Mary, still in the bedroom, said, “It’s too hot, too spicy. It’s got habanero pepper in it.”
“I love hot foods.”
Mary sighed. “Then go ahead. You know better than me, Fred. You always do.”
Fred returned the rollmop to the plate. He wasn’t home five minutes and already he was over his head. He listed his options: not eat a rollmop, eat one, eat several, or not eat any but say that he had. That about covered it. He could safely rule out the first and last options. If Mary had gotten out of bed to make these things, he’d better either try them or say that he did. But it was foolish to lie to an evangeline. So the only question now was how many to eat. If they were as hot as she said they were, even one might upset his poor, HALVENE-abused belly. He took a glass to the dispenser and drank a half liter of rice milk to dampen the way, then chose a fat rollmop and bit into it.
It was spicy, all right, but nothing he’d call hot. He popped the rest of it into his mouth and swallowed it. “It’s terrific,” he said, reaching for a second and a third.
“Just wait,” Mary said.
He didn’t have to wait long. The back of his tongue began to burn, and his throat closed up. His eyes bugged, his nose watered, and sweat beaded on his scalp. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t see. He groped for another glass of rice milk.
“Fred, are you all right?”
He choked and coughed and couldn’t answer.
“Fred? Can you hear me? Come here!”
“Just a minute,” he croaked, wiping tears from his eyes, grinning, heading for the bedroom, invited in, at last.
SHE WAS PROPPED up in their large bed. Her hair was a mess, and she had food stains down the front of her nightgown. But she cleared a space for him to sit next to her, and that was all that mattered.
“Here, blow,” she said, handing him a tissue. “I told you they were hot, but you wouldn’t listen to me. I should have chuted them with the rest. Honestly, I don’t know why I kept them.”
Fred blew his nose and said, “It’s nothing. They’re really good.” He blew his nose again and said, “What you watching?” She had a little scape open at the foot of her bed. It looked like the interior of a garden where nothing much moved. “Is it Shelley?”
“Uh-huh,” Mary said. “They had problems feeding Judith today. It looks like things are speeding up, healthwise. She’s sinking fast.”
Fred leaned over to peer into the scape. It was the breezeway location. The breezeway connected two wings of the death artist’s Olympic Peninsula beachfront bungalow. Looked like it was just after lunch on the West Coast, overcast, plenty of exotic plants in large colorful pots along the cement brick floor. Judith Hsu lay on a chaise lounge in the shade. Two evangelines sat with her, Shelley and one of the others. Both evangelines wore wide-brimmed hats, and from this angle, Fred couldn’t tell which of them was his and Mary’s friend.
Mary sniffed him. “Fred, you’ve been dry-cleaned!”
Fred shrugged his shoulders.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s no big deal.”
“Of course it’s a big deal. Were you hurt?”
Now came the best part. Fred sat still while Mary searched his face with those big brown evangeline eyes of hers. And while it wasn’t easy to lie to an evangeline, her eyes couldn’t lie to him either. Her soul possessed no curtains or veils. Fred said, “I’m not hurt,” and peered into her eyes. He scattered his words like bait to lure her out into the open.
“I didn’t ask are you hurt,” she said. “Obviously, they’d patch you up. I asked were you hurt.”
His confidentiality oath prevented him from telling even his wife any details of his missions. But there was no need, for Mary could see everything.
Evangelines had been introduced thirty-two years earlier to meet a market demand for personal companions for wealthy women. Certain affs needed a breathless audience for their empty lives. Only prototype batches totaling ten thousand evangelines were ever decanted because market demand had collapsed. But the market’s loss was a russ’s gain.
Fred held his wife in his arms and summarized his whole, crazy day—without saying a word. She glimpsed his fear and panic and pain. After a while she hugged him and broke the spell. “My poor man,” she said and pushed him away. “Move aside. I have to pee.”
Fred watched his wife climb out of bed. Evangelines were skinny little things. At least compared to jennys they were. And small-hipped and flat-chested, compared to michelles. But in the sack, Mary was beyond comparison. When they made love, Fred begged her to keep her puddlelike eyes open so that he could witness in them the astonishment of every touch.
Mary closed the bathroom door, and Fred lay back in bed and watched Shelley’s scape. Shelley was not only their friend, but Reilly’s spouse, and a member of their Wednesday night crowd. Something in Shelley’s scape moved and caught his attention. The door to one of the bungalow wings opened, and two more evangelines came into the breezeway. It was a shift change. The two offgoing ’leens, one of them Shelley, joined the newcomers at a round patio table at some little distance from the unfortunate Myr Hsu. They were giving the shift report, and he upped the volume:
“—she can hardly bend her arms,” one of them was saying.
“Or form her words,” said the other.
“Chewing is almost too much for her.”
Fred checked the time. If Shelley got on a train in the next hour, she’d make it in time for the canopy ceremony, even if Reilly couldn’t.
Fred went out to the living room and stood opposite the window wall. It wasn’t a real window—their apartment was a good half kilometer from the nearest exterior wall—but it showed the realtime view from the window of a luxury apartment high in the same stalk. Just now the sun was dipping behind O’Hare Picket on the Illinois countryside. Fred wiped the scene away, replacing it with the phone frame.
“Reilly Dell,” he said, and a jittery view of his friend opened. Reilly was in a CPT bead car. The two men grinned at each other. There was nothing much they had to say. Obviously, both had survived the day. They made a little small talk and signed off.
Fred returned to the bedroom to change into house togs. That was when he noticed that the slugway near the ceiling had been stopped up with a towel. His heart skipped a beat. He tapped on the bathroom door and said gently, “Mary, someone’s plugged the slugway.”
Not waiting for a reply, Fred climbed on a chair and pulled the towel out. Immediately, six slugs came through and spread out across the walls and ceiling.
Mary watched from the bathroom doorway. “I saw on the Evernet how they’re going to retire them along with the canopy tonight.”
“That’s not likely,” Fred said. “If anything, we’ll have to increase their numbers. And double the visolas. And put bloomjumpers on every corner. And still, we won’t be safe!”
She was staring at him. Softly, he continued. “It’s a felony to obstruct a slug. We could be arrested.”
“Then why aren’t they here arresting us?” she said. “I plugged it up hours ago, and no one’s arrested me yet.” She returned to the bathroom and said, “Come in here and give me your opinion.”
There was a quarter-sized Mary in the bathroom mirror walking back and forth on a short runway. It wore a sexy lamé dress of blue and plum. Meanwhile, Mary sat at the face dresser and fine-tuned a mannequin of her head. She had set it to gala face and was tarting it up even more.
So, we’re going out, after all, Fred thought. Mary rubbed a wide band of gentian powder beneath the mannequin’s eyes, pulled the lashes longer, and plumped the lips slightly. She made the skin creamy brown and the irises and hair black.