beginning to feel the effects of the joint, “what do you want from me? Is this how you get your kicks, some kind of game?”

  “No! I’m just telling you what the score is.”

  “Like a tennis match, right? First the ball’s in this court and then in that and I’m running back and forth to try to stay in the game?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, exactly. I guess all those psych courses show up—I get interested in watching how people react to stimuli—”

  “Speaking of psych,” he went on savagely, “how would you diagnose a grown woman who shares a bedroom with a ten-year-old son? Do you have any idea what you’re doing to his chances of maturation?”

  She laughed. “Funny,” she declared. “Every man who comes up here tells me I’m screwing up Will’s sexuality, when actually it’s their own they’re worried about.”

  “And what are you worried about, Jo-Ellen?”

  She stubbed out the half-smoked joint and confronted him. “I’m worried about my ex-husband! I’m worried that he’s going to beat somebody else up, and I’ll be in the middle of it again, and I’ll get another conviction for public disorder. I’m worried that Will’s going to grow up terribly bent, not because his mother sleeps in the same room with him but because his father makes him a spy! Look at this place! I’ve taken out everything that might encourage a man to start fooling around—and even so, Dinny says there are all those pillows and how does he know what I do with them on the floor? And—And—Oh, shit,” she said, and began to cry.

  Jimper stood up, hazy from the dope, keyed up from the talk, his reflexes confused. What he wanted to do was either to take her in his arms and comfort her or walk out and never see her again.

  It wasn’t until he found himself actually drawing those heavy drapes that he realized he had opted for course number one, and then things went along without further planning. The examination table wasn’t necessary. The pillows were just fine. It was all just fine, as a matter of fact, with just the one little nagging worry, and so it was not until, hours later, he was leaving the building and glancing around for lurking figures, and finding none, that he was convinced that Dinny the Ex-Husband had indeed been in Chicago that night.

  Ninety days’ work equivalent wasn’t all the punishment Jimper suffered. There was a penalty beyond the legal one, and that was the terrible wrath of old Mr. Mawzi. Mawzi Frères was no longer interested in employing the despoiler of Mawzi’s daughter, and the bills he presented for work already done got somehow stuck in the accounting department. Worse. The other prospective customers Mawzi had turned him onto had got the word. He wasn’t received with cordiality any more. Usually he wasn’t received at all.

  So the ninety days’ sentence was a boon, for he got paid for the work he did. Minimum wage, to be sure. But minimum wage was a lot more than zero, which is what he was getting from all other sources. The way he had to earn that minimum wage, though, was something else again. They put him where they needed him each day, and they needed him in places where he did not much want to go. Graffiti cleaning, which meant climbing the balconies and trellises of high-rise buildings to scrub off someone’s spray-painting. (The longest and hardest was fifty stories up under the lower dome, where someone had managed to decorate what was left of the World Trade Center with the three-meter-high legend Don’t Deface Our City!) Compliance inspection—touring a hundred businesses and residences a day in a particular volume of the city to check on whether they were observing safety regulations, sanitation, maintenance of public services and all the other things they were required to do. “Pied pipering,” which turned out to be distributing high-frequency sound generators in rat-infested sections. Well, all the sections were rat-infested, more or less—every city always was—but although the Pied Pipers couldn’t win the war against rats they could cause them to blunder around, disoriented, so that they could be trapped, poisoned or clubbed fairly successfully. Jimper didn’t mind laying out the sound generators, or helping evacuate invalids, pets and children from the areas about to be pipered; clubbing the clumsy, ugly creatures when the generators had destroyed their normal caution, however, was the worst job the authorities gave him. Almost the worst. “Lift maintenance” was at least as bad. That didn’t mean anything to do with the machinery of the elevators itself—only specialists did that. It meant getting down into the pits to clean out the refuse that collected there, while the huge cages swooped down at the work crews, popping their ears with pressure and scaring them half to death—they always had stopped in time, but would they always continue to?

  On the other hand, he had Jo-Ellen. Sort of had Jo-Ellen, or at least almost had Jo-Ellen—would have had her if it hadn’t been for the Jealous Ex-Husband. Dinny did not make any further trips to Chicago, and Jo-Ellen flatly refused Jimper entry to her apartment while Dinny was in town.

  It took Jimper a week to figure out what to do about all that, and so he counted up his money, decided he had enough and made a trip to the 83d level of the New Gotham Tower. It cost more than he expected to reserve the little room for two hours.

  But it was worth it. It was well worth it, he decided, drowsily relighting the hookah when Jo-Ellen and he had worked off the most urgent of their pent-up needs. He smiled fondly at her as he passed the mouthpiece over.

  But she refused it. “Jimper,” she said, “this is all pretty nice, even if a little weird—”

  “Did they try to sell you graveyard dust?” he chuckled.

  “—but do you understand that what I told you is real?”

  “What’s real, doe-deer?” he asked comfortably.

  “Dinny’s real,
Jimper. It’s all right this time—I think it’s all right—anyway, I was careful about coming here, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t followed. But if we keep coming here, sooner or later he’ll catch us.”

  “So we’ll go somewhere else. It’s a big city.”

  Jo-Ellen sighed and nuzzled closer to him for a moment. They were lying flesh to flesh, both of them with skins still damp and sticky, and Jimper felt no urgencies or apprehensions at all. But then Jo-Ellen stirred and got to her feet. “I have to show you a poem,” she said, rummaging in her shoulder bag.

  “A poem?”

  “A poem that Dinny wrote,” she said firmly, and handed him a bound sheaf of creamy white paper, each page with two neatly calligraphed lines on it. Aw, hell, thought Jimper, what does she want to show me somebody else’s love poetry for?

  But it wasn’t exactly love poetry. The first page read in its entirety:

  A’s for an Axiom that’s easy to see:

  If you put out for him, you put out for me.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded.

  “Read on,” she ordered.

  B’s for the Bargain that follows on A.

  If you don’t keep it, sweetie, I blow him away.

  C’s for that Cute little rascal of ten.

  Call for a cop and you won’t see him again.

  “My God,” Jimper breathed, “the man’s a psychopath!” He riffled through the rest of the alphabet. All the pages were the same—no, not true; some were worse than others! “What’s this about forcing you to realize there’s no such thing as divorce?”

  “He says he didn’t agree to it, so it’s not binding on him. I mean,” she clarified, “as far as Dinny is concerned, we’re still conjugal. You know? He says he won’t stop me from making love. Only every time I do it with someone else I have to do it with him, too, he says.”

  “You—Uh, you—”

  “But I don’t want to do that, Jimper! So—Well,” she said, looking away, “I had this idea that maybe I could do it with somebody I didn’t like very much. You know? So I wouldn’t mind if Dinny creamed him.”