Chapter Nineteen: Back on the Chain Gang
The day disappeared into its end, vanished like no other day had in his memory. Felix felt like he had only just sat down when lunch came and again, when the screen zeroed out at the end of the day he could hardly remember even being there. It was a little worrisome, almost as if he had left things undone. He knew he had been at his BioWatch station physically but in his mind he was walking in the garden or in bed with Veronica. Over and over he imagined their love making, displacing it now from their bedroom to the meadow or the lake where the smell and texture of their skin became alive. Work was like a scene superimposed on a window, he could look and feel beyond it to an erotic paradise so real it rendered insignificant the ordeal of the job.
He gazed out the windows of the Amphibatrains at the falling darkness and followed the ferries as they plied the river and the many work and pleasure boats. A harsh rain erupted now and again and high wind buffeted the cars when they separated.
At Les Jardeen he ordered his usual and read the paper while Peter tended to the other regulars. Paregane and its manufacturer, Monozone, were all over the news and he took a particular interest in it. Monozone stock, even after a split, was pushing the 200 mark and it looked like it was sure to challenge Genetel for a council seat. Enthusiasm for approving Paregane for over-the-counter sales in this country was tempered however by the Chinese experience. People there were beginning to spend days and weeks in Lucky Day parlors, flop houses with dark cafes. Users would doze and talk on bamboo mats and then retire, alone, to rooms upstairs to sleep away the time in paradise. Police in Shanghai, at the behest of the Yangtze Industrial Group, attempted to shut down several establishments and sparked three days of rioting that left two thousand people dead in the street. There were also reports that people were dying mysteriously but these reports were dismissed by Paregane spokesman Owen Bradlee as unfounded and absurd. There was no clinical evidence of Paregane causing death or having any other dangerous side effect.
Peter set down Felix’s Gulag martini and looked at the cheap, grey hemp sheets of paper spread out on the zinc top bar. “Isn’t that the drug your wife takes?” he asked.
Felix looked around and said, quietly, “Yes, and I’ve taken it too.”
“Really?” Peter expressed uncharacteristic curiosity.
“I can see why they’d riot.”
“I’ve heard of others, in the city who use it. A lot of actors. Someone said they opened one of those Lucky Day parlors might open in midtown.”
“They oughta put it in the water.” Felix drank his drink down and ate an olive. “Well, that’ll be all for tonight, Peter.”
“It’s kind of early, isn’t it Mr. Clay?”
Felix smiled mischievously. “Veronica and I are back in the saddle.”
As he walked down the composite steps into his living room the sweet smell of fish baked with lemon and butter filled his nostrils. How warm, how delicious it was to come in from a needling rain and thunderclouds, a hot windy night smelling of rotten shoreline and burning tires, and the tall, transgenic pines sawing the orange sky, and into a room steamy with real food. Veronica was in her house clothes, a loose, blue, short sleeved cotton top and white silk boxer shorts that clung to her thighs as she moved. He took off his wet rain clothes and greeted her with a kiss. Then he put on his red sparkle boxer shorts and a white tank top and came upstairs to watch her work. She pulled the small roasting pan out of the oven and basted the fish with butter. Then she emptied the salad bag into two bowls and opened the bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.
She washed her hands, wiped them on a towel and hugged him. It was almost more than he could bear, touching her swelling ass through the smooth fabric of the shorts; it made his nipples pucker and tingle. They sat down and ate avidly, in silence.
After dinner they sat in bed watching The Rise of Ivan the Terrible. Inhabitants of the planet Zorg have revived Ivan the Terrible from a DNA sample sent out into space by the Russians, centuries before, and which has just reached them. Ivan has a long white beard and bulging eyes–the moviemakers have captured his image from the Sergei Eisenstein classic. He wears a wizard hat. One by one he murders the leaders of Zorg and takes over the whole planet, plunging a modern society into dark age barbarity. Horrified at these events, the president of Earth, a Russian, sends an expeditionary force to relieve Zorg but they are lost in space, never to be heard of again. Part 1 ends with the people of Zorg suffering unimaginable tortures–. But long before this Felix and Veronica had drifted off into an almost desperate sexual hinterland where neither could tell anymore what was happening, she played with his tits and fucked him in the mouth. His cunt rang through all the next day till it was night and he paid her back.
