Norvell was entirely numb.
Stimmens said uneasily, “You could have avoided this. Don’t think I enjoyed it. I’ve been working on it for six months, and I didn’t have the heart to go through with it. I had to give you a chance; you turned it down.”
Norvell stared, just stared. Stimmens went on defensively: “It isn’t as if I just walked into it. Believe me, I earned this. What do I know about Field Days? Sweat, sweat, sweat; I haven’t had a moment’s peace.”
Miss Dali walked in and kissed Stimmens, burbling: “Darling, I just heard! You wonderful Grade Fifteen you!”
“Oh,” said Norvell hi a sick voice.
They said more, but he didn’t hear; it was as if his hearing aid were turned off, but the switch was not hi his pocket but in his mind. He was out on the street before he realized what he was doing . . . and what had happened to the contract career of Norvell Bligh.
The thing was, Virginia.
Norvell came up to that point in his thinking as he had come a thousand times before and, like a thousand times before, he backed away from it. He ordered another drink.
No contract status, no bubble-house. It would be Belly Rave, of course. Norvell took a deep swallow of the drink. Still, what was so bad about Belly Rave? You’d be out in the fresh air a lot, at the least. You wouldn’t starve—nobody ever starved, that much everybody knew. He could find something to do, probably. The allotments would take care of eating; his extra work—whatever it turned out to be—would give him a chance to save a little money, make a fresh start, maybe find a place in the old section of the city. Not like the bubble-houses, of course, but better than Belly Rave, from all he’d heard.
He wished one more time that he knew a little more about Belly Rave. Funny, considering that Virginia had been born there; but she had never wanted to talk about it.
And there he was, back on the subject of Virginia again.
How she would take it was another matter. He really couldn’t guess. She had been so resolutely, reliably silent on
the subject of Belly Rave and all it concerned. Her childhood, t her parents and even her husband, the power-cycle stunter whose crash in a long-ago Field Day had left young Nprvell Bligh with a tearless widow to jolly out of filing a claim. He had married her instead; and Candella had made an unforgivable joke. . . . No. He faced it. He hadn’t married her; she had married him—and not even him, really, but a contract job and a G.M.L. house.
He dialed another drink.
He looked around the bar; he had never been in the place before. He didn’t even know where he was; he’d found himself wandering through the Ay-rab section of town, footsore. He had turned back and this place had been there, new and shiny and attractive. It looked like a nice place. Someday he might bring Arnie here, if Arnie would still——
He squelched that thought before it was properly formed. Certainly he would bring Arnie here! Arnie wasn’t the kind of friend to look the other way when you were a little down on your luck—not even that, really, just temporarily in a little bit of a rough time due to a professional misunderstanding and a doublecross. Good old Arnie, Norvell thought sentimentally.
He caught a glimpse of the time.
Better face the music and get it over with. Maybe he could have it out with Virginia, and then go over and spend a little time with Arnie. The thought bucked him.
He swallowed his drink and slipped his wallet into the bar slot. Having it out with Virginia might not be so tough at that. In a way, he thought, the fact that she had been born in Belly Rave was an advantage, if he could only make her see it that way. She would know the ropes. She’d have friends there; she’d have some ideas about pleasant, useful work he could do to supplement the allotment until he got on his feet again. She could save him plenty of time in making contacts, getting——•