Set This House in Order

by Matt Ruff

  I might have figured it out, but just then Julie returned from the shower, bringing her own logic puzzle. I distinctly remembered her taking a robe to the bathroom, but now coming back she was wrapped only in a towel. As a fashion choice it was beyond criticism—with the bare skin of her upper chest and shoulders still flushed from the heat of the shower, she was almost indescribably lovely—but the question remained: what happened to the robe?

  Julie went to the dresser and picked up her glass. The arch of her neck as she drank had me mesmerized; I tried to think of a way to tell her how gorgeous she looked that wouldn’t imply any inappropriate feelings on my part.

  “So,” Julie said, turning to face me, “you think I’m a fuckup.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “What you said outside the bar, when I asked if I was a complete fuckup…” Oh great. She had heard that. “‘If you are, it’s not because you have to be…’ If you are. Meaning I am, right?”

  “No! No, Julie, I—”

  “It’s all right,” Julie said. “I’d rather you be honest with me, and if you think—”

  “I don’t think you’re a fuckup, Julie. I think…you’re impractical—”

  “Impractical. Hmmph.”

  “—and sometimes it seems like you set out to frustrate yourself, and I don’t get that, but I also know that you’re really talented, and really smart, and, and beautiful, and if your life isn’t everything you want it to be right now, it’s not because you’re condemned to that…you have all the qualities you need to make things better, you just…need to pick a different strategy, is all…”

  “A different strategy. Uh-huh.” Julie was smiling guardedly now, a sign that she’d only been teasing me, but I went on babbling, alternating apologies with further compliments, until she finally took pity on me.

  “Andrew,” Julie said at last, setting her glass back on the dresser and coming over to the futon. “It’s OK…”

  “No, it isn’t…you were depressed, and I wanted to say something to make you feel better, and instead—”

  “I knew what you were trying to say, Andrew…more or less.”

  “I’m sorry, Julie.”

  “Andrew, shh, stop apologizing.” She sat beside me on the futon, put an arm across my shoulders. “You’re my best fucking friend, you know you are…” She reached up with her other hand to stroke the side of my face, and then I couldn’t help myself: I leaned over and kissed her.

  Julie didn’t pull away; she kissed back, softly. We broke from that, and then I, emboldened, bent my head down and brushed my lips against the tops of her breasts. Julie tensed. “Andrew,” she said, starting to object. “Andrew, wait…” I didn’t wait. I raised my head again halfway and kissed a spot in the hollow of Julie’s throat, the right spot I guess; all at once she was tense in a different way. “Andrew,” she repeated, her voice different too. “Ah, shit…”

  We ended up lying side-by-side on the futon. My hand was on Julie’s bare skin, tracing the curve of her shoulder.

  “This is a bad idea, Andrew,” Julie said. She said it like she believed it but might also be willing to overlook the fact, which was all the encouragement I needed. My wish had come true: the window of opportunity had opened again, and this time I was not going to be too shy or indecisive to go through it.

  I propped myself up on one elbow and leaned over, kissing Julie on the mouth, on the face, on the chest. She accepted the kisses passively at first, but then I found that magic spot on her throat again, and she said “Ah, shit…” and started to reciprocate. She grabbed me by the collar, shoved me over onto my back, and rolled on top of me. She kissed the hollow of my throat, nibbled on it. Her fingers found the top button of my shirt and undid it, then groped for the second button; I reached for her towel, which was already slipping. We began to wrestle, fighting over who would get to undress who first. I had the advantage—in addition to the fact that towels have no fasteners, I had the better upper-body strength. But Julie was wilier; she slipped a hand free and reached down, meaning to throw me off balance by grabbing between my legs.

  And that’s where things started to go wrong. Julie grabbed my crotch…and paused. A puzzled expression came over her face—the look of mild bafflement you get when you reach for a set of keys that you know you just put down, only to find that they’re not where you thought they were. Julie’s hand resumed its groping, more urgently now, and her puzzlement increased…where were those keys?

  “Andrew,” Julie said, drawing back from me a little, even as her hand continued its groping, “you’re not…you don’t have…”

  “What?”

  She made herself say it.

  “Oh,” I replied casually, as if she’d expressed surprise over my choice of underwear. “Oh yeah. I don’t have…one of those.”

  “You don’t…” Julie blinked, struggling to keep a game face. “Is that…part of the abuse? Did your stepfather…?”

  “What?” Then I laughed, getting it. “Oh no! No, nothing like that. Nothing was…cut off. The body’s female, that’s all.”

  “What?”

  “The body is female,” I repeated. “What—”

  “No,” Julie protested. “No, that can’t…you said ‘he.’ You always say ‘he.’”

  “What?”

  “When you talk about Andy Gage…the original Andy Gage…you always say ‘he,’ not ‘she.’”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “But if Andy Gage was a girl, then—”

  “Julie…” Of all the times to start talking about metaphysics…but it seemed important to her, so I curbed my impatience. “I call Andy Gage ‘he’ because, well, because my father always does…and Adam, and Aunt Sam, and everybody else in the house too.”

  “But if Andy Gage was female…”

  “His body was female, but his soul was male.” I didn’t actually know this for a fact, but it made the most sense—and I wasn’t about to call my father out for confirmation.

  “You said that souls and bodies were twins, though. Reflections of each other.”

  “In people who are singular. But—”

  “But Andy Gage was singular. I mean he was the original soul, right? He…she…existed before the split. So—”

  “Julie,” I interrupted, “Julie, I don’t want to be rude, but…why does this matter? I mean I’d be happy to talk about it later, but—”

  “Why…?” She let out a crazy laugh, a half-strangled chuckle. “Oh my God…”

  “I mean I’m sorry if the body is not…not everything you’d like it to be, but I’m sure I can make up for…anything that’s missing.” I smiled, still believing that this was a minor misunderstanding that would soon be put behind us. “Just tell me what you want.” I reached for her but she wriggled away. She backed up to the far end of the futon, gathering her towel tightly around her.

  “Julie?” I said, finally growing alarmed. “Julie, what is it?”

  I sat up and reached for her again, but Julie shouted “Don’t!” and slapped my hand away, hard. I couldn’t have been more stunned.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew,” Julie said stiffly. “I’m sorry, but please don’t…please don’t touch me.”

  “Julie…” I felt a familiar dash of ice water on my heart, a dash that became a torrent. It had happened again: one moment we’d been intimates, open and loving, and now…now the window was closed again, nailed shut, shuttered and barricaded. And I didn’t understand. “Does it really matter so much? I mean it’s still me, even if I don’t have—”

  Julie laughed that crazy laugh again. “Yes, Andrew,” she said. “It matters.”

  “But…but it was me you were going to, to make love to, right? And you knew the body isn’t a perfect reflection of my soul, so—”

  “Andrew…”

  “—so it’s really only a question of degree, right? It’s still me, Julie…”

  “I’m not a lesbian, Andrew.”

  This was such a non sequitur that for a momen
t I was completely lost. “What?”

  “I’m not a lesbian. I—”

  “But…I’m not a lesbian, either.” I felt a brief, irrational surge of hope, that died when I saw Julie’s expression hadn’t changed. She didn’t care whether I was a lesbian; she cared that Andy Gage’s body was female. Case closed.

  And still I struggled, trying to come up with a new line of argument, some way of convincing her that it really didn’t matter. At a loss for words, I started to reach for her again, but Julie evaded my touch, getting up off the futon with such incredible speed that she seemed to have evaporated.

  “I’m sorry, Andrew,” Julie said. She was standing over by the dresser, facing away from me, and I tried to figure out how she’d gotten all her clothes back on so quickly. “I’m sorry…I know it shouldn’t make a difference, and I wish I could be more open to…to…but it matters. It does matter. It matters, and I, I just can’t…And besides,” she added, looking over her shoulder at me, “it’s still true what I said, the two of us getting together would be a bad idea, I mean even if…it would be a mistake. So maybe this is a sign, huh? One more sign that we’re meant to be just friends, good friends, forever…”

  “Friends.” The word was a dry croak in my throat. I raised my glass and took a big swallow of scotch, felt it warming me, numbing me. “Friends,” I repeated, bitterly. “I love you, Julie…I love you, and you know I’d treat you well, but you still pick him…him, and all the ones before, who, who treat you like shit…”

  “I didn’t pick him, Andrew,” Julie said, shaking her head. “I slept with him, OK, but now we’re broken up, and he’s out of my life—”

  “Sure, until next time.”

  “Would you really rather be in Reggie’s shoes, Andrew? Sleep with me, but then not be friends?”

  “I want both!” I shouted. I felt my eyes start to get wet. “You’re always flattering me, telling me how wonderful I am, how together I am…if all that’s true, if you mean it, why can’t you love me? Why?”

  She didn’t answer, and I raised the bottle to my lips, took a long pull. The scotch backed up in my throat and I choked. When my vision cleared, Julie was no longer standing by the dresser; she was sitting on the floor by the window. Her eyes were red, just like they had been this morning.

  “Why, Julie?” I repeated hoarsely. “Why can’t you love me?”

  She wouldn’t look at me. “Andrew,” she sighed, sounding on the verge of total exhaustion, “I don’t…I don’t know what more you want from me. I mean I’ve tried—”

  “I want to know why. I want you to tell me—”

  “Andrew, please…I’m sorry, OK? I’m sorry I’ve hurt you so badly, I’m sorry if…if you think this is intentional cruelty. It’s not, at least I don’t think it is, but…I don’t know anymore. But I’m tired, Andrew…I’m tired, and I feel like I’ve explained myself a million times already, but you still won’t accept it, and I just don’t have the energy to make it a million and one times…so can’t we just stop? Please?”

  “A million times?” I said. “You haven’t explained anything, Julie…”

  Julie covered her face with her hands.

  I took another drink from the bottle.

  “Julie…” I began again, and then paused, distracted by the glow of a street lamp shining through the window above Julie’s head. When I finally shook my attention free and looked down again, Julie was gone.

  “Julie?” I looked over at the dresser, but she hadn’t moved back there; she wasn’t in the room anymore. Where had she disappeared to? “Julie?”

  I got up. Actually, I got up twice; my first attempt to stand failed when the floor pitched up suddenly, thwacking me in the side of the head with Julie’s futon mattress. The second time I moved more slowly, concentrating on balance, and managed to gain my feet.

  I searched the entire apartment, calling Julie’s name repeatedly. She was nowhere to be found. Finally I noticed that the apartment’s outer door was ajar.

  “Julie?” I stumbled onto the landing at the top of the rickety staircase, imagining I heard footsteps descending just ahead of me. But there was no one on the stairs, and the street-level door, visible only as a faint outline far below, was closed. I started down, too fast, and after only a few steps my balance went out again; I tripped and fell, the walls of the staircase seeming to fall away too, so that I landed outside, face down on an asphalt surface.

  “Ju-ulie,” I gasped, sprawling. My shirt, untucked, caught beneath my hip; I heard a tiny click-click-click as a button popped off and bounced away. Something wet splashed my wrist.

  I rolled onto my side. My hand was still holding the scotch bottle, I saw. The bottle had survived the fall intact, but the violence of the motion had caused some of the contents to slosh out of the neck; that was the wetness I’d felt. The scotch tingled on my wrist, making it seem more awake than the rest of me. I brought my wrist to my face, rubbed some of the wetness on my cheeks and forehead. I took another drink.

  “Julie?” Somehow I got to my feet again. I was standing in the middle of a street, the street in front of Julie’s apartment or maybe a different one, I couldn’t tell. It was full dark now, and my vision had become grainy, so it was hard to resolve shapes, even those that were lit by street lamps. On the sidewalk to my left, I thought I saw a person—a woman? Julie?—but when I moved towards her she dissolved, like an eidolon morphing into a flock of doves.

  “Julie…” Where was I? I needed to find a street sign, something I could focus on. Reasoning that a street corner would be a good place to look, I picked a direction and started walking.

  Or lurching, is more like it. My soul swung loose in the body, as if it were attached to Andy Gage by a web of elastic tethers. Moving was like trying to operate a marionette from the inside—I swayed and pitched from side to side, using a line of parked cars as a combination handrail and crash barrier. Then I was at the corner, hugging a metal post and looking up at two narrow green bands set at right angles, one reading IRVINEST, the other OSWEGOCT.

  Irvine and Oswego, Irvine and Oswego, where was that? Above Bridge Street, or below it? I tried to place the intersection on a mental map of the town, then got sidetracked by another consideration: if I did figure out where I was, where did I want to go? Home to Mrs. Winslow’s, or back to Julie’s place? “Julie…” I sighed. My arm, the only part of me still capable of coordinated movement, started to come up; I caught it just in time, just as the bottle was about to touch my lips.

  I decided on what, at the time, seemed like a practical strategy: I would just keep walking. Autumn Creek was small, after all; if I kept moving, kept trying new streets, and was careful not to cross any bridges, sooner or later I was bound to happen across Julie’s building, or Mrs. Winslow’s, or some other landmark that would allow me to orient myself. And Julie herself was still out on the streets somewhere, probably; with a little luck I might bump into her. That thought, more than any other, propelled me into motion again.

  A step; a step; another step; and another. I don’t know how long or how far I walked. I was losing time, of course: minutes and blocks were passing between each footfall that I was aware of. A step; a step; another step; and then suddenly I drew up short, feeling as though I was about to fall again. I pivoted, wheeled away from an unseen precipice; stumbled up over a curb; crossed an expanse of sidewalk; and staggered to a halt on a patch of mowed grass.

  A voice called my name, and I came up into a state of relative sobriety. I was standing on the front lawn of Mrs. Winslow’s Victorian. Mrs. Winslow was on the porch; it was she who had called to me. “Mrs. Winslow!” I cried, and my elation at finding myself home was eclipsed almost immediately by shame. I must look terrible…was I still carrying the scotch bottle? Yes, I was still carrying the scotch bottle. I thought seriously about walking away, ducking back out of sight before Mrs. Winslow could get a good look at me, but then she said “Andrew” again with such concern that it was obvious it was too late.


  Mrs. Winslow wasn’t alone on the porch. There was a man up there with her, a policeman I thought at first, and my shame intensified—she’d gotten so worried she’d reported me missing. But the policeman wasn’t wearing a uniform. No suit, either, so he wasn’t FBI…

  It was Dr. Eddington, I realized. What was he doing in Autumn Creek?

  On my own I never would have guessed it; I was still too drunk. But some other soul looked out from the pulpit then, and put it together. The thought came, not mine but clear just the same: Something has happened to Dr. Grey. That’s what brought him here the last time.

  I didn’t want to hear it. It’s my job to deal with the outside world, no matter how bad things get, but I didn’t want to hear it. It was one blow too many. I’d killed Warren Lodge; I’d killed my friendship with Julie too, probably; if it turned out I’d killed Dr. Grey as well, tempting her back to work she no longer had the strength for, I didn’t want to know. I refused to know.

  “Andrew…” Dr. Eddington began, but I didn’t stay to listen. I shook loose from the body, snapped the tethers. There was a sound of glass shattering, of house-timbers cracking; a chorus of souls crying out in anguish and alarm; and all of that swallowed up by the hissing roil of the mist as I fell back into the lake. I plunged down deep, down to the bottom where the water is black, and there is no bad news.

  I fell into the lake; but somebody has to run the body. And somebody did: ran it, and ran with it: somebody who had been waiting a long time for just this chance. Even as the waters closed over me, Andy Gage’s body was on the move again, running back into the street, back into the night; running far, far away.

  SIXTH BOOK: MOUSE

  16

  Mouse’s first meeting with Dr. Eddington is scheduled for 7:30 P.M., which is pretty late in the day, but the only time he had available. When Mouse called to make the appointment, she was surprised that Dr. Eddington answered the phone himself; he explained that his regular secretary was getting married in two days, and her temporary replacement hadn’t shown up, “so I’m running things by myself for the time being…What did you say your name was?” Mouse told him, and he replied cheerfully: “Oh, Penny! Danielle—Dr. Grey—told me you might be calling. And this is about treatment for multiple personality disorder, right?”