Wildcards - Down and Dirty Part 44

Sal asked her what broken promises those were.

Why, that I was done leaning on anyone, Sal. Remember? I promised that after the Cloisters. And now look at me. I'm leaning so hard I'm tipped over. Then she realized he'd known and he'd just wanted her to say it, to admit it.

All right. I admit it. I admit it all. I said I'd never kill anyone' again, no matter how bad they were, even if it meant they'd kill me first. And I killed Emile because he wanted to watch how he'd die. She didn't have to explain who he was; Sal knew that, too.

And I always promised I'd be ... responsible with my body. Maybe it was easier to lock myself up than finally accept that we would never be together.

Sal thought that was kind of funny. After all, he wasn't just gay, he was gay and dead; been that way for quite some time, too.

Well, Sal, being dead, you wouldn't have any idea how easy it can be to remain faithful to someone's memory. It's real easy when you're too scared to face a living person. Live men are real intimidating, Sal.

Sal said he knew what she meant.

Yeah, I guess you would, wouldn't you. I guess it's kind of a funny coincidence, then, that the first time I'd be with a woman, and then the first man I ever really had would also be gay.

Sal said he didn't see what that had to do with anything. Well, it's like a recurring theme.

Sal said he still couldn't see it.

Never mind. I'm just glad now that you didn't live to see what I've come to.

That's something you missed by drowning in the bathtub, Sal, that and the big AIDS epidemic. I mean, if you really had to go and die, drowning was the better way. You wouldn't want to die of AIDS. Or of me.

Sal said he'd never been that paranoid.

Well, there's plenty to be paranoid about these days. I found out there's a contagious form of the wild card virus. No one knows how it's being transmitted.

And most people die from it.

Sal said that certainly was a revolting development. Yes, it certainly is. And you know what else, Sal?

Sal asked her what that was.

There's no way to tell if you've been exposed. Till it happens. Maybe I've been exposed. Maybe I'll get it and die. I just hope I can't give it to anyone else.

"Honey, you're not the only one."

Jane was about to answer when she realized she had heard Sal's voice for real.

But it didn't sound very much like Sal. She turned to him in surprise and found it hadn't been Sal beside her after all but some stranger, a skinny man with a ratlike face, down to the mangy fur covering his cheeks, the pointed nose, and the whiskers.

"It's a mouse face, lady, not a rat face," the man said wearily. "You can tell by the teeth, if you know anything about rodents. I used to be an exterminator, okay? Gimme a hard time about it, why doncha. I tagged along with you to see what a little piece of chicken could want wandering around in Jokertown at this hour of the night. Frankly, lady, you got a lot more problems than I have, and I don't want none of them."

He was gone and she was standing in the middle of a sidewalk under a buzzing streetlamp.

"Sal?" she asked the air. There was no answer.

At first she'd been afraid she'd come back to the same bar, but then she saw it was different. No stage set up for a live s.e.x show, for one thing, and the clientele was a lot livelier, more brightly dressed, some of them even in costumes and masks.

When she saw the eyeless man behind the bar, she panicked, and then she realized it couldn't be the same one she'd taken into the limousine. When had that been?

At least a thousand years ago. Like a sleepwalker she moved to the bar and took one of the high stools. The eyeless bartender, working expertly, suddenly straightened up and turned his face in her direction.

"Trouble, Sascha?" A dwarf materialized at her side and clamped one thick hand on her arm.

The bartender backed away. " I don't want to be near her. Get her away from me."

"Come on, honey. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." The dwarf started to pull her off the stool. "No, please," she said, trying to twist her arm out of his grasp. " I have to see someone." She knew where she was now and it was the only place she could have come to find what she needed; Chrysalis or someone around Chrysalis would know where she could get a drug that would fill in the void Ti Malice had eaten away in her. She turned to look at the bartender. "Please, I'm not going to hurt anyone-"

"Get her out," the bartender said urgently. "I can't stand the way she feels."

Jane looked around wildly and then spotted Chrysalis at a corner table. She gave a mighty tug and slipped out of the dwarf's grip.

"Hey!" he yelled.

Ignoring the stares of the other patrons, she darted between the tables to the corner where Chrysalis was sitting, watching with those strange, floating blue eyes.

"Gotcha!" The dwarf seized her around the waist, and she fell to her knees, crawling the last few feet to Chrysalis's chair, dragging the man with her.

Chrysalis lifted a finger. The dwarfs arms loosened but he didn't let go of her completely.

"I need information,Jane said in a low voice. 'About a drug."

Chrysalis didn't answer. Whatever expression might have been on her peculiar face was impossible to read.

"I've been addicted to something against my will. I need-I need-" She dug in her pants pocket and miraculously there was money there, a small, flat fold of bills. Hurriedly she unfolded them and held them out. " I can pay, I can pay for-"

Chrysalis flicked briefly at the bills Jane was thrusting at her. Jane looked; there were three bills, two tens and a twenty. Forty dollars. Bad joke.

Chrysalis shook her head and waved a hand.

"Like I said, honey," the dwarf said, "you were just leaving."

She leaned against the side of the building with the bills crumpled in her hand.

The void in her widened until she thought the craving had to split her open right there. "Excuse me."

Kim Toy.

She blinked and then realized it wasn't Kim Toy after all. This woman was younger and taller and her features were different.

"I saw Chrysalis give you the b.u.m's rush. Some nerve she's got, huh. The twerp took you by my table, and I couldn't help thinking I knew you from somewhere."

Jane turned away from her. "Leave me alone," she muttered, but the woman moved closer.

"Like, I think you used to work for Rosemary Muldoon. Didn't you?"

Jane stumbled away from the woman and then fell to her hands and knees, shaking all over. Underneath the ache she felt something else, a sickness that was more physical. As if she were coming down with the flu or something worse. The idea was so absurd she could almost have laughed.

"Hey, are you sick or something?" The woman bent down, putting concerned hands on her shoulders. "You strung out?" she asked in a low voice.

Jane could feel herself weeping without tears.

"Come on," said the woman, helping Jane to her feet. "Any friend of Rosemary Muldoon's is a friend of mine. I think I can help you out."

In spite of the hollowness eating away at her, Jane was overwhelmed by the luxurious apartment. The sunken living room was as large as a ballroom. The predominant color was a delicate, pearlized pink, even to the silk wallpaper and the enormous crystal chandelier.

The woman led her down the steps and sat her on an overstuffed sofa. "It's something; isn't it? Looks like a dump on the outside and heaven on the inside.

Had to grease a lot of palms to keep the CONDEMNED sign out front. just finished the place last week, and I've been dying to entertain. What are you drinking?"

"Water," Jane said weakly.

Across the room, at the ornate wet bar, the woman looked over her shoulder with a near smile. "Thought you could get your own."

Jane stiffened. "You-you know-?"

"Didn't I say I knew you? You think I'd really bring anyone here I wasn't sure of?" The woman brought her a cut-gla.s.s goblet of ice water and sat down next to her. "Of course, it isn't all mine. It really belongs to the people I work for.

Best job I ever had, needless to say."

Jane sipped her water. Her hands began to shake uncontrollably, and she handed the goblet to the woman before she could spill it. The physical illness was crawling over her again, like a cramp, except it was all over her body. She held very still until it subsided.

"Whatever you've got, I hope it isn't catching," the woman said, not unkindly.

"What happened-you fall in with one of those sleaze-bags around Rosemary and get turned on to junk?"

Jane shook her head. "Not Rosemary."

"Oh? That's too bad. I mean, I was sort of hoping you were still in touch with Rosemary because I'd like to see her again." She leaned over to open a pink laquered box on the oversize coffee table. "Joint? It'll take the edge off. It really will. This is like nothing you've ever had before."

"No, it isn't," Jane said, looking away from the proffered joint.

"What are you on, anyway?"

"It's something that goes straight to the pleasure center of the brain. You don't want to know." Or perhaps she would, Jane thought suddenly. Her thoughts began to coil toward a plan. What if she could get this woman to go back to the apartment with her and offered her to Ti Malice? He loved new mounts, she knew that ...

"Oh, that's easy," the woman said. "What?" Jane looked at her, startled.

The woman tilted her head to one side, eyeing her curiously. "I've got an a.s.sociate who's developed something that'll go straight for the pleasure center of the brain."

"Who is it?" Jane said, grabbing the woman's shoulder. "Can I meet him? Where can I find him? How-"

"Whoa, whoa now. Slow down." The woman plucked Jane's hand off herself and moved away slightly. "This is top secret stuff. Stupid of me to mention it, but you being a friend of Rosemary's and all, I kind of forgot myself. Come on. Mellow out and let's talk about Rosemary," She lit the joint with a crystal table lighter, took a deep drag, and offered it to Jane.

She accepted the joint and tried to do exactly as she'd seen the woman do. The smoke burned in her lungs, and she coughed it out.

"Keep practicing," the woman said, laughing a little. "It'll really take the edge off."

A few drags later she had gotten more than just the hang of it. So this was what they meant by getting a buzz on, she thought. It was a buzz you felt rather than heard, and it would have been pleasant, except that it couldn't get between herself and the gnawing void. She tried to give the joint back to the woman, but she told Jane to keep at it, she needed it more. Instead she put it out carefully in the cut-gla.s.s ashtray on the table.

"Don't like it?" the woman said in surprise.

"It's ... okay," Jane said, and her voice seemed to stretch out and out and out like long, slow elastic. Her head felt ready to float off her shoulders like a helium balloon and rise up to the ceiling. She wondered if Hiram knew about this.

But the woman wanted to talk about Rosemary, and between trying to keep her head on her shoulders and fighting against the need for Ti Malice, it was hard to keep track of what she was saying. If the woman would just shut up, she might achieve some kind of equilibrium, something that would steady her long enough to break the water gla.s.s on the table and use one of the shards on her throat. That was the only answer now; the dope was helping her see that. She would never be free of the need for Ti Malice, and if she went back-when she went back-she could only look forward to worse things, more degradation, more killings, all done willingly, just to feel the bliss of his presence within her. All the things she had wished for Hiram, that he would find someone to make his life complete, she had inadvertently gotten for herself, except it was Ti Malice instead of the vague, unidentifiable man she had always dreamed of, who had sometimes resembled Sal and sometimes Jumpin' Jack Flash and sometimes even Croyd. Another bad joke in an ongoing series. It had to end.

The woman kept on talking and talking. Occasionally there were long periods of silence, and Jane came out of her fog to find that the woman was no longer on the couch with her. She would lie back against the cus.h.i.+on, glad of the silence, and then the woman would magically rematerialize next to her, going on and on and on about Rosemary Muldoon until she thought she might cut her throat just to get away from that voice.

But that was awfully ungrateful. The woman was just trying to help her. She knew that. She should do something in return. Offer her something.

Rosemary's phone number swam to the surface of her mind and waited for her to pick it up. And after a while she did, and the woman disappeared for the longest time ever.

Someone was shaking her awake. The first thing that hit her was the need, and she doubled over, beating her fist on the couch cus.h.i.+on because it wasn't Ti Malice there but a slender Oriental man kneeling on the carpet next to her, smiling polite concern at her.

"This is the a.s.sociate I was telling you about," the woman said, pulling her to a sitting position. "Roll up your sleeve."

"What? Why?" Jane looked around, but the room wouldn't come clear yet. Her head felt heavy and thick.

"Just my way of saying thanks."

"For what?" She felt her sleeve being pushed up and something cold and wet on the inside of her arm.

"For Rosemary's phone number."

"You called her?"

"Oh, no. You're going to do that for me." The woman tied a piece of rubber around Jane's upper arm and pulled it tight. "And in return, you get a trip to heaven."

The Oriental man held up a syringe and grinned as though he were a game show host showing off a prize. "But-"

The woman was shoving a cordless receiver into her hand. "You'd like to see her again, wouldn't you?"

Jane let the phone drop to her lap and wiped her face tiredly. "I'm not so sure, really."

"Then maybe you'd better get sure." The woman's voice hardened. Jane looked up at her in surprise. "I mean, I'm sure. I have a lot to talk about with Rosemary.

The sooner you contact her, the sooner you go to heaven. You want to go to heaven, don't you?"

"I don't know if I can-I don't know if she'll even take my call-"

The woman leaned down and spoke directly into her face. "I don't see where you've got a choice. You're strung out and you've got nowhere to go. I can't let you stay here indefinitely, you know. The company that owns this place might not want me to have a roommate. Of course, they'd feel differently if you did something for me."

Jane drew back a little. "Who do you work for?"

"Don't be so nosy. Just make the call. Get her to meet you here, if possible, anywhere else if necessary."

She was about to say no when the craving gnawed at her again, shutting off the word in her throat. "This drug," she said, looking at the syringe. "It's-good?"