The phone on the other end crashed against the wall as the unfamiliar voice let it dangle. Far away, dim, as if in a dream, he heard the unfamiliar voice knocking and yelling: "Phone! Phone for ya, Missus Richards!"
Half a minute later the unfamiliar voice was back on the line. "She ain't there. I can hear the kid yellin, but she ain't there. Like I say, she keeps an eye out when the fleet's in." The voice giggled.
Richards wished he could teleport himself through the phone line and pop out on the other end, like an evil genie from a black bottle, and choke the unfamiliar voice until his eyeballs popped out and rolled on the floor.
"Take a message," he said. "Write it on the wall if you have to."
"Ain't got no pencil. I'm hangin up. G'bye."
"Wait!" Richards yelled, panic in his voice.
"I'm... just a second." Grudgingly the voice said, "She comin up the stairs now."
Richards collapsed sweatily against the wall. A moment later Sheila's voice was in his ear, quizzical, wary, a little frightened: "Hello?"
"Sheila." He closed his eyes, letting the wall support him.
"Ben. Ben, is that you? Are you all right?"
"Yeah. Fine. Cathy. Is she-"
"The same. The fever isn't so bad but she sounds so croupy. Ben, I think there's water in her lungs. What if she has pneumonia?"
"It'll be all right. It'll be all right."
"I-" She paused, a long pause. "I hate to leave her, but I had to. Ben, I turned two tricks this morning. I'm sorry. But I got her some medicine at the drug. Some good medicine." Her voice had taken on a zealous, evangelical lilt.
"That stuff is shit," he said. "Listen: No more, Sheila. Please. I think I'm in hems. Really. They can't cut many more guys because there's too many shows. There's got to be enough cannon fodder to go around. And they give advances, I think. Mrs. Upshaw-"
"She looked awful in black," Sheila broke in tonelessly.
"Never mind that. You stay with Cathy, Sheila. No more tricks."
"All right. I won't go out again." But he didn't believe her voice. Fingers crossed, Sheila? "I love you, Ben."
"And I lo-"
"Three minutes are up," the operator broke in. "If you wish to continue, please deposit one New Quarter or three old quarters."
"Wait a second!" Richards yelled. "Get off the goddam line, bitch. You-"
The empty hum of a broken connection.
He threw the receiver. It flew the length of its silver cord, then rebounded, striking the wall and then penduluming slowly back and forth like some strange snake that had bitten once and then died.
Somebody has to pay, Richards thought numbly as he walked back. Somebody has to.
MINUS 089 AND COUNTING
They were quartered on the fifth floor until ten o'clock the following day, and Richards was nearly out of his mind with anger, worry, and frustration when a young and slightly faggoty-looking pal in a skintight Games uniform asked them to please step into the elevator. They were perhaps three hundred in all: over sixty of their number had been removed soundlessly and painlessly the night before. One of them had been the kid with the inexhaustible fund of dirty jokes.
They were taken to a small auditorium on the sixth floor in groups of fifty. The auditorium was very luxurious, done in great quantities of red plush. There was an ashtray built into the realwood arm of every seat, and Richards hauled out his crumpled pack of Blams. He tapped his ashes on the floor.
There was a small stage at the front, and in the center of that, a lectern. A pitcher of water stood on it.
At about fifteen minutes past ten, the faggoty-looking fellow walked to the lectern and said: "I'd like you to meet Arthur M. Burns, Assistant Director of Games."
"Huzzah," somebody behind Richards said in a sour voice.
A portly man with a tonsure surrounded by gray hair strode to the lectern, pausing and cocking his head as he arrived, as if to appreciate a round of applause which only he could hear. Then he smiled at them, a broad, twinkling smile that seemed to transform him into a pudgy, aging Cupid in a business suit.
"Congratulations," he said. "You've made it."
There was a huge collective sigh, followed by some laughter and back-slapping. More cigarettes were lit up.
CHAPTER FOUR
"Huzzah," the sour voice repeated.
"Shortly, your program assignments and seventh floor room numbers will be passed out. The executive producers of your particular programs will explain further exactly what is expected of you. But before that happens, I just want to repeat my congratulations and tell you that I find you to be a courageous, resourceful group, refusing to live on the public dole when you have means at your disposal to acquit yourselves as men, and, may I add personally, as true heroes of our time.
"Bullshit," the sour voice remarked.