Damon Knight - Orbit 15

“I’m sick and tired of your feeling sorry for me,” I said to Permilia. It had been a week since I’d spoken to her. “You act like I’m a lamb about to be led to the slaughter. Kindly tell me what in hell is wrong with you.”

“Memory. There’s a piece of brain in my head that won’t be laid to rest.”

“You’re different. Don’t you like me anymore? If you don’t you can be frank about it. You don’t have to use my stalls out of politeness.”

“You fool.”

“That’s easy to say. Everyone is a fool.”

Quick as a wink, she changed the subject, or I thought she did. “There’s a clinic on Eighth does a lot of operations free of charge.”

“What kind of operations?”

“They’ll lop off your beef if you ask them.”

“Holy crow.”

“Takes three minutes; no pain, no fuss.”

“Permilia, what in the world—”

“Go over there and get it done. Right away. Today.”

“There’s another clinic on Ninth,” I said. “It’s for nuts, and you’d better get over there fast.”

“Do it, sweetie,” she said, and her eyes were full of tears.

“Go away. You’re scaring me.”

Lydon. He makes me miserable. Do I make him miserable? I hope so. There is a kind of sweetness like no other, and it only comes riding on the person of another. This sweetness worries me. It makes me despair. A pair of pants is nothing but a pair of pants. Shoulders, smelly old feet, hands, sweaty neck, hair in need of a shampoo, common face. Ordinary things. He comes out of his resting booth and everything which I am grows alert, like hair that suddenly stands on end. He looks across the street to see if I’m there, and naturally I am, and where else does he think I’d be? I’m never sick, so why look to see if I went somewhere?

The stink of the stalls saturates the air. The crowds have gone home. It is raining. I like the stink and the moans and the rain. He’s over there where I can see him. The sweetness is as the steam rising from the sidewalks. Unhappy am I because it’s almost quitting time, and he’ll lock up his booth and walk away without saying good-bye. This business is making me sick. He sits over there, watching me all day, but seldom does he smile or say good-bye. I mean, if I’m fit to look at all day, aren’t I fit for more?

“Permilia, I have a problem.”

“You’re alive.”

“That isn’t the problem.”

“I’m in a hurry.”

“You’re getting to hate me, and I don’t know what I did.”

She replied, but not to me; to herself maybe. “I should have grown a shell around me, like a clam. What do I care about a dumb kid? So she’ll grow up, the same as everybody else, and I should laugh. I told her to go to that clinic, but she wants to keep her button. Why? Because without the goddam thing she might as well be dead. But she’ll be dead if she keeps it. What kind of a world is this?”

Sydney Lummet won the election. We had a new President and everybody was happy. I was happy too. That old Lydon, that dumbbell, he brought me a present; a camera. I took his picture, he took mine.

“Did you vote for Lummet?” I said.

“Sebastian. I’m sorry the way the election turned out. I don’t think Lummet can handle the economic crisis. Already we got too many people starving. He’s an egotist. Besides, he leans too heavy toward psychology. You can’t run a country on speculation, which is all psychology is.”

I wasn’t paying any attention to what he said. From the corner of my eye, I stared at his throat. The sun made it pink; it glistened like baby skin. Probably he looked that way all over. Next I examined his face. Common, ordinary man, except that he gave me a bellyache.

He was smiling at me. “Do you like to read?”

It was my turn to get red. “You won’t laugh?”

“Of course not.”

“I don’t know enough to get along. You know. I’m not backward as far as brains go, but nobody ever tells me anything. How can I learn about life unless I read? So I read porno.”

The smile left his face as if someone had smacked it off. His eves grew small and narrow, and his mouth went thin. “Both of us are in the same boat. I read it too.”

At noon he came over to my side of the street. We sat on the curb and had lunch together.

“What do you want to do with your life?” he said. “What is it that you have to have? I mean, what’s your main interest?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Me, either. I guess I’m just waiting for life to come and get me. Doesn’t it work that way? We wait for death. I guess we wait for life too.”

“I guess.”

Permilia and I were both out of sorts. My trouble was a mystery to me. As for my friend, I planned to tell her to see a doctor, that is if I could get close enough to her. Suddenly I had the plague or something. Regular, she came to use the stalls, and regular, she kept out of my reach. From what I could see from a distance, she was steadily losing weight. Her skin looked bad. In fact, her whole appearance was haggard. Maybe she had gotten hooked on dope. I’d ask her, first chance I got.

My trouble. Awake at three every morning with my brain clicking away at the same old subject. Lydon. Why didn’t he go away? So he didn’t show up at work for three days. I didn’t know if he had been sick. For some reason I was afraid to cross the street and ask him. Why didn’t he come over and tell me where he had been? He sat in his resting booth, after he returned, and he looked as white as a sheet. Damn you, Lydon, what’s wrong? Why don’t you like me anymore?

Tuesday. As soon as I got to my resting booth, I knew I was in for a bellyache. I hadn’t slept hardly any. The sidewalks were wet and hot, people were all over the place, the sun was a furnace, I was already sweaty, the stalls stunk to high heaven, my belly was killing me. Back in my mind, some idiot said over and over again, “Lydon, Lydon, Lydon.”

“Why don’t you go to hell?” I yelled.

He came out of his booth, walked to the curb, stopped. I walked to my curb, stopped. We stared across the wet street at each other. All I could see were his eyes. They went all the way down into my soul and back out again, taking my guts with them. He smiled. My belly turned over. I smiled. How serious were we that morning, two dunderheads glaring at each other as if the life we were waiting for had suddenly materialized between us. A yearning in my throat, I said, “Lydon.”

“Vega.” He was hurting. So was I. Neither of us knew the truth. There wasn’t anyone else in the world. The planet was ours, and our togetherness tore both of us to tatters, and it was the most glorious pain there could be. I wanted to be a worm clinging to his skin. That way he couldn’t leave me. I’d be hanging onto him, secretly, and he’d take me with him wherever he went.

The sun was hot between us. I had a headache.

“Vega.”

The way he said it made me smile again, but my face felt as if it were going to crack. I was so happy I wanted to cry, and then I did cry a few minutes later, because Lydon didn’t come across the street to me. He started to; I know that was what he intended, but he never made it. His smile was like mine, simply there to dress up a naked face, and he put one foot down onto the street, with the other foot ready to follow. His hands were stretched out toward me.

All of a sudden his face turned purple. His feet stopped moving. His body froze. His expression deadened. He turned and walked over to one of the stalls. He slammed through the door.

I bawled my eyes out. I sat on the curb and waited for him to come out so that he would see my rage. I wanted to kill him with my anger. He didn’t see it. After the longest time, he popped out of the stall and ran down the street at high speed.