Kurt noticed that something large and meaningful was going on beneath Mary’s eyes, and he claimed that significance, believed himself to be her mover, fell into a sort of love with the version of her that he chose to see. He didn’t question his feelings for Mary in this moment, didn’t wonder what Internal Directives might be coursing through his sensors or hers. Later Kurt would pore over the reports, try to understand exactly what happened to him that day, but in the warm center of this feeling, there was no explaining it. He never found out if the Research Division had been using Internal Directives on him, but even if he found out they’d caused the feeling he had that day, it wouldn’t have mattered. The feeling was his. It had happened.
After her compartmentalization protocol, Mary declined the car service and walked back to the train, lost in useless thoughts of Paul (What had they had together and how real had it been?), when she noticed a window a few floors up a building, light glowing through thin curtains. From that low angle she could see a fragment of a life—a framed photograph, a hanging plant, a figure walking by—and she ached for the unscheduled feelings and random lives that person might have had.
11
In the loft that night, Kurt felt idle and restless, sent Matheson and the Research Division home early and put on an old album by instinct. The third song stilled him, forced him to sit and do nothing but listen, something he’d rarely done since he was a teenager, when music had meant much more to him than it did now. How was it that this song—a woman and a guitar, half morose and hopeless, half romantic and hopeful—had broken through to him? When it ended, he played it again, then again, indulging himself.
Thoughts of Mary circled him. She paced in his head. This whole situation was perplexing, disruptive.
Was it that simple? That if you sat with someone for long enough, told them enough stories, that if you looked at them and they looked at you, then this feeling could occur? She wasn’t beautiful, or at least not in a way that he found beautiful, but there was, Kurt thought, something beautiful about her. Maybe beauty had been part of the problem all along. So often love began in the visible. Maybe that was always the beginning of the end. Because what use did a person’s beauty offer another? It was a signifier of the genes, sure, a suggestion of procreative abilities, but beyond that—what could it add to the time spent with that person, especially when procreation wasn’t the goal? Some kind of mutual desire was important to a relationship, and this desire so often came from one’s instinctual response to the aesthetic beauty of the other, but within any sexual encounter, the attractiveness of either lover served no purpose. The body of the other became a collage of sensation and shape, an invisible composite of both bodies feeling and being felt, sensed but not seen, eyes held shut to sink into feeling. And yes, the path leading to the moment two people became lovers was often a pageantry of appearances, but sex itself was not a primarily visual experience, and Kurt felt sure, considering it now, that the pageantry of seduction was the first place people went wrong in choosing what they thought was love. Love at first sight, that lie, a confusion of lust and aesthetics with something deeper.
As the song ended its fourth repeat, Kurt resisted playing it again. He felt he was sitting in Mary’s gaze, that faraway peace, and the thought of her compelled him to his editing room to work. Launching the GX had been draining, and though he kept his regular working hours on The Walk, those afternoons had been going badly. He’d been making decisions in circles, deciding something only to undecide hours later, a cycle of sabotage that had been going on for a year, since he had impulsively and somewhat accidentally broken his self-imposed rule of not watching any films until he was done working (the practice, he’d been told, of a certain award-laden editor).
He blamed this misstep on an aspiring actress he’d met at a party who had never seen 8½ (A crime, he said), but midway through screening the film Kurt realized his error and jumped from his chair. The actress asked if he was okay, but Kurt insisted everything was fine and she should keep watching, that it was a fucking perfect work of fucking art, that Fellini had just enough self-awareness to complicate traditional filmmaking and enough cultural isolation to preserve his aesthetic vision, and Kurt was overcome with a certainty that no one would ever make a film anywhere near the brilliance of 8½, that we all knew too much now, had seen too much now, and everything was lost, hopeless.
The actress noticed the struggle between Kurt’s eyes and skull as he spoke, as if his sockets had to somehow clench to stop his eyes from bulging out. She watched the rest of the film alone—at first a little rattled and antsy, then overtaken by the film’s dreamy beauty—while Kurt went to his editing room to delete his most recent cut of The Walk. Then he found and deleted the raw footage, then the second and third backups, and he wept in anger until he realized that Matheson had a fourth backup at his place, then he wept harder and more pathetically because he realized he didn’t have the nerve to delete those files, that he had to make something from the years of imperfect work he’d already put into it, the life he was wasting on subpar art. And he knew it would be inferior to the sort of work that outlived its maker and he knew he would have to live with that, that he had no easy way to bridge the distance between what he wished he could make and whatever he’d made so far. All he could do was salvage the scraps, finish it, and move on—though even that was proving impossible. It had been years. He didn’t like to think of how many.
But that actress (he couldn’t remember her name now) had been contaminated with her awe of 8½ and wouldn’t stop talking about it even after Kurt tried twice to change the subject. What was it he said…? she asked. No, I remember, he said, I have nothing to say, but I still want to say it. I loved that part! It’s like acting, sort of, that I really want to say something but I want someone else to tell me what to say, you know?
She went on like that for a while until Kurt said, Let’s call you a car, and he noticed a look of momentary confusion in her face, then a visible calculation over whether she wanted to leave without having the sex they had both assumed would happen, then a look of relief when she realized she’d actually gotten the intimacy she wanted, a little late-night attention for being alive, and for a few minutes they talked about almost literally nothing (a rumor about a casting director they both knew), before she took the elevator down. He never saw her again. He called Matheson immediately to say that it had just occurred to him that the inconsistency of his sexual and romantic life was probably the real culprit of his constantly derailed creative process, an idea that eventually led to the GX.
He had tried to explain his theory of the relationship between the creative and the romantic to the Intellectual Girlfriend, but he could tell from the way she looked at him (always a yawn in her eyes) that she didn’t believe or adequately understand what he was saying. Thoughts of Mary flashed like spliced film—her relaxed gaze, the sense he had that she understood him so clearly—and surely, he thought, surely there must be a way to measure and prove and replicate that feeling he had with Mary, to make it occur at will between people.
The Intellectual Girlfriend, though—perhaps she was too intellectual. Perhaps that was her problem—taking herself too seriously. She always had so much to say, spoke in complete sentences, seemed to intentionally use words Kurt didn’t understand, undid his ideas with the ease of slipping a button through its eye. Listening to her—which it felt like most of his sessions were since she talked over him if he tried to interject into the conversation, bulldozing over anything he could have added, though if she would ever have given him the chance, she would likely have found his ideas to be relevant—listening to her filled Kurt with a heavy dread. She had a Ph.D. in something, in the aesthetics of something or the psychology of something, a degree so specific and pretentious sounding he was sure it was fake (though Matheson assured him it checked out), and she was always taking a stance decidedly against anything that Kurt said, and she didn’t seem to respect any of his work as an actor, which he believed
had, in a way, earned him a sort of honorary doctorate in psychology—from experience, he said, I’ve truly experienced other minds in a way that most people don’t get the chance, spending months in a character’s head, an immersive sort of knowledge that psychologists probably don’t even get—but the Intellectual Girlfriend was having none of it and went on some rant about anecdote and experience versus data and observation and she even had the nerve to call the whole GX into question, which was the last goddamn straw for Kurt. That was it. He was done.
She’s out, he told Matheson, bursting into his office, send her home, I’m done.
It rattled Matheson to see Kurt so rattled, but Matheson tried to keep it together, flipping open to the index of his handbook and finding the Proposal to Alter the Experiment Protocol.
We’re not doing that, Kurt said. Just send her home.
And Matheson understood (he did, he really did) how stressful it can be to build something this complicated, to take risks the way that Kurt was willing to take risks, to do something that had never before been done (and Matheson admired him for that), but the truth was (and Matheson knew this and he knew that Kurt knew this) that rules and structures and protocols were there for a reason. And that reason was this reason. Times like this.
I’m hearing that you’re stressed, that you’re upset, so if you could just give me a Complaint Statement, you know, that might ease some of that stress. And I can put it on the Incident Report for us and we can send an Amendment Proposal over to the Research Division, and this should all be—
Just send her home, Kurt said, and the silence that followed this quietly crushed Matheson, who knew that Kurt knew that Matheson was really, really triggered when Kurt cut him off midsentence. They had been through this. They had been through this several times. They’d even had a few mediation sessions about this with Yuri, and Matheson had really thought Kurt had changed, and it hurt and exhausted Matheson in this moment to feel all the work they’d put into their communication just vanish. Matheson looked at Kurt, waiting on the inevitable apology, but he got nothing. Kurt turned to stare out the window, folding his arms, holding his ground.
Silently, Matheson rehearsed a rebuttal: that he was already managing all the girlfriends, all their changing schedules and million little questions and that half of them seemed allergic to reading their handbooks and some of them came to their sessions five, ten minutes behind schedule and a few times not at all, and he was working nearly twice his usual hours and it was really, when you got down to it, not really a part of his fucking job description to have to manage Kurt’s sudden scientific whims, not that he was complaining, Matheson said to himself, in his anger, but was it so much to ask for Kurt—Kurt of all people—to just follow the fucking protocol?
It’s just that, you know, Matheson said to Kurt, exerting all possible energy to keep his tone respectful, it’s actually really important that we respect the division of the personal, professional, and scientific boundaries of the GX. Don’t you think we have a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the Research Division’s work?
This was the second time in a day Kurt had been directly challenged by someone he was paying, someone who was not even adequately listening to him, and though Kurt theoretically respected Matheson, his assistant of many good years now, a part of Kurt right then had also run out of the energy to respect anyone at all. He stared through Matheson, said nothing.
I’m sorry. I’m only trying to do what’s best for the GX, Matheson said, all the work you’ve put into it, you know?
He knew it sounded as if he was groveling, which Kurt hated, but all Matheson wanted, like any misunderstood love wants, was to be understood again, to be in the same reality as Kurt again, so Matheson hit the emergency exit, the way we all try to return, immediately, to a better place: he said, No, I’m sorry, you’re right.
* * *
When Matheson entered the Research Division office a moment later, everyone was hunched over scattered papers or making calculations on one of the whiteboards or watching numbers and graphs shoot across the screens. Matheson cleared his throat to get their attention and at once they all stopped, as if by some secret choreography, stilling their hands, turning to face him.
Ah, excuse me, we just wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to let the Intellectual Girlfriend go.
In pairs, they turned to each other, some of them whispering too quietly to be heard, others consulting each other wordlessly, until one of them, a hollow-chested man with closely shorn hair, said, That would be fine.
And we’ve decided in this case not to go through with the Experiment Alteration Protocol as outlined in the handbook, Matheson added with an unnecessary sense of authority, and we’re just going to send her home, the Intellectual Girlfriend.
But they had all returned to their work, no longer listening to him. One or two of them looked up briefly, as if to let him know that he could leave them now, so, dejected, he did, returning to his office to find Kurt still standing where he’d left him, thinking, thinking. What was he always thinking of?
I think you’re overworked, Kurt said, his back still to Matheson, whose body loosened with relief when he heard this.
You’re probably right, he said, trying to seem strong.
So let’s skip our Tuesday meeting.
About The Walk? But—
No, I think—I’ve decided to have Research do an experiment with Mary and my editing process. It makes more sense, especially since we’ve let Intellectual go. So let them know for me, will you?
And Kurt was gone.
Matheson looked at the shut door and replayed what Kurt had said again and again. He considered going after Kurt, telling him he wouldn’t let this happen, that he was worried about him, really worried, that he couldn’t just make such a large decision this quickly, but he just sat, staring at the door. How had Kurt just disregarded Matheson’s years of experience for the sake of an experiment? He imagined what he would look like as he made this speech to Kurt. Perhaps Kurt would begin to cry stoically because he would know Matheson knew him so well, better than anyone else.
But Matheson didn’t go after him, instead sat at his desk and quietly considered all the ways it might go if he did go after him. What if Kurt had never much liked Matheson’s ideas? He caught himself chewing on a pen. He put it down, pulled at a cuticle until it bled. He thought about getting back into therapy, but immediately discarded the idea and instead drifted off, as he did so often, to that moment that happened a few years back—Matheson had been heading for the elevator after a long day’s work when Kurt initiated (really, went out of his way to initiate) a hug that was much firmer than usual, and as they released from each other, Kurt sort of lingered (no, he definitely lingered) just ever so slightly (or more than slightly) near Matheson’s face—and Matheson had long been attracted to Kurt but had always dismissed this attraction because Matheson was a professional and nearly everyone on the planet was attracted to Kurt Sky and of course there was the power dynamic between them and basically there was nothing but reasons (so many reasons) why Matheson should not read so much into being attracted to Kurt, to not be so stupid to fall for his boss (his most likely mostly straight boss), and even though Kurt seemed to intentionally linger in this hug (more of an embrace, really) for long enough that there seemed to be a suggestion in it, Matheson could not let himself believe in this suggestion because it was too painful to wonder if this had been his chance to change everything and he’d missed it.
He had quickly said good-night to Kurt, eventually resigning himself to never knowing what (if anything) Kurt had been trying to covertly convey. Sometimes Matheson was certain that Kurt had been trying to begin something with him and it had been Matheson who’d put up a boundary, remained professional, rejected him, and though there was some power in seeing the moment that way, there was just as much sadness.
12
Sometimes I think I can’t edit this film because I can’t feel anything about it anym
ore.
Everything was black in the editing room—black walls, black floor, ceiling, computer, all the furniture—everything except the white tabletop hovering above imperceptible black legs. It dizzied Mary to be there, as if she’d been set loose in space. Kurt sat at the table, facing the three large screens that hung in a triptych, each paused on slightly different close-ups of his own face. Hours could easily pass like this—Kurt staring at three images of himself, clicking a keyboard and a mouse to make tiny adjustments to the same few seconds of film, trying to decode something in the scene, figure out what was off about it, maybe the color, maybe the cropping, or maybe it needed a few more pauses, or a quicker cut between frames, or maybe he needed to go back to the raw footage to find something that had been lost somewhere, and maybe he’d overlooked the better take, lost something along the way. Always, it seemed, something had been lost along the way.
Everything is in the details—his back to her, speaking as if he were giving a presentation to a large crowd, but there was only Mary. The room was so insulated and small she could hear every key and mouse click. He was playing and replaying three different takes of himself saying, Everything else has failed—and as he played and replayed the clips for almost an hour—Everything else has failed—the pitch and tone and rhythm of those words became lodged in her head like a song—Everything else has failed—another pause of a few seconds, another adjustment to the frame, and again—Everything else has failed.
The Answers Page 15