Joshua Ferris - To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

Reluctantly I walked over to Connie. She wanted to discuss my latest tweet.

My dream is to overcome my terrifying inhibitions one day, and sing on the subway with my banjo

“You’ve said that to me,” she said. “You’ve used those very words.”

I didn’t know where to begin.

“This is maddening!” I said. “That’s not me!”

“Who else could it be?”

“I swear to God, Connie.”

“This is you, Paul.”

“No, it’s not, I swear to God.”

“Is this some weird game you’re playing to get me back?”

“Get you back? I broke up with you.”

She cocked her head.

“The first time I did.”

“Why are you writing these things?”

“I’m not! Look, I can prove it.”

I dug out my me-machine and showed her the email exchanges between me and my double. I made sure she saw the part where I confessed to him my desire to get on the subway and sing.

“How do I know this isn’t you?”

“Emailing with myself?”

“It’s not hard to create an email account.”

“That’s my point! He created one in my name and used it to write me.”

“Why did you write back?”

“You’re missing the point,” I said. “You think I’m emailing with myself. I’m not emailing with myself.”

“What’s this one?” she asked.

She held the phone up so I could read.

“Is that why you thanked me for the desk flowers?” she said. “Because some stranger pretending to be you told you to in an email? Paul,” she said, “do you need help?”

I took the phone out of her hand.

“It’s not me, Connie, honest to God.”

She walked away. Then she came back.

“If that’s the case,” she said, “if it’s really not you saying all this crap, then what’s happened to your outrage? You were out of your mind when you thought they had made you into a Christian. Now you’re this other thing, this weird other thing, and somehow that’s okay? You’re emailing back and forth with the guy? You’re letting him tweet in your name? You have a Facebook page, for God’s sake! Where’s the old you, Paul? I wouldn’t question it if I could locate the old Paul somewhere.”

“He’s right here,” I said. “He’s still outraged.”

“If your fight against the modern world was going to end, and you were always going to tweet and blog and all the rest of it, why not tell everyone who you really are — a great dentist, and a true Red Sox fan — and not this… this…?”

She threw up her hands and walked away.

Mrs. Convoy was in room 2 prepping an impacted molar while in room 3 a chronic bruxer with a hypertrophied jaw was waiting for me to treat the eroding effects of his grinding and clenching. I couldn’t find an iPad. You buy the newest technology for the office, and then you spend the rest of your time trying to locate it. Or figure out how it works. Finding it or figuring it out becomes more important than tending to patients. It becomes a personal imperative, finding and using the thing you’ve spent thousands of dollars on or figuring out how to work the thing that’s so invaluable to your practice. Who gives a shit about the patient? It’s like the patient just disappears. You’re not even there yourself, really. You’re in this weird hermetic world where it’s just you and the machine, and the question is, who’s gonna win?

I entered room 5 and came upon another patient. He was obviously in a lot of pain, telling from the moaning. Looking high and low for a spare iPad, I heard him take a deep breath and then go, “Ah-rum… ah-rum.” I turned slowly, and sure enough, it was him. “You!” I cried.

I reached down, grabbed Al Frushtick by the collar, and lifted him into the air.

“Dr. O’Rourke!” he hollered. “God help me, I’m in so much pain!”

I refused to treat him until he explained everything.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Israel?”

“It didn’t work out! I came back. And now I’m in big trouble! You’re the only dentist I trust. You have to help!”

“I don’t have to do anything,” I said. “Why did you create a website in my name?”

“Are you kidding me? I couldn’t create a website in my own name! This is just some big misunderstanding!”

“My lawyer looked into it, pal. You’re listed as the registrant. And before you left, you called yourself an Ulm and said I was one, too. So don’t act dumb.”

“Treat me first,” he cried, “oh, please!”

I still had his collar balled in my hand and his shoulders raised well off the chair. I grabbed a pair of forceps with my spare hand and started probing his nostrils.

“Okay,” he muttered weepily. “Okay, okay.”

I set him down.

He smoothed out his rumpled shirt and winced again at the aching tooth.

“I’m sure they have your family records,” he said, “and I’m sure they’re as thorough as anyone’s.”

“My family records?”

“Everything you’ve wanted to know,” he said, “whether you’ve known it or not: who you are, where you come from, to whom you belong. To whom you belong, Doctor.” Forgetting the tooth, he smiled at me, then quickly resumed wincing. “But that’s not how they’re going about things now. By now they have enough reclaimants. They’re interested in finding out who among the reclaimed will elect the old way of life on the strength of the message alone.”

“What is a reclaimant?”

“Someone reclaimed from the diluted bloodlines and forced conversions of the diaspora. Haven’t they been in touch with you?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s irresponsible,” he said and, with one swipe to the left and one swipe to the right, expressed dismay in the crisping up of his wilting mustache hairs. “I think that’s irresponsible. But they have their reasons. Listen,” he said. “If they won’t tell you, I will. You belong to a lost heritage. A counterhistory. Your genes prove it: that’s where our history resides. It’s inescapable, it extends back hundreds of years. I don’t have your specific details, but I’m sure Arthur does.”

“Who’s Arthur?”

“Grant Arthur. He’s the one who found you. You belong,” he said. “You’re as old as the Egyptians and even older than the Jews.”

“I should knock your teeth out for the things you people are saying about the Jews!”

“Wait!” he cried, gripping the arms of the chair and throwing his body back, away from my fists. “What are we saying about the Jews? Nothing bad! We feel a kinship with the Jews. We use the Jews as a point of reference, that’s all. Do you think we should use the Native Americans? I find them more apropos, personally. The accusation of heathenry, the mass slaughters, the subsequent history of alcoholism and suicide. The squalor of a once-great nation. But they lack a global reach. The history of the Jews is a helpful comparison, that’s all. Suffering shouldn’t be a competition.”

“It sounds like a competition when you read about it on Twitter,” I said.

“On Twitter,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “Hey, this outreach is really happening.” He ruminated a moment, scratching, with nervous automation, the pale groove that ran between the two halves of his mustache from nose to lip. “There was a lot of debate about the dangers of calling attention to ourselves. But Twitter… that’s significant. Well,” he said. “Anyway. Does that help clarify things?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Why are you here?”

He shot me a look full of incomprehension. “Why am I here? Why am I here?! Doctor, turn on that light and look inside this poor mouth!”

“You said you were leaving for Israel. What happened?”

He shook his head and sighed and reached up for his mustache again, stroking it this time with deliberate melancholy.