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

Leaving it to everyone else to pick up the sweltering moons.”
    Raising her head she confronted him and said, “Have I hurt you? I saved you from the pols; that’s what I did for you. Was that the wrong thing to do? Was it?” Her voice increased in volume; she started at him pitilessly, unblinkingly, still holding her forkful of spaghetti.
    He sighed. It was hopeless. “No,” he said, “it wasn’t the wrong thing to do. Thanks. I appreciate it.” And, as he said it, he felt unwavering hatred toward her. For enmeshing him this way. One puny nineteen-year-old ordinary, netting a full-grown six like this—it was so improbable that it seemed absurd; he felt on one level like laughing. But on the other levels he did not.
    “Are you responding to my warmth?” she inquired.
    “Yes.”
    “You do feel my love reaching out to you, don’t you? Listen. You can almost hear it.” She listened intently. “My love is growing, and it’s a tender vine.”
    Jason signaled the waiter. “What have you got here?” he asked the waiter brusquely. “Just beer and wine?”
    “And pot, sir. The best-grade Acapulco Gold. And hash, grade A.”
    “But no hard liquor.”
    “No, sir.”
    Gesturing, he dismissed the waiter.
    “You treated him like a servant,” Kathy said.
    “Yeah,” he said, and groaned aloud. He shut his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. Might as well go the whole way now; he had managed, after all, to inflame her ire. “He’s a lousy waiter,” he said, “and this is a lousy restaurant. Let’s get out of here.”
    Kathy said bitterly, “So that’s what it means to be a celebrity. I understand.” She quietly put down her fork.
    “What do you think you understand?” he said, letting it all hang out; his conciliatory role was gone for good now. Never to be gotten back. He rose to his feet, reached for his coat. “I’m leaving,” he told her. And put on his coat.
    “Oh, God,” Kathy said, shutting her eyes; her mouth, bent out of shape, hung open. “Oh, God. No. What have you done? Do you know what you’ve done? Do you understand fully? Do you grasp it at all?” And then, eyes shut, fists clenched, she ducked her head and began to scream. He had never heard screams like it before, and he stood paralyzed as the sound—and the sight of her constricted, broken face—dinned at him, numbing him. These are psychotic screams, he said to himself. From the racial unconscious. Not from a person but from a deeper level; from a collective entity.
    Knowing that did not help.
    The owner and two waiters hustled over, still clutching menus; Jason saw and marked details, oddly; it seemed as if everything, at her screams, had frozen over. Become fixed. Customers raising forks, lowering spoons, chewing…everything stopped and there remained only the terrible, ugly noise.
    And she was saying words. Crude words, as if read off some back fence. Short, destructive words that tore at everyone in the restaurant, including himself. Especially himself.
    The owner, his mustache twitching, nodded to the two waiters, and they lifted Kathy bodily from her chair; they raised her by her shoulders, held her, then, at the owner’s curt nod, dragged her from the booth, across the restaurant and out onto the street.
    He paid the bill, hurried after them.
    At the entrance, however, the owner stopped him. Holding out his hand. “Three hundred dollars,” the owner said.
    “For what?” he demanded. “For dragging her outside?”
    The owner said, “For not calling the pols.”
    Grimly, he paid.
    The waiters had set her down on the pavement, at the curb’s edge. She sat silent now, fingers pressed to her eyes, rocking back and forth, her mouth making soundless images. The waiters surveyed her, apparently essaying whether or not she would make any more trouble, and then, their joint decision made, they hurried back into the restaurant. Leaving him and Kathy there on the sidewalk, under the red-and-white neon sign,