like the holy thing it is.
That was not what Murad Murad wanted to discuss, though.
Murad Murad complimented Fatima’s typing skills. He noted that her speed and accuracy were the result of her good posture while seated, which he felt was almost as remarkable as her posture while standing. Fatima was the only female in the department, which employed a total of eighteen people. She didn’t see what her posture had to do with anything, but she kept that to herself. She sighed in relief, too audibly perhaps, when six o’clock came.
It was an accomplishment to exit that huge grey monstrosity of a building.
As she was walking home – she, her mother, and her sister lived a quarter of an hour’s brisk walk away – Fatima heard a woman’s unfamiliar voice. It said, from right behind her and in the native tongue, ‘Follow me, please. We are expected.’
She didn’t turn to see who it was. That would show weakness. Weakness acknowledged the importance of all interruptions. Let whoever was speaking say whatever needed to be said again.
xxxv. interruptions
That dreary Brazilian Polonius-by-the-Pool: interruption personified. Cigar. Alone. Singing. If one can call it that. Will no other guest complain? His penchant for archaic sub-disco irritates you. I can tell by your sudden kicking. My internet is out yet again. Damn Clive. Damn this place.
12 In Which the White Album Cues Itself Up
Perhaps it would be better (Thelonius suggested to Becky after they had made love in the little cottage) if they spent some time apart.
That (Becky pointed out) could create more problems than it solved.
A week later, they were married. Thelonius was never quite sure how it happened. The guilty dead guy he became reconstructs one possible scenario below.
Becky was all about solving problems. She fell in love with him knowing love was a potentially serious career mistake, knowing that, having recruited him and concealed his problems, she was, technically at least, putting herself at risk of a five-to-ten-year term in a federal penitentiary. But all that penitentiary business was only if anything ever went wrong, so really, what was quite important was that nothing go wrong, and perhaps they were stuck with each other already. Perhaps marriage really was the best option, in terms of both love and damage control, so they agreed nothing would go wrong. Remarkably, nothing did, for the longest time.
In 2005, though, in Salem, at Thelonius’s dining-room table, Sergeant USA said:
Kid. She’s not a woman. She’s an android. Cut her head off. You’ll see .
And the trouble was, he really felt like listening to that voice.
‘Keep looking at my feet, T, and keep breathing from your diaphragm.’
He did. Puddles of milk near her feet breathed, too.
‘Tell me who I am, T.’
She stood, slid off the peach-and-black bathrobe and let it fall to the hardwood floor.
The feet disappeared. Two gentle steps and they returned, with the graceful long Toes. He always capitalized them in correspondenceto her. He shut his eyes now. She was standing nude for him, her first-line prescription for calm during periods of black rage. It had worked many times. But he could not bring himself to look at her, not with that cat crated somewhere, writhing in its own filth.
‘Who am I?’ she demanded again, in the familiar, insistent tone, concerned for him and for the world. ‘Am I a machine or am I a woman?’
Machine, kid.
xxxvi. Machine, kid .
I am not yet convinced that T actually had this specific, pseudopropagandistic hallucination. It seems unthinkable that he could have concealed such aberrations from me. That portable silver boom box emits its squalid poolside dance music. It squawks and bleats far too loud for safety. It affects you. It affects you. Unendurable. Gloves on.
He was afraid to look away from the white puddle.
‘I don’t want to answer that question,’ Thelonius hissed, his eyes tight, his words black with sarcasm. ‘Put that
That was not what Murad Murad wanted to discuss, though.
Murad Murad complimented Fatima’s typing skills. He noted that her speed and accuracy were the result of her good posture while seated, which he felt was almost as remarkable as her posture while standing. Fatima was the only female in the department, which employed a total of eighteen people. She didn’t see what her posture had to do with anything, but she kept that to herself. She sighed in relief, too audibly perhaps, when six o’clock came.
It was an accomplishment to exit that huge grey monstrosity of a building.
As she was walking home – she, her mother, and her sister lived a quarter of an hour’s brisk walk away – Fatima heard a woman’s unfamiliar voice. It said, from right behind her and in the native tongue, ‘Follow me, please. We are expected.’
She didn’t turn to see who it was. That would show weakness. Weakness acknowledged the importance of all interruptions. Let whoever was speaking say whatever needed to be said again.
xxxv. interruptions
That dreary Brazilian Polonius-by-the-Pool: interruption personified. Cigar. Alone. Singing. If one can call it that. Will no other guest complain? His penchant for archaic sub-disco irritates you. I can tell by your sudden kicking. My internet is out yet again. Damn Clive. Damn this place.
12 In Which the White Album Cues Itself Up
Perhaps it would be better (Thelonius suggested to Becky after they had made love in the little cottage) if they spent some time apart.
That (Becky pointed out) could create more problems than it solved.
A week later, they were married. Thelonius was never quite sure how it happened. The guilty dead guy he became reconstructs one possible scenario below.
Becky was all about solving problems. She fell in love with him knowing love was a potentially serious career mistake, knowing that, having recruited him and concealed his problems, she was, technically at least, putting herself at risk of a five-to-ten-year term in a federal penitentiary. But all that penitentiary business was only if anything ever went wrong, so really, what was quite important was that nothing go wrong, and perhaps they were stuck with each other already. Perhaps marriage really was the best option, in terms of both love and damage control, so they agreed nothing would go wrong. Remarkably, nothing did, for the longest time.
In 2005, though, in Salem, at Thelonius’s dining-room table, Sergeant USA said:
Kid. She’s not a woman. She’s an android. Cut her head off. You’ll see .
And the trouble was, he really felt like listening to that voice.
‘Keep looking at my feet, T, and keep breathing from your diaphragm.’
He did. Puddles of milk near her feet breathed, too.
‘Tell me who I am, T.’
She stood, slid off the peach-and-black bathrobe and let it fall to the hardwood floor.
The feet disappeared. Two gentle steps and they returned, with the graceful long Toes. He always capitalized them in correspondenceto her. He shut his eyes now. She was standing nude for him, her first-line prescription for calm during periods of black rage. It had worked many times. But he could not bring himself to look at her, not with that cat crated somewhere, writhing in its own filth.
‘Who am I?’ she demanded again, in the familiar, insistent tone, concerned for him and for the world. ‘Am I a machine or am I a woman?’
Machine, kid.
xxxvi. Machine, kid .
I am not yet convinced that T actually had this specific, pseudopropagandistic hallucination. It seems unthinkable that he could have concealed such aberrations from me. That portable silver boom box emits its squalid poolside dance music. It squawks and bleats far too loud for safety. It affects you. It affects you. Unendurable. Gloves on.
He was afraid to look away from the white puddle.
‘I don’t want to answer that question,’ Thelonius hissed, his eyes tight, his words black with sarcasm. ‘Put that
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