The Silver Metal Lover(62)

“Catch what off whom?” I said.

“Gosh,” said Jason, “what impeccable grammar. Off that peculiar actor friend of yours.”

Do they know? How can they be here? As if they’re waiting for me— Don’t answer. Switch. Throw them.

“Isn’t it cold?” I said.

“Not for you in that lovely green cloak.”

“Is that his?” Medea inquired.

“Whose?”

“Your rude friend.”

“I have a lot of rude friends.”

“Oh,” said Medea. “Does she mean us?”

“She doesn’t want to talk about him. Obviously had a lovers’ tiff. What a shame, when you’re living here in the slums to be with him.”

They know. I think they know it all. Do they know where I live? Where Silver is? How can they…

“If you mean the man with the red hair you saw on the bridge,” I said, “we’ve split up, yes. He’s gone east.”

“East?”

“Out of state.” (Like Swohnson and E.M. and their new line in farm machines.) “There’s the chance of a good part there, in a drama.”

“And left you all alone? In this slummy bit of the city?”

“Jason,” I said, “what gave you the idea that I live around here?”

“Well. You’ve left your mother, and your mother’s stopped your credit and your policode and all that. Then we asked around rather. Described you very accurately—diet-conscious, bleached hair—And we heard about how you sang in the street with your friend who’s gone east. How brave, when you can’t sing. Do you do it the way we do? Someone said you come here, to this arcade.”

They’d been searching for me. It couldn’t be for any reason but pure nosiness and spite. And today was the day Silver and I used to come to the arcade—they’d found that out too, and stationed themselves here, waiting. And, used to coming to this spot at this time, on this day, I’d done it without considering. And walked right into them. (They know he’s a robot, they’ve spoken to Egyptia, or Clovis. They know.) But—they hadn’t found out where we were living—or they’d have turned up there. (I can just imagine their smiling faces in the doorway.) Of course. Nobody did know where we lived, we’d never told anyone, even the musicians whose lofts we’d visited had never yet been invited back.

“Well actually,” I said, “I don’t live this end, at all. It’s sheer chance we met.”

“Ah. A Dickensian coincidence,” said Jason.

“Where do you live, Jane?” asked Medea, smiling, her eyes like thin slices of cobra. How I hated her, and her awful crimped blue hair.

“Where do I live? Near the Old River.”

“And you never open the windows.”

“Not often.”

“It’s interesting there.”

“Yes. Anyway, I must go. Goodbye,” I said.

“Goodbye, Jane.”

“Goodbye, Jane.”

They stood totally static as I walked out of the arcade, and I almost turned and ran for home. But as the cold of the open street breathed over me and my boots crunched in the deeper snow, I suddenly understood I’d escaped too easily. With a queasy, dizzying sensation I walked over the road and into Kacey’s Kitchens, and straight down an aisle of servicery fixtures. Pausing before a chromium in-sta-mix I saw, reflected in its curved surface, a distorted runny image of Jason and Medea flowing in at the door.

Pretend not to be aware. Find a crowd, lose them.

Oh God. There may not be a crowd. It’s cold, and cash is low.

There has to be a crowd.

There wasn’t.

Not in Kacey’s, not in the Cookery. Not in the dozen or so stores and shops I walked through. I tried to lose them in alleyways, too, twisting and turning, going along walks I only knew because of going along them with him. Darting across hurtling roads, trying to get ahead of them—or perhaps, get them run over. But somehow they kept after me. I’d see their storefront reflections melt in, a few yards behind mine.

The sun went. The streets darkened with dusk and brightened with extra lighting. It was getting late, and I couldn’t go home. I ached with the cold, and with hunger, and with anger and fear. I hurried into a second owner clothing store, and tried to shake them off among the moth-eaten fur coats. I almost thought I had, and then, going through the hats toward the other door, most horribly I heard Jason give a raucous hoarse sneeze. It went through me like a bullet, and then I ran. I ran out of the store, and down the street outside, skidding and sliding, clutching at intermittent lampposts to steady myself. Would they run too? Oh let them fall over and break all their legs— They ran. They must have. I didn’t hear them, they ran like weasels, better than me. Without knowing quite how, I’d reached the square that led to the all-night market with the fish-oil flares. As I stopped, panting and gasping, with a stitch jabbing in my stomach, they came up, one on either side of me, like the slatey shadows.

“Jane, whyever were you running?”

“Are you following me?” I cried.

“Are we?” Medea asked Jason.

“Sort of,” he said reasonably. “We thought we’d walk you home.”

“Only, the river isn’t in this direction at all, Jane.”