Something in her gaze, outwardly friendly so far, hardened. “And how many times have I heard that?”
“No, I mean it this time. I was almost involved in an accident up there. I’m not happy with the safety standards.”
“What did you tell me last time, or was it the time before that? Weren’t you up for promotion, some kind of liner job out of Mars?”
“I didn’t get it, but I was shortlisted.” The lie came easily, surprising him.
She sipped her coffee, eyeing him judiciously over the chocolate-sprinkled froth. “So, what are your plans?”
He lowered his gaze. “I haven’t got that far yet.”
Her salad arrived, and from her indulgent expression he guessed that she was calling a truce. She forked cubes of avocado and chewed, watching him. “How’s your father keeping, Josh? Have you had time to visit him yet?”
He nodded. There was no way he could talk to Julia about the morning’s events. “You know how he is.”
He ordered another beer, his third. Already he was feeling light-headed, abstracted from this ridiculous little scene with someone he could no longer bring himself to regard with any degree of affection whatsoever.
Julia paused, brie-loaded fork halfway to her lips. “Josh, you’ve visited Ella’s hologram since you’ve been back, haven’t you?”
He shrugged, surprised by the turn of conversation. “What if I have?” he said, then: “How do you know?”
“Because you’re always so… I don’t know, melancholy, I suppose, after visiting the SIH.”
Referring to Ella’s image as the SIH was Julia’s way of ridiculing his time spent in the memorial garden.
He nodded. “We talked. It was good to see her again. I haven’t seen her for over a month.”
“It’s not a ‘her’, Josh, for Christ’s sake. It’s a computer program, a projection.”
“I know that.” He stared at her. “But apart from my memories, that’s all I’ve got of Ella.”
“You should make do with your memories then, like most grieving people.”
“But memories aren’t enough, Julia. I need more. I feel I have a relationship with her.”
Julia dropped her fork, theatrically, into her salad. “Jesus Christ.”
Bennett felt anger rise within him. “I do. I feel—”
“Josh, you can’t have a ‘relationship’ with a damned machine!”
“I don’t know. I think I can. I relate to her. I respond. She responds to me.”
“Let me put you right, Josh.” She picked up her fork and used it to point at him. “A relationship is a two-way thing between two human beings. A transaction of feelings, emotion, concern. But of course you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you? A machine is about all you’re able to feel anything for.”
His voice cracking, he said, “The program learns, stores what I say, remembers our conversation. It’s like talking with a real person, Julia, except that it’s impossible to touch.”
Julia was silent for a while, staring at him. She leaned forward and whispered with vehemence, “But you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d like to touch her, wouldn’t you?” Her gaze was relentless. “Or let me put it another way: you’d like to fuck her.”
“You bitch.”
He was overcome with the sudden urge to hit her, wipe the smug expression from her face. Then he thought he should walk away, just leave. But both options, he realised, would be craven.
“I’m serious, Josh. I don’t know what went wrong after Ella died, but it screwed you up. It warped you so that you couldn’t relate.”
“What crap!”
“No? Look at the girlfriends you’ve had over the years—not many, I must say, but a reasonable enough sample to trace a definite trend. What did all those women have in common, Josh?”
She waited, watching him.
“I’ll tell you. They were all tall, dark, dominant, pretty, younger than you. They were all grown-up versions of Ella, Josh. Ella as she might have been had she lived. You’re trying to find in us something of Ella, and when you fail to do so you close up. No wonder we can’t relate.”
He finished his beer and gestured to the waiter for another.
Surprising himself, he leaned across the table and said, “You’re so full of shit! If you spent half your time applying your half-baked psychology to yourself, you might learn something.”
He was aware of the other diners, watching him.
Julia was half-smiling at him. “Such as?”
He leaned back, suddenly weary and ashamed. He shook his head. “I don’t know. Forget it.”
He fell silent. He stared around the outside tables, suddenly aware of the other diners. They shied away from his regard and spoke in lowered tones, embarrassed.
After a while, he said, “Why did you want to see me? Is there someone else?”
She sighed. “I don’t know. There might be. I just had to tell you that it isn’t working. I owed you that, at least.”
He nodded, kept on nodding at the inevitability of what she had said. Julia finished her salad, slowly picking through the debris of endive and watercress.
Bennett drank his beer. When she looked up, he said, “You might think I’m a cold bastard, Julia, but we’ve had some good times.”
She was good enough not to contradict him. “I hope you find whatever it is you’re looking for, Josh. I really do.”
“Julia,” he began. He almost reached across the table to take her hand, but stopped himself in time.
She stood and strode from the table, paid her bill at the bar and hurried away through the trees. Bennett watched her go, filled with that strange mixture of regret and relief he knew so well from all the other partings in the past.
He drank steadily during the afternoon, feeling the unaccustomed effect of the beer dull his senses. On Redwood Station he hardly socialised, and drank only occasionally. He pushed the thought of the station from his mind. He sat and watched the swans, their antics at once comic and undignified: they tipped themselves upside down, rubber-looking orange feet flapping, soiled scuts waggling.
He considered what Julia had said. He wondered if he was really looking for some mature version of Ella, the only person he had ever really loved. He found that the hardest thing in the world was to look into himself and attempt to determine the truth, so wrapped up as it was with the deception of self-interest and vanity. The thought that his actions as an adult might have been conditioned by events in his childhood filled him with fear, a terrible sense of not being in control of his motivation, and therefore his destiny.
He finished his beer and walked back through Mojave to his car. He drove slowly through the shimmering heat of late afternoon, aware of the effects of the alcohol. He arrived at his dome with the grateful sense of having gained refuge.
Mood-jazz began a gentle syncopation as he entered the lounge. He turned it off. The com-screen came on and the picture divided into small squares, each bearing a frozen face. He wondered why he should have been bombarded by so many calls. As he sat down in his swivel chair, he understood: these people were all friends or business associates of his father. He cycled through the messages of condolence, the dispiriting repetition of inadequate sentiments: “Your father was a fine, God-fearing gentleman, Joshua. He’ll be missed by everyone at the Church’; “I’m calling to offer my condolences, Mr Bennett…” Others were evidence of a side of his father’s character that he had managed to keep hidden from Bennett: “I was saddened to hear of your father’s passing. I worked with him back in ninety-five and I never met a more caring and compassionate man’; “Your father helped me out in a time of need back in the fifties, Mr Bennett. I’ve never forgotten him for his kindness.”