to?”
“Nothing special,” Redrick said unwillingly. “Just unimportant things.”
He watched Noonan bustle and establish himself in the chair opposite and move the glass with the napkins in one direction with his plump hands and the plate with sandwiches in another. And he listened to Noonan gab.
“You look kind of peaked. Not sleeping enough? You know, lately, I’ve been very busy with this new automation stuff, but I never miss my sleep, that’s for sure. The automation can go hang.” He suddenly looked around. “I’m sorry, maybe you’re expecting someone. Have I interrupted? Am I in the way?”
“No, no,” Redrick said lamely. “I just had some time and thought I’d have a cup of coffee, that’s all.”
“Well, I won’t keep you long,” Dick said, looking at his watch. “Listen, Red, why don’t you drop your unimportant things and come back to the institute. You know they’ll take you back whenever you want. You want to work with another Russian? There’s a new one.” Red shook his head.
“Nope, a second Kirill hasn’t been born. Anyway, there’s nothing for me to do in your institute. It’s all automated now, you have robots going into the Zone and that means that the robots get all the bonuses. The lab assistants are paid peanuts. It wouldn’t even keep me in cigarettes.”
“All that could be arranged.”
“I don’t like having things arranged for me,” Redrick said. “I’ve taken care of myself all my life, and I intend to keep on doing it.”
“You’ve become very proud,” Noonan said with condemnation.
“No, I’m not. I just don’t like pinching pennies.”
“I guess you’re right,” Noonan said distractedly. He looked at Redrick’s briefcase on the chair next to him and rubbed the silver plate with the engraved Cyrillic letters. “You’re right, a man needs money so that he doesn’t have to always be counting it. A present from Kirill?” he asked, nodding at the briefcase.
“I inherited it. How come I never see you at the Borscht anymore?”
“You’re the one who’s never there,” Noonan countered. “I have lunch there almost every day. At the Metropole they charge an arm and a leg for a hamburger. Listen,” he said suddenly, “how’s your money situation now?”
“Want a loan?”
“Just the opposite.”
“You want to lend me money?”
“I have work…”
“Oh God!” Redrick said. “Not you too!”
“Who else, then?” Noonan demanded.
“There’s lots of you… hirers.” Noonan, seeming to finally get his point, laughed.
“No, no, this isn’t along the lines of your primary specialty.”
“Along what lines then?”
Noonan looked at his watch again. “Here’s the deal,” he said, getting up. “Come to the Borscht for lunch, around two. We’ll talk.”
“I may not be able to make it by two.”
“Then this evening around six. All right?”
“We’ll see.” Redrick looked at his watch. It was five to nine.
Noonan waved and rolled out to his Peugeot. Redrick followed him with his eyes, called the waitress, paid the bill, bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, and slowly headed over to the hotel with his briefcase. The sun was baking hot already and the street had quickly become muggy, and Redrick felt a burning sensation under his eyelids. He squinted hard, sorry that he hadn’t time for an hour’s nap before his important business. And then it hit him.
He had never experienced anything like this before outside the Zone. And it had happened in the Zone only two or three times. It was as though he were in a different world. A million odors cascaded in on him at once— sharp, sweet, metallic, gentle, dangerous ones, as crude as cobblestones, as delicate and complex as watch mechanisms, as huge as a house and as tiny as a dust particle. The air became hard, it developed edges, surfaces, and corners, like space was filled with huge, stiff balloons, slippery pyramids, gigantic prickly crystals, and he had to push his way through it all, making his way in a dream through a junk store stuffed with ancient ugly furniture… It lasted a second. He opened his eyes, and everything was gone. It hadn’t been a different world—it was this world turning a new, unknown side to him. This side was revealed to him for a second and then disappeared, before he had time to figure it out.
An angry horn beeped, and Redrick walked faster, faster, and then ran all the way to the wall of the Metropole. His heart was beating wildly. He put the briefcase on the pavement and impatiently tore open the pack of cigarettes. He lit one, inhaled deeply, and rested, as if after a fight. A cop stopped near him and asked:
“Need help, mister?”
“N-no,” Redrick squeezed the word out and coughed. “It’s stuffy.”
“Can I take you where you’re going?”
Redrick picked up his briefcase.
“Everything, everything is fine, pal. Thanks.”
He walked quickly toward the entrance, walked up the steps and went into the lobby. It was cool, dusky, and echoey. He should have sat for a while in one of those voluminous leather chairs and caught his breath, but he was late already. He allowed himself time to finish the cigarette, checking out the crowd through half-shut eyes. Bones was there, irritatedly riffling through the magazines at the newsstand. Redrick threw the butt into the ashtray and went into the elevator. He didn’t manage to close the door in time and others crowded in: a fat man breathing asthmatically, a heavily perfumed lady with a grumpy little boy eating chocolate, and a heavyset old woman with a poorly shaved chin. Redrick was pushed into the corner. He closed his eyes, trying to shut out the boy with chocolate saliva dripping down his chin, whose face was fresh and pure, without a single hair. And to shut out his mother, whose scrawny bosom was embellished with a necklace made of large black sprays set in silver. And to shut out the bulging sclerotic whites of the eyes of the fat man, and the hideous warts on the swollen face of the old woman. The fat man tried to light a cigarette, but the old woman attacked him and kept after him until she got out on five. As soon as she did, the fat man lit up with a look that proclaimed that he was defending his civil rights, and broke out coughing and hacking as soon as he inhaled, sticking out his lips like a camel and jabbing Redrick in the ribs with his elbow.
Redrick got out on the eighth floor and walked down the thick carpet on the corridor, cozily illuminated by hidden lamps. It smelled of expensive tobacco, French perfumes, the soft natural leather of stuffed wallets, expensive ladies of the night, and solid gold cigarette cases. It reeked of everything, of the lousy fungus that was growing on the Zone, drinking on the Zone, eating, exploiting, and growing fat on the Zone and that didn’t give a damn about any of it, especially about what would happen later, when it had eaten its full and gotten power, and when everything that was once in the Zone was outside the Zone. Redrick pushed open the door to 874 without knocking.
Throaty, sitting on a table by the window, was performing a ritual over a cigar. He was still in his pajamas and his thinning hair, though wet, was carefully parted. His unhealthy puffy face was smoothly shaved.
“Aha,” he said without looking up. “Punctuality is the politeness of kings. Good day, young man!”
He finished clipping the end of the cigar, took it in both hands, brought it up to his nose, and passed it back and forth under it.
“Where is good old Burbridge?” he asked and looked up. His eyes were clear, blue, angelic.
Redrick put the briefcase on the sofa, sat down, and took out his cigarettes.
“Burbridge isn’t coming.”
“Good old Burbridge,” Throaty repeated. He took the cigar between two fingers and carefully brought it to his mouth. “Old Burbridge’s nerves are acting up.”
He kept looking at Redrick with his clear blue eyes, never blinking. He never blinked. The door opened slightly and Bones slipped into the room.
“Who were you talking to?” he asked from the doorway.
“Ah, hello,” Redrick said cheerily, flipping ashes on the floor.
Bones shoved his hands in his pockets and came closer, taking broad steps with his huge pigeon-toed feet. He stopped in front of Redrick.
“We’ve told you a hundred times,” he reproached him. “No contacts before a meeting. And what do you
