Valentine's Exile (23 page)

Number 28.5. This was their boat.

It looked like a frog sitting between two giant white tortoises. The two-level houseboats on either side of the spade-shaped cruiser looked as though they were using the craft as a fender. It had once been a dual-outboard, judging from the fixtures.

Cotswald shrugged. “It's a cabin.”

A man who was mostly beer gut and sunglasses sat under an awning atop the port-side craft. “Yello, stranger,” he offered.

“Hello back.”

“You'll want to wash your bedding out good,” their neighbor said. “Last time that cabin was used, it was by the president of the Ohio-Nebraska. He kept his bird dogs in there. They scratched a lot.”

“I'll be back tomorrow,” Cotswald said, perhaps fearing becoming part of a decontamination press-gang. Valentine nodded.

“Stu Jacksonville, Leisure and Entertainment,” Valentine said. “Thanks for the tip.”

“Forbes Abernathy. I'm a poor benighted refugee from Dallas, adrift in the world and drowning my sorrows in alcohol and Midway pussy. Or that's what the wife said before she took off with a Cincinnati general. Does this boat look adrift to you?”

Valentine threw the satchel down in the stern of his housing and helped Duvalier in. “Not in the least.”

“Now, your putt-putt; a strong storm comes and you'll be blown downriver.”

“Thanks for the warning.” He tried the key in the padlock holding the doors to the front half of the cabin cruiser closed. After a little jiggling, it opened.

He could smell the dogs. Or rather, their urine.

“Sorry, Ali,” he said. He went into the cabin—it had two bed-couches set at angles that joined at the front, and moldy-smelling carpeting that looked like the perfect place to hatch fleas—and opened a tiny top hatch to air it out. There was a tiny washroom and sink. He tried the tap and got nothing.

“Thanks, Forbes,” Duvalier said to him as she almost fell into the cabin and plunged, facedown, onto the bench.

Valentine knelt beside her and checked her pulse again. It was fast but strong. Still no trembling.

Another piece of Doctor Jalenga's lecture rose from the tar pit of Valentine's memory. A few people had proven immune to the various strains of ravies virus, or fought it off with nothing more than a bad fever. He crouched next to her—crouching was all that was possible in the tiny cabin—and touched her back. It was wet through, wet enough to leave his hand slick and damp.

She stirred. “Got any water?” Duvalier asked, rolling over. Her hazel eyes looked as though they were made of glass.

Valentine poured her another cup from his canteen. Perhaps a half cup remained. He needed to get them some supplies.

“Why are we back, David?” she asked.

“We're not back. We're in Memphis.”

“That's what I mean. Back in the KZ.”

“We're trying—”

“We're trying to die.”

He put his hand on her forehead. It felt hot and pebbly. “We're doing no such thing.”

“That's why we keep going back in,” she insisted. “Every time we get out of the KZ, all we can think about is the next trip in. Now why is that? We feel guilty. We want to die like them.”

“Rest. I'm going to see about food and something to drink.” He unbuckled the shoulder holster.

He went up on deck, feeling alone and vulnerable. Such a tiny piece of information measured against the vastness of the structure above him—

After a moment's thought he locked the door to the cabin with the padlock again. The orblike superstructure atop the Pyramid seemed designed to stare straight down into the back of his boat.

Job at hand. Eat the elephant one bite at a time
.

His neighbor had a comic book perched on his bulging stomach.

“Excuse me, Mr. Abernathy,” Valentine called. “Is there a market around?”

“Inside the Pyramid. Plaza north. Jackson, was it?”

“Jacksonville.”

“Where you two from?”

“The Gulf.” Valentine jumped up onto the wharf. “Excuse me, my friend's feeling a little sick.”

“You two ever been to Dallas?”

Valentine pretended not to hear the question and waved as he walked down the wharf as quickly as he could. The boat attendant saw him coming and suddenly found something to do inside a rusted catamaran.

Valentine ignored him and crossed a wide plaza to the Pyramid. From close-in the base seemed enormous, flanked by concrete outcroppings with pairs of City Guard doing little but being visible.

A towering stone pharaoh, leaning slightly to the left thanks to the earthquake, Valentine imagined, looked out on the main parking lot with its hodgepodge of trailers from the bottom of an entrance ramp.

He walked up the ramp and noticed dozens of chaise lounges on the southwest outer concourse. Women and men, mostly in bathing suits or camp shorts, lounged and chatted and drank while waiters in white shirts and shorts dispensed food and drink from a great cart. It struck Valentine as similar to the lunches in the yard of the Nut.

No double line of fencing topped with razor wire separated these people from their freedom. Habit? The security of position? One deeply tanned man snored into a white naval hat with braiding on its black brim, a thick ring of brass around his white-haired knuckle.

Valentine paid them no more attention than he would a group of lakeside turtles. He passed through a set of steel-and-glass doors and into the Pyramid.

Moyo kept his realm cleaner than the zoo, Valentine gave him that. The impossibly cool interior smelled of floor polish and washroom disinfectant. He was on some kind of outer concourse; advertisements for alcohol, tobacco, women, games of chance, and sporting events hung on banners tied everywhere. As he walked tout after tout, mostly teenage boys Hank's age, tried to hand him flyers. Valentine finally took one.

Black letters on orange card stock read:

Bloody “Cyborg” Action
Pulp Fontaine
(hook on right hand)
vs
The Draw
(solid aluminum left arm)
3 rounds or maiming
Friday July 22 9PM Center Ring
all wagers arranged by
Roger Smalltree Productions
“the pharaoh of fair odds since y37”
•
Payouts are Moyo Bonded and Insured
•
(Gallery of Stars Booth 6)

The teen squeaked: “Listen, sir, my brother's a locker warden. He says Draw's long-shotted to pay off big. Do a bet and you can pay a whole week on the Midway, say?”

“Say,” Valentine said and moved on. A woman thrust out a mimeograph of a nude woman with snakes held in each outstretched arm. “Angelica the Eel-swallower!”

Four-color circus posters, bigger than life-size, screamed out their attractions as he followed an arrow to Plaza North.

Loudspeakers played upbeat jazz or orchestral renditions of old tunes Valentine couldn't quite categorize but which fell under the penumbra of rock-and-roll.

He found the food market using his nose. A lively trade from grill and fish vendors added to the aromas of cut melons, fresh berries, and tomatoes. At another stall fryers bubbled, turning everything from bread paste to sliced potatoes into hot, greasy delight, ready for salting.

His stomach growled.

He placed his hand on a pile of ice at the edge of an ice-filled bin holding two gigantic Mississippi catfish, resting on a semicircular counter, and felt the wonder of the wet cold.

“Mind! Mind!” yelled the woman behind the bins of freshwater food. “You buy? No? Shove off!”

Valentine settled on buying a five-gallon plastic jug full of water and some “wheat mix for cereals.” Then he found a bottle labeled aspirin—it also smelled like it.

“You just bought that, son,” the trucker-cap-wearing druggist said. He paid, glad that Memphis scrip was good in here.

Valentine sought out some food. The rotisserie chickens were reasonably priced and looked fresh—he had to buy a stick for them to put it on, and he topped his purchases off with a sugar-frosted funnel cake. He ate half of the last as he wandered, getting a feel for the layout of the Pyramid—or Midway, as the locals seemed to call it.

An area labeled the Arena seemed to be the center of activity; he heard a woman's voice warbling through a door as a pair of sandal-wearing rivermen exited. There were also two huge convention-center spaces, filled with wooden partitions turning the areas into a maze of tiny bars, tattoo parlors, and what he imagined were brothels or sex shows. Guards stood in front of the elevators, checking credentials and searching those waiting in line for a lift. Valentine guessed that Moyo's offices were somewhere upstairs.

Few visitors seemed to be around at this time of day; Valentine counted at least one employee for every tourist. Red-jacketed security supervisors ordered around men in black overalls with tight-fitting helmets; the footsoldiers bore slung assault rifles and shotguns, but twirled less-lethal-looking batons as they walked in pairs around the concourses, grazing from the food vendor stalls or being passed a lit cigarette by a marketer. Beefy old women pushed buckets and wheeled trash bins everywhere, their gray bandannas wet with sweat and PYRAMID POWER! buttons pinned to their sagging bosoms.

Valentine had done enough sightseeing and returned to the line of houseboats. His Dallas neighbor had disappeared. He hurried back to his small, rented boat, roasted chicken in one hand, water in the other. He set down the water jug and unlocked the cabin.

Duvalier came into the sunshine and reclined on the vinyl cushions—spiderwebbed with breaks exposing white stuffing threads—and drank almost her entire oversized canteen of water. Valentine mixed her up some of the cereal (IDEAL FOR CHILDREN AND SENIORS—ADVANCED NUTRITION! the label read) from the bag, and she ate a few bites with her field spoon.

“Gaw,” she said, and tossed the rest to the Mississippi fishes. She leaned against the side of the boat and closed her eyes. He gave her two tablets of aspirin and she gulped them down, then gave him her cup to refill.

“Chicken?” Valentine asked.

“You can have it. You get anywhere with this Moyo guy?”

“Haven't met him yet.” He felt helpless against the heat coming up through her skin. “How are you feeling?”

“Weird dreams. Really weird dreams. Thought I was running in Kansas with a cop chasing me. He had giant bare feet with eyes in the toes. I know I'm awake now because you don't have flames coming out of your ears.”

“I'm glad you're sensible. You were barking out profanity an hour ago.”

“Give me a day or two. I'll be back up to strength—or I'll be . . . either way, you'll be on your way.”

She slept, still sweating like a horse fresh from the track, in tiny doses all that night, waking Valentine now and then with brief cries. Not knowing what else to do, he stripped her and dabbed the sweat off her body. To add infestation to injury, both of them broke out in flea bites.

A firework or two went off outside, seemingly timed for the moments when she was sleeping. Forbes Abernathy made a noisy return to his boat about two A.M. with someone who communicated mostly in giggles.

Cotswald arrived the next day, dressed in a straw yellow linen suit. Valentine thought he had a ponderous elegance to him, but he still puffed and wheezed.

“Asthma,” Cotswald explained. “Speaking of miseries, how's your bodyguard?”

“A little better,” Valentine lied. Duvalier had visibly thinned as the fever wrung the water from her. Valentine, feeling almost as daring as the night he snuck into the general's Nebraska headquarters, had stolen a plastic bag full of ice from the fish vendor when her back was turned and used it to make a compress for her head. She now slept, perhaps a little more soundly thanks to ice and aspirin, in the flea-infested cabin.

He left her a note. Not knowing what the night might bring, he didn't lock her in the cabin. The only weapon he dared take was his little multiknife.

Cotswald puffed up past the stone pharaoh and into the cool of the Pyramid. The sun still seemed high, but the evening throngs were already milling around on the inside. The music played louder and livelier, and attraction barkers brayed. Rivermen in an assortment of outfits and assorted KZ thrill-seekers traveled in mutually exclusive clusters.

Women dressed so as to present décolletage, stomach, buttocks, and legs to advantage wandered through the crowd, selling shots of licorice-smelling alcohol called Mississippi Mud, or “party bead” necklaces of candy, aphrodisiacs, and Alka-Seltzers on a single convenient string, or hot pink Moyo-roses that could be presented to any working girl in tonight's theme costume—(Valentine overheard that it was a cheerleader outfit)—for a free tumble.

“Not that you really need one,” a busty pimpette in a conglomeration of zippers and patent leather insisted to a young buck in a Mississippi Honor Guard uniform.

A faint cheer erupted from the arena as they walked the concourse toward the elevators.

“Fifteen-minute call for motorcycle jousting,” a pleasant Southern-belle drawl announced over the loudspeakers. “A reminder: The Jackson Rangers have gone all of July undefeated. Last year's finalists, Indianapolis Power, will challenge tonight. Ten minutes remain to get your bets in.”

They shouldered past a group of off-duty soldiers extracting money from their socks and hats, and stepped into the line at the elevator.