The Dream of Doctor Bantam (7 page)

Something about his expression bothered her. When she had peed and was washing her hands, she looked at her face in the mirror and tried to match her expression to the painting. Lips that drooped in a frown before twisting up at the corners like a Dali mustache, seagull-silhouette wrinkles in her forehead, eyes staring straight ahead like perfect circles. She looked at herself in the mirror with water running over her hands until she got scared and stretched her jaw to relax it. The wrinkles took a long time to smooth out from her forehead; she splashed water on them until they looked like they had dissolved.

She went back into the living room; Patrice was gone. She went into the kitchen, ran a glass of water for herself, and drank it. A half-moon of lipstick was left on the edge of the glass Patrice had used. What time was it, even? She looked for a clock and didn’t find anything. There was a microwave with a digital readout; someone had put a skinny strip of masking tape over the numbers.

She went to the door and turned the knob twice without opening it, then took her hand away and stood there for a moment, watching the haloes of the Christmas lights hanging on the walls. Then she walked back down the hallway to the door ninety degrees to the bathroom. It was closed, and a song was playing quietly through the crack under the door:

Je ne veux pas travailler

Je ne veux pas déjeuner

She knocked.

Don’t come in, commanded Patrice’s voice. I need to get ready for work.

I’m just going to leave, said Julie. It was nice meeting you.

She’d turned around and made it back to the living room before she heard the door open. Patrice was standing there in the doorframe, black stockings taut on her legs, navy skirt buttoned up. She had an amazingly dirty green-and-white striped towel wrapped around her breasts, held shut under one shoulder with a white-knuckle grip.

Wait, said Patrice. You, are you looking for a job?

Julie made sure to keep looking at her eyes.

I’m not really looking for one, no, she said. I’m not interested in like, selling cult books or anything.

Patrice straightened her shoulders; the towel rustled.

No one would ask you to work
directly
for the Institute if you weren’t a member of the Institute, she said. And I’m not asking you to become a member of the Institute. If you don’t feel that the Institute would be helpful to you, then it won’t be helpful to you. Even though it would actually be helpful to you.

What is that even supposed to mean? asked Julie. I don’t even know what you just said. Can we talk about this not in the hallway? Could you come in the living room, or could I come into that room?

You’re not allowed to come into my room, said Patrice. Can you, can you change an air conditioning filter?

Anyone can change an air conditioning filter, said Julie, and weirdly, Patrice smiled.

I respect your confidence in your own abilities, said Patrice. It’s like you aren’t even aware of how difficult physical work can be to people who work in other spheres.

Julie shifted her weight on to the balls of her feet.

You’re saying that I’m too stupid to work for the cult, so I’d make a good manual laborer, she said. And you respect me for being too stupid to know that I’m stupid. Thanks!

Patrice frowned. Julie flinched; when Patrice frowned, she looked like Tabitha.

I’m sorry I said that, she said.

No, said Patrice. You’re right. I was speaking thoughtlessly. It was the right thing for you to point it out to me. It makes me a better person in the future.

She kept standing there in the doorway with the towel hanging off of her breasts and that pathetic Tabitha-like pout on her face, and Julie realized that Patrice might stand here forever, even, slowly age and turn into a pile of bones wrapped in a green-and-white striped towel here on the spot, if no one said anything to her.

You said you had a job available, she said.

Patrice looked up.

Yes, she said. I need a person, a someone to fix different things around this building. Clean things and repair things. I think you would be the ideal person for this.

Julie kept looking at her.

You think that I’d make a good handyman, she said. Without knowing literally anything about me.

You saved my life, said Tabitha. Not many people would do that for me.

Her voice wasn’t completely regular after all. There was a quiver to it, a suspiciously small quiver, like her words were passing through a long California hotel hallway caught mid-earthquake, and only some amazing force of will made her voice come out even at the end of it. Julie could feel the shiver in her chest, like a thief was vibrating a pin against the tumblers of her heart, lifting first one, then the other, until suddenly the lock came apart. She looked at the girl down the hallway who was watching her.

In the sixth grade a girl had asked to look at Julie’s hands.

Hold out all your fingers straight, she said. Then: Ooooooh.

What, demanded Julie.

Your ring finger is longer than your index finger, said the girl. She looked at the pack of girls that began to gather to either side of her for confirmation.

So what? asked Julie.

So that means, whispered the girl, you’re
gay
.

The other girls burst into laughter. Julie made a knuckle with her giant ring fingers and made sure they were the ones that stuck out the furthest as she drove her pubescent fists into their faces.

Okay, she said to the girl down the hallway. I’ll be your handyman. How much do I get paid? When do I start?

Patrice smiled; the resemblance to Tabitha faded entirely when she smiled.

Could I ask you to start today? she asked. I need the air conditioning filter fixed. Summer is coming, soon, and it will be just a disaster if that isn’t fixed.

Sure, said Julie. No problem.

Excellent, said Patrice. Then we’ll discuss the question of your salary when I get back from work.

She turned; the towel didn’t cover her bronze back. Julie flinched and walked over to the couch, rested an arm on the back of it. The door to Patrice’s bedroom closed.

You’re going to work at the cult, said Julie, loud enough for Patrice to hear. Right?

At the Institute, said Patrice. Yes.

It only took her a minute to come out this time, the white blouse in place, the lightning back in her eyes. She stomped across the carpet to the door, past Julie, then turned to look back at her. She smiled—her nervous smile clashed like crazy with her eyes. Which detail was real?

Is there anything else, before I go? Patrice asked. Anything you need?

Give me a cigarette, said Julie.

You said you didn’t smoke, said Patrice as she took out her pack.

I’m considering starting, said Julie.

3

It took maybe thirty minutes altogether to fix the air conditioning filter; she walked to the hardware store on 29th Street, a few blocks away, picked up the new filter, and had the whole job done before it could have been much past noon. Still, it wasn’t a moment too soon—the old filter was jet black, probably years out of date; how many cigarettes had passed through it in its time? She started coughing as soon as she had the grating to the intake vent open and didn’t stop until the thing was thrown away in a garbage bag in the yard.

Back inside, she sat on the couch, hunted up matches, and finally lit the cigarette Patrice had given her. She hacked her way through the first two drags, trying to wolf the nicotine down like pot smoke, then let herself just hold everything in her mouth and let it go through her lips, let it sniff around the edges of her throat, venture a tentative paw or two past the boundary line; she let her virgin-pink body get used to its new friend and it to her. Everyone must go through this, she figured: Tabitha, Linda, Patrice, everyone. Learning to smoke was just like anything, an application of total will power.

Somewhere behind the walls the air conditioning switched on and off, sucking air past its clean new teeth; somewhere outside there were cars gliding. Julie smoked and looked at the slat of yellow daylight under the drapes once, closed her eyes and counted to two hundred, looked at it again. She tried to decide if it was getting brighter or if it was slowly becoming dim.

There was a landline phone on the carpet with a pink kinked cord coiled around it. She uncoiled the cord and plugged it into the jack in the wall. Miraculously there was a dial tone. She bent it around the corner of the hallway, sat on the carpet by the wall, and dialed. It took eight long rings before she heard Tabitha’s voice.

Hi, you’ve reached Applied Cryonics Mortuary. If you’re calling in regard to an immediate death, press 1. If you’re calling in regard to the death of a pet, press 2.

You are such an asshole, Tabitha, she said aloud.

If you’re calling in regard to the death of a celebrity, please stay on the line and an operator will assist you as soon as possible. If you’re calling because you want to fuck a dead celebrity, please also stay on the line. Our staff pride themselves on their discretion and beeeeeeep

Mom, pick up the phone, said Julie. I know you’re there, so pick up the phone. I’m just gonna keep talking and talking until you …

There was a click and a folksy guitar strumming away on ancient speakers.

Hi, baby, said Linda.

Mom, said Julie. I’ve got a job, maybe even for the summer.

Congratulations, Linda moaned. That’s so wonderful.

Yeah, said Julie. So she—so they want me to start today. My boss.

Oh good, said Linda. The folksy guitars got louder; she was turning the volume up.

So I won’t be coming home tonight, said Julie. Until late. Just … so don’t wait for me with dinner.

Dinner, said Linda. Okay. Listen, honey, thanks for calling, all right?

Sure, said Julie. Oh, she’s also a big dyke.

There was a dial tone, again.

A huge dyke, Julie said to the receiver. She said it louder.
Dyke
.

She thought she could feel the motors in the walls stop for a moment, terrified, before lurching forward again. She set the phone down in the hallway, got up, and walked to the center of the living room. The white walls felt like they were moving in on her and she could feel the heat of the Christmas lights above her, incandescent, and she could feel her stomach moving, rolling over and over itself.

She walked to the front door and turned the knob all the way clockwise and all the way back in the other direction. Then she swallowed and turned the deadbolt: locked, open.

She could hear Ira moving around downstairs, she thought. If she wanted to, she could go down and see him, hang out with him, like she’d been planning to do when she left the house today.

She stood and waited with her hand on the door. Then she locked the deadbolt. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, and she unzipped her pants, zipped them again, unbuttoned them and unzipped them and stepped out of them. She took off her polo shirt and unhooked her bra.

She was all alone in the house of a stranger, felt queasy with the knowledge of this.

She watched the thick drapes for a thrilling minute before pulling them back, unlatching them, leaning out the window. Specks of college kids moved along the wide streets toward one or another off-campus rathole or to a late lecture and cars and vans chugged by and Julie wondered if they could see her hanging naked out the window like an orange branch in the sun.

She walked through the living room—what the fuck, what the fuck was she doing—and went down the hallway past the bathroom she’d seen earlier. She took her clothes with her, bundled in front of her chest, and she held them tight with one arm as she opened the door to the bedroom.

You’re not allowed to come into my bedroom, she said to the empty hallway, mimicking Patrice’s voice. Julie goes where she wants, you cult bitch.

She eased the door shut behind her and turned on the light. At first glance, she was relieved to confirm that Patrice was, left to her own devices, a horrible slob. In the unshaded light of an incandescent bulb, the brightest the socket would allow, the grit stood out on the piles of dirty blouses, socks, underwear, all of it knee-high, whitecapping and breaking on the periwinkle-sheeted foot of Patrice’s unmade bed. The trash can, an industrial blue cylinder, overflowed with lipstick-blotted Kleenex, pizza crusts caked with banana peppers, snot-crystalized napkins, dented white applicators, one broken comb in the shape of a pink horse. The desk was stacked with papers and legal pads, and a swivel lamp of cheap 1980s construction was C-clamped to the back, its cord long ago frayed apart and a heavy char mark on its candy-apple shade. Next to the lamp sat two cartons of Camel cigarettes, one cracked and missing three out of ten, the other sealed. Next to the cartons sat an iron machine. The machine looked like someone had crossed a Singer sewing machine and a Vespa: it was basically a hefty green cabinet with two massive headlights that sprouted out like an elk’s rack. Two thick coaxial strands ran over the lip of the desk and ended in a foot pedal attachment below a wooden kitchen chair. The whole thing’s purpose baffled her.

She stood by the door with her hand on the switch and the incandescent bulb toasting her pale bare skin, the weirdness of Patrice developing in her mind like accidental sunlight in the darkroom.

She dodged the piles to get to the bed and eased herself down on it; the foreign grease of the sticky sheets eased itself against her. She lay herself down against Patrice’s pillow and let the pores of her neck close up against it.

She imagined the lock turning and Patrice coming home early, hunting up some thing or other she’d forgotten, finding Julie in here sprawled nearly naked on the bed; she felt dizzier than ever.

She sat up and eased the pillow out from under her head, tucked it between her knees, and flipped onto her stomach—then she saw the diary. It was bound in some kind of lavender-dyed lace, laid in with sequins and girly little mirrors, some of them cracked. She let the pillow drop from between her knees and she cracked open the snap.

It was full of doodles, impressive ones, all done in cheap black roller ball. Spiderwebs, vampires, a mysterious copy of the portrait that hung in the bathroom (did she draw on the toilet, this Patrice, lost in her dreams?) There was one large street scene, a part of the Drag that Julie couldn’t place exactly, squiggles of rain blotting the sky and all the squiggles of people in the background moving with such purpose, their shoulders bent so angrily against an unseen wind, and Julie felt bad for them, wanted to tell them that they didn’t have to hurry like that, the world wasn’t as bad as all that. But above all, Patrice doodled girls. Girls in scarves and sweaters and hats. They climbed the blue squares like chess pawns striving for queendom, the girls, their torsos fleshy and full, collarbones drawn even when it made no compositional sense to do so, skulls crosshatched with a casually obsessive ease, lips puffed out and vulnerable. No straight girl drew collarbones.

On one page, written in big gothic-looking letters with crosshatch shading within the thick outlines:

THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY MUST BE SAVED

This beside a portrait of the barista at the Retrograde leaning on a counter, studying the liner notes to some album she was about to put on the store player.

Julie couldn’t look at it anymore. She snapped the diary shut, put it back into its place, took the pillow from between her legs and replaced it with the satisfying butter of guilt that simmered in her brain. She laid her head back again and stared at the ceiling and let the bulb burn shadows into her eyes. She had never known a real dyke before; they’d seemed mythical. What did you talk about with a dyke? Could one dyke tell another dyke somehow, by the hungry, depraved look in their eyes, by some pheromone?
Was this why she had gotten the job?

In sudden terror, she got up from the bed and whacked at it with her palms, trying to efface her outline from the surface. Then she swiped a pack of cigarettes and ran, as quietly as she could, into the bathroom with her clothes.

She turned on the lights and the hot water and she set herself a deadline: by the time this bathtub fills up, you have to decide whether or not a pervert is the kind of thing you want to be for the rest of your life. She paced, her bare feet leaving ghostly footprints on the dirty tile, and in the end, as she settled into the rising water, she still couldn’t decide.

There were dozens of tiny vials of bath oils and salts scattered around the rim of the tub. She used a little bit of each of them in turn and put them back where she’d found them—it was easy to tell; there was a round ring of scum around each. She wiped it off and let it fall into the water;
a good worker wastes not a single moment
. She let the oily bath foam rise around her until her knees were islands in a verdantly stinking sea. She eased a cigarette out of the pack; she had no way of lighting it. She thought about getting out and finding a lighter somewhere in the cold bathroom, maybe in the kitchen. She stared at the tip of it, unlit, as she soaked in the impregnated water, let the old dirt wash off of her. The air conditioner she had fixed chugged away, goosepimpled what skin she allowed to show above the foam and water.