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Snake Oil - Waiting for the Galactic Bus Part 19

"You shut your fuckin mouth, bitch!"

"Certainly." Eleanor knew how to make a graceful exit with ruin in her wake. "This place isn't your hell, darling. Nowhere you go will ever be. You carry it with you. For you, nice girls don't, isn't that so? You can never quite reconcile sexuality with virtue. Actually nice girls have more talent for sex. Less guilt, more imagination and a great deal more fun."

"I said shut up." Roy swung off the bed, ugly and dangerous. "You don't talk to a man like that."

"A man?" Eleanor's laughter cut like shards of crystal. "And you're what busy little Drumm dredged up for the people's choice? White Paladin to the unwashed. Bon chance, darling. Hail and farewell from the gratefully obsolete."

"Listen, you - " Roy took a vicious swing at her. She hardly moved, but whatever she did Bruce Lee would have paid to learn. Roy went tail over teakettle against the wall and landed head down, blinking at an upside-down Eleanor.

"Filet's not for you, Mr. Stride. Adrian will fetch you something more in the line of grits." The door closed behind Ms. Padgett-Clive.

Cold, shaking, Roy sat down on the bed, staring at the door. They knew. Everything. Got right down to the problem, even laughed at him. He cursed with feeble rage at Eleanor and Adrian and the whole goddamned lousy system that made things and people the way they were.

/ didn 't make the rules about what's nice and what ain 't. Just I'm a White Christian and that's the way things are.

"Precisely, sir." Adrian poised in the doorway, an etude in apology.

"Hey, man, do you people know what I'm thinking even?"

"Not exactly, but we have done business for ever so long. One hopes you will pardon my deplorable lapse of judgment. Eleanor of course was completely wrong for your specifications. Actually she specializes in the younger novelists. I insist on making amends. Our remaining selection is Florence Bird."

Roy was in no mood to be gracious. "She better be the right stuff. Won't be long 'fore I got some pull around here. The business will go where I go, you got it? Who is she?"

Once more Adrian was the compleat sommelier. "Florence Bird: vintage '54. Robust, assertive as Pinot Noir. And absolutely Wasp."

"For real?"

"On the house's reputation: the last honest-to-Goebbels bottling Below Stairs.

"Well, run her in here before I go somewhere else. Can't be only one whorehouse around here."

"There is Club Banal for the pedestrian trade," Adrian informed him with a definite chill. "Whatever they can make ordinary, A Son Gout can render sublime. Miss Bird, sir."

Once more Adrian bowed and withdrew. Only a short wait, then the door flew open and Florence Bird gusted in. Roy's heart leaped.

" 'Allo, luv!"

Florence was large, frizzy-haired and utterly bare under the open nylon wrapper trimmed in rabbit fur that fluttered in her bold wake like the train of a raffish empress. Florence was nothing if not forthright.

"Had to spend a linnet up the apples for an 'it and miss from all the pig's ear and mother's ruin down the rub-a-dub. Like me Bristols?"

Roy licked his lips in tumescent excitement. Florence was stout and coarse with a merry lasciviousness, though her very direct handshake was definitely not what he was used to from businesswomen. She sounded like some foreigner, very difficult to understand. "Hiya, honey. Where you from?"

"Lunnon," Florence pealed like Bow Bells. "Carnt yer tell?"

More bullshit. He didn't want to talk at all. She worked for him, all right, the kind that always did: loud, cheap, lay it on the line. Right on. There'd be no problems with Florence beyond translation. She was late, she explained, having been down at her pub having a few gins and beer chasers and had to stop at the bathroom for that and to rouge her nipples, knowing a man of his hearty tastes would appreciate the effect.

Right stuff, right on, Roy thrilled. Oh jeez, if she can only do the rest of it.

Subtle as a bayonet charge, Florence cupped Roy's genitals and wiggled her hips. "Right bit o' wick'n awls." She winked, undulating her belly against his. "Like me Khyber?"

Whatever her Khyber was, Roy was all for it. "Yeah. Come on."

"A course, for you, might have to down a few more pints to give yer what yer need, but we'll give it a bash. Down on the floor, luv. Might be a bit left for yer."

"Oh yeah. Yeah, that's it, you got it." Roy got ready, tingling with anticipation and need. "Give it to me, you lousy slut. The whip, too."

Florence was cheerfully accommodating. Roy closed his eyes in bliss and pain under the benediction and the whip. Love had found Andy Hardy.

17 - Faith, hope and Charity Stovall

Charity didn't dare stop for long. Of all the terrors hell might hold, she most feared that unknown voice pursuing her, though she could no longer hear it following on the wind. No real time in this place, no real distance she could measure with any certainty. The gray velvet gown was a Hollywood dream but not much for traveling, sodden and heavy with mist.

She stopped suddenly. Just ahead through the swirling fog hulked a large house surrounded by a high iron fence. No lights showed but smoke curled from one chimney. The gloomy presence of the house contrasted with a gleaming, fresh-waxed taxi near the front steps. The driver's door bore the device:

below stairs cab

"anywhere to hell and back"

call 666-jake

Charity pushed at the wide gate. At the groan of rusty hinges, a huge hound raised his head from a nap on the crumbling stone steps with an inquisitive woof.

"Got no time for games," Charity told the dog. "Hope you don't bite."

"Not at all." The hound yawned to his ears. "But beware the owner. He thinks."

Charity was only moderately surprised. After a monster made out of television, an earthquake and a thrill-packed but exhausting interlude with Dane, a talking dog was not all that new, except he sounded kind of snooty. City people were always putting you down, trying to sell you something or draft your friends. "You got a funny accent. Where you from, doggie?"

"Boston, girlie," said the hound with audible disdain. "I will not comment on your accent. Similes founder, metaphors fail."

"I speak good American."

"And I only English, alas. Yale, '52. Summa cum maxima, Skull and Bones."

"Plattsville High School, class of '85." Charity would not be outdone. "You don't have to be so stuck-up about it. Everybody goes to school." Will you listen to me? she caught herself. I'm arguing with a watchdog. "Anyway, is your owner home?"

"He's not my owner." The hound indulged in a thorough fore-and-aft scratch. "But he's in. What do you want?"

"I guess a cab to town. Somewhere. Maybe get warm first."

"The cab you can get; the warmth comes harder. His name is Jake. With a J."

"I know, I know." Charity grasped the heavy bronze knocker and banged it twice.

"Oh, go on in, it's never locked," the dog told her. "Jake had only a few things he valued and lost them ages ago. Some ideals and a friend." He licked his chops and settled down again into his nap.

Charity had to ask. "How does a hound dog go to college?" One eye opened. "I'm only a dog on duty. Good hours, great for catching up on sleep, which was very difficult for a successful embezzler. Worries, occasional conscience. This is like keeping a lighthouse, not much traffic. So if you don't mind, sayonara." The eye closed.