The Dream of Doctor Bantam

by Jeanne Thornton

  I don’t hate what you believe, grumbled Julie.

  You were rude to Doris, said Patrice. Because she represents the Institute.

  Who’s Doris? asked Julie.

  Patrice was breathing in the blankets. Julie pulled her knees to her chest and folded her arms and face up against herself. She was still wearing blue jeans; she could smell them, sweat and cooking oil and something acrid behind.

  It’s not ridiculous to say that I’m your girlfriend, she said. It’s not ridiculous at all. It’s actually pretty fucking sweet, is what it is. It’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.

  It was only after the silence that followed this that she looked up. In the pink shadow cast by the desk lamp Patrice’s forehead was enormous, cast on the wall, still and looking down and thinking. In her eyes, which were locked on Julie, the spark of the incandescent bulb burned.

  Do you mean the things you say? Patrice asked her, slowly.

  In general? asked Julie.

  In specific, said Patrice. Did you mean what you just said?

  Her electric eyes sparkled with her shadow across the Machine.

  Yes, said Julie. I did.

  Would you adopt children with me? asked Patrice hungrily.

  Julie laughed.

  Sure, what the hell, she said. We’ll adopt a whole bunch of them.

  Don’t joke with me, Patrice hissed.

  She breathed in sharply, producing a wet rattle. Julie hadn’t noticed it, that tear that ran from her eye, over her still, motionless cheek.

  In the Institute, she said, we have a notion called identity. The idea is that you have more than one identity. You are, I don’t know. You work at the INTAKE desk, like me. You are also a student of the Institute. You are also a daughter, or a parent, or a lover. Do you understand?

  You’re all those things at once, said Julie.

  Patrice nodded and sniffled again.

  It is a big thing, she said, to share someone’s identity. It means that you are them, and they are you. That you care for them as you would care for yourself. This is essential to have, if you want to become a parent. If you want to help a child become something better than you became.

  She said it, this horrifying thing, sitting back in the desk chair with the incandescent spark burning in her wet eye and the cigarette burning out, unsmoked, between her fingers. Julie watched the cherry of it grow, watched it begin to detach. If it fell on the dirty carpet there would be a fire. Everyone might die.

  So this was it, she thought. This was really the time to back out.

  Then she thought of Michael and Linda, waiting for her at home.

  Okay, she said. We’ll share an identity. Why not?

  Patrice looked at her, head level and still, eyes running.

  It means you accept all of them, said Patrice. Even the parts you don’t like or understand.

  —share an identity, Julie repeated, whispering.

  Patrice thought, her eyes staring deep into her shoes. She stared at her shoes and she thought about what Julie had said to her. Then she got up from the desk chair and put out the cigarette. She crawled onto the bed on top of Julie, flattened her against the pillows, her thighs pressing on her ribs.

  She came something like three times that night. Julie watched her do it: grinding, touching herself, devouring Julie’s neck. It was like watching a lion in a circus ring pace and yawn, the velvet of its paws against the sawdust. She lay back and held her back tightly with her nails and she figured that this was good enough; the Institute was only temporary. Nothing so crazy could endure. This was good enough for her until the time her craziness crumbled, until she became just like Julie: reasonably sane, reasonably horny, reasonable.

  She figured she had probably done the right thing.

  3

  August moved forward and the heat cracked the land into a spiderweb design of mud clots, burning the grass brown. You couldn’t walk outside in August; fifteen steps into wherever you were going and you’d get dizzy, thirty steps in and you’d sit down on the brown grass, arms sticky with salt, and you’d tell yourself you’d get up any moment now; thirty minutes later the fire ants would have you. The streets reeked of sour clothes, beards, trash, exhaust; the gawky barista at the Retrograde wiped her face with her wrist and stretched out on the couch under the rattling air conditioner for a long nap.

  Julie decided that they would have a picnic. She worked for a week on it, buttering bread crusts, slicing cucumbers into thick hunks and slapping on bean curd, sesame seeds, thick aged dressings. She bought bus tickets. Patrice took the day off, under protest. There was something satisfying about doing something so involved and so purposeless. Julie hummed while she worked in the kitchen, the dots of Christmas-light heat struggling one-to-one against her air conditioner goosebumps.

  They caught the bus downtown, lugging the cooler full of sandwiches between them. Patrice, wearing the burnt orange shorts Julie had made her wear, kept her ankles crossed and her knees pressed together the whole way, doubled over herself in the seat. She looked over her shoulder at every intersection, followed each person with her eyes as they got on and walked past her to take their seats. Some of them ignored her. Some of them looked back, concerned.

  Julie leaned back in her chair, soles of her green galoshes on the cooler at her feet. She adjusted the bridge of her sunglasses and scratched under the waistband of her jeans.

  Sit up straight, she said.

  I am straight, said Patrice, and slumped still lower. Julie watched her for a while, jouncing in the seats, before letting her knuckles dart into the soft flesh just below Patrice’s ribs. Patrice yelped and jumped up; Julie started laughing.

  Please stop that, Patrice hissed.

  You’re so solemn, said Julie. We’re going on a picnic. Lighten up.

  I am light, said Patrice.

  She sank back into the seat, pressing herself as far back as she could go with her arms tight over her chest.

  I’m light as a feather, she began, and then Julie knuckled her in the ribs again.

  Lesbos, sneered the man in the seat behind them.

  Julie turned. His head was shaved bald and he was wearing a gray tank top, sweaty around the shoulder straps. The skin of his neck was loose and thick, like the wattle of a steroid-stuffed rooster.

  What’d you say? asked Julie.

  Why don’t you like men? said the man. Are you afraid of cock or something?

  Cock, Julie said, as if she were trying out the word for the first time. Cock. I’d never thought of it that way before. I guess I am afraid of cock.

  I guess you are, said the man quickly.

  Could you maybe help me with that problem? asked Julie. I mean, you face your fears by confronting them, right? I think that maybe I could not be a lesbian anymore if you just showed me your cock, right now.

  The woman opposite the man got up and walked toward the back of a bus, where she took hold of one of the handrails and stood, teetering. He stared at her, face in a loose kind of sneer, unable to figure out anything to say.

  Show me your cock, demanded Julie. Come on. Whip it out. Let me and all our friends on this bus see what you’re made of.

  He refused to whip it out, and Julie kept asking him to, and they would have missed their stop had Patrice not gotten up and edged past Julie, not saying a word to her, and went to stand by the exit door. Julie followed her. On the way past the man’s seat she put her hand on his seat back, only inches from his shoulder tattoo, an eagle holding a flintlock rifle. He recoiled.

  I’m not going to give you my number, she said. Because that would make it too easy for you. I want you to have to look for me. I want you to find me, and I want you to use your penis to make me not gay anymore.

  Get off my bus, suggested the driver.

  Julie was still laughing as they walked the extra two blocks toward Barton Springs, Patrice in silent lockstep beside her.

  Come on, she said. You have to admit that was hilarious.

 
That was mortifying, said Patrice.

  Oh, said Julie. Well. I’m sorry you were mortified.

  You don’t have to lie about being sorry, said Patrice.

  The rest of the walk to the Springs was silent: the Doppler whoosh of passing cars, the chatter of beach-goers balancing Coleman coolers between them, the honk of geese somewhere back in the trees as they left the main road.

  There were two pools at Barton Springs: the official pool, which gleamed and stretched far off into the distance with lifeguard towers manned and looming and which cost $5 to enter, and the common pool full of bathers splashing over the stones, with sleek dogs that paddled in the shallows and licked up the $5 water that came over the spillway from the official pool. Tattooed men and women sat in the trees, hemp-clad and glowing with sandalwood fumes as they beat rhythms on handmade drums. Julie walked in step with the rhythms, spun and jumped in time over the sharp, rough stones of the path along the water. Patrice somehow kept up with her without varying her walk. The white ducks honked at them as they walked toward the boathouse, dug for bread crusts and flapped their white wings like a row of Hans Christian Andersen soldiers saluting.

  Julie stopped in front of the boathouse, an aluminum-sided shed manned by a single teenager and surrounded by trash cans full of orange life vests and heaps of metal boat shells. She went through her wallet, hunting a twenty. Patrice stood by her.

  We’re not going to keep walking? Patrice asked. To find a place for the picnic.

  We’re going to rent a boat, Julie said. Like we planned.

  I hate boats, said Patrice.

  I hate you, said Julie happily.

  Twenty dollars got them the boat for two hours, the worst possible rate. Patrice held the lifejackets and sat by the food while Julie struggled and dragged the canoe in a sharp line across the sand to the water’s edge. She leaned over, feet crusted in sand, and held the scuffed metal stern of the canoe in her fist. The bow drifted back and forth in the lazy current with the ripples of turtles passing secretly by.

  Get in, said Julie. Wait. Make sure to load in the life jackets and the food first.

  Patrice took the life jackets and the food and walked to the edge of the water, just where it kicked up against her tennis shoes. She waited while the edge of the canoe hull cut into Julie’s hands as it wrenched back and forth in the river—then, with a single brave leap, she stepped into the water and splashed toward the boat, her bare knees wet, drops jumping up against the shorts. She walked to the boat, set the life jackets and the food into the puddly base, and hauled herself up on the side of the boat and tipped it over completely.

  After that, it only took five more tries before they were both afloat and moving. Patrice soaked in the stern with two life jackets around her neck, and Julie sat in the bow, dry and slicing the water with the paddle to keep them on course. All of the food she had carefully made was at the bottom of the river and that was fine, totally fine. Eventually the plastic she had wrapped the cucumber sandwiches in would probably drift free of the bread and would kill some ducks and swans, and she and the river would be even. In the meantime she paddled between the trees hanging over either bank, the valley of leaf-shadows and leaf-lights on the surface of the water, the flashes of turtles’ beaks against the air, the other boats—kayaks, canoes from the same boathouse, rafts—floating and straining back and forth along the same stretch of water at the gate to the Colorado. Mosquitoes circled the boat and landed on them, draining their blood and carrying it away into the secret parts of the river, and Julie wouldn’t have spoken even if she had something to say, and she paddled while Patrice slumped in the stern, sulked, shivered. Then the canoe burst into the sunlight and they fell into the current of the Colorado River, the Lamar Boulevard Bridge high above them to the east, the passengers and cars dots against the lazy noonday sun, and the ducks circled around them, hugging the banks of the wide open silver desert through which Julie paddled, dragging Patrice’s ass through the current toward the east.

  That’s where the bats live, she said to Patrice as they passed beneath the bridge. When they come out from under the bridges, nights. We could stop and have our picnic here. With the bats.

  We don’t have any more food, said Patrice. We can’t have a picnic.

  That’s right, said Julie. We don’t have any more food. And whose fault is that?

  It is my fault, said Patrice.

  They paddled on.

  Exactly, right, said Julie. But we’re going to have a picnic anyway. We’re going to park this canoe somewhere and we’re going to sit down in the fucking sun and we’re going to have a fantastic picnic together.

  A refusal to accept reality is one of the primary signs of the timebound, muttered Patrice.

  Julie stopped and slashed her paddle into the surface of the water. The boat lurched and a fat wave lashed up against the hull, drizzling over the side onto Patrice.

  What are you doing? Patrice cried.

  I’m splashing you, said Julie.

  Stop, shrieked Patrice.

  This is going to keep happening to you, said Julie. This is going to keep happening to you until you apologize for calling me timebound. This is going to keep happening to you until you make the right decision.

  It kept happening to her until she apologized, water and dirt running down her face and her red-brown hair flat and lank in sheets around her nose.

  They spent the balance of the first half hour cruising along the banks, unable to find a comfortable place to get out and eat. Julie wanted to try the loading dock of the old city power plant just east of the graffiti-covered railroad bridge—a building that always reminded her of the conclusion of a Batman movie—but Patrice didn’t want to risk the jump from the boat to the rusty loading ladder, so they settled on a small shoring of rocks pushed up against a strut of the railroad bridge instead. Julie stuck out her paddle and locked it into place between two of the rocks to hold the canoe, and Patrice scrabbled over the side, life jackets still around her neck, hyperventilating. Julie went over after her. As soon as she left the boat it began to drift; she took the paddle and quickly slipped it under the crossbars of the boat, pulling the hull to her. She scooted to the edge of the rocks and slipped her foot over the side to hold the boat in place.

  They sat there, Patrice crowded up against the foot of the bridge strut and Julie lying at her feet, a rock grinding into her side, bare foot resting in the sun against the metal edge of the canoe. A fire ant was crawling up her other foot. She crushed it with her fingernail.

  I’m hungry, said Patrice.

  We’ll kill a duck, said Julie. Do you have a lighter? We could cook it.

  I don’t want to kill a duck, said Patrice.

  Do you have a lighter anyway? asked Julie. Do you have cigarettes?

  I had cigarettes, said Patrice. They got wet. That’s my fault also.

  She pulled her knees closer to herself—pulled her feet away from Julie’s back—and buried her head in them. The top of her hair looked like it was burning in the sun and most of the water had dried from her legs.

  Okay, said Julie. I’m not sure what your problem is, but I guess I’ve accepted that you have some kind of problem.

  She turned to look at the ducks circling in the water. One was only a hundred feet or so away. If she swam, fast, she could get it. She could bring it down.

  Patrice cleared her throat.

  You don’t seem to appreciate that people are made uncomfortable by you, she said.

  I appreciate it, said Julie. You can see how much I appreciate it.

  Why are you so hostile? she asked. Why are you so addicted to destruction?

  Julie readjusted her foot, slowly falling asleep, on the edge of the hull. She wondered if she was starting to get cramps already. It would be about the right time for it, she calculated.

  Have you been talking to Gregory? she asked.

  Patrice squinted.

  Of course I have, she said. He’s my dismantler.

 
He’s your what again? asked Julie.

  Patrice didn’t answer, but sat with her mouth covered by her knees and peeped out at Julie. A pair of brown eyes, fighting against the sun: you’d think she’d be used to staring into lights by now.

  It was just an observation, said Patrice at last. I’m interested in you.

  You’re interested in me, laughed Julie. Why?

  Patrice’s face squeezed tight into itself. She stared at the hems of her shorts, frayed against the rock.

  Why, demanded Julie.

  I am answering, said Patrice. Give me time.

  Time isn’t reeeeal, said Julie.

  Patrice sat up and looked at her.

  I know that you don’t believe what I believe, she said. Why do you still need to attack me?

  She said it quietly, this time—there was no lightning in her eyes. There was some new Patrice, some third Patrice Julie had never seen before. Julie felt herself flush, beneath her skin.

  Because I think that it hurts you, she said. Your belief in, like, time travel. I think it hurts you very much.

  The third Patrice looked at her; Julie looked back—then something in Patrice’s eyes changed, and Julie exhaled and felt suddenly the hull of the canoe digging into her heel.

  I think your disbelief in the Institute hurts you, said Patrice. I think you’d be much happier if you joined. I have no shame about telling you that. But I’ve accepted that you’re not willing to be a part of my identity in that aspect.

  So that means I can’t talk about your stupid religion, said Julie.

  Not unless you’re willing to share my identity with respect to it, no, said Patrice. Otherwise we have nothing real to say about it.

  I’m not joining your cult, said Julie.

  No one expects you to join the Institute, said Patrice. When you come to the Institute, you do it on your own. Not because anybody expects you.

  I’m never joining the Institute, said Julie. I want that to be pretty clear here.

  That’s fine, said Patrice. Then the Institute doesn’t want you. We can do without you.

  They sat and baked in the sun coming over the water, mosquitoes humming around them and the smell of oil from the cars and old trains slowly falling over the river like a blanket. Patrice’s arms and legs had dried, now. The smell of her was coming through her skin.