Blood Music (4 page)

Humans were a randy bunch, Vergil decided as he perched on a stool and watched the cattle call. Mellow space music powered the slow, graceful gyrations on the dance floor and flashing amber lights emphasized the pulse of packed bodies, male and female. Over the bar, an amazing array of polished brass tubing hummed and spluttered delivering drinks—mostly vintage wines by the glass—and forty-seven different kinds of coffees. Coffee sales were up; the evening had blurred into early morning and soon Weary’s would be turning off and shutting down.

The last-ditch efforts of the cattle call were becoming more obvious. Moves were being made with more desperation, less finesse; beside Vergil, a short fellow in a rumpled blue suit was plighting his one-night troth to a willowy black-haired girl with Asiatic features. Vergil felt aloof from it all. He hadn’t made a move all evening, and he had been in Weary’s since seven. No one had made a move on him, either.

He was not prize material. He shambled a bit when he walked—not that he had left the stool for any purpose but to go to the crowded restroom. He had spent so much time in labs the past few years that his skin was the unpopular shade of Snow White. He didn’t look enthusiastic, and he wasn’t willing to expend any amount of bullshit to attract attention.

Mercifully, the air conditioning in Weary’s was good enough that his hay fever had subsided.

Mostly, he had spent the evening observing the incredible variety—and underlying sameness—of the tactics the male animal used on the female. He felt out of it, suspended in an objective and slightly lonely sphere he wasn’t inclined to reach beyond. So why, he asked himself, had he come to Weary’s in the first place? Why did he ever go there? He had never picked up a woman at Weary’s—or any other singles bar—in his life.

“Hello.”

Vergil jumped and turned, eyes wide.

“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

He shook his head. She was perhaps twenty-eight, golden-blonde, slender to the edge of skinny, with a pretty but not gorgeous face. Her eyes, large and clear and brown, were her best feature—except possibly for her legs, he amended, looking down on instinct.

“You don’t come in here often,” she said. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Or do you? I mean, I don’t either. Maybe I wouldn’t know.”

He shook his head. “Not often. No need. My success rate hasn’t been spectacular.”

She turned back with a smile. “I know more about you than you think,” she said. “I don’t even need to read your palm. You’re smart, first off.”

“Yeah?” he said, feeling awkward.

“You’re good with your hands.” She touched his thumb where it rested on his knee. “You have very pretty hands. You could do a lot with hands like that. But they’re not greasy, so you’re not a mechanic. And you try to dress well, but…” She giggled a three-drink giggle and put her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. You do try.”

He looked down at his black and green checked cotton shirt and black pants. The clothes were new. What could she complain about? Maybe she didn’t like the Topsiders he was wearing. They were a little scuffed.

“You work…let’s see.” she paused, stroking her cheek. Her fingernails were masterpieces of the manicurist’s art, thick and long and shiny bronze. “You’re a techie.”

“Pardon?”

“You work in one of the labs around here. Hair’s too long to be Navy, and they don’t come here much anyway. Not that I’d know, you work in a lab and you’re…you’re not happy. Why’s that?”

“Because—” He stopped. Confessing he was out of a job might not be strategic. He had six month’s unemployment coming; that and his savings could disguise his lack of gainful labor for a while. “How do you know I’m a techie?”

“I can tell. Your shirt pocket—” She slipped her ringer into it and rugged gently. “Looks like it should hold a nerd pack of pencils. The kind you twist and the lead pokes out.” She smiled deliciously and thrust the pink tip of her tongue out to demonstrate.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. And you’re wearing argyles. Only techies wear argyles now.”

“I like ’em,” Vergil said defensively.

“Oh, so do I. What I’m getting at is, I’ve never known a techie. I mean…intimately.”

Oh, Lord, Vergil thought. “What do you do?” he asked, immediately wishing he could suck the words back.

“And I’d like to, if you don’t think that’s being too forward,” she said, ignoring his question. “Look, the bar’s dosing in a few minutes. I don’t need any more to drink, and I don’t much like the music. Do you?”

Her name was Candice Rhine. What she did was accept advertising for the La Jolla Light. She approved of his Volvo sports car and she approved of his living quarters, a two-bedroom second-floor condominium four blocks from the beach in La Jolla. He had purchased it at a bargain price six years ago—just out of medical school—from a UCSD professor who had departed to Ecuador shortly after to complete a study on South American Indians.

Candice entered the apartment as if she had lived there for years. She draped her suede jacket on the couch and her blouse on the dining table. Her bra she hung with a giggle on the chrome and glass light fixture over the table. Her breasts were small, amplified by a very narrow rib cage.

Vergil watched all this with awe.

“Come on, techie,” Candice said, standing naked at the bedroom door. “I like the furs.” He bad a baby alpaca rug over his California king-sized bed. She posed with her finger tips delicately pressed near the top of the door jamb, one knee cocked wide, then rotated on one heel and sauntered into the darkness.

Vergil stood his ground until she turned the bedroom lamp on. “I knew it!” she squealed. “Look at all the books!”

In the darkness, Vergil thought all too clearly of the perils of sex. Candice slept soundly beside him, the sleep of three drinks and making love four times.

Four times.

He had never done so well. She had murmured, before sleep, that chemists did it in their tubes and doctors did it with patience, but only a techie would do it in geometric progression.

As for the perils…He had seen many times—most often in textbooks the results of promiscuity in a well-and frequently-traveled world. If Candice was promiscuous (and Vergil couldn’t help but believe only a promiscuous girl would be so forward with him) then there was no telling what sort of microorganisms were now setting up shop in his blood.

Still, he had to smile.

Four times.

Candice groaned in her sleep and Vergil jerked, startled. He would not sleep well, he knew that much. He wasn’t used to having someone in his bed.

Four.

His brown-speckled teeth gleamed in the dark.

Candice was much less forward in the morning. She solemnly insisted on making breakfast He had eggs and Beefstrips in his antique round-cornered refrigerator and she did an expert job on them, as if she had once been a short-order cook-or was that simply the way women did things? He had never caught the knack of frying eggs. They always came out with broken yokes and crackling seared edges.

She regarded him with her wide brown eyes from across the table. He was hungry and ate quickly. Not much on delicacy and manners, he thought. So what? What more could she expect from him—or he from her?

“I don’t usually stay the night, you know,” she said. “I call a lot of cabs at four in the morning when the guy’s asleep. But you kept me busy until five and I just…didn’t want to. You wore me out”

He nodded and wiped up the last perfection of semisolid yoke with the last bite of toast. He didn’t particularly care to know how many men she had been to bed with. Quite a few, by the sound of things.

Vergil had had three conquests in his entire life, only one moderately satisfactory. The first at seventeen—an incredible stroke of luck—and the thud a year ago. The third had been the satisfactory one and had hurt him. That was the occasion that had forced him to accept his status as a hell of a mind but not much for looks.

“That sounds horrible, doesn’t it?” she asked. “I mean, about the cabs and everything.” She kept staring at nun. “You made me come six times,” she said.

“Good.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty-two,” he said.

“You act like a teenager-in bed, I mean. Stamina.”

He hadn’t done nearly so well as a teenager.

“Did you enjoy it?”

He put his fork down and looked up, musing. He had enjoyed it too much. When would the next time be? “Yes, I did.”

“You know why I picked you out of the crowd?” She had barely touched her single egg, and now chewed the end from her lone Beefstrip. Throughout the night, her nails had emerged unmarred. At least she hadn’t scratched him. Would he have liked that?

“No,” he said.

“Because I knew you were a techie. I’ve never screwed—I mean, made love with a techie before. Vergil. That’s right isn’t it? Vergil Ian Ull-am.”

“Oo-lam,” he corrected.

“I would have started sooner if I’d known,” she said, she smiled. Her teeth were white and even, if a touch large. Her imperfections endeared her to him even more.

“Thank you. I can’t speak…or whatever for all of us. Them. Techies. Whoever.”

“Well, I think you’re very sweet,” she said. The smile faded, replaced by serious speculation. “More than sweet. Honest to God, Vergil. You’re the best fuck I ever had. Do you have to go to work today?”

“No,” he said. “I work my own hours.”

“Good. Done with your breakfast?”

Three more before noon. He couldn’t believe it.

Candice was sore when she left. “I feel like I’ve just trained a year for the pentathlon,” she said as she stood at the door, coat in hand. “Do you want me to come back tonight? I mean, to visit?” She looked anxious. “I couldn’t make love any more. I think you’ve brought on my period early.”

“Please,” he said, reaching for her hand. “That would be nice.” They shook hands rather formally and Candice walked out into the spring sunshine. Vergil stood at the door for a while, alternately smiling and shaking his head in disbelief.

Vergil’s taste in food began to change a week into his relationship with Candice. Until then, he had stubbornly pursued sweets and starches, fatty meats and bread and butter. His favorite food was a garbage pizza; there was a parlor nearby that cheerfully loaded pineapple and prosciutto on top of the anchovies and olives.

Candice suggested he cut down his intake of grease and fat—she called it “that oily shit”—and increase his greens and grains. His body seemed to agree.

The amount of food he ate also declined. He reached satiety faster. His waistline diminished perceptibly. He felt restless around the apartment.

Along with his changing taste buds came a change in his attitude toward love. Nothing unexpected there; Vergil was savvy enough about psychology to realize that all he really needed was a fulfilling relationship to correct his nervous misogyny. Candice provided that.

Some nights he spent exercising. His feet didn’t hurt quite so much. Everything was turning around. The world was a better place. His back pains gradually faded, even from memory. They were not missed.

Vergil attributed much of this to Candice, just as adolescent rumor attributed the improvement of bad skin conditions to the loss of virginity.

Occasionally the relationship became stormy. Candice found him insufferable when he tried to explain his work. He approached the topic with barely concealed anger and seldom bothered to simplify technicalities. He almost confessed about injecting himself with the lymphocytes but stopped when it became obvious she was already thoroughly bored. “Just let me know when you find a cheap cure for herpes,” she said. “We can make a bundle from the Christian Action League just to keep it off the market.”

While he no longer worried about venereal disease—Candice had been up front about that and convinced him she was clean—he did break out in a rash one evening, a peculiar and irritating series of white bumps across his stomach. They went away by morning and did not return.

Vergil lay in bed with the smooth white-sheeted form breathing softly next to him, fanny like a snow-covered hill, back unveiled as if she wore a seductive low-cut evening gown. They had finished making love three hours ago and he was still awake, thinking that he had made love to Candice more times in the past two weeks than he had with all other women in his life.

This caught his fancy. He had always been interested in statistics. In an experiment, figures charted success or failure, just as in a business. He was now beginning to feel that his “affair” (how strange that word was in his mind!) with Candice was moving over the line into success. Repeatability was the hallmark of a good experiment, and this experiment had—

And so on, endless night ruminations somewhat less productive than dreamless sleep.

Candice astonished him. Women had always astonished Vergil, who had had so little opportunity to know them; but he suspected Candice was more astonishing than the norm. He could not fathom her attitude. She seldom initiated lovemaking now, but participated with sufficient enthusiasm. He saw her as a cat searching for a new house, and once finding it, settling down to purr, with little care for the next day.

Neither Vergil’s passion nor his life-plan allowed for that kind of sated indifference.

He was reluctant to think of Candice as being his intellectual inferior. She was reasonably witty at tunes, and observant and fun to be around. But she wasn’t concerned with the same things he was. Candice believed in the surface values of life—appearances, rituals, what other people were thinking and doing. Vergil cared little what other people thought, so long as they didn’t actively interfere with his plans.

Candice accepted and experienced. Vergil sparked and observed.

He was deeply envious. He would have enjoyed a respite from the constant grinding of thoughts and plans and worries, the processing of information to glean some new insight. Being like Candice would be a vacation.

Candice, on the other hand, undoubtedly thought of him as a mover and shaker. She led her own life with few plans, without much thought and with no scruples whatsoever…no bites of conscience, no second thoughts. When it had become clear that this mover and shaker was unemployed, and not likely to be employed again soon, her confidence had remained strangely unshaken. Perhaps, like a cat, she had little comprehension of these things.

So she slept, and he ruminated, going back and forth over what had happened at Genetron; chewing at the implications, the admittedly weird behavior of injecting his Lymphocytes back into his bloodstream, his inability to focus on what he was going to do next.

Vergil stared up at the dark ceiling, then scrunched his eyes to observe the phosphene patterns. He reached up with both hands, brushing Candice’s bottom, and pressed his index fingers against the outer orb of each of his eyelids to heighten the effect. Tonight, however, he could not entertain himself with psychedelic eyelid movies. Nothing came but warm darkness, punctuated by flashes as distant and vague as reports from another continent.

Beyond rumination, isolated from childhood tricks and still wide awake, Vergil settled into watchfulness, watching nothing, and thought with no object

really trying to avoid

—waiting until morning.

trying to avoid

thoughts of all things lost

and all recently gained that could be

lost

he isn’t ready

and still he moves and shakes

losing

On the Sunday morning of the third week:

Candice handed him a hot cup of coffee. He stared at it for a moment. Something was wrong with the cup and her hand. He fumbled for his glasses to put them on but they hurt his eyes worse. “Thanks,” he mumbled, taking the cup and lurching up in bed against the pillow, spilling a bit of the hot brown liquid across the sheets.

“What are you going to do today?” she asked. (Look for work? implied, but Candice never stressed responsibility, and never asked questions about his means.)

“Look for work, I suppose,” he said. He squinted through his glasses again, holding them by one flopping temple piece.

“I,” she said, “am going to take ad copy down to the Light and shop at that little vegetable stand down the street. Then I am going to fix dinner by myself and eat it alone.”

Vergil looked at her, puzzled.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He put the glasses aside. “Why alone?”

“Because I think you’re beginning to take me for granted. I don’t like that. I can feel you accepting me.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” she said patiently. She had dressed and combed her hair, which now hung long and shining across her shoulders. “I just don’t want to lose the spice.”

“Spice?”

“Look, every relationship needs a scratch of the kitten now and then. I’m beginning to think of you as an available puppy-dog, and that’s not good.”

“No,” said Vergil. He sounded distracted.

“Didn’t sleep last night?” she asked.

“No,” Vergil said. “Not much.” He looked confused.

“So what else?”

“I’m seeing you just fine,” he said.

“See? You’re taking me for granted.”

“No, I mean…without my glasses. I can see you just fine without my glasses.”

“Well, good for you,” Candice said with feline unconcern. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Don’t fret.”

“Oh, no,” Vergil said, squeezing his temples with his fingers.

She closed the door softly behind her.

He looked around the room.

Everything was in marvelous focus. He hadn’t seen things so clearly since the measles had stricken his eyesight when he was seven.

It was the first improvement he was positively convinced he could not attribute to Candice.

“Spice,” he said, blinking at the curtains.