“No,” I said aloud. “No, no—”
I saw Silver, who I’d wanted to give another name to, and hadn’t, walking along the sidewalk, putting back his head to watch the flyer go over. I saw his face against the dark sky in the balcony just before he kissed me the second time. I felt him hold me, and a spear divided me. I remembered the cubicle, the clockwork nerves of his body exposed. I visualized Clovis and Egyptia squabbling over him.
Like a sleepwalker, I got off the bed. I thought of my mother, and I could smell La Verte, but the scent of him had lingered on my own skin, blotting out my mother’s psychologically conjured perfume.
“All right,” I said. “Why not? If it’s supposed to be mine.”
You should make the decision yourself, my mother would say. Once I’d asked her what to do, and she’d told me.
“Yes, Mother. I’m going to make a decision.”
The auto-chill had refilled with wine, and I drank some, however, before I called Casa Bianca, the largest and most expensive second owner store in the city.
Before I quite knew what I’d done, I’d invited their representative over to Chez Stratos to assess the entire contents of my suite. Rich people fall on hard times and sell things, but I could tell, when I got through to the human assistants at Casa, that they were rather surprised—surprised and greedy. Of course, they’d cheat me. I looked at the receipt from E.M., seeing the wording for a S.I.L.V.E.R. The Sophisticated Format Robot, and at the charge. I’d get enough. And enough for other things, for a run-down apartment somewhere. And then, with the thousand I.M.U. card, I could manage there, if I was careful.
What was I doing? Did I know? Ice water ran down my back, my head throbbed, I felt sick. But I only drank some more wine, and got dressed and powdered my face to put up a barrier between me and the rep. from Casa Bianca. Then I gave admittance instructions to the lift, which said: “Hallo, Jane. Yes, Jane, I understand.”
The rep. arrived an hour later, very smart, about forty but not on Rejuvinex, or not on enough of it. She had long, blood-red nails, a bad psychological mistake in her line of work. Or perhaps it was done to intimidate. She looked predatory as she came out of the lift into the foyer.
“Good evening,” she said. “I’m Geraldine, representing Casa Bianca.”
“Please come this way,” I said. Party manners. Well, I’d often felt just as scared as this at parties.
We went up in the birdcage to the Vista.
“Excuse me,” said Geraldine, “is any of the rest of the house involved?”
“No. Just my suite.”
“Pity.”
We walked through the Vista, and she exclaimed. Indigo clouds were humped against the balcony-balloons with puddles of stars in them. The Asteroid blazed in the East like a neon, advertising something too ethereal to be real.
“My God,” said Geraldine, proclaiming a monopoly. “By the way,” she said, as we went up the annex stair, “I’m afraid we’ll require proof of your ownership of the properties you want to sell. You did realize that?”
She thought I was about ten years old and she would make corn hash of me. She probably would. I was allergic to her. I wished my mother would come home unexpectedly and end all this. What had I done?
“In here,” I said, as we went into my suite, which one of the spacemen had tidied.
“Oh, yes,” said Geraldine. “You said on the phone everything was to go.”
“If you can give me a reasonable price for it,” I said. My voice trembled.
“Why the heck are you leaving?” marveled Geraldine.
“I’m going to live with my lover,” I said. “And Mother wants to restyle the suite.”
Geraldine opened her big leather bag and removed a lightweight mini-computer which she set up on a side table.
“I’ll just run the ownership proof through now, if you don’t mind.”
I handed her the inventory tape. It had my individual body code, and the description and sonic match for everything in the rooms, which her computer would test and find correct. The inventory was kept in Demeta’s tape store, but I’d sent one of the spacemen for it.
As the computer chittered through its routine, Geraldine walked round and about, now and then picking things up and running a little calculator over them.
“The computer will take the full scan in a moment,” she said. “But you have some nice things. I think Casa Bianca will be able to take most of this off your hands.”
“There are clothes, too. And makeup cabinet. And a hairdresser unit. And all the tapes with the deck. You can take the bath fittings if you want, so long as you tie off the plumbing.”
“Well, I shan’t be doing it personally,” she corrected me.
I cringed, and just managed not to apologize to her.
“Well,” said Geraldine. “I just hope your lover can give you all of this.”
I kept quiet, this time. That was my business, wasn’t it.
What my lover, my love, my beloved, gave me. Or could he give me anything.
I opened the doll cupboard.
“My!” said Geraldine. “Some of these are—” she stopped herself. “Of course, secondhand toys are much harder to sell. But they seem well-preserved. Did you ever play with them?”
“They’re durables.”
My mother had wanted me to be able to work out my aggressions with my toys, so they were the kind whose hair didn’t come out, and whose ears didn’t fall off. There was my unicorn rocking horse, unscratched, and my bear in shining coal-black fur. “See,” I thought to them, “people are going to buy you and love you and play with you, after all.” I wouldn’t cry in front of Geraldine. I wouldn’t.
I poured some wine and didn’t offer her any. She hated me anyway.