The admissions nurse nodded.
Finally, Remo tore a sheet of paper in two while pointing at the map.
"Ramona Tear?" she mouthed.
"Rip," Remo mouthed back.
"Rip Ramona?" the admissions nurse mouthed, her face blank.
"Rona Ripper," Remo snapped in exasperation.
In a corner a sleeping man made a snuffling sound, and the admissions nurse's eyes went wide in horror.
"Tell me which room she's in, or I'll wake them all," Remo threatened.
"Four seventy-eight! Third floor!" the admissions nurse bleated.
Remo wasted a minute waiting for an elevator. When it arrived, it was occupied by a trio of Chileans playing threecard monte.
"Do you mind?" one asked.
"I'm, beginning to," Remo grumbled. He took the stairs.
On the third floor, he passed the same game in progress in the same elevator.
"Cause of you I'm losing!" one of the players shouted at him. "Broke my concentration!"
"Sue me," Remo shot back, working his way to Room 478. He was beginning to look forward to meeting Rona Ripperif only because she probably bathed more than once a month.
Rona Ripper lay on her stomach like a beached whale, her chin on a fluffy pillow, her intensely black eyes on the TV screen set on a high wall shelf opposite her hospital bed. She looked like the Goodyear version of Elvira.
The room smelled hospital-clean. But it was not clean enough for Rona Ripper. The window fan was busy sucking out the offending odor of disinfectants. She had ordered the keyhole of the door sealed with wax, so that no disagreeable smell of sickness or blood or pus could find its way into the pristine environment of her room.
After the physician had changed the dressing on her wound, she had ordered him banished.
"You can't banish me," the doctor had complained.
"You're a smoker. I can tell."
"That's none of your business. Besides, I'm not smoking now."
"Your clothing reeks of tobacco. You get out, or I'll sue you for every penny."
"On what grounds?" the doctor asked.
"Spreading second-hand smoke."
"Miss Ripper, at best there are trace elements on my smock."
"Carcinogens are insidious. The smaller they are, the more damage they do. Out!"
The doctor had withdrawn in a huff. Another sign of a chronic tobacco fiend. They were ill tempered. When Rona Ripper became governor of California, she vowed, no one would smoke. All billboards would be replaced with giant No Smoking signs. Tobacco products would be outlawed. Smoking fines would run to five figures. Per violation.
"It will be," Rona Ripper had said, when she'd announced her candidacy before a packed meeting of the Southern California branch of the American Civil Rights Collective, "a paradise on earth."
The ACRC had applauded wildly. They already thought California was a paradise on earth. But they knew it was not a perfect paradise. For one thing, there were too many Republicans.
"I intend," Rona had shouted, "to run on a strict no-smoking platform. Smoking is at the root of all our troubles in this wonderful progressive state of ours."
More applause. The fact that Rona Ripper was Executive Director of the Southern California branch of the ACRC had nothing to do with their enthusiasm. They always applauded sentences containing the word "progressive," whether spoken or not. If Rona Ripper had announced that she had contracted progressive throat cancer, they would have begun applauding before she got out the word, "throat."
"If we stamp out cigarettes, cigars, and pipes, our studies show," Rona added, "the smog levels will drop accordingly."
That had brought them to their feet. No one thought to ask what "accordingly" meant in terms of cubic volume. Had they learned that tobacco smoke was a negligible contributor to the California pollution problem, they would have denounced the results as a cover-up perpetrated by big business and the tobacco lobby.
When Rona Ripper added her personal belief that smoking had contributed in not-yet-understood ways to the six-year drought, they carried her through the streets on their shoulders.
That night, the Southern California ACRC came out in total support of Rona Ripper for Governor. The fact that she had no economic recovery plan, no strategy to deal with the drought, and no interest in the illegal alien crunch other than to note that California had belonged to Mexico before it belonged to the fascist United States, meant nothing. She was against smokers' rights. In a state where local laws already had sent tobacco users slinking and skulking, to exercise their right to smoke freely in woods and back alleys and under freeways, that was enough to mobilize a political organization and get Rona Ripper on the ballot.
The early weeks of the campaign had been promising. She had been polling even with the traitor, Barry Black, Junior.
Then Enrique Espiritu Esperanza, having narrowly escaped assassination, had begun moving up.
It had presented Rona Ripper with an incredible dilemma.
Esperanza was a Hispanic, and therefore above criticism. There was no way the Executive Director of the ACRC could publicly criticize an Hispanic candidate. They belonged to the underprivileged underclass. To criticize one of them would have been tantamount to heresy.
"We have to get something on this guy," Rona had complained to her inner circle. "Something that will knock him out of the race, and keep our hands clean."
"He's a straight arrow. Son of an immigrant. Built a vineyard in the Napa Valley and, made good. He's clean."
Rona Ripper's black eyes narrowed. She frowned like a thundercloud.
"Has he ever . . . smoked?"
"Not that we can prove."
"But it's possible," Rona pressed.
"Doubtful."
"Maybe we can doctor up a photo showing him with a Camel in his mouth. I hear they can do that with computer-enhancement now."
The campaign director of the Ripper for Governor organization shook his head. "Too risky. Could backfire."
Rona's frown deepened. "You're right. We can't take the chance. If I lose, this state is doomed."
Around the conference table, heads nodded in solemn agreement. There was no question: Without Rona Ripper of the ACRC to guide the Golden State, it might as well fall into the Pacific.
"Then we have no choice," Rona had decided. "We'll have to run on the issue."
"Issues, you mean."
"There is only one issue," Rona Ripper said tartly. "Making California's air breathable again. And the only obstacle is the evil weed called tobacco."
When it was reported that Barry Black, Junior had escaped an assassination attempt, Rona Ripper had greeted the news with wide eyes and a shift in strategy.
"It's a two-issue race now," she decreed. "Tobacco, and the right to campaign in safety. I want round-the-clock protection."
"I'll put in a request with the authorities."
"Are you insane? The way we've been suing them for years? Those Neanderthals are probably behind this campaign violence. I want everybody armed and ready to lay down their lives in the name of Governor Ripper."
This presented the Ripper for Governor campaign with a new crisis. They were against private ownership of firearms.
"If we arm now," Rona was told, "the National Rifle Association will throw it back in our faces into the next century."
Rona stood firm. "My election is more important than mere principle. I want one sacrificial lamb to buy a gun and stand by my side, ready to kill or be killed."
In the end, they drew straws. One of the press liaisons drew the short straw. He bought a .22 Ruger and showed it to Rona Ripper the same day.
"Is it loaded?" Rona asked, curious.
"Good question," said the press liaison. He lifted the shiny weapon to his face and looked down the barrel. He squinted.