pointless when he came home every night exhausted and alone. He
had thrown himself so completely into his work that little was left
over for romance. Any energy he tossed in that direction seemed
pointless and unfulfilling. The women he saw perhaps did not
understand him.
“Your problem is you’re too serious,” Bidden told him. “You’ve
got to let go a bit. Do something crazy.”
“What? Like shoot people from a water tower?” Roy grumbled.
“I don’t know. Women like crazy. Did I ever tell you how I met
my wife?”
“No. I didn’t ask,” Roy said. He was busy examining chemical
translations of Hawaiian Kona crop poetry.
Bidden unwound his tale, shaking beans in his hand percussively
as he did. “I was down in Brazil trying to negotiate a contract with
some whole bean distributors when they had that big Earth Summit
down there. The place was packed with environmental freaks with
their lame ideas about how to save the planet. They were saying that
the rich countries should stop raping the poor ones for their
resources. Then they said that the poor countries should get more
developed, I guess so that they could rape themselves. They kept
talking about rich and poor countries in sexual terms: Rape,
domination, penetration, maturity, bondage. They were saying that
poor countries were just unhappy wives who got nothing out of the
relationship. Like they should get a divorce and go get an apartment
somewhere.”
“A very astute and literary interpretation, Morris, as usual,” Roy
sighed.
“Thanks! So one day a bunch of these ecofreakos organized a
march down a main street, demanding that the rich take the poor out
to dinner more often, buy them more jewelry or something like that.
They all looked idiotic. Except for one. One of them was this amazing
woman. Something about the way she carried herself. She wasn’t the
absolute most beautiful female I’d ever seen, but there was
something about her, something uncommonly confident and
gracious. She was tall and strong, and since it was hot and it was Rio,
half-naked. I was nuts about her from that instant on. She had a kind
of lost look in her eyes, searching for something. I like to think she
was looking for me, someone to save her from the screaming rabble.”
“So you saved her,” Roy guessed.
“What I did was I ran into a shop and bought a big marking pen.
ABYSSINIA
52
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