Chimpanzee (28 page)

Cynthia's office calls.

“Mr. Cade?”

It's the receptionist.

“Yes.”

“This is Dr. St. Claire's office. I'm calling because we haven't heard from you regarding the scheduling of your next appointment.”

“I didn't think you'd be taking appointments. The equipment . . .”

“Dr. St. Claire isn't seeing patients in the office,” she says. “The equipment has not yet been replaced. She's making house calls instead.”

“All right,” I say. “So is this just talk therapy?”

“No, Dr. St. Claire will be employing the use of her field kit. This is why we're behind schedule.”

“A field kit?”

“Yes, it's for housebound or rural patients.”

“I see.”

“What time works best for you, and may I have your new address?”

Sireen and Dimitri have both prepared for this. They're excited. Sireen changed her jeans—which she wore all day while painting her study—for a pair of her professional slacks. She's wearing a sweater with a bundled collar that exposes one shoulder. She even took the time to hang our artwork in the front rooms of the house—where Cynthia will be able to see it. Dimitri has pressed his shirt, and he's wearing cologne. Just enough. He sits with me on the sofa while we wait. I mute the TV, but I leave the picture up—it's a documentary. About something. It doesn't matter. It's just something to look at. He volunteers his portable music player for the speaker dock beside the fireplace, and I let him play what he wants. It's something neo-folk. A song about being. Like the rest of them.

“Did I get you into trouble?” he says. “On campus?”

I don't look at him. I'm watching animated models of Pangaea on the television—how we might push our own continents back into its shape. Then how we might split them again, to make things right.

“It's all right,” I say.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “The chancellor told me I shouldn't call attention to you. Afterward. For your sake.”

“It's all right.”

A Renewal PSA commercial appears. It shows us smiling, and making the pledge of allegiance, and wearing red jumpsuits. We build roads. We feed the elderly. We keep an eye out for our internal enemies.

“What were you even doing there?” I say.

“Do you two want wine?” Sireen says from the dining room.

She's arranging hors d'oeuvres on the table. Olives and soft cheeses and tiny, gleaming knives.

“Please,” Dimitri says.

“No.”

I don't know if Cynthia is going to bring an I.V. line with her. Who knows how chemicals mix.

“Didn't Sireen tell you?” he says. He looks over his shoulder, as if identifying her for me.

“No.”

“Tell him what?” she says, handing him a glass of wine. He brought two bottles of it. A housewarming gift.

“About the grant,” Dimitri says. “I thought you'd told him.”

She looks at me. “I told you about the grant.”

“Yes,” I say, “but what does that have to do with tearing asbestos out of an old building?”

Dimitri looks at her first. Then me. “That is the grant.”

“Renovation?” I say.

“Yes.”

“The school is renovating it to become a depot. For the perishables and other products that will come from
SHARE
taxation.”

I watch him like a silent TV.

“It's a work-study,” he says. “Community organizing and poverty studies will both route students through the program. Juniors and seniors, mostly.”

“You've been working on this?” I say.

“I thought you knew.”

“You know I use
SHARES
, right?”

He looks into his wine. “It wasn't my idea to tax them.”

I think about it. I don't care.

“Don't worry about it.” I slap him on the knee. “What do you think of the house?”

“You have a lovely home,” Cynthia says. She shakes Sireen's hand. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Sireen says. “We still haven't arranged everything. I'm sure it'll be months.”

They trade smiles. Cynthia is dressed like Sireen. Professionally. Her shoulder bag is not unlike the one Sireen carries to campus.

“This is a colleague of Sireen's,” I say, “Dimitri Petrić. He's in sociology, at Central.”

Cynthia extends her hand, fingers together, cocked, like she's ready to pet a dog.

“So nice to meet you,” Dimitri says.

“Likewise,” Cynthia says.

“They wanted to observe a session,” I say. “Sireen has some questions about indexing, if you can spare a minute.”

“Of course,” Cynthia says. “Support systems are important.”

“Dimitri's doing a study,” I say, “on the repossessed. On me.”

“How interesting,” Cynthia says.

Reflected in the taut lines of her professional hair, in its charcoal rays, the light in my house is not so bright. It is as dim upon her brow as it was in the windows. That first night, when I could still see what happens to the light when it fills the darkness.

“Wine?” Sireen says.

“Thank you.”

Cynthia is not using an I.V. line tonight. She thinks a glass of wine is a fine idea, for me. So I agree.

Dimitri turned off the electronics when she asked. He and Sireen sit on chairs from our kitchen table, near the fireplace. Out of the way, with their legs crossed over their knees. Sireen's bracelet
of imitation garnets rests against her wine glass, which she holds at a lazy angle against her crossed leg. The bracelet is too large for her wrist, which is fashionable. Dimitri keeps his shoulders back, his notepad upon his leg.

Cynthia's field kit is no larger than a portable computer. She arranges it on our coffee table and hands me a pair of chimping glasses, like Zoe's. Not goggles—these don't exclude as much stimuli as do the others in her clinic.

“They use less power,” she says, watching me study them. “The equipment is not energy efficient.”

I'm holding them by an earpiece. “What happened with the clinic? Did the police find anything?”

“Not regarding the thieves,” she says, “but they face assault charges, if you'll press.”

“Sure.”

“Good. I have a form for you to sign.”

I slide the glasses on. They feel light and hot and ineffective.

“There's one more thing, Ben, about the assault.”

I look at her. An asshole wearing sunglasses in his own house. “Yes?”

“The technicians who appraised the damage to the terminal have discovered that it had been previously compromised by remote access. Several times.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“Your data was among the information that was compromised, at successive stages during your therapy.”

“Okay.”

“There are reports of a rise in black market simulations,” she says. “The Department of Health and Human Services regrets that your indices may have become a part of this trade.”

I wonder if I could find someone chimping me. Talk to myself for a while about the good old days. I feel my molars coming together in the back of my mouth. I hold them in place. It takes a minute to get it together.

“Yes,” I say. Carefully. “That's regrettable.”

“I'll need you sign a form,” she says.

“Of course.”

“We'll begin, then,” she says.

I stretch out on my sofa. I can feel the room behind the lenses, in the air that doesn't move against my skin—goggles usually close this off. These earphones are different. Cynthia's voice sounds tinny, cheap. The adhesive pads on my brow smell like talcum powder.

“Today, we'll do something a little different,” she says.

She makes the room ever so red. I can see it in the refurbished coffers lining our ceiling. Sireen sits in the corner of my eye, adjusting the lay of her hands. I imagine her voice in the earphones, her fingers upon that computer pad, remaking my world in her image, just like Cynthia does.

An image of a frog appears in my field of vision.

“How does this make you feel?” Cynthia says.

“Fine.”

She types a command into her computer. The pads warm against my head. The frog disappears and then returns. The exact same frog, the exact same position.

“And how about this?”

I think about someone, in some bar, saying my brilliant things. While I look at frogs. Am I even feeling this, or is Cynthia making me?

“Honestly,” I say, “a little irritated. Why am I seeing this frog again?”

“That's okay,” she says. “It's normal.”

“What, irritation?”

“Seeing the same image.”

I wonder how hallucinations work. How to perceive something that isn't there, bending light and air into the brain's best patterns.

“This is rehabilitation, Ben. You're at risk for neurological imbalance, now that we've made it this far. Just bear with me.”

“Does that mean I'm going crazy?”

“It means you won't.”

She shows me an image of her face.

“Who do you see?”

“You.”

Then my face.

“Who?” she says.

“Me.”

“Good.”

I lean forward enough to sip my wine. I can't identify the grape, but it tastes faintly of mint. Nutmeg. It's nice. A pleasant evening with friends in the parlor, playing games with cognition.

“How do you feel?”

Who's next?

“Fine.”

No, you try it.

“Very good,” she says. “Now, something more difficult.”

She removes the image of my face. Sireen leans forward, elbows on her knees. Dimitri is unmovable. There must be something about watching a friend, on a couch, losing his mind. It commands stance. Position. He can see best if he doesn't move, which is usually the body's way of trying to change the situation. The batting at a fly, the twirling of a lock of hair, the clenching of fists.