“You’re so brown. Where’ve you been?”
“Florida.”
“Oh, Florida. And what were you doing in Florida?”
“Fishing, mostly.”
“Fishing! Well, well. Any luck?”
“I threw them back by the carload.”
“I don’t suppose it occurred to you that while you were down there fishing I was up here going berserk every night at seven sharp.”
“Hester, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry doesn’t get it. Mmmm. Oh. Okay, I’m not mad any more. Darling. Are you about to come again?”
“With just a little help—”
“Help like this? First we peel the apple, then we core it—ah! God. Babybabybaby.”
In repose Peter told her the story of his arduous escape from the hospital, and the long killing pursuit.
“I almost bought it in the river, Hester. Hit my head on something while I was swimming under water. I lost my bearings. The current carried me at least a mile from where I’d planned to go ashore. I stayed in too long. My body core temperature was falling fast; another minute of that cold water and I couldn’t have done the right thing even if I’d been able to think of it. Thank God it was New Year’s Eve. Some long-haul truckers were having a party in a private place, and they’d left their rigs on the river bank. I crawled into a bunk behind one of the cabs, wrapped myself in wool blankets and sucked on a box of sugar cubes I found. I needed the fuel; just a six-degree loss of body core heat is fatal.
“Woke up at dawn at a truck stop somewhere south of Wilmington, Delaware. I still couldn’t think very clearly. Borrowed some clothes and took off. I was sick and I knew I needed help. Washington was closer than New York. I took a big chance and looked up an old friend named Nick O’Hanna. We were in the Navy together. I told Nick everything. He got me a doctor and then he flew me south to his/place in the Keys for R and R. I sweated out the flu, or whatever it was. Nick brought me back to Washington; this afternoon I hopped a commercial jet to the Westchester airport and drove straight here. Nick and his boss, a man named Todfield, are trying to get a line on Robin for me. No luck so far.”
Hester sat up and traced the outline of Peter’s mouth with a finger. “I want to talk to you about that. But first why don’t we take our clothes off and really make out?”
Peter smiled but shook his head sternly. Play time was over. Hester made a face that accused him of pooping out too soon, but she stripped anyway because she was rumpled and sticky.
“Right back,” she said.
In the bathroom, taped to the mirror, was another of Peter’s signs, warning of a planted listening device. Hester shuddered at the thought of her apartment crawling with MORG’s obscene little bugs and kept her mouth shut while she washed herself. She put on a plushy jump suit and sprayed the root of her throat with something beguiling and then, just because she felt like it, she added rococo earrings, filigreed Mexican silver set with big opals: a “thank you” from the Bundys for helping them paint their apartment.
In the living room she lay with her head in Peter’s lap where they could talk all they wanted, protected by the blaring TV.
“How many of their teeny little microphones did you find?”
“Six.”
“Six! How did you know where to look? I wouldn’t have known where to look.”
“The placements were strictly routine. I used a detection system called a Saber kit. It took about twenty minutes.”
“Couldn’t you rip them out of the walls?”
“I could also stand naked in the window with a lampshade on my head.”
“Oh. Uh-huh, I see what you mean. Are you sure you didn’t miss any?”
“I’m sure.”
Hester looked around with loathing. “How’d the buggers get in here? I have some damn good locks—”
“And they have the people who make the locks for people like you.”
“Yah! I can’t stand it. They’ve been eavesdropping. On me! Somehow I don’t feel like a person any more. They’ve taken away my citizenship. They can tune in whenever they’re in the mood. They hear me chew and gargle and shit and whip my beaver when I’m blue and lonely and, and they, they drilled holes in my walls! They drilled holes in me!”
“Almost,” Peter said calmingly, a hand on her arm.
“How long do you think I’ve been bugged?”
“At least two weeks. Some of the placements, the telephone, for instance, must have been made when you started working at Paragon Institute.”
“And that’s why you’ve always stayed away from here.”
“One of the reasons.”
“Where are they listening?”
“Somewhere on the block.”
“In this building?”
“It would be convenient.”
Hester’s breath hissed between her teeth. She hunched her shoulders uneasily.
“Well—that really complicates things. I’ve got her, but now I don’t know what to do with her.”
“Got who, Hester?”
She smiled proudly at, him.
“Gillian Bellaver,” she said.
Bradford lived a few blocks from the Director’s Chair Theatre, in a co-op at Park and Thirty-eighth. Bradford’s last name was Whitlock. There were a lot of Whitlocks around, and they all had money. He didn’t ask, so Gillian didn’t tell him she was a Bellaver. He was, however, curious about where she went to school. Bordendale, Gillian told him. Bradford seemed surprised and then flustered. I thought you were older, he said. His smile revealed the gum line. You look older, he said. They paused in front of his building and Bradford asked her if she would like something to eat. He praised the candlelight restaurant on the corner. Gillian was cold but not hungry. No, she said. Let’s go on up. Bradford’s smile was antsy. His blue eyes had a sparkly unreal quality, but Gillian didn’t think he was high on anything: some people just had baby-doll eyes. Cute if you were a girl. Bradford held her elbow awkwardly and they went in. The doorman was deferential, and the elevator operator was delighted to have Bradford’s company. He called Bradford “sir” five times on the way to the penthouse.
The front door was opened by a huge man with white hair and a mass of liver spots on his aged face. He wore gray trousers with sharp creases, a white shirt and a charcoal vest with a subtle blue stripe. He spoke softly and never once looked directly at Gillian. Still he seemed to regret the fact of her presence.
“Good evening, sir.”
“Good evening, Elias.”
They took off their wraps and handed them to Elias. There were framed sketches in the entrance hall that looked to be the work of Old Masters, and one massive fifteenth-century oil of a king posing on a balcony too snug for his full-grown fame. The furniture was French, all of it at least two hundred years old, and also of exhibition quality.
“May I fix you something to eat, sir?”
“I don’t think so. Later.”
Elias nodded a fraction of an inch and departed arthritically, his feet shuffling in slippers. Bradford took Gillian’s elbow again and escorted her into the living room. More antique furniture. Two lamps were lit in opposite corners. Beyond the terrace the view was dominated by the lights of the United Nations Plaza on the river.
“Do you live here by yourself?” Gillian asked.
“Yes.” Bradford played with the buttons of a lighting-control system concealed in a game table, illuminating great numbers of old paintings and drawings on the walls. He called her attention to one after another.
“Here’s a favorite of mine, by Giordano. It’s just a little sketch. She looks a lot like you, Gillian.”
Gillian studied the drawing politely; she didn’t get the resemblance. Still, she couldn’t be all that certain any more. Cornered there with aftereffects, she glanced hopefully at an old mirror, but it was far enough away so that she couldn’t make herself out.
Bradford lowered most of the lights and joined her; he put a hand lightly on her shoulder. Gillian
looked into the baby-doll eyes.
“How long have you known Hester?”
“Oh—two years.”
“Will she be coming soon?”
“Don’t worry. How about something to drink?”
“No, I don’t drink.”
“I don’t either. Wine with meals. You couldn’t call that drinking. Are you into grass?”
“No.”
“That makes two of us. Oh, once in a while I’ll have a joint, just—”
“—To be sociable. I’d like to use the bathroom,” Gillian said.
“Surely.”
He took her through his bedroom, which was monastic in its simplicity: a single hanging fixture, chains and crudely hammered brass, a low wide bed with a heavy superstructure, raw beams stained dark. The floor was of faded red tiles like firebrick. White walls. The bathroom was conventional and had some color: stained glass, walnut paneling. Gillian locked the door and looked into a mirror that made her eyes water blindingly. A rheostat controlled the lighting around the mirror, and she dialed it low. The bathroom smelled of the shaving lotion he fancied.
Gillian knew she had made a mistake: Bradford was no friend of Hester’s. He’d lied to her. What did he want, then?—What else? Gillian swallowed hard and shook. She ran water to bathe her face and calm herself. She suffered a cramp like a menstrual cramp; it left her ashen. She unbuttoned her jeans and sat hunched on the john with head in hands. Moving her bowels was some relief, but the movement happened with difficulty and it hurt. Probably she’d missed Hester by being stupid. What was she going to do now?
Her fingers touched the round Band-Aid near her groin and something stirred in her memory. She peeled the elastic from tender skin and held it in her hand. Now she remembered the Band-Aid’s purpose. Hester had put it there for her in case she got lost or drew a blank somewhere along the way. Shrewd Hester: there’d been plenty of blanks. Gillian pried the gauze loose from the elastic. A note under the pad, in characters so tiny Gillian had to turn the lights up to full again in order to read it. There seemed to be nothing to the message but an address on East Thirty-sixth Street. Hester’s apartment? Gillian pressed the pad back into place and stuck the Band-Aid in a more convenient location, on the inside of one wrist. She knew she might turn forgetful again, although her mind seemed clearer now than it had for hours.
When she left the bathroom buttoning her jeans she encountered Bradford. He had taken off his clothes and was bending over with his backside exposed to her, hands grasping his ankles. He had laid out a wicked-looking assortment of flagellants’ tools on the bed.
“Punish me, Gillian,” he panted.
Gillian was startled, but not frightened; it wasn’t exactly an assault. She looked at his upside-down and reddening face.
“You lied to me about Hester.”
“I had to. Otherwise you wouldn’t have come. Now you can get even. Hit me. Make me scream.”
His buttocks were a nightmare. Scars, and welts the color of earthworms. Gillian looked away.
“Let me go,” she said. “I have to find Hester.”
“The door’s locked; you’ll have to whip me if you want the key!”
“I’ll scream. That’s a promise. Elias will hear me.”
“He’s heard your kind scream before. I want the black one with all the little knots. Get it for me, Gillian. Use all your strength. Hurt me.”
Genitally he was undeveloped, childlike, his scrotum hairless, puny as an out-of-breath balloon. His half-aroused cock was in proportion. Bradford would never grow up. He lived luxuriously in hell. For the first time since morning Gillian thought about Robin, as she had last seen him, in bed with his whore. Trying to mock her. But living in hell. She pitied him, but she realized now he would never grow up either; Robin was doomed. A flash of insight that was worse than a cramp; she wondered where that left her.
Gillian approached Bradford and stood looking calmly at him. He was filmy with perspiration. He trembled all over.
“Do it, do it.”
“Stand up, Bradford,” Gillian said. When he didn’t obey her she lifted him by the hair of his head. He jittered with expectations. Gillian stared into his evasive eyes, brilliant now in the blushing face.
“Is it the end of the world, Bradford? What do you think?”
“Are you into one of those nutball religions?”
“No,” Gillian said, and she kissed him softly on the cheek.
Bradford flinched, drawing away in confusion and dread.
“I don’t like being kissed,” he said. “And don’t look at me. Just beat me the way I deserve.” He covered his inadequate sexual equipment with one hand, resembling a flighty nymph in one of the old paintings that filled his rooms.
“I can’t do that,” Gillian explained. “I’m sorry you’re in such a mess. I’m in kind of a mess myself. But the difference is—the difference is—I can’t just give in. I have to do something about it. If you’ll unlock the door I’d really like to go now.”
Bradford began to cry, in such agony that Gillian couldn’t watch him; the tears were worse than his pathetic scars. He spared her by running into the bathroom and slamming the door.
After walking around the austere bedroom a couple of times she decided to try the door. It wasn’t locked after all. Bradford had told another lie. Gillian looked sympathetically at the bathroom door, then walked through the quiet flat. Elias was nowhere around. She found her coat in a closet and put it on. Her footsteps echoed in the entrance hall. Three minutes later she was on the street, walking sadly toward the river.
Even before they left the little mom-and-pop restaurant on First Avenue Miles Bundy knew he was in for a rough evening. It was all he could do to keep from belching as he shook hands with the proprietor on their way out, but his expression must have been something to see: Meg looked as if she were biting on a nail to keep from laughing.
On the street he let it roll out profoundly, not caring how many windows he shattered.
“Oh, my,” Meg said. “Don’t point that thing at me.”
“So much for those charming little places nobody knows about yet.”
“You insisted on eating Hungarian. I warned you.”
“I can handle Hungarian cooking. When it’s good. Those two must be gypsies. Straight from the campfire. They’ll throw anything in the communal pot. Hair, hide and all.” Miles was sourly incredulous. “That’s what it feels like. It feels like I just ate a scalp.”
“I liked the sobbing violin, though.”
“And the violinist?”
Meg nodded dreamily. “He’s the sort I’d like to take home with me for a few hours. In chains.”
“He was getting a pot belly. He uses shoe polish on his hair.”
“He has eyes like homemade sin. I couldn’t help noticing how charming you found our dusky serving wench. Do you suppose those were really tooth marks on her breast?”
“Once-bitten, like a poisoned apple. Do we have any Maalox at home?”
“Martians,” Meg said.
“What?”
“All Hungarians are supposed to be descendants of a lost tribe of Martians who came to colonize the earth. That’s why their language has nothing in common with other European languages.” Miles was staring at her. “Hungarian is a very difficult language to master. And, personality-wise, they’re a breed apart. They have this other-worldly, spaced-out quality. A vale of mystery lies behind every smile.”
“Urrrp. Goddamn it.”
They walked silently the rest of the way home. Meg let them into the building with her key, and they continued upstairs.
“Aren’t we on the Late Show tonight?” Miles said.
“Thursday? Uh-huh. Channel nine at eleven.”
“That one we did with Cyd and Frank and Ann Miller? Texas Red?”
“The ‘Billy the Kid’ fantasy number,” Meg said. “Terrific. Can’t wait to see it again.” Hester’s television was blasting game-show banalities which were clearly audible in
the hall. Meg glanced at the door as they went by. “Hester got our note.”
“It was Gene and not Frank,” Miles said. “And it wasn’t Ann Miller, it was Betty Garrett.”
“You know, you’re right? Betty Garrett. We wrapped just a couple of weeks before Larry got nailed. I always confuse that flick with Holiday in San Antone.”
“The ‘Fall of the Alamo’ ballet.”
“Only one of the all-time greats—”
“Academy!” Miles said, leaping gracefully and clicking his heels, still spry as a pup. Then he farted. Meg wrinkled her nose and opened their apartment, turned on lamps inside. The painting had been completed; and all the furnishings were in place.
“Maalox you said?” Meg asked, going to the kitchen.
“And a glass of milk to wash it down.” Miles piled his Loden coat on the awning-striped sofa, then sat in a leather chair in his favorite corner and exchanged low-top boots for slippers.
“Holiday in San Antone,” he said. “Didn’t I slip on some wet tiles and sprain my back?”
Meg was busy and didn’t reply. Miles got up and unlocked an armoire with heavy carved doors. There were drawers inside, also with locks. He pulled out two deep drawers. One contained a bulky UHF receiver, the other a voice-activated tape deck. A glance at the take-up reel assured him that nothing had been transcribed in their absence. He warmed up the radio, a relic of the fifties, and from another drawer removed two pairs of headphones.
“I don’t suppose you remember the name of that Commie rat bastard who played the tent show impresario?”
Meg returned to the living room with a silver tray. Maalox and milk for him, tea and lemon for her. She put the tray on a low copper-clad table. A replica of an Aztec calendar stone was stamped in the copper.
“Was it Lawrence Keats?”
“Lawrence Keats? Yeh. We fixed him pretty good, didn’t we?”
Meg said affectionately, “We fixed a lot of them, hon.”
Miles locked in the frequency he wanted. A red light glowed. He incautiously dialed the volume too high and tried the number three microphone. Rock music nearly burst his eardrums and he yanked the headphones off.
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