Stacey Levine - Dra-

Dra— lay back. “But I’ve heard that she is beautiful,” she breathed.

“Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t,” the woman said. “You have a hard time with making decisions, don’t you? I pity that.” The woman lay back, then sang a few bars of an outmoded work song.

Presently she sat up and combed her hair vigorously for a few minutes. With a hand beneath the man’s head, she cuddled him protectively as he stared upward, moving his lips scantly, as if reciting to himself.

“Mustn’t I find her soon no matter what she has done? After all, she’s my Administrator,” Dra— said, then lay back, and presently, she felt herself dropping off to sleep.

“What is the best way to live?” the woman was muttering close to Dra—’s ear. “The newscasters say we should live well, and try to show us how, but we’re not much up to that, are we? It’s all like a dream, far away.” They all dozed off for some minutes.

Dra— heard the man whining and opened her eyes.

He was petting the front of the woman’s blouse, and the woman, waking, regarded him with a distant silence. Then she turned to Dra—, saying softly, shaking her head with disappointment, “Look at you, look at your skin, your neck, your hands, all ruined, ruined by worry,” and Dra—, greatly burdened, fell back to sleep.

Much later she woke, and turning over, found herself face to face with the man, who rested along the length of the woman’s body, a cigarette in his fingers, and his eyes, slitted, shone desperately with desire.

“How old are you?” she asked him in a whisper, but the man turned his face into the woman’s breast.

The woman woke. “Why can’t people do exactly what they like in this world?” she said loudly and plainly. “Doesn’t time feel terrible when it’s wasted? For God’s sake, stop thinking about that Administrator! If I could, I’d reach into your head with a stick and poke all those thoughts out of you.” Standing, she scooped the man into her arms and moved down the hall; then she turned, calling back somewhat ruefully, “I’ll always remember your little body sleeping next to mine, so full of misgivings!” and with a sagacious air strode away while Dra—, still lying on the floor, called after them not to leave.

“Oh, sugar, you remind me of myself, exactly one decade ago,” the woman called back to her. “I was just like you — strained, broken-hearted, all those things. I was quiet, just to avoid the arousal of men! Oh, I changed, and so will you. Suddenly I wanted a man, not in my heart, but in my stomach — that’s how it happens, and no one knows why.” She walked to the end of the hall, feet slapping loosely on the tile floor, then came upon an upright ladder leading, it seemed, either to the next floor or a storage compartment. Still carrying the man, she climbed it.

Lying exhaustedly among the tough-skinned pillows, Dra— contemplated with discomfort the silence left behind by the woman and man. Exhaling, squeezing her eyes shut, she suddenly recalled a day long ago when, fatigued beyond plausibility, wishing desperately for a job, so thirsty her pulse had pounded high in her dry eyes, she had stood near a moderately busy airstrip, watching small fleets of indoor airplanes taking off at intervals, ferrying huge numbers of employees to their worksites. The planes’ old black bodies shuddered as they lifted off, rear engines pouring smoke and dripping with moisture. It was the moisture that tantalized her, she remembered, for she had needed water so badly on that day. She imagined running to one of the roaring planes, swinging herself atop its wing, grasping the propeller base and fixing her lips and tongue there and along its nub and inside its vents too, and everywhere upon the plane’s body’s hammered seams where the gassy, gritty condensation would be hers to lick up; she would beg for more, she imagined, and cry out from the relief and discomfort of drinking. Imagining it, she almost had been able to taste the moisture, which probably would have been satisfying and not immediately toxic; and she considered how drinking in spasmodic gulps from an airplane in such a fashion would really most closely resemble a homecoming — in fact, all that afternoon she had been full of the unmanageable desire and anger common to homecomings, emotions so bright and obtrusive that they both magnified and blotted away their source.

And recalling that afternoon’s zestful imaginings, just as thirsty now, perhaps, though more accustomed to it, she also recalled the endless, borderless night before that afternoon at the airstrip — she had no longer been a schoolgirl then, but had not yet been admitted to the employment pool, either, so it had been the time in her life when she had been nearest to being absolutely nothing — a night when she had felt so quietly out of sorts: not abandoned, for there had been no one to abandon her, yet living in a prospectless twilight all the same. Standing in the overheated corner of a bare atrium, she had heard the faint sounds of flushings and laughter, and, after a moment, a hidden voice spluttering out angrily, “Sonofabitch!”

On that evening, she had spotted two tiny approaching figures, one of which, as they grew closer, she identified as Dr. Jack Billy — so old, in slippers, head down, speaking sadly and at great length to a child nurse who trod beside him, helping him walk. He looked as if he were making some kind of confession. As they approached, Dra—, half-hiding behind a buzzing air grille, heard the doctor weakly describe his failed attempts with the French horn, and also a medical examination from long ago that still upset him deeply. The child nurse carried a footstool at her waist.

The story of the examination was simple: when he had entered the exam room, there had been not one, but two quiet women on the metal table, one woman, the smaller, lying directly beneath the other. But to the doctor’s regret, he had not realized the second woman had been there until days after the exam. During it, he ran his finger along the crevice where the two torsos met, absently wondering what sort of anomaly it was, thinking back to his training and finding a theory that, in its very concept, brutalized the patients. He derived subtle pleasure from the theory, though it provided no answers, and gently he applied some suction to the crease in hopes of solving the puzzle before him, but nothing happened. Disturbed, he finally looked down at the woman whose face he could see, and pronounced her unable to have children.

Recalling the incident, Dr. Billy cried, ashamed, for it called to mind similar incidents in which he had not dared question his training. He was more sad than Dra— could have imagined him — perhaps the single regret refracted into a larger, overarching grief — and he sobbed rhythmically, hiding his eyes, finally lowering himself onto the stool the child nurse placed before him. He admitted wetly to her that for years, his wife had not come close to him, nor had he wished her to, and that jars reminded him of conjugal life; and that lately, he had no yearnings for anything except to feel terrible. He said he wanted to open his mouth onto another mouth and inhale everything then choke on the lack of air, because the need to damage himself and others was consuming, as it had been all his life.

Slowly, the doctor grew calmer, more circumspect, and spoke of his profession.

“We set bones, though not often. We listen. We give pills without enthusiasm. There is a great deal of affection for patients that we must ignore. When patients ask, ‘Why, underneath it all, do I feel so bad?’ we give prescriptions, allow them to search the advertisements, read about magical treatments, and even formulate alternate codes for living, yet we never bother telling them: ‘you have merely been infected by someone very close.’ ”