The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [10]
Now she played with herself very slowly and lazily. Her mind was virtually blank. There was no fantasy, no memory, only the pure tactile pleasure of her fingers upon her loins. At one point she heard Peter’s voice telling her that she was going to be all right.
After half an hour or so she got out of bed, made toast, fried a couple eggs. She had not reached orgasm. It would have been easy for her to do so, it always was, but she did not want to.
TWO
Peter walked easily down the stairs, then felt his shoulders sag as he reached the door to his own apartment. For a moment he was tempted to go straight to the theater. It was safe enough to walk around New Hope with drugs on one’s person; if they busted everyone in town who was holding at any given moment they would cut the local population in half. Besides, he was known, he was local. The mobs of itinerant freaks who massed around the base of the cannon were subject to periodic frisks, but New Hope residents could do everything short of shooting up in public without drawing official attention.
So it would be safe enough to go directly to the theater, and thus avoid Gretchen—
But he couldn’t do it. First there was his rule: He did not carry anything illegal if there was any way to avoid it. He had several rules, all of them painfully evolved over the past few years, and he felt it necessary to stay within them insofar as possible. It was a part of staying together, and Peter was very much aware how easy it was to cease to be together, and thus to fall apart.
Gretchen was in the process of falling apart. This was a reason why he increasingly wanted to avoid seeing her, and it was also a reason why he had to see her.
Because of the kid.
Robin hopped off the couch as he opened the door, toddled across the room to him. The child’s face glowed with total joy, and Peter had never failed to respond to such radiance. “Peter, Peter, Peter,” she chirped.
He bent over, gripped her by her hips, hoisted her high into the air. “How is Robin Redbreast?” he singsonged. “How is Peter’s baby bird?”
She squealed with delight. “Oh, I can almost touch the ceiling!”
“See how big you’re getting?”
“Hold me higher, Peter, I can almost touch the ceiling.”
He boosted her a few inches higher and the little fingers brushed a piece of loose paint. “I did it,” she said.
The chip of paint fell. “Oh, my goodness,” he said, “Here comes the ceiling.”
“Is it falling, Peter?”
“Oh, Chicken-Licken, the sky is falling. The sky is falling, Robin-Lobin.”
“The sky is falling, Peter-Leter.”
He swung her to and fro, then set her on her feet. “Where’s Mommy?”
“Mommy-Lommy,” Robin said.
“Catch on fast, don’t you?”
“Gretchen-Letchen’s in the bathroom, Peter-Leter.”
He smiled. Gretchen-Letchen indeed. Mouth of babes, he thought. And was Gretchen lechin’ after all? One never quite knew.
“In the bathroom,” Robin said again. “She’s been in the bathroom almost forever.”
He went to the door, knocked. No answer. He spoke her name, knocked again, called out her name again and tried the knob. The door was locked.
His mind filled in a rush with images. Gretchen in the bathtub, her face swollen beneath the water. Gretchen sprawled on the floor with her wrists slashed and the tiles red with her blood. Gretchen slumped on the toilet like Lenny Bruce with a spike of bad smack still in her arm. But she wasn’t shooting anything these days, was she? But how could you tell, how could you ever tell from one day to the next?
“Gretchen.”
“Gretchen-Letchen, Mommy-Lommy—”
He forced his face to soften, then turned to Robin. He said, “Honey, could you go watch television for a few minutes?”
“The picture’s all funny.”
“Well, play with the knobs and see if you can fix it.”
“Oh, dynamite,” Robin said.
The hip talk had originally