The Bradbury Report (42 page)

 

The Tall Man returned the third week of August. We could no longer predict or prepare for his arrival. We'd finished lunch. I'd got back into bed, thinking I might push through another hour on my report before I napped. (My naps, now, were long and deep, mini-comas from which I surfaced—so that I might eat—groggy and disoriented.) The day outside, Anna informed me, was inhumanly hot. The apartment's air-conditioning, mostly notional, could not begin to keep up. Alan was stretched out on the other bed in shorts and a T-shirt; Anna had provided him with a drawer full of short-sleeved things he could wear inside the apartment. He had come to us thin, without an ounce of fat on him, but strong. He was markedly thinner now. He was lying on his back, his head on the contoured pillow he'd acquired, his hands beneath his head. I could see a segment of his tattoo. He had his mirrored sunglasses on (he wore these more and more)—obviating the need for the pillow over his eyes—and it was impossible to tell where he was looking, or if he was awake. (I hated these glasses: to see myself reflected in them was unnerving.) The Tall Man, who wore the same thing whatever the weather—a kind of coolie's uniform: gray chinos and a blue work shirt, the sleeves rolled up above his hypertrophied forearms, muscly and thick-veined—had come to speak to Anna. Before he did, he looked in on me.

“How are you faring?” he said.

“Faring all right,” I said.

“Do you get out of bed?”

“On occasion.”

“Then you might want to come into the living room. Hear what I have to say to Anna.”

“And Alan?”

“Either way,” he said.

Alan had been awake and wanted no invitation. He had taken it on himself to protect Anna from the Tall Man, and, still wearing his sunglasses, sat down, inscrutable, on the couch close beside her. Hot
as it was, I put a robe on over my pajamas. What the Tall Man said to Anna—you could tell he took no pleasure saying it—when we'd all gathered, was this: we would have to leave Calgary at the end of September. Anna, who must have been expecting something of the sort, told him this would not be possible. I could not be moved. The Tall Man said he understood. That, in negotiating for us an extra month—getting us four months instead of three, as had been the rule—he had bought us as much extra time as he could. And in doing so, he assured us, he had put our lives, and his own, had put the whole enterprise, at unacceptable risk. When the time comes, he told Anna, you and the clone will have to leave Ray here.

“We'll have someone from the group move in with him and see to his needs while he finishes his report.”

Anna told him she refused to leave me behind.

“You'll have the choice,” he said to her. She could stay with me, or move on with Alan. He didn't say where they'd be going, but, given the pattern, we assumed it would be somewhere in British Columbia.

(I will not live beside the sea.)

“I won't leave Ray,” she said.

“That will be your choice. Just know this: if you decide to stay, we'll have to take the clone.”

“I won't leave, too,” Alan said.

I was touched by Alan's pronouncement, even though I knew it spoke more to his concern for Anna, and her predicament—if he could effectively refuse to go, he would release her from the need to choose—than to his wanting to stay with me.

“I won't leave,” Alan said again.

“That's all right, Alan,” Anna said to him. “You don't need to worry. We'll work something out.”

Alan stood up and approached the Tall Man, so that he was standing directly in front of him. “I won't leave.”

“Alan,” Anna said. “Come back now. Sit here.”

“I'm not afraid of you,” Alan said. His head came up to the Tall Man's chest, and he looked, next to him, in all ways impotent and small.

“You should be, son.”

“I'm not your son,” Alan said. “I am no one's son. I am not afraid.”

“Then take off those damn glasses,” the Tall Man said. “Let me see your eyes.”

Alan took off the glasses and looked straight at the Tall Man. “Do you see my eyes?”

“I do.”

“I am not afraid.”

The Tall Man studied him. “I can see that.”

“I don't care if I die,” Alan said. “Did you know that?”

“No,” the Tall Man said.

“Do you care if you die?”

“Yes, I do,” the Tall Man said.

“Then you should be afraid of me.”

“Maybe I should.”

“I know what you want me to do,” Alan said. “I know what you want me to do. I won't do it. I won't do it for you.”

“You won't?”

“No,” Alan said. “I won't do it.”

“Yes, you will,” the Tall Man said. “Believe me. You will do it.”

“I
don't
believe you.”

The Tall Man put his hand on Alan's shoulder. There was nothing rough or threatening about this gesture. Alan moved out from under his touch. “That was good, son,” the Tall Man said. “Well done. Well spoken.” He turned to Anna. “Devil his due,” he said. “You've done well.” He looked at me. “Both of you.”

That night, when Alan had gone to bed, I told Anna I was proud of him. I knew Anna was fretful. She'd left the oven on, the milk standing out, the door to the freezer open, neglected to flush the toilet. Such undomesticated things as she never did. She'd snapped at Alan for the most trivial offense (I don't remember what it was), and for the first time, she'd sent him to his room. I'd meant to find something positive to say about what had transpired.

“You're proud of him?”

We were in bed, the lights off.

“Yes. I am.”

“Who cares about your pride? What difference can it make? If I lose you, Ray.”

“As, one way or the other, you will.”

“. . . I will have lost, or be lost to, all and everyone I loved.” She shook her head, as if chasing off a bad dream. “You don't want to know this.”

“Listen, Anna. There'd be no percentage, no special virtue, in your staying with me. It is Alan who needs you.”

I needed her, I
need
her, too, though she can do me much less good, and, whatever my needs, they will be short-term. Which is what I told her.

“You need me,” she said.

I am not so insensible that I didn't understand what she wanted me to say.

“I do.” I was glad I couldn't see her.

She claimed she couldn't say what she would do, but we both knew, if it came to that, she would go.

 

The next day was hot again. Outside the streets were baking, and there was not much relief to be had inside the apartment. We were already jagged, the freakish (for Calgary), insistent heat another edge.

That's not quite true. I didn't seem to register the heat. What the Tall Man said did not signify a change in
my
prospects. It remained probable I would die before the end of September, and that Anna, without having to choose, would go on with Alan to British Columbia, to wherever they were sent. It was hard to know how Alan was feeling. He spoke even less frequently, only in terse pellets of speech. He spent most of the day silent and supine on Anna's bed. I could never tell if he was looking at me, watching me work (the pretext for this proximity was that he was helping with my report). He wore the mirrored sunglasses all the time now. He came out for breakfast with them on, and wouldn't take them off, supposing he did take them off, until he went back into his room at night. It was Anna who was
jagged, vexed, working full tilt, if I know her, to find the solution to a problem that would, in short order, solve itself.

In the late afternoon—by then it seemed as if the air-conditioning had capitulated—Anna came into my room (
her
room as well) to say she had a favor to ask of us, Alan and me.

“Is he awake?” she said.

“I don't know,” I said.

“Alan,” she said. “Are you awake?”

“Yes,” he said.

“Would you mind sitting up?” she said.

“Why?” he said.

“There's something I want to ask you and Ray.”

Alan sat up.

“I'd like it if you'd take off your sunglasses,” she said.

“I wouldn't like it,” he said.

“Will you do it anyway, please?”

“I won't do it,” he said. This was neither defiant nor belligerent.

“Leave them on then,” she said, “but listen. I didn't get any sleep last night. The heat.”

“And I was snoring,” I said.

“You always snore,” she said. “Last night you were extravagant.”

“It must be the medication.”

“Do I snore?” Alan asked.

“You don't,” she said.

“Why don't I snore?”

“Because you're young and fit and good-looking,” I said.

“Is that true?” he said to Anna.

“It is true that you're young and fit and good-looking,” she said.

“Maybe it's true that's why you don't snore. Now listen. I want to sleep by myself tonight, boys. I'll sleep in your room, Alan. You can sleep here, on my bed. Do you mind? Just for a night or two.”

“I don't mind,” Alan said, which surprised me.

Anna went to bed early. Alan stayed up a while in the living room by himself. It was past eleven when he came in. I'd been asleep for an hour. Alan switched on the ceiling light, a garish bulb in an open fixture
that did nothing to soften the glare. I was sleeping on my back, which is how I start out, and the light woke me.

“Turn the light off, will you?” I said.

“I won't turn the light off,” he said.

“Why won't you turn it off?”

“I don't want it off,” he said. “I want to talk.”

“We can talk in the dark,” I said.

“I won't talk in the dark,” he said. It began to seem he might be being disagreeable for sport, or reviving, in a more articulate version, an erstwhile mode of behavior. “I don't want to go to sleep. I don't want to go to sleep in this bed.”

“Why not?”

“Because you snore,” he said.

“Where will you sleep?”

“I will sleep on the couch.”

He was wearing a green T-shirt and, in lieu of the shorts he routinely wore inside the apartment, a darker green bathing suit. (He still would not undress in front of me.) Anna bought him the bathing suit thinking she might be able to find him a place to swim. Though minor, still another sadness. We surmised Alan had never been swimming, didn't know how to swim. There was the problem of his tattoo. Anna hoped to find, in her words, a swimming hole, where she might take him after dark, so that he could wade and paddle around, get a feel for the water, cool off. Alan expressed no interest in swimming, but he liked to wear the suit. It was loose and baggy and didn't necessitate his wearing underwear.

He had his sunglasses on, and his Jets cap. That he had aspirations to, but no sense of, fashion is understandable. The same could not be said for me. He sat down on Anna's bed, his feet on the floor. He leaned forward, halving the space between us. I turned on my side to face him.

“Did you ever make love to a woman, Ray?”

He took something out of the side pocket of his bathing suit, but I couldn't yet see what it was.

“Yes,” I said. “What have you got there?”

His response was to hold up a small pink plastic figure I was slow to recognize.

“What
is
that?” I said.

He didn't say, but, whatever it was, he continued to hold it up so I might see it.

It was, I saw, the Pony Girl doll Alan had been determined to buy on his shopping spree. He'd taken off the doll's pony dress, a pinto shift with hood. What remained, what he was showing me, was the doll undressed. There was no attempt at anatomical correctness. The doll was a cheap, junky plastic thing: head (it had no hair; it was meant to be seen with its hood up), arms, legs, undifferentiated torso; the whole figure no more than five inches tall. I knew it, of course, as a Dolly Doll: the same plastic figure dressed, shift and hood, in imitation fleece. Each year, come Dolly Day, they sell millions of these things.

“Oh, right,” I said. “The doll.”

“To a woman?” he said.

“Yes.”

As we talked, Alan dismembered the doll, pulling off its arms and legs and head—all affixed to the torso by a kind of ball-and-socket snap joint—then put it back together. He performed this action repeatedly, deftly, without looking at the doll in his hands, the action unmistakably reflexive and unconscious.

“You made love to Anna,” he said.

“I mean my wife.”

“Her name was Sara,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You made love.”

“Yes.”

“How many times did you make love?”

“I don't know,” I said. “We were married. A number of times.”

“How long were you married?”

“Seven years.”

“You made love a number of times.”

“Yes.”

“How many times?” he said. “One hundred and forty-four times?”

I couldn't help but laugh. “Where did you get that number?”

“It's a gross,” he said. “One hundred and forty-four.”

“I know,” I said.

“How many times? One hundred and forty-four?”

“I don't know, Alan.”

“Did you also make love to Anna?”

He kept working away at the doll, pulling it apart, snapping it back together.