Her eyes changed. "I loved him," she breathed in a voice that was both
soft and heavy with another kind of anger than the violence she had
shown just a moment before. This was resentment against the past, while
her previous flare had been against the physical present. "I loved
him," she repeated. "I loved the flat-brained animal enough to lead him
into the bedroom if that's what he wanted. But no, the imbecile thought
that the only way I would unfreeze was with a hellflower. So he parted
with half a hundred dollars for one. The idiot could have rented a
hotel room for a ten-dollar bill," she added sourly. "Or bought a
marriage license and had me for the rest of his life for five."
"Why didn't you refuse it?" he asked. "Or didn't you know that it
wasn't a gardenia?"
Norma looked up with eyes that started to blaze, but they died and she
was listless again. "Maybe because people like to flirt with danger,"
she said. "Maybe because men and women don't understand each other."
"That's the understatement of the century."
There was no flicker of amusement in her face. "Look at it this way,"
she said. "I did say I loved him. So naturally he wouldn't be the kind
of man who would bring me a love lotus. Or if he did I could wear it
for the lift they bring without any danger, because any man worth
loving would not take advantage of his sweetheart while she's unable to
object. So I wore it and when I woke up after a real orgy instead of a
mild emotional binge, I was on the road toward having no feelings left.
I've been on the road ever since and I've come far."
She looked at him again. "See what you and your kind have done?" she
demanded. Farradyne knew that she was whipping herself into a fury
again. "I was a nice, healthy woman once, but now I'm a burned out
battery. It takes a spot of violence to make me feel anything. Or maybe
a sniff from a lotus. Maybe by now it would take more than one."
"But I haven't any."