they didn’t like the scheme, or had some objection to any of its principals, whatever pledges he had seemed to give up to this point were easily enough deniable. If they did, he could probably write his own ticket upward, Level Eight for sure, possibly higher—
The telephone chimed softly.
Farkas was reluctant to let go of his fantasy of Level Seven life. But he answered anyway. There were only two people in the universe who knew where he was, and—
Yes. It was Jolanda. “Everything comfortable?” she asked.
“Very fine, yes.” Then, quickly—too quickly, perhaps: “I wonder, Jolanda, do you have any plans for dinner this evening? There are Kyocera people I could call, but if you would be willing to join me—”
“I’d love to,” she said. “But Marty and I are spending this evening with some people we know over here in Berkeley. Isabelle Martine, Nick Rhodes—she’s a kinetic therapist, my closest friend, a fascinating wonderful woman, and he’s a brilliant geneticist who’s with Samurai—adapto research, I’m sorry to say, really awful stuff, but he’s such a sweet man that I forgive him—”
“Tomorrow, then?” Farkas asked.
“That’s why I’m calling, actually. Tomorrow night—”
He leaned forward tensely. “Perhaps we could have dinner in San Francisco, just you and I—”
“Well, that would be pleasant, wouldn’t it? But what would I do with Marty? And in any case I want you to come over here, to see my sculptures—” A self-conscious giggle. “To
“Yes. Of course. How sad for him. And perhaps during the day, then, Jolanda—would it be possible to have lunch, do you think?”
Farkas felt absurd, pursuing her this way. But there was always the chance that—
No. There wasn’t.
Gently Jolanda said, “I’d love to, Victor. You know I would. But we have to wait until Marty goes back to Israel, don’t we? I mean, he’s here now, he’s staying with me, and it would all be terribly awkward—surely you see that. But later— after the thing with Valparaiso Nuevo is done with—there’ll be plenty of time then, and not just for lunch. I wish it could be some other way right now, but it can’t. It just can’t.”
“Yes,” Farkas said, dry-throated. “I understand.”
“Tomorrow night, then—at my house in Berkeley—”
He made a note of the transit code, blew her a kiss, broke the contact.
He was amazed at how irritated he felt: amazed, too, at his own sudden obsessiveness. It was a long time since he had behaved this way. Never, perhaps. Why did this woman matter so much? Because she was unattainable just now, maybe? There were other breasts in the world, other thighs, other lips. It seemed a little dangerous to him, his fascination with this Jolanda.
Through the hotel’s guest-services menu Farkas arranged a companion for himself for dinner and three hours afterward. He had long ago learned to rely on professional companionship in times of physical needs. A good professional was almost always quick to hide her initial reaction to his appearance; and there were no troublesome involvements afterward. Farkas had never cared for emotional involvements. But the physical side of things—ah, that!—there was no escaping it indefinitely, he thought. A good thing that ways and means were available for dealing with it.
He took another brandy from the minibar, and sat back to wait for his companion to arrive.
25
“I shouldn’t,” carpenter said, as Rhodes picked up his glass and started to refill it. “I don’t handle this stuff as well as you do.”
“Indulge yourself,” said Rhodes. “Why the fuck not?” Amber fluid splashed into the glass. Carpenter had forgotten whether they were drinking rye or bourbon. Bourbon has a sweeter taste, he told himself; but he had lost the capacity to distinguish flavors. It seemed to him that he had been drinking steadily all evening. Certainly Rhodes had, but Rhodes always did.
Have I been matching him one for one? Carpenter wondered.
Yes. Yes, I think I have.
“Indulge yourself,” Rhodes said. He had said that already, hadn’t he? Was he starting to repeat himself, now? Or had Carpenter simply generated a replay of Rhodes’ remark of a moment earlier in his mind? He wasn’t sure.
It didn’t matter. “Don’t mind if I do,’’ Carpenter said. “As you so eloquently put it, Nick: Why the fuck not?”
Carpenter had reached the Bay Area earlier that day, after a wild and indistinctly remembered drive back from Chicago. The car had been on automatic the entire time, programmed to seek the shortest route between Illinois and California, stopping only when it needed to recharge itself and paying minimal attention to speed limits, and Carpenter had slept through most of the trip, curled up on the back seat like a bundle of discarded clothing. He recalled that there had been some trouble when the car bumped up against a newly extended tendril of the virus quarantine zone and had to make a wide detour to the north; he could remember seeing the sun go down over western Nebraska like a plummeting red fireball; he had a vague and untrustworthy memory of traversing a broad black inexplicable plain of heaped ashes and glossy volcanic clinkers the following dawn. That was about it for him, so far as recollections of the journey went.
His recollections of Chicago were sharper ones.
Jeanne gasping in his arms in the surprise of pleasure during a long hungry night of embracing. Jeanne breaking into convulsive sobs just as abruptly later that same night, and refusing to say why. Jeanne telling him that she had become a Catholic, and offering to pray for him. Jeanne pushing him away, finally, toward dawn, saying that she was out of practice at lovemaking and had had about all she could handle of it for now.
The two of them, masked and shot full with Screen, walking hand in hand through the Loop at midday in heat that would make Satan feel homesick, under a splotchy green sky that looked like an inverted bowl of vomit. Sensing the rotten-egg aroma of hydrogen sulfide in the air, even through the mask. Looking up at immense ancient buildings whose soaring stone facades had been carved by the virulent erosive air and acid rains into a phantasmagoria of accidental Gothic parapets and turrets and pinnacles and asymmetrical spires.
Jeanne hiding her body from him in her shapeless robe later that day, telling him she was too ugly to be seen with the lights on, and getting angry when he told her that she was crazy, that she had a truly beautiful body.
Jeanne saying at last, “It’s been wonderful having you here, Paul. I mean that. To have made it real, when it was only pretend for so long. But now—if you think you can find the strength to move onward, now—”
Finishing off the last of Jeanne’s meager liquor supply, then, putting it away in a steady dedicated manner that was worthy of Nick Rhodes. Trying to call Jolanda in Berkeley, hoping it wouldn’t upset Jeanne too much to see him turning so swiftly to another woman, but getting only a recorded message at Jolanda’s number, not even a seek-forwarding indicator. Calling Nick, then. Inviting himself to stay with him. Telling Jeanne that he was going to leave for California right this minute, and seeing the suddenly bereft look on her face, and wondering if he had really been supposed to take her words at face value when she had asked him to move along. “It’s the middle of the night, Paul,” she had said. And he had said, “Even so. Such a long drive: I’d better get started.” The glistening of her eyes. Tears of sadness? Relief? Jeanne gave eternally mixed signals.
“Stay in touch, Paul. Come back to see me whenever you want.”
“Yes. Yes.”
