As She Climbed Across the Table (12 page)

“Well,” I said, feeling a bit testy, “he asked me to watch over you
and
Alice. To keep an eye on you both.”

Braxia bowed slightly, a subtle folding at the waist. “Very good,” he said. “That’s better, I admit. I will now have to petition to Soft to be permitted to watch over you as well.”

He smiled again. I was unnerved by his breezy amiability. The blithe way he stood chewing his sandwich while I panted.

“Well, what happened?” I said finally.

“Oh. What happened. She came in here, asked to be alone, so I went outside. It was about five minutes, and she came out. Crying. And she went away. That’s all.” He picked up his sandwich, took another bite.

“You didn’t go in with her?”

“No. I respect her privacy.”

“So you don’t know what happened.”

He shrugged. “I have a guess. But no.”

I was envious. Another man had acted as Alice’s protector in this chilly subterranean theater.

Braxia stared at me, plainly amused. “What’s the matter?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? My dear fellow, you look like shit. I’ll tell you what is the matter with you. You are worried that Professor Coombs, Alice, is going to put herself up here”—he slapped at the table—“and that’s it, no more Professor Coombs.”

“Yes,” I admitted.

He smiled again. “Come here,” he said.

I stepped up, unexpectedly fearful, to the table. It was the nearest I’d been to Lack, though I’d certainly been nearer in nightmares.

Braxia put his hand on my shoulder, coaxed me up even closer. I moved forward and put my hand on the smooth, cool surface of the table. Braxia slid his sandwich to one side, leaving the strawberries where they sat.

“Look,” he said. He took a ring off his left hand and hid it in his fist, then slowly moved the hand with the ring forward, across the space of the table, past the point where Lack began. He drew his fist back, opened it up. The ring was still there.

“He doesn’t like Professor Alice, and he doesn’t like my wedding ring,” he said. “But, watch.” He picked up a strawberry, closed it in his fist, and repeated the demonstration. When he drew his hand back and opened it the strawberry was gone.

“Me and Lack, we have the same taste in dessert. Hah! It’s a good magic show, but I keep the rest for myself.” He popped a
strawberry into his mouth, then twisted away the stem and laid it on a corner of the wax paper.

Lack doesn’t like marriage, I thought. Alice and I should have gotten married. That was our mistake. Lack would have left us alone.

“It is very interesting, this idea your Professor Coombs has. Or is it more of an emotion than an idea, eh? I think so. To put herself into the Lack. You think it’s terrible, I can see. But myself, I understand it a little. I feel it in myself too.” He met my eyes. “You wish I didn’t know about this idea of hers.”

Humbled, I nodded.

“Here.” He gestured at his sandwich. “You want some? Hen salad.”

“Hen salad?”

“I’m losing a word. Rooster?”

“Rooster salad,” I said. “No thank you.”

He shrugged, took another bite of sandwich, and chewed it into one cheek. “You seem afraid that I am going to make some trouble for Professor Alice, eh? But you are wrong. I think it’s charming. I want to help her.”

“How?” I was jealous. “Help her disappear?”

Braxia swallowed the cheekful. “You know the outcome of the experiments,” he said.

“Yes.”

“The Lack never changes his mind. If he refuses something once, he refuses it forever. He is consistent in this way, yes?”

I nodded, feeling thick.

Braxia put down his sandwich and extended his arm through Lack again. “He will never take my ring, and he will never take Professor Alice. No matter what her passion dictates. No matter how often she tries. So it might be better, if she needs
to try, that we let her. Yes?” He pulled his arm back. “Have a strawberry.”

The barbed wire loosened from around my heart. “You really think he’ll never take her?” I said.

“I really think he’ll never take her,” said Braxia, through another mouthful of sandwich.

“Would he take someone else?”

“I don’t know, my dear fellow. It is a good question, but hard to ask, don’t you think? Not too many volunteers. Strap on a transmitter, jump across the table. Hah!”

“Where would they end up? What’s on the other side?”

“That’s the whole question, isn’t it? That’s what we all want to know. Is it a tiny little universe in there? Maybe every time I drop a strawberry I crush three or four little suns! But who knows. We’re trying.” He indicated the roomful of equipment, with obvious pride. “When I have my answer, be sure, my dear fellow, you’ll hear about it.”

“You’re sure it’ll be you who gets the answer.”

“Hah! Very good. Yes, I think so. Soft, he’s not so strong anymore. He’s in retreat. And your Professor Coombs, she’s asking a very different kind of question now, I think. More about herself than about the Lack.”

“What about the graduate students?”

“The graduate students.” Braxia snorted. “Yes. Have you heard their proposal?”

“No.”

“The idea is to build a monitor, an information-gathering device, out of only those materials the Lack desires. A Lack-compatible device, to launch across the table. Hah!” He slapped at Lack’s table again. “It is very clever, and also deeply idiotic. Lack will refuse the device. You know why? They will build it
out of driftwood, strawberries, whatever Lack likes. Then one day Lack changes his mind, says no more strawberries. Besides, the Lack likes things for themselves, not for components. A device is no longer the things it is made up of, it is a device. The students will be very lucky if Lack eats their monitor. No, they are in no danger of learning anything.” He poked me in the chest. “If you were a physicist, perhaps you would be my competition. But.”

“You seem to be saying that Lack is a metaphysical phenomenon. So I should be just as qualified as you to uncover his meaning. If he is, as you say, interested in the idea of things in themselves. Meanings. Texts.”

Braxia’s eyes bugged with excitement, as if he might inflate and float to the ceiling. Instead he seized up the final corner of his sandwich and pushed it into his mouth.

“Okay,” he said. “Very good again. I like talking with you. Yes, Lack is interested in the idea, but not metaphysical. There is nothing metaphysical. We only have to uncover the underlying physics behind it. Soft created an experiment, remember? He wanted to do some fancy physics, bring something new into the world. And he succeeded. Hah! So now we take a good look at this thing. Texts, yes. That’s a good word, texts. Soft has written a new text. But it is a physics text. From physics comes physics. I will prove it to you personally.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Oh, but don’t stop your own work. I won’t hear of it. Please, come and decode the text in your own way. I will follow your work eagerly. And while you read the book, I will tell you how and why there is a book, and more. I will tell you how there is a shelf for the book, and a house for the shelf, and so on.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t quite follow you.”

“Listen, my dear fellow. I’m studying the universe. Lack is just a part, a clue. I’ll explain Lack, and then I’ll explain the rest to you, too. The whole thing. That’s my job.”

“So you’re getting somewhere. You’re learning something about Lack.”

He screwed up his forehead. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Engstrand. I have twelve men here, young, headstrong ones, who can think of nothing but physics. Like Soft, or me, ten years ago. They do what I tell them, they work around the clock for me. We will shoot the Lack with sonar, radioactivity, demagnetized particles, tachyons, whatever I can cook up. I am very patient, Mr. Engstrand. I am going to find the signal that can bounce back out, and then I am going to describe the world to which the Lack is a door. Trust me, my dear fellow.”

“But there’s nothing yet.”

“Just strawberries.”

“And in the meantime you’ll tolerate Alice, you’ll tolerate me if I try, you’ll tolerate doddering old Soft.”

Braxia seemed entertained. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly. I am fond of you already. Take your hours. I welcome you. You think I want to be here all day and all night? No! This weekend I am going to Sonoma.”

“It’s lovely.”

“Yes. Besides, I will want you around to see when I have my breakthrough. You can document my discovery.”

“Okay,” I said. “You make a discovery. I’ll document.” I’d had enough of his bombast now. I turned to leave. Let Braxia and Lack enjoy their strawberries. Somewhere outside the sun was shining, somewhere skies were clear.

Before I got to the door of the chamber, though, he called to me.

“I forgot to tell you,” he said. “When she came out of the chamber, she had her shirt on, what is the word?
Inside out
.” His eyes bored into mine, looking for reaction.

I refused to show one.

“Alice is your lady, eh?”

“Yes, Braxia. Alice is my lady. Or was.”

“You know what? By solving Lack I will cure your Alice for you, give you her back.”

“I hope so,” I said honestly.

After her second refusal by Lack, Alice fled to her parents, an hour north, for Thanksgiving. From the horn of emptiness to the horn of plenty. I came home to find her stuffing underwear into a weekend suitcase, Evan and Garth standing stiffly to one side, canes lifted. She left without once meeting my eye. The blind men and I stood listening as her car, improperly warmed up, roared out of the driveway.

“Huh,” said Garth, with deep sourness.

It rained that weekend. Evan and Garth and I went for walks in the mist. Weather seemed to lull the blind men to silence. It provided proof of an environment, so they no longer had to conjure one up by inventory. Turning their wet faces upward, losing shoes in the sucking mud of campus paths, they were finally convinced that their verbal weather was redundant, that a world loomed out around them.

I was thinking of Braxia’s assurances. If it was true that Lack would never take Alice, then my struggle with Lack wasn’t for her body, but for her mind, her soul. It was a struggle I felt I had a chance of winning. I sorted through long arguments in favor of myself, and against Lack. I measured my love for Alice against hers for Lack—which was craftier, which more tenacious? I was sure I knew the answer.

I’d woo her back.

On Thanksgiving I drove Evan and Garth to a dinner at the blind school, a large flat factory-like building in the middle of a grassy compound, surrounded by a baseball diamond, a parking lot, and a shallow blue swimming pool, drained for the winter and filling with dry leaves and the husks of summer insects. They invited me in, but I refused. I spent the afternoon driving in the hills above the city, nearly the only car, my radio tuned to live coverage of a far-off parade, athletes and politicians greeting crowds from garish floats. When it got dark I drove to my favorite diner, the Silver Lining, but the doors were closed. I peered in through the window. The vast, incomprehensible Greek family that ran the place was just sitting down to a pilgrim feast at the largest booth. The turkey was huge, golden, classic, and the side dishes were endless.

When I got back to the apartment I found—surprise!—Alice clearing out the bedroom to create a painting studio.

Alice was a terrible amateur painter. Or had been. At the start of our relationship she’d given it up. But now her dusty equipment was resurrected from the tomb of her parents’ garage. Paint-splattered easel, drop cloths, and containers of gesso and rabbit-skin glue. A thick, square mirror, edges taped. The bookshelves had been moved into the living room, to expose the north wall. A roll of fresh white duck was leaning up against the
door frame, blocking the entrance. Alice was in the kitchen, rinsing old brushes at the tap.

“Alice. You’re back.”

Silence.

“You missed the rest of your shift. Soft took over. I guess you’ll have to wait until next week.”

Silence. Water running in the sink.

I took a deep breath, trying to relocate my newfound, rain-washed strength.

“Possibly there’s been a change,” I suggested. “You’re not so sure about this thing after all. You might be in over your head. Maybe you want to take a step back, get some perspective on this Lack thing.”

Stony silence.

“Alice?” I moved up closer behind her. She went on gently kneading the encrusted bristles back to life.

“Maybe you’re still in love with Lack,” I said. “But feeling like you came on too strong. You’re giving him some space, so he can mull it over.”

Silence. I felt my schemes evaporating in it.

“Probably you’re still in love with Lack,” I said. “You’re determined, nothing’s going to stop you. You’re going to try to change yourself for him. That’s why you’re painting again all of a sudden.”

She shook a handful of brushes dry, and gathered them in a coffee can.

“Listen,” I said. “I’m going to change my approach. I’m going to be lighthearted from here on in. We’ll develop a lighthearted, bantering dialogue. Like an old movie. Like in
His Girl Friday
, when Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell are old flames,
but she’s going to marry somebody else. He stays lighthearted. They banter. But at the same time, he’s making a very sly, very persuasive pitch for himself.”