Chic laughed sharply. ‘That's a good one. And I'll give you back Julie's left foot.'
‘Jesus.' Vince stared at him, unable to believe his ears. ‘You're depraved or something.'
‘Not at all. I'm in a very bad position, careerwise. All I have to bargain with is your ex-wife. What am I supposed to do? Sink obligingly into oblivion? The hell with that; I'm fighting to exist.' Chic seemed calm, fully rational.
‘Do you love her?' Vince said.
Now, for the first time, his brother's composure seemed to leave him. ‘What? Oh sure, I'm out of my mind with love for her -- can't you perceive that? How can you ask?' His tone was violently bitter. ‘That's why I'm going to trade her back to you for a job at Karp. Listen Vince, she's a cold, hostile cookie -- she's out for herself and no one else. As far as I can ascertain she came up here merely to hurt you. Ponder that. I tell you what. We've got a bad problem here, you and I, with Julie; it's ruining our lives. You agree? I think we should take it to an expert. Frankly it's too much for me. I can't solve it.'
‘What expert?'
‘Any expert. For instance the building marital guidance counsellor. Or let's take it to the last remaining psychoanalyst in the USEA, that Dr Egon Superb they told about on the TV. Let's go to him before they shut him down, too. What do you say? You know I'm right; you and I'll never manage to thrash this out.' He added. ‘And come out alive, anyhow the two of us.'
‘You go.'
‘Okay.' Chic nodded. ‘I'll go. But you agree to abide by his decision. Okay?'
‘Hell,' Vince said. ‘Then I'll go along, too. You think I'm going to depend on your verbal report of what he says?'
The door of the apartment opened. Vince turned. There in the doorway stood Julie, with a package under her arm.
‘Come back later,' Chic said to her. ‘Please.' He rose to his feet and walked towards her.
‘We're going to see a psychiatrist about you,' Vince said to Julie. ‘It's settled.' To his brother he said, ‘You and I'll split the fees. I'm not going to get stuck with the whole tab.'
‘Agreed,' Chic said, nodding. Awkwardly -- or so it seemed to Vince -- he kissed Julie on the cheek, patted her shoulder. To Vince he said, ‘And I still want that Job at Karp und Sohnen Werke, no matter how this comes out, no matter which of us gets her. You understand?'
Vince said, ‘I'll see what I can do.' He spoke grudgingly, with massive resentment. It seemed to him too much to ask.
But after all, Chic was his brother. There was such a thing as family.
Picking up the telephone, Chic said, ‘I'll call Dr Superb right now.'
‘At this time of night?' Julie said.
‘Tomorrow, then. Early.' With reluctance Chic set the phone down again. ‘I'm anxious to get started; this whole business weighs on my mind, and I've got other problems that are more important.' He glanced at Julie. ‘No offence meant.'
Stiffly, Julie said, ‘I haven't agreed to go to a psychiatrist or abide by anything he says. If I want to stay with you -- ‘
‘We'll do what Superb says,' Chic informed her. ‘And if he says for you to go back downstairs and you don't then I'll get a court order to bar you from my apartment. I mean it.' Vince had never heard his brother sound so hard; it surprised him. Probably it was due to Frauenzimmer Associates folding up. Chic's job was his whole life, after all.
‘A drink,' Chic said. And crossed to the liquor cabinet in the kitchen.
To her talent scout, Janet Raimer, Nicole said, ‘Where did you manage to dig up that?'
She gestured towards the folk singers twanging their electric guitars and nasally intoning away at the microphone in the centre of the Camellia Room of the White House. ‘They're really awful.' She felt thoroughly unhappy.
Businesslike and detached, Janet answered brightly, ‘From the conapt building Oak Farms in Cleveland, Ohio.'
‘Well, send them back,' Nicole said, and signalled Maxwell Jamison who sat, bulky and inert, on the far side of the large room. Jamison at once clambered to his feet, stretched, and made his way to the folk singers and their microphone.
They glanced at him. Apprehension showed on their faces and their droning song began to trail off.
‘I don't want to hurt your feelings,' Nicole said to them, ‘but I guess I've had enough of ethnic music for this evening. Sorry.' She gave them one of her radiant smiles; wanly they smiled back. They were finished. And they knew it.
Back to Oak Farm Conapts, Nicole said to herself. Where you belong.
A uniformed White House page approached her chair.
‘Mrs Thibodeaux,' the page whispered. ‘Assistant State Secretary Garth McRae is now waiting in the Easter Lily Alcove for you. He says you're expecting him.'
‘Oh yes,' Nicole said. ‘Thank you. Give him some coffee or a drink and tell him I'll be in shortly.'
The page departed.
‘Janet,' Nicole said, ‘I want you to play back that tape you made of your phone conversation with Kongrosian. I want to see for myself just how sick he is; with hypochondriacs you can never be certain.'
‘You understand there's no vid portion,' Janet said. ‘Kongrosian had a towel -- ‘
‘Yes, I realize that.' Nicole felt irritable. ‘But I know him well enough to tell by his voice alone. He gets that reticent, introverted quality when he's genuinely in distress. If he's just feeling sorry for himself he becomes garrulous.' She stood up, and at once the guests stood, too, here and there in their places throughout the Camellia Room. There were not many of them tonight; the hour was late, almost midnight, and the current programme of artistic talent was slender.
This was distinctly not one of the better evenings.
‘I'll tell you what,' Janet Raimer said archily. ‘If I can't do better than this, than the Moonrakers -- ‘ She gestured at the folk singers, who now were glumly packing up their instruments. ‘I'll arrange a programme entirely of the best of Ted Nitz' commercials.' She smiled, showing her stainless steel teeth. Nicole winced. Janet, sometimes, was just too much the witty professional woman. Just too amusing and poised, and wholly identified with this powerful office; Janet could be sure of herself any time and this bothered Nicole. There was no way to get at Janet Raimer.
No wonder every aspect of life had become for Janet a kind of game.
On the raised dais, a new group had replaced the defunct folk singers. Nicole examined her programme. This was the Las Vegas Modern String Quartet; they would in a moment, be playing a Haydn work, despite their august title. Maybe I'll go see Garth now, Nicole decided. Haydn seemed to her, with all the problems she had to cope with, a bit too nice. A bit too ornamental, not substantial enough.
When we get Goering here, she thought, we can bring in a brass band, street style, to play Bavarian military marches. I must remember to tell Janet that, she told herself. Or we could have some Wagner. Didn't the Nazis dote on Wagner? Yes, she was sure of that. She had been studying history books about the period of the Third Reich; Dr Goebbels, in his diaries, had mentioned the reverence felt by high Nazi officials at a performance of The Ring.
Or perhaps it was Meistersinger.
We could have the brass band play arrangements of themes from Parsifal, she decided with a secret spasm of amusement. In march tempo, of course. A sort of proctological version, just right for the Ubermenschen of the Third Reich.
Within twenty-four hours the von Lessinger technicians would have the conduits to 1944 completed. It was weird but perhaps by tomorrow at this time Hermann Goering would be here in this era, plucked from his own time period by the most wily of the White House negotiators, skinny, small, elder Major Tucker Behrans. Practically a der Alte himself, except that Army Major Behrans was alive and genuine and breathing, not a mere simulacrum. At least not as far as she knew. Although sometimes it seemed that way, seemed to her that she existed in the centre of a milieu comprised entirely of artificial creations of the cartel system, of A.G. Chemie conspiring with Karp u. Sohnen Werke in particular. Their commitment to ersatz reality ... it was frankly too much for her. She had, over the years of contact with it, developed a sense of pure dread.