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InterText Vol. 7, No. 4 / September-October 1997
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Contents
FirstText: Triumph and Turmoil..................Jason Snell
Closed Circuit...............................Peter Meyerson
Mobike Rumblings...............................John Szamosi
Apple-Scented Dream.............................Larry Lynch
Neon Sea Dreams.............................Rupert Goodwins
....................................................................
Editor Assistant Editor
Jason Snell Geoff Duncan
jsnell@intertext.com geoff@intertext.com
....................................................................
Submissions Panelists:
Bob Bush, Joe Dudley, Peter Jones, Morten Lauritsen, Rachel
Mathis, Jason Snell
....................................................................
Send correspondence to editors@intertext.com or
intertext@intertext.com
....................................................................
InterText Vol. 7, No. 4. InterText (ISSN 1071-7676) is published
electronically every two months. Reproduction of this magazine
is permitted as long as the magazine is not sold (either by
itself or as part of a collection) and the entire text of the
issue remains unchanged. Copyright 1997 Jason Snell. All stories
Copyright 1997 by their respective authors. For more information
about InterText, send a message to info@intertext.com. For
submission guidelines, send a message to
guidelines@intertext.com.
....................................................................
FirstText: Triumph and Turmoil by Jason Snell
=================================================
It used to be that I wrote a column to open every issue of
InterText, whether I had anything to say or not. After six years
and 34 of those columns, I decided I wasn't going to write a
column unless I had something to say. It's been four issues
since I broke the string of obligatory editorials, but now I'm
back with both good news and bad news, as well a few general
comments about the state of InterText.
Let me start the bad news by turning this column into something
that's been common over the years as electronic magazines like
Athene, Quanta, and InterText have missed their self-imposed
deadlines: An apology for lateness. I've been very fortunate in
that InterText has never appreciably strayed from its
every-other-month schedule since our second issue appeared six
years ago. But this issue you're now perusing, whether it's on
paper, in e-mail, or on the Web, is the _latest_ one we've ever
produced. By all rights, this issue should've been in your hands
in July, and it's October. For blowing our regular schedule
(perhaps the thing about InterText's six-plus years I'm most
proud of), I can only offer an apology.
Well, not _only._ I can also offer an explanation.
One of the reasons I stopped writing a regular InterText column
was because every issue's column seemed to be a complaint-fest,
a chance for me to explain just how much time InterText takes to
create and how much the pressures of real life have intruded
into work which seemed easy and free when Geoff Duncan and I
were still writing e-mail with addresses ending in ".edu".
I had _no_ idea.
In addition to all those pressures, the time between issues has
seen Geoff birth a new member of the TidBITS family, namely the
new NetBITS weekly e-mail publication. For me, the change has
been even more radical -- my employer of four years, MacUser
magazine, merged with our competitor, Macworld. I've kept my job
though all the turmoil, but saying that the merging of two
competitors into a seamless whole that's supposed to work in
complete harmony is a difficult task doesn't begin to explain
how hard it's been for all of us to put out a magazine.
On top of that, my wife has recently switched jobs, and we're in
the process of looking for a new place to live in a different
corner of the San Francisco area.
So it's been a busy time. After all that's happened, it was only
fair to let you all know the story.
On to happier news. I'm happy to report that in the past month,
a couple different publishing events have mentioned InterText
and supported this whole online publishing concept we've been
riding for years.
First, the small (but still exciting) potatoes. In his
introduction to The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth
Annual Collection (St. Martin's Press, 1997), editor Gardner
Dozois singles out only a handful of online magazines, and
InterText makes the cut. "There are some longer-established
sites that are worth keeping an eye on, though, such as
InterText," Dozois writes, singling out two excellent stories
from Jim Cowan, "The Gardener" (InterText v4n5) and "Genetic
Moonshine" (InterText v5n3). To be mentioned favorably in a
volume containing two dozen of the best Science Fiction stories
of the past year is quite an honor, and I thank Gardner Dozois
for recognizing the work we do.
More exciting is the new book Coffeehouse: Writings from the Web
(Manning Publications, 1997), edited by Enterzone editor
Christian Crumlish and longtime InterText contributor Levi
Asher. This anthology is an excellent cross-section of different
kinds of Web-based writing, and includes works from four
InterText contributors, including two stories previously
published here. In addition to Asher, the collection features
Carl Steadman, Greg Knauss ("The Damnation of Richard Gillman,"
from InterText v1n3), and my own "Gravity" (InterText v2n1). If
you're interested in seeing a handsome, well-thought-out
collection of Net fiction, I highly recommend you buy
Coffeehouse and visit the related Website.
(For your convenience, we've posted both of these books on the
InterText Web site, linked to online bookstore Amazon.com, if
you're interested in purchasing them via the Net.)
Maybe I'm just a sucker for free publicity, but the
double-whammy of the Dozois anthology and the beautiful
Coffeehouse book have energized me with regard to InterText. In
addition, I've got a great team of story readers who are poring
over all the story submissions we receive, a system that will be
bearing fruit with the next issue. With any luck, I'll be able
to squeeze two more issues into 1997, keeping us on our
six-per-year track. But no promises. If the past year has taught
me anything, it's that anything can happen -- and probably will.
Until we meet again.
Jason Snell
------------------------------------
This week Jason Snell is the senior associate features editor at
Macworld magazine. In what passes for his spare time, he edits
InterText and the TV criticism-and-comedy Web site TeeVee
(http://www.teevee.org/).
Closed Circuit by Peter Meyerson
==================================
....................................................................
No matter how many years go by, the relationships between family
members are a constantly changing equation.
....................................................................
Although they exchanged ritual news of the weather and the
family on the phone regularly, Martin hadn't visited Sarah for
nearly three years. Now, standing at the foot of her bed, he
wondered if she was pleased to see him. Her expression or, more
accurately, the lack of it, revealed nothing.
Sarah was almost ninety. Her parched, furrowed little face was
framed by a halo of thin dead wheat, punctuated with clots of
lipstick, spiky mascara and long fake eyelashes; a grotesque
face which, without its dentures, curled back into itself like a
burnt match. His mother's face.
He couldn't quite take in this painted Jazz Age doll all at
once, couldn't, for more than an instant, consider her tiny
red-speck eyes (a wounded mongoose squinting at the sun, he
thought), eyes which in the past had never missed a trick.
Nor did Sarah, gazing at the mute TV set planted in the corner,
look at her son. Martin turned toward the set. Displayed was a
shadowy black and white image of the lobby's glass-door entrance
where, from time to time, some weary, hunched ancient shuffled
slowly through the portal.
"What's that on the tube?" he asked.
"The lobby. I watch them come and go," she replied.
"This is how you spend your days?"
"You got something better for me to do?" she said, her eyes
never leaving the set.
Definitely an edge there, Martin thought. For three years she
had made his excuses for him, embraced the ruse of the loving
son. It was, "Darling, I know you want to come, but what can you
do? You're so busy." But now that he was here, there was an
unmistakable hint of "how could you have stayed away so long?"
Martin's father had died fourteen years earlier, and Sarah
memorialized her husband's death by taking to her bed with a
variety of largely imagined ailments which, over time, became
real. Her occasional dizziness and light-headedness due, the
doctors said, to wildly fluctuating blood pressure eventually
became firmly rooted in budding emphysema. Which didn't erode
her dedication to unfiltered Camels. Between each cigarette
Sarah took deep swills from an oxygen tank.
"Don't worry," she assured her son. "I stub them out good. I
won't explode."
"This is no way to live to a hundred, ma," Martin said.
"A hundred? Ninety's ten years too old already. I wish I'd gone
at eighty," She meant it.
Martin was sixty-five, an age at which most people have lost
their mothers, may already be dead themselves; yet, suddenly, he
felt like a child abandoned in a dream, wandering through an
unfamiliar landscape aching to find his way home.
Martin and Melinda were talking in the living room while Sarah,
pretending to nap, strained to catch her children's words. A
futile endeavor; her erratic hearing demanded less distance and
more volume.
"Who knows what's she's doing? She's practicing to die."
Melinda's bitterness hissed through a narrow slit that echoed
with cracking crowns. That tiny mouth, Martin thought, the ruin
of her pretty face. Martin -- lucky male -- tucked his own
genetic legacy behind a full beard and moustache.
"She go out?"
"Never," Melinda replied. "Or not any more, not even to my house
for holiday dinners."
"Anybody visit?"
"Who? They're all sick... or worse. Besides, she doesn't want
anyone to see she's grown old."
"You don't like her very much, do you?"
"Oh, please! What do you know?" Melinda said, welcoming the
chance to unburden herself. "You breeze in once every three or
four years... to what? Pass judgments? _You_ try taking her
phone calls ten times a day. _You_ take a turn coming up here
twice a week to fill the fridge -- not that she eats what I
bring -- and put on her eyelashes. Her eyelashes! Can you
believe that? And what does she do for entertainment? Every
other month, like clockwork, she falls down and goes to the
hospital."
"She wants to be taken care of."
"A stunning insight."
"What about a home?"
"Oh, sure," Melinda said cynically. "She says she'll jump off
the balcony if I even think about it." Then, faltering: "I...
couldn't do that to her."
After his sister left, Martin mused about his parents'
generation. The last of their kind, he thought, children of
immigrants, people of the boroughs drawn in the end to the damp
heat and thick, mnemonic air of Florida. What better place to
grow old and die? Here is where their youth has fled. Here, just
staring at the sea, they conjure up the lost beaches of August
-- Edgemere or Long Beach or the Jersey shore, the courts of
stucco cottages filled with chattering families where, for a few
months at least, they escaped the Depression and the war which
followed.
Here, sitting on the terrace issuing wheezy tropical sighs, a
long-retired grandfather recalls his exuberant six-year-old
guiding him home from the train station, watching proudly as he
launders his city-soiled body in the sea. An ancient
grandmother, briefly alone at poolside before the bridge game
begins, remembers herself as a girl lugging unwieldy jugs of
juice and sandwich baskets to woolen islands on the sand,
weekend picnics at the cool water's edge. Brothers-in-law took
pictures. Where are they now, the Harrys, Sams and Daves? Most
are dead. And the photographs? Gone. No matter. For the
survivors, the images are fixed forever in coils of Florida
surf. Theirs for the reminiscence. But access to these memories
was not for Sarah, not anymore. Having cut herself off from past
and present alike, she lies in bed and watches the lobby.
Martin had always deplored his mother's lies and manipulations,
her appalling vanity, the pathetic facade of abundance and
culture she constructed for the benefit of others, and maybe,
above all, the way she'd always denigrated his father. As a
child, he hated her; as an adult, after years of therapy taught
him to forgive, he simply didn't like her.
But there was one event, a childhood incident, which he had
never forgotten and never forgiven her for. When Martin was five
years old, a few months after Melinda was born, Sarah had
announced that it was time for his first visit to the dentist.
Just a checkup. After a short taxi ride to the office of the
family pediatrician, Dr. Shaw drove them to a private hospital
on the Grand Concourse not far from their Bronx apartment. Here
they were seated in a waiting room. The doctor murmured a few
words to Sarah, chucked Martin under the chin, grinned
reassuringly, and disappeared through a pair of swinging doors.
Uneasy, Martin asked whether Dr. Shaw was a dentist, too.
"Of course he is, darling," Sarah said. "You're not worried, are
you? Don't be worried. We'll be home in half an hour."
Fifteen minutes later, two attendants entered the waiting room
and approached Martin from either side. Without a word, they
closed in on the frightened boy like a pair of giant claws and,
suddenly, grabbed him, pulling the child, flailing and
screaming, through an open door. From the depths of his terror,
Martin caught a momentary glimpse of his mother's face. But,
strangely, for the rest of his life, even after years of
intensive psychotherapy, he'd never been able to recall her
expression at that instant.
In a small operating room, the attendants strapped him to a
table. Immobilized, surrounded by masked adults, Martin watched
as they placed a noxious, cotton-filled ether strainer over his
face; someone told him to count to ten. Martin knew with
profound certainty that he was about to die. His last thought
before passing into unconsciousness was why his mother wanted
him dead. What had he done?
When he awoke, he learned that he'd had his tonsils removed.
From that moment on, Martin earned his reputation as a difficult
child.
"I think she's waiting for pop to come home from the hospital,"
Martin said.
"Well, she's in for a big surprise."
The floor-to-ceiling doors of the boardwalk restaurant had been
removed, giving diners a view of passersby, the beach, and an
enormous orange moon inching slowly out of the sea.
"I don't mean consciously, for God's sake."
"Well, excuse me," Melinda said, studying her menu. Martin's
confident psychologizing had been irritating her for fifty
years.
"She's filled with remorse."
"Uh huh. About what?"
"Pop, obviously. How she couldn't handle being with him at the
end. She couldn't even go to the hospital that last week."
"That was a long time ago."
"So what? Guilt doesn't heal itself. She's waiting for him to
come back and forgive her, tell her he understands."
"What do you say we order?" Melinda said.
"I'll have the pompano."
"Fish? You're a meat eater."
"I was. Before I leaked."
"What're you talking about?"
"My aortic valve. It sprung a leak."
"Since when?" Melinda was alarmed.
"I don't know. I found out a couple of weeks ago," Martin said
matter-of-factly. "Is the pompano any good here?"
"Martin. What...what does it mean?"
"Not much. It's a slow leak. Congenital. Completely benign.
There aren't any real symptoms...except for a slight arrhythmia.
I just have to make sure my blood pressure stays normal. The
cardiologist says there's a good chance the condition will
remain stable. If it doesn't, then it's... Take my heart --
please take my heart."
"A transplant?" Melinda's hands began to tremble. She put the
menu down.
"Valve replacement. At my age they'd probably give me a porcine
valve. Imagine. A pork chop in my chest." Then, noticing her
distress: "Melinda, it's a routine operation. The survival rate
is ninety something percent. And I'm in excellent health.
Honest, sis. Nothing to be upset about."
"Well..." Melinda said, somewhat reassured. "You don't seem very
worried."
"I'm scared shitless."
After melinda dropped him off at Sarah's apartment building,
Martin stopped at the security desk and waved at the closed
circuit TV camera.
"That for your mother?" the guard asked.
"Yeah."
"She's not home."
"She's always home," Martin said.
"Uh-uh. They took her away."
"Who took her away?"
The guard shrugged. "The ambulance people. We got an ambulance
in the building on twenty-four hour call," he said.
"What happened?" Martin could feel his balky valve refusing to
seal, flooding his heart with regurgitated blood.
"I dunno. She looked alive.... But I'm not a doctor."
"I got a little dizzy. I fell down. That's all. I'm fine."
Nurtured around the clock, Sarah was happy, the reigning queen
of the cardiac unit at Humana Biscayne Hospital. She smiled at
everyone, made jokes, ate whatever they put in front of her,
asked the doctors about their families, the nurses about their
boyfriends. "No boyfriend? What about my son here? He likes them
young. His last wife was half his age."
"Ma, please," Martin said, embarrassed.
"They're so good to me here," Sarah said pointedly.
During the week Sarah was in the hospital, the family -- Martin,
Melinda, her husband, Art, and their two grown children --
explored their options and reached an agreement. On the day
Sarah returned to the apartment, they gathered to tell her what
her future held. Since she could no longer take care of herself
and since the family couldn't afford a live-in companion, Sarah
would have to enter a nursing home.
"I'd rather die!" Sarah said.
"Ma, it's the nicest place in Florida. There's a waiting list a
mile long," Melinda said.
"Good. I'll wait."
Melinda unfolded a colorful brochure depicting the ivy-covered,
Spanish colonial buildings and exquisitely manicured grounds of
the Miami Home for the Aged and laid it out on Sarah's lap.
Sarah swept it to the floor with a rancorous sneer.
"How could you do this to me?"
"If it weren't for the judge -- he's on the board -- we couldn't
even get you in." Melinda worked in the law office of a retired
Superior Court judge.
"A home! You want to put me in a goddamn home!" On Sarah's lips
the word, usually a synonym for `safety' and `love,' became an
obscenity.
"Don't think of it as a home, Ma," Martin said. "Think of it as
a fancy hotel with round-the-clock service."
"It's a home!" she shouted. "Old people in wheelchairs and
walkers. Droolers staring at the walls...I have nothing to say
to these people. It's not for me."
"Well, what is? Huh? Besides driving your daughter crazy, lying
here like a half-dead fish and staring at the lobby all day and
all night!" Martin said, shocked by the vehemence of his
outburst. "_Nothing's_ for you! No one! You're just too good for
_everyone,_ for all of mankind! I mean, Jesus, what the hell do
you want?"
"I told you. I want to be dead."
"Well, it won't be long."
Sarah raised her eyes and looked at Melinda. "Look at how he
talks to his mother."
"I'm speaking for all of us, Ma."
Martin woke in a sweat at four-thirty in the morning, pursued by
echoes of a nightmare the substance of which was just beyond his
grasp. His chest was pounding violently, like some atonal madman
turned loose upon a kettle drum. It was too early for his dose
of Toprol, but he took a tab anyhow and, gradually, his heart
returned to something resembling a regular beat. After his panic
subsided, he began rethinking the events of the afternoon,
bewildered not so much by the anger behind his eruption, but by
his failure to control it, to conceal it not only from Sarah,
but from the rest of the family as well.
As the sky began to lighten, Martin got up, went into the
kitchen, and made a pot of decaf. Sarah's bedroom door was
slightly ajar and he peeked in to see if she was awake and
wanted a cup of coffee.
Martin knew instantly -- almost as though he had been expecting
it -- that she was dead. Propped up on some pillows staring at
the mute, flickering TV image of an empty lobby, it appeared as
though her entire being had issued a giant sigh and collapsed.
She seemed years younger; her skin was smoother, her hair
fuller, less patchy, her face, bereft of makeup, almost pretty.
She might have looked peaceful were it not for her eyes. Her
eyes were filled with limitless pity, as though Sarah were
witnessing an event too painful to bear. He had seen this
expression before. But...where? When, suddenly, the recollection
surfaced, Martin realized with a shudder that this was the
expression he had so briefly glimpsed on that horrendous morning
sixty years earlier, the profoundly anguished expression of a
woman utterly incapable of confronting her son's terror.
He lifted the bedsheet and covered his mother's face, then went
to turn off the TV. The lobby was no longer empty. Martin could
see a small, graceful figure, who he could have sworn was Sarah,
wafting through the open doors. He had an urgent impulse to call
out to her. But it was too late, a lifetime too late, to start
all over.
Peter Meyerson
----------------------------------
Peter Meyerson began writing short stories about two
years ago after careers as an editor in book and magazine publishing and
writing plays, half-hour sitcoms and screenplays.
Peter Meyerson previously wrote "Small Miracles are Better Than
None" (v7n2) for InterText.
Mobike Rumblings by John Szamosi
====================================
....................................................................
How do you give a friend unvarnished advice and still keep him
as a friend?
....................................................................
"Please, tell him to get rid of the motorcycle," Lorie asked me
on the phone. "Gary listens to you." Lorie and Gary are in their
mid-thirties. They've been married for nine years, and are
expecting their first child. It's going to be a girl.
"Good show, man," I greet Gary next time we meet.
His face goes into a wide grin. "What a relief! I was at the
point of giving up totally on the family issue. I thought I was
shooting blanks."
"No, not you," I shake my head. It's so stupid, though; I'm his
fishing buddy, not a sperm counter.
He takes out a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.
Silence. I have to say something. "I hear it's going to be a
girl."
"Yeah, Lorie and I have decided to have another kid after this."
I lift my hand to a military salute to show I admire their
dedication. "Good idea, Gary. What a great idea."
"You don't think we gonna have a second child just because I
always wanted a boy?" He looks deep into my eyes. "That's the
reason, you think, don't you?"
What else, you son of a bitch? "No, of course not. Why would I
think that?"
"I always wanted a boy and a girl. There are advantages to both.
Little boys are funny; you can play baseball with them, teach
them poker, show them how to fish for bass, catfish, trout. And
little girls, they're so cute...."
Silence again. I clear my throat. "They tend to gravitate to
their father."
Gary smiles. "Lots of advantages to having a daughter."
I nod. "Lots of advantages."
Gary pulls out a cigarette from the pack. "You think she's gonna
be good looking?"
How on earth would I know, you moron? "Yes, Gary, she's going to
be beautiful."
"Looks is genetic, ain't it?"
"Pretty much."
Gary is relatively handsome, just a little bald on the forehead,
and Lorie is a French woman who looks five years younger than
her age. Or at least she did before she got so huge. Now she
looks fifty.
Gary continues talking, "I've got lots of different genes. I'm a
real mutt: Irish, Hungarian, Italian, English. Even some
Eskimo."
"Inuit," I correct him. By the time his daughter grows up,
people will receive ten-year prison sentences for uttering
ethnic slurs like Eskimo.
Gary waves his hand; he always says what he thinks. It's
different only when he gets shitfaced on booze: then he uses the
two-dozen words he can still recall from his vacuous memory.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "She'll have French charm, Irish
ingenuity, Hungarian intelligence, Italian warmth, and the pride
and nobility of her Inuit ancestors."
"What about English?"
Nothing comes to mind. For evasion, I fill my mug with seltzer.
Now Gary is talking about life's complexities, how the next
generation is going to be exactly like us, but still totally
different. He even throws in an Oriental proverb: "You can't
step in the same river twice."
While drinking the club soda, I study his face.
Gary looks away. First he mumbles unintelligibly, then he speaks
up, "Lorie wants me to sell the motorbike. She's afraid I might
have an accident and get hurt or die."
I sigh; it's so much easier that he's brought it up. "Lorie is
right. Sell that stupid motorcycle. It's got the speed of a car,
but gives as little protection as a regular bike."
Gary takes a deep breath, and his eyes sparkle as he makes a
solemn announcement, "I'm gonna get rid of the mobike on the day
my daughter is born."
I wipe my forehead with a paper tissue. "Good decision, Gary,
I'm telling you. It must've been painful, but we all have to
make sacrifices." I stop, but his body language indicates he
wants to hear more of it. "You know, John Irving, the writer,
did the same thing when his first child was born."
"John Irving, huh?" Gary squints his eyes. "Garp and Hotel New
Hampshire?"
"That's the one."
"All right!" he yells. Then he adds in a lower tone, "Never read
his books. Seen the movies, though. Pretty good. So, what was
his first child, boy or girl?"
Oh, shit! "If I remember right, he has three boys from two
marriages."
"How many girls?"
"I don't know. Maybe he's got only boys."
Gary makes a slight guttural sound, then stares in front of
himself.
Absolutely nothing to say, so I speak again, "Look at the sunny
side, Gary -- you'll get a beautiful daughter, and lose a clunky
motorcycle." I hesitate. Should I shake his hand? I decide to
show him a thumb-up instead.
He forms a V between his fingers and nods. I sigh again; it's
over, finally.
Gary scratches his chin. "What if my daughter's not that
beautiful?"
It's not over yet. I shrug. What if she _is_ ugly? Plastic
surgery? Sell her to a rich childless couple? Let the Indians
steal her? Euthanasia? All good ideas; fortunately I am still
focused enough to keep my mouth shut.
"What if the baby is totally unattractive?" Gary repeats the
question louder, and moves so close to me that my eyes are
burning. I make a mental note that next time I have a serious
conversation with the man I'll put on reading glasses.
"What I mean is, should I get rid of my mobike even if the baby
is repulsive? Because I don't think I should!"
I turn away. This will never end.
Gary grabs my arm. "You know what? If she's gruesome like hell,
I refuse to sell the motorbike. Better yet, I'm gonna ride it
without a helmet!"
I resist the urge to ask the dingbat if he's already been riding
without a helmet.
Both of us have to get underway. In three months, Gary will be
the proud father of the youngest American. I sure hope the kid
is good looking.
John Szamosi
--------------------------------------
John Szamosi is an R&D scientist who lives in the sticks of
northwestern New Jersey. He is a fitness-and-fiber fanatic: He
has run four marathons, including the 1995 New York Marathon. He
has been writing humor, satire and fantasy fiction since
college.
Apple-Scented Dream by Larry Lynch
======================================
....................................................................
Blood defines family -- but not always in the way you think.
....................................................................
"OK?" Cami's father stood in the doorway of her room. She rolled
over and facedthe wall. "Is it the babysitter? I've arranged for
a new one," he explained. Cami lay still. "Is it school?" he
asked. No answer. "Cami?"
"It's everything," she said to the wall.
It was moving. It was leaving her friends. It was her father's
stupid job. It was having to tell people, tell them all over
again, that it was only the two of them -- Cami and her father.
Her full name, Camilla, was her mother's legacy to her. That,
and the burden of trying to explain being motherless everywhere
they went. It was easier to say "divorce" or "plane crash" than
to tell people what her father had told her: "She was young ,
Cami. And you were so little. She found being a mother harder
than anything in the world." Her father's explanation to her
would be unbelievable to others. She thought it seemed
unbelievable to him.
On a day in that reluctant spring, on her first day at another
new school, Cami's fourth grade teacher introduced her. "Class,
this is Camilla," she announced to snickers. "It's Cami," Cami
corrected, but the horrid utterance had already begun to
circulate like a fart in church, and it swirled above her head.
She felt like an oddity -- a weird one-parented girl in a land
of judgmental, perfect pre-teens.
He sat on her bed and rubbed the back of her neck. She liked it,
resented it, wished she was older, wished he would leave her
alone, wished she could lie in bed with him like she did when
she was younger.
"It's going to be all right," he said. "Give it some time." Her
father smelled good, like the cologne samples in magazines. She
could not stay mad at him.
"There's someone new coming over tomorrow after school." He
stroked her hair and she lay still, facing the wall. "I'm
leaving work early to pick you up so we can meet her when she
gets here. OK?" She didn't answer.
"OK?" he said into the back of her neck, leaning on her and
tickling her ribs. She squirmed and rolled over facing him, and
as hard as she tried, she could not keep from smiling.
"Good," he said.
"Can I stay after school by myself when I'm thirteen?" she
called to him as he left.
"We'll see," he answered.
"Fourteen?"
"We'll see."
Every babysitter Cami's father hired was met with Cami's extreme
disapproval. She hated them, she told him. They smoked, they
stank, they talked on the phone for hours, they snooped through
the house; she could be very convincing.
But this time, when the new babysitter arrived, Cami did not
have to roll her eyes, pinch her nose, stick her finger down her
throat or do any of the other things that brought that panicked
look to her father's face; it happened as soon as he opened the
door. He stood there, looking nervous and incompetent, while the
new girl stared down at him.
Perhaps it was because she was taller. Perhaps it was the shirt
she wore that exposed the gold hoop that pierced her belly
button. Perhaps it was her extra-wide pant legs and the
psychedelic, crocheted bag that hung over her shoulder. The new
girl smiled broadly, and Cami's father stuck out his hand.
"You're Kate," he said. Not a question, or an exclamation, but
more a bewildered statement -- the way you might react if you
caught your grandmother smoking pot. The face did not match the
name.
"That's me," she said and turned to Cami.
"This is Cami," her father said.
"Cool name." Kate nodded in approval at them both.
Cami could see her father's apprehension abating then, and knew
he would be going back to work, leaving her with this '70s girl.
Good reasons to hate her were starting to congeal in her mind.
"OK," he said, like he was about to divulge a big secret. "I'm
leaving." He scanned their faces for comprehension. "Any
problems, my number is on the fridge." This was standard; the
number hung there under a banana-shaped magnet as it did for all
the other babysitters. "Gotta go." He leaned down and kissed
Cami, who stood rigid, unreciprocating.
As was her practice, she went directly to her room. She said she
was going to do homework, which meant "don't bother me."
Normally, she would lie in her bed, doodling in her text books,
listening to the noise of the TV coming from the living room,
and the cupboard doors opening and closing in the kitchen. Cami
felt babysitters had an innate ability to find potato chips in
any house and always helped themselves. Having someone strange
in the house, watching her TV, eating her chips, talking on her
phone, and ignoring her just like she wanted -- these things
bothered her. She was thankful it was only for a few hours after
school, and that her father felt enough guilty about it not to
venture far in the evenings or on the weekends without her.
When Cami and her father watched television at night, he sat on
the couch, and she would sometimes sit on the floor with her
back resting against his legs. He flipped through catalogs and
asked her which curtains matched which bedspreads, holding the
catalog in front of her face and blocking her view of the TV.
(The furniture they moved from their apartment looked almost
like doll house furniture in the house's large rooms.) "I don't
know," she would say, and change channels indiscriminately.
Sometimes she would catch him staring at her, then say to him:
"What?"
"Nothing," would be his surprised answer, snapping from his
gaze. "Just looking at a monkey," and chase her with his
tickle-ready fingers.
Sometimes he just sat there looking defeated and lonely. In
those instances, Cami could say or do nothing that would help,
for if she could, she would have done so for herself. When he
was not home she took the catalog to her room; not to look at
the furniture and drapes and towels that her father struggled to
choose, but at the women, deciding which were the prettiest, and
which, if any, looked like her, had her round cheeks and wide,
dark eyes.
"Are you hungry?" Kate said and came into and Cami's room. Cami
sat up. "_No,_" she said. She scrutinized Kate as she wandered
about the room browsing through Cami's things. Kate's hair was
straight and hung down her back. She parted it somewhat in the
middle, but really in no particular place, and kept sweeping
errant strands behind her ears. Her ears were pierced in several
places, and earrings hung around them like seats on a Ferris
wheel, dangling hypnotically.
Cami could see that her "no" had not registered. Kate moved over
to her bureau and picked up a magazine. "You like these guys?"
she asked and turned the picture of the band on the cover in
Cami's direction. They were Cami's favorite. "They're OK," Cami
said.
Kate put the magazine back and surveyed the room. "Where's your
mom?" she asked. "Working too?"
If Cami had been a cat, she would have scratched her, would have
run up her leg and clawed her belly, and maybe hooked a claw
into that bellybutton ring. Cami's eyes narrowed to slits and
her lips were thin and pale. But, as she always did when she was
asked, she said, "It's only my dad and me."
"That's cool," Kate said and looked neither surprised nor
sympathetic. Everything was _cool._ Cami was getting a little
tired of cool. Kate sat on her bed, and Cami pulled her knees in
to her chest. "So, what do you want to do?" Kate asked her.
Cami shrugged and inched back toward the wall, bracing her knees
with her arms.
"Do you want to listen to some music? Do you have any CDs?"
"A few," Cami said reluctantly, "in the living room."
Her cat arched against the wall near the door. Cami watched Kate
bend down and pick up the cat on her way out of the room.
"What's her name?" she asked.
"It's Tiger, and it's a he," she snapped. "He'll scratch you,"
she said, more hopeful than cautionary, and watched her hold up
the surprised cat under the front legs like a baby, rubbing
noses with it. "Pretty Tiger," Kate cooed, then tucked the cat
under her arm and rubbed its head. The cat's tail flicked wildly
against her exposed lower back as she carried it down the hall.
Babysitters should eat chips, lie on the couch, talk on the
phone, and not bug her. That is what they should do, Cami
decided. Not come into her room, ask a bunch of nosy questions
and pick up her cat. And why did she have so many earrings?
What, two weren't enough?
Cami thought about how many times she asked her father to allow
her to get her ears pierced. "Someday," he would say, not really
trying to put her off, she thought, just not knowing that it was
important to her; a girl thing, a growing up thing. He frowned
when they went shopping, and smiled helplessly at the clerks as
Cami coaxed and pleaded him to buy her what she wanted; not the
cute sweaters with the animals or cartoon characters on them,
but clothes like other girls wore -- girls like the ones in her
school, the girls with earrings, the girls who talked to boys,
the ones who turned and giggled when "Camilla" spread through
the room like a gas.
And like a strange, nauseous gas itself, music spread from down
the hall into her room. It wasn't one of her CDs -- it was
something new. Cami went to see what her new and nonconforming
babysitter was doing.
"Your dad has some really old ones here," Kate said as she
pulsed in front of the record player, holding an album up for
Cami to see. The cover had three men with hair as long as a
woman's and neatly cut beards -- The Bee Gees, it said. Her cat
stood in the middle of the room looking defensive.
"I didn't know that worked," Cami said, nodding toward the
record player. Kate's shoulders dipped with the music and her
hips moved back and forth, and Cami watched the ring wriggle as
her bellybutton puckered and winked in rhythm. Kate's head
bobbed as she read the words on the album cover.
Cami moved closer to see exactly how many records her father
had. She knelt and pulled some from the drawer below the
turntable. They were light and flimsy with faded pictures of
strange looking groups on the front. She was kneeling close to
Kate and watched her pant legs billow and her painted toes tap
on the floor. She smelled faintly of cigarette smoke, and of
fruit. It was her hair, Cami thought. Apples.
"Do you smoke?" Cami asked.
Kate said "No," and Cami stared at her in disbelief.
The records were of little curiosity to Cami; only their number
and that they were probably older than she was. She stuffed them
back into their slots. When she stood, she was looking directly
into Kate's skewered navel. Kate caught her staring.
"Do you like it?" Kate asked, and flipped the ring up and down
with a casual finger.
She did not know what to say, and remembered the time she saw a
woman breast-feeding her baby on a bench at the mall, and how
uncomfortable she looked.
"Did it hurt?" she asked
"A little," Kate answered and smiled and put on another record.
"Does it come out?"
"Yeah," she said, "do you want to see?"
Cami shook her head to say no, but "Yes" came from her mouth.
Kate undid the clasp on the ring and slid it from the tiny holes
in her navel. The little wounds looked neither sore nor
grotesque as Cami had expected. Kate slid the ring back in with
ease; first in one tiny hole, then out the other, then fastened
it. "See," she said.
Kate played records and cooked some fries and fish sticks in the
oven -- her specialty, she joked. Cami followed her in and out
of the kitchen and living room, keeping her distance, acting
nonchalant, and stifling the questions that filled her mind. She
sat on the couch eating (she was hungry after all), and watched
Kate reel to the music, alive in it. The couch felt new and the
room felt different to Cami. In the waning light of the
afternoon, in the odd scratchy beat of another era, being that
close to a babysitter for that long, it felt like a different
house.
Her father looked too surprised to smile when she told him that
things went OK. "So it's OK that she comes back?" he asked her.
Cami shrugged. She brushed her teeth while her father leaned
against the bathroom door, staring at her with his glassed-over
gaze.
Toothpaste frothed down her chin. "She was playing your
records," she said, expecting somehow it might be a bad thing,
since the records were obviously something sacred, something she
had never seen or heard. "And I think she smokes." Her habitual
resentment resurfaced.
"My records?" he said and wiped her face with a towel. "Did you
like them?" he asked her, smiling. "No," she said, "they were
weird." This was to be his punishment for not being upset with
Kate.
He kissed her on the forehead and swept her hair back when she
got into bed. She could see his face soften. And as she lay
there for a long time, unable to fall asleep, she pinched her
bellybutton and her earlobes as hard as she could, just to see
how much it hurt. She heard scratchy music coming from the
living room, records and a life she never knew her father had.
She fell asleep trying to picture her father when his records
were new, when he was younger, happier, dancing to that music,
holding a woman and whispering into her round cheeks.
In the morning she asked again.
No. Please? Cami. Please? No. Why not? You're too young. But...
Cami. Please? No. Please, please, please, please, please,
please, please, please, please, please, please? Cami, you don't
need your ears pierced. Wait 'til you're older. When will that
be? Soon.
In the heat of the spring sun, the tulips that had kept
themselves a secret under the snow since Cami and her father
moved there pressed through the warming soil and basked next to
the front of their house. Thanks to the spring rain and spring
sun, things grew.
Cami's curiosity grew.
How old are you? Does your father let you stay out late? How
late? Do you keep a diary? I think I'll keep a diary. Do you
have a lot of friends? What are their names? Are they all
seventeen too? Do you like school? How old were you when you
started wearing a bra? I think I should get one. My dad gets
weird when I ask him. Do you have a phone in your room? Really?
Cool! Do you think I should let my hair grow? When people kiss
on TV are they doing it for real? I think it would be cool to be
on TV. Do you? Cool.
Cami told her father: "Kate knows lots of stuff."
"I bet she does," he said.
"She said she was nine when she got her ears pierced."
"Really?"
"Yeah. And she says that people on TV really _are_ kissing, but
they don't mean it. And she said she was ten when she got a bra.
Do you think I should get one?"
"I don't know. Isn't it almost time for bed?"
"Don't you think Kate is cool?"
"Cool?"
"Yeah. She said she would take me to get my ears pierced if you
said it was OK. So, can I?"
"Cami..."
"Please." She said it only once.
"We'll see."
"Great," she squealed and scampered to her room, picking up the
cat in the hall before it had time to get away.
Cami was not nervous. She trusted Kate and felt the feeling was
mutual, since she promised not tell her dad that they spent the
money he had given them on a bra and not on ear piercing. Cami
held the tiny blue box in her hand as she twisted in front of
the mirror to see if the outline of her new bra was noticeable
through each and every shirt she owned. She held the little gold
studs up to her ears to see how they looked -- studs Kate had
given her, ones Kate had worn when _she_ was ten. Cami was not
nervous. She reassured herself aloud. She trusted Kate. Not
nervous at all. Kate promised that it would not hurt much. Kate
said she pierced her own once. Cami pinched her lobes. "I'm
almost ready," she could hear Kate calling from the kitchen. She
pinched them harder and her fingernails left her earlobes red
and with crescent shaped indentations. Her cat was nowhere to be
seen.
"Are you sure you want me to do this?" Kate appeared in the
doorway of Cami's room and caught her by surprise. Cami was
wearing the tie-dyed shirt Kate made for her. She turned in the
mirror, examining her newly accentuated physique. "You can
hardly see it," Kate said and grinned uncontrollably.
"Really?" Cami said. She was disappointed.
"Things are ready," Kate said. "Why are your ears so red?"
"Uhm...because...this isn't going to hurt, right? You said it
wouldn't." Cami covered her ears.
"I said it will a little," Kate said. "You don't have to do
it..."
"I want to. Will it bleed?"
"A little. Are you sure?"
Cami nodded.
"And you'll have to take care of them so they don't get
infected."
Cami nodded again.
Water boiled in a pot on the stove, and some alcohol and a bar
of soap were on the counter. Cami sat on a stool near the sink.
Kate took the earrings from the box and put them in the boiling
water along with a pin she took from her bag. She gave Cami two
ice cubes and told her to squeeze her earlobe between them. Cami
did, the ice melted, and water ran down her arm. She watched
Kate intensely and began to sweat and itch in her new bra. The
ice burned her fingers and ear, and she was sure it was going to
be painful.
"Keep holding it," Kate said and fished the needle and earrings
out of the pot with a spoon and doused them with the alcohol.
Kate took the ice cubes from Cami and swabbed her ear with the
alcohol. She held a bar of soap behind Cami's ear and stretched
the lobe over it and held it in place with her thumb. "Hold
still," was all the warning she gave before Cami felt the pinch
of the needle and the little gold studs sliding into place.
"Go and have a look," Kate said, and Cami scampered to the
bathroom mirror. She lightly touched the stud, and waggled her
earlobe with her finger, and was impressed at her own durability
and pluck. A speck of blood formed behind the gold, but she
didn't mind. She ran back to the kitchen where Kate returned the
needle to the boiling water.
"It looks good, doesn't it?" She pulled back her hair and cocked
her head.
"Very nice," Kate said, "now let's do the other."
"It did hurt some," Cami said, "but not too bad." Her face
glowed. "You're good at this."
"Thanks. You did great too. Hold these," and she pressed ice to
Cami's other ear.
It was like Christmas, and Kate was like Santa. That was how
Cami felt. She was getting exactly what she wanted and she could
not wait for her father to get home. She did not mind the cold
water dripping down her arm.
The phone rang. "Tell Dad that I can't come to the phone. Tell
him I'm doing homework. No. Tell him I'm in the bathroom." Water
pooled on the floor.
Kate answered. "Hello? Oh, hi. Not much. Piercing Cami's ears.
Yes, really." Cami's face plummeted. "I'll ask her. OK.
Tomorrow. OK. I'm sure he won't mind -- he seems really nice.
OK. Me too. Bye."
"Why did you tell him?" Cami accused her, "I thought..."
"That was Derrick, not your father."
"Derrick? Who's Derrick?"
"My boyfriend. Are you ready?"
Boyfriend, Cami thought. Kate took the ice from her ears. Cami
had questions to ask. How old was he? What does he look like?
How long had they been dating? Does he call her all the time?
Why hadn't she mentioned it before? "Ouch!" And with the prick
of the pin, the questions stopped swirling, and her ears had
matching holes.
Cami went from the mirror in her room to the mirror in the
bathroom, back and forth, twisting and changing clothes, looking
at her ears and her bra, and how it all looked together while
Kate put everything away. Cami sat on the couch and tried to
think of something more mature to talk about with Kate; after
all, they did have things in common now, she thought -- two
anyway, or four, depending on how you counted them. But Kate was
practicing lines for a play and was not chatty. Cami paced and
modeled and fidgeted and touched her ears until her father came
home.
When he arrived, she pranced before him, holding her hair back
and turning her head from side to side, showing him both shining
studs with a speck of dried blood behind each.
"They're beautiful," he said, "very mature." He looked relieved.
"And..." Cami said, twisting on the balls of her feet and
thrusting out her chest.
"And what?" he said.
When Cami turned her back (she hoped her bra was more noticeable
from that angle), Kate plucked at her own strap for him to
notice.
His relieved look deserted him. "Oh, yes... a new... ah, a
bra... it's very... ah... new."
The end of the school year drew nearer; the sun stayed longer
after supper and etched long shadows across the lawn. The
tulips, spring's first adornment, withered next to the house.
The cat slept in the picture window, absorbing the sun in its
orange fur. Cami's ears were almost completely healed. Kate
studied a lot and rehearsed lines for her play. Derrick watched
wrestling on TV.
Derrick was cool, too, Cami thought, or at least he acted that
way in spite of the pimples on his forehead and cheeks. He would
arrive at the house after school, and although Cami's father had
given unenthusiastic consent, Derrick always left before Cami's
father got home from work. Cami liked the flag Derrick had sewn
over a hole in the seat of his ripped jeans. And she was
beginning to consider his very faint mustache to be not as
hilarious as she did the first time she saw it. The first thing
Kate did was advise him not to smoke in the house.
The first day he was there, Cami walked into the room and they
separated quickly and Kate's face turned crimson.
"Were you guys kissing?" Cami asked, trying to act like she'd
seen it all before and that nothing surprised her.
"I was just smelling her hair," Derrick said and grinned
foolishly.
"Yeah, right," Cami said and tilted her head giving him her
how-dumb-do-you-think-I-am look. "Kiss her all you want. I don't
care." She tried to act indifferent, but, in reality, was never
far from them while he was there.
She felt older just being around them, sublimely absorbing the
intricacies of courtship. Kate laughed differently at the things
Derrick did and said, different from the way she laughed at
Cami. When she laughed at Derrick, she would lean into him and
he would put a casual arm around her or a hand on her bare lower
back. Cami thought that was why he tried to act funny more
often, especially if Kate was standing close to him. Cami
noticed that Kate sat sideways on the couch to study, and tucked
her feet under Derrick's legs as he watched TV, as if her
painted toes were cold. To Cami, that closeness seemed
effortless and natural and a lifetime away.
"Are you going to get married someday and have kids?" she asked
them one night.
Derrick never looked from the TV. "Not if she's going to
college, we're not," he answered.
That night at supper, Derrick drank a beer from the fridge, and
Kate got mad. Pretty mad, Cami guessed, since Kate sat on the
floor while Derrick sulked on the couch.
Out of allegiance, there was something Cami found not so likable
about Derrick. Kate's knitted eyebrows and pursed lips confirmed
it. There was something ugly about the ripening pimples on his
face, something repulsive and dirty about the way he flicked
ashes on the front step. There was something extremely annoying
about the way he monopolized the remote control.
Cami broke the silence. "Is that all you like? Stupid
wrestling?"
He did not respond immediately. He was sitting there, she
thought, trying to come up with something funny to say;
something stupid to make Kate laugh and make her want to sit
next to him.
"What? You don't like the Hulkster?" he said as he jumped up and
put a wriggling Cami in a pretend head lock. His belt buckle
hooked her earring. When she tried to pull away, it felt as
though the gold stud had ripped off her ear. Cami screamed and
clutched the side of her head. Derrick froze.
When Kate rushed to her side, and knelt and took her head in her
hands, Cami could smell her -- apples and ink. Kate's hands were
smooth and gentle as she turned her head to inspect the damage.
"It's OK, Cami. It's not ripped. It's OK."
"Hey. It was an accident," he said. "Don't be such a baby."
"Derrick -- you're an asshole." Kate's face was hard.
Cami's ear throbbed and her confusion swelled. She did not want
to cry in front of them -- to be a baby. She wanted to run to
her room and cry into her pillow; she knew her sobs were muffled
there, and her tears absorbed. She wanted to run over and kick
Derrick in the shins, and throw her hissing cat in his face. She
wanted Kate to let go of her arm so she could run from them to
her room. She wanted Kate to use both arms and hold her --
tightly -- and not let her go. Cami stood there, wincing as she
touched her bleeding ear with fingers covered in her salty
tears.
Derrick left.
With her thumb, Kate swept a tear from Cami's cheek. "Are you
OK?" Cami nodded and sniffed. Kate smiled gently and in her
soft, even voice said: "With eyes so brown, I was expecting
brown tears," and she showed Cami her wet and shining thumb.
How far away was college? Will you come home on weekends? Are
you still going to go out with Derrick? Will there be a phone in
your room there? How much does it cost to send a letter there?
Can you come home for my birthday? Cami wanted to know all these
things and more, but did not ask. And she thought she had
finished crying; that is, until Kate hugged her and she started
again -- woeful sobs, and plump, streaming tears. Kate's
earrings hung like the seats on a Ferris wheel, jingling in
Cami's ear like chimes in a summer's apple-scented breeze.
When the curtain came down on Kate, the audience applauded the
resurrected unicorn and her chorus of bowing animals. Cami and
her father rushed home -- Kate was coming from the play to their
house to babysit, and Cami wanted to make a card for her before
she got there. Cami could still hear the applause as she her
father hurried across the parking lot to their car. They passed
Derrick. He was leaning against the auditorium, with the glowing
ember of his cigarette casting an orange light into his
squinting and evasive eyes.
On a piece of colored paper she drew a unicorn: Kate, the
unicorn. She drew the white and blue ribbons that were curled
into Kate's hair and floated and danced in the air when she
leapt around the stage. She drew the flowing white dress Kate
wore, and showed its silky layers fluttering behind a prancing
and carefree unicorn. She drew the glittering spiral horn that
grew from her head, and she drew the audience in front of the
stage that stood and applauded the star. She drew herself,
applauding among the appreciative, stating proudly to the
stranger seated beside her, that the unicorn, the star, was
_her_ babysitter.
When Kate arrived, Cami was already in her pajamas with the card
she made in hand. Were you nervous? Did you see me clapping? Did
you sign any autographs? Can I stay up late? There is no school
tomorrow. We can make popcorn. Did you save the horn?
Kate was still in her costume and glittering makeup sparkled
blue and gold across her cheeks. Her horn was missing and she
soberly held her bag over her shoulder. Her smile was bright,
but brief when Cami gave her the card: The Best Babysitter.
Cami's father left a number where he could be reached before he
left.
Kate made popcorn and they sat on the couch watching the news.
Kate never changed from her flowing white dress, and the blue
and white ribbons entwined in her hair hung over her shoulder.
She answered Cami's questions with little enthusiasm until
eventually Cami struggled to stay awake, and her chatter slowed.
"When are you leaving for college?" Cami asked, leaning her head
on Kate's shoulder, preparing to close her eyes.
"Next month," was Kate's answer.
To that, Cami said only, "Oh." Her cat rubbed itself across
Kate's legs, then jumped up and curled by the arm rest, purring.
Kate placed a pillow on her lap. Cami laid her head there and
looked up, fading from consciousness. The blue and gold sparkles
on Kate's cheeks glittered like the heavens, and her earrings
hung like the planets in the tails of shooting stars that were
the ribbons in her hair. Cami's limp body twitched occasionally
in opposition to sleep, but eventually her mouth hung open,
drawing in peaceful breaths, and her hand hung limp over the
side of the couch.
She started to dream; a dream of a unicorn surrounded by
children with their outstretched arms. There were flowers and
the smell of apples and a faint unsettling smell of smoke.
Fingers ran through her hair. "Do me a favor," she heard, and
her body lunged to a half-sleep. "Don't ever go with a guy who
will make you choose." And sparkles of blue and gold on streams
of mascara ran down to the corners of a trembling mouth. There
were many children, and cats chasing balls. The unicorn smiled
and whirled around trying to touch all the outstretched hands,
but kept missing Cami's. The whirling and spinning obscured the
unicorn's face. "Look at me," Cami tried to say above the
others. Then she felt herself being carried on a scent and in
arms so familiar that she nestled into it, comforted, secure,
until she was set down and she awoke.
Her father kissed her on the forehead then turned to leave her
room.
"Dad," she said in a fragile and fatigued voice.
"Yes, Cami."
"Where's Kate?"
"She went home, Cami."
"Oh," she said, under the weight of realizing where she was and
that she had been dreaming.
"Dad?"
"Yes, Cami?"
"Can I sleep in your bed?" She held out her arms so she could be
lifted and carried.
She felt half her age as she clung to his neck as he carried her
down the hall, and she wondered how long it took to dream a
dream.
"Dad?" she asked.
"Yes, Cami?"
"Do you ever wonder if she can see us?"
He laid her in bed and covered her and brushed her hair back as
he always did. "Sometimes," he said. "Sometimes I do."
Larry Lynch
--------------------------------------
Larry Lynch is a 32-year-old single dad from New Brunswick,
Canada. He works in a paper mill and writes on night shifts
while watching the paper go around and around. His boss hopes
Larry will write a best seller and quit. Larry does too.
Cami and Kate's story was inspired by Dar Williams' "The
Babysitter's Here," from her "The Honesty Room" album.
Neon Sea Dreams by Rupert Goodwins
======================================
....................................................................
When you win that award and get up on stage, don't forget to
thank those who made it all possible.
....................................................................
It had been the longest summer. A decade spent in Atlanta had
done nothing to inure her to the heat, the humidity, the people
-- rather, each passing year had worn her out a little more,
made the seasons a little less bearable. This time, she swore,
she would leave.
"I'll miss you, though," she said to Fungus the Bogeyman. Fungus
rippled the photophores on his skin, waves of iridescence
slipping beneath the nest of electrodes that cradled him in his
tank. "But will you miss me? You don't care about this weather,
do you? You don't have to...." She checked the temperature and
salinity, pH and clarity -- all was well in the cool seawater
that bathed the constantly dreaming squid.
She looked out of the window at the city below, its bright
colors beaten flat by the sun. No coolness there, she thought.
Nobody watching out for me. And when she published and left?
She'd been there: some interest, some conferences, a few offers
of collaboration. They could wait. A year off, perhaps. The log
cabin in the mountains. The cottage on the edge of Dartmoor. The
Cape. Silence and birdsong, dry land and sea, sun and clouds.
She needed all of them, and none of this. Even the blandness of
the office had begun to disgust her. It was a playpen set up by
the grown-ups, a place to keep her quiet while they did their
grown-up things elsewhere.
Back to work, or she'd never leave. She sat down at the terminal
and typed away, leaving the city behind her as she dropped like
a diver into the depths of her private world. No one was here in
her silent sea; nobody drifted with her through the suspended
motes of numbers, the tangled clumps of equations and thoughts
waving slowly. This was her fiefdom -- no, more than that, her
creation.
Well, it was his -- she couldn't think of the Bogeyman as an it
-- as much as hers, and it seemed unfair to claim all the
credit. Perhaps she'd give him co-authorship of the paper. It
was the least he deserved for the years trapped in his tiny
glass rockpool, she thought, although it'd be a bit difficult
for him to give the talks. She had a momentary vision of Fungus
in his tank, casting shadows on an overhead projector to a
roomful of rapt neuroscientists, and laughed out loud in the
empty room.
She worked until one in the morning, then walked out into the
stifling night, hailed a cab, out along Peachtree to Dekatur.
The apartment was far too good for her, a long-term loan from an
absent friend, not really hers at all. She had been glad to
accept it, but too worried to make any changes. It was his
decor; she placed her books, her music, her clothes in it. They
were a portable environment, life support in a welcoming but
alien place.
Tired, she couldn't sleep. Lay awake naked on top of the bed,
the breeze from the fan an insubstantial touch, background
murmur to seaweed thoughts that looped and crossed restlessly in
the currents of the night. Eventually, unnoticed, sleep came.
She was in her inland sea again, but this time she wasn't alone.
There! A shadow against the sandy floor, mottled by the
sunlight. Dash, dart, into the shadows and out. She dipped down,
chased after it. She was a sea lion, a dolphin, some playful sea
being wanting to catch and be caught. There! She had it now,
seen it sneak into a crevice in the jagged limestone, anemone
urchin-encrusted stone that darkly, spikily ringed the white
pools of sand. No way out for you!
She looked in, held her face inches from the hole in the rock.
An eye looked back at her -- a flash, a familiar rainbow
cascade. Fungus!
"Mate!" she said. "Am I glad to see you! Must be good for you to
be free after all this time, eh?" She held out her hand, and
Fungus gently wrapped a tentacle around and around, a perfect
spiral, covering the finger without a gap. She tugged gently,
felt him tug in return. Two tugs. Two tugs back.
"You're in there, aren't you?" she said. "You know."
When she woke it was 5 a.m. The air in the room seemed thin as
vacuum, the once-smothering humidity just a ghost of the sea.
She reached into herself, found the dream even as it deliquesced
in the thin air; remembered the games and the patterns, the
cascading patterns played across Fungus' skin as he hung in the
pellucid water in front of her, the patterns that slowly began
to make sense. And her following him, following to the hole in
the rocks, the hole with the steady, cool current that could
only come from outside....
"Girl, you have got to get a grip!" she said to herself. "This
is no good. Time to wrap up and ship out."
She barely glanced at Fungus when she got in, just running the
checks on the water without the normal half-conversation she had
with him. Three more weeks, she thought. Three more weeks and
she could publish.
Was it time for the title? Why not? It was an act of faith with
her that the giving of a title to her work came at the end, not
the beginning. Naming something before it existed always seemed
wrong, unscientific. Uncover, _then_ describe. She played with
words... the usual stuff first. Neurophysiology of Squid? Who
cared about that? Cognitive Location Precepts? No....
She looked at the title on screen, and knew that it was right.
Cognitive Cartography of Lycoteuthinae Nematolampas. Cog. Cart.
That'd do. She wondered how the abstract would look. By
selective stimulation and deep neurophysiological structural and
activity-based monitoring, the normal environmental responses of
L.N. can be mapped to the point where the animal's expectation
of its normal habitat is fulfilled. That habitat may thus be
mapped and itself simulated, allowing an exploration of the
behavioral and cognitive responses... and so on.
Actually, it was pretty good. She could see a thousand research
projects sparking off from this. Multiple animals. Multiple
environments. And what could be done with all those other
cognitive mapping projects? MIT practically had their artificial
squid neural net already. Wouldn't it be good to put it in that
environment?
Poor Fungus. He'd given up his life for hers. The work that
would set her free had left him dulled and manacled in a box,
dreaming his dreams in a world that would die when she stopped
bothering about it. She worked on through the day, trying -- but
never quite managing -- to forget the bundle of life in the tank
behind her.
That night, the dreams were darker. She revisited the inland
sea, but the water was still, cold. No seaweed drifted, and the
limestone rocks were dull, skeletal. A faint tang of decay on
the air, in the water, was all that was left of life. Overhead,
the sun was red, shrunken, dour, and a couple of clouds hung
motionless in the still sky. She couldn't find the hole in the
rocks. She sat shivering on the shore, waiting to wake up.
The next day was Saturday. Shopping and movies, friends and late
night. Not today. She lay in bed until noon, wide awake, staring
at the ceiling, thinking, wondering. Building.
When the idea was finished, she was filled with a burning
excitement. It had to be done! It had to be done now! It took an
hour, maybe two, to put together the proposal, and five minutes
to zap it off to her network of friends email-linked across the
world.
It's a world that's more than capable, she thought, of
supporting life. That's what it's here for, after all, this
little speck of warmth and damp that twirls through the void.
That's what we're here for.
It didn't take long for the replies to crystallize. "Yes," they
said. "Be delighted. Have the resources, have the time, would be
a wonderful thing. Send the files." All that remained, she
thought, was to get Fungus a safe home in real life -- and the
marine boys in the aquarium would love him. Quite an attraction,
really. A real live cybersquid. Come see.
She couldn't sleep at all that night. She paced around the
apartment, logging on, watching the world of her dream come
alive. The cold water channel through the rocks grew wider. Her
little Fungus world had been copied, distributed; it lived in
Vancouver now, and London, and Bombay, and Amsterdam. Each pool
connected, each slightly different, each coming to life in the
fertile soil of a thousand processors, a million disks, dead
silicon and metal oxide recombining in patterns, in a new world.
And then everything was ready. Fungus would have his world, a
world much larger and stranger than his little inland sea. Who
knows what might join him there?
Then it was Sunday. She rested.
Rupert Goodwins
------------------------------------
Rupert Goodwins lives in London and writes about computers -- at
least until they get good enough to write about him. Philip K.
Dick and J.G. Ballard reliably float his boat. "Neon Sea Dreams"
is dedicated to Deirdre C., for inspiring this and other
silliness.
Rupert Goodwins previously wrote "Little Acorn" (v6n4) and "Fade
Out, Mrs. Bewley" (v6n5) for InterText.
FYI
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