As we strolled, he told me everything that had happened in my absence.
I felt sick.
“LARRY“
Chapter 34
For some moments after George had finished, the only sound I could hear was my own breathing. The two of them, George and his mysterious friend Dave, just stood there, waiting for me to say something. There was no sense of impatience or urgency about them. It was as though they had all the time in the world—which apparently they had, as I could still see from the window where the rest of the world remained frozen. Yet they had obviously come here with specific things to accomplish, and as soon as I was ready we would move on to them.
“Are you all right, Larry?” George asked.
“He’s fine,” Dave said. “I think we can wrap this thing up. What I propose is that the two of you go sit over there, and then we can do what we have to to get this situation resolved.”
He indicated two soft leather armchairs placed at an angle to each other before a vast abstract painting by one of Sara’s artists. George started obediently for one. I, with my mind spinning and a sense of having alarmingly little fight left in me, headed for the other.
“And George,” Dave added, “you can take your glasses and the hat off now.”
“Oh—yeah, sure.”
He did so, and we both sat there looking up at Dave, waiting.
“Before we get started,” he said, “I have kind of a confession to make. I already indicated to you, George, that we’ve had some funding problems on this project lately. Which has meant we’ve had to cut a few corners here and there. The fact is, and I haven’t wanted to mention this so far for reasons I’m sure you’ll understand, we’re going to have to cut another one now. Normally in a case like this—they happen inevitably from time to time—we’d have to go through a lengthy process that would involve starting up Larry’s program over again and introducing him back into it. Unfortunately, in this instance we aren’t going to be able to do that.”
George was listening with polite, reasonably untroubled interest. I shifted in my chair, wondering uneasily where this “confession” of Dave’s was going.
“So the thing is,” Dave continued, looking down at his feet as he took a few steps across the thick cushion of carpet, “we’re not going to be able to unpick this situation in the way we normally would. In fact we’re not going to be able to unpick it at all. We’re simply going to have to cut, as it were, the Gordian knot.”
He stopped pacing and looked at both of us.
“The fact is,” he said, and paused a moment to make sure we were both still paying close attention, “that for all practical purposes, Larry’s world has come to an end, so there’s no way he can go back to it. As a result, the two of you are now in this world—George’s world—which has created a logically impossible situation. You’re not twins and you’re not clones. You’re two blueprints living one life. The only solution is that one of you is going to have to be eliminated.”
“Wait a second here, Dave, I’m not sure I understand…”
The interruption had come from George, his brow furrowing with a crease of sudden concern.
“When you say eliminate, in what sense are you meaning that?”
“In the usual sense I guess,” Dave said.
George continued to look puzzled. “But d’you mean… are you saying that one of us will have to… to cease to be?”
I said nothing. Something in my gut told me I already knew the answer to that question only too well. So did George: He just wasn’t ready to face it yet.
Dave, I have to say, for the first time had the grace to look a little embarrassed, even shifty.
“That’s about it, I’m afraid,” he answered, avoiding George’s gaze. “Strictly speaking, what we’re about to do is illegal, and I could get into a lot of trouble for it. But then I have to balance that against the project and the importance of keeping it going. We can’t afford to have it brought to a halt by mishaps like this. Frankly, this research is too important.”
“But Dave,” George persisted, in the reasonable tones of a man unable to acknowledge that his argument was already lost, “you assured me that this whole problem could be ironed out—unpicked, you said—and everything put back to square one. That’s what you told me, isn’t it?”
“That’s what I told you. That’s how I would have liked it to be. That’s how it would be in an ideal world. Unfortunately, we’re not in one.”
“So what exactly are you saying, Dave? And why have you chosen to wait until now?”
The question came from George, but Dave directed his reply to me.
“For technical reasons, you’re going to have to settle this between you. One of you has to displace the other—face-to-face and without any help or interference from outside. Nobody else can do it for you. Not me, not my supervisor, not even the head of the department responsible for this computer.”
“For God’s sake, what you’re talking about sounds like—”
Dave ignored George’s whiny-voiced interruption and plowed on, addressing both of us now.
“The problem is that because you’re a conscious entity you have a very significant element of free will, which by definition only yourself—these two versions of yourself—can use. And you’re going to have to use it now.”
“This is getting a little out of hand, and it’s certainly a long way from—”
George started to push himself up off his chair as he spoke, but fell back as though held by some invisible restraint.
“What the—? Why can’t What is this—?”
Dave shook his head, and his voice reflected genuine regret. “I’m sorry, but you can’t get out of those chairs, either of you, until this is over.”
I tried. What Dave said was true. It wasn’t a feeling of being strapped down, no straining of muscle and sinew against confinement. My body just wouldn’t do what I wanted. I felt disconnected from it.
“I’m not pretending I like this,” Dave was saying, “but I don’t have any choice, given the circumstances.”
Then I realized that I had no sense of smell. Not that there was ever much to smell in that room, just the hazy, agreeable odors of comfortable living. But now I could smell nothing at all. I could hear and I could see, but I was aware suddenly that I wasn’t breathing. Not holding my breath, just not needing to breathe. I was still in my body, but disembodied.
“I repeat,” Dave said, “that the only way we’re going to resolve this situation is by having one of you eliminate the other.”
George started blustering as panic took hold of him. “This is outrageous! Barbaric! I never agreed to anything like this…”
Dave simply carried blithely on like a game show host explaining the rules to a couple of fresh contestants.
“If you’ll both look down at the right arm of your respective chairs, you’ll find that a button has been fixed near to where your hand is.”
I dropped my gaze. Sure enough, a disc of stainless steel had been embedded in the leather, with a central plunger raised almost an inch. I couldn’t imagine how I hadn’t noticed it when I sat down, though I was so accustomed to a general and pervading sense of dislocation by now that little could surprise me any longer.
“Whichever of you hits that button first will eliminate the other,” Dave said, and stood looking down at both of us as if his role were over and from now on it was up to us.
“This is against every notion of decent civilized…”
I noticed George appeared to be physically struggling as he blustered and protested, not simply detached from physicality in the way I was. Perhaps it was a subjective thing; it was impossible to know.
“By the way,” Dave cut in on George’s tirade, “I forgot to mention, for the purpose of hitting this button, you will both be physically quite free, neither of you at any disadvantage with regard to the other.”
“Let me get this straight,” I said. “Whichever of us hits this button first eliminat
es the other—as in ‘dead”
“Complete nonexistence.”
“And the other?”
“Will live on—as George Daly, from the point where you meet in the park.”
“That first time or this morning?”
“Oh, this morning, I’m afraid. It’s too complicated to go back and unpick everything that’s happened since the first time.”
“No!” George shouted. “This is a scandal and a travesty. Larry, listen to me, we have to stay together on this and play no part in any such—”
He ranted on, but I had ceased to listen. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the situation, they were irrelevant. In real life things happen too fast to be sure you’re doing the “right” thing. Life and death decisions are made on gut instinct. George was a jerk if he didn’t understand that. But then I already knew that George was a jerk, period. He didn’t deserve his life.
Fuck it, I thought.
I hit the button.
“SARA“
Chapter 35
I got back to the apartment after five. At first I didn’t know if George was in. I called out, but he didn’t answer. Then, when I went into the bedroom, I found him lying in his robe staring at the ceiling.
“George? Are you all right?”
He turned his head and looked at me as though he hadn’t heard me come in. “Fine,” he said.
“I called, you didn’t answer.”
“I took a bath, fell asleep. I was thinking.”
I bent down to give him a gentle kiss on the forehead. “If we’re going to Rob and Charles’s party,” I reminded him, “you need to get ready. Me too.”
“Yeah, right.” He looked at his watch as he rolled off the bed and got to his feet, running his hands through his hair to shake off his drowsiness. He went into his bathroom, I into mine.
I showered, thinking yet again what a relief it was to have my hair so short that I could leave it to look after itself. It was just after Steve was convicted that I’d first cut it. I never knew if there was any connection between the two things, and even less what it might be. I read once that in France after the Second World War they shaved the heads of women who had consorted with the enemy. Was I trying to persuade myself that Steve had become some sort of enemy?
My image gazed back at me impassively from my dressing room mirror. Why is it we can never look natural in a mirror? Because the person in it is staring at you, I suppose, and nobody ever looks entirely natural when they’re staring at you. Did I ever, I wondered, look natural anymore?
I hesitated between a St. Laurent (long, dark, and formal) and a Ralph Lauren trouser suit (also dark and formal). What was it with me these days? My dark and formal period? In mourning for my life?
Stop it. It would end one day, I told myself for the millionth time. I would stop thinking about myself and what I’d lost. I would once again be as grateful as I used to be for what I’d had in the past and for what I had now. Poor George: My unhappiness was an insult to him. It was unfair.
Why is it so hard to love nice people?
Why is “nice” such an anemic word?
Did I ever think Steve was “nice”? Not really. Stubborn, independent, ambitious. A bit of a rogue. Warm, funny, unpredictable.
Mine.
These were thoughts I didn’t need. Couldn’t afford. That part of my life was over. It had been a mistake, I must let it go, pretend it never happened. It wasn’t my fault. The fact that I had loved a murderer simply meant that the man I loved had committed a murder.
Did I still love him?
Why did I have to ask that?
I couldn’t forgive him for what he did. Nobody had the right to forgive somebody else’s death. Especially not me; I had been part of the cause. It was Nadia Shelley’s jealousy when Steve dropped her for me that made her a threat to him. But he killed her to save his career, not because he loved me. If he’d loved me enough he’d have said to hell with his career, and we’d just have been together. But he wanted his career as well as me. That’s where people always get into trouble—wanting everything.
In the end I chose a Nicole Farhi ensemble—light, knee-length, and younger than I felt. But my mirror reassured me. From the outside I looked fine. My reflection almost smiled at me approvingly.
George was on the terrace, leaning on the wall and looking out over the park, nursing a drink. He must have heard the click of my heels as I approached but he didn’t turn around.
“It’s time to go,” I said, “or we’ll be late.”
He seemed almost surprised by my arrival, just as he had been when I got back earlier.
“You’re still lost in thought,” I said. “Have you been working?”
“Not really.” He looked down into his drink, twirled the ice in it, then tossed it down his throat in a single gulp.
On the way down in the elevator he continued to look strangely preoccupied, staring into space, unblinking.
“George, what is it?” I said after a while. “Is something wrong?”
He turned toward me, and his eyes seemed to take a moment to focus—as though he were on drugs, but I didn’t believe that he was. As far as I knew he’d never used them.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I was miles away. What did you say?”
“I asked if there was something wrong.”
“No. Nothing at all. Just”—he gave a little shrug—“some ideas I’m playing with.”
We got into the car and rode without talking any further.
“What did you do today?” I asked eventually, beginning to find our silence oppressive. “Did you go out?”
“I took a walk, that’s all. In the park.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“Like who?”
“Anyone you knew.”
He seemed to need some time to think about this. Then he said, as though it had been a difficult conclusion to come to, “Not really.”
Chapter 36
I was preoccupied over the next few days with an opening we had at the gallery on Tuesday—a young Brazilian painter whose first New York show this was. But I couldn’t help noticing that George remained in a distinctly strange mood. He was restless and nervous and slept badly. Two nights that week I woke in the small hours to find him gone from our bed. Once he was in his study, reading; another time he was in a guest room watching television. When we were together he seemed somehow distracted and yet obsessively watchful at the same time. Several times I caught him staring at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. When I asked him why, he denied doing it.
At other times he would spend hours pacing in his study. Twice I came across him staring out of the window in a kind of trancelike state. It took him some time to respond to my presence and realize I was speaking to him, then he turned with a vacant expression as though he’d just woken up and wasn’t sure where he was. But whenever I asked him if anything was wrong, he insisted—sometimes even snapped—that he was fine. Whatever it was, he clearly couldn’t bring himself to talk about it.
The opening went well; by Thursday we had picked up enough reviews to know we had a success on our hands. The whole collection had sold out in days, and I was generally credited with having discovered another promising talent, which was gratifying. For the first time in several weeks, I began to relax.
It was George’s idea that we should go up to the Berk-shires the following weekend. We had stopped using the house as much as we used to; the memory of that night when I had confronted George with Steve was awkward for both of us. But George still loved Eastways as much as he always had. Again, it was an unspoken understanding that we wouldn’t talk about the past, just let bygones be bygones.
Everything always unspoken. Was it simply that we had nothing to say? When we first met, I remember, we talked all the time. Like most couples, I suppose. In between talking we made love all the time, or most of it. It was nice.
“Nice” again.
It was still nice when we made love. But it was an occas
ional thing. As rare as really talking.
I wonder if life with Steve would have gone the same way? It showed no sign of doing so during those first two years together. The sex was still great even when he started to worry about losing control of his life through marrying a “spoiled” rich girl.
What a fool he was to have thought like that. What a fool I was to let him. The fact that we were young is our only excuse.
Later, when we met up again, Steve and I, the sex was still great. Even better. It was like rediscovering something we both thought had gone forever. Well, I’d thought it had gone from my life forever. Not Steve, perhaps. He’d had mistresses.
Like Nadia Shelley.
Who had meant more to him than he’d wanted me to know.
On Saturday we had dinner with a few friends at Tom and Cecily Winters’s house; they lived only a couple of miles from Eastways. Tom was an investment banker and Cecily wrote books about gardening, which she had all the time in the world for now after bringing up three kids. They had been my parents’ friends and were closer to their age than ours, as was most of the crowd they knew.
Evenings there never ran on late; we were back home before eleven. George said he would have a nightcap in the library and watch the news. I bit back an impulse to suggest he’d already had enough. I had noticed he was drinking more than usual during dinner. He’d lost his train of thought a few times when he was talking, then interrupted other people because he wanted to go back to something they’d said fifteen minutes ago. Nobody minded terribly: Everybody has the right to have a couple of drinks too many from time to time. All the same it was surprising, and there was obviously some sort of hidden reason for it.
He had the good sense not even to suggest driving home. The moment he got into the car he put his head back and fell asleep. Or pretended to. Maybe he just didn’t want to talk because he was afraid I might ask him yet again what was on his mind, and he would get defensive and say I was imagining it, and quite possibly we’d have an argument. This way made it simpler. I didn’t disturb him, and he woke up the moment we came to a stop in our drive.
Coincidence Page 18