Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [26]
“Work at it!” Connie chuckled, remembering Professor Everett Silvester in bed, working at sex. Her body was a problem he was solving. He put everything in pass-fail terms. “You’re crazy, you know that? If I’m not.”
“Crazy? No, actually I’ve never been able to. Jackrabbit went mad at thirteen and again at fifteen—”
“Who’s this Jackrabbit?”
“I am sweet friends with Jackrabbit. Also Bee. Both are my mems too—in my family? If we work at this, I hope you’ll meet them soon. Even though you laugh at me for speaking of it so. My own work is velvet for me. And this too fascinates.” Luciente took her hands and squeezed them.
“Second best to blue whales and the Yif—whatever they are!”
“Not to me, truly,” Luciente assured her, nodding vigorously. “I see you as a being with many sores, wounds, undischarged anger but basically good and wide open to others.”
“Ha! You know I’m a two-time loser?” Connie yanked her hands free.
“Encyclopedia: define two-time loser.” This time she saw that what she had taken for a watch on Luciente’s wrist was not only that, or not that at all. He was not lifting it to his ear to hear it tick but because it spoke almost inaudibly.
“What’s that?”
“My kenner. Computer link? Actually it’s a computer as well, my own memory annex. I don’t quite follow what you mean, but I myself have done things I regret. Things that injured others. I have messed up experiments—”
“Messing up is something I’m an expert on!”
Someone banged on the door. Luciente sprang to his feet, glancing around.
“Who is it?” Connie yelled.
“It’s me—Dolly! Let me in! Hurry!”
Luciente kissed her on the cheek before she could duck and ran long-legged into the bedroom, saying hastily over his slender shoulder, “Till when! Graze me when you’re free.”
She stood a moment collecting herself. Dolly was banging on the door and screaming. It was a funny time for her to arrive, on a Friday night, when she always had to be working. As Connie released the police lock, she felt the sensation of Luciente’s presence evaporating. She shook her head like a dog coming out of the water. Once Eddie had remained stoned for twenty-four hours on some strongly righteous grass … .
Dolly rushed in past her, blood running from her bruised mouth.
THREE
Locked into seclusion, Connie sat on the floor near the leaky radiator with her knees drawn up to her chest, slowly coming out of a huge dose of drugs. Weak through her whole useless watery body, she still felt nauseated, her head ached, her eyes and throat were sandpapery, her tongue felt swollen in her dry mouth, but at least she could think now. Her brain no longer felt crushed to a lump at the back of her skull and the slow cold weight of time had begun to slide forward.
Already her lips were split, her skin chapped from the tranquilizers, her bowels were stone, her hands shook. She no longer coughed, though. The tranks seemed to suppress the chronic cough that brought up bloody phlegm. Arriving had been so hard, so bleak. The first time here, she had been scared of the other patients—violent, crazy, out-of-control animals. She had learned. It was the staff she must watch out for. But the hopelessness of being stuck here again had boiled up in her two mornings before when the patients in her ward had been lined up for their dose of liquid Thorazine, and she had refused. Pills she could flush away, but the liquid there was no avoiding, and it killed her by inches. She had blindly fought till they had sunk a hypo in her and sent her crashing down.