Hank waved and Roderick waved back. Indica was of course upstairs with Bax.
Ab and Hank disappeared, and Roderick saw the giant armpit again.
Bye-bye-bye. Roderick trundled into the hall and looked up the dark stairs. Indica and Bax were up there playing a game, he could hear them laughing and grunting. There must be some way of getting up all those stairs, maybe if he grabbed the newel-post and tilted his bottom so his tracks could grip the carpet — it was easy. One step, two steps, this little finger went to market, queen, king, bishop, knight, rook, here he was half way up, whatever you do don’t look down, but no one’s ever climbed the South face before… I, I can’t hold on, slipping… hang on, two hands reaching for each other, fingers almost touching when the distant rumble of an avalanche… I, I’m not gonna make it, Bill. You damned cripple, get up out of that chair and walk! Fingers reaching out, clutching for support…
He was at the top, gliding along to the door that was open just a crack to lay a finger of light across the landing carpet. Roderick530 looked in, knowing it was forbidden… Do not fence with me, Amanda, that room is always kept locked, I have my reasons…
Bax and Indica were sitting on the side of the bed. Indica was sitting on Bax’s lap, facing him. They were not wearing any clothes. Their faces were different, as though Bax had just swung open the gull-wing door of his new Ghirlandaio and invited her to jump in for a new motoring experience, while Indica had just used Anatase, the fragrance that makes him thrill to be a thrall, or as though they were expecting something to happen. They gasped and groaned and kept wrestling around, nobody winning. Every now and then Indica might give out with a No or a Yesyes, but Bax said nothing.
Roderick tired of waiting for something to happen. He counted those fingers and toes he could see, he noticed that Indica had bigger chests than Bax, and then he started looking over the room.
There was a funny bicycle-thing in the corner, you’d need fingers to grip the handles. On the wall there was a picture of a woman standing balanced on one toe. Toes are just little fingers, you need them for everything here. There was a picture of a whale, above a table covered with little bottles and jars. A policeman would put his finger into a jar and taste it and nod at the other policeman, saying it was the real stuff all right, the real stuff.
There was a telephone by the bed. Whoever calls the detective can’t say it over the phone, meet him at Pier 13, only he’s always dead when the detective gets there. And as soon as the detective leaves somebody’s office they start pushing buttons on the phone, ‘Some nosey P.I. is asking a lot of questions. The wrong questions.’ Then he sits chewing his finger-nails before he reaches for a gun. With fingers you could do just about anything, squeeze a trigger…
Indica said, ‘Yes no yes no no yes yes no yes no!’ Bax gasped and they rolled apart. There were marks on his shoulders where her red finger-nails had been digging in.
Roderick looked at his own red claw. Red, but not a finger, not a toe. With real fingers you could do anything, make a phone call, taste the real stuff, count up ten little fingers and ten littler fingers…
Bax lay there like a boxer, like when they’re taping your fingers before your comeback fight, years ago you killed your pal and quit the ring…
Rings, sure, you could wear rings, a fancy ring like the homicidal maniac who’s always stalking somebody and all you ever see is his fancy ring… third finger left hand with this ring, yes, wedding-rings, engagement-rings, all at low, low prices, one carat, two carat…
Fighting, fists, sure, you could make a fist. ‘Quantrell, you had this coming for a long time, and I aim…’ Or a fistful of money for seven straight passes at the crap table, or fist counting, one potato, two potato…
Something made him see all the fingers in the world, fingers held out to beg bread from the French aristocrats, gripping the bars of a cell in Death Row, pressing a doorbell, thumbing a ride, squeezing a trigger, playing church-and-steeple, throwing down a gauntlet or drawing off a slim glove, giving signals (‘Contact!’ ‘Scram!’ ‘Peace!’), bidding at an auction, gripping a precipice as a heel comes down to crush them. He saw chorus girls filing their nails as they talked over their dates; priests making a gesture as though they held invisible martini glasses; the suspect being finger-printed in the old precinct house; the safe cracker sanding his finger-tips; the fingers of an artist framing his model; the quivering fingers of a drunken brain surgeon; the cruel fingers of a pianist clawing the keyboard; the gnarled hands of a diamond-cutter; the plump hands of a Roman emperor…
He couldn’t be sure until he counted again, and still he had to think it over until dawn, when Bax and Indica were gone and Hank came home.
‘Mommy not here this morning, eh Roddy?’
‘Bax,’ said Roderick.
‘Uh-huh. She’s not back. Probably went off to her goddamned health ranch again. Boy, if she had to pay a few of the bills from that place… Still, it’s just you and me today, Roddy. Have to get our own breakfasts — I mean, I have to aw shit, why do I bother trying to talk to you, might as well talk to this coffee-maker here.’
‘Bax.’
‘Tell you what, let’s surprise her, okay? She’s always complaining about how I never fix anything around here, let’s make a big effort and really try to whip this place in shape, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘I’m gonna fix every damn thing in the place, that or bust my balls trying. One thing, I see she went and spilled nail-varnish all over the coffee table in the den. So first I better add that to the list.’
Roderick followed him to his desk and watched him finger the keyboard of his home computer.
Table, coffee, teakwood, refin top.
ejt 2 hrs.
complete when?
After a moment the computer replied:
Earliest complete 94 weeks. ok?
‘Ninety-four weeks before I can sand down a little table? What the hell here, Roddy, looks like the old computer’s playing tricks on us. Let’s try again.’ He tapped. ‘Same damned answer. Hmm. Maybe what I need is a new scenario with the earliest possible window for table, coffee.’ He punched some new instructions and the computer began reeling off pages of explanation involving work-flow diagrams, urgency priorities, job-class and materials-acquisition charts. Hank could barely understand half of it, and that half made him uneasy.
Urgent jobs, such as
