Steve Erickson - These Dreams of You

“No, nothing’s original,” Zan says, “but this comes damned close. Stained-glass windows recreated in butterfly wings? There’s not a single documented example of anyone doing that before Viv.”

“Well there you are.”

Brown says, “Off to Africa, then, is she?” watching Sheba and appearing to become even more nervous than her father.

“It’s complicated. I. . ” Zan glances at the girl, “. . should explain another time.”

“Right,” says Brown. “But I trust she’ll be back before the lecture next week.” Discernible in his eyes are images of Sheba amok on the university grounds.

“I hope so, for all kinds of reasons. Mainly I’m worried about her.”

“Viv always was resilient,” Brown shrugs.

He’s trying to be reassuring but Zan doesn’t need any reminder of how well Brown knows Viv or whatever way it is he thinks he knows her. “She gets lost,” Zan says, “she has no sense of direction.”

“Mount Kilimanjaro and all that, as I remember.”

“Mount Kilimanjaro is up ,” Zan points out, “that direction she’s mastered. Most people would have taken the Mount Kilimanjaro experience as a warning, given that she missed the only flight out that week. Viv took it as a lifetime Get Out of Insane Situations Free card. Except when she’s being a mom and worrying the kids are going to drink the Drano. Listen, James,” Zan announces somberly, “here it is in a nutshell: I’m the family’s sanest person. Do you understand? Can you wrap your head around the implications of that? Can you envision the. . the. . state of general derangement this portends? I’m the most stable member of the family. That’s like Ahab being the captain of a Carnival Cruise line. Sheer dementedness increases in direct proportion to the decrease in physical size, until you wind up with the world’s worst dog, who finally breached an electric fence for the sheer thrill of it, like someone tasering himself.”

Brown says, “I’m certain you’ll hear from her soon,” which is curious, since Zan hasn’t actually said anything about not hearing from her. Brown clasps his hands together and rubs them, torturing the empty space between his palms. “Hotel is satisfactory, I trust.”

“Sure,” says Zan.

“Working on anything these days?”

“Uh. . ”

Brown can’t be certain what this means, since Zan isn’t either, but replies, “A novel, I presume?”

“Yes.”

“Brilliant. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since the last.”

“Yes,” says Zan, “and you?” changing the subject: Let’s talk about what you really want to talk about. “Still the journalism, of course.”

“Yes,” Brown says, “a proper piece about the impact that torture at Guantanamo has had on the Muslim world. The waterboarding, sexual humiliation. All that.”

Zan struggles to suppress a nationalist impulse, though not as much as the impulse to puncture what he regards as the other’s pomposity. “The president signed an order,” he says.

“Oh well, then, right,” Brown answers, “it’s all sorted.”

“I think an order against waterboarding is a good thing, James.”

“Yes, though he won’t let us see any photos, will he? The sexual humiliation, none of that.”

More fed up than he expected, Zan looks at the kids. “That’s not torture,” he says, surprising himself.

“No?” says Brown.

“Tawdry, stupid, puerile, counter-productive. Pick one or all of them, but not torture.”

“Really?” not actually said as a question.

What is it about the fucking British? Zan seethes, mostly at himself for being baited into this. Politely hostile. Gracefully aggressive. Zan says, “Torture is fear of death — like waterboarding, thinking you’re going to drown. Infliction of pain. Drilling someone’s teeth like that movie where Laurence Olivier is a Nazi”—he goes for the British actor, of course—“pulling out fingernails, hanging by eyelids on meat hooks. Being tied to a chair and made to watch a naked woman? You pay money for that in Vegas.”

“I see,” says Brown. What happened to the trusty silence into which Zan reliably falls when confronted by the indignation of others? It’s like the woman on the plane berating him for irresponsibility; suddenly he’s surrounded by people whose politics take on the tone of personal accusation. Or is it just a sign of Zan’s newly less-than-robust objectivity about things concerning the new president, a deeply dangerous protectiveness? In his own way, has he gone off the rails about his country no less than everyone else?

Zan rises from his seat. “Abdul,” he continues, “probably goes back to jail afterward and all the jihadists have a good laugh about it. Parker, are you watching her?” he barks at his son, gazing about a bit madly for his daughter only to realize she’s at his feet, staring up at him. Neither child says anything, watching their father intently; Zan is aware he’s slipping into a rant. “Gets back to his cell and it’s, you know, ‘Feature this, guys, they tortured me with the naked woman today!’ A routine, like Br’er Rabbit and the briar patch. ‘Oh no, whatever you do, not the naked woman! I might tell you anything if you make me watch the naked woman!’” He looks at the kids and it’s clear that, while slightly scandalized, they find this the most interesting thing their father has said in years.

Brown peers up at him from where he sits. “Of course,” he ventures calmly, “given the attitudes some of these men are raised with about such things, it is torture, isn’t it.”

“Sincerely,” Zan says, “maybe that says more about some fucked-up attitudes about women and sex than it does about what can objectively be called torture.” He’s abashed at his lapse. “Sorry,” he snaps at the kids, “you know you’re not supposed to say that word.”

“Sex?” says Parker.

“The other one.”

“Fucked-up,” volunteers Sheba.

“We’ve heard you say that before,” Parker observes.

“You say it all the fucked-up time,” Sheba agrees.

“Thank you, children,” says Zan, “for that authoritative consensus. Sheba, don’t say it again.” He sighs. “The waterboarding was horrific,” he quietly gathers their things, “a disgrace to everything we’re supposed to stand for. Let’s leave it at that. Listen,” he says, uncertain if he’s disappointed in himself or has discovered something new, “I’ve got to get them back. . ”

“We’ll carry on next week,” says the other man, “catch the train out to the college together, if that’s agreeable.”

“How far is it?”

“Twenty minutes from Waterloo. Longer if we miss the express.”

“James,” Zan says, “if Viv isn’t back by then, I may need to line up a nanny of some sort. Sorry, I know this isn’t what you signed up for. It’s not what I had in mind either.”

Images of Sheba’s havoc receding in his eyes, Brown emanates unmistakable relief. “I’ll look into it,” he says.

Zan writes to Viv as breezy an email as he can muster, though he doesn’t do breezy in even the breeziest of circumstances. He writes about the city, kids, what they’ve been doing, concluding, Assume you’re not returning to London w/in nxt 48 hrs so looking into childcare prospects for when residency begins next week.

When there’s no answer, Zan sends another email, then phones Viv on her cell, though he knows she has no connection where she is. He phones the Ghion Hotel in Addis Ababa. The weekend passes; Zan, Parker and Sheba spend Saturday afternoon at Leicester Square eating a surprisingly excellent pizza and poking around an old-fashioned Covent Garden toy shop where the manager — a young guy from Vermont who wants to be a fantasy writer and has been in England long enough to pick up an accent — plays with the kids a game involving small toy creatures locked in epic battles. Sheba keeps knocking over the creatures she isn’t supposed to, to her brother’s growing rage.