The Scream (17 page)

Squiggles that ofttimes looked an awful lot like the waveforms that were her stock in trade.

So she did it: scoring some secondhand med-tech equipment, reaching up and tapping in. Most of the readings were too random to register as anything but noise; and even some of that was usable, at least as a filtering agent.

And then, a few of them . . .

A few of the readings were periodic. They ran in discernable cycles. They could be looped. And once looped, she could use them . . .

She experimented on herself at first, sampling and blending, shaping the sounds of her life. Her brain waves, awake and asleep and even meditated into as pure an alpha state as she could attain. Her day-to-day emotions. Joy. Anger. Anxiety. Excitement.

She collected these readings and replicated the waveforms. And from there she began to weave it all into the growing tapestry of her music.

The results were surprising, and surprisingly beautiful; the melding of the various timbres of her being into hybrid instruments. The effect was subtle and deep, like the presence an underground stream exerts upon the world above it.

The symphony grew over the months, until about eight weeks ago, when she decided that the symphony was missing something. She was almost finished with the first movement; she needed an accomplice for the second. She wanted to capture Love. She needed help.

And she had found it. In Pete.

He was certainly willing enough; that was for sure. He didn't even mind the many electrodes stuck to their naked bodies; he thought they were kinky and made several characteristically crude references about their being "wired for love."

"Save it for the meters," she replied dryly, pressing him back onto the bed and powering up. She loaded a disk into the sampler's drive and then worked him over like a professional, with tongue and hands and lips, alternately tending the needs of the flesh and the patchwork jumble of sensors
that connected to their scalps and ran down their spines until the heat and the motion of the sweat ultimately broke the connections to the higher points and left only enough concentration to hold on to the lower ones, as their priorities shifted and he pressed deeper and deeper and
-

She considered the experiment a major failure at the time, but neither of them cared. It wasn't until sometime afterward that Jesse discovered the true extent of the failure.

And the success.

Because she discovered, in the aftermath, that they had tapped some very usable stuff indeed. In fact, the traces were like nothing she had seen before. Curiously powerful: particularly the signal she recorded at the moment of orgasm.

On the screen, it read like a spike with a long, ghosting trail; through the speakers, with a little tinkering, it sounded like a clear steel bell. She'd gone on to use it repetitively in the weeks that followed, in the second movement. For emphasis.

In the solitude of her bed last night, she suddenly realized what that little spike of energy might just be. Maybe more than a bell. Maybe more than she could handle.

Maybe the
spark
itself: the exact moment of miracle.

And disaster.

Which was why she was in the car right now, pulling into the northern edge of downtown Harrisburg, knowing damned well where she'd be stopping first and foremost. Just as she knew that she probably shouldn't have played that tape last night.

Things were hard enough as they stood, and she already knew what she had to do. She didn't need to be reminded.

She just needed to get it over with.

The Susquehanna Women's Services clinic was a store-front operation situated in a quaint little red-brick, three-story building on Second Street near the Taylor Bridge. Parking wasn't too tough-Jesse hooked around the block and found a space for the Suzuki on one of the narrow cross-streets that offered a view of the flat, rocky river beyond. The morning rush hour crowd was bustling in that small-city way-but hell, after New York, just about everything seemed quaint. Even a crowd.

One of the more pleasant aspects of culture shock. She realized it had been a long time since she'd been in any urban environment whatsoever; even the comparatively low buzz of Harrisburg was a welcome jolt of energy. Maybe she'd even have a little lunch afterward. If she wasn't too wiped out.

The clinic was dead ahead.

She walked up to the lace-curtained door. Took a deep breath.

Get on with it
.

And stepped inside.

The place smelled of air-conditioning, pine-fresh disinfectant, and lilac-scented stick-ups. After the fresh air and real smells of the mountain, it was nauseating. She looked around: tile floors, imitation-walnut paneling, the kind of solid pine living room suites regularly proffered in
Parade
magazine with a free black and white TV thrown in. Lumpy 3-D pictures of cute little puppies and kittens adorned the walls.

There were two other women in the waiting room, paging nervously through a stack of well-worn magazines. Jesse sighed deeply and stepped up to the receptionist's window.

"May I help you?" the receptionist inquired with a voice reeking of purely professional courtesy.

"Yes, I have an appointment."

"Name?"

"Jessica Malloy."

The receptionist checked the logbook, nodding perfunctorily. "You're early," she noted, then added, "but that's okay. Just fill out these forms and bring them back, and someone will see to you shortly."

Jesse took the forms over to one of the tacky chairs and sat down. The inner door opened and a nurse emerged, inviting the older of the two already-waiting women to come inside. The remaining one looked all of about nineteen and scared shitless. Jesse looked at her and offered her best pillar-of-strength smile; it was pretty clear that this was her first time.

"Don't worry. It really isn't the end of the world."

"Yeah," the girl whispered nervously. "It just feels like it."

Jesse nodded and looked back at her forms.
Name. Address. Date of birth. Medical history. Maternal history. Single or Married?

She'd been through all of this before. She was already projecting through the rest of the process. . . .

After the forms, the ritual flash of cash
. She'd been in too big a hurry yesterday to even ask them how much and had brought two hundred along just to be safe.

Then came the blood test/urine sample, the tour through the procedure in all its stainless-steel, rubber-tubed glory, the final okay, and onward to the Undressing Room to be outfitted in the latest in bare-assed hospital chic. Another half hour in the inner waiting room, shivering with more old magazines as you waited for your number to come up.

And eventually . . . sometime later this century by the feel of it . . .

Next!

You wake up in the recovery room, feeling dazed and grogged and Roto-Rootered to hell and back. You get up. You get dressed.

You get the hell out of there
.

Of course, some women seemed to take it all in stride; sit around scarfing the juice and cookies and trading horror stories like veterans at a VFW post. Others broke down for a while, quietly wringing out their inevitable sense of loss and regret.

Jesse preferred to do her crying later.

At home.

Alone.

Which was why this should work out just fine: everyone would be cleared out when she got back. The drive to Philly would give her plenty of time to shake it off.

Plenty of time.

She stood with her forms, crossed the tiny room, and handed them through the window to the receptionist, who perused them expressionlessly. Finally she looked up, smiling that thoroughly professional smile, and said, "Thank you. Someone will see you shortly."

Jesse was ready to fork over the cash, but no request was made. The receptionist turned back to her busy busy book.

Hmmph
. she thought.
In New York they'd probably be turning me upside-down and shaking me by now
. More culture shock. This was Pennsylvania, after all; she figured they just must do things differently here.

She returned to her seat just as the younger girl was ushered in.
And then there was one
. . .

Another fifteen excruciating minutes crawled by. She frittered the time away, looking at back issues of
Time
and the
National Enquirer
. She picked up one issue and a card fell out into her lap. Probably a subscription renewal insert or such. She held it up, and was momentarily stunned by the three words emblazoned in bold red strokes on the front.

Abortion Is Murder
.

Jesse stared at the card hard before balling it up.
Bastards
. She'd known about antiabortionists' tactics for a long time, but had never actually gotten kidney-punched by them before.

This was a favored trick. There were others. She'd known friends who had breached their picket lines, gotten blood thrown on them; friends who'd been assaulted, psychologically and otherwise, by pious, impassioned do-gooders who behaved as though the decision to go through with it were some sort of callous romp. The stupid motherf-

"Miss Malloy?"

Jesse looked up; the nurse was standing at the door, waiting. Jesse nodded. The nurse nodded back, unsmiling.

"Miss Malloy, please, come in."

This is it
, she told herself. There was nothing else to say.

Then she stood.

And she followed.

"Your record states that this is not your first time."
The corridor was long and low-ceilinged: more tile, more paneling
.

"Yes; there were two others."

"Mmm-hmmm."
Make a little check. Turn right. Into a room with a short row of lockers and a short, low bench. Table with a vase of plastic flowers
. "Please get into this."
A powder-blue paper smock thrust in her face. One size fits none. An accompanying plastic wristlet, her name typed on it
.

Strange: no briefing, no show-and-tell, no tour through the shiny tools of the trade. Oh, well. They do it different here. She knows you know the paces. She leaves, you stay.

Pull off T-shirt. Kick off boots. Pull down jeans. Slip out of panties. Belly barely bulges. Good. It'll flatten right out
.

Into the johnnie. Hate the fuckers: waxen-feeling, stiff. Butt hangs out as you swish swish swish into the next room. Next room itself: dim lit, empty. Pine-fresh scent. More paneling, more magazines. A battered Zenith and a VCR on a stand: odd. Silently playing an "I Dream of Jeannie" rerun off some insipid cable station. Whatever.

Sit down. Cold: cold plastic bucket seat, too much air-conditioning. Sounds of someone crying softly in another room. Major Healey is watching Jeannie blink Master back to his space capsule. Wait for the blood test, and the fresh urine sample.

Wait: for your turn.

Next
. . .

The door opened.

A tall, softly imposing woman came in. She looked at Jesse and smiled: it was genuine smile, and slightly sad. She was fortyish, dressed in a very nice summer linen suit with a tasteful scarf at her throat and a tasteful gold pin on her lapel. She had Jesse's file in one hand. She walked up and held out the other.

"Miss Malloy, I'm Lenore Kleinkind, the director of this facility. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm a big admirer of yours."

"Thank you." Jesse felt extremely awkward, stripped naked in the face of fandom.
Can we get on with this please?
She smiled and shifted in the cold plastic bucket.

Lenore sat down beside her, hands folding neatly over her file. She stared at Jesse intensely: brow knitted, consternation playing across her features.
What's the deal? Let's go already
. . .

"Jessica-may I call you Jessica?-we have a problem." Her face leaned close: a kind face. Intense. Concerned. "Your medical history indicates that you've already had two abortions. Is this correct?"

Jesse nodded. Lenore shook her head.

"Jessica, frankly we're very concerned." Pause.
What is she talking about?

"Jessica, there's something very important that I think you should be aware of. With two prior pregnancies under your belt, so to speak, another abortion may well risk sending your body mixed signals: in effect, you may be inadvertently training yourself to spontaneously miscarry."

Jesse stared at her as if she'd just fallen off the back of a truck. "What the hell are you talking about? That was five
years
ago."

"That's hardly the point, Miss Malloy," Lenore said flatly, unequivocally. "We're talking about another
life
here."

"
What?
"

Lenore Kleinkind reached into her jacket pocket, producing a small silver remote control. She pointed it at the VCR and punched a button. The VCR whirred dutifully, engaging a tape already cued up.

"You're a very influential woman, Jessica. A visible woman. A lot of young women look up to you as a role model."

The tape cut in with the sound turned down, showing a pair of anonymous, gloved hands wielding a long rubber hose
.

Jesse's stomach curled up into a tight little fist.

On the screen: an anonymous pair of hairless legs, spread wide in the shallow steel troughs
.

On the screen: a jar, filling in hitching gulps with red red goo
.

On the screen: a jumble of red, spongy matter on a white white background, shiny spattered forceps pushing it this way and that
.

"You have a responsibility, Jessica. To your audience."

On the screen: tiny tattered arms and legs
.

"To our children."

Tiny hands
.

"To
your
child."

Tiny feet
.

Jesse stared blankly, eyes swimming. She refused to look at the video. She felt nauseous.
Where are my clothes?
Her eyes rolled around, searching for anything to key in on.