“If we’re going to talk seriously,” she said, “I want to put my wig on. Could you bring me my blonde wig? It’s around somewhere, maybe under those clothes in the corner there. Where that red top is, the one with the white buttons. I have to sew a button back on it, if I can find the button.”
He found her her wig.
“Hold the hand mirror for me,” she said as she placed the wig on her skull. “Do you think I’m contagious? Because M.E.D. says that at this stage the virus is inactive. I talked to M.E.D. for over an hour yesterday; they gave me a special line.”
“Who’s maintaining your gear?” he asked.
“Gear?” She gazed at him from behind dark glasses.
“Your job. Monitoring incoming traffic. Storing it and then transferring it. The reason you’re here.”
“It’s on auto.”
“You have seven warning lights on right now, all red and all blinking,” he said. “You should have an audio analog so you can hear it and not ignore it. You’re receiving but not recording and they’re trying to tell you.”
“Well, they’re out of luck,” she responded in a low voice.
“They have to take into account the fact that you’re sick,” he said.
“Yes, they do. Of course they do. They can bypass me; don’t you receive roughly what I receive? Aren’t I essentially a backup station to your own?”
“No,” he said. “I’m a backup station to yours.”
“It’s all the same.” She sipped the mug of tea which he had fixed for her. “It’s too hot. I’ll let it cool.” Tremblingly, she reached to set down the mug on a table beside her bed; the mug fell, and hot tea poured out over the plastic floor. “Christ,” she said with fury. “Well, that does it; that really does it. Nothing has gone right today. Son of a bitch.”
McVane turned on the dome’s vacuum circuit and it sucked up the spilled tea. He said nothing. He felt amorphous anger all through him, directed at nothing, fury without object, and he sensed that this was the quality of her own hate: it was a passion which went both nowhere and everywhere. Hate, he thought, like a flock of flies. God, he thought, how I want out of here. How I hate to hate like this, hating spilled tea with the same venom as I hate terminal illness. A one-dimensional universe. It has dwindled to that.
In the weeks that followed, he made fewer and fewer trips from his dome to hers. He did not listen to what she said; he did not watch what she did; he averted his gaze from the chaos around her, the ruins of her dome. I am seeing a projection of her brain, he thought once as he momentarily surveyed the garbage which had piled up everywhere; she was even putting sacks outside the dome, to freeze for eternity. She is senile.
Back in his own dome, he tried to listen to Linda Fox, but the magic had departed. He saw and heard a synthetic image. It was not real. Rybus Rommey had sucked the life out of the Fox the way her dome’s vacuum circuit had sucked up the spilled tea.
“And when his sorrows came as fast as floods,
Hope kept his heart till comfort came again.”
McVane heard the words, but they didn’t matter. What had Rybus called it? Recycled sentimentality and crap. He put on a Vivaldi concerto for bassoon. There is only one Vivaldi concerto, he thought. A computer could do better. And be more diverse.
“You’re picking up Fox waves,” Linda Fox said, and on his video transducer her face appeared, star-lit and wild. “And when those Fox waves hit you,” she said, “you have been hit!”
In a momentary spasm of fury, he deliberately erased four hours of Fox, both video and audio. And then regretted it. He put in a call to one of the relay satellites for replacement tapes and was told that they were back-ordered.
Fine, he said to himself. What the hell does it matter?
That night, while he was sound asleep, his telephone rang. He let it ring; he did not answer it, and when it rang again ten minutes later he again ignored it.
The third time it rang he picked it up and said hello.
“Hi,” Rybus said.
“What is it?” he said.
“I’m cured.”
“You’re in remission?”
“No, I’m cured. M.E.D. just contacted me; their computer analyzed all my charts and tests and everything and there’s no sign of hard patches. Except, of course, I’ll never get central vision back in my bad eye. But other than that I’m okay.” She paused. “How have you been? I haven’t heard from you for so long—it seems like forever. I’ve been wondering about you.”
He said, “I’m okay.”
“We should celebrate.”
“Yes,” he said.
“I’ll fix dinner for us, like I used to. What would you like? I feel like Mexican food. I make a really good taco; I have the ground meat in my freezer, unless it’s gone bad. I’ll thaw it out and see. Do you want me to come over there or do you—”
“Let me talk to you tomorrow,” he said.
“I’m sorry to wake you up, but I just now heard from M.E.D.” She was silent a moment. “You’re the only friend I have,” she said. And then, incredibly, she began to cry.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You’re well.”
“I was so fucked up,” she said brokenly. “I’ll ring off and talk to you tomorrow. But you’re right; I can’t believe it, but I made it.”
“It is due to your courage,” he said.
“It’s due to you,” Rybus said. “I would have given up without you. I never told you this, but—well, I squirreled away enough sleeping pills to kill myself, and—”
“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” he said, “about getting together.” He hung up and lay back down.
He thought, When Job had lost his children, lands, and goods, Patience assuaged his excessive pain. And when his sorrows came as fast as floods, Hope kept his heart till comfort came again. As the Fox would put it.
Recycled sentimentality, he thought. I got her through her ordeal and she paid me back by deriding into rubbish that which I cherished the most. But she is alive, he realized; she did make it. It’s like when someone tries to kill a rat. You can kill it six ways and it still survives. You can’t fault that.
He thought, That is the name of what we are doing here in this star system on these frozen planets in these little domes. Rybus Rommey understood the game and played it right and won. To hell with Linda Fox. And then he thought, But also to hell with what I love.
It is a good trade-off, he thought: a human life won and a synthetic media image wrecked. The law of the universe.
Shivering, he pulled his covers over him and tried to get back to sleep.
The food man showed up before Rybus did; he awoke McVane early in the morning with a full shipment.
“Still got your temp and air illegally boosted,” the food man said as he unscrewed his helmet.
“I just use the equipment,” McVane said. “I don’t build it.”
“Well, I won’t report you. Got any coffee?”
They sat facing each other across the table drinking fake coffee.
“I just came from the Rommey girl’s dome,” the food man said. “She says she’s cured.”
“Yeah, she phoned me late last night,” McVane said.
“She says you did it.”
To that, McVane said nothing.
“You saved a human life.”
“Okay,” McVane said.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m just tired.”
“I guess it took a lot out of you. Christ, it’s a mess over there. Can’t you clean it up for her? Destroy the garbage, at least, and sterilize the place; the whole goddam dome is septic. She let her garbage disposal get plugged and it backed up raw sewage all over her cupboards and shelves, where her food is stored. I’ve never seen anything like it. Of course, she’s been so weak—”
McVane interrupted, “I’ll look into it.”
Awkwardly, the food man said, “The main thing is, she’s cured. She was giving herself the shots, you know.”
; “I know,” McVane said. “I watched her.” Many times, he said to himself.
“And her hair’s growing back. Boy, she looks awful without her wig. Don’t you agree?”
Rising, McVane said, “I have to broadcast some weather reports. Sorry I can’t talk to you any longer.”
Toward dinnertime Rybus Rommey appeared at the hatch of his dome, loaded down with pots and dishes and carefully wrapped packages. He let her in, and she made her way silently to the kitchen area, where she dumped everything down at once; two packages slid off onto the floor and she stooped to retrieve them.
After she had taken off her helmet, she said, “It’s good to see you again.”
“Likewise,” he said.
“It’ll take about an hour to fix the tacos. Do you think you can wait until then?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking,” Rybus said as she started a pan of grease heating on the stove. “We ought to take a vacation. Do you have any leave coming? I have two weeks owed me, although my situation is complicated by my illness. I mean, I used up a lot of my leave in the form of sick leave. Christ’s sake, they docked me one-half day a month, just because I couldn’t operate my transmitter. Can you believe it?”
He said, “It’s nice to see you stronger.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “Shit, I forgot the hamburger. Goddam it!” She stared at him.
“I’ll go to your dome and get it,” he said presently. She seated herself. “It’s not thawed. I forgot to thaw it out. I just remembered now. I was going to take it out of the freezer this morning, but I had to finish some letters… maybe we could have something else and have the tacos tomorrow night.”
“Okay,” he said.
“And I meant to bring your tea back.”
“I only gave you four bags,” he said.
Eyeing him uncertainly, she said, “I thought you brought me that whole box of Celestial Seasonings Morning Thunder Tea. Then where did I get it? Maybe the food man brought it. I’m just going to sit here for a while. Could you turn on the TV?” He turned on the TV.
“There’s a show I watch,” Rybus said. “I never miss it. I like shows about—well, I’ll have to fill you in on what’s happened so far if we’re going to watch.”
“Could we not watch?” he said. “Her husband—”
He thought, She’s completely crazy. She is dead. Her body has been healed, but it killed her mind.
“I have to tell you something,” he said.
“What is it?”
“You’re—” He ceased.
“I’m very lucky,” she said. “I beat the odds. You didn’t see me when I was at my worst. I didn’t want you to. From the chemo I was blind and paralyzed and deaf and then I started having seizures; I’ll be on a maintenance dose for years. But it’s okay? Don’t you think? Tobe on just a maintenance dose? I mean, it could be so much worse. Anyhow, her husband lost his job because he—”
“Whose husband?” McVane said.
“On the TV.” Reaching up she took hold of his hand. “Where do you want to go on our vacation? We so goddam well deserve some sort of reward. Both of us.”
“Our reward,” he said, “is that you’re well.”
She did not seem to be listening; her gaze was fastened on the TV. He saw, then, that she still wore her dark glasses. It made him think, then, of the song the Fox had sung on Christmas Day, for all the planets, the most tender, the most haunting song which she had adapted from John Dowland’s lute books.
“When the poor cripple by the pool did lie
Full many years in misery and pain,
No sooner he on Christ had set his eye,
But he was well, and comfort came again.”
Rybus Rommey was saying, “—it was a high-paying job but everyone was conspiring against him; you know how it is in an office. I worked in an office once where—” Pausing, she said, “Could you heat some water. I’d like to try a little coffee.”
“Okay,” he said, and turned on the burner.
Strange Memories of Death
I woke up this morning and felt the chill of October in the apartment, as if the seasons understood the calendar. What had I dreamed? Vain thoughts of a woman I had loved. Something depressed me. I took a mental audit. Everything was, in fact, fine; this would be a good month. But I felt the chill.
Oh Christ, I thought. Today is the day they evict the Lysol Lady.
Nobody likes the Lysol Lady. She is insane. No one has ever heard her say a word and she won’t look at you. Sometimes when you are descending the stairs she is coming up and she turns wordlessly around and retreats and uses the elevator instead. Everybody can smell the Lysol she uses. Magical horrors contaminate her apartment, apparently, so she uses Lysol. God damn! As I fix coffee, I think, Maybe the owners have already evicted her, at dawn, while I still slept. While I was having vain dreams about a woman I loved who dumped me. Of course. I was dreaming about the hateful Lysol Lady and the authorities coming to her door at five A.M. The new owners are a huge firm of real estate developers. They’d do it at dawn.
The Lysol Lady hides in her apartment and knows that October is here, October first is here, and they are going to bust in and throw her and her stuff out in the street. Now is she going to speak? I imagine her pressed against the wall in silence. However, it is not as simple as that. Al Newcum, the sales representative of South Orange Investments, has told me that the Lysol Lady went to Legal Aid. This is bad news because it screws up our doing anything for her. She is crazy but not crazy enough. If it could be proved that she did not understand the situation, a team from Orange County Mental Health could come in as her advocates and explain to South Orange Investments that you cannot legally evict a person with diminished capacity. Why the hell did she get it together to go to Legal Aid?
The time is nine A.M. I can go downstairs to the sales office and ask Al Newcum if they’ve evicted the Lysol Lady yet, or if she is in her apartment, hiding in silence, waiting. They are evicting her because the building, made up of fifty-six units, has been converted to condominiums. Virtually everyone has moved since we were all legally notified four months ago. You have one hundred and twenty days to leave or buy your apartment and South Orange Investments will pay two hundred dollars of your moving costs. This is the law. You also have first-refusal rights on your rental unit. I am buying mine. I am staying. For fifty-two thousand dollars, I get to be around when they evict the Lysol lady who is crazy and doesn’t have fifty-two thousand dollars. Now I wish I had moved.
Going downstairs to the newspaper vending machine, I buy today’s Los Angeles Times. A girl who shot up a schoolyard of children “because she didn’t like Mondays” is pleading guilty. She will soon get probation. She took a gun and shot schoolchildren because, in effect, she had nothing else to do. Well, today is Monday; she is in court on a Monday, the day she hates. Is there no limit to madness? I wonder about myself. First of all, I doubt if my apartment is worth fifty-two thousand dollars. I am staying because I am both afraid to move—afraid of something new, of change—and because I am lazy. No, that isn’t it. I like this building and I live near friends and near stores that mean something to me. I’ve been here three and a half years. It is a good, solid building, with security gates and dead-bolt locks. I have two cats and they like the enclosed patio; they can go outside and be safe from dogs. Probably I am thought of as the Cat Man. So everyone has moved out, but the Lysol Lady and the Cat Man stay on.
What bothers me is that I know the only thing separating me from the Lysol Lady, who is crazy, is the money in my savings account. Money is the official seal of sanity. The Lysol Lady, perhaps, is afraid to move. She is like me. She just wants to stay where she has stayed for several years, doing what she’s been doing. She uses the laundry machines a lot, washing and spin-drying her clothes again and again. This is where I encounter her: I am coming into the laundry room and she is there at the machines to be sure no one steals her laundry. Why won’t she loo
k at you? Keeping her face turned away… what purpose is served? I sense hate. She hates every other human being. But now consider her situation; those she hates are going to close in on her. What fear she must feel! She gazes about in her apartment, waiting for the knock on the door; she watches the clock and understands!
To the north of us, in Los Angeles, the conversion of rental units to condominiums has been effectively blocked by the city council. Those who rent won out. This is a great victory, but it does not help the Lysol Lady. This is Orange County. Money rules. The very poor live to the east of me: the Mexicans in their Barrio. Sometimes when our security gates open to admit cars, the Chicano women run in with baskets of dirty laundry; they want to use our machines, having none of their own. The people who lived here in the building resented this. When you have even a little money—money enough to live in a modern, full-security, all-electric building—you resent a great deal.
Well, I have to find out if the Lysol Lady has been evicted yet. There is no way to tell by looking at her window; the drapes are always shut. So I go downstairs to the sales office to see Al. However, Al is not there; the office is locked. Then I remember that Al flew to Sacramento on the weekend to get some crucial legal papers that the state lost. He hasn’t returned. If the Lysol Lady wasn’t crazy, I could knock on her door and talk to her; I could find out that way. But this is precisely the locus of the tragedy; any knock will frighten her. This is her condition. This is the illness itself. So I stand by the fountain that the developers have constructed, and I admire the planter boxes of flowers which they have had brought in… they have really made the building look good. It formerly looked like a prison. Now it has become a garden. The developers put a great deal of money into painting and landscaping and, in fact, rebuilding the whole entrance. Water and flowers and french doors… and the Lysol Lady silent in her apartment, waiting for the knock.
Perhaps I could tape a note to the Lysol Lady’s door. It could read:
The Eye of the Sibyl and Other Classic Strories Page 46