Lydia Millet - How the Dead Dream

One day, he knew, it would be men that were last. In the silence of the exhibits he thought he could feel time changing him too, atom by atom. He was so bored one night that he lost resistance to falling asleep. It would be good to let himself go, he decided: so he did. After that sleep was part of the routine, and sleeping he surrendered-it was up to the animals what happened. He was not protected anymore by the city and its installations. Lying down in the exhibits with them, awkward, uncomfortable, and finally overcome; creeping out before the keepers appeared for the morning feeding.

While he slept, as far as he knew, the animals did not mean to approach him. But when he woke up they were sometimes near him by happenstance. In this way he saw a ringtail nosing her young down into the entry of her den and a hyena tearing hungrily at the breast of a pigeon.

As a rule no one else came to his apartment. Since Beth had died and Fulton had kicked the dog it had welcomed no one: the rooms were a set of monastic cells, unseen by anyone but himself and the cleaning lady. And while his financial research was kept vaulted and secure at the office, indexed in spreadsheets and cross-referenced, his animal research was spread throughout the space he inhabited like debris at a crash site. Magazines were spilled over the arms and cushions of sofas, where the dog lay sleeping and shed her white hairs; printouts from library computers were piled on the kitchen counter where he never cooked; spilled water gummed the pages together in wavy blocks and blotted the type. Videotapes were perched in crooked towers, maps were laid out on the guest bed and over tables and desks. In disarray were his tools, the lockpicks for doors and gates, binoculars and night-vision goggles, cords and carabiners, wet suits and waders.

After Beth his apartment had been reduced to a closet, with a door he could shut to seal off the contents. It was only the presence of his dog that kept the place from wholesale neglect. He did not like to think of the dog living in squalor throughout the workday, even if it was unlikely she would share his preference for tidiness.

He meant to leave the apartment, which he had rented purely for convenience and to which he had never had a particular attachment. In time he would have to buy, he would need a show home. He lived so far beneath his means that Fulton ridiculed him. But when he bought he would have to move his office and his mother with him; so he delayed and delayed and the apartment felt less and less like a place he lived in and more and more like a storage locker.

Meanwhile his mother and Casey met almost every day to work on jigsaws. They seemed to be forging an alliance, because when he stopped by they contentedly ignored him and made jibes at his expense. At first he viewed this development with alarm but soon it felt, when he stepped into his mother's dining room, as though Casey was meant to be there, as though it was meant to be the three of them.

"Puzzles," he said to Susan at the office, and shook his head. "I don't get it."

"You know what it is? It's a miracle," said Susan. "It really is. You don't know the apathy I've been dealing with. I don't care what her new hobby is. It could be beekeeping or kung fu movies. Really. Whatever gets her out of her apartment. Believe me. It's a miracle, T."

In the past Fulton had left the planning decisions to him, but now he began to question the fundaments of the island project with a marked belligerence. He suggested, for example, that they should attempt to attract mammoth cruise ships to their facility, despite the fact that there was no port for such vessels and no channels deep enough to accommodate them; he saw no obstacles to a high-volume, fast-turnover operation on an island off a coastline that boasted only a one-runway airport and no paved roads, where even a modest supply of fresh water had to be imported.

T. explained patiently the reasons for the modest scope of the development and its tidy benefits-the exclusivity appeal, the quick returns due to the fairly small capital outlay-but Fulton only shook his head restlessly and accused him of "thinking small" and having "no cojones." He made this kind of remark most often in a group meeting with other investors, not when the two of them were alone; and though his protests were easily overcome, due largely to their senselessness, the suppressed hostility behind them was disruptive.

When T. took him aside and reminded him the enterprise was only a boutique project, one of a large array of his current startups in which Fulton was free to invest, Fulton guffawed; when he offered him the opportunity to pull his funds Fulton ignored him. Clearly there was tension. Fulton had noticed that T. spent time with him only when he could not avoid it; it had dawned on him that T. preferred the company of others. Surprisingly to T. given his insensitivity in all matters, he appeared to be offended by this. He wished to draw T. back in, or failing that he wished to undermine him covertly.

Presently Casey liberated Susan from her long servitude. She left the apartment every day; she bought her own food, paid her own bills, in short agreed to conduct her own life. For a while he drove her to buy groceries, to ease the transition.

They were in the produce section of a luxury food store in Santa Monica, Casey reaching up to a shelf of honeydew melons to touch them and smell them, when T. wandered away to pick up a bag of apples and found himself looking past the bag at a man's broad chest in a sport jacket, over a V-necked sweater.

It was Fulton.

"Shit, guy," said Fulton, and delivered a punch to the shoulder. "Look who."

"Fulton."

"What are you doing here? You don't buy food. You order out. I saw your refrigerator. One old jar of mayo that looked like earwax and a six-pack of Heinie."

"I came with my secretary's daughter."

"The dirty-blonde there? The quadriplegic?"

"Just her legs are paralyzed, actually."

"What I said, man."

He craned his neck to see past T.'s shoulder.

"She's not that bad. If you could get past the whole no-legs thing enough to just stick it in."

"Don't be foul."

"Good tits."

"End of conversation."

"You could always put a paper bag over the withered parts and go for the tittyfuck, I guess."

T. turned on his heel. He meant to steer them away from Casey but Fulton preempted him, striding past him to stick his hand out in her direction.

Caught off-guard, she dropped a melon into her lap.

"Fulton Hanrahan! Business partner of T.'s. Pleased as shit to meetcha."

"Casey."

He shook her hand far too hard; when he let go she rubbed it, wincing.

"So you two been keeping this whole thing real quiet, huh? He told my wife he was seeing someone but he wouldn't bring her over. Now I know why."

"Excuse me?" asked Casey.

"We're friends, Fulton. We're not in a relationship. I'm not seeing anyone."

"See Casey, my wife was trying to set him up with these hot women, and then he blows them off and goes for one with zero feeling below the waist. You like that, T.?"

Casey gaped. T. looked at Fulton sharply; his face was tanned and bland as ever.

"Shut the fuck up, Fulton. Casey. Let's get out of here."

"Are you kidding?" said Casey, and then smiled at Fulton. "I want to stay. Can I ask you something? So far what I'm thinking is Antisocial Personality Disorder. You may actually meet the diagnostic criteria for a sociopath. There's a handy checklist in the DSM-III."

"Great legs; nice personality, too."

"Number one on the checklist: Would you say you've exhibited, since roughly the age of fifteen, a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others?"