Robert Thurston
What would the reciprocal of this story be like— that is, what if the author had put in what he left out, and vice versa?
The room was all Jack knew. He had been other places but he could no longer remember them. He stood still, concentrating on his peripheral vision. To his left the room seemed to have blurred, then faded. He turned quickly. For a split second the other side of the room was not there. Then it reappeared, mud-colored and barren.
Betty was long in coming this time.
He paced the mud-colored floor. Floorboards sank beneath his feet like the springs of a hard, lumpy mattress. He sat on the mud-colored divan.
Whatever Betty did when she was away, this time she was a long time doing it.
He played breathing games. Long inhale, long exhale. Short inhale, short exhale. Long inhale, short exhale. Short inhale, long exhale. Rhythmic breathing where the breaths imitate the drum accompaniment to a song played by full orchestra in the mind. He concentrated on the orchestra itself, placing the bass fiddle section right by his left ear. Second bass fiddle was an orange-haired girl with a freckled face. She leaned over the instrument as if she were having an argument with it.
A long time this time, Betty.
As soon as she materialized, Betty realized that Jack always broke into a grin when she returned. What’s he got to grin about? I must be ten pounds heavier this time. Stupid. I feel shitty. 1 feel shitty and witty and wise. Dumb fat-girl dress, daisies all over it. Why would I ever buy such an atrocity? At least it’s colorful, something better than the faded-lace color of this room.
“You remember, this time?” Jack said, as Betty sat down beside him.
“Not a goddamned thing. One second I’m sitting here, deciding to let your hand sneak into my cheerleader’s sweater, the next I’m standing over there in a party dress. But I’ve been someplace. I can almost remember where. It’s like waking up from a dream, it’s gone now.”
“Like that for me, too.”
Jack’s face was heavier, a suggestion of jowls. His eyes looked as if they’d been smeared with coal dust.
“What do I look like?” she asked.
“Cotton candy.”
“Is that complimentary?”
“I doubt it.”
Jack held up his right leg and pointed to his trousers. Betty saw droppings of what might be dried paint—bits of purple, black, and brown.
“You think maybe you’re a painter?”
“Yeah.”
Jack put his leg down. Delicately, so as not to dislodge the drops of paint.
“House or canvas?”
“Looks like oils to me.”
“You should be happy then. A clue to your identity and all. Why aren’t you happy?”
“What if I’m not good at it? How do I get any satisfaction out of knowing I’m an artist if I can’t see the fruits of my labor?”
“In an automated society the majority do not see the fruits of their labor. Many people don’t know what their labors are.”
“I’ve got to know.”
“Well, then, you may possess some talent, a dabbler’s maybe, an alien corn’s. But yours is not the artistic temperament.”
“Pompous bitch.”
“Yes, isn’t it worthwhile?”
Betty disliked the way her skirt slid farther upward each time she shifted position on the divan. Each movement revealed a little more of her meaty thighs. She stood up, knowing that the perspective suited her figure better. De-emphasized were the big stomach, the upper-arm fleshiness, and the awesome thighs. She felt her muscles strain holding so much of her in place.
Jack disappeared, which was something of a relief.
Betty spent the next few hours relaxing, letting her flesh fall where it might. She wondered if Jack was worth all the trouble. Putting up with his curtness, listening to his egomaniacal self-pity, trying to keep her witty remarks down to his level, watching his baldness run from his temples upward in a pair of flying wedges—all because he was the only game in town.
Jack returned. He was dressed quite conservatively, like a stockbroker or banker, and now had a slight paunch and a mustache. Betty laughed at the mustache. Touching it, feeling its strangeness, he said, “Does it look good at all?”
“Want an honest answer?”
“If the honest answer is yes, I want it. If it’s no, I don’t want it and I want you to tell me yes anyway.”
“Okay. Yes. It looks just marvelous.”
“Really?”
“Honest or dishonest answer?”
“Forget it.”
He sat beside Betty and held her. She looked quite sexy in the daisy-flowered dress. Staring at the low scoop of its neckline, he felt desire for her. Betty kept touching his mustache and giggling. He kissed her, which initiated a giggling lit. Later, when the kissing became more intense, she appeared to enjoy the mustache. At the moment of her disappearance, he was beginning an affectionate hug. One hand slammed against his chest as his arms crossed where she had been.
Jack discovered some marijuana in his suit-coat pocket, along with a packet of Zig-Zags. He rolled and smoked the first joint, then looked slowly around the room. There was nothing for heightened perception to fix on. The mud-colored room just became more mud-colored. No kick in that. Betty better make it back quicker this time. Betty better. The second joint worked.
Betty came back pregnant. She almost fell flat on her face because of the sudden abdominal weight. She looked to Jack for help. Through the smokescreen that surrounded him.
“My God, what a time for you to be stoned! You always know, don’t you? What do you have, advance information?”
“Bug off. Any time you want to is a good time to be stoned.”
“But not now, stupid.”
“Why not now?”
Betty stood sideways. “I’m pregnant, God damn it! Knocked up. Enceinte. In the family way. Preggers. Unexpectedly with child.”
“I gave at the office.”
“Help me or something!”
“Here, you should sit down. Sit down here. Mustn’t exert yourself. That’s what all new fathers-to-be say.”
“I strongly doubt that you’re the new father-to-be, my friend.”
“Well, sit down anyway! What the hell do I care whose kid the bastard is?”
Betty sat at the end of the couch. With some difficulty, because her pregnancy prevented graceful movement and because the battered slope of the couch made it tricky to sit as far away from Jack as she wanted.
“What I hate most,” Jack mumbled, “is people who continually give you stage directions for the roles you play.”
The pot smoke dissipated slowly. Jack stared straight ahead, his lips working steadily on unheard mutterings. Bored, Betty fell asleep. Bored Betty. Baby-kicks awoke her twice. The second time Jack was gone.
She wondered what to do if the kid decided to get born here, here, before Jack came back. She wondered what use he’d be anyway.
Jack’s return coincided with a labor pain. He was put on edge both by her scream and the rage in her eyes.
“What can I do?”
“Pray.”
In between pains her whole body went slack. Her arms hung over the edge of the divan. Her lace looked puffy.
“God, you’re bald!”
He felt his head. It was true, his hairline had receded further. Only a few strands crossed the forelock area. Still a lot of hair above the timber line, though. A cold breeze blew across the barren slopes and made him tremble.
Without dignity Betty endured another labor pain. Afterward she said, “Have you read A Farewell to Arms?”
“No.”
“I think I have, God damn it!”
Jack felt he must do something, concoct a heroic act, make a civilized gesture, accomplish something worthwhile before he lost all his hair. What could he do? Talk to her, offer her encouragement? “Go to it, Beth old girl . . . Another heave and it’ll be all over . . . Open wide, it won’t hurt.”
Her pains came with more frequency. He held her, first for affection, then to pin her down.
“Boy, if I ever come across the guy that did this, my impregnator, I’m going to—Jesus!—it’s coming now. I can feel it. It’s coming, God damn it! Help me, please. I can feel it. It’s coming. Jack, do something, do something, do something!”
He could not move. Betty’s words dissolved into a long-drawn-out shriek, the sound of which ended sharply as she disappeared, leaving a broad, deep gully in the divan, which slowly inflated to its regular shape.
Inspecting himself with a hand, Jack stroked his baldness, detected a new graininess around his eyes, a bit more weight in his chin and waist, and an operation scar. There was added congestion in the nasal passages.
What accusations would Betty throw at him upon her return? Too many. That’s what you get when you make your mistakes out in the open. He was furious with her, anyway. Somehow she was no longer his, the stupid bitch. She belonged to somebody outside the mud-colored room. He would never know his rival, or even know if there was a rival. Maybe, when they disappeared, they went to another room like this one. And there they met each other again. No, they could not meet each other, they never disappeared together. Maybe they met antitheses of themselves. When Betty went, she rendezvoused with anti-Jack, a guy just the opposite in manner, abilities, and ideas. Gregarious, optimistic, loving, possessed of brilliant moral strength. Anti-Jack would be everything that Jack was not. With him she would get what she wanted, which was why she often returned so happy. But, then, how in hell could he put up with her, if he was so goddamned perfect? She’d drive him out of his head.
Betty came back short of breath, fatter. She seemed to have gained weight everywhere. The loose faded-print dress she now wore didn’t help either, it seemed to touch her body only where it could not avoid it. She felt her hair, which was now dry and brittle. I must look like hell.
“You look like hell,” Jack said.
“You go to hell,” she said, and began to cry.
Jack just stared ahead. Brushing away tears with the back of her hand, she felt a leathery coarseness in her cheeks. I should kill the smug bastard, tie it up in a sloppy little knot. But what if I killed him and still kept coming back here?
“Do you think we can save our relationship?” she said.
“Save it for what?”
“For five and a half percent interest! You ... you would destroy everything that’s beautiful between us.”
“What’s so beautiful between us?”
“Between us, nothing. I only want you should pretend, to take up the time.”
Jack sighed.
“Please don’t do that.”
Jack sighed again.
Betty sighed as long as she could, with some shrillness in her voice.
Jack sighed in sincere despair.
Betty sighed The Carousel Waltz. Look at him, pouting like a kid when somebody’s taken away his toys. I’ll take away his toys. I’ll take away his balls.
“Want to make out?” she asked.
“Bug off.”
“I’ll bestow upon you the ultimate gift.”
“You couldn’t give that away if you took out a want ad under merchandise, used.”
“Prude!”
She tried to control her temper. “What do I look like? In metaphor.”
“Betty, I don’t know. Leave me alone.”
“Tell me.”
“Beauty seen through a shard of Coke bottle that’s been beaten by the sea and aged by the sun.”
“I don’t know what to do with that.”
“Shove it in your glass eye.”
“I don’t have a glass eye.”
“Well, find somewhere else.”
Betty tried to strike an adamant pose, but she could not make her arms work right. Extra flesh slapped against extra flesh. She had trouble fitting her left hand into her right armpit. Only the fingertips of her right hand touched the flabby muscle of her left arm.
“I think we should split,” she said.
“Gladly.”
“Agreed then?”
“A-greed.”
Each sat motionless, waiting for the other lo move.
“Well?” Betty said.
“Well what?”
“In every separation somebody has to go. You!”
“Go? Where’ll I go?”
“Out there.” She waved a hand at the mud-colored door.
“Now wait a minute. One thing I do not do is go out there.”
“Coward!”
“Intimidator!”
“Well, I’m not going. It’s not the girl’s plat e to challenge the unknown.”
Jack stood up, began to pace.
“At your age afraid of dragons!” Betty said sardonically. “Remember when we looked out the door and saw only a hallway with dark at the end? Quite conventional-looking if you ask me, just a quaint drab corridor, nothing to be terrified of. You just walk on down it, all you’ll probably encounter is a minotaur or two.”
“I won’t go. I can’t.”
“Bloodless. Spineless. Shrinking violet. Drooping lily. Chicken. Faint of heart, cold of feet.”
Betty spoke tonelessly, leaving a precise two-second pause after each insult.
“Poltroon. Dastard. Jelly-testicled. Churning-stomached. Trembling-lipped. Scaredy-cat. Shadow-terrified. Pusillanimous. Sissy. Effeminate. Milksop. Lacker of the essential juices. Slacker. Dodger. Abdicator of responsibility. Limp-wristed. Eye-flincher. Pigeon-hearted. Spermless.”
“Are you going to keep this up?”
“Impotent. Weak-kneed. Worry-wart.”
“Stop it, please.”
“Terror-struck. Blench-faced. Bulgy-eyed. Panic-stricken.”
“Okay. Second chance. We’ll try harder.”
“Number two. Cold running blood. Goosefleshed. Tremoring cowerer.”
“Betty!”
“Cold-sweated. Ball-less. Yellow-streaked a mile wide. Duty-shrinker. Quisling. Benedict—”
“All right, I’ll go.”
He opened the door a little way, slipped through the narrow space. The door clicked shut hollowly. She listened to his steps going down the hallway. Tentatively. He seemed to pause near the end. Betty grunted, she expected now to hear him return. When the sound of steps resumed, the footfalls came quickly, resolutely. Their sound diminished gradually until Betty realized that she had imagined the sound of the last few steps. The faint scream seemed to come also from her imagination.
Although she had been alone in the room before, this time she felt stimulated about it. There was that chance that he would not come back. She listened for his footsteps.
He won’t get far. He’ll be like the first one to test the water on the first good swimming day. He’ll test the surface with his toes, let the good chill run up his legs, venture out to knee level maybe, then race back to the beach, heedlessly splashing water behind him. Unless he’s dead or something. Eaten up by the minotaur, bad-breathed by the dragon. Strongest odds are that there’s nothing out there but more of this. He’s probably lost in a maze of hallways. Or maybe he’s outside the cave, foraging for food. He’ll come back a naked ape. A welcome change.
She stretched out on the divan and tried to go to sleep. At first she was disturbed by worries. Maybe something had happened to Jack. What about the scream? If that’s what it was. Too far away to be sure. He probably just saw his own shadow or something.
Gradually she dozed off.
She could not keep track of the number of times she awoke groggily. At these moments she would not allow herself to come to full consciousness, at least not to a consciousness where she might have to reflect upon anything serious. Enough to notice a change of dress and return to sleep. On some awakenings she would look around the room to see if Jack had returned. When she did not see him, she shrugged and resumed the napping position.
Abruptly she was aware of herself lying awake, staring at the faded-lace ceiling. Her body felt stiff. Gripping the back of the divan with both hands, she pulled herself up, muscles straining at the effort. Sharp pains ran between her elbow and wrist.
Reluctantly, she examined herself. She looked like a mountain. Breasts like elongated watermelons, resting on the ample field of her stomach. Thighs like overfilled sacks, so thick she could not make her knees touch. Below them, parts of her body she might never see again. She wore an old lady’s dress, basic brown with miles of grainy lace, fading.
Jack had not returned. Or else he’d come back while she slept, seen her grown fat and lumpy, and had left again.
She let her fingers journey over her face. Trenches and pits, loose coarse skin, eyelids like thin lampshade paper.
I can’t stay in this room anymore. I should never have let him go. Retribution like that takes the juice out of victory. Well, who the hell likes victory juice anyway? I’ll go out there. Anything’ll be better. I’ll step tippy-toe into the mouth of the nearest dragon.
She stood up. Unbearable pain rode up from her calves and thighs. She sat down again. Eyes shut, concentrating, she tried to separate herself from the fat, as if the fat were pasted to her thin body and could be ripped off at any time. She felt it as discrete and alien matter. She inhaled and it rose, pushed up by her breathing. She shifted position on the divan and it moved with her. Silly to get hysterical about it. I should relax. Contemplate my navel. If it is physiologically possible to locate my navel.
Hours later she heard a shuffling sound, somebody walking in the hall. The echo of the steps seemed awesome, threatening. She pictured, in a quick series of flash-card images, hundreds of monsters in a variety running from reconstituted human creatures to the ugliest possible sentient collages. The steps stopped in front of the door. Betty wished she could disappear at will. The doorknob began turning.
“Who is it?” she shouted.
The doorknob’s movement stopped.
“Is it you, Jack? Is that you?”
An answering mumble. He slowly opened the door, slid in sideways, a little of him at a time. A withered old hand, sharp-pointed and lace-colored. Glimpses of an emaciated arm beneath a tattered shirtsleeve. Half of a dirty shirt and trousers, half of a wrinkled bearded face. The entire head came into full view: skin yellowed and spotted, completely bald, lines running into lines, sparse and speckled whiskers. The creature seemed to be Jack. It must be. But Jack as if his face had been made of candlewax which was now half melted. He stood before her, tottering on trembling legs. Shakily his hand rose in a hello salute. It was almost the wave of a returning hero.
Struggling to control her nervousness, Betty spoke in a guarded and toneless voice. “Where’ve you been?”
He shrugged a long, quaking shrug. “I have some memories, but dim and growing dimmer as I think of them. Broken sidewalks, thick forests, a strange city that left me messages, rocks falling from the sky. There was a dragon, I think. But I can’t concentrate, synthesize.”
He could hardly see her. His vision was impaired by glaze and other matter. She looked big now. She looked very big.
She beckoned to him and patted a cushion beside her. Without speaking, she kept patting it. His feet sliding along the floor, he walked toward her. It seemed a long way. She extended her hand, took his, and guided him onto the divan. Her hand remained in his. The skin of their hands had the texture of wood, of old boards; if one altered the grip, the other would get splinters.
“How do you feel?” Betty asked. “You feel okay?”
“No, don’t feel so good. Don’t feel okay.”
He looked at her with eyes so dark they reminded her of tarnished coins. She touched his grizzled beard, with the tips of her fingers wiped away some wetness by his mouth.
“You know,” she said, “I have this funny feeling that any minute now somebody is going to scream ‘Cut it and print it,’ and the walls are going to be struck, and the makeup men are going to stride in and tear off the plastic that’s our makeup and rip out the pillows from inside my costume and compliment us for a good job well done and escort us to our limousines, and you can say to me, ‘Nice working with you,’ and I can say to you, ‘Nice working with you,’ and we can bid farewell against a setting sun and drive off in highly polished Cord automobiles. Something like that could happen, couldn’t it?”
“Not bloody likely.”
She rested her head on his shoulder, felt herself drifting off to another nap. “My legs hurt like hell,” she muttered.