another. Chained by the real world, man may nonetheless remain
free inside his head, without the world ever finding out. Man is an
adulterer to reality? So be it. Reality has been an unreliable spouse.
Harvey wasn’t much of a dancer, though he was unfortunately
being forced to do a lot of it lately. A week ago with Victoria, and now
here, in front of Cain and Barth, he found himself forced to pirouette
around the truth, straining for a nimbleness that he never had when
dealing with other people. It was a pretty demanding audience, too:
At the moment, they were trying to force him do the splits—betray his
new friends, as well as a backflip—join up with VTV again, all in
exchange for not bringing the curtain down prematurely on the sad
pageant of his life.
Once again, he was tied to a chair, and once again a bunch of
misguided zealots were trying to pick his brain. This time, he decided
that the best defense would be to send his brain on vacation
somewhere nice.
“What are you talking about? I don’t know what you’re talking
about? Who are you? I don’t know you,” Harvey insisted. He was
trying to convince them that he was amnesic.
“Futterman, this is so tiresome,” Barth said. “You don’t have
amnesia. You’re sharp as a tack. The police sent the monkey back,” he
pointed to Spinoza, watching them from a cage on the other side of
the room. “And so we know all about your friends, and we know that
they’ve got the machine now. All we want is the machine. It’s our
property, after all. Of course I won’t hurt them, nor yourself.
However, I can’t be responsible for Cain. He’s a monster.”
Cain snarled and grit his teeth. He enjoyed playing the “bad cop”
to Barth’s “good cop,” even though Barth was clearly more of a
monster than he was. Cain bore an unfortunate resemblance,
particularly for a henchman, to Truman Capote, but this
disadvantage was more than made up for by a bad attitude, a black
belt in Judo, and elevator shoes.
“I’m sorry,” Harvey said innocently, doing his best not to use any
big words, “They tell me that a stress problem has caused me to block
out all my memories. There is nothing I can tell you. Would you like
some gum? I like ice cream. Do you know the way to grandmother’s
house?”
Without warning, Cain hit Harvey square in the nose. This
caused Harvey, and the chair it was tied to, to fall backwards and
come crashing to the floor.
H O L Y S H I T !
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