The Dream of Doctor Bantam (16 page)

What did the object of inquiry say about the story?

She said: God, I wish my past would just dry up and crumble away.

And then?

She asked me something strange. She asked me: why did you pick me for all of this? What was it that you saw in me?

How did you answer her?

Well, I mean—I had to think about it. I mean one way of perceiving it is like I said—we were low on stats, I was stressed out and I needed people to route onto courses, so I asked everyone—and she was the one to respond. So she kind of chose herself, you know? But I mean, I didn’t tell her that. Obviously I didn’t tell that to her. And in a way it’s not even true. There was something extra about her—there had to have been. I wasn’t just some kind of monster, playing the odds. I couldn’t have been.

How did you answer her?

I told her she had a kind of intensity that I found very appealing.

How did she respond?

She believed it, which was good. She said thank you.

Was it your perception that she believed it?

I mean—I think she decided to believe it. But that’s good, right? That’s how it’s supposed to be. Reality is what you want it to be. You water the plants in your own garden that most need watering.

Did you have sexual intercourse with the object for the first time that evening, or later?

I don’t remember.

Did you have sexual intercourse with the object for the first time that evening, or later?

I don’t want to tell you.

Did you have—

Jesus! That evening. Which is fine. It was a moment.

Describe the sexual encounter.

No!

Describe—

Fine. Fine. It was in her dorm room. She lived in one of those huge buildings, like anthills—people used to say that her dorm had once been a prison, that it had its own zip code, that kind of stuff. And she and her roommate really were packed in there. They didn’t even really have beds, just these kind of couch things that slid out of the walls so you could sleep on them, then you could slide them back into the wall when you were done and sit on them. I never met her roommate. She must have been some kind of dog person—there were all kinds of pictures of her, alone in a park or something with different huge dogs. Patrice’s side of the room was really different—there was like, nothing, except these little postcard photos of Paris she had pinned to a corkboard, three of them, kind of sad, right next to a class schedule. There were a few textbooks, too, but no fantasy novels or anything—she said she’d thrown all of that stuff away; she was too embarrassed to bring it to college with her. And she had some Christmas lights, the colored kind, strung around this microscopic desk she had stuffed in the corner. That was literally it—not even any clothes or plates or vases with dried flowers or, you know, girl stuff. I never went to college, so I don’t know what you’re supposed to have in a dorm, but it seems like you were supposed to have a little more than that—I mean, did she just eat in restaurants all the time or something? It’s like it never even occurred to her that this is where she lived. I guess it was kind of cool, you know? It’s like she didn’t need anything to remind her of who she was—I guess.

Was there anything else?

There was her notebook. Has she ever shown you her notebook?

Assume she hasn’t. Describe the notebook.

It was a little thing, kind of a vinyl-looking cover, quadrille paper. I didn’t look through it then, but she showed it to me later, once she was on staff, one time when we were over there while her roommate was away. It had these drawings and stories in it—little drawings of people and stories written in her tiny handwriting, like little bits of black plastic shrapnel scattered over the page.

Her drawings were really good—they still are, I think, even though I don’t know if she does anything in her little book these days. She told me once how she got started with it. She’d be riding the bus around the city, back and forth to school or to the mall with her mom to get some shirts and things, and she’d see some man—or some woman, even—who’d be looking at her, or smile at her, or something. And she’d duck her eyes, she couldn’t bring herself to look back at them. But she’d remember what they looked like, and once she got home and she’d finished her chores and her homework and things, when she finally got to be alone, she’d draw them, just right out of her head, just like that. And God—she’d make up these stories about what she and these people on the bus would do together.

Sexual stories?

Sometimes, yeah, but she didn’t show me those, and I don’t think she did more than one or two. Mostly it was just stuff where like—they’d go to the movies or the library together, or they’d talk about the books Patrice had been reading—in the stories, the people on the bus had also read those weird fantasy books, these like weird drunken frat kids or lawyer women in pinstriped suits had for some reason read Gudrun St. Silverwolf books—and they had these animated arguments about the themes of the stories, and Patrice usually came out on top of the arguments, but not always, which was kind of strange—like sometimes she’d let these totally imaginary people beat her. It was crazy, this totally classic dislocated locus of identity, just like Dr. Bantam describes in
Who Are You And Who Are You Today
? She had like hundreds of these little drawings and stories.

Go back to the actual sexual encounter.

I mean it was good. It felt kind of dangerous—we were in a dorm and all—it felt like what Dr. Bantam talks about, like our identities, our purposes, were one, like you’re always supposed to feel, you know?

It was good, except for physically, I guess. Physically it was kind of terrible. We were on this horrible bed that slid into the wall, and the more you moved around the more it slid in by accident until it was basically shoving us onto the floor. And she wasn’t—fully aroused, if you know what I mean. But you know, we finished up and everything.

What did the object say to you after you had finished?

She asked if I thought her, you know, her hair—you know—was ugly, or coarse, or something. I told her it wasn’t.

What else did the object say to you?

She asked about protection, like if I had used any. Which seemed weird to me—I mean she must have known that I hadn’t. I said that we could use some in the future if she wanted.

She looked at the ceiling; her hands were kind of resting behind her head. I was sitting on the floor beside the couch-bed; she rolled to the side and there was a kind of ripping sound when her skin came loose of the vinyl. She said that she didn’t mind if we used protection or not.

Actually I kind of want to have a baby, she said. I’d want to have a lot of them.

What did you say to the object?

What was I supposed to say? It was such a weird thing. Why would someone who liked being alone to the extent that she obviously did want to have a baby? It didn’t fit.

Why do you believe that she wanted to be alone?

She said she did, didn’t she? Why would you live like she did if you didn’t enjoy being alone?

Did you ask the object to explain what she had said?

Why would I? It’s pretty straightforward. She wanted a baby. It must have been biological or something.

Again: what did you say to the object?

I said that I guessed she should do whatever she wanted in life. She seemed happy about that. She sat up from the couch and gathered up my hair in kind of a knot—I had longer hair then, remember—and she kind of pulled my head into her arms and kissed the top of it. Which was nice and all.

Is that all you noticed?

No—I mean I was kind of weirded out by it, honestly, but I really liked her too. And when I walked home from the dorms—she got me out by the back stairs, didn’t kiss me good night or anything, but who really minds that, you know—I could still kind of smell her on me, some weird sweat that had soaked into my slacks. It’s like—this is kind of silly—but have you ever reached into a birdbath? When you see your reflection in it, and your reflection is in this upside-down world, and so you reach in to try to touch the world on the other side of the water? It felt like that—like my hand was still coated with some mud or something from the bottom of the birdbath, soaking into my skin.

And this was not the only occasion on which you had intercourse.

Oh no. We had plenty of intercourse, believe me. A little bit less once we were both on staff and one or the other of us would be tired all of the time. But there was always some occasion where I could, you know, talk her out of studying for a test for an evening—because it’s meaningless, right?—or we could borrow a car from Andrew or one of the other guys on staff and go out for a drive, and you know what that leads to.

Did the object ever exhibit more arousal during intercourse than she had previously?

What does that even matter? I mean she must have. She never said no or anything.

Describe the point at which the object said no.

Oh God. So it’s months later. She’d dropped most of her classes altogether—she had one microeconomics course left, but we could tell she was going to drop it, too. And we were all pretty happy about that, of course, because she was such an asset to the branch, and it was what she really wanted to do then. It was good for her to drop courses like that. You can read about all that academic stress and stuff in her record—all the things with her mom, and the counselors at her high school, and, you know, the
attempt
she’d made—all of that. So it was good for her to have less of that stress to deal with and for her to be working for something really positive for a change.

Describe the point at which the object said no.

Don’t make me, okay? She said no. We broke up.

Describe the point at which the object said no.

We were over at the apartment; Andrew and Kayla were still finishing it up and everything. I think they had to fix up the sinks or something but all the paint was on the walls and the carpet was in. We came over with a bunch of beers and some takeout Chinese food to, you know, celebrate her dropping out of school completely. And I thought it was kind of a given that we were going to, you know—have intercourse. But she just sat there, even when I crawled across the floor to kiss her and start, you know, taking off her clothes. She just sat there, like some shadow burned into the bare white walls.

And she said: Gregory. I think we should stop seeing each other.

I didn’t stop what I was doing; I thought she was just being nuts. And she didn’t try to stop me—I mean physically. She just sat there letting me unbutton her blouse and, you know, stuff.

She just said again: I think we can’t do this anymore. So finally I sat back and gave her kind of a glare.

What do you mean, we can’t do this anymore? I asked. You have to speak specifically.

I’m sorry, she said. It’s my fault, not yours. I don’t think I can do this anymore. I’m really sorry.

What emotions did you experience?

What emotions do you think I experienced? I mean she didn’t have to say it like that—just so blankly like that. Like it was nothing, like she could just, you know, turn things off like a tap. I mean, yes, I know you’re supposed to be able to talk reasonably and openly about issues relating to the identity you share with different people—and she did that—I mean she’s very good at not acting in a timebound way. But I guess it hurt me. I guess I felt, you know, betrayed.

Were you right to feel that way?

No—I was wrong. You’re right. I should have been better—like she was better. I should have been more rational. I shouldn’t have felt anything.

Go deeper on feeling betrayed.

She said she didn’t want to have sex with me anymore. She just sat there in this apartment and said that, and she apologized—but it was like it was nothing. So why did she have sex with me before? Was it just for—I mean, sorry.

Finish the sentence.

Was it just for sperm. But I didn’t mean to think that. That’s totally out of line. I shouldn’t feel those things.

Why did you feel hurt by the situation?

I mean—I know it’s wrong to feel hurt—but doesn’t it seem intuitive to you why I would feel hurt by the situation? I—I first thought she was just like, someone to route into courses, some girl on the street. But she’s so much better at this—at being in the Institute, you know—than I ever was—than I’ll ever be. And she was so fragile, first—if you know the stuff about her past I know, stuff that came out on the Machine—she was like a face painted on an eggshell. If you weren’t careful with her, she’d crack.

But now here she was—working pre-INTAKE, teaching relax courses, running the Machine, even, that young—and on the streets passing out flyers and things—you wouldn’t believe some of the dirty things people said to her. Timebound people, physics students and such—they called her stuff like
cult whore
or
brainwashed
or
stupid bitch
—they shoved digital watches in her face and asked her
is this real, is this real
—you know how timebound people can be. And I wanted to hit them in the face for saying those things to someone who was a thousand times better than they would ever be.

But the old Patrice, the eggshell Patrice—she would have cracked, no question. She froze up even whenever people looked at her on bus stops. And now these depressing timebound people say their depressing things to her—like that she’s ruining her life in here with us—and she can look them right in the eyes, God, her eyes are like lightning—she can knock them down with her eyes, and tell them why their assumptions are wrong—she can quote Dr. Bantam right back at them like a champion. She’s even routed one of them in to courses. She’s totally healthy, independent, strong. And it’s just like—