Spin Dry

by Greg Hollingshead

  “What about Cam Wilkes?”

  “Right. Wilkes.” Silver’s mouth did an embarrassed smile. “Self-absorbed little prick, aren’t I?”

  Rachel nodded, belching softly.

  “So you’re absolutely sure he wanted to sell the bus yard?”

  “That’s what Jane said.”

  “OK. First thing Monday morning, the property registry. You do a title search. See if—when—it’s changed hands. Next—Next I don’t know. Even if you weren’t dream deprived I wouldn’t advise tangling with the Mortprop boys. You could end up in a ditch on Village Drive North. Maybe next you should contact the police. No—you’re too crazy; they’d notice. How about Jane calling the police? But she doesn’t understand the Mortprop thing, does she? Rachel, you know what? Give me an hour for my paperwork and I’ll take you back to the lab—I’m going back anyway, I’m there for the day, Puff needs me—and you can sleepand dream until you’re sane. When you wake up, call his home, check with Jane that he hasn’t shown up yet, and then call the police. I mean, please don’t feel bad about dropping out of the study. I’ve already got plenty of—”

  “What about Harry?”

  “Ah, yes. But he’s not Wilkes, I thought.”

  “If I sleep now I’ll never find him.”

  “As a man of science and as a friend, I’d say your safety comes first.”

  “Then what about Stanley Jardine?”

  “Stanley can wait. That one I’m sure of. They haven’t even broken the ground yet. If he is already here he’ll be here for a while. Or be back and forth from wherever—”

  “Paris.”

  “For a long time.” Silver looked at his watch. “Listen. Gotta get upstairs. And get this talcum off of me. That’s what it is, you know. Talcum. I told Babs the real reason she was doing the study. To find a man. That this was the limit of her dreams. I also told her I wasn’t him. A submissive woman I don’t need. She got a little incensed. Attacked me with a box of the stuff. Talcum. Lavender. Smell it? Almost choked me to death. You wondered? You thought flour, right? Miller?”

  Rachel nodded, sheepish.

  “Rachel, you’ll meet me in an hour, or call? Tell me where to pick you up? You’ll think of me, too? You do something insane and I could get hit with a malpractice suit that’ll have me back giving government aptitude tests in remand centres.”

  Rachel nodded, disguising her lie in a blush of silence.

  “Great. See ya.”

  On her way out, Rachel visited the washroom. Wallpaper of diving loons. Filled her water gun.

  Loons.

  The rest of the day Rachel spent back at 201 Dell, eating her way through the rest of yesterday’s enormous grocery shopping when her hands were not too busy between her legs to get the food to her mouth. She did not answer the phone. Just let it ring. If Harry was watching, he was hard to make out amongst the sweep and flow of so much eating and coming.

  That night Rachel boomeranged back late to the Dream Centre, wired her own head, and left early Monday before anybody was up, test forms completed in a neat pile.

  By 8 a.m., after two Super Specials at the twenty-four-hour Pancake Corral in Hopperboy High Street, she proceeded to the township registry office, which had recently, it happened, moved to sub-basement quarters in Village Green. Terrified of being seen by an early Millpond Indemnity person—in half an hour she would phone in sick—she snuck onto a down elevator. Took a number. Vinyl seats, foamboard fluorescence. An endless wait, with others there even earlier. Fortunately the pale, crooked-toothed young woman behind the counter, though she seemed to understand only slightly better than this madwoman what was required, had the tolerance and kind heart of an anxious greenhorn, and with her help Rachel was able toascertain that Wilkes had sold the four-acre bus yard to Mortprop Investments on Tuesday of last week for a half million, the realtor being one Leon Boseman of Bi-Me Village Realty.

  Except that that was not Leon’s signature, was it? Was nothing like. A fact apt to throw Cam’s into doubt.

  What happened next happened so fast Rachel must have blacked out the interim. Probably ran into Mr. Felpson and just cancelled the whole experience. One moment she was leaning across a government counter listening to that greenhorn young woman explain the signatures, the next she was opening fire with her water gun across a white desk, soaking the face and cleavage of a screaming blonde, thinking Where am I and what am I doing? And then Nick Sirocco was trying, and failing—got squirted himself—to grab the water gun, gave up to grip Rachel’s elbow, vise style, and walked her into an office like the wheel-house of a large liner, cutting through suburban seas.

  “Sit.” Rachel got pushed towards a leather chair. Her adrenaline at full throttle, she did not so much sit as crouch, however, studying Sirocco, his back. Dark tube-cut suit. Very stylish, very expensive. A monogrammed silk handkerchief out to mop the back of his gunned neck.

  Click. He is across his desk, seated, looking at her. Not a good man. “What’s the matter with you?” he said. “You look like hell.”

  “Where’s Cam Wilkes?”

  “How should I know?”

  “You got a signature for his bus yard.”

  “Yeah, we gave him a good deal. Maybe he went on a holiday.

  What are you on?”

  “Holiday where?”

  Sirocco came around the desk. “A real dingbat, aren’t you, coming in here soaking my girl.”

  “Where is Cam Wilkes.”

  “Listen. I got a question for you. Did you ever hear of a guy by the name of Stanley Jardine?”

  “What about him?”

  Sirocco laughed. A mean laugh, from the throat. “‘What about him.’ You tell me.”

  “He’s your architect—”

  “Very good. Our flake architect. Who won’t look at the facts of what I’m trying to do here. An architect who can’t understand the words ‘super-regional mall.’ You’re a woman. You shop. You tell me. Four stretch-dumbbells in an octagon. Is this hard to understand?”

  “You’re talking to me because I shop?”

  Sirocco had been pacing. Now he stopped. “Look. We check people out. Don’t get smart with me—”

  “Where’s Wilkes?”

  “I want you to talk to Jardine. I want you to tell him my concerns about your face—”

  “Take me to Cam Wilkes and I’ll talk to Jardine.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? This is not a deal. This is me telling you what you are going to do.”

  Rachel jumped up. “Here’s a better idea. I kick you so hard you get to use your nuts for a brain.”

  Tactless, tactless. Sirocco lunged, swung. No open-handed womanslap either—But how could he take into account Rachel’s reflexes after eight days without dreaming? Her head snapped back, its own intelligence, and her face felt the wind from that ugly Sirocco fist. A real sweetheart, this guy. Lost her balance exactly as he recovered his. There came another swing, but Rachel was already falling, and it fanned the top of her head. A crablike scramble then, backwards across the floor, trying to squeeze into her pocket for the water gun, her only weapon, while Sirocco came stumbling to lift her by her jacket against the wall and smash her—once, twice—thumbs on her throat, no air, this was it, no air, not such a handsome face when intent on strangulation this Adonis, no air—

  The door opened. A blue-jawed character, hesitating.

  “Moe, get the fuck outta—” Sirocco paused long enough to say.

  That must have been how Rachel got him with her water gun, in the eyes. And during the pause that gave him, jerked her knee nutsward, hard, whispering, “Moe, please stay,” as she deked past slow Moe, out the door, and into a big blur of corridors, office doors, doors to whole clusters of offices, all Mortprop somewhere in the name. Elevators stalled at distant floors. Come on, come on! Rachel took a Fire Exit, concrete stairs, to fool her pursuers went up, not down, bounding, three at a time, to a red door with a bar, gave it a good slam. To find herself panting like a hound
ed muskrat in the cold still air on the roof of Village Green, Tower B. A blue sky. Crushed stones. Chilly out here. Low perimeter wall. Evergreen shrubbery in aluminum boxes. She could always throwherself over. Wary, Rachel circled the brick cubicle that she had burst out of, came back to its door. Now closed. Handleless. Oh dear. Put her ear to it. Footsteps, climbing. Next she was scaling wall-bolted rungs to flatten herself against the cold tar roof of that cubicle. Below, all of the Millpond and more, much more. Open fields and distant, smogged-in city. A savage slam on the door and two—no, three—of them were crunching around on the roof. “Hey, Rico. Watch the door,” somebody said, meaning the door whose top edge Rachel could have reached out and touched.

  Fortunately Rico’s idea of watching the door was to lean against it while trying to drag a cement block over with his foot. Rachel landed right next to him already throwing herself sideways through that open door, twisting and writhing in the air to keep on descending without actually being stopped by stair, landing, or wall. What’s a broken ankle or wrist at a time like this? Rico, who had flunked high school physics, let go of the door to plunge after, thereby locking the other two on the roof. Shouts. Heavy pounding. Lighter than Rico by about a hundred pounds and ten times faster in the head, Rachel took the twenty-six flights to burst into the Tower B lobby, all mirrors and burnished marble, getting to see dozens of herself at full tilt, heads turning—Who was that woman?—”Sprint jogging, folks, coming to your neighbourhood soon!” out the big revolving door—“Hey, excuse me!” waving her arms the way arms wave at disappearing cabs, running right into the horn blast of another one. She got in.

  “You likely get killed that way,” said the cabby, a guy in a knitted cap.

  From the back seat Rachel gave him a big hug and told him to Drive, Rastaman. Drive.

  Next Rachel was stumbling down a narrow alley between a seven-foot Permawood fence and the white-brick rear wall of a building where green garbage bags clustered like supplicants around steel doors. There she discovered a parking stall with a Dr. Alex Silver plaque bolted to the white brick. Also his Morgan. Rachel ran her hand along the pneumatic bulge of the silver thing, made blinders with her hands to peer inside. An AAA guide to Southern California. A deerstalker in red corduroy. On the back seat a warped fungus-green book by Horace Fletcher, entitled Chew Your Way to Mental Hygiene.

  So here she was in the alley behind Village Market Square. Alex Silver being the person she felt most reluctant to see just now, she had been drawn to him like a bobby pin to a magnet. Now what.

  Straightening, Rachel became aware of an idling engine. A stretch limo with black windows, chrome boomerang on the trunk, had slunk up alongside the fence maybe ten feet away. Electrically the driver’s window came down, maybe four fingers. She saw eyes. A flicked cigarette butt bounced in front of her, rolled against her shoe.

  “Asshole,” she said. But already she was shaking, stepping through one of those steel doors.

  Next Rachel found herself standing in front of another desk, this time looking down at an old woman in an orange blouseand mud yellow cardigan, buffing her nails. Rachel asked her if Dr. Silver had any cancellations this morning. Even a minute or two between clients would really be appreciated.

  “I know he wants to see me.”

  “Oh, he wants to see you?”

  “I had brunch with him yesterday! And he said—”

  “So you had brunch with him yesterday. Sunday brunch. I suppose this gives you special privileges? Will this solve your problems? Why don’t you get him to take you to a movie. With dinner after. Marry him maybe. Have him set you up in your own little split-level. Like a queen. Then you will be cured, I suppose. All the craziness will go away.”

  “Listen, Mrs. Silver. I’m dream deprived—”

  “You think I’m not dream deprived? I have news. I had my dreams deprived a long time ago, by the biggest dream depriver of them all. Adolf Hitler. He made a science out of it. That’s what he took away when he didn’t take your life.”

  “Your son,” patiently, “said to call—”

  “Am I talking to a phone? Do I hallucinate you standing here? I know. This is a hologram. Ma Bell has done it again.”

  “Mind if I use your washroom?”

  “Go ahead. Only, wash the sink after you. Have consideration. And flush. Don’t be a pig. Flush the toilet. And please, please. No tampons.”

  Rachel’s face in the washroom mirror was wilder than she had dared to fear. It came at her in blazing snapshots, none the same. An unspecifiable period of baffled scrutiny, and Racheldropped her mad red eyes from the mirror to fill her water gun. The water seemed unusually cold.

  Then she went out and fired it into the startled face of Mrs. Silver. When the gun was quite empty, she left.

  Rachel found pay phones by the cab rank outside and tried Wilkes’ house. No answer. She looked up Dick on Smutter Circle and called.

  “Howdy, Rachel. Nice of you—” “Dick, could I speak to Jane, please.”

  “I’m afraid Jane’s not in. Are you all right, Rachel? You’re sounding a little—”

  “Yeah. Will she be back soon?”

  “You bet. Shouldn’t be gone too long. You’re doing all right, yourself?”

  “I’m fine. Should I call back?” “That’s a terrific idea.” “When?”

  Sound of meditative pipe-sucking. “Why don’t we say a week Thursday.”

  “Pardon?”

  “By then we would have a better idea.” Sound of interior barking. “Excuse me, Rachel. It’s Spot—I’m afraid I—There’s somebody at the door.”

  “Dick, where is she? Cam didn’t come back, did he? She’s not on her honeymoon?”

  “Wilkes? That’s it. Wilkes’ doing—A week Thursday?”

  “Right.”

  “We should know better then.”

  “Goodbye, Dick.”

  “Bye, Rachel. Thanks for the call.”

  Rachel took a cab to Flume Fields, a massive beige brick addendum to the Millpond General, designed by the same architect who had done Millpond Collegiate, a specialist in the Correctional Look. When she asked at the front desk for Jane, the woman located the name in her book and said, “You want the D Wing. D for Depression. Straight to the end, hang a left, a right, another left. Big cheery room.”

  Rachel found Jane in a ward that must have contained fifty exhausted and defeated women of every age. They lay staring in their beds or stood about singly, like caryatids stooped under enormous weights. Jane was sitting on the side of her bed dressed in a pink nightgown. Her head was bowed and her hands lay upturned in her lap.

  “Jane!” Rachel cried.

  Slowly Jane raised her head. A gradual, antidepressant smile seeped into her lower face. Stopped just short of the eyes. “Rachel—Did you find—”

  Rachel shook her head. “Puff I’ll resc—pick up when I can. Cam I’m still working on. Why are you here?”

  Jane sighed and bowed her head.

  “Jane?”

  “So tired—”

  “Are they going to—”Jane nodded.

  “When?”

  Another big sigh. “—afternoon.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “So tired—Want it—” “Come on.”

  As they left the ward a nurse stopped and looked sharply at Rachel, who said, “Just going for a little walk—”

  “All right, I suppose. But be back in ten minutes. We have to have our shot.”

  “Right.”

  Before they reached the front lobby, Rachel put her jacket over Jane’s shoulders. They then walked past the desk, out the front door, and got into a cab. “Where to, ladies?”

  Good question. “Jane, where does Sally live?”

  With some effort Jane remembered that Sally had moved to Bolting Reel Manor. The tower and apartment numbers she did not know. Rachel thought, Isn’t that where Gretchen lives? Still another last place in the Millpond I want to be right now? Please oh please, Unconscious Mind, no more bo
bby-pin-to-magnet stuff for Rachel Boseman. She told the cabby to try Tower One. In an oiled movement he flipped the meter, checked his side mirror, and pulled away. Rachel spent the trip like a new boyfriend, not knowing what to say, giving reassuring squeezes to Jane’s strengthless little hand.

  Bolting Reel Manor, Towers One to Three, was a sound buffer for singles, designed to absorb the steady roar of the 303. Theygot the right tower, Two, on the second try, Sally’s name in Dymotape on the massive mock-marble plaque, like a memorial to the war dead. Number 1403. So, however, was G. Molstad on the fourteenth floor. No thirteenth. Gretchen Number 1423. Remember that. Do not press the wrong one. Rachel pressed Number 1403. It was a long wait, or seemed to be. Rachel was ravenous. “Who is it?” Sally’s voice, indistinct. The connection?

  “Rachel and Jane!” Rachel shouted.

  A pause. “C’mon up,” Sally said and buzzed them in. Across the giant terrazzo lobby was a waiting elevator big enough to move the contents of an entire bachelor apartment in one trip. “Have you seen Sally in her new place?” Rachel attempting normal conversation as the elevator deposited her stomach on the floor.

  Jane shook her head. “Dick didn’t think I—” she sighed.

  They left the elevator and moved along the deep red shag of the corridor. A muffled experience. A humming tunnel of indirect light. The sound of clanking metal grew near and receded. A buckle flying around in a clothes dryer. And here it was. Number 1423. Rachel pressed the doorbell.

  The door was opened by Gretchen Molstad. Instamatically the moment was caught by Rachel’s brain, never to fade. Wrong apartment. Fuck. Gretchen was wearing leather slippers, black socks with calf garters, jockey shorts, a sleeveless undershirt, and a tweed driving cap pulled down low over her eyes. She was smoking an Old Port cigar. In her right hand she held a hairbrush the size of a small paddle.

  It was a moment of shared confusion.

  Gretchen spoke first. “Er—hi—” She looked to Jane, whose eyes were fixed upon the carpet, then back to Rachel, who was taking in those calf-garters. “This—?” indicating her outfit with a dismissive flick of her hand. “This is just—” She stepped towards them, pulling the door shut behind her, then put her arms around their shoulders and walked them down the hall a short way, remarking, “I thought you people were the Pizza Hut kid.”