Jim and the Flims by Rudy Rucker Read Free Book Online Page B

that if I had a major health crisis, some of the people I’d lost touch with would magically appear to comfort me. But that that wasn’t panning out. Nobody at all was visiting me. I didn’t have any relatives left. And my friends were hopeless flakes. As for Dick and Diane, my asshole landlords—surely they’d seen the ambulance taking me away. But they were probably hoping that I’d die or move into a nursing home. Then they could up the rent.
    I was in the hospital for three days, having tests and being observed. When I wasn’t thinking about death, I was obsessing about that strange scene at the crumbling green Victorian house, trying to figure out what it meant. Had it been a warning vision sent from beyond?
    On the second day in the hospital, I asked my nice nurse with the big hips to wheel me to the ward’s walled patio. She wore her skirt full-cut, it swayed enticingly as she walked. The tag on her shirt said her name was Alice.
    I sat on the patio watching the clouds change shapes in the high summer sun. The leaves of a potted palm tree rocked chaotically in the gentle airs, with the fronds clearly outlined against the marbled heavens. It struck me, in a deep kind of way, that the world would keep right on running if I died. An obvious fact, yes, and I knew it in a theoretical way from seeing Val pass away. But, now that it was personal, it seemed horrible.
    â€œI feel like death is stalking me,” I told nurse Alice as she wheeled me back to my room. “My wife died last August. Her name was Val. We thought she was pregnant, but it was cancer.”
    â€œI remember that case,” said Alice after a pause. “I was on duty that day.”
    â€œThey incinerated Val and the baby,” I said, my voice catching. “I never got to say good-bye.”
    â€œThe hospital’s public safety precautions can be a little zealous,” said Alice in a calming tone. “But sometimes it’s for the best.”
    â€œI don’t know what to think anymore,” I said, wanting to prolong our chat. “I feel like anything at all can fall apart. From one moment to the next.”
    â€œYou’re going to be okay, Jim,” said Alice, patting my shoulder. “You’re a strong man. You’re recuperating very fast.”
    By the morning of the third day, they’d decided that my seizures could have been an isolated fluke. I wasn’t very eager to be leave the hospital. I felt safe in there. But they said that I should go home that afternoon and taper off the antiseizure drugs on my own. And we’d see what happened next.
    Lunch came and went as I lay there worrying. And then, just before it was time for me to check out, nurse Alice led a woman into my room.
    â€œShe says she’s your new wife!” said Alice, her kind lips parting in an innocent smile. “I didn’t know.”
    For a crazy instant I thought Alice was bringing the dead Val back to me. But, no, my guest was a tall, well-formed young woman with her curly brown hair in a ponytail. A woman with aged, knowing eyes. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite—
    â€œWeena Wesson?” said the woman. She mimed eating ice cream with a spoon. Of course. The new clerk from Mahalo Gelato. The woman who’d possibly come from the basement of that crumbling Victorian house.
    â€œHow did you know I was here?” I challenged Weena, suspicious and afraid.
    â€œPull yourself together, Mr. Oster,” said nurse Alice reprovingly. “Be glad you have a partner who cares for you.”

6: Weena Wesson

    W eena called a cab and rode with me to my house. I was reasonably glad to have her along. She was, after all, an attractive woman. But...
    â€œWife?” I said.
    â€œI had to say that so they’d let me in,” said Weena. “I’m quite the intriguer.” She gave me a sly look. “Or perhaps you did marry me, but you forgot?”
    I