“How about theAntigone? ” she asked.

  “Incredible. Demolishing. I almost feel a kind of second-hand paternal pride in

  it. I mean, these hands here made it. This brain conceived it. Even if I wasn’t

  there at the time. And—”

  “No,” Lissa said. “These hands made it, yes, but not this brain.” She tapped his

  skull lightly, affectionately, with three fingertips. “A brain’s just a globe of

  gray cheese. Brains don’t conceive sculptures.Minds do. And this wasn’t the mind

  that conceived theAntigone. ”

  “I realize that,” he told her stiffly. Somehow her quibbling upset him. A show

  of loyalty for Hamlin, perhaps. Arousing jealousy in him. Hard to accept the

  truth that she had been there while that piece was being fashioned, she posed,

  she was in on the white-hot hours of creation, she and Hamlin, in the days

  before Paul Macy was born. To think about that made him feel like an intruder in

  his own body. What ecstasies had Lissa and Hamlin shared, what joys and griefs,

  what moments of exaltation? He was shut out of all those events. Cut off by the

  impenetrable wall of the past. Other times, another self. Butshe could remember.

  Scowling, he watched the museumgoers filing by threes and fours into the Hamlin

  room. Hamlin is right, he thought gloomily. I’m nothing. I have no texture. I

  have no past. I have no reality. Abruptly standing, he said, “Is there anything

  else you’d like to see, as long as we’re in the museum?”

  “This trip was your idea.”

  “As long as we’re here.”

  “No, nothing,” she said. “Not really.”

  “Let’s go, then.”

  “Did you learn whatever you wanted to learn from theAntigone? ” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “All that I wanted to learn. And more. Maybe too much more.”

  They hurried from the building by a side door in the Egyptian wing.

  EIGHT

  EMERGING into the sunlight revived his vigor a bit. It was still only about four

  in the afternoon. At Lissa’s suggestion they went uptown, to her place; there

  were some things she needed to get, she said. Unspoken in that was the

  assumption that she would be moving in with him. He didn’t object. He couldn’t

  say that he loved her, as Hamlin evidently had, or that he was even on the verge

  of falling in love with her; but their individually precarious circumstances

  demanded a mutual defense treaty, and living together was the obvious logistical

  arrangement. For the time being, at least.

  In the tube heading north she was cheerful, even a little manic: definitely up,

  despite the throngs of fellow travelers pressing close. Her ESP didn’t seem to

  operate all the time. It was something like Hamlin was for him, he imagined:

  coming and going, ebbing and flowing, now virtually in full possession, now weak

  and indetectable. When the demon was on her, she came close to disruption and

  collapse. At other times, such as now, she was lively, alert, buoyant. Yet there

  was a hard fretful edge to her gaiety. As if she were contemplating at all times

  the possibility that her telepathic sensitivity would switch itself on, here in

  the tube, and plunge her once more into frenzy.

  Her apartment was grim: one shabby room in an antique building on a forgotten

  limb of the city. Something out of Dickens. The lame and the blind infesting the

  place, dirty children everywhere, fat old women, sinister cutthroaty young men,

  dogs, cats, screams, shrieks, wild laughter from behind concave doors. A

  prevailing odor of urine and exotic spices. Not just the twentieth century

  surviving here; more like the nineteenth. The booming of holovision sets in the

  halls seemed like a grotesque anachronism.

  They walked up, five flights. One didn’t expect to find liftshafts in this sort

  of house, but one hoped it dated at least from the era of elevators. Apparently

  not. Why did she live here? Why not go to one of the people’s cooperatives,

  stark but at least clean, and surely no more costly than this? She preferred

  this, she told him. He couldn’t follow her mumbled explanation, but he thought

  it had to do with the construction of the walls; was she saying that in an old

  building like this she wasn’t as bothered by her neighbors’ telepathic

  emanations as she would be in a flimsily built co-op?

  Within this dismalness she had carved an equally dismal nest. A squarish

  high-ceilinged room with clumsy furniture, patched draperies, simple utensils. A

  tiny stained powerpack to cook on, a cold-sink in lieu of real refrigeration. He

  didn’t see toilet facilities. Everything in disarray. No housekeeper she. The

  bed unmade, the exposed sheets carrying half a dozen layers of yellowish

  stains—that bothered him, he could guess at the origin of the stains—and books

  scattered everywhere. On the windowsill, on the floor, even under the bed.

  So she was a diligent reader. Interesting. You could judge a person’s character

  by his reading.

  Macy realized he scarcely knew Lissa at all. What could he say about her? That

  she seemed fairly bright but had shown no signs so far of having intellectual

  interests, that she was a passably good lay (so far as he was capable of

  telling, given the synthetic nature of his available past experience), that she

  once had been closely associated with an important contemporary artist. Period.

  Had she had an education? A career of her own, goals in life, talents, skills? A

  model is only a cipher, a shape, a set of curves and planes and textures; Hamlin

  was too complicated a man to have fallen in love with her purely as model, so

  there had to be something back of the exterior, she must have had some kind of

  interior substance, she must have done something in the world other than pose

  for Nat Hamlin. At least until her increasingly more turbulent inner storms had

  driven her to take refuge in this squalid place.

  But he knew nothing. Had she traveled? Did she have a family? Dreams of becoming

  an artist herself? Perhaps her books might tell him something. Helplessly, he

  surveyed and inventoried her library while she bustled around collecting her

  other possessions.

  Immediately he found himself in difficulties: he was no reader himself, had

  merely skimmed a few popular novels during his stay in the Rehab Center, and

  whatever Hamlin had read, if he had read anything at all, was of course gone

  from Macy’s mind. Macy had only theillusion of a familiarity with literature.

  Dr. Brewster, the literary one, had programmed him with hazy plot summaries and

  dislocated images and even with the physical feel of some books, so that he knew

  quite clearly that theIliad was a tall orange volume with cream-colored paper

  and elegant rounded print. But what was it about? A war, long ago. A quarrel

  over a woman. Proud barbarian chieftains. Who was Homer? Had he lived before

  Hemingway? Jesus, he was an illiterate!

  And so, looking through Lissa’s heaps of books, he could draw no certain

  conclusions, except that she seemed to read (or at least to own) a lot of

  novels, thick serious-looking ones, and that perhaps a fifth of the books were

  works of biography and history, not casual light stuff by any means. So she must

  be a more complex person than she had revealed herself to him thus far to be.

  Anybody, no matter how dim, might happen to pick up a book occasionally, but

  Lissa had surrounded herself with them, which argued for the presence within her

  of psychic hungers for knowledge.

  He tried to touch up his image of her, making her less waiflike and dependent,

  less the hapless, whining victim of circumstances, more of a self-propelled

  inner-guided individual with purpose and direction and a sphere of interests.

  But he still had difficulty seeing her as anything other than part of the

  furniture in Nat Hamlin’s studio, or as a pitiful casualty of modern urban life.

  She refused to come alive for him as a genuine, fully operative human being.

  Maybe it’s because I don’t understand people very well, being so new in the

  world, he thought. Or perhaps one of the doctors built his own archaic attitudes

  toward women in general into me—does Gomez, say, see them only as extensions and

  pale reflections of the men they live with? Mere bundles of foggy emotion and

  woolly response? But they don’t just drift from event to event, letting things

  happen to them. They won’t forget to get out of bed if nobody tells them to.

  Women have minds of their own. I’m sure they do. They must. They must. And

  interesting minds. Some commitment to something besides survival, meals,

  fucking, babies. Then why does she seem so hollow to me? I have to try to get to

  know her better.

  She was filling a large battered green suitcase with her things. Clothes,

  knickknacks, a dozen books. Something large and flat, maybe a sketchpad. A

  folder of old letters and papers. She stuffed five more books in at the very

  last.

  A tepid evening, an indifferent night. Dinner at a beanery a few blocks from his

  place. Afterward, home, a couple of golds, some desultory chatter, bed. No

  outbursts of telepathy to plague her. No resurgences of Hamlin to bother him.

  They were free to pursue one another’s innerness without distractions, but

  somehow it didn’t happen; they talked all around their troubles without coming

  to any of the main issues. He was surprised to learn she was not quite

  twenty-five years old, four or five years below his guess. Born in Pittsburgh,

  no less. Father some kind of scientist, mother an expert on population dynamics.

  Good genes. They sounded like acceptable types. Lissa hadn’t seen them in years.

  Came to New York, age seventeen, to study art. (Aha!) Thought also of writing

  novels. (Ahahaha!)

  Turning point in life June 15, 2004, age eighteen, meets famed artist Nathaniel

  Hamlin. Falls wildly in love with him. He doesn’t notice her at all, so she

  thinks (scene is a meet-the-faculty party at the Art Students’ League, everybody

  wildly stoned, Hamlin—guest lecturer or something that semester—urbanely putting

  on all the pretty girls).

  But a week later he calls her. Drinks? Stroll in Central Park? Of course. She is

  terrified. Hopes he’ll accept her as a private student. Wants to bring him to

  her apartment (not this present uptown hovel) and show him her sketches. Doesn’t

  dare. A nice chaste summertime stroll.

  Afterward she is sure he found her too trivial, too adolescent, but no, he calls

  again, exactly seven days later. What a sweet time that was. Care to see my

  studio? Out in Darien, Connecticut. She has no idea where is Darien. He’ll pick

  her up, never fear. Long sleek car. Driving it himself. She has brought her

  portfolio, just in case. He takes her to flamboyant country estate, unbelievable

  place: swimming pool, creek, pond full of mutated goldfish in improbable colors,

  big stone house, medium-big studio annex.

  Turns out he isn’t interested in her as an artist at all, wants her as model:

  has some ambitious project in mind for which she would be perfect. She is awed.

  Her portfolio lying neglected in the car. I need to see the body, he says. Of

  course. Of course. Strips: blouse, slacks. Thoughtfully omitted to don underwear

  that day. He studies her carefully. Oh, God, my backside’s too flat, my boobs

  are too big, or maybe not big enough! But no, he compliments her, good tight

  fanny, cute shape, will do, will do.

  And suddenly his pants are open in front. Thick reddened organ sticking out.

  (Oh, you’ve seen it, Macy, you know it like your own!) She is thrown into panic.

  She’s been laid before, yes, eight, ten fellows, not coming on as timid innocent

  at all, but yet this is the authentic erect cock ofNathaniel Hamlin that now

  approaches her, which is something very special. Admired his work all her life,

  never dreamed that one day he’d be presenting his mast to her. Can’t take her

  eyes off it until it disappears into her box.

  In and out. In and out. Nathaniel Hamlin’s authentic thing knows its business.

  Such terrific intensity boiling within him, and he expresses it with his pecker.

  She comes a thousand times. Afterward they both run naked around the estate,

  swim, laugh, get stoned. He grabs a camera and holographs her for an hour. You

  and me, he says, we’re going to make a masterpiece the world won’t ever forget.

  Then they dress, he drives her to a restaurant near the Sound, such glamour that

  it dizzies her, and finally, late at night, deposits her, an exhausted astounded

  adolescent heap of much-fucked flesh, at her apartment. An unforgettable

  experience.

  Then she doesn’t hear from him for three months. Despair. At last an apologetic

  postcard from Morocco. Another, a month and a half later, from Baghdad. At

  Christmas time a card with Japanese stamps on it. Then, January ’05, a

  phonecall. Back in town at last. See you at nine tonight, break all other

  engagements.

  And from then on she is more or less his full-time mistress, living at Darien

  much of the time, naturally dropping out of art school, drifting away from old

  friends, who now seem naive and immature to her. New friends, exciting ones.

  Even becoming friendly with Hamlin’s wife. (A peculiar marital relation there,

  Macy concluded.)

  Early in ’06, after nearly a year of planning, he gets down to serious work on

  theAntigone 21. Months of toil for him and for her; he is a demon when he works.

  Twelve, fifteen, eighteen hours a day. Finally almost finished. Almost finished

  with her, too. He has been talking of marrying her since the summer of ’05, but

  their relationship grows increasingly tense. Physical violence: he slaps her,

  kicks her a couple of times, balls her once by main force when she doesn’t want

  it, ultimately knocks her down the stairs and breaks her pelvis. Hospital.

  During which time he succumbs completely to the disintegration of personality

  that has, unknown to her, been going on in him for most of the year, and commits

  Dreadful Deeds upon the persons of a variety of women. He is arrested and tried;

  she sees him no more until that eerie day in May of 2011 when she crashed into

  Paul Macy on the streets of Manhattan North.

  And your telepathy problem, Macy wants to ask? When did that start? When did it

  become severe? But obviously she doesn’t want to talk about that. She will speak

  to him tonight only of old business, her romance with the defunct great artist.

  And now she has talked herself out. Silence. Lights out. Two red roaches in the

  darkness. Pungent smoke rising ceilingward. This would be the sort of moment,

  Macy thought, when Hamlin would appear. To append footnotes to Lissa’s story.

  But Hamlin, missing his cue, did not appear. It began to occur to Macy that each

  of his encounters with Hamlin might drain the other’s strength as much as it did

  his, possibly more; between colloquies, Hamlin had to lie doggo, recharging.

  Maybe not so, but a cheering possibility. Tire him out, wear him down,

  eventually eject him. An endurance contest.

  Macy turned dutifully to Lissa, not particularly in need of her but feeling that

  they ought to commemorate her moving-in with some kind of celebration of

  passion; his hand slipped over one of her breasts, but she responded not at all,

  merely lying there in a passive stony haze, and an uncheering possibility struck

  him: When she makes love with me, is she really only trying to recapture those

  moments of fire withhim? I am Nat Hamlin’s well-endowed body minus Nat Hamlin’s

  troublesomely violent nature; is that not all she seeks from me?

  The thought that he might be, for her, nothing but a dead man’s reanimated penis

  did not amuse him. Of course she said she enjoyed him for his own sake, but of

  what did his own sake consist? Having loved a genius, could she love a nonentity

  equally well? Or at all? A young, impressionable art student would of course be

  drawn automatically to a magnet such as Nat Hamlin, but Paul Macy should have no

  pull. Who am I, what am I, wherein lies my texture, my density? I am nothing. I

  am unreal. Hamlin’s shadowy successor. His relict. Macy attempted to check this

  cascade of negativisms, telling himself that Hamlin was undoubtedly causing it

  by releasing a river of poisons from his subcranial den. But he could not coax

  himself just now to a higher self-esteem. Entering her, he pushed the piston

  mechanically back and forth for three or four minutes, feeling wholly detached

  from her except at the point of entry, and since she gave no hint of being with

  him in any way, he let himself go off and sank into the usual bothered sleep,

  infested by incubi and revenants.

  Many sympathetic glances at the network office the next day. Everybody tiptoeing