Bugs Read online

  Fred dreamed he was in a dressing-room. The smell of makeup was overpowering. George C. Scott sat before a lighted mirror, rehearsing a certain line over and over: ‘I will be with you on your wedding night.’

  Fred jumped awake. ‘What happened?’

  ‘We fell asleep,’ said Honesty.

  He remembered. ‘I told you I felt relaxed with you.’

  ‘I’m sorry Mom’s being a bitch, Fred.’

  ‘No need for you to be sorry. Anyway, she did promise me this would be the last time. Guess I’d better finish getting ready and go find her.’

  Honesty looked him over. ‘You’re kind of a mess. Lipstick’s smeared, garter-belt’s all twisted. Let me help.’ She examined one of the clips on his garter-belt and found it badly bent. ‘This’ll never close like this. I need some pliers to straighten it. No, wait …’

  She leaned over and gripped the wire with her teeth. At that moment, the door opened, and Moira walked in.

  ‘Virtual response, we could term it. The totally unpredictable vibration underscoring the limousine lift-off of life. … Graphic non-metal caution, sure, only what if …’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  The General and Rain were now against the railing of the minstrel gallery. They might have been visible from below, but Fellini, having finished the pitcher of Martinis, was not seeing well.

  ‘An unleashed transform …’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Metalife equals metal life.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘One more thing about the curled hazards of unanimity, it soon won’t matter what we think.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh.’

  Rain, too, seemed to moan agreement: ‘Yes. Yes.’

  ‘We stand on the boulevard of grapefruit methodology. I don’t want to think about no frivolous crystallinity, I mean Christianity. Unleashed and transformed.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Uh-huh.’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  And another moaning arose, too, a rhythmic moaning that came from no human throat, but from the nails that had been holding the railing in place. In one orchestrated moment, there were screams of ecstasy and collapse, as the loving couple came crashing through, unleashed and transformed, falling to meet the soft waves of couch as they met the waves of sound surging up from below: ‘Oh, the gyring! The joystick of it! The transform has been unleashed, we are surging towards the future wave, towards a peaked impact with now. Totally.’

  ‘What was that crash?’ Fred asked.

  Moira shrugged. ‘Probably another part of the decadence. I just wish someone had told me there was going to be an orgy; I’d have dressed for it.’ She looked pointedly at Fred’s garter-belt and stockings.

  ‘It isn’t how it looks,’ he said. ‘I was just putting on this stuff for – for a laugh, and Honesty was helping me with the suspender-belt.’

  ‘I wonder who helped you with the lipstick? It’s all over your face and neck.’ Moira sighed. ‘Why bother explaining? This is really none of my business.’

  ‘No, really. I had this other suit. Where is it? It was right here. Maybe it’s in the wardrobe.’

  ‘None of my business. I really came in to find Hal. He was giving me a –’

  Fred slid open the wardrobe door to reveal Ratface Hallicrafter Porch, dressed in a powder-blue suit with black velvet lapels, no shirt, no shoes, and pissing into a high-heeled shoe.

  Moira made a sound of disgust. ‘I guess I don’t need to wonder where Hal is.’

  This time Ratface had the sense to drop the shoe and make his escape.

  ‘Moira, really, this isn’t an orgy. It’s –’

  ‘I guess I’ll be going now. Before someone crawls out from under the bed.’

  ‘No, wait,’ Honesty said. ‘There’s a few things you should know before you go.’

  ‘Psst. You need help, young man?’

  Hal peered into the car at a plump man with owlish spectacles.

  ‘I guess so. Lost my car keys.’

  ‘Let me give you a lift.’

  ‘OK, thanks.’ Hal got in. ‘My name’s Hallicrafter.’

  The owlish man introduced himself as Nigel Hook.

  ‘Been visiting the Fellinis, have you? Strange couple.’

  ‘Boy, I’ll say. They got drag queens there, and people who steal your clothes, orgies all over the place. And that Mrs Fellini is kind of a whore.’

  ‘I see.’ Hook cleared his throat. ‘Of course, in a sense, all women are fundamentally whores, wouldn’t you agree?’

  ‘Sure. Right on.’

  ‘So glad to hear you say that, Hallicrafter. Nice suit, by the way. Just what material is that?’ Hook put his hand on the knee of the suit to feel the material.

  Hal considered threatening the old fruit with death. On the other hand, there were the blackmail possibilities …

  ‘At least no one got hurt,’ Fred said. He was sharing a taxi with Moira. He’d managed to scrub off the make-up and throw an overcoat over the rest.

  ‘I just can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘General Buddy and Rain and Sturge all tangled up like that. You think you know people and then they reveal hidden depths like this.’

  ‘You mean me, too, I suppose.’

  She was silent for a long time. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘About marrying you. I think I’d like that.’

  Fred said nothing. He was madly running over the incidents of the evening, wondering what there was in it to change her mind. ‘Fine,’ he said finally.

  ‘You’re not like that. You can be saved from it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Another thing. I know now that you’re not a sexist. Not hung up on sex stereotypes.’

  He did not disagree.

  ‘I want to take you to meet my parents,’ she said. ‘In Las Vegas.’

  Honesty said: ‘They’re gone now. You can come out, Robinson.’ The figure in black rolled clumsily out from under the bed and got to its feet. Then it groped its way to a chair. The long black coat and ski-mask were covered with dust.

  ‘Why don’t you take off that stupid mask? It didn’t fool me.’

  Robinson shook his head. ‘It fools others. Thank you for not betraying me. I thought Moira had discovered my hiding-place.’

  ‘You were taking quite a risk to come here. Why?’

  ‘I’m not even sure, Honesty. I did promise to be with Fred on his wedding night. Maybe that’s why I followed him here.’

  ‘His wedding night. How weird.’

  ‘I must spoil his happiness. It happened like that in the book Frankenstein. Victor does not create a companion for the fiend, so it promises to spoil his wedding night.’

  Honesty peered into the goggling eyes behind the mask. ‘You poor thing. This is not a book. At least, it’s not Frankenstein.’

  ‘I know that of course.’

  ‘You need to forget about Fred and try living your own life, Robinson. Look, millions of people are lonely, but they don’t make such an almighty fuss about it. Grow up! Get a hobby or something.’

  ‘Too late! Like the fiend of the novel, I have already committed a heinous crime. They are right to hunt me down. Farewell!’

  The figure clawed its way to its feet and staggered out the door.

  Fellini woke up as the stranger passed.

  ‘Hey, stop and have a drink. Why wear a ski-mask? Not that cold out. Or are you a terrorist? Of course in a way we are all terrorists, just as we are all hostages …’

  As the stranger left, Fellini relapsed into his vodka coma.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Seeing the people on the plane to Vegas should have told him something of the visit to come. He and Moira seemed the only passengers with any purpose but pleasure. The others included a few kids in T-shirts, but mainly middle-aged mums and dads on the razzle. They had dressed for the trip; the men in sideburns and leisure suits, the women in blazers, slacks and high heels. There was plenty of gold jewellery visible: hoop earr
ings, friendship rings, sparklers for the ladies; massive signets and watchbands for the gents. Even at dawn, some had been drinking enough to become politely boisterous. The gents shouted jokes across the aisle; the ladies shrieked with laughter. The flight attendants pretended to be vastly entertained by it all, as they scurried to provide drinks and organize a lottery. “Bye. Be lucky,’ said the attendants, as the passengers made their way out the door and into the blistering desert heat. The air stung their eyes and made them cough.

  The taxi-driver wore cowboy clothes, but spoke with a New York accent. ‘Yup, I moved out here to retire, ten years ago. Ran outa money the first year, so I went back to work.’

  ‘My parents retired out here, too,’ said Moira.

  ‘But it’s a wonderful life,’ the cowboy added quickly. ‘I wouldn’t live nowheres else. Out here, a man can breathe, you know?’

  The air was stinging Fred’s lungs and eyes. Above the horizon was a sinister brown haze, as though particles of sewage had somehow become airborne. Below it on the crowded boulevard glittered the beetle backs of a thousand cars.

  The taxi finally left the boulevard and took to the freeways. They bowled along past building sites where bulldozers were locked in a mortal struggle with great lumps of hard clay. Somehow the clay would get broken up and remoulded into white or pink apartment-complexes. The taxi finally stopped at one of these.

  ‘I can’t take you no further,’ said the cowboy. ‘But it must be in here somewheres. Ask at the office.’

  The office had a CLOSED sign up, and the venetian blinds drawn. From within came the unmistakable sounds of love.

  ‘Shall we hang about for the orgasm, or go and try to find the place ourselves?’ Fred asked.

  ‘I think it’s just around the corner.’

  Around the corner was a tiny courtyard, surrounded by black numbered doors and silvered windows. The path led to another tiny courtyard, then another. Each one featured a wilting lemon or olive tree and a battery of sprinklers working madly to keep the grass green. Nothing but door numbers told you where you were. Fred imagined being lost for ever in the apartment-complex of forking paths.

  ‘Here we are.’ Moira knocked at a shiny black door. After a pause for scrutiny through the peephole, the door opened.

  A skinny toothless old man grinned at them. ‘Hi! Come on in!’

  From behind him, a querulous female voice said: ‘Tell them to come in, Tony. You’re letting in all the heat.’

  Moira’s parents wanted to be called Dot and Tony. Tony was a rather shy little man who grinned and nodded a lot. Dot was a fat woman who, despite plain good health, seemed to consider herself an invalid. She spent much of her time being enormous in lounging pyjamas, in which she lounged on a sofa with a hand to her forehead, a box of tissues and a vial of tablets always close by.

  ‘For God’s sake, don’t ask her how she is,’ Moira had warned. ‘Don’t mention health at all. It just gets her started. We used to call it the organ recital.’

  Fred forgot. When he dropped an innocent remark about the healthy desert climate, Dot said: ‘It’s why we moved out here. Tony’s heart couldn’t take another Minnesota winter, and neither could my kidneys. My doctor says we moved just in time. It isn’t just the kidneys with me, though; there are all these complications …’

  She was off on an unstoppable monologue about health; the merits of doctors, the health of others, but especially her own chronic illness. Nothing could interrupt her; remarks by anyone else were either ignored or cleverly worked into the fabric.

  ‘Anyone want some coffee?’ Tony said.

  ‘… and that was before I had to give up coffee. Even decaf started affecting my nerves at night. I couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep without Mortadorm; but then the doctor said …’

  ‘I warned you,’ Moira said to Fred. ‘She won’t run down.’

  ‘… yes, the doctor warned me; he said: “Dot, you’ve got to start taking care of yourself. You just do, do, do for everyone else, until you’re all run down. You better put yourself first for a change, or else order your gravestone.” That was after the time I had Hodgkin’s disease, but before the thrombophlebitis. My sinuses were acting up …’

  The amazing monologue lasted more than an hour. Even when it stopped, there was a horrible suspense, waiting for it to restart. In that, it was like the barking of a distant hysterical dog.

  In the interval, Fred learned something of Dot and Tony’s history. They had had modest jobs back in Minnesota (Dot had been a telephone supervisor; Tony a postal worker) and saved a modest nest-egg. But all the time they had been planning a life of luck. They’d always felt lucky – ever since Moira’s miracle – and it was time to cash in on all that luck. They both took early retirement, sold their house, and moved out here to ‘Vegas’. Where the action is.

  Now they were here, Dot and Tony had quickly found their nest-egg insufficient for a life of expensive apartments, eating all meals in casino restaurants, and gambling by day and by night. It was gradually borne in upon them that even the very lucky must make some economies. They moved to cheaper accommodation, sold their new car and bought an old one, cooked their own frugal meals. But, while these measures helped, they did not restore the lost money. Only gambling could make things right again.

  ‘We tried everything,’ Dot complained. ‘The slots, blackjack, craps, keno. We used to spend all day in a keno lounge, and come out of it with less than we started!’

  ‘Our luck was real bad,’ said Tony.

  Dot seemed indignant at the unfairness of it all. ‘All our friends made money, but we just kept losing.’

  ‘Your friends made money?’ Fred asked.

  ‘Yes, there was Earl Clyde, he was on a real hot streak,’ said Dot. ‘Remember, Tony? How he borrowed that thousand from you, when he was hot at the crap-table?’

  Tony nodded. ‘Only, right after that, his luck ran out, though.’

  Dot said: ‘Our money was like poison, that’s what he said. He couldn’t win with it. He just kept losing until he lost it all.’

  ‘Poor guy,’ Tony said. ‘I had to loan him his air fare home again.’

  In similar terms, Dot and Tony described all of the other wonderful friends they had made here. There was Donnie Ray Earl, a sterling young man who had given them a few joints, then borrowed a couple of thousand dollars. Marty Day had apologized about not repaying the five hundred they’d advanced him; he had then asked to extend the loan, offering in return to let Tony have a bash at his wife, Earlene. Then there was the nice young coloured janitor, who borrowed fifty dollars from them before unaccountably quitting his job. At some point in each story it would become clear that the terrific friend was a prostitute or a dope dealer, a burglar or a pimp. Or just insane. What they all had in common was varying luck and the urgent need of a loan.

  Tony and Dot now had hardly enough money even for gambling. They were stuck here, hardly venturing out of their cheap apartment into this city of thieves.

  Dot returned to the organ recital often over the next two days. When Tony ignored her and turned on the television, Dot said: ‘You watch an awful lot of television. Be careful now. Remember, at your age you can be struck blind without warning …’ She fell silent for a moment, then raised her voice and continued, her voice rising and falling in tearful obbligato over the news.

  ‘So far, no one knows exactly how the strychnine got into the containers, but a company spokesperson said all tampered containers of Blefescue will be recalled. This is Gardner Hogforth, ZBC News, West Bend, Iowa.’

  Three personable newsreaders grinned at one another across their huge communal desk.

  ‘Well, Jan, do we have anything more on the Little Dorrit killer?’

  ‘Yes, Bob. As you know, this is the man who terrorized people in Little Dorrit restaurants across the nation: Ohio, Illinois, Iowa and Nevada. So far, forty-one people are dead, another twenty wounded, and of course a lot more scared stiff. All we know about the killer is tha
t he’s white, and he has “Love” and “Hate” tattooed on his knuckles. They can’t tell his hair colour, because he always has it tied up in a red bandana.

  ‘But the killer’s been very quiet lately. One police theory is that he’s left the country, fleeing to Mexico or Canada. If this is true, it will be very good news for the Little Dorrit restaurant chain, which has been losing a lot of business. The directors of Little Dorrit were even thinking of changing the name to Heidi’s.’

  ‘And in Minnesota the hunt continues for Robinson Robot. But it looks as if Robinson is fast becoming a cult figure. The first mechanical folk-hero. Here’s Porthos Floog with the details.’

  The screen showed kids wearing Robinson masks, a store selling I ROBINSON sweatshirts, a bumper sticker (‘Robinson Does It with Electrons’) and a college boy wearing a button (‘Waldos off Robinson’).

  ‘For a blue robot hiding out from the law, Robinson is doing all right. Everyone seems to love him. Across the nation, Robinson souvenirs are selling up a storm. Judging by the sale of T-shirts, toys, bumper stickers, even records, Robinson is our first mechanical folk-hero.’

  A country singer was shown recording a few lines of a sentimental song:

  ‘They call him Robinson, Robinson the robot.

  His only crime is wanting to be free.

  Robinson is right and I don’t know but

  The next one they’ll come after will be me.’

  ‘With all of this public interest, it will be increasingly hard for law-enforcement agencies to continue the hunt –’

  ‘Buncha crap.’ Tony switched to local news, which included a mob murder (the victim found in his luxury car out in the desert, shot in the face with a shotgun) and the collapse of six people who breathed today’s smog.

  After a time, the sound of Dot’s tired tearful voice became a kind of background noise they all put up with. You noticed it when it was gone, however. On Wednesday, when Fred and Tony went outside to work on Tony’s car, they took their time, savouring the quiet – it was like the calm after a dripping tap is finally stopped.