by John Darnton
"You got it."
The stylist walked away.
"I see you're already casting your spell," remarked Jude.
The visit to the doctor was an ordeal. Skyler needed a great deal of persuading even to enter the office, which lay behind a small side door next to an imposing entrance under a green awning on East Eighty-sixth Street.
Jude remained outside. Over and over, he had explained to Skyler why it was important to him to undergo a medical exam that would establish once and for all just how much alike the two of them really were. Skyler had had too much experience with doctors in his short life, Jude figured. His reluctance to submit to a physical was understandable, but it had to be overcome if they were to get any answers. Finally, Jude had prevailed upon Tizzie to accompany him, and it was only then that Skyler had agreed.
Skyler jumped when Tizzie rang a bell and the door was buzzed open by the receptionist. The lock, she explained, was intended to keep people out, not in.
The patient was so obviously nervous that the receptionist, the same one who had talked to Jude on the phone, was touched. She smiled sympathetically as she handed the file to Tizzie—Jude's file—and told them she would try to push his name ahead on the list. The waiting room was crowded, and they took the last two empty seats.
Tizzie asked him about the medical care on the island. He told her about the weekly examinations, the urine and blood tests, the obsession with vitamins and health food.
"Tell me," she asked. "Were you all in good health?"
"Yes, perfect health."
"But sometimes people got sick?"
"Sure, we got sick."
"And sometimes they didn't recover. That's what you told us."
"Most of the time they did. But not always."
"And when they didn't recover, what happened?"
"They died."
"Just like that? They died?"
"Yes. We never saw them again. We went to their funerals."
"Did you know why they died? Did they tell you?"
"Not really. They just said they died."
"But when they recovered... they were all right?"
"Yeah. But sometimes they were missing things—like an eye."
Tizzie was visibly upset.
A nurse with a clipboard walked in and looked at Skyler.
"Hello, Jude," she said. "You've changed your hair—very hip."
He tried to smile.
"What brings you here?"
Tizzie answered for him.
"Nothing specific, just a general checkup."
"Good idea. It's a smart thing to do," she replied. "Come with me."
Tizzie squeezed Skyler's hand, and he stood up, apprehensive. The nurse saw this, and on the way to the examining room, she turned to look him in the eye and said with feeling: "I hope it all works out okay."
An hour and a half later, after Skyler had given up every conceivable bodily fluid and had X rays taken of every bone and examinations of every orifice and protuberance, he was led back to Tizzie. He was shaken but in one piece, and he brightened visibly when he saw her reading magazines in the lobby, which moved her. They stopped off at a counter where a sign in block letters said: BILL MUST BE PAID AT TIME OF VISIT. Tizzie pulled out a check that Jude had already signed, and was about to fill in the amount when the Filipino woman behind the counter asked why Skyler didn't do it himself. So he did, writing the numerals and the zeroes in a fluid hand. Tizzie was struck, in fact, by how much his writing resembled Jude's.
An hour later, Jude and Skyler were riding in the subway. Lurching back and forth against the seat as the train screeched around a bend, Skyler could not believe that anything could make so much noise. But the people around him did not notice it or if they did, they gave no sign. He was fascinated by them—he had never seen anything like them, such a multitude of humanity and such diversity; he had never dreamed that people could come in so many different sizes and shapes and colors. Some of them looked like Kuta. And the clothes they wore were flamboyant and equally bounteous—T shirts with designs, flowered dresses, light jackets and short skirts, baseball caps and berets and earphones. But his fellow passengers did not seem especially happy; none of them were smiling. Across the way, a figure in short blond hair and dark glasses seemed to be staring at him; he looked back and realized with a start that he was looking at his own reflection.
The wheels screeched again and the train came into a station, and as it halted, the doors flew open, so that looking through them, Skyler could see walls covered in white tile and dark columns. Dozens of people got off and dozens more cleared a path for them and then stepped on board. Skyler was amazed that even children seemed unfazed by the noise and the crowd. One was asleep in a little chair that had wheels on it, the same device that he had seen on the sidewalks above.
He kept an eye on Jude and decided to stick close to him. Jude seemed so nervous, constantly looking around and even looking over his shoulder when he bought the coins that allowed them on the subway, that it made Skyler nervous. He began to feel that menace was lurking everywhere. Jude explained that he was on the lookout for the Orderlies, and he made Skyler promise to let him know the minute he spotted one.
Earlier, Jude had explained that he was taking Skyler to his own apartment, and he had assured him that he would be safer there, because no one would know where he was. Skyler was not so certain of this. He had developed an almost superstitious belief in the ability of the Lab to do whatever it wanted. Its power was unlimited, its tentacles reached everywhere. Surely, one of them could reach out and grab him no matter where he was hiding. And he was not too keen at the prospect of being on his own. It made him anxious, to think that he would have to make decisions and deal with this complicated city alone. He looked again at Jude, scanning the subway car.
He was beginning to trust Jude a little bit. But the trust was tentative; it came and went and he could drive it away by concentrating too much and thinking about all the possibilities. It occurred to him that if he was dead wrong and if Jude was planning to do away with him because of some conspiracy that was bigger than anything he could imagine, then this would be the way to do it. Jude would take him to some apartment away from everything, leave him alone and let him stew and then face his doom in solitude. Or perhaps there would be people from the island waiting there to take him away. Still, what option did he have but to go with him?
He felt a tugging on his sleeve—it was Jude, standing up. They had arrived at their stop. On the white tile wall outside, a sign read: ASTOR PLACE. The doors flew open and they stepped out, Jude first, Skyler right behind, stepping quickly lest the doors suddenly close and trap him and separate him from Jude forever. They exited through the turnstiles, Jude still scrutinizing the flow of people carefully, searching for a telltale forelock of white hair.
The air on the street above was stiflingly hot, but Skyler was relieved to be out of the underground tunnel. He followed Jude across the street and two blocks down. They went into a bar and immediately felt a rush of cold air. Air conditioning—he was getting used to it. A country tune played on the jukebox. Skyler pushed his glasses up on his head, but it was still so dark inside that he could hardly see. Jude sat on a stool and he sat next to him, and Jude ordered a beer for himself and a Coke for Skyler.
Jude took a long drink, set his glass down and wiped his mouth. He told Skyler to look through the window at the building across the street. That's where he would be staying. He must pick the key up from the super on the first floor and walk up to the third floor. He would have to lay low and wait for Jude to contact him; he could go out to buy food at the corner deli or emergency supplies, but that was about it. In the meantime, Jude would be working hard to figure out what was going on and to come up with some sort of a plan.
"Any questions?"
Skyler shook his head no, still feeling uncertain.
"Here, take this," said Jude, reaching into his front pocket and pulling out a wad of bills. "It's only fif
ty dollars, so it won't go very far, but it's all I've got on me at the moment."
Skyler put the money in his pocket. It was more than he had ever seen. He looked at Jude long and hard, which was easier to do through the dark glasses.
"You know," he said. "There are still a lot of things to tell you about the island."
"Like what?"
"Well, like about the people. I haven't told you about all the people. One in particular. She was in the Age Group..." He faltered.
Jude waited quietly.
"Her name was Julia. She was my whole life. She died. That's why I left."
"I'm sorry."
"I loved her—I still love her."
He stopped. There, he had said it. He couldn't say more anyway, not right now. That was enough for the time being.
Jude reached over and put his arm around him. It felt strange being touched by him like that—strange and comforting.
"Have a beer," said Jude. "I bet I know what brand you'll like."
He ordered two, and they finished them and got up to leave.
They parted, shaking hands, which struck Skyler as strange. He wondered if he would ever see Jude again. He adjusted his glasses, put his hands in his pockets and crossed the street to enter the building, just as Jude had told him to. He knocked on the door marked SUPERINTENDENT.
"Hot damn," said the man who answered it, holding one hand on the doorknob and looking him up and down, a cool appraisal. "It didn't take you long to change your look. I liked it better the old way."
The mattress Skyler was lying on was lumpy, and sagged so much in the middle that he could not turn to either side and still breathe. It made him even more claustrophobic, if such a thing were possible. As he lay there, with the windows open and the soiled curtains waving in the feeble wind, he sweltered. His body perspired uncontrollably, and he imagined he was suffocating. Yet when he stepped in front of the window, he felt a sudden chill and he practically shivered. He missed the equalizing breezes and balmy sun of his island.
The room was dingy and smelly, and it had depressed him the moment he opened the door. The cockroaches waited for all of five minutes before they began skittering across the linoleum in the kitchen. When he looked inside a closet, he found a trap with two dead mice. The windows were streaked with dirt, the wallpaper was starting to peel and the sink had bulbshaped yellow stains under the faucets, which made him wonder if the water was safe to drink.
The sounds of the street flowed into his room and made him jumpy. From somewhere nearby, a radio was blaring Hispanic dance music. Again, he had that sensation of being overwhelmed by everything; it felt nauseating—too much noise, traffic lights, buildings that reached to the sky, people rushing about on the sidewalks. He had no one to talk to and no idea of what to do next, and he felt that he was in a vacuum and all the fears and uncertainties were rushing in from all sides and squeezing him so much, he wanted to scream.
He filled the time by spending it with ghosts, even though he knew that would make him even lonelier. And so, tossing about on the bed in his dismal room somewhere in the giant and heartless city, he traveled back to his earlier life on the island.
He thought about Raisin and how they used to run through the woods, wild with happiness at the sense of being free. He remembered once again how Julia used to trail after them, and the recollection plunged him into something akin to despair—had he only known how much he would come to love her, how differently he would have acted! He thought of the time she'd disappeared into the operating room and the panic that had gripped him, and he thought of how the two of them had discovered lovemaking and the memory raised him to a bittersweet joy.
And a curious thing was happening. Thoughts of Julia began turning into thoughts of that other woman. Tizzie. Tizzie—what kind of name was that?—he didn't even like it. A big question mark hung over her. She was not as beautiful as Julia, not as kind or as giving or as adventurous or as warm. Still, she had been tender and solicitous in the doctor's office—he had to give her that.
He did not know where she fit into the whole crazy puzzle. When he had awakened that first time and found her next to him in bed, he'd practically fainted. It'd been traumatic. And he could tell that she had been just as thrown at seeing him, which had made him feel even more agitated. Her reaction had made him think for a moment that she had recognized him, as he had recognized her, as if they had shared some earlier life together. But he knew, rationally at least, that she was shocked because he looked so much like Jude. She did not know who he was. She'd jumped out of bed, pulling the top sheet with her and wrapping it around her body, which had exposed his nakedness. He'd grabbed the bottom sheet and jumped up, too. They'd stood there, gawking at each other. Finally, she'd demanded to know who he was. He'd told her his name and how he had found Jude's picture in a paper and come to New York to find him. He had not had the presence of mind to ask her who she was. They had not said much afterward; they'd seemed embarrassed in each other's presence. Once they got hurriedly dressed, they'd sat in stricken silence until Jude arrived. She'd been extremely upset.
Since then, Skyler had felt so many conflicting emotions toward her he didn't know what to feel. When she was in the same room, he hung on her every word and her every movement, and he was hard pressed to pay attention to anything else. When she was away, he thought of her all the time. There were moments when she did recall Julia to him, the way she turned her head or sat curled up on her legs in the chair or sharpened the inflection of her voice. Sometimes the gestures were so vividly familiar that she seemed to be Julia reincarnated, and during those moments, Skyler had to turn away to contain himself. He felt elated almost, as if he had been given a second chance—like the time Julia had walked out of the woods.
Then there were other times when her gestures and intonation and all the little actions of how she presented herself to the world would be off. During those times she seemed such a poor counterfeit that it only caused him to ache for the real Julia, and it actually made him mad. It made him angry at the Lab and all those who ran it, and even, for some reason, at Tizzie herself.
He didn't know which was worse. At either extreme—whether she seemed to be like Julia or not at all like her—she aroused a confusion of passions that overwhelmed him. And it was even harder to shuttle from one extreme to the other—traveling from hope to despair and back to hope again. It was an emotional roller coaster that left him dizzy and exhausted.
But on a practical level, the level of his survival, what did her existence mean? What did it tell him about the mystery of the Lab and those who ruled the island? How could it be that there were two sets of identical-looking people whose lives were so interwoven? And if there were two, were there others? He needed to know more and to find out more, and until he did, he would not reveal the little that he did know. For the safety of the woman and perhaps for his own safety, too, he resolved to keep her resemblance to Julia a secret, no matter what—even from Jude.
Lying on the rumpled bed, lost in his thoughts and perspiring madly, Skyler came down to earth with a jolt. He heard something, a sound outside his door. Footsteps! And not a normal tread, but rather something lighter, as if the person was trying to sneak up to the door.
He rose steathily and crept to the door between the bedroom and kitchen, and he listened. He thought he heard the footsteps stop on the landing outside his door, and he thought he could sense a person there, thinking, waiting. Was it real or not? He decided not to wait to find out.
He ran across the bedroom and flung open the window. Right outside was a peculiar metal casing attached to the building, a series of ladders that led down. He turned and listened: did he hear someone knocking on his door? He couldn't be sure. He stepped out onto the metal grating, uncertain if it would hold him, and now there was so much noise outside he couldn't hear the knocking anymore. He hesitated no longer, but bounded down the metal ladder, feeling it shake madly with his weight. He ran along a platform on the floor below and
then down another ladder and then to another floor and another ladder.
He looked up. Was that a dark shadow above through the metal strips, a head sticking out his window? He could not tell. He ran across another platform and felt the metal structure shaking. He made it to the lowest ladder, but it did not reach the ground, and just as he started down, he heard a ripping noise and felt a vibration that shook so strongly, he fell. He landed on the ground and, looking up, he saw that the ladder had slipped down and was resting in the air only a few feet above his head. He leapt up and ran as fast as he could, and as he rounded the corner and came into an alley, he almost bumped into the super, who looked at him with his mouth open.
But Skyler did not stop. He dashed out into the main street, filled with passersby who looked inquisitively down the alley and at him. He kept running, all the way up Astor Place, one block, then two, then three and four, running blindly and as fast as he could through the streets of the city.
¨
McNichol sounded pleased with himself. He had come up with an answer for Jude, and he sounded like the man Jude had met the first time around—the effusive medical examiner who had given a guided tour of a corpse, not the one whose DNA test had fingered a living judge as a murder victim. He had insisted upon giving the answer to what he called "your little riddle" in person, which was odd. Why couldn't he just do it over the phone? He said he was coming to New York on business and would meet Jude precisely at four o'clock that afternoon. He gave an address on Foley Square, which Jude jotted down. It sounded vaguely familiar.
Jude was still trying to dodge assignments at the office. He hadn't written a story in days, and he was afraid he was acquiring that guilty hangdog look reporters get when they're not in the paper. It was worth a detour to avoid the bulletin board where the city editor had tacked up his favorite slogan: "You're Only As Good As Your Last Story."
Just as he was about to down a cup of coffee, his sixth of the morning, he heard his name out over the loudspeaker—the city editor was summoning him to the Metro desk. He took his time getting there, and when he did, he found Bolevil in a foul mood.
