Adventures of the Artificial Woman

by Thomas Berger

  “I was being professional.” Phyllis donned her jacket. “You might make other movies in the future that are not so silly.”

  “But this is the big one. If it scores I’ll keep making sequels. What don’t you like? Is it Shakespeare? Is it me?”

  As Phyllis went through the reception room on her way out of the building, Max’s gray-haired grandmother, looking over the spectacles on the end of her nose, said, “That was a quickie. Good-bye, dear. Take care.”

  7

  Pierce got a phone call from Cliff Pulsifer, a name that he could not place until Cliff apologized for not getting back in touch immediately after the marvelous dinner party at which he had been a guest.

  “But Ray and I broke up, which took some getting over.”

  “Yeah,” said Pierce. “Phyllis and I split, too, and I haven’t gotten over it.”

  “I suspected as much,” said Cliff, “and thought maybe I could help with some crisis management, having been through the same myself.”

  “How did you hear about it?”

  Cliff took an audible breath. “Tyler Hallstrom and I have been living together for several weeks.”

  “I’ll be damned.”

  “That’s the virtue of an animatron.” Cliff spoke on a rising note. “They can be anything you want them to be—but look who I’m telling. You wrote the book on the subject. You made your own.”

  Pierce felt an access of self-pity. “For all the good it did me. I couldn’t keep her.”

  “You shouldn’t be all alone with your problem,” Cliff said. “Come to dinner, Friday, and get some moral support. If you don’t mind takeout. Ray did the cooking. I can’t boil water in a microwave, and neither, it seems, can Tyler.”

  “I don’t know, Cliff …”

  “Please. Is it true you also lost your job?”

  “How do you know that?”

  Cliff’s next surprise was that he provided a female dinner companion for Pierce, who was at first offended that this had been done without his being asked or informed. But in the course of the evening Alicia, a slender fortyish brunette with shadowy eyes, ingratiated herself to Pierce by her calm candor, beginning with an unapologetic opting for a fork over chopsticks when offered a choice. She also differed from Cliff on everything else that was conversationally at issue, often saucily though always agreeably. Not until dessert, which Alicia had brought (the only non-Asian element in the meal), did she reveal that Cliff was her baby brother.

  Though Pierce could take or leave dishes prepared with fish sauce and lemongrass, he did very much enjoy good old-fashioned three-flavor ice cream, and the strawberry in this one tasted as if it had had some speaking acquaintance with the real fruit. Furthermore, he enjoyed Alicia’s repartee with her brother, which served to humanize Cliff, whom Pierce hadn’t known all that well. In his loneliness he even began to project a future in which, pursuing a friendship with Alicia, he acquired an instant family.

  But when at the end of the evening she invited herself home with him, her purpose proved to be the crisis management of which Cliff had spoken on the telephone but never approached when face-to-face during the dinner party.

  Alicia led him to the sofa and sat down close enough to rub knees. “As a Lesbian,” she said, her lush lips in a sententious configuration, “I think I can furnish some help with the woman’s point of view. And Phyllis, though not human, is, I gather, altogether feminine.”

  “Whatever she is,” Pierce noted coolly, “I built her from scratch.” He moved so that their legs were no longer in contact.

  “Aha,” said Alicia with a flutter of eyelash. “Cliff failed to mention that important fact. Typically.” She sighed. “Of course, this means she is a man’s idea of a woman, another thing entirely. I can’t be expected to relate to her. She will be utterly different from a real woman. She will define herself by her connection with a man. She will be weak-willed, dependent, gentle, clinging, anxious only to serve, uncertain, devoid of conviction, frightened by challenges …”

  “You’ve described Phyllis to a T,” Pierce said. “Would you like a drink?” He rose.

  Alicia stood up too. “Cliff thought I might help. Sorry I can’t.” She shrugged. “If you don’t mind my saying so, robots creep me out. What Cliff sees in that Tyler Hallstrom is beyond me. He used to get really nice fellows.”

  Speaking of which, Pierce had all but forgotten about Hallstrom soon after arriving at a dinner party that consisted of but three persons at table, with Tyler serving only as waiter and remaining in the kitchen between courses. He showed no recognition of Pierce. His expression stayed so blank as to suggest that his personality chip was missing.

  “I guess what Cliff wants at the moment is a servant,” Pierce said. “We all have our own needs.”

  On the way to the door Alicia shook her head and groaned. “You guys and your machines!”

  It occurred to Pierce that perhaps he should abandon the idea of re-creating a Phyllis and instead make a man. True, he had never been sexually attracted to a member of his own sex, but he could use a male pal and, just as Phyllis represented everything he sought in a woman, a handcrafted Philip could be fashioned to play the role of the perfect friend, providing commiseration when Pierce’s fortunes ebbed, as now, but cheering when the tide was reversed, for Phil would be innocent of envy. He need not be particularly good-looking, but it might be useful to make him husky, should Pierce be threatened with violence by other human beings, muggers, irrational road-ragers, or truculent drunks at public events. Any damage Phil sustained could be repaired, even gunshot wounds. He could do all the driving, as well, and be programmed to shop for Pierce’s clothing, a job Pierce himself had no taste for, and to pick up every check: a convenience, though Pierce would ultimately pay them. If they double-dated, Phil could be counted on not to compete for the attention of the women and to appear somewhat inferior to Pierce in every area, though without being so blatantly obsequious as to arouse suspicion. Finally, Philip would need no genitals—or should Pierce want to work out with his friend at the gym, only a nonusable set for locker-room appearances.

  For amusement Pierce projected future episodes in which a gay guy put the moves on Phil in the shower, or a female date’s hopes were dashed when Philip showed no reaction to a tongue in his throat…. But these were just idle fantasies. Pierce was not motivated by spite. Even when down he refused to put his craft at the service of negation. He would not construct an animatronic man. He would instead search for Phyllis and, finding her, reverse his previous position and demand that she return to him. If this did not work, he would beg and snivel. How could he be degraded by groveling before his own creation? Pride could mean nothing to Phyllis.

  8

  Phyllis of course never forgot any of her assigned dialogue, or for that matter anyone else’s, in what actors, honoring a traditional backstage superstition, called the Scottish Play.

  Macbeth was played by a man named Douglas Bigelow. When he forgot a line in any of the scenes they shared, or the prompter cued him in too soft a tone for Doug to hear, for he was a bit deaf, Phyllis delivered his lines.

  “What’s to be done?” Lady Macbeth would ask in Act III, Scene 2, and if her husband failed to make a timely response, she would answer herself:

  Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, Till thou applaud the deed. Come, seeling night, Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day …

  Occasionally when so jump-started, Doug would take over on one of her natural pauses for breath (though having no need to breathe, Phyllis simulated doing so to provide the proper rhythm for William Shakespeare’s verse) and complete the speech himself. More often, failing to recover, he let her finish all twelve lines that closed the scene, after which he would stagger into the wings and find the pint of vodka he had cached in a firebucket.

  Early on, Phyllis had asked Doug why he drank so much, and he said, “I’m scared. Much of the dialogue doesn’t make any sense to me, so I forget it. I joined this group to do
modern things, Streetcar, Death of a Salesman. Howard talked me into Shakespeare. Next he wants to do Medea.”

  “I thought I knew everything William Shakespeare wrote,” said Phyllis, “including even The Two Noble Kinsmen, which many scholars don’t believe was his, except for a few lines.”

  “Medea’s Greek tragedy,” said Bigelow. “In revenge against her husband, the title character cooks her own children and serves them to him for dinner. Sick stuff…. I can sing, you know. I’d like to do Rodgers and Hammerstein.”

  When Phyllis told Doug’s troubles to Howard Kidd, the director and founder of the suburban theater company, he shrugged his narrow shoulders.

  “So he goes up in his lines, like everybody does from time to time except you, Phyl. So what? The audience never knows. They don’t understand any more of the text than he does.” Before getting her big break, Phyllis had begun as flunky and gofer for Kidd, whose little theater was a personal project funded by himself, or rather by his rich wife. The unpaid casts were made up of amateurs who loved to perform. Doug Bigelow, for example, sold computers; Jane Wilhelm, Phyllis’s predecessor as Lady Macbeth, taught high school English. The roster of nonperforming personnel, backstage and box office, tended frequently to change from weekend to weekend. Even though the theater was open only on Friday and Saturday evenings during short spring and fall seasons, there was a great deal of exhausting work to be done for no tangible reward but a listing of names in the xeroxed program.

  Kidd had readily accepted Phyllis as an unpaid apprentice, and in that job she painted, hauled, and erected scenery, and, after a bit of research, did carpentry as well. She mounted posters, wherever such were permitted, all over town and several nearby villages. She handled the accounts for the theater, as well as Kidd’s correspondence. She served as property manager and wardrobe mistress, stage manager and prompter. Once, when Kidd was down with the flu, she assumed directorial authority and forced what she recognized as a cast grown stale in their roles to rehearse and crisp up some of the performances, for example that of the retired postman named Ned Stilling, whose Banquo was overly decrepit. In so doing, Phyllis offended these people, who after all were not professionals and performed for audiences that, after the openings in which most of the seventy five seats would be filled with relatives and friends, in the later days of the run might number fewer than half a dozen.

  But as soon as Kidd had returned and Phyllis had gone back to her normal functions she was quickly forgiven by all, owing to the unfailing good humor and tireless energy with which she did everything that looked like labor, freeing the actors to dwell on the artistic plane.

  Kidd himself was less appreciative. The more tasks Phyllis took on, the more critical of her he became. Before her arrival, the cleaning of the theater had been done on the morning before each performance by a volunteer crew of high school students under the supervision of Jane Wilhelm, their moonlighting teacher. They did a negligent job even early in the engagement, and by the third weekend most of them failed to appear, but Phyllis easily fitted this chore into her schedule, making short work of sweeping the little theater, mopping the lavatories, and polishing the metal fixtures and glass.

  Some of the folding camp chairs that accommodated the audience were the worse for years of wear. Phyllis tightened their connections and revarnished many, early enough in the week so that all tackiness would have dried by Friday. On an extension ladder, she confirmed her suspicion that the house lights wore filters of grime and cleaned them thoroughly.

  Kidd was not impressed. “You piss your time away on make-work when what I need is audience.”

  “The difficulty,” she pointed out, “is that the nearby population is not large enough to sustain even a small theater devoted to classics performed in the time-honored way.”

  “I hope you’re not about to suggest a Hamlet with a circus theme—Horatio dressed as a clown, Ophelia playing an aerialist. I loathe modernizations of Shakespeare.” He brandished a fist at the ceiling. “I’d rather go dark for good, and I may have to.” He made a noise between a grunt and a gasp. Human beings could produce at will compromises of sound beyond Phyllis’s capacity. “The latest news is that my wife is definitely pulling out her support from under me. I made the point that just because she hates my guts and is terminating the marriage, it shouldn’t have a necessary bearing on the fate of the theater, but she didn’t buy it. She might have if her lawyer were not such a nasty motherfucker. First kill all the lawyers!”

  “‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’” Phyllis quoted correctly. “Dick the Butcher, Henry the Sixth, Part Two, Act Four, Scene Two, line twenty-seven.”

  “She was crazy about me once,” said Kidd. “She bought me off. I might have gone somewhere on Broadway. This little theater was a consolation prize.”

  “Have you ever appeared in any of the productions here?”

  “Who wouldn’t rather direct than let somebody else run him around?”

  “Acting is a magical art,” Phyllis said.

  “You say that only because you haven’t done any.”

  “By the way, Jane is giving notice.”

  “Oh, shit!” Kidd howled. “Can’t you talk her into staying? There’s only next weekend left.”

  “Her husband’s going into the hospital for a double bypass.”

  “That’s bullshit. Can’t he wait? Or can’t she just come here for a couple hours, two nights? As a personal favor to me, who she owes so much?”

  “She doesn’t wish you well, Howard. She says you’re lucky she didn’t go to the police when she caught you putting the moves on her fifteen-year-old.”

  Kidd lifted a trio of fingers and lowered them one by one as he made the respective assertions. “Three things. One, she’s lying. Two, what steamed that ugly little bitch was I didn’t come on to her. Three, the lying slut swore she was twenty-one while zipping open my fly with her teeth.”

  Kidd’s wife was divorcing him because of his taste for adolescents, to whom he promised parts that were never forthcoming. It was convenient for Phyllis to look too old for him.

  “I want to play Lady Macbeth next Friday and Saturday,” she said now.

  He screamed and bellowed for a while, marching around his little office above the theater, but finally settled down to predict sardonically, “There won’t be a Saturday performance if you go on Friday night.”

  “Word of mouth will fill every seat,” said Phyllis. “I’ve got some good ideas.”

  Her prediction proved to be on the money. The Friday evening audience comprised six persons, but on Saturday the seats were sold out, in addition to which the SRO crowd was so large as to violate the fire laws, though Kidd got away with only a warning. A bluenosed member of the town council, an elder in his church, tried to close down the production on grounds of obscenity, but he was successfully opposed by two other councilpersons, both eminently respectable wives and mothers, who applauded Phyllis’s interpretation of her role as empowering to their sex. A male member pointed out that ticket buyers from elsewhere would bring much-needed revenue to the town, a matter of interest to the several officials who owned local retail businesses.

  The review in the weekly newspaper was written by a man named Monroe Calthorp, who not only taught Speech at the high school but had also on a visit to London attended a professional production of Shakespeare in the poet’s homeland, though not, admittedly, Macbeth. He had roundly derided Kidd’s first cast, scorning Jane Wilhelm’s performance even more than that of Douglas Bigelow. “One begins to silently scream No, No, No on her first line, having already been put off by her appearance. A hefty Lady Macbeth? I don’t think so. What’s worse, a Valley Girl’s diction.”

  But Phyllis’s conquest of Calthorp was so overwhelming as to give him a different view even of Bigelow, whose stumbling gait and slurred speech he saw as enhancing the emotional disintegration of the character. As to Phyllis, “Never before, at least in this reviewer’s ken, has sexuality been
used so appropriately, so eloquently at the service of characterization. That Ms. Pierce is comely, that exposing her unclad figure might well run the risk of distracting from the sublime language are serious considerations. The good news is that this does not occur. The power of Shakespeare’s words is if anything enhanced by Ms. Pierce, even when she is not the speaker thereof but only stands and waits.”

  This production of the play was not the first to feature nudity, which had apparently been done a time or two in the hippie era, with Lady Macbeth naked in the sleepwalking scene; and more recently a version of the Three Witches had been offered at a Florida strip club, in a kind of ruse to evade the anti-obscenity laws. But Phyllis was the first on record to incorporate overt sexual acts at moments when they did not pervert, but rather enhanced what William Shakespeare surely intended—and of course in no instance was his celebrated language altered. For example, in Act III, Scene 4, when Banquo’s Ghost takes Macbeth’s place at the table, Lady Macbeth reproves her husband for his fright:

  Shame itself!

  Why do you make such faces? When all’s done,

  You look but on a stool.

  And to prove her point, hikes up her gown and gives the Ghost a lap dance, after a few moments of which, its bluff called, the Ghost vanishes as called for in the stage directions.

  When, twenty-odd lines later, the apparition reappears, displaying a lustful grin and heading for the lady, the Thane of Cawdor has recovered sufficient self-possession to cry:

  Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;

  Thou hast no speculation in those eyes

  Which thou dost glare with!

  To divert the attention of the others at the table, Scottish noblemen who, not seeing the Ghost, show dismay at Macbeth’s bizarre comportment, Phyllis at this point begins to strip while saying:

  Think of this, good peers,