Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

“When do you . . . What’s his name?”

“Dr. Soeul.”

“Ha. With a name like that, he must get more word-of-mouth business than he can handle.” I raise my hand. “Don’t. I know he comes recommended. I was the one who turned you on to the whole thing, remember? But when do you see him next?”

Her glance has grown needle-sharp now since the diet. “Tomorrow night, seven.”

I feel myself moving closer to her.

Her hands fold together like slender, pale fish. “I’m sorry, David. I love you.” I see her slip up to her outer level, a silent click. “I think we both do,” she tries.

My eyes clasp hers and my hands her warm cheeks, and then I bend to kiss her mounding stomach through the cloth. I am aware of my hair again. “What are you worrying about?” she asks as she touches it.

“Nothing.”

“The ba—”

“No. Of course not.”

She waits a beat. “The CO thing.” I start to answer again, but her fingers tighten on my head. “I know it’s getting to you.” Her tone: strangely serene, as if separate from the words.

“It’s nothing.”

“Nothing,” she says then, “is something inside out.”

I have to look up. The dark eyes slip back to that other place. I can’t help trying to press deeper into them. . . .

This is one night.

The horror lies in that there is no horror.

I sank back into the dry, distended hand of the chair, the chair crackling, accommodating me. Out somewhere the crickets began to chirp, a sound like the clicking of poker chips.

Rocking. Trying to rock. I held my breath. I couldn’t smell then. Or see. I tried not to feel. Only the motion. And the story.

I remembered our first week. My II-S had expired that quarter. The first days of our relationship were like the first bites of a watermelon before you hit a seed. It started at Santa Monica. She was walking out of the sea and the sunlight was firing blinding bolts around her silhouette and I stood transfixed and just watched her come up to meet me. The next day my eyes peeled burned skin. She said she had run away from a place where they wrapped her in wet sheets.. When she found out I lived in Silverlake, too, she asked me if I had a car. I told her I didn’t and she moved into a new apartment ten miles away just to test me.

I was the one who gave her the book, along with Albion Moonlight and From Bindu to Ojas and some others. Of course you will blame me, as you should. Naturally. It started with a visit to his office in Little Tokyo; you know the type: Monday night Zen classes served up with brown rice; the following night another course. The regimens. Something. I didn’t go. The vigil at the Friends House, a WRL meeting, maybe a counseling session somewhere or hours alone just going over and over my duplicate file. I don’t remember.

When she came home I had turned down the bed. Afterward she shook herself like a puppy coming out of sweet grass and smiled around the house and left her hair down the rest of the night. In the morning she woke me to announce that she had dropped something. We searched the floor for her last pill, more valuable than a contact lens—it couldn’t be insured. She wished it had been an IUD. Later she tried to drink a bottle of Jergens Lotion while I was out mailing a letter to the Board. “It smelled so good,” she said. “Just like burnt almonds!”

After the Form was filed I had to beg the usual collection of “imminent piety” reference letters. Then the reclassification: I-A. No surprise. It did not take long; the Justice Department is no longer involved. Then the appeal. Then the request for a personal appearance. Then the letter requesting an appointment with the government Appeals Agent, a Compozed Larry Blyden impersonator who knew nothing. A formality. I can no longer remember when her thinness first became frightening. Then the personal appearance and the two counselors along as witnesses: refused admittance, of course: one more detail duly noted in case of a court test. The refusal to reopen the classification. Then the appeal to the County Board, where it is said the rubber stamp falls like a blade every eleven seconds. Then the filing of Form 151 with the Local Board, followed by their refusal to reclassify and rewind the appeal procedure for another replay. Then the preinduction physical, follow the colored stripes up and down the stairs and get in line for short-arm inspection. Later the fellow next to me bit his lip and spat blood into the beaker and it almost worked. Then the appeal to State Headquarters. Their reply. Then the letter to the National Director. She spidered her fingers around cups of mu tea, talked rapidly of tests in darkened rooms and small bottles and extractions. Then the first set of induction papers. Then the change of address through a front in San Francisco. Then the flight up to the Local Board there for a transfer of induction—$11.43 each way on PSA. Then the National Director’s refusal to intervene. Then the new induction date in Oakland. Then the transfer back down here. Then the letter from the Friends counselor pleading for a new hearing. Then the letter requesting another-appointment with the Appeals Agent, adjusting his glasses with sweaty fingers, handshake clammy. Then the new induction date. Then a final transfer back up to the Oakland Induction Center. . . .

Shyla. Shyla. It grew more and more difficult for her. I don’t know how it happened. I don’t even know what happened to her. Her condition was not enough for a III-S under the new law. For a time I thought of her like the place where I had met her: storms rend the sea but never change its hardness. If anything she seemed to be growing softer, more sensitive. That was good. I thought that.

One night coming home from there like so many other nights.

Looking up and seeing her halfway through the bead curtain.

Her body like one of those starving African children, bloated belly and pencil-thin wrists.

I stand and take her hands. “Hey, your gloves are cold,” I tell her.

“I’m not wearing any.”

I breathe on her fingers. We sit. After a while I say, “How is . . . ?” The way she looks, I don’t want to press it.

“H-he’s pleased with my progress. He said so. The examination—”

She creates a little pull at the corners of her pallid mouth but her eyes lid over. Her finger makes a fine tracing around my jawline.

“David,” she pronounces. That is enough, I think. Then her lashes fly together and I can feel the strain growing as it draws together in her. It feels something like desperation. “David, let’s get out of here.” Her eyes open. She is unbelievably sanpaku, I notice, and for some reason, though I know better, much better, I get a cold rush in my chest. “Now. Tonight. We could start fresh—in Mendocino. Anywhere. Oh shit.”

“Hey, hey.”

I see she is struggling to stay ahead of herself. “I can’t have it this way. I want to get out of here, out of LA. We have to, don’t you see? This place is some kind of—of necropolis for—for the waiting dead.” She shudders, unbelievably.

I have no idea what to say to that.

Then her eyes, flicking between mine, lose some of their depth and withdraw in the manner of a camera iris stopping down, click. And I know she has remembered my case and the way its weight has me anchored here.

I take her head in my lap and stroke it. Now there is neither resistance nor consent. . . .

She casts the yarrow stalks. She sits cross-legged, staring as into scattered entrails. She is still for a long time. Then she takes the book down from the shelf and unwraps it and the three coins and throws them, too. I ask her for the reading.