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“Marilyn,” Norman said, thinking of Marilyn Chambers, who for years had been his favorite porn star. His second favorite was Amber Ly
“Ahoy for terror, matey!” the robot ship’s captain called over and over again in his mechanical drone of a voice. No, he didn’t want to attract the wrong sort of attention… and here he was, doing precisely that.
“Hey baldy! You in the wheelchair!” People turning to look at him. One was a fat black bitch in a red jumper who looked about half as bright as The Base Camp clerk with the harelip. She also looked vaguely familiar, but Norman dismissed that as plain paranoia-he didn’t know anyone in this city. She turned and walked on, clutching a bag the size of a briefcase, but plenty of other people were still looking. Norman’s crotch suddenly felt humid with sweat.
“Hey, man, come back here! You gave me too much!” For a moment the sense of this didn’t come through to him-it was like something spoken in a foreign language. Then he understood, and an enormous sense of relief-mingled with feelings of disgust at his own stupidity-washed over him. Of course he had given the guy in the booth too much. He had forgotten he was not an Adult Male but a Handicapped Person.
He pivoted and wheeled back to the booth. The guy leaning out of it was fat, and he looked as disgusted with Norman as Norman felt with himself. He was holding out a five-dollar bill. “seven bucks handicap, can’tcha read?” he asked Norman, first pointing at the sign on the booth with the bill and then shoving it in Norman’s face. Norman entertained a brief vision of jamming the fivespot into the fat fuck’s left eye, then took it and stuffed it into one of his jacket’s many pockets. “sorry,” he said humbly.
“Yeah, yeah,” the man in the booth said, and turned away. Norman began wheeling himself into the park again, his heart pounding. He had carefully constructed a character… made simple but adequate plans to accomplish his aims… and then, at the outset,had done something not just stupid but incredibly stupid. What was happening to him? He didn’t know, but from this point on he was going to have to work around it.