Our Friends From Frolix 8 (9 page)

At the sound of their special knock, Kleo Appleton opened the door of the apartment. Home in the middle of the day? she wondered. Something must have happened.

And then she saw, with him, a small girl, probably in her late teens, well-dressed, with much makeup, and a white-toothed smile, as if of recognition.

‘You must be Kleo,’ the smiling girl said. ‘I’m very glad to meet you, after what Nick has said about you.’ She and Nick entered the apartment; the girl gazed around at the furniture, the wall colors: she appraised the decor expertly, seeing everything. It had the effect of making Kleo nervous and self-conscious, whereas, she realized, it ought to be the other way around. Who is this girl? she wondered.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m Mrs. Appleton.’

Nick shut the door behind the two of them. ‘She’s hiding from her boyfriend,’ he said to his wife. ‘He tried to beat her up and she got away. He can’t trace her here because he doesn’t know who I am or where I live, so she’s safe here.’

‘Coffee?’ Kleo asked.

‘“Coffee”?’ Nick repeated.

‘I’ll put on some coffee,’ Kleo said. She surveyed the girl and saw how pretty she was, despite her heavy makeup. And how little she was. The girl probably had trouble finding clothes small enough to fit her… a trouble I wish I had, Kleo reflected.

‘My name is Charlotte,’ the girl said. She had seated herself on the living room couch and was unbuckling her greaves. The wide, positive smile never left her face; she gazed up at Kleo with what seemed almost to be love. Love! For someone she had never seen before in her life.

‘I said she could stay here overnight,’ Nick said.

‘Yes,’ Kleo said. ‘The couch makes into a bed.’ She made her way to the kitchen area and poured three cups of coffee.
‘What do you take in your coffee?’ she asked the girl.

‘Look,’ Charlotte said, springing lithely up and coming toward her. ‘Don’t go to any trouble for me, honest. I don’t need anything, except a place to stay a couple of days that’s a place Denny doesn’t know about. And we lost him, we shook him off in all that traffic. So there’s really no chance of a—’ She gesticulated. ‘A scene. I promise.’

‘You still didn’t tell me what you want in your coffee.’

‘Black.’

Kleo handed her a cup.

‘This is wonderful coffee,’ Charlotte said.

Carrying two cups, Kleo went back to the living room, gave Nick his cup, seated herself on a black plastic chair. Nick and the girl, like two people in adjoining seats at a movie, sat down side by side on the couch.

‘Have you called the police?’ Kleo asked.

‘Call the police?’ Charlotte asked, with a puzzled expression. ‘No, of course not. He does this all the time; I just get out and wait – I know how long it lasts. And then I go back. The police? And have them arrest him? He’d die in jail. He has to be free; he has to go on sailing over great spaces, very fast, in that squib of his, the Purple Sea Cow we call it.’ She then sipped her coffee, earnestly.

Kleo pondered. She had mixed feelings, chaotic feelings.
She’s a stranger
, she thought. We don’t know her; we don’t know even if she’s telling the truth about her boyfriend. Suppose it’s something else? Suppose the police are after her? But Nick seems to like her; he seems to trust her. But if she is telling the truth, of course we ought to let her stay here. And then Kleo thought, She certainly is pretty. Maybe that’s why Nick wants her to stay here; maybe he’s got a – she searched for the word. A special interest in her. If she wasn’t so pretty, would he still want to let her in here to stay with us? But that did not sound like Nick. Unless he was unaware of his true feelings; he knew he wanted to help the girl but he didn’t actually know why.

I guess we should take the chance, Kleo decided.

‘We’d be very happy to have you stay with us,’ she said aloud, ‘for as long as you need to.’

At this, Charlotte’s face grew radiant with pleasure.

‘I’ll take your coat,’ Kleo said, as the girl wriggled out of it – Nick gallantly offering her help.

‘No, you don’t have to do that,’ Charlotte said.

Kleo said, ‘If you’re going to be staying here’ – she took the coat from Charlotte – ‘you’ll have to hang up your coat.’ She carried it to the single closet of the apartment, opened the door, reached for a hanger… and saw, in one of the coat pockets, a hastily rolled up pamphlet. ‘Cordonite writing,’ she said aloud, as she took it from the pocket. ‘You’re an Under Man.’

Charlotte ceased smiling; she looked anxious now, and it was obvious that her thoughts were moving rapidly as she hurriedly searched for an answer.

‘Then that whole story about her boyfriend,’ Kleo said, ‘it’s a lie. The tracks are after her; that’s why you want to hide her here.’ She carried the coat, and the pamphlet, back to Charlotte. ‘You can’t stay here,’ she said.

Nick said, ‘I would have told you, but—’ He gestured. ‘I knew you’d react this way. And I was right.’

‘It’s true about Denny,’ Charlotte said in a mild, steady voice. ‘It
is
him I’m hiding from. The tracks aren’t after me. And you just had a random check, Nick told me. This apartment won’t be coming up again for – hell, for months. Maybe years.’

Kleo stood holding out Charlotte’s coat to her.

‘If she goes,’ Nick said, ‘I go with her.’

‘I wish you would,’ Kleo said.

‘You mean that?’ Nick asked.

‘Yes, I mean it.’

Charlotte rose to her feet. ‘I’m not going to split the two of you up. It isn’t fair – I’ll go.’ She turned to Nick. ‘Thank you anyway,’ she said. She accepted her coat, put it on, moved toward the door. ‘I understand how you feel, Kleo,’ she said as she opened the door. She smiled her bright – but now frozen – smile. ‘Goodbye.’

Nick moved rapidly – he strode after her, stopped her at the door by seizing her by the shoulder.

‘No,’ Charlotte said, and with what seemed unusual force
by a woman, she twisted loose. ‘So long, Nick. Anyhow we shook the Purple Sea Cow. That was fun. You’re a good driver; a lot of guys have tried to shake Denny off when he’s in his ship, but you’re the only one who’s actually managed to do it.’ She patted him on the arm and walked briskly out into the hall.

Maybe it is true about her boyfriend, Kleo thought. Maybe he did try to beat her up; maybe we ought to let her stay. Anyway. In spite of the fact… but, she thought, they didn’t tell me: not her, not Nick. Which amounts to a lie, by omission. She thought, I’ve never known Nick to do that before. Here he’s put us in all this danger and he hasn’t said – I just happened to see the pamphlet in her coat.

And, she thought, he might actually leave with her, as he says. Then he really must be involved with her, she thought. They can’t have just met: it wouldn’t be reasonable for anyone to go so far in giving help to a stranger… except that in this case the stranger is beautiful, small and helpless. And men are that way. There is a weakness in their structure which comes out in situations like this. They no longer think or act reasonably; they do what they think of as ‘chivalry’. At whatever cost to themselves, and, in this case, to their wife and child.

‘You can stay,’ she said to Charlotte, following after her into the hall, as the girl stood struggling to get her coat back on; Nick stood blankly, as if he could no longer follow – and hence participate in – the situation.

‘No,’ Charlotte said. ‘Goodbye.’ She ran, then, in full flight down the corridor, like a wild bird.

‘God damn you,’ Nick said to Kleo.

‘God damn you, too,’ Kleo said, ‘trying to bring her in here to get us bursted. God damn you for not telling me.’

‘I would have told you when the opportunity arose,’ he said.

‘Aren’t you going after her?’ Kleo asked. ‘You said you would.’

He stared at her, his face mobile with wrath, his eyes small and crammed with darkness. ‘You’ve sentenced her to forty years in a work camp on Luna; she’ll roam the streets with
no money and no place to go, and eventually a prowl car will stop and they’ll question her.’

‘She’s a smart girl; she’ll get rid of the pamphlets,’ Kleo said.

‘They’ll still get her. For something.’

‘Then go on and make sure she’s all right. Forget us; forget Bobby and me and go see if she’s okay. Go ahead.
Go!
’

His jaw retracted, as if, she thought, he is going to hit me. Look what he has learned already from his new girl friend, she thought. Brutality.

However, he did not hit her. Instead, turning, he ran up the corridor after Charlotte.

‘You bastard!’ Kleo yelled after him, giving not a damn who in the building heard her. Then, returning to the apartment, she slammed and locked the door; she put the night bolt in place, so that even with his key he could not open the door again.

They walked hand-in-hand along the busy street with its many shops, through heavy sidewalk traffic, neither of them speaking.

‘I wrecked your marriage,’ Charley said after a time.

‘No you didn’t,’ Nick said. And it was true: his showing up with the girl had brought to the surface only that which was already there. We lived a life of scrabbling fear, he thought, a life of worry and pitiful terrors. Fear Bobby wouldn’t pass his test; fear of the police. And now – the Purple Sea Cow, he thought. All we have to do is worry about it strafing us. Thinking that, he laughed.

‘What’s funny?’ Charley said.

‘I was imagining Denny dive-bombing us. Like with one of those old Stukas they used back in World War Two. And everybody scattering to get out of the way, thinking war had broken out with North-West Germany.’

Hand-in-hand they walked, each wrapped for a time in his own thoughts. Then, all at once, Charley said, ‘You don’t have to hang around me, Nick. Let’s cut the cord; you go back to Kleo – she’ll be glad to see you. I know women; I
know how fast they get over being mad, especially at something like that, where what menaces her – in other words, me – is gone. Right?’

It was probably true, but he did not answer; he had not as yet found his way out of the tangle of his own thoughts. What, in toto, had happened to him today? He had discovered that his boss Earl Zeta was an Under Man; he had joined with Zeta in drinking alcohol; they had gone to Charley’s – or Denny’s – apartment; there had been a fight, and he had gotten out of there with Charley, rescuing her, a complete stranger, with the help of his bulky, strong boss.

And then the business with Kleo.

‘Are you sure the PSS doesn’t know about your apartment?’ he asked Charley. In other words, he thought, have they picked me as a suspect, yet?

‘We’re very careful,’ Charley said.

‘Are you? You left that pamphlet in your coat for Kleo to find. That wasn’t very frosty.’

‘I was all unhooked. From slipping the Purple Sea Cow. I never do things like that, usually.’

‘Do you have any more on you? In your purse?’

‘No.’

He took her purse from her and looked through it. It was true. He then searched the pockets of her coat, as they walked along. True of her coat, too. But Cordon’s writing also circulated in the form of microdots; she could have several of them on her, and, if they picked her up, the track boys of the PSS would find them.

I guess I don’t trust her, he decided. After she let that happen with Kleo. Obviously, if she could do it once—

He thought, then. Probably the tracks are watching the apartment, monitoring it in some way. Who comes in; who goes out.
I
came in;
I
went out. So, if that’s the case, I’m listed.

So it’s already too late to go back to Bobby and Kleo.

‘You look so grim,’ Charley said, in a merry, what-the-hell voice.

‘Christ,’ he said, ‘I’ve crossed the line.’

‘Yes, you’re an Under Man.’

‘Wouldn’t that make anybody look grim?’

Charley said, ‘It should fill you with joy.’

‘I don’t want to go to a detention work camp on—’

‘But it’s not going to end that way, Nick. Provoni is coming back and everything will be okay.’ Holding his hand, she swung her head, cocked it, peered at him birdwise. ‘Cheer up, and stand up straight! Look happy! Be happy!’

My family, he thought, is broken and by her. We have nowhere we can go – they’d find us in a motel easily – and—

Zeta, he thought. He can help me. And the responsibility, to a great extent, is his: Zeta set off everything that’s happened today.

‘Oh,’ Charley said, blinking as he tugged her to a ped overpass. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To the United Front Slightly Used Squibs lot,’ Nick said.

‘Oh, you mean to Earl Zeta. Maybe he’s back at the apartment, fighting with Denny. No, I guess Denny must have gotten away by now; anyhow, that’s what we thought when you were driving, because of that one sight of him on the roof. Oh, good; now I can enjoy some more of your driving ability. Do you know, as good as Denny is, and he’s really good, you’re better? Have I told you that before? Yes, I guess I did.’ She seemed rattled. And, all at once, ill at ease.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked as they entered the up-ramp which would take them to the fiftieth level lot where he had parked his squib.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid Denny will be looking there. Hanging around, skulking, watching. Just
watching
.’ She snarled out the word, savagely, startling him – he hadn’t seen this side of her before. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I can’t go there. You go alone. Let me off somewhere, or I’ll just take the down-ramp and—’ She made a whisking motion with the flat of her hand. ‘Out of your life forever.’ Once more she laughed, in the manner that she had always before. ‘But we can still be friends. We can communicate by postcard.’ She laughed. ‘We’ll always know one another, even if we never meet again. Our souls have meshed, and when souls have meshed, one can’t be destroyed without the other dying.’ She was
laughing uncontrollably, now, virtually hysterically; she pawed at her eyes, giggling through her flattened hands. ‘That’s what Cordon teaches and it’s so funny; it’s just so goddam funny.’

He took hold of her hands and lifted them away from her face. Her eyes shone with brilliance, star-like eyes fixed on his own, searching deeply into his, as if obtaining her response not from what he said but from what his own eyes showed.