Chapter 21- Bribes

"Let's get down to brass tacks. Why is it that you want to get your semen checked? Because nine times out of ten the reason why answers what the problem is," Doctor Crawford bluntly asked Richard.

Doctor Crawford's office was about a quarter of the size of Doctor Ashland's and as such Richard was sitting right next to the wall. Crawford didn't have a desk as much as he had a small writing table and behind him a bookshelf crammed with battered books and messy piles of paper crammed in between the books. There was also the heavy smell of disinfectant in the air and a cabinet stuffed full of frightening-looking medical implements on the wall.

"It glows, that's why," Richard answered just as succinctly.

Crawford frowned. "Glows?" he skeptically repeated.

It was an effortless task in the small office to flick the light switch off. "Like this," Richard said, demonstrating the yellowish hue of his eyes in the dark.

"Bugger me! What'd you do, eat a rod of uranium?"

Richard flipped the light back on. His eyes scared people. Rollie had been visibly shaken when he showed him and the less said about Dorothy the better. "I was told that if I got a sea slug implanted in me it'd cure my bad leg. Which it did, but this was a side effect I was not warned of. And my semen also has this glow."

Crawford leaned back in his chair. "Who recommended this surgery to you?"

"Doctor Ashland. Do you know him?"

Crawford nodded. "Looks like Fontaine got to him. They approached me as well but I told them no, no I wasn't going to push some bizarre new surgery on my patients. I got standards, not like those hypocrites in the Medical Pavilion."

Despite this new and alarming development Richard couldn't help but remember what Lupe had told him about Crawford. "I heard you got thrown out of the Medical Pavilion for misconduct, what are they doing that makes them worse than that?"

Crawford made a dismissing motion with his hand. "Listen, I never hurt anyone. I just…like my pictures, alright? And they never cared about them until it was one of their own wives. But I'd never hurt them ladies, not in the way Fontaine wanted me to, not to the point of exposing them to genetic ruin. Representatives from Fontaine came to me and explained the whole shebang, but it's a bad egg, all of it, and I told em I wasn't interested no matter how much money they threw at me. What do you know about genetics?"

Richard shrugged. "Not a thing."

"In layman's terms it's the blueprints inside your body that make you look and work the way you do. It says to make your hair blond and your skin white and so on. What was wrong with your leg? Polio?"

"I got shot in the war."

"Ah, so the ADAM, that's what they call the discharge of the slug, that tells your body to fix itself. I presume the surgery worked so that would mean that it told the cells in your body to put your body back together the way it was originally supposed to be. I don't pretend to know exactly how it does it, I don't think anyone knows, but somehow or the other Fontaine's people figured this out. They want lots and lots of this ADAM and I'd reckon only the Devil himself knows what they're planning on doing with it," Crawford explained.

Richard failed to see exactly why Crawford had such a serious issue with the ADAM or the genetics or whatever it was exactly. "So what's the problem? Why did you refuse them?"

"Because they don't understand it. It's a resource for them to exploit, not a scientific discovery. And yes, it's amazing, it can fix serious problems. But something that powerful needs to be tested and studied for years. You're familiar with radiation?"

Richard nodded. He had kept up with the research following the horrible bombs.

"Well that's a powerful tool in treating cancer but it also gives you cancer. You see what I mean?"

Richard gut twisted, completely unrelated to the slug. "I'm going to get cancer?"

Crawford sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know. It's unchecked cellar growth, which is what the ADAM is stimulating in you. But then again, if the ADAM orders your body to fix itself, perhaps the constant supply you have from the slug will prevent that from happening. The point is I don't know. No one knows. Normally we'd research this for years, test it on dogs or sheep, but as far as I know they found this slug not even six months ago."

Richard was silent while digesting Crawford's words. I should have never done this. I should have stayed the way I was. I should have stayed on the surface, his mind treaded down the same worn and familiar pathways of regret. But a newfound rush of vitality spoke up and it's siren call of hope was irresistible. There's no going back. I've got to make the best of this. I could grow a tumor in my heart overnight and die tomorrow. Or I could live a thousand years. One thing is for sure I'm not going to waste any more time than I have to in this dingy office with this admitted pervert.

"Does this answer your question about what's wrong with my semen? Or is this the one time out of ten you'll have to run some tests."

Crawford considered Richard's question thoughtfully. "I can't imagine it's viable anymore. Sperm are very delicate critters and are the essence of your genetic information. The ADAM has scrambled your genetic eggs but you're not going to get any omelets out of it."

Richard furrowed his brow. "You're saying I'm sterile?"

"I'm guessing Ashland didn't warn you of that possibility? It's not a far leap to make in theory. But if he had told you you'd probably wouldn't have gotten the surgery and then he wouldn't have gotten the payday from Fontaine about it."

So Ashland's double dipping on my surgery. Richard unconsciously started to fidget with the switchblade he now kept in his pocket. "Can you check? Also, is it poisonous?"

"Poisonous? To you?"

The man's a pervert, just ask him. "If my girlfriend swallows it is she going to have any negative effects?"

To his credit, Crawford didn't chuckle or wink at this question and instead treated it as a regular medical inquiry. "ADAM isn't effective when swallowed, that's one of the issues with commercializing it. It needs to be in the blood stream. I wouldn't let it get in the way of a good time. Same thing with ejaculating inside. The mucus membranes inside the vagina are pretty good at keeping out pathogens."

"Can you check?"

Crawford shrugged. "There's not a standard panel to check for poisonous semen, but, well, there's also not any precedent for men to have glowing eyes and slugs in their stomachs. I'll do what I can." Crawford opened a cabinet to his left and after noisy scrounging around found a small specimen jar that had obviously been used many times, judging by the crossed out and reapplied labels pasted to it. "There's a bathroom down the hall, but you gotta be quick cause the other offices use it as well."

Richard could be quick. Despite the decidedly unromantic surroundings of a hastily constructed bathroom with a constantly running toilet and a grubby towel he mechanically and dispassionately provided the requested sample. The faint glow of it in the dimly lit hallway back to the office no longer generated the fear it had previously. At least I'm probably sterile. The last thing I'd want to do is try to raise a child in this dark and dreary place.

Crawford told him it'd be a few hours so Richard decided to investigate Pirithous Court. Now that he didn't have a pressing quest it was more interesting to poke around the narrow streets. He found a store that sold their own turrets and the shoddy wiring and haphazard welding angered him. Dangerous, one misplaced spark and all the rounds will ignite. But it was pushed from his mind at the next shop, which sold the most shocking pornography that he'd ever seen. Oh, it would appear that I am not the first person to think about tying a woman up. Richard purchased a photobook and was relieved to see that they had at least had the decency to put it in a brown paper sack.

It was right after he stepped in a pile of vomit that he decided it was time to go home to Adranos Place. The novelty of slumming it had worn off and he was eager to not smell warm garbage or fetid sewage every couple of yards or so. It did not escape his notice that there were far more people in Pirithous Court than there were in Adranos Place by a factor of at least ten. The unfortunate outnumber us. If they so chose to do so they could overthrow us like the Russians did. Or the Chinese. Or the French. Richard suddenly felt very claustrophobic. He'd had the foresight to not dress to the nines but everything he owned was just flat out nicer than everyone in Pirithous Court.

Crawford was with another patient when he returned to the office. Richard didn't try to eavesdrop but it was hard to not overhear the conversation through the wafer-thin walls. The man had a kidney stone, and it was not going to be pleasant trying to get it out. Crawford had some painkillers he could offer him, but aside from that there was not much else to do but wait.

"Ah, you're back, good," Crawford said as he saw the afflicted man out. Crawford had no receptionist. "Well the good news is your jimmies aren't radioactive, I ran a Geiger counter over it," he said so loudly Richard was certain the kidney stone man heard it.

Richard hurried into the office. "What's the bad news?" Richard asked and shut the door behind it.

"Your sperm is mutated to all hell. I thought this would happen which is why I turned down Fontaine's men. I suspect every cell in your body has had some level of mutation due to the constant exposure to ADAM. Your boys are a mess: multiple tails, no tails, split bodies, abnormal shapes. It'd say you have about a one in a hundred thousand chance of successfully impregnating a woman."

Richard shrugged. "I'm very much okay with that." I do wish Ashford would have told me, I know for a fact those bastards checked my sperm at the Medical Pavilion. The urge to finger his switchblade came back but he suppressed it. I'd get caught.

"As for possible toxicity, I'd say you're fine. I ran the standard screens plus anything else I could think of. It isn't going to hurt your special gal."

Richard sighed, relieved. He had had a rather devious idea while on his walkabout earlier, however. "How much would it run me if you sent a letter to my house saying that my semen was very poisonous and that it should be avoided at all costs? And you wrote on the envelope something like, oh, 'confidential medical information' in all red letters?"

Crawford was obviously baffled by this request but didn't ask questions. "In addition to my fee, let's say, oh, a hundred?"

Richard's experience that day in Pirithous Court had hardened him somewhat and he now smiled at the exorbitant amount. "Fifty," he counter-offered.

Crawford pulled an envelope from his desk. "Lucky for you I still have a whole stack of my old stationery from the Medical Pavilion. Is that official enough for you?"

Richard nodded and gave him his address. Mail delivery in Rapture was speedy due to the pneumatic tubes and with any luck, Dorothy would stick her nose into the letter before he even got home that evening.

Would you kindly imagine a page break here?

"How much money do you have?"

Lupe looked up in confusion. She had been in the process of soaking the bed sheets in a starch solution when Dorothy had barged into the laundry room. "I-what?"

Dorothy rolled her eyes and sighed. "It's a simple question." She's got more between her legs than her ears, that's for sure.

"In total? Around one hundred dollars. I had some old debts I needed to pay off and-" "I do not care about your debts. And that's not going to be enough."

Lupe stood up and wiped her hands on a towel. Every movement she made infuriated Dorothy beyond words. "Why do you want money from me?"

Dorothy laughed shortly. "I don't need anything from you."

"You need me to clean up after you, for one, and make your food, and-"

"Sleep with my husband, yes, I know," Dorothy finished before she had the chance to taunt her with that.

"I was going to say run your errands, but that works too." The hint of a shadow of a smile that played on Lupe's face made Dorothy want to hold her head in the basin of starchy water until it filled her whore lungs. But servants had a brute-like strength to them and she'd probably be able to fend her off. "You need a dress for the casino party, remember?"

"Yes, I was going to go shopping next week," Lupe slowly said, her little whore eyes narrowing in suspicion. "Why is this your concern?"

"Everything in this house is my concern, yourself included. And you've made yourself the center of gossip by getting arrested a few days ago. Every luncheon and high tea and brunch and afternoon tea has been dominated by conversation about my foolish, foolish husband bailing you out of the police station and damn near holding hands with you on the walk back home."

"It wasn't like that," Lupe protested. "I was freezing, he just gave me his jacket, that was all."

"That was more than enough. I've been doing what I can, trying to mitigate this disaster." Dorothy sighed heavily. Her strategy had been to not deny what had happened, that would have been foolish, but to act as if it was perfectly fine and that she had been worried about Lupe as well. Even more worried than Richard. Because they were good friends now. Well, not friends, but on good terms. They got on. They chatted.

"What does any of this have to do with how much money I have?" Lupe impatiently asked and pulled the sheets from the basin.

Such an impudent whore. I wish I could give her a good thrashing, that'd cure her smart mouth. "We are going shopping today in Fort Frolic. Together. As friends. Or something."

"I can't afford anything there," Lupe answered. "I'll go shopping with you if you wish, but I'm going to get a dress in Little Eden Plaza."

"Listen here you sass mouthed slut, I am buying you a dress, but it has to look like your own money because I told people we pay you apparently far better than we do," Dorothy impatiently spat out, begrudging every word. "You finish up your whore chores and get dressed in a nice outfit and we are going to Fort Frolic. Is that clear enough for you?"

Lupe nodded and went back to the sheets. Dorothy stomped off to her dressing room and smoked several cigarettes before she felt recovered enough to change out of her house dress and into something more appropriate for the public. She chose an olive green two-piece set with a black silk blouse under it and her everyday pearls to wear with it.

Lupe was waiting for Dorothy at the front door. She was wearing an out-of-style bright red day dress with a modest cut. It would be suitable so Dorothy didn't harangue her about her dress as she had been planning on. "Don't wear your coat, it's too old and I don't want people thinking we don't pay you enough."

"Then pay me more," Lupe unbelievably talked back to her. "It's cold in Rapture."

Dorothy slapped Lupe's hand away as she reached for the door. "For goodness sake, I'll buy you a new one too."

Lupe stuck her feet out. "And these Mrs. Stone? Do my shoes please you, mistress?" Dorothy wasn't going to rise to her insolent bait. "They are horrendous and I would personally rather go barefoot." Truthfully her shoes were fine, if not plain and boring.

"And my bag? Is it not the latest style?"

Dorothy performatively did not reply to Lupe's sarcastic query. She's got that annoying way of making it sound like a real question. No wonder she's been able to trick Richard into sleeping with her after he finishes with his needs. Tricky little slut.

Dorothy noticed that Lupe studiously kept out of arms' length of her when they were waiting for the train. I wouldn't kill you here, not in public. Throwing you in front of a train, my word, they'd talk about that for years. And I'd probably go to prison despite it being completely justified. Dorothy had put her desire to kill Lupe and possibly Richard on the back burner for now as she couldn't think of a way to do it that didn't make her an obvious suspect.

This was especially true after the catastrophe with Richard with his arm around her on the way back from the police station. Oh, my friends would love to see me dragged into a courtroom and accused of murder. The papers would gleefully print any and all rumors and make up their own and by the time they'd be done I'd somehow be the villain in all this and they'd make Lupe into a victim. Dorothy would never give them the satisfaction of that entertainment.

Dorothy made sure the compartment door was shut and no one was eavesdropping before speaking to Lupe. "I am going to look for shops that have people I know in them, so you don't get to choose where we go. This is for show. You're getting nothing unless one of my friends is around to see."

Lupe pursed her lips. "Why are you friends with these people?"

Dorothy scoffed. "And who should I be friends with? My social inferiors? Drunkards or dope fiends or whores like yourself?"

Lupe shrugged. "People who don't actively make your life worse would be a good place to start."

Stupid slut who doesn't understand anything about my life, trying to give me advice. "I do not care about your opinions on anything. If you wish to continue the truce in our home you will do what I say. I can make life very unpleasant for you and you can't hide behind my husband forever."

Lupe didn't reply right away. "Regardless of why, I do thank you for the new dress. I haven't had anything new in years."

Lupe's sneaky, tricky, deceptive, lying, whore's voice was like a slap to Dorothy's face. "I do not want to talk to you," Dorothy curtly said. "Keep your mouth shut until I speak to you. And my goodness, you'd better behave. No sass or backtalk or any of those little comments you like to make and if my husband's name comes out of your mouth I will throttle your little whore neck when we get home."

Lupe had the good sense to not argue and remained silent for the rest of the trip. Dorothy would have preferred it if Lupe did not have such good sense – she'd be less worrisome if she was truly empty-headed. If I'm not careful Richard will imagine that he's in love with her.

Once at Fort Frolic Dorothy guided Lupe down the shining floor and neon-lit corridors to the shopping area, keeping her eyes peeled for anyone she knew. She spotted Maude Howard, who was on the periphery of acquaintanceship but was neighbors with Jane, in a shoe store.

"We are going in to look, not buy, at least not for you," Dorothy harshly whispered as they walked towards the store. "Make conversation."

Lupe didn't ask what about. "I used to work at that cigar store we passed a few minutes ago," she started.

"Oh, how interesting," Dorothy replied, trying to think of something constructive to say. "Do you smoke cigars?"

"No, I don't care for the taste."

Neither do I. But she'd be damned if she agreed with Lupe on anything. Searching for something, anything, to talk about Dorothy searched her mind for memories about cigars. "My father always smoked them, a couple of them a day." Suddenly she was a little girl and she could smell the smoke again. The sadness came back…

Stupid slut. Talking about things she doesn't know about.

Maude didn't notice them come in and it took some conniving to make her notice them. Dorothy lightly pushed Lupe into a display rack of shoelaces, which prompted Maude (and the sales clerk and the other two shoppers in the store) to pay attention. After much to-do and browsing, Dorothy ended up purchasing a pair of sleek black pumps and a pair of sensible flat Oxfords for herself and, as promised, jack squat for Lupe's whore feet.

Dorothy had Lupe carry the bags as they stalked around the upper floor of the promenade. She finally found her ideal prey, Annette, in the salon of the most expensive dress shop that wasn't a bespoke dressmaker. Richard's money will buy a lovely wrapping for his little snack. "You're in luck," she mumbled to Lupe as they approached. "This will cost more than you make in three months so a little gratitude from you wouldn't be out of order."

"I literally do not know what it is that would make you happy," Lupe shot back.

"For you to disappear forever, that's what would please me."

Lupe stopped in her tracks and held Dorothy by her arm. "You want gratitude? How about it in the form of the truth? It isn't me, Dorothy, it's you. You're the problem in your marriage. If it wasn't me it would be someone else. I'm honestly shocked it hadn't been someone else already. If I go away someone else will take my place."

Dorothy froze in place. Stupid slut who knows nothing. "Get your hand off me," she hissed.

Lupe obeyed. "I don't hate you, Dorothy, I want you to know that."

Forgetting where they were and why they were there, Dorothy viciously sneered at Lupe. "Well, I hate you, you worthless tramp. I want nothing more than to see you reduced to the gutter trash that you are. I'm using you now to clean up the mess you made. I'm smarter than you, prettier than you, and better than you in every possible way. Your pity and your gratitude and your apologies mean nothing to me."

Lupe met her hard stare. "I never said I was sorry. I don't apologize."

Dorothy set her lips into a severe line to cover for the fact she was rendered speechless by Lupe's brazen retort. She's not afraid of me. I must find a way to eliminate her before it's too late.

Lupe gestured at the store. "Shouldn't we go in? This is for her, isn't it?"

Dorothy found her voice and made it as cold as the water several yards from them outside the windows. "Yes. Put on a smile, you slut."