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"Don't feel stupid," he said, drawing up the chair he kept for visitors.

She kept her head down so that her hair spilled across her face. "I can't help it. I can just imagine what you're thinking."

"I'm not thinking anything bad. I'm wondering what's upset you, and hoping it wasn't me, but Jesus, Cat. People cry all the time. If you want to talk about it, I'll listen. If you don't want to talk about it, that's okay too. But don't feel embarrassed just because you let go for a minute."

"Yes, but…"

She looked up finally and Peter shook a finger back and forth in front of her.

"But nothing. I don't know what's upset you, but if you need a shoulder to cry on, it's okay. What do you think I'm going to do? Write it up as a news flash for
Locus
or something?"

Cat sniffled, but the beginnings of a smile started on her lips. "I can just see it," she said. "'Writer Has Breakdown in Sci-Fi Store.'"

"Ouch."

"Okay. Ess-eff store."

"Better. Not perfect, but better." He regarded her for a moment, wondering not for the first time just who the person behind the writer and occasional visitor was. "Say," he said. "You got anything planned for the next couple of hours?"

"No." Sniff. "Why?"

"Well, I thought maybe we could go out and get a bite to eat."

Cat put her hands over her eyes. They were a bit swollen and would look all red. Everybody'd stare at her and know she'd been bawling.

"Oh, no," she said. "I couldn't."

"Well, how about having something here? I can offer you leftover chili."

"No. I really should be getting home…."

Except she didn't want to go home. The cats were probably still off wherever it was that they went. She'd just sit there, knowing the typewriter was standing silent upstairs, feeling the big empty house all around her. It was funny— she never used to feel that way about it.

"Okay," Peter said. "I just know that when I'm feeling lousy, nine times out of ten I feel better just being with someone. But if you've got to go… Well, at least let me walk you home."

Cat barely heard what he was saying. She kept thinking of the big lonely house. And what if that man came by and stared at her again? She just
knew
it wasn't the first time he'd stood there. What if he did more than stare tonight?

"Earth calling Cat, earth calling Cat."

"What? Oh, I…"

If this was what it was like being real, Cat didn't know if she wanted to be real. Everything was wound up tight inside her again. She wasn't relaxed like she always felt in the Otherworld, but if she couldn't go night-visiting, she wanted to stay here. She
couldn't
go home. Not yet. But it was hard to get the words out. When she finally did speak, she surprised herself.

"Peter, I haven't written a word in three months."

As soon as it was said, she felt better. She realized immediately— just as she had with Melissa— that it wasn't such a hard thing to say after all. She stole a glance at Peter to gauge his reaction. Don't let him shrug it off, but don't let him make a big fuss about it either. God, she didn't know what she wanted him to do.

"Jeez," he said. "No wonder you're feeling so shitty. You must be climbing the walls. How'd it happen, do you know?"

"I…"

She wanted to tell him about Kothlen and the Otherworld, but everything closed up inside her.

"Hey," Peter said, sensing that she was beginning to withdraw again. "Why don't we talk about it later— if you're up to it. Meanwhile, let me show you how a rich bookseller lives."

The pressure inside her eased as soon as the subject was changed.

"I'd like that," she said.

Lisa Henderson hurried south along Bank Street, turned left on Sunnyside then right on Willard. She glanced at her watch: 9:45. Her mother was going to kill her. She'd promised to phone her before nine to make arrangements for her birthday dinner on the weekend. "Now are you
sure
that's what you want for dinner, dear? Roast chicken, broccoli, and scalloped potatoes? It seems rather plain. And I
do
think you should bring a friend— like that nice young man with the mustache. No? Well, call me on Tuesday,
before
nine,
just
to be sure. Now you won't forget?"

Except she had forgotten, because after work she'd gone for a coffee with Brad Windsor— who didn't have a mustache like Jon Fisher, whom she'd stopped seeing a month ago, though her mother didn't know that yet— and ended up having dinner with him and spending the better part of three hours just talking. Brad was nice. He listened to what she had to say, didn't peel away her clothes with his eyes, and… well, so far as she could see, he just didn't have any bad habits.

Lisa worked at Rhapsody Rag Market— a clothing store close to the corner of Bank and Cooper that sold the kind of clothes she wore, uptempo folksy in natural fibers. She was twenty-three— twenty-four on Saturday— and a graduate of Carleton University, where she'd acquired a B.A. in English that didn't do much for her except make her mother happy.

As she reached the half-double that housed her second-floor apartment and was digging about in her purse for her keys, she glanced at the darkened windows of the adjoining double, wondering, not for the first time, just exactly what the fellow who lived in there was like. He was such a dreamboat. If only he wasn't so standoffish. Everytime she'd tried to strike up a conversation with him, it went absolutely nowhere.

She gave a mental shrug as she ran up the steps to her own house. What she should be doing was getting an excuse ready for her mother, not mooning over the man next door. Her mother— Ottawa's expert in emotional blackmail, but still the only mother she had. Now let's see. We had to do inventory— no, she'd used that one last month. Then… She smiled wickedly as she fit her key into the lock of her apartment door.

She should just tell her mother the truth. Something like: you see, Mom, I've been seeing a lot of different guys, sleeping with some of them too, but I haven't met anyone I feel really serious about yet. Her mother, she knew, would have a cardiac arrest on the spot. And if she survived the heart attack, Lisa would never hear the end of it. "Bad enough you live on your own, unmarried as you are, but to throw yourself around like some common prostitute…"

Lisa sighed. Some parents changed with the times while others— like her own— never lifted their eyes from their own narrow view of the world. The best thing to do was to say that she ate out and forgot the time, then listen to her mother sigh and moan and wonder aloud how she could have raised such a thoughtless daughter, and leave it at that. Anything else and she was just asking for trouble.

The phone started to ring as soon as she got her door open. There was no need to guess who that would be.

Debbie had the evening to herself for a change and was enjoying the quiet. After a light dinner of a spinach and feta-cheese salad, washed down with a glass of white wine, she took a long leisurely bath, then watched
Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley,
and
Three's Company
while her hair was drying. She passed up
9 to 5—
she'd liked the movie better anyway— to try on her new dress.

It was low-cut, gathered tight at the waist, the skirt falling loosely to her knees— a little slinkier than she'd originally planned on, but she hadn't been able to resist the way it accentuated her figure when she'd tried it on in the store. She studied herself in the mirror, with her blonde hair pulled up in a loose bun and wearing a pair of spiky high heels— the kind Judy in the office called CFMPs, Come-Fuck-Me-Pumps. Smoothing the skirt, she bent as though to pick something up to see how much leg showed through the slit, and smiled as she straightened.

Rick Kirkby, she thought. You don't stand a chance.

Tomorrow night she'd see how much of him was innuendo and how much the real thing. She changed into a loose gown and curled up on her couch to read the last few chapters of Ludlum's new book,
The Parsifal Mosaic.

"Hey, Ben," Becki said. "You wanna dance?"

They were sitting at a table in Barrymore's, facing stage center, the vaulted ceilings loftly above them. The building had been, in its time, a theatre, a movie house, a strip joint, and now a rock 'n' roll club, retaining the garish furnishings of all its previous incarnations.

It was situated on Bank Street, above another club that was a biker's hangout and a pinball and video-game arcade, and across the street from a chip stand and the Royal Oak— a quasi-British pub. The coloring of Barrymore's was all gilted, velvet red and black, with ornate chandeliers and brass railings separating the various tiers that had once been balconies in its theatre days. The rows of seats had been removed and replaced by tables and chairs which, though the arrangement appeared curious at an initial glance, proved to give every patron an excellent view of the stage.

Adding a final tackiness to the worn-edged glitter were the costumes of the waitresses— a last nod to the club's days as a strip joint. The women moved between the tables wearing black low-cut bathings suits, top hats and tails, black fishnet stockings and high heels. Ben shook his head as one of them approached their table to ask if they wanted a refill.

"You want
me
to dance?" he asked Becki.

She was decked out
in
her full gear tonight. Three earrings in one ear, none in the other; the thick raggedly-cut hair uncombed and spiked like a hedgehog's back; a red, white, and blue British flag T-shirt with the arms torn off; tight black jeans with the knees torn. Her deep-blue eyes sparkled mischievously as she grinned.

"Of course you. Mick's too busy playing Dread at the controls."

Ben glanced up to where Mick was working the soundboard. He looked like he knew exactly what he was doing as he fiddled with what appeared to be a hundred different sliding knobs, and by the sound that eventually issued from the speakers, he apparently did.

"Sure," Ben said. "I'll give it a try."

"Great."

By the time they reached the small dance floor to the right of the stage, the band had ended one number and were starting another. They were called Too Bad, after the band's lead singer, and consisted of four young men— two white and two black. The music was just as Mick had described it— fast reggae with a touch of R&B. The rhythms were infectious, the harmonies clean.

Ben started out feeling awkward, then got into the swing of it, much to Becki's approval. She grinned at him in the midst of a dance that was a combination of a very vigorous twist and a hopping motion called pogoing. Ben glanced up at the soundboard again and caught Mick's gaze. His Mohawk-topped head was bobbing in time to the music and he lifted his hand from the board to give Ben a thumbs-up. By the time the song ended— the chorus was a repetition of "Goin' down to de riddem, goin' down, goin' down" with one of the black men, his dreadlocks flying as he shook his head, doing a rap overtop of the harmonies— Ben was thoroughly enjoying himself.

"You want to stick it out for another?" Becki asked him.

"Try and stop me."

"All
right."

Farley and Ron sat in the parking lot across from Barrymore's, huddled behind the chip wagon, finishing off a bottle of wine. Poke had drifted off sometime around noon.

"You still seeing snakes?" Ron asked.

Farley blinked. It took him a moment to digest the words, then he slowly shook his head. "Nope," he said very seriously, took a swig of the cheap wine and passed the bottle to Ron.

"That's good," Ron replied, equally serious. "I don't like snakes."

Ron had been bumming some spare change down in the Market late that afternoon, when a woman had pressed a twenty-dollar bill in his hand, saying, "You get yourself something to eat, you poor man."

"Yes, ma'am," he'd replied, grinning so hard he was likely to split his face. "I surely will, ma'am. Thank you very much. God bless you, ma'am. God bless you."

With the three dollars Farley had acquired, they'd bought themselves four bottles of wine and had enough left over for two breakfast specials in the morning and a healthy start on tomorrow's alcoholic intake.

"I
especially
don't like snake-headed men," Farley said as the bottle came back to him.

"The worst," Ron agreed. "They're the fucking worst."

Rick spent the evening at Stella's, bored out of his mind as they watched some made-for-TV movie that even the actors didn't seem to care about. About its only saving grace was the way that woman— what was her name? She was on
Dallas
or one of those shows— looked in a bikini. It made you want to get her out under some palm trees somewhere and hump the brains out of her.

He sighed as they sat through the news.
The National.
The Prime Minister was leading Joe Clark in the Gallup Polls. Big deal.
The Local.
Some church burned down. Who cared? Did people even go to church anymore?

Tonight was his big effort at "getting along"— especially important because he wasn't going to be around until late tomorrow night, and he sure didn't want Stella tagging along. Not with Bill's secretary coming. But until he had Bill's money in his hands… Yeah. Well, all that was going to save tonight was when they finally turned off the boob tube and hit the sack.

Stella might have her faults, but she sure had all the right moves when it came down to the skin game. He might get a little on the side— hell, he might get a lot, who was counting?— but what made those affairs so sweet was knowing he could always have Stella as a sort of icing on the cake. Who said you couldn't have your cake and eat it too?

By eleven Cat and Peter were sitting on a couch on Peter's balcony. It had cooled down somewhat over the evening and Cat was snuggled in an old sweater of Peter's, feeling drained of words again, but in a pleasant way. She didn't think she'd talked this much, especially about herself, to anyone before. They'd been enjoying a companionable silence over the past fifteen minutes, broken only by the traffic on Bank Street, a few houses away.