Joan let the doctor lay her cloak around her shoulders; it brought his head close to hers. She turned her face toward that side, wet her lips and smiled at him.
She could see him decide to risk it. She did not dodge as his lips met hers—but did not put her arms around him and let herself be slightly clumsy, stiffened a little before giving in to it. (Twin! Don’t let him put us back on that able—make him use the couch in his office.) (Neither one, Eunice. Pipe down!)
Joan broke from it, trembling. “Thank you, Doctor. And you see I can be a girl if I try. How do I get back to the waiting room without passing your Miss Perkins?” She hooked her yashmak.
18
A few minutes later Shorty handed her into her car, locked her in, and mounted into the forward compartment. “Gimbel’s Compound, Miss Smith?”
“Please, Finchley.”
Once inside the compound Joan had Fred escort her to Madame Pompadour’s. The fact that she had a private bodyguard got her immediate attention from the manager, who was not Madame Pompadour even though he wore his hair in the style made famous by the notorious Marquise and had manners and gestures to match. (Eunice, are you sure we are in the right place?) (Certainly, Boss—wait till you see their prices.) “How may I serve Madame?”
“Do you have a private viewing room?”
“But of course, Madame. Uh, there is a waiting room where—”
“My guard stays with me.”
The manager looked hurt. “As Madame wishes. If you will walk this way—” (Eunice, shall we walk that way?) (Don’t try, twin—just follow him. Or her, as the case may be.)
Shortly Joan was seated facing a low model’s walk; Fred stood at parade rest behind her. The room was warm; she unfrogged her cloak and pushed back its hood but left the yashmak over her features. Then she dug into her purse, got out a memorandum. “Do you have a model who comes close to these measurements?”
The manager studied the list—height, weight, shoulders, bust, waist, leg. “This is Madame?”
“Yes. But here is another specs list even if you can’t match me. A friend for whom I wish to buy something pretty and exotic. She’s a redhead with pale skin to match and green eyes.” Joan had copied Winifred’s measurements from the exercise records the two had been keeping.
“I see no problems, Madame, but in your own case permit me to suggest that our great creative artist, Charlot, will be happy to check these measurements or even to design directly on—”
“Never mind. I am buying items already made up. If I buy.”
“Madame’s pleasure. May I ask one question? Will Madame be wearing her own hair?”
“If I wear a wig, it will be the same color as my hair, so assume that.” (Eunice, should I buy a wig?) (Be patient and let it grow out, dear. Wigs are hard to keep clean. And they never smell clean.) (Then we’ll never wear one.) (Smart Boss. Soap and water is the world’s greatest aphrodisiac.) (I’ve always thought so. Though a girl should smell like a girl.) (You do, dearie, you do—you can’t help it.)
“Madame’s hair is a beautiful shade. And now, since Madame indicated that her time is short, perhaps it would suit her convenience to let our accounting department record her credit card while I alert the two models?”
(Watch it, Boss!) (I wasn’t a-hint the door, dearie.) “I use credit cards with several names. Such as McKinley, Franklin, and Grant. Or Cleveland.” Joan reached into her purse, fanned a sheaf of bills. “The poor man’s credit card.”
The manager repressed a shudder. “Oh, goodness, we don’t expect our clients to pay cash.”
“I’m old-fashioned.”
The manager looked pained. “Oh, but it’s unnecessary. If Madame prefers not to use her general credit account—her privilege!—she can set up a private account with Pompadour in only moments. If she will permit me to have her I.D.—”
“Just a moment. Can you read fine print?” Joan pointed at a notice near a portrait of President McKinley. “‘This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private.’ I shan’t get tangled up in a computer. I pay cash.”
“But, Madame—we aren’t set up for cash! I’m not certain we could make change.”
“Well, I don’t want to put you to any inconvenience. Fred.”
“Yes, Miss?”
“Take me to La Boutique.”
The manager looked horrified. “Please, Madame! I’m sure something can be arranged. One moment while I speak to our accountant.” He hurried away without waiting for an answer.
(Why the fuss, Boss honey? I’ve bought endless things for you, against your personal-expenditures account. Jake said we could use it.) (Eunice, I’ve despised those moronic machines since the first time I was trapped by a book club. But I’m not just being balky. Today is not a day to admit who we are. Later—after we’re out of court—we’ll set up a “Susan Jones” account for shopping in person. If we ever do again. I can see it’s a bloody nuisance.) (Oh, no, it’s fun! You’ll see, twin. But, remember—I hold a veto until you learn something about clothes) (Sho’, sho’, little nag.) (Who are you calling a nag, you knocked-up bag?) (Happy about it, beloved?) (Wonderfully happy, Boss. Are you?) (Wonderfully. Even if it wasn’t romantic.) (Oh, but it was! We’re going to have your baby!) (Quit sniffling.) (I’m not sniffling; you are.) (Maybe we both are. Now shut up, here he comes.)
The manager beamed. “Madame! Our accountant says that it is perfectly all right to accept cash!”
“The Supreme Court will be pleased to hear it.”
“What? Oh! Madame is jesting. Of course there is a service surcharge of ten percent for—”
“Fred. La Boutique.”
“Please, Madame! I pointed out to him how unfair that is…and found the most wonderful solution!”
“Really?”
“Truly, Madame. Anything you choose to buy, I’ll simply charge against my personal account—and you can pay me cash. No trouble, I’ll be happy to. My bank doesn’t make the least fuss over accepting cash deposits. Really.” (Watch it, Boss; he’ll expect a fat tip.) (If he can show us something we want, he may get it. Cost is no huhu, Eunice; we can’t get rid of the stuff.) (It’s the principle of the thing, Boss.) (Forget it and help me spend money.) (All right. But we don’t buy unless we like it.)
For the next two hours Joan spent money—and was dazed to discover how expensive women’s clothes could be. But she suppressed her early upbringing and paid attention only to an inner voice: (Not that one, twin—it’s smart but a man wouldn’t like it.) (How about this one, Eunice?) (Maybe. Have her walk it around again, then have her sit down. Show some leg.)
(Here comes ‘Winnie’ again. Is that girl a real redhead, Eunice?) (Probably a wig but doesn’t matter; she’s almost exactly Winnie’s size. That would be cute on our Winsome. Twin, see what they have in fancy gee-strings—green, for a redhead. Winnie ought to have at least one outfit intended to be seen by no one but her new boy friend.) (Okay, we’ll give ‘Bob’ a treat. Who do you think he is, beloved?) (Haven’t the faintest—and we don’t want to guess. Do we? I just hope he’s nicer to her than Paul was.)
“Mr. duValle? Do you have something exotic in a minimum-gee for a redhead? Green, I suppose. And matching cups would be interesting, too. Something nice—an intimate present for a bride.” (Bride?) (Well, it might help Winnie become a bride, Eunice—and it steers him away from thinking I’m buying it for my sweetheart.) (Who cares what he thinks?)
“Jeweled perhaps? Emeralds?”
“I wouldn’t want a bride to be mugged over a wedding present. Nor do I wish to buy her something more expensive than her bridegroom can afford. Bad taste, I think.”
“Ah, but these are synthetic emeralds. Just as lovely but quite reasonable. Yola dear—come with me.”
Several thousand dollars later Joan quit. She was getting hungry and knew, from long experience, that being hungry made her unwilling to spend money. Her subconscious equated “hungry” with “poor” in a canalization it had acquired in the 1930?
??s.
She sent Fred to fetch Shorty to help carry while her purchases were being packaged and while she paid the startling sum. (Eunice, where shall we eat?) (There are restaurants inside this compound, Boss.) (Uh, darn it—no, damn it!—I can’t eat through a yashmak. You know what will happen. Somebody who watched video yesterday will recognize us. Then the news snoops will be on us before you can say ‘medium rare.’) (Well…how about a picnic?) (Wonderful! Eunice, you win another Brownie point. But—where can we go?—a picnic with grass and trees and ants in the potato salad—but private so I can take off this veil…and yet close enough that we won’t starve on the way?)
(I don’t know, Boss, but I’ll bet Finchley does.)
Finchley did know. Shorty was appointed to buy the lunch at The Hungry Man inside the compound—“Get enough for six, Shorty, and don’t look at the prices. Be lavish. But there must be potato salad. And a couple of bottles of wine.”
“One is enough, Miss. I don’t drink, wine is a mocker, and Finchley never drinks when he is on call to drive.”
“Oh, think big, Shorty; I may drink a whole bottle myself—you can save my soul tomorrow. Today is special—my first day of freedom!” (Very special, beloved.) (Very, very special, Boss!)
Down into the crosstown chute, up onto Express Route South, out to the unlimited zone, then fifty miles at three hundred feet per second—a speed that Finchley did not use until Joan was protected by full harness plus collision net. The fifty miles melted away in fifteen minutes and Finchley eased it down and over, ready to exit. They were not shot at, even where Route South skirts the Crater.
“Finchley? Can I get out of this pesky cocoon now?”
“Yes, Miss. But I’d feel easier if you would wear the Swedish belt. Some of these drivers are cowboys.”
“All right. But tell me the instant I can take it off.” (Eunice, the engineer if-that’s-the-word who designed if-that’s-the-word these goddam straps did not have women in mind!) (You’ve got it rigged for a man, Boss—of course you’re pinching a tit. Move the bottom half closer in and shift the upper anchor point after we stop; that’s the way they rigged it for me. Some man has used it since the last time I did.) (Jake, probably, sometime when his own car was laid up. Sweetheart, how many things do I have to learn about being a woman before I can avoid tripping over my feet?) (Thousands. But you’re doing all right, Boss—and I’m always here to catch you.) (Beloved. Say, this doesn’t look like picnic country. I wonder if Finchley is lost.)
They were passing through solid masses of “bedroom” areas—walled enclaves, apartment houses, a few private homes. The trees looked tired and grass scarce, while the car’s air-conditioning system still fought smog.
But not for long—Finchley turned into a secondary freight route and shortly they had farms on each side. Joan noticed that one belonged to her—to a subsidiary of Smith Enterprises, she corrected, and reminded herself that she no longer held control.
Nevertheless she noted that the guard at a corner watch tower seemed alert and the steel fence was stout and tall and capped with barbed wire and an alarm stand, all in good maintenance. But they were past without her seeing what was being cropped—no matter; Johann had never tried to manage that slice of conglom, he had known his limitations. (Eunice, what are we raising back there?) (Joan, I can’t see if you don’t look—and you never looked.) (Sorry, dearest. Speak up if you don’t like the service.) (I will. I think it was a rotation crop. This soil has been farmed so hard and long that it has to be handled carefully.)
(What happens when the soil no longer responds to management?) (We starve, of course. What do you expect? But before that they’ll build on it.)
(Eunice, it’s got to stop, somewhere. When I was a boy I was a city kid but I could walk in less than an hour to green fields and uncut woods…woods so private I could play Tarzan in my skin. I wasn’t ‘just lucky’—even in New York City a boy with five cents could ride to farms and woods in less time than it took me to walk it.)
(Doesn’t seem possible, Boss.) (I know. It’s taken a fast car and a professional driver to do what I used to do on bare feet—yet this isn’t real farm country; these are open air food factories with foremen and time clocks and shop stewards and payroll deductions and house-organ magazines and you name it. A dug well and a tin dipper would cause a strike—and they’d be justified; those open wells and tin dippers spread disease. Just the same, the tin-dipper era was a good time in this country…and this one isn’t. Where do we go from here?)
The inner voice failed to answer. Joan waited. (Eunice?)
(Boss, I don’t know!)
(Sorry, just sounding off. Eunice, all my life I did the best I knew how with what I had. I didn’t waste—shucks, even that white-elephant house keeps a lot of people off Welfare. But every year things got worse. I used to get sour consolation from knowing that I wasn’t going to be around when things fell to pieces. Now it looks like I will be. That’s why I say: ‘Where do we go from here?’ I don’t know the answer, either.)
(Boss?)
(Yes, dearest?)
(I could see it, too. Moving from an Iowa farm to a big city made me see it. And I did have plans, sort of. I knew you were going to die, I couldn’t help but know, and I figured that Joe would get tired of me someday—no kids and no prospect of any, and me someday no longer with a fine job that took care of everything Joe needed. I underrated Joe; nevertheless I never forgot that he could hand me a pink slip anytime. So I had plans, and saved my money. The Moon.)
(The Moon! Hey, that’s a fine idea! Take one of Pan Am’s package tours—deluxe with private courier and all the trimmings. Do it before we bulge so big we can’t climb through a hatch. What do you say, little imp?)
(If you want to.)
(You don’t sound enthusiastic.) (I’m not against it, Boss. But I wasn’t saving money for a tourist trip. I meant to put my name on the list and take the selection exams…and be able to pay the difference, since I didn’t have one of the subsidized skills. Out-migrate. Permanently.)
(I’ll be durned! You had this in mind—and never said a word?) (Why talk about if and when? I didn’t plan to do it as long as you or Joe needed me. But I did have reason to be serious. I told you I was licensed for three kids.)
(Yes, surely. I’ve known it since your first security check.) (Well, three is a high quota, Boss—more than half a child over replacement. A woman can be proud of a three-baby license. But I wanted more.)
(So? You can, now. Fines are no problem, even though they’ve upped them again and made them progressive. Eunice, if you want babies, this one is just a starter.)
(Dear Boss. Let’s see how we do with this one first. I knew I could not afford fines…but Luna has no restrictions against babies. They want babies. I think we’re there.)
Finchley turned in at a gate—Agroproducts, Inc., Joan noticed—a competitor. He parked so as not to lock the gate, then got out and went to the guard post. He had parked at such an angle that Joan could not see what was going on, the armor between her and the control compartment cut off her view.
Finchley returned, the car rolled through the gate. “Miss Smith, I was told to hold it under twenty miles per hour, so no safety belts is okay now.”
“Thank you, Finchley. How much was the bribe?”
“Oh, nothing to matter, Miss.”
“So? I expect to see it on O’Neil’s Friday Report. If it is not there, I will have to ask you again.”
“It’ll be there, Miss,” the driver answered promptly. “But I don’t know yet what the total will be. Have to stop at their Administration Building and get us cleared through a back gate. To where you picnic.”
“To where we picnic.” Joan stopped to think. It irked her to pay a bribe when her status as a major competitor (retired, conceded) entitled her by protocol to red-carpet treatment. But she had not sent word ahead, a minimum courtesy in visiting a competitor’s plant, to allow him time to sweep dirt under the rug or to divert the visitor away
from things. Industrial espionage could not with propriety be conducted at top level. “Finchley, did you tell the gate guard whom you were driving?”
“Oh, no, Miss!” Finchley sounded shocked. “But he checked the license even though I tell him it’s your car—best to tell; he has a list of all private armoreds in the state, just like I have. What I tell him was, I’m driving guests of Mr. Salomon…and let him think it was a couple of Vips from the Coast with a yen to picnic in a safe spot. Didn’t tell him anything really, except Mr. Salomon’s name. That okay?”
“Just fine, Finchley.” (Eunice, I feel like an interloper, being inside without giving my name. Rude.) (Look at it this way, Boss. You know who you are. But the public doesn’t—not after that silly carnival yesterday. I think it’s best to be Jake’s guest…which is true, in a way.) (I still feel that I should tell Finchley to give my name to the Chief Agronomist. But would the word get out? Or, rather, how soon?) (Thirty minutes. Long enough for some clerk to phone in and a news copter to fly out. Then some snoop will try to interview you by loudspeaker because the boys won’t let him land.)
(Some picnic!)
(If he does land, Shorty and Fred will be elbowing each other for a crack at him. Eager. Too eager. Boss, maybe you haven’t noticed, but, while they call you ‘Miss Smith,’ they treat you exactly as they treated me. In their heads they know you are you…but in their guts they feel you are me.) (That’s not far wrong, Eunice. In my head I am me… but in my guts—your pretty belly—I am you.)
(Boss, I like that. We’re the only one-headed Siamese twins in history. But not everything in our belly is me. There’s one wiggler swimming faster than the rest—and he is ‘Johann,’ not Joan, not Eunice—and if he makes it to the finish line, he’s more important than both of us put together.)
(My love, you’re a sentimentalist.) (I’m a slob, Boss. And so are you.) (Nolo contendere. When I think about Johann and Eunice—both dead, really—getting together in Joan to make a baby, I come unstuck and want to cry.) (Better not, Joan; the car is stopping. Boss? How long does it take a wiggler to get there? I know a spermatozoon has to move several inches to reach the ovum—but how fast does he swim?) (Durned if I know, dear. Let’s leave that cork in place at least a couple of days. Give the little bastard every possible chance.) (Good!) (Do you know how to take it out? Or do we have to see Dr. O’Neil? We don’t want to let Winnie in on this.) (Boss, I’ve seated them and taken them out so many times I can do it in my sleep. No fret, Annette. I’ve worn out more rubber baby bumpers than most girls have shoes.)