The Cat Who Walks Through Walls (27 page)

“Oh, I love you!”

“I love you, too, in a sweaty, vulgar fashion.”

“Uh…now?”

“I need a bath.”

“We can bathe later.”

I had just retrieved Gwen’s other baggage, temporarily forgotten outside the door—and happily untouched—and we were getting ready to bathe when Gwen bent over the little tree, then picked it up and put it on the shelf table by the dumbwaiter so she could get at it better. “Present for you, Richard.”

“Goodie. Girls? Or liquor?”

“Neither. Although I understand both are readily available. The desk manager wanted a cut of my fee when I bought Bill a key here.”

“Bill is here?”

“Overnight, in the cheapest single. Richard, I didn’t know what to do with Bill. I would have told him to find his own doss in Bottom Alley if I hadn’t heard something Rabbi Ezra said about rats. Dam it all, there did not used to be rats down there. Luna City is getting to be a slum.”

“I’m afraid you’re right.”

“I fed him, too—there is a Sloppy Joe up the line. He eats enough for four—perhaps you’ve noticed?”

“I have.”

“Richard, I could not abandon Bill without feeding him and finding him a safe bed. But tomorrow is another story. I told him that I expected him to shape up—before breakfast.”

“Hmmph. Bill would lie for a fried egg. He’s a sad sack, Gwen. The saddest.”

“I don’t think he can lie convincingly. At least I gave him something to think about. He knows that I am angry with him, that I despise his notions, and that the free lunch is about to shut its doors. I hope I have given him a sleepless night. Here, dear—” She had been digging into the potting soil, under the little maple. “For Richard. Better wash them.” She handed me six cartridges, Skoda 6.5 mm longs or monkey copies.

I picked one up, examined it. “Wonder woman, you continue to amaze me. Where? When? How?”

Praise made her look sunnily happy and about twelve. “This morning. In Kong. Black market, of course, which simply means finding which counter to look under at Sears. I hid my Miyako under Tree-San before I went shopping, then stashed the ammo there in leaving Xia’s place. Sweetheart, I did not know what sort of search we might have to stand if things got sticky in Kong—and they did, but Auntie got us loose.”

“Can you cook?”

“I’m an adequate cook.”

“You can shoot, you can rassle a rolligon, you can pilot a spacecraft, you can cook. Okay, you’re hired. But do you have any other skills?”

“Well, some engineering. I used to be a pretty good lawyer. But I haven’t practiced either one lately.” She added, “And I can spit between my teeth.”

“Supergal! Are you now or have you ever been a member of the human race? Careful how you answer; it will be taken down in writing.”

“I decline to answer on advice of counsel. Let’s order dinner before they shut down the kitchen.”

“I thought you wanted a bath?”

“Do. I’m itchy. But if we don’t get the order in soon, we’ll have to get dressed and go out to Sloppy Joe’s…and I don’t mind Sloppy Joe but I do mind having to get dressed. This is the first completely relaxed, quiet time I’ve had alone with my husband for, oh, ages. In your suite in Golden Rule before that silly eviction notice.”

“Three days.”

“As little as that? Truly?”

“Eighty hours. Fairly busy hours, I grant you.”

The Raffles has a good kitchen as long as you stick to chef’s choice; that night it was meatballs with Swedish pancakes, honey-and-beer sauce—an odd combination that worked. Tossed fresh salad, oil and wine vinegar. Cheese and fresh strawberries. Black tea.

We enjoyed it but an old shoe, suitably sautéed, would have been acceptable, so long had it been since we had eaten. It could have been fried skunk and I would not have noticed; Gwen’s company was all the sauce I needed.

We had been happily chomping away for a half hour, making no attempt to be elegant, when my darling noticed the brass plate in the rock—too busy before then. Understandable.

She got up and looked at it, then said in a hushed voice, “I’ll be a Hollywood hooker. This is the place! Richard, this is the very cradle of the Revolution! And here I’ve sat, belching and scratching, as if this were just any hotel room.”

I said, “Sit down and finish your dinner, love. Three out of four hotel rooms in Luna City have signs something like that.”

“Not like
that
. Richard, what is the number of this room?”

“Doesn’t have a number—a letter. Room L.”

“‘Room L’—yes! This is the place! Richard, in any nation back dirtside, a national shrine this important would have an eternal flame. Likely a guard of honor. But here—Somebody puts up that little brass plaque, and it’s forgotten. Even on Free Luna Day. But that’s Loonies. Weirdest mob in the known universe. My word!”

I said, “Darling girl, if it pleases you to think that this room is truly what that sign says—fine! In the meantime sit back down and eat. Or shall I eat your strawberries?”

Gwen did not answer; she did sit down, then kept quiet. She merely toyed with the fruit and cheese. I finally said, “Sweetheart, something is bothering you.”

“I won’t die from it.”

“Glad to hear it. Well, when you feel like talking, I’m all ears. Meanwhile I’ll simply fan you with them. Don’t feel hurried.”

“Richard—” Her voice sounded choked. I was surprised to see tears slowly creeping down each side of her nose.

“Yes, dear?”

“I’ve told you a pack of lies. I—”

“Stop right there. My love, my lusty little love, I have always believed that women should be allowed to lie as much as they need to and never be taxed with it. Lies can be their only defense against an unfriendly world. I have not quizzed you about your past—have I?”

“No but—”

“Again stop. I haven’t. You volunteered a few things. But, even so, I’ve shut you up a couple of times when you were about to have an attack of pernicious autobiography. Gwen, I didn’t marry you for your money, or for your family background, or your brains, or even for your talents in bed.”

“Not even for the last? You haven’t left me much.”

“Oh, yes, I have. I appreciate your horizontal skills and your enthusiasm. But competent mattress dancers are not uncommon. Take Xia, for example. I conjecture that she is both skilled and eager.”

“Probably twice as skilled as I am, but I’ll be damned if she’s more eager.”

“You do all right when you get your rest. But don’t distract me. Do you want to know what it is that makes you so special?”

“
Yes!
Well, I think so. If it’s not booby-trapped.”

“It’s not. Mistress mine, your unique and special quality is this: When I’m around you, I’m happy.”

“Richard!”

“Quit blubbering. Can’t stand a female who has to lick tears off her upper lip.”

“Brute. I’ll cry if I goddam well feel like it…and I need this one. Richard, I love you.”

“I’m fond of you, too, monkey face. What I was saying was that, if your present pack of lies is wearing thin, don’t bother to build up another structure filled with solemn assurances that this is at last the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Forget it. The old structure may be threadbare—but I don’t care. I’m not looking for holes or inconsistencies because I
don’t
care. I just want to live with you and hold your hand and hear you snore.”

“I
don’t
snore! Uh…do I?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t had enough sleep in the last eighty hours for it to be a problem. Ask me in fifty years.” I reached across the table, tickled a nipple, watched it grow. “I want to hold your hand, listen to your snores, and occasionally—oh, once or twice a month—”

“Once or twice a month!”

“Is that too often?”

She sighed. “I guess I must settle for what I can get. Or go out on the tiles.”

“Tiles? What tiles? I was saying that once or twice a month we’ll go out to dinner, see a show, go to a night club. Buy you a flower to pin in your hair. Oh, oftener, I guess, if you insist…but too much night life does interfere with writing. I intend to support you, my love, despite those bags of gold you have squirreled away.” I added, “Some problem, dear? Null program? Why the expression?”

“Richard Colin, you are beyond doubt the most infuriating man I have ever married. Or even slept with.”

“Did you let them sleep?”

“Oh, you
mother!
I shouldn’t have saved you from Gretchen. ‘Once or twice a month’! You set me up for that. Then sprang the trap.”

“Madam, I don’t know what you are talking about.”

“You do so! You think I’m a sweaty little nymphomaniac.”

“You’re not
too
little.”

“Keep doing it. Go on. Push me hard enough and I’ll add a second husband to our marriage. Choy-Mu would marry us—I know he would.”

“Choy-Mu is a dinkum cobber, too right. And I’m sure he would marry you; he doesn’t have sand in his skull. If you so elect, I’ll try to make him feel welcome. Although I hadn’t realized that you were that well acquainted with him. Were you speaking seriously?”

“No, damn it. I’ve never made a practice of plural marriage; coping with one husband at a time is complex enough. Certainly Captain Marcy is a nice boy but he’s much too young for me. Oh, I won’t say that I would turn him down for a night of bundling if he asked me gracefully. But it would be simply for fun, nothing serious.”

“
I
won’t say that you would turn him down, either. Well, let me know ahead of time, if convenient, so that I can gracefully fail to notice. Or stand jigger. Even hand out towels. Lady’s option.”

“Richard, you’re entirely too agreeable.”

“You want me to be jealous? But this is Luna, and I’m a Loonie. Only by adoption but nevertheless a Loonie. Never a groundhog, banging his head against a rock wall.” I paused to kiss her hand. “My lovely mistress, you are indeed small and not massy. But your heart is big. Like the loaves and fishes, you are a rich plenitude for as many husbands and lovers as you choose. I am happy to be first—if I am first—among equals.”

“‘Is this a dagger which I see before me?’”

“No, an icicle.”

“Really? Let’s grab it before it melts.”

We did, but just barely; I was tired. Afterwards I said, “Gwen, why are you frowning? Did I do so poorly?”

“No, love. But I still have those lies on my mind…and this time please don’t change the subject. I know that the inscription on that brass plate over there is correct, because I knew three of those four. Knew them well; I was adopted by two of them. Beloved, I am a Founding Father of Luna Free State.”

I said nothing because sometimes there is nothing one can say. Shortly Gwen wiggled and said almost angrily, “Don’t look at me that way! I know what you’re thinking; 2076 is quite a while back. So it is. But, if you’ll get dressed, I’ll take you down to Old Dome and show you my chop and thumbprint on the Declaration of Independence. You might not believe that it’s my chop…but I can’t fake a thumbprint. Shall we go look?”

“No.”

“Why not? Want to know my age? I was born Christmas Day 2063, so I was twelve and a half when I signed the Declaration. That nails down how old I am.”

“Sweetheart, when I decided to become a native Loonie or a reasonable facsimile, I studied the history of Luna to help me get away with it. There is no Gwendolyn among the signers. Wait a second, not saying you lied—saying you must have had another name then.”

“Yes, of course. Hazel. Hazel Meade Davis.”

“‘Hazel.’ Later married into the Stone Gang. Leader of the children’s auxiliaries. Um, Hazel was a redhead.”

“Yes. Now I can stop taking some pesky pills and let my hair go back to its natural color. Unless you prefer it this shade?”

“Hair color isn’t important. But—Hazel, why did you marry me?”

She sighed. “For love, dear, and that is true. To help you when you were in trouble…and that is true, too. Because it was inevitable and that is true, also. For it is written in history books in another time and place that Hazel Stone returned to Luna and married Richard Ames aka Colin Campbell…and this couple rescued Adam Selene, chairman of the Revolutionary Committee.”

“Already written, eh? Predestined?”

“Not quite, my beloved. In other history books it is written that we failed…and died trying.”

“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale
Her infinite variety: other women cloy
The appetites they feed; but she makes hungry
Where most she satisfies—”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
1564-1616

So this girl tells the school nurse, “My brother thinks he’s a hen.” The nurse answers, “Oh, goodness! What’s being done to help him?” The girl answers, “Nothing. Mama says we need the eggs.”

Are a woman’s delusions anything to worry about? If she’s happy with them? Was I duty bound to take Gwen to a shrink to try to get her cured?

Hell, no! Shrinks are the blind leading the blind; even the best of them are dealing from a short deck. Anyone who consults a shrink should have his head examined.

Close scrutiny showed that Gwen was possibly over thirty, probably under forty—but certainly not as old as fifty. So what was a gentle way to handle her claim that she was born more than a century ago?

Everyone knows that natives of Luna age more slowly than groundhogs who have grown up in a one-gee field. Gwen’s delusion seemed to include the notion that she herself was actually a Loonie instead of the native groundhog she had claimed to be. But Loonies do age, albeit slowly, and Loonies more than a hundred years old (I had met several) do not look only thirty-odd years old; they look ancient.

I would have to try hard to let Gwen think that I believed her every word…while believing none and telling myself that it did not matter. I once knew a man who, sane himself, was married to a woman who believed devoutly in astrology. She was forever buttonholing someone and asking what sign her victim was born under. That sort of antisocial nuttiness must be much harder to live with than Gwen’s gentle delusion.

Yet this man seemed happy. His wife was an excellent cook, a pleasant woman (aside from this hole in her head), and may have been a bedroom artist equal to Rangy Lil. So why should he worry about her syndrome? She was happy with it, even though she annoyed other people. I think he did not mind living in an intellectual vacuum at home as long as he was physically comfortable there.