The Feelies

"THEY DON'T LIKE ME!"

"You've got a page and a half in Game World."

"They're calling me the bad girl of 'Wildest Dreams.' Mean Wanda-Jean. What did I ever do to them?"

Brigitte the chaperone/dresser/gofer sat down on the bed. "I've been with maybe a dozen contestants while they were on the Dreamroad. The fan rags always cook up some kind of personality for them. You don't want to let it get to you."

Brigitte had been provided by the network. She came with the hotel suite and the bodyguard who waited outside the door. It was what you got when you started on the Dreamroad. Wanda-Jean found that she had been removed from her normal life and shut away in luxurious isolation. Her only contact with the outside was either through the show or through Brigitte.

Wanda-Jean threw the magazine on the floor and pouted. "I never heard of a bad girl winning in the end."

Brigitte looked genuinely scandalized. "Don't talk like that."

"Why not? It's true, isn't it?"

"Of course it's not. Anyone can win."

"It's just that it feels really unlucky to be the bad girl."

Brigitte stood up. "Maybe I should fix you a drink?"

"I shouldn't start drinking this early in the day."

"It's the middle of the afternoon."

"Yeah, but I only just got up."

It seemed to Wanda-Jean that just about everything in her life had been turned upside down. From being anonymous she now appeared on TV and had her picture in fan magazines. She seemed to sleep all day and live by night. Where once she had been on her own, making her own decisions and facing her own problems, now all she had to do was order from a menu, or come up with a yes or no answer when someone offered to mix her a drink, fetch her a pill, or run out for a magazine. The network didn't expect Wanda-Jean, or any of the other contestants, to think for themselves while they were on Dream-road. The network's minions acted accordingly.

The real physical change was the hotel suite. The downtown Sanyo-Hyatt was a far cry from the minuscule singles apartment in the faceless high rise. The big open-plan day room almost gave her agoraphobia. It seemed as big as a football field. The wraparound, ceiling to floor, double-glazed windows and the wall-to-wall, dark green carpet added to the sense of space and exposure. The fashionably sparse, ultra modern furniture didn't help to give the place any sense of coziness.

Even the bedroom wasn't any refuge. It was as big as her own apartment. The bed alone could accommodate maybe five people in comfort. Just to make matters worse, Brigitte felt she could walk in anytime she wanted to. Wanda-Jean didn't have any place in which she could feel confident she was alone. She had even offered to trade the vast bedroom for the suite's much smaller second room, the one in which Brigitte slept. But Brigitte had told her that it was impossible-she would be fired if anyone found out. The inability to even organize a simple thing like switching rooms made Wanda-Jean feel even more like a prisoner of luxury. There was, of course, also Brigitte herself, a short woman with pale skin, orange hair, and an air of continual confidence, a combination of nurse, nun, big sister, and warden.

Wanda-Jean lay on her side and watched Brigitte moving around the room. Brigitte was a compulsive tidier. She seemed incapable of just sitting still and slouching. If nothing else was going on, Brigitte would get up and tidy. It got on Wanda-Jean's nerves. A lot of things about Brigitte got on Wanda-Jean's nerves. Sometimes she wondered if that was the way condemned prisoners felt. They used to be watched nonstop by obliging guards. The thing Wanda-Jean couldn't get over was that Brigitte had sat with a dozen other contestants before her. She propped herself up on one elbow. "How many of the contestants won?"

Brigitte looked around blankly. "What?"

"The contestants you've looked after-how many of them won?"

Brigitte came over to her and briskly plumped up a pillow. "Aren't you getting a little morbid, dear? All this talk about being the bad girl, and bad luck, and now this. I'd think about something else if I were you. Why don't you watch TV or something? There's 'Penal Colony' on channel 80. You like that?"

Wanda-Jean stuck out her lower lip. "I don't want to watch TV. I want to know how many of the contestants who've been through your hands have won. Okay?"

"Isn't this all a bit childish?"

"How many won, goddamn it?"

As Wanda-Jean's voice got more hysterical, Brigitte's, in direct proportion, became more soothing.

"I can't tell you that."

"Why not?"

"It's against the rules, dear."

Wanda-Jean tried wheedling. "You can tell me, Brigitte. Nobody will find out."

"I can't, and you know that."

"Then fuck you, you miserable bitch. You probably put a jinx on all of them."

"You ought to start to grow up, dear. Neither of us needs this sort of thing."

Wanda-Jean rolled over so her back was toward Bri-gitte. She lay in sullen silence for a long time, until a new idea struck her.

"I want to go out."

Brigitte's patient look switched on. "You know you can't do that."

"So I'm a prisoner?"

"You're not a prisoner. You have to stay inside for your own protection."

"Who's going to hurt me?"

"Fans, psychopaths, people who've bet on the show, you want a list?"

"How am I supposed to get any exercise if I can't get out?"

"You know damn well that there's a gym, a swimming pool, and a sauna in the basement of the hotel. You can use them anytime."

"I just can't stand being cooped up in here. It's driving me crazy.''

"If you don't like the rules there's a very obvious solution."

Wanda-Jean raised a quizzical eyebrow. "What solution?"

Brigitte smiled. It was a calm, superior smile. "You can always quit the show. Go back to your job and your little apartment and forget the whole thing ever happened."

Wanda-Jean glared at her. "You'd really like that, wouldn't you?"

"I don't care either way. It's not my job to get involved."

"Yeah?"

"You can believe what you like."

Wanda-Jean lay flat on her back and stared at the ceiling. Brigitte moved busily about the room. All Wanda-Jean could think about was how ridiculous the whole situation was. She was supposed to be a star, the fan magazines told her that, and yet she wasn't even allowed to enjoy it.

The bodyguard stuck his head around the door. The bodyguards were changed regularly, but they all had the same flat, faceless, unapproachable expression, close-cropped bullet head, and massive shoulders. They reminded Wanda-Jean of retired ball players.

"There's a visitor coming up."

Wanda-Jean sat up. "Who is it?"

"It's a Mr. Priest."

"I'm not sure I want to see him."

Brigitte stepped in. "Send Mr. Priest right through."

"Sure."

Wanda-Jean jumped angrily to her feet. "Don't I get any say in the matter? I said I didn't want to see him."

"You don't say that to Bobby Priest."

"Jesus…"

"Hi, there. Is everybody happy?"

Bobby Priest was already in the room. He was almost as flamboyant off set as he was on. His white lounging suit would have cost a month's salary for Wanda-Jean at her old job.

Wanda-Jean was still standing glowering at Brigitte with clenched fists. Brigitte managed a calm greeting.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Priest."

"Hi there, Brigitte. Do I detect some tension in the air?"

"I think Wanda-Jean is starting to feel the strain. The fan rags weren't very kind to her."

Bobby Priest was the picture of caring concern. He put a protective arm around Wanda-Jean. "You don't want to let those things get to you. They got to write something or they wouldn't stay in business."

Wanda-Jean crumpled. She sat down on the bed. "It's not just that. It's the whole thing, being shut up in here, not having any life of my own. It just gets so hard."

"You'll be the one who's laughing, when you win."

"If I win."

"You got to think positive."

"Everyone seems to want to tell me what I got to do."

Bobby Priest sat down beside her. He took hold of her hand and stroked it. "Just relax, babe. Take one thing at a time and you'll be okay."

"You don't know what it's like. It's the waiting, the not knowing what's going to happen to you."

"You think I don't have troubles?"

Wanda-Jean dropped her head into her hands. "Yeah, I suppose so. I've just got myself wound up."

Bobby Priest patted her shoulder and got up. "I think I know what you need. You need to get out of here for a while."

Wanda-Jean looked up sharply. "I've been saying that all day. I just get told that it's against the rules."

"Not if you're with me."

Wanda-Jean half smiled. She almost, but not quite, fluttered her eyelashes. "Are you asking me for a date, Mr. Priest?"

Bobby Priest hit a formal pose. "I'd be honored if you'd permit me to take you to dinner tonight, ma'am."

Wanda-Jean laughed. "I'd be honored to come."

Instantly Bobby Priest was back again being his highspeed self. "Good. I've got to move now. I'll pick you up at eight."

"I'll be ready."

"Yeah, right."

It seemed as though Wanda-Jean was dismissed already. With mixed feelings, she watched Priest hurry out of the suite.

RALPH EMERGED FROM THE RT EXPRESS station to the all-too-familiar crowding, the piled-up trash, and the relentless decay. Even the booze and the contempt that familiarity was supposed to breed didn't stop the dull fear that always nagged at his gut on the ride home. The fear started fairly soon after the monorail pulled out of Reagan Plaza. That was the last outpost of downtown civilization. After Reagan Plaza, the twilight sprawl started, the miles of urban wasteland, the seemingly endless expanse of burned-out shopping malls, twentieth-century high-rise towers that loomed like giant crumbling headstones, and the equally beat-up durafoam adobes that were the sad legacy of the Cuomo Administration's final, doomed crusade for national urban renewal. From Reagan on, only the underclass rode the rail, and they had long since been told to go and lose themselves. The cops had been pulled off the trains and it was a safe bet that there was no one watching the security monitors. The farther out one went from Reagan Plaza station, the more the fear grew. The cars became increasingly empty, and the dwindling numbers of passengers became more and more vulnerable to attacks by gangs of railjammers, bloods, and locos. Once upon a time, robbery had been the motive. Now most of the passengers who went all the way out to Lincoln Avenue, 207th Street, Southend, or the Point had very little worth stealing. That didn't, however, stop the attacks. The weirdies were on the rail, and they were so unpredictable they could do just about anything to the lone riders that were unfortunate enough to be on a train they took it into their heads to wild through.

Down on street level, the rail curved away, over the roofs of buildings that sagged against each other, apparently kept up only by encrusted grime and a miracle. Lincoln Avenue had once been a prosperous neighborhood shopping strip, but it had become a picture of desolation. The few stores that were still open were protected by steel grilles on the outside and armed guards within. Layers of graffiti covered every flat surface. Winos and derelicts shuffled on the cracked sidewalks, and groups of young men stood on street corners in immobile surly groups. Their fury at simply being alive was only temporarily damped down by Serenax, Blind Tiger, and Night Train.

As his own booze haze wore off, it left behind a nagging depression, the kind of depression where every problem, big or small, becomes insurmountable. He brooded for a minute or so on how Sam didn't like him. He meant to be pleasant to Sam, but, always, it ended up with him picking on the guy. He had even left Sam standing on the street that night. He had walked off without saying so much as "Good night" or "See you later."

Ralph's depressions had a habit of jumping from subject to subject. From Sam he moved on to the stiffs who were dying. Ralph had been brought up on the old TV late shows, the fearless private eyes who stumbled across a telltale clue to corruption in high places, or the courageous reporters who brought down governments. They had always fought their way through against all the odds; they stripped away the facade and showed the world the rotten side of the big and powerful.

Ralph's train of self-pity was interrupted by a physical annoyance. For the second time that week, the moving walkway had broken down. It was typical. The only money that got spent in this city got spent on the rich. All the poor people got was cheap shit that broke down, if it ever worked at all. Ralph started the long trek down the tunnel to the boarding point.

As he walked, his mind grasshoppered from one cause of resentment to another. Sam, the job, he couldn't help it. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't Philip Marlowe or Mike Hammer, or Bernstein and Woodward. Sure it would be great to get at Combined Media. He would like to be a hero, to smash the structure and show everyone its corrupt, disgusting inside. It wasn't his fault he didn't have friends in the police department, or work on a fearless, fact-finding TV show. He was just a drunk in a dead end, union nonjob who was frightened of the ride home at night. Nobody could expect him to overturn the system.

He turned the corner and saw the CRAC squad down the block: City Riot And Combat. There must have been a baby riot or radical wilding for them to be out. The presence of a couple of fire trucks and the smell of smoke in the air seemed to confirm that. He started cautiously down the block. The CRAC squad members were spread out over the street. It was doubtful that those paramilitary supercops would let him through to take his usual route to his building. In places like Lincoln Avenue, the regular PD behaved like an occupying army. The CRAC squads were more like alien invaders, vicious and violent, who moved in and crushed disturbance with an iron fist and not even the public relations nicety of a velvet glove. CRAC men were built for business. Every one of them was well over six feet tall, anonymous, and threatening in dark blue coveralls, full-body flak jackets, and paler blue, bone-dome helmets with built-in radios. The majority carried over-and-under M20s that were capable of firing tear gas and concussion grenades, although a few had street sweepers, heavy, rapid-fire shotguns that were more than capable of doing exactly what their name implied. The CRAC team's faces were hidden behind gas masks, which not only added to their air of invaders from space but also protected them from recognition when the inevitable charges of police brutality were raised after one of their actions. Something bad had definitely gone down. Sal's Pizza was a burned-out ruin; Ralph could see four bodies lying on the street. A teenage girl huddled on the sidewalk would not stop screaming. An officer went over to her. He hit her once, a quick jab with the butt of his weapon, and she was immediately silent. Ralph didn't even speculate how the trouble had started. Such sudden flares of violence could come out of nowhere-a word or a gesture, and the next moment there would be slaughter. Automatic weapons were common in these areas; even the kids carried them.

"Hey, you! Get out of here!"

The voice was muffled by the gas mask, but Ralph had no doubt that the cop's gesture was aimed at him. He pointed down the street in a single attempt to maintain a shred of dignity. "I live right down there."

"I don't give a damn where you live. Get the hell off the street."

Ralph knew it was pointless to protest. As he turned, he remembered the Vietnam movie that he had seen a few days earlier on the late show when he had been up with insomnia. What was that phrase they had used? Winning the hearts and minds of the population?

FRANCIS XAVIER BARSTOW WENT INTO A feelie once a year. It was the shortest one available, just six hours. He had to save all year to be able to afford it. Of course, he'd have liked to have actually experienced it on Easter weekend, but that wasn't possible. There were extra charges for his particular feelie if you had it on Easter weekend.

Francis Xavier Barstow had been through the same feelie so many times that he almost knew it by heart. The yelling of the crowd, the smell of the primitive city, the chafing of the rough, homespun robe, the pain of the whip cuts across his back, and, above all, the weight of the huge, wooden cross that bowed his shoulders.

He knew that a lot of people thought he was crazy. His neighbors and the people he worked with all thought he was a religious fanatic. He found some consolation in telling himself that they would think that about anyone who still tried to worship a god. Religion played no big part in this soulless age.

Sometimes he worried about his annual adventure in the feelie. He knew he was supposed to live in the image of Christ. Sometimes he wasn't too sure that it was right to seek the help of a lot of electronic gadgetry.

He'd asked the priest, but the priest hadn't been much help. He was one of the new kinds of priest, all psychology and social conscience. He told Francis Xavier that there was no harm in the feelie, but Francis Xavier had suspected that the priest didn't think there was much good in it either.

Francis Xavier knew in his heart that he was right. They had invented the feelies, and the least he could do was use them to get closer to his god. It was better than all those other people who wanted to be samurai killers, prostitutes, and perverted Roman emperors.

Sometimes he felt that he was bracketed with those people. He didn't like the way the receptionist women looked at him when he went in to book his feelie time. He got the impression that he was seen as some sort of sexual weirdo, a masochist or something.

This time there seemed to be something a little different about the experience. What was left of his conscious mind couldn't quite get a grip on what exactly had changed. Somehow everything was a trifle more intense. The colors were brighter and appeared to shimmer. The pain was much more severe than he remembered. In previous experiences, it had been a tolerable background. In this one, it was almost more than he could stand.

The part of his mind that was still Francis Xavier Bar-stow pretty much knew the sequence of the crucifixion program by heart. He was coming up to the part where he stubbed his toe and stumbled under the weight of the cross.

Just like every time before, he found himself staring down at his dirty sandaled feet. There were flecks of dried blood. The ground was dry and cracked. Each footstep produced small puffs of dust. Then a small green lizard scuttled from under a rock. As far as he could sluggishly remember, that had never happened before.

Francis Xavier wasn't about to ponder on the significance of these changed details. In the middle of a feelie, it wasn't possible to ponder on anything. The greater part of his consciousness was too busy being Jesus Christ on the home stretch to Calvary.

He could see the small rock coming up. There was nothing he could do to avoid it. His foot hit it and…

Pain, flashing burning jagged colors swamped the desert landscape and the brown faces that pressed in on him. A scream like ripping steel blotted out all other sounds. There was nothing else but stabs of red, orange, and yellow, rolling sweeps of purple split by white forked lightning, and the unbearable pain.

Then it stopped, just as suddenly as it had started. He also found that he was more than a dozen yards farther up the road. It was like a sudden jump in a film. Something was wrong. A much greater part of him was now detached from the Christ personality.

The things around him were also changed. The visual images seemed washed out, insubstantial, almost transparent. The sound was fuzzy and muffled. There was enough of Francis Xavier Barstow outside of the feelie to know that something was wrong. There wasn't enough of him to know what to do. He felt he ought to scream or thrash about. There ought to be an alarm, a button he could push or a lever he could pull. Instead he just kept plodding toward the Place of the Skull, until the pain started again.

If anything, it was worse than the first time. The colors and the noise were even more violent. The detached part of his mind wasn't detached enough not to suffer. It felt as though a blowtorch was being run lovingly over every nerve ending in his body. He was convinced he was about to die.

Then it stopped again. The color and noise vanished as though it had never existed. There had been another jump. He was lying spread on the cross. Two Roman soldiers knelt beside him. There was something reassuring about the burnished bronze, well-polished leather, and coarse red fabric of the uniforms. Francis Xavier had asked for their forgiveness so many times that they almost felt like friends. He even knew their faces. One had a deep brown, earthy face with a broad flattened nose like an ex-boxer. The other's was thinner, more sensitive… But it wasn't. He wasn't the same. He had a ridiculous false mustache and eyebrows. A fat cigar was clenched between his teeth. The absurd eyebrows were jerked rapidly up and down. The face split into an insane grin.

"Would you mind crossing your feet? We've only got three nails!"

SAM LET HIMSELF INTO HIS MINUSCULE room. Max the black and white cat was lying curled up on the bed with his tail draped around the tip of his nose. He woke up, yawned, and then got to his feet stretching languidly. He padded toward Sam, flexing his claws and digging them into the covers. Sam sat down on the bed. The cat butted his upper arm. Sam smiled and patted him.

"Hi, Max, how you been?"

The cat yowled.

"Hungry, huh?"

The cat yowled again. Sam picked him up.

"You better keep the noise down, or we'll both be in trouble."

He tried to pet the cat, but Max squirmed out of his arms. Still yowling, he ran to the small alcove the landlord liked to call a kitchenette, and then back to Sam.

"Will you shut up, Max? When are you going to realize you're against the rules?"

Sam climbed reluctantly to his feet, still trying to hush the cat. Max danced around his feet, alternately yelling and purring loudly. Sam opened a small wall cupboard with a cracked glass door and took out a pack of Kitty Krunch. He filled a small plastic bowl. The bowl was red and bore the legend "Present from Rio de Janeiro." Sam couldn't remember where the bowl had come from. He had certainly never been to Rio. He set the bowl down in front of the cat. Max threw himself, single-mindedly, into the task of eating. It was the high point of his day.

Sam went back to the bed and sat down. He watched the cat. In between mouthfuls, it would pause to purr joyfully. Cats, in fact pets of all kinds, were totally outlawed from all cheap-lease rooms. The rules had been made some ten years before, when an urban rabies scare had started City Hall on a vast antipet drive. The campaign had not worked, but the rules remained. Max was Sam's single, but continuous, act of rebellion.

Sam worried about Max. The cat had been with Sam for almost three years. Nobody had said a word about Max, but still Sam worried. As well as his sole act of rebellion, the cat was also his main source of companionship. Sometimes Sam wondered how he would survive without Max.

When those thoughts started, he would take a Serenax. The room was drab and as clean as it was possible to make a cheap-lease, where the war against roaches alone was a full-time occupation. The yellowing walls didn't bother Sam. He found them kind of restful. It actually was not hard to keep the room neat. Sam didn't have very much. Aside from the bed, two chairs, a small table, a built-in wall TV, and a selection of cooking utensils, there was just a small nest of shelves that held the meager mementoes of a life of very limited expectations. There was a blue plastic lunch box from an ancient TV show called "The Galaxy Rangers" that Sam had watched as a child, a Michael Jackson funeral mug, a glow-in-the-dark figurine of Batman with one arm missing, a group of lead spacemen, a neat row of books, and a framed black-and-white photograph of May Marsh, the star of "Penal Colony." He really didn't know why he kept that picture. He didn't actually like "Penal Colony."

Sam wondered if he should fix himself a meal. Somehow he couldn't be bothered. He had taken too many pills already. He just didn't have the motivation. Instead, he went to the same cupboard that held the Kitty Krunch and took down a jar of cookies. The cat looked up at him. Max had a keen interest in anything to do with food. Sam looked at him sadly.

"I only saw her once today, the girl in the vault, the one I told you about."

He munched absently on a cookie, carrying the jar with him as he went back to the bed.

"I have to go and see her when Ralph's off drinking, otherwise he gives me a hard time."

The cat sat down and began to wash himself.

"It's difficult with Ralph. I mean, he's my partner, and I like him, but when he drinks, he can get real mean. I tell myself it ain't his fault, but it still ain't easy. I like to look at the girl."

The cat was totally involved in its toilet. Max always did a thorough job.

"I sure hope nothing happens to her."

Sam started on another cookie. As he chewed, he stared at the cat.

"You're just not interested, are you?"

Sam reached out and turned on the TV. One of the consolations of a cheap-lease was the way almost everything could be reached from the bed.

The screen came to life. It was channel 45, "Earth News." It was in the middle of an item about a subway riot. Sam was glad he didn't use the subway. It was worth the extra fare to take the monorail and know he was fairly safe. On the subway, anything could happen.

The picture on the screen seemed to be proving Sam's point. It was shaky and hand held. It showed a seven-man CRAC squad clubbing a subway car full of fighting passengers into some semblance of order. The commentary mentioned Lincoln Avenue station.

"I hope Ralph wasn't involved."

Sam flipped the channel. On 48 someone was getting his head kicked in an ancient western. Sam turned off the set. He didn't like violence.

He reached for the bookshelf. Sam was reading two books at the moment. One was The House at Pooh Corner, the other was Moby Dick. Sam didn't feel like dealing with Herman Melville, so he picked up Pooh Corner. He opened the book, took out a marker, and settled back to read. The cat climbed on his chest and rolled onto the open book. Sam smiled and poked the cat in the stomach.

"What's the matter, don't you want me to read?"

The cat waved its legs in the air and tried to bite him.

"Maybe you want to watch television?"

WANDA-JEAN SAT UP IN THE HUGE BED. She felt a little dizzy. She had drunk too much, earlier in the evening. Over on the other side of the bed, Bobby Priest was fast asleep.

She looked over at him. In repose, he was very different from the character she had come to know on the studio floor. Without the surface layer of fast-talking energy, he looked weak, vulnerable, almost petulant, more like a spoiled little boy than the big TV star.

Beneath the drunkenness, Wanda-Jean felt empty and far from satisfied. In bed, he was a long way from a superstar.

The whole evening had been an awful disappointment. Wanda-Jean had imagined he would take her to one of the city's most exclusive restaurants or nightclubs. She had picked out a luxurious white evening gown from the wardrobe that the network had given her when she started on the Dreamroad.

To her amazement Priest had shown up in a faded but well-tailored work suit. He announced that they were going to Old Town.

"Old Town?"

Priest had grinned. "Sure, what's wrong with Old Town?''

"Nothing, but…"

"I go over to Old Town a lot. It's one of the few places in town where either you don't get recognized, or the ones who do ain't interested."

Wanda-Jean wasn't too happy about his plan. She had rather wanted to be recognized, particularly with Bobby Priest.

Old Town was, strictly speaking, part of the twilight area. Unlike Lincoln Avenue, which had just been left to decay, Old Town had been cosmeticized into a rather cutesy bohemian neighborhood. It was where poets, painters, and musicians lived side by side with trendy executives who filled their apartments with bric-a-brac from the fifties and sixties and pretended they were nonconformist and artistic.

Wanda-Jean had looked down at her dress with an expression of horror. "I can't go to Old Town dressed like this."

Bobby Priest had laughed. "You can go to Old Town dressed any way you want to."

"With you done up like a truck driver?"

"We'll make a very striking couple, and anyway, there isn't time for you to get changed all over again."

Still protesting, Wanda-Jean had been hustled into the lift and down to the waiting car. They drove across the city, alone with just the chauffeur and bodyguard.

Bobby had been right about two things. Nobody had seemed to recognize them, and nobody took much notice of Wanda-Jean's overelaborate dress, although she had still spent most of the evening feeling slightly ridiculous.

One mercy was that the place they went to was very dark, almost dark enough to forget about the bodyguard who sat like a squat, broad-shouldered boulder at the next table.

When you got down to basics, the place was a small, nondescript cellar. The walls were probably damp but, mercifully, hidden in the gloom. The decor was a loving, if grubby, re-creation of the beatnik era. The furniture was mismatched. The crowning glory of each table was a red and white checked tablecloth and a candle stuck in a wax-encrusted Chianti bottle. These were the only source of light, except for a couple of spotlights that were trained on a small stage.

For maybe the first hour, all Wanda-Jean could think of was why Bobby Priest had brought her to a place like this. The tables were crammed with an assortment of standard weirdos. Some were so far into the part that they sported long lank hair and beards, or black and white existentialist makeup-what was the name of the chick who started the whole thing? Juliette something?

The food wasn't all that bad. It had a loose base in Italian cooking. Wanda-Jean suspected that it was loaded down with illegal flavorings, and maybe other illegal ingredients, as well.

With just about anybody else Wanda-Jean would have come right out and demanded he explain what he thought he was doing bringing her to a cruddy place like this. With Bobby Priest, she just didn't feel able to.

It was made doubly difficult by the fact that somebody seemed to have hit the man's off button. The stream of patter appeared to have totally dried. He sat in silence, pushing food into his mouth with a kind of mechanical enthusiasm. Every now and then he'd pause and tap his fork in time to the resident jazz trio. Conversation was zero. Wanda-Jean had become angry and confused. First of all he'd brought her up to this dump in Old Town, and then he treated her as if she wasn't even there.

Wanda-Jean still hadn't been able to summon up the courage to confront Priest with her displeasure. Instead she fumed inside, and went on drinking the harsh red wine that he had insisted on ordering. The cabaret, if one could call it that, started. The trio vacated the tiny stage, and were replaced by a wild-haired poet who bellowed unintelligible, and frequently obscene, blank verse across the smoke-filled room.

After the poet, a skinny kid with a guitar sat on a stool and, accompanying himself, did an unsuccessful job of reviving the kind of protest music that was popular around the time of the Asian war, a period that even Wanda-Jean's mother was too young to remember.

When the kid finally was through, the trio came back accompanied by a young and not very attractive girl with stringy black hair and makeup like a corpse. She sang one almost inaudible song, then slipped out of her kimono-style robe and, stark naked, proceeded to go through a series of listless but supposedly symbolic gyrations.

Bobby Priest applauded loudly after each act. Wanda-Jean, by the time the dancer came, was slumped, elbows on the table, her chin resting on her fists. For the first time all evening, Priest deigned to notice.

"What's the matter? Don't you like it?"

Wanda-Jean scowled. "This half-assed amateur talent show, what's there to like?"

Priest shrugged. "I can't get enough of it."

The statement had been delivered as though it was an absolute truth. It was enough to make Wanda-Jean sit up straight in her chair.

"You're kidding?"

"Why should I kid?"

Wanda-Jean had looked around the room with almost slack-jawed amazement. "You like… this?"

"Sure."

"Jesus Christ, why?"

"I'll tell you…"

He hesitated as two women pushed past the table. One was young, in a not very fashionable, but timelessly clinging, red dress with slits up to her hips. She treated Priest to a long liquid stare and puffed sexually on a thin black cigar. The other was at the end of an emaciated, almost cadaverous middle age. Her dress was a vastly expensive couture house creation. A mink stole was thrown around her mottled shoulders. The older woman made a small impatient gesture and they both moved on. None of the regular bearded and work-clothed clientele paid them any attention. Bobby Priest was the single exception. He winked at Wanda-Jean.

"How about those two?"

"How about them?"

"Five gets you ten they're a couple of dykes into S and M. I figure the old one wants to get the young one home and whip her crazy."

Wanda-Jean couldn't help picturing the scene, but she was determined not to be impressed. "So? They looked pretty out of place here."

"You think so?"

"Didn't they?"

"Looked to me like they fitted perfectly."

Wanda-Jean had shaken her head at that point. "I don't understand. I don't understand any of this."

"I expect you figured I was going to take you to some classy downtown joint and we'd wind up in tomorrow's gossip columns, right?"

Wanda-Jean was a little taken aback. "Yes… something like that."

"Well, let me tell you something, sister. Let me explain something. You want to know why I come to a dump like this?"

Wanda-Jean nodded. "I'll tell you. This is one of the few places in this whole fucking city where I can go without having people point and stare and elbow each other to get close to me. I need that. I need somewhere where I can be me, where I don't have to be Bobby Priest."

For the very first time Wanda-Jean noticed that, close up, there was something a little mad about Bobby Priest's eyes. The eyes seemed to bore into her.

"You don't understand what I'm talking about, do you?"

Wanda-Jean did her best to look sympathetic. She had decided it was the best way to deal with him. "Sure I understand."

"Bullshit you do. You're just starting on this. I've been on it forever. I've seen a thousand of you come and go. You all run around, getting your kicks out of being somebody for the first time."

"What's wrong with that?"

"There's nothing wrong with it, except I've been somebody so goddamn long I've had it."

Wanda-Jean wasn't sure she could handle this. She wondered what Priest was on. "You don't mean that. You wouldn't go on doing the show if you didn't like it."

"So I don't even get a night off now and then?" He waved his arm around the room. "You see these weirdos here? They don't know from shit about me or you or game shows or feelies, and they care even less. That's what I call a night off."

"I'm sure you need it…"

"But not on your time. You wanted to go to some joint where everyone would recognize us. Right?"

"I didn't say that."

"But it's true."

"I don't want to fight with you." Wanda-Jean was actually scared. It all seemed to be going wrong on her. She couldn't afford to get on the wrong side of Bobby Priest.

"Yeah, well…"

To her surprise Priest suddenly slumped. His shoulders sagged. He looked older and much less energetic than before. "I expect you want to go."

It was too fast for Wanda-Jean. "I…"

"We'll go back to your hotel."

The totally flat statement was much too fast. Wanda-Jean had expected to wind up in bed with Priest, but she had expected at least some sort of token persuasion. She let out a confused laugh. "Sure, yeah, okay, let's go."

Back at the hotel it had become even stranger. Priest had lapsed into silence again on the ride home. Wanda-Jean had half expected to be taken to the hotel bar for a drink. Instead she was steered straight into the lift and up to her, or rather the network's, suite. The silence continued as they rode up in the lift and went through the living room into the bedroom. The moment they were in the bedroom, Bobby Priest had started taking off his clothes. There hadn't been a word. Something rebelled inside her. There was a limit to everything, even for Bobby Priest. She planted her hands squarely on her hips.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?"

Priest turned and looked at her. His face registered surprise. "I was taking my clothes off. What else?"

"Why?"

"What do you mean, why?"

"What I said, why? You going to take a bath or something?"

"I imagined we were going to fuck."

Wanda-Jean became really angry. "That's what you imagined, did you?"

"Well…"

"No sweet talk, no build up, nothing. Just strip off and get to it?"

"What do you want, champagne and flowers?"

"Why the hell not?"

"It all comes to the same thing in the end. Why bother with a whole lot of phony bullshit?"

"Phony or not, at least I get to keep some pride. I get to be more than just something for you to jerk off in. Even hookers get paid."

Priest sneered. "So how much do you want?"

"You bastard!"

"Yeah? Why so worked up, sweetie? Don't make me laugh with all this crap about pride. You lost all your pride when you went in for the show. All you got left is greed. You'd do anything to stay on the show, and as far as you're concerned, I am the show. You screwed everyone you thought might do you the slightest bit of good, so why waltz around?"

He had started to move toward her.

"You might as well just get down. I'm only one more."

He put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her back on the bed. Wanda-Jean was way past resisting. She fell back limply. Priest started tearing at her clothes. A part of her wanted to fight him off, to kick and scratch and hurt him, but the rest of her just couldn't raise the energy.

There has been a certain relief in the fact that it was all over in a flash. Priest came almost as soon as he had started. Wanda-Jean wondered if maybe he got his real kick beforehand. Was he a degradation freak? He lay flat on his back staring at the ceiling in silence. Wanda-Jean gathered up what was left of her clothes and her dignity and and retreated into the bathroom. She felt as though being sick might be an appropriate gesture, but even that seemed a bit futile. Instead, she took a shower and cleaned her teeth. When she returned to the bedroom, Priest was asleep. She slipped into bed. Fortunately, it was so large that there was room for an appreciable space between them.