Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick Read Free Book Online Page A

pleases you.”
    A moment later she returned the cards, smiling her sixteen-year-old hazy smile.
    Observing her youth, her automatic radiance, he said, “‘I feel as old as yonder elm.’”
    “From
Finnegans Wake
,” Kathy said happily. “When the old washerwomen at dusk are merging into trees and rocks.”
    “You’ve read
Finnegans Wake
?” he asked, surprised.
    “I saw the film. Four times. I like Hazeltine; I think he’s the best director alive.”
    “I had him on my show,” Jason said. “Do you want to know what he’s like in real life?”
    “No,” Kathy said.
    “Maybe you ought to know.”
    “No,” she repeated, shaking her head; her voice had risen. “And don’t try to tell me—okay? I’ll believe what I want to believe, and you believe what you believe. All right?”
    “Sure,” he said. He felt sympathetic. The truth, he had often reflected, was overrated as a virtue. In most cases a sympathetic lie did better and more mercifully. Especially between men and women; in fact, whenever a woman was involved.
    This, of course, was not, properly speaking, a woman, but a girl. And therefore, he decided the kind lie was even more of a necessity.
    “He’s a scholar and an artist,” he said.
    “Really?” She regarded him hopefully.
    “Yes.”
    At that she sighed in relief.
    “Then you believe,” he said, pouncing, “that I have met Michael Hazeltine, the finest living film director, as you said yourself. So you do believe that I am a six—” He broke off; that had not been what he intended to say.
    “‘A six,’” Kathy echoed, her brow furrowing, as if she were trying to remember. “I read about them in
Time
. Aren’t they all dead now? Didn’t the government have them all rounded up and shot, after that one, their leader—what was his name?—Teagarden; yes, that’s his name. Willard Tea-garden. He tried to—how do you say it?—pull off a coup against the federal nats? He tried to get them disbanded as an illegal parimutuel—”
    “Paramilitary,” Jason said.
    “You don’t give a damn about what I’m saying.”
    Sincerely, he said, “I sure do.” He waited. The girl did not continue. “Christ,” he spat out. “Finish what you were saying!”
    “I think,” Kathy said at last, “that the
sevens
made the coup not come off.”
    He thought. Sevens. Never in his life had he heard of sevens. Nothing could have shocked him more. Good, he thought, that I let out that lapsus linguae. I have genuinely learned something, now. At last. In this maze of confusion and the half real.
    A small section of wall creaked meagerly open and a cat, black and white and very young, entered the room. At once Kathy gathered him up, her face shining.
    “Dinman’s philosophy,” Jason said. “The mandatory cat.” He was familiar with the viewpoint; he had in fact introduced Dinman to the TV audience on one of his fall specials.
    “No, I just love him,” Kathy said, eyes bright as she carried the cat over to him for his inspection.
    “But you do believe,” he said, as he patted the cat’s little head, “that owning an animal increases a person’s empathic—”
    “Screw that,” Kathy said, clutching the cat to her throat as if she were a five-year-old with its first animal. Its school project: the communal guinea pig. “This is Domenico,” she said.
    “Named after Domenico Scarlatti?” he asked.
    “No, after Domenico’s Market, down the street; we passed it on our way here. When I’m at the Minor Apartment—this room—I shop there. Is Domenico Scarlatti a musician? I think I’ve heard of him.”
    Jason said, “Abraham Lincoln’s high school English teacher.”
    “Oh.” She nodded absently, now rocking the cat back and forth.
    “I’m kidding you,” he said, “and it’s mean. I’m sorry.”
    Kathy gazed up at him earnestly as she clutched her small cat. “I never know the difference,” she murmured.
    “That’s why it’s mean,” Jason said.
    “Why?” she asked.