by Gene Wolfe
“Shot up?”
“You ought to see my scars.”
“She—she wasn’t shot. She was captain of the fencing team. Just wonderful at sports, you know. I wasn’t, and I envied her, oh, terribly!”
“Maybe she envied you, too.”
The lost woman cocked her head thoughtfully. “I, well, I really don’t think she did.”
Chelle’s phone played. Telling the lost woman to wait a moment she answered it. “I’m in this place right now. Why don’t you join us when you can get away?”
She listened for half a minute, then said, “Carrera’s. Carrera’s Café. It seems to be pretty cheap and pretty good.”
She listened again. “Okay. Love you! Bye.”
As she shut her phone, the lost woman said, “Your contracto?”
“Not yet. Just a boyfriend. He’s been trying to find me a job, and he’s got something he wants to talk about.”
The lost woman looked stricken. “I suppose I ought to leave.”
“Hell, no. I want you to meet him. Besides it’ll be a while before he shows up, and I need somebody to talk to. What’s troubling you?”
“I—I’m lost, that’s the main thing.…”
“Where are you trying to get to?”
“I know where I am, it’s just that I don’t know what to do.”
While Chelle was nodding sympathetically and sipping her coffee, the waitress arrived with tea, ham, pancakes, and a cruet of syrup. “The cook won’t make you cinnamon toast,” the waitress told them. “He says it’s not on the menu, so he won’t cook it.”
Chelle rose. “I’ll talk to him.”
Another waitress, emerging with a tray from an arch at the back of the café, betrayed the location of the kitchen. A sweating fat man was flipping burgers there while a much smaller man with the furtive manner of the oppressed loaded a dishwasher.
Chelle approached the fat man. “What’s your name?”
“Who wants to know?”
“I was hoping we could be polite about this.” Chelle stepped nearer and her voice hardened. “That’s what I was hoping, but I can play it any way you want, buster. I can have you down on that floor yelling for mercy in less time than it takes a rat to shit.”
“Lady…”
“Shut the fuck up!” Chelle’s left hand gripped her blouse and tore it. “I’ll have you down there, and I’ll start screaming. I’ll say you tried to bite my tits, and by God I’ll have you locked up in an hour. I’ll sign every complaint the cops shove at me, understand? And I’ll cry my eyes out at your trial, and you’ll do ten fuckin’ years easy. Get the picture?”
The cook looked as if he were about to spit, threw his arms up in a gesture that sent his spatula flying, and fell at her feet.
“That was just a sample.” She bent over him, almost whispering. “Make us cinnamon toast, buster. Make it good, and make a lot of it, or I start yelling. Only I mess you up a whole lot more first.”
He groaned.
“Which is it? Cinnamon toast or jail?”
* * *
Grinning, Chelle returned to her booth.
“Goodness!” The lost woman’s eyes were wide. “What happened to you?”
“My shirt?” Chelle glanced down at the tear. “Oh, the cook did that. It doesn’t matter.”
“I think I’ve got a pin…” The lost woman snapped open her purse.
“It’s okay.” Chelle cut a piece of ham and forked it into her mouth. “Tell me about being lost.”
The lost woman did, and at some length, while finding a small safety pin and pinning Chelle’s blouse to her own satisfaction.
“Your kids don’t need you anymore and your contracto never did,” Chelle summed up for her as a heaped platter of cinnamon toast arrived. “You need to be needed. Maybe we all do. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“I … Well, I just feel so helpless. And I feel like I ought to die.”
“Do you know about the soldiers in the hospitals?”
The lost woman shook her head.
“If the docs can patch you up in a hundred-day or so, they keep you up there, on whatever crazy planet it is. But the long-term cases get shipped back here. Some of them won’t be well for years. Some won’t ever be, not unless the doctors figure out something new.”
The lost woman’s nod was hesitant and small, but it was unmistakably a nod.
“You said you had two boys. What’re their names?”
“Jack and Jeff … That’s what we call them, I mean. Their real names are Jeffrey and—”
“Doesn’t matter. Jack’s older?”
The lost woman nodded, positively this time. “By two years. We spaced them like that.”
“Okay, let’s suppose Jack went into space. Say that he enlisted at twenty. Jeff was eighteen. Jack’s off fighting for a couple of years, his time. When he comes back, it’s been more than twenty. His folks are dead, and his kid brother’s pushing forty and lives in the EU. Get the picture? Jack’s in some hospital hooked to a bunch of machines, and nobody gives a damn. You’re your Jack’s mother. How about if you go to some of those hospitals and be my Jack’s mother? I’m not going to tell you you’ll get your reward in heaven or any of that shit, because I don’t know. But one day pretty soon you’ll get your reward from my Jack’s eyes.”
Chelle paused, and sighed. “I spent a hundred-day plus in a hospital once, and believe me you will.”
For a time that seemed stretched, the lost woman was silent, nibbling while she watched Chelle eat. At last she smiled. “I … Well, I’m not a forceful woman, but I’m going to do it. I spend hours and hours shopping. Just shopping for nothing, really. Or watching tele. Vic can’t object, but if he does I’m going to do it anyway.”
“Good for you!”
They had nearly finished eating when Mick Tooley came in. He grinned and said, “Hi, Chelle! Who’s your friend?”
Chelle slid over to make room for him. “Martha, this is Mick.” Her right eyelid drooped. “He’s the wonderful boyfriend I was telling you about.”
Tooley produced a card and handed it across the table. “You hang on to this, Martha. Call me anytime you need somebody kept out of jail.”
“He’s a lawyer,” Chelle explained.
“A good one. What’s with all the cinnamon toast?”
Chelle said, “The cook made it for us.”
The lost woman nodded. “She made him do it.” After a glance at Tooley’s card the lost woman added, “I asked for cinnamon toast, Mr. Tooley, and she’s a very kind person.”
“I know,” Tooley said.
“I didn’t even have to pull my gun.” Chelle took a piece of cinnamon toast. “We’ll call this the appetizer before our early lunch.”
“It looks like you just finished breakfast. You sure you want lunch?”
“I’ll order something light, like a roast pig with an apple in its mouth. You know. Have you got me a job?”
“I think so. They want to talk to you first, but you’re a natural and I’ve got the screwdriver.” Tooley demonstrated, tightening an imaginary screw. “We used to use the Zygmunt agency, a little shop over on a hundred and fifty-first, only Zygmunt’s dead and it looks like they’ve closed. So we’re looking at some others.”
“He’s talking about private investigators,” Chelle told the lost woman. “Lawyers use them all the time.”
“Right. This outfit, Confidential Security Research, would love to have our business. I’ve told them they ought to staff up a little for us, and I’ve made an appointment for you.”
“Honestly, Mick, I’d like to get this job because somebody wants me.”
The lost woman said, “You are.”
Tooley looked startled, then nodded. “That’s right. And they’ll want you, too, once they get to know you. You’ll see.”
“I hope so.” Chelle’s coffee cup was empty; she pushed it away.
“And another thing,” announced the lost woman, who no longer looked even a little bit
lost. “I’ve been thinking and thinking, and I’ve finally remembered the name of that girl I went to school with. Her name was Shelly. Shelly something with a B. Shelly Blaine or something like that.”
“Was she nice?” Chelle asked.
The no longer lost woman slid to the end of her seat and stood. “Very nice. Good at games, you know, and she could run like the wind. But a really nice girl. Now I’ve got to go. It was wonderful talking to you, but if I’m going to see Jack I’ve got to get started.”
“Who was she?” Tooley asked when she had gone.
“A girl I went to school with, only her name was Martha Watson then. She used to help me with my math.”
“Are you sure you’re up to eating lunch?”
“I told you, a wild boar’s head with an apple in its mouth. Those things take a long time to cook.”
Tooley took a bite of cinnamon toast. “This is good.”
“You’re hungry. I bet you didn’t eat breakfast this morning. I’ll eat the toast and I might steal your food, too. Now order something.”
Tooley did. The café was beginning to fill, harried office workers with an hour for lunch and no time to look at the menu. The waitress who had taken Tooley’s order brought Chelle more coffee.
Not long after that, an Army officer came in. Chelle, who had to repress the impulse to stand and salute, needed a full six seconds to recognize him. Tooley, who did not, took even longer.
By which time Skip had reached their booth. “Glad I found you,” he told Chelle. “I was going to call you after I got some lunch.”
“You joined.” For an instant Chelle’s voice faltered. “You’re JAG, by God!”
Tooley said, “What’s that?”
“He’s in the Judge Advocate General’s Department.” Chelle pointed. “See? Crossed gavels on his lapels.”
“Nobody knew where you were, Skip.” Tooley seemed on the point of stammering.
“Luis did, he just wasn’t talking. I asked him not to, in case I washed out.”
Chelle said, “You’re a major, so you didn’t.”
“Correct. I didn’t. They call it officers’ school. Do you know about it?”
Chelle nodded.
Tooley said, “I don’t. What is it?”
“Easier than I expected, for one thing. Basically, it’s a three-week crash course in how to be an officer. How to salute and return salutes, how to wear the uniform, the moral code expected of an officer and so forth. Say that some kid just out of law school wants to join. He looks good, he’s physically fit, and they need him. They send him to officers’ school, and he’s commissioned as a second lieutenant when he finishes it.”
“You’re not a second lieutenant,” Tooley said. “Major sounds pretty important.”
Skip shrugged. “I’ve been practicing law for over twenty years, and I’ve made something of a reputation, so that’s one thing. Another is that my field is criminal law, which is basically what military law is. Disobeying an officer’s direct order is a crime, punishable by death or such lesser penalty as the court may decree, et hoc genus omne. But is Private Doe guilty of it? Were there mitigating circumstances? It’s all pretty familiar.” Skip paused. “Another thing was that I was asking to go into space.”
Despite the noise surrounding them, Chelle’s gasp was audible.
Skip grinned. “They don’t hear much of that. Most of those new lieutenants want to stay right here, so there was that. Still another thing was that a second lieutenant my age would look silly.”
Chelle said, “You’re going up there.” It was not a question.
“I am. I’d been holding out for a captaincy, telling them I wouldn’t enlist without it. General Le Tourneur called me in. He’s the Judge Advocate General, the Armed Service’s top attorney. We must have talked for an hour or more, but main things were that he was going to make me a major, and as soon as I was actually out there I would be promoted again, jumping a grade to full colonel.”
“You were going to call me.” Chelle’s voice quavered. “You said that.”
“I was. I wanted to tell you where I was going, and why.” Skip paused again, waiting for a question; but none came. “I can’t tell you what planet they plan to send me to. That would be secret even if I knew it, and I don’t. The why…” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s obvious enough.”
“I’d like you to say it just the same.”
“All right. I want us to be about the same age. It won’t be exact, I know; but we’ll be a lot closer than we are now. My hair will be a little grayer and a little thinner. You’ll be a middle-aged woman. If you want me, I’ll be yours for the asking. If you don’t…” He shrugged. “I’ll try to find something else to live for.”
Tooley said, “What about the firm? You’ll be creating one hell of a vacancy.”
“Ibarra can run things in my absence, and do it about as well as I could.” Skip was brusque. “As for me, I’m a senior partner, and I’ll remain a senior partner. There are hardnosed statutes protecting the rights of men and women who go into the armed services. If you don’t know about them, I advise you to bone up on them.”
He turned back to Chelle. “A court will void our contract if you try hard enough. Mick can tell you all about that. You may have contracted with him or someone else by the time I’m sent home. I realize that. If you haven’t—well, you know. Now it’s goodbye until then.”
“Not before I kiss you. Get out of the way, Mick.”
Tooley slid to the end of the seat and stood, and Chelle slid as he had, rose, and embraced Skip. “I can’t make a kiss last twenty years,” she told him, “but I’m going to try.”
It was in fact a long, long kiss. When it was over, Skip turned and left the café.
Chelle followed him and stood on the sidewalk watching him—his bright blue dress uniform made him stand out—and heard not a word when her heart poured from her lips. “I didn’t want to tell you, but now you can’t hear me. And they’ll be after me, whoever it was that hired Ortiz and his gang. You wondered why they wanted you? Why they sent Achille for you, to bring you back to them? It was because they wanted me, and you should have seen what they did to me when they had me, trying so hard to drag out Jane Sims and everything she knew.”
A woman like a small, gray mouse touched Chelle’s arm. “You’re talking to yourself, darling. Did you know it? Talking out loud?”
“Bad, mad Chelle!” She nodded, smiling. “I’m psycho, that’s why the Army doesn’t want me anymore. Only I was really talking to somebody, to that major in dress blues. See him? He’s crossing the street now.”
“Yes. Yes, I do, darling. He can’t hear you.”
“That’s the good thing about it.” Chelle’s smile was still there. “If he could hear me, he’d come back and we’d be miserable all over again.”
She turned away from the mousy woman. “They think I’ve got part of Jane Sims’s brain, Skip. That’s the EU, because I think it was them, and the Os, because they sent poor Rick. Only I don’t. All I’ve really got is her left arm up to the shoulder, only I feel her in me sometimes just the same, so I’m psycho and the Army won’t take me back.”
He had vanished among hundreds of other pedestrians. She stood beside the mousy woman for a moment longer, and another moment after that, before she turned away and began to walk.
REFLECTION 20: Walking
The fat man who kept pushing past me was God, and Charlie. Or was Charlie, who was God. When you’re a little kid, you think your father is God. That’s wrong, but maybe I went too far the other way. Where the hell’s Charlie now? I have to tell him I want to go on his picnic.
Most of all I want to get out of this city, get away from the dirt and cold and these gray-faced people. I’m turning into one of them, and I’d rather be dead.
Maybe you go to the dream-world when you’re dead, maybe that’s what death feels like. Tell me, Jane? Can you hear me? You’re dead, so what’s it like? Do you see the white pigeons, white pigeon
s falling from the sky, all speckled over with their own blood? People are so damned cruel.
I didn’t run out on Skip because he tried to make me happy, I ran out because he thought that horrible thing he did would make me happy and after that I knew I could never trust him anymore, that when he gave me something there might be dead kids behind it, might be anything behind it, any kind of murder.
I killed Mort Pununto. I know I did. They were all saying afterward that they hadn’t aimed at him, that they’d made sure they missed. I’d aimed for the middle of his chest, and what I aim at, by God I hit.
So I looked in the truck where they’d put his body, and there he was, Master Sergeant Pununto, the best damn noncom I ever saw. And he didn’t look one fuckin’ bit like he was asleep. He looked dead and he was dead, and there was my bullet hole in the middle of his chest three buttons down and no other bullet holes at all. And I knew then why they had put me on the firing squad.
Goodbye, Mort! Sometimes I see you in my dreams. I guess I always will.
You and Skip.
Is the Army a kind of death? Or is death a kind of enlistment? If it is, we all enlist, even if we don’t want to.
We’re sick of this life. Was I sick of winning the fencing tournament, sick of being the star pitcher on the softball team? No, sick of being out of college and in a world where I couldn’t do any of that, sick of living with Skip in a studio apartment. Sick of waiting for him to come home so I’d have somebody to bitch at. We weren’t going to last a year, and I knew it.
So I joined, and then he wanted to contract and I said sure, darling, you wait for me.
The Army seemed so damned glamorous then. And damn it, up there it was glamorous! We were us. That was the big thing. We were us, and we could tell an officer to fuck off if we wanted to, because what was he going to do? Lock us up where the Os couldn’t get at us? Some fucking punishment! Not that we did it a lot. Our officers were fighters, or most of them were.
So was Mort Pununto and I killed him.
He enlisted. He was sick of whatever it was he’d been living in the EU, so he signed up for a job he must have known would get him killed within a year or two. He signed up for death.