“Well, then, have you read too much Nietzsche? Doesn’t he talk about supermen?”
“I’m not interested in making a superhuman, or super-person. I’m interested in your happiness. If you had told me that your dream was to be a bag lady, I would have given you bags. If you had told me you wanted to find the man of your life and live with him in a house with a white picket fence, I would have searched the earth for him and brought him to you and bought you the house.”
“You’re insane,” I said. “But I’m repeating myself. What if I had told you I wanted you?”
“I would have warned you. But then I would have acquiesced.”
“Warned me of what?”
“That having me may not make you happy.”
“But then you would have given in?”
“Yes.”
“You would have sacrificed yourself to that extent?”
“It would not have been a sacrifice. What I’m doing now is a sacrifice.”
“What do you mean it wouldn’t have been a sacrifice? Are you saying you’re in love with me?”
“Too bad we didn’t record it, cause we could play it back and check if I said that. But I don’t think I did.”
Damon made me stretch again. I got mad: “Did I ever, at any point, say that I wanted to be flexible? No! Flexibility is not in the list you so conscientiously made of my desires. So leave me alone!”
But he didn’t. He said, “I remember one time when you saw how flexible I was and you said you wished you were as flexible.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
He ignored me. After the stretching, I was allowed to take a bath and relax for the rest of the afternoon, since it was the first day, he said. I took that opportunity to go over my plan of escape.
As for Damon, he worked in his lab. I watched him on the monitor. He typed at his computer for a while, and then, with the big machine in his lab, he made three new clouds, which came out of a sort of horizontal chimney, or exhaust pipe, like a slow, aerial defecation, or birth. He then placed each cloud under a glass cover and left them there.
We had dinner in my cell, at a folding table that he brought in. The food was good considering how healthy it was: dark, whole grain pasta with steamed vegetables, cut up in small pieces. We ate with plastic spoons, for safety reasons. When we finished the food that was on the table, I felt some panic and my scalp was sweating, because nothing was happening: no dessert was coming.
“What’s for dessert?” I asked.
“Oh, are you still hungry?”
“What does that have to do with anything?” I answered.
“If you’re still hungry, you should eat more. Have more pasta.”
“I’m not still hungry. I want dessert. The dessert to this meal.”
“There is no dessert.”
I felt my throat clenching. “Oh, so you do want to kill me after all.”
He looked confused and pushed the bowl of pasta toward me, saying meekly, “Have more pasta.”
I restrained myself from knocking the bowl across the room. “I need sugar.”
“Oh. Okay, if you want I can give you a piece of fruit or a yogurt.”
“No.” I was on the verge of tears. “I want real dessert. Real sugar.”
“I’m sorry but I don’t think I can give you that. What type of dessert did you have in mind?”
“Anything with chocolate is fine. Some desserts without chocolate will do too as long as they’re good, and contain sucrose, not fructose.”
“I know it’s hard at first, but in a few days your body will adjust to not having sugar or chocolate.”
“No it won’t; it never does, and even if it did, I wouldn’t adjust. Believe me, your dealings with me will go better on every level if you give me dessert. So please call up that restaurant now and order some.”
“No. But let’s try to get your mind off this, and you’ll forget about it in five minutes.”
“Demon, listen to me. If you don’t give me dessert, you will regret it. I’m warning you. This is the worst possible thing you could do to me, next to kidnapping me. It’s worse than making me swim in the watair. It’s worse than not letting me smoke.”
“To categorize no dessert as the worst thing is a little premature, wouldn’t you say? You’ve only been here one day.”
He didn’t give me dessert. He gave me a banana and yogurt. I didn’t accept them, out of pride and lack of hunger. I asked him for a cigarette. He refused, saying, “No smokey dokey.”
After dinner, he made me sit in a chair against the wall, and sat in front of me with a pad of paper and a pen. He offered me a piece of grape Bubblicious, which I reluctantly accepted. He had one too.
“Okay, you can start now,” he said. “Make your wishes.”
I stared at him blankly, chewing, and then, in a tone dripping with sarcasm, said, “Hmm, this is tough, every wish of mine is fulfilled. I’m so happy in every way. I couldn’t ask for anything more.” I paused. “Oh, but wait a minute, I just thought of a wish: that you let me out of this god-awful fucking cage.”
“No, real wishes about your life, your future.”
“That you give me dessert.”
He gave me a reproachful look.
“That I won’t be obsessed with killing you when I’m free.”
“I told you I want some real wishes. Apart from wanting to be an actress, what else have you always wanted?”
“Why in the world would you think I would ever again tell you any wish of mine? You must be insane.” I paused. “But of course, you are that. You must also be dumb.”
“I think you’ll tell me because otherwise I’ll shoot. Now wish!”
“I wish that you have a life of endless misery.”
“Already done,” he said, and shot me. I screamed. He was now standing over me, his gun pointed. “Stop annoying me and wish. Otherwise …”
“No, don’t,” I said, holding out my hands as a shield. “Wait. I don’t know. I need time to think.”
“No, you can’t have time. That’s the whole point of this wishing session: that you don’t have time.”
The barrel of the gun was an inch from my forehead, and I found it very upsetting that he next intended to shoot me there.
I tried to come up with a safe wish that would not offer him any opportunity to torture me.
“Okay. I wish that I had a better sense of style.”
He seemed stunned for a moment, and then screamed, “No! That’s a trick wish. You’re just avoiding your real wishes.”
He shot me in the collarbone, and I howled and plucked out the shard, yelling, “Do you have to use the shards? You could at least use the bullets of hot water.”
“Boiling water. They don’t hurt less,” he warned.
“But you already know all my real wishes. I told them all to you when we were friends.”
“I want to hear about your other wishes, the things you may not know you want. Getting what we want is not enough to ensure our happiness. Getting what we don’t know we want ensures it more. But for that to happen, we have to realize what it is that we don’t know we want. Then we can get it. So search deep within yourself.”
“I do have some wishes, but I don’t want to say what they are.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m afraid of your gun. You might not think they’re good.”
“Okay, I won’t shoot. Tell me what they are.”
“That you kill yourself.”
“Okay, you got that one out of your system. What are the others?”
“Oh my God, I just realized that if you die, then I’ll die!”
“I’m touched.”