She came across the room and knelt by his chair. “You have got something even better, darling, you have got a dream,” she said. “And you will make it. I know you will. One day you will be a famous designer, like that guy in the magazine ads, Calvin What’s-His-Name.”
“Calvin Klein,” he said automatically, watching the hippos and the alligators on the television screen, cavorting to The Dance of the Hours. He grinned as a hippo in a pink tutu did a grand jeté.
“Right. Or that Don Karen fellow.”
“It’s Donna. Donna Karen,” Peter said. “He’s a she.”
Grimalkin, their blue point Siamese, padded into the room from the kitchen and rubbed against Teri’s leg. She reached down absent-mindedly to stroke the cat’s fur.
“Okay, Donna,” she said. “The point is, you will be big one day too. I’m sure of it.”
Grimalkin offered a meow of agreement.
“And when I am, will you be happy then?” Peter asked, looking directly at her and momentarily forgetting his movie. “With a dress designer for a husband? You know what everyone will think.”
“Probably the same as what Abner Kravitz next door thinks.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh, that old bigot, who cares? So he thinks that you’re gay? So what? Let him think what he likes, and anybody else, too. We certainly know the truth.” She kissed him tenderly. “Besides, you don’t think I get the same thing all the time? People see me, a woman in a police uniform, the first thing they think is that I’m a dyke. Half the guys on the force are convinced I’m a lesbian. But, hey, I don’t care, I like my job, and I still come home to you every morning, and that’s when the pudding gets proved, as the old saying goes.”
She kissed him again and stood up. “Okay, boy genius, back to the drawing board. There are bad guys out there, and crime on the streets, waiting for me to set things right.” She paused at the door. “But I still think you should take a nap.”
* * * *
He should have taken a nap. Peter realized later that night that Teri had been right after all. It was all he could do to keep his eyes open as he mopped the floors and dusted the counters at Wald-Med Pharmaceuticals. First floor, second floor, then the third. Mop the floors, dust the desks and the counters, empty the wastebaskets, clean the toilets, wash the sinks. The same old thing every night, one corridor after another, one more office, never a break in the unvarying routine.
He hated his job: the forbidding silence, the sterile walls, the antiseptic smell. The fluorescent lights glared over-brightly. By this time of night his hands stung from the strong detergents and his clothes were permeated with the smell of TSP and Pledge, which no amount of laundering could ever entirely eradicate. Sometimes it seemed to him like he smelled them in his dreams.
If only...he resorted once again to his favorite daydream, his great white whale of a future, always looming ahead of him, just out of reach, teasing him. If only he could interest one of the big fashion houses in his design portfolio, he would be out of here in a second. It wasn’t that his designs weren’t any good, either. He knew they were. He sighed.
Why was life always so hard for someone artistic? He thought that things would be a great deal simpler if he were just a mechanic or a plumber.
Yawn. He used his passkey and let himself wearily into the locked research laboratory and glanced at the clock on the wall. It was barely one o’clock in the morning. Almost two more hours to go, he thought dispiritedly and he was nearly finished already. Two hours to kill before he could clock out. Maybe he would find someplace secluded and take that nap after all.
He thought of Teri, and wondered where she was just at that moment. Taking a nap in her cruiser, he hoped, though knowing her, he doubted it. More than once he had contemplated abandoning his dream of becoming a fashion designer and looking for a serious job instead, something that would support the two of them and make it unnecessary for her to remain a policewoman. He wasn’t cut out to be a mechanic, and he knew nothing about plumbing, but he could work in a department store, couldn’t he or—well, there must be plenty of jobs out there, if you weren’t too choosey.
In his heart, though, he knew it would make no difference if he did. Notwithstanding his fears, Teri loved her job as much as he hated this one. On the rare occasions when she had seen some action, chasing a thief down, or breaking up a melee between street punks, she had come home to tell him about it with eyes afire. With her body afire too, all charged up and eager to share her adrenaline rush with him.
Then, at least, as they frantically coupled on the bed, he had nothing to complain about. It was only later that the worrying set in again.
He swiped the mop listlessly across the linoleum floor and took a damp dusting cloth from the pocket of his apron to wipe down the counter. Ho hum.
He was surprised to see the vial and the syringe on the counter. Nothing was ever left out in here, lest the wrong person stumble upon it. The truth was, he had only the vaguest idea of what those two women scientists did here in the research lab at Wald-Med. Even if he had ever found anything before, he would probably have had no clue what it was. He was not scientifically inclined.
There were such things as industrial spies, however, weren’t there? You read about stuff like that in the papers. And there had to be a reason why the laboratory door was always locked. When they had hired him for this job, they had impressed on him the need for security, which had left him with the impression that whatever went on here in the laboratory was top secret.
He debated with himself whether he should leave the vial and the syringe where they were, or try to put them away somewhere? He felt certain his employers would not want anything important just sitting about where anyone could put their hands on it—but he had no idea where to put them.
Creak. Scratch. The noise from behind him made him start. He glanced around guiltily, half expecting to see one of the laboratory scientists glowering accusingly at him—but no, he was still alone in the room, the door firmly closed. He was alone in the entire building, so far as he knew.
He heard it again, the scratching sound. Puzzled, he looked around. There was a row of a dozen wire cages along one wall, all of them covered with fitted sheets. When he had first started on the job, they had told him emphatically to leave the cages alone, and he always had done just that, had never paid any attention to them at all—had ignored them so completely, in fact, that he had nearly forgotten they were even there.
Now, however, he realized that the noises were coming from one of the cages. The noise, and an odd smell, like iodine or...or like spilled blood. That thought popped into his head unbidden. He grimaced and, curious, he gingerly lifted the cover from one of the cages, the one nearest to him, and peered into it.
“Well, hello there,” he said to the cat staring back at him through the bars. “My, you are a big kitty, aren’t you?”
The unkempt cat regarded him solemnly from her cage. She was not just big, in fact, she was enormous, nearly the size of a cocker spaniel; spotted orange and white, like a calico, but her hair was shaggy and unkempt.
She was certainly not a pretty animal but she looked docile enough at the moment and he was fond of cats. He reached a tentative hand through the bars to stroke behind one ear, just where Grimalkin liked to be petted. For a second or two the cat allowed
