Chimpanzee (24 page)

Cynthia has her arm around her receptionist, who is young. Once, she might have worked this job while attending college. Now she works this job to work this job. Cynthia stares at me.

“What happened?” I say.

“That equipment is dangerous,” she says. “What they took.”

I don't say anything.

“Your indices are on one of those chips,” she says. “Among other things.”

I can only think to laugh, but I don't.

“Would you like me to walk you somewhere?” I say.

“It would be inappropriate.”

“Where will you go?” I say.

“To the police station.”

“The police are all downtown,” I say. “Tied up. Can't you hear the noise?”

Now I understand. The protest bought time. No cops free to bother our intruders.

“Then we will go there,” she says. “Are you well?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I'm fine.”

But I'm trembling.

We walk in different directions. At my end of the alley, someone hands me my phone. I take it without looking at him. The messages have all been deleted.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HIS TIME, WE TAKE
D
IMITRI WITH US
. O
UT OF TOWN
. T
HEY
are both on Fall Break, from the university, and Sireen would like some air. Dimitri wants to photograph the kudzu, which is everywhere outside of town. He is wearing khaki pants and hiking boots. A short-sleeved shirt with multiple pockets. A straw hat. He sits in the back seat with a leather-bound notepad in his lap. Sireen and I wear jeans and old sneakers.

“How's the house-hunt?” he says.

“Fine,” Sireen says.

“Fine,” I say.

The radio slips between stations. The mountains are breaking up the broadcast into its constituent parts. Hissing and squealing.

“You know, ten percent of that radio static is left over from the Big Bang,” Sireen says.

I wait long enough after she's said this before I turn it off. It's just noise, after all. Salvage, from the universal wrack.

“Will you make another offer?” Dimitri says.

“Yes,” I say. I look over at Sireen. “Sireen has found another one she likes. A craftsman overlooking the river bottom.”

“Great,” he says. “That's great.”

I turn our sedan off the state highway and onto the short avenue that constitutes this little town's main street. The trailhead we're seeking is on the other side of town—just outside it. Along this avenue, all I see are crumbling bricks and wooden siding, which has gone gray for want of chemical
treatment. Between storefronts, I see glimpses of the houses that line parallel avenues.

“There,” Sireen says, and points.

I park before a small, free-standing shop. The sign on the latticed window says
GENERAL STORE
. I can see candles and birdfeeders inside.

Dimitri and Sireen walk ahead. Around the building, there is a derelict wagon house in an overgrown lot. The mountains are watercolor blue in the distance. The building has been entirely overgrown by kudzu—it climbs the utility poles at the edges of the lot and hangs in geometric shapes from the power lines. Sireen and Dimitri wade into the weeds, and he points his antique camera at things.

Behind us, on the other side of the avenue, retirees sit in kudzuvine rocking chairs, which you can buy. Some of the residents are weaving vines, making things. There are others harvesting kudzu leaves from a cluster abutting a parking lot. There are restaurants here that serve them in salads or vegetarian quesadillas made with thin, American cheese.

A few years ago, this town was the subject of a federal investigation. The residents ran underground cock-fighting matches that offered cheaper buy-ins and greater returns than the casino in the Qualla Boundary. They were run by young white men with beards and dark glasses, and you could buy jars of cheap liquor from the runners who came down from the hills.

No one used to come, from our city. It wasn't safe, until the residents began opening antique shops and selling their kudzu handicrafts. One of Sireen's senior co-workers gave us a kudzuvine basket last year. It was filled with pears from the trees on the back third of his four-acre hillside plot, where he also grows tomatoes and paints images of the city below. Our city.

He is on paid sabbatical this semester.

The retirees across the street watch Dimitri take photographs. They see Sireen's unbound hair in the clear day. Me.

They are paying attention. Which used to mean something, even to them.

Sireen leans her head against my shoulder. We're taking a break from the trail. She has an arm around me, and I can hear her nails picking at the ironwood tree against my back.

“I have an idea for a grant,” she says. “For the department.”

This is one of her professional duties. Bringing in money so the university doesn't have to fund its own research.

“That's good.”

Dimitri is ahead of us, off the trail. I can see him on his knees, before a tree-of-heaven. Its leaves have begun their autumnal change, which will soon sweep all of Appalachia. People will come from the north to take photographs of mountainsides like acrylic paintings.

He is bracing his camera upon a log he found in the earth.

“Let me ask you,” Sireen says, “is there a precedent for older scholars being indexed?”

“It depends how old,” I say. “There are a few, older than us, who came late to the program, so they only had their last few semesters indexed. They were a control group—in a weird way.”

“Because they couldn't lose everything?” she says.

“Yep.”

“I see.”

“And they were insured. My director and his bunch got the government to underwrite rehabilitation, if the experiments failed.”

“Did they?”

“A few, but they're on lifetime pensions now.”

“They're still collecting?”

“Well, they were,” I say. “Times were fine then.”

I shift her off of my shoulder, to get a better look.

“Why?” I say.

Dimitri is on his back now, obscured by the grass, lifting his camera through the tree's lower branches.

Sireen tucks her hair behind her ears. She squints into the conversation. “What do you think it would take to get them—the older ones—to agree to the process?”

“I don't know. Money? The backing of some foundation? People are doing weird shit with indices these days. Making sims.”

She was shocked when I told her about the raid on Cynthia's office. My indices. She stared, as if she didn't believe me. Nodded
a few times. She took a few notes when the police came by for my statement.

She nods now. It is a performance. It is a nod that says,
I already know what comes next
, but it's better, sometimes, if we look like we don't.

“Why?” I say.

“I was thinking, if we could get older scholars—accomplished scholars—to agree to index and then to donate it, then other people could use it. Open source.”

Dimitri has finished with the tree.

“How?” I say.

“To solve problems,” she says. “Difficult ones.”

“What?”

“With chimping goggles. Like those people, from that sim at the bar. They were real. We
thought
them—like them—during that sim.”

It's an oversimplification, but I can feel that pressure behind my eyes. I can't remember how to tell her.

“So,” I say.

She crosses her arms. “If you could
think
like some genius, who has a record of solving problems, then you could solve more.”

“I guess you could.”

She studies me, catches the liminal forest light, alive and dying, in her eyes. We haven't been out enough—as much as we used to. Her skin has paled.

“Could I talk to Cynthia about this?” she says. “Would you mind?”

“No,” I say. “I don't mind.”

Dimitri is beside us now. His camera hangs on a strap around his neck. He has a bottle of wine in a cylindrical satchel over his shoulder.

“May I come to one of your sessions?” she says. “To take notes for the proposal?”

I don't know how long it will take Cynthia to replace the equipment in the sofa. Repossession is federal, so, a while.

“May I come, too?” Dimitri says.

He hands me a plastic glass filled with wine. Sireen found a suitable clearing, and she has removed her shoes to practice yoga where she can't hear us. I can see her across the trail, all elbows and sunlight. She doesn't want any of Dimitri's wine.

“Why do you want to come to a session?” I say.

He braces himself against the loam with an elbow. “Why does Sireen?”

It's a pinot. My favorite. Usually, Dimitri doesn't care for them. I can see the mountains over the tree line behind Sireen's clearing. We're both watching her. I feel like I've done this before. With someone, sometime. Watching Sireen, keeping an eye out. Checking for weakness in the other man. I wonder sometimes.

The wine tastes cold. Like earth.

“She wants to bring in grant money,” I say. “Something about chimping great minds.”

“Good idea,” he says.

She sinks her belly into the grass. A practice of non-being. Reduction. There is nothing before us but a clearing of wild grass and the idea that there may be a woman within it.

“Why do you?” I say.

“I'm doing a study.”

I look at him. His cheekbones are pale. His skin is manicured, and he smells faintly of cedar and rose oil. Some cologne.

We're so close to the Qualla Boundary, I want to laugh at him. A brilliant doll, like some shamanic talisman, who doesn't belong. He lives only this one life, but they live two, divided by those mountains into American and not. “Native” is just an afterthought.

“About repossession?” I say.

He looks back. “Repossession. People like you.”

“There's not a lot of sociology involved,” I say.

“Sure there is.”

That stops us. We drink. Sireen stretches toward something—air, tension?—above the grass. I would rather be in that field, but she dislikes it when I interrupt her.

“Sure,” I say. “You can come, too.”

He hands me a cigarette. “I need a case study. I've been taking notes.”

“Of course you have.”