Hell's Gate

West. He's been our family doctor for years. He's stopping by tomorrow to look you over, chiefly to find out what happened to you. After he left, I found that your bathroom door-”
        He found it a bit hard to swallow, washed the meat down with juice.
        “What did happen?” she asked, green eyes wide, leaning slightly forward toward him.
        “I'd rather not say just yet. Maybe later. It's hard to believe anyway.”
        He expected a typical female reaction: sly wheedling at first, then cajoling and fencing to get him to spill something, and when that did not work, a bit of conjecture with an attempt to get him to agree or disagree. Maybe some indignation after that, then fury in hopes a woman's anger could break him. But she simply shrugged, smiled and was perfectly willing to forget it- at least outwardly.
        He was thankful for her reaction. How could he have gone about explaining this sort of thing? Lynda, there was a robot here last night. He was sent by a bunch of lizard-things. Intelligent lizard-things, Lynda. He came to kill me. Had a vibrabeam in his finger, for Christ's sake! Lynda, I killed Harold Jacobi.
        “But I can tell you something I found in Harrisburg,” he said.
        She grinned, leaned forward again.
        He went through the story, about the body being a mistake, about Mrs. Dill, about buying art supplies.
        “They came,” she said. “A drafting table and everything. I had them pile it all in the living room because I didn't know where to tell them to put everything. They brought it around two.”
        “In the afternoon? What time is it?”
        “Nine o'clock in the evening,” she said. “You slept all day.”
        One-thirty was just four and a half hours away. He would have to get rid of her before that and plan something for the lizard-things and their robot zombies. Well, he could let her stay another two hours perhaps…
        “Why did you go to all this trouble?” he asked.
        “I guess I'm just the motherly type. I take in lost kittens, tattered dogs, birds with broken wings-”
        “You're fishing.”
        “… and half-crippled men with bloody chests,” she finished, blushing. “I'm sorry. You don't want to talk about it, and I don't want to force you. You know, of course, my curiosity is eating me alive, malting up stories far worse than the truth, most likely. But in your own good time.”
        She was a magnificent woman, far more lovely with her crooked front tooth (which he had just noticed) than a hundred starlets with plasticized lips and artificial mouths behind them. She radiated an earthy sensuality that almost had an odor, a taste, a touch. She carried herself so casually yet coolly. He found that he liked her far more than he had realized; maybe it went beyond a mere liking.
        “How is Henry these days?” he asked.
        The question had the effect of a pile driver coming down on top of her head. Her face grew depressed, then savage. She fisted her little hands, then seemed to grow calmer. “Why do you ask that?”
        He felt instantly crude. It was not the thing to do, dredge up old pains and make a friend relive them. He realized he was beginning to feel possessive towards her and that the question had been spawned by jealousy. “I heard Dr. West mention him just before he put me to sleep.”
        “Let's say I'll tell you later, Vic. That makes us even.”
        “I'm sorry,” he said. “I should have known that was restricted grounds for conversation.”
        “Oh, hell, now it sounds like a 'dark mysterious mess,' which it really isn't at all.”
        “Nice weather we've been having, huh?”
        “I want to tell you,” she said. “Does that make me an emotional bore?”
        “Do you spill your woes to everyone?”
        “You're the first.”
        “Which doesn't mean you're working in an emotional bore pattern.”
        “Why should I want to tell you, though? I mean, I don't really know you. In fact, I disliked you at first. You were cold and uncommunicative. Even when you started being friendly, I thought you seemed sort of-”
        “Yes?”
        “Well, hollow. Like you were pretending to be someone you really weren't.”
        The response shook him considerably, though he thought maybe he concealed his surprise. “Now?”
        “Well, there's still something odd about you. But you seem fuller, more of a person than