The Old Reactor (17 page)

When he felt himself fully aroused, he placed two fingers at the entrance to her
vagine
and pressed them inward, causing her to stir uncomfortably, yet to open her legs wider. He felt that her body, if not her mind, was willing. It wouldn’t be a beautiful act, it would be sublime. He let a finger enter the
vagine
and inch or two, then slid it outward and upward. He did this again and again until her hips rose and she presented herself to him. But now he was soft. He fondled himself once more to no effect and in a few minutes gave in to sleep.

At about three, he felt chilled, threw back the cover and sat on the edge of the bed, intending to feed more pellets to the stove. Before getting up he felt Sorrel’s forehead, to see if her fever had gotten worse. At first touch, his hand drew back. Her face was as cold as a statue’s. She was dead and already a little stiff.

The first Saposcat’s, an elegant old restaurant damaged during the liberation, had its re-opening in the Quarter spoiled by a head drop on the part of an organized band of jellyheads. Those dining there were being treated to cuisine prepared in the French style, and this included freshly baked hard-crust bread from brick ovens. The diners were urged also to try the tortoise soup, the tongue salads. Other specialties included meat divan, mud fish
en papillot
. And the best part was the price. With a proper pass card, and for those being released back to Bunkerville, the meal cost nothing.

Along with the serving of soup on opening night came a commotion at the back entrance. Three male jellies walked in with dripping suitcases and cans of deformant. One of them took the lead and tried to calm the full tables. “Look, remain still. Don’t vocalize. We have some heads. We will leave them and go. Continue eating, please.”

The suitcases were set down near the
maître d
’s station and the jellyheads backed out waving deformant cans. When they were gone, one of the kitchen staff came out in his apron and assured the quivering diners that all was well. “We’re very lucky no one was harmed. Keep enjoying your meal. This mess will be remedied.”

A little troupe of kitchen help took the suitcases away and cleaned up the leakage with hand cloths and turpentine. After that, despite the bite of turpentine in the air, the diners went on and finished all the courses, including a desert of fluffy lemon soufflés with butterflies and barrel honey on toast.

Salmonella woke up that morning hungry and with a full bladder. She went downstairs and knocked on the Dutch door. “Moldenke, are you in there? Can I use the pot? It’s raining outside.”

Moldenke opened the top section of the door. “Go ahead, use it.” He opened the bottom and let her in.

On the way to the commode she said, “Let’s go eat. I’m starving and I want to talk to you about a very serious thing.”

“All right.”

Salmonella tried to read a snippet or two of the
Treatise
as she emptied her bladder. Moldenke could hear her through the not-quite-closed door.

“What is all this stupid stuff? I don’t read that good, you know. I’m freeborn.”

“Just something to think about while you toilet,” he said, “not to be taken seriously. It’s a lot of blather about the sublime and the beautiful.”

“What’s that?”

“He thinks that beautiful things are things that pose no threat to us, like statues, poems, symphonies, and paintings. The sublime is like things we marvel at, but fear, like all the majestic mountains we’ve heard about, the storms at sea, the mystery of the night sky—that’s what’s sublime.”

“Who cares?”

Moldenke admitted he didn’t care at all. He waited at the door for Salmonella to finish her toileting.

She flushed and stood to see if it all had gone down. The yellowed water swirled slowly around the bowl.

“This isn’t working very good, is it?”

“The pipes are half frozen.”

On the way to Saposcat’s, Moldenke and Salmonella passed the smoking ruins of the Heeney. He regretted even turning his head that way and looking. Among the fallen timbers were burned corpses, some sitting in metal chairs, a sight that set off a twitching in Moldenke’s bowels. Salmonella took little notice of the horrible scene, of the stink in the air, or the weeping families waiting for the mounds of smoking debris to cool.

At Saposcat’s, the first thing Salmonella said was, “When I was going up the steps last night, I saw somebody sleeping in that bed, in that little apartment you have. Is it your deformed friend from the bakery? What was her name?”

“Sorrel. She’s dead, I’m sad to say, of radio poisoning. She passed on last night. Swam too much in the Reactor pond. I’ll have to do
something
with her. But my joints ache, my legs are getting weak, if I bend over I get dizzy. It’s hard enough to move my own body, much less another. Can you help me out?”

“Things happen,” Salmonella said. “I’ll help you with the body if you want. I’m strong. I can do things you can’t. You want me to dig a hole? Where? In the Park?”

“That would be very nice of you. I’m thinking, though, that there’s a cellar, or an old shelter, in the basement to put her. As long as cool weather holds, we’re fine. When it thaws, when the ground is good and soft, we’ll find an empty lot and get them under some dirt. You can dig the hole.”

Salmonella opened her menu. “Okay, let’s eat then. Oh, look. There’s scrapple today. I want that and green soda. You?”

Moldenke ran his finger up and down the menu, squinting to see the small print. “I can’t afford to anger my bowel any more than it is, but I love their scrapple. I’m going to have the scrapple, too, and some tea.”

The waitress came and their orders were placed.

“I should tell you,” Moldenke said, “as long as you’re going to help me with Sorrel, that the concierge didn’t go back to Bunkerville. She’s in the basement, too. Died all of a sudden. I assumed it would be best if I just took over her responsibilities. Who would care?”

Salmonella folded her arms and pouted. “I think now I’m afraid of those men up there. And that room is cold. Let me stay in your cozy little apartment with you. Your girlfriend is dead. Why not?”

“All right. You can stay. I’ll fix you a place on the floor near the stove. There’re blankets in the closet.”

“I like you. You’re nice.”

“Well, I try to accommodate.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means being nice.”

The waitress brought the breakfasts. “Here’s your order.” She looked Moldenke in the eye. “You look like you haven’t heard. Have you heard?”

“I haven’t heard anything,” Moldenke said.

“They liberated Bunkerville. It happened last night. They just said it on the radio. We’ll all be sent back now. That’s what the radio says. They’re thinking the freeborn might have to stay. Nobody’s sure.”

Salmonella was perplexed. Her eyebrows arched and she stuck out her tongue and made a hissing sound.

“She was freeborn,” Moldenke said. “Doesn’t understand what liberation is. Maybe that’s why they want them to stay.”

The waitress tapped a pencil against the side of her head. “I don’t think I do either, tell you the truth.”

Salmonella had a bite of scrapple. “I’m not staying.”

“Like I said,” the waitress said, “it was only the radio. It probably isn’t true. You can probably go if you want to.”

Moldenke had a bite of his scrapple, hot enough to burn his tongue. He spit it out to let it cool.

“Will they send you back?” Salmonella asked.

“I don’t know. How would I know?”

“If they do, I’m going with you. You can’t leave me here.”

When Moldenke’s scrapple had cooled, he ate it hungrily. “I’ll probably regret this later.”

“Did you hear me? I said I was going with you.”

“It’s probably a false alarm. Somebody started a rumor. I’m not going to get excited.”

Patrons were getting up and leaving in haste.

Salmonella pointed her fork at Moldenke. “Look at them. We should go.”

Moldenke polished off the last of his scrapple and stood up. “We have to get back to the Tunney and take care of those two…the things we discussed.”

Salmonella smiled, showing teeth greened by the soda. “I’m ready.”

They returned to the Tunney to find several of the roomers walking out with their few things. “Hell, man. We’re going back to Bunkerville. What about you? There’s a big boat leaving from the Point Blast wharf tonight.”

“I haven’t gotten any official kind of notice,” Moldenke said. “I have responsibilities here.”

“There’s no notice. You just go. We’re getting rotated. Don’t you get it? The radio is saying it’s time to head for the Point.”

The men rushed toward the car stop reaching for their pass cards.

Salmonella held Moldenke’s hand. “I’m going with you. Let’s go. Let’s go now.”

Moldenke worried. “We can’t leave the bodies.”

Salmonella shrugged. “Why? We need to get to the Point. What if we miss the boat?”

“Where is Udo’s motor?”

“It must be parked near the Heeney. We can find it. I know where he hides the key. We don’t have to worry about the bodies.”

Moldenke thought it over for a moment. “It does seem nicer where they are than anywhere else we could put them, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a beautiful place,” Salmonella said. “Let’s go.” She tugged on Moldenke’s finger. “Come on, we’re going to Bunkerville. Me and you. We’ll get along good.”

“I have nothing to pack,” he said. “These are my only clothes.”

“All I own is in this bag,” Salmonella said. “We have to find the motor.” She led Moldenke out of the Tunney and past the ruins of the Heeney. By then the site was abandoned, the embers out and the bodies taken away by family or friends, or those willing to help out of boredom.

Around the corner from the Heeney, Udo’s motor was parked under a flickering street lamp, its roof coated with ash from the fire.

“There it is,” Salmonella said excitedly. “The key is hidden in the well of the fifth wheel.”

Moldenke sank into a funk. He was leaving behind a nice apartment with a commode and a kitchen. He was leaving behind the lofty feeling of being a concierge with the run of a two-story rooming house. And what would he find when he returned to the House on Esplanade? A shambles? With jellyheads living there?”

The golfer, Brainerd Franklin, has died. A lover of the practical joke, he had asked to be buried in a lace nightgown, seated comfortably in a reclining chair, with an album of Misti Gaynor photos in his lap. “Tell them to hire a backhoe if they must,” he said to his nurse shortly before passing on, “move mud, get me in deep. Leave air space within so that beetles and worms have free passage.”

The nurse, who says she knew the end was near, told reporters that in his last weeks Franklin had been spitting up whatever he swallowed. His house gown was a sour mess and he had bouts of quivering and loose bowels. He appeared discombobulated, petty and annoyed, clumsy and skittish. In a fit of self-mutilation, he scissored off both ear valves and ate them.

The nurse said she knew the end was near when he took to his bed and refused all food and drink for five days. She remained beside him in the final moments. His last words, she recalls, were “Tell them I’ll be back for supper.” After uttering them, there was a groan, a gasp for breath, and the great golfer was gone.

When the cortege arrived at the jellyhead cemetery, the excavation was ready, rimmed with green velvet and artificial grass, seeming to invite Franklin’s body, which could be seen atop a motor that streamed black bunting from the rear. There were hundreds in attendance, free people and jellyheads alike.

Udo’s motor had been parked for weeks. Moldenke feared it wouldn’t start. He checked the level of heavy water in the tank and located the key in a small magnetic box hidden under the well of the fifth wheel. Salmonella rushed in when he unlocked the front door. There were spider webs in all the ceiling and door-frame corners and mice rustling in a kitchen drawer. Salmonella struck a match, lit a lantern, and the cockroaches scattered.

Moldenke sat in the driver’s seat, set the finder for Point Blast, and goosed the starter. The first several attempts failed to warm the water enough to send it flowing through the system. Until that happened, the motor could not be driven.

“It isn’t going to start,” Moldenke said.

“Pump that little red rod in and out a few times. That’s what my father used to do. He told me it was the hot rod.”

Moldenke located the red-handled rod and engaged it over and over until it was warm to the touch without success. “I’m about to give up,” he said.

Salmonella stomped her foot on the wooden floor. “Keep trying. It takes a while.”

Moldenke did keep trying and in a few minutes he could hear water gushing through the main tube.

“Goody, goody,” Salmonella cheered. “I’m going to dust out my nook and go to sleep. Wake me when we get to the Point.”

“All right.”

Moldenke geared up the motor and drove down Arden Boulevard, mostly past darkened buildings. Even Saposcat’s and the public privy were closed. Almost everyone had been reprieved and was leaving. Yet when he turned onto Old Reactor Road he could see the lights of the Quarter burning brightly. No one was leaving the gates. They knew that all those empty buildings on the west side would soon fill with new arrivals and customers would return. Now that Bunkerville was liberated, the dispossessed would be coming to Altobello in droves. The older Quarter dwellers had probably seen the cycle repeat more than once in their lifetimes and had come to accept it as the way things went. It was something to be counted on if not understood, like the tides.

A reporter for the
City Moon
had a choice encounter with Mayor Grendon only twenty-four hours ago. The reporter was lunching at a Saposcat’s when the perennial candidate came in to eat. It was near freezing outside. A pre-snow sleet crusted the Deli window. The reporter was determined to find a story and intruded at Grendon’s table. “Will you make a statement, sir?”

“Of course I will. Stay here and eat with me. The snow is a bluff. In an hour the sun will shine.”

The reporter took out her pad and pencil and said she was a journalist.