Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; Chapter 11

Jason finds Ruth smoking a cigarette in the living room, lit only by the lights of urban night outside. (Oh, apparently cigarettes are *rationed*, not illegal (because they give you cancer) and so of course the black market provides extra cigs, and Ruth in fact has a lung-shaped ashtray. She asks Jason if she loved Monica Buff.

Jason says yes, qualifying it by saying there are many kinds of love. Ruth tells a story of a bunny rabbit a childhood friend once owned. Raised with cats, it always wanted to bring the cats back to a little nest the rabbit made out of cat fur. Cats being cats did not do this. Then one day it decided to play tag (which it always played with the childhood friend and the cats) with a German Shepard that was with another friend. The dog not knowing the rules (or who this strange rabbit was) bit and held the rabbit by its hindquarters, until people got him off. After that, the rabbit was terrified of dogs, but still kept trying to be a cat, because it wasn't very smart. This is why Ruth divested herself of animals entirely: their lives are short and then they die, and that hurts.

Jason asks what the point of love is, then. From his experience people will just leave as they got a better offer on the love market, leaving you holding the bag of emotions. Ruth has a fairly long monolog on what love is, saying it's completely irrational and against most human instincts, which is survival. But survival always fails, in the end. No instinct can defeat death. So love is the thing that goes on; not with you, but with others, and that's why it alone gives the true peace and contentment.

Jason's repost is that since love inevitably is irrational and leads to badness, you could cut it out of your life entirely. Ruth responds that saying that grief - this is really what is being talked about - is the thing that allows love its special value, as love with grief would be under or unappreciated. Ruth shares a ghost experience she had with the family dog. Grief as experiencing death for a time, then gradually you return to life.

Jason plans to stay till morning at Ruth's apartment. He thinks it unlikely that the Police would turn on him that quickly. He ends on the disquieting thought that in this situation, he is the rabbit; something that doesn't understand the rules of the people around him.