by Gene Wolfe
She said, “Hey! They’re not supposed to see me here.”
He told her, “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving.”
Fanny sighed. “You’ll throw that thing away when you’ve been with me for a week or two.”
He wanted to shake his head, but he did not.
“You don’t die, do you?” Fanny whispered. “They don’t die where you come from. We can do it over and over, as often as we want to.”
Her dark eyes made him uncomfortable, so that this time he did shake his head, thinking of Lara.
The nurse returned with a bundle wrapped in brown paper and tied with string. She handed it to him, and she and Fanny left his room, shutting the door behind them. He broke the string, unwrapped the bundle, and unfolded his shirt on the bed. The laundry had bleached out the bloodstains, leaving the shirt as white as it had been when it was new. He took Lara’s picture from the pocket of his pajamas and put it into the pocket of the shirt.
Tina asked, “Are we going with that lady?”
“For a while,” he told her.
“I don’t like her,” Tina said.
“I do,” he told her. “But not enough.” He pulled off the pajama top and tossed it onto the bed. “Now turn around and shut your eyes.”
She did, and he untied the cord of his pajama bottoms and let them drop to the floor. When he had buttoned the clean shirt, he permitted her to look again.
“You should have waited till you had your pants on,” Tina lectured him. “Are you going to let those ladies come back in now?”
“I’m wearing jockey shorts,” he explained. “Besides, the shirttail covers me.” He carried his trousers to the window, where the light was better; they were dotted with dried blood, rusty and stiff. “I wish they’d sent these to the cleaner,” he said.
His wallet was in the hip pocket, still holding money that would be useless here. Bills that could buy things were in the double pocket of the overcoat, though his gloves seemed to have fallen out; the map was in the other pocket. He put the scarlet thread that held Mr. Sheng’s charm about his neck and thrust the charm inside his undershirt, then knotted his blood-smeared tie as neatly as if he were going to work at the store. When he was fully dressed and Tina had been stowed in his jacket pocket and cautioned to keep quiet, he opened the door.
“I’m afraid you have to ride in my chair again,” the nurse told him. “We can’t let you walk until a doctor says you can walk.”
He sat down obediently, and she pushed him as before, this time with Fanny walking beside them. Fanny signed him out at the main desk. “You won’t need your coat,” she told him. “It’s beautiful outside.” He folded the coat over his arm.
She was right. A spring breeze stroked his cheek as soon as they had left the hospital smells behind them. Jonquils in stone tubs waved to them from both sides of the walk leading to the street.
“You’re not too steady on your pins, are you?”
He was holding on to the rail as he went down the steps. “I’m fine,” he said.
“We can take a cab. They gave me expense money.”
“I can walk.” He was looking up and down the street; it was hauntingly familiar. “And I think we’ll have to. Do you see any cabs?”
Fanny shook her head.
“You didn’t bring your car?”
“No,” she said. They had started down the street. “You’re thinking of that time I was at the Grand, but that wasn’t really my car.”
“How did you get to the hospital?”
“On the trolley,” Fanny said.
“Then we can ride the trolley back. Is there a stop around here?”
“A stop?”
“Where the trolley stops and you get on.”
Fanny shook her head again, making her tight black curls bounce in the sunshine. “Is that how you do it where you come from? Here we just flag them down. What are you staring at?”
It was a shop window, the window of a narrow little store that sold sheet music. The song displayed there, open upon a gilded music stand, was “Find Your True Love.” It had been in the window so long that its dusty paper had turned yellow.
“There’s a cab,” Fanny said, and called, “Taxi!”
He looked down the street for the doll hospital. Its sign hung there, displaying a picture of a doll dressed like a nurse.
“The cab’s stopping.” Fanny tugged his sleeve. “Come on.”
He nodded and turned to follow, feeling more lost than he ever had since he had run down Mr. Sheng’s alley. Fanny opened the door for him, and he said, “Thank you,” and got in.
“Where to, sir?” The driver was a man, a bit younger than he was and surprisingly clean. Fanny was walking around the rear of the cab. He considered the matter.
“Where are you and the lady going, sir?”
Casually, he reached across the seat and depressed the lock button. “To the railway station,” he said, rolling up the window. “But she’s not coming.”
“Like that, huh?” The driver grinned as he put the cab in gear.
“Yes,” he said. “Like that.” He turned to look at Fanny, left standing in the street. He felt that she should have drawn her gun or at least shaken her fist at them. She did neither, and there was something achingly forlorn about her small, dark figure.
“We’re out of that hospital, aren’t we?” It was Tina, thrusting her head past the lapel of his jacket.
“Yes,” he told her.
“Where are we going?”
“To Manea.” He spoke softly, so that the driver would not overhear him; the driver might be questioned by the police.
“Lovely country, they tell me,” the driver remarked. “Close to Overwood.”
“I didn’t think that you heard me,” he said. “Yes, I know it must be.”
They passed a fountain, and its splashing recalled Klamm—the tears in Klamm’s eyes. Klamm had followed the letter of the law; but suddenly he knew that no one would question the driver or pursue them. Fanny might be reprimanded; but there would be no investigation, no all-points bulletin.
Not far away the whistle of a steam locomotive blew, echoing and re-echoing among the surrounding buildings. He smiled. It blew again, singing of lovers’ meetings in distant places.
Tina looked out from her vantage point beside his necktie. “Whooee!” Tina said. “A-whooee, a-whooee!”
NOTE
Indoor moopsball, as played by the patients and staff of United General Psychiatric Hospital, is taken from “Rules of Moopsball,” by Gary Cohn, and used with his permission. “Rules of Moopsball” originally appeared in Orbit 18, edited by Damon Knight.
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