Дэймон Найт - Orbit 9

“I’m really concerned for her,” she said. “I don’t think she ought to be alone. And I don’t think she’s crazy, either.”

“Okay. Tell.” I headed for the kitchen and she followed. Janet had made coffee and it smelled good. I poured a cup and sat down. “I don’t know if I can or not,” she said. “Christine has a gift of vision that I’m sure no one ever had before. She can see, or sense, the process of growth and change in things.” I knew that I was supposed to register skepticism at that point, and I looked up at her with what I hoped was a prove-it expression. She became defensive. “Well, she can. She’s trying to duplicate it with the camera, but she’s very frustrated and disappointed in the results she’s been able to get so far. She’s got a new technique for developing time-lapse photographs. Whether or not it’s what she is after, it’s really remarkable. She prints a picture on a transparency, and shoots her next one through it, I think. When she prints that on another transparency, it gives the effect of being in layers, with each layer discernible, if you look hard enough. But she claims that for it to be successful, you should be able to see each stage, with all the others a blur, each one coming into focus with the change in attention you give to it. And that’s how she sees.”

I finished the coffee and got up to pour a second cup, without commenting. Standing at the stove, with my back to her, I said, “I’m willing to believe that she’s some kind of a genius. But, this other thing, the fainting, screams, whatever happened tonight. She needs a doctor.”

“Yes. I know. I talked her into seeing Dr. Lessing. Lessing will be good to her.” She made a short laughing sound, a snort of quickly killed mirth. “And he’ll tell her to pick up a man somewhere and take him to bed. He thinks that widows and widowers shouldn’t try to break the sex habit cold turkey.” Again the tone of her voice suggested amusement when she added, “Knowing that she’s coming to him through us, he’ll probably recommend that she cultivate Lenny’s company, two birds with one stone.”

My hand was painfully tight on the cup handle. I remembered one night with Janet, saying, “Jesus, I wish I could be you just for once, just to see what happens to you when you cry like that, when you pass out, why that little smile finally comes through…”

I knew my voice was too harsh then. I couldn’t help it. I said, “I think she’s a spook. I don’t like being around her. I get the same feeling that I got when I was a kid around a great-uncle who had gone off the deep end. I was scared shitless of him, and I get the same feeling in the pit of my stomach when I’m near her.”

“Eddie!” Janet moved toward me, but didn’t make it all the way. She returned to her chair instead and sat down, and when she spoke again, her voice was resigned. Way back in Year One, we’d had an understanding that if ever either of us disliked someone, his feelings were to be respected without argument. It needed no rationalization: people liked or disliked other people without reason sometimes. And by throwing in a non-existent uncle I had made doubly sure that she wouldn’t argue with me. Finis. “Well,” Janet said, “she certainly isn’t pushy. If you don’t want to be around her, you won’t find her in your path.”

“Yeah. And maybe later, after I get out from under all this other stuff, maybe I’ll feel different. Maybe I’m just afraid right now of entanglement, because I’m too pressed for time as it is.”

“Sure,” Janet said. I liked her a lot right then, for the way she was willing to let me drop Christine, whom she had grown very fond of, and was intrigued by. She was disappointed that she had been cut off at the water, that she wouldn’t be able now to talk about Christine, speculate about her. God knows, I didn’t want to think about her any more than I had to from then on.

The next few days blurred together. I knew that things got done, simply because they didn’t need doing later, but the memory of seeing to them, of getting them done, was gone. The geriatric patient came out of his cast on Saturday practically as good as new. He was walking again the same day they removed it, with crutches, but for balance, and to give him reassurance. His leg and hip muscles were fine. Lenny and I laughed and pounded each other over the back, and hugged each other, and split a bottle of Scotch, starting at one in the morning and staying with it until it was gone. He had to walk me home because neither of us could find a car key. Lenny spent the night, what was left of it. On Sunday I slept off a hangover and Lenny, Janet, the kids, and Christine all went for a long ride in the country and came back with baskets of apples, cider, black walnuts, and butternuts. And Janet said that Christine had invited all of us over for a celebration supper later on.

“I didn’t say we’d come,” Janet said. “I can call and say you still are hungover. I sort of hinted that you might be.”

“Honey, forget it. How’s Lenny? You should have seen him last night. He laughed!”

“And today he smiled a couple of times,” she said, grinning. “He’s over at Christine’s house now, helping with firewood, or something.”

“Tell her that we’ll be over,” I said.

The kids grumbled a little, but we got Mrs. Durrell in to sit and we went over to Christine’s. Lenny was in the living room mixing something red and steaming in a large bowl. “Oh, God,” I prayed aloud, “please, not one of his concoctions.” But it was, and it was very good. Hot cider, applejack, brandy, and a dry red wine. With cinnamon sticks in individual cups.

Steaks, salad, baked potatoes, spicy hot apple pie. “If I knew you was coming,” Christine had murmured, serving us, but she hadn’t belabored the point, and it was a happy party. She proposed a toast after pouring brandy for us. “To the good men of the earth. Eddie and Lenny, and others like them wherever they are.”

I knew that I flushed, and Lenny looked embarrassed and frowned, but Janet said, “Hear, hear,” and the girls touched the glasses to their lips. In a few moments we were back to the gaiety that was interrupted by the toast that lingered in my head for the rest of the evening.

Lenny was more talkative than I’d seen him in years. He even mentioned that he had been a physicist, something that not more than a dozen people knew. The girls were both looking pretty after a day in the cold air; their cheeks were flushed, and they looked happy. Janet’s bright blue-green eyes sparkled and she laughed easily and often. Christine laughed too, more quietly, and never at anything she said herself. She still was shy, but at ease with us. And it seemed that her shyness and Lenny’s introspective quiet were well matched, as if there had been a meeting of the selves there that few others ever got to know. I caught Lenny’s contemplative gaze on her once, and when she noticed also, she seemed to consider his question gravely, then she turned away, and the flush on her cheeks was a bit deeper. The air had changed somehow, had become more charged, and Janet’s touch on my hand to ask for a cigarette was a caress. I looked at her, acknowledging the invitation. Our hands lingered over the cigarette in the non-verbal communication that made living with her so nice.

I was very glad we had that evening together. Janet and I left at about twelve. Lenny was sitting in a deep chair before the fire when we said goodnight, and he made no motion to get up and leave then too. In our car Janet sighed and put her head on my shoulder.

Images flashed before my eyes: Christine’s buttocks as she moved away from me; the tight skin across Janet’s ribs when she raised her arms over her head; Christine’s tiny, tiny waist, dressed as she had been that night, in a tailored shirt and black skirt, tightly belted with a wide leather belt; the pink nipples that puckered and stiffened at a touch; and darker nipples that I had never seen, but knew had to be like that, dark and large. And how black would her pubic hair be, and how hungry would she be after so long a time? Her head back, listening to a record, her eyes narrowed in concentration, her mouth open slightly. And the thought kept coming back: What would it be like to be her? What did Janet feel? What would she feel when Lenny entered her body? How different was it for a woman who was sexually responsive? She wouldn’t even know, if I waited until she was thoroughly aroused. Sex had been in the air in the living room, we’d all felt it. After such a long period of deprivation, she’d crumble at Lenny’s first touch. She’d never know, I repeated to myself.