Gene Wolfe - Free Live Free

The telephone rang, and he glanced through the glass panel that separated him from the girl. She was out. Probably gone to the can, gone for coffee.

The telephone rang.

He reached for his extension, sleekly black. Through the glass he could see the gold letters on the other side of the pebbled door that opened into the hallway: Ess, Eee, El, Ay, Ess. Ess, Eee, En …

The telephone rang.

Barnes sat up in the gray dimness. His arms were cold and stiff, and he rubbed them. As if he were still dreaming (and for a moment, he believed he was) the bathroom door swung open, releasing a flood of light. A switch clicked and the light went out. The telephone rang again.

“Hello,” Candy said. There was a pause. “Yes, it’s me … . I’m staying with her … . Okay. It was real nice hearing from you, you know? We thought something might have happened to you.” She hung up.

From the other end of the room, Stubb’s voice asked, “What was that?”

“Never mind.”

“You didn’t tell somebody from the hotel you were staying with Madame S.”

“Huh uh. It wasn’t from the hotel.”

“Who was it?” Stubb’s voice was sharper now.

“I said never mind. It was for me, all right? I answered it. I got the message. It was my business.”

The witch asked, “How would someone know that you were to be reached in my room?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him, and he didn’t tell me.”

“It was a guy then.”

“Jim, shut the hell up.” Trailing a corner of blanket, the fat girl stepped over Barnes. There was a grunt and a thump as she lowered herself. “Dammit, I’m not made for sleeping on floors. I don’t think I ever even passed out on a floor, for Christ’s sake. I usually find a couch or something.” A scuffing noise was followed by the flapping of the blanket.

No one else spoke. Barnes stared at the dim ceiling for a time, then allowed his eyes to close. The fat girl was near enough for him to hear faintly the sighing of her breath. He could even imagine the sensation of her body heat on the bare skin of his left arm. He was chilled, and she seemed to radiate warmth like a stove.

He tried to call back the great house in the mountains, but it was lost somehow, speeding away from the speeding car, always vanishing around the next turn in the road until they no longer saw it at all, were no longer sure it had even passed that way. Then something happened, somehow the car would no longer run, and Little Ozzie was wandering the windy mountain roads on foot, alone in the dark and looking for him.

Something touched his hand. Automatically, he drew it away; the touch came again, and after a moment he realized it was another hand, very soft, small and warm.

“Ozzie.” It was the faintest of whispers.

“Yes,” he said, glad to be taken away from the nightshrouded mountain roads where his son could not find him, where he could not even find himself.

“You awake?”

Outside, the doorman’s whistle blew.

“Yes,” he said again.

“Jim’s asleep. I can hear him and I think she’s asleep too.”

Barnes did not reply. He had opened his eyes, but they had closed themselves again. He lay in the dark, listening to her as he might have listened to some night-calling bird, innocent of the need for any reply.

“I feel like a hog, keeping this whole blanket to myself. Are you cold, Ozzie?”

“Little.”

“There’s plenty for both of us. It’s for a double bed.”

There was a flapping as of wide wings, and the blanket settled over him. Her breasts nuzzled at his shoulders, and the soft, warm bulge of her belly lay against his side. Two arms that were like two pillows embraced him. He rolled over and kissed her.

Her lips were moist, soft and warm as every part of her seemed to be soft and warm. She did not bite, though he for some reason had feared she would; her tongue touched his, then drew away just before they parted. She nibbled gently at his lower lip, so that he had the illusion (taken perhaps, as such things often are, from some forgotten book he had been read as a child—or perhaps only borrowed from the blond girl who had once in better days brought him a drink in the Kansas City Playboy Club) that Candy was a very large white rabbit who had somehow been transformed into a woman. So that if someone had flicked on the lights, he would not have been surprised to find she had pink eyes and a wiggling pink nose; not a carrot-chewing, wisecracking Bugs Bunny, but something like one of Peter Rabbit’s sisters, caged and fed on Caesar salads and grown huge. “Nothing tricky,” she whispered. “Not tonight.”

“All right,” he said.

“Not that I mind usually, but it’s late and I’m tired. Besides, it’s like …you know.”

“All right,” he said again. He did not know. He kissed her again.

She laughed softly. “You’ve got a nice mustache. It looks like it’s going to be bristly, but it’s sort of silky. Anybody ever tell you?”

“No,” he said. He tried to kiss her as he had before, but she had turned her head to one side, and it was her ear he kissed. He kissed his way down to her neck, thick, soft and warm, like all the rest of her.

“Stop,” she said. “You’ll make me laugh and that’ll wake them up for sure.”

He did not stop.

She pushed him gently away and reaching down took hold of him. “Do you like that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I like that very much.” He wanted to kiss her breasts, but he could not reach them. He stroked them instead.

“I have big ones, but nobody ever notices,” she said.

“I noticed.”

“Forty-six D’s. How about this? Do you like this too?”

“Yes,” he said. “I like that a lot.”

“Only when I take off weight—when I used to—that’s where it would come off first. It never would come off my hips. Nothing but surgery or a hydrogen bomb will ever take one ounce off my hips.”

“I like your hips too.”

“Not me. The movies won’t let me in any more.” She kissed his chest and shoulders.

He visualized a rude ticket-taker who barred her from some palace of dreams with a flaming sword.

“Those damned narrow seats. Don’t pinch hard.”

He kissed her again, pushing close, and she tucked the blanket around them.

“I used to love to go. You remind me of that one with the mustache—I can’t think of his name.”

“Peter Sellers. Richard Pryor.”

“No.” She giggled. “I can’t think of it. He’s handsomer, but you’re handsome too.”

“That’s right.”

“Can you reach? I’m sorry, but you can’t lie on top. I don’t like that any more.”

“All right.” He moved until their faces were no longer together, their bodies forming an X. Afterwards, he got up first and went into the bathroom to wash. Candy went in when he left, and he lay on the floor listening to her, hearing the toilet flush, then flush again.

He hoped she would lie down with him instead of asking for the blanket back, and she did. “Everything okay?” she said. “Copacetic?”

He had been wondering if he had caught a disease, syph or maybe herpes. She’s probably thinking maybe she’s pregnant, he thought. No, she isn’t. He said, “Not while you were gone. I missed you.”

“Uh huh. You were cold.”

“Right.” He chuckled.

“Me too. My feet are cold from that damn cold floor in there. Can I put them against your legs?”

“Okay.”

She lay with her back to him, the soles of her feet against his calves. He made sure they were covered by his topcoat, tucking it in, then pulled up the blanket. Old Mr. Free was standing there in the dark, ready to light the hot water heater for Candy’s bath. Barnes thought: That’s who called. She must have told him to come up.