As She Climbed Across The Table Part 7

"You don't look like you want to do jumping jacks."

"You'd be surprised." I opened the shirt b.u.t.ton at my throat. Serious trouble was close.

"You look like something is worrying you."

"Actually, there's a woman, Cynthia. If you have to know. I'm a little torn up about it, I guess. That's why I wanted to meet someone intelligent and perceptive like yourself. I'm sorry it isn't working out. Maybe I need a gla.s.s of water."

"Stay there, Dale. I'll get you a gla.s.s of water."

"A gla.s.s water would be nice. Of."

I drank in a panic, both hands around the gla.s.s, hoping to dilute the contents of my stomach to digestibility. I felt heat and pressure building up in my rib cage. A fire or disaster inside. When I looked up from the gla.s.s I seemed to be peering through the eyeholes of a loosely fitted mask. I blinked, and the air was spangled with phosphenes.

"I'm in sort of a situation," I explained carefully. "My heart is being broken, very gradually, so I hardly notice it, even. I mean, it's difficult to pinpoint the exact moment it actually exactly happened. If it has yet."

"I'll drive you home," she said.

"Not home," I reminded her. "I wish I could remember the name of that d.a.m.n hotel. All the same. Sunset...Mountainview? Bayview? Lodge? Inn? I thought I had a matchbook." I feigned a search, turned my pockets inside out, dropping change on the floor. "No such luck. Mountain Lion? Sea Lion? Are we near the mountains or the sea?"

Cynthia Jalter drove me home. She powered down my window from her place in the driver's seat, and the cool air whistled in my nostrils and blew tears out of my eyes horizontally, into my ears. I was silent, chagrined.

We pulled up outside my apartment. "Nice meeting you," she said. "Feel better. Don't forget your car."

"Rental job," I managed. "Let them find it. Fly out tomorrow." I tugged on the ashtray, the cushioned arm, the window handle, finally opened the car door and got out. "They put me up on campus here. Fly out tomorrow. Another day, another city."

"Give me a call sometime. I'm in the book. See you later."

"Never again, I'm sure. Thanks profusely for everything. Fly out tomorrow."

She drove away, leaving me there in the dark on my wobbly legs. I was surrounded by crickets. Lights burned in the apartment. The blind men were still awake. I tested myself, shook out my limbs, kneaded my numb jaw. I beat through the ferns to find the garden spigot, and splashed water on my face and down my collar. A toad groaned. I tiptoed back to the door.

When I went inside I found Garth, Evan, and Soft huddled around the couch. The lights in the room were dimmed. I focused, with difficulty, on the form across the couch.

Alice.

Her head was limp on the pillows, her hair splayed out, her forehead a pale beacon in the gloom. A blanket was tucked up to her chin. Were they admiring her, or mourning her? Or about to attack? I rushed over and saw her lips rippling gently with breath. Not dead.

I looked up at Soft. I must have looked a bit crazy, my eyes bugged and red, my collar wet.

"She's fine now, she's asleep," said Soft. "She needs rest. Where have you been?"

I thought for a minute. "I was involved in the demonstration," I said.

Soft frowned. I'm sure he thought I'd organized it. "I found her with Lack," he said. "After the riots this afternoon she locked herself in with him. They had to call me. I have the only other key."

"Why is she here, not the bed?"

"She's hard to carry," said Soft. "She pa.s.sed out in the chamber. The recording devices were all shut off. So we have no way of reconstructing the events. I have some theories, though."

I leaned over, tucked her hair behind her ear, and put the flat of my hand on her forehead. I felt a twist of shame. This was stolen intimacy, the first time I'd touched her in more than a month.

"I should go," said Soft.

He rolled his eyes to suggest that I should follow. We stepped out onto the porch together, leaving Garth and Evan, grim sentinels, to watch over Alice. Soft turned to me, his features drawn.

"She's no longer competent to manage the project," he said. "I'm looking at alternatives. But what's important is that she slow down. She needs to step back, get some perspective. I need your help. Don't let her spend any more nights in the lab. We've got students for that."

"I don't understand. What happened?"

"This business with the cat. Alice took it very personally. I don't know, I can only speculate, but I think she may have tried to enter Lack."

I stared at Soft. My face felt like Play-Doh receiving a footprint.

He nodded confirmation.

"Come see me in my office tomorrow," he said. "We'll talk more then."

He crossed the street to his car. I went inside. Alice was still asleep. Evan and Garth were pacing, busy doing nothing, like their first night in the apartment. Alice's return had unsettled them. Soft didn't know of my recent distance from her, but they certainly did. I imagine their alert noses had sniffed out the traces of my drinking, too.

"Professor Soft suggested that she stay here at night from now on," said Evan. "We certainly agree."

"We'd be happy to sleep in the guest room," said Garth. "Or out here if that's better."

"Take the guest room," I said.

"Good. And Philip?"

"Yes?"

Garth grew solemn, raised his chin, fixed his ungaze on some infinite distance. "Evan and I want you to know we'll do anything we can to help. You just have to ask."

"Thank you."

There was a pause, a leaden silence. "Huh," said Garth. "I suppose we'll go to bed now."

They scuttled into the guest room, and closed the door.

I knelt beside Alice, careful not to wake her. I could hear the blind men running water, brushing their teeth. Outside, crickets pulsed. I don't know how long it was that I sat there, silently contemplating her, tracking the flicker of dream state across her eyelids, the murmur of breath in her throat. Finally I spoke her name, and nudged her shoulder.

"Philip," she said.

"Yes."

"What happened?"

"Soft brought you here. Everything's okay. Come to bed."

She nodded, still asleep, really, and let me guide her to the bedroom. She stood wobbling and mole-eyed while I tugged the disarrayed blankets and sheets into shape, then she slid into the bed. When I switched off the overhead light she looked up at me meekly through the dark.

"Philip?"

"Yes?"

"Where are you going to sleep?"

"I'll sleep in the living room."

Rea.s.sured, she curled up and fell asleep.

I closed the door to the bedroom and patrolled the apartment on tiptoe. In the kitchen I sc.r.a.ped food off the blind men's plates and drank a gla.s.s of water. Then I remade the makeshift bed on the couch, stripped to my underwear, and put myself to bed.

But I didn't sleep.

The alcohol had leached out of my brain. But now I was drunk on Alice. She was back in the house. A miracle. I pictured her alone in the chamber, clambering onto the steel table to offer herself up to Lack's indifferent mouth. I shuddered. No wonder she couldn't love me anymore. She'd become estranged from humanness. She was on the brink of the void.

My heart pounded with fear. But she was safe for the moment. Safe in my bed. Under my care. I just had to make it last, keep her here. I'd draw her back to the human realm. I'd teach her human love again.

I couldn't afford any stupid mistakes. Any Cynthia Jalters. I had to walk the line. Be worthy.

Headlights from the road outside flared across the ceiling. In the kitchen the refrigerator hummed into midnight life. (I always imagine the light inside switching on, food cavorting.) My pulse slowed.

When I first heard the murmur I thought I was dreaming. But I opened my eyes, and it continued. Was it Alice, calling my name? I put aside the blankets, and crept out, cold and huddled, to the middle of the room, nearer the bedroom doors. The voices went on. I made myself still, to listen.

Evan and Garth arguing.

I went back to bed on the couch.

In the morning Evan and Garth vanished. I woke to see them breakfasting in decorous silence. I watched with half an eye as they tiptoed past me to the door. Then I went back to sleep, and a pleasantly forgettable dream.

An hour later I woke for real, to a hangover. I reconst.i.tuted myself in the bathroom with paste and swabs, drops and floss. I got a kettle boiling, its whistle-top propped open with a fork, shook coffee into a filter, and set out two cups. Evan and Garth had the cupboard stocked with a product called Weetabix. I opened a packet and poured milk over a desolate pod.

Alice padded in and sat at her place, not saying anything.

I gave her coffee, and we ate breakfast like mimes, yawning, stirring, and chewing in exaggerated silence. Alice hit the side of her cup with her spoon and spilled out a neat pylon of sugar. The room was washed with light. Alice's mussed hair was a backlit halo. We were a diorama labelled Philip and Alice, Breakfast Philip and Alice, Breakfast. Circa two months ago. The past. Before.

"You slept about ten hours," I said. "From the time Soft brought you."

"It was Soft, then."

"Yes. He thinks you belong here. As far as he knows he was putting something back in its place."

She didn't say anything.

"He's worried about you," I said. "He says you're no longer competent to manage the project."

I decided not to make any I I statements. We would talk about Soft's perceptions, Soft's concerns. Or Alice's. But not mine. statements. We would talk about Soft's perceptions, Soft's concerns. Or Alice's. But not mine.

"There isn't any project," she said. "Just Lack. Lack and approaches to Lack. Soft's holding on to the idea of a project. That's his big blind spot."

"Soft's concerned about your approach to Lack," I said coolly. "He feels your approach is too, um, direct."

She looked down into her coffee. The sun sculpted hollows of light in her tired features. Tender feelings rustled in me like bat wings unfolding.

"He thinks you're identifying too much," I said. "Losing that essential detachment."

She looked up sharply. "Lack doesn't require detachment. That's Soft's error. Lack requires engagement, a relationship. It's something I was able to rise to. Soft is out of his depth."

"You're saying that what Lack wants is a relationship." I said, still calm.

"Right."

"And you're saying you can provide that."

"Right."

"A human relationship."

"Right."

I lost my cool a little. "He isn't getting one in you, Alice. You're moving away from the human. Lack is too powerful an influence, can't you see? He's changing you. You're becoming a void to match. You're not human if you're no longer able to love love."

I caught myself before I added the word me me.

"Love isn't the problem," she said weakly. "I'm not having a problem loving."

"What are you saying?"

"You still don't understand, do you? Why I can't be with you anymore."

Don't address me, I wanted to say. Philip isn't here. This is Omnipotent Voice you're speaking with.

"You're in love with someone else," I heard myself say.

"Yes."

A change came over me, a phase transition. A flush rose through my chest and neck.

"You're in love with Lack," I said.

"Yes."