Part 18 (2/2)
”Yes, Jane,” she said. ”For three more days. And then I'm withdrawing your print from the precinct computer.”
”That's for my own good, too, is it?”
”You know the expression, Jane, I must be cruel only to be kind.”
”Yes,” I said. ”Shakespeare. Hamlet.” I drew in a hard impossible breath. ”Spoken by a lunatic who's just killed an old man behind a curtain, and who has a deep-seated psychological desire to sleep with hismother .”
I slammed down the switch so violently I broke the skin and my hand started to bleed.
It was raining fiercely now. Vaguely through the rain I could see someone else was waiting outside to come in and use the phone.
It became a matter of enormous importance then, not to let them see my face or what sort of state I was in. Though I wasn't even sure myself. So I pretended I hadn't hit the switch, and went on listening, and talking to the receiver-speaker for a few moments. My face was burning, and my hands were cold. I couldn't really think about what had just happened. ”No, Mother,” I said to the dead phone.
”No, Mother. No.” I'd feel better when I got out of the stuffy kiosk. Better when I'd walked to the apartment, dodged the caretaker after the rent, gone, with my arms empty of packages, into the room empty of Silver. Of course, he wouldn't be there. Perhaps he'd guessed. Perhaps robots picked up special telepathic communications from other machines. I wasn't solvent. So he might be now with Egyptia, his rich legal owner. What was I going to do?
My head tucked down, I pushed open the door of the kiosk and almost fell out. The cold and the water hit me like a wave and I seemed to be drowning. Someone caught me, the person waiting for the phone, and a horrible embarra.s.sment was added to my illness.
”I'm all right,” I insisted.
And then a scent, a texture, the touch itself-I looked up through the rain, and my head cleared and the world steadied-”You!”
”Me!”
Silver looked down at me, amused, compa.s.sionate, unalterable. His hair was nearly black with rain and plastered over his skull as if in the shower. Beads of rain hung and spilled from his lashes. His skin wasmade of rain.
”How did you-”
”I saw you come out of the store, when I was several blocks away. I could have caught you up, but I'd have had to run fast, and you want me to pretend I'm human, don't you? So I walked after you, and waited till you finished your call.”
”Silver,” I said, ”it's all over. Everything's hopeless. But I'm so glad you didn't leave me.”
”Jane, if you need to cry, couldn't you cry against me and not into that pillow?”
”Wh-Why?”
”Because the green stuff you covered it with obviously isn't dye-proofed, and your face is acquiring a most abnormal green pattern.”
I started up and ran to the mirror. What I saw there made me laugh and weep together. I washed my face in the bathroom and came back. I sat down beside him.
”I don't want to cry against you, or you to comfort me, or hold me anymore,” I said, ”because soon I'll have to do without you, won't I?”
”Will you?”
”You know I will. I told you what happened. There's no money. No food, no rent. No chance of work- even if I coulddo anything. I can't stay here. And she-my mother-won't let me bring you to the house, I'm sure of it. Even if she did, she'd sort of-what can I say?-dissect my feelings... She doesn't mean to hurt me. Or-Oh, I don't know anymore. The way I spoke to her was so odd. It wasn't even like me, speaking. But I do know it's hopeless.”
”I saw the caretaker,” Silver said. ”I went down when you were crying your way through the shawls. He thinks we're actors from a street company that's folded. I didn't tell him that, by the way, he told me. He was having a good day, no pain and no side-effects. He said we can sit on the rent for another week.
Everyone else does, and at least you paid the first quarter.”
”But there won't be any more money in a week.”
”There could be. And no need of a labor card, either.”
”No.”
”Yes.”
He drew the guitar to him, and reeled off a reeling wheel of a song, clever, funny, adroit, ridiculous, to the accompaniment of a whirling gallop of runs and chords. Breathless, I watched and listened. His eyes laughed at me. His mouth makes marvelous shapes when he sings and his hair flies about as if it's gone mad.
”Throw me a coin, lady,” he said seductively, as he struck the last note.
”No. It must be illegal.”
”People do it all the time.”
”Yes,people . But you can do it better than people. It can't be fair. Can it?”
”We won't pitch where anyone else sings. We won't ask for cash. We'll just play around with some music and see what happens.”
”Supposing someone recognizes you-what you-are?”
”I have a suspicion,” he said, ”that you'll find itis legal. Look at it this way,” he stared at me seriously over the guitar, absurdist as only he could be. ”You bought a performing seal that can do tricks no other performing seal can do. Then you run out of money. So you put the seal on the street with a ten-ton truck balanced on its nose, and you walk round with a hat.”
”You're not a seal.”
”I don't want a ten-ton truck on my nose, either.”
”It seems-I can't imagine how it could work out.”
He put the guitar aside, took my hands and held them under his chin. He looked up into my face.
”Listen,” he said, ”is it just that you'd prefer to go back to your house in the clouds? If I've stopped amusing you, if you're no longer happy-”
”Happy?” I cried. ”I was only ever happy with you. I was only ever alive with you!”
”Are you sure? Because you have a number of options. If you're simply worrying about my side of things, let me remind you, for the hundredth time, that I'm a robot. My function is service, like any piece of metal junk you buy in a corner store to sh.e.l.l eggs.”
”Stop it,” I said.
”It's true.”
”It isn't.”
”It is.”
He lowered his head to rest it in my hands. His face was hidden, and my fingers were full of his hair.
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