Then Chuck came and got me for lunch. With his drooping mustache, he looked like a Scandinavian travel advertisement Haris had made some deerburgers, fried with onion. They sat me at the middle of the table, where I could get the full benefit of the love-buzzing, the hush whenever I spoke, the smiles and eye contact and shameless flattery. Yes, they all knew as soon as they saw me that I would be a wonderful addition to the group. Just wonderful. Just what they had been waiting for. Persival and Alvor sat alone at the other table, talking in low voices.
The conversation was slightly strained, and I guessed it was because they felt they should not talk about Nicky, but he was ever-present on the edge of memory. I made a few fruitless-efforts to steer the conversation toward politics and violence, but they fielded them deftly and threw to another base.
After cleanup, a screen was set up and a projector wheeled out. I thought I was going to hear a tape by the celebrated Sister Elena Marie, but it was a creaky old black-and-white motion picture about The Long March, with a noisy sound track, a voice-over with a marked British accent, a lot of ruing, shooting, and gesticulating. They marched across China and up into the hills and caves, while my chin kept dropping onto my chest and I kept waking with a start. It ended with a loud blast of martial music which roused me enough to get up and say good night and go back to my trailer. I couldn’t find the light switch and finally gave up and went to bed in the dark.
I was awakened by the click of the latch on the flimsy door of the trailer, a stealthy and barely au- dible squeak as it was opened. I wondered if one of
The Green Ripper the team had decided to correct Persival’s decision to keep me alive. I moved in the bunk until I had my shoulders against the wall, until I was braced to move as quickly as I had to.
The generator was silent, the encampment dark. Just enough starlight came through the window above the bunk for me to make out a pale figure moving toward me. It stopped a couple of feet away, and I heard a silky whisper of fabric, caught a faint scent of female, and realized that Nena or Stella was paying me a visit. I guessed I had been asleep for an hour.
She picked up a corner of the blanket and came sliding into the bunk, shuddering with the cold, reaching to embrace me. I faked a great start of surprise.
“It’s me, Brother Thomas,” she whispered. Yt’s Stella.”
So I was being gifted with the sallow blond lady with the inadequate jaw. ‘~Vhat’s going on?”
‘dwell. whatever you want to go on. Okay?” Vhose idea is this?”
What difference would that make?”
“lid like to know.”
“You do a lot of talking, huh?”
I caught her questing hand by the wrist and took it away from me and said, “Is there anything wrong with wanting to know?”
“Look, are you okay? I mean, you make it with women?”
“Jesus Christ!” she said. And then, ‘Tm sorry. That’s blasphemy. But, you know, you are something else.”
She turned onto her back, trying to separate herself from me totally, but the bunk was too narrow. Hip rested against hip, shoulder against shoulder.
“All it is,” she said patiently, “you’re new. Probably they don’t want you being restless and wanting to sneak off or anything. So you get food and shelter and, once in a while, a piece of ass. What does it cost? Nothing but time, right?”
‘Lou sound as if you did some hooking.”
“I was into it. So?”
“Where was that?”
“So you’re another one of those.”
“Another what?”
‘~hen I was a hooker, there was always a trick who wanted to know how I got into that line of work.”
“Stella, settle down. Where are you going, anyway? Why the hostility? I can ask about you because I’m interested in you, can’t I? Is there a house rule against that?”