Chapter 38 – Cans

"Well are you happy then, Richie?"

Richard nodded and smiled slightly. "Yes, very much so." He had just deposited a check for nearly six million dollars into a collection of his accounts that morning. Ryan Industries had won the bidding war. To celebrate he and Rollie met for drinks at The Seahorse in the early afternoon. Richard's drink was tomato juice though, which he was trying to develop a taste for in the name of health. The attempt was going poorly and he grimaced as he took a sip.

Rollie sighed and leaned back in his chair. "Dad's not happy. Mom's in hysterics over it. Betrayal, that's what they are both saying."

Richard shrugged. "And what are you saying? Your opinion is worth ten of theirs combined." Maybe some salt would improve this, he idly thought while looking at the tomato juice. A bit of pepper. May as well drink some soup at that point though.

"Ah shucks, you know I'm not mad at you. I get it. Not having to dance to someone else's tune must be the best. Speaking of dancing, why hasn't anyone come up yet?" Rollie craned his neck around and looked at the long, elevated stage behind them.

"It's just after noon, I don't think they have dancers this early. I didn't even know they were open this early until you invited me here." Richard hadn't been to The Seahorse in ages.

Rollie waved to the barkeeper, who waved back. "No one right now?" Rollie shouted at him. The barkeeper shook his head and went back to cleaning the beer tap.

"You're not bothered too much by my selling?" Richard asked and took another sip of his juice. Hopefully the slug liked that more than beer.

Rollie shook his head. "I'll miss you like hell though. What's your plan?"

"Cans."

"Cans?"

"Oh yes, cans. Over the last year I've been evaluating the various tin cans in the lab at work. Mostly out of boredom, just to see what sort of metal quality they use. Terrible quality steel for the most part. Lots of sulfur, poor heating, I could go on. I bet they start to leak and corrode within months of getting filled with peaches or beans or whatever is inside, so I spoke with a few of the grocers in Elpis Court and yes, they do start to leak, especially when they get wet, which is often here. I can make a much better can for a comparable price, I've gone over the numbers," Richard explained proudly, happy to have carved out a little niche for himself already.

"Cans," Rollie repeated thoughtfully. "How's the misses taking that?"

Richard laughed. "Which one?"

"I never pegged you for a bigamist Richie, I'll tell you that."

"We aren't married, at least not yet. Dorothy still won't sign those papers, I don't know if I can starve her out or not. Lupe likes the cans though, she's very excited and has been coming up with lots of names for the company. They all revolve around puns like 'Can Do' or 'We do what they can't'. I don't like those names, honestly, but I haven't figured out a way to politely tell her that I don't want to give my business a silly name."

"Lupe's a peach, but don't let her name your company. How's her business doing?"

"Fantastic. She made enough last month to cover our rent entirely and she insisted on paying it. She's very proud of herself." Richard was very proud of her as well. He had never seen anyone so happy about anything as she was when she told him she was going to pay the rent.

"Is she selling any boudoir plasmids? I'd reckon that'd get the purse strings open," Rollie asked. "Maybe one that makes your pecker bigger. I mean, mine's fine, but if it's available?" He laughed and lit a cigarette.

Richard shook his head. "She's terrified of plasmids, and for good reason. There's no damn good reason for a person to be able to make fire or ice from their hands. We've got lighters and freezers, for goodness sake! But that's not the worst part, not by a country mile. They are made out of the same science that gave me back my legs, but let me tell you Rollie, that first aid kit is Pandora's Box." He hesitated, not wanting to share the unpleasant reality with his brother, but also wanting to impress upon him the danger of ADAM. "The scientist who discovered it, she told me some… alarming things. See, this slug makes ADAM, but now so do I. And the ADAM, it changes you in ways the scientist doesn't understand, but in a bad way. Because of the… intimate contact Lupe and I have, she's gotten an addiction to it the way people get an addiction to morphia."

Rollie considered what his brother told him, then snorted a laugh. "Are you telling me what I think you're telling me?"

"If it's obscene, then yes, that's what I am telling you. And it's not funny, at least not anymore." It had been a real monkey's paw I wished on when I desired more sex.

Rollie couldn't help but suppress a slight chuckle. "She bleeding you dry?"

Richard grunted and took another swallow of tomato juice. "I can live with it. I don't want her to take the ADAM they have for sale, it's already bad enough that she's got the habit for it, but the more she is exposed to it the worse it will get. It's not bad, not yet, but I fear for her health." That phrase Tenenbaum had said, 'cellular degeneration', or something to that effect, haunted him in the moments he wasn't actively thinking about other things.

"Maybe she's just got to cold turkey it," Rollie suggested, shifting out of joviality in sincerity, but still had a cloak of lightness to his tone. "Have yourself one of them Josephite marriages for a few weeks, get out of her system."

Richard shook his head. "It doesn't work like that. ADAM isn't like morphine where you can sweat it out yelling and strapped to a bed in an asylum. It's different. It changes you Rollie, it changes you in ways that are permanent, and if that chair gets kicked out from under you, you swing. Don't screw around with ADAM, so matter how big it can make your pecker."

"Geez, Richie, is it really so dangerous?" Any trace of joviality had drained from him.

Richard glanced around to make sure no one was eavesdropping on them, and then lowered his voice considerably before continuing. "Lupe stumbled upon an ADAM lab and she saw some monstrous things, fish and squids twisted and lumpy, looking like a child made them out of clay. She drew me a picture of what she had seen and if she was only half-accurate it's still completely horrifying."

"How can they sell it then?" Rollie asked, his voice too loud for Richard's liking.

Richard gestured for him to lower his voice. "Because this place is Hell," Richard explained in a shushed voice. "Because they don't have to test it. Because there's no board or administration to make sure stores aren't selling poison or worse to people. Because they can just do whatever they want, buyer beware."

"You should tell people! You should tell the newspaper, or the radio," Rollie pointed out, his voice raised still too much for Richard's liking.

Richard frowned. "I received a threat last week. An anonymous letter came to the house, telling me that if I had any thoughts on the safety of ADAM I'd do best to keep it to myself or I'd find myself with a burned out house, a drained bank account, and a dead girlfriend. These people can shoot fire from their hands, I'd prefer not to aggravate them." The letter can come one the same day that Lupe arrived home in a near-panic, fretfully mumbling about Dorothy and being frozen to death. The letter hadn't helped her mood.

"What are you going to do?"

"Keep my trap shut, that's what I am going to do. I'm stuck down here and I don't want a target on my back." Richard was only going to play the hero for Lupe, not for the rest of Rapture's population. "But swear to me that you won't touch plasmids or anything else they cook up like that."

Rollie quickly nodded. "I swear, you don't gotta worry about me."

Richard exhaled a breath he hadn't been aware he was holding. "Good, that's a load of my mind. Now, for my next trick, I need you to explain to me how you convince people to buy stuff from you."

Would you kindly imagine a page break here?

Everyone in the Lady's Club had been talking about The Dairy Maid. It was supposed to have the best crème brulée ever, topside or not, so Annette and Robert decided to duck into it for a late afternoon treat. Robert had been in demand ever since he awoke from his coma. Doctors and scientists were constantly prodding him and taking his blood and hooking him up to machines while he did that strange new trick with his thoughts.

He couldn't lift anything too heavy – anything that weighed more than a few pounds would just quiver and wiggle instead of rushing towards him, if it reacted at all. It was still amazing though. The scientists certainly thought so. They were fixing on making a plasmid out of his new ability, but Robert threatened to sue unless he received a cut. After hammering out a deal for five percent of any plasmid crafted off a base of his strange new powers, he was more than happy to let the scientists do whatever they felt like doing to him.

"More sugar, my dear?" Robert floated over a sugar cube and held it over her tea cup.

Annette nodded and the sugar cube plopped into her cup. "Thank you." She idly looked across the street while stirring and noticed Dorothy sitting alone on a bench. It was the first time she had seen her since the kerfuffle. Damned Richard, he took the fun out of this. Annette couldn't really enjoy Dorothy's swift plummet to the bottom due to the unpleasant aftertaste that Richard had left. It was objectively entertaining, of course, and she had heard from Agnes that Dorothy had nearly lost her marbles. It hadn't taken much, had it? Just a pretty face and willing quim. Such a pushover. How could she not see this coming?

Dorothy hadn't noticed her yet, so Annette surveyed her while munching on the truly divine crème brulée. There was no trace of make-up on her face, leaving the imperfections on her skin on display, and her blouse was wrinkled to the point of ridiculous. She does look nice and thin though.

Robert noticed her gaze and huffed in annoyance. "I hope her husband is nearby, I'll give him a piece of my mind, I'll tell you that." The cheese knife on the table next to them soared into his hand.

Annette suddenly realized how much gossip Robert had missed out on. "Oh, I doubt it. He left her high and dry, so to speak. Richard's shacking up with the maid and she's got a shop now in Little Eden. I had to give her some hush money that turned out to be a lot more than we would have liked. Anyway she's selling the sort of the thing that prostitutes and burlesque dancers use. It's quite clever, really, she realized she was momentarily famous after your fight and used that notoriety to open a store selling the things a seductress would use. In any event, she's turned herself into a businesswoman. Richard left Adranos Place and I heard his mother is just in a state over where he's living now, but I'm not sure exactly where that is."

Robert gestured to Dorothy. "Where's she living then? Adranos Place still?"

Annette tittered. "Goodness no, she hasn't got the money. Jane told me she thinks she's living in the back room of a liquor store. I don't know what she's doing for money, she hasn't got a job. I suppose she's got lots of jewelry to hock."

Dorothy happened to look in their direction at that moment and, instead of putting on a polite mask, bared her teeth in an animalistic way. She stood up and strode over to the bistro with a gusto that belied her slovenly appearance.

"Are you satisfied, you scheming bitch?" Dorothy hissed at them as she approached.

"I will thank you to not refer to my wife with such coarse language!" Robert interjected.

Dorothy merely laughed at Robert's request. "How on Earth did you awake from that living death my wonderful husband sent you to? Yes, of course it was over his whore, I'm well aware of that, but honestly, you got what you deserved. I heard you'd be a houseplant for the rest of your life, what happened? Did they give you the little slug they gave my husband?"

Annette ignored her harmless barbs. That little slug again, why did they give it to Richard and not Robert? Ever since Robert's unusual new abilities manifested she began to wonder if Richard had developed any as well, aside from his leg healing. She had deduced that was probably how he was able to nearly kill Robert with one punch. "Dorothy, this is really quite embarrassing for you," she distantly taunted, her mind lingering on Richard's possible abilities and the difference between the slug and the injection.

"Embarrassing? Bitch I live in a grocer's back room, I no longer care if I raise my voice." Dorothy turned to Annette. "And maybe I want people to hear, huh?" She looked around and saw that she had the attention of several adjacent tables and a curious water. "You may have bought the whore off, after all, that's how whores work, but-"

"Dorothy, please, let's not make a bigger fool of ourselves." She knows something, of course. She knows that Richard went directly to Lupe's room and realized that Robert was in their room. Dorothy had been so distracted by Lupe that she had overlooked Dorothy's potential threat.

Dorothy's eyes lit up upon discovering Annette's weak point. "And why shouldn't I? Like I said, I haven't got much further to fall, you saw to that. I knew damn well he was lying with the whore, we had worked out a deal, but you, you had to make a game of my misery! Everything was manageable as long as it was in the house. We were all content, we all had what we wanted, but you, you had to make it a news story and give him no choice but to publicly acknowledge his whore! You arranged for the whore to be there that night, you gave her her own room, so generous, and all after that diner party where Robert got a nice eyeful of her-"

"I did no such thing!" Annette injected, which they all three knew was a lie. I have to shut her up and fast! "I have always been your friend! What happened with your former husband-"

"Not former!" Dorothy nearly shouted at Annette. "He's still my husband!"

"Yes, of course, your husband, that was so unfortunate, and we came to an understanding with Lupe regarding it, I am sure we can come to one with you." Annette hoped she would recognize the hint.

Dorothy narrowed her eyes. "What did you give the whore? Because I am worth more than that," she slowly asked and had thankfully lowered her voice.

"A few hundred dollars," Annette lied quickly, trying to form a strategy on the fly. Agnes says she thinks Richard is going to come back to her, she recalled. "Look, I'm sure this will all resolve itself soon enough," she babbled. "Richard will come to senses soon enough, once he's had his fun. And you'll need a place to stay until then. I'm your friend, Dorothy, even if you think I'm not. I wasn't trying to make a sport of anything, but I don't blame you for lashing out. I probably would too."

At the suggestion of a place to stay Dorothy calmed down considerably. "Where?" She sat down at an empty chair at the table.

"The Luckier Duck, of course," Robert offered and offered Dorothy a gentle smile. "For as long as you need. One of the more modest rooms, but doubtlessly more comfortable than where you've been staying, unless grocery store back rooms are more luxurious than I've been led to believe."

Annette locked eyes with Robert. His offer had been what she was just about to say. We are like one soul in two bodies. The hairsbreadth that had stood between him and death suddenly weighed upon her more than the millions of tons of water above her head. That damnable Richard damn near ruined everything!

Before she had been reluctant to seek revenge from Richard and was content to let sleeping dogs lie, but now as she stared into her husband's eyes she realized she needed some closure. I'm not going to let him get away with almost taking Robert from me.

She looked at Dorothy with fresh eyes. "Why one of our modest rooms? She's a friend, Robert, we'll put her up in a nice room. And help her to get looking her best, after all, she's got a roving husband to win back." And I've an enemy to destroy.