As She Climbed Across the Table

by Jonathan Lethem

  The day was cold and bright. I crossed the lawns, retracing my steps. I’d slept badly. I was sealed in a pocket of leftover night, mouth dry, eyelids swollen.

  I went back to the physics facility. Now the hallways bustled with students, their hair wet from the shower, mauling bagels or croissants as they hurried to check the outcomes of overnight experiments. Instruments that had been quiet the night before beeped and blinked at me, as though they’d detected an inauthentic presence. I was a bit of the night myself, haunting the new day. Garth would have called me a time traveler.

  Lack’s outer doors were open. Phase two had started. I went inside. I was alone in the observation room. The overhead screen was dead. The blinds were down over the window to the Cauchy-space lab. I levered them open, and there was Alice in the intermediate zone, the clean room. She had her back to me. Her face was pressed against the glass of the window to Lack’s chamber.

  Inside, Braxia and the Italian team frenziedly set up their equipment, a galaxy of cameras, detectors, shields, counters, and meters, a forest that overwhelmed Lack’s little table. I raised my hand to tap at the glass, to draw Alice’s attention, then stopped.

  What would I say to her?

  So I watched. Watched Braxia command his efficient team, and watched Alice watching, leaning on her elbows, her devotion to Lack absolute. She must have hated to see him swarmed over by the Italians. We made a pyramid, Braxia observing Lack, Alice observing Braxia and Lack, myself observing all three. I thought: If Alice still feels my eye tracks, she’ll turn. She didn’t. I shut the blinds and went out of the facility.

  My first class was at three. I needed a shower and a shave before then. Maybe a nap. But if I killed some time the blind men would go out. I could have the apartment to myself. I raised my collar against the morning wind and hiked up the sunny path to the soccer fields. Practice was underway.

  My graduate student had applied for funding to study the geographic spray of athletes on a playing field following an injury. He wanted to understand the disbursement of bodies around the epicenter of the wounded player, the position of the medics and coaches, and the sympathy or skepticism implicit in the stances chosen. All taking into account the seriousness of the injury, the score in the match when it occurred, the value of the player injured. Et cetera. I’d written an effusive letter in support of the application. The work had been funded generously. My student was here now on the sidelines, jotting notes on a clipboard as he watched the players sprint. I moved up beside him.

  The players on the sidelines jogged in place, cold in their shorts, skin red and goose-pimpled, tousled hair glinting in the late-November sun. They were used to seeing my student by now, but they seemed wary of me. The coach straddled the line, barking orders, slapping at the men as they joined the drills.

  “Subjects who express sympathy at a teammate’s fall are sixty-eight percent likelier to sustain a treatable gravity-related injury in the same game,” my student said, not looking at me, his eyes trained on the field.

  “That’s good work,” I said.

  “Subjects who assume a sympathetic posture at an opponent’s fall are another sixteen percent likelier.”

  “Very good.”

  We were like athletes ourselves, perfecting a purely meaningless activity, ears growing numb in the wind. I felt a solidarity with the players. I wanted to sustain a treatable gravity-related injury myself. I tested my weight surreptitiously, faked a limp.

  It was good to see my student so busy doing what I’d taught him to do. Looking for the hidden data, the facts that hide inside obvious things. The interdisciplinary dark matter. And a protégé confirmed my existence in the world. I felt grateful. I wanted to share some kernel of advice with him, some warning about women, but nothing came to mind. It was okay. We were safe here, on the sidelines, far from danger.

  So we watched the players drill. Passing the ball, rolling it backward with their toes, popping it up with their knees and foreheads. Running patterns, in bursts of speed, then falling away. The goalies lunged from side to side, protecting the sanctity of the delineated space. And when a defenseman shot suddenly upward, then fell groaning to the ground, players around him freezing, assuming revealing postures, the ball rolling to a stop unmanned, my student and I rushed together onto the field, huffing, experts who’d been waiting in abeyance for the right time to assume their roles, and had a closer look.

  Alice’s first shift began at noon, three days later. Soft had reassigned her the key, after extracting solemn promises. Still, I meant to be there. I spent the morning in my office attempting to make good on my threats to Soft, drawing up and discarding a series of mediocre proposals for use of Lack-time, getting nowhere. Faced with Lack I became Lack-like myself. I had nothing to say, no experiment to conduct. I wanted to represent the needs of those baffled and helpless before Lack, but I resembled my own constituency too closely.

  So I sat crumpling sheets of paper. The problem was that my usual approach—anthropology—would give blessing to Alice’s anthropomorphization of Lack. I wanted to prove Alice wrong, to show Lack to be a dead thing, a mistake, a cosmic pothole. But the physicists were in charge of that. So I ground to a halt, let my pen hand fall to the desk. And looked up at the clock.

  Late.

  I was late for Alice’s first shift. Potential disaster. Did I want her to throw herself in? I ran from my office, and across campus, to the physics facility. Eyes bulging with terror, I made my way down in the elevator, to Lack’s suite. The doors were locked. I pounded on them.

  This would be a magnificent rescue. Or a tragic near miss.

  Nothing. I pounded again.

  The handle turned, with a calmness that was an admonishment. Braxia’s florid face appeared.

  “Hello,” he said. “You would like to come in.”

  “Yes.”

  “By all means, dear fellow. Come in.”

  The lights were off in the observation room. The equipment was quiet. Braxia led me through to Lack’s chamber, which was lit. Most of the Italian team’s various monitors were folded away into the corners of the room. Lack’s table was spotlit in the center of the floor, alone. Laid out on wax paper on the near side of it was a sandwich and a green plastic supermarket basket of strawberries.

  Braxia turned to me, looking vaguely menacing in the shadows. “It’s nice in here now, no?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, panting, surely bright red.

  “Well. So. An unexpected visit, eh?”

  “It’s Professor Coombs’ first shift,” I said. “Where is she?”

  He folded his arms and looked at me appraisingly. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile.

  “Where is she?” I said again.

  “She came already and went already,” said Braxia. “You missed her.”

  For one deranged moment I imagined that Braxia had committed some act of violence. Lack, the perfect murder weapon. I took an involuntary step backward before I regained my poise.

  Braxia turned to the table, and picked up a neat triangle of sandwich. Mayonnaise glistened in the spotlight. “You’re very worried about her, I gather,” he said.

  “I’m supposed to administer her shift.”

  “Watch over her, you mean. Because of Soft’s concern.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, Soft asked me to do the same. So here I was. No problem.”

  “Soft asked you to watch Alice?”

  Braxia smiled disingenuously. “Yes, my dear fellow, he did.” He bit off the corner of the half-sandwich, then fit the rest of it back into place on the wax paper.

  “Well,” I said, feeling a bit testy, “he asked me to watch over you and Alice. To keep an eye on you both.”

  Braxia bowed slightly, a subtle folding at the waist. “Very good,” he said. “That’s better, I admit. I will now have to petition to Soft to be permitted to watch over you as well.”

  He smiled again. I was unnerved by his breezy amiability. The blithe way
he stood chewing his sandwich while I panted.

  “Well, what happened?” I said finally.

  “Oh. What happened. She came in here, asked to be alone, so I went outside. It was about five minutes, and she came out. Crying. And she went away. That’s all.” He picked up his sandwich, took another bite.

  “You didn’t go in with her?”

  “No. I respect her privacy.”

  “So you don’t know what happened.”

  He shrugged. “I have a guess. But no.”

  I was envious. Another man had acted as Alice’s protector in this chilly subterranean theater.

  Braxia stared at me, plainly amused. “What’s the matter?” he said.

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? My dear fellow, you look like shit. I’ll tell you what is the matter with you. You are worried that Professor Coombs, Alice, is going to put herself up here”—he slapped at the table—“and that’s it, no more Professor Coombs.”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  He smiled again. “Come here,” he said.

  I stepped up, unexpectedly fearful, to the table. It was the nearest I’d been to Lack, though I’d certainly been nearer in nightmares.

  Braxia put his hand on my shoulder, coaxed me up even closer. I moved forward and put my hand on the smooth, cool surface of the table. Braxia slid his sandwich to one side, leaving the strawberries where they sat.

  “Look,” he said. He took a ring off his left hand and hid it in his fist, then slowly moved the hand with the ring forward, across the space of the table, past the point where Lack began. He drew his fist back, opened it up. The ring was still there.

  “He doesn’t like Professor Alice, and he doesn’t like my wedding ring,” he said. “But, watch.” He picked up a strawberry, closed it in his fist, and repeated the demonstration. When he drew his hand back and opened it the strawberry was gone.

  “Me and Lack, we have the same taste in dessert. Hah! It’s a good magic show, but I keep the rest for myself.” He popped a strawberry into his mouth, then twisted away the stem and laid it on a corner of the wax paper.

  Lack doesn’t like marriage, I thought. Alice and I should have gotten married. That was our mistake. Lack would have left us alone.

  “It is very interesting, this idea your Professor Coombs has. Or is it more of an emotion than an idea, eh? I think so. To put herself into the Lack. You think it’s terrible, I can see. But myself, I understand it a little. I feel it in myself too.” He met my eyes. “You wish I didn’t know about this idea of hers.”

  Humbled, I nodded.

  “Here.” He gestured at his sandwich. “You want some? Hen salad.”

  “Hen salad?”

  “I’m losing a word. Rooster?”

  “Rooster salad,” I said. “No thank you.”

  He shrugged, took another bite of sandwich, and chewed it into one cheek. “You seem afraid that I am going to make some trouble for Professor Alice, eh? But you are wrong. I think it’s charming. I want to help her.”

  “How?” I was jealous. “Help her disappear?”

  Braxia swallowed the cheekful. “You know the outcome of the experiments,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “The Lack never changes his mind. If he refuses something once, he refuses it forever. He is consistent in this way, yes?”

  I nodded, feeling thick.

  Braxia put down his sandwich and extended his arm through Lack again. “He will never take my ring, and he will never take Professor Alice. No matter what her passion dictates. No matter how often she tries. So it might be better, if she needs to try, that we let her. Yes?” He pulled his arm back. “Have a strawberry.”

  The barbed wire loosened from around my heart. “You really think he’ll never take her?” I said.

  “I really think he’ll never take her,” said Braxia, through another mouthful of sandwich.

  “Would he take someone else?”

  “I don’t know, my dear fellow. It is a good question, but hard to ask, don’t you think? Not too many volunteers. Strap on a transmitter, jump across the table. Hah!”

  “Where would they end up? What’s on the other side?”

  “That’s the whole question, isn’t it? That’s what we all want to know. Is it a tiny little universe in there? Maybe every time I drop a strawberry I crush three or four little suns! But who knows. We’re trying.” He indicated the roomful of equipment, with obvious pride. “When I have my answer, be sure, my dear fellow, you’ll hear about it.”

  “You’re sure it’ll be you who gets the answer.”

  “Hah! Very good. Yes, I think so. Soft, he’s not so strong anymore. He’s in retreat. And your Professor Coombs, she’s asking a very different kind of question now, I think. More about herself than about the Lack.”

  “What about the graduate students?”

  “The graduate students.” Braxia snorted. “Yes. Have you heard their proposal?”

  “No.”

  “The idea is to build a monitor, an information-gathering device, out of only those materials the Lack desires. A Lack-compatible device, to launch across the table. Hah!” He slapped at Lack’s table again. “It is very clever, and also deeply idiotic. Lack will refuse the device. You know why? They will build it out of driftwood, strawberries, whatever Lack likes. Then one day Lack changes his mind, says no more strawberries. Besides, the Lack likes things for themselves, not for components. A device is no longer the things it is made up of, it is a device. The students will be very lucky if Lack eats their monitor. No, they are in no danger of learning anything.” He poked me in the chest. “If you were a physicist, perhaps you would be my competition. But.”

  “You seem to be saying that Lack is a metaphysical phenomenon. So I should be just as qualified as you to uncover his meaning. If he is, as you say, interested in the idea of things in themselves. Meanings. Texts.”

  Braxia’s eyes bugged with excitement, as if he might inflate and float to the ceiling. Instead he seized up the final corner of his sandwich and pushed it into his mouth.

  “Okay,” he said. “Very good again. I like talking with you. Yes, Lack is interested in the idea, but not metaphysical. There is nothing metaphysical. We only have to uncover the underlying physics behind it. Soft created an experiment, remember? He wanted to do some fancy physics, bring something new into the world. And he succeeded. Hah! So now we take a good look at this thing. Texts, yes. That’s a good word, texts. Soft has written a new text. But it is a physics text. From physics comes physics. I will prove it to you personally.”

  “I look forward to it.”

  “Oh, but don’t stop your own work. I won’t hear of it. Please, come and decode the text in your own way. I will follow your work eagerly. And while you read the book, I will tell you how and why there is a book, and more. I will tell you how there is a shelf for the book, and a house for the shelf, and so on.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t quite follow you.”

  “Listen, my dear fellow. I’m studying the universe. Lack is just a part, a clue. I’ll explain Lack, and then I’ll explain the rest to you, too. The whole thing. That’s my job.”

  “So you’re getting somewhere. You’re learning something about Lack.”

  He screwed up his forehead. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Engstrand. I have twelve men here, young, headstrong ones, who can think of nothing but physics. Like Soft, or me, ten years ago. They do what I tell them, they work around the clock for me. We will shoot the Lack with sonar, radioactivity, demagnetized particles, tachyons, whatever I can cook up. I am very patient, Mr. Engstrand. I am going to find the signal that can bounce back out, and then I am going to describe the world to which the Lack is a door. Trust me, my dear fellow.”

  “But there’s nothing yet.”

  “Just strawberries.”

  “And in the meantime you’ll tolerate Alice, you’ll tolerate me if I try, you’ll tolerate doddering old Soft.”

  Braxia seeme
d entertained. “Yes,” he said. “Certainly. I am fond of you already. Take your hours. I welcome you. You think I want to be here all day and all night? No! This weekend I am going to Sonoma.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “Yes. Besides, I will want you around to see when I have my breakthrough. You can document my discovery.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You make a discovery. I’ll document.” I’d had enough of his bombast now. I turned to leave. Let Braxia and Lack enjoy their strawberries. Somewhere outside the sun was shining, somewhere skies were clear.

  Before I got to the door of the chamber, though, he called to me.

  “I forgot to tell you,” he said. “When she came out of the chamber, she had her shirt on, what is the word? Inside out.” His eyes bored into mine, looking for reaction.

  I refused to show one.

  “Alice is your lady, eh?”

  “Yes, Braxia. Alice is my lady. Or was.”

  “You know what? By solving Lack I will cure your Alice for you, give you her back.”

  “I hope so,” I said honestly.

  After her second refusal by Lack, Alice fled to her parents, an hour north, for Thanksgiving. From the horn of emptiness to the horn of plenty. I came home to find her stuffing underwear into a weekend suitcase, Evan and Garth standing stiffly to one side, canes lifted. She left without once meeting my eye. The blind men and I stood listening as her car, improperly warmed up, roared out of the driveway.

  “Huh,” said Garth, with deep sourness.

  It rained that weekend. Evan and Garth and I went for walks in the mist. Weather seemed to lull the blind men to silence. It provided proof of an environment, so they no longer had to conjure one up by inventory. Turning their wet faces upward, losing shoes in the sucking mud of campus paths, they were finally convinced that their verbal weather was redundant, that a world loomed out around them.