Then Chuck came and got me for lunch. With his drooping mustache, he looked like a Scandinavian travel advertisement Haris had made some deerburgers, fried with onion. They sat me at the middle of the table, where I could get the full benefit of the love-buzzing, the hush whenever I spoke, the smiles and eye contact and shameless flattery. Yes, they all knew as soon as they saw me that I would be a wonderful addition to the group. Just wonderful. Just what they had been waiting for. Persival and Alvor sat alone at the other table, talking in low voices.
The conversation was slightly strained, and I guessed it was because they felt they should not talk about Nicky, but he was ever-present on the edge of memory. I made a few fruitless-efforts to steer the conversation toward politics and violence, but they fielded them deftly and threw to another base.
After cleanup, a screen was set up and a projector wheeled out. I thought I was going to hear a tape by the celebrated Sister Elena Marie, but it was a creaky old black-and-white motion picture about The Long March, with a noisy sound track, a voice-over with a marked British accent, a lot of ruing, shooting, and gesticulating. They marched across China and up into the hills and caves, while my chin kept dropping onto my chest and I kept waking with a start. It ended with a loud blast of martial music which roused me enough to get up and say good night and go back to my trailer. I couldn't find the light switch and finally gave up and went to bed in the dark.
I was awakened by the click of the latch on the flimsy door of the trailer, a stealthy and barely au- dible squeak as it was opened. I wondered if one of
The Green Ripper the team had decided to correct Persival's decision to keep me alive. I moved in the bunk until I had my shoulders against the wall, until I was braced to move as quickly as I had to.
The generator was silent, the encampment dark. Just enough starlight came through the window above the bunk for me to make out a pale figure moving toward me. It stopped a couple of feet away, and I heard a silky whisper of fabric, caught a faint scent of female, and realized that Nena or Stella was paying me a visit. I guessed I had been asleep for an hour.
She picked up a corner of the blanket and came sliding into the bunk, shuddering with the cold, reaching to embrace me. I faked a great start of surprise.
"It's me, Brother Thomas," she whispered. Yt's Stella."
So I was being gifted with the sallow blond lady with the inadequate jaw. '~Vhat's going on?"
'dwell. whatever you want to go on. Okay?" Vhose idea is this?"
What difference would that make?"
"lid like to know."
"You do a lot of talking, huh?"
I caught her questing hand by the wrist and took it away from me and said, "Is there anything wrong with wanting to know?"
"Look, are you okay? I mean, you make it with women?"
"Jesus Christ!" she said. And then, 'Tm sorry. That's blasphemy. But, you know, you are something else."
She turned onto her back, trying to separate herself from me totally, but the bunk was too narrow. Hip rested against hip, shoulder against shoulder.
"All it is," she said patiently, "you're new. Probably they don't want you being restless and wanting to sneak off or anything. So you get food and shelter and, once in a while, a piece of ass. What does it cost? Nothing but time, right?"
'Lou sound as if you did some hooking."
"I was into it. So?"
"Where was that?"
"So you're another one of those."
"Another what?"
'~hen I was a hooker, there was always a trick who wanted to know how I got into that line of work."
"Stella, settle down. Where are you going, anyway? Why the hostility? I can ask about you because I'm interested in you, can't I? Is there a house rule against that?"
She took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Novell, okay. I'm sorry. When I came in here, I was really ready, you know? I don't feel that way very often. But what happens, you want to talk. So I'm losing the edge. It's fading on me. I think I got that ready on account of Nicky dying. Death does it to
The Green Ripper me in a funny way, I guess. When somebody you know is suddenly dead forever, then I want to get laid. I've heard lots of people are like that. Like in shelters when there's bombing going on. Maybe it goes back to instinct. Like in animals. If people are dying, it's time to make more people and keep the population up. But there was a couple of years there when I couldn't have come no matter what."
"What do you mean by that?"
Of you want talk instead of tail, 1~11 give you talk. I'm from an absolutely nowhere place. Opportunity, Montana."
"Little west of Butte? South of Anaconda? Flint Creek Range and the South Fork?"
"Hey, you heard of it!" She turned and settled herself more comfortably, fitting the nape of her neck to my arm, one hand resting on my chest.
"Been through there. When did you leave?"
"A long time ago. I don't know who's left there, if anybody."
"Run away?"
"Sort of. With a girl friend. We got in with some rough people in Miami. I got busted for possession, and when I got out, I couldn't find her. A cop put me on the streets, hustling. Then one day he beat me up bad because he thought I was holding out, and I met some people from the Church of the Apocryphal"
"In Miami?"
"You'll find the Church everywhere these days.
What I was thinking, I could use the Church. They'd take care of me and keep that freak cop away from me. I'd been beaten real bad. What I was then, I was a dumb, selfish, ignorant teenage hooker. What I needed most was some rest from cruising the streets and taking the marks back to that motel room. When I was rested up, I'd take off. But the people in the Church, they knew what I was thinking every minute. They never gave me a minute alone. They loved me. They believed I was precious and they made me think of myself as pre cious to them. I was a lazy little slut, and they cured me of that. My God, I never worked so hard and so long in my life. It made hooking seem like picnics. Dumb dreary food and not enough sleep ever. Fifteen hours at a stretch, seeing stuff to strangers, walking the streets carrying candy and thread and junk, begging money, making quotas. My weight went down to minus nothing. A lot of my hair fell out. I had a scaly rash all the time. I forgot about sex. I stopped menstruating. My tits and my ass like to shrunk away to nothing. And when I was about to believe the life was going to kill me, suddenly I realized I was doing God's work, and that I wanted to drive myself even harder than they were driving me. And once I saw the Light and heard the Word, I started to get bet ter. I ate tons of that sorry food they served at the dorm, and it tasted delicious. And I began to seD more stuff. I made people buy it. I turned in big
The Green Ripper scores every night and slept like a baby. I smiled and sang all the time. The Church had put my head back on straight. For the first time in my life I was really part of something My life had meaning. I worked hard for the Church and for myself, and finally they picked me for a different kind of work."