To Live Again and The Second Trip (46 page)

So she described it, in intermittent bursts, whenever she could spare him a moment out of her contemplations. The high piping throaty thoughts of the giraffe. The dull booming ruminations of the rhino. The dense, complex, bleak, and bitter output of the African elephant, he of the big ears, a Kierkegaard of zoology. The sparkling twitter of the chimps. The flippant outbursts of the raccoon. The Galapagos tortoise pondered eternity; the brown bear was surprisingly sensual; the penguins dreamed icy dreams.

“Are you making all this up?” he asked her, and she laughed in his face, like Aquinas accused of inventing the Trinity. Within an hour she was wholly spent. They snacked on algaeburgers and Lenin soda, and took the conveyor to the exit. Lissa giggling, manic, stoned on her beasts. “The orangutan,” she said. “I could tell you exactly how he’d vote in the next election. And if I could only let you hear the gnu! Oh, shit, the gnu!”

But she was brooding again before dark. They went into Manhattan in the afternoon, circling around the burned-out places and drifting through the flamboyant new downtown section, and he tried to interest her in the amusement parlors, the sniffer palaces, the swimming tanks, and such, only she was glassy and distant. They had dinner at a Chinese restaurant on one of the Hudson piers, and she picked idly at her food, leaving most of it, getting clucked at by the waiter. A quiet evening at home. We have no friends, Macy realized. They played Bach and smoked a lot.

Just before bedtime Hamlin seemed to stretch and yawn within him, or was it an illusion? Bad sex that night, Lissa very far down, he not much better, both of them clumsy and halfhearted as they groped each other in bed. He tried to go into her and she was dry. Persevered, God knows why. Finally some lubrication. Not much response from her, though. Like fucking a robot; he was tempted to quit in the middle, but thought it would be impolite, and he chased himself on to a solitary, unrewarding coming. Some nasty dreams later, but nothing he hadn’t had before.

Saturday a fizzle. Lissa vacant, absent An endless day. Sunday much better. Throwing herself on him at sunrise, straddling him, lowering herself until impaled. Good morning, good morning, good morning! Up and down, up and down. Breasts jiggling overhead. His startled fingers encircling the smooth cool globes of her ass. After which she fixed a hearty breakfast. Bouncy, a breathless adolescent giddiness about her, perhaps fake: trying hard to be a good companion, he suspected. After that sulking bitchy day she gave me yesterday. Lose one, win one.

“Where to?” she asked.

“Museum of Modern Art,” he suggested. “They’ve got some Hamlins there, don’t they?”

“Five or six, yes. But do you really think it’s wise to go? I mean, he’s been so quiet the last couple of days. The sight of his work might stir him up again.”

“That’s exactly what I want to find out,” he told her. They went. The museum, it developed, had
seven
Hamlins, two big pieces almost though not quite as impressive as the
Antigone,
and five minor objects. They all were on display in the same room, four grouped in one corner and three assembled against the opposite wall, which gave Macy the opportunity for a critical test: would the presence of so much of Nat Hamlin’s handiwork arouse the submerged artist by some process of psychic leverage?

Boldly Macy planted himself between the two groupings, where he would be exposed to the maximum output of the pieces. Well, Hamlin? Where are you? But though Macy detected some cloudy subliminal squirmings, there was nothing else to indicate Hamlin’s existence within him. He studied the sculptures closely. The connoisseur making his lofty observations. Only a few weeks ago, in Harold Griswold’s office, the sight of a Hamlin piece had knocked him slappy, and here he was listening critically to the resonances, noting the subtle recurvings of the contours, doing the whole art-appreciation number with great aplomb.

Some kids in the room, researching a report on Hamlin, maybe. Apparently recognizing him. Looking at his face, then at his Rehab badge, then at his face again, then at the sculptures, then at each other. Whispering. Even that didn’t bother him, being found out as the walking zombie relict of the great artist. The kids didn’t dare approach him. Macy gave them a benevolent smile. I’d give you my autograph if you asked. With these very hands, you know, those masterpieces were created.

He was impressed by his own newfound resilience. To come here, to confront Hamlin’s work, to take it all so calmly. Although not entirely calmly. He found the sight of these pieces gradually stirring in him that dismal depressing nostalgia, that yearning to have access to the past in which this body had brought into being those sculptures. His true past. As he was starting to regard it. Implying that his own past was unsatisfactory, insufficient insubstantial, inadequate. As if he too had come to agree with Hamlin that he was mere fiction, a freakish aberrant unreality that had been appended to Nat Hamlin’s authentic life. So he craved knowledge of that other time. Who was I when I was he? How did I bring forth these works? What was it like to be Hamlin? A bad moment. The subtle corrosive influence of Hamlin within me, undermining me even when he’s quiescent. So that I have begun to doubt myself. So that I have started to scorn myself. And hunger to be him. This is the road to surrender; let me turn from it.

Lissa seemed troubled by the Hamlin group too. Remembering a jollier past, perhaps. The happy days of first love. The awesome sensation of being chosen by Nathaniel Hamlin for his bed, for his studio. A world of endless sunrises before her. All highways open. And to have come to this. How great the contrast Macy could see the bleakness spreading across her face. A mistake to inflict Hamlin’s art on her? Or maybe she merely felt oppressed by the museum’s Sunday throng. We will go now, I think.

Midmorning, Monday, Macy hard at work. Griswold had just assigned him to a new story. Preliminary charisma-level statistics for the 2012 election came out last night, late; let’s do a feature on all the candidates, run up a chart of pulse-figures, hormone counts, recognition profile, the whole multivalent works, right? Right. And so to the task. Research assistants scurrying madly. Their pretty pink boobies hobbling. Stacks of documents. Fredericks stopping by to offer bland, useless suggestions. Loftus staggering in with a load of simulations and color overlays for his approval. The hours whisking swiftly by; the mind fully engaged in purposeful activity.

And then an unscheduled interruption. Someone down here to see you, Mr. Macy. No appointment. A visitor for me? Who? Image of Lissa, bedraggled, obsessed, freaking out in the reception hall. Please, I must see him, matter of life and death, I’m going to snap, I’m going to blow, let me go upstairs! A messy scene. Only his visitor wasn’t Lissa. His visitor turned out to be a Dr. Gomez.

Panic. Gomez, here? Hamlin’ll kill me!

After the first quick surge of fright, some rethinking. Hamlin had warned him not to go to the Rehab Center, or to telephone his doctors, yes. But the doctor had come to him. Was that covered by the threat? A debatable point. In any case, Hamlin didn’t seem to be raising objections. Macy waited a long troubled moment, expecting a sign from within, a squeeze of his heart, a pinching of his nerves, some sort of don’t-fool-around signal. Nothing. He sensed Hamlin’s presence like a dull heavy weight in his gut, but he got no specific instructions about seeing Gomez. Perhaps Hamlin wants to find out what Gomez will say. Maybe he’s still recovering from the jolt Lissa gave him. Anyway. Tell Dr. Gomez he can come up.

Gomez, out of context, looked unfamiliar. At the Rehab Center, surrounded by his phalanxes of computers and his electronic pharmacopoeia, Gomez was dynamic, formidable, aggressive, indomitable, confidently vulgar. Entering Macy’s sleek office he was almost meek. Without his throne and scepter a king’s but a bifurcated radish. Gomez came slipping hesitantly through the fancy sliding door. Dressed in excessively contemporary business clothes, greens and reds, much too young for him, instead of the customary monochrome lab outfit. Looking shorter and more plump than in his own domain. His thick drooping mustache seedy and in need of trimming. The weakness of his chin somehow mattering much more here. Ten feet apart; eyes meet eyes. Gomez moistening his lips. How strange to see him on the defensive.

Macy said, “I guess you’ve decided to believe me after all.”

“We’ve been discussing your case nonstop for three days,” said Gomez hoarsely. “But I had to have firsthand data. And since you wouldn’t come to us—”

“Couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t.” Gomez nodded. Scowled. Not at Macy but at himself. His distress was apparent. Coming here today was a considerable gesture. The cocky doctor eating crow. He said, voice ragged, “I didn’t want to chance phoning you. In case it might provide too much time for the former ego to build up negative reactions. Is my presence here causing any repercussions?”

“Not so far.”

“If it does, tell me and I’ll leave. I don’t want to endanger you.”

“Don’t worry, Gomez, I’ll tell you fast if anything begins.” Checking to see if Hamlin is stirring. All calm. “Hamlin hasn’t been very active since Thursday night.”

“But he’s still there?”

“He’s there, all right. Despite your loud assurance that it wasn’t possible for him to come back.”

“We all make mistakes, Macy.”

“That was a pretty fucking big one. I asked you to run an EEG. You said no, I was merely hallucinating, merely having a fantasy, there was no chance in the world that Hamlin was intact and surfacing. And then you said—”

“All right. Let’s not go into that now.” Dabbing at his sweaty forehead. “I’m concerned with therapy for this, not with placing blame. When did it start?”

“The day I left the Center. When I met the girl, Hamlin’s old model, mistress, the one you spoke to a couple of times on the telephone.”

“Miss Moore.”

“Yes. Bumped into her, literally, on the street. I told you all this. She kept calling me Nat, ignoring my badge—you remember?”

“I remember.”

“I saw her again, last Monday. She said she was in trouble and wanted me to help her. I didn’t want to get involved and started to leave. She hit me with a two-pronged blast of telepathy. Which woke him up fully, completing the job of arousing him that had started when—”

“Telepathy?”

“ESP. Communication between minds. You know.”

“I know. This girl’s a telepath?”

“I’m trying to tell you.”

“You knew she was a telepath, and also that she was a figure out of Hamlin’s past who you therefore were under instructions not to see, and nevertheless you arranged to meet her and—”

“I
didn’t
know she was a telepath. Until it was too late. Not that I’d have had any particular reason to avoid her because of that You never said anything about telepaths, Gomez. I didn’t even know there were such things as telepaths, not real ones, not walking around in New York City.”

Gomez closed his eyes. “All right. I get the picture. What we have here is an apparent case of induced identity reestablishment under telepathic stimulus. Of all the shit. A minute theoretical possibility, but who ever expected to run into an actual case of—no fucking literature on the whole subject—no tests, no background, no data—”

“You can write a wonderful paper on me some day,” Macy said bitterly.

“Spare me the crap. You think I’m happy about this?” Indeed genuine agony was visible in Gomez’ fleshy features. “Okay, so she woke Hamlin. Meaning what? Give me the symptomology.”

“He talks to me.”

“Out loud?”

“In my head. A silent voice, but it doesn’t seem silent. Twice now he’s tried to grab my speech centers. All he can say is gibberish, though, and I knock him away. He also took hold of the muscles of the right side of my face once. I made him let go. Two or three times he’s given me a physical shock, a jolt, knocked me down. Last Tuesday, when I set out to the Rehab Center, he staged a little heart attack for me, telling me that he’d give me a niftier one if I persisted in going to the Center. This is no goddam hallucination, Gomez. I’ve had conversations with him, long rational conversations. He’s got very ambitious ideas.

He’s been inviting me to let him finish me off so he can have his body back.”

“Obviously we can’t allow that.”

“Obviously there isn’t a fucking thing you can do. If I let you make any hostile moves toward him at all, he’ll kill me. It’s like I’m carrying a bomb inside me.”

“He’s bluffing.”

“You’re very sure of that,” Macy said.

“If your body dies, he’ll die with it. Whatever he is, he can’t survive the decay of your brain cells.”

“He can’t survive another round in the Rehab Center, either. So he’d be willing to take any step to keep me from going there, right up to and including killing us both. If I go to you, he dies. Why shouldn’t he kill me anyway and take me along? Or at least threaten to, knowing it’ll stop me from going to the Center?”

Gomez considered that. He didn’t seem to arrive at any immediate conclusions.

Macy said, “I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. One of two things. He’ll knock me out and take over the body, or I’ll find some way of chopping him up so he can’t hurt me.

“You’re playing dangerous games, Macy. Come to the Center. I know Hamlin better than you do: he won’t carry out his threat, he won’t do anything ultimately to harm you. Killing you would mean the decay and ruin of his own physical self, the last legitimate vestige of Nat Hamlin in the world. He wouldn’t do it. He’s always been body-proud.”

“Balls. I’m no gambler. He said keep away from you and I’m going to keep away.”

“We can’t let you remain at large with the ego of a condemned criminal in partial control of your brain,” Gomez said.

“What will you do, then? Order my arrest? He’ll kill me. I believe him when he says that. Do you want to take the chance? It isn’t your life on the line, Gomez. You’ve been wrong in this case once already.”

Twitchings of the mustache tips. The tongue moving restlessly between teeth and lips. Gomez in a pickle. Macy staring across the desk at him. He felt his heart hammering. Was it Hamlin, waking up? Or just the excitement, the adrenalin flow?