Contemporary Gay Romances (9 page)

He was very careful in holding all the kiddies back safely as we passed them by. They all knew who I was by then because of the TV and newspapers and they yelled and waved. And so did he. Our eyes locked as we slowly drove by. “Hello, Underwear Man.” I mouthed the words to him. Then we were gone.

How he finally got me was kind of a surprise. But by then he’d been on the hunt over a year and seven months, so he’d gotten pretty good at it. I’d been left alone less than a minute in the disabilities restroom the following afternoon, when blondie, who was guarding me, was distracted by what sounded like shots—actually fireworks he’d planned—going off outside the back window, and she stepped away briefly.

“Your face is very nice, but otherwise you ain’t very pretty!” he said to me, just before he applied the chloroform hanky. That had been my fear, of course, because all the others had been so very pretty, head to toe pretty, pretty like he was, pretty like he must have been as a lil’ child when he was being sexually molested.

Later on, when we was alone, and he was doing it to me, he kept on saying “So soft! So soft!” about my skin and body. “So soft!” Which was a nice compliment.

It hurt at first a lot, but then I thought about Sheriff Longish and that made it better. Of course I could have just peed myself all over to stop it, but I wanted to see what it felt like. Sex, I mean—having heard and read so much about it.

He’d read and heard by then too about the name the F.B.I. had given him and why. So even though he had my underwear ripped apart with his teeth when he began biting me to do his molestation and he was really ready to use it around my neck, he restrained himself. Taking a great deal of effort to do so, so he wouldn’t be ever caught that way again.

“You’ll have to leave, now they know where you are,” I told him.

He was crying by then, the fit having passed. “I know,” he said.

“You should go to Mexico,” I said. “Unless you don’t like dark-haired kids.”

He looked up at me and smiled. “That was just what I was thinking.”

This is what I know about drowning: some persons can hold their breath longer than others. No one can hold it longer than five minutes seventeen seconds underwater without a special apparatus. With all my conditions, I certainly can’t. So when Underwear Man pushes my wheelchair into the pond. I’ll just gulp as much water down as I can all at once and hope my body doesn’t try to struggle. That’ll happen in six minutes. He’s cleared the pathway of all debris down to there and is walking back up to come get me. Sheriff Longish will blame himself for a while. But he’ll get over it.

They say that drowning is the easiest death. And after all, my work here is done.

When he opened his eyes upon a seamless, all-enveloping, pale lilac light, he immediately realized that he knew for certain these four things:

He was alive.

His name was Blue Andresson.

His official vocation was Investigator: privately established, financed, and (as a rule) client-paid; specializing in Difficult Interpersonal Relations and Potentially Criminal Conflicts.

And lastly, if he reached his hand out he would encounter—while his elbow was still slightly flexed—the surface of a soft, protective Heal-All within which he had been enclosed, and which had served to return him back to full physiological health over an unknown period of time, while he was seriously injured or chronically ill, and which a thrust-out fingernail would easily rip open.

There was one other thing he wished he knew but did not: What was he doing inside a Heal-All in the first place?

There would be time enough for that. His sense of his body odor was growing stronger by the second from long enclosure and he must get away from it. He reached out his right hand, struck the smooth surface, tore at it, and it collapsed all about him with a soft hiss.

Instantly a soft chiming began somewhere below the plinth upon which he lay.

He tried to sit up and found it difficult: His muscles wouldn’t work, not even supported by his hands. He tried again and felt slightly nauseated.

The room around him was an even softer lilac color, nearly pearl; its surfaces were smooth, indistinguishably similar, at least from this level and position.

He tried to sit up again and this time achieved an inch or two of head height. His body was unclothed and the Heal-All’s therapeutic dews were quickly drying in the ambient warming air. His chest hair was sparse, golden; his abdomen flat, muscled, his legs were long and also golden haired, his feet were large and personable.

A fourth attempt to sit up got him onto his elbows facing his large perfect toes, and what he now saw, since it slid open with a whoosh, was a door, through which three completely clothed and hooded figures stepped and immediately came to his side.

“You’re awake, Mr. Andresson? How do you feel? Not too disoriented, we hope?” said One.

“You must be thirsty. And hungry too, I’m guessing,” said Two.

He was. And nodded so.

“Your personal secretary has been notified,” said Three. “You’re unexpectedly early and she is out of town on her own business and can be here in a few hours. Should we contact her? Or a friend or relative? Your mother is listed as next of kin. There is as well as a relationship that might have been as close as fiancée before your injury.”

A slight transparent tube arrived from out of nowhere right at his lips and he received a delicious cold drip of water that he then sucked at greedily. After which he said, “No. Thank you, don’t bother anyone,” somehow surprised by the deepness of his voice (was it because of this resonant little enclosed chamber?). “In fact, my secretary need not hurry back if she doesn’t have to. I’d prefer her to finish her business already begun.”

What he wanted more than anything else was time, he’d already decided. Because now there was another unanswered question: “How long have I been here? In the Medical Cocoon?”

“Close to a year”: One.

“Don’t worry about it, Mr. Andresson, you were very seriously injured”: Two.

“You’re fine now. Perfect, in fact”: Three.

No, I’m not, Blue thought. I don’t remember things. Things I believe I ought to remember.

The plinth tilted slowly and a shelf came out at his feet. He realized he was being stood up.

An opposite wall mirrored over and he could see himself in it.

“You see. You’re perfect”: Three, again?

He was in fact, physically perfect. Medium-height, handsome in a square-jawed, straight-nosed, blue-eyed way, with thin lips and a facial fuzz of light hair. His upper body was strong and muscular, with well-developed arms and legs. No scars apparent anywhere, naturally; the Heal-All would have gotten rid of any. No sign of any kind of deformity. Everything looked size appropriate, except maybe slightly larger than normal genitals. He figured he must be about thirty years old.

Why did all this seem ever so slightly, although by a mere hairsbreadth, off? Blue wished he knew.

There was more chiming now and One said: “Contamination is nonexistent. Quarantine off!”

Their masks melted off the medicals’ faces and two were revealed as females, one male.

“We’re going to stand here and help if you need help walking. Take one tiny step,” Female one said.

She and the male medical held out supportive arms for him to lean upon. Blue did put out his hands and he was able to stand away from the plinth for a few seconds before total exhaustion set back in.

“Excellent start. Your physical rehabilitation will set in later today,” Female one assured him. “It will be constant, and, I’m afraid, rather annoying at first.”

“But it’s necessary,” the male said. “If you’re to get on your feet and be a full member of our community again.”

“We think you can do it in a few days. Less than a week,” she added.

He lay back on the plinth and it slowly angled back so he was in a partially sitting position again.

They left and Medical Number Three arrived again with a tray in which he could smell simple food. Eggs, toast. He was ravenous.

The tray attached easily to the extensor sides that he just now noticed were part of his plinth-bed, and he could reach out for the transparent bulbs of food.

“We’ll begin therapy with you reaching,” Three said. She was the least attractive of the three medicals and the nicest.

“We’ll also be exposing you to visual, audio, and then intellectual stimuli,” she said.

A Vid-set suddenly turned itself on where the mirror had just been, with soft-focus moving pictures of the outer world: a countryside, a pond, an ocean, along with music he almost recognized.

“All you say is ‘more’ and it will provide you with stories, newscasts, weather, sports, specific information, whatever you ask,” she added. “You can also ask it to repeat. Or to be only music, or only voice.”

“I understand,” Blue said. “I can control it by my voice.”

“There is an important intercontinental air-race final taking place,” she suggested.

His hands could barely grasp and hold the bulbs containing 1) a poached egg 2) a fruit juice concoction 3) a weak herbal tea. When he dropped the last one it bobbed right up and floated toward his hand again as though somehow attached.

He could do this, Blue decided.

Three fussed about him, covering his body with a light sheet, tucking it in, beneath. As she was leaving he asked:

“What was it?”

“What was what, Mr. Andresson?”

“My serious injury?—I can’t seem to recall it.”

“You really can’t?”

“Not at all. No.”

“That’s probably because you were shot in the brain.”

“I was shot in the brain?”

“Yes. Twice. Once in each lobe. In the brain twice and once each in the kidneys, the liver, and the heart.”

With that, she sailed out of the room, humming to herself.

*

Andresson Investigations inhabited a stylish three-room suite on the ninety-eighth floor of an upscale bronzed glass building at the northwestern transportation-hub edge of the city. The rooms were spacious, comfortably lighted with diffused and slightly dimmed afternoon sunlight, and with built-in storage areas. His own office appeared to be the most functional and most characterless of the rooms.

Another, slightly smaller office, had been converted by his secretary for use in her new part-time business, which as far as he could figure out involved stock option bids on speculative off-world futures. It was filled with computers and printer-scanners, all merrily chugging away by themselves, accessible to his secretary he assumed through the Vid-net. The third room, the outer waiting area, had received the most attention of the three in terms of design and expense—fine carpets, posh furniture, gleaming coffee tables, sculptures of lighting, individual framed artwork, etc. It all showed Andresson Investigations to be a successful business—to have been once successful.

It was six days after he’d awakened and Blue was just too bored and itching to do something, anything, to remain in the Heal-All Center. When he’d checked out, he’d been warned by Medicals One and Two there that he was still only at about seventy-four percent of his required physical capacity to continue his vocation as usual and that he would have to continue therapy for weeks more.

He’d noted with satisfaction in the downstairs lobby of this edifice that a new health club had opened twenty-six stories below. He’d sign up later today.

His secretary, a woman approximately forty-five years old, had not yet appeared except by Vid-screen phone. When she did, she remarked that although his vocational insurance had covered all the expenses included in keeping the agency afloat for six months, that she had become quickly immersed in her own sideline, and that she’d begun showing profits early enough in that sideline that she took over the suite’s lease, utilities, and other incidentals for the following five and three-quarter month period.

She told Blue she was prepared to share the quarters with him for as long as he wished. She had no interest at all in his line, she stated rather bluntly, being a “fearful type, unlike yourself,” whom she characterized as “curious and adventurous.” She had referred his newer clients to a competitor at the other end of the city who was prepared to refer clients back as soon as Andresson was once again in business. She doubted that he would need a secretary for another few months yet, and she agreed to hire one for Blue when he did.

I’m an investigator,” Blue had thought, the first time he’d clearly been able to think about his past and future in the Heal-All Center. “I’m privately established, financed, and client-paid. So I must have been pretty good. And I specialize in ‘Difficult Interpersonal Relations’ and ‘Potentially Criminal Conflicts.’ So I must have been very good.”

It wasn’t lost on him also that he couldn’t have been all that good, or at least all that lucky, since he’d ended up so seriously wounded that it had required almost a year to return to health. Surely something or someone he’d been investigating had been responsible for putting those five bullets into fatally strategic spots of his body.

As an investigator it was his job to find out how that had happened—and why.