Damon Knight - Orbit 16

A long time this time, Betty.

As soon as she materialized, Betty realized that Jack always broke into a grin when she returned. What’s he got to grin about? I must be ten pounds heavier this time. Stupid. I feel shitty. 1 feel shitty and witty and wise. Dumb fat-girl dress, daisies all over it. Why would I ever buy such an atrocity? At least it’s colorful, something better than the faded-lace color of this room.

“You remember, this time?” Jack said, as Betty sat down beside him.

“Not a goddamned thing. One second I’m sitting here, deciding to let your hand sneak into my cheerleader’s sweater, the next I’m standing over there in a party dress. But I’ve been someplace. I can almost remember where. It’s like waking up from a dream, it’s gone now.”

“Like that for me, too.”

Jack’s face was heavier, a suggestion of jowls. His eyes looked as if they’d been smeared with coal dust.

“What do I look like?” she asked.

“Cotton candy.”

“Is that complimentary?”

“I doubt it.”

Jack held up his right leg and pointed to his trousers. Betty saw droppings of what might be dried paint—bits of purple, black, and brown.

“You think maybe you’re a painter?”

“Yeah.”

Jack put his leg down. Delicately, so as not to dislodge the drops of paint.

“House or canvas?”

“Looks like oils to me.”

“You should be happy then. A clue to your identity and all. Why aren’t you happy?”

“What if I’m not good at it? How do I get any satisfaction out of knowing I’m an artist if I can’t see the fruits of my labor?”

“In an automated society the majority do not see the fruits of their labor. Many people don’t know what their labors are.”

“I’ve got to know.”

“Well, then, you may possess some talent, a dabbler’s maybe, an alien corn’s. But yours is not the artistic temperament.”

“Pompous bitch.”

“Yes, isn’t it worthwhile?”

Betty disliked the way her skirt slid farther upward each time she shifted position on the divan. Each movement revealed a little more of her meaty thighs. She stood up, knowing that the perspective suited her figure better. De-emphasized were the big stomach, the upper-arm fleshiness, and the awesome thighs. She felt her muscles strain holding so much of her in place.

Jack disappeared, which was something of a relief.

Betty spent the next few hours relaxing, letting her flesh fall where it might. She wondered if Jack was worth all the trouble. Putting up with his curtness, listening to his egomaniacal self-pity, trying to keep her witty remarks down to his level, watching his baldness run from his temples upward in a pair of flying wedges—all because he was the only game in town.

Jack returned. He was dressed quite conservatively, like a stockbroker or banker, and now had a slight paunch and a mustache. Betty laughed at the mustache. Touching it, feeling its strangeness, he said, “Does it look good at all?”

“Want an honest answer?”

“If the honest answer is yes, I want it. If it’s no, I don’t want it and I want you to tell me yes anyway.”

“Okay. Yes. It looks just marvelous.”

“Really?”

“Honest or dishonest answer?”

“Forget it.”

He sat beside Betty and held her. She looked quite sexy in the daisy-flowered dress. Staring at the low scoop of its neckline, he felt desire for her. Betty kept touching his mustache and giggling. He kissed her, which initiated a giggling lit. Later, when the kissing became more intense, she appeared to enjoy the mustache. At the moment of her disappearance, he was beginning an affectionate hug. One hand slammed against his chest as his arms crossed where she had been.

Jack discovered some marijuana in his suit-coat pocket, along with a packet of Zig-Zags. He rolled and smoked the first joint, then looked slowly around the room. There was nothing for heightened perception to fix on. The mud-colored room just became more mud-colored. No kick in that. Betty better make it back quicker this time. Betty better. The second joint worked.

Betty came back pregnant. She almost fell flat on her face because of the sudden abdominal weight. She looked to Jack for help. Through the smokescreen that surrounded him.

“My God, what a time for you to be stoned! You always know, don’t you? What do you have, advance information?”

“Bug off. Any time you want to is a good time to be stoned.”

“But not now, stupid.”

“Why not now?”

Betty stood sideways. “I’m pregnant, God damn it! Knocked up. Enceinte. In the family way. Preggers. Unexpectedly with child.”

“I gave at the office.”

“Help me or something!”

“Here, you should sit down. Sit down here. Mustn’t exert yourself. That’s what all new fathers-to-be say.”

“I strongly doubt that you’re the new father-to-be, my friend.”

“Well, sit down anyway! What the hell do I care whose kid the bastard is?”

Betty sat at the end of the couch. With some difficulty, because her pregnancy prevented graceful movement and because the battered slope of the couch made it tricky to sit as far away from Jack as she wanted.

“What I hate most,” Jack mumbled, “is people who continually give you stage directions for the roles you play.”

The pot smoke dissipated slowly. Jack stared straight ahead, his lips working steadily on unheard mutterings. Bored, Betty fell asleep. Bored Betty. Baby-kicks awoke her twice. The second time Jack was gone.

She wondered what to do if the kid decided to get born here, here, before Jack came back. She wondered what use he’d be anyway.

Jack’s return coincided with a labor pain. He was put on edge both by her scream and the rage in her eyes.

“What can I do?”

“Pray.”

In between pains her whole body went slack. Her arms hung over the edge of the divan. Her lace looked puffy.

“God, you’re bald!”

He felt his head. It was true, his hairline had receded further. Only a few strands crossed the forelock area. Still a lot of hair above the timber line, though. A cold breeze blew across the barren slopes and made him tremble.

Without dignity Betty endured another labor pain. Afterward she said, “Have you read A Farewell to Arms?”

“No.”

“I think I have, God damn it!”

Jack felt he must do something, concoct a heroic act, make a civilized gesture, accomplish something worthwhile before he lost all his hair. What could he do? Talk to her, offer her encouragement? “Go to it, Beth old girl . . . Another heave and it’ll be all over . . . Open wide, it won’t hurt.”

Her pains came with more frequency. He held her, first for affection, then to pin her down.

“Boy, if I ever come across the guy that did this, my impregnator, I’m going to—Jesus!—it’s coming now. I can feel it. It’s coming, God damn it! Help me, please. I can feel it. It’s coming. Jack, do something, do something, do something!”

He could not move. Betty’s words dissolved into a long-drawn-out shriek, the sound of which ended sharply as she disappeared, leaving a broad, deep gully in the divan, which slowly inflated to its regular shape.

Inspecting himself with a hand, Jack stroked his baldness, detected a new graininess around his eyes, a bit more weight in his chin and waist, and an operation scar. There was added congestion in the nasal passages.

What accusations would Betty throw at him upon her return? Too many. That’s what you get when you make your mistakes out in the open. He was furious with her, anyway. Somehow she was no longer his, the stupid bitch. She belonged to somebody outside the mud-colored room. He would never know his rival, or even know if there was a rival. Maybe, when they disappeared, they went to another room like this one. And there they met each other again. No, they could not meet each other, they never disappeared together. Maybe they met antitheses of themselves. When Betty went, she rendezvoused with anti-Jack, a guy just the opposite in manner, abilities, and ideas. Gregarious, optimistic, loving, possessed of brilliant moral strength. Anti-Jack would be everything that Jack was not. With him she would get what she wanted, which was why she often returned so happy. But, then, how in hell could he put up with her, if he was so goddamned perfect? She’d drive him out of his head.