All right, all right, I knew right off from
seein’ her that it couldn’t be no accident. It broke
all their rules, for one thing. But this Brandy was me and
wasn’t me. I kept my straight hair from Beth; she had my old
bush neatly trimmed. And my body—nobody human’s
body—never looked that perfect, that good, or could.
Fact was, the more I watched, the more I got turned on myself.
Really turned on. They could do it to a stone, no matter which sex.
But I was a pro, and I knew somethin’ was not right. The odds
against a Brandy bein’ in this world was about even—we
wasn’t that far off my world’s line and it was possible
Daddy would have married the same woman, maybe even founded an
agency. The odds of that Brandy bein’ a stripper or whore
wasn’t all that low, neither. Fact was, I knew I was pretty
much that in most of the worlds where I existed at all. But the
odds of my bein’ in this particular bar in Atlantic City in
November as a victim of what I was put investigatin’ and just
happen to be a performer the night I show was beyond any odds of
hittin’ a jackpot lottery I knew.
There was no doubt that these bastards knew I was here, who I
was, and why I was here. The only thing I couldn’t be clear
on was if they did this every night till I finally showed up or
whether they had made me that night. Yeah, I knew who that dancer
was, but did she, or they, know who I was? That was a big
question. I had to guess they didn’t—not yet, anyways.
Why bother with this show if they did? Just slip somethin’ in
the drink and they had me. I had to figure they trotted put their
Brandy every time there was a black woman in the house, with or
without friends and companions. This was bait, and you don’t
bother to feed bait to a hooked fish.
Thing was, I was hooked good and proper, but I wasn’t
’bout to get reeled in right then if I could help it. One
thing they hoped to do was to throw me so off guard I
couldn’t think straight and they come close—but only
close. It was tough, though, when the act was over and they all
bounded from the runway to the center bar counter and then into the
place itself, naked, wet, and drippin’. And the black one,
the other me, came straight over to me.
“Hey, sista’!” she whispered in my ear.
“Don’t that look good? I seen ya here,
feelin’ yo’self up. Want a private lesson?”
My voice never sounded like my voice to me, but it was close
enough to know it really was. Not the accent, though. She was more
ghetto-southern, more damned ignorant-soundin’, too,
in the way she used the words. Damn it, though! I was tempted! Not
so much by the real offer as by getting this girl, this other me,
alone somewhere in a room. Just us. But, then, that’s what
they figured on. And this wasn’t me! Maybe we was
genetically the same, maybe even the same fingerprints, but this
Brandy had taken a different route than me a long time ago and made
a lot more wrong choices, and we was literally worlds apart. On the
other hand, “sister” was more than just a friendly term
here.
“No,” I answered huskily, tryin’ to lower my
voice a little ’cause it always sounded higher to me than it
really was. “I just ain’t up to you girls.” And
weren’t that the truth!
She pressed a little, and I was real nervous she’d see
through it all and feel who I was, but she didn’t. You
don’t look the same lookin’ at another you as you look
even in a mirror. She backed off while I played it cool, and then
started workin’ the guys. I relaxed a bit, but continued to
drink. I was real shaken, but I wanted out of that place in one
piece and without tippin’, and if they was lookin’ for
me then I didn’t want to leave while she was still
in the same room.
They all three got customers with no problems and disappeared in
the back, and the barmaid come back over. “What’s the
matter hon? No guts when it counts?”
I looked up at her. “Not with them. There was
just somethin’ . . . I dunno.
Now you I could go for.”
There was something in the waitress’s eyes and expression
when I made that first comment. “I understand,” she
whispered, more like talkin’ to herself. “Hon, after
watchin’ that I might take you up on it, but not
tonight. I got to work till two and I been here since four. You
come ’round tomorrow this time, though, when I don’t
work late, and maybe we’ll watch the show and have a little
fun, huh?”
“Maybe I will,” I told her. “My name’s
Sam, by the way. Short for Samantha but I never use that.” I
took a twenty out and slipped it to her as a tip. She took it real
smooth.
“I’m Deb. You come ’round tomorrow a little
earlier, like eight, and we’ll see.”
I finished my drink, got up, and walked slowly out of the bar
and onto the street. I had to walk a couple of blocks over just to
get some distance, then waited in the cold until I finally got a
cab back to my apartment. My mind was really in a kinda roar, and I
needed to sort things out.
First I called Camden information and tried numbers for Harold
Parker, Spade & Marlowe, and a few more. I drew a blank, but I
kinda expected to. I wanted to call in to Lindy or her people
locally and run this thing down, but I wasn’t sure I could.
Fact was, they knew I was in this world and workin’ to find
them. The only ones who knew and could get the word out would be
Aldrath, Bill Markham, or—Lindy. Not necessarily Lindy
herself, but definitely folks within her organization. If so, I
couldn’t use her, or them, much again.
Things started to tumble into place now, bit by bit. Maybe this
world was a damn sight more important to this whole plot than
Aldrath and Bill had been led to believe. Maybe Vogel took care of
the far-out research, but this world was the center of the
actual plot, whatever it was. No investigator is ever any better
than the quality of his or her information. Aldrath depended on
Lindy’s organization for most of the information that he got.
Maybe, in fact, Vogel was a red herring, somebody to be discovered
as a big player in the game when in fact he was a side
operation.
If they was feedin’ a stock line, and givin’ just
enough information that some of Aldrath’s boys could
independently check out as right, then they had it made here. They
might even, in the end, raid both Fast Eddie’s harem and even
the compound in Guiana and blow it to hell and never really touch
what was goin’ on here. But, then, why reveal the Guiana
thing at all—unless that, too, was a cover, the base to be
exposed. That was research, while this was some kinda little thing
involvin’ the local mob.
Then I showed up and got involved. I’m a real danger, not
to the operation, but to Lindy or whoever it was in Lindy’s
crew that was really workin’ for the opposition. They got to
send out my reports—Aldrath will be expectin’
’em. So they decide to see just how far I can get, and even
set a trap with an alternate me.
That only made sense to a point, though. That other Brandy
weren’t no new addict; she’d been hooked for a long
time to get that look about her and get so practiced at that act.
That meant they had her before we got involved, maybe long before
we ever was brought in to go after Vogel. They just switched her
here to Atlantic City ’cause they knew it was flypaper and
honey to me. And there was only one reason they’d have
another me all set up before all that took place.
They was plannin’ a switch. Her for me. But either
somethin’ went wrong or we got directly involved and they
couldn’t risk it. No, wait—Vogel. That was the key.
They was gonna pull the switch after the Vogel job, which
they’d been plannin’ in that Security Committee for
months before tellin’ us. That meant my not gettin’
shot serious in the tunnel wasn’t no accident. That also
meant that Sam was supposed to be shot, maybe killed. That’s
why they took the time to shoot everybody. They couldn’t be
sure in that small area and time which was Sam.
Then why hadn’t they made the switch? I looked at myself
in the mirror once more and then I knew. Ikept my
hair straight and my complexion a little lighter and smoother!
They couldn’t move this big-time equipment over here; the
heat was on too much. They couldn’t get enough big medical
shit over to make it take. They didn’t have Doc’s or
the Center’s big experts and gadgets where they could make
her over into me. That explained somethin’ else, too. Why
they might get Vogel a hypnoscan.
Maybe there weren’t no Brandy in this world. Maybe she was
from someplace else, just like me. I know there was a couple in
worlds just near our own. Ones that went bad. Ones that never met
Sam. The competition had used folks from one of them worlds the
first time we’d tangled. Maybe this one was from the same
one.
But why me? And why make a switch with somebody like me? I
didn’t work for the Company. About the only one I could see
was Bill Markham, and they could try for him without me if they
really wanted to. Or was it even worse?
Could somebody be a good-enough shot and a cool-enough head to
nail everybody in a Labyrinth cube ’cept Sam and me, and then
nail me in an unimportant spot and Sam exactly in a way that would
cause what happened? Maybe not, but even if Sam had died
I’d’a had special status with the Company. Access to
the Labyrinth, access even to headquarters. But that didn’t
make no sense, neither. I had a special, unique, unbreakable code
inside me. I knew it was unbreakable ’cause if it was
breakable they had all sorts of ways of sneakin’ in and out.
That twin of mine might be able to learn how I walked, talked,
thought, and be made over to be a perfect double, but she could
never have that code.
Still, I knew now I was on to somethin’, and it was big. I
was sure right to have gotten involved—I now had proof
positive that the enemy was plannin’ to draft me,
anyways.
Still and all, there was a number of missin’ pieces. Even
grantin’ they had some way to get her in headquarters as me,
so what? It’d hav’ta be real quick, since they
hadn’t managed to get any of this damned super drug in and
she was sure on it. Most she’d dare risk would be a few
hours. What could I do in just a few hours, takin’
nothin’ in with me and dependin’ on Aldrath’s
folks to get ’round the place and even translate? The answer
was nothin’. A big, fat zero.
That was the thing ’bout this case. Every time you thought
you had somethin’ figured, it just asked another crazy
question. Still, I was gettin’ more and more convinced that
the answers to many of ’em was right here—or, over
there, in the Purple Pussycat. Trouble was, they was layin’
for me, and if they missed me tonight they might not miss me
again.
I had a sudden bad feelin’ and told the driver to let me
out a block down and around the corner from the apartment. I was
pretty sure they never knew ’bout my streetwalker life, but
they did know Beth Louise Parker, and her bank, and the apartment
she had in her own name. I’d gone back there tonight for the
first time in a couple of weeks. I guess they got sloppy. After
all, I walked in dressed like a whore but I’d left to go
shoppin’ as me and come back, then walked out dressed like a
dyke. I had to figure they’d be on their guard and fully
staffed this time. Trouble was, my streetwalker clothes was up
there, and all I had on me was a hundred and twenty-one pounds. I
had another two hundred and fifty up there, enough to use for a
switch without goin’ to the bank where they was sure to stake
me out.
I hadn’t figured on this. I was on the run from the people
who was supposed to help and support me while the people I was
tryin’ to check out still hadn’t discovered me. Without
Crockett I didn’t have a way in to the Labyrinth or any way
to contact Aldrath; they’d just keep sendin’ progress
reports from me out and everything would look real fine.
Thing was, this was now pretty clearly the place where the real
action was, not no backwater joint. More than that, they knew from
the start through Crockett’s people that security knew about
this place and they didn’t seem to be slowin’ down. Why
should they? They was puttin’ up a real nice front here,
showin’ Aldrath just what he wanted to see but not enough to
get him to take any real direct action. That was bad, too,
’cause it meant more’n likely that they were very close
to findin’ what they were tryin’ to find, or maybe
they’d found it and were just makin’ sure. This thing
was both a drug and a disease; you don’t let somethin’
like that loose in alien worlds until you make sure you can’t
get it yourself.
I checked the area around my apartment. Normally you
wouldn’t see nothin’, but I’d done a hundred
stakeouts myself and I knew just what to look for. I was pretty
sure they weren’t in the apartment itself; the place was real
close with nosy neighbors and paper-thin walls and if they got in
for more than a visit they’d be noticed. This was one time in
this world when it was a real advantage bein’ black; the
Crockett types wouldn’t have no Spade & Marlowe to use,
or wouldn’t think to use ’em, and white PIs would stand
out in this neighborhood. Of course, Siegel probably had
loads of black gunsels to call on—the mob always was
somethin’ of an equal opportunity employer—so it paid
to be careful.
There was a medium-sized black car parked with its lights out
about half a block down from the apartment with two men in it. That
was one. In the alley behind, where the fire escapes was, I thought
I could see movement beyond the trash containers, like somebody
shiftin’ uncomfortable from the cold. If they didn’t
have nobody inside, though, I could probably just walk right in
bold as brass. The problem would be if one of ’em was bright
enough to figure out why that whore went in, I come out, and there
was nobody else there. You got to be thin and light to be a
second-story type, and I was neither. I turned and headed down to
the district.
Harley squinted. “That really you, luv? I
didn’t know you was no lezzie. Not that it makes no
difference here.”
“I’m not, but it’s a disguise,” I told
him. “My ex caught up with me and he’s got an in with
Siegel. I got to blow, Harley, but I can’t get back in my
darktown flat to get my money, my workin’ clothes, or even my
damned contact lenses and regular glasses.” I told him about
the place, and the stakeout.
“You got some money, then?”
“Some cash up there, and I put the rest of what I had in a
local bank. That’s what he’s mad about. I got his
money. And I can’t get to it ’cause they figured out
the name it was under, ’cause the flat’s under that
name, too.” I never knew how important an automatic teller
machine was till now, but first they had to invent the computer
here, and a phone system where you didn’t need no manual
switchboard operators.
Harley chuckled. “Got the stash in a bank, huh? Well,
let’s see. I think I know a fella who might be able to get
the small stuff out of your apartment, particularly if it’s
bein’ watched. He likes that kind of thing. You make a list
of stuff that can be carried in no more than a handbag. I’ll
make a call and see if he’s interested. He keeps the cash, of
course.”
I nodded. “Okay, but then what do I
do?”
“When he gets your checkbook, you write one out the way I
tell you. Not to me, and not for a big amount, but some. How much
you got in there?”
“Lots.”
“Three hundred quid?”
“Yeah, more’n that.”
“I can see why he’s interested and why you laid low.
Okay, you give me a check for three hundred and I give you two
hundred. Fair?”
Of course it wasn’t, but I was in no position to argue.
“Fair.”
“All right, then. You give me the address and particulars
and we’ll see what we can do.”
I spent the night in a small room in back of his store,
uncomfortably but it was a place to hide at least. I didn’t
wake up until well after noon, then blew some money buyin’
some sandwiches from the clerk at the store. The clerk had been
told I was stayin’ there but not why. You don’t go far
askin’ too many questions down here.
Harley come in about two, lookin’ like the cat that just
swallowed the canary, carryin’ a shoppin’ bag. In it
was my glasses, contacts, checkbook, fake IDs, makeup, toiletries,
and the rest. No cash and no clothes, but I coulda kissed him. I
wrote the check and now had a fair amount of money for the
time.
I had been tryin’ to figure what to do next, and I pretty
well decided I had only a couple choices. I could either give up,
stay in this world, and go somewheres outside Wycliffe’s
territory and work the streets—I could never use the fake
identity again, after all, so I had no education, no records, and I
was a female member of a race that had thirty-percent unemployment
here now—or I could keep goin’. This Deb was a way in,
but a real risky one. I needed more than a one-night stand to get
information, and my money was limited, so I needed an edge. On a
crazy thought I checked out somethin’ I never even thought
of. Back when they did that dental work they loaded that tooth with
shit that was supposed to make Vogel real nice, only I never got a
chance to use it. I figured when they put my face back they took it
out, but since now half my teeth was capped and they left ’em
that way I decided to check. I scrunched up my mouth the way I was
supposed to and pushed. The loaded tooth moved.
That was no guarantee they’d left it loaded, but maybe the
Center just hadn’t noticed or known about it. It was worth a
try. Of course, I didn’t really know much about what it did
or how long it lasted, but it couldn’t hurt and might give me
an edge.
I got some locals in the district to help. I needed to look
different than this other Brandy even when I wasn’t dressed
like this and with dark glasses. When you never was able to have
straight hair, and then you did, you didn’t want to go back,
but even though it broke my heart I had it cut real, real short and
styled in a man’s style. My face would never look like a
man’s or boy’s, but it sure changed my looks. I hid the
documents in a place that was as safe as any, and got a fresh
wardrobe that, with the leather jacket, made me about as butch as
they come. Private ownership of guns wasn’t allowed and it
woulda cost me more than I could raise to get one quick, but a
nasty little needle-tipped switchblade with a real strong spring
was only five quid if you knew where to get it, and after a few
weeks down here, I knew. I had to still go with the blonde wig, and
I just hoped nobody had second thoughts about the one there the
night before or compared notes with the watchers on the
apartment.
Thursday was a busier night, but other people was workin’
the Purple Pussycat. Deb was in there, but out of uniform and in
fairly ordinary street clothes, sittin’ and talkin’ to
the barmaid. Even though she wasn’t dressed like she belonged
there, there was that hardness in the face and coldness in the
mannerisms that everybody on the street got that said she was right
at home. She came right over when I sat down in a small booth.
“Hello, there. Buy me a drink and watch the early show
first?” she suggested, real friendly and professional. I had
to wonder if she did this normally with girls or if this was a new
experiment. Work in these joints long enough, though, and you see
and do most everything.
The show started at eight-fifteen, and was pretty much the same
as the night before but had one extra girl, another black girl more
in keepin’ with the other two and not my twin. This time I
was ready for it and began to look at the others. There was just
somethin’ ’bout them, something different even from the
other Brandy. Black, white, and yellow, but they was almost the
same height, they had near identical perfect builds, and their
faces, while different, didn’t seem all that much different.
They all had the same noses, kinda, small and neat, and the same
size mouths, and their eyes looked a little different but even the
blonde had brown eyes. Their hair was different—the
blonde’s was shoulder-length and straight, the black
girl’s was short and curly, but big curls, not the natural
type I normally had or that my twin still had, and the yellow girl
had a pageboy with bangs. Still, one seemed no thicker or thinner
than the other, and you could almost see any hairstyle on the other
two.
Why fifty girls, all female, all just workin’ the streets
and clubs? Why no men? Why these fifty? Did most of ’em look
kinda the same? Suppose all three of them up there had dark brown
hair and golden skin . . .
They finished up and went to work the crowd, ignorin’ us.
Deb sighed, turned, and said, “My place or yours?”
“Yours,” I told her. “Mine ain’t exactly
a nice place right now.”
She lived in a room about a block in back of the place. It was a
pretty run-down row house that had been made into little tiny
apartments with just a tiny refrigerator, hot pot, and plug-in
portable stove for cookin’. It was a little messy but it had
that lived-in look. Odds were that Fast Eddie owned the place. I
pulled out one of my few remainin’ reefers and we split it,
then started to get to it. The reefer had made it easier for me to
turn tricks on the street and it made it easier to do this, too. It
ain’t bad and can be a lot of fun, but when you get all hot
and up there ain’t nothin’ to put where you want or
need it. I did manage to toggle that trick tooth and turn it some,
and some sweet kinda liquid, not much, come out and got delivered
into her mouth by tongue.
Took me a bit to realize she’d stopped doin’ much
and was just lettin’ it happen with a dreamy smile on her
face, eyes closed. I figured I might as well go for the whole nine
yards. I started nibblin’ her ear and whispered, “You
love me, you want me, you need me, now and forever,” which
wasn’t exactly how the whispers usually went. “All the
men was just for money but this is the real thing. You’d do
anything for me, believe anything I said, trust me forever.
Don’t try to explain it or think about it, it just is and
it’s wonderful.”
And she smiled, mumbled, and repeated it—and repeated it
again. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she looked at me like it was
for the first time, like the wonder in a little kid’s face at
a new toy, and then she really tore into it so passionately I just
let it rip.
I didn’t know how long the stuff would last, but it was
powerful stuff all right, if you hadn’t been
immunized to it. It was hours before it stopped, and then she
insisted on cookin’ somethin’ for me and generally
actin’ like a cross between a puppy dog and a little kid.
“Might as well,” I sighed, feelin’ really achy.
“I ain’t got no place to go anyways.”
She was startled. “What d’ya mean?”
“I mean I got fired and tossed, lock, stock, and barrel. I
been walkin’ the streets, sleepin’ in women’s
flophouses, and watchin’ my money go down.”
“Stay here, then!”
“But—”
“Look, I know this sounds crazy, ’cause it does to
me, but I think I’m in love with you. You don’t owe me
nothin’. I owe you, ’cause I never thought
I’d have this feelin’ again.” She was a
mixed-race girl, mostly white but a noticeable quarter black, which
was why I hit on her, but it was still kinda funny to hear her
start talkin’ like me.
“I like you, too,” I told her, and I did. I felt
sorry for her more than anything. “But ain’t no way I
can stay here without payin’ some freight.”
“It’s okay. It wouldn’t even be like you was
the first one or only one around here like that. A lotta girls
’round here can’t get close to no men. They all act
alike under the skin. We lean on each other a lot. Maybe I can get
Fast Eddie to find you a job ’round here.”
Funny thing was, she did. To this day I ain’t sure if that
potion was strong or just a little temporary thing that worked as a
starter set for what might already have been there in her head
’cause it seemed so natural for her. Of course, the potion
made it quick and painless. By the time she took me ’round to
meet Fast Eddie Small a couple of days later I’d already
kinda settled in and knew most of the girls in the house. And
that’s how I became Samantha “Sam” Marlowe, my
third undercover identity. I ditched the wig and used the dark
glasses, which I was gettin’ used to even in dark places. I
had the contacts but decided not to use ’em since they
didn’t have the real thin contacts here and I thought it was
a little too much of an invite to compare faces with Brandy the
Shadow Dancer.
Fast Eddie looked like a guy who sold furniture. Thin,
mid-fifties, moustache, little gray eyes, balding and graying,
always in a brown or gray tweed suit and real thin tie, usually
with a cigar in his mouth. I was real nervous about meetin’
him since he almost surely saw Brandy most times and also knew to
look out for another with straight hair, but with gum in my mouth,
a real Brando manner, and dressed like I was it never seemed to
enter his head. “I don’t really need nobody so I
can’t do much,” he told me, “but just
’cause it’s Deb I’ll make an exception.
You’ll help clean up the place after it closes, mop up,
restock the bar, that kind of thing. Thirty a week for part-time on
trial. After that, we’ll see.”
I took the job, and I was on the inside. The basic expenses for
all the “employees” was taken care of, and they turned
their money over to Small ’cept for twenty percent, although
Deb as waitress made a flat eighty a week and got to keep ten
percent of any fringes. Of course, she skimmed like they all did,
so it wasn’t too bad. It bothered me a little that I took so
easy to the dominant role in the relationship, in bed, even on the
street, but I learned a lot in a very little time.
There was six shadow dancers workin’ the place and two
more out at Siegel’s. Small was married with two mostly grown
kids and a house out of town. He didn’t mistreat his string
more than the usual, and he always had whatever drugs his
“ladies” required on hand. About half of ’em was
on smack, the other half took various stuff as it suited them. All
but the shadow dancers. They lived together in a small set of rooms
just above the club, and while you couldn’t avoid ’em
you didn’t stay ’round them long. They seemed free to
come and go days, and they did, but not far. Every day they’d
do a run ’round a track at a junior high that had closed down
and was boarded up now. They bought and fixed their own food, and
you could hear ’em up there sometimes exercisin’ or
liftin’ weights or whatever, too. They was always real
made-up, even for their runs, and that helped. Still, I tried to
make sure that Brandy and Sam was never seen in the same room
together again.
They had funny names that sounded like sororities. Beta, Delta,
Zeta, Lambda, Rho, and Iota. All but Rho had simple nicknames like
Bet, Del, Zee, Lam, and Ta. Letters of the Greek alphabet, like
they was some kinda clinical experimental samples. All six really
did look similar in size, shape, and build; you could draw
’em in outline, make their hair any color or style you wanted
and color their skin any which way and you really couldn’t
tell which was which. They wasn’t no runaways, that’s
for sure. They was either picked ’cause they had that look,
or bred that way. None of ’em had that hard look to
’em, neither; they all looked kinda empty, and lost, like
this life and these ways was all they ever knew or could think of,
and all they ever imagined the future would be. Shadow people
without souls, Harley had said, and that was pretty close to the
truth. Only their Brandy was different—larger, with distinct
black features and speech, and with natural woolly hair in a mane
that was shorter than I used to wear it and better kept but pretty
much the same.
It was okay till I literally bumped into her one day. She was
with one of the other girls, the black one, Beta, and they come
’round the corner in their fancy-lookin’ furs and heels
and I was comin’ the other way and we collided. Nothin’
much, but we stopped for a minute and looked at each other. She
just smiled and said, in a real mellow voice, “Hey, sis,
don’ worry none. It’s all cool.”
“My fault,” I mumbled, tryin’ to keep my
diction up and my voice and head down. “Sorry.”
All the other girls had high, sweet voices that sounded almost
alike. “Hey, you know, she look somethin’ like
you,” Beta noted to my distress. “I seen her
’round th’ club.”
“I clean up there nights,” I told them bruskly.
“Look, gotta go, nice talkin’ and all that.” And
I hurried off, even though I was only goin’ out for
cigarettes.
We parted quickly, but I could hear Brandy Two’s voice say
clearly, “I don’t look like no bull dyke.”
I breathed hard and tried to think about what to do next. I
could run, but then they’d know, and like the shadow dancers
I had no place to run to. Here in this district was the only
friends I had in this world I could count on. Was it time, maybe,
to take on another identity? I went and got the cigarettes and came
back to the room and stuck some jazz on the radio. When
nothin’ happened for a while, I started to relax and followed
my normal routine.
It was Sunday night—or, rather, Monday morning. Sundays
was busy nights ’cause most bars and clubs was closed all day
by law; only in an entertainment district could they stay open, so
we got a lot more business from as far away as Philadelphia.
I cleaned up and was gettin’ ready to go when one of the
shadow dancers came down and looked out at me. “Hey! Sammy
girl! The man wants t’see ya upstairs.
Now.”
I frowned. I didn’t like this. Fast Eddie still here at
three-forty in the mornin’? I could run out the front door
but if it was trouble he’d have that covered. Better to bluff
it through.
“Okay, okay, tell him to keep his shirt on,” I
mumbled. “I’ll be up as soon as I finish here.”
And I did take a little time, just to be on the safe side, then
went back and up the back stairs to the only part that wasn’t
reserved for the shadow dancers—the small back office. I
knocked, and got a muffled “Come in,” and I opened the
door and saw Eddie Small there in shirtsleeves workin’ on the
books. He seemed alone. He kept on with the books a minute, maybe
gettin’ even with me not runnin’ when he called, then
closed the ledger, leaned back in his creaky desk chair, and took a
pull on his cigar.
“You’re one hell of a detective, Horowitz,” he
said. “Best I ever seen in forty years in this
racket.”
I had that trapped-rat feelin’, but I had to play the
part. “What the hell’s that supposed to
mean?”
“It’s a compliment. Even with pictures and a
description in a town this size, we couldn’t find you.
Anybody who can disappear into a place that’s strange to them
in every way and wind up workin’ for their mark day in and
day out and havin’ the mark pick up most of the tab is
impressive, I got to tell you. I am really impressed. Even when
Beta mentioned your resemblance to Brandy to everybody, most of us,
me included, just dismissed it.”
“Look, Mr. Small, I don’t know what all this is
about, but—”
“Stow it! It’s over. The game’s done. Call it
my paranoid nature, but it’s kept me out of prison for forty
years, not countin’ a few nights in the pokey here and there.
We still weren’t sure we were right, but we had an easy way
to tell. We sent a guy up and he dusted a few parts of your place
for fingerprints. Know what? You got the same prints as our dancer,
Brandy. Now ain’t that an impossibility?”
“So what’s gonna happen now?”
“Well, the original plan was to let you come back home the
grieving widow, then switch our Brandy for you, but it proved too
hot to do. Then we get word you’re comin’ in here so it
looked like a possibility, but when you got here you had different
hair and coloring. We couldn’t straighten that hair of hers
in a million years. So I said, hey? Why bother? We don’t need
to switch if we got the real one. Then you take a powder and we
can’t find you. To be honest, we did think it was you that
night in the club, but when you came back and then moved in we just
threw the idea out of our mind. And here you are.”
“I assume the exits are all covered.”
He just smiled and shrugged.
“Well, what now?” I noticed he let me do all that
damned work for him downstairs before he nabbed me. At least I
wouldn’t have gotten no further tryin’ to walk or fight
my way out.
“Like the old saying goes, one Brandy is a necessity, two
are a luxury. We can afford luxury, but we’ll take necessity.
It’s up to you.”
Two gunsels I never even seen or heard was now in back of me in
the hall. They marched me down it to a small room all the way
forward, frontin’ on the street, but the lone big window in
it had them burglar bars set in. Half the room was filled with a
double bed; there was a radiator down at the other end on full and
bangin’ slightly. Right next to it was an old,
seedy-lookin’ and stained bare toilet and above it a rusted,
stained, and tiny one-faucet sink. The bed had only a yellow
blanket and pillow without pillowcase on it, but it had one of them
iron headboards and posts at the feet. The only inside light,
barely enough, came from a tiny little bare frosted bulb in a wall
fixture and from the streetlights outside. Then they took my
glasses and I couldn’t even see them, let alone most
of the room.
It was the start of one of them nightmares a lot of women have.
They stripped me, then tied my hands to the headboard and my feet
out to the two bedposts. I was braced for a rape, maybe a gang
rape, but even that wasn’t what they had in mind. Fast Eddie
dismissed the gunsels and came in the room.
“Comfy?”
“Go to hell!”
“Almost certainly. That knowledge alone makes it so much
easier on me in this line of work. Don’t worry. Just a little
pressure on your right thigh and then you’ll have a really
wonderful time. Of course, it almost always fails the first time.
Some people need a week or two, and a very few just won’t be
hooked, but your other self in there only took three days so I
expect about the same. We’ll take care of Debbie and your
things, so don’t worry. I’ll even have your counterpart
come in to see to all your needs while you’re here. I’m
sure you and she have lots to talk about.”
“Oh, no! Oh, God, no!” I know they warned me, but I
never really believed it would happen, not down deep.
I couldn’t do nothin’, and then I felt
somethin’ press on my thigh and felt a small burning
sensation. It seemed to sink in and grow, then swallow my whole
right side, makin’ it a little tingly, and then my head
exploded.
I cannot describe it. It’s impossible to describe and you
get tingly just doin’ it. The best I can do is ask you to
imagine the ten best orgasms you ever had and combine it with the
feelin’ and high from the most potent drugs ever invented.
Somewhere in your brain you got somethin’ like a button, and
when you enjoy somethin’ or feel real good it gets pressed
some. Super drugs can press it more than any natural high, but they
go maybe a third of the way. This thing pushed it to the floor.
Pure pleasure. Absolute.
Beyond measure, beyond description, and sustained for a long
time. The noises outside, the room, the light, the bed and straps,
they all don’t exist no more. You ain’t even aware of
’em. You ain’t thinkin’ at all. It’s
impossible. You just relax and it’s everything.
You do come down, of course, but it’s real slow and
gentle, not like the crash with pure coke or anything like that.
There’s no crash at all, just a slow ease back to reality.
You feel real good. Real good. Everything is heightened
and pleasant and amusing. Traffic noise, a creaky floorboard, the
radiator clang, or the flush of a toilet down the hall are all the
music of heaven. You see beautiful patterns in lights and shadows.
I wanted to move, ’cause movin’ made it all prettier
and things rubbin’ on my skin felt nice. I couldn’t see
too good, and it was still dark, but that didn’t bother me
none, neither.
It was a surprise to find I could move. I wasn’t flipped
out or nothin’, I remembered where I was and what was
causin’ this—I just didn’t care much. But my arms
wasn’t tied at all, and I had somethin’ fixed to my
leg. Another chain, like all this started out. Naked and in chains.
Just one, though, a leg chain. Somebody was here and did all this
while I was havin’ a fine time and I never even noticed.
I was still high. Colors seemed to make pretty musical sounds
and sounds caused pretty light patterns. I was also real turned on;
’bout as turned on as I could get. I was so wet I was
drippin’, and my nipples were so aroused it was heaven to rub
’em, yet I could think fairly clearly. That was the crazy
part—I could think clearly. All of a sudden I knew just how
that girl back at the Center, Donna, felt. It was all done with
brain chemicals, they said, so she must be like this all the
time.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought. In fact, it was like
seein’ the world and everything in it, including yourself, in
whole new ways. It was like I felt when I was on high-class pot,
only better, with everything sharper and more beautiful. Like pot,
though, you might have some pain or discomfort and even notice it
but you just didn’t mind. It wasn’t allowed.
I got up, then down on all fours and followed the chain. It was
very solidly attached to the radiator, it seemed, and the radiator
was hot. Up close, I could actually see fuzzy purples and reds
comin’ off the radiator and flowin’ up and over in the
room. I made it over to the toilet, then sat down and peed. I also
had some gas. I can’t describe what that felt like, but it
was somehow very, very funny.
It was gettin’ to be dawn, and I suddenly felt tired. I
made my way back to the bed in the little room and flopped back on
the bed and just lay there a while. Then I went, very pleasantly,
to sleep. It was a pleasant glow, and while I must’ve dreamed
I don’t remember what about.
I woke to the sound of the boomin’ jazz from the club
below, so I knew it was four o’clock. I opened my eyes and
instinctively reached for my glasses, but they weren’t there
of course. The really great feelin’ had gone, and I
didn’t feel real good at all. My stomach was sour, I had bad
gas, and I felt real dizzy. I didn’t really hear the lock
turn and the door open, but I noticed somethin’ and watched
as a dark blur come into the room.
“I guess you ain’t feelin’ none too good right
now,” I heard Brandy Two’s voice say over the music.
“I knows how it is first times. It git a whole lot bettah the
more you have it.”
“I guess they told you who I am,” I managed. My
voice sounded like a frog’s to me.
“Yeah. I knowed d’ere was ones like you befo’
dey put me on de juice. You jus’ the first I ever seed in
person. I dunno. I think we look mo’ like sistahs den
twins.”
She had a much heavier dialect than mine all the time, and
clearly a lot less learnin’ even though I did a lot on my own
in spite of school. Just from that, I guessed she was probably at
least a functional illiterate. And they was gonna replace
me with her and get away with it? I didn’t
know much ’bout them hypnoscans, but I had a real
feelin’ they was much better at makin’ you dumber and
ignorant than the other way ’round.
“Dis heah’s toast and orange juice,” she told
me. “Best take somethin’ in yo’ tummy but go real
slow.”
“I’m nearly blind without my glasses,” I told
her. “You’ll have to help me.”
“Huh. I don’t see de best in de bus’ness, but
de juice it clear up some of it. It do the same fo’ you, most
like.”
She helped me, and I managed some toast, but I was very thirsty
and drank the orange juice right down. She wouldn’t get more,
but did keep filling the small plastic cup with water from the tap.
I wanted to question her in great detail, find out everything about
her, but it was slow going. I was dehydrated and really more than a
little ill.
“Yo’ body and de juice dey have a big fight,”
she told me. “Dat’s what you feel now. Tomorrow it be a
lot betta’, and betta’ and betta’ afta’
dat. Soon you neva’ feel sick no mo’. De juice, it
don’t let nothin’ bad happen t’ya. No colds, no
sniffles, nothin’. No VD, neitha.”
“But it makes you a slave to it,” I noted.
“Well, yeah, but ya gotta figua, honey. I was hooked on
smack so long I don’t ’member when I wasn’t. Dis
is much betta’—give you somethin’ back
for it ’cept a high, and de high it give is the best.
Ain’t hooked on smack, neither, no mo’. No, no. Even de
needle marks dey gone.”
And that, of course, was the bottom line for her. She’d
been hooked on heroin since she was a teen—probably from that
same gang element I came so close to makin’ my life—and
she was always hustlin’ for bucks to feed her habit, always
subject to the will of the dealer or pimp. There were a million
stories like hers out there; the only difference here was that she
was me, another me, who’d made one different choice. She had
my brains, such as they were, and all the rest, but she’d
wasted them. Daddy and me we had that fight, and he stalked to his room
and me to mine and I packed and was on my way out when I heard him
sobbin’ in his room. I stopped, turned, and went
in . . .
Maybe Daddy didn’t cry for her, and so she left for the
streets. Or maybe she just didn’t hear, or didn’t go
in. I knew I’d hesitated long and hard before doin’ it.
Was that it? Was the world, all the worlds, all the lives of all
the people in them, like this? A single moment, a single decision
in the heat of anger and emotion, a little thing goin’ one way and not the
other . . . How much good and bad in
anybody’s life turns on moments like that, without even
thinkin’ ’bout them? Somebody too busy with their taxes
to play with their kid, or lettin’ the kid cry ’cause
she had to learn—or maybe not lettin’ the kid
cry. Too proud to make up after a fight with your husband, or
goin’ back to a husband even though he keeps beatin’
you. All that.
Sure, we both wound up in the same hole in the end, but think of
all the good things and good times I had before then. She got the
same shaft, but she never knew anything but.
She couldn’t stay long, and seemed almost apologetic about
the whole thing, but she took the tray and left the room and made
sure that door was locked. After a while, it got dark again, but I
didn’t bother to turn on no lights. What was the use when I
couldn’t even clearly see the bottom of the bed from the top
of it? She left the little plastic cup, and I couldn’t
believe how thirsty I was. Drink four or five cupfuls, then pee
about fifteen minutes or three songs later, then drink more.
I checked my chain and nearly burned myself, but it was real
clear that the other end was welded on to that radiator. Short of a
welder’s torch or a hacksaw and a lot of time, I wasn’t
gonna break it easy. I went over to the window; the blinkin’
lights from the Purple Pussycat signs gave off real pretty patterns
and constantly changed the look inside the room. I thought the
windows themselves were frosted over from the cold outside and the
heat within, but with my eyes I couldn’t be sure. With luck I
might break the glass but I’d never get them bars
out—they was sunk in concrete sills. All I’d do was
wind up freezin’ my ass off when it already was uneven in the
room and if I caught anybody’s attention at all down there it
would probably be the wrong folks. If I had my glasses and a
lockpick I might have been able to pick the lock on the leg
shackle, but probably not.
Later on, Brandy Two came again, this time with what seemed to
be a coldcut sub, a piece of chocolate cake, and two opened bottles
of beer. I found I was real hungry now, and it went down just fine.
I coulda used cigarettes, though, but she told me they was not
allowed. Too much danger in givin’ me a fire. They
didn’t even give me silverware, and the beer bottles turned
out to be clear plastic and fairly soft.
I could smell her perfumes and tell she was real made up and all
now, and she had on her show outfit, which wouldn’t last on
her long, and her heels. The early show.
“Cain’t talk now but I be back lata on,” she
promised. I listened to the show as I chugged the bottle.
It was late when she came back, but we talked for a little bit.
Not about us, though; I don’t think either of us was ready
for that yet. They had to blame somebody for the breach so they
blamed Deb; she was bein’ shipped someplace out of state.
Word was she’d be lucky if they didn’t kill her just to
make an example out of her.
She was probably too well known locally for that, I tried to
tell myself, feelin’ guilty about it. If she turned up dead
there might be eyes turned this way that couldn’t be bought
so easily.
I was also right about Brandy Two.
She—we—didn’t exist in this world. She’d
been in a string in a Camden that sounded frighteningly close to my
old world when some mob men had come for her. They drugged her and
she woke up a prisoner in an awful place that sounded a lot like
Vogel’s estate. There they both hooked and conditioned her,
but then she was brought down here and kept for a long while at the
country estate in what I thought of as central Pennsylvania. They
didn’t hypnoscan and made no attempt to brief her or rehearse
her to be me, which was another thing that didn’t make sense.
Then she was brought down here and with her larger size and
distinctive looks she was rehearsed and worked into the show act.
It wasn’t a whole lot more information than I had before.
Then, late in the evening, she gave me the second shot. If
anything, it was better than before and seemed longer and it also
seemed slower coming down. The dizziness was worse and I had
diarrhea bad, but that was all.
From Brandy Two I also learned about the life of a shadow
dancer. She had not heard the term but liked it. You always felt a
little high and a little turned on and mostly great, but during the
coming down period you was suggestible, at least
that’s how I see it. A new shot of juice in under twenty to
twenty-four hours had no real effect. It was like injecting
distilled water. Withdrawal, for Brandy Two, started at thirty
hours and got worse and worse. By forty hours she would be in hell.
That’s how they “conditioned” you. They let you
go into withdrawal, then told you what you had to do and gave it to
you. When you woke up in that mellow, suggestible time they
reminded you of what was expected. They didn’t need to do
this too much, ’cause while the juice wasn’t smart or
nothin’ it kinda pushed you to do whatever it took to keep
gettin’ a new supply as needed. No matter how crazy or
against your nature it was, it became just like normal to you in no
time.
I thought ’bout Donna bein’ forced to go through
that barracks, day after day. Them patterns was damned hard to
break.
After the third day they didn’t give me a regular shot.
They waited to see if withdrawal would come on. On the fourth day,
it did. In its early stages it was almost as bad as heroin
withdrawal; you got real sick, bad sick—upchuckin’, the
runs, hot and cold spells, everything at once. I was hooked and I
knew it.
Fast Eddie Small was blunt about it. “Until they decide
when or if they’re gonna use you and for what you’re
stuck here,” he told me. “Until your hair grows out
enough to get styled decent, you’ll have to wear a wig. Wear
it any time, all the time, you ain’t in these rooms.
Brandy’ll get you all the right jewelry, cosmetics, perfumes,
powders, and like that. Use what she don’t. You
never leave here without ’em on and on right. You
want to work into the act, fine. You don’t, then you go down
after wearin’ nothin’ more than the girls do at the
end—and nothin’ less—and you get customers. Two a
night minimum, twenty-five minimum a trick. If you don’t have
enough in the club, then you go out and get ’em. They pay the
barmaid, satisfaction guaranteed, get it?”
“Yeah, I get it,” I replied, wishin’ I could
rip his guts out. “You mean I got to work the streets in
nothin’ but shoes with it twenty degrees out
there?”
“Naw, I got heart. A big heart.” One of the
girls—Lambda, I think, the blonde—went when he snapped
his fingers and brought back absolutely the most gorgeous,
sumptuous fur coat I ever seen. It was gray, but otherwise
close to the coats the girls were wearin’ when I made my
fatal bump into them. It was silver fox, mink lined, and it had a
belt around its middle and two deep pockets inside. “You wear
this and you take care of it. If it needs repairs or cleanin’
you tell the barmaid. Now, you get this straight. You want more of
a wardrobe, you earn it by goin’ over your quota.
You don’t handle money, never. You want
somethin’, you come see me or one of my people and you
convince us you’re worth it. One way is to follow all our
rules. You all got the same rules. You follow them and you’ll
learn fast enough. You break the rules, any of ’em, or you
see one of the other girls breakin’ the rules, and you get
real hell.”
He was really enjoyin’ this. It was a real turn-on for
him. I hated his stinkin’ guts. The only thing worse than big
Hitlers was little Hitlers.
I was unchained, unlocked, and left on my own. I didn’t
know if there was any guards around, but I never saw none. He
didn’t need ’em. Brandy took me under her wing, though.
“Can’t call you no Brandy, too. Both of us’ll go
nuts,” she noted.
“That’s okay, just call me Beth. I kinda feel like I
come full circle on this case now anyways.” And that’s
the way we agreed it would be.
In a way, it was worse, ’cause now I was the property of
two masters, one allegedly human, the other inside me. I
found out what that was like real quick. First, my sniffles, which
I’d had since God knew when, just went away, as did all of my
old sinus problems, but that was only the tip of it. You sure
followed a routine, like it or not.
When you was supposed to eat, you got hungry—and I mean
hungry. It became an overpowering urge, the only thing you
could think of till you ate, but it was a little specific. You got
more irresistible and otherwise repulsive cravin’s than a
pregnant woman. Pumpkin washed down with pickle juice. Raw
hamburger with chocolate sauce. Steamed fish a la mode. Now, it
wasn’t always that way, but it often was, particularly the
first few weeks. The other girls swore to me that it stopped after
a while and only popped up after that occasionally, but until then
I could tell one of the bar staff what I wanted and they’d
hold their nose and go get it. I had to fix it myself, though, in a
neat but antique kitchen they had. And when you wasn’t
hungry, you couldn’t even look at anything at all.
The upstairs of the club went over into the row house next door,
I found. Even after workin’ there I hadn’t knowed that
before. They was kinda like dorm rooms, but each one had a double
bed, small closet, a switched speaker that would bring the bar
music in with volume control, and some fancy lights. There was two
bathrooms with both tub and shower on each floor, one at each end.
The sheets were pink, purple, or crimson satin with down
comforters. We was all responsible for keepin’ our rooms
absolutely clean and neat and perfect, and either Eddie or one of
his boys could pop in at any time to inspect them like some Army
sergeant. All of us was responsible for keepin’ up the inside
of the house, includin’ scrubbin’ halls and common
areas, vacuumin’ with real antique-style cleaners, kitchen,
bathrooms, and the rest.
On the top floor was a room that was somethin’ of a gym,
with weights, exercise machines, and all the rest. That
was ’cause this thing inside us wanted a perfect
house to live in, which was us, so just like the meals you got
these—well, not urges, really, more like
compulsions. To run, to lift weights, exercise every part
of your body you could every day. It wasn’t easy at the
start, but when you did what this thing wanted you got little
pleasure jolts; when you didn’t, you got misery. You did
it.
Likewise, I no longer wanted cigarettes. Couldn’t stand to
have one in my mouth, though it didn’t bother me none to be
in a smoke-filled bar. You could drink, but the more you drank the
more you went to the bathroom and you never got drunk or even
tipsy.
And when it decided you was to have sex, you got so tense and
worked up that nothin’ else mattered. You had to
have it. Male, female, horse—I don’t think it mattered
none. Only the knowledge that you had to turn two tricks to get the
juice kept your mind in the act.
Of course, I was still a naughty and disobedient girl at the
start with anything this shit inside didn’t force me to do,
like Fast Eddie’s rules, but they took me down a few pegs in
a hurry. They let you go real deep into withdrawal, just to the
edge of where it might really start causin’ brain or nervous
system damage, then they’d stand there and keep
insistin’ that you repeat all the rules and swear to obey
’em. There was no way you couldn’t. The sickness was
bad enough and got worse and worse and you knew it could never get
no better but that you could be all well and feelin’ great in
just a minute or so if you swore on your mother’s grave to
obey, and then that thing would start pushin’ the pain button
in your head slowly down, more and more, till you couldn’t
stand it no more.
You didn’t get that far but once.
They reinforced it when you came out of the pure pleasure high
and loved the world by havin’ somebody there whisperin’
all the rules and havin’ you repeat ’em and swear to
act just that way. One day you just wake up, and doin’
everything their way is the most normal and natural thing
in the whole world. You know it’s not the way you used to do
it or think about it and not the way other folks do, but it’s
the norm for you and you do it automatically. It wasn’t like
no hypnosis or conditioning—they could change the rules any old
time and that would be the new normal thing.
Turnin’ two tricks in Atlantic City deep in winter
wasn’t always possible no matter what the decrees. There was
snowstorms and power outages and bad rain and ice storms, and not
many people. Christmas through New Year’s was great, though,
with lots of parties and winter getaway specials and the like,
although it was real depressin’ for us to see the Christmas
lights and displays and people shoppin’ and feel isolated,
alone, and left out.
By “us” I mean Brandy two and me. The other girls,
they didn’t seem none too touched by Christmas or much else.
They didn’t seem to remember no past at all, no growin’
up, nothin’ but bein’ what they were. Even with the
never-ending compulsions there was time, and thinkin’ was
still there, and memory, too, good as old. My eyesight gradually
improved to where I could see pretty good from a distance and close
up was blurry. It was much better for gettin’ around, but it
was hell to read anything like a book. To Brandy, the idea that
anybody’d read books for fun was near impossible for her to
get in her head. As I suspected, her own readin’ was on the
Dick and Jane level.
After New Year’s they moved us up to New York, which was a
surprise, to a club in the Manhattan entertainment district where
almost anything went so long as you gave the customer value for his
money and didn’t roll or stiff him. The district’s
boundaries were pretty clear but unwritten; the law and the adult
entertainment district kept their ends up. Outside the district,
wham! Inside—well, just keep it there. Of course, it
wasn’t immune from things like robbery, murder,
rollin’, and hard drug sellin’, but the fact was it was
pretty well self-policed and while there was drugs aplenty there
was no big scorin’ to be done there. You did that uptown in
Harlem or over in The Bronx.
By the end of January, I’d undergone some radical changes
that at the time I was only partly aware of. My body was lean and
muscular, the best it probably could ever be. I could run for miles
and hardly work up a sweat. If I flexed all my muscles, I looked
like one of them female bodybuilders, and I think I could bench
press more than Sam ever could. They paired Brandy Two and me in a
duo strip and sex act as The Double Brandys, of course, and slowly
my skin was goin’ back to its normal tone, which was her
tone, and my hair was gettin’ all woolly and curly as it used
to be. Whatever tricks the Center had pulled was bein’
undone. By spring, we figured a trim for her and we would be so
identical that even we couldn’t tell each other apart. Only
our dialects and our relative educations told any difference. We
even had the exact tastes in perfumes, lipsticks, and cosmetics of
all kinds, even toothpaste.
Mentally, it was strange. On the one hand, you lived for that
glorious hour of the juice, and you spent part of the time
tryin’ to recapture it, push it just a little. You did that
by followin’ your impulses, which was guided by the juice
itself. The normal physical things that brought intense pleasure,
like orgasms, produced much more intense feelin’s of
pleasure, so you went for ’em.
Kinky was normal. We’d take walks in the afternoon
wearin’ only the shoes and coats and think nothin’ of
it, and not be cold, and we’d window shop or even go into
stores and look over fashions and mentally dress each other,
sometimes try on things. I didn’t feel no sense of right and
wrong when it came to me. We didn’t steal stuff we liked only
’cause we understood that gettin’ caught and
goin’ to jail was a death sentence with no juice. No guilt,
no shame. When we saw somethin’ we wanted, we had to beg and
plead like little kids and hope they’d buy it for us, and we
didn’t care. If you wanted to do it and it wouldn’t
cause punishment or death, you did it. When I was workin’
freelance on the street I always felt guilty ’cause of Sam.
Now I had no guilt, no shame, no conscience, no pride, neither.
And that was the other crazy thing, ’cause I thought about
Sam a lot. Not just Sam, but especially Sam. I still loved
him, wanted him, and cared for him. I still remembered it all.
And I still wanted to solve this damned puzzle if I could. That
was part of me, part of my nature, as much a pleasure giver as the
rest and also in my best interests. I don’t know if they
thought of that or not, or if they cared. Whether or not I could
bring myself to deliver that solution wrapped and sealed to Aldrath
or Bill Markham even if I got the chance I didn’t
know—I really did love the juice most of all. Deep down, I
didn’t know if there was any way I could consciously and
deliberately cut it off on my own. Bill was kiddin’ himself
with his thirty doses; you didn’t want to get to the
Center even if they gave you a complete cure, ’cause you
could never feel that intense pleasure again. That’s what
hung up Donna and some of the others in the end. Even if physically
cured, they couldn’t forget the yen for that feelin’
and recapturin’ even a slice of it meant everything to
them.
Fact was, I wanted to solve it all not to bring nobody to
justice or stop no plot but ’cause these folks had pulled out
before and left those on the juice to die in agony. What they done
to others they could do to me, anytime, anyplace. The only fear I
had was fear of not gettin’ the juice.
I wanted to be this way forever.
All right, all right, I knew right off from
seein’ her that it couldn’t be no accident. It broke
all their rules, for one thing. But this Brandy was me and
wasn’t me. I kept my straight hair from Beth; she had my old
bush neatly trimmed. And my body—nobody human’s
body—never looked that perfect, that good, or could.
Fact was, the more I watched, the more I got turned on myself.
Really turned on. They could do it to a stone, no matter which sex.
But I was a pro, and I knew somethin’ was not right. The odds
against a Brandy bein’ in this world was about even—we
wasn’t that far off my world’s line and it was possible
Daddy would have married the same woman, maybe even founded an
agency. The odds of that Brandy bein’ a stripper or whore
wasn’t all that low, neither. Fact was, I knew I was pretty
much that in most of the worlds where I existed at all. But the
odds of my bein’ in this particular bar in Atlantic City in
November as a victim of what I was put investigatin’ and just
happen to be a performer the night I show was beyond any odds of
hittin’ a jackpot lottery I knew.
There was no doubt that these bastards knew I was here, who I
was, and why I was here. The only thing I couldn’t be clear
on was if they did this every night till I finally showed up or
whether they had made me that night. Yeah, I knew who that dancer
was, but did she, or they, know who I was? That was a big
question. I had to guess they didn’t—not yet, anyways.
Why bother with this show if they did? Just slip somethin’ in
the drink and they had me. I had to figure they trotted put their
Brandy every time there was a black woman in the house, with or
without friends and companions. This was bait, and you don’t
bother to feed bait to a hooked fish.
Thing was, I was hooked good and proper, but I wasn’t
’bout to get reeled in right then if I could help it. One
thing they hoped to do was to throw me so off guard I
couldn’t think straight and they come close—but only
close. It was tough, though, when the act was over and they all
bounded from the runway to the center bar counter and then into the
place itself, naked, wet, and drippin’. And the black one,
the other me, came straight over to me.
“Hey, sista’!” she whispered in my ear.
“Don’t that look good? I seen ya here,
feelin’ yo’self up. Want a private lesson?”
My voice never sounded like my voice to me, but it was close
enough to know it really was. Not the accent, though. She was more
ghetto-southern, more damned ignorant-soundin’, too,
in the way she used the words. Damn it, though! I was tempted! Not
so much by the real offer as by getting this girl, this other me,
alone somewhere in a room. Just us. But, then, that’s what
they figured on. And this wasn’t me! Maybe we was
genetically the same, maybe even the same fingerprints, but this
Brandy had taken a different route than me a long time ago and made
a lot more wrong choices, and we was literally worlds apart. On the
other hand, “sister” was more than just a friendly term
here.
“No,” I answered huskily, tryin’ to lower my
voice a little ’cause it always sounded higher to me than it
really was. “I just ain’t up to you girls.” And
weren’t that the truth!
She pressed a little, and I was real nervous she’d see
through it all and feel who I was, but she didn’t. You
don’t look the same lookin’ at another you as you look
even in a mirror. She backed off while I played it cool, and then
started workin’ the guys. I relaxed a bit, but continued to
drink. I was real shaken, but I wanted out of that place in one
piece and without tippin’, and if they was lookin’ for
me then I didn’t want to leave while she was still
in the same room.
They all three got customers with no problems and disappeared in
the back, and the barmaid come back over. “What’s the
matter hon? No guts when it counts?”
I looked up at her. “Not with them. There was
just somethin’ . . . I dunno.
Now you I could go for.”
There was something in the waitress’s eyes and expression
when I made that first comment. “I understand,” she
whispered, more like talkin’ to herself. “Hon, after
watchin’ that I might take you up on it, but not
tonight. I got to work till two and I been here since four. You
come ’round tomorrow this time, though, when I don’t
work late, and maybe we’ll watch the show and have a little
fun, huh?”
“Maybe I will,” I told her. “My name’s
Sam, by the way. Short for Samantha but I never use that.” I
took a twenty out and slipped it to her as a tip. She took it real
smooth.
“I’m Deb. You come ’round tomorrow a little
earlier, like eight, and we’ll see.”
I finished my drink, got up, and walked slowly out of the bar
and onto the street. I had to walk a couple of blocks over just to
get some distance, then waited in the cold until I finally got a
cab back to my apartment. My mind was really in a kinda roar, and I
needed to sort things out.
First I called Camden information and tried numbers for Harold
Parker, Spade & Marlowe, and a few more. I drew a blank, but I
kinda expected to. I wanted to call in to Lindy or her people
locally and run this thing down, but I wasn’t sure I could.
Fact was, they knew I was in this world and workin’ to find
them. The only ones who knew and could get the word out would be
Aldrath, Bill Markham, or—Lindy. Not necessarily Lindy
herself, but definitely folks within her organization. If so, I
couldn’t use her, or them, much again.
Things started to tumble into place now, bit by bit. Maybe this
world was a damn sight more important to this whole plot than
Aldrath and Bill had been led to believe. Maybe Vogel took care of
the far-out research, but this world was the center of the
actual plot, whatever it was. No investigator is ever any better
than the quality of his or her information. Aldrath depended on
Lindy’s organization for most of the information that he got.
Maybe, in fact, Vogel was a red herring, somebody to be discovered
as a big player in the game when in fact he was a side
operation.
If they was feedin’ a stock line, and givin’ just
enough information that some of Aldrath’s boys could
independently check out as right, then they had it made here. They
might even, in the end, raid both Fast Eddie’s harem and even
the compound in Guiana and blow it to hell and never really touch
what was goin’ on here. But, then, why reveal the Guiana
thing at all—unless that, too, was a cover, the base to be
exposed. That was research, while this was some kinda little thing
involvin’ the local mob.
Then I showed up and got involved. I’m a real danger, not
to the operation, but to Lindy or whoever it was in Lindy’s
crew that was really workin’ for the opposition. They got to
send out my reports—Aldrath will be expectin’
’em. So they decide to see just how far I can get, and even
set a trap with an alternate me.
That only made sense to a point, though. That other Brandy
weren’t no new addict; she’d been hooked for a long
time to get that look about her and get so practiced at that act.
That meant they had her before we got involved, maybe long before
we ever was brought in to go after Vogel. They just switched her
here to Atlantic City ’cause they knew it was flypaper and
honey to me. And there was only one reason they’d have
another me all set up before all that took place.
They was plannin’ a switch. Her for me. But either
somethin’ went wrong or we got directly involved and they
couldn’t risk it. No, wait—Vogel. That was the key.
They was gonna pull the switch after the Vogel job, which
they’d been plannin’ in that Security Committee for
months before tellin’ us. That meant my not gettin’
shot serious in the tunnel wasn’t no accident. That also
meant that Sam was supposed to be shot, maybe killed. That’s
why they took the time to shoot everybody. They couldn’t be
sure in that small area and time which was Sam.
Then why hadn’t they made the switch? I looked at myself
in the mirror once more and then I knew. Ikept my
hair straight and my complexion a little lighter and smoother!
They couldn’t move this big-time equipment over here; the
heat was on too much. They couldn’t get enough big medical
shit over to make it take. They didn’t have Doc’s or
the Center’s big experts and gadgets where they could make
her over into me. That explained somethin’ else, too. Why
they might get Vogel a hypnoscan.
Maybe there weren’t no Brandy in this world. Maybe she was
from someplace else, just like me. I know there was a couple in
worlds just near our own. Ones that went bad. Ones that never met
Sam. The competition had used folks from one of them worlds the
first time we’d tangled. Maybe this one was from the same
one.
But why me? And why make a switch with somebody like me? I
didn’t work for the Company. About the only one I could see
was Bill Markham, and they could try for him without me if they
really wanted to. Or was it even worse?
Could somebody be a good-enough shot and a cool-enough head to
nail everybody in a Labyrinth cube ’cept Sam and me, and then
nail me in an unimportant spot and Sam exactly in a way that would
cause what happened? Maybe not, but even if Sam had died
I’d’a had special status with the Company. Access to
the Labyrinth, access even to headquarters. But that didn’t
make no sense, neither. I had a special, unique, unbreakable code
inside me. I knew it was unbreakable ’cause if it was
breakable they had all sorts of ways of sneakin’ in and out.
That twin of mine might be able to learn how I walked, talked,
thought, and be made over to be a perfect double, but she could
never have that code.
Still, I knew now I was on to somethin’, and it was big. I
was sure right to have gotten involved—I now had proof
positive that the enemy was plannin’ to draft me,
anyways.
Still and all, there was a number of missin’ pieces. Even
grantin’ they had some way to get her in headquarters as me,
so what? It’d hav’ta be real quick, since they
hadn’t managed to get any of this damned super drug in and
she was sure on it. Most she’d dare risk would be a few
hours. What could I do in just a few hours, takin’
nothin’ in with me and dependin’ on Aldrath’s
folks to get ’round the place and even translate? The answer
was nothin’. A big, fat zero.
That was the thing ’bout this case. Every time you thought
you had somethin’ figured, it just asked another crazy
question. Still, I was gettin’ more and more convinced that
the answers to many of ’em was right here—or, over
there, in the Purple Pussycat. Trouble was, they was layin’
for me, and if they missed me tonight they might not miss me
again.
I had a sudden bad feelin’ and told the driver to let me
out a block down and around the corner from the apartment. I was
pretty sure they never knew ’bout my streetwalker life, but
they did know Beth Louise Parker, and her bank, and the apartment
she had in her own name. I’d gone back there tonight for the
first time in a couple of weeks. I guess they got sloppy. After
all, I walked in dressed like a whore but I’d left to go
shoppin’ as me and come back, then walked out dressed like a
dyke. I had to figure they’d be on their guard and fully
staffed this time. Trouble was, my streetwalker clothes was up
there, and all I had on me was a hundred and twenty-one pounds. I
had another two hundred and fifty up there, enough to use for a
switch without goin’ to the bank where they was sure to stake
me out.
I hadn’t figured on this. I was on the run from the people
who was supposed to help and support me while the people I was
tryin’ to check out still hadn’t discovered me. Without
Crockett I didn’t have a way in to the Labyrinth or any way
to contact Aldrath; they’d just keep sendin’ progress
reports from me out and everything would look real fine.
Thing was, this was now pretty clearly the place where the real
action was, not no backwater joint. More than that, they knew from
the start through Crockett’s people that security knew about
this place and they didn’t seem to be slowin’ down. Why
should they? They was puttin’ up a real nice front here,
showin’ Aldrath just what he wanted to see but not enough to
get him to take any real direct action. That was bad, too,
’cause it meant more’n likely that they were very close
to findin’ what they were tryin’ to find, or maybe
they’d found it and were just makin’ sure. This thing
was both a drug and a disease; you don’t let somethin’
like that loose in alien worlds until you make sure you can’t
get it yourself.
I checked the area around my apartment. Normally you
wouldn’t see nothin’, but I’d done a hundred
stakeouts myself and I knew just what to look for. I was pretty
sure they weren’t in the apartment itself; the place was real
close with nosy neighbors and paper-thin walls and if they got in
for more than a visit they’d be noticed. This was one time in
this world when it was a real advantage bein’ black; the
Crockett types wouldn’t have no Spade & Marlowe to use,
or wouldn’t think to use ’em, and white PIs would stand
out in this neighborhood. Of course, Siegel probably had
loads of black gunsels to call on—the mob always was
somethin’ of an equal opportunity employer—so it paid
to be careful.
There was a medium-sized black car parked with its lights out
about half a block down from the apartment with two men in it. That
was one. In the alley behind, where the fire escapes was, I thought
I could see movement beyond the trash containers, like somebody
shiftin’ uncomfortable from the cold. If they didn’t
have nobody inside, though, I could probably just walk right in
bold as brass. The problem would be if one of ’em was bright
enough to figure out why that whore went in, I come out, and there
was nobody else there. You got to be thin and light to be a
second-story type, and I was neither. I turned and headed down to
the district.
Harley squinted. “That really you, luv? I
didn’t know you was no lezzie. Not that it makes no
difference here.”
“I’m not, but it’s a disguise,” I told
him. “My ex caught up with me and he’s got an in with
Siegel. I got to blow, Harley, but I can’t get back in my
darktown flat to get my money, my workin’ clothes, or even my
damned contact lenses and regular glasses.” I told him about
the place, and the stakeout.
“You got some money, then?”
“Some cash up there, and I put the rest of what I had in a
local bank. That’s what he’s mad about. I got his
money. And I can’t get to it ’cause they figured out
the name it was under, ’cause the flat’s under that
name, too.” I never knew how important an automatic teller
machine was till now, but first they had to invent the computer
here, and a phone system where you didn’t need no manual
switchboard operators.
Harley chuckled. “Got the stash in a bank, huh? Well,
let’s see. I think I know a fella who might be able to get
the small stuff out of your apartment, particularly if it’s
bein’ watched. He likes that kind of thing. You make a list
of stuff that can be carried in no more than a handbag. I’ll
make a call and see if he’s interested. He keeps the cash, of
course.”
I nodded. “Okay, but then what do I
do?”
“When he gets your checkbook, you write one out the way I
tell you. Not to me, and not for a big amount, but some. How much
you got in there?”
“Lots.”
“Three hundred quid?”
“Yeah, more’n that.”
“I can see why he’s interested and why you laid low.
Okay, you give me a check for three hundred and I give you two
hundred. Fair?”
Of course it wasn’t, but I was in no position to argue.
“Fair.”
“All right, then. You give me the address and particulars
and we’ll see what we can do.”
I spent the night in a small room in back of his store,
uncomfortably but it was a place to hide at least. I didn’t
wake up until well after noon, then blew some money buyin’
some sandwiches from the clerk at the store. The clerk had been
told I was stayin’ there but not why. You don’t go far
askin’ too many questions down here.
Harley come in about two, lookin’ like the cat that just
swallowed the canary, carryin’ a shoppin’ bag. In it
was my glasses, contacts, checkbook, fake IDs, makeup, toiletries,
and the rest. No cash and no clothes, but I coulda kissed him. I
wrote the check and now had a fair amount of money for the
time.
I had been tryin’ to figure what to do next, and I pretty
well decided I had only a couple choices. I could either give up,
stay in this world, and go somewheres outside Wycliffe’s
territory and work the streets—I could never use the fake
identity again, after all, so I had no education, no records, and I
was a female member of a race that had thirty-percent unemployment
here now—or I could keep goin’. This Deb was a way in,
but a real risky one. I needed more than a one-night stand to get
information, and my money was limited, so I needed an edge. On a
crazy thought I checked out somethin’ I never even thought
of. Back when they did that dental work they loaded that tooth with
shit that was supposed to make Vogel real nice, only I never got a
chance to use it. I figured when they put my face back they took it
out, but since now half my teeth was capped and they left ’em
that way I decided to check. I scrunched up my mouth the way I was
supposed to and pushed. The loaded tooth moved.
That was no guarantee they’d left it loaded, but maybe the
Center just hadn’t noticed or known about it. It was worth a
try. Of course, I didn’t really know much about what it did
or how long it lasted, but it couldn’t hurt and might give me
an edge.
I got some locals in the district to help. I needed to look
different than this other Brandy even when I wasn’t dressed
like this and with dark glasses. When you never was able to have
straight hair, and then you did, you didn’t want to go back,
but even though it broke my heart I had it cut real, real short and
styled in a man’s style. My face would never look like a
man’s or boy’s, but it sure changed my looks. I hid the
documents in a place that was as safe as any, and got a fresh
wardrobe that, with the leather jacket, made me about as butch as
they come. Private ownership of guns wasn’t allowed and it
woulda cost me more than I could raise to get one quick, but a
nasty little needle-tipped switchblade with a real strong spring
was only five quid if you knew where to get it, and after a few
weeks down here, I knew. I had to still go with the blonde wig, and
I just hoped nobody had second thoughts about the one there the
night before or compared notes with the watchers on the
apartment.
Thursday was a busier night, but other people was workin’
the Purple Pussycat. Deb was in there, but out of uniform and in
fairly ordinary street clothes, sittin’ and talkin’ to
the barmaid. Even though she wasn’t dressed like she belonged
there, there was that hardness in the face and coldness in the
mannerisms that everybody on the street got that said she was right
at home. She came right over when I sat down in a small booth.
“Hello, there. Buy me a drink and watch the early show
first?” she suggested, real friendly and professional. I had
to wonder if she did this normally with girls or if this was a new
experiment. Work in these joints long enough, though, and you see
and do most everything.
The show started at eight-fifteen, and was pretty much the same
as the night before but had one extra girl, another black girl more
in keepin’ with the other two and not my twin. This time I
was ready for it and began to look at the others. There was just
somethin’ ’bout them, something different even from the
other Brandy. Black, white, and yellow, but they was almost the
same height, they had near identical perfect builds, and their
faces, while different, didn’t seem all that much different.
They all had the same noses, kinda, small and neat, and the same
size mouths, and their eyes looked a little different but even the
blonde had brown eyes. Their hair was different—the
blonde’s was shoulder-length and straight, the black
girl’s was short and curly, but big curls, not the natural
type I normally had or that my twin still had, and the yellow girl
had a pageboy with bangs. Still, one seemed no thicker or thinner
than the other, and you could almost see any hairstyle on the other
two.
Why fifty girls, all female, all just workin’ the streets
and clubs? Why no men? Why these fifty? Did most of ’em look
kinda the same? Suppose all three of them up there had dark brown
hair and golden skin . . .
They finished up and went to work the crowd, ignorin’ us.
Deb sighed, turned, and said, “My place or yours?”
“Yours,” I told her. “Mine ain’t exactly
a nice place right now.”
She lived in a room about a block in back of the place. It was a
pretty run-down row house that had been made into little tiny
apartments with just a tiny refrigerator, hot pot, and plug-in
portable stove for cookin’. It was a little messy but it had
that lived-in look. Odds were that Fast Eddie owned the place. I
pulled out one of my few remainin’ reefers and we split it,
then started to get to it. The reefer had made it easier for me to
turn tricks on the street and it made it easier to do this, too. It
ain’t bad and can be a lot of fun, but when you get all hot
and up there ain’t nothin’ to put where you want or
need it. I did manage to toggle that trick tooth and turn it some,
and some sweet kinda liquid, not much, come out and got delivered
into her mouth by tongue.
Took me a bit to realize she’d stopped doin’ much
and was just lettin’ it happen with a dreamy smile on her
face, eyes closed. I figured I might as well go for the whole nine
yards. I started nibblin’ her ear and whispered, “You
love me, you want me, you need me, now and forever,” which
wasn’t exactly how the whispers usually went. “All the
men was just for money but this is the real thing. You’d do
anything for me, believe anything I said, trust me forever.
Don’t try to explain it or think about it, it just is and
it’s wonderful.”
And she smiled, mumbled, and repeated it—and repeated it
again. Suddenly her eyes opened, and she looked at me like it was
for the first time, like the wonder in a little kid’s face at
a new toy, and then she really tore into it so passionately I just
let it rip.
I didn’t know how long the stuff would last, but it was
powerful stuff all right, if you hadn’t been
immunized to it. It was hours before it stopped, and then she
insisted on cookin’ somethin’ for me and generally
actin’ like a cross between a puppy dog and a little kid.
“Might as well,” I sighed, feelin’ really achy.
“I ain’t got no place to go anyways.”
She was startled. “What d’ya mean?”
“I mean I got fired and tossed, lock, stock, and barrel. I
been walkin’ the streets, sleepin’ in women’s
flophouses, and watchin’ my money go down.”
“Stay here, then!”
“But—”
“Look, I know this sounds crazy, ’cause it does to
me, but I think I’m in love with you. You don’t owe me
nothin’. I owe you, ’cause I never thought
I’d have this feelin’ again.” She was a
mixed-race girl, mostly white but a noticeable quarter black, which
was why I hit on her, but it was still kinda funny to hear her
start talkin’ like me.
“I like you, too,” I told her, and I did. I felt
sorry for her more than anything. “But ain’t no way I
can stay here without payin’ some freight.”
“It’s okay. It wouldn’t even be like you was
the first one or only one around here like that. A lotta girls
’round here can’t get close to no men. They all act
alike under the skin. We lean on each other a lot. Maybe I can get
Fast Eddie to find you a job ’round here.”
Funny thing was, she did. To this day I ain’t sure if that
potion was strong or just a little temporary thing that worked as a
starter set for what might already have been there in her head
’cause it seemed so natural for her. Of course, the potion
made it quick and painless. By the time she took me ’round to
meet Fast Eddie Small a couple of days later I’d already
kinda settled in and knew most of the girls in the house. And
that’s how I became Samantha “Sam” Marlowe, my
third undercover identity. I ditched the wig and used the dark
glasses, which I was gettin’ used to even in dark places. I
had the contacts but decided not to use ’em since they
didn’t have the real thin contacts here and I thought it was
a little too much of an invite to compare faces with Brandy the
Shadow Dancer.
Fast Eddie looked like a guy who sold furniture. Thin,
mid-fifties, moustache, little gray eyes, balding and graying,
always in a brown or gray tweed suit and real thin tie, usually
with a cigar in his mouth. I was real nervous about meetin’
him since he almost surely saw Brandy most times and also knew to
look out for another with straight hair, but with gum in my mouth,
a real Brando manner, and dressed like I was it never seemed to
enter his head. “I don’t really need nobody so I
can’t do much,” he told me, “but just
’cause it’s Deb I’ll make an exception.
You’ll help clean up the place after it closes, mop up,
restock the bar, that kind of thing. Thirty a week for part-time on
trial. After that, we’ll see.”
I took the job, and I was on the inside. The basic expenses for
all the “employees” was taken care of, and they turned
their money over to Small ’cept for twenty percent, although
Deb as waitress made a flat eighty a week and got to keep ten
percent of any fringes. Of course, she skimmed like they all did,
so it wasn’t too bad. It bothered me a little that I took so
easy to the dominant role in the relationship, in bed, even on the
street, but I learned a lot in a very little time.
There was six shadow dancers workin’ the place and two
more out at Siegel’s. Small was married with two mostly grown
kids and a house out of town. He didn’t mistreat his string
more than the usual, and he always had whatever drugs his
“ladies” required on hand. About half of ’em was
on smack, the other half took various stuff as it suited them. All
but the shadow dancers. They lived together in a small set of rooms
just above the club, and while you couldn’t avoid ’em
you didn’t stay ’round them long. They seemed free to
come and go days, and they did, but not far. Every day they’d
do a run ’round a track at a junior high that had closed down
and was boarded up now. They bought and fixed their own food, and
you could hear ’em up there sometimes exercisin’ or
liftin’ weights or whatever, too. They was always real
made-up, even for their runs, and that helped. Still, I tried to
make sure that Brandy and Sam was never seen in the same room
together again.
They had funny names that sounded like sororities. Beta, Delta,
Zeta, Lambda, Rho, and Iota. All but Rho had simple nicknames like
Bet, Del, Zee, Lam, and Ta. Letters of the Greek alphabet, like
they was some kinda clinical experimental samples. All six really
did look similar in size, shape, and build; you could draw
’em in outline, make their hair any color or style you wanted
and color their skin any which way and you really couldn’t
tell which was which. They wasn’t no runaways, that’s
for sure. They was either picked ’cause they had that look,
or bred that way. None of ’em had that hard look to
’em, neither; they all looked kinda empty, and lost, like
this life and these ways was all they ever knew or could think of,
and all they ever imagined the future would be. Shadow people
without souls, Harley had said, and that was pretty close to the
truth. Only their Brandy was different—larger, with distinct
black features and speech, and with natural woolly hair in a mane
that was shorter than I used to wear it and better kept but pretty
much the same.
It was okay till I literally bumped into her one day. She was
with one of the other girls, the black one, Beta, and they come
’round the corner in their fancy-lookin’ furs and heels
and I was comin’ the other way and we collided. Nothin’
much, but we stopped for a minute and looked at each other. She
just smiled and said, in a real mellow voice, “Hey, sis,
don’ worry none. It’s all cool.”
“My fault,” I mumbled, tryin’ to keep my
diction up and my voice and head down. “Sorry.”
All the other girls had high, sweet voices that sounded almost
alike. “Hey, you know, she look somethin’ like
you,” Beta noted to my distress. “I seen her
’round th’ club.”
“I clean up there nights,” I told them bruskly.
“Look, gotta go, nice talkin’ and all that.” And
I hurried off, even though I was only goin’ out for
cigarettes.
We parted quickly, but I could hear Brandy Two’s voice say
clearly, “I don’t look like no bull dyke.”
I breathed hard and tried to think about what to do next. I
could run, but then they’d know, and like the shadow dancers
I had no place to run to. Here in this district was the only
friends I had in this world I could count on. Was it time, maybe,
to take on another identity? I went and got the cigarettes and came
back to the room and stuck some jazz on the radio. When
nothin’ happened for a while, I started to relax and followed
my normal routine.
It was Sunday night—or, rather, Monday morning. Sundays
was busy nights ’cause most bars and clubs was closed all day
by law; only in an entertainment district could they stay open, so
we got a lot more business from as far away as Philadelphia.
I cleaned up and was gettin’ ready to go when one of the
shadow dancers came down and looked out at me. “Hey! Sammy
girl! The man wants t’see ya upstairs.
Now.”
I frowned. I didn’t like this. Fast Eddie still here at
three-forty in the mornin’? I could run out the front door
but if it was trouble he’d have that covered. Better to bluff
it through.
“Okay, okay, tell him to keep his shirt on,” I
mumbled. “I’ll be up as soon as I finish here.”
And I did take a little time, just to be on the safe side, then
went back and up the back stairs to the only part that wasn’t
reserved for the shadow dancers—the small back office. I
knocked, and got a muffled “Come in,” and I opened the
door and saw Eddie Small there in shirtsleeves workin’ on the
books. He seemed alone. He kept on with the books a minute, maybe
gettin’ even with me not runnin’ when he called, then
closed the ledger, leaned back in his creaky desk chair, and took a
pull on his cigar.
“You’re one hell of a detective, Horowitz,” he
said. “Best I ever seen in forty years in this
racket.”
I had that trapped-rat feelin’, but I had to play the
part. “What the hell’s that supposed to
mean?”
“It’s a compliment. Even with pictures and a
description in a town this size, we couldn’t find you.
Anybody who can disappear into a place that’s strange to them
in every way and wind up workin’ for their mark day in and
day out and havin’ the mark pick up most of the tab is
impressive, I got to tell you. I am really impressed. Even when
Beta mentioned your resemblance to Brandy to everybody, most of us,
me included, just dismissed it.”
“Look, Mr. Small, I don’t know what all this is
about, but—”
“Stow it! It’s over. The game’s done. Call it
my paranoid nature, but it’s kept me out of prison for forty
years, not countin’ a few nights in the pokey here and there.
We still weren’t sure we were right, but we had an easy way
to tell. We sent a guy up and he dusted a few parts of your place
for fingerprints. Know what? You got the same prints as our dancer,
Brandy. Now ain’t that an impossibility?”
“So what’s gonna happen now?”
“Well, the original plan was to let you come back home the
grieving widow, then switch our Brandy for you, but it proved too
hot to do. Then we get word you’re comin’ in here so it
looked like a possibility, but when you got here you had different
hair and coloring. We couldn’t straighten that hair of hers
in a million years. So I said, hey? Why bother? We don’t need
to switch if we got the real one. Then you take a powder and we
can’t find you. To be honest, we did think it was you that
night in the club, but when you came back and then moved in we just
threw the idea out of our mind. And here you are.”
“I assume the exits are all covered.”
He just smiled and shrugged.
“Well, what now?” I noticed he let me do all that
damned work for him downstairs before he nabbed me. At least I
wouldn’t have gotten no further tryin’ to walk or fight
my way out.
“Like the old saying goes, one Brandy is a necessity, two
are a luxury. We can afford luxury, but we’ll take necessity.
It’s up to you.”
Two gunsels I never even seen or heard was now in back of me in
the hall. They marched me down it to a small room all the way
forward, frontin’ on the street, but the lone big window in
it had them burglar bars set in. Half the room was filled with a
double bed; there was a radiator down at the other end on full and
bangin’ slightly. Right next to it was an old,
seedy-lookin’ and stained bare toilet and above it a rusted,
stained, and tiny one-faucet sink. The bed had only a yellow
blanket and pillow without pillowcase on it, but it had one of them
iron headboards and posts at the feet. The only inside light,
barely enough, came from a tiny little bare frosted bulb in a wall
fixture and from the streetlights outside. Then they took my
glasses and I couldn’t even see them, let alone most
of the room.
It was the start of one of them nightmares a lot of women have.
They stripped me, then tied my hands to the headboard and my feet
out to the two bedposts. I was braced for a rape, maybe a gang
rape, but even that wasn’t what they had in mind. Fast Eddie
dismissed the gunsels and came in the room.
“Comfy?”
“Go to hell!”
“Almost certainly. That knowledge alone makes it so much
easier on me in this line of work. Don’t worry. Just a little
pressure on your right thigh and then you’ll have a really
wonderful time. Of course, it almost always fails the first time.
Some people need a week or two, and a very few just won’t be
hooked, but your other self in there only took three days so I
expect about the same. We’ll take care of Debbie and your
things, so don’t worry. I’ll even have your counterpart
come in to see to all your needs while you’re here. I’m
sure you and she have lots to talk about.”
“Oh, no! Oh, God, no!” I know they warned me, but I
never really believed it would happen, not down deep.
I couldn’t do nothin’, and then I felt
somethin’ press on my thigh and felt a small burning
sensation. It seemed to sink in and grow, then swallow my whole
right side, makin’ it a little tingly, and then my head
exploded.
I cannot describe it. It’s impossible to describe and you
get tingly just doin’ it. The best I can do is ask you to
imagine the ten best orgasms you ever had and combine it with the
feelin’ and high from the most potent drugs ever invented.
Somewhere in your brain you got somethin’ like a button, and
when you enjoy somethin’ or feel real good it gets pressed
some. Super drugs can press it more than any natural high, but they
go maybe a third of the way. This thing pushed it to the floor.
Pure pleasure. Absolute.
Beyond measure, beyond description, and sustained for a long
time. The noises outside, the room, the light, the bed and straps,
they all don’t exist no more. You ain’t even aware of
’em. You ain’t thinkin’ at all. It’s
impossible. You just relax and it’s everything.
You do come down, of course, but it’s real slow and
gentle, not like the crash with pure coke or anything like that.
There’s no crash at all, just a slow ease back to reality.
You feel real good. Real good. Everything is heightened
and pleasant and amusing. Traffic noise, a creaky floorboard, the
radiator clang, or the flush of a toilet down the hall are all the
music of heaven. You see beautiful patterns in lights and shadows.
I wanted to move, ’cause movin’ made it all prettier
and things rubbin’ on my skin felt nice. I couldn’t see
too good, and it was still dark, but that didn’t bother me
none, neither.
It was a surprise to find I could move. I wasn’t flipped
out or nothin’, I remembered where I was and what was
causin’ this—I just didn’t care much. But my arms
wasn’t tied at all, and I had somethin’ fixed to my
leg. Another chain, like all this started out. Naked and in chains.
Just one, though, a leg chain. Somebody was here and did all this
while I was havin’ a fine time and I never even noticed.
I was still high. Colors seemed to make pretty musical sounds
and sounds caused pretty light patterns. I was also real turned on;
’bout as turned on as I could get. I was so wet I was
drippin’, and my nipples were so aroused it was heaven to rub
’em, yet I could think fairly clearly. That was the crazy
part—I could think clearly. All of a sudden I knew just how
that girl back at the Center, Donna, felt. It was all done with
brain chemicals, they said, so she must be like this all the
time.
It wasn’t as bad as I thought. In fact, it was like
seein’ the world and everything in it, including yourself, in
whole new ways. It was like I felt when I was on high-class pot,
only better, with everything sharper and more beautiful. Like pot,
though, you might have some pain or discomfort and even notice it
but you just didn’t mind. It wasn’t allowed.
I got up, then down on all fours and followed the chain. It was
very solidly attached to the radiator, it seemed, and the radiator
was hot. Up close, I could actually see fuzzy purples and reds
comin’ off the radiator and flowin’ up and over in the
room. I made it over to the toilet, then sat down and peed. I also
had some gas. I can’t describe what that felt like, but it
was somehow very, very funny.
It was gettin’ to be dawn, and I suddenly felt tired. I
made my way back to the bed in the little room and flopped back on
the bed and just lay there a while. Then I went, very pleasantly,
to sleep. It was a pleasant glow, and while I must’ve dreamed
I don’t remember what about.
I woke to the sound of the boomin’ jazz from the club
below, so I knew it was four o’clock. I opened my eyes and
instinctively reached for my glasses, but they weren’t there
of course. The really great feelin’ had gone, and I
didn’t feel real good at all. My stomach was sour, I had bad
gas, and I felt real dizzy. I didn’t really hear the lock
turn and the door open, but I noticed somethin’ and watched
as a dark blur come into the room.
“I guess you ain’t feelin’ none too good right
now,” I heard Brandy Two’s voice say over the music.
“I knows how it is first times. It git a whole lot bettah the
more you have it.”
“I guess they told you who I am,” I managed. My
voice sounded like a frog’s to me.
“Yeah. I knowed d’ere was ones like you befo’
dey put me on de juice. You jus’ the first I ever seed in
person. I dunno. I think we look mo’ like sistahs den
twins.”
She had a much heavier dialect than mine all the time, and
clearly a lot less learnin’ even though I did a lot on my own
in spite of school. Just from that, I guessed she was probably at
least a functional illiterate. And they was gonna replace
me with her and get away with it? I didn’t
know much ’bout them hypnoscans, but I had a real
feelin’ they was much better at makin’ you dumber and
ignorant than the other way ’round.
“Dis heah’s toast and orange juice,” she told
me. “Best take somethin’ in yo’ tummy but go real
slow.”
“I’m nearly blind without my glasses,” I told
her. “You’ll have to help me.”
“Huh. I don’t see de best in de bus’ness, but
de juice it clear up some of it. It do the same fo’ you, most
like.”
She helped me, and I managed some toast, but I was very thirsty
and drank the orange juice right down. She wouldn’t get more,
but did keep filling the small plastic cup with water from the tap.
I wanted to question her in great detail, find out everything about
her, but it was slow going. I was dehydrated and really more than a
little ill.
“Yo’ body and de juice dey have a big fight,”
she told me. “Dat’s what you feel now. Tomorrow it be a
lot betta’, and betta’ and betta’ afta’
dat. Soon you neva’ feel sick no mo’. De juice, it
don’t let nothin’ bad happen t’ya. No colds, no
sniffles, nothin’. No VD, neitha.”
“But it makes you a slave to it,” I noted.
“Well, yeah, but ya gotta figua, honey. I was hooked on
smack so long I don’t ’member when I wasn’t. Dis
is much betta’—give you somethin’ back
for it ’cept a high, and de high it give is the best.
Ain’t hooked on smack, neither, no mo’. No, no. Even de
needle marks dey gone.”
And that, of course, was the bottom line for her. She’d
been hooked on heroin since she was a teen—probably from that
same gang element I came so close to makin’ my life—and
she was always hustlin’ for bucks to feed her habit, always
subject to the will of the dealer or pimp. There were a million
stories like hers out there; the only difference here was that she
was me, another me, who’d made one different choice. She had
my brains, such as they were, and all the rest, but she’d
wasted them. Daddy and me we had that fight, and he stalked to his room
and me to mine and I packed and was on my way out when I heard him
sobbin’ in his room. I stopped, turned, and went
in . . .
Maybe Daddy didn’t cry for her, and so she left for the
streets. Or maybe she just didn’t hear, or didn’t go
in. I knew I’d hesitated long and hard before doin’ it.
Was that it? Was the world, all the worlds, all the lives of all
the people in them, like this? A single moment, a single decision
in the heat of anger and emotion, a little thing goin’ one way and not the
other . . . How much good and bad in
anybody’s life turns on moments like that, without even
thinkin’ ’bout them? Somebody too busy with their taxes
to play with their kid, or lettin’ the kid cry ’cause
she had to learn—or maybe not lettin’ the kid
cry. Too proud to make up after a fight with your husband, or
goin’ back to a husband even though he keeps beatin’
you. All that.
Sure, we both wound up in the same hole in the end, but think of
all the good things and good times I had before then. She got the
same shaft, but she never knew anything but.
She couldn’t stay long, and seemed almost apologetic about
the whole thing, but she took the tray and left the room and made
sure that door was locked. After a while, it got dark again, but I
didn’t bother to turn on no lights. What was the use when I
couldn’t even clearly see the bottom of the bed from the top
of it? She left the little plastic cup, and I couldn’t
believe how thirsty I was. Drink four or five cupfuls, then pee
about fifteen minutes or three songs later, then drink more.
I checked my chain and nearly burned myself, but it was real
clear that the other end was welded on to that radiator. Short of a
welder’s torch or a hacksaw and a lot of time, I wasn’t
gonna break it easy. I went over to the window; the blinkin’
lights from the Purple Pussycat signs gave off real pretty patterns
and constantly changed the look inside the room. I thought the
windows themselves were frosted over from the cold outside and the
heat within, but with my eyes I couldn’t be sure. With luck I
might break the glass but I’d never get them bars
out—they was sunk in concrete sills. All I’d do was
wind up freezin’ my ass off when it already was uneven in the
room and if I caught anybody’s attention at all down there it
would probably be the wrong folks. If I had my glasses and a
lockpick I might have been able to pick the lock on the leg
shackle, but probably not.
Later on, Brandy Two came again, this time with what seemed to
be a coldcut sub, a piece of chocolate cake, and two opened bottles
of beer. I found I was real hungry now, and it went down just fine.
I coulda used cigarettes, though, but she told me they was not
allowed. Too much danger in givin’ me a fire. They
didn’t even give me silverware, and the beer bottles turned
out to be clear plastic and fairly soft.
I could smell her perfumes and tell she was real made up and all
now, and she had on her show outfit, which wouldn’t last on
her long, and her heels. The early show.
“Cain’t talk now but I be back lata on,” she
promised. I listened to the show as I chugged the bottle.
It was late when she came back, but we talked for a little bit.
Not about us, though; I don’t think either of us was ready
for that yet. They had to blame somebody for the breach so they
blamed Deb; she was bein’ shipped someplace out of state.
Word was she’d be lucky if they didn’t kill her just to
make an example out of her.
She was probably too well known locally for that, I tried to
tell myself, feelin’ guilty about it. If she turned up dead
there might be eyes turned this way that couldn’t be bought
so easily.
I was also right about Brandy Two.
She—we—didn’t exist in this world. She’d
been in a string in a Camden that sounded frighteningly close to my
old world when some mob men had come for her. They drugged her and
she woke up a prisoner in an awful place that sounded a lot like
Vogel’s estate. There they both hooked and conditioned her,
but then she was brought down here and kept for a long while at the
country estate in what I thought of as central Pennsylvania. They
didn’t hypnoscan and made no attempt to brief her or rehearse
her to be me, which was another thing that didn’t make sense.
Then she was brought down here and with her larger size and
distinctive looks she was rehearsed and worked into the show act.
It wasn’t a whole lot more information than I had before.
Then, late in the evening, she gave me the second shot. If
anything, it was better than before and seemed longer and it also
seemed slower coming down. The dizziness was worse and I had
diarrhea bad, but that was all.
From Brandy Two I also learned about the life of a shadow
dancer. She had not heard the term but liked it. You always felt a
little high and a little turned on and mostly great, but during the
coming down period you was suggestible, at least
that’s how I see it. A new shot of juice in under twenty to
twenty-four hours had no real effect. It was like injecting
distilled water. Withdrawal, for Brandy Two, started at thirty
hours and got worse and worse. By forty hours she would be in hell.
That’s how they “conditioned” you. They let you
go into withdrawal, then told you what you had to do and gave it to
you. When you woke up in that mellow, suggestible time they
reminded you of what was expected. They didn’t need to do
this too much, ’cause while the juice wasn’t smart or
nothin’ it kinda pushed you to do whatever it took to keep
gettin’ a new supply as needed. No matter how crazy or
against your nature it was, it became just like normal to you in no
time.
I thought ’bout Donna bein’ forced to go through
that barracks, day after day. Them patterns was damned hard to
break.
After the third day they didn’t give me a regular shot.
They waited to see if withdrawal would come on. On the fourth day,
it did. In its early stages it was almost as bad as heroin
withdrawal; you got real sick, bad sick—upchuckin’, the
runs, hot and cold spells, everything at once. I was hooked and I
knew it.
Fast Eddie Small was blunt about it. “Until they decide
when or if they’re gonna use you and for what you’re
stuck here,” he told me. “Until your hair grows out
enough to get styled decent, you’ll have to wear a wig. Wear
it any time, all the time, you ain’t in these rooms.
Brandy’ll get you all the right jewelry, cosmetics, perfumes,
powders, and like that. Use what she don’t. You
never leave here without ’em on and on right. You
want to work into the act, fine. You don’t, then you go down
after wearin’ nothin’ more than the girls do at the
end—and nothin’ less—and you get customers. Two a
night minimum, twenty-five minimum a trick. If you don’t have
enough in the club, then you go out and get ’em. They pay the
barmaid, satisfaction guaranteed, get it?”
“Yeah, I get it,” I replied, wishin’ I could
rip his guts out. “You mean I got to work the streets in
nothin’ but shoes with it twenty degrees out
there?”
“Naw, I got heart. A big heart.” One of the
girls—Lambda, I think, the blonde—went when he snapped
his fingers and brought back absolutely the most gorgeous,
sumptuous fur coat I ever seen. It was gray, but otherwise
close to the coats the girls were wearin’ when I made my
fatal bump into them. It was silver fox, mink lined, and it had a
belt around its middle and two deep pockets inside. “You wear
this and you take care of it. If it needs repairs or cleanin’
you tell the barmaid. Now, you get this straight. You want more of
a wardrobe, you earn it by goin’ over your quota.
You don’t handle money, never. You want
somethin’, you come see me or one of my people and you
convince us you’re worth it. One way is to follow all our
rules. You all got the same rules. You follow them and you’ll
learn fast enough. You break the rules, any of ’em, or you
see one of the other girls breakin’ the rules, and you get
real hell.”
He was really enjoyin’ this. It was a real turn-on for
him. I hated his stinkin’ guts. The only thing worse than big
Hitlers was little Hitlers.
I was unchained, unlocked, and left on my own. I didn’t
know if there was any guards around, but I never saw none. He
didn’t need ’em. Brandy took me under her wing, though.
“Can’t call you no Brandy, too. Both of us’ll go
nuts,” she noted.
“That’s okay, just call me Beth. I kinda feel like I
come full circle on this case now anyways.” And that’s
the way we agreed it would be.
In a way, it was worse, ’cause now I was the property of
two masters, one allegedly human, the other inside me. I
found out what that was like real quick. First, my sniffles, which
I’d had since God knew when, just went away, as did all of my
old sinus problems, but that was only the tip of it. You sure
followed a routine, like it or not.
When you was supposed to eat, you got hungry—and I mean
hungry. It became an overpowering urge, the only thing you
could think of till you ate, but it was a little specific. You got
more irresistible and otherwise repulsive cravin’s than a
pregnant woman. Pumpkin washed down with pickle juice. Raw
hamburger with chocolate sauce. Steamed fish a la mode. Now, it
wasn’t always that way, but it often was, particularly the
first few weeks. The other girls swore to me that it stopped after
a while and only popped up after that occasionally, but until then
I could tell one of the bar staff what I wanted and they’d
hold their nose and go get it. I had to fix it myself, though, in a
neat but antique kitchen they had. And when you wasn’t
hungry, you couldn’t even look at anything at all.
The upstairs of the club went over into the row house next door,
I found. Even after workin’ there I hadn’t knowed that
before. They was kinda like dorm rooms, but each one had a double
bed, small closet, a switched speaker that would bring the bar
music in with volume control, and some fancy lights. There was two
bathrooms with both tub and shower on each floor, one at each end.
The sheets were pink, purple, or crimson satin with down
comforters. We was all responsible for keepin’ our rooms
absolutely clean and neat and perfect, and either Eddie or one of
his boys could pop in at any time to inspect them like some Army
sergeant. All of us was responsible for keepin’ up the inside
of the house, includin’ scrubbin’ halls and common
areas, vacuumin’ with real antique-style cleaners, kitchen,
bathrooms, and the rest.
On the top floor was a room that was somethin’ of a gym,
with weights, exercise machines, and all the rest. That
was ’cause this thing inside us wanted a perfect
house to live in, which was us, so just like the meals you got
these—well, not urges, really, more like
compulsions. To run, to lift weights, exercise every part
of your body you could every day. It wasn’t easy at the
start, but when you did what this thing wanted you got little
pleasure jolts; when you didn’t, you got misery. You did
it.
Likewise, I no longer wanted cigarettes. Couldn’t stand to
have one in my mouth, though it didn’t bother me none to be
in a smoke-filled bar. You could drink, but the more you drank the
more you went to the bathroom and you never got drunk or even
tipsy.
And when it decided you was to have sex, you got so tense and
worked up that nothin’ else mattered. You had to
have it. Male, female, horse—I don’t think it mattered
none. Only the knowledge that you had to turn two tricks to get the
juice kept your mind in the act.
Of course, I was still a naughty and disobedient girl at the
start with anything this shit inside didn’t force me to do,
like Fast Eddie’s rules, but they took me down a few pegs in
a hurry. They let you go real deep into withdrawal, just to the
edge of where it might really start causin’ brain or nervous
system damage, then they’d stand there and keep
insistin’ that you repeat all the rules and swear to obey
’em. There was no way you couldn’t. The sickness was
bad enough and got worse and worse and you knew it could never get
no better but that you could be all well and feelin’ great in
just a minute or so if you swore on your mother’s grave to
obey, and then that thing would start pushin’ the pain button
in your head slowly down, more and more, till you couldn’t
stand it no more.
You didn’t get that far but once.
They reinforced it when you came out of the pure pleasure high
and loved the world by havin’ somebody there whisperin’
all the rules and havin’ you repeat ’em and swear to
act just that way. One day you just wake up, and doin’
everything their way is the most normal and natural thing
in the whole world. You know it’s not the way you used to do
it or think about it and not the way other folks do, but it’s
the norm for you and you do it automatically. It wasn’t like
no hypnosis or conditioning—they could change the rules any old
time and that would be the new normal thing.
Turnin’ two tricks in Atlantic City deep in winter
wasn’t always possible no matter what the decrees. There was
snowstorms and power outages and bad rain and ice storms, and not
many people. Christmas through New Year’s was great, though,
with lots of parties and winter getaway specials and the like,
although it was real depressin’ for us to see the Christmas
lights and displays and people shoppin’ and feel isolated,
alone, and left out.
By “us” I mean Brandy two and me. The other girls,
they didn’t seem none too touched by Christmas or much else.
They didn’t seem to remember no past at all, no growin’
up, nothin’ but bein’ what they were. Even with the
never-ending compulsions there was time, and thinkin’ was
still there, and memory, too, good as old. My eyesight gradually
improved to where I could see pretty good from a distance and close
up was blurry. It was much better for gettin’ around, but it
was hell to read anything like a book. To Brandy, the idea that
anybody’d read books for fun was near impossible for her to
get in her head. As I suspected, her own readin’ was on the
Dick and Jane level.
After New Year’s they moved us up to New York, which was a
surprise, to a club in the Manhattan entertainment district where
almost anything went so long as you gave the customer value for his
money and didn’t roll or stiff him. The district’s
boundaries were pretty clear but unwritten; the law and the adult
entertainment district kept their ends up. Outside the district,
wham! Inside—well, just keep it there. Of course, it
wasn’t immune from things like robbery, murder,
rollin’, and hard drug sellin’, but the fact was it was
pretty well self-policed and while there was drugs aplenty there
was no big scorin’ to be done there. You did that uptown in
Harlem or over in The Bronx.
By the end of January, I’d undergone some radical changes
that at the time I was only partly aware of. My body was lean and
muscular, the best it probably could ever be. I could run for miles
and hardly work up a sweat. If I flexed all my muscles, I looked
like one of them female bodybuilders, and I think I could bench
press more than Sam ever could. They paired Brandy Two and me in a
duo strip and sex act as The Double Brandys, of course, and slowly
my skin was goin’ back to its normal tone, which was her
tone, and my hair was gettin’ all woolly and curly as it used
to be. Whatever tricks the Center had pulled was bein’
undone. By spring, we figured a trim for her and we would be so
identical that even we couldn’t tell each other apart. Only
our dialects and our relative educations told any difference. We
even had the exact tastes in perfumes, lipsticks, and cosmetics of
all kinds, even toothpaste.
Mentally, it was strange. On the one hand, you lived for that
glorious hour of the juice, and you spent part of the time
tryin’ to recapture it, push it just a little. You did that
by followin’ your impulses, which was guided by the juice
itself. The normal physical things that brought intense pleasure,
like orgasms, produced much more intense feelin’s of
pleasure, so you went for ’em.
Kinky was normal. We’d take walks in the afternoon
wearin’ only the shoes and coats and think nothin’ of
it, and not be cold, and we’d window shop or even go into
stores and look over fashions and mentally dress each other,
sometimes try on things. I didn’t feel no sense of right and
wrong when it came to me. We didn’t steal stuff we liked only
’cause we understood that gettin’ caught and
goin’ to jail was a death sentence with no juice. No guilt,
no shame. When we saw somethin’ we wanted, we had to beg and
plead like little kids and hope they’d buy it for us, and we
didn’t care. If you wanted to do it and it wouldn’t
cause punishment or death, you did it. When I was workin’
freelance on the street I always felt guilty ’cause of Sam.
Now I had no guilt, no shame, no conscience, no pride, neither.
And that was the other crazy thing, ’cause I thought about
Sam a lot. Not just Sam, but especially Sam. I still loved
him, wanted him, and cared for him. I still remembered it all.
And I still wanted to solve this damned puzzle if I could. That
was part of me, part of my nature, as much a pleasure giver as the
rest and also in my best interests. I don’t know if they
thought of that or not, or if they cared. Whether or not I could
bring myself to deliver that solution wrapped and sealed to Aldrath
or Bill Markham even if I got the chance I didn’t
know—I really did love the juice most of all. Deep down, I
didn’t know if there was any way I could consciously and
deliberately cut it off on my own. Bill was kiddin’ himself
with his thirty doses; you didn’t want to get to the
Center even if they gave you a complete cure, ’cause you
could never feel that intense pleasure again. That’s what
hung up Donna and some of the others in the end. Even if physically
cured, they couldn’t forget the yen for that feelin’
and recapturin’ even a slice of it meant everything to
them.
Fact was, I wanted to solve it all not to bring nobody to
justice or stop no plot but ’cause these folks had pulled out
before and left those on the juice to die in agony. What they done
to others they could do to me, anytime, anyplace. The only fear I
had was fear of not gettin’ the juice.
I wanted to be this way forever.