The Answers

by Catherine Lacey

  What a danger it is to love, how it warps a person from the inside, changes all the locks and loses all the keys.

  16

  Ed lightly pressed an elbow into Mary’s back, asked if she’d been using a cell phone.

  I can tell from this little knob right here. And here, too. He rested two fingers, just barely, in the slight hollow behind her ear. You should try to limit how much you use it, or stop using it completely, at least until our work is done.

  I can’t, she said, her face mushed in the cradle, it’s for work.

  For the travel agency?

  New job—second job.

  Doing … what exactly?

  A personal, um, assistant kind of work.

  Anything strange about how this person behaves toward you?

  She knew usual and unusual didn’t apply, so she said, after some consideration, No.

  Are they reliable?

  I guess so, sure.

  Pay on time?

  Uh-huh.

  Mm.

  They were silent for a while. Ed had her flip over and she stared at the ceiling while he rolled a wooden sphere across her belly. The lights were low. He placed a small green crystal on her forehead.

  Heard from Chandra recently?

  No.

  She lied without even considering the truth, not wanting to think about the way she had been hearing from Chandra, refusing to believe it was Chandra.

  I think she may be traveling.

  Ed nodded, moved the crystal to her chest. It was exactly as Chandra had told him it would be—an energetic contamination.

  And you’re still not involved with anyone … romantically?

  No.

  Not dating or sleeping with anyone?

  No, nothing.

  You do understand why it would be important to our work that I know that, right?

  Of course.

  That I need to know about any psychic cords that could be interacting with your pneuma in order to best prepare and protect myself from the aura displacement?

  Ed had that neck cramp again, and a discomfort deep in his left wrist. He kept having visions of Mary without eyes. Possibly he’d become too emotionally involved with her, but in meditation the previous night, he’d gotten a clear message from Chandra about Mary’s secrecy and self-destructiveness, that he had to be careful, that she was more energetically poisonous than she might realize.

  Okay, he said, just let me know if anything changes.

  Mary nodded, got up, got dressed, and tried to understand what, if anything, all her time with Ed meant, when you added it all up, when you smushed it together: all these hours they’d spent together, half-clothed, trying to make life better. What was that if it wasn’t a relationship? Did love have to be declared to exist or was it just as real when it was a silent belief? It seemed to her that people could call love whatever they wanted, but it was really just a long manipulation, a changing, a willingness to be changed.

  Perhaps all the time she’d spent working for the GX had confused her, she thought, had made her try to quantify a thing that couldn’t be quantified, but, still—had she grown to love Ed or was she just dependent on what he did to her? And what was the difference between those things? Did she even want to know? He stared at her so neutrally sometimes she couldn’t help but wonder what he might be hiding and sometimes she wanted to ask him what he was feeling about her, what he would call it if he had to give it a word. This might be what a marriage felt like, a puzzle, a staring contest.

  * * *

  As she left Ed’s office her GX phone had three missed calls, four texts, and a voice mail, all from Matheson.

  —confirming you for 5pm, quick meeting b4 wardrobe

  —let me know

  —call me as soon as u get this

  —important that u call

  —Hi, Mary, this is Matheson. Okay, so, I’m having a little trouble reaching you and it’s been over an hour so just make sure you call me as soon as you get this. Okay.

  Mary called as she walked up Broadway, sidewalks dense with slow tourist traffic, and just as Matheson picked up, she passed a man bulging in a navy suit, shouting into his phone … can go to hell, he can just eat my dick.

  Mary?

  Hi, yeah, I’m just walking back to work. I had a, um, doctor’s appointment and—

  That’s not on your conflicts and commitments sheet.

  I didn’t realize I needed—

  Mary, do you really understand how your position in the GX requires you to be reachable at all times?

  It’s just—

  And it’s very simple for you to let us know ahead of time when you have something like a doctor’s appointment. Unless it was urgent—was it urgent? Sudden? Are you dying of something? Are you contagious?

  No, I just didn’t realize I needed to tell you.

  Maybe you should have read that part of your handbook a bit more carefully. Jesus! Doesn’t anyone read their fucking handbooks?

  Mary ducked into one of those metal shells that used to hold a public phone so she could hear him more clearly. Everything smelled like urine and dirty hair and the man who’d suggested someone could eat his dick was down the street now, buying an ice cream cone from a truck, vanilla, rainbow sprinkles.

  And actually, Matheson continued, the reason I needed you to come in earlier is that we want to bring you on full-time, so you need to quit your other job as soon as possible.

  Oh.

  But do you really think you’re ready for that?

  She knew she was barely ready to be alive, but she also felt she didn’t have a choice, that circumstance had whittled her options, that her body needed PAKing and PAKing needed the GX and the GX needed her, now, all her hours. It seemed possible that she’d never made a choice of her own. It seemed that all her life she’d been moved by circumstance instead of desire, that she’d never had to consider the possibility of being ready or not ready for something. She heard herself saying, Yes, I’m ready, I can.

  * * *

  In the office Mary taped a note to her computer screen—Quit—and though she had no sentimental attachment to this job, and though she never looked forward to work, quitting felt somehow like a loss, as if she had to do it quickly, quietly. But then, as she was waiting for the service elevator to arrive, she noticed a stack of boxes—extra copy paper and office supplies or whatever—and just as the elevator doors opened, she pushed it all over, a rumble and a smash and a few loose sheets of paper sent flying up and floating down.

  The elevator descended. She smiled.

  17

  They ate blossoms and mosses, saps, uncommon pickles, thin slices of flesh.

  Fiddle-fern mousse, petrified hake, reduced algae, Chef Breton said, as if reciting a prayer, gesturing to the plate just placed before them.

  Mary stared at a lump of something coated in green jelly as Kurt told her Kandinsky was Chef Breton’s main inspiration for his plating technique, that he had won an award just for the way he put food on a plate. She looked at these award-winning smears, at Kurt, back at the smears. The dinner was supposed to be a celebration but it felt like an ordeal, a fuss to honor her going full-time. Eating it was half-pleasant and half-unpleasant, the same as almost everything lately—the uncomfortable relief of PAKing, the interesting annoyance of being around Kurt, the lonely contentment she felt in her apartment, earning all this money but immediately giving it to Ed or throwing it into the debt pit. Kurt kept talking about whatever he talked about, and Mary listened in the way she’d been taught and when he finally stopped talking for a minute, closing his eyes while chewing a walnut-oil-vaporized golden heirloom beet, she wondered if this was how he came to be how he was—always being seen and never seeing.

  That night she was to replace, for the first time, the Sleeping Girlfriend. Matheson had gone through the sleepover protocol just before dinner: the meditation, the showering with precise amounts of certain soaps, the facial regimen, the gray silk slip, the bedtime determined by
Kurt’s circadian-rhythm tracker and the schedule of the sun. She was to be in bed first, waiting for him with her eyes open (very important that you have your eyes open), and that night, as he did most nights a week, Kurt had a forty-minute session with an IT Girlfriend in a room on the other side of the loft, followed by a shower and an evening meditation before joining Mary in his bedroom.

  She was to be on her left side, facing west on the west side of the bed, and he slept beside her, each of them with their knees bent to 140 degrees, his knees bent behind her bent knees, his right arm curved around her waist, forearm against her forearm. They lay like that for seventeen minutes of silent holding before Kurt rolled onto his back, his left leg stretched out close to her so he could feel the heat of her sleeping. She was to remain on her side or, if necessary, turn onto her back or belly at the same time he turned onto his back, so her movement wouldn’t disturb him. In the morning the curtains, automated, slowly parted to wake them, at which point Mary was to resume her initial position on her side, knees bent, waiting for Kurt to roll back to her, resuming the silent holding position for seven minutes until Kurt got up and left. Mary was then sent away until three, told to go wherever and do whatever she pleased as long as it was something she could later tell Kurt about, though he never asked.

  She went home wearing the makeup and clothes the GX had supplied—You’ll only wear pieces from our wardrobe from now on, Matheson explained—and she noticed how this made the city move around her in new ways. People held doors open for her everywhere, smiled at her for no particular reason, told her to have a nice day. She felt eyes drift toward her, and the sort of women she’d felt invisible beside started giving her knowing glances or asking who had made this piece she was wearing. Everything had become a piece, not a dress, a piece. She never knew who had made it, so she just shrugged. This seemed to be impressive—this ignorance—though she didn’t understand why.

  In her apartment she’d always take the piece off, hang it up by the door, and put on the same musky sweatshirt, trying to think of something interesting to do that Kurt wasn’t going to ask about anyway. Usually she settled on nothing or went for a walk up the river, where she would sometimes read and reread e-mails from Chandra on her phone, enigmatic lines that arrived at all hours. Somehow Chandra had gotten her GX e-mail, and though Mary wasn’t sure how that could have been possible, nothing really seemed possible or impossible anymore.

  I want you to know that your communications are being received.

  We realize you have been taken hostage.

  We’re all very proud of you. But you must remain on alert. Do not trust them.

  Sometimes Mary tried to resist opening these messages, as she knew nothing was to be gained but more confusion, but she always gave in. She had been indifferent about the GX phone at first, would sometimes misplace it or not hear its alerts, but now that it was her only point of connection to Chandra she never let it out of her sight and sometimes, when she couldn’t find it for a moment, she’d frantically search around her apartment, only to realize that she’d been intensely clutching it the whole time. Mary caught herself curled around the phone at all hours, checking and rechecking for word from Chandra (or “Chandra” or someone, or something). Sometimes Mary sent a reply, and even though they bounced back, she still held out hope they might somehow be going through.

  During her sessions at the loft, Mary felt a constant, stymied impulse to check her phone. She was half-removed from the room, there and not there.

  It’s been almost four months, Matheson said to her one day in his office. She didn’t understand what he was saying. Four months. Remember what you were supposed to do at some point after three months? We had been so hoping it would happen organically, you know. Saying you love him? Remember?

  It had always been unclear to Mary why saying these words in this order—I love you—had been made into such a spectacle. In college she had listened to other girls debate the reasonable amount of time two people had to spend together before it could be said and whether it was better to do the saying or the hearing for the first time. And she remembered Paul saying it for the first time to her, his palm sweaty and so much terror in his eyes. Mary wondered if hearing himself say these words made him doubt their substance. (But they were in love, weren’t they? Weren’t they?) It seemed that everything that had to be done and felt before these words became true, the daily vulnerability, the ever-increasing risk, the sustained nerve to look into the same face each day (as if to say, Still me? Still you?), all of this meant so much more than a sentence. (Subject, verb, object. Subject, verb, object, modifier.) Once two loved each other, it had already been said, just as when the love was undone, she thought, neither had to speak it. It simply became clear.

  If she loved Kurt, she didn’t love him in a way she recognized, but by enacting the evidence of love she had noticed some amount of strangeness in her. She might have loved the strangeness, she thought, and that might have been enough. Anyway, saying some words wasn’t hard for her, so the afternoon Matheson reminded her of this task, she said them. It was the middle of a Personal History and Opinion Sharing Relational Experiment, and when it was her turn to speak, she said she loved him instead of answering whatever he’d asked.

  Kurt stared at her, or above her or just over her shoulder. Sometimes she couldn’t get a good read on where he was looking, what he was seeing. He smiled, looked down, widened his smile, looked up, said, I love you, too, and embraced her. But later he complained to Matheson that Mary had picked a sort of stale moment to say it for the first time.

  I thought so, too, Matheson said.

  But I do believe her, Kurt said, though he didn’t believe himself when he said that he believed her. Yet, she must have loved him. How could she not? The perfect environment had been created, Kurt thought, to create a pure and unwanting love, untethered to sex, without obligation, beyond a community—a love that asks for nothing. Or this is what he thought had been created, until a report came from the Research Division advising they let Mary go.

  Disorganized attachment, they said. Pretty typical. Sure, she’s doing all the protocols, but the data sets she’s creating are inconsistent. Some days it seems she’s in love, but on those days her activity patterns reflect a sort of nostalgic state, like she’s reliving a memory instead of being in the moment.

  Are you saying she’s incapable of this, Kurt asked, is that what you’re saying?

  That wasn’t what they were saying, but they knew enough now to not always say what they really meant to Kurt.

  It’s not yet clear what we’re saying, they said.

  He told them he’d consider it.

  (In truth, Mary’s involvement in the GX was simply getting in the Research Division’s way. She didn’t respond to Internal Directives in any way that made sense to them—she hardly responded to them at all—and her data, in general, was boring. They hadn’t even been able to run any significant tests on Kurt in their sessions and those who had first been interested in the Mary-Kurt dynamic had moved on to more interesting problems. She was dead weight.)

  That night Kurt dreamed about the Girlfriend Experiment as a kind of city, with each girlfriend being a street that ran parallel to the others, no intersections, so the city was impossible to traverse. He wandered this unpeopled city, trying to climb over buildings or squeeze through narrow alleyways to reach other streets. In the morning he was completely convinced the GX needed some kind of integration—especially with Mary. Perhaps if she better understood her role within this larger project, if she understood the importance of her assignments, then she would be able to feel more for Kurt. Yes, Kurt had known all along (hadn’t he?) that something had always been just under the surface with Mary, just out of reach. He felt sure there was some depth, some greater thing that could exist between the two of them if only they could reach it, if only they could shock it from themselves. He felt more urgently about Mary than he ever had, an urgency that paced around him, had no place to go
.

  What was it that she was missing or not letting herself feel? What was it? How could he reach it? How could he show it to her?

  18

  You’re a terrible person, Ashley said, a horrible fucking person.

  Kurt and Mary stood at the elevator, which shut and sank behind them. Kurt moved toward her, said Ash as if it were his pet name for her, or maybe just because her punch stopped his mouth.

  You bitch, he said, hunched over, his hand muffling his words. You fucking bitch, he said, louder, as if she’d asked him to repeat himself.

  Ashley was silent for a moment, smiling, cracking her knuckles.

  Right … I’m the bitch, I’m the bitch, yeah, keep telling yourself that.

  Over dinner earlier that night, Kurt had told Mary about an experimental theater group that staged their work for unsuspecting audiences, blurring the line between life and performance, and when Ashley first began her attack, Mary watched with a kind of presence that would have been impossible if looking at a stage or a screen; it wasn’t until later that she wondered if the conversation at dinner had been intended as a clue.

  She knew she wasn’t allowed to ask what Ashley and Kurt might have done together, what she might have meant to him, what he had promised to her, but something in Ashley’s face made Mary wonder if this anger was her own, not assigned. Mary had a strong desire to comfort her, to push the hair from her face, to hold her still and feel the muscles release under her skin, but soon Ashley had punched Kurt again, then kicked him hard in the knees, and as he fell, Ashley bolted through the emergency exit, the alarm swirling on, leaping down the back stairs and bounding into the night.

  Kurt was shaking, ablaze with two women in heightened emotional states over him, that contrast, the sense of being caught. A rush of cortisol and adrenaline had wordlessly bonded him to Mary as he looked at her now. She brought him a dish towel to sop up the blood, and he could tell the experiment had already worked, that something had intensified between them.