Free Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick

I take?
    Cheerful Charley, he thought, told me to look up Heather Hart. And as everybody in TV-land knows, Cheerful Charley is never wrong.
    But will I live long enough, he asked himself, to reach Heather Hart? And if I do reach her and I’m bugged, won’t I simply be carrying my death onto her? Like a mindless plague? And, he thought, if Al Bliss didn’t know me and Bill Wolfer didn’t know me, why should Heather know me? But Heather, he thought, is a six, like myself. The only other six I know. Maybe that will be the difference. If there is any difference.
    He found a public phone booth, entered, shut the door against the noise of traffic, and dropped a gold quinqueo into the slot.
    Heather Hart had several unlisted numbers. Some for business, some for personal friends, one for—to put it bluntly—lovers. He, of course, knew that number, having been to Heather what he had, and still was, he hoped.
    The viewscreen lit up. He made out the changing shapes as indicating that she was taking the call on her carphone.
    “Hi,” Jason said.
    Shading her eyes to make him out, Heather said, “Who the hell are you?” Her green eyes flashed. Her red hair dazzled.
    “Jason.”
    “I don’t know anybody named Jason. How’d you get this number?” Her tone was troubled but also harsh. “Get the hell off my goddamn phone!” she scowled at him from the viewscreen and said, “Who gave you this number? I want his name.”
    Jason said, “You told me the number six months ago. When you first had it installed. Your private of the private lines; right? Isn’t that what you called it?”
    “Who told you that?”
    “You did. We were in Madrid. You were on location and I had me a six-day vacation half a mile from your hotel. You used to drive over in your Rolls quibble about three each afternoon. Right?”
    Heather said in a chattering, staccato tone, “Are you from a magazine?”
    “No,” Jason said. “I’m your number one paramour.”
    “My
what
?”
    “Lover.”
    “Are you a fan? You’re a fan, a goddamn twerp fan. I’ll kill you if you don’t get off my phone.” The sound and image died; Heather had hung up.
    He inserted another quinque into the slot, redialed.
    “The twerp fan again,” Heather said, answering. She seemed more poised, now. Or was it resigned?
    “You have one imitation tooth,” Jason said. “When you’re with one of your lovers you glue it into place in your mouth with a special epoxy cement that you buy at Harney’s. But with me you sometimes take it out, put it in a glass with Dr. Sloom’s denture foam. That’s the denture cleanser you prefer. Because, you always say, it reminds you of the days when Bromo Seltzer was legal and not just black market made in somebody’s basement lab, using all three bromides that Bromo Seltzer discontinued years ago when—”
    “How,” Heather interrupted, “did you get hold of this information?” Her face was stiff—her words brisk and direct. Her tone…he had heard it before. Heather used it with people she detested.
    “Don’t use that ‘I don’t give a fuck’ tone with me,” he said angrily. “Your false tooth is a molar. You call it Andy. Right?”
    “A twerp fan knows all this about me. God. My worst nightmare confirmed. What’s the name of your club and how many fans are there in it and where are you from and how, God damn it, did you get hold of personal details from my private life that you have no right to know in the first place? I mean, what you’re doing is illegal; it’s an invasion of privacy. I’ll have the pols after you if you call me once more.” She reached to hang up the receiver.
    “I’m a six,” Jason said.
    “A what? A six what? You have six legs; is that it? Or more likely six heads.”
    Jason said, “You’re a six, too. That’s what’s kept us together all this time.”
    “I’m going to die,” Heather said, ashen, now; even in the dim light of her quibble he could make out the change of color in her