"Throw a cigarette to a working girl," she said. "It"s five hours since I had one."
"I don"t smoke. Shall I ring for some?"
"Good Lord, another sad sack! Never mind the phone .. or that dame will show up again. Rummage around in the ashtray and find me a good long b.u.t.t."
The ashtray did have a lot of long b.u.t.ts.
"They all have lipstick on them," said I.
"That"s all right; it"s my lipstick. What"s your name?"
"Ivan."
She snapped a lighter and lit up.
"And mine is Ilina. Are you a foreigner, too? All you foreigners seem so wide. What are you doing here?""
"Waiting for Rimeyer."
"I don"t mean that! What brought you here, are you escaping from your wife?"
"I am not married," I said quietly. "I came to write a book."
"A book? Some friends this Rimeyer has. He came to write a book. s.e.x Problems of Impotent Sportsmen. How"s your situation with the s.e.x problem?"
"It is not a problem to me," I said mildly. "And how about you?"
She lowered her legs from the table.
"That"s a no-no. Take it slow. This isn"t Paris, you know.
All in good time. Anyway, you should have your locks cut -- sitting there like a perch."
"Like a who?" I was very patient as I had another forty-five minutes to wait.
"Like a perch. You know the type." She made vague motions around her ears.
"I don"t know about that," I said. "I don"t know anything yet as I have just arrived. Tell me about it, it sounds interesting."
"Oh no! Not I! We don"t chatter. Our bit is a small one -- serve, clean up, flash your teeth, and keep quiet. Professional secret. Have you heard of such an animal?"
"I"ve heard," I said. "But who"s "we" -- an a.s.sociation of doctors?
For some reason, she thought this was hilarious.
"Doctors! Imagine that." She laughed. "Well, wise guy, you"re all right -- quite a tongue. We have one in the once like you. One word, and we"re all rolling in the aisles.
Whenever we cater to the Fishers, he always gets the job, they like a good laugh."
"Who doesn"t?" said I.
"Well, you are wrong. The Intels, for instance, chased him out. "Take the fool away," they said. Or also recently those pregnant males."
"Who?""
"The sad ones. Well, I can see you don"t understand a thing. Where in heaven"s name did you come from?"
"From Vienna."
"So -- don"t you have the sad ones in Vienna?"
"You couldn"t imagine what we don"t have in Vienna."
"Could be you don"t even have irregular meetings?"
"No, we don"t have them. All our meetings are regular, like a bus schedule."
She was having a good time.
"Perhaps you don"t have waitresses either?"
"Waitresses we do have, and you can find some excellent examples. Are you a waitress then?"
She jumped up abruptly.
"That won"t do at all," she cried. "I"ve had enough sad ones for today. Now you"re going to have a loving cup with me like a good fellow...." She began to search furiously among the bottles by the window. "d.a.m.n him, they"re all empty! Could be you"re a teetotaler? Aha, here"s a little vermouth. You drink that, or shall we order whiskey?"
"Let"s begin with the vermouth," said I.
She banged the bottle on the table and took two gla.s.ses from the window sill.
"Have to wash them. Hold on a minute, everything"s full of garbage." She went into the bathroom and continued to speak from there. "If you turned out to be a teetotaler on top of everything else. I don"t know what I would do with you.... What a pigsty he"s got in his bathroom -- I love it! Where are you staying? Here too?"
"No, in town," I replied. "On Second Waterway."
She came back with the gla.s.ses.
"Straight or with water?"
"Straight, I guess."
"All foreigners take it straight. But we have it with water for some reason." She sat on my armchair and put her arms around my shoulders. We drank and kissed without any feeling.
Her lips were heavily lipsticked, and her eyelids were heavy from lack of sleep and fatigue. She put down her gla.s.s, searched out another b.u.t.t in the ashtray, and returned to the ha.s.sock.
"Where is that Rimeyer?" she said. "After all, how long can you wait for him? Have you known him a long time?"
"No, not very."
"I think maybe he is a louse," she said with sudden ire.
"He"s dug everything out of me, and now he plays hard to get.
He doesn"t open his door, the animal, and you can"t get through to him by phone. Say, he wouldn"t be a spy, would he?"
"What do you mean, a spy?"
"Oh, there"s loads of them.... From the a.s.sociation for Sobriety and Morality.... The Connoisseurs and Appraisers are also a bad lot...."
"No, Rimeyer is a decent sort," I said with some effort.
"Decent... you are all decent. In the beginning, Rimeyer too was decent, so good-natured and full of fun... and now he looks at you like a croc."
"Poor fellow," I said. "He must have remembered his family and become ashamed of himself."
"He doesn"t have a family. Anyway, the heck with him! Have another drink?"
We had another drink. She lay down and put her hands over her head. Finally she spoke.
"Don"t let it get to you. Spit on it! Wine we have enough of, we"ll dance, go to the shivers. Tomorrow there"s a football game, we"ll bet on the Bulls."
"I am not letting it get to me. If you want to bet on the Bulls, we"d bet on the Bulls."
"Oh those Bulls! They are some boys! I could watch them forever, arms like iron, snuggling up against them is just like snuggling against a tree trunk, really!"
There was a knock on the door.
"Come in!" yelled Ilina.
A man entered and stopped at once. He was tall and bony, of middle age, with a brush mustache and light protruding eyes.
"I beg your pardon, I was looking for Rimeyer," he said.
"Everyone here wants to see Rimeyer," said Ilina. "Have a chair and we"ll all wait together."
The stranger bowed his head and sat down by the table, crossing his legs.
Apparently he had been here before. He did not look around, but stared at the wall directly in front of him.
However, perhaps he just was not a curious type. In any case, it was clear that neither I nor Ilina was of any interest to him. This seemed unnatural to me, since I felt that such a pair as myself and Ilina should arouse interest in any normal person. Ilina raised up on her elbow and scrutinized him in detail.
"I have seen you somewhere," she said.
"Really?" said the stranger coldly.
"What"s your name?"
"Oscar. I am Rimeyer"s friend."
"That"s fine," said Ilina. She was obviously irritated by the stranger"s indifference, but she kept herself in check.
"He"s also a friend of Rimeyer." She stuck her finger at me.
"You know each other?"
"No," said. Oscar, continuing to look at the wall.
"My name is Ivan," said I. "And this is Rimeyer"s friend, Ilina. We just drank to our fraternal friendship."
Oscar glanced indifferently in Ilina"s direction and nodded his head politely. Ilina picked up the bottle without taking her eyes off him.
"There"s still a little left here," she said. "Would you like a drink, Oscar?"
"No, thank you," he said, coldly.
"To fraternal friendship!" said Ilina. "No? You don"t want to? Too bad!"
She splashed some wine in my gla.s.s, poured the rest in hers, and downed it at once.
"Never in my life would I have thought that Rimeyer could have friends who refuse a drink. Still, I have seen you somewhere before."
Oscar shrugged his shoulders.
"I doubt it," he said.
Ilina was visibly becoming enraged.
"Some sort of a fink," she said to me loudly. "Say there, Oscar, you wouldn"t be an Intel?"
"No."
"What do you mean, no?" said Ilina. "You"re the one who had a set-to with that baldy Leiz at the Weasel, broke a mirror, and had your face slapped by Mody."
The stone visage of Oscar grew a shade pinker.
"I a.s.sure you," he said courteously, "I am not an Intel and have never in my life been in the Weasel."
"Are you saying that I"m a liar?" said Ilina At this point I took the bottle off the table and put it under my armchair, just in case.
"I am a visitor," said Oscar. "A tourist."
"When did you arrive?" I said to discharge the tension.
"Very recently," replied Oscar. He continued to gaze at the wall. Obviously here was a man with iron discipline.
"Oh, oh!" said Ilina suddenly. "Now I remember! I got it all mixed up."
She burst out laughing, "Of course you"re no Intel! You were at our office the day before last. You"re the salesman who offered our manager some junk like... "Dugong" or "Dupont..."