How the Dead Dream

by Lydia Millet

  Janet was a homemaker by choice, a Texas debutante whose father had gifted her with a dowry that had made her attractive to a legion of Fultons; what distinguished her own Fulton was chiefly that he had beaten other suitors to the punch. So the women she brought to meet T. were seldom burdened by such useless accessories as an academic record or a sense of social purpose. They tended to be certain of their attractiveness and accustomed to admiration; they were eager to begin a conversation with him but not always sure where to take it. One of them asked him what he did for a living and then, after he told her, smiled, twirled her hair around a finger and gazed at him glassily, as though fully expecting him to run with the discussion from that point onward.

  At first he tried to be polite to show deference to Janet, but as the dinners wore on over the weeks he saw he had to discourage the women, smoothly and cannily, without allowing them to say precisely what it was in his manner that had pushed them away. Janet should see only that the women, despite their initial surge of interest, would never quite warm to him.

  He applied himself thus to the task of quiet repulsion; and as he grew competent at lockpicking the pace of Janet’s dinner invitations began finally to slacken.

  “I don’t know what your problem is, man,” said Fulton as he was leaving one night, following an encounter with an interior decorator named Ligi who had wished to talk only of upholstery. “Why don’t you make a move for once?”

  “Listen, Janet needs to stop setting me up,” said T. gently. “I appreciate her good intentions. But I’m not in the market.” “Jesus, you don’t have to marry them,” said Fulton. “But

  they’re better than K/Y and carpal tunnel.” “Not to me,” said T.

  “That’s hardcore,” said Fulton.

  In New York for a business meeting he drove to the Bronx at night. The lock was easy. A low metal gate in a grove of thin trees, then a walk across a dark, wide square. Lights reflected on a sealion pool.

  On the second lock his fingers slipped nervously, but soon he was in. His neck was wet and his heart rate rapid; he heard the rush of blood in his ears. He slipped the tools back into his pack, stood still and made himself slow his breathing. He had read a zoo press release. “The most endangered mammal in the world, the Sumatran rhinoceros has not bred in captivity since 1889.” Penlight beam focused, he read the card: Dicerorhinus sumatrensis. It was the only one in captivity in the United States and it was a dinosaur; its species had lived for fifteen million years and there were only a few hundred left. A female.

  She hauled herself up as he stood there, hauled herself up and walked a few steps away. She was nosing hay or straw, whatever dry grass littered the floor of her room. She gave an impression of oblong brownness. The Sumatran rhinoceros, he had read, liked mud wallows. Here there was nothing but floor.

  He was standing where any zoo patron could stand, and there was no danger or special privilege. Still, no one was around—he was alone with her—and he was content. It was not to claim the animal’s attention that he was here but to let her claim his. She was the only one of her kind for thousands of miles, across the wide seas. What person had ever known such separation?

  The Sumatran rhinoceros reportedly had a song, difficult for the human ear to follow; its song had been mapped and similarities had been found between this song and the song of the humpback whale. It was not singing now.

  Sight was less important to a rhinoceros than to him, he knew that, but she still had to see. He put his hand to his nose, blocking sight between his own two eyes, closing one and then the other. He had read that the vision of many animals was dichromatic; they saw everything in a scheme based on two primary colors, not three. Were they red, he thought, red and blue? He closed his own eyes, heard the rise and fall of his chest and nearby a rustle whose nature he could not discern. Behind the eyelids it was thick and dark but impressions of light passed there, distracting. They passed like clouds he found himself idly drawn to interpret, to fix into the shape of rabbits or swans.

  After a while the rhinoceros sighed. It was a familiar sound despite the fact that they were strangers. He knew the need for the sigh, the feel of its passage; a sigh was not a thought but substituted for one, a sign of grief or affection, of putting down something heavy that was carried too long. In the wake of the sigh he wondered exactly how lonely she was, in this minute that held the two of them. Maybe she saw beyond herself, the future after she had disappeared; maybe she had an instinct for the meaning of boundaries and closed doors, of the conditions of her captivity or the terminus of her line, hers and her ancestors’.

  Maybe she had no idea.

  He put a hand against the cool wall and felt almost leaden. No other animal could have eyes shaped like these, see the ground and the trees from this place with this dinosaur’s consciousness. No other hide would feel the warmth of the sun wash over these molecules, and neither he nor anyone would know how it had felt to live there, in both the particulars and the generalities, the sad quiescence of the animal’s own end of time.

  •

  His mother had always been punctilious about hygiene but now she neglected to bathe; timely about bills, but now she neglected to pay them; anxious to read her mail, but now she neglected to pick it up from her box. The lapse of her mania for cleanliness was the most glaring change, making of her inward switch an ongoing outward pageant. Once she had watched milk expiration dates like a hawk but lately, neglecting to purchase new food, she settled for eating butter without bread, ketchup on stale crackers, aged baby carrots excavated in surprise from a rancid puddle of red-leaf lettuce at the back of the crisper.

  A new frugality had taken hold. Although her savings were sufficient for a comfortable retirement she did not like to draw upon them; instead, before T. even knew her intent, she had sold all her jewelry and commissioned her former neighbors in Darien with the sale of the family heirlooms she had left in the house.

  “You don’t need to do this,” he told her when he found out, perched on the arm of her sofa with his arms crossed.

  At work on a puzzle of cavorting dolphins, she showed no interest in turning to face him. “If you’re worried about money I can help you. There’s no reason you should deprive yourself.”

  “I didn’t want those old things anyway,” she said, and fit in a puzzle piece. “The armoires and the tables. Who needs them?”

  “Someone else in the family might want them. That desk from 1680, for instance. Maybe that second cousin that sends you those long family letters at Christmas? The one in Salt Lake City?”

  “Betsy?” “Right. Betsy.”

  “I don’t like Betsy. She’s obese. And Mormon.”

  “Still, might as well keep it in the family. We’re not hurting here, you and me. I’m rolling most of my profits back into investment, but I have plenty left for you to live well.”

  “A penny saved is a penny earned.”

  “You don’t need to earn pennies. I paid six million in taxes last year.”

  “Don’t brag. You could end up in the Pancake House.” “I’m not saying it’s a big deal. I’m just trying to make you

  see.”

  “I’m doing just fine, honey. Really.”

  “Yesterday when I came in you remember what you were drinking? The vinegar from a pickle jar? It had pieces of stem and peppercorns floating in it.”

  “It was good. If you like pickles, why not the juice? People are so finicky.”

  “And the cereal you were eating Tuesday? With the maggots in it?”

  “Those weren’t maggots, T. Don’t be ridiculous! They were mealworms.”

  All he could do was hire a nurse, who kept the refrigerator stocked, cooked and cleaned, and made sure his mother remembered to bathe. A strong and matronly woman from Yugoslavia, the nurse took her charge out once a day to walk through the streets to the beach; she was a staunch believer in the restorative powers of locomotion.

  •

  In celebration of his nation’s birth Fult
on had pulled out all the stops, resulting in Fourth of July festivities so red, white and blue that heads spun from the impact of spangles. In his three-acre backyard a band in cowboy gear played traditional favorites: for Fulton liked gangsta rap but Janet listened exclusively to country. Thus the lyrics of “I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy” were belted out by a woman with long, elaborately curled red hair who swayed back and forth in an agitated fashion from one high-heeled foot to the other; as the afternoon wore on she began to caress the microphone with a frantic obscenity, groaning “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” as though straining under the lash.

  T. was prevented from leaving by the promised arrival of a new investor whom Fulton had invited to meet him. He watched the redhead stagger back and forth across the front of the stage and felt battered; across his horizon Janet paraded a number of sacrificial virgins, each of whom required civil handling. During a foot-stomping rendition of “Clementine” there was a blonde from Indiana; when the sheet cake was cut—a giant flag in the shape of the country, with Hawaii and Alaska as bundt cake satellites—there was a dark-haired woman with a long face.

  “This is Tanya,” said Janet. “She’s a real estate agent! You guys have so much in common!”

  “I’m sorry,” said T., smiling affably. “What would that be?”

  “You know! Real estate things!” effused Janet, and steered her friend forward with a viselike grip on her arm.

  “I’m really sorry to hear about your loss,” said Tanya, but wavered between a frown and a smile.

  “Tanya just got divorced recently,” said Janet. “Well then I’m sorry,” said T., and meant it.

  “It was actually a very positive step,” said Tanya. “She was wasted on him,” said Janet.

  “I don’t doubt,” said T.

  “So, you’re in real estate too?” asked Tanya, and T. nodded very slightly before turning back to the redhead, who was now wailing, “Hang down your head, Tom Dooley, hang down your head and cry-iy-iy …”

  “I develop resort properties,” said T.

  “Hang down your head Tom Dooley; poor boy you’re going to die-iy-iy.”

  “Oh, wow. Yeah. I’m a buyer’s agent. Residential. I’m actually new to the whole racket. I just started a year ago. When I was married, you know, all I ever did was the Home Shopping Network, basically.”

  “Listen,” said T., because he could not bear to look at the singer a moment longer and did not want to make small talk either. “Can I confess something? Janet’s always trying to set me up, and her intentions are good, but I don’t want to be set up. I’m basically still in mourning. I don’t want to meet anyone.”

  Tanya nodded eagerly, as though what he said had nothing to do with her.

  “You’re probably totally sick of it,” she said. “Am I right?”

  He hoped she would impart the tidbit to Janet, but this must not have occurred; for after the triumphant finale, namely “The Lord of the Dance,” he was served up the redhead herself.

  His second breakin after the rhinoceros was a Monkey House near San Diego, where his research failed him. The Monkey House was equipped with a silent alarm.

  Making his way down a narrow corridor between the cages of the smallest monkeys—marmosets, tarsiers and golden lion tamarins, their small homuncular faces beadily watchful in the foliage behind the thick glass—he felt the shock of security guards bursting into the building, one from the front and one from the rear.

  He heard the crash of the metal doors and the racking of slides on two guns; thoughtless and rushing, he leapt over the wall of an open enclosure and shimmied down a palm tree. The rough bark tore at his legs and he tumbled onto a tussock and hid behind a fake rock, his thighs burning so hard he had to grit his teeth at the sting.

  Within hearing distance the guards met; they came together in the walkway between his enclosure and another.

  “See anything?”

  “… bird got in earlier? And just tripped the thing now? Like with the myna at the fundraiser.”

  “I betcha it was Galt. Couldn’t raise him before. Heard he’s off the wagon.”

  They stumped heavily toward the front of the building, the beams of their flashlights scoping but giving him a wide berth. When their footfalls faded he climbed out of the exhibit as quietly as he could and scurried out the rear service door. He wanted to apologize to the monkeys, to tell them he was sorry for the intrusion. He had not meant to bring them

  the loud men with guns—behind him, unseen, a monkey had squealed at the noise, startled out of its sleep.

  Attacks had occurred in the past, he learned; a young female baboon had been shot in the stomach by a hunter wanting to take home her skull for a trophy. The zoo in question was under pressure. But the incident led him to research animals who were not always closed within buildings, who could not be sealed off so easily with electronic systems. It was not that he was afraid of the awkwardness of an arrest—victimless trespasses like his tended not to draw much publicity—but more that his experience would be trivial if it revolved around awareness of risk.

  And how arbitrary it was that certain authorities ruled over zoo animals, decided which persons could draw near to them—authorities vested by neither the state nor any other body, handed permits with a near-infinite laxness by the Department of Agriculture. There were almost no standards for the treatment of the animals unless the zoo they lived in belonged to the American Zoo Association—some two hundred out of two thousand. The other zoos could do almost anything to their charges.

  He had standards. He only broke into accredited zoos. In the others he knew he would see nothing but misery. They held no appeal for him.

  When he first met Susan’s daughter he was hitching a ride with Susan to the dealership where his 560 was being serviced. He had finally traded in the 190.

  Her daughter lived in an apartment building hemmed in by smaller buildings on the Marina’s narrow peninsula. Herons and ducks alit on a dirty-looking canal; wide ramps led up to the front doors. The building’s functionality, he thought as he passed through the foyer, gave an impression

  of coldness, as though the Herculean effort of making the premises handicapped-friendly had drained those in management of all their energy reserves and left them no choice but to decorate the lobby with two dead philodendrons and a stained brown carpet.

  Casey seldom left the building, Susan told him as they waited for the elevator, not because she was not able to do so but because she was angry and depressed. Susan brought her food and supplies twice a week and had done so, she told T. as they stepped into the freight elevator, ever since the accident nearly six years before.

  The apartment felt temporary, with plywood on bricks for bookshelves and ripped pieces of cloth tacked over the windows. Susan set down a grocery bag on the counter and the two of them passed into the dining room and the hall, where dirty beige indoor-outdoor carpeting bore deep gray grooves from thin wheels.

  “She won’t let me make improvements,” whispered Susan.

  “I hear you, Mother,” called Casey. “Don’t apologize for me, OK? If I want to live in a shithole that’s my choice. I’m not sorry.”

  “I wasn’t apologizing, honey,” said Susan calmly as they turned a corner and stood at the bedroom door.

  “You were making excuses for the paraplegic. Same thing.”

  T. saw a thin, pale young woman sitting in her rumpled bed. She had her television on with the sound muted; on the nightstand sat a fish tank containing a single blue-and-gold fish, its long fins waving. She scowled at him.

  “This must be the boss,” she said. “COLA raises plus five percent.”

  “T., this is Casey. Casey, T.”

  it.

  “I’m a bitch. Did she tell you?” “Not in so many words,” said T.

  “Yeah well. You can’t say bad things about a cripple.” Susan had warned him she was outspoken. He went with

  “True,” he said.

  “The best thing about thi
s room is the view,” said Susan

  cheerfully, and opened the blinds over a wide window. “Would you look at that? Beautiful!”

  “I forget the Pacific is even there,” said Casey to T. “I look at Oprah and Jerry Springer. And my betta fish. At night sometimes, when I’m moisturizing my atrophied legs, I look at the test pattern. You should give her a ten percent raise this Christmas. She has a cross to bear.”

  “Indeed,” said T.

  “Did you bring the batteries for the remote?” “Everything on the list, dear. Like always. Mind if I clean

  this up here?” “Go for it.”

  He watched as Susan picked up balled tissues, brown apple cores, coffee mugs full of mold and glasses coated with the residue of old juice. Oddly he was relaxed, even sleepy. He felt content in the room. Susan gathered the detritus into a waste basket and carried it out.

  While she was in the other room Casey glared at him. “Is this a staring contest?” he asked, amused.

  “It was. You just lost though.” “I’m devastated.”

  “You should be. Staring contest performance is a measure of social anxiety. Losing means you’re even more spineless than me.”

  He cocked his head, waiting for her to continue. “Get it? Spineless?”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Tell me about it. Hey. Pass me that chapstick, would you?”

  Before the car accident, Susan said on their way out, her daughter had been quiet, gentle, somewhat passive. She had been seventeen then, a good student, popular; she had been accepted to Stanford, but then came the accident, a pileup of cars on the freeway in an ice storm outside Denver. When the school semester began she had still been in the hospital.