As She Climbed Across the Table

16

Cynthia Jalter drove me home. She powered down my window from her place in the driver’s seat, and the cool air whistled in my nostrils and blew tears out of my eyes horizontally, into my ears. I was silent, chagrined.

We pulled up outside my apartment. “Nice meeting you,” she said. “Feel better. Don’t forget your car.”

“Rental job,” I managed. “Let them find it. Fly out tomorrow.” I tugged on the ashtray, the cushioned arm, the window handle, finally opened the car door and got out. “They put me up on campus here. Fly out tomorrow. Another day, another city.”

“Give me a call sometime. I’m in the book. See you later.”

“Never again, I’m sure. Thanks profusely for everything. Fly out tomorrow.”

She drove away, leaving me there in the dark on my wobbly legs. I was surrounded by crickets. Lights burned in the apartment. The blind men were still awake. I tested myself, shook out my limbs, kneaded my numb jaw. I beat through the ferns to find the garden spigot, and splashed water on my face and down my collar. A toad groaned. I tiptoed back to the door.

When I went inside I found Garth, Evan, and Soft huddled around the couch. The lights in the room were dimmed. I focused, with difficulty, on the form across the couch.

Alice.

Her head was limp on the pillows, her hair splayed out, her forehead a pale beacon in the gloom. A blanket was tucked up to her chin. Were they admiring her, or mourning her? Or about to attack? I rushed over and saw her lips rippling gently with breath. Not dead.

I looked up at Soft. I must have looked a bit crazy, my eyes bugged and red, my collar wet.

“She’s fine now, she’s asleep,” said Soft. “She needs rest. Where have you been?”

I thought for a minute. “I was involved in the demonstration,” I said.

Soft frowned. I’m sure he thought I’d organized it. “I found her with Lack,” he said. “After the riots this afternoon she locked herself in with him. They had to call me. I have the only other key.”

“Why is she here, not the bed?”

“She’s hard to carry,” said Soft. “She passed out in the chamber. The recording devices were all shut off. So we have no way of reconstructing the events. I have some theories, though.”

I leaned over, tucked her hair behind her ear, and put the flat of my hand on her forehead. I felt a twist of shame. This was stolen intimacy, the first time I’d touched her in more than a month.

“I should go,” said Soft.

He rolled his eyes to suggest that I should follow. We stepped out onto the porch together, leaving Garth and Evan, grim sentinels, to watch over Alice. Soft turned to me, his features drawn.

“She’s no longer competent to manage the project,” he said. “I’m looking at alternatives. But what’s important is that she slow down. She needs to step back, get some perspective. I need your help. Don’t let her spend any more nights in the lab. We’ve got students for that.”

“I don’t understand. What happened?”

“This business with the cat. Alice took it very personally. I don’t know, I can only speculate, but I think she may have tried to enter Lack.”

I stared at Soft. My face felt like Play-Doh receiving a footprint.

He nodded confirmation.

“Come see me in my office tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll talk more then.”

He crossed the street to his car. I went inside. Alice was still asleep. Evan and Garth were pacing, busy doing nothing, like their first night in the apartment. Alice’s return had unsettled them. Soft didn’t know of my recent distance from her, but they certainly did. I imagine their alert noses had sniffed out the traces of my drinking, too.

“Professor Soft suggested that she stay here at night from now on,” said Evan. “We certainly agree.”

“We’d be happy to sleep in the guest room,” said Garth. “Or out here if that’s better.”

“Take the guest room,” I said.

“Good. And Philip?”

“Yes?”

Garth grew solemn, raised his chin, fixed his ungaze on some infinite distance. “Evan and I want you to know we’ll do anything we can to help. You just have to ask.”

“Thank you.”

There was a pause, a leaden silence. “Huh,” said Garth. “I suppose we’ll go to bed now.”

They scuttled into the guest room, and closed the door.

I knelt beside Alice, careful not to wake her. I could hear the blind men running water, brushing their teeth. Outside, crickets pulsed. I don’t know how long it was that I sat there, silently contemplating her, tracking the flicker of dream state across her eyelids, the murmur of breath in her throat. Finally I spoke her name, and nudged her shoulder.

“Philip,” she said.

“Yes.”

“What happened?”

“Soft brought you here. Everything’s okay. Come to bed.”

She nodded, still asleep, really, and let me guide her to the bedroom. She stood wobbling and mole-eyed while I tugged the disarrayed blankets and sheets into shape, then she slid into the bed. When I switched off the overhead light she looked up at me meekly through the dark.

“Philip?”

“Yes?”

“Where are you going to sleep?”

“I’ll sleep in the living room.”

Reassured, she curled up and fell asleep.

I closed the door to the bedroom and patrolled the apartment on tiptoe. In the kitchen I scraped food off the blind men’s plates and drank a glass of water. Then I remade the makeshift bed on the couch, stripped to my underwear, and put myself to bed.

But I didn’t sleep.

The alcohol had leached out of my brain. But now I was drunk on Alice. She was back in the house. A miracle. I pictured her alone in the chamber, clambering onto the steel table to offer herself up to Lack’s indifferent mouth. I shuddered. No wonder she couldn’t love me anymore. She’d become estranged from humanness. She was on the brink of the void.

My heart pounded with fear. But she was safe for the moment. Safe in my bed. Under my care. I just had to make it last, keep her here. I’d draw her back to the human realm. I’d teach her human love again.

I couldn’t afford any stupid mistakes. Any Cynthia Jalters. I had to walk the line. Be worthy.

Headlights from the road outside flared across the ceiling. In the kitchen the refrigerator hummed into midnight life. (I always imagine the light inside switching on, food cavorting.) My pulse slowed.

When I first heard the murmur I thought I was dreaming. But I opened my eyes, and it continued. Was it Alice, calling my name? I put aside the blankets, and crept out, cold and huddled, to the middle of the room, nearer the bedroom doors. The voices went on. I made myself still, to listen.

Evan and Garth arguing.

I went back to bed on the couch.