Heathern (14 page)

"It'll be a shame to split them up, if only for awhile," said
Bernard, suddenly staring at Lester and I as if he were a
doorman and we, messengers. "They make such a cute
couple."

Susie's voice cried out over the intercom. "Matters need
attending, Bernard. I'm coming down."

"So keep Lester going through the preliminaries," said
Thatcher. "Once I get a line on Otsuka I'll get a better
idea of when we can start putting our teacher here to
work."

"What are you talking about?" Bernard said, laughing,
yet evidently finding little humor in what we said.

"Mystic, Bernard. Check it out."

As Gus prepared to leave, it occurred to me that he had,
during the course of listening to conversation running
around him, discovered the method of Susie's trick, one I'd
often wished I'd been able to perform. Never one of the
more approachable men I'd known, an almost palpable
shell seemed to form itself around him, protecting as well as
lending isolation and distance, protecting him from those
he protected. He paused, standing by Lester, facing
Bernard's desk.

"No one stopped you?" he asked Gus, pointing to the
pen and pencil set's plastic knoll. Bernard stared at them as
if watching a movie take an unforgivable turn.

"No," he said, seemingly completing the conversation
we'd interrupted. "They trusted I had nothing to do with
it." He left, brushing past Susie as she entered; she cringed
at the feel of shell against shell.

"Bernard didn't know," I told Lester that night, in bed.
"Thatcher told me he didn't. If he did know I don't think he
wanted to be reminded."

"He doesn't seem to be a very sentimental person
otherwise," said Lester.

"He is. And everybody had heroes."

"Does Bernard enjoy what he does?"

"It's grown on him," I said. "He's a natural at advertising. He started in product development but couldn't stand
the sight of blood."

"Thatcher trusts him?"

"More than anyone except Susie, I think."

"What sort of relationship does Gus have with Jake?" he
asked, after a minute or so more. "Besides that of a
teacher?"

"Nothing abnormal," I said. "Avi once told me Gus
wanted to get married and have a son. I asked him how he
knew, and he said he could tell from Gus's handwriting."

"Did you want to get married?" he asked me.

"Once," I said. "Nobody wanted to go all the way."

Some did, truly, but that would have ruined it; I could
never allow the men I'd loved the most to become my
lovers. Genuine friendship between men and women was
such a rare thing that to admit sex into such relations was
unfailingly destructive, as if you were to carve your initials
into a pearl.

"Lester-"

"Did you want to have a baby?"

"Not until I had him."

"Abortion's not illegal if you make enough money," he
said, embracing me as if assuring that one of us would not
abandon the other before the time was right. "We both
know that. Why didn't you-"

"Thatcher's pro-life."

After Lester left I fell asleep and dreamed I saw his
family's house. The ruin stood as desolate as an old English
church, yet it couldn't have antedated America's Civil War;
its stones could never have known the touch of a slave's
hand. Attached to the chimney's outer wall was a bloody
diadem, a rusted basketball hoop. Opening the front door I
tiptoed in as if entering a nursery. No rags of memory
clothed the room's nakedness; his house's amnesia was as
profound as mine. I saw Lester standing in the kitchen. The
pantry door was off its hinges and the room beyond
appeared only recently unsealed. In the center of the
far wall's fairness an aureola of punctures ringed an abyss blown into the plaster: an inoculation scar, the mark
of an angel's bite, Saturn gathering his children around
him.

-What happened to your family? I heard myself ask.

-Misunderstandings, his image said.

Susie left the next morning for the Westchester estate,
departing ahead of the others that she might oversee
Thanksgiving preparations. Her personality's buds took
full bloom, removed from Thatcher's shadow; Avi had
heard that the year before two members of the kitchen
staff killed themselves within a day of her arrival. Sitting
in Bernard's office the next morning, waiting for Thatcher,
I thumbed through the pages of her newspaper, seeing
signs that the season was upon us. In Ohio a woman
found her herald of the new millennium emblazoned in
mold on the wall of her garage; analysts agreed that the
stars proclaimed that stores remaining open would show
profits this year; devil-worshiping cults were to be
soon exposed in the north of England. There'd been a
murder in St. Patrick's Cathedral: while confessing a venial
sin, the confessant was overcome by the need to com mit a mortal one, and so kicked his priest to death in the
stall.

"Isn't Thatcher overreaching himself?" Bernard mumbled. Before I could answer, he responded, "No. Not
this time," and I realized he was only voicing some
mental catechism as he dallied over his paperwork. "What
can he do to the Japanese except turn people against
them?"

I threw the paper aside, having seen inspiration enough
within to last a lifetime. Deciding to dawdle additional time
away under the guise of work, I pulled a thick folder marked
Otsuka from Bernard's outbox. Within were snapshots of the
man taken years before, photos that by their angles suggested he had no notion that they were being taken. Pages
of statistics referred to his businesses, his buyouts, his
mergers and steals. I came upon some of his poems within,
one of which had its lyric transcribed from Japanese into
English.

"It reads like a transcript," Lester commented, studying
the page from over my shoulder.

"No petals on wet black boughs for our allies," said
Bernard, distracting himself from his unsolvables long
enough to annotate. "He's fond of using found material in
his constructs. Even in Japan he's quite askew from the
norm."

"He seems almost interesting," I said.

"Thatcher would seem interesting, seen from Mars," said
Bernard. "Otsuka's older, that's all, and he's had more time
to elaborate upon himself. His followers worship him for
having stayed alive against all odds." We might as well not
have been in the room; Bernard was again transfixed by his
desktop screen's fluttering green auroras. "Try not to
evidence untoward fascination, Joanna, they've distractions
enough."

"We're no longer involved, Bernard."

"You'll be involved, long as you work for him. I did forget
we're playing minister and the choir girl for the nonce,
however. Keep an eye on both of them, that's my suggestion. Prepare to duck."

"You're as paranoid as they are."

"With reason," he said. "Make sure the agreement gets
signed. Progress on this computer is essentialed."

"Which computer?" Lester asked.

"You take an interest in technology? I'd imagine you'd
think it superfluous," Bernard said. "As we apparently keep
no secrets from you at present, I suppose I can detail a bit.
Thatcher requires that a new super-super oversee company
operations by the end of the decade; preferably next week.
Without Japanese assistance it won't be done. Our team
goes into conniptions working with fifth generation models. The masters from the east play with number sevens to
unwind after drinking all night. Thatcher's logic is such that
he believes if we combine the groups we'll shortly produce
a number twelve, or what in theory is called, I believe, the
Algorithmic Logistical Interactive whatchamacallit hoozis.
How the language suffers at the tongues of these buffoons."

"A talking computer, I suppose," said Lester. "How'11 it
sound?"

"Mellifluous. Speaking only Latin for safety's sake, I'm
tempted to say. It'll be a thinking computer, in theory.
Independent thought. If it works as they believe it will, then no one will ever need God again." Bernard forever pretended to recognize his social faux pas a beat too late. "Oh,
Macaffrey, obsolescence hits everyone in time."