"He made her into a prostitute, that's what he gave her."
"I don't care!" Maury shouted. "That's just talk, a word, nothing more. You get back here to Boise. Our partnership is off. You have to get out of R & R ASSOCIATES. I'm calling Sam Barrows and telling him I have nothing to do with you; I want him to keep Pris."
"Goddam you," I said.
"You as my son-in-law? You think I gave birth to her--in a manner of speaking--so she could marry you? What a laugh. You're absolutely nothing! Get out of here!"
"Too bad," I said. But I felt numb. "I want to marry her," I repeated.
"Did you _tell_ Pris you're going to marry her?"
"No, not yet."
"She'll spit inyour face."
"So what."
"So what? So who wants you? Who needs you? Just your defective brother Chester and your senile father. I'm talking to Abraham Lincoln and finding out how to end our relationship forever." The phone clicked; he had hung up on me.
I could not believe it. I sat on the unmade bed, staring at the floor. So Maury, like Pris, was after the big time, the big money. Bad blood, I said to myself. Carried by the genes.
I should have known. She had to get it somewhere.
What do I do now? I asked myself.
Blow my brains out and make everyone happy; they can do fine without me, like Maury said.
But I did not feel like doing that; the cold calm voice inside me, the instinctive voice, said no. _Fight them all_, it said. _Take them all on_... Pris and Maury, Sam Barrows, Stanton, the Lincoln; stand up and fight.
What a thing to find out about your partner: how he really feels about you, how he looks at you secretly. God, what a dreadful thing--the truth.
I'm glad I found out, I said to myself. No wonder he threw himself into the Civil War Soldier Babysitter simulacrum; he was _glad_ his daughter had gone off to be Sam K. Barrows' mistress. He was proud. He read that _Marjorie Morningstar_, too.
Now I know what makes the world up, I said to myself. I know what people are like, what they prize in this life. It's enough to make you drop down dead right on the spot, or at least go and commit yourself.
But I won't give up, I said to myself. I want Pris and I'm going to get her away from Maury and Sam Barrows and all the rest of them. Pris is mine, she belongs to me. I don't care what she or they or anybody else thinks. I don't care what evil prize of this world they're busy hungering after; all I know is what my instinctive inner voice says. It says: Get Pris Frauenzimmer away from them and marry her. She was destined from the start to be Mrs. Louis Rosen of Ontario, Oregon.
That was my vow.
Picking up the phone I once more dialed.
"Northwest Electronics, good morning."
"Give me Mr. Barrows again. This is Louis Rosen."
A pause. Then the deeper-voiced woman. "Miss Wallace."
"Let me talk to Sam."
"Mr. Barrows has gone out. Who is calling?"
"This is Louis Rosen. Tell Mr. Barrows to have Miss Frauenzimmer--"
"Who?"
"Miss Womankind, then. Tell Barrows to send her over to my motel in a taxi." I gave her the address, reading it from the doorkey. "Tell him not to put her on a plane for Boise. Tell him if he doesn't I'm coming in there and get her."
There was silence. Then Miss Wallace said, "I can't tell him anything because he's not here, he went home, he honestly did."
"I'll call him at home, then. Give me his number." In a squeaky voice Miss Wallace gave me the phone number. I knew it already; I had called it the night before.
I jiggled the hook and called that number.
Pris answered the phone.
"This is Louis," I said. "Louis Rosen."
"For goodness sakes," Pris said, taken by surprise. "Where are you? You sound so close." She seemed nervous.
"I'm here in Seattle. I flew in by TWA last night; I'm here to rescue you from Sam Barrows."
"Oh my god."
"Listen, Pris. Stay where you are; I'm driving right on over. Okay? You understand?"
"Oh no," Pris said. "Louis--" Her voice became hard. "Wait just a second. I talked to Horstowski this morning; he told me about you and your catatonic rampage; he warned me about you."
"Tell Sam to put you in a cab and send you over here," I said.
"I thought you were Sam calling."
"If you don't come with me," I said, "I'm going to kill you."
"No you're not," she said in a hard calm voice; she had regained her deadly cold poise. "You just try. You low-class creep."
I was stunned. "Listen," I began.
"You prole. You goof ball. Drop dead, if you think you're going to horn in. I know all about what you're up to; you fat-assed fart-faces can't design your simulacrum without me, can you? So you want me back. Well go to hell. And if you try to come around here I'll scream you're raping me or killing me and you'll spend the rest of your life in jail. So think about that." She ceased, then, but she did not hang up; I could hear her there. She was waiting, with relish, to hear what I had--if anything--to say.
"I'm in love with you," I told her.
"Go take a flying fling. Oh, here's Sam at the door. Get off the phone. And don't call me Pris. My name's Pristine, Pristine Womankind. Go back to Boise and dabble with your poor little stunted second-rate simulacra, as a favor to me, please?" Again she waited and again I could think of nothing to say; nothing anyhow that was worth saying. "Goodbye, you low-class poor ugly nothing," Pris said in a matter-offact voice. "And please don't annoy me with phone calls in the future. Save it for some greasy woman who wants you to paw her. If you can manage to find one that greasy, ugly and low-class." This time the phone clicked; she had at last hung up, and I shook with relief. I trembled and quaked at having gotten off the phone and away from her, away from the calm, stinging, accusing, familiar voice.
Pris, I thought, I love you. Why? What have I done to be driven toward you? What twisted instinct is it?
I sat down on the bed and closed my eyes.
14
There was nothing to do but return to Boise.
I had been defeated--not by powerful, experienced Sam K. Barrows, not by my partner Maury rock, either, but by eighteen-year-old Pris. There was no use hanging around Seattle.
What lay ahead for me? Back to R & R ASSOCIATES, make peace with Maury, resume where I had left off. Back to work on the Civil War Soldier Babysitter. Back to working for harsh, grim, bad-tempered Edwin M. Stanton. Back to having to put up with interminable readings-aloud by the Lincoln simulacrum from _Winnie the Pooh_ and _Peter Pan_. Once more the smell of Corina Lark cigars, and now and then the sweeter smell of my father's A & Cs. The world I had left, the elecronic organ and spinet factory at Boise, our office in Ontario . .
And there was always the possibility that Maury would not let me come back, that he was serious about breaking up the partnership. So I might find myself without even the same drab world I had known and left; I might not even have that to look forward to.
Maybe now was the time. The moment to get out the .38 and blow off the top of my head. Intead of returning to Boise. The metabolism of my body was speeding up and slowing down; I was breaking up due to centrifugal force and at the same time I groped out, trying to catch hold of everything near me. Pris had me, and yet in the instant of having me she flung me away, ejected me in a fit of cursing and retching. It was as if the magnet attracted particles which it simultaneously repelled; I was caught in a deadly oscillation.