As She Climbed Across the Table

“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.

17

In the morning Evan and Garth vanished. I woke to see them breakfasting in decorous silence. I watched with half an eye as they tiptoed past me to the door. Then I went back to sleep, and a pleasantly forgettable dream.

An hour later I woke for real, to a hangover. I reconstituted myself in the bathroom with paste and swabs, drops and floss. I got a kettle boiling, its whistle-top propped open with a fork, shook coffee into a filter, and set out two cups. Evan and Garth had the cupboard stocked with a product called Weetabix. I opened a packet and poured milk over a desolate pod.

Alice padded in and sat at her place, not saying anything.

I gave her coffee, and we ate breakfast like mimes, yawning, stirring, and chewing in exaggerated silence. Alice hit the side of her cup with her spoon and spilled out a neat pylon of sugar. The room was washed with light. Alice’s mussed hair was a backlit halo. We were a diorama labelled Philip and Alice, Breakfast. Circa two months ago. The past. Before.

“You slept about ten hours,” I said. “From the time Soft brought you.”

“It was Soft, then.”

“Yes. He thinks you belong here. As far as he knows he was putting something back in its place.”

She didn’t say anything.

“He’s worried about you,” I said. “He says you’re no longer competent to manage the project.”

I decided not to make any I statements. We would talk about Soft’s perceptions, Soft’s concerns. Or Alice’s. But not mine.

“There isn’t any project,” she said. “Just Lack. Lack and approaches to Lack. Soft’s holding on to the idea of a project. That’s his big blind spot.”

“Soft’s concerned about your approach to Lack,” I said coolly. “He feels your approach is too, um, direct.”

She looked down into her coffee. The sun sculpted hollows of light in her tired features. Tender feelings rustled in me like bat wings unfolding.

“He thinks you’re identifying too much,” I said. “Losing that essential detachment.”

She looked up sharply. “Lack doesn’t require detachment. That’s Soft’s error. Lack requires engagement, a relationship. It’s something I was able to rise to. Soft is out of his depth.”

“You’re saying that what Lack wants is a relationship.” I said, still calm.

“Right.”

“And you’re saying you can provide that.”

“Right.”

“A human relationship.”

“Right.”

I lost my cool a little. “He isn’t getting one in you, Alice. You’re moving away from the human. Lack is too powerful an influence, can’t you see? He’s changing you. You’re becoming a void to match. You’re not human if you’re no longer able to love.”

I caught myself before I added the word me.

“Love isn’t the problem,” she said weakly. “I’m not having a problem loving.”

“What are you saying?”

“You still don’t understand, do you? Why I can’t be with you anymore.”

Don’t address me, I wanted to say. Philip isn’t here. This is Omnipotent Voice you’re speaking with.

“You’re in love with someone else,” I heard myself say.

“Yes.”

A change came over me, a phase transition. A flush rose through my chest and neck.

“You’re in love with Lack,” I said.

“Yes.”

Should I have known sooner?

Love is self-deception, remember. And my competition was so improbable.

But now that it was named, Alice’s Lack-love seemed obvious, a foregone conclusion. Probably the whole campus buzzed with it, and I was the last to know.

“The way you loved me?” I squeaked.

“No. Yes.”