The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue
Louis Shalako
Copyright 2014 Long Cool One Books
Design: J. Thornton
ISBN 978-1-927957-25-7
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The following is a work of speculation. Any resemblance to any person living or deceased, or to any places or events, is purely coincidental. Names, places, settings, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. The author’s moral right has been asserted.
The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue
Louis Shalako
Chapter One
Constables Darnell Wood and Randall Zonaras sat in the squad car, holding at a south central location. They were monitoring radio traffic and updates on the onboard, centered on the dashboard between them. It had already been a long shift.
“Huh.” The huskier of the pair, Randy Zonaras was in the passenger side.
He pointed at the screen.
“Unit Twelve is on the scene of that missing robot.”
They had laughed on hearing it on the radio.
“Hmn.” Darnell, thirty-four years old and the archetypical buzz-cut blonde jock, glanced over.
It was a slow night so far, yet it just wasn’t worth committing to some small-time play when sure as shooting something more interesting would break three minutes later.
“They’re asking for assistance. She says the thing just walked off. Ah, not too long, a few minutes ago.” Randall read further. “It’s in the three-hundred block of Jefferson.”
Randall turned and tilted the screen back on its adjustable column so his senior partner could get a better look at the details.
“All right, we’re near there. Tell them we’ll keep a lookout.” Darnell barely glanced out the window, giving a disgusted snort.
It was pretty good policy, one where they didn’t have to do anything in particular. Saunders, senior cop in Unit Twelve, along with Young Miss Bradley as everyone called her, might be kind enough to put them in their report. It helped to account for their time on shift. The fact that it was a slow night didn’t help. Slow nights were all too rare and ought to be savored.
Darnell’s eyes slid down and he took another look.
“That’s a robot?” His eyebrows rose. “Holy. She’s not bad looking.”
“I don’t know if you saw that thing on TV the other night, but they make these robots nowadays…” Randall was going on but Darnell waved it off and the other trailed into silence.
The fact was that he had seen it, and it was still kind of disturbing to the slightly jaundiced eye of a cop. He knew himself that well.
Darnell reached for the ignition.
“Might as well have a look around. Hey?”
Randall grinned.
“Yup.”
Spinning the computer, he typed in a quick text message to Constable Bradley that they were mobile and in the area.
He could have just called them—most cops had personal phones, but this way it was logged.
They’d never apprehended a robot before, but there was a first time for everything.
In the event, they circled and circled in an ever-increasing radius, block after block after block, along with one other stray unit. It was a bunch of rather bored cops. With all of their combined efforts, they found exactly nothing.
“She’ll turn up somewhere, and we are killing some pretty good time.” The taxpayers hated seeing the police sitting around in their vehicles, doing nothing, when in fact that was when they should have been the most grateful—surely it was a sign that things were going well, i.e. no crime and folks really ought to try and be a little more happy about it.
Half of their time in the car involved writing, and reading, endless notes, memos, bulletins, and reports. It was the sort of work that you couldn’t jam in a briefcase and take home with you. It all had to be done right now.
Randall nodded sagely at this observation. He typed a few notes in, made a mention of the other units, and eyed up the calls list without much hope of action. The thieves and the pimps and the pushers were staying in tonight.
An oddly cheerful lot they were too, but the folks about at this hour on a cold and rainy night in mid-spring hadn’t seen too many lady robots around. They probably would have remembered that sort of thing if they had. That was the big consensus so far. Pretty much everybody had seen one on TV, or knew some little thing about them. They all knew what they cost, or had some idea of the moral dilemmas.
It was a deadly slow night, and Darnell realized that you couldn’t possibly have seen it all because it all hadn’t been invented yet.
You couldn’t possibly have seen it all.
Life was just too damned short to ever have to worry about that happening.
***
“I must thank you young lady. You really are most kind.” The gentle voice, rusty and unused to much company, was slightly apologetic.
Scott had been blind for over ten years, legally blind that is, although he had ten percent vision, maybe a little less in the right eye. He’d lived alone since long before that, up three floors above an old laundromat on the east side of Onion City. He had the white cane and everything, as he was wont to say.
When a pleasant young woman had offered to help him home with his groceries, he was initially nervous but then thought why not.
Why not?
What have I got to lose.
It had happened before, more than once, not that he expected such help. Scott had become hardened, used to shifting along all right for himself. This one seemed so young and pleasant.
He never knew what to say, perhaps that was his problem. What did he have to offer in the way of conversation? He had nothing but pride and deprivation to talk about, nothing witty, or smart, or positive to say to anyone these days.
A conversation composed entirely of social pleasantries got pretty boring after a while and then you were in for it. He was afraid of saying something really off.
It was usually older people, although there was this one really big dude who turned out to be a preacher. It was a certain sort of person, and you recognized that after a while—some big dude with something to atone for, in other words. He was making amends for something nameless, and long, long ago. Scott didn’t give a shit, really.
Eager to please, that was it. She put his groceries away and bustled around. She grabbed a broom and swept the floor, which probably did need doing. She washed up his one plate, a cup and a fork or something. He hoped she was putting everything back exactly where she found it, but he didn’t want to say anything. All of this house cleaning, now this had never happened before. It was like he’d just been adopted or something. He couldn’t quite account for how that had happened. She had said nothing about herself, and social workers didn’t do that sort of thing.
It was a feeling he wasn’t used to. No one had ever cared what Scott thought, or what Scott wanted.
No one had ever worried about what Scott needed.
But he was having a hell of a hard time getting rid of her. Rudeness was beyond him, apparently, and she didn’t seem to be able to take a hint. At some point he just gave up and wondered when she might wander off on her own. He would simply wait her out. He felt bad inside for thinking that, he really did, but…but.
S
he seemed kind of vulnerable herself. How he knew that was a question for some other time.
He just felt it. It was somehow self-evident. They sat at the kitchen table, having a cup of tea.
Betty was terribly quiet, with long gaps in the conversation when neither one of them knew what to say, although she did ask quite a few of the more obvious questions at first.
With his limited vision, he had the impression she was rather tense, preoccupied. Her voice was dead neutral, though. That was a little different, but then he didn’t get out much. There was nothing artificial or insincere about it.
It was like she was listening, for something, a knock at the door or something, and she had absolutely no idea that this was someone’s private home and you couldn’t just come walking in and take over like that.
He had this crazy idea that she was drop-dead beautiful. Somehow he just knew it.
“A blind man would be glad to see it.” The bleak tone shocked him, but it was out there and there was nothing else but to own up to it.
“Pardon me, Scott?”
“Never mind. Just an old saying.”
She smelled lovely, that almost went without saying.
Betty Blue, or whatever she said her name was, sure sounded nice, and the dim silhouette up against the kitchen window certainly bore that out.
She must have some kind of a story.
Sooner or later, she was bound to spill her guts.
Chapter Two
“You’re tired. You’ve had a long day. Perhaps I could draw you a bath?”
It completely went over his head.
Draw me a bath?
Never mind the obscene mental picture; someone sketching a tub full of suds and water for the perusal of a blind man—what, was she blind too? What? What?
And why wouldn’t she leave.
He could accept someone helping him home with the groceries, maybe even coming upstairs for a moment, but this. This.
It was like she was never going.
“Miss. I—”
She was in the other room. The taps were turned on, with a squeak and a thud from just inside the wall, just as it always did, and then came the sound of running water.
Scott suddenly became very fearful.
She was obviously nuts, or bucking for sainthood…? Or what? What?
He heard footsteps, and craned his head to try and get some sort of a clue. Her shoes scraped on the old boards, tapped across the intervening linoleum, and then she was right beside him. Her aroma enveloped him.
“Ah, listen. Ah—Miss.”
“It’s all right, Scott. I don’t mind.” Her hands were on his shoulders. “Everything will be fine, Scott. I’m a friend. And please call me Betty. A little bath isn’t going to hurt you.”
His guts withered. She was serious, and he didn’t know how to stop her.
She could drown him in the bathtub. Something cracked inside of Scott and he was inclined to let her.
For fuck’s sakes, why not, eh? Not after all these years.
It’s not like he hadn’t prayed for death, or at least release, a time or two.
He shoved the chair back a little, putting his hands on the edge of the table, preparing to rise.
“No.” Her voice was gentle and soft, up beside his right ear.
She must be slightly bent at the waist to do it, a simple deduction, one based on old memories. For some reason his eyes watered but he blinked it back and watched his breathing for a moment.
Nary a hint of the longing inside escaped, he was almost sure.
Goose bumps and shivers were beyond his control. It was a kind of electrical shock—what pure fear did to a man. Her hands were on him, up close to his throat.
She began to knead and massage Scott’s shoulders. At first he resisted, and then with a recognition that nothing like this had ever happened in his life, not in his entire stinking life, Scott gave in again.
He sat there and let it happen.
Psychotic or something, he decided. She could have gutted me first thing if that’s what she really wanted to do. It’s not like there were going to be any eyewitnesses.
Yeah, but who in the hell is she?
And why.
The realization that she could have done anything she wanted with him was no comfort. Thank all the psycho-slasher melodramas on TV for that. He’d listened to one too many.
He slumped in his chair.
“That’s better. I promise, a nice hot bath will make you feel a whole lot better.”
“Betty.”
“Yes, Scott?”
“Why are you doing all this? Please don’t think that I’m not grateful—” He left the part about not being a charity case unsaid, hoping that she would get it.
He left out all the stuff about a man’s dignity.
She had done enough for him. He understood and accepted her need to do this. And yes; he needed someone to do something nice for him once in a while. As well. And that should have been that.
“I don’t know why, Scott.”
It seemed like a pretty good answer, all things considered.
Scott hadn’t done the laundry in three or four weeks. He hadn’t actually showered this morning, having slept in a bit, and then he was feeling very tired for some reason. Then the cheque came in the mail, and if he was going to the bank he might as well get it over with. His breath was bad after ten cheap, off-the-cuff contraband smokes and a coffee. His feet stank. Blind as he was he had no illusions about his looks and certainly no unrealistic expectations of the crummy Salvation Army and thrift store attire. The kitchen garbage was beginning to smell. He’d been cramming as much as possible into the bag, which cost six cents each, before taking it out. It was probably the soup-can of bacon grease in there, and his place was often quite warm.
He hadn’t shaved in four or five days, when last it was, he couldn’t quite recall. While he still had a stick of deodorant in the bathroom, it was like he hardly ever used it anymore. He was trying to make it last a while.
Scott became very aware of all shortcomings in that exact moment. He really had let himself go—and to hell with it.
What in the hell was wrong with this woman?
The one thing he dare not ask was, why me?
Please don’t say it. Please don’t tell me.
Why me?
***
“Would you…would you please step out of the room, if only for a moment, Betty? Please?”
“Don’t be silly. I’ve seen plenty of men’s bodies.”
Scott gave a funny, high-pitched little moan as her strong fingers took his upper arms and spun him twenty degrees to the left or so and then she was unbuttoning his shirt.
“Betty, I mean really.”
“”It’s okay Scott. Don’t worry about it. I’m very glad to help.” He lifted his arms and she got his tee-shirt off.
He heard it hit the floor somewhere off in the background.
“At least you’re calling me Betty now.” There was a brightness of expression in there.
He still couldn’t really read her emotional state. She was too new.
Maybe she was just happy or something.
He sensed her kneeling, and very fluid and graceful a move it was. This was the brightest room in the place, facing south over the alley and towards a gap in the tall buildings to the southwest. The last of the sunset was coming right in. It was all he could do to keep up with her.
“Lift your left foot.”
“Ah”
“Come on, Scott. You can do it. Don’t be a fraidy-cat.”
She was chiding him like a little kid or something. His face was suddenly wreathed in a smile.
Just the tone in her voice was what did it. Unbelievable. You really had to admire her gall.
The smile faded.
“Oh, God.” He shook his head in despair and submission.
He was a little kid again.
Holy, Jesus, who is this girl.
He lifted his left foot and
she steadied him with one hand clamped on his other leg while she peeled it expertly off.
They repeated the process with the other foot.
This is where he baulked.
“No, seriously.”
“What, are you shy? But why?”
“Yes!”
“That’s okay, I’m not.” He could almost sense her impatience. “Come on, Scott.”
He could feel the heat of her body, barely a foot in front of him.
Scott hastily backed up and she had to grab him and steady him because he hadn’t been standing exactly where he thought, and he hit the laundry hamper by the door.
“Come to mama.”
“Oh, Lord.” He protested feebly.
She held him up, steadying him.
She dragged him two steps forward.
Finally he gave up. She was tugging at the top button of his jeans.
“Aw. No. Let me do it, for Christ’s sakes.” He wasn’t helpless.
What had started off as fear had transformed itself into anger, something he hadn’t felt in a very long while—perhaps too long. His jaw worked back and forth uncontrollably. It was like a little red switch being flipped in your head.
So you want to be like that, eh?
You have no idea, baby? No clue? Really?
Face hot and red, although he was completely unconscious of that, he pulled off his jeans. They were a bit tight but they still fit. He stumbled and hopped for a moment but he did it alone and without help. The exertion and the anger had him gasping for air. There were going to be some consequences.
Little lady.
What was coming along pretty well in terms of erections un-snagged from the top of his underwear, and popped up as if to take a long deep breath of fresh air. He stuck his jaw out and kept his mouth stubbornly clamped shut. He threw the underwear aside angrily, but she just ignored it all as far as he could determine by sound.
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