“The landlord told me he won’t rent to students now after the damage they used to do. You should hear them at night across the street. I’ve almost called the forcers a few nights myself, but the cold weather seems to be slowing them down a little.”
“I love it. Very artistic place, nice mood.”
“And it’s nice and warm and toasty, so take your coat off, why don’t ya?”
He wore entirely black under his black overcoat. It slimmed him, and he knew he looked good in it—it showcased and contrasted his pale skin and dirty blond hair, light eyes. He played to the physical attraction he knew Mauve felt for him, obvious from her quick interest and receptiveness to him. But also it was his no-nonsense, down-to-business look; it was Sunday afternoon, and tonight Mauve would take him backstage to meet the director of Meathearts.
She’d invited him for lunch before the play, set it out for them now as he poked around on her combined VT/home computer/vidphone. He called up the titles of movies she had recorded in the memory and read through them. Most were less than ten years old but some were quite old, pre-colonial. One recent movie was based on the true story of a woman who’d died of M-670, played, of course, by Lhinda Sanchez, one of the top juicy role snatchers. Monty had seen it. The movie briefly portrayed Matt Cotton, the VT evangelist who had financed the creation of M-670.
Calling him to the table, Mauve poured wine. It was a light dinner of fish and vegetables, and quite good. “You’ll make some man a good wife,” Monty said, half smiling.
“Oh please, Monty. I’d rather make myself a good actress, right now. Anyway, you should see this place when I’m not expecting company—I’m a slob. Clothes everywhere. Can’t you still smell the socks I picked up before you came?”
“Hey, I’ll have to turn you over to the Health Agency for producing hazardous waste.”
“They’ll never take you back, huh? Have you tried?”
Monty poked his fish, flipped open the silvery skin to the feathery white inner flesh. Steam curled out. “No. I’m not so sure I’d want to try. Outside them now, I can see them a little better for their hypocrisy and corruption and all that shit you find in an institution, whether it’s private or government run. Inside, you feel this loyalty ‘cause you’re part of them. I knew, then, that HAP looks the other way when the price is right. They’ll nail a little printing company to the wall for dumping some sludge but they’ll just slap a major corporation with a fine and you’ll never see it in the press, though there might have been a violation endangering thousands. Politics and business are inseparable…we live in a plutocracy.”
“But like you say, every place, private or government run, is full of hypocrisy and corruption…so where do you go?”
“To sell newspapers in Blue Station.”
“That answer disappoints me, Monty.”
“Sorry.” He wasn’t looking at her. “I don’t feel like being a HAP goon. Hired assassin.”
“Come on—you did some real good, didn’t you? The police force is corrupt, to a huge extent, but they do good, and there are good forcers and bad forcers. It’s all we got. Good guys like you have to be strong and hold on against the bad ones…not give up.”
“I assassinated a male prosty with M-670 in Red Station. It was on VT—you don’t remember seeing that?” She shook her head. “I made him go to his knees and then I melted him with plasma. I executed him. I could have cuffed him and taken him in by force. Selfish hazard or not, he wasn’t given a trial. I didn’t question my orders. And if I had, if I’d refused, it would have gone down against me and someone else would have executed him.”
“All right, that was bad—but it bothers you, right? You regret it. It wouldn’t bother a bad man.”
“Regret doesn’t bring a dead person back to life.”
Mauve dropped the subject, prodded her own fish. “I don’t want to upset you.”
“You aren’t. I was upset before I met you.” He hadn’t dropped the subject. After a few moments he said, “Matt Cotton won’t be executed. He may not even spend the rest of his life in prison…”
“Oh, come on now, Monty.”
“Well, he’s got VT, decent food, recreation. He’s already been allowed to preach his shit to the inmates at the cushy rest home they call a prison. I’d like to commit a crime and get put in there with him, to ream his ass myself, but that’s probably already been done and he probably likes it.”
“How’s the fish?”
Monty finally looked at Mauve and smiled, embarrassed. “I’m sorry. It’s great. Fantastic. No more ranting.”
“You’ve got good reason to, but not right now, all right?” She smiled at him, one corner of her mouth pulling down without the scars, this characteristic not caused by them as he had originally believed. She looked beguiling. But he missed the scars, he was ashamed to admit to himself. They were what he’d originally noticed, what had originally defined her for him, he argued to himself in justification.
It was only twenty minutes from the end of the meal to the waterbed. Why postpone the inevitable? His ardor was real and strong in the beginning, frenzied even, his right hand alternately up under her loose top or slipping under the elastic rim of her sweat pants, their mouths locked. Her tongue in his mouth. But his was timid, and he preferred kissing her jaw and neck. When they were naked his kisses didn’t stray any lower than her ribs. She didn’t complain or pull him lower but he felt guilty, a little inadequate, for the omission. Her ardor was so much stronger than Opal’s had been but for rarely. He had had to ask Opal to wrap her legs around him like this, Mauve’s feet propped on the ottoman of his ass. Opal had usually been dry at first; he had glided instantly into Mauve. She moaned heartily, and at her climax she thumped him on the back with the heel of her hand, startling him for a moment, making him think she wanted him to stop, but she didn’t.
And he didn’t. He couldn’t. He had been soft at first, and afraid it wouldn’t progress beyond that, was relieved when it did—but he couldn’t climax, couldn’t ejaculate. A full hour after she had climaxed a second time he knew he was no closer to release. He sweated. They tried various positions. His heart hammering, his brain starved for blood, he rolled off of her slick flesh and curled in a sweat-chilly ball.
She lightly touched the wall of his back. “I know,” she said.
“Sorry.”
“I understand, Monty. You can’t because you’re thinking of Opal. You’re afraid you’re going to hurt me. But that’s all over now. You don’t have to feel guilty—you didn’t kill her. Matt Cotton and Toll Loveland did.”
“Let’s drop it for now.”
“You’ve got to face it. Don’t be humiliated, Monty, I’m not upset. I had a great time. I know it’s been a long time for you…next time will be much better, I’m sure. Just be patient. But Opal wouldn’t blame you for what happened, you know that.”
“She did blame me. She wouldn’t see me. Even in her message she admitted she felt that I did this to her and it was my fault…”
“She was probably apologizing, admitting her guilt, from the sound of it.”
“You didn’t hear it.”
“So call her mom. Show me.”
“Drop it, Mauve. This is my shit. Drop it.”
“It’s the same reason why you work that empty newsstand job. It’s self-punishment. You don’t feel worthy of a better job or going back to HAP and asking for your job back because you failed in catching Toll Loveland…”
“Oh? So why am I looking for him now, if I’m so defeated?”
“Because you’re struggling to be yourself again.”
Monty slid his legs from the bed, sat up. “Are you an undercover therapist hired by HAP to plague me?”
“I’m not trying to plague you.” Mauve sounded hurt, bitter. “I’m trying to help you.”
Twisting around to look down at her, Monty took her hand and kissed it. “I’m sorry. I know. Thanks for your help. You’re very special…not many people care about other peo
ple’s problems for long.”
“I’m not from around here—we’re a little warmer down south, like the climate.” Mauve got out of bed. “I’m gonna grab a shower; I feel like a glob of hazardous waste. Why don’t you relieve yourself while I’m gone…don’t be proud. I know how you guys are—you don’t get it out now, it’ll be backed up in your brain until you get another chance.”
It was backed up in his eyes; he’d almost cried from the frustration that had left him this exhausted and shaken. “Take your shower, doctor.”
She ruffled his hair, strode naked across the cold tiles toward the bathroom. How beautiful she’d been in bed, he reflected as he heard the water go on. Women sought to prepare their hair just so, their makeup and clothing, to compose their expressions into sly seductiveness, but to him nothing matched the mussed hair, the flush of blood and the weighted lids and slack mouth of the sex act, the exhausted dizzy sheen to the eyes and lazy smile afterwards. The primal, natural abandonment of pretense and posing.
He wondered if the scars would have been able to push him over the edge to release. He confronted their allure more directly now that she was safely away from him, blocked off by water. That photo of her in the paper had seized him—the yin/yang her face had presented so distinctly and compellingly. Ugly black stitches in a beautiful soft face. A weariness there from the arduous performance, as after sex. How a face could still be so lovely with such ugliness within its borders fascinated him, made her more intriguing and striking than she was normally. He longed to have her naked before him now, the stitches bold in her face, weary and vulnerable and softly smiling, lids heavy. Could he possibly convince her to convince Dwork to leave the stitches in for one night? How? He didn’t see how…
Well, tonight her scars even without stitches would be raw and distinct. That would be quite close. He was certain she’d let him sleep here tonight. He wouldn’t release himself now; he’d save it for then.
On top of all his other guilt, this new guilt perched. But why be guilty? he struggled to argue to himself. She isn’t a victim—she chooses to accept these wounds and brands, doesn’t she?
*
They reached the Jason Scarborough Theater good and early. Mauve left Monty only briefly to change into her white dress for the opening scene, and when she returned introduced Monty first to Westy Dwork.
Dwork’s work area, contained within a small dressing room, was much less exotic and bizarre than Monty had envisioned, resembled more closely a miniature dentist’s office. There was a central reclining chair to seat patients, various glittery instruments poised over it like statues of Stems, and a counter against one wall—a large mirror behind it—covered with devices with colored jewels of light attempting to enliven their blandness. The two Stems were here, keeping to the corners like something you’d toss your coat over.
Dwork was Stem-like himself for a human, very tall and very thin. Dark hair in boyish bangs over wide eyes. He had a nervous flicker of a smile and a twitchy sort of nervous energy. He wore a white lab smock, open to show his gray suit, gray shirt and gray tie.
“Westy,” said Mauve, “this is my friend Montgomery Black.”
“Mr. Black.” They shook hands. “You’re a lucky man to be a close friend to this lovely creature.”
“I understand it’s your job every Sunday to make her not so lovely.”
“Oh yes, I have the distinction of hacking her up every performance, but I’m also the one who restores her loveliness.”
“It’s a remarkable process…Mauve told me some of the future potential. She didn’t give away the technical aspects, though—don’t worry.”
“I haven’t given away the technical aspects to her, so don’t you worry, either. I do have to ask you, though, Mr. Black, not to reveal my name to any newspapers or such. Mauve tells me you’re in the newspaper business. Not as a writer?”
“Oh no. Sales and distribution.”
“It’s just that the process is still rather experimental and I don’t want to discredit the research company I work for. It was kind of difficult getting them to let me use the ‘friendly flesh’ process in the play. Ah, Mauve tells me you’re an ex-health agent. That’s intriguing. You’re fully out of the Agency now?”
“Yep. I caught M-670 at Toll Loveland’s Pandora’s Box, performed in the old Greenberg plant where your Cugok place is now.”
“I remember hearing about you, but they didn’t release your identity. Good—now you don’t release my identity and I won’t release yours. Sound fair?” Dwork chuckled a bit in his tall man’s deep bass voice. “I, ah, I remember that your partner died…a woman?”
“That’s right.” Monty ignored Mauve’s glance at him.
“A terrible thing. Good to see you’re all right now.”
“Is ‘friendly flesh’ primarily your own invention?”
“Yes, it is, which is why I had the leverage to get Cugok to let me do Meathearts. I’m the Chief of Research at Cugok, in fact, which is why any controversy with me would reflect badly on them. I wear a blond wig and mustache on stage. I wish I had a bigger part,” Dwork chuckled again. “The acting bug has bit me.”
Is the acting bug a moth, in this case? thought Monty, not amused but showing a smile. “You must have had some pretty rigorous schooling—you’re not an old man.” Monty figured Dwork to be in his twenties, but you could never be sure. He briefly remembered the child-like Helga Greenberg.
“Oh, I sure did,” chuckled Dwork, nervously pulling his tie taut, jerking on it. “I’m not some lab monkey bio-technician but a full-scale bio-researcher, as I said. I studied just as rigorously as the best doctors—much more so than the common mechanics they call surgeons. The medical training is similar. You had to be very, very aggressive and driven. In dissection we’d have ten cadavers going on and one instructor patrolling; you had to hog him for questions so he couldn’t get to anybody else. If he was at your stiff I’d come over to ask my question and nudge you out of the way to point out my question on your stiff. Very cutthroat, pardon the pun. You have to be a vulture and pounce first to do the cutting and poking before your work partners can go at it. Several times I deleted names off posted project rosters and put my name in. I was reported once, but the complainer was told some mutant shit and I wasn’t even spoken to. They like that aggression.”
Monty imitated Dwork’s enthused chuckling. “Well, they knew they really had something in you, obviously.”
“I was imaginative. You can’t teach imagination. That was my greatest edge. For my master thesis on radical functional mutation I extended the body of a lab beagle, in four days, to sixty-two feet in length, while still keeping it alive and functioning without artificial means. On a playing field it even showed clumsy efforts at locomotion. We called him Hotdog—he’d put a dachshund to shame, believe me!”
“Amazing,” said Monty. He meant it. He found Dwork’s cruelty quite amazing. “Where’d you go to school?”
“Earth. Ever been?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a lot more provincial here, but that’s what I like. Forgive me for saying this, Mr. Black, but you’re interviewing me, aren’t you? Are you sure you aren’t a reporter…or still with the Health Agency?”
“Don’t apologize; I admire your honesty.” Monty ignored Mauve’s glance again. “I assure you I’m merely curious about you—I don’t mean to seem so nosy. It’s a habit from my old line of work. Please forgive me.”
“Forgive me. I’m just on edge after this Cugok scandal.”
“Cugok scandal? What is this?”
“You haven’t heard? Oh come on, Mr. Black. Didn’t you read last night’s paper?”
“I sell them, I don’t read them—what happened?”
“You either?” Dwork asked Mauve. “Oh shit, wait ‘til you get a look at this.” Dwork motioned them toward a monitor on his workbench and deftly punched up a story on the third page of last night’s copy of Punktown’s lead newspaper. Monty leaned in intensely, n
ot hiding the concern in his tight face.
There had been a labeling mix-up at the Fredrick V. Cugok Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Company, Inc. Two one-thousand-unit lots of a vitamin with an added formula which helped prevent radioactive poisoning and mutation had accidentally been sent out with the wrong bottles in the boxes. The substance in these two thousand mislabeled bottles was the drug Cugok called “friendly flesh.” Several people medically scanned for routine problems had been shown to contain an odd drug in their systems and it had been identified, as had the drug’s source. Cugok was ordering a recall on the vitamin and had already reclaimed five hundred units from area stores, but the error had taken place last spring and it was expected that at least half of the mislabeled drugs had been consumed by now…
“Is this dangerous?” Monty asked Westy Dwork.
“Oh, not at all, thank God. How could it be? It doesn’t conflict with other common drugs or medical procedures. Of course, it won’t aid in the healing of anyone, either—not without their molecular pattern on file in my computer.”
“Why was an experimental drug produced in such amounts?”
“To experiment with. It won’t harm anyone, but it’s a fucking shame it had to happen…it makes Cugok look like idiots. A research drug goes out in vitamin packages, no less. They still haven’t traced back whose error it was but I’d love to strangle them myself for the damage this could do. Your friends at the Health Agency are supposed to come down today to talk to Mr. Cugok.”
Monty tried on a playful little smile for Dwork. “This wouldn’t in any way be an experiment on Cugok’s part, would it? Utilizing unknowing guinea pigs?”
“That would be impossible. For one, this was bound to be detected and traced to Cugok sooner or later…”
“It could be said, ‘hey, it’s only an accident.’”
“But for what purpose? Without the molecular blueprints of these people on file, what could we do to them for the sake of monitoring? No, this was all just a terrible ironic farce, and it concerns my ‘friendly flesh,’ of all things, calls too much advance publicity to it. So now you can understand why I was a bit wary of you, Mr. Black.”
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