by John Varley
The hell with it. I started whaling away at it with all my strength.
After seven or eight blows the piece of linen tore and the bubble floated up above my desk again, swirling in the eddies my swinging arm had made in the air. I caught it before it could float into a hiding place, and put it under a glass tumbler.
I put my face down close to the desk. There was a new, circular depression in the wood surface. And on the bubble… no dent, no scratch.
Answer: very tough.
I FOUND I couldn’t sleep. I went out on my little balcony and watched the cars go by. Not as boring as it may sound, many of them were full of students shouting and laughing. People in convertibles would see me up on my balcony and wave, sometimes invite me down to join them.
Not too many people on the sidewalks. There used to be a few hookers who staked out corners within sight of the Blast-Off. Then the Golden Manatee moved in, and the cops ran them all off. Now, the preferred way to buy sex in this neighborhood is to get a room in the Manatee and call one of the escort services. I imagine you’ll get a [64] better class of hooker, but be sure to bring a lot of cash. You’ll pay more tipping the bell captain to bring your escort in the back way than you would have paid for a whole night with one of the chased-away streetwalkers.
One girl seemed not to have got the message. She came strolling down the sidewalk, bold as brass, on three-inch cork platform shoes. She wore a silvery blouse tied up between her breasts and a hollerin’ orange miniskirt. Lots of lipstick, lots of piled-up blonde hair, and big, dark, pink-rimmed sunglasses at one in the morning. She looked up at me and grinned.
“How about it, cowboy? Should I come up?”
Cowboy? I thought it over.
“Not sure I can afford it,” I said.
“Sure you can, sweetie.”
“Oh… well, all right.”
“That’s what I love. Enthusiasm. What’s your room number?”
I told her, and in a minute I could hear the clunking sound of her huge cork soles. She knocked on the door and I turned off the lights and opened it.
“Twenty dollars gets you all night,” she said.
“All night? Hell, it’s already one-thirty.”
“C’mon, stud.” She put her hand in my groin. “I can tell you’re glad to see me.”
“That’s a banana for my pet monkey. And all I have is ten dollars.”
“That’ll have to do, I guess.” She came into the room and closed the door. I jumped her as she turned around. I pressed her back against the door.
“Lipstick! Watch the lipstick, you wild man!”
“Forget the lipstick,” I said. Or tried to say, between kisses.
I was tearing at her skirt and she found my zipper. I wasn’t surprised to see she was wearing no underwear. I took her right there against the door, then on the floor, and finally with her knees on the floor and her body bent over the bed. In about half an hour we both collapsed at the foot of the bed, leaning back against the sheets and blankets we’d torn up.
[65] She still had on her silver lame blouse and big clunky shoes. My pants were over by the door somewhere. I picked up the skirt and held it up to the blue light from the streetlight outside. It was even ghastlier that way.
“Where the hell did you get this?” I asked.
“Thrift shop,” Kelly said.
“Which one? Whores ‘R’ Us?”
“Yeah, I think that was the one.” She pulled off the blonde fright wig and tossed it toward my garbage can.
“Did you have a permit to shoot that?” I asked.
She kissed my cheek, then bounced to her feet and headed for the bathroom. The high shoes made her bare bottom do things even more interesting than usual. She went in, flicked on the light, then the blouse came sailing out the door followed, one by one, by the shoes. In a minute I got up and joined her.
Kelly wears a green stone in her navel. It’s big enough to fill the entire belly button and I’m pretty sure it’s a real emerald, but I wasn’t going to ask her, or take her to a jeweler to have her assayed. She was looking down, fiddling with the tiny gold rings that held it in. She looked up at me.
“Something wrong?”
“What could be wrong?” And really, what could? The emerald set off her greenish eyes nicely. Her skin was smooth and flawless, except for some tiny moles scattered around, what the upper classes used to call beauty spots and put on deliberately. She had lots of blond hair which she was unpinning. Everything else was where it ought to be, in ample amounts. Let’s just say that picking out a bikini or a thong didn’t give her anxiety attacks.
She was laying out mysterious female stuff from her crowded purse. I was far from through for the night, but first I had to answer a call of nature, and wasn’t about to dress and go downstairs, so I used the sink. Kelly glanced at me.
“Boys,” she said, disdainfully.
“Hey, it all goes down the same pipes.”
“You rinse that out real good.”
[66] “You’re telling me you aren’t going to use it as soon as I’m through?” I reached for her arm, but she shook me off.
“Down, boy. Later. First, I need you to go down to my car and get the small suitcase in the trunk. I’m not going down there again as Sally Streetwalker.” She tossed me her car keys.
“Did you have any trouble?”
“The doorman at the Manatee gave me a funny look. I parked in their lot, all the way over toward the beach.”
“What’s in the suitcase? Can you stay over?”
“Yes, if you bring me the decent clothes that are in the suitcase. I’m not walking out of here tomorrow and let your mother see that outfit.”
“Don’t worry about that. You’re solid with my mother.”
“Whatever.”
“I guess I should bring the car over to our lot. Those bastards might tow it.”
“Good idea.”
“Are you sure you want me going out alone at this hour? I could get mugged.”
“Hey, it was you called me up, remember?”
She was filling a plastic douche bottle so I pulled on my pants and left.
KELLY DRIVES A green Porsche 921, this year’s model, that cost more than our income at the Blast-Off for two or three years. When your daddy is the biggest luxury car dealer in northeast Florida having a rad ride is something you just naturally expect.
Not that she lacked for anything else, either.
Kelly.
Every once in a while something drops into your life that makes you think that, in spite of all evidence you’ve seen so far, somebody up there really does like you. Meeting Kelly is the first time it’s happened to me.
We went to different schools. She can’t help being born rich any more than I can help being poor, at least until I get a better shot at [67] carving out my own destiny instead of just settling into the level I’d been born into.
But I think we were both a little insecure about it. All sorts of awkward questions came up. Is he just after me for my money? Is she just trying to stick it to her asshole of a racist father by dating a half-Cuban? Does he secretly think I’m a dumb rich bitch? Is she enjoying slumming when she comes down here and dresses as a whore?
No, can’t make that one stick on her. We both enjoyed sexual games, surprises, role playing, and she had gone to a lot of trouble for her little trick-or-treat tonight. Slumming? If volunteering two evenings a week at a battered women’s shelter was slumming, then I think we need more slummers.
That’s where Kelly met Alicia and since Dak and Alicia had been together for about a year, it was inevitable that Kelly and I would meet. It was also inevitable that I’d be greatly impressed by her. There’s a lot of impressive things about Kelly, and her body is only one of them.
I couldn’t see a thing she had to gain by being my girl other than the pleasure of my company and some damn good sex, so it must be love, right? She said it was, and Kelly always knows her own mind.
But did I love her? J
erk that I am, I was still trying to figure that out.
So far Kelly had never even hinted at matrimony… which made me even more nervous, because she was an incredible catch and I liked her boundlessly, I was pretty sure I loved her, if I could put aside the marriage anxiety. But… what if, by the time I was ready, she had found someone else? What if she didn’t wait for me? I might be throwing away my only chance at happiness by not grabbing her now, when she seemed to like me so much.
It sure wouldn’t be hard for her to find another lover more in keeping with her social position. Kelly worked as chief bookkeeper at her father’s dealership. Guys her age were always coming in to trade up from last year’s model, and plenty of them didn’t need financing, they just wrote a check.
I don’t know why it never occurred to me that a family and kids would get in the way of her goals just as much as it would screw up my college aspirations.
[68] I found her car parked where she said it would be. I always worried a little when I saw it. It stood for all the things I couldn’t give her for another decade, if ever.
I put the top down and slid in on the leather seat. The engine growled at me and I wheeled around the lot and out onto the road. It would get up to sixty in about four seconds, I knew because I’d tried it. No chance to unleash the beast in the spring break traffic, though. I crawled down the highway, getting some very interested looks from some of the snow bunnies, parked in our lot, put the top up, grabbed the indoor silent car alarm, and carried her small suitcase up the stairs and into my room.
LATER THAT NIGHT, just before we finally got to sleep, I took out the silver bubble and showed it to her. I put it through its paces, showed her its tricks. I’d been a little worried that her reaction would be, more or less, So what?
But it impressed her even faster than it had fascinated me.
“It’s light as a soap bubble, and harder than a ball bearing,” she summed it up. “I don’t know of anything like that. You’re the science student, do you?”
“Nothing even close,” I told her.
She held it in her hand and frowned at it.
“Manny,” she said at last, “you know I’m not the type to worry about nothing or get premonitions. But there’s something frightening about this. Do you get a sense of great power from it?”
I had felt exactly that, but couldn’t put my finger on it.
“I think it has a lot of power, and it might mean a lot of money.”
“Really? Why?”
“Well, something new, something really new, it just turns the world upside down. Think of what the world was like before electricity. Or television, or cars.”
“That big?”
“Maybe bigger.”
9
* * *
I HAD PLANNED to get out to Rancho Broussard the next evening, but we were just too busy. Spring break is one of the few times of the year we actually do some pretty good business. We had already been sold out twice that week, for the first times that year.
Mom and Aunt Maria had been working all day, every day. I’d been helping with the chores even though both of them said Let us handle this, you go study every time I picked up a mop. So that night I worked the late shift on the desk, and the night after that as well. The night after that Kelly had something, I think it was some of her volunteer work, and the night after that wasn’t good, either.
All in all it was a week before I got out there again.
This time it was in Kelly’s car. She offered to let me drive but I waved it off. I’d taken the Porsche through its paces once, right up to 150 miles per hour, and then I hung up my racing gloves. To tell the truth, I was terrified of getting into a fender bender that would cost more to fix than the city budget.
This time I saw the Autopike from the supersonic lane, at the head of a drafting pack of twenty vehicles no more than two inches apart. Dak says that’s no accident, that the software is set to always move the [70] bitchin’est car available to the head of the draft. Noblesse oblige, he says, and Kelly agrees with him… Me, I don’t have enough data, but it sure seems that way.
Not far from the gate of Travis’s place we got behind a flatbed truck with a big farm tractor on the back. The thing was too wide and the road too rutted for us to risk passing, so we settled in at a stately twenty-five miles per hour, the Porsche’s engine growling in frustration. We followed it for three miles, hoping for a turnoff. It did turn… right into the Rancho driveway.
We followed it in a cloud of dust until it reached the clearing, then it turned right toward the barn and the row of junked cars and we turned left toward the house.
Off to one side of us a dump truck had just spilled its load of crushed shell next to half a dozen other hills of shell. There was a guy using a weedeater to destroy the grass that had sprouted in the cracks of the tennis court concrete. He was wearing a blue coverall with a patch on the back that said HIAASEN LANDSCAPERS AND YARD WORK. So was another guy working in close among the plantings that surrounded the house. Already he’d rescued a few sick-looking rhododendrons and hibiscus from strangulation by morning glories and other vines.
“Are they tearing this place down, or building it up?” Kelly wanted to know.. “Don’t ask me. This is all news to me.”
We got out of the car and headed for the patio, where I could see Travis and Dak relaxing with tall drinks. The long hoses of an industrial carpet shampooer went from a van through the open patio doors and inside the house.
“Spring cleaning,” Travis announced, as we reached the patio. He raised his glass in a toast. “You want a Virgin Mary?”
“Are you on the wagon, Col… I mean, Travis?” I asked.
“You bet he is,” said Alicia, coming outside with another nonalcoholic cocktail in her hand. How do I know it was nonalcoholic? Because Alicia would have flung it as far as she could if it had any liquor in it. Alicia is death on alcohol.
[71] I introduced Travis to Kelly, and he turned on his good smile and natural charm, leaning over to kiss her hand. Kelly smiled and let him.
Travis took the girls inside for a drink and a tour of the house, leaving me alone with Dak and two empty cans of Coke.
“So when did all this happen?”
“All this what?”
“The spring cleaning. You trying to take over the man’s life?”
“Let me tell you, Manny. Dude’s life can use some cleaning up.”
Dak was silent for a moment, then made a sweeping gesture.
“All this, the spring cleaning and the Virgin Mary, this is all Alicia. I can hardly believe it, but she came out here and got to talking with him, and she says he sort of broke down. He found Jesus, and admitted to himself that he was wrecking his life.”
“Alcoholics Anonymous,” I said.
“Yeah, something like that. I don’t mean he found Jesus literally-”
“That’s a relief.”
“Alicia convinced him what he’s gotta do is clean up his act. Clean himself up, body, soul, mind, and surroundings. So we got half of northeast Florida out here doing they cleaning thing. Eat better, stop drinking, stop seeing your old friends-which is easy for Travis, since he ain’t got no friends left, just a couple regulars at the Apollo he says hi to on his way to his next bender. So the next thing is ‘Make new friends,’ and here we are, the four of us, ready-made, the assorted-varieties family-sized package.”
“Is that one of the twelve steps?”
“It’s one of ’Leesha’s steps. I don’t know if AA has any truck with it.”
We were quiet for a while, listening to Alicia, and then Travis and Kelly laughing loudly from the kitchen. I looked at Dak and saw he had a slight frown on his face.
“Are you okay with that?” I asked him.
“With what?”
“You know what.”
[72] He sighed. “It bugged me a little at first. Hell, at first I wondered if he wanted to get into our pants, you and me, but he didn’t act much like a fag… I know, I k
now, I’m stereotyping an abused minority, like they used to say in the Tolerance Workshop 101. They have that class at your school?”
“They called it ‘Struggling with Prejudice.’ Sounds like the same thing.”
“Right. Alicia says Travis ain’t gay, and girls always know. But the important thing about Travis is, he’s a drunk. Alicia would never allow herself to be interested in a drunk until he had five, ten years’ sobriety under his belt.”
“Besides, she loves you,” I pointed out. He grinned.
“Yeah, there’s that. Why date an astronaut when she can have me?”
When Travis and the girls came out of the kitchen there was even more startling evidence of the transformation in Travis. They were carrying bowls of sliced and peeled fresh fruit, yogurt, raw veggies and dip (crudites, Kelly called it), and a plate of assorted cheese slices and chunks. Alicia was carrying a battalion-sized blender.
We all sat around the table and dug into lunch, Travis looking a little desperate, I thought. We watched as Alicia began dumping things into the blender, including a raw egg, shell and all, bananas and chunks of other fruit, veggies… but I find it hard to go on. We all started laughing with every new ingredient, and Alicia did, too.
“So this is part of the recovery process?” Travis asked. “Eating rabbit food?”
“Rabbits don’t eat cheese.”
“Mouse food, then. Is this the thirteenth step?”
“Did you read the booklet I gave you?”
“Yeah. I figure seven steps out of twelve ain’t too bad.”
“You’ve done seven of them?” Kelly asked. “That sounds pretty good to me.”
“He means he’s willing to try seven of them,” Alicia said. “Right, Travis?”
“And I’m sort of dubious about step five. Maybe I should only tackle six and a half steps. It’s still a majority.”
[73] “What’s step five?” I asked.
“ ‘I admit to God, to myself and to another human being…’ ” Alicia, Kelly, and Travis broke up as they realized all three were chanting in unison. Travis finished it:
