The Second Trip

8

Emerging into the sunlight revived his vigor a bit. It was still only about four in the afternoon. At Lissa’s suggestion they went uptown, to her place; there were some things she needed to get, she said. Unspoken in that was the assumption that she would be moving in with him. He didn’t object. He couldn’t say that he loved her, as Hamlin evidently had, or that he was even on the verge of falling in love with her; but their individually precarious circumstances demanded a mutual defense treaty, and living together was the obvious logistical arrangement. For the time being, at least.

In the tube heading north she was cheerful, even a little manic: definitely up, despite the throngs of fellow travelers pressing close. Her ESP didn’t seem to operate all the time. It was something like Hamlin was for him, he imagined: coming and going, ebbing and flowing, now virtually in full possession, now weak and indetectable. When the demon was on her, she came close to disruption and collapse. At other times, such as now, she was lively, alert, buoyant. Yet there was a hard fretful edge to her gaiety. As if she were contemplating at all times the possibility that her telepathic sensitivity would switch itself on, here in the tube, and plunge her once more into frenzy.

Her apartment was grim: one shabby room in an antique building on a forgotten limb of the city. Something out of Dickens. The lame, the halt, and the blind infesting the place, dirty children everywhere, fat old women, sinister cutthroaty young men, dogs, cats, screams, shrieks, wild laughter from behind concave doors. A prevailing odor of urine and exotic spices. Not just the twentieth century surviving here; more like the nineteenth. The booming of holovision sets in the halls seemed like a grotesque anachronism.

They walked up, five flights. One didn’t expect to find liftshafts in this sort of house, but one hoped it dated at least from the era of elevators. Apparently not. Why did she live here? Why not go to one of the people’s cooperatives, stark but at least clean, and surely no more costly than this? She preferred this, she told him. He couldn’t follow her mumbled explanation, but he thought it had to do with the construction of the walls; was she saying that in an old building like this she wasn’t as bothered by her neighbors’ telepathic emanations as she would be in a flimsily built co-op?

Within this dismalness she had carved an equally dismal nest. A squarish high-ceilinged room with clumsy furniture, patched draperies, simple utensils. A tiny stained power-pack to cook on, a cold-sink in lieu of real refrigeration. He didn’t see toilet facilities. Everything in disarray. No housekeeper she. The bed unmade, the exposed sheets carrying half a dozen layers of yellowish stains—that bothered him, he could guess at the origin of the stains—and books scattered everywhere. On the windowsill, on the floor, even under the bed.

So she was a diligent reader. Interesting. You could judge a person’s character by his reading.

Macy realized he scarcely knew Lissa at all. What could he say about her? That she seemed fairly bright but had shown no signs so far of having intellectual interests, that she was a passably good lay (so far as he was capable of telling, given the synthetic nature of his available past experience), that she once had been closely associated with an important contemporary artist. Period. Had she had an education? A career of her own, goals in life, talents, skills? A model is only a cipher, a shape, a set of curves and planes and textures; Hamlin was too complicated a man to have fallen in love with her purely as model, so there had to be something back of the exterior, she must have had some kind of interior substance, she must have done something in the world other than pose for Nat Hamlin. At least until her increasingly more turbulent inner storms had driven her to take refuge in this squalid place.

But he knew nothing. Had she traveled? Did she have a family? Dreams of becoming an artist herself? Perhaps her books might tell him something. Helplessly, he surveyed and inventoried her library while she bustled around collecting her other possessions.

Immediately he found himself in difficulties: he was no reader himself, had merely skimmed a few popular novels during his stay in the Rehab Center, and whatever Hamlin had read, if he had read anything at all, was of course gone from Macy’s mind. Macy had only the illusion of a familiarity with literature. Dr. Brewster, the literary one, had programmed him with hazy plot summaries and dislocated images and even with the physical feel of some books, so that he knew quite clearly that the Iliad was a tall orange volume with cream-colored paper and elegant rounded print But what was it about? A war, long ago. A quarrel over a woman. Proud barbarian chieftains. Who was Homer? Had he lived before Hemingway? Jesus, he was an illiterate!

And so, looking through Lissa’s heaps of books, he could draw no certain conclusions, except that she seemed to read (or at least to own) a lot of novels, thick serious-looking ones, and that perhaps a fifth of the books were works of biography and history, not casual light stuff by any means. So she must be a more complex person than she had revealed herself to him thus far to be. Anybody, no matter how dim, might happen to pick up a book occasionally, but Lissa had surrounded herself with them, which argued for the presence within her of psychic hungers for knowledge.

He tried to touch up his image of her, making her less waiflike and dependent, less the hapless, whining victim of circumstances, more of a self-propelled inner-guided individual with purpose and direction and a sphere of interests. But he still had difficulty seeing her as anything other than part of the furniture in Nat Hamlin’s studio, or as a pitiful casualty of modern urban life. She refused to come alive for him as a genuine, fully operative human being.

Maybe it’s because I don’t understand people very well, being so new in the world, he thought. Or perhaps one of the doctors built his own archaic attitudes toward women in general into me—does Gomez, say, see them only as extensions and pale reflections of the men they live with? Mere bundles of foggy emotion and woolly response? But they don’t just drift from event to event, letting things happen to them. They won’t forget to get out of bed if nobody tells them to. Women have minds of their own. I’m sure they do. They must. They must. And interesting minds. Some commitment to something besides survival, meals, fucking, babies. Then why does she seem so hollow to me? I have to try to get to know her better.

She was filling a large battered green suitcase with her things. Clothes, knicknacks, a dozen books. Something large and flat, maybe a sketchpad. A folder of old letters and papers. She stuffed five more books in at the very last.

A tepid evening, an indifferent night Dinner at a beanery a few blocks from his place. Afterward, home, a couple of golds, some desultory chatter, bed. No outbursts of telepathy to plague her. No resurgences of Hamlin to bother him. They were free to pursue one another’s innerness without distractions, but somehow it didn’t happen; they talked all around their troubles without coming to any of the main issues. He was surprised to learn she was not quite twenty-five years old, four or five years below his guess. Born in Pittsburgh, no less. Father some kind of scientist, mother an expert on population dynamics. Good genes. They sounded like acceptable types. Lissa hadn’t seen them in years. Came to New York, age seventeen, to study art. (Aha!) Thought also of writing novels. (Ahahaha!)

Turning point in life June 15, 2004, age eighteen, meets famed artist Nathaniel Hamlin. Falls wildly in love with him. He doesn’t notice her at all, so she thinks (scene is a meet-the-faculty party at the Art Students’ League, everybody wildly stoned, Hamlin—guest lecturer or something that semester—urbanely putting on all the pretty girls.)

But a week later he calls her. Drinks? Stroll in Central Park? Of course. She is terrified. Hopes he’ll accept her as a private student. Wants to bring him to her apartment (not this present uptown hovel) and show him her sketches. Doesn’t dare. A nice chaste summertime stroll.

Afterward she is sure he found her too trivial, too adolescent, but no, he calls again, exactly seven days later. What a sweet time that was. Care to see my studio? Out in Darien, Connecticut. She has no idea where is Darien. He’ll pick her up, never fear. Long sleek car. Driving it himself. She has brought her portfolio, just in case. He takes her to flamboyant country estate, unbelievable place: swimming pool, creek, pond full of mutated goldfish in improbable colors, big stone house, medium-big studio annex.

Turns out he isn’t interested in her as an artist at all, wants her as model: has some ambitious project in mind for which she would be perfect. She is awed. Her portfolio lying neglected in the car. I need to see the body, he says. Of course. Of course. Strips: blouse, slacks. Thoughtfully omitted to don underwear that day. He studies her carefully. Oh, God, my backside’s too flat, my boobs are too big, or maybe not big enough! But no, he compliments her, good tight fanny, cute shape, will do, will do. And suddenly his pants are open in front. Thick reddened organ sticking out. (Oh, you’ve seen it, Macy, you know it like your own!) She is thrown into panic. She’s been laid before, yes, eight, ten fellows, not coming on as timid innocent at all, but yet this is the authentic erect cock of Nathaniel Hamlin that now approaches her, which is something very special. Admired his work all her life, never dreamed that one day he’d be presenting his mast to her. Can’t take her eyes off it until it disappears into her box.

In and out. In and out. Nathaniel Hamlin’s authentic thing knows its business. Such terrific intensity boiling within him, and he expresses it with his pecker. She comes a thousand times. Afterward they both run naked around the estate, swim, laugh, get stoned. He grabs a camera and holographs her for an hour. You and me, he says, we’re going to make a masterpiece the world won’t ever forget. Then they dress, he drives her to a restaurant near the Sound, such glamour that it dizzies her, and finally, late at night, deposits her, an exhausted astounded adolescent heap of much-fucked flesh, at her apartment. An unforgettable experience.

Then she doesn’t hear from him for three months. Despair. At last an apologetic postcard from Morocco. Another, a month and a half later, from Bagdad. At Christmastime a card with Japanese stamps on it. Then, January ’05, a phonecall. Back in town at last. See you at nine tonight, break all other engagements.

And from then on she is more or less his full-time mistress, living at Darien much of the time, naturally dropping out of art school, drifting away from old friends, who now seem naive and immature to her. New friends, exciting ones. Even becoming friendly with Hamlin’s wife. (A peculiar marital relation there, Macy concluded.)

Early in ’06, after nearly a year of planning, he gets down to serious work on the Antigone 21. Months of toil for him and for her; he is a demon when he works. Twelve, fifteen, eighteen hours a day. Finally almost finished. Almost finished with her, too. He has been talking of marrying her since the summer of ’05, but their relationship grows increasingly tense. Physical violence: he slaps her, kicks her a couple of times, balls her once by main force when she doesn’t want it, ultimately knocks her down the stairs and breaks her pelvis. Hospital. During which time he succumbs completely to the disintegration of personality that has, unknown to her, been going on in him for most of the year, and commits Dreadful Deeds upon the persons of a variety of women. He is arrested and tried; she sees him no more until that eerie day in May of 2011 when she crashed into Paul Macy on the streets of Manhattan North.

And your telepathy problem, Macy wants to ask? When did that start? When did it become severe? But obviously she doesn’t want to talk about that. She will speak to him tonight only of old business, her romance with the defunct great artist. And now she has talked herself out Silence. Lights out Two red roaches in the darkness. Pungent smoke rising ceilingward. This would be the sort of moment Macy thought, when Hamlin would appear. To append footnotes to Lissa’s story. But Hamlin, missing his cue, did not appear. It began to occur to Macy that each of his encounters with Hamlin might drain the other’s strength as much as it did his, possibly more; between colloquies, Hamlin had to lie doggo, recharging. Maybe not so, but a cheering possibility. Tire him out, wear him down, eventually eject him. An endurance contest.

Macy turned dutifully to Lissa, not particularly in need of her but feeling that they ought to commemorate her moving-in with some kind of celebration of passion; his hand slipped over one of her breasts, but she responded not at all, merely lying there in a passive stony haze, and an uncheering possibility struck him: When she makes love with me, is she really only trying to recapture those moments of fire with him? I am Nat Hamlin’s well-endowed body minus Nat Hamlin’s troublesomely violent nature; is that not all she seeks from me?

The thought that he might be, for her, nothing but a dead man’s reanimated penis did not amuse him. Of course she said she enjoyed him for his own sake, but of what did his own sake consist? Having loved a genius, could she love a nonentity equally well? Or at all? A young, impressionable art student would of course be drawn automatically to a magnet such as Nat Hamlin, but Paul Macy should have no pull. Who am I, what am I, wherein lies my texture, my density? I am nothing. I am unreal. Hamlin’s shadowy successor. His relict Macy attempted to check this cascade of negativisms, telling himself that Hamlin was undoubtedly causing it by releasing a river of poisons from his subcranial den. But he could not coax himself just now to a higher self-esteem. Entering her, he pushed the piston mechanically back and forth for three or four minutes, feeling wholly detached from her except at the point of entry, and, since she gave no hint of being with him in any way, he let himself go off and sank into the usual bothered sleep, infested by incubi and revenants.

Many sympathetic glances at the network office the next day. Everybody tiptoeing around him, speaking in soft tones, grinning a lot, sidestepping every situation of potential stress or conflict. Obviously all of them afraid he might flip at the first jarring stimulus. It was a regression to the way they had treated him weeks ago, when he had first come here, when they thought a Rehab needed to be handled as carefully as a barrel of eggs. He wondered why. Was it because he had called in sick yesterday, and now they assumed he had been suffering from some special affliction of Rehabs, some slippage of the identity, that required extracautious handling? Their excessive kindness, implying as it did that he was more vulnerable than they, irritated him. After two and a half hours of it he cornered Loftus, Stilton Fredericks’ executive assistant, and asked her about it.

He said, “I want you to know that what kept me home yesterday was simply an upset stomach. A case of the runs and a lot of puking, okay?”

She looked at him blankly. “I don’t remember asking.”

“I know you didn’t ask. But everybody else around this place seems to think I had some sort of nervous breakdown. At least, that’s how they’ve been treating me today. So fucking kind it’s killing me. So I thought I’d let you spread the word that I’m all right. A mere internal indisposition.”

“You don’t like people to be nice to you, Macy?”

“I didn’t say that I just don’t want my fellow workers making inaccurate assumptions about the state of my head.”

“Okay, so you didn’t have a nervous breakdown. So why do you look so strange?”

“Strange?”

“Strange,” Loftus said.

“What way?”

“Look in the mirror.” Then, a moment of tenderness breaking through the steel: “If anything’s the matter that any of us could fix—”

“No. No. Honestly, it was only an upset stomach.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, if anybody asks, I’ll tell them. Nobody’s going to whisper behind your back.”

He thanked her and made a quick escape. Executive washroom: amid all the electronic gimmickry, the sonic shavers and the Klein-bottle urinals, he found a mirror, standard variety, silver-backed glass as in days of yore. A fierce, bloodshot face looking back at him. Furrowed forehead. Nostrils flaring. Lips compressed, mouth drawn off to one side. Jesus, no wonder! He was Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll both at the same time, his features all snarled up, reflecting the most intense kind of interior agonies.

And this without a buzz from Hamlin for the past eighteen hours. This double existence, this squatter occupation of the lower reaches of his mind, was corroding his face, turning him into an ambulatory flag of distress. Of course they were all being sweet to him today; they could see the signals of imminent collapse inscribed on his brow.

Yet he felt relatively relaxed today. What must he look like when Hamlin was near the surface and prodding him? Macy ventured an exploratory sweep. Hamlin? Hamlin, you there? My private permanent bad dream. Come up where I can see you. Let’s have a chat.

But no, all quiet on the cerebral front Feeling snubbed, Macy set out to repair his face. Stripped to the waist. Sticking his head into the hot-air blower. Loosen the muscles, soften the scowl. A little humidity, maestro. Ah. Ah, how good that is on the tactile net. Thrust noggin now into whirlpool sink. Round and round and round, bubble bubble bubble, hold your breath and let the lovely water work its magic. Ah. Ah. Splendid. Back to the hot air to dry off. Now pop a trank. Blow a gold Survey the map. Better, much better. The tension draining away; a lucky thing, too, they wouldn’t have let you step in front of a camera looking all screwed up.

Macy was still refurbishing himself, putting his clothes back on, when Fredericks walked into the John. A hearty phony laugh out of him, ho ho ho. “Interrupting you in a moment of relaxation, Paul?”

“No. All done relaxing now. And feeling much better.”

“We were all quite concerned when you phoned in yesterday.”

“Just a jumpy stomach, was all. Much better now. See?” Flashing his rehabilitated features at Fredericks. “I appreciate the concern, but I’m really pretty tough. Stilton,” he added reluctantly. A hell of a name to carry through life.

Fredericks addressed himself to the task of unloading his bladder. Macy went out, working hard at looking loose. The effort must have been worthwhile; people stopped pampering him.

At half past two he picked up his script for the day, ran through the visuals four or five times, rehearsed the audio. A two-minute squib on the coronation in Ethiopia, surging throngs, lions marching on chains through the streets, a herniated corner of the fifteenth century poking into the twenty-first.

Macy wondered how Mr. Bercovici, he who had selected him at the Rehab Center for this job, was making out in Addis Ababa. Was that him at the edge of the crowd, picked up by the trusty hovereye, that plump white face among the hawk-featured brown ones? Here and gone; probably the South African consul-general, or whoever. Macy carried off his voice-over nobly. “Amid the pomp and glamor of a medieval empire, the former Prince Takla Haymanot today became the Lion of Judah, King of the Kings of Ethiopia, His Excellency the Negus Lebna Dengel II, newest monarch in a line of royalty descended from King Solomon himself…” Beautiful. And then home to Lissa through thin rain.

She was in bed, reading, wearing a tattered green housecoat that looked old enough to be one of the Queen of Sheba’s hand-me-downs, nothing at all underneath it, pinkish-brown nipples peeping through. One quick look and he knew, as if by telepathic transmission, that she had had a bad day. Her face had that sullen, pouty look; her hair was uncombed, a wild auburn tangle; the stale smell of dried sweat was sharp in the air of the bedroom. He felt strangely domesticated. Hubby coming home from hard day at office, slatternly wife about to tell him of the day’s petty crises.

She tossed aside her book and sat up. “Christ,” she said. Her favorite expletive. “An all-day bummer, this was. Rainy weather indoors and out.”

He kicked off his shoes. “Bad?”

“The anvil chorus in my head.” Shrugging. “Let’s not talk about it I was going to whip up a fancy dinner, but I didn’t get up the energy. I could put something together fast.”

“We’ll go out. Don’t bother.” He eased out of his over-clothes. Fifteen seconds of dead air. Despite her saying she didn’t want to talk about today, she seemed obviously waiting for him to start questioning her. Gambit declined. He was tired and fretful himself: Hamlin beginning to clamber toward the surface again, maybe.

He looked at her. She at him. The silence continued, dragging on until it had attained a tangible presence of its own. Then Lissa appeared to tune the tension out; she disconnected something in herself and slumped back against the pillow, sinking into that brooding withdrawal that she affected about half the time.

Macy got himself a beer. When he returned to the bedroom she was still eighteen thousand light-years away. A curious notion came to him: that unless he made contact with her in some fashion this very minute, she would be wholly lost to him. Her closedness annoyed him, but he hid his pique and, going to her, pulled back the coverlet to caress the outside of her bare thigh. A friendly gesture, loving almost. She didn’t seem to notice. He touched his cold beer to her skin. A hiss. “Hey!”

“Just wanted to find out if you were still here,” he said.

“Very funny.”

“What’s the matter, Lissa?” The question out of him at last.

“Nothing. Everything. This shitty rain. The air in here. I don’t know.” Momentary wildness in her eyes. “I’ve been picking up noise all day in my head. You and Hamlin, Hamlin and you. Like a kind of radioactive trance in the air. I shouldn’t have moved in here.”

“Surely you can’t pick up telepathic impulses from someone who isn’t even in the room!”

“No? How do you know? Do you know anything at all about it? Maybe your ESP waves soak into the paint, into the woodwork. And radiate back at me all day. Don’t try to tell me what I’ve been feeling. The two of you, banging at me off the walls, blam blam blam, hour after hour.” These sharp sentences were delivered in an inappropriately flat, absent tone. At the end of which she disconnected again.

“Lissa?”

Silence.

“Lissa?”

“What?”

“Remember, you came looking for me. I told you it wasn’t good for us to be together. And you said we needed each other, right? So don’t take it out on me if it doesn’t work well.”

“I’m sorry.” A ten-year-old’s insincere apology.

More silence.

He tried to make allowances for her mood. Cooped up all day. Raining. Hostile ions in the air. Her period coming on, maybe. A woman’s entitled to be bitchy sometimes. Still, he didn’t need to take it. If there was too much telepathic noise here, she could go back to the pigsty.

“I heard that,” she said.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“My period isn’t due for a week. And if you want me to go to the pigsty, say it out loud and I’ll pack right now.”

“Do you read my mind all the time?”

“Not like that, no. What I get, it’s a general hazy fuzz that I can identify as your signal, and a different fuzz that’s his, but not usually any sharp words. Except that time it was perfectly clear. Am I really being bitchy?”

“You aren’t being much fun,” he said.

“I’m not having much fun, either.”

“How about a shower? And then a good dinner.” Trying to repair things. “A dress-up diner, downtown. All right?” Like humoring a cranky child. Did she hear that too? Apparently not. Getting up, shucking her housecoat. Not bothering to hold herself upright; shoulders slumped, breasts dangling, belly pushed outward. Padding across and into the shower. Well, we all have our bad days. Sound of water running. Then her head sticking into the bedroom.

She said, “By the way, the Rehab Center phoned this morning.”

Macy looked up, and in the same instant Hamlin awoke and did something to his heartbeat, something, transient and painful, that made him gasp and clap his hand to his breastbone.

“I said, the Rehab Center phoned—”

“I heard you.” Macy coughed. “Wait a second. Hamlin acting up.” He shot a furious thought downward. Let me be. Knock it off. The pain subsided. Macy said, “Who was it?”

“A woman doctor with an Italian name.”

“Ianuzzi.”

“That’s the one. She wanted to know why you hadn’t shown up for your therapy yesterday. After making a special early appointment and everything.”

“What did you tell her?” he asked.

Hopes suddenly soaring. His previous identity has surfaced and is trying to take him over, Dr. Ianuzzi. A terrible struggle going on inside him. Oh, is that so, Miss Moore? How unexpected. But we can handle it, of course. We’ll have our mobile ego-smashing unit on the spot at seven o’clock sharp. Three quick bursts of rays from the egotron machine, beamed up from the street, and that’ll be the end of Mr. Nat Hamlin for once and all, oh, yes, oh, yes. Tell Mr. Macy not to worry about a thing. Thank you for giving me the details, Miss Moore.

Lissa very far away. Dreamy. Macy said again, more sharply, “What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t tell her anything.”

“What?”

“She called at a bad time for me. I don’t even know why I answered. I couldn’t make much sense out of what she was asking me until afterward.”

“So you just hung up?”

“No, I talked, more or less. I said I didn’t know much about why you missed your appointment. Or where you were at the moment.” A distant shrug. “I guess I was pretty foggy.”

“Jesus, Lissa, you had a chance to help me, and you blew it! You could have told her the whole story!”

She said, “Didn’t you tell me that Hamlin threatened to kill you if you brought the Rehab Center into the picture?”

“That’s right. But he wouldn’t have known it if you had given them the story while I was at work. It was a perfect chance. And you blew it. You blew it.”

“Sorry.” But not very.

“If they phone again, will you do things right?”

“What do you want me to tell them?”

“The straight story. Hamlin coming back. And especially the part about his saying he’ll stop my heart if I go near a Rehab Center. Make sure they know he means it. How I set out to go there, how he knocked me down at the Greenwich terminal. You won’t forget that part of it?”

“Maybe you better call them yourself.”

“I told you, I can’t. Hamlin monitors everything I think or say. The moment I pick up the phone, he’ll have his clutches on my—”Jesus! Another twinge in the chest Clammy invisible fingers tweaking the aorta. A cough. A gasp. A slow shivering recovery. Lissa watching, unconcerned. “There,” Macy said finally. “He just did it. To let me know he’s tuned in.”

“What good is having them know, though, if he’ll kin you if they try to help you?”

“At least they’ll know. Maybe they have a remote-control way of dealing with situations like this. Maybe they can sneak up on him somehow. They’ve got their tricks. It can’t hurt to have them realize what’s happened. Provided they’re aware of the risks involved for me. You won’t forget that part?”

“If they call,” Lissa said vaguely, “I’ll try to tell them everything. I’ll try.” She didn’t sound too sure of it.

In the night, fragmentary episodes of not-quite-night-mare, slippery bulletins issued by the psychic underground. Oddly unfrightening moments out of an unremembered past arriving on top deck for the sleeper’s inspection and enlightenment. Bucolic scenes: the arrest, the arraignment, the detention center, the courthouse, the trial, the verdict, the sentence. Keep your fucking hands off me, I told you I’d go peacefully!

Lights flashing in his eyes. A hovereye camera practically touching his nose. Viewers around the world enjoying the spectacle. See the famed doer of abominations! Watch justice triumph! Death to the enemies of chastity! A jury of twelve honest computers and true.

Sweartotellthetruththewholetruthnothingbutthetruth. IdoIdoIdoIdo. See the sobbing witnesses! Observe their haunted, vindictive faces! What memories of obscene violations blaze in their souls? Yes, that’s the man, he’s the one! I’d know him anywhere. The courtroom silent. Your honor, I ask permission to enter as evidence the taped record of the defendant’s intrusion into the home of Maria Alicia Rodriguez on the night of—Red light flickering on the lawyerboard. Objection! Objection! Commotion. Denied. Prosecution may proceed.

On the wallscreen the defendant appears, bent on rape. Had he but known he was performing for a camera, he would have been ever so much more stylish about it. Up onto the windowledge, hup! Pry the window open. Hands cold; this miserable winter weather. Yes. Inside. The trembling victim. And the camera descends to get a good view of the action. If they were so concerned about chastity, why did they let him consummate the rape? A good question for the victim to ask. But of course it was all taped automatically; not till later did anyone realize that the hovereye had caught the mad rapist at his trade. White thighs gleaming in the moonlight. Wiry black bush, almost blue. Push. Push. Wham!

Will the defendant please rise. Nathaniel James Hamlin you have heard the verdict of your peers. This court now declares you guilty on eleven counts of aggravated assault fourteen counts of unsolicited carnal entry five counts of third-degree sodomy seven counts of irremediable psychic injury seventeen counts of violation of marital propriety seven counts of first-degree illicit proximity nine counts of eleven counts of sixteen counts of.

The sleeper becomes restless. Let us perhaps turn our attention to happier times. The artist at work in his splendid studio, cascades of spring sunlight pouring through the grand window. Cleverly constructing the armature for the latest masterpiece. First comes the all-encompassing vision, you understand, the sense of the work as a wholeness, without which it is impossible to begin. This hits you like a bolt of lightning; if it comes any other way, don’t trust it. Afterward it’s just plonking drudgery, a lot of soldering. I wouldn’t bother except that I have to. It’s the first moment, the white light falling out of heaven, that makes it all worthwhile.

But of course any shithead phony can say he has inspirations. Can he realize them? I can. You build the armature, see, which means you have to crap around with relays and solenoids and connectors and power-shunts and gate-nexuses and such. You calculate the atmospherics you want; a computer gives you the ionization tables, but then you have to make the corrections yourself, intuitively. You do the lighting. Then you put the skin on. Throughout the whole business you never lose sight of the initial impulse, which is, item one, a matter of form, of the actual goddam shape of the piece, and, item two, a matter of psychological insight, of the particular movement of the spirit you mean to express. Now you know as much about my working methods as I do. You want to know more, buy one of my pieces and take it apart.

The scene changes. At the gallery now, we are watching the elite of the art world scrambling to buy his 2002 output; that was the year of the phallic miniatures, they walk, they talk, they jerk off, eight grand apiece, every distinguished creator is entitled to have his little black jest. Sold like hotcakes. Better than hotcakes: did you ever buy a hotcake in your life? The hotcake market is extremely depressed these days.

Macy, slumbering, maybe even snoring, makes desperate mental notes. I must remember all this when I wake up. This is my genuine past, accept no substitutes. Is Hamlin sending all this stuff up by way of making friendly overtures to me, or is he trying to torment me? In any event, more. More, he cried, give me more! So more. Look at the world through a madman’s eyes. Take the hallucinogenic trip for free. Breathe in, breathe out, turn on, tilt! What are those streaks spanning the sky? That cockeyed rainbow, black, green, turquoise, gray, purple, white. And what colors do you see when your eyes are closed? The same. The very same.

Why is there so much pressure in the groin? You can feel the pulsations, the throbbings. It’s like being sixteen all over again. You want to plant it fast, you want to pump yourself dry. Insatiable. But only in strange and reluctant cunts. Why is that? Can you offer a rational explanation? Ha. Time to prowl the winter streets. A tightness in the ass, a dryness in the throat. Your own sweet wifey willing to come across for you, any time, any place, and the same is true of a myriad of others, hot available Lissa, so why endanger yourself in this fashion? But danger defines the man. I climb these peaks because they’re here.

Do you realize, though, that you’re out of your mind? Naturally I do. Will the defendant please rise. Nathaniel James Hamlin you have heard the verdict of your peers. There, you see the risks? You know what those bastards can do to you? Sure I know. I accept the risks. Let them do their worst. It is the decision of this court that the identity known as Nathaniel James Hamlin having been found guilty of repeated and numerous instances of intolerably antisocial activity and having been declared an incurable and incorrigible sociopathic menace by a properly constituted panel of authorities shall be withdrawn permanently from access to society and shall be at once expunged under the provisions of the Federal Social Rehabilitation Act of 2001 and that in accordance with the terms of that act the physical container as legally defined of the proscribed identity be reconstructed and returned to society at the earliest possible time.

Let me have your left arm, please, Mr. Hamlin. No, this isn’t a needle, it’s an ultrasonic injector, you won’t feel a thing. How long will it be before it takes effect? Oh, you’ll sense some effects almost immediately, I’d say, as the short-term memory processes begin to break down. The left arm, now? Thank you. There. See how easy it was? We’ll be back in ten hours to begin the next phase. What is my name? Who am I? Why are they doing this to me? Now the right arm, please, Mr. Hamlin. Who? Mr. Hamlin. That’s you, Nathaniel Hamlin. Oh. The right arm, please? No, it’s not a needle, it’s an ultrasonic injector, just like the last one. You don’t remember the last one? Well, of course, I should have realized that. Here we go! They’re washing away my mind! No no no no no no no no no no no no

At the office the next afternoon Hamlin, who had not been heard from in any overt way for almost two full days, made another attempt at seizing the speech centers of Macy’s brain. He chose his moment carefully. Late in the day; Macy trying for the tenth or twelfth time to tape his commentary for the evening news; inner tensions high.

The words weren’t flowing and the tones were thorny. He was covering the presumed assassination of the Croatian prime minister, a particularly nasty incident: a gang of monadist radicals had kidnapped the man a week ago and, spiriting him away to an illegal mindpick laboratory thought to be located somewhere in the Caucasus, had subjected him to an intensive three-day personality deconstruct that had wholly obliterated his identity. His soulless shell had been picked up during the night in Istanbul and was now in Zagreb, where platoons of neurologists now were converging in the hope of summoning back his eradicated self. Scarcely any chance of success, according to a British authority on deconstruct techniques. If an identity is taken apart properly, there’s no known way of reassembling it. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, and so forth. A bad show.

When the story had started to come off the pipe around lunchtime, Macy had instantly volunteered to handle it. He felt he had to prove to his colleagues that he did not need to be sheltered against references to deconstructs and reconstructs, rehabilitation work, and related matters. But it was proving unexpectedly difficult for him to carry out the assignment. The story was full of lumpy Croatian names that refused to cross his tongue in the right order of syllables. Moreover, he was more sensitive to the theme of the incident than he had realized; he burst into uneasy sweats at odd moments while reading his script, usually around the place where he was doing the lead-in to the statement from the London neurologist.

Take it slow, the platform monitor kept calling out to him. You’re pressing, Paul. Just go easy and let the words slide out. Everybody was being kind to him, again. A whole taping crew immobilized here for well over an hour while he blundered and staggered his way through an infinity of faulty takes. Take it slow, take it slow.

This time he thought he had it. The polysyllabic names all safely taped. The intricate explication of Balkan politics handled without calamity. For the first time this afternoon, a single usable take covering ninety percent of the script. Now to clinch things: “This morning in London, we spoke with the celebrated British brain expert Varnum Skillings, who vdrkh cmpm gzpzp vdrkh—”

“Cut!”

“Shqkm. Vtpkp. Smss! Grgg!”

People rushing toward him from all sides of the studio. His skull ablaze. Eyes unfocused. Macy knew precisely what had happened, and after the first instinctive moment of terror he began to take counteroffensive action. Just as he had on Tuesday, he labored to pry Hamlin’s mental grip loose. There was a complicating factor here, the public nature of his fit, the disturbed colleagues fluttering around him, asking him things, loosening his collar, otherwise distracting him. And the feeling of calamity that came over him at the realization that he had suffered this upheaval in front of everybody, exposed himself thoroughly as too sick to hold this job. Brushing aside those matters, he worked on Hamlin. The devil had bided his time, collected his strength, made his try when Macy was least prepared for it. All the same, Macy was more powerful. He had the leverage that controlling the body’s main neural trunks provided. Back, you fucker! Back! Back! Let go!

Hamlin let go. Foiled again.

Macy’s vision returned and he found himself staring into the agitated onyx face of Loftus. Asking him over and over what had happened, was he all right, should they send for a doctor, an ambulance, get him a drink, a gold.

“I’ll be fine,” he said. Voice like corroded copper.

“You sounded so weird just then—and your face was so twisted up—”

“I said I’d be all right.” Normal tone returning.

No one must know. No one.

The platform monitor, Smith, Jones, some name like that, coming up to him. “We got a nearly perfect take, Macy. If you’d like to rest a while, and then you can do the finale for us—no problem to splice it—”

“Well do it now,” said Macy.

No one must know.

The camera crew returning to places. Confusion defused. Macy, alone under the lights, swaying a little, searched his mind for Hamlin, could not find him, decided that he really had succeeded once again in thwarting a takeover. Nevertheless, he would keep on guard. If it happened again under the cameras he’d be in trouble. No room in this organization for newsmen who throw fits at unpredictable moments.

“Roll it,” said Jones or Smith.

“This morning in London,” Macy said smoothly, “we spoke with the celebrated British brain expert Varnum Skillings, who gave us this assessment of the situation.”

“Cut,” said Smith or Jones.

Macy smiled. Almost home free, now. The platform monitor gave the signal. Macy delivered the final line. Done. Sighs of relief. People trooping out. Low whispers, everyone no doubt talking about his creepy paroxysm.

Let them talk. I beat him down again, didn’t I? He loses every time.

For once Macy thought it might be almost tolerable to have Hamlin alive within him. Hamlin was the perpetual challenge that defined him. Every man needs a nemesis. He arises, I smite him. He arises again, I smite again. And so we go on together through the busy, happy days. He gives me texture and density. With him, I am a man with a unique affliction; I carry tragic angst. Without him I would be a shadow. And so we are comfortable with one another. Until the time when the pattern of testing, of thrust and parry, is broken. Until he conquers me. Or I him. When it comes, it will come with one quick sudden triumphant thrust, and one of us will succumb. He? I? We’ll see. Home, now. A long wearying day.