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"What thing?"
"Nothing you can't live with." She picked the coal off the cigarette and swallowed it live. The rest she dropped on the floor. "Call my secretary, and we'll set up a date."
Galiagante was impatient to go. They followed him down the blind gut of yet another kinked set of stairs. A broomstick jammed between the walls shunted them aside and into a room lined with glass booths from which houris in hot pink bikinis and chrome-studded leather harnesses beckoned. It came to Jane suddenly that the Goblin Market might well have no end. There might be an infinite number of windowless rooms and orgy pits beneath the City, all redolent with incense and ammonia, charged with overamplified rap music, and tended by uncountable dawdling lowlifes. She was hopelessly lost, hopelessly tired, and hopelessly bored. She stifled a yawn.
"Fata Jayne doesn't seem to be enjoying herself," the one who was probably Floristan observed.
"I'm all right."
"Perhaps our pleasures are too refined for her," said maybe-Esplandian.
"Why don't we go to a place Jayne would like?"
"If there is such a place."
The lesser elves advanced on Jane, eyes glowing spitefully behind their masks. Backing away from them, she suddenly panicked, whirled, and discovered herself standing before an archway. Over the glass doors, surrounded by blinking lights, was a sign:
RUN WITH THE APES OF HELL
* Dreams Realized * Addictive Drugs *
* Disgusting Fantasies *
"I think," Galiagante said, "that we can provide Jayne with what she wants." He held open a door. "In here."
"Yes, certainly, delightful, oh yes." They sat in the anteroom on chintz chairs, listening to a fat, hairless old goblin run through his spiel. He bobbed and bowed restlessly, rubbing his hands together. "Oh, we know," he said. "We know what you want, before you do. Secret things, private things, revolting things that you would never admit to another. True love, enemas, eight yards of old lace turned brittle and brown with age. Your heart's desire." He leered at Galiagante. "Fishhooks. Other things."
Galiagante produced a mass of bank notes. "Serve her." The goblin bounced toward him, hands extended. But Fata Incolore intercepted the wad. She counted out half, and folded the rest back into Galiagante's jacket pocket. "If we're going to be business partners," she said, "we must first institute some financial accountability."
He looked at her with new interest. "Are we going to be business partners, then?"
"Wait and see."
"In through here." The goblin put his hand on an undistinguished-looking door. "Filthy nasty, very nice, oh my yes."
Jane hesitated. She was loath to enter. There was something fearsome inside. She could feel it. Something she knew she would forever regret seeing.
"You're afraid?" Jouissante said.
The two words hung in the air, a challenge.
"No, of course not." Jane went through the door, pulling it firmly shut behind her. Be damned if she was going to let the others see this, whatever it was.
She entered a room the size of a basketball court, and empty. Half a dozen dwarves sat on the floor in one corner, huddled about a portable television set. At her entry, they snapped it off and scattered through several doors. Two returned, wheeling in an old hand-cranked console record player. A third hurried after them with a wax cylinder. He snapped it in, spun the crank, and lowered the needle.
Scratchy waltz music came on.
Ladders slammed up against the walls. Strings of crepe-paper bells were stretched across the hall with dazzling speed. There was a clatter on the stairs as the remaining three dwarves returned.
They led in the Baldwy
The Baldwy
I'm not afraid, Jane told herself. I won't be afraid.
The Baldwy
He looked directly at Jane.
Gri
Then they were dancing. The ti
At first Jane stared fixedly at the Baldwy
A spark of something glimmered briefly there. His lips trembled, as if he were trying to remember how to perform some long-forgotten task with them. Once. Twice.
The third time was the charm. Slowly he puckered his lips, like a little girl begging for a kiss. He released them with a faint tchk noise.
Jane shook her head. "No."
Again his lips puckered. He moved his head down toward hers. She could smell his breath, maggoty and sweet. Life came to his hands. His fingers plucked feebly at her.
"No!" Jane pushed back against the Baldwy
He poked out his tongue and pushed it into her mouth. It entered her like a key gliding into a lock.
She opened at its touch.
At the prodding of his tongue, everything changed. The ballroom, dwarves, even the Baldwy
"Jane?"
She did not turn. She was staring at the window, mesmerized by the horrible thing there. The panes were streaked and filthy, and there were the blown husks of dead houseflies on the sill. The paint on the wood was white and chalky and broke away in sharp flakes if you pushed down on it hard enough with your thumb. Doing that pricked the flesh hard enough to hurt, but never enough to draw blood.
But none of that was the horrible thing.
"I brought you some nice fruit," Sylvia said. "Apples and bananas. And a carton of Salem Menthols, hundreds this time, just like you like. I gave them to the nurse at the station, and I wish there was some way you could tell me how many you actually smoke. I'm sure she's been stealing some."
The sky was low, but it didn't look like it was going to rain. It looked like it was going to stay gray and overcast forever. The view was ugly here, though it was not supposed to be. The rolling grounds existed only to be mowed, every other day it seemed, cropped so close that from up here the dirt could be seen through the stubble. They were afraid, she supposed, lest a blade of grass might briefly rise up and grow freely. To Jane, the lawn was the perfect symbol of oppression. But that wasn't the horrible thing either.
"Sit down on the edge of the bed and I'll do your hair."
Jane turned then to face her mother. How worn Sylvia looked, how unhappy, how old. She had that brave little look she always wore on entering, that reassuring everything-is-okay smile that was more then contradicted by the weary misery of her eyes.