The Dream of Doctor Bantam

by Jeanne Thornton

She walked to the front door and turned the knob all the way clockwise and all the way back in the other direction. Then she swallowed and turned the deadbolt: locked, open.

  She could hear Ira moving around downstairs, she thought. If she wanted to, she could go down and see him, hang out with him, like she’d been planning to do when she left the house today.

  She stood and waited with her hand on the door. Then she locked the deadbolt. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water, and she unzipped her pants, zipped them again, unbuttoned them and unzipped them and stepped out of them. She took off her polo shirt and unhooked her bra.

  She was all alone in the house of a stranger, felt queasy with the knowledge of this.

  She watched the thick drapes for a thrilling minute before pulling them back, unlatching them, leaning out the window. Specks of college kids moved along the wide streets toward one or another off-campus rathole or to a late lecture and cars and vans chugged by and Julie wondered if they could see her hanging naked out the window like an orange branch in the sun.

  She walked through the living room—what the fuck, what the fuck was she doing—and went down the hallway past the bathroom she’d seen earlier. She took her clothes with her, bundled in front of her chest, and she held them tight with one arm as she opened the door to the bedroom.

  You’re not allowed to come into my bedroom, she said to the empty hallway, mimicking Patrice’s voice. Julie goes where she wants, you cult bitch.

  She eased the door shut behind her and turned on the light. At first glance, she was relieved to confirm that Patrice was, left to her own devices, a horrible slob. In the unshaded light of an incandescent bulb, the brightest the socket would allow, the grit stood out on the piles of dirty blouses, socks, underwear, all of it knee-high, whitecapping and breaking on the periwinkle-sheeted foot of Patrice’s unmade bed. The trash can, an industrial blue cylinder, overflowed with lipstick-blotted Kleenex, pizza crusts caked with banana peppers, snot-crystalized napkins, dented white applicators, one broken comb in the shape of a pink horse. The desk was stacked with papers and legal pads, and a swivel lamp of cheap 1980s construction was C-clamped to the back, its cord long ago frayed apart and a heavy char mark on its candy-apple shade. Next to the lamp sat two cartons of Camel cigarettes, one cracked and missing three out of ten, the other sealed. Next to the cartons sat an iron machine. The machine looked like someone had crossed a Singer sewing machine and a Vespa: it was basically a hefty green cabinet with two massive headlights that sprouted out like an elk’s rack. Two thick coaxial strands ran over the lip of the desk and ended in a foot pedal attachment below a wooden kitchen chair. The whole thing’s purpose baffled her.

  She stood by the door with her hand on the switch and the incandescent bulb toasting her pale bare skin, the weirdness of Patrice developing in her mind like accidental sunlight in the darkroom.

  She dodged the piles to get to the bed and eased herself down on it; the foreign grease of the sticky sheets eased itself against her. She lay herself down against Patrice’s pillow and let the pores of her neck close up against it.

  She imagined the lock turning and Patrice coming home early, hunting up some thing or other she’d forgotten, finding Julie in here sprawled nearly naked on the bed; she felt dizzier than ever.

  She sat up and eased the pillow out from under her head, tucked it between her knees, and flipped onto her stomach—then she saw the diary. It was bound in some kind of lavender-dyed lace, laid in with sequins and girly little mirrors, some of them cracked. She let the pillow drop from between her knees and she cracked open the snap.

  It was full of doodles, impressive ones, all done in cheap black roller ball. Spiderwebs, vampires, a mysterious copy of the portrait that hung in the bathroom (did she draw on the toilet, this Patrice, lost in her dreams?) There was one large street scene, a part of the Drag that Julie couldn’t place exactly, squiggles of rain blotting the sky and all the squiggles of people in the background moving with such purpose, their shoulders bent so angrily against an unseen wind, and Julie felt bad for them, wanted to tell them that they didn’t have to hurry like that, the world wasn’t as bad as all that. But above all, Patrice doodled girls. Girls in scarves and sweaters and hats. They climbed the blue squares like chess pawns striving for queendom, the girls, their torsos fleshy and full, collarbones drawn even when it made no compositional sense to do so, skulls crosshatched with a casually obsessive ease, lips puffed out and vulnerable. No straight girl drew collarbones.

  On one page, written in big gothic-looking letters with crosshatch shading within the thick outlines:

  THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY MUST BE SAVED

  This beside a portrait of the barista at the Retrograde leaning on a counter, studying the liner notes to some album she was about to put on the store player.

  Julie couldn’t look at it anymore. She snapped the diary shut, put it back into its place, took the pillow from between her legs and replaced it with the satisfying butter of guilt that simmered in her brain. She laid her head back again and stared at the ceiling and let the bulb burn shadows into her eyes. She had never known a real dyke before; they’d seemed mythical. What did you talk about with a dyke? Could one dyke tell another dyke somehow, by the hungry, depraved look in their eyes, by some pheromone? Was this why she had gotten the job?

  In sudden terror, she got up from the bed and whacked at it with her palms, trying to efface her outline from the surface. Then she swiped a pack of cigarettes and ran, as quietly as she could, into the bathroom with her clothes.

  She turned on the lights and the hot water and she set herself a deadline: by the time this bathtub fills up, you have to decide whether or not a pervert is the kind of thing you want to be for the rest of your life. She paced, her bare feet leaving ghostly footprints on the dirty tile, and in the end, as she settled into the rising water, she still couldn’t decide.

  There were dozens of tiny vials of bath oils and salts scattered around the rim of the tub. She used a little bit of each of them in turn and put them back where she’d found them—it was easy to tell; there was a round ring of scum around each. She wiped it off and let it fall into the water; a good worker wastes not a single moment. She let the oily bath foam rise around her until her knees were islands in a verdantly stinking sea. She eased a cigarette out of the pack; she had no way of lighting it. She thought about getting out and finding a lighter somewhere in the cold bathroom, maybe in the kitchen. She stared at the tip of it, unlit, as she soaked in the impregnated water, let the old dirt wash off of her. The air conditioner she had fixed chugged away, goosepimpled what skin she allowed to show above the foam and water.

  4

  She was asleep on the couch with her Funky Winkerbean notebook tented over her stomach when Patrice got home. The sun under the drapes had long since gone out.

  Julie? called Patrice’s voice.

  She sat up on the couch, alarmed. Yo, she called back.

  Patrice dropped her purse by the doorway and shuffled into the kitchen, scratching her hip through the navy skirt. All the fascist animation that had carried her out the door that morning had somehow been drained off throughout the day; she was moving in slow motion, like the multiplane camera operator couldn’t be bothered anymore.

  I’m so tired, she said. Is there anything to eat?

  I don’t know, said Julie. It’s your house. Probably there isn’t.

  Could you cook something? asked Patrice. There’s food that needs to be cooked, I think.

  Julie set down the Funky Winkerbean notebook on the carpet.

  Is it part of the job to cook things for you? she asked.

  It can be, said Patrice. Why not? Do you mind?

  Julie remained sitting for a moment, then got up and went into the kitchen to scour the cupboards.

  Just give me, um … an hour, she said. Maybe two hours.

  Time isn’t real, called Patrice from the hallway.

  A blue box of mostacciolli, c
racked open and poured wholesale into the one pot. A quarter-stick of Parkay butter melted in the one pan. Water boiled too long, semolina scum clinging to non-stick iron edges. Noodles breaking down, stuck halfway in and halfway out of the drain like drinking straws no one ever wanted to use, ever. Two bowls, each filled with flobbering noodles, oils pooled at the base, an emptied saltshaker uselessly between them on the coffee table. Two glasses of water filled with tap silt. Patrice on the couch, knees crossed over one another, Julie on the floor, scrubbed but still feeling dirty as she looked up at her, noodles and oil corroding the walls of her stomach after the worst meal she had ever prepared in her life.

  Thank you so much, said Patrice. This is wonderful.

  Julie stared at her bowl of noodles.

  So, she said. What, um, schedule would you like me to follow? Like, twice a week, or five days, or what?

  I don’t know, said Patrice. Did you get the air conditioner fixed?

  Of course, said Julie. Can’t you smell the difference? When’s the last time you changed that thing?

  I don’t know, said Patrice. Ira told me it needed to be changed. But I didn’t know how.

  You don’t know much, do you? said Julie.

  Patrice bit her lip and began to fuss the edge of her blouse into the hem of the skirt. Her hair hung by her cheeks like velvet dog’s ears.

  Can I ask you a question, Julie? she said. Do you think that a person can be ignorant and still be good?

  I guess it would be very hard to be good at my job if I don’t know when you expect me to be here, said Julie. Is that the right answer to your question?

  It’s a general question, said Patrice. It will help me with my counseling.

  The cult does counseling? asked Julie.

  The Institute does, said Patrice. Yes.

  Julie set her bowl down on the table.

  Obviously it’s possible to be ignorant and still good, she said. It’s not like you’re a Nazi or something if you’re stupid. Probably the Nazis were less stupid than many people, and look what became of them. The big Nazis. Like the leaders. Is that a better general answer? Will you tell me my schedule now?

  I see, said Patrice.

  I’m not a Nazi, said Julie.

  Patrice was still eating this horrible food, nodding slowly to herself.

  The world is arranged in a certain way, she said. If we understand this way that the world is arranged, we can rearrange parts of it that are bad and improve their efficiency relative to the truth. Correct?

  What? asked Julie.

  We can improve their efficiency relative to the truth.

  Oh, said Julie. Sure. Why not.

  And so we must understand before we improve, Patrice said. So you must be intelligent before you can be good. Unless it’s all a matter of chance. Do you think it’s a matter of chance?

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, said Julie. Are you trying to recruit me into your cult? Because I’m not going to join it.

  Patrice sighed; when she sighed her breasts moved outward like little pistons. In that white blouse and navy skirt, all they needed was a little nametag and a pair of plastic wings sticking out at the end of them.

  Please stop calling the Institute a cult, she said. It’s an applied philosophy.

  I’ve gotta call ‘em like I see ‘em, laughed Julie; then Patrice’s mouth dropped into that frown again. She stopped.

  It would help me very much if you would not denigrate the things I believe in, said Patrice.

  Sorry, said Julie. I don’t want to denigrate the things you believe in.

  This was a lie; she wanted to very much. She could feel the Institute’s presence here, in the apartment, whirling around the room like a toxin flowing into both of their lungs—but the disease was only attacking Patrice; Julie had some immunity in her, some antibody she’d swallowed down long ago. She watched Patrice’s frown and felt terrible about this, like when she’d been young and her cat had to be put to sleep, and she’d vowed to become a veterinarian so that nothing would have to die on her watch anymore. It had been so long since she’d thought about those kinds of things; she didn’t want to think about them now.

  I mean, you could be totally stupid, she said, loudly, and you’d still like, save a drowning man or something.

  Patrice tilted her head; one of her dog-ear bangs flapped.

  I’m sorry? she said.

  I was answering your question, Julie said.

  Oh, said Patrice, and she frowned, but it was a better frown: she was thinking. But maybe it’s not true that saving that drowning man is the best choice, she said finally. Relative to the truth.

  She’d finished the pasta; she was scraping up the oil in the bowl with her spoon.

  Wait, said Julie. How is it not the best choice to save a drowning man? Like, if you have asthma or something and you’ll start drowning too? Or he’s like a child molester or something?

  I think I understand you now, said Patrice. I’m not sure what your schedule should be. Do you have a way I could reach you, when I need you?

  I have a phone number, said Julie. So I’m just on call, and I keep track of my hours, and then I bill you? Is that the method?

  That’s one method, said Patrice.

  Is that the method? asked Julie. The one I should normally use?

  Patrice was still scraping oil out of her bowl. Julie set her own nearly-full bowl on Patrice’s knees.

  Here, finish mine, she said.

  Patrice frowned at it, then smiled slowly, happily.

  This is going to work out beautifully, she breathed. Can I have a fresh spoon? I don’t want to use yours.

  I am basically a leper, said Julie. You already have a spoon.

  Patrice laughed.

  A leper is sometimes the best thing to be, she said.

  You’re deranged, laughed Julie.

  Patrice began eating again. Julie watched her, then took the Funky Winkerbean notebook out and tore a page from the back. She guessed that she’d been there maybe six, seven—eight hours, and wrote down Time (8) × Rate ($7) = $56.

  Here, she said. That’s my invoice. You should pay me $56.

  Okay, said Patrice. My money is in the drawer, in the kitchen.

  Okay, said Julie.

  She watched Patrice eat, then got up. The money was right in the kitchen where Patrice had said it would be, a loose set of bills binder-clipped together. She took out four twenties, tapped them against her thigh, then put one of them back.

  You find things quickly, said Patrice. It’s a very good quality.

  You don’t have change, said Julie. So I took $60. I’ll pay you back.

  You don’t have to, said Patrice. I like you.

  You’re joking, said Julie.

  I don’t believe in jokes, said Patrice.

  She set the bowl down and rubbed her stomach. The pack of cigarettes Julie had taken were sitting on the carpet; she took one out and lit it. Her cheeks puffed out when she smoked.

  What does that even mean? asked Julie. That you don’t believe in jokes.

  It means what it means, said Patrice.

  She bent her head forward and her hair dragged against the cigarette tip, filling the room with a puff of burned-hair smoke; she didn’t seem to notice.

  No, seriously, said Julie. You can’t just say whatever you want. What does that even mean?

  Jokes are just our response to absurdity and inefficiency relative to the truth, said Patrice. If we understand the truth, then there’s no reason for us to joke, because we’re responding to the truth instead of to absurdity and discontinuity. Timebound things.

  But you laugh at my jokes, said Julie.

  It is because I find you absurd, said Patrice. In some ways.

  She set her cigarette hand in her lap and stared at Julie.

  So wait, said Julie. If it’s not always a good idea to save a drowning person, then why is it that you say you respect me or something because I saved your life earlier?

 
; I don’t know, said Patrice. That is one of the absurd things. If you … if you give me time, I’ll probably become more correct in the things I’m saying to you. It takes time to really be able to communicate with another person. It takes more time, the more that you believe them to be … basically viable.

  Basically viable, said Julie, and Patrice nodded. She was resting her cigarette hand on the carpet now, letting the end of it turn to ash and drop away, the cherry drawing ever closer to the fabric. She was staring at Julie, her eyes total Patrice Mode II: open, nervous, terrified. For some reason Julie smiled.

  Give me a drag of your cigarette, she said.

  You don’t smoke, said Patrice.

  Give me one anyway, said Julie.

  When Patrice handed the cigarette to her she grabbed Patrice’s hand. Her skin, as she’d expected, was rough like vellum; sheep to the slaughter.

  What are you doing, quaked Patrice.

  Hot blood in the veins around her knuckles. Julie made some quick calculations.

  Your ring fingers aren’t longer than your index fingers, she said, disappointed.

  What does that mean? asked Patrice in a small voice.

  Julie let go of her hand. She took Patrice’s cigarette out of her mouth, lit her own off of it, and sat back on the floor. She drew on the filter and collapsed, coughing.

  I have to go to the bathroom, said Patrice after a moment, and she got up. A moment later the lock on the bathroom door clicked.

  Julie hissed smoke into her lungs, got up, stacked the bowls and carried them to the kitchen.

  She scrubbed grease and noodles off of everything with the year-old steel wool she found under Patrice’s sink. It was hard to work and smoke; she kept worrying about getting water on the filter. At some point she became aware of Patrice standing over her, watching her clean. She looked up.

  Yes? she asked.

  What are you doing? Patrice asked.

  I’m cleaning your dishes, said Julie. It’s how we prevent disease, here in the, what is it? The timebound world. Unless that’s not part of my job.

  No, no, said Patrice. Go on.

  Julie went on, Patrice standing over her, smoking, watching her. She could feel Patrice’s breathing change, become faster, then slower, like she was waiting for something. Julie tried to finish the dishes as quickly as she could, set them all on a sheaf of paper towels to dry, then looked up.