Slant

by Eikeltje

  fur"I have that effect on some men," Yvonne says with such innocent truth-

  ess that Giffey knows she is not boasting. "I just wish they were quality,

  like you. Why can't you stay a while?"

  "I'll be here, but I'm going to be busy," Giffey says.

  "Backwoods business, probably," she says.

  Giffey grins but does not nod.

  "I know all about what men do here to make money. We've brought the

  hard times on ourselves. I wish to God I could just pack up and move to

  Seattle, get a job there."

  Giffey shakes his head. "Bad idea, unprepared."

  "We've talked about this already," Yvonne says.

  "We have."

  She is interrupted by heavy knocking on the door. Giffey is up and has his

  pistol out of a drawer before the third knock. The knock is followed by a loud

  male voice.

  "Yvonne, this is Rudy. We know you're in there with somebody."

  /

  SLANT 119

  "Go to hell, Rudy, I am not yours to bother!" Yvonne shouts back. She

  stands on the bed and looks for her clothes. Giffey bunches them up in a fist

  from the chair and throws them to her.

  He is standing naked with his gun in one hand, and she tilts her head to

  one side and closes her eyes. "Dear sweet Jesus," she whispers.

  "Bill's friends?" Giffey asks softly.

  "Yeah."

  "Will they hurt you?"

  "No," she says. "They are such clucks."

  "Will Bill hurt you?"

  "They don't tell him," she says, exasperated. "The bastards think they're

  watching out for me. They think I'm Bill's property."

  "I see. You've been here before."

  "Haven't you?"

  Giffey chews this over for a moment, and then his wise old smile returns.

  "Not for some time."

  There is this other woman, whose name and face he can't quite recall. He

  shakes that cold little sliver of memory out of his thoughts.

  Yvonne sees his expression and her face wrinkles in disappointment. "I'm

  sorry," she says.

  "They tangle with me and they are going to be hurt. You get dressed and

  get out there. It's been a pure pleasure, Yvonne."

  "For me, too, Giff."

  "Yeah, well, call me Jack," he says, and retires with his clothes and gun to

  the bathroom, shutting off the light. He hopes Yvonne is smart enough to

  close the door and let it lock on her way out, before the men decide they have

  to do something more.

  He hears them talking on the walkway outside. He doesn't hear the hotel

  room door close.

  There are two men and they sound like they're about Yvonne's age, maybe

  younger. He hopes they do not come into his room.

  Footsteps on the room's threadbare carpet. Giffey's senses become very keen,

  in the dark behind the bathroom door. Whoever is in his room--just one

  person--is taking it slow and easy, looking things over.

  "I don't want to hurt you," the young man, Rudy, says. "I just want to talk

  things over. Let me know where you are."

  Giffey keeps quiet. Quiet is spookier.

  "Come on. Just talk."

  Yvonne tells Rudy to get out of the room, they should just leave.

  "This bastard isn't worth it," the other young man says. "Let him go."

  "Yeah. Well, he should know something, that's all. You listening? Where

  are you, you fucker?"

  "Rudy," Yvonne whines, "he's a pro. Federal army. He'll kill you."

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  GREG BEAR

  Giffy cringes.

  "Pro what? Pro federal woman-stealer? Talk to me, or I'll shoot through

  the goddamn walls!"

  Giffey holds up his pistol and pulls back the automatic target seeker switch.

  It makes a small sliding click. Through the door or the wall, it won't be very

  good, but it will give him a better chance if the man decides to jump into the

  bathroom. Some of these young Ruggers are just crazy enough to do a thing

  like that.

  "Around here, we don't mess with another man's woman!" Rudy says, his

  voice hoarse. He's not happy with this quiet.

  "Oh, Rudy, 0z, h-leeze!" Yvonne says.

  "I'd go home if I were you, Mister, back to fucking District of Corruption

  or wherever you call home. Leave this town to the good people, the ones who

  know better than to--"

  "Rudy," the other man calls. "Let's go."

  Rudy thinks this over. He hasn't come any closer to the bathroom door.

  "Yeah, crazy bastard," Rudy murmurs. The footsteps retreat.

  Giffby stays in the bathroom for ten or fifteen minutes, listening. He can't

  hear a thing outside the room, though car and truck noises from the street

  could mask some sounds. There's a couple of minutes of almost complete

  silence, and slowly, he emerges from of the bathroom.

  tie feels like a crab scuttling out from under a rock with gulls wheeling

  overhead.

  The room is empty.

  When he is sure the hall and the street outside the building are clear, he

  packs up everything in a small suitcase and leaves. Giffby does not want any-

  knowing where he is, where he

  be,

  after that.

  might

  or

  tomorrow

  or

  e is furious with himself for losing sight of his goal. This could have

  ended it all early and stupidly, for nothing, he thinks.

  For nothing at all.

  2O

  Night is coming on to dark morning and the storm is gentled, the lightshow

  is off. All the house shutters are drawn and the monitor is set to store and be

  quiet. Alice has calmed Twist and given her some fast OTC anxiolytics. She

  is not hyperventilating now and she lies on Alice's couch with a cold cloth

  /

  SLANT 121

  stopped sobbing. Alice is exhausted but she watches over the young woman

  with feelings of irritation and peculiar gratitude.

  She can rely on Twist to always have more urgent and tangled problems.

  Twist's words tumbled out of her as soon as she came through the door--her

  awfulness was back, she said, in force, and she could hardly see straight. She

  has cycled in and out of total darkness, "Like looking at a black dog with sick

  eyes," she said; skirted slashing her wrists, listened to the most awful silent

  urgings, and imagined the most vivid hells. Some of these she described while

  Alice fixed her some food and dosed out the anxiolytics. Alice listened, grimly

  sympathetic.

  Twist is having one severe fallback, no doubts. Tomorrow they will talk

  about her temp situation and see where some long-term medical and therapy

  might be gotten.

  But now it is peaceful. A slow drizzle falls outside, little finger-taps of rain

  barely audible on the blanked windows, and all there is in the world exists

  within these walls.

  Alice puts on her plush robe and curls up on the chair beside the couch,

  drawing up her knees, eyes closing of themselves. She feels like a squirrel after

  it has been chased by a cat. Her thinking comes in slow waves of reason mixed

  with soft tremors of fkntasy.

  Mary Choy has filed her request with Seattle Citizen Oversight to get the

  records she needs. Humans have to make that decision and they are all at home

  asleep, and so after checking
in with Nussbaum and finding that he has gone

  home, she hooks a police shuttle, empty but for her, on its ride to the north.

  At her apt, she undresses. Showers.

  Sits staring at the rain on the antique thermopane plate glass windows. Bs3'

  day, little girl.

  It is a day she would not mind forgetting. Nussbaum could have tried her

  out on something a little less gruesome, a little less disturbing and pointless.

  Her legs stretch long and her back slumps in the soft chair. She is not ready

  for sleep yet. She stands and performs a slow dytch, Tai-Chi and Aikido moves

  choreographed to her own dance rhythms, until her muscles and attitudes relax

  and allow her basic status self, ground and reference for all her endeavors, to

  come to balance and emerge like the moon from behind clouds.

  She yawns. The images are tightly bottled. She will release them tomorrow,

  122 GREG BEAR

  SEXSTR pounds M:

  Legitimate and Sincere Discussion of Sexuality in Our Time, REAL and IMMEDIATE

  in Your Pad! (Vids and Yox of REAL people available for YOUR sincere needs!)

  (This piece has had 10230 accesses in 10 years. Author not listed; public access free

  of additional licenses.)

  THE HUSBAND:

  I have always been courteous and sweet, and thought of you. You yourself told

  me I was the best lover you ever had. I watched with dismay the cooling, the

  change from excitement to responsibility, to keeping the home on course...

  When I am gone, I hope you'll look back and realize what opportunities you missed.

  You'll think of all those times you could have felt more and done more, and as

  you're lying there, completely alone in bed, you'll have so many regrets...

  That's what I dream of. The body's reckoning.

  THE WIFE:

  Yes, he is conscientious, but lord... After he is gonemand I do hope I survive

  himml can spend all morning in the garden, and then have toast and a little marmalade

  for breakfast. I hope I am too old and withered for men to pay me any

  attention. I will travel with my friends and read whenever I wish. I suppose he thinks

  I will miss him in bed, but really, after, what will it be, probably, forty years of having

  to service him--that's what he himself calls it sometimes--wouldn't any reasonable

  human being hope for a vacation?

  That's what I dream of. A long vacation.

  In the back of Marcus's limo, without Marcus, Jonathan is on his way home.

  He is gray smooth neutral now; he feels he has been manipulated into tracking

  a slick fast groove he does not think can lead anywhere good. By feeling neutral

  he can let himself think there is some way out, some room to maneuver; he

  has not really made any decisions. Marcus's offer sounds so very ridiculous,

  nineteenth-century; a secret society, perhaps, with handshakes and fezzes, Ancient

  Revelations Unveiled upon signing a binding pact in blood...

  What he feels, most of all, is lost, like a small boy. He wants to belong

  someplace, but where--with Marcus and his unknown opportunity? With

  Chloe and her hidden emotions and reluctance?

  Jonathan travels in someone else's car to a house where he is no longer at

  /

  SLANT 123

  God, I'm feeling sorry for myself, he thinks. Time to get maudlin and look for a

  sympathetic shoulder.

  But he is a mature man and playtime is long over.

  He can see his house from the road. The limo pauses at a crossing. He

  wonders whether Chloe is still awake.

  Penelope and Hiram have gone to bed. The house is quiet. Chloe stands by

  the living room window watching the clouds tatter.

  Chloe's thoughts have been more and more ragged and bitter through the

  evening, veering between self-judgment and self-justification. Yet there is

  nothing she can blame specifically for her mood. Jonathan has done nothing

  unusual to irritate her. The children have simply been themselves, and she is

  used to that sort of stress.

  Maybe she can blame a crazy toilet that says they are sick; it has even told

  her now, based on a straightforward pee, that she is the one who has a viral

  cold. She has phoned in a repair order, though the toilet's own opinion of its

  condition is that there is nothing wrong.

  No member of the family has ever had a cold. She hardly remembers what

  the symptoms might be.

  For reasons she cannot fathom, she has been thinking with sharp persistence

  about the months before and after she met Jonathan, that time when

  she could have reliably bedded a new man every week, sometimes two, and

  often did. Back then, she would not have hesitated to call it fucking

  around; now the term seems crude. She is a mother, after all, and a good

  and responsible one.

  Jonathan at first seemed just another of those men, less handsome than most,

  but from the beginning she treated him differently. Even as she dated and

  bedded others, she would not immediately give herself to him, give him what

  her mother called "the physical privilege." No privilege--just sex, delightful

  exercise. But with Jonathan--

  She felt differently about Jonathan, not strongly attracted sexually, yet not

  uninterested; he moved her in different ways.

  In those weeks before she finally allowed him to persuade her, she gave

  herself to other men and behaved with them in ways that she would not with

  Jonathan, and has not since. She has never tried to explain that to herself and

  in fact has seldom thought about it, but this evening, the question comes out

  of the murk with a disturbing rough edge.

  She remembers now that she had twenty men in all--eight of them after

  she began dating Jonathan, sometimes inviting a man over hours after Jonathan

  had left. Why twenty, she wonders; it seems so rounded and artificial a number,

  so meaningless, nothing to do with actual people, with arms and legs and cocks

  and pretty eyes and thrusting hips.

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  GREG BEAR

  turn down the quiet good and intelligent man and then bed the loud, self-assured

  and brightly plumed boys.

  It was the last, the monster, that broke her and sent her straight to Jonathan.

  He was what she needed.

  The frame house creaks softly as the last of the wind fetches up against its

  eaves.

  Jonathan to her seemed honorable and decent and therefore much less of a

  challenge. Getting the posturing boy-men to pay attention to her was a real

  accomplishment. "Bitch thinking," she murmurs. He knows little or nothing

  about the men who had her but were not hers, knows only about the last, and

  she will never tell him; he is not the sort who would react well. She would

  not want him to be that sort.

  Though he has tried to get her to engage in fantasizing about other relationships,

  she has resisted; there is something about such demands that lessens

  him, in her eyes. He's changed. Sex, for this older Jonathan, seems to be some

  sort of adventure, some way of making up for a stiff youth; she has long since

  discarded that notion.

  Yet she and Jonathan get along well enough in bed, she believes. She feels

  his occasional dissatisfactions, his attempts to change their sexual routines; she

  res
ists with a tree-like stubbornness, hoping to keep their relationship on a

  firm and level ground, away from the jagged mountains of her early behavior.

  She will not go back to the out-of-control passion, the pain, the loss of self

  through giving all and getting nothing she needs in return.

  She knows little about Jonathan's other sexual experiences. A few things he

  has admitted to--unsatisfactory, half-hearted couplings with confused young

  w-men--things Chloe scrupulously dismisses as inconsequential, and indeed I are.

  The present moment is supreme. Family is what counts.

  Yet increasingly she has felt Jonathan's entreaties turn bitter. He does not know why she resists; she doesn't either, not really. He has asked for things,

  after all, that she once freely gave to others. Perhaps he senses that. He's not

  stupid.

  And his requests are not extreme--no marriage counselor would call them

  extreme, or do more than offer mealy-mouthed placating defenses for Chloe's