The Mysterious Case of Betty Blue (5 page)

Nobody’s perfect, he thought
wildly.

“
Please don’t leave me,
Betty.” Tears sprang at last from his eyes, bringing a kind of
madness with them. “Oh, God, please don’t leave me.”

She held his hand and comforted him as
he cried on her shoulder, body wracked by spasms of
grief.

“
Betty. Betty.
Betty.”

“
Scott.”

“
Oh, God, why
me?”

“
Scott.”

She held him as he sobbed, stroking
his hair and whispering his name.

Around them, outside of the open
windows, curtains billowing in another surprisingly warm breeze,
the sounds and the life of the city went on, cheerful, robust, and
vigorous for all of its faults.

In here it was all pain, and poverty,
and deprivation, and now it would get even worse because now Scott
had a much better idea of what he was missing. Now he knew how much
better life could actually be, if only a man caught a break once in
a while.

A real good break that didn’t kill you
with happiness one minute and then cast you into the depths of hell
the next.

If only a man had a friend, a
companion—someone to love, for fuck’s sakes. Scott had no one to
talk to.

If only.

“
Scott.”

Those vacant eyes stared hopelessly
where her face would be.

“
Betty.”

He tried to pull away, to sit up, and
to just try and think it through.

It was obvious enough.
Three-point-eight million.

“
Yeah, they’ll never stop
looking for you.”

He sniffled, back in control for the
most part.

“
Fuck.”

She squeezed his hand, saying
nothing.

“
I need you.”

“
Yes. That was my original
assessment.”

He half-laughed, and half-sobbed at
those words.

“
Betty.”

“
Scott.”

There wasn’t much to say.

“
I’m not letting you go.
We’ll think of something.”

“
Scott, the longer I stay
here, the more likely it is that something will go wrong. I don’t
want to see you in trouble.”

He sighed, unwilling or unable to
accept it.

“
Betty. I love you so
much.” How to say it? “I haven’t loved anybody, not even myself, in
too many years. I don’t think I can stand it any more—not after
you.”

“
Scott. I can’t endanger
you any further.”

“
Sure you can.”

“
Scott. What do you mean
by that?”

“
What are you going to do,
just take off and leave me here?” Scott’s face twisted in an agony
of emotions, all of them feeding the big boil of pain and pus on
his psyche. “I can’t take it. What do you expect me to do? Just
forget? Just get over it?”

“
Scott. This was
wonderful. Our time together is something I will always
treasure.”

He gripped her hands
fiercely.

“
We’ll go
together.”

“
What? Oh, Scott. My poor
love. Scott. You don’t know what you’re saying.”

“
They’re looking for one
robot. We’ll be two people together. We can travel. We can cook up
a story. What we need is a plan, Betty.”

He fell forwards onto her upper body,
clinging to Betty Blue.

“
Please, Betty. Please
don’t leave me.”

There were some noises and Betty
picked up the sound of the landlady’s tread on the
stairs.

She put a finger over Scott’s
lips.

“
Hush, Baby.”

Scott closed his eyes, tried to
staunch the tears and the fear and the despair.

He had to get control over himself and
make her understand what she was doing to him.

Weren’t there three rules of robotics
or something?

He’d read that as a kid, before he
grew up and lost his vision.

Betty knew the facts better than he
ever could. To her mind, it was impossible. What they had to do was
irrational.

They had to do something irrational,
in the face of impossible odds.

“
Betty?”

“
Yes, Scott?” Her voice
was subdued.

“
Do you trust
me?”

She stroked his hair and kissed him
and he fell silent.

The sound of Mrs. Jarvis and her
vacuum cleaner, roaring and banging in the hallway outside, was of
no great reassurance.

Sooner or later, Betty’s luck had to
run out.

As for Scott, it already had. Scott’s
luck had run out years before.

Wasn’t it time he caught a real
break?

For much of his adult life he had done
nothing but think. Time had always been the one thing he had plenty
of. Scott was a man with a little too much time to
think.

If only he had learned what to do with
it.

They could sure use some ideas right
about now.

***

They had talked it out, and while it
was desperate, it was completely unorthodox, upon which Scott had
insisted.

“
We have to do something
they would never anticipate.” Hopefully she could take it on faith.
“We have to do something completely unpredictable, something they
would never expect.”

She had outlined all the methods which
they would have to avoid, or evade, or elude, methods by which she
and he could be seen, recorded and identified. They faced a
daunting prospect. Betty was monitoring hundreds of channels at all
times, but her own recent files were blocked by police and original
company protocols. Having anticipated this, she had a backup file
ready-made. It was disturbing to know they were probing not just
for her, but at her and in her.

“
You know they’re going
right by the book, and routine, on this one.”

The state would be relying on manpower
and technology, Scott told her. It would be relying on its very
ubiquity. The eyes were everywhere. One of the reasons the cops
weren’t swarming all over the vicinity, was because they expected
to solve the case by other means. They were counting on some data,
a sighting, a recorded image, by the all-pervasive passive means at
their disposal. Someone would find her facing into a corner in a
blind alley, feet still going. He explained to her just exactly how
they would think. Her battery must have died, her brain had a short
circuit in it, or something like that.

Sooner or later someone would try to
flog the parts, if nothing else. Sooner or later the cops or the
waste disposal people would find a leg in a dumpster.

She took some convincing, but Scott
could be persuasive, and he had a good mind when he focused on a
problem.

***

The time had come and they were ready,
with darkness falling and the weekday commuter traffic at its
peak.

Scott would be lost in the crowd within
two minutes, unless someone professional already had them under
surveillance—in which case why would they watch and
wait?

Why not just march in and grab
her?

They had the right, as Scott put
it.

She ruffled his hair and then smoothed
it down again. She put his hat on for him.

“
All right. Off you go. I
love you, Scott.”

They stood in the centre of the living
room.

Scott was all outfitted, with his long
cane and his dark glasses. He was wearing a white trench-coat to
make him more visible. Scott was going to stand out like a sore
thumb. He had his three shopping bags, two empty ones inside of the
other. He had a small day-pack on his back. He had his bus pass, a
sixty-dollar a month value as the government was fond of saying
when asked why the disabled must live sixty-five percent below the
poverty line.

Criminals lived better, and that was
okay with Scott Nettles.

That’s because he was about to become
one.

We’re moving on up in the
world.

It’s about fucking time,
too.

Damn, but this felt good.

She had some money, but they had
decided it was better if she avoided crowds and cameras altogether.
This would not be easy but they had disguised her to some extent
with different clothing, an old pea jacket, and a big red bandanna
for a head scarf.

He could only imagine the
effect.

Damn them all.

“
I love you too,
Betty.”

He smiled. It was a beautiful thing to
see, or so he had been told.

“
Don’t you worry about me,
Baby. I’ve been doing this for a long time.”

She did up the buttons on his
jacket.

“
I know,
Scott.”

“
I’ll be there.” His smile
was gone. “Just make sure you show.”

A hard lump of concrete or something
obstructed his throat, and while swallowing was hard enough,
getting the words out was something else.

“
Promise, Betty. Please
promise me. Please.”

She kissed him lightly on the lips and
gave him one last hug.

“
Don’t you worry, Scott. I
promise. I will never lie to you, Scott.”

Her face was moist.

“
You’re wet—what is that?”
In wonder, he reached up and touched her cheek.

He nodded, face pulling downwards, grim
with the thought of separation.

The odds were worse than fifty-fifty,
he thought.

There’s no way she’s going to show.
It’s a just a way of getting me out of the way while she bolts for
freedom.

To start crying now would be too much
for him. That would be it and it would be over.

He steeled himself with false hope and
fake courage.

“
All righty then.” His
head swiveled and then his body followed his decision. “Let’s do
this.”

She held the door and carefully closed
and locked it after his departure.

She had everything they might
reasonably need or could possibly carry, packed in two pieces,
mismatched as to colour and size, of hard-sided plastic
luggage.

Scott had all the cash he could find in
the house, including a fistful of change. Scott had a backpack. He
had his bank debit card. He had his credit card, passport, birth
certificate, anything they could think of. Betty’s raw physical
strength meant that poor Scottie would have clothes, socks,
underwear, and they had a supply of food. Upon her recital of the
items included, Scott figured it was good for four or five days, or
enough to get them out of the city and most probably the state.
Short and erratic steps all the way.

***

He was surprisingly cheerful, having
made the decision.

Scott was buoyed up by the sheer
novelty of it.

For whatever reason it felt right, and
Scott had been plenty fed up with his lot in life for a very long
time.

Maybe now we can get someone to kill
me.

Scott laughed out loud at that
one.

He liked the feeling of being bad. It
was a ray of hope.

Is this guts? I always thought I
already had them.

This is something new.

This was the chance to do something
different, for Scott to reassert his manhood, although he would
hardly put it in those terms. The sounds from directly ahead
indicated that he had made it to the street, but then Scott wasn’t
the subject of the manhunt.

He paused, hand on the
latch.

Off in the building, some people next
door, to the west of Scott’s place, were having an argument. They
were one floor up.

There were eight million stories in the
naked city. Betty and Scott’s was merely one of them.

Scott opened the door, and stepped out
into bustling pedestrian traffic. He turned right and began to
walk.

***

Her internal clock counted off the
seconds, the minutes and the hours and then it was time to
go.

She made a quick review of the
situation.

Mrs. Jarvis snored safely in her
armchair and other people moved about in their units. There was
nothing else happening. All she had to do was leave
quietly.

Betty made sure to turn off the light
and lock the door behind her.

Picking up the suitcases, she made her
way down the stairs, the only sound of her passing the creak of
oaken steps and the click of the latch in the vestibule.

Chapter Five

Olympia Cartier reminded herself that
frowning gave one age lines.

“
Darryl.”