irretrievably by one more.
Automatically, she reached into the glove compartment of the car and groped for a neatly-wrapped strip of rabbit-paper, as it was called. She found a strip—it was the old kind, not the new—and unwrapped it, put it between her teeth and bit.
In the glare of the dome light of the car she examined the strip of rabbit-paper. One dead rabbit, she thought, recalling the old days (they were before her time) when a rabbit had to die for this fact in question to be determined. The strip, in the dome light, was white, not green. She was not pregnant. Crumpling the strip, she dropped it into the disposal chute of the car and it incinerated instantly. Damn, she thought wretchedly. Well, what did I expect?
The car left the ground, started for her home in Los Angeles.
Too early though to tell about my luck with Clem, she realized. Obviously. That cheered her. Another week or two and perhaps something.
Poor Pete, she thought. Hasn’t even rolled a three, isn’t back in The Game, really. Should I drop by his bind in Marin County? See if he’s there? But he was so stewed, so unmanageable. So bitterly unpleasant, tonight. There is no law or rule, though, that prevents us meeting outside The Game. And yet—what purpose would it serve? We had no luck, she realized, Pete and I. In spite of our feeling for each other.
The radio of her car came on, suddenly; she heard the call-letters of a group in Ontario, Canada, broadcasting on all frequencies in great excitement. “This is Pear Book Hovel,” the man declared exultantly. “Tonight at ten P.M. our time we had luck! A woman in our group, Mrs. Don Palmer, bit her rabbit-paper with no more idea of hoping then she ever did, and—”
Freya shut off the radio.
When he got home to his unlit, unused, former apartment in San Rafael, Pete Garden went at once to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom to see what medication he could find. I’ll never get to sleep otherwise, he knew. It was an old story with him. Snoozex? It now took three 25-mg tablets of Snoozex to have any effect on him; he had taken too many for too long. I need something stronger, he thought. There’s always phenobarbital, but it slugs you for the next day. Scopolamine hydrobromide; I could try that.
Or, he thought, I could try something much stronger. Emphytal.
Three of those, he thought, and I’d never wake up. Not in the strength capsules I’ve got. Here … he let the capsules lie on his palm as he stood considering. No one would bother me; no one would intervene—
The medicine cabinet said, “Mr. Garden, I am establishing contact with Dr. Macy in Salt Lake City, because of your condition.”
“I have no condition,” Pete said. He quickly put the Emphytal capsules back in their bottle. “See?” He waited. “It was just momentary, a gesture.” Here he was, pleading with the Rushmore Effect of his medicine cabinet—macabre. “Okay?” he asked it, hopefully.
A click. The cabinet had shut itself off.
Pete sighed in relief.
The doorbell sounded. What now? he wondered, walking through the faintly musty-smelling apartment, his mind still on what he could take as a soporific—without activating the alarm-circuit of the Rushmore Effect. He opened the door.
There stood his blonde-haired previous wife, Freya. “Hi,” she said coolly. She walked into the apartment, gliding past him, self-possessed, as if it were perfectly natural for her to seek him out while she was married to Clem Gaines. “What do you have in your fist?” she asked.
“Seven Snoozex tablets,” he admitted.
“I’ll give you something better than that. It’s going the rounds.” Freya dug into her leather mailbag-style purse. “A new, new product manufactured in New Jersey by an autofac pharmaceutical house there.” She held out a large blue spansule. “Nerduwel,” she said, and then laughed.
“Ha-ha,” Pete said, not amused. It was a gag. Ne’er-do-well. “Is that what you came for?” Having been his wife, his Bluff partner, for over three months, she of course knew of his chronic insomnia. “I’ve got a hangover,” he informed her. “And I lost Berkeley to Walt Remington, tonight. As you well know. So I’m just not capable of banter, right now.”
“Then fix me some coffee,” Freya said. She removed her fur-lined jacket and laid it over a chair. “Or let me fix it for you.” With sympathy she said, “You do look bad.”
“Berkeley—why did I put the title deed up, anyhow? I don’t even remember.