Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said; Chapter 9

So Jason and Ruth were fucking, and Jason is amazed by how big her apartment is, the dog breeder man she married must have (or had) serious cash. Ruth smokes cigarettes, which is very very expensive, and also the only vice that is explicitly described as illegal. Jason is actually censoring his own thoughts as to how old Ruth looks, changing "prune face" to "weathered". I dunno, I think as far as showbiz goes, Dick knows of what he writes here. Hollywood wrote off Natalie Wood past 35 FFS

Ahem. Anyway, Jason asks if Ruth remembers Monica Buff. Ruth does, as she was her sister-in-law for six years. She sounds like a catch: mentally ill with what sounds like schizophrenia, rarely washes, can go for days at a time saying literally nothing, would steal from anybody (like Ruth) if the opportunity arose. Naturally Jason had a "brief but intense affair with her" She was 19, he was 37. She spent all her days shoplifting so she could feed students (IE the bad literally underground rebels.) Despite being an unmedicated schizophrenic, she beat the police system entirely. Any time her paranoia said "pols gonna run a spot check" she would call the police about a man beating on her door, and then she'd maneuver whatever refugee she was keeping out of the house, and then lock the door on them. The police would show up and find a student beating on her door. No more police problems! She also wandered off and vanished, and is probably dead now.

While Ruth is trying to understand what Jason saw in a mentally ill teenager who stank, Jason remembers "hey, didn't McNulty ask about who planted the tracking dot?" Jason then spends an intense half hour in the bathroom, looking for the translucent purple dot and eventually finding it. Not only has this whole fucking ruse been for nothing, now Ruth's life might be in danger too.

Bummer. Jason asks for coffee, which Ruth gets out of her automat/replicator thing, in a big mug that says "keep on Truckin'" on it. After wolfing it down, tooth pain be damned, He then explains he has to leave, he doesn't know if the pigs are on his tail, but getting an innocent person police hassle is a sin he doesn't want, and besides, you're too old

Ruth looks like "a warped, stomped doll", then runs to the kitchen and runs back with a stoneware platter with souvenir of knotts berry farm written on it. She at a run tries to cave Jason's head in with the platter, and Jason only just manages to intercept with his elbow. The platter shatters into three pieces, one slashing a deep gouge in Jason's arm.

There's a pause.

Ruth says she's sorry. Jason says he's sorry, too. Ruth asks why Jason said that to her, Jason says "because of my own fears of age. Because they are wearing me down, what's left of me." Jason does some first aid and wonders where Ruth has gotten to. If it's to get the police, after what I said, Jason thinks, he couldn't blame her.