Interface

Twelve

At 2:24 P.M., Docker had gone up the stairs of a faded residence hotel midway along the 600 block of Geary Street. It was a neighborhood of cheap bars, buildings torn down to make way for parking lots, and beyond mid-block, post-quake construction totally without charm.

The heavy varnished front door, its glass protected by twisted wrought iron rods, was open. The way Docker entered made it apparent that he had known the door was unlocked. He limped down the hall on a cheap carpet given spurious depth by the foam rubber pad beneath it, went through another door at the far end of what once had been a quite ornate lobby. A mirror gave him back his own bulky image fragmented by the silver peeling from the back of the mirror.

Rough concrete steps led down a half-flight to another door. This was old, weathered even on the inside, painted a faded yellow which looked almost brown in the dim light. The light over the door didn’t work. Docker let himself out.

This put him in a low-roofed, concrete passageway. At the far end was scraggly foliage, ground-hugging juniper and a wildly out-of-place Fatsia japonica, whose deeply indented spatulate leaves were turning brown from lack of chemicals in the soil. Down a dozen groaning wooden stairs was a narrow alley.

Docker turned left, went along the littered blacktop to pause in a doorway on the right-hand side with his back against the door. The building was of faded red brick. The doorway had a red EXIT light above it in a metal cage. Docker drew on his cigarette, let his eyes roam behind their hornrims. No one was in sight.

Docker ground out the cigarette against the wall, pocketed the stub, pushed backwards against the door. It opened with his weight, he slid through. He was at the foot of dark narrow stairs. He went up them through the gloom, laboring a little with his right leg yet sure-footed, his fingers in their surgical rubber serving as delicate antennae to aid his orientation as do a cat’s whiskers.

At the top of the stairs was a firedoor. The hand that did not hold the attaché case turned the knob. This door was also unlocked. Docker opened it a scant inch, laid an eye to the strip, saw only empty hallway with peeling grey walls and a grey threadbare rug with a pink flower design like spilled animal guts.

He let the firedoor click shut behind him, crossed the hall in two quick strides, twisted the closest knob, went through the door and shut it behind him.

The junkie whore called Robin had turned around the chair over which Kolinski’s coat had earlier been thrown to face the room’s lone window. This stared out at a red brick airshaft through greyed nylon curtains. The open window let air stir her lank hair and the greyed curtains. At this hour oblique sunlight touched only the upper third of the age-softened brick wall opposite.

Robin smiled at Docker over her shoulder, thus throwing her head back and tightening the muscles in her neck to give her throat a smooth deceptive grace. Her face was pinched; normally, she already would have used the second of the glassine bags of heroin Kolinski had left with her.

She laughed softly at the expression on Docker’s face. There might have been the faintest note of hysteria in her merriment. If Docker noticed, he let nothing show in the smile he found to put on.

“He brought your name up himself this morning,” she said. “I didn’t have to maneuver him at all.” Docker said nothing. She said, “I can’t ever get used to...” She stopped, shook her head. She said, “Have you got it?”

Docker opened the attaché case on the bed. “I’ve got it.” He held up one of the baggies of pure heroin for her to see, tossed it on the rumpled covers. He delved again, and dropped on the blanket beside the heroin a ten-cc syringe that looked the twin of the one which Kolinski had used on Robin that morning. “You?”

“In the top drawer of the dresser.”

Docker sighed. He sat down on the edge of the bed, legs thrust wide in front of him. He stared glumly at the cracked dirty linoleum. His position was so unconsciously reminiscent of Kolinski’s that morning and all the other mornings that the girl shuddered.

“Is this the way the world ends?” she asked softly.

Docker raised his head very quickly to surprise the momentary horror on her face. She was still sitting in her chair, knees drawn up to her chest, arms locked around her folded legs. Only her bare feet showed beneath the frayed hem of the nightgown.

“We don’t have to go through with it, Robin.”

“Daphne’s going to call at two-forty-five. You saved out the five thousand?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes were suddenly feverish with rage. “He hurt her this morning. He loves to hurt people. He calls her Aunt Jemima.”

Docker sighed again. “Robin, I still think...”

She ran a hand through her hair. There was some of that morning’s urgency back in her movements, but it was under control. The dregs of the dose Kolinski had administered still remained in her body. The sweats and sniffles were still some way off.

“I thought about getting my hair done,” she said. “Putting on makeup, buying a robe. Then I realized that would ruin it.”

Docker took a turn around the room. His face was icy behind the glasses; a faint sheen of sweat had appeared on his forehead. He didn’t meet her eyes. He looked at his inexorable watch as at a bomb. He stopped by the sink, leaned over it as if he wanted to vomit into it. He straightened, turned, leaned back against the wall. He seemed disinclined or unable to stand up straight; being on his feet seemed to tire him.

“Yes,” he said harshly. “Business as usual for it to go down. But...”

“The time for „buts“ is gone.” She paused, added his name deliberately, almost mockingly, as if tasting the shape of it with her mouth. “Docker. The time for anything is gone. Time is gone.”

“It doesn’t have to be—”

“For me it does.”

She stood up, crossed the linoleum on bare narrow feet. Her skin was luminously pale. Although she was a tall woman, her head fit under Docker’s stubborn chin. The chin was already lightly stubbled since his morning shave. She reached up, removed his glasses, folded them, stuck them end-down in the outer breast pocket of his jacket.

She said against his chest, “Jesus, I’ll be glad.” She leaned back to look up into his face, then pressed hers against his chest again. “You understand that, don’t you? I’m tired, tired in my soul.”

Docker put a hand wedge-shaped with muscle under her chin, tipped her head back, bent and with a ritual tenderness pressed his open mouth against hers. It was a long, sexually alive kiss, though the lips of both man and woman were dry and feverish. Her arms went around him, clung fiercely.

She broke the kiss so she could whisper into his mouth. “I wondered whether I would wish we’d saved time for it. Now I’m glad we didn’t.” She suddenly giggled. “I’m probably syphed up again.”

“Robin, there’s still time to call it off...”

She didn’t bother to reject his plea. She began softly humming a dance tune. To a few bars of it they actually danced, a dream-like waltz step from a long time before. Docker’s limp was not apparent in their slow matched movements. They were graceful together.

“Remember?”

Docker nodded. “Twelve, thirteen years ago. The grand ballroom of the St Francis.”

She stopped dancing.

“Miss Stayton was the hit of the Cotillion. She was stunning in her cerement and shroud.”

“For God’s sake, Robin—”

“Twelve, thirteen centuries ago, baby. I’m old. Ancient. Burned out. Time?”

Before he could check, she twisted his thick wrist so they could read his watch together.

“Two-thirty-three,” she said.

She walked away from him without a tremor of hesitation, pulled open the dresser drawer which contained her treasures. She set aside the handkerchief-wrapped syringe very gingerly, as if it were fragile crystal. Then she quickly and efficiently arranged her matches, her candle, her bent tablespoon. These defined her physical world, these were her Shakespeare folio, her Gauguin original, her Hope Diamond.

Without being bidden, Docker got the baggie of heroin and the syringe from the bed. He set the attaché case on the floor.

Robin heaped the tablespoon three-fourths full of the terrific jolt of white powder. She added water at the sink, returned to move it gently over the candle flame. As she worked, she talked, her voice almost sprightly, snatches of poetry, the Shakespeare line about motive and cue for passion.

In a suddenly flat rational tone, she demanded, “How pure?”

“Ninety-five percent.”

A shiver ran through her, whether from anticipation or fear or merely from bare feet on cold linoleum was impossible to tell. She tipped up the spoon, filled the opened ten-cc syringe.

“The hottest shot in the world. The ultimate flash. My usual is five percent.” Her eyes glittered. She was sweating badly, pouring sweat; great moons of dampness had appeared under the arms of the flannel nightgown.

“Be by me, darling,” she said.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, holding the hypo in her left hand as her right delicately began working to bring up the veins. She was so totally absorbed in this that it was obvious her absorption was spurious, or rather was intensified so as to shut out all other thought.

Docker had no such anaesthesia. Sweat poured off him to equal hers. In a hoarse voice he said, “Robin...”

She shook her head. Her tongue came out one corner of her mouth in concentration. She switched the syringe to her right hand, then, with the suddenness of a fisherman gaffing a shark, she rammed the needle into her arm.

“Got it, first try!” she exclaimed.

She did not yet depress the plunger. She laid back on the balled-up pillow and looked at Docker almost joyfully. In her movements had been none of the hesitation which had seduced Kolinski into injecting her that morning.

“Two months I pretended to dislike the needle. A lot of hypes really do, you know.” She met his eyes almost mockingly. “Darling, I’d do it if you were here or not. Accept that. The only difference is that it’d be wasted.” She drew a deep breath. “Time?”

Docker had been sidling closer. Unthinking, concealed desperation glinted in his eyes. He turned the action of checking his watch into a sudden lunge for the syringe. His hand was still a dozen inches from it when her thumb rammed the plunger home. Her body arched slightly.

“Are you in such a hurry for me to... oh! Oh, Jesus Christ! It’s beautiful! It’s pure... pure...”

Her face now wore a look of utter ecstasy. Her hand was already relaxing on the syringe. Her feet were drooping outward as the muscles of her calves and ankles relaxed.

“So... so sleepy-tired!”

“Robin. Oh, Jesus, Robin...”

Her face was relaxing, smoothing out. Her eyes under suddenly sleepy lids were now very clear. The angles of her face were elegant and fine and altogether lovely.

“Shleepy,” she said gaily. “Sh-h-h...” She raised her head with an effort. “I don’t love you, you know, darling. Not anymore. We just... You...” She stopped as if she would not be able to speak again. Then she said in an abrupt clear surprised voice, “Who would have believed it’d all... all shlip... all... away...”

Her head rolled sideways on the pillow. Her right hand fell laxly away from the hypo, so it flopped over against her arm, the needle still sticking in her vein and raising a long narrow ugly blue-looking welt of flesh with its imbedded length. Her breathing was regular but already growing shallow.

Docker stared down at her with a shocked look on his face, as if he could not believe the speed with which the deadly infusion was working. In a tight, agonized voice, he said, “Jesus, oh, Jesus, Robin, what have we... Wasn’t there any...”

His voice died away. There was no response, no movement from the girl on the bed. Her breathing had lengthened further, was becoming labored. At that instant the needle, responding to gravity and its own weight, slid from her arm. It fell past the edge of the bed.

Docker moved with dazzling speed, his hand shooting down and out and snapping shut around it just as it touched the floor. It had no chance to break. He straightened slowly with it clutched in his gloved fingers. He was breathing heavily. His eyes looked as if he wanted to scream. Yet by catching the hypo before it could smash on the floor he seemed to have made his ultimate acceptance.

For some minutes he stood unmoving above her, watching her chest continue to stir under the faded flannel. He stooped, laid a hand on her ribs, pressed delicately up under the meager flaccid globe of her left breast.

“Presque morte,” he said in soft sorrow. The two isolated French words had a finality that their English equivalents lacked. Nearly dead. He seemed to be searching for the hard edge of that finality.

Docker drew a deep breath that was also a sob, came erect, then bent once more to touch his lips to hers. They were warm and yielding, as if she were dropping into sleep instead of death.

He said, “Goodbye, Robin.”

He crossed quickly to the dresser, picked up the handkerchief and its burden the way he would have picked up a primed charge of plastique. He held it beside her left elbow, then let the handkerchief drop open so the syringe fell on the floor where the other would have struck if he had not intercepted it.

Docker stepped back, regarded the scene critically, then carefully toed the syringe a little further under the bed where it would not be instantly apparent to anyone entering the room. He was working with fine tolerances now.

Docker opened his attaché case without lifting it from the floor, put in the hypo which had killed her, withdrew a banded sheaf of bills. They were hundreds, fifty of them. His gloved fingers laid them on the corner of the dresser.

One last quick look around the room.

Breeze gently stirring the dirty lace curtains, very slightly guttering the candle on the dresser top. Sunlight gone from the mellowed brick wall opposite. Spoon. Ripped baggie which had brought her the death she sought.

He looked at his watch. He touched nothing except his attaché case and the doorknob going out. He left the room, the building, by the same route he had entered, like a cloud passing from the pale face of the moon. The goose-plump black girl using the pay phone at the far end of the hall did not see him go. No one saw him go.

It was 2:47 P.M.