Chrysalis lifted a finger. The dwarfs arms loosened but he didn't let go of her completely.
"I need information, Jane said in a low voice. `About a drug."
Chrysalis didn't answer. Whatever expression might have been on her peculiar face was impossible to read.
"I've been addicted to something against my will. I need-I need-" She dug in her pants pocket and miraculously there was money there, a small, flat fold of bills. Hurriedly she unfolded them and held them out. " I can pay, I can pay for-"
Chrysalis flicked briefly at the bills Jane was thrusting at her. Jane looked; there were three bills, two tens and a twenty. Forty dollars. Bad joke.
Chrysalis shook her head and waved a hand.
"Like I said, honey," the dwarf said, "you were just leaving."
She leaned against the side of the building with the bills crumpled in her hand. The void in her widened until she thought the craving had to split her open right there. "Excuse me."
Kim Toy.
She blinked and then realized it wasn't Kim Toy after all. This woman was younger and taller and her features were different.
"I saw Chrysalis give you the bum's rush. Some nerve she's got, huh. The twerp took you by my table, and I couldn't help thinking I knew you from somewhere."
Jane turned away from her. "Leave me alone," she muttered, but the woman moved closer.
"Like, I think you used to work for Rosemary Muldoon. Didn't you?"
Jane stumbled away from the woman and then fell to her hands and knees, shaking all over. Underneath the ache she felt something else, a sickness that was more physical. As if she were coming down with the flu or something worse. The idea was so absurd she could almost have laughed.
"Hey, are you sick or something?" The woman bent down, putting concerned hands on her shoulders. "You strung out?" she asked in a low voice.
Jane could feel herself weeping without tears.
"Come on," said the woman, helping Jane to her feet. "Any friend of Rosemary Muldoon's is a friend of mine. I think I can help you out."
In spite of the hollowness eating away at her, Jane was overwhelmed by the luxurious apartment. The sunken living room was as large as a ballroom. The predominant color was a delicate, pearlized pink, even to the silk wallpaper and the enormous crystal chandelier.
The woman led her down the steps and sat her on an overstuffed sofa. "It's something; isn't it? Looks like a dump on the outside and heaven on the inside. Had to grease a lot of palms to keep the CONDEMNED sign out front. just finished the place last week, and I've been dying to entertain. What are you drinking?"
"Water," Jane said weakly.
Across the room, at the ornate wet bar, the woman looked over her shoulder with a near smile. "Thought you could get your own."
Jane stiffened. "You-you know-?"
"Didn't I say I knew you? You think I'd really bring anyone here I wasn't sure of?" The woman brought her a cut-glass goblet of ice water and sat down next to her. "Of course, it isn't all mine. It really belongs to the people I work for. Best job I ever had, needless to say."
Jane sipped her water. Her hands began to shake uncontrollably, and she handed the goblet to the woman before she could spill it. The physical illness was crawling over her again, like a cramp, except it was all over her body. She held very still until it subsided.
"Whatever you've got, I hope it isn't catching," the woman said, not unkindly. "What happened-you fall in with one of those sleaze-bags around Rosemary and get turned on to junk?"
Jane shook her head. "Not Rosemary."
"Oh? That's too bad. I mean, I was sort of hoping you were still in touch with Rosemary because I'd like to see her again." She leaned over to open a pink laquered box on the oversize coffee table. "Joint? It'll take the edge off. It really will. This is like nothing you've ever had before."
"No, it isn't," Jane said, looking away from the proffered joint.
"What are you on, anyway?"
"It's something that goes straight to the pleasure center of the brain. You don't want to know." Or perhaps she would, Jane thought suddenly. Her thoughts began to coil toward a plan. What if she could get this woman to go back to the apartment with her and offered her to Ti Malice? He loved new mounts, she knew that…
"Oh, that's easy," the woman said. "What?" Jane looked at her, startled.
The woman tilted her head to one side, eyeing her curiously. "I've got an associate who's developed something that'll go straight for the pleasure center of the brain."
"Who is it?" Jane said, grabbing the woman's shoulder. "Can I meet him? Where can I find him? How-"
"Whoa, whoa now. Slow down." The woman plucked Jane's hand off herself and moved away slightly. "This is top secret stuff. Stupid of me to mention it, but you being a friend of Rosemary's and all, I kind of forgot myself. Come on. Mellow out and let's talk about Rosemary," She lit the joint with a crystal table lighter, took a deep drag, and offered it to Jane.
She accepted the joint and tried to do exactly as she'd seen the woman do. The smoke burned in her lungs, and she coughed it out.
"Keep practicing," the woman said, laughing a little. "It'll really take the edge off."
A few drags later she had gotten more than just the hang of it. So this was what they meant by getting a buzz on, she thought. It was a buzz you felt rather than heard, and it would have been pleasant, except that it couldn't get between herself and the gnawing void. She tried to give the joint back to the woman, but she told Jane to keep at it, she needed it more. Instead she put it out carefully in the cut-glass ashtray on the table.
"Don't like it?" the woman said in surprise.
"It's… okay," Jane said, and her voice seemed to stretch out and out and out like long, slow elastic. Her head felt ready to float off her shoulders like a helium balloon and rise up to the ceiling. She wondered if Hiram knew about this.
But the woman wanted to talk about Rosemary, and between trying to keep her head on her shoulders and fighting against the need for Ti Malice, it was hard to keep track of what she was saying. If the woman would just shut up, she might achieve some kind of equilibrium, something that would steady her long enough to break the water glass on the table and use one of the shards on her throat. That was the only answer now; the dope was helping her see that. She would never be free of the need for Ti Malice, and if she went back-when she went back-she could only look forward to worse things, more degradation, more killings, all done willingly, just to feel the bliss of his presence within her. All the things she had wished for Hiram, that he would find someone to make his life complete, she had inadvertently gotten for herself, except it was Ti Malice instead of the vague, unidentifiable man she had always dreamed of, who had sometimes resembled Sal and sometimes Jumpin' Jack Flash and sometimes even Croyd. Another bad joke in an ongoing series. It had to end.
The woman kept on talking and talking. Occasionally there were long periods of silence, and Jane came out of her fog to find that the woman was no longer on the couch with her. She would lie back against the cushion, glad of the silence, and then the woman would magically rematerialize next to her, going on and on and on about Rosemary Muldoon until she thought she might cut her throat just to get away from that voice.
But that was awfully ungrateful. The woman was just trying to help her. She knew that. She should do something in return. Offer her something.
Rosemary's phone number swam to the surface of her mind and waited for her to pick it up. And after a while she did, and the woman disappeared for the longest time ever.
Someone was shaking her awake. The first thing that hit her was the need, and she doubled over, beating her fist on the couch cushion because it wasn't Ti Malice there but a slender Oriental man kneeling on the carpet next to her, smiling polite concern at her.