“Nightmare.”
“Fascinating boy.” Bunny glanced at Kid. “He’s old as I am, dear, but I still consider him very young. (Really, you must sit down. I’m the only one who’s allowed to wander around and make everyone nervous.) You scorpions do more to keep law and order in the city than anyone else. Only the good and the pure in heart dare go out on the street after dark. But that’s the way, I suppose, the law has always worked. The good people are the ones who live their lives so that they don’t have anything to do with whatever law there is anyway. The bad ones are the ones unfortunate enough to become involved. I rather like the way it works here, because, since you are the law, the law is far more violent, makes much more noise, and isn’t everywhere at once: so it’s easier for us good people to avoid. Are you sure you wouldn’t like some more wine—?”
“I told him to get it when he wants it.”
“I’ll get it for him, Pepper. You may not be a gentleman, but I am a lady.” Bunny plucked the jar from Kid’s hands and went to fill it and another cup. “Just an old-fashioned girl, too shy to dive into the rushing river of worldly fame, too late for the mouse-drawn pumpkin to take me to the ball, too old for Gay Lib—not to mention Radical Effeminism!” Bunny couldn’t have been more than thirty-five, Kid thought. “Not in body, mind you. Just in spirit. Ah, well…I have the consolations of philosophy—or whatever the hell you call it.”
Kid sat down on the couch beside Pepper.
Bunny returned with the brimming jelly glass. “When you let your little light shine, what great and luminous beast do you become?”
“I’m not a scorpion.”
“You mean you just like to dress up that way? And wear a shield around your neck? Mmmm?”
“Somebody gave me these clothes when I got my others messed up.” Kid took the jar and picked up his projector at the end of its chain. “This doesn’t have a battery or something. I just found it.”
“Ah, then you’re not really a scorpion yet. Like Pepper, right? Pepper used to be a scorpion. But his battery’s run down.”
“I guess that’s what it is.” Pepper rattled the links of his shield among his other chains. “I gotta get hold of another one and see.”
“Pepper used to be the most charming bird of paradise. Red, yellow, and green plumes—one could almost ignore its relation to the common parrot. Then he began to flicker, more and more, sputter, grow dim. Finally—” Bunny’s eyes closed—“he went totally out.” They opened. “He hasn’t been the same since.”
“Where could you pick up one? A battery, I mean.”
“Radio store,” Pepper said. “Only the guys have about stripped all the places around here. A department store, maybe. Or maybe somebody’s got an extra one. Nightmare’s got a lot, I bet.”
“How exciting, to anticipate your glowing aspect, to puzzle over what you’ll turn out to be.”
“Inside here—” Pepper snapped his shield apart—“they got a little thing in here that’s supposed to be what it is. But it just looks like a whole lot of colored dots to me. The battery goes in there.” He picked at the mechanism with a grey nail—“This one…”—and pried loose a red and white striped oblong with blue lettering: 26½ Volts D. C., below a colophon of gathered lightning. “This one ain’t worth shit.” He flipped it across the room.
“Not on the floor, Pepper love.” Bunny picked up the battery and put it on a shelf behind some porcelain frogs, vases of colored glass, and several alarm clocks. “Tell me, Kid, now that you’ve found me, just who were you looking for?”
“A girl. Lanya. You know her: You spoke to her one night in the bar when George Harrison was there.”
“Oh, yes: She-who-must-be-obeyed. And you were with her. Now I do remember you. That was the night they made George the new moon, wasn’t it? The way that poor man has driven all those silly dinge-queens out of their flippy little minds is just terrible!”
Kid turned his jar. “He has a pretty heavy fan club.”
“More power to him, I say.” Bunny raised the cup overhead. “But if George is the New Moon, darling, I am the Evening Star.”
Pepper loosed his consumptive giggle.
“I want to go out and look for her,” Kid said. “If she comes into Teddy’s after it opens, will you give her a message for—”
“I can’t think of any reason why I should. She has a much easier time getting hers than I do getting mine. What do you want me to tell her?”
“Huh? Just that I was around looking for her, and that I’ll be back.”
“Smile.”
“What?”
“Grin. Like this.” Bunny’s bony face became a death mask around bright, perfect teeth. “Let’s see an expression of ecstatic happiness.”
Kid twisted his lips back quickly and decided this was his last politeness.
To Kid’s leer, Bunny returned a wistful grin. “You just don’t seem to have any special points of attraction. Actually, I’d put you rather low down on my list. It’s completely personal, you understand. I suppose I can afford to tell your girlfriend you’re looking for her. I will if I see her.”
“Everybody’s somebody’s fetish,” Kid said. “Maybe I still got hope?”
“That’s what I keep telling Pepper. But he just won’t believe me.”
“I believe it.” Pepper said from his end of the couch. “You just won’t believe you ain’t mine.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’m revealing any embarrassing secrets when I say that you can be very sweet and affectionate once you relax. No, Pepper is just terribly uncomfortable at the idea that anyone could find him attractive. It’s that simple.”
“It ain’t happened that often so I’m what you’d call used to it.” Pepper squinted into the bottom of his cup, rocked up to his feet, and walked to the counter. He gave Bunny a passing nudge on the arm with his elbow. “Bunny’s a good guy, but she’s a nut.”
“Ow!” Bunny rubbed the spot, but grinned after Pepper.
Kid grinned too and tried not to shake his head.
“Why are you two here now, anyway?” Bunny asked. “What are the scorpions doing today? Shouldn’t you be out working?”
“You trying to kick me out again?” Pepper stooped to open a cabinet and took out another jug which he put on the counter beside the one now empty.
Kid saw four more gallons and decided to leave after this glass. “Where was Nightmare’s gang off to this morning?”
“You said you saw them. How many were there?”
“Twenty, twenty-five maybe,” Kid said.
“Maybe he’s gonna pull that Emboriky rip-off today. How you like that?”
“Oh, no!” Bunny put the cup down—“Oh well.”—then picked it up again, to sip pensively.
“He’s been talking about it for a month, but he wants a whole damn army.”
“Why’s he need so many people?” Kid asked. “What’s Emboriky?”
“Big downtown department store.”
“Lovely things,” Bunny said sadly. “Perfectly lovely things. I mean it isn’t just your run of the mill five-and-dime. I just wish I could have some of their stuff in here. Give some class to this place. Oh, I hate to think of you guys clomping around in all that beautiful stuff.”