Free Aqua Domination by William Doughty Page B

convincing as when she herself pretended to be innocent and harmless.
    ‘Oh, you’re interested in them.’
    ‘All right, I am. You can always see through me.’
    ‘You’re so depressed that you’re underground, David. You’re burrowing towards the Earth’s core. Introducing two innocent girls to the insanity of your bathroom is just the sort of thing that could help you feel better. It’ll be a good project.’
    ‘A project!’ David exclaimed, and had a fit of coughing. ‘Forget it,’ he told her when he had recovered. ‘It’s hopeless. It’s immoral and insane.’ He pretended to read an Alfred Bester anthology for thirty seconds. ‘Your plan doesn’t even make any sense,’ he burst out, putting his paperback down carefully, as it was a mint 1968 edition. ‘Why should we need a house-sitter if we’re only going away for a couple of days?’
    ‘We need them to look after our cat.’
    ‘There is no “we” so there is no “our”, don’t forget that, Mary. Most of all, there is no bloody cat. We are extremely catless.’
    ‘Ha! You said “we” too! Gotcha.’
    ‘Oh, shut up,’ David snarled, but he could not help feeling intrigued by Mary’s plan. She could hear it in the tone of his snarls. ‘You’re the most annoying woman I’ve ever met.’
    ‘Good. That means you’ll remember me when you’ve forgotten the others. We can easily get a cat for Carol and Faye to take care of. I love cats. I’ll take good care of the cat all its life.’
    ‘You’re nuts. You’ve really lost it,’ said David. He finished his ice cream and peaches in an angry way that made Mary smile. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘You’re right, Mary. It’s an interesting idea. Will they or won’t they do anything in the bathroom? I have to know.’
    ‘Well done,’ Mary told him. ‘You haven’t completely lost your guts and your balls after all. You just mislaid them for a while.’
    ‘Oh, shut up.’
    ‘Well, I’ll be going home now. I don’t have to worry about you now that you have a project.’ Mary was bluffing. If David called her bluff, she would fall back on plan B, which was to vomit, weep and throw herself at his feet.
    ‘No, now you have to stay a couple of days,’ David said with reluctant firmness. ‘I can’t lie to those poor girls like you can. Anyway, it’s not fun unless you see it through with me. But after we watch the tapes together you’ll leave.’
    Mary did the washing-up, and David went into the shed to work on a piece of furniture, or perhaps to try and reanimate a dead body like Frankenstein, for all Mary knew. She decided to tackle the house seriously. First she finished cleaning up the kitchen, then she set the living room to rights. After that she went into the bathroom and divided David’s collection into two piles. She cleaned and polished all the items in one pile, but the other pile she placed in garbage bags for disposal, feeling these pieces were too far gone, with perished rubber, tarnished metal and discoloured or warped plastic. Handling these familiar items made her wet. Lastly she cleaned the water bed thoroughly and refilled it. Now the bathroom truly was as she remembered it, as it should be.
    Feeling good, she made dinner, then told David he could come and eat if he liked.
    ‘You spoil me, Mary,’ David said as they ate the meal together. ‘I don’t deserve it.’
    ‘I know you don’t,’ Mary agreed sincerely. ‘I’ve sorted out some of the stuff from the bathroom to throw away, stuff in bad condition. So Carol and Faye will only see things that look nice.’
    ‘Good idea,’ David agreed. He hesitated, then asked, a little sheepishly: ‘Is there still plenty of stuff left?’
    ‘Yes, don’t worry,’ said Mary. ‘Anyway, we – I mean “you”, as there is no “we” – you can always replace it.’
    ‘I’m like a cocaine addict, trying to give it up, then trying to find some cocaine I imagine I might have dropped on the carpet last