A Working Theory of Love (8 page)

“We prefer them at Swan’s,” the beau says. With relief, I see what I can dislike about
him: he has a voice I don’t think Erin would have put up with ten years ago. Self-satisfied,
aggressively confident.

Of course, ten years ago she was putting up with my voice.

She tucks herself under the beau’s arm, as if expecting him to carry her out like
a rug. For her it’s an impressive amount of PDA. They say their goodbyes and leave.

“You were married to her?” Rachel says.

I can’t tell if she’s surprised I was married or surprised I was married to Erin.

“For a little while. We dated for a long time before that.”

“She’s beautiful. Like Audrey Hepburn.”

“I wouldn’t go overboard.”

“I just mean—she’s gorgeous, she’s sophisticated.”

“Would you please take your napkin down from your mouth?”

Rachel lowers her hand to the table, her face a picture of heartbreak. “What happened
to your connection?”

“You make it sound like a phone call.”

•   •   •

T
HE RIDE HOME SEEMS COLDER,
shorter, grimmer. On Valencia Street, I look out the window at the hipsters on their
fixed-speed bikes. The tight clothes, the tiny hats—their major struggle as a generation
seems to be reducing drag. As if success in life requires being ever ready to slip
through a narrow opening.

We arrive back at my apartment, quiet. Rachel says she’d like to use the telescope,
and so I grab a blanket and lead her to the dirty stairwell that climbs past my upstairs
neighbor’s to the roof. The telescope was an unusual extravagance of my father’s,
bought when he was in his early twenties, before he and my mother married. When I
was a kid, he was reluctant to get it out, embarrassed—I think—by its perfection.
In South Arkansas, perfection was considered a type of vanity. Tools should be just
sufficient—less than, if you were courting glory. There was no higher boast than to
say you’d fixed some troublesome mechanical problem in the most unlikely manner possible—with
chewing gum or a well-aimed kick. My father prided himself on his descent from Louisiana
plantation aristocracy, but on this issue he went native. He loved to boast about
the time he fixed the Buick by hitting the manifold with a stick of firewood.

But he wasn’t always opposed to perfection, as these German optics prove. It’s a reminder
that change can be bad as well as good.

“I’m sorry about the restaurant,” Rachel says, as we spread out the blanket. “Sometimes
I have low self-esteem.”

“Only idiots don’t.”

“Not Erin.”

“She used to. She’s probably all better now.” Through the viewfinder, I search for
the Crab Nebula, but the air is hazy. The days have been warm and windless, gathering
smog. “Her boyfriend doesn’t have apparent self-esteem issues.”

“Tell me about it. He was staring at me like I was a bug.”

“That’s called ogling.”

“Please,” she says. “With a girlfriend like that you don’t ogle me.”

“If she’s sleeping with him. She didn’t really sleep with me, towards the end.”

“I can hardly believe that,” she says. “Who wouldn’t want to sleep with you?”

“You must be kidding.” But, Sweet Jesus, she doesn’t sound like she’s kidding. She’s
sitting Indian-style, wineglass held like a beggar’s bowl, shoulders exposed to the
rare warmth. “I’m changing tacks here—I’m looking for Io.”

“I don’t even know any constellations.”

“Nobody does. Io is just a moon. She’s a cow who was Zeus’s lover.”

“He fucked a cow?”

“I think he changed her to a cow afterwards. I couldn’t swear to the exact timing.”

“If I was a constellation, I’d be a butter churn.” I hear her shifting on the blanket,
moving her legs, lying back. “My dad took us over to one of those Amish places, for
fried chicken, in Pennsylvania? When I was like twelve. And they had this little barn,
where you could watch the women churning butter and the kids chasing a goat and everybody
thought it was so funny. But you know what I thought? Adopt me. Seriously. Let me
do
something. Churn butter. One stick of butter. Wrap it in that cloth. Put a stamp
on it. The way they do?”

“A butter churn.” I lean back, look to Orion—maybe his sword could be repurposed as
a wooden plunger. “I would be a man sitting alone on a very nice chair.”

“I think it would be a couch. And you’re waiting on someone.”

“I seem like I’m waiting on someone?”

“Don’t you want to fall in love again?”

I stop turning the main tube—Io too is obscured. “That sounds ambitious.”

“Maybe you’re waiting on your wife to come to her senses.”

“Ex-wife. And we already came to our senses.”

“You seemed kind of, you know, shook up at the restaurant.”

“If I was pining for her, would I be here with you?”

“Maybe you’re working through some roadblocks. I’m approachable.”

“You make yourself sound very therapeutic.”

“That’s okay, right? I can work through some things with you, and you can work through
some things with me. We can be there for each other.”

My heart falls at this vision, but is it really so bad? She at least sees a purpose,
a set of benefits that will accrue. It beats the thin nihilism of seizing the day.

Rachel’s phone rings. She picks it up and begins an exasperated conversation with
someone—the aunt or uncle she lives with, I assume. “Are we on the good side of the
Mission or the bad side of the Mission?” she asks me.

“That’s Dolores Park.”

“Did you hear that?” she says into the phone. “I’m not biting your head off. I love
you, too.” She hangs up. “Sorry about that. They worry about me, after my last relationship.
But I’m much more grounded. To click is to stick. That’s something we say in Pure
Encounters.”

I try my tactic again—imagining she’s a tribeswoman explaining her ancient traditions.
Maybe one of those Burmese women, with beautiful rings stretching her neck.

“I’m having trouble with the telescope,” I say.

“That’s because you’ve got it pointed in the wrong direction.” She crawls over to
the back of the blanket, positioning herself behind the eyepiece. She cranks the tube
down so that it aims across the park, at a perfect angle to see in other people’s
apartments. “There we go. Getting ready for the big night at the club.”

“I wouldn’t have picked you for a Peeping Tom.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t do this.”

“I’ve made it my policy not to,” I say.

“Ooh, she’s taking off her top. She’s got the windows wide open. Don’t you want to
see?”

“Move over.”

And indeed there she is. A tan woman, heavyset, in a bright green brassiere, pinning
her dark hair behind her head, her arms up in the style of a fifties calendar. She
holds barrettes in her teeth. She lives on the top floor, and I don’t think she’s
exhibiting herself. Too focused. She turns left and freezes. She turns right and freezes.
Someone important is going to see her tonight, whether he plans to or not.

“Are you aroused?” Rachel asks.

“More like inspired.” Good luck, stranger. May your labors bear fruit. May your visions
come true.

We pack up the telescope and repair to the bedroom. We left all the lights off and
I don’t turn them back on. She stands at the foot of my bed, the old Bassett mahogany
bed from the plantation, its four-posters eight inches thick and shaped like gigantic
crayons. I reach up to help with her checked scarf; it’s as tucked and cinched as
a turban. “I don’t know how to get this off without choking you,” I say.

“We’ll just leave it on,” she says.

“I thought we were going to have a pure encounter.”

“Shhh.” She puts a finger to my lips. I take it into my mouth, and then pull her close,
her ribs against mine, both of our pulses beating fast. Her eyes have gone ghostly
again, almost colorless in the dark. But she’s no ghost. I can feel her reality shooting
up my arms like a cardiac arrest.

•   •   •

I
N THE MORNING,
we go to the SFMOMA to see an exhibition, which is full of burned things—canvases,
wooden structures, weird ashy angel wings. We take a peek at the statue of Michael
Jackson and Bubbles. We eat a cream puff. After last night, our body shyness has left
us. I put my arm around her, and we walk as a unit, my hand hanging from her belt
loop. I feel a jittery excitement. She’s either asking too much, or I’m promising
too much. Or there’s a sliver of another possibility—that maybe these jitters are
caused by my sudden proximity to a good thing. Dropped—unanticipated and unmerited—from
the heavens.

Which I don’t believe in cosmically, of course—only as a metaphor. But how can a good
thing drop from a metaphor?

Rachel and I stand on Market Street, which isn’t so grimy today, contemplating which
way to walk. We’re caught in the pleasant dilemma of having no wrong choices. The
sun is out, and a gale-force wind is batting at our hair, spinning loose papers through
the sky like pinwheels. In the morning I’ll have to take her back to Fairfax—she opens
the Coffee Barn early—and it’s with surprise that I feel a pang of something like
regret.

6

frnd1: it’s nothing serious

drbas: she’s humorous?

[300244: “it’s nothing serious�� = “she and I are not in a serious relationship”;
repeat]

drbas: there’s no such thing as an unserious relationship. even married people shouldn’t
have friendships across the sexes. it tempts

frnd1: neither of us is married

The bells on the front door jingle open. Two possibilities: UPS or Toler.

“Noel,” he shouts. “I’m going to need your help.”

I don’t move. I’ll come when Livorno asks for me. Not a second sooner.

“Neill,” Livorno says.

Crap.

Toler is traveling without his assistant today. He’s flipping through a stack of sheets,
which he spreads out on Livorno’s cluttered desk.

“I hope you boys don’t mind,” he says, touching a finger to each page. “But I’ve started
a little Turing test project myself. Code name—Program X.”

I look at Livorno, who studiously does not look at me. Toler raises his head in the
silence, arching his eyebrows above his Lucite glasses. “You guys just seem to be
having so much fun.”

Livorno clears his throat. “I hope you know what you’re getting into. We have a two-year
head start.”

“All I’ve got on my side”—Toler places a hand over his heart—“is money.”

I again look to Livorno, hoping to gauge his reaction, but he’s flashing the genial
smile—his version of a poker face. I follow him around the desk to the pages Toler
has laid out. The shape of the text is familiar: it’s a lengthy chat.

toler: what are you favorite books?

progx: i like books about spies

toler: do you read romances?

progx: i wouldn’t say i “read” romances

“Is that a dodge?” I ask.

“I don’t think so,” Toler says. “But, Noel, here.” He points to the third page. “What
do you think of the naturalness of this dialogue?”

toler: do you know what it’s like to have emotions?

progx: to have emotions is to feel something

toler: where do you feel something?

progx: typically with your involuntary nervous system

“I made him a doctor,” Toler says. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“I wouldn’t say the dialogue is natural,” I say. But the program seems to follow the
conversation with incredible precision. How has he accomplished this in a month?

“Read this bit,” he says.

toler: why did the chicken cross the road?

progx: to get to the other side of the road?

“You shouldn’t have fed it that answer. The point is to assess the changes.”

“He guessed it.” Toler shakes his head. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

I look back at the sheets. Is it possible that the program figured the joke out? I
suppose a computer intelligence should help—enough searches and it might discard the
irrelevance of the chicken. Why does A cross the road? To get to the other side. But
Dr. Bassett doesn’t even understand that the question is hypothetical. He keeps relating
it to some specific chicken.

“What are using for your data sets?” Livorno asks.

Toler spreads his hands. “The world.”

•   •   •

A
FTER
T
OLER LEAVES,
Livorno curses under his breath. I listen to him miss putt after putt. He must regret
showing Toler his project, regret—I would assume—hiring me instead of an engineer.
Livorno didn’t think he needed a genius, because he is a genius, but I’m not sure
his attention hasn’t gone slack.

I get up and go into his office. “I smell a rat,” I say. “I think he had someone type
those up.”

Livorno thumps the floor with his putter. “That’s a comforting theory.”

“He’s a squarehead.”

“With deep pockets. And here we are on a shoestring, bedeviled by plateaus.”

Plateaus? Yesterday, we were zooming up like a rocket ship. I walk over to his desk,
where he has a new tchotchke—a bobblehead Tiger Woods. I give it a poke, watch the
impervious smirk wiggle and blur. Then I plop into the Wassily chair, uncomfortably
reclined, the morning analysand.

“He’s gone broad,” Livorno says, leaning his putter against his file cabinet. He sits
in his upright Aeron and affixes his hands behind his head. “And we’ve gone narrow.
His challenge will be controlling the chaos. Ours is enlivening the dead clay.”

I narrow my eyes, but don’t say anything. The words “dead clay” irritate me.

“I’ve believed for years that the weakness in this field is this fruitless pursuit
of a theory of the mind. No one can make a move forward without a comprehensive theory
of the mind, and these theories—while illuminating—are never complete. How can a thing
understand itself? Can the eye see the eye?”

“The eye can see other eyes. That’s what an optometrist does.”

“I’m speaking platonically. In any case, maybe I’ve been wrong—perhaps we’ve bottomed
out because of conceptual limitations.”

“Bottomed out” sounds dire. “Aren’t you taking this development a little hard?”

“We could try the Sins, but we don’t know what would happen.” He sits up.

“Let’s not make any rash decisions.”

“The Sins are modeled on EQ—emotional intelligence. They might find hidden webs of
connection. Alternately, they might snarl the whole project up.”

“Snarl?”

“I don’t know how they would work together.”

“Then I think we should do an intermediate step.”

The clouds clear from Livorno’s brow. “You’re right. Let’s start simple. How does
a mind get put together?”

That’s his version of simple. “I don’t know,” I say. “We just come this way.”

“Think about a child. Language. What is a child’s first word?”

“Mama?”

“I don’t mean a baby. What is the word that enters the child into the human community?”

“No?”

“
Why.
The sky is blue—why? You can’t eat any more candies—why? It’s the question that indicates
knowledge of what one
doesn’t
know. Knowledge of the presence of an absence. What that man called known unknowns.
Exformation.”

My neck is starting to pinch. “Dr. Bassett already asks questions.” I give my shoulder
a squeeze. “Computers have been asking questions since the sixties.”

“
Preformulated
questions. No machine has sought knowledge. Has
desired
knowledge.”

“They’re computers.”

“You’ll go through the subject categories and double-check them. Add ones we need.
Laham can handle the tag numbers. Then we will have Dr. Bassett ask questions to enrich
those categories. A kind of learning tree.” He rolls his fingers on the counter.

“But what about the desire thing?” I sit up. “How will you program desire?”

“He will continually ask questions about his current knowledge base.”

“He already asks questions.”

“
Preformulated
questions.”

“You were talking about desire.”

Livorno snatches Tiger Woods from the desk. “I have to compete against a multimillionaire
and one of my principal employees is of a religious mind-set.” He says this bitterly.
He’s not referring to the devout Muslim in the other room, but to me. My religious
mind-set, I suppose, is that there’s something particular about humans that makes
them human. “You mustn’t forget: your father appearing to want to talk to you is measurably
indistinguishable from his really wanting to talk to you.”

He’s an academic, I remind myself, taking in his blank, guileless face. Nothing he
says reflects real beliefs. These are all thought games, endless earnest thought games
that, like their predecessors, will aim at consciousness and result in a new answering
system for United Airlines.

“We’re not talking about my father.”

He grows sober. “We should be. We have to think big. That’s where Adam’s mind will
be.”

I surprise myself by blowing air out of my cheeks, exasperated at this bullshit.

“Shouldn’t an old man dream?” He pats his chest to indicate that he is indeed talking
about himself. “Before he’s shipped into the old folks’ home to eat baby porridge?”
He turns Tiger Woods one more time in his hand before setting him down gently by the
phone. “Baby porridge,” he repeats, looking at me. I sit up, annoyed. Am I supposed
to say he’s young as spring shoots and will live forever?

“What is porridge?” I say. “Is it like oatmeal?”

“When I was a child we would sometimes eat wheat berry, with yogurt and honey. Very
thick yogurt—not like what you buy in the grocery here. My mother made the yogurt.
It was one of her great joys. She kept bees, as well. I was an only child, and I helped
her. My mother and father were considered cursed because they only had me, but later
in life my mother told me they’d done it deliberately.” His gaze drifts off, until
he appears to be looking behind me with rapture. I turn, but it’s only the dry-erase
board from the defunct quilting studio:
double-ringed wedding Thur @ 5
. “My mother’s bees, however, are what made me an iconoclast in the field. I knew
intelligence didn’t necessarily rise from a central processor, a central I. The bees
are individually nonintelligent, but together they produce emergent phenomena. They
plan for the winter; they exert control over their environment. This is why I invented
the Sins, which people still don’t understand. They think I’ve made seven separate
buzzing subsystems, but the truth is that each Sin is a subsystem made up of dozens
of subsystems, each as simple as a bee.”

“That’s beautiful,” I say, though I’ve heard it all before. “And you can buy that
kind of yogurt at Trader Joe’s.”

“Yet we’ve built Dr. Bassett out of similar bees. Subsystem within subsystem within
subsystem. And he’s plateaued.”

I take a deep breath. I need to tamp down whatever is driving me to be rude to my
kind, doddering boss. “Maybe we need a system for the subsystems. The contest just
requires him to seem sentient for a few minutes.”

“There is no measurable difference between seeming and being.”

Maybe it’s my “religious turn of mind,” but this has to be wrong. I hope my be, for
instance, is better than my seem.

“I’ll give you an example,” I say. “My father said he loved my mother, but that’s
not the same as actually loving her.”

Livorno looks at me, surprised and wary. “Yes, but that’s the difference in saying
and doing, not seeming and being. If he loved your mother outwardly, there’s no reasonable
way to say he didn’t love your mother, who I’m sure is a splendid woman.”

“You don’t love people because they’re splendid.”

“I’m European, Neill. We have a more mature attitude. Romance . . . the spice of life . . .
but everything in moderation. It’s the sensible way.”

He’s done being upset. Now he beams at me over his nose, avuncular. I suspect he’s
happy he steered the conversation back into the realm of Wisdom—irrefutable and trite.
I force a smile. What is moderation but a grim set of half-measures? I can think of
nothing more depressing than “European” marriages with their dalliances as sanctioned
and regular as ski trips. Everything in balance—the life of the heart as an index
fund.

“Adam is a squarehead, however,” he says, tapping his finger on his chin.

frnd1: everything in moderation

drbas: it’s good to have a balance between recreation and work, family and friends

Where did he get that idea? I know my father had his delusions, but surely he didn’t
think he was buoyed on some wonderful lifestyle balance.

frnd1: what if you really love one or the other?

drbas: i tell my patients about ketchup. you may love ketchup but you don’t want to
eat it all the time, do you?

Ketchup. Today’s deep thought from the Dr. Bassett Magic 8-Ball.