on that drug.”
“A lot. Everything.” And Spanner smiled.
Lore hit her. An open-handed slap that sent her spinning across the sink.
“Why?” She was panting. But Spanner said nothing. “I should have figured it out sooner. Why hadn’t I heard about this drug? Why didn’t anyone else know about it? Because it’s new. Who steals it for you? You make me so angry! We could have earned more selling it than using it. Couldn’t we? Couldn’t we!”
But if they had merely been selling it, Spanner would not have had the same power; she would not have known something Lore didn’t.
Lore wanted to hit Spanner again, hit her over and over, blame her for everything. But something held her back. She was already the kind of person who sold herself, who humiliated herself on a regular basis. She did not want to become the kind of person who enjoyed hurting others.
Spanner had turned her back on Lore and was examining her face in the mirror. “It’s swelling already. I’ll have to use a lot of makeup to cover it before we go out.”
Lore felt cold and sick. She had hit Spanner. She could not understand why Spanner wasn’t reacting to that. “We can’t go out. Not now. We—”
But Spanner whirled, teeth bared and tendons standing out in her neck and shoulders. “We have no choice! You think the drug’s expensive? You have no idea!” She barked with laughter. “We owe money, you fool. And they know where we live. They’re not forgiving types, either. So you get your body into that dress and come with me, because if we don’t earn some cash tonight, tomorrow you won’t be in any position to worry about what kind of damage this stuff will be doing to your health.”
Lore’s mind went terrifyingly blank. She was beginning to feel that the whole world was out of control. She closed her eyes. Think fast. “They know you. Not me. You need the money more than I do.”
“They won’t take long to figure—”
“But for now, you’re the one.” Lore made her voice hard and flat. “So you need my help, for a change. So I’ll make you a deal. We’ll go out tonight, and tomorrow, and the next day. For as long as it takes. But we won’t use that drug anymore. And we’ll save the money.”
Without the drug, it would be unbearable. At least, she hoped Spanner would find it so. And then maybe she could be persuaded to look at the possibility of a net-commercial scam.
“Is there any left?”
Spanner held up a vial, still half-full.
“Then you can use it.” She no longer trusted Spanner to look after her while she was in throes of hormonally induced ecstasy. And maybe the effects of the drug would not be lasting if she stopped taking it now.Without the drug it was terrible. Lore felt like a receptacle, one of those plastic vaginas she and Spanner had both laughed at in the sex shop. But she stayed with it grimly. And she stuck to Spanner’s side like a burr.
“I won’t let you run up any more debt,” she told her. So they earned their money, and they saved, and after six weeks Lore decided it was enough.
Lore prepared the garden for a long absence. That’s how she thought of it, a long absence, not a permanent one; she did not want to examine why. She just pruned and aerated and clipped. She had hoped to see the cat one last time, but it stayed away. It would always be wild, coming and going unbidden. Like hope. She hoped Spanner would feed it. Probably not.
Afterward, she cleaned her spade and shears and clippers carefully and wrapped them in oilcloth. Then she waited patiently for Spanner to wake.
When she did, Lore called her into the living room. She gestured at the two piles of debit cards on the table. “Choose one,” she said. “They’re roughly equal. You can check them if you like.”
Spanner looked at them, and at the two suitcases against the wall. “Does this mean what I think it means?”
“Yes.” Lore sat on the couch. She had meant to be businesslike, but the lost look on Spanner’s face brought back memories of all the good times they had had: the exhilaration of riding the freighters; packs full of stolen slates; champagne at four in the morning. “Yes,” she said again.
Spanner squatted on her heels by the table, examined the pile thoughtfully. “You know, there’s enough here to bankroll that scam you