‘And that’s the only reason they broke up.’
‘Yes. Yes.’
‘How do you know that? How do you know what went on in the man’s head?’ He leaned forward, lowered his voice. ‘How do you know he didn’t start hating her? All her nutty ideas.’
‘Because that’s not what happened. That’s not why he left.’
‘Just because you made up this story doesn’t mean you can make the man into whatever you want.’
‘The Agency arranged things. To make him leave. Things happened.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Funny things, that scared him and drove him away. Things in driveways and with the hive touchstone. Even on their honeymoon. Suppose they saw a precursor on the road. And it scared him. Wouldn’t something like that turn him against her?’
‘And it didn’t scare her?’ Jennie didn’t answer. ‘That’s really the point, isn’t it? That’s what you don’t want to say. That she loved all those things. She loved them more than she loved her husband. This agency—if this agency ever existed, it didn’t need to drive her husband away. It didn’t need to. All it had to do was seduce her. And she was ready. She loved all that true event stuff. She went right along with her new lover.’
‘No. That’s not true. She was tricked. It tricked her the same way it tricked him. I’m not making this up. It’s not a fantasy. Really, Mike. There’re things you don’t know.’
‘And I don’t want to know. I got a court order so I wouldn’t have to know.’
‘Are you sure? Do you really know for sure why you got the order?’
‘And now you come up with some paranoid fantasy—’
‘It’s not paranoid, Mike. We were tricked.’ He looked about to get up. Jennie grabbed his arm so hard he stared down at her fingers, then up at her face. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Will you just listen to me? Just once?’
‘I always listened to you. You were the one—’
‘Stop that. It doesn’t matter. All that old stuff.’
He leaned forward. ‘Why does this agency thing, why does it do all these things? Why should it take charge of people like that?’
Tell him about the fish, Jennie thought. He’d have to believe her. She said, ‘Because it needs them. First it needs them to get together, then it needs to break them apart.’
‘Why? What the hell for? Can’t you see how crazy that is? What does it care what happens to these people?’
‘It doesn’t care. Not about them. It just wants to use them. That’s why they have to fight it. Because it doesn’t care what they want.’
‘Use them how? For what?’
Her eyes fell away from his stare and she watched her fingers twist her napkin until Mike pulled it out of her hands. He said, ‘Use them for what?’
‘Well, maybe it needs, maybe it wants the woman in Poughkeepsie. Maybe it needs to get her there, and the man—the man serves this need.’
‘Why does it want her in Poughkeepsie?’
‘I don’t know. It just does. Good spiritual configurations. For whatever it wants…for her.’
‘All right. Fine. It wants her in Poughkeepsie. Then why does he leave? Why not keep him in Poughkeepsie as well?’
‘I don’t know. The Agency wants him out of the way.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Because it wants her there alone. It can’t do what it wants to her if she’s got a husband around.’
‘What does it want to do to her?’
‘How would I know? I’m just a human. “The observer can never learn the purpose of the experiment.” Remember Adrienne Birth-of-Beauty. 10th proposition.’
‘You’re full of shit. You’ve got some idea in your head. You really believe this nonsense.’
‘It’s not nonsense.’
‘Then what does the agency want to do to her?’
Jennie said, ‘People can’t know those kind of things. You can’t…Look at the parents of the Founders. Or their grandparents. Maybe they thought, maybe each of those couples thought they loved each other. Or hated each other. What difference—whatever they thought, they really got together so their children would come together and give birth to the Founders. It didn’t matter what they wanted. And they didn’t even know. That’s the sad part.’
Mike shook his head. ‘I’ve got no time for this, Jennie. I just want to know what’s going on. Why this supposed agency wants you—wants this woman.’
‘How do I know? It’s against the law to know things like that.’
‘It’s also against the law to break an annulment.’ Jennie didn’t answer. Mike got up. ‘I’ve got an opening to go to.’
She grabbed his sleeve. ‘Please don’t go.’
He pulled loose. With a shrug he got out his wallet. He tossed a five dollar bill on the table. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘my treat. Since we both come from Poughkeepsie.’
‘Mike,’ she said, ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘What? Holy shit.’ He stared at her stomach. ‘Holy shit.’ Sitting down, he said, ‘Is that what this is all about? All this agency bullshit? I don’t believe it.’
Jennie sank down in the booth. She didn’t want to look at Mike’s grin. Inside her, the foetus stirred slightly, not quite a turn or a kick, but definitely a movement. Startled, Jennie looked down at her belly.
Mike said, ‘You’re not accusing me, are you? You’re not claiming I could have—’
‘Don’t be an idiot. If I haven’t seen you for three years how could I say—’
‘How would I know? Another one of your goddamn true events.’
‘Go to hell.’
He laced his hands behind his head. ‘I heard on the news one time about some woman who prayed—her husband was dead, he died suddenly before they could have a child, and she prayed and did a flesh offering—in Sanctified Park in New Chicago—God, I’d hate to work as a garbageman there—anyway, this Benign One came disguised as a milkman or something and knocked her up—’
‘You’re really enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘Personally, I think she made the whole thing up. To get on the news. Or maybe to cover up for screwing the milkman.’
‘And that’s what you think I did.’ He smiled and crossed his arms. ‘You think I made it all up. The Agency, everything else. So I could trick you. Because I’m pregnant.’
He leaned forward. ‘That sounds about right.’
‘You bastard. You weak—’
‘I’m weak? You’re the one with the nutty fantasies. You’re the one who can’t adjust to a simple court order.’
‘Simple? If you weren’t too frightened to even look at me you wouldn’t have—’ She stopped. Accusations, complaints, they were all a trap. She thought, Tell him about the dream. Tell him how it kept me from the Recital and how it brought Allan Lightstorm, and the car, and Gloria—‘I tried to get an abortion,’ she said. ‘I went to this clinic…at first I couldn’t even remember the name, I had to ask Karen—’
‘Karen who? I don’t know any Karen.’
‘Stop it. I went to a clinic. And I couldn’t get in. I couldn’t get to the door. Trees grew wherever I tried to walk. They just popped out of the ground. The Agency did that. It wouldn’t let me get an abortion. I’m telling the truth, Mike. Doesn’t that show its power?’
‘Sounds like a good trick. Maybe you could hire out as a gardener.’
She said loudly, ‘What’s the matter with you?’
A couple of booths away a man sitting alone said, ‘Goddamn it,’ and got up from his half-finished meal to march to the cash register.
‘You’re scaring the clients,’ Mike said. ‘Don’t, huh? I’ve got to come back here. I live around here.’
‘Do you think I’m lying?’
‘Why not? What else should I think? Lying or crazy. Actually, no. It’s possible you’re even telling the truth. With you—maybe it did. Maybe the abortion clinic’s got a whole new set of shrubbery.’
‘Then doesn’t that
prove—’
‘Maybe. Maybe everything you say. Maybe this agency got us together and then broke us apart. Maybe it drove me away.’
‘But if you believe me—if you believe me—’
‘Because I don’t care. It doesn’t matter how it happened.’
‘Of course it matters.’
‘Not to me. I don’t care what pulled me away from you. I’m gone. Free. That’s what matters. I’m free.’
‘How can you call that free?’
‘Maybe I should do an offering to this agency of yours.’
‘How can you call that free? It’s the opposite of freedom. Something makes you do things—’
‘I’m happy. I like my life now. I don’t want anything else.’
‘You just think that.’
‘Don’t you tell me what I think.’
‘We had a good life. We loved each other.’
‘I thought you told me the agency arranged all that. Pushed us together. So then all it did was let go of me.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Why not? It’s not very difficult. I’ve got rid of you. That’s all. And I don’t care who arranged it.’
‘I don’t understand. It’s not fair.’
‘Sounds very fair to me. This agency forces me at you, then it lets me go.’
‘Pushes you. Pushes you.’
‘Okay, pushes me. A real hard shove. So what? I’ve still got away from you. That’s fair enough for me.’
Jennie thought, I love you, why are you doing this to me? She thought, It’s the Agency. She thought, You bastard, you coward, you liar. She thought, This isn’t Mike, this isn’t him, they’ve sent an impersonator to squeeze me and step on me. She thought—
Mike said, ‘If you ask me, we’ve both got just what we want. I’ve got my own life back and you’ve got your true events.’
‘I just want you. I want you.’
‘Yeah, I’ll bet.’ He got up and stood away from the table. ‘I’m going, Jennie.’
‘This isn’t you,’ she said. ‘It’s the Agency. The Agency’s making you do this.’
‘Yeah? Then I guess that’s another one I owe it. Maybe I wouldn’t have had the courage without the agency backing me up.’
‘You wouldn’t need courage. You wouldn’t want this. You don’t want this. The Agency just makes you think you want it.’
‘Forget it, Jennie. If there’s one thing I do know, it’s what I want.’
‘You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything.’
‘Don’t follow me, Jennie. Don’t ever come back to my house and wait for me again. And don’t call me, or write, or anything. I’ve still got the annulment. If you bother me again I’ll come down on you so hard the agency will have to dismantle the whole fucking government just to get you out of jail.’
‘Why do you hate me so much?’
‘Bullshit. I don’t hate you. I just don’t want you pushing me around.’
‘I’m not pushing you around. It’s the Agency.’
He walked away with his shoulders up and his hands in the pockets of his jeans. When Jennie tried to get up the air thickened around her. She tried to push against it only to find herself back in the booth. This wasn’t supposed to happen, she thought. They’d promised her. She grabbed her bag and found the Revolution Mouse doll. ‘Why did you do this?’ she said. ‘Why didn’t you help me?’
She put it away as the waiter came to clear the table. He was whistling and Jennie knew he wanted her to leave. He was scared she’d throw a fit, terrify his customers, maybe even bring on a visitation so that the SDA would shut the whole place down as a sacred health hazard.
A high-pitched sound answered the waiter’s whistle. It floated on the air, a piercing song narrowed down to a thread sewing the room together in a web of calm. Jennie recognised it. The same song had sent her to sleep the night after she’d gone to the clinic. She knew what it was now. The foetus was singing. To calm her. To protect her, from the waiter, from any hostile customers. Jennie shook her head. ‘I don’t want your help.’ She stared down at her belly. ‘Don’t help me. Let me keep my own feelings.’
The waiter stood beside her. His cloth hung from his hand and he smiled at her. When she got up she saw all the customers turned towards her. They were smiling and nodding their heads. ‘Stop it!’ Jennie shouted. The smiles widened. And all the time she could feel joy tugging at her. She just had to give in. Like they were doing. Like Mike had done.
Jennie put on her jacket and buttoned it. She assembled The Times, then put the doll back in her bag. She clenched her fists. ‘Have a nice day,’ she said to the waiter. He nodded at her. She took a couple of steps then turned back and hit the button on the plastic guardian. From table to table she ran, turning on the horned totems until growls filled the diner. No one paid any attention. They smiled and listened to the song of the fish lilting its way through the maze of noise.
13
Outside, in the wet wind, the music stopped. Jennie took a deep breath. She was herself again. Angry, confused, frightened. No calm settling over her, no joy grabbing hold of her. She shook her head. As if she herself could do any good. The Agency had made it plain where the power was. It had taken her husband from her and plunked him down in this alien land.
She looked around, seeing nothing but the street’s unbearable sophistication. Art galleries with faceless concrete walls and metal gates. Clothing stores that sold only one fabric at a time in bizarre constructions. A salad restaurant where the carrots and Japanese turnips were carved in the shape of spirit beings dreamed each night by the chef’s paralysed aunt. Mike didn’t belong here. Look, there, down by Spring Street, there was that restaurant where Mike once walked out because they served hamburgers on toasted pitta bread and gave you chutney instead of ketchup. Couldn’t he see it wasn’t him that made him end up here?
She was getting wet, she should get out of the rain, the paper was getting heavier from the rain. She walked a few feet and leaned against a metal grate enclosing a jewellery store. The Agency put him here. To make it easier to reject her.
And everything else. Mike’s girl friend, these stores, the kind of coffee in the diner. Were they all arranged? Set up to contribute their bit to keeping her husband away from her? She looked down the street at a middle aged woman slipping and dropping her bag in a puddle. Was that arranged? And the little girl up near Prince walking towards her with something dangling from a string held in her hand. Did the Agency stage her there? Did it bring her parents together and arouse their passion on some particular night, just so she’d be born with the right genes, upbringing, and spiritual configurations to send her out in a cold rain walking slowly at just that moment on just that corner…? And the rain itself. And the people who put up the buildings and opened the shops. And the Beings who pushed the island up out of the sea.
It was too much. To discover something like that, to begin to see the connections, the lines between the pieces…She closed her eyes. The paper dropped from her hands. She thought, I just wanted my husband back.
When she opened her eyes the girl stood in front of her, the one with the string. She held it a little away from her body, and Jennie watched the doll at the bottom sway back and forth. The doll hung upside down by one foot. The other leg was crossed behind the straight one, and the arms were clasped behind the back. Jennie had seen something like that once, a picture on a card or something. It had to do with precursors, something or other in the Old World that kept the truth from suffocating.
‘Miss,’ the girl said, ‘where do babies come from?’
Jennie stared at her. Sickness washed over her. In her womb she felt that whisper of movement again. She crossed her arms over her belly. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I don’t know.’
The girl walked off, swinging her little hanging man in front of her as she headed south toward Spring Street.
Jennie turned north, across Prince and then Houston, past a jazz club and an Italian re
staurant. To the right stood the triple towers of the university’s lush ghetto. At the edge of Rainbow Square she stopped, looking in on the concrete park. She thought of Rebecca Rainbow camping out there while she threatened to split the Revolution if she wasn’t allowed to reopen the factories. Rebecca Rainbow would never have given in. But Rainbow was a Founder. In beauty and truth lives her name forever.
Something tugged at her jacket. She slapped at it without looking. It tugged again, and she turned her head to see a little boy holding on to her with one hand in a torn woollen glove. He wore no hat; water ran down his face. ‘Miss,’ he said, ‘Miss, where do babies come from?’
Jennie backed away, then turned and hurried through the square. She came out heading west towards Sixth Avenue. She’d only taken a few steps when she saw in front of her three dead birds lying together on the sidewalk. Pigeons. White pigeons. ‘Shit,’ she whispered, then said loudly, ‘Leave me alone!’ When she looked up she saw three children standing beside her. Dressed identically in jeans and running shoes and plastic jackets they watched her slide away from them. One of them nudged the birds with his foot. ‘Hey, lady,’ another called out. Jennie hurried towards the avenue before the child could finish what she was going to say.
On Sixth Jennie stood for a while, not sure which way she wanted to go. She found herself looking at the line of cars waiting for a green light. Steam rose from their hoods like the anger of neglected spirits.
A groan turned Jennie towards the West Fourth Street subway entrance. She saw a woman huddled on her side in the alcove by the stairs. The woman wore a long purple coat, running shoes with holes and broken laces, and green stockings that had fallen down around her ankles. Strands of grey hair stuck out from under a green nylon wig. Blood trickled down her neck from a shallow cut on her left cheek. Behind Jennie people walked past, looking and then hurrying away. One of them bumped into Jennie, saying, ‘What’re you, a statue?’ A man and woman in the bluejackets of registered penitents bent down to touch the woman’s cheek and then anoint their own foreheads and throats with her blood. Jennie wondered if she should help the woman to a shelter. Probably the shelters weren’t open yet.
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