Man Walks Into a Room (17 page)

“The misery of other people is only an abstraction,” Ray insisted, “something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one’s own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.”

“And mistreat each other, won’t they?”

Ray nodded. “Horrendously.”

The low jazz played on, and outside, the desert was Ray’s stage. When Samson finally left, stumbling back to the Bathhouse in the pitch-dark, he felt a little thrill in the pit of his stomach, a rising of goose bumps on his skin that was not only because of the fierceness of the stars and the chill in the air. Despite everything Ray had said, he felt the doctor understood him, and that he in turn had witnessed something like another man’s mind laid bare.

SAMSON RAN THE
hot water in the bathtub. The nights were still cold once the sun set, and he lowered himself an inch at a time into scalding water, each new level of submersion happening before he was ready, the water a hot itch, a small punishment to clear the way for comfort. The water dissolved the day’s sweat and dust. Silver bubbles like mercury formed on his skin, the skin taking on a green hue under the water, making it look rubbery and inhuman. Droplets of sweat beaded on his forehead. His whole body in, he squeezed his eyes shut and slipped his head under, and in the hot, muffled silence he could hear his waterlogged pulse. He stayed like that, holding his breath for as long as he could, and when his head broke the surface he blinked and gasped. He leaned forward and rubbed the steam on the mirror, and slowly his face began to take shape.

It was a fine face, nothing unusual, only a little rugged from the
sun; a face that no one would look away from in displeasure. He hadn’t shaved for a few days—he still found the habit awkward—but despite the shadow of growth it was still the face of a man who wouldn’t be averse to helping an old lady cross the street. Who, feeling her bulky handbag against his hip, might imagine making off with it only to discomfort himself with his proximity to the barbarians. A face not puffed out by drugs or heavy drinking, the healthy face of a thirty-seven-year-old (a birthday come and gone) who ate generously from the five food groups and exercised regularly, evidence being membership to the West Side Racquet Club and the profusion of grayish gym socks and nylon shorts with the built-in underwear perforated for air circulation that he had found in his bottom dresser drawer. There seemed to be a belief that one’s face reflected certain qualities of one’s inner life. He tried to come to terms with this now, to claim the face as his own. Since he first saw it in the hospital mirror, his face had been like someone who was following him, attempting an impression of himself.

A fine face. If not that of a hero, then of a man who had the potential for passing the endurance tests and the grueling training needed before blastoff and moon walk. Though now the moon was nothing, he’d learned, provincial, and it was Mars that constantly made the news. Just recently he’d read in
Time
magazine that the Global Surveyor orbiting Mars had sighted gullies ending in fanlike deltas, suggesting a relatively recent water flow on the planet; water that had been on or near the surface only thousands, or even hundreds, of years ago, billions of years later than previous estimates. The news had been leaked to the press, and experts had talked on the condition they not be named. Nothing gushing or springing, they said, no rivers or hot springs, for goodness’ sake, just the possibility of liquid water. And where there is water there could be life, they said, speaking from their homes, their words later quoted under images of the red surface marked with tiny furrows, flow marks, traces.

He had left New York barely a week ago, and already the city was receding, becoming another life that did not necessarily relate to what came before or after it. It was the thing he found most difficult to grasp: the sense of a continuum, where the world was not something
that happened in shards, moments of illumination in the darkness of consciousness. Because it was not, despite what he’d said to Donald, that the twenty-four years between the last glimpse of childhood and waking under the hospital clock had been obliterated. On the contrary, they
existed:
empty, submerged in silence, filled with nothing but the distant thump of a pulse. There, there was only time—not as the waking-alive knew it, with a before and now and after, but time as endurance:
here, here, here.

The water had gone cool and the fog retreated to the far corners of the mirror, left in patches like wisps of cloud after inclement weather. He stood up and dripped, the water only reaching his calves, wading water, water the level of a baby pool or a mildly threatening flood.

Donald’s small suitcase was on the floor by his bed, decorated with colored decals from a host of American and Canadian cities. Samson hadn’t seen the suitcase earlier and it almost brought tears to his eyes now, the unswerving optimism of the stickers, the pride and extroverted friendliness of the gesture. He half wished he had gone with Donald to Las Vegas and spent the night drinking tropical cocktails under a plastic palm tree, listening to him proudly recount his adventures in each city. If the stories were made up, if Donald had only bought the decals all at once, in a souvenir pack at a local gift shop, it hardly mattered. What mattered was listening to him. Somehow the stickers—reflective or transparent, illustrated with landmarks from Salt Lake City, Portland, Anchorage, Port Edwards, Phoenix—made him feel more compassionate toward Donald. It was as if he had come to Clearwater on a holiday. He thought about Donald’s eyes: careful eyes that took in more than they expressed, eyes incongruous with the impersonations and the real estate. It occurred to him that he hadn’t asked Donald what memory he was donating to science; what powerful and unforgettable image, what stream of neural firings to be used as the lab saw fit. He didn’t even know how much Donald knew about the whole Clearwater project; neither one of them had mentioned it. From what Ray had told Samson, they were currently recording one of Donald’s memories on a massive computer. The team had already created
the technology to read and record the brain’s activity during the process of remembering, break the information down, then produce a map of its entire chemical and electromagnetic activity while experiencing the memory. What they were still working on was how to trigger another brain to perform the same functions—how to actually transfer a memory. Ray had asked Samson not to discuss what he’d been told; for all he knew, Donald knew nothing except that a memory of his was being recorded for the future.

He walked outside and waited for his eyes to adjust to the dark. If there was no moon, as there was not tonight, the stars went berserk, billions of them shuddering against the black. Sooner or later, in the corner of his eye, he would see a meteor streak past, hitting the atmosphere and burning up. A few months before, a meteor had lit up over the Yukon and pieces of black rock came down over Canada. A man, an ordinary layman, picked them up out of the snow, carbonaceous chondrite that he slipped in plastic kitchen Baggies and froze until the proper authorities could send someone to fetch them. Little hunks of the universe preserved next to deer meat in his freezer, until the snow melted and the UPS man could get through.

He found the path that passed the laboratory before it began to ascend into the hills, winding past the dark outlines of rock formation. At the top were a busted couch and a few chairs, most likely dragged up there by some kids who used it as a hangout when the place was still abandoned. He took out a pocket flashlight and directed the weak beam on the star chart he’d bought in town: a plastic disk with a rotating cardboard center notched with the hours and months and a map of the constellations.

He thought of the moment, during the last week of summer before the seventh grade, when he was lying on his back in the grass next to Jollie Lambird, moving his fingers toward her hand as she said,
Taurus, Pegasus, Cassiopeia,
knowing he could keep reaching as long as the list went on. When his fingers touched hers she whispered,
What sign are you?
His heart was pounding.

I don’t know.

When were you born?

I’m trying to think, he wanted to say, give me time, and finally it came to him,
January
29.

Aquarius.

Water Bearer, eleventh sign of the zodiac, the stars taking the shape of a man pouring water into a jar.

He shone the flashlight at the star chart and tried to find some connection between the flimsy rotating disk and the massive, breathing field of stars. It took a minute before the scattered lights focused into distinct groups, shapes that the ancients had seen as animals, hunters, and dippers. He sat down on the busted couch. A bat flew by, almost grazing his head. He thought about everything Ray had said to him over the past week. He could see the laboratory below and heard the distant hum of the generator. He thought about how he had arrived in such a strange and compelling place, all the unlikely events that had led up to this.

Then his thoughts returned to Jollie Lambird, to that night when he was twelve and nothing yet had happened.

What about you? What sign?
He had her hand then, her cool fingers folded into his, and he moved his thumb gently across hers. He didn’t care if he never spoke to anyone else in the world, as long as she was there, whispering,
Andromeda, Polaris.

Leo.

He inched toward her until their sides were touching, arm to arm, leg to bare leg.
Sam?
she whispered.
Do you think
—This was Jollie Lambird, whom he had been in love with since the second grade, and he was ready to answer any question she might have for him. But he didn’t hear the rest of it because just then he kissed her, a kiss that may have lasted for hours while porch lights shuddered and went out across the neighborhood. While stars themselves lit up or went out, stars that had not yet been given names by which to remember them. It was the last week of summer before the seventh grade, and afterward he walked her back to her house. He kissed her again, shyly and gently, now with the thrill of knowing that he had a small claim on her affections. He ran the rest of the way home, leaping over toys left lying in
yards, over rosebushes and garden chairs, running through countless dark yards, his heart pounding in his chest, each step an exercise of joy, and that, really, was the very last he remembered, running through the dark before the world stopped, and in the empty silence all he could hear was the sound of his pulse.

DONALD CAME BACK
the next day at noon. There was only one access road to Clearwater, a long dirt road lined with cottonwood trees, and Samson could see the trail of dust the taxi kicked up before it shuddered to a stop in front of the Bathhouse. He waited outside the door and watched Donald struggle out of the car, his shirt untucked, reaching for his wallet.

He shuffled past Samson without a word and flopped facedown on the bed.

“So?”

“Who am I?” he said into the pillow.

“How was Vegas?”

“I didn’t go.”

“You didn’t go to Vegas?”

“I’m telling you I didn’t go.”

“Then where did you stay last night?”

He rolled over and grinned. “Wouldn’t ya like to know.”

“I would.”

“Give me a minute, will you, Sammy? I’m luxuriating.”

He had gone to see a friend of his called Lucky. That was the name she went by; it was a stage name first and then it was her name. He had meant to go to Vegas but then the taxi passed right by Lucky’s place; he’d had no idea it was so close. She’d been happy to see him because the only people who visited her these days were truckers and military personnel.

“So what, you caught up on old times?”

“I guess you could call it that.”

“What do you mean, you guess?”

“Whad’ya mean, what do I mean? We. Caught. Up. On. Old. Times,” Donald said, thrusting his hips for punctuation.