Rivka Galchen - Atmospheric Disturbances

Isn’t it strange how conveniently timed my incoming phone calls were?

But isn’t it also strange that the Gospel According to Matthew ends with Jesus on the cross saying, Father, Father, why have you forsaken me? Who could have foreseen that ending?

“Hi, this is Lola?” a voice said.

I was still stepping out front, to the courtyard full of dusty bougainvillea. “Who?”

“Lola?”

“No, I’m not Lola. Leo here.”

“Leo? This is Lola. I’m calling for Arthur. Arthur Corning. About the job in the South.”

“Arthur?”

“Yes. Arthur. Twenty-seven. Bowdoin College. Recreational ice climber? We talked about wounds?”

Then I finally, sun heating my back, relaxed enough to recognize that sensually quavering voice. The simulacrum’s appearance must have temporarily blotted out my imagined image of Lola from the Royal Academy. “Oh,” I said, my palms beginning to sweat as random sensuality carbonated up to my cortex. “Yes. That’s me. Arthur.”

Why did I say that? Say that I was Arthur when I was not? Well, the name was bestowed upon me, I did not come up with it myself. I had to be open to the disguised ways in which progress, clues, might present themselves to me. Lola and I had established a real connection; it would have been foolish to disregard that; that personal connection was what mattered; maybe paperwork had been randomly mixed up, but maybe it had been randomly mixed up on purpose; maybe this would lead nowhere, this name, but I couldn’t reject it out of hand just because I remained ignorant of the details behind it, and just because I was, in a sense, lying.

“We want to offer it to you,” Lola silked. “That position. Down South.” Lola’s words sounded dirty to me. I don’t believe this was just because I suddenly imagined that she imagined me as a sexy, well-built, young ice climber. Nor do I believe those words sounded dirty because I was projecting my own anxieties — or hopes — about what likely never happened between Rema and the dog man, or Rema and Anatole, or Rema and no one. I think it was just overstimulation; it was just as if I had been watching night skies and a new planet had swum into my ken, and a new planet naturally throws off one’s calculations about the movements of all the other celestial bodies, and that made me think again of the Dog Star, Sirius, that had appeared to be just one star but was later discovered to be two, or maybe even three, and when they learned that, that must have changed everything, all the calculations. My mind was running like that.

“You were very sweet the other day,” Lola continued. “I was feeling very—”

“Can you review again for me the exact details of the job?” I said. I wasn’t trying to be mean, cutting her off just as she began speaking about her feelings. I wasn’t actually developing the detachment of a disordered psychotic — I just wanted to concentrate, to stick to the business at hand.

“I’m sorry. Of course. Are you mad at me?”

I’m mad at Tzvi , I didn’t say. And I heard myself saying to Lola: “Well, it’s like what Tzvi Gal-Chen says in his paper ‘A Theory for the Retrievals,’ when he says, ‘It should be emphasized that the thermodynamic retrieval concept does not involve marching forward in time by means of prognostic equations … Rather the retrieval method is a diagnostic procedure using the same prognostic equations, but in a different way.’”

“I don’t understand what you are saying?”

I didn’t quite know what I was saying, either; those words had arrived whole from Tzvi’s research writings, writings I hadn’t thought I had so nearly memorized. “Oh, that’s just a thought that comes to my mind now and again — about retrievals, about improving predictions. Oddly enough, introducing errors into models makes for more reliable predictions. But I’m digressing. I really just wanted to hear about the work.”

“But what did you mean just then? I mean, what’s the meaning behind what you said?”

“I’m not really sure.” But I did feel somehow relieved, as if I’d made progress. “But it’s like Professor Gal-Chen’s other point, about how we cannot tell what the weather will be tomorrow because we do not know accurately enough what the weather is right now. Like, how can we forecast when we can’t even properly now- cast? You know, an Initial Value Problem.”

“What’s the weather right now?”

“Sunny,” I answered. “A light breeze from the southeast.” Lola laughed.

Lots of serious things get dismissed as jokes; that’s a respectable coping mechanism.

Then Lola proceeded to fill me — as Arthur — in on the details of the meteorological job that I had apparently been awarded, that I could take if I so desired. I said I so desired. I desired to work for the Royal Academy of Meteorology.

That night the double came into my bedroom (that is, whoever’s bedroom I was staying in, maybe even Rema’s bedroom). The double’s hair carried a scent, in the faintest way, of bacon. I was sitting at the desk chair; she sat down on the bed.

“Those clothes you’re wearing aren’t yours,” she said. “I am just now noticing that.”

She had made a true observation. I was wearing the clothes that Magda had lent me. An attractive pale green button-up with a stain of unknown origin on the left breast pocket. I began to pick at that stain which I had not earlier noticed; it seemed like a gravy of some sort, powdery bits precipitated out of the goo. “It’s because I lost my luggage,” I said.

“You’ve lost your luggage?” she said, which felt like an older and more familiar accusation than it could possibly actually be. As if the simulacrum and I had often been in situations in which I had disappointed her in just this way.

“Really they lost my luggage,” I explained, while keeping my attention focused on the old stain and not on her. “I mean: it was out of my hands when it was lost, so it’s really not my fault. Others are to blame for having lost it. Though naturally I’m the one suffering as a result. Not that it’s whose fault it is that matters most, that’s just one thing. I mean I just said that, about who is to blame, because it happens to be true, because it’s true that it’s not my fault.” I continued on, still picking at the shirt, though there was little hope for change. “But whose fault it is isn’t the main point. Let’s say it’s Tzvi Gal-Chen’s fault. It’s just gone, the luggage. Anyway, they’re supposed to call me.” I didn’t tell her about my job offer.

“I’ll buy you new clothes tomorrow,” the woman said abruptly.

Reaching one hand into a deep and narrow pants pocket, I told her, “Don’t worry about it. I like what I’m wearing.”

“No,” she said shortly and with authority. Then softer again: “I will buy you something else.” She was staring, like Magda had, at the snap on the cuff of my sleeve. She put her hand on my knee, making all sensation rush patella-ward, and she said: “So that’s something that we’ll do together. Tomorrow. Buy clothing.”

Then a quiet again, hot at the knee, and I found myself saying boldly: “So who is taking care of that undernourished greyhound puppy? Is it Anatole? Is Anatole taking care of her?”

The mattress was sunk ever so slightly beneath the woman’s weight, and this made the blanket crease out in radii in a way that made the simulacrum seem like the carpel of a flower, and she looked to me very beautiful, also very deerlike, as she said, withdrawing her hand from my knee: “Who said that name to you? Something is wrong with you.” The woman looked — I only then finally noticed — as if she had not slept in days. The skin beneath her eyes was so dusky, as if the blood there had never breathed. The hair at her temple curled damply. “What,” she sharped, “have you been talking about with my mom? She lied to me, didn’t she? Did she lie to me? She didn’t tell me she told you about him. I should tell you that she’s kind of a crazy liar—”