Chimpanzee (9 page)

                    
My friend brought us drinks. Ben, I found out about the              , he said.          '                    -                                                                          -                              .

“I pertain,” Sireen says. We slip where she's pressed against me, sweating like condensation. “Grad school was us. Beginning.”

One semester, Sireen's program got to her. It was too much, and she exhausted herself. We had to put her in the hospital, and she took incompletes for all of her classes. I took care of her, afterward, in her tiny apartment. I gave her everything she needed, and she fell in love for good.

                    
She laid on the sheets. The summer's blue night louvered through uneven blinds. Naked against the heat. The sheets were topographic around us. Too soon. She wasn't better yet. Wasn't finished becoming worse. I was still worried about never-ending theories.

She lips a whisper against my skin. “What will you forget?”

“It's all I can do, Sireen.”

“I know,” she says.

                    
I'm sorry, she said.

“I'm sorry.”

CHAPTER SIX

I
HAVE TO WAIT A LONG TIME BEFORE
R
OSIE TURNS ON THE
light and summons me inside. Ten minutes. I don't have anything to do, anything to read, standing there, so I listen to other workers converse quietly. We're getting used to each other.

When the light comes on, two young men, the ones who changed the white woman's tire along the highway, emerge at once. I have never seen Rosie admit more than one worker at a time. They give me a good look, and I give it back, as if, eventually, we will learn to read each other's minds. We might as well practice now.

Rosie closes the windowless door behind his desk when I walk in. He moves piles of newspapers and circulars from his desk to the floor.

“You saw the rockslide on the news?” Rosie says.

West of town, in the mountains. It crippled the entire highway, and the expected repair costs are beyond both the state and the federal budgets. The newscasters reported talks with foreign investors to finance the work. Renewal from three states will absorb fifty percent of the workload.

“Yes,” I say.

Rosie grins. “You get to break rocks,” he says. “Just like old times.”

He enters some information into his computer, points at the thumbprint scanner. I put my thumb in place, checking in. There are six other workers waiting in line outside.

“But it isn't all bad,” he says. “Two of your hours are just sitting in the bus. There and back.”

“Yes, sir,” I say.

“That big Methodist church downtown donated protein bars. Charity. You'll get one at lunch.” He pulls one out of a drawer and unwraps it.

“Yes, sir.” I look at the floor as I turn around. We're having herbed rice and beans for dinner tonight. Sireen promised.

“Cade,” Rosie says.

I stand in front of the door and stare at my co-workers outside through the window. They watch, in line.

“You know, I never went to college,” he says.

He puts down the protein bar when I turn around. I can only see his eyes above the rim of his monitor.

“You know,” I say, “I'm teaching a free course downtown. Writing, communication—that sort of thing.”

“Is that what you're doing.”

It isn't a question.

There is a mansion in town. You can see it from the highway on your way into the mountains, where it seems small. Before, you could pay $40 to tour the inside. Learn the domestic secrets of the magnate who built it during the Gilded Age. When Civil War Reconstruction made white men rich. When they hired the men we'd freed.

For $20 less, you could drive your car around the grounds, but you couldn't get out. There used to be hundreds of acres of vineyards. There used to be guest houses and small hotels, done in the same style. You could visit during Christmas as a special event.

Now, it is a club. People play golf upon the old vine beds. They swim and get massages and wave at the armed security guards on their ways in and out.

The bus driver takes us off the highway, along the exit where the state's brown road signs used to identify the mansion as a cultural destination. The rockslide is still fifty miles west, along the highway.

We look at each other, at our wardens. No one says anything as the mansion's security guards wave us through the front gate. We park behind a service building, where there is also a catering truck.

You don't get the same wardens every time. Like the crews, they rotate, along with the driver.

The wardens stand. I can see our driver out of my window when he exits the cab. A man in a suit greets him—hands him an envelope—and the driver pulls money out of it. He starts counting.

“Anyone here want to file a complaint?” one of the wardens says.

We look away, hoping like students that they won't call on us.

“The alternative is to break rocks in the hills,” the other warden says.

“You'll be given rubber shoes to wear in the kitchen. Don't touch them without permission. We see you bend over, that's another day on your record.”

The driver is satisfied. He signals the wardens.

“Now, when we call your name, say ‘here.'” He pulls a small notepad out of his pocket. The other one is holding the worker manifest that Rosie brought him before we left.

“Cade?”

“Here.”

Now they know. Whom to go after, if this gets out.

I wait while they take attendance.

Because I am the only one in the bar, because it is 12:15 in the afternoon—because I ordered hard liquor, the bartender is letting me chimp for free. Again. She's good. A professional. Asks no questions. Which is why I had to ask her myself, for the goggles. I only have so much money for the afternoon, and drinks are important. Dimitri and Sireen are both at work. It's Thursday, after all. She won't be home until after dinner, which is to say, after our usual dinnertime, because she has a department meeting. Dinner is now whenever she gets home, not when we get hungry. Spaghetti tonight, which I'm good at.

This is important. The meeting is important. Her department has to figure out what to do with its vacant position.

I'm not taking any chances this time. I'm already in the booth—I will not look at that carpet again while wearing these goggles. Apparently, sims have settings. Difficulty levels, which Dimitri didn't tell me about. It also has networking capability. This bar offers access for free.

I'm curious. I enable the network and set the difficulty level to its lowest. There is a tiny adjustment wheel on one of the earpieces. I need to see compulsion again. Obsession. I'm not interested in hallucinations or perversion. The menu offers thousands of available simulations.

I sit still, quietly disturbed, and drink.

What I'm seeing are feet. That is to say, the images appearing in my mind's eye are feet. Mental seeing and vision are not connected, and there is no such thing as the mind's eye.

But whatever.

The sim keeps stimulating disconnected images, none of which I care to see. Particularly annoying are the feet, which is why I think I keep seeing them. I'm looking down at them, as if they are my own—at the flip-flops they're wearing.

A network-connection request appears in my field of vision. I approve it.

These flip-flops piss me off. They spin like synchronized propellers—their axes are the flip-flop support straps, which divide the large toe and the one beside it. I can't control the image. I can't make them stop. It is ridiculous, but watching, but counting. It doesn't make me feel good. It keeps me from feeling bad.

I hear a woman's voice through the goggles' earphones. When I glance at the TV behind the bar, I get a reprieve from the flip-flops. The TV is muted.

“Authorities from the Center for Civic Renewal and the Downtown Chamber of Commerce believe the movement is tied to recent trends in social experimentation,” she says. Her voice sounds digitized.

The bartender is in the back. I am alone.

“Leah Johnson, a senior poverty studies major at Central, leads a field team surveying grassroots governance—”

“Hello?” I say. Out loud.

I decide to ignore the flip-flops, which creates a sensation of nausea.

“—the unemployed or underemployed under 30.”

“Hey,” I say.

“Yes?” she says.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you want?”

“Who are you?” I say.

“Who are
you
?”

“Ben.”

The bartender is back. She ignores me. Ignoring the flip-flops isn't working. I wonder whose feet these were. Whose life of hell. It is an asinine simulation, an introduction, the result of setting the difficulty to minimal.

“Really?” she says.

“Yes, really.”

“You shouldn't give out your real name.”

“Oh.”

“Hold on,” she says. “Thirty percent chance of rain. For this time of year, we are at positive two inches. Northern Georgia and the Piedmont, meanwhile, are still struggling with a now ninety-day drought.

“That's better,” she says.

“What are you chimping?” I say. “Why are you telling me the news?”

“I'm not telling
you
anything, and it's none of your business.”

“Right.” I need another drink anyway, and my head is starting to hurt. I've had enough.

“What are
you
chimping?” she says.

“Fuck you.”