The Dream of Doctor Bantam (10 page)

Oh God, she said. Do you have any, like, food?

Food? he asked, snapping his shorts and blinking.

She elbowed past him and pawed through his cupboards. Inside was a can of sirloin cheeseburger soup; she grabbed it.

I may borrow your bike again later, she called on her way out the door for real.

Sure, he said. No problem. Take everything. What’s mine is yours. Take the shirt from my back.

Your shirt is disgusting, she said.

But my back, he shouted after her, across the lawn. My back, is
choice
.

She made it upstairs, falling only once, and pounded on the door.

Patrice, she called. Patrice. C’mon. Lemme the fuck in. It’s Julie.

She pounded and pounded until the footsteps padded from the back bedroom and opened the door and Julie fell in with it against Patrice’s shoulder. Patrice jerked back and Julie continued down to the floor.

I broughtcha some soup, she said. Some sirloin cheeseburger soup. It’s gonna be excellent for what ails ya.

I don’t eat meat, said Patrice, quaking.

Who is this? asked the man who had been sitting on the couch.

He was tall, once he stood up, and he looked broader across the shoulders than he probably was, and his skin was whiter than white, so white it disappeared, leaving a splotch of red capillaries probably bursting under his cheeks. His glasses were narrow and his hair was crew-cut and wet, accidentally spiked in a way that made his hair look like a cartoon landscape of a dog’s flank seen through the eyes of a flea. He wore the same white shirt as Patrice, the same shade of navy on his pressed slacks. His mouth, weak, was hanging open; his teeth were crooked. He looked young, like a put-upon undergraduate from one of the more oppressive prep school dormitories—only the voice, only 90 percent scrubbed of a native Deep South accent, betrayed him.

Who are you? he squeaked.

This is the girl I was telling you about, said Patrice. The one who was impressive.

God damn yeah I’m impressive, she said. I’m bringing her food. What’d you ever do for her?

She rolled the can into the corner of the kitchen and she passed out on the carpet.

6

She woke up some hours later with a pain in her ribs and Patrice on the couch in her navy skirt and crossed knees, hatching away at her quadrille notebook. The undergraduate type was gone.

Julie got to her feet and shambled into the kitchen. She filled a glass of water for herself and scratched her right calf with the toe of her left sock, and put her foot down again to connect with the can of sirloin cheeseburger soup that was still resting on a corner of the kitchen floor.

Did you eat this? she asked, holding up the can and shaking it, voice more like someone correcting a dog than someone who has just passed out drunk at her employer’s feet after showing up late to work. Did you eat anything?

We need to talk about this incident, Patrice said.

Julie cursed and hacked the can open with an opener and cooked it all in the pot, taking a break midway to throw up in the bathroom, nostrils opened by the smell of liquid cheese and corn syrup. The granite face in the painting glared down at her; she flipped it the bird.

On the way back to the kitchen she peeped into Patrice’s bedroom. The sheets were unmade. This was probably normal.

So who was that kid, who was here, she asked.

He’s twenty-two, said Patrice. And he’s my co-worker. Actually, my dismantler.

Your dismantler, said Julie.

Yes, said Patrice. My dismantler.

And you were doing some after-hours dismantling, said Julie. Taking your work home with you.

Patrice didn’t answer.

I have an hour before going to work, she said. I think you would benefit from another session on the Machine.

Here’s your fucking soup, said Julie.

Patrice looked at it, disturbed the neon surface of it with her spoon.

Is there meat in this? she asked.

No, snarled Julie. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Ira had chained his bike to the railing. She screamed and kicked at his wheels until two of the spokes were dented and she started walking toward Lamar, headed north and home.

When she came back, two days later, she didn’t expect to be able to turn the knob. But it still opened easily for her; Patrice smiled at her; she cooked tofu sausages fried in butter and they ate them with pasta. They didn’t talk about what had happened.

It wasn’t terrible at all. Most days she’d wake up in Tabitha’s bed at eleven, her mother already gone. She’d take Tabitha’s bike to the Retrograde, she’d scam a coffee, she’d talk to college kids and sponge dollars, she’d beat kids at chess. She saw Ira a couple of times; she sat out on the street and tried and failed to sell
Bluecollar Review
issues with him. She kept craning her neck over to see if Patrice was out; she never seemed to be there. She didn’t want to walk into the lobby of the building.

Patrice had given her a spare key; she attached it to her key ring with a kind of reverence—the more keys you had on your key ring, the better you were doing in life. Patrice had told her that if there was any work she had to do more complicated than just cleaning, she’d leave a note, but there were never any notes to be found. So she would tidy up the living room, run some paper towels over the countertops, read from the Signet copy of
Crime and Punishment
she was supposed to be finishing for English class, fall asleep after five pages and dream about St. Petersburg. Patrice would come home; Julie would cook a meal for her; Patrice would eat it and lounge on the sofa afterward with slender hands curving over her stomach; Julie would bike home feeling dangerous. Or she’d stop by Ira’s and three hours later bike home drunk, forgetting to signal.

This is the last summer you can get away with this, said Michael one night. I’m glad to see you’re enjoying it.

I’m glad you’re enjoying my mom’s twat, she said loudly before passing out.

But she made sure to apologize in the morning. Michael shrugged.

I am, he said.

She worried about him saying this for a day before deciding that she liked him better for it.

At least once a day she made herself think about how much she hated Tabitha. She sat on the floor of Tabitha’s room and turned on Courtney Love and burned
Rauchen zwerge
incense and tried to imagine Tabitha’s face. She started with her own and stretched it out, like a funhouse mirror, squeezed the chin thinner, made the eyes separate and stare.

She wanted to see if she was feeling better or worse each time. She had no idea: all she knew was that she could predict when every guitar fill was going to come in on Doll Parts, and that this meant something was wrong with the world.

Patrice finally talked her into going back on the Machine. She went under easier this time and started talking about Tabitha, about how she sang while she stood at the counter and cooked mashed potatoes, and Patrice asked her to go deeper, go deeper, go deeper, and she barely even noticed when Patrice said that she was done and let the lights click off.

How do you feel, beamed Patrice.

Julie blinked back the spots and cricked her neck.

Actually pretty great, she said. Why does this even work?

Dr. Bantam invented the technology, Patrice said. We just apply it. Sometime you should come by the school and I’ll let you see what we can really do.

I’d rather not do that, said Julie.

I won’t insist on it, said Patrice.

Julie rubbed her eyes and looked at Patrice, at the colors swimming over her skin.

Patrice, she said. How did you get involved in the Institute?

Patrice bit her lip and looked at a corner of the room. She was thinking about the question. It was strange to watch someone actually think about a question.

I was drowning, once, said Patrice. And the Institute helped me sort my life out. And so I decided that I would go on trying to help other people in the same way. It’s the best thing that I could be doing with my time.

You could be doing so many other things, said Julie. You’re like—a great artist and everything.

I’m not an artist, Patrice said, alarmed. Why do you say that I’m an artist?

No reason, said Julie. You, um, seem like the type.

I don’t draw anymore, said Patrice.

Julie watched her and tried not to look at the notebook she knew was waiting under the pillow.

It seems crazy to devote your life to helping people, she said.

I think it is a good thing to do, said Patrice.

Julie rode home, and every star was shining, summer was warm on her wrists, every pump of her legs against Tabitha’s pedals making her jump forward on the bike like Superman used to jump just before he figured out he could fly. It wasn’t because of the Machine, she told herself. It was just her, growing stronger. Every day she was growing stronger and stronger and better able to survive.

Sometimes she’d come by Patrice’s early and snoop in her things and steal her cigarettes and masturbate in her bathtub, because why the hell not, she had a key and it was quiet. She’d lie in the warm water and let her eyes close and think: what happens if she comes in right now? What happens if Patrice comes in right now?

This would happen: she’d let her arms fall into the water, hold them tight against her sides; she’d let Patrice see everything. She’d lock her eyes on Patrice’s eyes and she’d smile,
fancy meeting you here. Oh but I live here
, Patrice would simper. Then they’d probably kiss or something, and Patrice’s blouse would get wet so she would just have to take it off.

She opened her eyes again; her legs were weak and her finger was exhausted; she was still getting away with it, wallowing in the mystery of Patrice and in something behind that mystery that stretched her tight like a violin string, ready to sing. Summer was still cruising on.

7

I’m going to make you the best dinner you’ve ever had in your life, she said to Patrice one morning after she’d stayed over on the couch. Can I have some money?

Take whatever you need, Patrice said. It’s all in the kitchen.

Julie pulled five twenties off of the roll.

Thanks, she said. You’re not going to believe how good these groceries are. You’re going to like, have an orgasm just eating this stuff.

Patrice flushed and kept writing.

Have you ever had an orgasm? Julie asked. Is there some Institute process that lets you have them on command?

I’m working, said Patrice. I have to get through these forms before I go to the Institute.

Respond-to-my-question, Julie said in a robot voice, as close to Patrice’s monotone while she was on the Machine as Julie could get. Can-the-unit-Patrice-come-on-command?

Patrice looked up at her.

Please leave me alone, she said. I need to finish this work.

Julie looked at her, this older woman bent over her forms. She put the money in her pocket and stepped toward the door.

Okay, said Julie. Sorry.

It’s fine, said Patrice.

To get the groceries you needed to make someone the best dinner they had ever had in their life, you had to go to the Family Market. The Family Market was a complex off of Lamar, its back end rammed against a column of white stone apartments that stretched over the hill where a skate ramp had been. The lot was U-shaped, full of fancy places that no one Julie knew really shopped at: chocolatiers, florists, fancy stationery stores. It took you fifteen minutes to find a parking space if you were driving; if you were walking, like Julie, it took you fifteen minutes anyway, because unless you picked your way carefully you would be run over by circling mini-vans. The Family Market loomed above her, its sides aluminum and curved like a grain silo in a picture book, its windows shaded green against the gray Texas sky, its security guards circling: guns and two-ways in golf carts, the company logo etched on the hood.

The Family Market was full of men on their lunch breaks, coffee cups broiling their hands and all wearing the same casual red polo shirt. It was full of women in loose dresses who pushed carts loaded with exotic squash and flaxseed oil. It was full with children who went for the Lamme’s candy displays by the registers. Above them the fluorescents burned, a full two stories down from the visible rafters, dangling on metal rods. Julie walked the aisles, eyed the onions and the monster truck wheels of cave-aged cheese, hefted tomatoes in her hand, sloshed kefir capsules and yogurt cartons and put them to her ear, listening for corruption. There were cookbooks and she tore the pages out of them and studied the recipes inside. Kale spanikopita, poblano stew, hummus tartlets. She walked and she filled a green plastic basket with ingredients, and she stole cherries from the produce aisle, and she thought about Patrice, how her eyes would sparkle with greed when Julie slapped the recycled brown bag full of goodies on her counter.

These delicious treats! she would say. If I could only decide which to eat first!

I’ll show you which to eat first, Julie would say, shoving her face into a wide dish of hummus.

She walked faster, sped past the sample stations of sausages on toothpicks dipped in chipotle reductions, nacho dip made of shallots and bacon, apple cider made from barrel-aged apples and filtered through a mesh screen of 24k gold, or whatever it was they were offering.

She was in the soda aisle drinking a Blue Sky carob-cola—imagining how the hummus would look on Patrice’s face—when she saw Robbie. He was alone and his cart was full of breakfast cereals and tofu sausages. She turned around, put the empty can back on the shelf, and started walking—but he had seen her.

Oh wow, Julie, he said. I’ve totally been trying to call you.

No need to now, she smiled through her teeth.

She was within his horrible force field now; she bobbed her head in a show of cheer at the outer circumference of it. He didn’t give a shit, just grinned and looked at her chest; he knew what it looked like and she hated that and she counted the seconds until she could break away.

So how’ve you been? he asked.

Oh, same as ever, fucking some girl, she said before she thought about it.

He laughed.

I was thinking about the other night, he said.

Were you, she said, lashing her basket back and forth in front of her hips.

I was thinking about the result from your reading, he said. You know, like the Three of Cups, upside down. I think it’s good, actually.

He had done some kind of tarot reading on her; she had forgotten.

You think it’s good, she said. Wasn’t it like, some card where a bunch of girls were pouring wine over their heads? Wasn’t it the Death card or something?

I think it was about your sister, he said. You know, the dead one.

She leaned back against one of the aisles, crinkling the foil-bagged yam chips.

Which dead sister could you mean, she said.

It’s a card about girls, he said. Like, a feminine card, with the three girls gathered together, holding up the cup. And reversed, it’s like, the overthrowing of that energy. Which is bad.

What’s your point, she asked.

It’s bad if the energy is positive energy, he said. There’s negative and positive energy, right? So if the positive energy is pouring out, that’s bad. But if the negative energy is pouring out, that’s good, right? So I think that it’s like, there was something bad with your sister, and the card is about like, letting that bad stuff go.

He was smiling. When he smiled, the skin around the spiral of bone stuck in his eyebrow puckered up, like it was on the verge of spitting the thing out.

And there’s a third girl, she said. Who’s also upside down. Or who’s maybe picking the cup up.

I haven’t figured that one out, he said. I just thought, you know. I was worried you thought it was a bad reading or something. When it was actually kind of good.

It is kind of good, she said. She smiled.

Yeah, he smiled back. Well hey. I’ve got to finish doing some shopping for my aunt. So, so give me a call sometime, right?

Right, she said. Then she sidled up beside him, put her arm around his shoulder, pinched his cheek tight between her nails.

Owww, he whined.

I’m getting out of here too, she said. Walk me to the registers.

They walked together, and Julie felt something in her rising up to the ceiling, filling the space, until of course he said:

I was also, you know, thinking about what we did. Like, you know.

Oh, yeah, she said, willing to overlook this.

Was I like, good? he asked.

She looked at him, at the sudden horrible vacuum of his expression, but it was too late; they were already in line and a woman with long, loose hair and a peasant skirt had just gotten in behind them. She looked at them with a knowing and approving smile.

I don’t know, she said.

Well, did you like, get off? he asked. I mean it’s hard to tell.

She looked down into the green basket of groceries for Patrice gathered in front of her.

Maybe, she said. Um, who can tell with these things?

You mean you’ve never had an orgasm? he asked. Wow, that must be crazy.

She stopped talking to him, willing the woman scanning groceries to speed up.

Let me pay for this, he said once Julie’s groceries had been scanned and the total was blinking.

The woman behind the register, bored and no more than a year older than them, swiveled her milk-fed throat to him.

I can pay, said Julie.

But I’m using my aunt’s credit card, he said. And she doesn’t mind; she’s got lots of money. He laughed and took out the credit card and handed it to the milk-fed register girl. Julie grabbed it out of her hand.

Excuse me, the girl said.

Julie pulled sixty dollars from her pocket and handed it to the girl.

Keep the change, she snarled as she grabbed her yet-unbagged groceries.

The total is $29.16 out of sixty thank you, said the register girl. Then she smiled at Robbie and rolled her eyes.

Julie managed to get the groceries into bags and get them to the parking lot. She made it halfway across before Robbie’s Jeep Cherokee caught up to her. It had four doors, a massive plastic luggage rack, and bumper stickers: KUCINICH 04, SAVE OUR SPRINGS, AN EYE FOR AN EYE LEAVES THE WORLD BLIND, NO BLOOD FOR FALLUJAH.

Want a ride? He called from the front seat as he trawled beside her, matching the speed of her galoshes as she broke for the street. He was wearing sunglasses.

I like walking, she called.

It’s going to rain, he called.

I’ll take that chance, she said.

It started raining a minute later, a few fat drops at first, then a steady rush, one of those freak summer rains that felt like swimming horizontally. His smeared taillights sparked and pulled over to the curb by the entrance to the Family Market compound, waiting for her. She opened the door and jumped in. The seats were beige leather and the carpeting was spotless under her muddy galoshes.

Thank you, she said.

No problem, he said, his smile stretching wider and wider beneath his sunglasses. Where we headed?

29th and San Pedro, she said. Then into West Campus by one of those streets. I don’t know.

They fell into traffic. He turned on the wipers and he put in a tape, more psychedelica.

You like Sun Ra? he asked.

I’ve never heard of them, she said. You still have tapes? We’re in the future now, you know. There are CDs now, and iPods, and huge clots of music online just waiting for you to download it. We couldn’t escape from music even if we wanted to.

Tapes are cheap, he said. They’re like a dollar apiece, now. And Sun Ra is a
him
.

Oh, said Julie. Good for Sun Ra.

She listened as he drove and a trumpet did something abstract in monaural.

So, he said. Didn’t I pick you up north of here? On our date.

When did we go on a date, she laughed.

The dance, he said insistently. The science club dance. Remember, last year.

I guess that was a date, sure, she said. I’m not living north of here anymore. I’m staying with someone.

Oh, he said.

Sun Ra filled the cab of the Cherokee.

It’s maybe not forever, she said. It’s with this girl.

Oh, he said, happily. That’s cool. What, you’re like roommates?

I guess, she said, slumping back in the bucket seat. She’s my employer, kind of. It’s weird. She’s crazy.

Crazy how? he said. Like she sees things or talks to herself?

She thought about telling him that Patrice was in the Institute. Something about the idea upset her; he’d say something stupid.
Don’t they worship the DeLorean or something?

She’s just eccentric, she said. She works a lot. Um. She has weird paintings in her bathroom. But she like, has no furniture. Or no silverware or glasses or anything. Weird stuff you wouldn’t think about.

Oh man, said Robbie. I have the
best
idea.

He swung the wheel and the Jeep lurched around a median on Lamar, horns screamed, Julie screamed and her arms shot forward and braced against the dashboard and the groceries rolled crazily in their bags at her feet. The Cherokee fishtailed, righted itself, shifted into the turn lane to access Mo-Pac.

What the
fuck
, she called.

Oh sorry, he said. It was kind of sudden.

My sister died in a car wreck, you dick, she shouted.

She hadn’t been thinking about Tabitha at all. The fact was just there, ready for her to use. It wasn’t even really a fact; her sister had been hit by a car. She repeated that sentence in her mind while Robbie sat beside her and suffered and she let him.

Shit, said Robbie at last, turning to look at her. I’m sorry. I wasn’t, I mean I didn’t, I mean, I care.

Watch the road, she said. Where are we going?

You need silverware and glasses and stuff, he said. And my parents totally have this storage space. They don’t even
use
it.

She leaned down and tried to get the groceries back in the bags.

Could we maybe not right now? she asked. It’s raining. I should get home. It’s
raining
.

It’ll just take a second, he said. Besides, I owe you one.

She closed her eyes and felt the road lurching around her, sensed the weight of the cars outside the metal eggshell of the Cherokee, swinging in space toward them.

So, like, why don’t you want to get my stuff right now? he asked.

Because it would be terrible, she said. It would be more terrible than you could ever imagine.

It took them half an hour to get there, one long freeway ride and two sides of Sun Ra away. He dug in the glove box to change tapes, frowning at the choices while the axle wobbled left and right, and she held onto her seat belt with both hands like it would do something to help her.

The parking lot for the storage facility was right off the highway. She watched him leading her across the parking lot through the drizzle; the buildings were sheathed in metal siding and concrete, his silhouette an ant crawling across their burning faces. He had to enter a secret code on a metal keypad to get into the elevator of the main building. They grabbed a handtruck from the secondfloor hallway and took it down to the double-padlocked door. The walls were white metal sheets; the air was chilly and she shivered in her rain-damp tank top.

When he rolled up the door of the storage unit, a chair fell out and crashed to the concrete a foot in front of her knee.

Oh my God, she said.

Yeah, he said, I know. It’s my parents’ stuff. They’re in the oil business, right, in Dubai. So they don’t need this stuff since we sold our house and I live with my aunt when I’m not visiting them. It’s not like they’ll miss any of this. Take anything you want. Actually, here.

He flipped the chair upright and set it in front of her. Then he reached into the storage area and started hauling out a gigantic mattress. She jumped forward and helped him to brace it.