As She Climbed Across the Table

by Jonathan Lethem

  The object wobbled perilously at the joint of the two tables. We held our breath. Then a foot descended from the interior of the probe, to steady it, and the treads reengaged. The machine rolled on. We breathed again. The students stood ready to receive signals from the other side, from inside Lack, or beyond Lack, whichever it was. From un-Lack. We all stared as the probe lumbered up to Lack’s entrance. Hoping, despite ourselves. Even Braxia, I imagine. We forgave it existing long after it really should have disappeared.

  Soon, though, it was unmistakably past Lack, and still in awkward grinding evidence on the table. For that moment when it drove on toward the far edge it seemed full of misguided valor, an object of beauty, a Quixote in full armor, but as its treads jutted idiotically over the rim of the table, and especially once it plopped stupidly off the end to crash in a heap on the tiles, treads spinning hopelessly in the air, arm fighting loose of the wreckage to grope hopelessly for orientation, it was only an embarrassment. The students turned from their monitors, clicked off their instruments, hitched their thumbs in the belt loops of their corduroys or adjusted their eyeglasses, but nobody approached the wreck. Soft coughed. Braxia rubbed at his chin. De Tooth went on scribbling. I left.

  The next night I found Alice alone in the apartment. The blind men were at Cynthia Jalter’s. Alice was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed, drawing in a spiral-bound notebook. She’d cleaned up the painting supplies. The lamp by the bed was the only light on in the apartment. Alice’s boyish, lopsided haircut had been growing out its worst irregularities, and I found myself actually charmed by the androgynous curve of her neck and scalp.

  The apartment was quiet. We were quiet. I stood in the doorway and she looked up at me. If I didn’t talk, her silence wasn’t anything abnormal. Maybe we were about to touch. As I recalled that kind of mutual, affectionate silence I stared, and she stared back.

  My inner chemistry had been hijacked by a mad scientist, who poured the fizzy, volatile contents of my heart from a test tube marked SOBER REALITY into another labeled SUNNY DELUSION, and back again, faster and faster, until the floor of my life was slick with spillage.

  “Do you want some coffee?” I said.

  She stared.

  “I guess that’s a bit naive, thinking you’ll break your silence to ask for coffee. Anyway, you probably just had coffee, just now.”

  She continued to stare.

  “Tea?” I said. “We could have tea. I heard someone say tea builds bridges between people. Coffee is more isolationist.”

  Alice smiled. My head flushed with blood.

  “I’ll make tea, then. I’ll go out and get some. You stay there. Keep smiling.”

  “Philip,” she said.

  “You spoke.”

  “Stop talking,” she said. “Stop for a minute.”

  I nodded, which she missed.

  “Why do you keep trying to talk to me, Philip?”

  “That’s it? You open your mouth to ask me why I talk to you? That’s what you have to say?”

  She nodded.

  The mad scientist dumped both test tubes on the floor, and the contents ran down the drain marked EMBITTERED.

  “I’ve thought about shutting up, believe it or not. But I think the solution is more talk, not less. I could learn ventriloquism. Ask questions and answer them myself. After Evan and Garth move out we could get some cats and dogs, and I could make up funny voices for them.”

  No reaction.

  “I talk to offer some contrast to Lack, to help you understand your options. I talk, he doesn’t. I talk because I’ve been consulting with an expert in ontological breakdown and he prescribes inane chatter. Doctor’s orders. You think I like this? It’s a living nightmare. I hear my voice in dreams, offering you coffee. This is a bedside vigil, an act of faith. And now the patient rouses to ask if I would please pull the plug on the respirator.”

  I heard footsteps. And cane taps, outside. A car door slamming. The blind men were back.

  “I talk because—listen, before they get inside, let me ask you a question: Do you think Garth would make a good blues singer? Or is that racist? I’m thinking of buying him a guitar for Christmas. You can write your answer down on a piece of paper.”

  The blind men clattered through the front door, into the darkened apartment. Alice looked away from me. Garth buzzed straight through to the kitchen, to the humming refrigerator, which spilled light into the living room. Evan walked a tight circle at the doorway until he stood facing me, approximately.

  “Philip?” he said. “Cynthia wants to talk to you. She’s waiting outside.”

  I looked at Alice again. Her eyes were stony. The moment of connection was over. If it had happened at all. Perhaps “Alice,” as previously formulated, resided more in my memory than in the depleted original container.

  “Stay there,” I said to her. “We’ll talk more in a minute. Practice moving your lips and tongue while I’m gone.”

  A car horn tooted. I went out. Cynthia sat waiting inside her rumbling, steaming Pontiac. I went to the passenger window. She powered it down a crack from her place behind the wheel. “Get in,” she said.

  I slid in beside her. “Are you with the mob?”

  “Close the door.”

  She rolled up the window and clicked on the overhead light. Our breath fogged the windows. Seated, her long legs tucked under the dash, Cynthia Jalter was the same size as me. The car was spacious, but I still felt huddled in a tiny place with her, like titillated children playing in a cardboard box.

  She dug for something in her purse. “Here.” She appeared with a thin, hand-rolled cigarette in her mouth, a lighter in her hand.

  “What’s that?”

  “Drugs,” she said, muffled through pressed-together lips. She ignited the cigarette. The surplus paper flared, then died, and the tip pulsed orange.

  “Don’t set your hair on fire. I’ve forgotten how to smother the flames of a burning woman inside a car. What’s that called, the Leibnitz Maneuver? Anyway, I’ve forgotten it.”

  “Come here,” she said, squeezing the words out airlessly. She crooked her finger and bugged her eyes.

  “I am here. You know, I have to go back inside in a minute and carry on both ends of a very important conversation—”

  Cynthia Jalter put her hand behind my neck, caught my mouth in an open, passionate kiss, and blew a lungful of smoke down my throat. I gulped, swallowing some of it, rerouting a measure through my nose, and inhaling the rest.

  “You’re not going back in there,” she said. “You’re coming with me.” She wiped a porthole in the foggy windshield, and shifted the car out of neutral.

  I spewed my smoke into the tiny airspace of the car, filling it completely. “You are with the mob, I knew it. This is a hit.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t have my coat.” I hiccupped out more smoke.

  “You’ll be fine.” She steered us out of my driveway, meanwhile drawing on the joint again, then passing it to me. I inhaled a smaller, more manageable portion. My head was already swimming, probably just from holding my breath. As I puffed inexpertly, the sealed space of the car continued to fill with smoke, becoming a kind of iron lung.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To my office. Give me that.” She smoked aggressively, her eyes on the road. “Take this.” She handed it back.

  “Why are we smoking this?” I asked between breaths.

  “To relax.”

  “Why do we want to relax?”

  She didn’t answer. We pulled up outside her office and got out in what must have appeared to be a minor explosion of smoke. The streets of Beauchamp were oddly quiet. Cynthia Jalter unlocked the door and we went in.

  When she switched on the lights the Muzak appeared too, surprisingly loud. I noticed how intricate and well-played it was. Cynthia Jalter unlocked her office and drew me inside.

  “Wait,” I said. “Listen to this.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know h
ow to turn it off.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  She smiled. “Come with me.”

  “Actual people played this music with actual instruments at some actual time,” I said. “Think of that. Actual musicians actually playing. In a recording studio. With ashtrays and cups of coffee, probably. They must have done dozens of takes sometimes. This might be take six on this particular tune. The keeper.”

  “They probably always get it right the first time.”

  “Do you think there are bootleg tapes of Muzak outtakes? Maybe they get excited by the groove and really cut loose sometimes. And the producer says, okay, boys, that was swell but now let’s try to get this wrapped so we can all go home. I bet that happens all the time.”

  “In here,” she said.

  She shut the door behind us, sealing us into her dangerously plush office. I sat on the sofa. It reminded me of the Muzak, and they both reminded me, as before, of eggnog.

  I craved eggnog.

  Cynthia Jalter sat beside me on the sofa, turned in my direction, her legs crossed. I sat facing her desk, my hands in my lap. I realized she was staring at me and turned and looked. She smiled. She was radiantly beautiful. I felt a flush of gratitude that she had taken me away from my apartment and brought me to this wonderful place. I was glad she wasn’t blond.

  “Philip.”

  “Cynthia Jalter.”

  “You don’t have to say Jalter.”

  “I like to. Why did we come to your office, Cynthia Jalter?”

  “You’re in a destructive relationship. I’m helping you. I’m your therapist.”

  “This is therapy?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s very nice.”

  “You like it?” She smiled.

  “Yes. Do you have any eggnog?”

  “Eggnog?”

  “Yes. The music sounds like eggnog. Do you know where we can get some? It’s almost Christmastime.”

  “Maybe after therapy we’ll go for eggnog.”

  “Therapy. Oh, yes.”

  Cynthia Jalter took my shoulder and turned me toward her, then drew her hair back and leaned forward. Her features were arranged in a special shape, a shape I recognized. She put her face against mine. A kiss. The sticky part of her face found mine, and they oscillated together.

  Cynthia Jalter leaned back and sighed.

  “I’ve never had this kind of therapy before,” I said. “I’m more accustomed to the talking kind.”

  “You want to talk?”

  I nodded. “Talk about couples. Coupling. The right and wrong way.”

  She sighed. “Well, the wrong way is like you and Alice. Circumscribed, myopic, inflexible. You formed a vulnerable mutual world-sphere.”

  “What?”

  “The sphere ruptured at the slightest pressure.”

  “Oh,” I said, bewildered. “What’s the right way?”

  “I’m going to show you the right way,” she said. She aligned our faces again, and we kissed. I helped. She slipped inside the shelter of my arm, which lay across the back of the couch. I put my hand on the nape of her neck, and wove my fingers into her long, smooth hair. It felt black. My hand was swallowed in it. Like an object swallowed by Lack. No, I thought, I shouldn’t be doing that, she wants me to stay separate. Don’t merge. It’s better not to merge.

  Something entered my mouth. The texture was extraordinary. Tongue. I tried to provide it a toothless, serene environment there, in my mouth. It seemed to be looking for something. Of course. My tongue. Tongue wants other tongue.

  Reports came in from other fronts. My right hand was exploring a softness and pleasantness that lacked an important name. Muzak? Eggnog? Breast. I felt a nipple, like a warm pebble in my palm. Then the softness swirled, became less definite. And the tongue, when I checked, was missing from my mouth. The extra tongue.

  “Philip,” Cynthia Jalter breathed into my ear.

  “Therapist,” I breathed back, except it came out an unintelligible croak.

  She slid off the couch and onto the carpet, quite smoothly, and without letting go of me. So I began by watching her go, detached at least intellectually, and ended on the carpet with her, painlessly. The couch and the carpet seemed somehow continuous, like they were meant for this.

  “Philip,” she said again.

  “Cynthia,” I whispered. “Have you noticed that I’m croaking like a frog?”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Also this isn’t therapy, I’m sure of it.”

  “That’s okay.”

  “Also I’m having some trouble identifying various parts of your body. Maybe when I come into contact with something new you could just call out the name aloud.”

  “Is there numbness in your extremities?”

  “Should there be? I think this is more a numbness in the female-anatomy-naming part of my brain. Also I’m thinking about Alice a little, I have to admit. And croaking like a frog, can you hear that?”

  “I see what you mean but it’s nothing very important. You could talk less. You talk a lot.”

  “Okay, but I am thinking about Alice a little bit, like I said.”

  Cynthia Jalter sighed, and shifted so that my hip slid to rest on the carpet.

  “If you want to go on being in love with Alice,” she said, “this therapy will help you do it in a more self-reliant way. I’ll identify the various parts of my body if you like, and I can also talk about the various phases of the brief affair we’re sharing, so you’ll develop both vocabularies at the same time. But while we’re on the subject I do want to say I think you’re wasting your time pining after a woman who stopped giving you what you need months ago. And you might be ignoring a very interesting alternative.”

  “Ah.”

  “Now kiss me.”

  She didn’t wait, but kissed me. Our bodies slid together so that they aligned in several crucial places, all of which had names that I would probably remember, or not. It didn’t matter. My body knew how to answer all the questions hers was posing, was busy answering them, in fact, despite my reservations. I was turned on, happy even, sandwiched there with Cynthia between carpet and Muzak.

  Something happened to my penis. Cynthia Jalter had hold of it, the end of it, and was kneading rhythmically, sending me signals. It was a message of some sort, on my private-access channel, my hot line, my Batphone. Maybe it was the secret of the universe. If the medium is the message, it was for sure. So I was about to learn the secret of the universe. I should be pleased.

  I sat up.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Therapy is supposed to help you understand.”

  “Yes. Come back down here and I’ll help you understand.”

  “I don’t want to understand.”

  “You don’t want to understand what, Philip?”

  “My coupling with Alice. I just want it back. I can’t stop wanting that.”

  Cynthia sighed. She tugged her twisted clothes back into place. “You don’t want to make love to me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Should we go out and find you some eggnog? This could be the start of a friendship that only gradually unfolds to reveal mutual desire.”

  “Maybe you should drive me home. I don’t feel good.”

  It was true. I felt like a mummy, shrouded in carpet and Muzak. I needed fresh air.

  Cynthia Jalter buttoned her shirt. Had I unbuttoned it? Had she? Was it an advanced form of shirt that unbuttoned itself?

  She led me outside, and I gulped at the night air, as I had the marijuana fumes. I wanted to reverse the damage, clear my brain. Cynthia Jalter went to her car and warmed the engine. I got in beside her. My head throbbed. We drove in silence back to campus.

  “Don’t worry,” said Cynthia Jalter as we pulled up outside the apartment. “I understand. You don’t have to say a word. Forget this ever happened, if you like. Or change your mind, come find me. I want you to feel okay about this.”

  “Okay.�
�

  “You’re making the worst mistake of your life. I resent you for being so blind. You’d better win Alice back, and it had better be wonderful, because after this anything less is inexcusable.”

  “That doesn’t go with the other thing you just said,” I said.

  “I know. You can choose which of them you prefer. I’m comfortable either way.”

  “Do I have to say now?”

  “No, take your time, let me know later.”

  “Okay. Good night, Cynthia.”

  “Good night, Philip.”

  I went inside. The house was quiet, the blind men asleep. I crept in to look at Alice, in our old bed, where she was sleeping. She looked very peaceful. I got under the covers beside her, fully dressed. She stirred, but didn’t wake. I curled around her and quickly fell asleep. When I awoke the next morning she was gone.

  It was a week until Christmas. Two days until the end of the term. National Entropy Awareness Week, according to the papers. A cloud of stress hung over the campus. Students appeared in my office ranting or shaking like heretics. Tempera Santas appeared on store windows, and immediately began flaking into colorful drifts in the window displays underneath. Braxia announced that the Italian team would fly back to Pisa at the end of the term. They were abandoning Lack. My sports-injury student called me, badly shaken. His results had been published in an in-house journal of the Navy Seals, been taken as relevant to combat situations. On Tuesday hail fell, lodging in the shrubbery like crystals of salt in broccoli.

  As for Alice, after our night together she crept back to the margins, the zone of silence. Sometimes it seemed to me that Lack had, after all, accepted her offer, and Alice had passed through to the other side. The part of her that mattered, anyway.

  When I came home Thursday she spoke again, but this time my hopes didn’t rise. The trail to my heart was growing cold.

  “Something might have happened,” she said.

  “Probably something did,” I said. I set my papers on the table.

  “Something bad, I think.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Evan and Garth didn’t come home last night.”

  “I noticed. Did you check with Cynthia Jalter? Or the blind school?”