You Must Be Very Intelligent

by Karin Bodewits

  “Dead,” Lucy says in a shocked voice while staring at her old-school computer screen.

  With my coat and backpack on, I pause at the office door. Who is dead?

  “What’s going on?” I hear the tremble in my voice.

  “I just told you, it’s dead.”

  She keeps her eyes on the computer screen. “It is dead?” I ask, taking a seat beside her.

  “The cat.”

  “Which cat?”

  “Whatsoever.”

  “Whatsoever? You mean the virtual cat?”

  “Yes. It’s dead.”

  “Fuck Lucy. You scared me!”

  “I scared you?”

  “Yeah Lucy. You sit here… with the body posture of a bag of potatoes, staring at a computer screen as if it’s nine-eleven and you greet me with the words IT’S DEAD.”

  I should have stopped there, of course, but I riff on. “I am just off my bike, I actually enjoyed the morning sunshine! I was expecting a normal boring lab day. You know… like… you sit on that bench and assay proteins and I repeat the same experiment for the tenth time without success. Babette sits there emitting strange, grumpy noises and Mark storms in at ten to vent his daily darkness. We would try to hide from him for a coffee break. At twelve we would go for lunch at KB House where we eat a hamburger with potato wedges… and then we would go for a cigarette break every hour in the afternoon, and wonder if all life is pointless. I expected it to be normal. Of course you scared me!”

  Lucy grins. “Stop Ka.”

  But I don’t stop, why would I?… “I thought you would be flying to Belgium, to bury someone!” I add. “But what happened is that your virtual cat died?”

  We are both laughing now, though I still keep a theatrical expression on my face as if she had really screwed me over.

  “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know you would be so sensitive about it.”

  It was just over two months since the end-of-year party at KB House, when Lucy was offered a virtual cat by one of the lecturers in the department. I saw him talking to her for a long time, and I couldn’t imagine what they would be talking about so intently. It was nothing new, Lucy being captured by a random male, but this one didn’t let go of her for ages.

  “OMG,” Lucy had said when the email came in from the virtual cat app.

  “What’s that?” I had asked.

  “You remember this guy… from last week, Dr. Wilson from the inorganic chemistry department? He offered me a virtual cat!”

  I felt my lips struggling to avoid a smirk. This was a new one. I loved all those guys proposing and doing strange things to score Lucy. I love all those messages, songs and poems. I get her to read out every single one, sometimes over and over again. I feel like a little girl sitting on the sofa replaying the end scene of Dirty Dancing ten times in a row, and wondering if this time Patrick Swayze will finally lose control and catapult the chick against the wall. The way Lucy reacts fascinates me. Despite being pursued by half the planet, she still reacts with honest surprise, and it’s generally shackled to a quite profound disinterest in whatever guy is trying to score her. I guess any other girl would become arrogant but Lucy never does. Every single time, she is surprised and yet sanguine.

  “How come he’s offering you a virtual cat?” I had asked while stifling a snort.

  “He asked me what my favourite animal was. I said pigs and started on about the variety of sausages I like. He clarified very patiently, that he was meaning pets…”

  It didn’t take long before I had felt the tears running down my cheeks. Guys around Lucy – they just lose the plot entirely.

  “Did he ask you about your favourite colour as well?”

  “I can’t remember, I was really drunk that evening. But I remember telling him that I like cats and that I would love to have one, but that it is just not viable right now. He told me that he felt the same, and would also love to have a cat one day.”

  “What a connection!”

  “It was the only connection.”

  “Are you going to accept it?”

  “Of course,” Lucy replied, already opening the link of the app he had sent her.

  “I still need to give it a name.”

  “Give it a name which clearly shows Dr. Wilson you are not very interested,” I had advised.

  “Whatsoever?” she had proposed.

  As soon as her black and white cat appeared on the screen, we were informed that Dr. Wilson himself keeps three virtual cats and a dog. The instructions said Lucy would need to feed her own cat regularly and give it attention. By way of touch screen or buttons, you could give the cat food, water or milk, and you could cuddle or pet it. You could do the same with other people’s virtual cats. Dr. Wilson must have gotten an email saying that Whatsoever has been registered as he cuddled and fed it within a few seconds of Lucy signing up.

  “He’s doing stuff with it!” Lucy had said in disbelief.

  “Oh dear… he plays with it!?”

  Over the summer, a few times per day, there were emails coming in saying that Dr. Wilson had cuddled, petted or fed the cat. Of course we wondered what Dr. Wilson was doing all day that he had so much time left to care about his own virtual animals and the cat of someone else. After a week or so Lucy had started to get annoyed, and after two weeks she hated it, she hated the messages in her inbox, and actively looked for buttons to get rid of the cat.

  “I can’t hit the cat. I just want to hit it.”

  “Hit his cats instead,” I suggested.

  “There is no button for it either.” She sounded seriously aggrieved.

  “Can’t you starve it?”

  “He keeps feeding it. Why do I only attract idiots?” her eyes rolled in exasperation.

  “This Jörg was alright, or…?”

  “You mean the dude who – on the first date – served me days-old pancakes in chicken broth and called it pancake soup? Only Germans do such disgusting things.”

  “Yeah, not a promising start.”

  Every day, Lucy kept me updated on what Dr. Wilson was doing to her virtual cat and we mostly laughed about it despite her annoyance. But in recent weeks we had lost interest in the cat, and so had Dr. Wilson, apparently. He has been feeding and cuddling less and less, scaling down to just five times per day then three then one and finally stopping altogether. And now the time had finally come: the cat was dead.

  “You should go to his office, to cry because it is dead,” I say.

  “Yes, I kind of presumed that he would feed it.”

  “Right, you’re not seriously going to Wilson’s office to cry,” Logan asks, baffled.

  “Well, it is kind of his fault it’s dead, isn’t it?” Lucy defends.

  “He could have put more effort into keeping it alive,” I add.

  “Yeah, he could have.”

  © Springer International Publishing AG 2017

  Karin BodewitsYou Must Be Very Intelligent10.1007/978-3-319-59321-0_31

  Chapter 31

  Karin Bodewits1

  (1)Munich, Germany

  Karin Bodewits

  Email: office@karinbodewits.com

  “Ohmigod, ohmigod, of course we go!” I shriek, in the office for all to hear.

  “And I thought Jennifer Aniston was hysterical,” says Lucy drily.

  “I would just really like to go!”

  “You want to go the Oxford University alumni party?” Lucy asks, in a distinctly disparaging tone.

  “Yes!”

  I am picturing myself sipping cognac with Alex amid the über smart set within a filmic university setting…

  “You fancy Alex, don’t you?”

  Lucy’s beautiful green eyes do their eerie penetrating thing. I think about his charm; his brown eyes, his defined mouth and despite his body not leaving much trace of physical activity, the appeal it has. There was something about him, as if he were designed to revive with my stone cold dead fantasies about Romantic academia in the UK. “I guess I do,” I answer h
onestly.

  Lucy’s beautiful eyes roll around as if despairing of this unfathomably strange statement. “He is charming,” I add.

  “Handsome he is, but mathematicians crunch numbers, not mattresses.”

  Did she just say that? Lucy of the devout demeanour is never quite so crude in public…

  “Did you just say that mathematicians crunch numbers but not mattresses?” Logan asks.

  “That’s what I understood,” I say. “Possibly a good point.”

  “You girls are awful,” says Logan, shaking his head and walking away to turn the autoclave on lest he hear more.

  Alex and Chris, both professors-to-be in the School of Mathematics, had been at my flat party the previous weekend. I had invited them during our first encounter at KB House a week before. We had been having after-work drinks that evening, which by now hardly merits mention since that is a normal evening. When eleven rolled round, Lucy and I were both clutching our empty glasses, holding onto hope while we treated our new maths pals like long lost friends. They dutifully volunteered to buy us a beer and we graciously accepted. It’s the acceptable indignity of the PhD experience; being skint when you’ve reached an age where you shouldn’t be skint. It has to be endured, lest only the rich reach the upper floors of the Ivory Tower.

  Earlier I had spotted a gorgeous guy at their table – Alex. When Lucy and I went outside to smoke a cigarette we were joined by a tall, long-haired PhD student, Greg, also seated at that table. “Who’s the chap in the corner?” I had asked.

  “My supervisor.”

  “Oh.”

  “He didn’t offend you, did he? He doesn’t seem to get along with the French, or philosophers. Or many people really. So don’t take it personally.”

  “No, he didn’t. He’s sitting too far away, haven’t exchanged a word.”

  “Keep your distance.” Oh, mysterious…

  “You should be glad you have such an extremely good-looking boss.”

  “I don’t know in what way I benefit from that.”

  “Isn’t it nice to have someone aesthetically pleasing around you? I love being around Lucy, I love her as a person but I also love looking at her; the shock of her beauty recharges with every glance.”

  “Ka… you are drunk!”

  “I don’t think heterosexual men savour each other’s beauty the same way,” Greg had said.

  “He is sooo hot!”

  “His PhD student is standing here,” Lucy reminded me.

  “You are all about looks?” Greg had asked.

  “No, not at all,” I protested.

  Lucy and I gave Greg the once-over; not a guy who put any effort whatsoever into looking good, or even dignified. The T-shirt looked like a freebie from a local sports event and the jeans could have come from a pound shop. His cycling shoes were cool, if only he were in the middle of the Tour de France; for a city commute they were simply silly.

  “Are you going home?” I had asked him.

  “No, what makes you think that?”

  “You have your jeans rolled up for cycling.”

  “True, that’s so they don’t get caught in my bike chain.”

  “Yes. I guessed that. But you’re not cycling now. You’re having a beer, right?”

  “Yes, I’m having a beer right now. Would it please your sensitive eyes if I were to roll these down ma’am?”

  “I guess it would,” I said.

  “It definitely would,” said Lucy.

  When KB House closed its doors around midnight, I invited all three leftover mathematicians to my flat party. The next morning in the lab Lucy asked if I recalled this dubious display of largesse.

  “I remember, yes, but they won’t come.”

  “They will. Being invited to a party is a rare event for them, maybe the highlight of their year.”

  “They don’t even have the address.”

  “You gave it.”

  “Oh. Well, they won’t know it anymore.”

  “Believe me, those dudes process data like computers.”

  Lucy clearly has a downer on mathematicians, but she was right about their attention to detail, because there they were; Greg had shown up in his lemon-yellow bike jacket, with his PhD supervisor Alex, and Alex’s buddy, Chris. When I opened the door, I said “Oh,”perhaps a little too excitedly.

  There are three weirdos entering your party, be friendly and don’t make a fool of them or yourself. But by God he is still gorgeous…

  “The mathematicians have arrived; the party can get started!” I shouted through the flat.

  Greg and Chris hadn’t been offended but Alex seemed to be considering my clichéd joke very carefully, maintaining a calm expression of complete self-assurance. Weirdo (But a gorgeous and mysterious weirdo)…

  I gestured them in but Lucy was at the door too, pointing at Greg’s rolled-up jeans. Without saying a word, she was telling him to roll them down before entering the house. Her beauty is commanding. There is never a doubt men will obey. I, on the other hand, have to resort to words, “And maybe take your shoes off as well.”

  He did as I asked and on display now were his large feet in pink Pilates socks separating all five toes. Lucy stared at the socks and then the jeans – same shapeless cheapos as last week. Her eyes moved up to the T-shirt; another one that can only be a freebie – it is inconceivable that anybody would pay actual money for such an ill-fitting, flimsy piece of sponsorship cloth.

  I try to apologise, “I’m sorry. I was concerned you might damage my wooden floor with the click system on your soles. I did not intend to expose you as a tasteless lunatic.”

  I catch Lucy’s eye, and she presses her hand to her mouth to keep the beer inside, then rushes to the bathroom to spit out and burst into laughter. She doesn’t want to hurt the man’s feelings but he dresses as if he actually wants to be mocked.

  “A girl who makes it clear what she thinks,” says the mysterious Alex, hanging his jacket carefully on the overflowing coat stand and, finally, he smiles.

  “They’re very comfy,” Greg defended his indefensible socks, then laughed. “You want me to take them off?”

  “Nooo! Keep them on. They’re a party piece.”

  Alex and Chris take a dozen frozen bottles of Schnapps out of their backpacks and try to fit them all in the small freezer. “You guys have big plans,” I comment.

  Alex’s complete non-response suggests either he is deaf or I am deathly dull. Is it normal to bring so much booze?

  There are about twenty-five people now, invariably PhD students from the biology or chemistry departments. Alex and Chris are obviously the oldest guests, and they draw some sideways glances.

  Logan stands in the kitchen doorway pointing at the backs of Chris and Alex. “What?” his lips say without making any noise, looking at me with a big question mark in his eyes.

  I walk towards him. “What are they doing here?” he whispers.

  “I invited them. Do you know them?”

  “Of course! I was in their lectures as an undergrad.”

  “Cool.”

  “It’s awkward, Ka. How do you know them?”

  “Lucy and I met them in KB House.”

  “Right…”

  “So who are you, Karin.”

  Quite suddenly Alex is right behind me.

  “I’m doing my PhD in the chemistry department,” I say, slightly nervously I fear.

  Why am I so desperate to impress this one strange person? And when the opportunity knocks I know not how to answer…

  “I’m aware of that. You work for Mark McLean.”

  “You know him?”

  “I do. How do you like it?”

  My mind is flying. Does he want to know about my PhD or about living in Edinburgh? How well does he actually know Mark? Should I blurt out that my PhD is a nightmare and Mark is a jerk-off? Should I say my PhD is as intellectually stimulating as Kim Kardashian on ketamine? Perhaps I could tell him how horrible the afternoon was, with Mark shouting at me, aga
in, it’s virtually a daily ritual of late. Today was typical; me not having my priorities right, focusing on the wrong project blah blah. But the number of projects and the importance of each were redefined, as they are every few days, and the only consistent fact about them is that none are remotely realistic because of time and/or money; I only have one year left and our threadbare lab simply, in reality, does not have the necessary equipment. The shouting shreds my nerves till I hardly have a clue anymore what I’m doing or should be doing. But I can’t tell Alex about my personal situation, how the hell has the idea even occurred to me, how desperate do I feel?! I don’t know him, maybe he and Mark are best friends, though I’m not sure Mark does friends. Maybe he plays football with Mark, though somehow Alex doesn’t seem the footballing type, too stylish for the compulsory coarse banter… Maybe it’s a trick question and he’s trying to make me say something bad about Mark, which he will then convey to him. Maybe… I thought all this through in nanoseconds, and then I came up with the brilliant conversational gambit, “It’s okay.”

  His eyes are quizzical, perhaps trying to work out how someone can seem so alert and yet speak so dully. Brightly I add: “I like Edinburgh very much.”

  Oh aren’t I witty fun?!…

  “I’m glad you like it,” says he.

  I walk off to the fridge to get myself another bottle of beer, perhaps hoping to find some words and confidence in it.

  Lucy follows me. “It is possible to have a conversation with him?”

  “Not sure. He makes me nervous.”

  “Greg warned you that he can be quite offensive,” Lucy said, worried.

  “He didn’t offend me. There is something about him.”

  I walk to the living room. Both Greg and Chris have integrated into the party, happily chatting with all and sundry. Alex sat at the kitchen table, keeping company with whoever chances to sit down.

  Just after Vlad left, Alex got up from the kitchen bench, apparently about to leave too. (I later learned this was after offending everyone who came into his orbit.) It must have been around 3:00 a.m. when I opened the front door for him. He pushed me away from the door and pulled me to the back of the corridor, and held me before my bedroom.