As sad as his situation is, his constant bickering and general nastiness antagonize everyone who meets him, including, I’m sorry to say, me. “What’s the problem, Rocky? Who crossed you this time?”
“Why do you want to know?”
I absentmindedly checked my watch. “It’s just that you seemed a little upset.”
“You looked at your watch! I won’t forget that!”
“Well, yes, I did. I’m sorry, I have an appointment.”
He sneered, “And whoever it’s with is more important than me, is that it?”
“Not at all, Rocky. But I’m not your doctor. If you believe that, you should talk to Dr. Roberts about it.”
“He checks his watch, too! He’s such a prick!”
“Have you asked him not to?”
“Wouldn’t do any good. There’s a clock in his office. He can’t take his eyes off it.”
“Maybe it’s not about you. Maybe he just wants to know what time it is.”
“He does want to know what time it is. So he knows how long he still has to talk to me. The fucking jerk!”
“Have you discussed this with him?”
“Wouldn’t do any good. He’d just find some other excuse to look at it.”
“Does it bother you that much?”
“Of course it bothers me! It would bother anyone!”
“Tell him!”
“Wouldn’t do any good. But I’ll get even….”
“How will you get even, Rocky?”
“Next time I see him I’m not going to say a word. I’m just gonna sit there and stare at the clock. Same as him.”
Unforgivably, I checked my watch again. “I’m really sorry, but I’ve got to run.”
He assured me through clenched teeth that he understood perfectly. An afterthought: “Who is this goddamn important person you’re meeting with?”
“Fled.”
“See? Even an ape is more important than me! You’re a bigger prick than Roberts is!”
“She’s not an ape, Rock. She’s a—”
But he had already turned around and was walking away. I started to call out that she was no more important to me than he was, but it wouldn’t have done any good.
* * *
On the way back to Room 520 I started to think again about what might happen if I were to find an alter ego lurking in fled’s impenetrable mind. What if he/she didn’t speak English, for example? I remembered (primarily because I had only recently listened to the tapes of our sessions) what prot had said about the Congolese people: “Besides the four official languages and french, there are an amazing number of native dialects.” What if the person spoke one of those dialects? (Or French, for that matter, or one of the four official languages, whatever they might be?)
The door was locked, but nevertheless fled was inside, apparently having just showed up. “How did you—?”
“You sapiens are constantly mystified, aren’t you? Why don’t you just accept the fact that you don’t know everything? Indeed, if I may be blunt, you don’t know much of anything.”
“Really, fled? We’ve figured out how the atom works. What happened after the Big Bang. How life evolved from a few organic compounds into us. We know something about almost everything. And we learn more every day!”
“Really, gene? If you’re such great learners, why have you been in the same rut for thousands of years? Stuck with the same tired, old religions, willing to fight any war that comes along or create one if it doesn’t, constantly striving for more wealth, endlessly multiplying and subduing without any thought for the consequences. You might be learning, but it’s a damn slow process, wouldn’t you say?”
“Not really,” I shot back. “We could probably prevent an asteroid or comet from destroying the Earth if need be.”
She hooted: “How are you going to stop a comet when you can’t even deal with a hurricane?”
I took a deep breath. I took another deep breath. “You may be right, fled. But today—”
“Where are the veggies?”
“Sorry, I forgot about them. Next time for sure.”
She scowled, or maybe it was a pout, but said nothing.
“Today we’re going to try to find out who’s crawling around in your brain, remember? We’re going to see what you can tell me about your past when I put you under hypnosis.”
“Fine. Let’s get the show on the road.”
“Great. Okay, I’m going to roll my chair around the desk so that nothing will be between us. Is that all right?”
She spread her legs apart. “Whatever you say, Dr. B. Enjoy.”
“No, dammit. Put your legs together. Thank you!”
“Killjoy!”
“Never mind that. Okay, we’re going to start now. Are you ready?”
“Go for it.”
Like prot, and unlike Robert Porter, fled seemed willing and eager to cooperate. Though this never hurts, it doesn’t guarantee that anything productive will come out of the procedure. “Okay, now I’m going to count from one to five. By the time I get to five—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know all that. Get on with it.”
“One….” Fled’s eyes had already begun to droop. I hoped she wasn’t faking it. “Two….” She was having trouble keeping them open. I thought I heard her murmur, “That’s amazing….”
“Three.” Her eyes were closed. On “four” her head began to slump toward her chest, and on “five” her arms and legs completely relaxed. Clearly, she was “under.”
“Fled?”
She mumbled something unintelligible.
“Okay, fled, you may raise your head and open your eyes if you want.” When she did, she looked rather dreamy, like a child awakening. “All right. Now I want you to describe your first sexual experience….”
Softly: “It went pretty fast. It was what you would probably call a “quickie.”
“I see. And how old were you?”
“A few—uh—you call them ‘months,’ I think.”
“Anyone else around?”
“Sure. All kinds of beings.”
“They all stand around and watch?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“Your mother watched, too?”
“Naturally.”
“Are you happy? Do you feel safe?”
“Of course. Why shouldn’t I?”
“No reason.”
For the next forty-five minutes I asked her to describe her sexual activities and any other events of note that she could remember, beginning when she was two years old, three, four, all the way up to her present age of twenty-three. She recalled nothing especially evocative or unusual. K-PAX seemed—for want of a better word—dull, even with the endless sex. Any hope I had harbored that something was going to crawl out of her closet dissipated like a drop of water in a hot skillet.
“All right. Now just relax. Close your eyes if you like.”
Her eyes drooped a little, but stayed open.
“Now I’m going to speak to someone else. You may listen or not, as you wish.”
She didn’t make a sound or gesture, but she seemed to be listening.
“Just relax, and think about nothing. Keep your mind open, and try to accept whatever happens, whoever might appear in this room.”