found her running along the old outer track. They asked her some questions and then let her go. She was about thirty, I guess. She looked in terrible shape.
And so I drove on, without incident. But even through the treated glass of the windshield I could see and sense the atrocious lancings and poppings in the ruined sky. It gets to you. Stare at the blazing noon of a high-watt bulb for ten or fifteen minutes then shut your eyes, real tight and sudden. That's what the sky looks like. You know, we pity it, or at least I do. I look at the sky and I just think… ow. Whew. Oh, the sky, the poor sky.
Happy Farraday had left a priority clearance for me at Realty HQ, so I didn't have to hang around that long. To tell you the truth, I was scandalized by how lax and perfunctory the security people were becoming. It's always like this, after a quiet few weeks. Then there's another shitstorm from Section C, and all the writs start flying around again. In the cubicle I put my clothes back on and dried my hair. While they okayed my urinalysis and x-ray congruence tests, I watched TV in the commissary. I sat down, delicately, gingerly (you know how it is, after a strip search), and took three clippings out of my wallet. These are for the file. What do you think?
Item 1, from the news page of Screen Week:
In a series of repeated experiments at the Valley Chemistry Workshop, Science Student Edwin Navasky has 'proven' that hot water freezes faster than cold. Said Edwin, 'We did the test four times.' Added Student Adviser Joy Broadener: 'It's a feature. We're real baffled.'
Item 2, from the facts section of Armchair Guide:
Candidate Day McGwire took out a spot on Channel 29 last Monday. Her purpose: to deny persistent but unfounded rumors that she suffered from heart trouble. Sadly, she was unable to appear. The reason: her sudden hospitalization with a cardiac problem.
Item 3, from the update column of Television:
Meteorological Pilot Lars Christer reported another sighting of 'The Thing Up There' during a routine low-level flight. The location: 10,000 feet above Lake Baltimore. His description: 'It was kind of oval, with kind of a black circle in the center.' The phenomenon is believed to be a cumulus or spore formation. Christer's reaction: 'I don't know what to make of it. It's a thing.'
'Goldfader,' roared the tannoy, scattering my thoughts. The caddycart was ready at the gate. In the west now the heavens looked especially hellish and distraught, with a throbbing, peeled-eyeball effect on the low horizon- bloodshot, conjunctivitic. Pink eye. The Thing Up There, I sometimes suspect, it might look like an eye, flecked with painful tears, staring, incensed… Using my cane I walked cautiously around the back of Happy's bungalow. Her twenty-year-old daughter Sunny was lying naked on a lounger, soaking up the haze. She made no move to cover herself as I limped poolside. Little Sunny here wants me to represent her someday, and I guess she was showing me the goods. Well it's like they say: if you've got it, flaunt it.
'Hi, Lou,' she said sleepily. 'Take a drink. Go ahead. It's five o'clock.'
I looked at Sunny critically as I edged past her to the bar. The kid was a real centerfold, no question. Now don't misunderstand me here. I say centerfold, but of course pornography hasn't really kept pace with time. At first they tried filling the magazines and mature cable channels with new-look women, like Sunny, but it didn't work out. Time has effectively killed pornography, except as an underground blood sport, or a punk thing. Time has killed much else. Here's an interesting topic sentence. Now that masturbation is the only form of sex that doesn't carry a government health warning, what do we think about when we're doing it there, what is left for us to think about? Me, I'm not saying. Christ, are you? What images slide, what specters flit… what happens to these thoughts as they hover and mass, up there in the blasted, the totaled, up there in the fucked sky?
'Come on, Sunny. Where's your robe.'
As I fixed myself a vodka-context and sucked warily on a pretzel, I noticed Sunny's bald patch gently gleaming in the mist. I sighed.
'You like my dome?' she asked, without turning. 'Relax, it's artificial.' She sat up straight now and looked at me coyly. She smiled. Yeah, she'd had her teeth gimmicked too-by some cowboy snaggle-artist down in the Valley, no doubt. I poled myself poolside again and took a good slow scan. The flab and pallor were real all right, but the stretch marks seemed cosmetic: too symmetrical, too pronounced.
'Now, you listen to me, kid,' I began. 'Here are the realities. To scudbathe, to flop out all day by the pool with a bottle or two, to take on a little weight around the middle there-that's good for a girl. I mean you got to keep in shape. But this mutton routine, Sunny, it's for the punks. No oldjob ever got on my books and no oldjob ever will. Here are the reasons. Number one-' And I gave young Sunny a long talking-to out there, a real piece of my mind. I had her in the boredom corner and I wasn't letting her out. I went on and on at her-on and on and on and on. Me, I almost checked out myself, as boredom edged toward despair (the way boredom will), gazing into the voided pool, the reflected skyscape, and the busy static, in the sediment of sable rain.
'Yeah, well,' I said, winding up. 'Anyway. What's the thing? You look great.'
She laughed, coughed, and spat. 'Forget it, Lou,' she said croakily. 'I only do it for fun.'
'I'm glad to hear that, Sunny. Now where's your mother.'
'Two days.'
'Uh?'
'In her room. In her room two days. She's serious this time.'
'Oh, sure.'
I rebrimmed my drink and went inside. The only point of light in the hallway came from the mirror's sleepless scanlamp. I looked myself over as I limped by. The heavy boredom and light stress of the seven-hour drive had done me good. I was fine, fine. 'Happy?' I said, and knocked.
'Is that you, Lou?' The voice was strong and clear-and it was quick, too. Direct, alert. 'I'll unlatch the door, but don't come in right away.'
'Sure,' I said. I took a pull of booze and groped around for a chair. But then I heard the click and Happy's brisk 'Okay'… Now I have to tell you that two things puzzled me here. First, the voice; second, the alacrity. Usually when she's in this state you can hardly hear the woman, and it takes an hour or more for her to get to the door and back into bed again. Yeah, I thought, she must have been waiting with her fingers poised on the handle. There's nothing wrong with Happy. The lady is fine, fine.
So in I went. She had the long black nets up over the sack -streaming, glistening, a crib for the devil's progeny. I moved through the gloom to the bedside chair and sat myself down with a grunt. A familiar chair. A familiar vigil.
'Mind if I don't smoke?' I asked her. 'It's not the lung-burn. I just get tuckered out lighting the damn things all the time. Understand what I mean?'
No answer.
'How are you feeling, Happy?'
No answer.
'Now listen, kid. You got to quit this nonsense. I know it's problematic with the new role and everything, but- do I have to tell you again what happened to Day Montague? Do I, Happy? Do I? You're forty years old. You look fantastic. Let me tell you what Greg Buzhardt said to me when he saw the outtakes last week. He said, 'Style. Class. Presence. Sincerity. Look at the ratings. Look at the profiles. Happy Farraday is the woman of men's dreams.' That's what he said. 'Happy Farraday is the-'
'Lou.'
The voice came from behind me. I swiveled and felt the twinge of tendons in my neck. Happy stood in a channel of bathroom light and also in the softer channel or haze of her slip of silk. She stood there as vivid as health itself, as graphic as youth, with her own light sources, the eyes, the mouth, the hair, the dips and curves of
