The Dream of Doctor Bantam

by Jeanne Thornton

  She could see the flyer in the pocket of the bathrobe he was still wearing, chartreuse against the blue plaid. Workingman’s plaid, he called it.

  Are you twenty-one? he asked.

  Tomorrow, she said. I swear.

  The kitchen was stacked with dirty dishes and empty Lone Star bottles filled the white translucent post office crate on the counter. On the table there was a full Lone Star bottle, which Ira opened and passed to her. He took another from the fridge.

  Sorry it took me so long to notice you, he said. I got up this morning and I picked up the mail, and then I don’t remember what I did. I took a long nap until you woke me up. You and Robin Zander.

  She held the Lone Star between her knees, still full.

  So what, she said. Did you quote me in your article about them?

  He took a pull from the beer and then set it down on the TV cart that held the Axis and Allies box and shoved it away from him, out of his reach. Then he reached over to the stack of Bluecollar Review issues sitting on the counter, next to the empties, and handed her a copy from the top. She flipped through it. The headline on the cover: CULT ON DRAG LINKED TO MURDER: HOW LONG WILL AUSTIN TOLERATE KILLER MIND CONTROL?

  You were selling this in front of the Retrograde? she asked. Are you stupid?

  I respected your privacy, he said. I didn’t, you know, name names.

  She sighed and shoved the issue into her pocket.

  They do this shit to people, you know, he said. If I were smart I would’ve expected it. I would’ve prepared. It’s actually kind of flattering. It’s maybe the greatest success the Bluecollar Review has ever had.

  How would you have prepared? asked Julie.

  I would have been born a different person, Ira said as he took off his glasses, rubbed his eyes. No. That doesn’t work. I’d have told people about some of that stuff they say about me. I’d have been an open book.

  She picked up the Lone Star and closed her eyes as she drank it. He was sitting in the kitchen chair beside her with his hairy forearms on his knees and he was waiting for her to open her eyes, she knew; he was watching her.

  So what their weird flyer says is true? she asked.

  I’m not a racist, he said. I don’t know where they got that. I failed physics, also. They should love me.

  Did you rape someone? she asked. Trying, God knew why, to make her voice gentle with him.

  He was watching the floor now. She could see his eyes on a tiny black plastic rifle, sticking out of the carpet.

  Here’s the thing, he said. It was statutory. It’s a world of difference.

  She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms and blew hot breath into her hacked-up bangs.

  It is, he said. You’re a smart kid. You weren’t fourteen all that long ago. Think you wouldn’t have done it?

  She was fourteen? Julie asked. This statutory rape survivor of yours?

  Yes, fourteen, one four, he said. So answer me. You wouldn’t have done it when you were fourteen?

  I might have, she said.

  There you go, he said.

  I wouldn’t have done it with—with a bearded thirty-something, she said.

  I wasn’t a bearded thirty-something, he said. I was a bearded twenty-something. Important fucking distinction.

  Julie laughed and sat up to drink from her Lone Star. He kept staring into his hands.

  So we worked at the same diner, he said.

  She was fourteen, said Julie.

  She lied about her age, said Ira. She needed a job. She was tired of babysitting.

  But you weren’t, said Julie.

  Look, fuck you, said Ira. Washed dishes, okay? And I cooked. And we liked a lot of the same bands. And we smoked pot together.

  I have no problem believing that, said Julie.

  Don’t go thinking she was this pure, innocent type, said Ira. No. Uh-uh. She could do mean impressions. She had a mouth on her. She was a dirty-minded girl.

  Don’t yell at me, said Julie.

  Don’t accuse me of raping people, Ira said.

  I’m not accusing you of raping people, Julie said. Don’t blame me because someone’s accusing you of raping people.

  Okay, said Ira. I won’t blame you, even when you’re to blame. That makes sense.

  Julie let her head loll back again in the chair, the beer heavy in her hand. She could let her hand go slack and the glass would slide onto the carpet; all she had to do was hang on.

  I’m to blame, she said. You’re so right. I’m so sorry that I told you stories about me and my girlfriend, and you wrote about them in your magazine, even after I asked you not to. I’m so sorry I did that to you.

  He didn’t say anything, just stared.

  So tell me what happened, she said finally.

  He opened another Lone Star.

  She used to get me to buy booze for her, he said. No big deal. I asked older guys to buy me booze when I was fourteen. Who doesn’t do that. It’s karma. Usually she’d just take it and get out of there. It’s no big deal.

  Go on, Julie said.

  One time, Ira said. Her boyfriend or someone, some guy she was blueballing. She asks him if he wants a table, professional for a fourteen year old, and he starts screaming at her. She goes back to the kitchen. He follows her back. There’s knives back there and there’s ovens and shit. Not a good scene. I threw him out.

  You asked him to leave, said Julie.

  No, I asked him to leave first, said Ira, then I threw him out. It set off the fire alarm and I think he scraped his shin on the pavement out back. Which was good for him, I think.

  He nodded to himself and he swallowed and belched.

  So she’s upset, he says. She wants me to buy her some booze to calm her down. Again, no big deal. We cut out of work early and I drove her to the store and we bought some whisky. Stronger than we usually make do with, but okay. Then she wants to walk to some park to drink it. Just me and the whisky alone in the dark, she says. That’s what I want right now. I say to her: girl alone in a public park with a bottle of whisky. Let’s think about that one, Ira. No. Uh uh. Not going to happen. Come on home with me, I tell her. Drink, cry, get it all out, I’ll drive you home. I’m a good drunk driver; I pride myself on it. But that’s going to be it. End of story.

  I believe you, said Julie.

  He cleared his throat.

  She’d never been to my place before, said Ira. I put on some music I thought she’d like. We sat on the couch, over there, that fucking plaid thing, and we drank. We laughed. The music stopped; I got up to change it. She stared at me while I walked across the room. God knows why. I’m an ugly motherfucker. I admit it.

  He waited for her to say that he wasn’t an ugly motherfucker.

  She didn’t want me to leave, he continued after a moment. Even that far. And when I sat down on the couch she kind of leaned near me. Like she wanted to lean on my shoulder. So I told her go ahead. We were good buddies at the cafe. It was no big deal.

  You were twenty-something, you said, said Julie.

  He sloshed his beer in the bottle and turned the black plastic infantryman in his fingers.

  She smiled, he said. And she put her pink hair in my lap. And then I kissed her. On the back of the head. Like, you know, an older brother or something.

  Julie bit her lip and swung her beer back and forth.

  What? Ira said.

  Nothing, she said. I never had an older brother, I guess. And she was drunk.

  We were both drunk, he said.

  And she had a boyfriend she was blueballing, she said. So what, she was a virgin?

  He shook his head.

  Was it weird, being with a virgin? she asked, turning around to look at him.

  He shook his head again and turned away.

  Look, one thing led to another, he said. She had to get it all out somehow. And she did cry, you know. Afterward. And I made her breakfast, toast and eggs. And I told her she could stay, and she said she had to go home. Her mom was worried abou
t her. She’d never mentioned her mom to me before.

  He finished his beer.

  I just wanted to help her, he said, and he put his head on the table.

  Julie watched him breathe for a moment. Then she got up and took the empty beer bottles from the table and brought them to the sink. She turned the water on and began washing them out. He didn’t ask her any questions about it.

  How long ago was it?

  Three years ago, he said.

  So it was while you were with Tabitha, said Julie.

  She kept her eyes on the water, filling the bottles and emptying them again, getting them clean. He didn’t answer.

  And so she’s my age, now, she said.

  Ira sat up.

  What does that have to do with anything? He asked.

  Nothing, she said. It’s just weird. So I would have met you around then, right? Do you remember meeting me when I was fourteen or anything?

  He stood up and went into the other room. She followed him, soap still on her hands.

  I was just curious, she said. You have to admit it’s interesting.

  Interesting, said Ira. Sure it’s interesting. It’s interesting to know, you know.

  I know what? asked Julie. You mean it’s interesting to know a rapist?

  That’s a great joke, Ira said. That’s hilarious.

  It’s true, said Julie.

  It only happened once, he said. And we talked about it and all, later. And we’re still friends. We don’t see each other that often anymore. She stopped working at the diner. But we’re still friends, okay?

  He sat down on the plaid couch. Julie looked at the space next to him. She remained standing and she rubbed her soapy hands against one another.

  So how’d the Institute know? she asked.

  He lay back on the couch and stretched.

  Who knows, he said. Maybe she told them. Maybe they know everything.

  No one said anything for a little while.

  Maybe, said Julie.

  He looked up at her from the couch.

  You don’t really think I’m a rapist, right? he said.

  She looked at him.

  I don’t know, she said. I’m going to go, okay?

  Think about it, he said. I mean, fuck, imagine that, you know, we did it when you were fourteen. Imagine being with me when you were fourteen. Would that be so bad?

  I’m going to go, she said.

  And she went out to the porch, an empty beer bottle in her hand and neighborhood cars pulling into driveways all around the cul-de-sac, fluorescent flyers tucked into their pockets.

  She stayed at Linda’s house that night and biked back over in the morning. She picked up a dozen donuts along the way at Ken’s, borrowed a Sharpie marker, and wrote on the lid: FOR MY FAVORITE RAPIST, LOVE, JULIE. She had gotten the bike tied off, the donuts steaming sugary glaze into the cooling September air, before she realized that all of the porch furniture was in a heap at the curb. Under his door, an eviction notice on Institute-issue triplicate paper.

  She pounded on the front door, circled the house, rapped on all the windows, shouted. Then she went back around to the front and tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn. Someone had shoved what looked like bubble gum into the lock.

  She sat down, back to the door and the donuts by her feet, and she took the Bluecollar Review out of her pocket and let her eyes float over the page.

  The basic “process” employed by the group involves the use of a big fucking Machine, green, described by inside sources as resembling a Singer sewing machine. Members of the group stare into a headlight-like device on the top of the Machine and are asked questions about their lives and beliefs, sometimes repeatedly, until they feel that whatever issue drove them to the Institute has been resolved.

  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what this is all about: self-hypnosis. And it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the problem with hypnosis is: whoever’s in charge of the hypnosis, meaning this Doctor Bantam-or-Bronwyn-or-whatever-the-hell-he-calls-himself, gets to be in charge of what members of the cult—because it is a fucking cult—believe, think, and do.

  Inside sources close to cult members have talked about the phenomenon of perceiving those cult members as two people. There’s a striking weakness to them, on the one hand. And on the other, there’s a terrifying strength—a fascist strength. The kind of strength that can sue the victims of the cult, that can steal information for the cult, or that can kill for the cult if Dr. Bantam demands it.

  So here’s the question, here’s the fucking question, dear readers: which is the real person, in the end? And who—in the end—is going to have the courage to stand up to them?

  She read the last lines over and over, sitting on the porch with the donuts congealing beside her. He hadn’t quoted her, exactly. It was pretty decent of him. If she ever saw him again, she might even thank him.

  6

  Patrice kept her pretty busy that next week. It was almost the only time she’d had to do property management work more strenuous than mowing the lawn or making soup. She had to figure out how to change the lock on the door downstairs—the gum had been a stopgap measure to keep Ira from coming in, classic Institute Macgyverism. She had to clear out the place, throw away all of Ira’s things, the game boards, the empties, the paperback books. She bought cardboard boxes from the hardware store instead and filled them up with the stuff, kept it all behind the porch and out of sight where Patrice tended not to go, Sharpied Ira’s name onto them. He never came by to pick them up. No one at the Retrograde seemed to know where he had gone—somewhere out West, toward El Paso, some people said, somewhere near Dallas, said others. He had seemed upbeat about it, like it was an opportunity for him. The gawky barista chewed on her bangs and said that she was spitting in the coffee of everyone who came over from the Institute, that she couldn’t believe they had done what they had done. Julie leaned over the counter and kissed her pimply cheek, then, when her back was turned, put up the flyer she and Patrice had put together: APARTMENT FOR RENT, DECENT LANDLORDS, SMOKERS AND PETS OKAY IF USED RESPONSIBLY, PLEASE CALL ASAP.

  She used to take baths at Patrice’s when she was lonely, long baths full of long drags on cigarettes and long Russian novel characters with long faces. Now she sat on the edge of the tub, turned the water on, ran her hand under it until it got warm, then felt something shift inside of her, some what’s-the-point reflex; she turned the tap off and watched the warm water spiral away down the drain. Dr. Bantam sneered down at her and she couldn’t take her clothes off in here anymore. She wanted to turn the picture toward the wall, wanted to paint lipstick over its mouth, wanted to scratch slogans into its forehead. Patrice wouldn’t like it if she defaced the portrait. She stared at the walls—Patrice would like her to stare at the walls—until she had to go downstairs.

  She went for long walks and she smoked while she walked. She didn’t realize she was doing this until one day when she forgot to take two cigarettes to cover the distance from Patrice’s to the Retrograde; she finished her first smoke, groped for her second and didn’t find it, and no longer knew where she was. The streets looked familiar; she just couldn’t remember what direction she was supposed to go in. She sat on the grass by one of the sorority houses on Rio Grande, in the shadow of a peach tree, and she tried to figure out where to go, tried to remember how to breathe.

  Can I bum a smoke? she asked a likely-looking kid, from the patch-and-hemp look of him someone who lived in one of the co-ops a few blocks down.

  You shouldn’t smoke, he said as he rolled her a cigarette from a half-empty pouch of Bali Shag. Are you a student here or something?

  Here, she said. Oh, the University? No. I mean, maybe I will be. I don’t know.

  It’s good not to know, he smiled down at her, nodding as he handed her the spit-sealed cigarette. She took it from him, looking up at him through her tiger-framed glasses, and she suddenly thought: I do not want to take this cigarette from this perso
n. I hate this person. I despise this person for his weakness.

  Thanks, she said, and she accepted a light and sucked the smoke down.

  She was getting pretty good at dealing with people she despised, maybe.

  She went to the Retrograde and she bought a latte and a croissant, for energy. She sat in the back and she took a free copy of the Daily Texan. She cut out panels from the terrible student comics and rearranged them in her notebook. Sloganeering fratboys gave zany rebuttals to anthropomorphic dogs. Anime freshmen laughed at crudely rendered A&M students. The word puzzle interrupted scenes of dorm pastoral, roommate conflicts, things wholly remote from her experience, things that should have been blueprints for her experience. She jumbled them all up, moved things around automatically. She checked for the flyer she’d left by the bathrooms. Someone had written over it.

  JUST SAY NO TO CULT LANDLORDS

  She found herself cursing under her breath at whoever the vandal was before she realized what she was doing.

  They didn’t talk about Ira at all while they were working together to scour all signs of Ira’s presence from the downstairs apartment. She didn’t sleep at Patrice’s the whole time. She saw Patrice often enough: helped paint over the stains in Ira’s old bedroom, helped her call the classified ad bureau at the Austin-American Statesman to list the apartment as being for rent, helped her burn the bundles of Bluecollar Reviews—the hate literature, said Patrice—that they’d found in Ira’s living room, mostly fresh from Kinko’s, collated but still unstapled. She watched the letters on the page—inside sources close to the cult—crumple into themselves and disappear. She made the meals and kept the bathtub clean. She never slept over. She looked at her fingers and she knew that she’d strangle Patrice in her sleep.

  Wrapped in Tabitha’s sheets, she had a dream: Patrice running down the street, naked, trying to escape from time. The Geo Prism barreling down at her. Julie standing at the curb, just at the point where the impact would occur. I have to jump in front of the car, she thought in her dream. I have to jump in front of the car for her. She always woke up before she found out if she jumped or not.

  Tell me a moment, said Patrice, and she adjusted the dial on the Machine.