Дэймон Найт: Orbit 5

They make small talk that I recognize, the same sort of small talk that a good doctor uses for a nervous patient before measuring his blood pressure. I am churlish with them in return and we go to the sleep lab silently. I understand all of their equipment and I have even had electroencephalograms made when I was studying, so nothing is new to me and the demonstration is short. Then I am alone in the darkened room, conscious of the wires, of the tiny patches of skin with adhesive gel tape that holds the electrodes in place. I don’t think I’ll be able to go to sleep here wired up like this, at least not into the deep sleep that should come in an hour or so. I deliberately close my eyes and try to picture a flame above my eyes, over the bridge of my nose. I know that I can interrupt my alpha waves at will with this exercise. I imagine Roger’s surprise. But suddenly I am thinking of S.L. and I blink rapidly, wondering what kinds of waves I am producing now for them to study. S.L. won’t go away. I ask, what does the S. stand for, and he smiles broadly and says Silas. Does anyone name children Silas anymore? So I ask about the L. and he says Lerner, which is perfectly all right, his mother’s maiden name, but he doesn’t like the idea of going around as S. Lerner Wright. It is a farcical name. He is S.L. Lying in the dark room of the almost empty hotel, I can think of S.L. without pain, without recriminations and regrets and bitterness. I remember it as it was then. I loved him so very much, but he said not enough, or I would go with him to Cal Tech and become Mrs. S.L. Wright, and forever and ever remain Mrs. S.L. Wright. I realize that I no longer love him, and that probably I didn’t even then, but it felt like love and I ached as if it were love, and afterward I cut my hair very short and stopped using makeup and took several courses in night school and finished the next three years in under two and received degrees and a job . . .

I am awakened by the telephone and I lift it and mumble into it. “My car isn’t working right, trying to back up on the road into Somerset and can’t make it go. I keep slipping downward and there is a cliff in front of me, but I can’t back up.”

I dream of the telephone ringing, and it rings, and I speak, less coherently, and forget immediately what I have said and sleep again. In the morning I have memories of having spoken into the telephone several times, but no memories of what I said. Sid enters and helps me out of the bird’s nest of wires. I wave him away and stumble into the bathroom where I wash my face and come really awake.

Sid? I thought Roger was the meter man of the night before. I dress and brush my hair and put on lipstick, and then find them both waiting for me to have breakfast with them. Sid has deep blue circles under his eyes. At a sunlit table with a bowl of yellow roses and a few deep green fems, I wait for them to break the silence that has enveloped the three of us. There is a sound of activity in town that morning, people getting ready to go to church in Hawley, cars being brought out of garages where they stay six days of the week, several people in the hotel dining room having an early breakfast before leaving for the day. Many of them stay away all day on Sunday, visiting friends or relatives, and I know that later the town will be deserted.

“So they talked you into letting them wire you up like a condemned man?” Dorothea stands over the table accusingly. “Are you all right?”

“Of course. It’s nothing, Dorothea, really nothing.”

She snorts. “Up all night, people coming and going all night, talking in the halls, meetings here and there. I never should have let them in.” She is addressing me still, but the hostility in her voice is aimed at the boys, at Staunton who has just entered the dining room. He joins us, and there are dark hollows under his eyes. He doesn’t meet my gaze.

We have coffee in silence and wait for our orders. I finger a sensitive spot on my left eyelid and Sid says quickly, “One of the wires came off during the night, I had to replace it. Is it sore?”

“No. It’s all right.” I am upset suddenly by the idea of his being there in the night, replacing a wire on my eye without my knowing. I think of the similar role that I play in my daily life and I know how I regard the bodies that I treat. Irritated at the arm that has managed to pull loose a needle that now must be replaced in the vein. Never a person, just an arm, and a needle. And the quiet satisfaction when the dials are registering correctly once more. I feel the frown on my face and try to smooth it out again.

Staunton has ordered only toast, juice and coffee, and he is yawning. He finishes his last crumb of toast and says, “I’m going to bed. Miss Matthews, will you join us here for dinner tonight?”

The sudden question catches me off guard, and I look at him. He is regarding me steadily and very soberly, and I realize that something has happened, that I am part of it, and that he is very much concerned. I am uneasy and only nod yes.

When he is gone I ask, “What happened? What’s wrong?”

“We don’t know yet,” Roger says.

Sid pours more coffee and drinks it black. He is looking more awake, as if he has taken a bennie or something. “We have to talk with you, Janet. I’d like you to hear some of our tapes, including your own, if you will.”

“You should get some sleep,” I say irrelevantly.

“This afternoon? Can you come here, or should we bring the stuff to your place?”

“You got him up last night?”

Sid nods. “I felt I should.”

I watch Myra and Al Newton leave their table, stop at Dorothea’s counter to pay the bill and leave, and I am struck by their frailty. They both seem wraithlike. Is anyone in Somerset under sixty? I suppose the Newtons must be closer to seventy-five. I ask, “Where are the other boys this morning?” The dining room is empty except for the three of us.

“A couple of them are out fishing already, and the rest are probably still sleeping. I’m taking Victor and Mickey to Hawley to catch the bus back to Boston later today,” Roger says, and then adds, “Probably Doug will be the next to go.”

“Doug? I thought he was one of the more interested ones in this whole thing?”

“Too interested, maybe,” Roger says.

Sid is watching both of us and now he leans forward, resting his chin on his hands, looking beyond me out the window at the quiet street. “Janet, do you remember any of your dreams from last night?”

I think of what I said over the telephone. Scraps here and there. Something about putting flowers on graves in one of them. I shake my head: nothing that I can really remember.

“Okay. You’ll hear them later. Meanwhile, take my word for it that some of the guys have to leave, whether they want to or not.” He looks at me for another moment and then asks, in a different voice altogether, “Are you all right, Janet? Will you be okay until this afternoon? We do have to process the tapes and record the data,, and I want to sort through all of them and pull out those that seem pertinent.”

It is the voice of a man concerned for a woman, not of a graduate student concerned for his project, and this annoys me.

“Of course I’m all right,” I say, and stand up. “For heaven’s sake, those are dreams, the dreams of someone who had too much to drink, at that.” I know I am flushed and I turn to leave. Have I embarrassed them with erotic dreams, concerning one of them perhaps? I 38 am very angry when I leave Sagamore House, and I wish I could go up to the sleep room and destroy the tapes, all of them. I wish Dorothea had shown just an ounce of sense when they approached her for the rooms. She had no business allowing them to come into our town, upset our people with their damned research. I am furious with Sid for showing concern for me. He has no right. In the middle of these thoughts, I see my father and me, walking hand in hand in the afternoon, heading for the drugstore and an ice-cream cone. He is very tall and blond, with broad shoulders and a massive chest. He keeps his hair so short that he seems bald from a distance. He is an ophthalmologist with his office in Jefferson, and after they dam the river he has to drive sixty-three miles each way. Mother worries about his being out so much, but they don’t move, don’t even consider moving. On Sunday afternoon he always takes me to the drugstore for an icecream cone. I blink hard and the image fades, leaving the street bare and empty.