Robert Wilson: The Affinities

But I began to forget about that. I dropped into a half dozen interesting discussions. No one resented my presence, and when I added a few words people paid attention. I spent a few minutes listening to a guy with a faint Hungarian accent debating Affinity politics with a couple of other Taus in a downstairs room. The talk was too lively to interrupt, but Lisa took my arm and whispered, “That’s Damian. Damian Levay. He teaches law at the University of Toronto. Very bright, very ambitious. He’s written a book or two.”

He looked pretty young for a tenured professor, but he talked liked someone accustomed to an audience. He had issues with the way InterAlia exercised control over Affinity tranches and sodalities. “If being a Tau is a legitimate identity, aren’t we entitled to self-determination? I mean, InterAlia may own the algorithms, but it doesn’t own us .”

Lisa smiled as she interrupted him: “‘When in the course of human events…’”

“Don’t laugh,” he said. “A declaration of independence might be exactly what we need.”

“If not precisely a revolution. ”

Damian looked at me and gave Lisa a quizzical glance. She mouthed something back at him—it might have been the word “newb.” I introduced myself and shook his hand.

As we walked away Lisa said, “Damian’s been with us for more than a year now. He’s one to watch. Pay attention to that one, Adam.”

A kind of happy exhaustion eventually set in. I made more friends over the course of an evening than I had made in the last six months, and every connection seemed both authentic and potentially important—the escalation from hi-my-name-is to near-intimacy was dizzying. Even the conversations I overheard in passing tugged at my attention: I kept wanting to say yes, exactly! or me too! Eye contact felt like a burst of exchanged data. Maybe too much so. I wasn’t used to it. Could anyone get used to it?

I had lost track of Lisa, but when she found me again she said, “You look like your head is swimming. I’m sure it is—I remember the feeling. Handed around like a new toy. It’s great, but if you need to get away for a few minutes—”

She showed me a room in the basement, furnished with a leather sofa and a big-screen TV. The only person in the room was a young woman who appeared to have Down syndrome. She wore a blue sweatshirt and drawstring pants, and she was watching SpongeBob SquarePants with the sound off.

“This is Tonya,” Lisa said. “Everyone calls her Tonya G. Her mother is Renata Goldstein—you met her upstairs. Tonya’s not actually a Tau, but we make room for her at the tranche gatherings. Because we like her. Right, Tonya?”

Tonya hollered out, “Yes!”

“Hey,” I said. “Enjoying the show?”

“Yes!”

“Can you hear it?”

She turned her head and fixed her eyes on me. “No! Can you ?”

“Mm … no.”

“Watch it with me?”

Lisa gave me a you-don’t-have-to-do-this look, but I waved her off. “Sure, I’ll watch it with you. Some of it, anyway.”

“All right.”

Lisa patted my shoulder. “I’ll let Renata know you’re down here. She’ll check in in a little while. But Tonya will understand if you want to get back to the party—right, Tonya?”

Tonya nodded emphatically.

So we watched SpongeBob with the sound off. It wasn’t clear to me why Tonya preferred to see it in silence, but she rejected an offer to turn up the volume. And it was still funny this way. Tonya seemed startled when I laughed, but she inevitably followed with a big peal of laughter of her own. After a while I started making up my own dialogue for the characters, doing crazy voices, which she liked. “You’re joking!”

“I’m a joker,” I admitted.

“What’s your name?”

“Adam.”

“Adam’s a joker!”

Among other things.

The credits were rolling when I noticed that someone had come into the room. A woman, maybe my age, leaning against the doorframe, watching us. South Asian features. Close-cropped dark hair. A Chinese dragon tattooed in three colors around the meat of her upper arm. She wore a sleeveless blouse and faded blue jeans. A belt with a purple metallic buckle.

“Getting late, Tonya,” she announced. “Your mom’s upstairs saying good-bye. I think you’d better go find her.”

“Okay,” Tonya said.

“Say good-bye to Adam first.”

“Good-bye, Adam Joker!”

“Bye, Tonya SpongeBobWatcher.”

Tonya ran from the room giggling. Her summoner stayed behind. I said, “You know my name, but—”

“Oh, sorry. I’m Amanda. Amanda Mehta.” She put out her hand. I stood up and took it. “You’re Adam. Lisa told me you were down here keeping Tonya company. Sorry, I couldn’t resist having a look at the new guy.”

I wasn’t sure how to answer that, given that I’d probably never see Amanda Mehta again. I just smiled.

“Lisa said she already showed you around. But I bet you didn’t see the roof.”

“The roof?”

“Come on.” She tugged my hand. “I’ll show you. And maybe you can tell me what’s bothering you.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Just come with me. Come on!”

What could I do but follow?

“What makes you think something’s bothering me?”

Amanda didn’t answer, just gave me a hold-your-horses look. She led me to one of bedrooms on the third floor, where a dormer window looked south over a wooded ravine. The window opened onto the part of the roof that connected the house to the garage. She climbed out deftly—obviously, she had done this before—then turned back and said, “You won’t fall. If you’re careful.”

So I stepped out onto the shingles. The slope was gentle enough that there was no real danger, but we were high enough to see across the backyard and over the ravine to the city—condo towers on Bloor Street, the headstone apartment slabs of the Cabbagetown district.

“Safest thing is to lie down,” Amanda said.

She stretched out with her head butting the low sill of the window. I did the same. “You know the house pretty well,” I said.

“I lived here for a few months.”

“Are you related to Lisa or—” I had forgotten the name of Lisa’s partner.

“Loretta. No, but they put me up when I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I finally got my own place last May.”

“They put you up because you’re a Tau?”

“Well, yeah. I’m not the only one they’ve helped out, and they liked having me here. Loretta inherited this place back in the eighties. The house is too big for them, really, so they’re always putting people up. It’s a place to go when you don’t have anywhere else to go. If you’re in the tranche. Or at least a Tau.”

“Must be nice.”

She gave me a searching look. “Of course it’s nice.”

“I think—”

“No, hush, be quiet a minute. Listen. I love the way it sounds out here. Don’t you?”

I would have said there was nothing to hear. But there was, once I paid attention. The tidal bass note of the city, the massed noise of air-conditioner compressors, car engines, high-rise ventilator fans. Plus animal sounds from the ravine and human voices from this or the neighboring house. Homely sounds that hovered over the dark backyard like phantom lights.

“And the way it feels,” Amanda said. “Late August, you know, even on a hot day you get that little chill after dark. The leaves on the trees sound different in the wind.” A wind came up as if she had commanded it. “This corner of the roof is completely private. No one can see you. But you can see the city.”