“Are you now maiming another girl as part of your job?” Zef asked.
Anabel ignored him.
“Admit it, Anabel,” Ra Mahleiné said to her directly, taking pleasure in pronouncing the name, when for years she had to say, always, “Supervisor ma’am, number 077-12-747 reporting.” “You devoted special attention to me, favored me with more than your usual professional care. The name Anabel, so like Davabel, will sound funny in Ayrrah. But no—they will give you a nice number instead, and that will be the end of your name.”
“You! Mind who you’re talking to!” Anabel snarled, losing control for a moment. ,The rule that had been instilled in them from childhood said clearly that she was in her first incarnation, while the hated white prisoner was in her second.
A silence followed. Anabel ate, wiped her mouth, moved easily, sure of her position. She was superior to the former prey that now sat across the table from her. Anabel had parried the few verbal thrusts without trouble.
“Let me guess, Anabel, why you moved here,” Gavein said. “You used your professional contacts and from the file at Hierarchy and Classification learned the identity of David Death. You’re frightened. You want to save your skin. By keeping close to him, maybe you will live longer. Am I right?”
“Ridiculous!” Anabel huffed. A drop of spaghetti sauce from her mouth hit the tablecloth.
“But you must know, surely, that our Dave is David Death,” said Zef. “Observe what sharp white teeth he has.”
“We really shouldn’t joke about such things,” said Myrna Patricks.
“But I’m not joking,” protested Zef. “Death has sharp white canines, and how he bites with them!”
“And before long,” Gavein said, theatrically baring his teeth in a wolfish grin, “he’ll have a shiny white skull, when he loses what’s left of his hair.”
“The skull doesn’t show quite yet,” Ra Mahleiné put in. She gently scratched his pate where the hair was thinnest. “You can hold on to your miserable life a little longer, Anabel. But watch him every evening, and you’ll see his skull shining through…”
Anabel said nothing this time. The bolt had hit home.
“Lorraine has off until the end of next week,” said Myrna. “But she’s feeling fine, and if you like, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind giving you a hand with the housework.” The loving mother believed every word of the Courier article. “You don’t have to pay her. She’s glad to do a good deed, aren’t you, dear?”
“What do you say to that, Little Manul?” Gavein asked. “Would you like a red… a friendly red helper?” His laughter and his flashing teeth chilled the blood of Anabel and Myrna.
“Why not?” laughed Ra Mahleiné. “It doesn’t matter if she’s red, as long as she’s friendly. But a black would be good only for cleaning out the toilet.”
“Looks like the toilet’s your only chance, Anabel. You might not get another,” said Zef, laughing too. “I’ve finally hit on the title of my dissertation: Probability Field Fluctuation as Generated by Brain Power. Dave will be the subject of my research.”
“You change the title every other day,” said Gavein.
“In any ambitious undertaking I begin with the title. A work of genius must have a carefully crafted title.”
The conversation at the table continued in this vein. Anabel was ignored.
39
Laila turned on the TV. She said that with the itching she couldn’t sit in one place. She scratched and scratched, loosening the bandages. Zef caught her hands, but even so she managed to draw blood on the new skin of her face.
“Enough. I want to see that puss of yours someday, and you won’t let it heal.”
“You forgot it already?”
“It was different before the fire.”
The news anchor read the news:
…when Gaisa Maslynnaya, R, died in a plane crash this afternoon. She was flying her private Equite 90 to the funeral of Lola Low, scheduled for tomorrow. An engine caught fire. Instead of taking the plane up to the altitude of minutes and waiting there for firefighting aircraft to arrive, she descended, and the plane went down in a municipal park. Two people on the ground were badly burned. One Hans Hartnung, B, was killed. He was unemployed and sleeping on a bench.
It has been decided to postpone Lola Low’s funeral for a day so that these two great film stars can be buried together. After the news there will be a special program devoted to their work.
“See, an R. She had a low category,” Zef said. “That was why she shaved her head.”
“She must have got special permission to remove the strip.”
“In her line of work, the law can be bent.”
“She didn’t go to a higher altitude,” said Gavein, “because she wanted to make it to the funeral.”
“She will make it now,” said Ra Mahleiné.
“That Hans, he was in our gang. A dopehead, but all right,” muttered Zef.
In connection with the brutal beatings of two individuals named Dave, who recently arrived from Lavath, the Division of Hierarchy and Classification categorically denies any truth to the article that appeared in the Courier. No correlation yet has been found between the deaths taking place in Davabel and any one individual.
After the news there was an hour-long tribute. Film clips were shown in which the two stars appeared together and with other actors: Clinton Prado, G; Miriam Ohindee, B; Eddie Davis, R; and Lopez de Gabriel, B.
Zef remarked that no scenes were included in which Maslynnaya and Lola Low removed their clothes.
“Obviously,” said Gavein. “We’re seeing only the nonnude scenes from their films. An hour contains them all.”
As Gavein and Ra Mahleiné were preparing for bed, Gavein said, “The teeth, that was an exaggeration. The ones in front are okay, but I have only a few molars left.”
“They’re enough for me,” answered Ra Mahleiné, brushing her hair before the mirror. She was trying to sit very straight and with her chest out.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. “So what do you say to Anabel as a maid? A little revenge. Why should we ruin our hands scrubbing the toilet when that bitch can do it?”
“Even then I would be better to her than she was to me. If you want, you can give her a child. I won’t be able to do that now. She can stand in for me.”
He could say nothing for a moment. Such a thought would never have entered his head.
“Are you crazy? I would hate the child, as I hate her. You also.”
“I don’t know. I might not live long enough to hate it.”
40
The next day, Walter Ravitzer died. The death toll now, from the airport explosion, was fifteen. That evening Laila ran another fever; she had scratches now all over her body.
Gavein questioned Zef about some of the mysteries of physics. He didn’t learn much that day but earned, from Zef, the rank of “physicist honoris causa, who chops with his brain a lot better than the morons taking the same course that I do.”
“You’re so boring, Dave,” said Lorraine.
Gavein turned. She rarely appeared in the dining room, having gone back to work and her late shift.
“I mean, it’s always your wife, your wife. Then you go to work, and then you come home, and it’s your wife again. Your only recreation is talking with this punk.”
“Don’t tell me you wouldn’t love to take Magdalena’s place,” said Zef. “The white woman has beat you to it.”
“I can’t stand these wise-mouth red brats, with their beady eyes and squirrel teeth.”