Universe 10 - [Anthology] Read online

  But Rakestraw was fascinated by the procedures Hurd and Arberry were using to determine the extent of his resemblance. Even when they weren’t touching his jaw or forehead with cold metal instruments or trigonometrically surveying the pyramid of his nose, he hovered behind them, looking over their shoulders and eavesdropping on the cryptic verbal shorthand they used to communicate their findings to each other. Toward what decision were their measurements leading them?

  Rakestraw’s powerful curiosity was not strong enough to overcome his natural reticence, though, and he sat down on the old-fashioned tufted bedspread to wait them out. As he waited, indignation seeped back into him, and a painful sense of separation from everything that was important to him.

  At last Arberry said, “Mr. Macmillan will be in to see you in the morning, Mr. Rakestraw. Jeff and I are going to report to him now.”

  Rubbing his frighteningly cold hands, Rakestraw stood up. He refrained from asking the question that even they expected him to ask. He was sure that the pressure of his self-control had to be visible in his face—the face they had clinically savaged for almost three hours.

  Two polite, well-groomed, amiable technicians. . . .

  “Mr. Macmillan will give you the results in the morning,” Arberry said, opening the door to his room.

  Hurd pushed the scales through the door. “Good night, Mr. Rakestraw—hope you get a good night’s sleep.” He had an equipment bag over one shoulder. Arberry smiled pleasantly and followed her colleague into the long, darkened, palm-lined corridor.

  They were gone.

  An hour or two later the telephone beside Rakestraw’s bed made a faint buzzing noise. Rakestraw picked it up.

  ‘Turn on your TV,” Macmillan said through the line. “They’ve got cable here, and there’s a Craig Tiernan movie on channel twelve. A good one, too. Tiernan plays Robert Pirsig in Phaedrus. It got great reviews five years ago but bombed out at the box office—strange how those things happen.”

  “Did you talk with the examiners?”

  “Yeah. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. Turn on the boob tube, Mr. Rakestraw, and catch the flick.” Macmillan hung up.

  It took Rakestraw a good thirty or forty seconds to find the television set, even though it was in full view and he had been in the same room with it since late afternoon. The set rested on a gilded stand in the corner beyond the dressing table, and a large potted rose geranium obscured most of the stand. The eye of the television set was cold and empty, camouflaged mysteriously by its own nakedness. Rakestraw crossed the room and turned it on.

  Opening titles rolled up and over a barren early-morning landscape of cattails and marsh water; a pair of motorcycles moved silently along the highway bordering the marsh. Rakestraw sat down on the bed.

  The film turned out to be full of flashbacks and flashforwards, as well as several wrenching exchanges about metaphysical matters that Rakestraw had trouble keeping straight in his head. Phaedrus was beautifully photographed, however, and he felt a grudging but genuine sympathy for the complex personality Tiernan was re-creating. Everybody in the film was suffering, everybody was on the edge of madness, and Rakestraw felt for them. An hour later he could take no more of their suffering—he got up and turned the set off.

  “I don’t look like that man,” he said aloud. “I don’t think we resemble each other at all.”

  * * * *

  Macmillan came for him in the morning and escorted him down the corridor to a dining room furnished with huge rattan chairs and tables with wrought-iron legs. They took coffee and Danish pastries from a serving board at one end of the room and found a table of their own.

  “Your face belongs to Craig Tiernan,” the attorney said a few minutes after they had sat down. “That’s the verdict of the data that Hurd and Arberry came up with.”

  Rakestraw laughed humorlessly.

  “It’s true, I’m afraid. The resemblance is acute and actionable.”

  “If I’ve got Craig Tiernan’s face, Mr. Macmillan, then he must be walking around California with all the expression of a hard-boiled egg.”

  “He lives in Oregon. When he isn’t working.”

  “Then why the hell is he worried about Tom Rakestraw’s face? I’m not going to Oregon. Who the hell does he think he is?”

  “He may live in Oregon, Mr. Rakestraw, but he’s a personality in every state of the union and more than a dozen foreign countries. Your infringement on those rights whereby his recognition is—”

  “Please, Mr. Macmillan. No more legal double-talk. Just tell me what ‘actionable’ means if Tiernan can’t win damages from me.”

  “It just means he can press suit, which is what he’s doing. Don’t worry about that, though. Here are your options under the law.”

  Macmillan took an envelope from his blazer pocket and began to write on it with a disposable plastic pen. Finally he pushed the envelope across the table to Rakestraw, who picked it up and hastily scanned what the attorney had listed as his options.

  1. Co-ownership of the rights in question, through either purchase or grant

  2. Authorization as a legal impersonator of the licensed owner, 10 percent of income derived from this source to accrue to plaintiff and his appointed agents.

  3. Voluntary self-sequestration, with the owner of the rights in question retaining to himself and his agents the means of checking and ensuring compliance.

  4. Immigration to a country to which legal distribution of the public works of the owner of the rights in question has either not yet been approved or not been taken advantage of.

  5. Permanent alteration of those features trespassing most conspicuously on the proprietary rights of the plaintiff, to be accomplished without appeal or delay.

  “Six,” Rakestraw added, placing the envelope in the middle of the table. “Voluntary self-annihilation of the offending party.”

  Macmillan laughed. “Oh, come on, it isn’t as bad as that. The thing you forget is that in the case of suits under the Physiognomic Protection Act, it’s the plaintiff who’s responsible for court costs and all the financial obligations arising from the defendant’s choice of an option. This is the only law on the books, Mr. Rakestraw, dictating that a victorious plaintiff must compensate his defeated court opponent for emotional suffering and any expenses following upon the action.”

  “But I haven’t been in court, Mr. Macmillan!”

  “You’re there now, in a manner of speaking. Hurd and Arberry are testifying for both you and Craig Tiernan—or their data is, I should say. And the verdict of the data will be the verdict of the court. Our case seems to be a solid one, Mr. Rakestraw.”

  Rakestraw picked up the envelope again. “Let me see if I understand this,” he said, glancing over it at the attorney. “Number one means that I can buy my face from Tiernan if he’ll agree to sell. Or that he can give me part interest in it if he wants to be . . . generous.”

  “That’s right. He won’t do either, though.”

  “Okay. What’s number two about?”

  “The law permits three legal impersonators. Tiernan already has three, I’m afraid. Two perform movie stunts for him and one’s a double at functions he doesn’t wish to attend.”

  “Like the Academy Awards?”

  “Oh no—he’ll be there in person this year. He’s got a good chance to win.”

  “I’ve got my fingers crossed.” Rakestraw took a sip of coffee, which by now was cold and scummy-tasting. ‘Three means that I can become a hermit and that Tiernan’s lackeys have the right to make sure I’m staying indoors in my hair shirt and sandals.”

  Macmillan nodded. “More or less.”

  “Isn’t Caracal hermitage enough for Craig Tiernan’s purposes?”

  “I’m afraid not. Your election poster went up all over Dachies County, the sheriff told me, on telephone poles and fence posts. That’s an infringement of Tiernan’s—”

  “Number four seems pretty clear. What countries might Nora, the twins, and I hope to i
mmigrate to, Mr. Macmillan?”

  “I’d have to look that up. Great Britain and Western Europe are pretty much out, though. Tiernan has big followings in those places. —Not many people choose this option, I’m told. Once you get a job and get settled, the plaintiff’s financial obligations to you begin to taper off really drastically.”

  “Which brings us to number five?”

  “Plastic surgery,” Macmillan said.

  “Plastic surgery,” Rakestraw hollowly echoed the man.

  “Right. On the house. We’ve got the facilities for it right here in this lovely sanitarium, they tell me.”

  * * * *

  A week later, Rakestraw rode home on a bus. Benny Harrison met him at the little town’s only grocery store, which also served as its bus depot, and drove him out to his house in the Caracal sheriff’s car.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” Benny Harrison asked.

  “No thanks. Go on back to town. I appreciate the ride.”

  Rakestraw watched the car float away from him in a backboil of thrown gravel and drifting dust. Then he saw the door to the house open and Nora and the twins come out.

  Nora was carrying a wreath of holly leaves. The berries on the wreath were like excruciatingly crimson drops of blood. Rakestraw’s face tightened in reminiscence.

  Gayle and Gabe looked toward him, and when Nora said, ‘Tom?” in surprise and evident doubt, the twins heard only the name and started to rush to him—as they had always done when he came in from the fields or back from a solitary trip to Caracal.

  At that moment Nickie came banging out the kitchen door, loped madly past the children, and halted at the edge of the road in front of Rakestraw. Wagging its tail dubiously, the dog soon began to bark—a sonorous and violent heaving from deep within its chest. The hair on the dog’s back stood up like a fan of porcupine quills, but it was clearly of two minds.

  “Goddamn it, Nickie! It’s me! Shut up, you dumb cur!”

  Nickie kept barking, and when Rakestraw looked over the dog’s ugly, persistently jerking head, he saw that Gayle and Gabe had retreated toward Nora and the house. How often, after all, had he warned them against taking up unquestioningly with strangers?

  In the kitchen, Rakestraw spoke to and embraced his children. By picking up his suitcase again, he avoided allowing Nora to put her arms around him, for he was alert to the fact that she wished to do so not only to welcome him home but to prove to him that the change didn’t matter. It hurt to realize how fully Nora understood the trauma of his homecoming. It hurt even more to realize that he was not yet ready to accept the simple kindness embodied in her love.

  “I’m going up to the guest room,” he said abruptly.

  As he swung out of the kitchen and began climbing the stairs, Gabe began to cry and Gayle to expostulate with her mother in bewildered, high-pitched tones. Rakestraw could hear Nora patiently declaring that she had told them their father would look a little different and wasn’t it shameful to be making such a fuss when inside where it counted Daddy was exactly the same person and couldn’t they understand that he was probably even more confused and uncertain than they were.

  Upstairs, Rakestraw threw his suitcase into the guest room, angrily followed it in, and slammed and locked the door.

  Long after the children had gone to bed, Nora knocked lightly and spoke his name. Knowing that she would be surprised to find him naked in the dark, he nevertheless opened to her, oddly indifferent to the pathos of his own behavior. This was not Tom Rakestraw acting in this unmanly, self-pitying way but an amazing, if imperfect, duplicate. Only the faces had been changed, to protect . . . well, some self-obsessed S.O.B. he had never even met.

  Nora closed the door and embraced him. “Aren’t you cold? It’s not even spring yet, and here you are walking around in your birthday suit.” Her hands moved gently up and down his back, as if to warm him, and Rakestraw surrendered to the extent of placing his chin on her head and embracing her chastely in return.

  “I don’t feel naked before you, Nora.”

  “You’re not supposed to. Clothed or not, we’re naked to each other almost all the time. We’re married.”

  After a long silence Rakestraw said, “What I meant, Nora, is that I don’t feel naked at all. I think I could walk through Caracal like this without feeling any shame. It wouldn’t be me, anyway.”

  “Because your face is different?”

  “Exactly.”

  ‘You’re still the same person, Tom.”

  “I heard you tell Gabe and Gayle that, Nora—hut it isn’t true. I’m becoming someone else. It started the moment I saw myself in the mirror after surgery. And it’s continuing even now.”

  Nora’s fingers caressed the hair in the small of his back “Maybe we’d better hurry, then.”

  “Hurry?”

  “Before our lovemaking becomes adulterous.”

  Rakestraw kissed his wife, disengaged from her embrace, and walked to the bed to turn back its coverlet. This was a kindness for which they were both ready, and he could deny neither himself nor Nora.

  * * * *

  “I don’t care if they do have school tomorrow,” Rakestraw told Nora at dinner several evenings later.

  “But they need their sleep, Tom, and you really don’t care who wins what. At least, you never have before.”

  “This year I care.”

  “Because of-”

  “That’s right. Because of Tiernan.”

  Gayle and Gabe were observing this exchange like spectators at a heated Ping-Pong match. The victor would determine their destinies between the approaching hours of nine and midnight.

  “But it’s everything you used to despise,” Nora persisted, “if you thought about it at all. Is this Tiernan business enough to make you want to expose your children to the whole gaudy rigamarole?”

  “They know what we think of that rigamarole. That’s our parental guidance, their knowledge that we disapprove.”

  “They’re first-graders, Tom. First-graders.”

  Rakestraw put his fork down and looked at each of the twins in turn. He had even more authority with them than he had had before. They listened to him now as if he were a policeman or a school principal.

  “Do you think you can stay awake for the Academy Awards program?” he asked. “You certainly don’t have to stay up if you don’t want to.”

  ‘We want to,” Gayle said.

  “Yeah,” said Gabe, wide-eyed and anxious.

  “Lord, Tom-”

  But Rakestraw, as he had known he would, prevailed. Nora did win a concession of sorts: she made pallets on the floor in front of the television for the twins.

  By ten-thirty Gabe had fallen asleep with his stuffed paisley dog and Gayle was staring bravely, glassily, at a group of gowned women and bearded, tuxedoed men holding Oscars aloft for the polite approval of a Hollywood audience of celebrities and other film industry people. But because no camera had yet picked Craig Tiernan out of the crowd, even Rakestraw was growing impatient with the program.

  Nora said, “Are you sure he’s even there? I think I’ve read that he usually boycotts these things.”

  “He’s nominated this year. Macmillan, the attorney, said he’d be on hand. He was in a film called Yeardance. Yesterday’s paper listed him as the favorite for Best Actor.”

  “Can’t we at least put the kids to bed?”

  But the orchestra began playing a well-known movie theme and Rakestraw saw Tiernan, a lanky black starlet on his arm, descending a monumental tier of steps to the presenters’ lectern.

  ‘There he is, Nora. Wake up Gabe.”

  Nora shook her head in simultaneous refusal and exasperation.

  “Wake him up, Nora!” Rakestraw got down on the floor, shook the boy by the shoulders, and pulled him to a precarious sitting position. “Who is that, kids? Tell me who that is!”

  On the tiny television screen Tiernan was all glittering teeth and windswept coiffure. The young black woman at his side exud
ed a sultriness that seemed almost to mock his innocent good looks and bearing. Applause filled the auditorium. Then the couple went immediately into their clumsy, ghost-written repartee.

  Gabe was jolted fully awake by the novelty of seeing his lost father in the company of a half-naked woman. Gayle, meanwhile, looked back and forth between the television set and the man who had just eased himself back onto the couch beside her mother.

  “That used to be you,” the girl said.

  “That was never me,” Rakestraw responded.