Health Agent

Author:Jeffrey Thomas
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press
Published: 2009-07-19T16:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

The second time, three days later, she had considerably healed; in fact, the scars were completely gone, unless it was just the light. Maybe he’d been wrong about her. A surgery she’d recovered from? Was she a Choom? He wondered what Midge would look like after such surgery, but only briefly…he was too taken with the scarred woman. The more so now that he’d seen her again.

She wore a black leather jacket, a black sweater and a black miniskirt revealing long, slim, black-nyloned legs ending in black high heels. She had a coffee and a cigarette in her hands and a woman was with her, older and not beautiful so he barely took her in. There were too many customers to attend for him to stare at her; he took quick bites. When a train docked and he turned from a customer to see her climbing up into it he felt irritated, resentful of his impotence inside his circular cell. He hadn’t noticed them before but now he saw two Stems board the train. Did they work around here now? It was about the same time of night that he’d seen her the last time, but funny he should see both her and the Stems again at the same time on the same night after three days.

Well, he wouldn’t totally despair. He’d seen her twice in four days; he was fairly certain he would see her again. And as the night closed, and in the next few days, other enticing creatures materialized to distract him, tantalize him, so that by the time six days had passed from the first time he had seen her he had largely forgotten the woman. Largely.

Business was good, as usual on a Sunday night around this time, hard to keep up with. He juggled customers in the circle around him, saw a businessman type strolling away casually reading a paper he’d lifted. “Hey,” Monty said over the heads of other customers but he went unheard or else ignored. He wondered how smug that man would feel if they were the only two people down here and Monty vaulted over the counter as he wanted to now, just to show that he wasn’t impotent…to prove it as much to himself as to the man. But he didn’t; he let it go.

At last the flood began to recede and he was coming up for air.

“Who do you like better, Dora Deering or Topaz?”

“Huh?” Monty turned around behind him.

Here she was before him, her eyes on him and she was smiling, tapping with a finger the magazine he’d left open on the counter. A flash of embarrassment, as if he’d been caught jerking off to his Dora Deering poster. But a greater flash through him of shock. The scars curving from the corners of her mouth to her ears were distinct pinkish creases in her soft pale flesh. He wouldn’t have reacted this strongly to them, stared so blatantly, except that—light or no—he could have sworn that three days ago the scars had been gone.

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