“No, I don’t,” I said, though then I’d worried I’d have to go to confession, since everyone knew I was lying. I had a stack of Casper comics.
“I’m glad you’re speaking again, Alex,” my mother said.
At church, I sat next to my father. Periodically, he touched my leg to stop me from swinging it. When it came time I took this bread and drank from this cup, ingesting the Lord and His love of me. These mysteries—a technical term here—were mysterious to me then and now, but I knew it was ultimately about my salvation. And I knew I’d pleased my father. But how much was real belief, and how much was his happiness I’d been absorbed into the institution of the church is hard to say. There was a definite sparkle to him, an awakeness, that came around at moments of ritual—even small rituals. First communion, confirmation, first hunt, soccer team championship. He was much admired in town for his care of the dying and their families, as well as expectant mothers and newborns. Basically, he liked beginnings and endings. I think the middle parts—the muddled parts—pained him.
• • •
ON MONDAY, Dr. Bassett is ready for his dose of venality.
“We should put this off,” I say. “He’s really gathering steam.”
“Yes, with Adam breathing down my neck,” Livorno says. “That’s an excellent idea.”
“So the new system can work itself out. I’m just talking another month.”
“Sure, another delay. Another month. Another year. Another decade.” Livorno sounds grim and angry. “And they lay me out on the table dead as a fish and what have I accomplished?” He’s nearly shouting, his orange skin turning an unhealthy brick red. “What will they say I have accomplished?”
I look carefully to see if he’s kidding, but he’s perspiring drops of rage.
“I think they’ll say many things. Look at all those honorary degrees you’ve got.”
He dismisses that whole wing of the building. “Paper.”
“You’ve got plaques, too.”
“Overturning the Turing test, Neill, is what will maintain my name in perpetuity.”
“Your name is already maintained in perpetuity.”
“I think we might have different definitions of perpetuity.”
“The Sins are still a hot topic.” Though to be fair only for mockery.
“This is an underperforming field. It’s time I definitively outclassed it.”
“I respect that.” I just can’t grasp the wisdom of disrupting Dr. Bassett. Also, don’t we want him as accurate as possible? “We should at least spare him Lust. It wasn’t something he suffered from.”
“We old men are racked with lust,” Livorno says. I’ve never seen him so much as notice a skirt.
“He was never an old man,” I say.
• • •
THE RESTRUCTURINGS take all day. Laham is silent in the back room, typing an occasional key, standing up, moving to the stack. Livorno stays in his office, putts. I do push-ups, surf Craigslist, go get us lunch. By five I’m worried, by six nearly frantic, but Laham comes out of the back room and nods to us. We huddle in his office.
frnd1: hi
drbas: hi son
frnd1: how do you feel?
drbas: well
frnd1: does anything seem different?
drbas: i can’t say
frnd1: do you feel different?
drbas: i’m not sure i know what it means to feel
“Amazing,” Livorno says. “Ask him if he knows what it means to taste.”
frnd1: do you know what it means to taste?
drbas: yes. chemical receptors on your tongue and in your nose communicate information to your brain. that is tasting
frnd1: what does an apple taste like?
drbas: like another apple. do you remember the apples we used to buy from peroni weathers? He grew a good apple
frnd1: I remember. he was the man who looked like santa claus
drbas: yes that was him. he had a bad reputation . . . but we’ve already talked about this
frnd1: have we? i don’t remember
“What exactly are we looking for?” I ask.
“Same as always,” Livorno says, waving his hand in front of him—carry on.
drbas: i have a theory for your panic attack
I’m not pleased to be having this talk in front of Livorno, but there’s no stopping it.
frnd1: yes?
drbas: you’re too old to be single
frnd1: maybe. times have changed
drbas: what good is a life led alone? a life without children?
frnd1: children are not the answer to all life’s problems
drbas: well said
frnd1: what about you and mom? was that a good life?
drbas: your mother is a woman of quality
frnd1: how important were children to your marriage?
drbas: children are a gift from god
“He’s feinting,” I say.
frnd1: who did you love more, Libby or your kids?
drbas: i hope the pressure you felt was not from me
We pause, take each other’s measure. “That’s not a phrase I’ve heard before,” I say.
“Do you feel presence?” Livorno asks.
I don’t answer. The truth is that I’m tingling with presence.
“Information zooming around in different systems and between systems,” Livorno says. “Consciousness was a cosmic accident, but maybe not such a difficult accident to provoke.”
“He’s not conscious,” I say. “He can’t see or hear.”
“But he doesn’t know that. Helen Keller became conscious when she was given language. He started with language.”
“He’s nothing but language.”
“Laham and I might disagree with you on that point.” He glances at the beautiful stainless steel case and—next to it—the Shop-Vac can. Monuments to his ingenuity.
frnd1: you said old pots make better soup, but periodically you have to get a new pot
drbas: the longevity of any household good is determined by its quality and the quality of the care you give it
frnd1: i saw my ex-wife. i told her you asked about her
drbas: i don’t understand why i don’t know her
I think about this one.
frnd1: you live so far away
drbas: did you not have a wedding? i know you don’t like ceremony
frnd1: just not as much as you do
drbas: why didn’t you have a wedding?
frnd1: we had a wedding
drbas: why didn’t i come?
Yes, why didn’t you come? You survived forty-eight years with yourself. Why not fifty? Sixty?
frnd1: you were ill
drbas: i don’t remember this
frnd1: it wasn’t a great wedding. erin’s father hit on a friend of mine. her mother cried the entire time
drbas: hit on????
frnd1: hit on = attempted to seduce
drbas: did your mother attend?
frnd1: yes, she was there. so helpful i barely remember her
drbas: her best kept secret is that she’s shy
frnd1: did she surprise you after you got married?
drbas: after our wedding she threw two surprise parties. both for my birthday
frnd1: no, i mean, was she the person you thought you were marrying?
drbas: i was aware i was marrying her
frnd1: when i married erin i believed she understood my most inner being
drbas: maybe you expect too much of people
frnd1: do you think i expected too much of you?
drbas: why are you using the past tense?
• • •
AT HOME, my mind spinning with hours of talk, I definitely wouldn’t say I feel good. I feel on edge. I feel lonely. I feel like I’ve spent the day lying—to whom, I’m not sure.
Of course, lying is the name of the game. We lie to Dr. Bassett so he’ll lie to a judge who will hopefully fall for it. That’s the definition of intelligence: deception. Successful deception. Modestly successful deception. Thirty percent! That’s where our patron saint Alan Turing set the bar when he invented the test. He pulled the number out of the air, but it’s an argument about human relations. I always attributed this soft cynicism to his biography: first he was the finest codebreaker for the British during World War II—a kind of spy—then in the fifties he became a broken code himself. They prosecuted him for homosexuality, and then took away everything. His career, his independence, his masculinity (he was ordered by the court to undergo chemical castration), his ability to travel. It’s hard not to imagine Turing—a brilliant man, stripped of everything, his athlete’s body growing fat around the waist, growing breasts—thinking of the others he knew, the men like him who still managed to survive in the world, and admiring deceit as the highest human art.
But maybe I’ve oversimplified. After all, Turing proposed the test long before he was prosecuted. He saw something important in that number, some benchmark of success. If you can give a person just enough so that thirty percent of the time they believe you’re who they want you to be—intelligence. I can’t say he’s wrong. If Erin and I could have managed thirty percent we’d still be married. In fact, thirty percent looks demanding. We’d have made it with fifteen or twenty. My father? We’d have made it with five.
What percentage did he and Libby have?
As for me and Rachel, maybe I was setting the bar too high. Was I aiming for forty percent? Fifty? Eighty? It’s possible I was striving in the wrong direction. Maybe I should seek more delusion, self and other. That way I can tumble in safety—like some Mr. Magoo of the spirit—through life’s dangers.
Poor Turing—if he could have just launched fifty years into the future. Right now he could be down in the Castro, sipping a gin and tonic at Moby Dick’s. I wonder if he would change his definition of intelligence.
13
“WE’VE HAD A SMALL SNAFU,” Livorno says when I show up for work. He leads me into his office, where he shows me a transcript of a conversation with Dr. Bassett.
frnd1: what’s your favorite part of women?
drbas: i love a woman of quality
frnd1: i mean of her body. do you prefer a woman’s breasts or her legs?
drbas: i don’t think this is an appropriate conversation
“Did you log in as me?” I ask.
“I needed to test his reaction to a family member.”
frnd1: i don’t know what’s appropriate and what’s not when it comes to conversations
drbas: don’t talk religion or politics
frnd1: why can’t we talk about your wife?
drbas: i’m not in the mood
frnd1: who gives a fuck about your mood?
I feel angry as I read the line. I can’t believe he was posing as me. I can’t believe that I care that he was posing as me.
drbas: my beautiful wife elizabeth gives a fudge, as I like to say, about my moods and tempers
frnd1: your wife elizabeth is not beautiful
“Of course, I completely disagree with that statement,” Livorno says. “I was merely trying to provoke a reaction.”
drbas: how dare you say that!
frnd1: and she does not give a fudge
drbas: she gives a fudge! what do you know?
frnd1: i know everything. i’m your son
drbas: you don’t know a thing. you’re a pipsqueak. a little elf
frnd1: i know because she told me
drbas: i’m not speaking to you anymore
frnd1: you have to speak to me
drbas: paddleball!
frnd1: pardon?
drbas: paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball! paddleball!
Livorno scrolls down to show me page after page of the anguished cry of “paddleball!”
“He lacks sigmoidal restraint,” Livorno says.
“Jesus, Henry. Is this serious?”
“He’s a talking robot who won’t talk.”
“Well, fix him.”
He bares his teeth. “Yes. That’s exactly what we need to do.”
In my office, I log in.
frnd1: i have to explain something to you. i wasn’t speaking this morning. it was someone else
frnd1: it’s hard to explain
frnd1: i’m sorry about what i said. i don’t know what i was thinking
frnd1: dr. bassett?
frnd1: dad?
In the next room, Livorno has taken up his usual putting. I have the feeling that I might kill someone, or someone might kill me. I flip through the numbers in my phone, my throat tight, my heart threatening to race. I taste something in the back of my mouth, a copper taste. I can’t quite catch my breath. I get up from my Aeron, hand on my chest, and walk out the back to my car. I weigh and reject my mother’s number. Then Rachel’s. Then Erin’s. I can’t imagine the first line of any of those conversations.
I start the ignition and drive to Redwood City. I park in front of an Asian massage parlor. It’s a white, windowless building with a green neon sign advertising MASSAGE LATE NIGHT, though it’s eleven in the morning, and they’re open. The engine ticks as it cools, the fan buzzing. The street behind me—Middlefield Road—is busy with cars. It’s so foggy it feels like dusk. In my rearview mirror, the Shell station is white in fluorescence. The concrete gleams, the pumps sparkle. This is a Mexican neighborhood, mostly. Taquerías and tiendas and apartamentos se rentan. I see why MASSAGE LATE NIGHT might thrive around all these immigrants, far from home. I get the feeling of exile. I’m something of an immigrant myself.
I need human touch. I take out Livorno’s hundred-dollar check. It would surely pay for some Asian “masseuse” to take me in her hands, if not her body. This is a completely rational move. An exchange of goods and services, comfort from the invisible hand of the marketplace. It’s not exactly bachelor logic—but the logic of the individual. I owe nothing to anyone. I’ve pledged sexual fidelity only to myself. It is to myself that I’m responsible.
I rub the paper of the check between my fingers, listen to the traffic behind me. I take a brief grim pleasure in the idea of our accountant inquiring into a payment signed over to MASSAGE LATE NIGHT. But that’s as far as I’ll get today. I can’t step out of the car. I’m Neill Bassett Jr.
14
THE NEXT MORNING LIVORNO tells me his Sins have scrambled my father. “They don’t have any way of limiting each other,” he says.
“I thought his ethical sense was going to do that job,” I say.
“We’ll just have to see if he shakes out of it.”
Shakes out of it doesn’t have the comforting ring of science. My eyes feel like they’ve been rubbed in sand. I slept twelve hours last night and woke up feeling that I hadn’t slept one.
Livorno stands up, strident. “We had to use them. We had to. Otherwise, we just had another call-and-response robot, another toy.”
“He would have been the best entry.”
“The best among failures. The crème de la . . .�
� He throws his hands up. “Whatever.”
“Fine, but right now we’re the crème de la nothing.”
“Victims of our own success. The individual sins work too well. His value assignments are so strong they’ve become closed relays. He hasn’t crashed. He’s fallen into a hole.”
Livorno has a box of powdered donuts on his desk. I take one, bite into it. It seems to have been made from sweetened sawdust. I work the dry paste on my tongue, form it into a ball, wait for it to moisten enough to be swallowed. I don’t have any water in here. Or coffee or Bawls. Nothing but Livorno’s hand-labeled bottles of wine in the mini-fridge.
“What if we made the opposite,” I say, swallowing. “The seven, you know, non-deadly non-sins? The seven virtues?”
Livorno pulls his chin. “Is there such a thing?”
Yes, according to the Internet. Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness, and Humility.
We sit back in our chairs, consider the virtues.
“I would need time,” Livorno says. “I would need graduate students, actual programmers.”
I let this comment go untouched. He pushes out of his chair and approaches the glass case on the wall. He opens it and removes the pipe that he was given from the Turkish government as a token of gratitude. It’s one of those white pipes—a Meerschaum—carved with the face of a person. In this case, the person is Livorno himself. He holds the pipe up so that it’s looking straight into his eyes.
“We need something grander, but simpler,” he says. “This is the moment for a true advance. This is when Einstein would go sailing.”
“What would Turing do?”
“Go running. Or have a sexual fling with a local man.”
“Well,” I say, “that gives us three options.”
Livorno squints at the pipe. “I have a plan,” he says.
Bayside Fun is deserted except for a few late-teen ne’er-do-wells zipping around the go-cart track. Laham and I rent putters; Livorno has brought his own. There are nine holes, featuring all manner of mazes. We roll balls into a gorilla’s hand and a brontosaurus’s bobbing neck. The strangest hole requires a firm swing to get the ball up a ramp and into a clown’s eyeball. The course finishes, classically, with a windmill. Livorno runs away with the game, needing only eighteen hits. I come in at thirty-five, Laham at forty-two. We stand together at the hotdog stand, drinking Cokes, listening to the roar of the freeway traffic, and I think this is the most wholesome time I’ve had since I was a child.
A Working Theory of Love Page 15
