Distress - A Novel Part 5

I couldn't bring myself to own up to Junk DNA . . . but I was just as afraid to mention Violet Mosala, in case my own doctor turned out to know more about Mosala's TOE-in-progress than I did. It wasn't an idle fear; Alice was obscenely well read on everything.

I said, "Nothing, really. I'm on holiday."

She glanced again at my notes on her desk screen-which would have included data from my pharm. "Good for you. Just don't relax too hard."

I felt like an idiot, caught out in an obvious lie-but as I walked out of the surgery, it ceased to matter. The street was dappled with leaf-shadows, the breeze from the south was soft and cool. Junk DNA was over, and I felt as unburdened as if I'd just been granted a reprieve from a fatal disease. Epping was a quiet suburban center: a doctor, a dentist, a small supermarket, a florist, a hairdresser, and a couple of (non-experimental) restaurants. No Ruins; the commercial sector had been bulldozed fifteen years before and given over to engineered forest. No billboards (though advertising T-s.h.i.+rts almost made up for the loss). On rare Sunday afternoons when nothing else claimed our time, Gina and I walked up here for no reason at all, and sat beside the fountain. And when I came back from Stateless-with eight whole months to edit Violet Mosala into shape-there'd be more of those days than there'd been for a long while.

When I opened the front door, Gina was standing in the hall, as if she'd been waiting for me to return. She seemed agitated. Distraught. I moved toward her, asking, "What's wrong?" She backed away, raising her arms, almost as if she was fending off an attacker.

She said, "Andrew, I know there's no good time. But I waited-"

At the end of the hall were three suitcases.

The world drew itself away from me. Everything around me took one step back.

I said, "What's going on?"

"Don't get angry."

"I'm not angry." That was the truth. "I just don't understand,"

Gina said, "I gave you every chance to fix things. And you just kept right on, as if nothing had changed."

Something odd was happening to my sense of balance; I felt as if I was 61.swaying wildly, though I knew I was perfectly still. Gina looked miserable; I held out my arms to her-as if I could comfort her.

I said, "Couldn't you tell me something was wrong?"

"Did I need to? Are you blind?"

"Maybe I am."

"You're not a child, are you? You're not stupid."

"I honestly don't know what I'm supposed to have done."

She laughed bitterly. "No, of course you don't. You just started treating me like some kind of ... arduous obligation. Why should you think there was anything wrong with that?"

I said, "Started treating you . . . when? You mean the last three weeks? You always knew about editing. I thought-"

Gina screamed, "I'm not talking about your f.u.c.king Job.'"

I wanted to sit down on the floor-to steady myself, to regain my bearings-but I was afraid the action might be misinterpreted.

She said coldly, "Please don't stand there blocking the way. You're making me nervous."

"What do you think I'm going to do? Take you prisoner?" She didn't reply. I squeezed past her into the kitchen. She turned and stood in the doorway, facing me. I had no idea what to say to her. I had no idea where to begin.

"I love you."

"I'm warning you, don't start."

"If I've screwed up, just give me a chance to put things right. I'll try harder-"

"There's nothing worse than when you try harder. The strain is so f.u.c.king obvious."

"I always thought I'd-" I met her eyes: dark, expressive, impossibly beautiful. Even now, the sight of them cut through everything else I was thinking and feeling, and transformed part of me into a helpless, infatuated child. But I'd still, always, concentrated, I'd always paid attention. How had it come to this! What signs could I have missed . . . when, how? I wanted to demand dates and times and places.

Gina looked away and said, "It's too late to change anything. I've found someone else. I've been seeing someone else for the last three months. If you really didn't know that. . . what kind of message did you need? Did I have to bring him home and screw him in front of you?"

I closed my eyes. I didn't want to hear this; it was just noise that made 62.everything more complicated. I said slowly, "I don't care what you've done. We can still-"

She took a step toward me and shouted, "I care! You selfish moron! I care!" Tears were streaming down her face. Beneath everything I was struggling to understand, I just ached to hold her; I still couldn't believe I was the reason for all her pain.

She said contemptuously, "Look at you! I'm the one who's just told you I've been s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g someone else behind your back! I'm the one who's walking out! And it still hurts me a thousand times more than anything will ever hurt you-"

I must have thought about what I did next, I must have planned it, but I don't remember turning to the sink and hunting for a knife, I don't remember opening my s.h.i.+rt. But I found myself standing by the kitchen doorway, carving lines back and forth across my stomach with the point of the blade, saying calmly, "You always wanted scars. Here are some scars."

Gina threw herself at me, knocking me off my feet. I pushed the knife away, under the table. Before I could get up, she sat on my chest, and started slapping and punching me. She screamed, "You think that hurts? You think that's the same? You don't even know the difference, do you? Do you?"

I lay on the floor and looked away from her, while she pummeled my face and shoulders. I felt nothing at all, I was just waiting for it to be over-but when she stood up and started to leave, making sniveling noises as she staggered around the kitchen, I suddenly wanted to hurt her, badly.

I said evenly, "What did you expect? I can't cry on cue like you do. My prolactin level's not up to it."

I heard her dragging the suitcases along the hall. I had a vision offal-lowing her out the door, offering to carry something, making a scene. But my desire for revenge had already faded. I loved her, I wanted her back . . . and everything I could imagine doing to try to prove that seemed guaranteed to hurt her, guaranteed to make everything worse.

The front door slammed shut.

I curled up on the floor. I was bleeding messily and gritting my teeth as much against the metallic stench, and a sense of helpless incontinence, as against the pain-but I knew I wasn't cut deeply. I hadn't gone insane with jealousy and rage and severed an artery; I'd always known exactly what I was doing.

63.Was I meant to feel ashamed of that? Ashamed that I hadn't broken the furniture, disemboweled myself-or tried to kill her? I could still feel the sting of Gina's contempt-and if I'd never really known her thoughts before, I'd understood one thing as she knocked me to the floor: because I hadn't been overwhelmed by emotion, because I hadn't lost control ... in her eyes, I was somehow less than human.

I wrapped a towel around my superficial wounds, then told the pharm what had happened. It buzzed for several minutes, then exuded a paste of antibiotics, coagulants, and a collagen-like adhesive. It dried on my skin like a tight-fitting bandage.

The pharm had no eye of its own, but I stood by the phone and showed it our handiwork.

It said, "Avoid strenuous bowel movements. And try not to laugh too hard."

64.8.Angelo said glumly, "I've been sent." "Then you'd better come in."

He followed me down the hall into the living room. I asked, "How are the girls?"

"Good. Exhausting."

Maria was three, Louise was two. Angelo and Lisa both worked from home-in soundproof offices-taking the childcare in s.h.i.+fts. Angelo was a mathematician with a net-based, nominally Canadian university; Lisa was a polymer chemist with a company which manufactured in the Netherlands.

We'd been friends since university, but I hadn't met his sister until Louise was born. Gina had been visiting mother and daughter in hospital; I'd fallen for her in the elevator, before I had any idea who she was.

Seated, Angelo said cautiously, "I think she just wants to know how you are."

"I sent her ten messages in ten days. She knows exactly how I am."

"She said you stopped suddenly."

"Suddenly? Ten acts of ritual humiliation is all she gets, without a reply." I hadn't meant to sound bitter, but Angelo was already beginning to look like a peace envoy stranded on a battlefield. I laughed. "Tell her whatever she wants to hear. Tell her I'm devastated . . . but recovering rapidly. I don't want her to feel insulted . . . but I don't want her to feel guilty, either."

He smiled uncertainly, as if I'd made a tasteless joke. "She's taking it badly."

I clenched my fists and said slowly, "I know that, and so am I, but don't you think she'd feel better if you told her ..." I stopped. "What did 65.she say you should tell me if I asked if there was any chance of her coming back?"

"She said to say no."

"Of course. But . . . did she mean it? What did she tell you to say if I asked if she meant it?"

"Andrew-"

"Forget it."

A long, awkward silence descended. I considered asking where she was, who she was with, but I knew he wouldn't tell me. And I didn't really want to know.

I said, "I'm meant to be flying out to Stateless tomorrow."

"Yeah, I heard. Good luck."

"There is another journalist who'd be willing to take over the project. I'd only have to make one call-"

He shook his head. "There's no reason to do that. It wouldn't change anything."

The silence returned. After a while, Angelo reached into a jacket pocket and pulled out a small plastic vial of tablets. He said, "I've got some Ds."

I groaned. "You never used to take that s.h.i.+t."

He glanced up at me, wounded. "They're harmless. I like to switch off sometimes. What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing."

Disinhibitors were non-toxic and non-addictive. They created a mild sensation of well-being, and increased the effort required for considered thought-rather like a moderate dose of alcohol or cannabis, with few of the side effects. Their concentration in the bloodstream was self-limiting- above a certain level, the molecule catalyzed its own destruction-so taking a whole bottle was exactly the same as swallowing a single D.

Angelo offered me the vial. I took out a tablet reluctantly, and held it in my palm.

Alcohol had almost vanished from polite society by the time I was ten years old, but its use as a "social lubricant" always seemed to be lauded in retrospect as unequivocally beneficial, and only the violence and organic damage it induced were viewed as pathological. To me, though, the magic bullet which had taken its place seemed like a distillation of the real problem. Cirrhosis, brain damage, a.s.sorted cancers, and the worst traffic accidents and crimes of stupefaction had been mercifully banished . . . but I 66.still wasn't prepared to concede that human beings were physically incapable of communicating or relaxing without the aid of psychoactive drugs.

Angelo swallowed a tablet and said admonis.h.i.+ngly, "Come on, it's not going to kill you. Every known human culture has used some kind of-"

I mimed putting the thing in my mouth, but palmed it. Screw every known human culture. I felt a momentary pang of guilt at the deception, but I didn't have the energy for an argument. Besides, my dishonesty was well intentioned. I could imagine more or less what Gina had told her brother: Get him D'd, it's the only way he'll start talking. She'd sent Angelo here in the hope that I'd unburden myself, spill my guts, and be healed. It was a touching gesture-on the part of both of them-and the least I could do in return was reduce the number of lies he'd have to tell her to make her believe she'd done some good.

Angelo s eyes glazed over slightly, as the chemical shut down various pathways in his brain. It occurred to me that James Rourke should have added a third disputed H-word to his list: honesty. Freud had saddled Western culture with the bizarre notion that the least considered utterances were always, magically, the truest-that reflection added nothing, and the ego merely censored or lied. It was an idea born more of convenience than anything else: he'd identified the part of the mind easiest to circ.u.mvent-with tricks like free a.s.sociation-and then declared the product of all that remained to be "honest."

But now that my words were chemically sanctified, and would at last be taken seriously, I got straight to the point. "Look: tell Gina I'm going to be okay. I'm sorry I hurt her. I know I was selfish. I'm going to try to change. I still care about her . . . but I know it's over." I hunted for more, but there really was nothing else she needed to know.

Angelo nodded significantly, as if I'd said something new and profound. "I could never understand why you were always breaking up with women. I thought you were just unlucky. But you're right: you're a selfish b.a.s.t.a.r.d. All you really care about is your work."

"That's right."

"So what are you going to do about it? Find a new career?"

"No. Live alone."

He grimaced. "But that's worse. That makes you twice as selfish."

I laughed. "Really? Do you want to explain why?"

"Because then you're not even trying!"

67."What if trying is at other people's expense? What if I'm tired of hurting people, and I choose not to do that anymore?"

This simple idea seemed to confound him. He'd taken up Ds late in life; maybe they addled his brain more than they did for someone who'd developed a tolerance for the drug in adolescence.

I said, "I honestly used to think I could make someone happy. And myself. But after six attempts, I think I've proved that I can't. So I'm taking the Hippocratic oath: Do no harm. What's wrong with that?"

Angelo gave me a dubious look. "I can't exactly picture you living like a monk."

"Make up your mind: first I'm being selfish, then I'm being pious. And I hope you're not impugning my masturbatory skills."

"No, but there's one small problem with s.e.xual fantasies: they make you want the real thing even more."

I shrugged. "I could always go neural as.e.x."

"Very funny."

"Well, it's always there as a last resort." I was already growing sick of the whole stupid ritual, but if I threw him out too soon there was the risk that he'd give Gina a less-than-satisfactory catharsis report. The details didn't matter, he'd be allowed to keep them to himself-but he had to be able to say with a straight face that we'd kept on baring our souls right into the small hours.

I said, "You always claimed that you'd never get married. Monogamy was for the weak. Casual s.e.x was more honest, and better for all concerned-"

Angelo laughed, but gritted his teeth. "I was nineteen when I said that. How'd you like it if I dug up a few of your wonderul films from the same era ?"

"If you've got copies . . . name your price." It seemed inconceivable, but I'd spent four years of my life-and thousands of dollars from a.s.sorted part-time jobs-making half a dozen terminally pretentious experimental dramas. My underwater butoh version of Waiting for G.o.dot was perhaps the single worst creation of the digital video era.

Angelo stared at the carpet, suddenly pensive. "I meant it, though. At the time. The whole idea of a family-" He shuddered. "It sounded like being buried alive. I couldn't imagine anything worse."

"So you grew up. Congratulations."

He glared at me angrily. "Don't be so f.u.c.king glib."

68."I'm sorry." He didn't seem to be joking; I'd struck a nerve.

He said, "No one grows up. That's one of the sickest lies they ever tell you. People change. People compromise. People get stranded in situations they don't want to be in ... and they make the best of it. But don't try to tell me it's some kind of... glorious preordained ascent into emotional maturity. It's not."

I said uneasily, "Has something happened? Between you and Lisa?"