The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [162]
Whatever in hell reality was.
His mind began to play little games with him. Paranoia was tempting; he had never before realized how seductive it could be. Once you bought the first premise you could fit absolutely anything into your theory. The villains could be anyone—the Communists, the Elders of Zion, the Martians, anyone at all. People who did one thing were villains or dupes. People who did the opposite were playing along in order to deceive you. It had been startlingly easy for him to revise her fantasies along the lines he wanted to. And he had not by any means anticipated all her questions and reservations. She’d been throwing him curves all morning, and he’d gotten wood on every last one of them.
It scared him that he was able to do this. Did his mind work that much like hers?
And it upset him that everything he did worked primarily not because of any brilliance of his, but because of her trust in him. She trusted him. He fought his way out of those thoughts. It was the speed talking, he knew. There was some truth in there that he could worry about later, but the speed was turning things in on themselves, and that was no good.
He heard the noon whistle. The spansules were supposed to deliver a balanced dose of speed over an eight-hour period. He had taken one at four, so it was time to take another. Of course the eight-hour thing was approximate. And if you took them too closely together, they could jam up on you, and if you waited too long, they could drop you and leave you strung out.
He swallowed a pill. Twelve o’clock, the end of the longest morning of his life. He could kill an hour now, maybe a little more than that. He could explain that long an absence in any of a hundred plausible ways.
But there was no way to make an hour last forever. Sooner or later he would have to climb those stairs and be with her again, and he wasn’t sure he could do it.
TWENTY-SEVEN
When the nurse came to give Clem his bath, Olive excused herself. “I don’t know if I dare leave the two of you alone,” she said, “but there’s a call I have to make.” She turned, a smile on her lips, and left the hospital room.
A young nurse’s aide passed her in the corridor and almost dropped her bedpan. What she witnessed was transformation that looked like a camera trick worked by means of time-lapse photography. An attractive middle-aged woman emerged from a room, shoulders squared, eyes bright, face radiant. In an instant she changed into a hopeless old woman. Her shoulders slumped, her eyes were vacant and dull, her face was lined with grief, and she walked wearily as if with great effort.
At the pay telephone Olive brought herself back to life again. She dropped a coin into the slot, dialed a number. An operator asked for more money, and she deposited another coin.
When Linda answered, she said briskly, “Olive, Linda. How’s business?”
Business, it seemed, was going well enough. “Then I won’t keep you,” she said. “I’m still at Doylestown General. He’s coming along nicely, but I’ll be here another week at the least. Just carry on in your usual capable fashion. Oh, there is one thing. Don’t sell any of Clem’s paintings.”
“It’s good you told me. Someone almost bought one about an hour ago. He was going to bring his wife back after dinner, but I’ll tell him it’s not for sale.”
“No, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” Her voice almost broke; she stopped herself in time and waited for a moment. “Not what I meant at all. I want you to give them away.”
“Pardon me?”
“Whenever anyone admires one,