"Are you all right?" he asked again, which she guessed finally in a stationer's delicate way meant had she been raped.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just a disagreement. Damn drunk and I crossed paths." God, if he or Nan put it together with the morning news—"I just wasn't walking very steady last night. He shoved me. I cussed him. I hit the wall. I went out. He apologized. Bought me breakfast."
Ely looked as if he doubted her. He looked at her a long time. Then: "Where are you staying?"
She thought, desperately. A year since anyone had asked that. She remembered the name of the bar. "Rico's. Good an address as any."
"You staying there?"
"I get my mail there."
"Who writes to you?"
She shrugged. The heartbeat was doing doubletime. But Ely didn't have to help. Ely didn't have to hand out a cred-chit to a down-and-gone spacer. He didn't have to call a woman friend in when he talked to her, all proper, so she could read his signals, that it wasn't her he was after, that he was trying to do a good deed. That kind was scarce on station docks. "Nobody," she said. "But if someone did, it'd be there. If something came in."
He just looked at her. Finally: "You do the trash-sorts. You run errands. You sign in every morning and you make sure you look like a client otherwise, if somebody's here besides Nan and me. I don't want Personnel to see you. If somebody comes in and you get caught in the back hall, just make like you were going to the restroom."
She nodded. She sat back in the back room and sorted the trash for recycling. She weighed it out and she noted the weight on each bundle because sometimes the cyclers cheated you. She'd heard that about Thule the first day she was onstation.
Mainday noon she got her cred-chit from Ely and she went to a sit-down restaurant and had another bowl of soup.
That night she went back to Rico's and Terry, his last name was Ritterman, bought her a beer and a cup of chowder.
He took her into the back then. She undressed, she said she had to wash her clothes, so he got her a bucket and she scrubbed her jumpsuit and her underwear and hung them to dry over the heat-vent. He came up behind her while she was doing that and put his hands on her. Without saying anything. She let him. She let him pull her down on the floor and he still wanted to touch her, that was all, while she shut her eyes or stared at the ceiling, and finally somebody came in out front, so he swore and went out to see about that.
She turned over and wrapped up in the rug and went to sleep for a while before he came back and woke her up, turning her over again and starting in.
Customers came in. He was gone a while. He came back and he got down again and she thought he must've been a long time without, he'd wear out finally and maybe go to sleep or let her sleep the rest of the night. But he never did.
She got dressed in the morning, he bought her breakfast. He wanted her to come to his apartment. "I got to work," she said.
She earned her chit. She thought about finding somewhere else to spend the night, she was recovered enough to be more fastidious, and Terry gave her the chills, but that meant no supper and no breakfast.
So she went back to Rico's.
It was that way every day. Every day she got the single chit. Every main-night she went back. Terry got stranger. He wanted her to come to his apartment. He wanted to show her his place, he said.
He got to doing weird things, like wanting to tie her up. "Hell if you do," she said. "I don't play those games."
He acted embarrassed. But she was worried about the drinks he gave her after that.
She was worried about going to sleep with him. He kept fingering her scars and asking how she'd gotten this one and that one and being weird, just weird, the way he went at sex while he was doing that. "Quit it," she said, finally, and shrugged him off. He slammed her back again, her bruised skull hitting the tiles and sparking color through her vision. She lay still, because she'd told her subconscious she was in trouble— don't react, don't react, he's a fool, is all—
"That night you came here," he said. "That black eye and all."
He hurt her. She got a hand free and clouted his ear. "Hurts, dammit!" He pawed after a hold on that arm and she gave him the knee. He yelled. She got away, off the blanket, over where her shoulders hit the corner and the shelves.
"You damn bitch," he said.
"Just back off." She levered herself up and sat down on a beer keg. It was cold. The air was. The whole place stank. "Back off, friend."
"Come on back."
"Hell. Just let me alone. I'm tired. This is my night-time, man, I work mainday. Just back off."
"You and that black eye. That man you say grabbed you—'
"Just leave me the hell alone. You got your supper's worth."
The front door chimed. He sat there, ignoring it, breathing hard.
"You got customers, Terry-lad."
"Security's looking for some woman, off in Green, same night, same night you came here, all marked up. You got no card, no ID, come in here beat up—Don't call the meds, you say. Don't want anything to do with the meds—I bet you don't, sugar."
Someone came into the hall. Shouted for service.
"Get out there, dammit," she hissed. "You want the law in here?"
"You're the one don't want the law, sugar." He put his hand on her leg. "I do what I want. Got that? I know where you hang out at the Registry. I followed you. Hear? If I call the law I can tell 'em where to look, even if you aren't in the comp, like I bet you aren't, sugarc"
"You want the law, dammit, get out there and wait on those guys before they call security!"
He stroked her skin. "You be here. You better be here. I got you for a long time. You better know I do."
More shouting. "Just a minute," he yelled. He got up and limped around putting his clothes together, staggered out the door fastening his belt.
She sat there on the beer keg with her arms clenched around her knees. She wanted to throw up.
She thought it through, what her choices were. She listened to the voices in the bar and she got up and got her clothes from over the heat-vent, she dressed and she walked out into the bar where he was waiting on a rowdy tableful of dockworkers.
He gave her a stark, mad look. She went over to the bar and got a drink for herself and listened to the rude comments from the four dockworkers, the invitation to have a drink, go to a sleepover with them and do this and that exotic number.
Attractive notion, considering. But the thought that kept coming through cold and clear was how fast Terry Ritter-whoever would be on the com to Central.
And with her fingerprints at the scene, the law just needed to get a look at her black eye and those scratches and to know that she was a transient and an illegal to get a judge to give a writ for real close questions.
Under trank.
She gave a scowl toward the dock workers. Loaders. Lousy lot. But cleaner than Terry Ritterman. Maybe even decent types, sober and solo. Terry came up and put his hand on her hip.
She took it. She leaned on the bar and drank her vodka sip by sip, she stared at the dockworkers with the thought that any one of them would be a hell and away better pick.
She walked over and got a bottle, she went over and poured their glasses full while they protested they hadn't ordered it.
"It's on me," she said, and played a scenario through in her mind, stirring up a ruckus where a soft little man could get his neck broken by some dockworker. But that still meant the law. It still meant questions.
So they drank, she played up to them and enjoyed Terry squirming and worrying, played it all the way and hoped to keep them there till maindawn, when the owner came.
Terry rang up her charges on his own card, Terry glowered at her and beckoned her over, but she ignored it until he picked up the phone.