"Do you always smoke right after you make love?"
She looked down at her crotch, and the punch line passed between us without her needing to deliver it. We both laughed. She lit up, and took a long drag, let the smoke out very slowly.
She seemed utterly content.
"I smoke after everything, Bill. I smoke before everything. If I could figure out a way to smoke while I was sleeping, I'd do it. It's only my inhuman self-restraint that leads me to smoke them one at a time in your presence."
"I suppose you know what the Surgeon General has determined."
"I can read the side of the box."
"Then why do you smoke?"
"Because I like the taste. It reminds me of home. And because getting lung cancer would be like a half-inch snowfall at the north pole."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm already dying of a horrible disease."
I looked at her, but her eyes weren't giving anything away. It could be the literal truth, or another of her weird delusions, or she could just be pulling my leg.
I'd been proud of myself when I'd decided, back at the restaurant, that she was lying to me. Now, I couldn't read her at all.
"We're all dying, Bill," she said. "Life is invariably fatal."
"I'd say you had quite a while to live yet, though."
"You'd be wrong."
"Why did you run yesterday morning? When I asked you for a cup of coffee?"
She stubbed out her smoke, lit another.
"I didn't expect to see you there. l was looking for something else."
"Do you really work for United?"
She grinned at me.
"What do you think?"
"I think you're crazy."
"I know that. The truth just isn't good enough for some people."
I thought it over.
"Yeah. I do think you work for United. I think you just have fun making people feel foolish. You like to keep them off-balance."
"If you insist."
"I think you were shocked by something else. Like bloody toys, and torn-up Christmas presents."
She sighed, and looked at me with sad eyes.
"You've discovered my dark secret. I've got a soft heart." She looked away from my face, down quite a bit lower, and stubbed out a cigarette half-smoked. From her, it was a startling gesture.
"You ready to do it again?" she asked.
Testimony of Louise Baltimore
The mission was still there, though I'd practically forgotten it. I had to keep reminding myself: what you're here for is to change him, to keep him from going back to that hangar in the middle of the night and meeting an earlier version of Louise Baltimore.
The fact that if he didn't go there a part of my life I'd already lived would be cancelled out, would never have happened, didn't bother me much. If the universe cancelled me out at least I'd fade away a contented woman. That's a lot better than I ever expected to get.
When I looked at my watch it was seven in the morning, and we were still sitting there in bed, naked, laughing and talking as the sun came up outside. I don't know who suggested sleeping, but eventually we seemed headed in that direction. I didn't think I'd have much trouble keeping him away from the investigation tomorrow. For one thing, this C. Gordon Petcher item was certain to arrive some time that morning, taking a lot of pressure off Bill.
He could plead illness, spend the day in bed.
At least I kept telling myself that.
The whole Window C business had turned out very strange. I had broken security up one side and down the other. I had told him the literal truth about many things. And I had not been believed.
Strangely, I saw that as a good sign. He thought I was a kook, and yet he didn't seem-to mind too much, Could it be so hard for the lovely kook with all the crazy stories to enchant this man long enough to keep him out of that hangar tonight? Even if she was destined to turn into a pumpkin at ten A.M., Pacific Standard Time?
Testimony of Bill Smith
We laughed in each other's arms, roaring drunk, and made love again, more slowly. We laughed some more, and made love some more. I impressed even myself. I hope she appreciated it.
I have no idea when I got to sleep. It didn't seem to matter.
But it did. Oh, it did.
I came out of bed like a guided missile ...
... and bumped my nose on the wall. I stood staring stupidly at it as my hungover thoughts arranged themselves into a dim state of awareness.
The alarm didn't ring. What's this wall doing here? Who am I where am I what am I why am I ...
Oh.
"Good morning," she said. She was sitting on the bed, nude, propped on some pillows with her feet out in front of her. She took a drag on her cigarette. She was so heartbreakingly beautiful I thought I might cry.
"Please," I croaked. "Don't smoke so loud."
"Pretty feeble. You did a lot better last night." But she stubbed ii out.
"I was feeling a lot funnier last night."
"I was just sitting here wondering," she said. "While you woke up on your feet, l mean. It took a while for your eyes to focus."
"They aren't focused yet."
"Yes they are." She stretched, and I guess she was right. It was impossible not to focus on someone as spectacular as that.
"What I was wondering is, what woke you up? I didn't hear anything and I didn't do anything. Brit brother, you sure as hell woke up."
"What time is it?"
"Eight-thirty."
I sat on the edge of the bed and told her about my alarm clock. What I had to assume was I had just pulled a variation of the old story about the man at the lighthouse. Twenty years he sits out there, and the foghorn goes off in his ear every thirty seconds. One night it misses a blast and he jumps out of bed screaming, "What was that?"
She listened solemnly, reached for another smoke, looked at me, and decided against it.
She held out her arms.
"Bill. Listen to me. You've been asleep for one hour. Your Mister Petcher can handle your duties this morning. Come back to bed. I'll rub your back."
I sat back down, and she did rub it. She used a lot more than her hands, too, and I didn't complain. Then I did the hardest thing I ever did. I stood up.
"Got to get to work," I said.
She sat there like something out of the middle of Penthouse, even to the vaseline on the lens -- though that might have been simply the condition of my eyeballs. She just kept looking up at me.
"This job is killing you, Bill."
"Yeah. I know."
"Stay with me today. I'll show you San Francisco."
"I thought you had to go at ten."
Her face fell. I didn't know what I'd said. She hadn't exactly said where she had to go at ten. Maybe to visit her baby in the hospital.
The shower curtain rings rattled as she yanked the curtain open and stepped in with me.
She shuddered when the cold water hit her and for a moment we clung together like children.
I turned the tap over toward warm, and hugged her. She leaned back in my arms. I saw that her nipples hadn't crinkled up from the cold like my wife's used to in a cold shower. Funny the things you notice at a time like that.
"I don't like to see you killing yourself. Take the day off."
" Louise, don't bitch at me. I have a job, and I have to do it."
"Don't work late, then. I'll be here at ten this evening: "That I can do. I'll be here, too."
Testimony of Louise Baltimore