She said: “I was just wondering if it had anything to do with that nonsense yesterday.”
Bron raised a questioning eyebrow. But of course she couldn’t see it behind the full-head mask. “How do you mean?”
“Well, all day long you were leaving your hands around on various desks and tabletops with your fingers in the age-old socially acceptable position—rather like now ...”
He looked down. “Oh ...” He closed his hands on the graphpaper; that was one of the unfortunate habits that was left over from his youthful profession; sometimes he signaled without even knowing it.
“—and I wasn’t being too responsive. I just thought you’d pick up on it Half the time, I thought you actually had. But then, we didn’t get it really straightened out till we were halfway home. And T made that crack to the Spike—she told me she’d told you, when I got back, all terribly apologetic. I guess theater people aren’t really known for their discretion.” Her hand dropped to her side. “What I said was pretty much joking.”
He laughed, leaned forward. The tunic pulled uncomfortably across his back. Cape folds, falling, whispered to the floor.
“And so was I. I hope you didn’t take any of that seriously—I didn’t.”
Her smile was worried. “Well ... I just thought I’d ask.”
“I’m glad you did. I’d feel terrible if you left thinking it was because of a silly remark like that. Really, I may—what was it?—be ‘... a louse who’s trying ...’ but, honestly, I’m not a monster. If it makes you feel better, I’d decided to ask for your transfer before any of that even happened.” He felt sorry for her, suddenly, through the annoyance of embarrassment. “Look, be honest with yourself. There I was, pawing all over you yesterday—T mean, I didn’t realize you weren’t interested. But that’s just the type I am. I find you very attractive. You certainly couldn’t have been looking forward to working with me all that much, with my carrying on like that—”
“You don’t mean,” she said, and even without her face he could tell she was frowning, “that you had me transferred because I wasn’t interested in you sexually ... ? I’ll be honest. That hadn’t even occurred to me!”
“Oh, no ... !” Inside the mask, he felt his face grow moist. “I just meant that you probably wouldn’t—You don’t really think that, do you? Because if you do, you’re just wrong! You’re very wrong!”
“Until Audri stopped me in the hall this morning, all I was thinking was that you’d made Metalogics sound like a fairly interesting subject. And I was rather looking forward to working in the department.”
“Well, thank you—” Without straining preposterously back, he could not see above her dark, delicate collarbone. “I’m glad at least I—”
“What it comes down to is: Is there any chance you might change your mind and keep me on?”
A surge of embarrassment and annoyance closed out all sympathy. He took his gloved hands from the desk and put them on his thighs, let them drop from his thighs, so that the voluminous double sleeves fell down about his wrists. Should he? Could he let her intimidate him like this? “No.” He took a breath, let it out. “I’m afraid I can’t.” He raised his head high enough to see her chin: it was moving a little oddly. “You can’t run a department that way. I’m sorry about the job, but—well, anything I say would just be silly at this point. My reasons have to do with a lot of things, which, since you aren’t in this department now, aren’t your concern. We have the Day Star program to rework where, yes, I could possibly use you. But I’ve just finished going over it again not ten minutes ago, and for all sorts of reasons, having to do with equally important projects, I just don’t want to do it now. It’s very simple and very straightforward: I just don’t need you, right now, for the jobs I have to do.” He took another breath and felt, to his surprise, somewhat relieved by his explanation. “Actually, I’m glad you came to see me. Because I wouldn’t have wanted you to leave thinking it was something personal.” Hoping he would never again have to set eyes on her, even so much of her as he could see now, he said: “Maybe we’ll run into one another at your co-op; someday we may even be able to have a drink and a laugh over it.”
“You said I should be honest,” came from somewhere above her shoulders. “Frankly, I hope I don’t see you or anyone else from this lame-brained funhouse for a good, long time. And that, I’m afraid, is completely personal!”
Bron’s jaw clamped. His mask slipped so that he could not see above her broad, chromium-cinched hips: they turned (not sharply, not angrily, but slowly and, if hips could look tired by themselves, tiredly) in the doorway, moved off into the corridor.
His cheeks were warm. He blinked, growing furious with the discomfort. While he’d been talking to her, he’d been trying to recall exactly why he’d wanted her gone. But she’d thrown him off with that incredible suggestion that it was because she hadn’t responded to his advances! Sometime yesterday—and, yes, it was before the Spike had related that stupid and insulting crack about his being a louse—he’d come to the decision. And, as a decision made, he’d stored it. Coming into the office that morning, in a swirl of black, he had gone straight to Audri’s office and laid it out.
Audri had said: “Oh ... well, all right.”
He’d gone to his own cubicle, gone to work; and had been feeling rather good until minutes ago ... It had been a logical decision. Still, for the life of him, he could not reconstruct the logic, or metalogic, that had generated it.
He thought: If you reach a conclusion validly, you don’t store all the work notes and doodles you’ve amassed on the way. Those are just the things conclusions are there to dispense with! (He crumpled a piece of paper that, looking at its gray, graphed corner sticking from the black-gloved knot, he realized he probably would need again.) She doesn’t like me and I don’t like her. You can’t work in an atmosphere like that. That’s logical!
He put the graphpaper down, pulled off one glove and, with a plastic graph template, began to clean his thumbnail. A bad adolescent nail-biter, he had, at the advent of his ephebic profession, finally broken the habit. But all his nails were now wider edge-to-edge than from cuticle to crown; which still looked a little odd. He didn’t like his hands and, with certain drugs, avoided looking at them at all. Well, today at least, his nails were filed, lacquered, and of even length.
For practical purposes, they looked ordinary enough.
He put the glove back on, pulled his cloak around his left shoulder, then his right and, at last able to use both hands, adjusted the head-mask.
His cheeks were still warm. On both, he knew, would be mottled, red blotches, just beginning to fade.
In the cafeteria, he was sitting at a just-plain-eating booth, pinching at the folds of a half-collapsed coffee bulb, when, glancing up, he saw Audri with her tray. “Hi, there,” she said and slid in across from him. “Ah ... !” She put her head, half masked on the left (clean and bright as a silver egg with an eye), against the padded back. “This has been a day!”
Bron grunted.
“My feelings exactly!” Silver covered the left side of Audri’s neck, her shoulder, one breast, down (below the tabletop now) over one hip, in a tight plastic skin that would have been quite svelte on anyone with less corners than Audri.
Bron reached up, lifted off his head covering, placed it on the wooden (an artificial cellular fiber indistinguishable from wood on any but micro graphic level) table, and looked at the puddle of dark veils, the shaded eye-holes, the black sequins that damasked the whole basketball-like affair. “Sorry about that transfer this morning. I hope she didn’t give you as much trouble about it as she gave me.”