Year's Best SF 10, page 39
“I don’t feel so good, Bea.”
“Come close. Let your sister see.”
Talisha stepped forward and stuck her chin at the pix.
“Ladyla, this is not your best look.” She lifted her goggles and peered at Talisha. “You’re not coming to work today, are you?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re sick?”
If she told Bea what had happened, her sister would be hauling Ricky down Elm Street by the collar of his coat. “Yeah, I think so. It hit me when I got out of bed.”
“Sick in the morning?” Bea grinned. “You’re pregnant?”
She sighed. “Bea, I’m having a rough day here….”
“Is it the baby you’ve been wanting?” Now she was laughing. “You said you’ve been trying, Ladyla and Lord Ricky.”
They had been trying, or at least, Ricky hadn’t objected when she stopped buying him birth control pills. But he hadn’t reached across the bed for her for almost two weeks now. Probably since he started with his damnfuck pills.
“I told you not to tell anyone.”
“And I didn’t. We’re talking here, like two sisters should. What, do you want a secure line?”
“I don’t think it’s…I don’t know what it is.” Talisha realized that this might be the only way to get rid of Bea. “Maybe I do need to buy a test.”
Bea clapped her hands. “That’s news, Lady ’Sha. That’s the newsiest news I’ve heard today.”
“Bea, don’t.”
“Okay. You stay home today, little sister. Take your test and God bless.” She waved at Talisha and the pix went blank.
Talisha did cry then. The tears came hot and fast and her cheeks burned with them. She would be lost without Ricky. “Without Ricky,” she said, to hear how it sounded. “Without that chiseling cock-for-brains.” She sank onto the couch and hugged her favorite pillow to her chest. It purred and breathed the scent of gardenias up at her. Ricky had given her the pillow for their sixth anniversary. Actually, she had wanted a new rug because Ricky had knocked a candle over and burned a hole in the old one. The apartment was so small and Ricky got clumsy after a few beers. But a rug wasn’t in the budget and so she had moved the coffee table to cover the hole. Talisha began to rock back and forth, squeezing the pillow. The rug didn’t matter anymore. Nothing did. If she and Ricky split, she’d never have the baby or the beautiful house she had always dreamed of. In fact, she’d have to move; there was no way she could afford the rent on what Bea was paying her. She thought of the tube rack where she had been living when she met Ricky. Her mod had been seven by seven by fourteen. She glanced around the apartment. None of this furniture would fit. The pillow and the rug would probably be all she’d be able to keep. She felt grief hollowing her out; she thought she might cave in on herself when her earstone started whispering again. She tossed her head as if to shake it loose but it was patient. It just wanted her to know that there were two new messages in her inbox.
“From Ricky?” She felt a flicker of hope.
“One is a bill from Infoline for $87.22. The other is The Two-Minute Report.”
TTMR episode opened automatically and the pix trumpeted its theme, Fanfare for Right Now. A news reader with a voice as smooth and bright as a mirror announced that Rabbi-Senator Gallman would be shutting down over the long weekend for routine maintenance. Talisha wiped the tears from her face. She didn’t care that Pin Pan was in Akron to campaign for the Death Amendment or that 21 percent of all guide dogs could now read at a third grade level. She didn’t need news. She needed advice. She needed….
Ed.
The idea brought her to her feet in excitement. She could ask Ed. She tossed the pillow on the couch and began to pace around the apartment. There was no time to enter her problem in his Question Queue. He might not get to it for weeks. Months. But for a fee, she could jump the queue and access Ed in real time. Of course, it would be hideously expensive. But so what? Would it cost as much as Ricky’s pills? She hoped so. She couldn’t wait to see his expression when he opened the bill.
But she couldn’t meet Ed looking like a trashy, jilted housewife. Talisha scrubbed her face and then sprayed on a hot shade of Benetint. She changed into her de Chaumont pantsuit and settled herself on the couch in front of the pix. She turned the pix into a mirror so she could see herself as Ed would see her. She tilted her head and tried for an assured, casual look. Then she brought up Ed Explains It All and clicked through greeting to the contract pages for a personal interview. The fee agreement almost stopped her. It was going to cost her a hundred dollars a minute to get Ed’s advice. But then she thought about how smart he was. How calm. She opened a window to check the balance on their bank account. They had $2393.89, but they needed eleven hundred for the July rent. Twelve minutes then, what she had was a twelve-minute problem. She was thinking about how to tell it as she opened their account to the contract genie.
Talisha wasn’t expecting to be connected immediately. She thought some secretary would come on the pix and they would schedule an appointment or something. But when she thumbed the last contract page, Ed himself peered into her tiny apartment.
“Go ahead,” he said. “I’m listening.”
This wasn’t the familiar Ed of the bi-weekly episode, who sat at a desk in a vast library, resplendent in his characteristic white suit, dark blue shirt, and paisley tie. This Ed was wearing green plaid pajamas and he needed a shave. He was sitting at a table in a sunny room pouring Cheerios into a bowl.
“Ed,” she said, “Is that you?”
“It is. Go ahead please.”
“But I…I mean I wasn’t…wait, are you real?”
He sighed and peeled a banana. “That question cost you seventeen dollars, madam. Have you ever read Hegel?”
“My name is Talisha. Hegel who?”
“Hegel wrote, ‘The will is a special way of thinking; it is thought translating itself into reality; it is the impulse of thought to give itself reality.’ Now Talisha, do you want me to be real? Is such your will?”
Talisha wondered if this was a trick question. “Uh, I guess so.”
“Well, then.” Ed began to cut the banana onto his Cheerios. “Go ahead please.”
Breathlessly, she told him about Ricky, their marriage, their money problems and the mechdream pills. At a hundred dollars a minute, there was obviously a lot she had to leave out, but she was satisfied that she had done a good job of painting a picture of her husband as the lying ass-wipe that he was. While she spoke, Ed spooned up his breakfast. She couldn’t help but notice that he was a very neat eater. Talisha always had to sponge off the kitchen table after Ricky ate.
Ed aimed his spoon at her when she finished. “But you do love him?”
“I….” Her cheeks flushed and she thought she might cryagain. Instead she said, “Yes.”
Ed considered this for ten or twelve dollars. “Who is he thinking of when you have intercourse?” he said finally.
“I don’t know.” She squirmed on the couch. “Me, I hope.”
Ed shook his head wearily. “Let me put it this way, who are you thinking of?”
“Him.” She could hear the squeak in her voice.
“Don’t waste your money, Talisha, or my time. Do you keep your eyes closed when you’re having intercourse?”
“I do.” But then he would know that, wouldn’t he? He was Ed. “Well, sometimes I think of Sanjay Deol.”
“The pilot on Let It Ride? The one with the blue hair?”
She nodded. She couldn’t believe she was telling her sexual fantasies to Ed and paying a hundred dollars a minute for the privilege. “And I used to think of Burt Christmas, but not since he took up with Pernilla Jones.”
“All right. Now then, what’s Richie’s favorite part of your body?”
“Ricky.” Talisha frowned and then held up her hand. “He said once that I had such pretty, long fingers.” She gazed at them as if surprised to find them at the end of her arm. “He said I should’ve learned to play a musical instrument. Like flute or piano or something.”
Ed smiled. “Touch the pix with your pretty fingers, Talisha.”
She bolted from the couch and pressed the tips of her fingers to the screen.
“Good.” He touched his own pix, so that his hand lined up with hers. Talisha’s heart pounded. They were so close, even though she had no idea where he was. His face was serene. Kind. She decided that the next time she had sex, she might try thinking about Ed.
“People think I can solve their problems, Talisha, but I can’t—not really.” He turned back to the table and picked up his bowl and the box of Cheerios. “But I can tell you what to do if you want to stay married.”
“I do,” she whispered. “I don’t know why, but I still want him.”
“Then you’ll have to go to where he is,” said Ed. “See what he’s doing.”
Talisha spent the rest of the day thinking. It was hard work. She drank two cups of Zest and washed three loads of laundry and vacuumed the entire apartment and never once turned on the pix to watch any of her shows. She crawled on hands and knees to gather Ricky’s pills. Of course, she had known right away what Ed had meant about going to him. He was telling her to take one of the pills so she could enter his mechdream. But she wasn’t sure that she wanted to know what Ricky was hiding in his secret world. It was bad enough watching him brush his teeth. Now she had to be an eyewitness to his forbidden desires?
Talisha started when the door to the apartment opened at five-thirty and Ricky walked in. He had finished work, so he had come home, of course. She thought he might at least have the decency to get stinking smart in some bar, stagger in at two in the morning and come crawling to their bed to beg her forgiveness. Instead he hung his Titans jacket in the closet and dropped his computer on the coffee table as coolly as if he were a finalist for Husband of the Year.
“So?” Talisha said.
“So I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“Fine,” she said. “That’s just fine.”
He slid to the other side of the apartment to avoid her and squeezed between the couch and the ugly lamp his mother had given them. She didn’t follow him into the sleeping closet; she knew what he was looking for.
“Where are they?” He came to the door.
“I hid them.”
“Okay.” He went back to change out of his work clothes.
And that was it. She didn’t believe he’d be able to pull it off, but he was his usual leaden self while he watched The Sports Witch. Then he played You Can Say That Again and climbed all the way to 11,234 out of 90,645. Talisha thought about frying just one Beefy Beanstix for herself but then she decided that if he could act as if their world wasn’t ending, then so could she.
“Dinner,” she called.
He came to the table and stared at the glass of water next to his slab of Beanstix. “Am I out of beer?”
“I poured them all down the sink,” she said brightly.
He shrugged and sat down. “Okay.”
Talisha tried to eat but she wasn’t hungry. The air felt thick to her. Or something. The only sound in their apartment was the click of Ricky’s fork against his plate. The silence didn’t seem to bother him. He probably didn’t even notice it. His body was in the apartment but his mind was probably riding cowgirls at Ricky’s Ranch. She felt certain that she could’ve set his pants on fire and he wouldn’t have complained. So how long had he been like this? Talisha wasn’t sure now. Ricky had never been much of a talker but at least he used to ask her about her day when he came home. She would tell him about what she and Bea were working on, give him the news from Amy Anderson or TTMR. He managed to look interested when she described all the beautiful homes she’d seen on Mainly Mansions.
When Ricky finished eating, he cleared his plate—and hers—and waved them under the dishwasher. Talisha stared at his back as he put the dishes away. Then she watched him sidle to the couch. He sat and opened his messages. She leaned back, waiting for the explosion.
“Talisha, what’s this bill about?” he called.
“I talked to Ed.”
“Eleven hundred dollars worth?”
“He explained some things to me.”
Ricky thought this over. “Okay.”
Talisha couldn’t believe it. She’d torched their finances and he was acting like a light bulb had burned out. He cleared the messages off the pix and began to click through the menus on The Classic Car Channel. “Is that why you’re all dressed up?” he said.
She had forgotten that she was still in her de Chaumont pantsuit. She’d bought it three years ago and only wore it on special occasions like birthdays and anniversaries. Up until today, she had only worn it for him. Well, maybe there weren’t going to be any more damn anniversaries.
“Fuck you, Ricky.” She flew into the bathroom and slammed the door behind her.
She had stashed the flat cardboard box with her tampons. In a rage she shook one of Ricky’s pills into her hand and popped it into her mouth. She’d go where he was, all right. She leaned over the sink and drank directly from the tap to wash the nasty thing down. She’d stick her head into his little pervert palace and tell him to shove the rest of his pills up his zombie ass.
She closed the toilet lid and sat down. She had no idea how the pill would affect her. As she waited, she thought about Ed’s green plaid pajamas. She wondered if maybe she could live with Bea. She noticed that they were almost out of toilet paper. Her brain felt odd. There were toothpaste spots on the mirror. She wasn’t sure that she had ever felt her brain before. It was a tickle, no, it was more like bubbles bursting and each bubble was the note of a song that she didn’t recognize but if she concentrated, she could sort of pick up the melody and then bits of lyric, something about The Dark Side of Town and the woman who lived there or maybe a woman who was going there, yes, that was it, a woman was going to see another woman who lived on The Dark Side of Town and that woman was her, Talisha, and now it was getting dark in the bathroom only that wasn’t right because she could see the water stain where the ceiling leaked and then the door opened and Ricky came and helped her up off the toilet and said It’s hard the first time as he took her by the arm and led her to the sleeping closet and then she was lying on the bed and he was taking off her shoes and she was so sad as he paused to turn off the light and the door snicked shut.
There was a parking lot on The Dark Side of Town. The cars lined up in rows had headlights on and engines running but they weren’t going anywhere. Talisha didn’t like the looks of them. They were old-fashioned cars, the models for the carbots that Ricky fixed. She had seen the full-sized ones mostly in the old, flat movies and in that museum. Not many people rode in the old cars anymore. Certainly not Talisha. As she approached the parking lot she could see lights inside the cars—and shadowy people.
Ricky rolled down the window of a long, low, green car that looked like it had melted in the sun. “You like it?” he said. “It’s a 1969 Pontiac GTO with a Ram Air III 400 cubic inch engine.” Ricky was wearing a sky blue tuxedo. “Eight cylinders, 366 horse power.” A woman was curled up on the tiny back seat, seemingly asleep.
“What is this, Ricky?”
He closed his hand over the stick shift. “It’s a Hurst T-handle four speed.”
“I mean, who’s that?” She wanted to throttle the woman but there was only one door on this side. Talisha would’ve had to drag Ricky out of the driver’s seat to get at her. “Hey you!” She stuck her head in the window. “Who the hell are you?”
“A posi rear axle,” said Ricky.
The woman stirred.
“There’s nobody but you, ’Sha,” he said.
When the woman raised her face into the dim glow of the dome light, Talisha could see it was true. It was her, like a double or something. She was dressed in shimmer tights and a zebra print halter top, clothes that Talisha had thrown out years ago. She looked to be wearing Talisha’s favorite pink lipstick, “Baby Kiss.”
“So get in.” Ricky reached across to the passenger door and opened it.
“And do what?”
Ricky leered and stepped on the gas. Three hundred and sixty-six horses screamed.
Talisha gave him her back and strode down the line of cars. But there was no escape. He called to her from every car. “1990 Jaguar XJS! 1929 Duesenberg J Murphy Roadster! 1952 DeSoto FireDome!”
As she passed an enormous boxy sedan with tiny windshields, he honked the horn. It startled her and she jumped.
“1932 Chrysler CL Custom Imperial,” he said. “Oilite squeak-proof springs. Double drop girder truss….”
“Stop it, Ricky.”
He opened the door and got out of the car. “Why did you swallow that pill, ’Sha?”
“So I could tell you to go suck cactus.”
“You could’ve done that at the apartment.” Now he was wearing a gray one-button cutaway tuxedo with a lavender vest and matching four-in-hand tie. “You wanted to see what I was doing, didn’t you?” He crossed the front of the car, brushing a finger along the elaborate chrome grille.
“And now I have, thanks so much.” But she hesitated. “Who’s dressing you, anyway?” she said.
“You like?” He struck a pose and then turned around slowly to give her the full effect. “I uploaded a fashion bug.” He opened the rear passenger door. “You haven’t seen it all, Talisha. Come look.”
She heard the sleeping closet door open and the real Ricky tiptoed in. He didn’t turn on the lights.
“Internal hydraulic brakes,” said the Ricky in the mechdream. “All steel body. Floating power engine mountings.”
The old box springs of their bed creaked as Ricky lay down. He didn’t touch her but she could sense his nearness by the sag of the mattress. “Please Talisha,” he whispered. “Let me show you.”
