The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant (19 page)

She patted the couch cushion next to her, and I went over and sat down.

Reaching beneath her dress, she unhooked the tube that led to the pot. The
woosh
sound of her spigot closing followed. She handed me the tube, and I pulled down my zipper, maneuvered myself into position and hooked up.

My God, what a relief. I still remember it even through the haze of all the intervening years of smoke. When I had finished, we sat in the orange cloud, listening to the heavenly music.

“Who are you, Joseph?” she asked in a whisper.

I knew what she meant, but it was too dangerous to speak of such things. On the bug planet, the charade of the exo-suits had not quite been figured out. Stootladdle and his minions really thought we were the stars we appeared to be. They were so enchanted by our personas, they had not bothered to apply the necessary logic to the situation. It was like the secret of Santa Claus, and I didn't want to be the one to blow it.

“A friend,” I said, amazed at myself for having the wherewithal not to prattle under the influence of the smoke.

“Do you miss Earth?” she asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I miss the sunlight.”

“I could go back any time I wished,” she said. “But there is nothing for me there. When the ambassador died, in a way, so did I.”

“A good man,” I said.

“A very good man,” she said. “He loved his work. No one could wrap Stootladdle around their finger like my husband. The freasence market owes him such a debt. And not only his work, he was so good to me too. We always talked and joked, and twice a year, using his own wealth, we would go to town and, I hope you don't mind me mentioning it, visit the box.”

“The box?” I asked.

“Stootladdle has a pressurized chamber you can get into and remove your exo-skin. It costs a great deal to use, but my husband thought nothing of the expense.”

“But didn't that give the secret away?” I asked.

“No, Joseph,” she said and laughed. “They think when we enter it, we are merely molting. They think of it in bug terms. A place for us to shed our outer skins and mate.” She blushed and her giggling overtook her for a time.

“Imagine what their concept of humanity must be,” I said, and laughed.

“A man from Earth invented the box and paid to have it brought here. It was popular for a time among the expatriates because he did not charge so much, but when Stootladdle saw that there was wealth to be made from it, he had the inventor meet with an accident and confiscated the box. Now he charges exorbitant rates for little more than an Earth half-hour.”

“He is a bastard,” I said.

“I shouldn't be telling you this, but I don't care now. In the box, we knew each other as the people that we truly are.” Here, she set herself up for another toke, and after that the conversation died. The old phonograph finished the black platter and the music became a
scratch, scratch, scratch
that in its insistence blended with the crickets outside. I dozed and when I awoke, Gloriette was gone. I stumbled upstairs to bed.

The next day, which of course was always night, Vespatian brought the truck around. Gloriette and I sat on the open platform in the back on lounge chairs bolted to the metal deck. We had a pitcher of drinks and a picnic lunch.

“Into the veldt, Vespatian,” she ordered.

“As you wish, madame,” said the grasshopper from the cab.

She showed me the sights of that illuminated flatland, and I could tell she felt a vicarious wonder through my own astonishment at its beauty. In the afternoon, we came upon a dung ranch. Out in the tall grass, behemoth insects, called Zanderguls, elephant-sized water bugs, moved slowly through the veldt. Gloriette explained that these lumbering giants ate the grass, which was set aglow by tiny microbe-sized insects that carried their own luminescence. As the huge beasts dined, they excreted, in near equal proportion, globules of the freasence. A chemical reaction of the microbes mixing with the digestive juices of the Zanderguls gave freasence its special love qualities for earthlings. Behind each organic aphrodisiac machine followed a flea, one of Stootladdle's brethren, with a cart in which they would place the lumpen riches of the bug planet.

Just being out there near so much freasence turned my thoughts to sex. Gloriette, I noticed also had a certain flush about her, and I detected the presence of her nipples from beneath her demure pink party dress. When she saw me noticing, she called out to Vespatian, “That's enough for today.”

The dutiful insect started the truck and took us back by way of a river path. Its waters were blacker than the night, but in its depths pinpoints of light darted about.

“There is Earth,” said Gloriette, pointing out into space at a star that was smaller than one of the river mites.

“So it is,” I said, but did not look.

That night, after dinner, after Vespatian had retired, Gloriette and I sat in the parlor staring through the orange fog at
The Rain Does Things Like That
. Earlier, when we had come in from the porch, an antique projector and a portable screen had already been set up. After a few good tokes, she turned off the lights and flipped the switch on the movie machine.

To be honest, the film was awful, the plot was what was known as a tearjerker, but Gloriette Moss was so radiant even in black and white, so honest, that the other lousy actors, the poor cinematography, the creaking scenario, didn't matter. It was about a young woman who, because she had been abused by her first husband, had become an alcoholic. We see her stumble out of a bar in the middle of a rainstorm and make her way along a city block. She is drenched when a young man approaches her with an umbrella and asks if she would like to share it with him. As it turns out, he too has a drinking problem. To make it short, they fall in love. Then they decide to help each other overcome their respective addictions. There is much overacting in relation to delirium tremors consisting of, among other things, swarms of insects, but finally love prevails. After the couple has succeeded, we see them married, living in an apartment building, modest but cozy. Life is wonderful, and then it starts to rain. The young husband tells her he is going across the street for a pack of cigarettes. From the window she watches him leave the building. As he crosses the street a car, driven by none other than the perpetually annoying Red Buttons, careens around the corner. The brakes are slammed, the car skids, and Gloriette's lover is killed. In the last scene of the movie, she is back at the bar. The bartender says that he hasn't seen her in some time and that she looks awful. She sips her drink, takes a puff of her cigarette and says, “The rain does things like that.”

When the movie ended and the tail of the film slapped the projector with each spin of the spool, Gloriette turned to me and said, “You know, I have almost come to believe that this is an actual memory and that I am watching the real me when I was younger.”

I told her she was fabulous in it, but she waved her hand in a manner that told me to leave the room. At the doorway, I turned back and told her she was beautiful. I don't think she even heard me, so intent was she rethreading the film as if intending to watch it again.

The days passed and I forgot completely about my assignment from Stootladdle. I had unwisely fallen in love with my mark. At every turn I had expected her to see through me, but each and every flaw in my design was masked and made charming by Cotten, so that I began to become aware, through the long hours we spent together, that she also had feelings for me. It was as if I were in a movie, some grade-B flick that, with its exotic backdrop of the veldt and the alchemy of its stars, transcended the need to aspire to “A” status and would live in the hearts of its viewers.

Or so I dreamed, until one day I passed Vespatian in the hall. He grabbed me by the arm, squeezing hard, and whispered, “Stootladdle sends a message. You have two days to deliver the film or on the third, if you do not, you will be hanging slack with Omar Sharif.”

Suddenly the house lights went up, as they used to say, and again I was buried up to my neck in nightmare. I entertained the idea of coming clean with Gloriette and telling her of my predicament. Out of the kindness of her heart, she might turn the movie over to Stootladdle to save me, but at the same time she would know I had betrayed her. I did not want to lose her, but I did not want to die either. Even Cotten, expert thespian that he was, couldn't disguise my quandary. After dinner the night that Vespatian had delivered the dreaded message, Gloriette asked what was troubling me.

“Nothing,” I told her, but later, after we had taken the smoke, she asked again. The drug weakened me and my growing fear forced me to rely on her mercy. I was sitting next to her on the couch. I reached over and took her hand in mine. She sat up and leaned toward me. “I have a confession to make,” I said.

“Yes?” she said, looking into my eyes.

I did not know how to begin and sat long minutes simply staring at her beautiful face. From out across the veldt came the sound of thunder, and then an instant later the rain began to fall, tapping lightly at the parlor window.

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came forth. She took this as a sign and moved her face close to mine, touching her lips against my own. We were kissing, passionately. She wrapped her arms around me and drew me closer. My hand moved along the thin material of her dress, from her thigh to her ribs to her breasts. She made no protest for she was as hot as I was. We fondled and kissed for an unheard of length of time, more true to the manner of the twentieth century than our own. When I could stand it no longer, I reached beneath her dress. My hand sailed along the smooth inner skin of her thigh, and when I was about to explode with excitement, my fingers came to rest on the cold steel of her exhaust spigot. I literally groaned.

The suit makers, in all of their art and cunning, had left out that which may be the most important aspect of human anatomy. Think of the irony, a suit made to enhance a commerce dealing ultimately in sex, but having no sex itself. At the same moment I groped her steel pipe, she was doing the same to mine. We released each other and sat there in a state of total frustration.

“The box,” she said. “Tomorrow we will go to town, to the box.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“We have to,” she said.

“But can you afford it? I haven't the money,” I said, still slightly trembling.

“No, I can't afford it either, but there is something that Stootladdle wants that I can trade for a half-hour in the chamber,” she said.

Then it struck me, just like in Gloriette's movie, love would prevail. She was going to trade the film for me, and I would live and not be found out by her. Frank Capra himself couldn't have conceived of anything more felicitous.

Vespatian woke me from a warm, bright dream of summer by the sea. “Mrs. Lancaster is waiting for you in the truck,” he said. I hurriedly got dressed and went downstairs.

As I climbed into my chair, I saw that Gloriette was holding the movie tin in her hand. She tapped it nervously against her knee.

“Good morning, Joseph,” she said. “I hope you are well rested.”

“I'm ready,” I said with a lightness in my heart I had not felt since landing on the bug planet.

She wore a yellow dress and a golden bee pendant on a thin cable around her neck. Her hair was done in braids, and she shone more vibrantly than the veldt itself.

“Exo-Skeleton Town,” she called to Vespatian.

“As is your pleasure, madame,” said the grasshopper, and we were off.

We rode in silence through the dark. Somewhere, after we had left the veldt far behind and I couldn't see two feet in front of me, I felt her hand touch mine and we intertwined our fingers. All went well until we reached the outskirts of Exo-town, and there, beneath a streetlamp, we witnessed a despondent Judy Garland, in blue gingham, put a stinger gun to her head and pull the trigger. Her exo-skin must have been poorly made because, instead of her leaking out, it blew apart like a bursting balloon, spewing blood and guts of her true self across the passenger door of our truck.

Gloriette covered her eyes with her hand. “I wish I hadn't seen that,” she said. “This is surely Hell.”

“It's alright,” I told her. “She's better off.”

The bluebottles immediately appeared and began devouring the remains.

“Drive faster, Vespatian,” she called.

The grasshopper hit the gas pedal and we were driving down the main street of Exo-Skeleton Town no more than three minutes later.

Stootladdle was beside himself with cordiality when he finally understood the deal that Gloriette was putting before him.

“An old movie and not well known,” he said, taking the film tin from her. “But, in deference to your late husband, and because you are so delightful, I will take this token in exchange for a half-hour in the box for you and your friend.”

“When you see me in the scene at the end of the film, where I am in the bar,” she said to him. “Always remember that at that moment, as I am saying my final line, my left high heel is flattening a roach beneath my bar stool.”

“It will thrill me to the very thorax,” said the mayor.

“The box,” she said.

“Yes, follow me,” said the flea. As we left his office, he turned to me and whispered, “Cotten, you damn rascal.”

The box was in an otherwise abandoned building down the street from the mayor's office. He unlocked the door with the end of a long thick hair that jutted from his cheek. We stepped into the deep shadows behind him. There before us, almost indistinguishable from the rest of the darkness, was a large black box, ten by ten by ten. Stootladdle moved to the front of it and appeared to be pressing some buttons. There was a sound of old gears turning slowly, and a panel slid back revealing bright light, as if from my dream of summer.

“Remember,” said the flea, “you must wait until the gong sounds inside before you can molt your outer skin. Also, when the gong sounds for the second time, you must replace your skin within five minutes or you will die when the door opens again. All this was told to me by the dear Earth man who invented it.”