The Dream of Doctor Bantam (9 page)

No, no, keep them open, begged Patrice.

She slowly let her eyes open; the light pried its way in.

Couldn’t you just blindfold me? she asked.

This is better than blindfolding, said Patrice. Julie jumped; she couldn’t tell where Patrice’s voice was coming from. Maybe that was what gave Patrice’s voice its sudden authority: this mysterious lack of placement, this lack of Patrice’s eyes and weak, dark mouth. This allows you to better perceive the simultaneity of things.

What does that mean, said Julie; her own voice had suddenly become so loud.

Relax, said Patrice.

I’m not going to relax, said Julie. I’m pretty freaked out about this, to tell you the truth. Are you trying to brainwash me or something?

You can’t brainwash someone who doesn’t want to be brainwashed, said Patrice. Look, it can be hard, the first time. Tell me a moment.

Tell you a what? asked Julie. Should I be blinking, or what?

Of course you should, said Patrice, it doesn’t work if you don’t blink. Tell me a moment.

Tell me what that even means, said Julie.

A dial turned; the intensity of the light increased.

Jesus, said Julie, forcing her eyes shut.

Relax, said Patrice. Relax and look into the light and trust me. Tell me a moment. Just—just, you know, describe something to me. A memory.

She blinked, and found it easier, somehow, to blink against the stronger, brighter light.

Tabitha and I, she said. In her bedroom.

Who’s Tabitha, asked Patrice sharply.

Julie laughed. Patrice turned the dial up further.

Owwww, whined Julie.

You have to describe the moment more, explained Patrice.

This is stupid, said Julie.

Describe the moment more, explained Patrice, and Julie shook a little, in the chair, because it was the voice of the stronger Patrice. The lightning was coming out of the headlamps now, filling up Julie’s eyes.

She felt a knot of tension bubble up her spine and pop into wet nothingness in her shoulders.

Okay, she said. Tabitha, my
sister
, and I, in her bedroom. We’re sitting on the bed. No … it’s my mother’s bed.

Go deeper on mother’s bed, said Patrice. Then: I mean … describe it further.

Her blankets are on it, said Julie. They’re pink and she doesn’t wash them often. There are ashes in them. And Tabitha’s telling me about my … genitals.

Go deeper on genitals, said Patrice.

She snickered.

Sorry. Go deeper on Tabitha.

The light was burning up everything. She felt like she was sleeping.

She’s dead. No. I mean.

Doesn’t matter. Go with what you say first. Go deeper on dead.

She’s not dead. Not during this memory, I mean during this moment.

Doesn’t matter. Go deeper on dead.

She doesn’t move anymore.

Deeper. More details.

Her body’s in the morgue drawer. My mother’s there. She’s dead. I want to do something else.

Go deeper on the morgue drawer.

She’s naked. And she has blue veins under her hips. And you can see through her skin. Let’s stop.

Go deeper on her skin.

Let’s stop, she said, very loud.

Go—

Stop, shouted Julie.

Patrice turned off the machine and the coils of the lights flared for a moment, then slowly went red before they went dark. She was surrounded by darkness and red spots that fluttered in front of her like curtains; they rose; one by one the house lights glowed on. Patrice was standing by the desk with one hand perched nervously on the corner of the wood, fingers drumming fast.

You’re not usually supposed to stop until you understand something better, she said.

Julie let her head drop between her knees.

Gee, look at the time, she said. I should really get going.

Time isn’t real, said Patrice. Please stay.

Julie sat up and looked at her. Her hands were closed into fists, shivering at her side.

Why? she asked. Why should I stay?

I don’t know, said Patrice. I’m sorry that happened to your sister. I don’t know what else to say.

Julie felt something in her chest close up.

Don’t be sorry about my sister, she said. My sister had it coming to her. All right?

All right, said Patrice.

Julie blinked.

She was a bitch, she said. She was weak-willed. She didn’t have what it took to survive in this world. She had it coming. All right? So don’t tell me you’re sorry for her. She felt sorry for herself enough.

Okay, said Patrice.

Okay
, mimicked Julie. Then she hung her head between her shoulders and pressed her palms into her eyes. If you pressed hard enough on your eyelids you could see patterns, gold and black bumblebee bands, much nicer colors than the colors burning up her cheeks. She pressed until she felt the headache she hadn’t even known she had relax a little, then opened her eyes and looked up. Patrice was sitting on the edge of the desk, watching her. Her face was blank, slack as a sail waiting for wind.

I’m sorry, said Julie. I didn’t mean to make fun of your voice.

It’s okay, said Patrice. It’s fine. If you want to go back on the Machine to process more of it, that’s fine. If you don’t, that’s fine too.

It’s really late, said Julie. I need to call my mom.

You should do only what you need to do, said Patrice.

The landline phone she’d rigged up was still in the hallway. She picked up the receiver and dialed her house. This time Michael answered.

Thatch residence, he said.

Michael, said Julie.

Julie, said Michael. Hey, kid. Where’ve you been?

Why’d you answer with Thatch residence? asked Julie. You’re not married to my mom. You’re not a member of the illustrious Thatch family.

It’s not really my house, I know, said Michael.

It makes it sound like you’re ten, she said. What are you, ten?

Michael chuckled.

Are you coming home tonight? he asked. Or is it just your mom and me again?

Let me call you back, said Julie.

She put the phone down and rubbed her eyes again; the colors from the light were slow in disappearing. She got up and went back into the bedroom. Patrice had put the Machine away and was sitting on the bed, smoking a cigarette. One hand was underneath the pillow, touching the diary. She pulled it away as soon as she noticed Julie watching her.

Um, said Julie. Can I maybe stay here tonight?

Of course, said Patrice. You can stay whenever you’d like.

Julie snickered.

Better be careful, or I’ll take you up on that, she said. You don’t want your house turning into like, a free mental hospital or something.

You’re not mentally ill, said Patrice. You just need to process things.

For some reason this was the saddest thing, someone from the Institute of Temporal Illusions telling her that she was mentally okay.

I’ll stay on the couch, she said. Is that all right?

That seems best, said Patrice.

All right, said Julie. Thank you. See you in the morning.

She started digging through one of the dirty piles of laundry.

What are you doing? asked Patrice.

Julie looked up; Patrice had gotten down from the bed. That aura of calm she’d had—Jesus, is that what being on the Machine gave you? That kind of calm, even for people who were basically born to be emotional wrecks?—it had disappeared, and she was wringing her hands, watching Julie dig through her dirty skirts and underwear.

God, I’m just getting a sheet or something, Julie said. You’re such a baby.

She got a sheet and made sure to knock over the rest of the pile of laundry in the process.

She spread the sheet out over the couch and lay down, fully clothed, then folded half of it over herself like a human pita. She looked up at the ceiling and she watched the spots from the headlights on the Machine run over the stucco and Christmas lights, dull blue now and quickly disappearing.

She was still awake when Patrice came in.

I’m just getting my cigarettes, Patrice said, standing in the hallway with just her hand reaching around the corner.

So get them, said Julie. This is your apartment.

Patrice danced into the room across Julie’s peripheral vision. She grabbed the cigarettes and danced back into the hallway; she lit one and stood there, watching Julie on the couch and smoked it. Julie kept looking at the ceiling. She breathed in the smoke, secondhand, fresh from Patrice’s mouth. She tried, thoughts moving through strange pre-sleep alpha waves, to isolate the taste of Patrice’s mouth from the taste of the smoke.

I’m not going on that Machine again, she said.

I think it would help you, said Patrice.

I don’t care what you think, she said quickly. You’re in a cult.

The smoke circled over her head.

Then maybe we can help each other, said Patrice. Who knows?

Julie turned on her side and wriggled around, adjusting the blanket over herself.

I’m sleeping, she said.

Good night, said Patrice. Keep smiling.

When she opened her eyes the overhead lights had been turned off and the apartment was dark, except for the Christmas lights, glowing like neon candles. She rolled to the left and remembered that she was sleeping on a couch at just the moment when she tumbled over the side and landed on the floor. A pile of covers moaned from the carpet nearby.

Awake now, she crawled on her hands and knees. Patrice was wrapped in the covers from the bed, asleep on the carpet just under the left arm of the couch, just under the place where Julie’s head had been resting. Her lips were moving.

Je ne veux pas travailler
, she chanted.
Je ne veux pas déjeuner
.

Julie looked down at her, hovering over her on all fours.

She lost the ability to count time; she had no idea how long she remained there.

She resisted for as long as possible the urge to shrug the covers off of Patrice’s shoulder. The summer night was warm; Patrice was wearing a long T-shirt, midthigh. Somehow Julie was sure that she was not wearing anything else.

She resisted for as long as possible the urge to put her hand on Patrice’s knee, and she resisted for as long as possible the urge to slide her finger, slowly, like peeling tape off of skin, up Patrice’s thigh to the hem of the long T-shirt. She let her finger rest against the edge of it, let her finger slip under the edge of it. She bounced its light weight, let it flip up and fall back down, until she accidentally bounced it too hard and it flipped too far, stuck via the laws of static against her hip, and no, she was not wearing anything else; her boss’s vast bare hip glowed orange in the blue night.

Julie quickly scrabbled backwards on all fours and got to her feet once she was a safe distance away. She didn’t look at Patrice lying there, still asleep, and she tiptoed into the bathroom, took the knob, and didn’t turn on the light until she was sure that the door was shut completely.

She was in the mirror with her back flat to the door. Her short hair was stuck up in the back from the couch and her clothes were rumpled. She had always wondered if you could tell a sexual deviant by her facial expression, and now she knew.

If she was a sexual deviant anyway, she decided, it didn’t matter how far she went with it.

That was how she justified taking off all her clothes and drawing the hot bath for herself. The tub was still full of scum and old cinnamon oils from this afternoon. She filled the bathtub slowly, so that the water would make as little sound as possible, and she crouched on the linoleum to the side of the bathtub and kept her right hand on the knob to regulate the water’s temperature and pressure and she kept her left hand stroking gently between her legs.

This is what she was doing when Patrice walked in without knocking, the T-shirt hanging to her knees and eyes blinking away sleep. Julie quickly dropped to the floor and crossed her legs and bent over herself as far as she could.

What are you doing? mumbled Patrice, sleepily.

Oh you know taking a night bath ha ha, said Julie.

Patrice nodded, strolled in, and looked at herself in the mirror.

I had the strangest dreams, she said. I was caught in a spider’s web, but there was only one strand in the web, wrapped around my ribs, and when I touched the strand it was sticky. And I kept undoing the strands of web from around my waist, but then another spider would come along and quickly put another strand of web around me. It kept happening all night.

What a crazy dream, said Julie, cheeks completely red and face buried in her bare knees. I wonder how it ends!

Yes, agreed Patrice, and she turned around and walked back to the door. Good night, she mumbled as she turned out the light.

Julie let her eyes adjust to the darkness and she turned off the water. In silence she stood up and let herself get in, inch by inch.

She tried not to move or make a single ripple as she lay in the warm water in the dark bathroom and told herself how disgusting she was being—a six-year-old, eating bowls of whipped cream uninterrupted by pie—and she bit her lips and lusted for a cigarette, and she was seventeen and her entire life would stretch before her like this, full like this, and every inch of her skin was warm in the darkness. She lay in the water and she allowed herself, with the memory of the light against her retinas, to think about the cult girl who frowned like Tabitha.

5

Her hair was still wet and reeked of bath oils when she crept downstairs and picked up the bike from the porch. She had ridden it halfway up Guadalupe before she realized that she hadn’t come on Tabitha’s bike the previous day; this wasn’t her bike. She began to pedal faster.

Michael’s swing was creaking on the branch of the tree in her yard; Michael’s car was in her mother’s garage. She leaned the bike up against his paint, unlocked the back door, and stepped into her kitchen.

When you step into a room you drop skin cells: some of your color and some of your weight. Eventually they stain all the walls, hang like stalactites from the ceiling. The kitchen was seething around her—the same dead plants in the window, the same glasses in the cupboard, the same scorch marks Tabitha had made on the potholders that hung under the stove. Jungle vapors of Tabitha against her skin. She hadn’t felt like this for weeks—her eyes stung; the Machine had cracked something open in her. She stepped back into the garage and closed the door and squeezed her eyes shut against the blue hour before morning.

In the yard she sat on the swing Michael had made for her and she kicked herself back and forth over the lawn as the dew collected and the sun came up. She was still there, passed out in the grass, when Michael came out to his car, work papers gathered in a binder-clipped heap at his side.

I worry about you, he said after he’d woken her up.

I worry about fire ants, said Julie.

He drove away and she saw that he’d lifted the bike, gently, and rested it against Tabitha’s old bike, where it looked like it belonged. She pulled it free, threw it down on the grass, and went upstairs to bed holding her arms tight around herself. She slept until Linda got home and the tobacco smoke had worked its way down the hall.

Patrice called her that evening at ten as she was eating frozen pancakes fresh from the microwave.

I just got back from work, she said. I slept so terribly. Can you come over right away and fix some dinner?

It’s ten o’clock at night, said Julie.

The time isn’t important, said Patrice. I’m so hungry, Julie. I’m so completely hungry and you need to be here.

Julie went to hang up the phone, but saw the yellow pages resting on the little footstool below the receiver first. She sat at the table with the phone cradled under her ear and paged through it.

Here, she said. Pizza Classics. They have a deal, nine dollars for a large pepperoni pizza.

I don’t eat meat, whimpered Patrice.

They have a deal, twelve dollars for a large vegetable pizza, said Julie. Here’s the number.

She read the number out. She waited, her pancakes turning to mush.

Did you write it down? she asked.

So I just call this number and they bring me the pizza, Patrice said, slowly.

It took ten minutes of explaining before Julie was sure that she understood the process and could get through it on her own: the call, the directions, the meeting at the door, the question of whether the pizza is handed over or left in a neutral location, the question of the tip.

Okay, said Patrice at last. I think I understand the principles.

Awesome, said Julie. Congratulations. I have to go.

Will you come back tomorrow at eight? asked Patrice.

Will you beg me? asked Julie, just before she hung up the phone.

She sat in the kitchen and finished her pancakes, stirring the icy batter at the bottom of the bowl with her spoon. Then she went to the phone and dialed Patrice’s number.

Hello? asked Patrice. Is there a problem? Is the pizza still coming?

Yes, I’ll come back tomorrow at eight, Julie said, and hung up.

All the next day she couldn’t relax; eight o’clock hung over her. She rode the mystery bike to the bookstore, to the Retrograde for endless glasses of free water, to the creek that ran by Lamar where the college kids played Frisbee golf on their days off. She took her copy of
The Dream and Reality of Time Travel
along and she sat on the limestone and mud banks of the creek, and she watched college kids and she calculated the time until she became one of them—three months of summer, twelve months of bulk hours—and she wondered just what the difference could be, what would happen to her in that time to make her think that Frisbee golf seemed like a good idea.

It is a long-held dream of human beings, homo sapiens
, said the copy of
The Dream and Reality of Time Travel
that Tabitha had once intended to give her as a birthday joke,
to escape from time. You may not call this dream by such an accurate name, of course. Perhaps you want something simpler for yourself. You want a good, fulfilling job. Success in school. Your own home; your own car. A loving relationship. The pursuit of an escape from time goes by many complicated names and many complicated masks.

But all the masks cover a single leering face! It is the ugliest face in the world and the most terrifying. If we saw it for what it truly is, we think we would scream in terror. So instead we substitute our masks for the truth. We deny that there is even a face to escape from.

The face that stares at us is time.

I see the face for what it is. You see it, too, if you are honest with yourself.

And if you can see time for what it is—if you stare into the face—the face of time ceases to be terrifying. You will lose the urge to scream. Instead, you will laugh at the fact that you were terrified for so long.

What is time?

Time is an illusion, the illusion that life proceeds as a series of events that “happen” to a series of individuals. Time is the illusion that our lives, our hopes and our dreams are constrained to a single line that leads in a single direction, from something we call birth to something we call death. We can’t escape time, we think. We can’t escape death and so we fill our lives, our identities, with hollow pursuits, with illusions of escape. Fulfilling jobs. Scholastic success. Possessions. Love.

These are comfortable goals; there is no question. But in an ultimate sense, they miss the point. They are responses to a mask. No one thinks to take off the mask, to make the ultimate escape. No one thinks to master our knowledge and our identity and to escape from time itself.

This is the reality of time travel—and this, if you are willing finally to face the fears that you deny you have, is the subject of this book.

Goodbye, she said at seven, jangling her keys as she stepped into the garage.

There was no answer from Linda’s room at the back of the house. She waited.

Don’t worry, I will, she called, and then she shut the door.

She let the bike grind to a stop across Patrice’s lawn. Ira Wasserman was on the porch of the house, smoking cigarettes and playing Chet Baker from a tiny boom box perched on the railing.

Mazel Tov, he shouted. You found it! I didn’t even put up a flyer for it yet! I meant to!

Julie had no idea what he was talking about until she remembered when she had gotten the bike.

It was easy, she said. Is there a reward?

There’s beer, he said. Come on inside.

His kitchen counters buckled under the weight of a hundred accumulated bills, water-electric-gas-power-tuition-who knew what, all scattered in thick envelopes around the room. A pile of unsold copies of the
Bluecollar Review
were sleeping in a wicker dog basket on the floor. The sink was filled with sparkling chrome pans and a line of tiny plants in terra cotta that rustled in the open window facing the front yard. A board game map of Europe lay half-played on the round and wide table; Germany had begun pouring its forces into Dover. In the corner sat a guitar that had been welded together from oil drum lids.

Very post-apocalyptic of you, she said. Did you make this?

For what it’s worth, Ira said. Your sister liked it, anyway.

She pulled out a chair at the kitchen table and flopped herself down.

What kind of beer do you have? she asked.

The kind that gets you drunk, said Ira, face in the fridge. I mean, what the fuck, who cares. There’s Lone Star, Tecate. Have a Lone Star.

He set one in front of her and one in front of himself and sat down at the table. From the pocket of his shorts he took a keyring made from an old C-clamp and took the top off of her bottle, then his own.

So, he said.

She sipped the Lone Star.

So, she said. I met your landlord and everything.

He put the bottle to his lips.

I thought you met her the other day, he said.

I met her again, she said. I totally stayed over at her place and everything.

You’re not fucking serious, he said.

Does Julie lie? she asked, spreading her hands.

Who knows, he said. Maybe Julie lies all the time. How would we ever know?

She laughed and took a swig of beer. He did as well, then set it on the table and rotated its neck like a joystick, the glass edge of the base digging into the wood.

So what happened? he asked.

Nothing much, she said. I mean, it’s hard to explain. She gave me a job. I’m your new property manager.

Did you fix the air filter? he said.

If you die of emphysema, it’s not my fault, she said.

Good to know, he said. So you like it? You like Patrice, I mean?

I like Patrice okay, she said. She’s interesting. She believes totally crazy things.

He nodded as he drank his beer. He didn’t look at her as he did it.

What, she said. You don’t like Patrice?

She’s a good landlord, he said. Do you like board games? Your sister didn’t.

Of course I like board games, she said.

Do you want to be Germany? he asked.

Don’t avoid my question, she said.
We haff ways of making you talk.

He got her another beer from the fridge.

Why don’t you drink that, Ilsa, he said, and I’ll explain you the rules.

He did; it took half an hour; she couldn’t follow what he was saying at all; he pulled the game board over, by some drunken grace without knocking any of the pieces out of their half-played positions. She rolled dice and bought pieces and moved; he did the same. Slowly her black tanks and soldiers came off the board and stacked themselves up in front of him, and every time her beer bottle got empty there was another one from the fridge that he opened with the C-clamp and set in front of her, the bubbles in the neck rushing and fresh.

So you like Patrice okay, he said at last.

He was looking right at her, his brows crinkled over his eyes, a heap of fallen
Wehrmacht
in front of him.

She’s a decent enough employer, she said, swallowing her beer and forcing her drying tongue to fall into line. What, seriously, you don’t like her?

She’s all right, said Ira. She’s okay with my going a day or two without the rent. Or a week or two, or a month. She’s fairly quiet. She’s fairly discreet. I don’t see too many people going up there to see her, you know. Except, now, for you.

Julie let her head droop.

You’re saying what, that I shouldn’t see her? she asked.

I’m not saying anything, he said. Except, you know, I think you should be careful.

Why? asked Julie. She’s not that pretty.

She finished her beer and set it on the table next to her, where she’d stacked her empties before. Ira didn’t move to get her another one. He was watching her, his eyes fluid behind his duct tape glasses.

What? she asked. Get me ‘nother beer, slave.

He scooted his chair back and replaced her bottle with yet another fresh one.

I mean she is pretty and all, she said, drumming her fingers on the table as she drank. I mean I’d do her.

You’d do her, chuckled Ira.

I’d do her, confirmed Julie.

He finally took another beer for himself and drank it in one prolonged swallow.

That’s fucking nice, he said. That’s fucking personal of you. Sorry, that’s fucking personable of you.

Fuck you, she said. I would too. I’d plow her field. I’d hoe her row.

You don’t know what you’re talking about, he said.

Fuck you! she shouted. I know what I want.

You want to, what, fuck my scary upstairs neighbor? asked Ira.

Yes, she said. Yes, I want to fuck your scary upstairs neighbor.

You’re deranged, he said. You’re unhinged. You’re a child.

Then I want to gather wildflowers, asshole, said Julie. I’ll sit naked in a cabin in the forest with a still pond, and when it rains I’ll play a guitar—I’ll
learn
to play the guitar—and when it’s sunny, I’ll gather wildflowers. All the wildflowers, even the dead ones, or the ones the caterpillars eat, or the ones the bees fuck. I’ll gather them all and I’ll sew them into a giant blanket—
I’ll learn to sew
—and I’ll sleep under it. I’ll eat wildflowers. I’ll drink nectar. And that’s all I’ll do. After ten years I’ll drown myself in the pond, and, and when they use the hooks to drag my bloated and haggard gray corpse out they’re going to find wildflowers in the pockets of my jeans.

Ira took the top off of a fresh bottle.

That’s cute, he said.

Fuck you, Julie said. Give me that.

She put her hand on the Lone Star and pulled it toward her, banking on the fact that Ira was older and that he knew, better than her, that it was stupid to fight over a beer because you’d end up spilling the beer, that it was better to be the reasonable person and give up the beer than to have to scrub beer out of your floor. She banked on this and she was right, and the beer was delicious, and when he stood up and walked to the sink, swaying, and unsnapped his shorts and whipped out his penis and pissed all over the clean chrome pans, she didn’t even find it as awkward as on some level, beneath the ferment in her liver, she knew that she really should.

What time is it? she said.

Nine ten, he said, freeing his watch hand.

Oh God, she said.

She stood up, knocking over the game board, and started to stumble toward the door. She stopped as soon as her hand was on the knob.