Walker Percy - Love in the Ruins - The Adventures of a Bad Catholic at a Time Near the End of the World

“Your article in the J.A.M.A. delineated a new concept.”

“Oh. I wouldn’t say that.”

And I wouldn’t. The “article” he speaks of is not the epochal paper I just finished, but a minor clinical note, small potatoes indeed. It noted nothing more than a certain anomaly in the alpha wave of solitary lovers (as Colley’s assistant, I read the EEG’s of all the lovemakers in Love). Stryker’s praise is something like congratulating Einstein for patenting a Swiss watch. I accept it for Moira’s sake.

Moira’s eyes are shining.

Lillian is going about her task at a fair clip. Drums revolve, heartbeats spike on a monitor, her skin conductivity ascends a gentle slope. Stryker keeps a casual eye on the dials, now and then dictates a clinical note to Moira. Helga and Father Kev Kevin, hearing my praises, look glum.

Moira perches on her stool, heels cocked on a rung, and manages both to take notes and keep her short skirt tucked under her knees. What lovely legs. Her kneecaps are smooth and tan as a beaten biscuit. To plant kisses on those perfect little biscuits, I’m thinking, as Stryker dances a step. Moira and I do not quite look at each other but my cheek is aware of hers.

She never told her love

But let concealment, like a worm i’ the bud

Feed on her damask cheek.

Lillian is going at a good clip now.

“There’s the old methodology,” says Stryker, waving a hand at Lillian without bothering to look. “Thanks to you, we’re onto something new.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” I murmur out of Moira’s hearing.

“Not that the old wasn’t useful in its way—”

“Useful!” chime in Helga and Father Kev Kevin. “Useful enough to take the Nobel!”

But Stryker waves them off. “Useful, yes, to a point But without your note on the alpha wave, we’d never have struck out on a new path.”

“A new path?” I ask, puzzled. But my Moira-wards cheek glows.

Her cheek like the rose is, but fresher, I ween,

She’s the loveliest lassie that trips on the green.

I ween she is.

Stryker sways closer, balancing lightly on his toes. “I think you might be interested to learn, Tom, that since June we’ve been using not one subject at a time”—he touches my arm with a withered finger—“but two.”

“Two?”

“Yes. A man and a woman. Here’s the breakthrough.”

“Breakthrough?”

“Yes. And guess what?”

“What?”

“We’ve got rid of your alpha wave anomaly. You were right.”

“Very good. But actually I was only reading EEG’s and not making recommendations about future techniques, you understand—”

“Moral scruples, Doctor?” asks Father Kev Kevin, eyes alight. He clears the orgasm circuit

“Perhaps.”

“Oh, that’s neither here nor there!” cries Stryker cheerfully. “All I’m saying is that using couples instead of singles we’ve got rid of your alpha wave anomaly and kept the cruciform rash. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Yes,” I say gloomily, watching Lillian. My nose is getting bigger. I try to think. “Then if that’s the case, what’s your problem?”

“Yeah, here’s the thing.” Stryker glances at Lillian like a good cook watches a pot of beans. I notice that as Lillian progresses, Stryker becomes ever more light-footed. His black pumps swing out. His watching Lillian is like a poet reading his best poem. “Our problem is that our couples do not perform regularly.”

“Ted ’n Tanya do!” Helga objects.

“Not lately. Only one out of four couples interact successfully,” says Stryker drily. “Hardly an adequate base for observation.”

“Ted ’n Tanya?” I ask, scratching my head. There could only be one Ted ’n Tanya. It must mean that my prescription for Ted didn’t, in the end, work, and that they’ve come here. “But what do you think I can do about it?”

Lillian seems to be looking at me. But I know she can only see mirror. It is herself she is watching. Her eyes are unfocused and faraway. Her eyebrows are unplucked, the heavy black sort one used to see in daguerreotypes of frontier women.

“Do some studies on our noninteracting couples!” cries Stryker. “I hear you’ve developed a special sort of EEG.”

“Not exactly.”

“Join our team! We’re even funded for a full-time consultant.”

“Well, thank you, Ken, but …” On the other hand, I could see Moira all day if I did.

“Twenty thousand a year, full professorship, and do as you please.”

“Well …”

“We’ve hit a snag in the interpersonal area and both Max and I feel you could iron it out.”

“The fact is …” What does Moira’s cheek say, my cheek wonders.

“ Here-we-are ,” says Stryker in a routine rush, glancing at Lillian. All the quiet pride of a scientist demonstrating his best trick.

The Love team springs into action, each to his station.

Lillian turns to show her famous cruciform rash. She embraces herself. Her pale loins bloom. Stryker presses buttons with a routine skill, a practiced climactic.

“Beautiful!” murmurs Helga.

“Pathognomonic!” cries Father Kev Kevin.

Moira bends to her note-taking, scribbles furiously as Stryker dictates.

Helga speaks by microphone to Lillian.

“Turn around slowly, dear.”

She addresses the unseen students, perched in their roost above us.

“You will notice please the cruciform morbilliform eruption extending bilaterally from the sacral area—”

Moira breaks her pencil and goes to sharpen it. The others are busy with Lillian and I see my chance. I follow her into a small closet-sized room, which houses a computer and a cot littered with dusty scientific journals. A metal label on the door reads Observer Stimulation Overflow Area. Standard equipment in all Love clinics. Known more familiarly to the students as the “chicken room,” it is provided to accommodate those observers who are stimulated despite themselves by the behavior they observe. For although, as Stryker explained, the observer hopes to retain his scientific objectivity, it must be remembered that after all the observers belong to the same species as the observed and are subject to the same “environmental stimuli.” Hither to the closet, alone or in pairs or severally, observers may discreetly repair, each to relieve himself or herself according to his needs. “It iss the same as a doctor having hiss own toilet, nicht ?” Helga told me somewhat vulgarly. “ Nicht ,” I said but did not argue. I have other fish to fry.

While moral considerations are not supposed to enter into scientific investigation, “observer stimulation overflow” is nevertheless discouraged. It is Stryker’s quiet boast, moreover, that whatever may happen in Palo Alto or Berkeley or Copenhagen, scientific objectivity has been scrupulously preserved in the Paradise Love Clinic. No observer has ever used the chicken room. The closet houses not lovers but dusty journals and a computer.

Moira, in fact, tells me she feels safer in Love than when she worked as secretary to the chief psychologist.

“Can I see you after work today?” I whisper and take her hand. It is cold. Che gelida manina. Thy tiny hand is frozen.

“Can’t today!” she whispers back. “But I can’t wait till the Fourth! Where are we going?” Her lovely gold eyes look at me over her steno pad like a Moslem woman’s.

I frown. An ugly pang pierces my heart. Why can’t she see me today? Does she have a date with Buddy? Here’s the misery of love: I don’t really want to see her today, was not prepared to, have other plans, yet despite myself hear myself insist on it.

“But—”