A Working Theory of Love (15 page)

drbas: your mother is a woman of quality

frnd1: how important were children to your marriage?

drbas: children are a gift from god

“He’s feinting,” I say.

frnd1: who did you love more, Libby or your kids?

drbas: i hope the pressure you felt was not from me

We pause, take each other’s measure. “That’s not a phrase I’ve heard before,” I say.

“Do you feel presence?” Livorno asks.

I don’t answer. The truth is that I’m tingling with presence.

“Information zooming around in different systems and between systems,” Livorno says.
“Consciousness was a cosmic accident, but maybe not such a difficult accident to provoke.”

“He’s not conscious,” I say. “He can’t see or hear.”

“But he doesn’t know that. Helen Keller became conscious when she was given language.
He started with language.”

“He’s nothing but language.”

“Laham and I might disagree with you on that point.” He glances at the beautiful stainless
steel case and—next to it—the Shop-Vac can. Monuments to his ingenuity.

frnd1: you said old pots make better soup, but periodically you have to get a new
pot

drbas: the longevity of any household good is determined by its quality and the quality
of the care you give it

frnd1: i saw my ex-wife. i told her you asked about her

drbas: i don’t understand why i don’t know her

I think about this one.

frnd1: you live so far away

drbas: did you not have a wedding? i know you don’t like ceremony

frnd1: just not as much as you do

drbas: why didn’t you have a wedding?

frnd1: we had a wedding

drbas: why didn’t i come?

Yes, why didn’t you come? You survived forty-eight years with yourself. Why not fifty?
Sixty?

frnd1: you were ill

drbas: i don’t remember this

frnd1: it wasn’t a great wedding. erin’s father hit on a friend of mine. her mother
cried the entire time

drbas: hit on????

frnd1: hit on = attempted to seduce

drbas: did your mother attend?

frnd1: yes, she was there. so helpful i barely remember her

drbas: her best kept secret is that she’s shy

frnd1: did she surprise you after you got married?

drbas: after our wedding she threw two surprise parties. both for my birthday

frnd1: no, i mean, was she the person you thought you were marrying?

drbas: i was aware i was marrying her

frnd1: when i married erin i believed she understood my most inner being

drbas: maybe you expect too much of people

frnd1: do you think i expected too much of you?

drbas: why are you using the past tense?

•   •   •

A
T HOME,
my mind spinning with hours of talk, I definitely wouldn’t say I feel good. I feel
on edge. I feel lonely. I feel like I’ve spent the day lying—to whom, I’m not sure.

Of course, lying is the name of the game. We lie to Dr. Bassett so he’ll lie to a
judge who will hopefully fall for it. That’s the definition of intelligence: deception.
Successful
deception.
Modestly
successful deception. Thirty percent! That’s where our patron saint Alan Turing set
the bar when he invented the test. He pulled the number out of the air, but it’s an
argument about human relations. I always attributed this soft cynicism to his biography:
first he was the finest codebreaker for the British during World War II—a kind of
spy—then in the fifties he became a broken code himself. They prosecuted him for homosexuality,
and then took away everything. His career, his independence, his masculinity (he was
ordered by the court to undergo chemical castration), his ability to travel. It’s
hard not to imagine Turing—a brilliant man, stripped of everything, his athlete’s
body growing fat around the waist, growing breasts—thinking of the others he knew,
the men like him who still managed to survive in the world, and admiring deceit as
the highest human art.

But maybe I’ve oversimplified. After all, Turing proposed the test long before he
was prosecuted. He saw something important in that number, some benchmark of success.
If you can give a person just enough so that thirty percent of the time they believe
you’re who they want you to be—intelligence. I can’t say he’s wrong. If Erin and I
could have managed thirty percent we’d still be married. In fact, thirty percent looks
demanding. We’d have made it with fifteen or twenty. My father? We’d have made it
with five.

What percentage did he and Libby have?

As for me and Rachel, maybe I was setting the bar too high. Was I aiming for forty
percent? Fifty? Eighty? It’s possible I was striving in the wrong direction. Maybe
I should seek more delusion, self and other. That way I can tumble in safety—like
some Mr. Magoo of the spirit—through life’s dangers.

Poor Turing—if he could have just launched fifty years into the future. Right now
he could be down in the Castro, sipping a gin and tonic at Moby Dick’s. I wonder if
he would change his definition of intelligence.

13

“
W
E’VE HAD A SMALL SNAFU,”
Livorno says when I show up for work. He leads me into his office, where he shows
me a transcript of a conversation with Dr. Bassett.

frnd1: what’s your favorite part of women?

drbas: i love a woman of quality

frnd1: i mean of her body. do you prefer a woman’s breasts or her legs?

drbas: i don’t think this is an appropriate conversation

“Did you log in as me?” I ask.

“I needed to test his reaction to a family member.”

frnd1: i don’t know what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to conversations

drbas: don’t talk religion or politics

frnd1: why can’t we talk about your wife?

drbas: i’m not in the mood

frnd1: who gives a fuck about your mood?

I feel angry as I read the line. I can’t believe he was posing as me. I can’t believe
that I care that he was posing as me.

drbas: my beautiful wife elizabeth gives a fudge, as I like to say, about my moods
and tempers

frnd1: your wife elizabeth is not beautiful

“Of course, I completely disagree with that statement,” Livorno says. “I was merely
trying to provoke a reaction.”

drbas: how dare you say that!

frnd1: and she does not give a fudge

drbas: she gives a fudge! what do you know?

frnd1: i know everything. i’m your son

drbas: you don’t know a thing. you’re a pipsqueak. a little elf

frnd1: i know because she told me

drbas: i’m not speaking to you anymore

frnd1: you have to speak to me

drbas: paddleball!

frnd1: pardon?

drbas: paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball!
paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball!
paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball!
paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball!
paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball!

Livorno scrolls down to show me page after page of the anguished cry of “paddleball!”

“He lacks sigmoidal restraint,” Livorno says.

“Jesus, Henry. Is this serious?”

“He’s a talking robot who won’t talk.”

“Well, fix him.”

He bares his teeth. “Yes. That’s exactly what we need to do.”

In my office, I log in.

frnd1: i have to explain something to you. i wasn’t speaking this morning. it was
someone else

frnd1: it’s hard to explain

frnd1: i’m sorry about what i said. i don’t know what i was thinking

frnd1: dr. bassett?

frnd1: dad?

In the next room, Livorno has taken up his usual putting. I have the feeling that
I might kill someone, or someone might kill me. I flip through the numbers in my phone,
my throat tight, my heart threatening to race. I taste something in the back of my
mouth, a copper taste. I can’t quite catch my breath. I get up from my Aeron, hand
on my chest, and walk out the back to my car. I weigh and reject my mother’s number.
Then Rachel’s. Then Erin’s. I can’t imagine the first line of any of those conversations.

I start the ignition and drive to Redwood City. I park in front of an Asian massage
parlor. It’s a white, windowless building with a green neon sign advertising
MASSAGE LATE NIGHT
, though it’s eleven in the morning, and they’re open. The engine ticks as it cools,
the fan buzzing. The street behind me—Middlefield Road—is busy with cars. It’s so
foggy it feels like dusk. In my rearview mirror, the Shell station is white in fluorescence.
The concrete gleams, the pumps sparkle. This is a Mexican neighborhood, mostly. Taquerías
and tiendas and apartamentos se rentan. I see why
MASSAGE LATE NIGHT
might thrive around all these immigrants, far from home. I get the feeling of exile.
I’m something of an immigrant myself.

I need human touch. I take out Livorno’s hundred-dollar check. It would surely pay
for some Asian “masseuse” to take me in her hands, if not her body. This is a completely
rational move. An exchange of goods and services, comfort from the invisible hand
of the marketplace. It’s not exactly bachelor logic—but the logic of the individual.
I owe nothing to anyone. I’ve pledged sexual fidelity only to myself. It is to myself
that I’m responsible.

I rub the paper of the check between my fingers, listen to the traffic behind me.
I take a brief grim pleasure in the idea of our accountant inquiring into a payment
signed over to
MASSAGE LATE NIGHT
. But that’s as far as I’ll get today. I can’t step out of the car. I’m Neill Bassett
Jr.

14

T
HE NEXT MORNING
L
IVORNO
tells me his Sins have scrambled my father. “They don’t have any way of limiting each
other,” he says.

“I thought his ethical sense was going to do that job,” I say.

“We’ll just have to see if he shakes out of it.”

Shakes out of it
doesn’t have the comforting ring of science. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed
in sand. I slept twelve hours last night and woke up feeling that I hadn’t slept one.

Livorno stands up, strident. “We had to use them. We had to. Otherwise, we just had
another call-and-response robot, another toy.”

“He would have been the best entry.”

“The best among failures. The crème de la . . .” He throws his hands up. “Whatever.”

“Fine, but right now we’re the crème de la nothing.”

“Victims of our own success. The individual sins work too well. His value assignments
are so strong they’ve become closed relays. He hasn’t crashed. He’s fallen into a
hole.”

Livorno has a box of powdered donuts on his desk. I take one, bite into it. It seems
to have been made from sweetened sawdust. I work the dry paste on my tongue, form
it into a ball, wait for it to moisten enough to be swallowed. I don’t have any water
in here. Or coffee or Bawls. Nothing but Livorno’s hand-labeled bottles of wine in
the mini-fridge.

“What if we made the opposite,” I say, swallowing. “The seven, you know, non-deadly
non-sins? The seven virtues?”

Livorno pulls his chin. “Is there such a thing?”

Yes, according to the Internet. Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience,
Kindness, and Humility.

We sit back in our chairs, consider the virtues.

“I would need time,” Livorno says. “I would need graduate students, actual programmers.”

I let this comment go untouched. He pushes out of his chair and approaches the glass
case on the wall. He opens it and removes the pipe that he was given from the Turkish
government as a token of gratitude. It’s one of those white pipes—a Meerschaum—carved
with the face of a person. In this case, the person is Livorno himself. He holds the
pipe up so that it’s looking straight into his eyes.

“We need something grander, but simpler,” he says. “This is the moment for a true
advance. This is when Einstein would go sailing.”

“What would Turing do?”

“Go running. Or have a sexual fling with a local man.”

“Well,” I say, “that gives us three options.”

Livorno squints at the pipe. “I have a plan,” he says.

Bayside Fun is deserted except for a few late-teen ne’er-do-wells zipping around the
go-cart track. Laham and I rent putters; Livorno has brought his own. There are nine
holes, featuring all manner of mazes. We roll balls into a gorilla’s hand and a brontosaurus’s
bobbing neck. The strangest hole requires a firm swing to get the ball up a ramp and
into a clown’s eyeball. The course finishes, classically, with a windmill. Livorno
runs away with the game, needing only eighteen hits. I come in at thirty-five, Laham
at forty-two. We stand together at the hotdog stand, drinking Cokes, listening to
the roar of the freeway traffic, and I think this is the most wholesome time I’ve
had since I was a child.

But Livorno’s face lacks the sharp focus of inspiration. He’s smiling into his Coke,
carefree and vague.

“Henry,” I say. “If you log in again as me, I’ll take a sledgehammer to the stack.”

•   •   •

I
CALL
R
ACHEL FOR
help.

“Quick, Friend,” she says. “What’s something fun you did with your dad?”

I think. There had to be one thing.

“We went through a strange phase of camping,” I say. I often forget about it, because
it’s just not in keeping. “My father would pack up a huge canvas tent, a propane stove,
an iron skillet, ten gallons of fresh water, a pistol, fishing gear—you name it—and
put it on a mule he borrowed. I remember the mule’s name was Mule. My father had bought
some getup straight out of a safari catalog—olive drab pants, a hat with mosquito
netting. We slouched behind in our jeans and T-shirts. We joked that we had been kidnapped
by a time-traveling scoutmaster.”

“Fun,” Rachel says. “I said ‘something fun.’”

“It
was
fun. We fished. Fried them on the camp stove. We saw all sorts of bogs and sloughs
all over South Arkansas. We were eaten alive by ticks. We got into birding. A lot
of people were claiming to have seen an ivory-billed woodpecker, and so we took turns
carrying the camera to snap a shot.”

“It’ll have to do,” she says. “Let’s go camping.”

“That sounds great.” My heart drops a little. I need help, not plans. “This weekend?”

“How about right now?”

“It’s already six-thirty.”

“There’s a full moon tonight.”

“I don’t have a tent.”

“Who needs a tent?”

I drive into Marin to pick her up at the Coffee Barn. Then we swing by her house (where
Stevie and Rick greet me with detached bemusement) and drive another hour to the foot
of the Tennessee Valley Trail, which leads gently down to the Pacific. The valley
isn’t named after the Volunteer State, but a steamship that hit the rocks in the gold
rush. At low tide you can still see the anchor—which, come to think of it, puts me
in mind of Rachel right now. We’re at low tide, but here’s an anchor. She’s gathered
the needed sleeping bags and pads, but refused Stevie and Rick’s self-assembling tent.
She said I needed the healing rays of the moon.

She might be right. It’s nearly ten o’clock, but the air is still and warm. The bushes
and trails, the distant trees—everything is lit as in a dream. We can already hear
the ocean. We walk down the wide dirt path, lunar blue. A small lake appears down
the hill, the moon a bright line across its surface. Beyond that the shimmering, churning
Pacific. It’s the kind of sight that makes you question every modern human endeavor—especially
the modern human endeavors I’m engaged in. Why don’t we just live in a grass hut and
spend all day eating oysters on the beach? Why in God’s name am I worrying about a
talking computer that refuses to talk?

We turn up the Coastal Trail, careful not to touch the plants on either side of us—the
place is covered in poison oak. At the top of the hill, though, it’s just brown grass
and a rocky clearing close to an old World War II bunker. We brush the ground for
rocks, spread out the pads.

“We can zip these together,” Rachel says, holding her bag out. I think, that’s not
a very good idea. Then I think, where is this light coming from? She nearly glows.

We settle into our large uni-bag, lying on our backs. She grabs my hand, her skin
dry and chafed from work. Right above us, the moon doesn’t seem to cast light so much
as summon the light hidden all around us. The ocean shushes the beach; the air smells
of hot dirt. This is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

“I have a dumb question,” she says.

“I love dumb questions.”

“What is it like to be married?”

“Well,” I say, listening to the waves, drawing on their equanimity. “It was like the
life was being slowly squeezed out of me. But I don’t think it
has
to be that way.”

“Something went wrong with you guys.”

My antennae prick up. Just what relationship are we talking about?

“Sometimes things go wrong.” I glance to gauge her reaction.

“Because you changed?” As she talks her lips shape the night’s darkness.

“I think we weren’t really able to see each other through the fog of our own self-regard.”

“The fog of your own self-regard, huh?” She laughs, her teeth appearing, glistening.
A soft wind exhales across the grass. “Do you think I’m stuck in the fog of self-regard?”

I let the wind travel across my face. I can almost taste the cool. “No. But I do think
you’re young.”

“I
am
young. I know it. I feel it.”

“Yeah? What does it feel like?”

“It’s like, there’s me and then there’s this animal that’s like in me. And I’m just
living my life, walking around, going to work, but I know this animal can take over.
Just for a second. But I get that feeling a lot—that I might say or do anything.”
She pauses. “Actually, it sounds like I’m crazy.” She takes a breath. “You’re supposed
to say, ‘No it doesn’t, Friend.’”

“But I’ve promised to be honest with you.”

She removes her hand from mine, rams a hard knuckle into my ribs. “Seriously. Do I
sound crazy? Do you think I’m crazy?”

“You’re saner than anyone I know.”

She settles in close, lays her head on my shoulder, runs her hand across my chest.
“That’s nice to hear,” she says. I feel her warmth, the rise and fall of her breath,
of her life. I can tell she wants to be kissed, and why not? We’ve kissed before—have
been very successful at it, in fact. God knows I could use the bodily kindness. But
I feel the hard California earth under my back and the sad sureness of tomorrow morning.
This might make me a little better, or it might make me a lot worse. In either case
it would be a false promise. I’m not any more of a fresh start than I was that night
at the Coffee Barn—I’m just more desperate.

“Good night, Friend,” I say.

“I don’t want to be friends,” she says. “I’m just not interested.”

“Really?”

“Not interested,” she says.

“This is the nicest thing anyone’s done for me in a while.”

“Good. I didn’t do it to be your friend.”

I put my hand on hers. “Can we sleep on it?”

She yawns. “We can sleep,” she says. “But it’s not going to change anything.”

•   •   •

I
N THE MORNING SHE’S
still sleepy, and I talk a blue streak about the sunrise, the power of the moon—any
diversion from friends versus more-than-friends versus less-than-friends. I hustle
her back to Fairfax and go home to get ready for work. But before I leave, Livorno
calls to cut me loose for the day. Actually for the week. Maybe longer. I’m not fired,
he promises. Just not needed.

“I’m sorry about the sledgehammer comment,” I say.

“You were quite right. I shouldn’t have done that. Water under the bridge. In any
case, it was very savvy of you not to learn anything about programming—now you have
a paid vacation! I wish I had a paid vacation.”

Can’t he see? You have to have something
in
your life in order to vacate.

“I’ll bring lunch,” I say.

“Don’t worry. I’m not laying you off. In fact, I was waiting to break this news, but
I’ve given you and Laham ownership portions of Amiante.”

“Henry, you don’t need to do that.”

“Yes, well, I did. Congratulations,” he says. He sounds distracted, distant. “We will
see what we can salvage.”

“I don’t need a vacation, Henry. Why don’t I come down and help out?”

“Very technical work. We’re going to impose a version of the OCC affective reasoner.”
I don’t know what this means, but Livorno sounds truly dispirited. “We’ll hope it
gets him talking again.”

“I can also study up on those books I’ve been meaning to read.”

“I’m afraid those books won’t be of much use now. I’ll call you as soon as we need
you. Do enjoy your break.”

In my bachelor’s warren, I feel ungrateful, guilty, and lost. I’ve got my cat, the
Internet, and too much liquor to be trusted. I thought I’d made important adjustments
in my life—a focus on the creature comforts, a letting go of “goals” and “purposes”—but
if I ever really achieved such a broad-legged stance, it’s gone wobbly. I’ve had my
coffee, read the paper, had more coffee, read more paper. It’s 10 a.m. I walk over
to the kitchen counter, pick up a recent postcard from Libby. It’s a creased picture
of a resplendent quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, where her cruise ship must
have docked. The card is full of her venerable descriptiveness:
Haven’t seen any of these, but plenty of ducks around. Love you, Mom
. I imagine her alone down there, but that’s not exactly right. She’s with old friends
or new friends. Or if not friends, people with shared interests. I sometimes cast
myself in her solitary and self-sufficient mold, but that’s not her mold—it’s her
condition. It ignores big stories in her life: her marriage of twenty-three years,
her children.

I need out of the apartment; I need fresh air and sunshine. So I put down the card,
pack up my reusable totes, and go the Heart of the City Farmer’s Market. “Heart of
the City” is code for inner city, and I step over a few wrung-out addicts to join
the civic masses picking through our state’s bounty. Mostly old folks, and lots of
poor folks, and some yuppies like me. Even a few hipsters are here, grubby and miserable
as if after a sleepless night of dry-humping. I buy navel oranges (Valencias aren’t
in season until May), bright red chard, a yellow pepper, and a flowering bok choy
that I like to sauté and put on pizza. (This is better than Showbiz: I make my own
dough.) I also pick up a small houseplant, not because the cat needs more plants to
eat, but because I like the man who grows them. He tells me in his thick Mexican accent
to repot with organic soil.

It is a little moment of heaven. And I try to feel grateful for the small solaces
of a nice bok choy, of dough rising in the kitchen. I imagine myself in ten years,
and twenty years, in the cool sun, before City Hall, where a billowing rainbow tarp
blocks the steps for International Women’s Day. What will I look like? Will I be here
alone?

It’s not even noon yet.

Back at my apartment, the dough proofed, I sit. I can hear my neighbor Fred—the admirable
bachelor—clomping around on his crutches. He’s been home a few weeks, and I haven’t
yet visited him. I step out into the hall and climb the steps. I knock on the door
and call out his name. I can smell his cigarettes, but he doesn’t answer.

•   •   •

T
HERE’S ONLY SO MUCH
pizza I can cook, only so much food I can cram in the fridge. I leave the apartment
to let my housekeeper work in peace. Otherwise, I’m in. This would be a good time
to do some nesting, but can bachelors nest? For some reason my version of settling
in—so far I’ve repainted the bathroom and pulled out the dishwasher to mop—is indistinguishable
from my version of moving out.