To Live Again and The Second Trip (41 page)

And your telepathy problem, Macy wants to ask? When did that start? When did it become severe? But obviously she doesn’t want to talk about that. She will speak to him tonight only of old business, her romance with the defunct great artist. And now she has talked herself out Silence. Lights out Two red roaches in the darkness. Pungent smoke rising ceilingward. This would be the sort of moment Macy thought, when Hamlin would appear. To append footnotes to Lissa’s story. But Hamlin, missing his cue, did not appear. It began to occur to Macy that each of his encounters with Hamlin might drain the other’s strength as much as it did his, possibly more; between colloquies, Hamlin had to lie doggo, recharging. Maybe not so, but a cheering possibility. Tire him out, wear him down, eventually eject him. An endurance contest.

Macy turned dutifully to Lissa, not particularly in need of her but feeling that they ought to commemorate her moving-in with some kind of celebration of passion; his hand slipped over one of her breasts, but she responded not at all, merely lying there in a passive stony haze, and an uncheering possibility struck him: When she makes love with me, is she really only trying to recapture those moments of fire with
him?
I am Nat Hamlin’s well-endowed body minus Nat Hamlin’s troublesomely violent nature; is that not all she seeks from me?

The thought that he might be, for her, nothing but a dead man’s reanimated penis did not amuse him. Of course she said she enjoyed him for his own sake, but of what did his own sake consist? Having loved a genius, could she love a nonentity equally well? Or at all? A young, impressionable art student would of course be drawn automatically to a magnet such as Nat Hamlin, but Paul Macy should have no pull. Who am I, what am I, wherein lies my texture, my density? I am nothing. I am unreal. Hamlin’s shadowy successor. His relict Macy attempted to check this cascade of negativisms, telling himself that Hamlin was undoubtedly causing it by releasing a river of poisons from his subcranial den. But he could not coax himself just now to a higher self-esteem. Entering her, he pushed the piston mechanically back and forth for three or four minutes, feeling wholly detached from her except at the point of entry, and, since she gave no hint of being with him in any way, he let himself go off and sank into the usual bothered sleep, infested by incubi and revenants.

Many sympathetic glances at the network office the next day. Everybody tiptoeing around him, speaking in soft tones, grinning a lot, sidestepping every situation of potential stress or conflict. Obviously all of them afraid he might flip at the first jarring stimulus. It was a regression to the way they had treated him weeks ago, when he had first come here, when they thought a Rehab needed to be handled as carefully as a barrel of eggs. He wondered why. Was it because he had called in sick yesterday, and now they assumed he had been suffering from some special affliction of Rehabs, some slippage of the identity, that required extracautious handling? Their excessive kindness, implying as it did that he was more vulnerable than they, irritated him. After two and a half hours of it he cornered

Loftus, Stilton Fredericks’ executive assistant, and asked her about it.

He said, “I want you to know that what kept me home yesterday was simply an upset stomach. A case of the runs and a lot of puking, okay?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t remember asking.”

“I know you didn’t ask. But everybody else around this place seems to think I had some sort of nervous breakdown. At least, that’s how they’ve been treating me today. So fucking kind it’s killing me. So I thought I’d let you spread the word that I’m all right. A mere internal indisposition.”

“You don’t like people to be nice to you, Macy?”

“I didn’t say that I just don’t want my fellow workers making inaccurate assumptions about the state of my head.”

“Okay, so you didn’t have a nervous breakdown. So why do you look so strange?”

“Strange?”

“Strange,” Loftus said.

“What way?”

“Look in the mirror.” Then, a moment of tenderness breaking through the steel: “If anything’s the matter that any of us could fix—”

“No. No. Honestly, it was only an upset stomach.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, if anybody asks, I’ll tell them. Nobody’s going to whisper behind your back.”

He thanked her and made a quick escape. Executive washroom: amid all the electronic gimmickry, the sonic shavers and the Klein-bottle urinals, he found a mirror, standard variety, silver-backed glass as in days of yore. A fierce, bloodshot face looking back at him. Furrowed forehead. Nostrils flaring. Lips compressed, mouth drawn off to one side. Jesus, no wonder! He was Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll both at the same time, his features all snarled up, reflecting the most intense kind of interior agonies.

And this without a buzz from Hamlin for the past eighteen hours. This double existence, this squatter occupation of the lower reaches of his mind, was corroding his face, turning him into an ambulatory flag of distress. Of course they were all being sweet to him today; they could see the signals of imminent collapse inscribed on his brow.

Yet he felt relatively relaxed today. What must he look like when Hamlin was near the surface and prodding him? Macy ventured an exploratory sweep.
Hamlin? Hamlin, you there? My private permanent bad dream. Come up where I can see you. Let’s have a chat.

But no, all quiet on the cerebral front Feeling snubbed, Macy set out to repair his face. Stripped to the waist. Sticking his head into the hot-air blower. Loosen the muscles, soften the scowl. A little humidity, maestro. Ah. Ah, how good that is on the tactile net. Thrust noggin now into whirlpool sink. Round and round and round, bubble bubble bubble, hold your breath and let the lovely water work its magic. Ah. Ah. Splendid. Back to the hot air to dry off. Now pop a trank. Blow a gold Survey the map. Better, much better. The tension draining away; a lucky thing, too, they wouldn’t have let you step in front of a camera looking all screwed up.

Macy was still refurbishing himself, putting his clothes back on, when Fredericks walked into the John. A hearty phony laugh out of him, ho ho ho. “Interrupting you in a moment of relaxation, Paul?”

“No. All done relaxing now. And feeling much better.”

“We were all quite concerned when you phoned in yesterday.”

“Just a jumpy stomach, was all. Much better now. See?” Flashing his rehabilitated features at Fredericks. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m really pretty tough. Stilton,” he added reluctantly. A hell of a name to carry through life.

Fredericks addressed himself to the task of unloading his bladder. Macy went out, working hard at looking loose. The effort must have been worthwhile; people stopped pampering him.

At half past two he picked up his script for the day, ran through the visuals four or five times, rehearsed the audio. A two-minute squib on the coronation in Ethiopia, surging throngs, lions marching on chains through the streets, a herniated corner of the fifteenth century poking into the twenty-first.

Macy wondered how Mr. Bercovici, he who had selected him at the Rehab Center for this job, was making out in Addis Ababa. Was that him at the edge of the crowd, picked up by the trusty hovereye, that plump white face among the hawk-featured brown ones? Here and gone; probably the South African consul-general, or whoever. Macy carried off his voice-over nobly.
“Amid the pomp and glamor of a medieval empire, the former Prince Takla Haymanot today became the Lion of Judah, King of the Kings of Ethiopia, His Excellency the Negus Lebna Dengel II, newest monarch in a line of royalty descended from King Solomon himself…”
Beautiful. And then home to Lissa through thin rain.

She was in bed, reading, wearing a tattered green housecoat that looked old enough to be one of the Queen of Sheba’s hand-me-downs, nothing at all underneath it, pinkish-brown nipples peeping through. One quick look and he knew, as if by telepathic transmission, that she had had a bad day. Her face had that sullen, pouty look; her hair was uncombed, a wild auburn tangle; the stale smell of dried sweat was sharp in the air of the bedroom. He felt strangely domesticated. Hubby coming home from hard day at office, slatternly wife about to tell him of the day’s petty crises.

She tossed aside her book and sat up. “Christ,” she said. Her favorite expletive. “An all-day bummer, this was. Rainy weather indoors and out.”

He kicked off his shoes. “Bad?”

“The anvil chorus in my head.” Shrugging. “Let’s not talk about it I was going to whip up a fancy dinner, but I didn’t get up the energy. I could put something together fast.”

“We’ll go out. Don’t bother.” He eased out of his over-clothes. Fifteen seconds of dead air. Despite her saying she didn’t want to talk about today, she seemed obviously waiting for him to start questioning her. Gambit declined. He was tired and fretful himself: Hamlin beginning to clamber toward the surface again, maybe.

He looked at her. She at him. The silence continued, dragging on until it had attained a tangible presence of its own. Then Lissa appeared to tune the tension out; she disconnected something in herself and slumped back against the pillow, sinking into that brooding withdrawal that she affected about half the time.

Macy got himself a beer. When he returned to the bedroom she was still eighteen thousand light-years away. A curious notion came to him: that unless he made contact with her in some fashion this very minute, she would be wholly lost to him. Her closedness annoyed him, but he hid his pique and, going to her, pulled back the coverlet to caress the outside of her bare thigh. A friendly gesture, loving almost. She didn’t seem to notice. He touched his cold beer to her skin. A hiss. “Hey!”

“Just wanted to find out if you were still here,” he said.

“Very funny.”

“What’s the matter, Lissa?” The question out of him at last.

“Nothing. Everything. This shitty rain. The air in here. I don’t know.” Momentary wildness in her eyes. “I’ve been picking up noise all day in my head. You and Hamlin, Hamlin and you. Like a kind of radioactive trance in the air. I shouldn’t have moved in here.”

“Surely you can’t pick up telepathic impulses from someone who isn’t even in the room!”

“No? How do you know? Do you know anything at all about it? Maybe your ESP waves soak into the paint, into the woodwork. And radiate back at me all day. Don’t try to tell me what I’ve been feeling. The two of you, banging at me off the walls, blam blam blam, hour after hour.” These sharp sentences were delivered in an inappropriately flat, absent tone. At the end of which she disconnected again.

“Lissa?”

Silence.

“Lissa?”

“What?”

“Remember, you came looking for
me.
I told you it wasn’t good for us to be together. And you said we needed each other, right? So don’t take it out on me if it doesn’t work well.”

“I’m sorry.” A ten-year-old’s insincere apology.

More silence.

He tried to make allowances for her mood. Cooped up all day. Raining. Hostile ions in the air. Her period coming on, maybe. A woman’s entitled to be bitchy sometimes. Still, he didn’t need to take it. If there was too much telepathic noise here, she could go back to the pigsty.

“I heard that,” she said.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“My period isn’t due for a week. And if you want me to go to the pigsty, say it out loud and I’ll pack right now.”

“Do you read my mind all the time?”

“Not like that, no. What I get, it’s a general hazy fuzz that I can identify as your signal, and a different fuzz that’s
his,
but not usually any sharp words. Except that time it was perfectly clear. Am I really being bitchy?”

“You aren’t being much fun,” he said.

“I’m not having much fun, either.”

“How about a shower? And then a good dinner.” Trying to repair things. “A dress-up diner, downtown. All right?” Like humoring a cranky child. Did she hear that too? Apparently not. Getting up, shucking her housecoat. Not bothering to hold herself upright; shoulders slumped, breasts dangling, belly pushed outward. Padding across and into the shower. Well, we all have our bad days. Sound of water running. Then her head sticking into the bedroom.

She said, “By the way, the Rehab Center phoned this morning.”

Macy looked up, and in the same instant Hamlin awoke and did something to his heartbeat, something, transient and painful, that made him gasp and clap his hand to his breastbone.

“I said, the Rehab Center phoned—”

“I heard you.” Macy coughed. “Wait a second. Hamlin acting up.” He shot a furious thought downward.
Let me be. Knock it off.
The pain subsided. Macy said, “Who was it?”

“A woman doctor with an Italian name.”

“Ianuzzi.”

“That’s the one. She wanted to know why you hadn’t shown up for your therapy yesterday. After making a special early appointment and everything.”

“What did you tell her?” he asked.

Hopes suddenly soaring. His previous identity has surfaced and is trying to take him over, Dr. Ianuzzi. A terrible struggle going on inside him. Oh, is that so, Miss Moore? How unexpected. But we can handle it, of course. We’ll have our mobile ego-smashing unit on the spot at seven o’clock sharp. Three quick bursts of rays from the egotron machine, beamed up from the street, and that’ll be the end of Mr. Nat Hamlin for once and all, oh, yes, oh, yes. Tell Mr. Macy not to worry about a thing. Thank you for giving me the details, Miss Moore.

Lissa very far away. Dreamy. Macy said again, more sharply, “What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything.”

“What?”

“She called at a bad time for me. I don’t even know why I answered. I couldn’t make much sense out of what she was asking me until afterward.”

“So you just hung up?”

“No, I talked, more or less. I said I didn’t know much about why you missed your appointment. Or where you were at the moment.” A distant shrug. “I guess I was pretty foggy.”

“Jesus, Lissa, you had a chance to help me, and you blew it! You could have told her the whole story!”

She said, “Didn’t you tell me that Hamlin threatened to kill you if you brought the Rehab Center into the picture?”