Neuropath (18 page)

'Yeah, well, he's met his match, don't you think?'

'In the FBI?'

'I was thinking of
you
.'

Thomas shook his head. 'Wrong answer, Agent Logan. For as long as I've known him, the guy's kicked my ass in everything from Risk to racquetball.'

'But you wouldn't be playing alone this time.'

There was something in her look that at once troubled and exhilarated him to the point of breathlessness. He could almost feel the dopamine flooding his caudate nucleus. He was falling for her, he realized—falling for her hard. And that was a problem. As Neil would say, precious little distinguished the neurochemical profile of love from that of obsessive compulsive disorder. And now, more than at any other time in his life, he needed to be
rational
.

'I'd like to say that comforts me. I really would. But the FBI…'

Sam blinked, obviously hurt. She brushed a lick of hair, as soft as floss, from her cheek. 'I was thinking of
me
,' she said, turning to her car.

'Sam?' Thomas called, following her down the walk. 'Sam.'

'It's okay, professor,' she said, tugging open the door to her Mustang. From her expression he knew she'd transformed into Agent Logan once again. 'You know Neil better than anyone else; you've got to protect your own. I can appreciate that. Believe me.' She squeezed his hand.

'I am sorry, Sam.'

'I know.'

Several awkward moments passed. She swung into the car, then with a blank forward look, turned the ignition. The sound of her car had teeth.

Frankie and Ripley were fighting at the kitchen table when Thomas came back in—something about Sam's underwear, of course. Thomas was about to intervene, but the phone startled everyone into silence. He glanced at the caller ID, cursed. He closed his eyes to gather himself, then picked up the phone.

'Nora?'

'Hi, Tommy. Listen, could you do me a favor?'

For an instant he had no idea what to say. A favor? After these past couple days?

He left the kids in the kitchen. He could hear Ripley say 'Uncle Cass… is a psychopath,' in her radio DJ voice.

'You gotta be fucking kidding me,' he said to his ex-wife.

'Da-ad!' Frankie called. 'Ripley said
psycho!'

'Daddy's talking to Mommy,' he called, knowing that would shut them up. It did.

'I just need you to keep the kids for a bit longer,' Nora said.

Thomas paused, brought up short by the quaver in her voice. He found himself surprised by just how little he had thought about her since the previous night with Sam, and idly wondered whether this was a staple of male psychology, something 'pre-programmed to maximize reproductive possibilities.' A bird in the hand, as they say…

'Where are you calling from?'

'It's been horrible, Tommy,' she whispered, the way she always did before crying.

Terror flushed hot through his limbs, face, and chest.

'What's been horrible, Nora?' He turned his back to the kids. 'What are you talking about?' His throat ached saying this, as though he had forced the words through a more primal urge to cry out.

He was seeing Neil around every corner now.

Please-no-no
—

'The FBI,' she said, her voice hitching. In a rush of relief, Thomas realized they must have taken her into custody, probably to scare her into cooperating. 'You-you told them about me and Neil, didn't you?'

'What did you expect me to do, Nora?'
Do the crime, do the time, bitch
.

'Look, Tommy. I don't know why I told you. I-I should never have told you. The last thing I want is for you to be hurt…'

Unfuckingbelieveable
. She was apologizing for
telling
him that she was fucking his best friend, as though honesty were the only real sin here.

'Yeah, I was pretty shocked,' he said with breezy cruelty. 'I mean, imagine that. Finding out your whole life was—' A sudden pang pinched his voice silent. He squeezed hot tears from his eyes. Cursed himself for an idiot. 'Imagine,' he continued in a broken voice, 'finding out your whole life w-was a fucking sham.'

How could you do this to me, Nora? Please!

'You're bitter,' she said, as though naming some inevitable adolescent phase.

Fucking bitch! Fuck-fuck-fucking cunt-whore-bitch!

Somehow he managed to squeeze out, 'I'm sure it'll pass.'

A long, uncomfortable silence followed. Thomas realized that she was crying.

'Hey…' he said softly.

'What am I going to do, Tommy?'

She loves him. Loves Neil.

His sigh was as much the product of disgust as regret. 'Listen. You gotta get a lawyer, Nora. Don't mess around. You can be guaranteed
they
won't.'

'But who?'

'You need someone ruthless. Bloodthirsty and smart. What about that Kim guy you used with us?'

'He's a divorce lawyer, Tom.'

'Exactly,' he said, hanging up.

He leaned his head against the wall for a moment, afraid he might vomit. Being mean-spirited just wasn't in his nature—no matter how hard he tried.

Stupid. So fucking stupid!

What was he doing, feeling ashamed? Served her fucking right.

Besides, they were probably just bullying her.

'I wanted to say hi!' Frankie bawled from the kitchen. Ripley stared into her empty cereal bowl.

Thomas jumped when the doorbell rang, actually dropped the phone.

'
Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!'
he hissed under his breath.

'Where's Mommy?' Frankie cried.

Thomas crept to the window, glimpsed Mia on the porch, wearing cut-off shorts, a tank, and fluffy-white slippers.
Nosy prick
, he thought, unable to repress a grin.

He reluctantly opened the door.

'No work today?' Mia asked, leaning against the frame.

'I called in sick. Thought I'd give you a break from the kids.'

Mia nodded, his look one of cartoon-skepticism. 'So,' he said pleasantly, 'the FBI was here…'

'And then some,' Thomas said.

'They interrogate you all night?'

Thomas closed his eyes, smiled, then surrendered to the inevitable. 'C'mon in, Mia,' he said. 'I'll tell you all about it.' He couldn't resist adding, 'You're as transparent as a negligee, you know that?'

Eyebrows raised, Mia shot him the finger as he stepped inside.

'
Mia
!' Frankie and Ripley cried as one.

While Thomas exchanged his bathrobe and boxers for jeans, a shirt and a blazer, Mia managed to settle the kids in front of the TV. Thomas brewed some fresh coffee, then joined his Number One Neighbor at the kitchen table. They spent an hour or so discussing the previous two days. Though in many ways Mia had become his best friend since the divorce, Thomas avoided any mention of Nora's affair with Neil—or of his night with Sam. He needed to sort things out for himself first—or so he thought.

Afterward, Mia breathed deep, then said, 'Wow.'

'Pretty intense, isn't it?'

'You think?' He pawed his face as though trying to scrape off the madness. 'Well, you know what Marx says.'

'Do I ever?' Thomas asked. Mia quoted Marx the way others quoted Dr Phil.

'"With man, the root of the matter is always man himself."' He snorted as though at a half-funny thought. 'I don't think he meant
grey
matter, though.'

'Neil's sick,' Thomas said sourly.

'You don't sound convinced.'

Something about this comment made his scalp prickle. 'How can I be? He's simply walking the talk, isn't he? Shit just happens. Tornados wipe out trailer parks. Bombs go off in coffee shops. Cancers spread. Arteries clog. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a crap shoot. That's just the way the world works; it's only our psychological shortcomings that make it seem otherwise. All Neil's saying is that the same goes with our neurons. That our every thought, every experience is just another synaptic roll of the dice. Statistical, not meaningful.'

'Certainly doesn't feel that way.'

'Why should it? Our brains evolved to process inputs, perceptions and the like, into effective outputs—the things we do. We see oncoming cars and traffic lights, and our foot depresses the brake pedal. What we don't see are all the neurophysiological processes involved. Our brain is essentially blind to itself, far more geared to external events than internal.'

Mia toyed with a lock of hair, contemplative and crosseyed. 'So?'

Thomas breathed deep, smelled sun-on-dust and the memory of breakfast bacon. 'So, when we choose, or decide, or hope, or fear, or whatever, it's the same as when we see or hear: the brain drops out of the picture. We don't experience what makes experience possible. All the neurophysiological machinery that generates choosing, hoping, hearing, and so on, processes without
itself
being processed. For us, each thought comes from nowhere, constitutes a kind of… absolute beginning, so that it seems we somehow stand outside the nets of cause and effect that entangle everything about us, including our brain. Consciousness is like a hamster wheel, always moving, but somehow stationary as well. For us, it's always
now
, always
here
. We always feel we could have done otherwise because our choices always seem to stand at the beginning of events, rather than the middle.'

'Ooookaay,' Mia said dubiously.

'Here, look,' Thomas said, reaching back and dragging a quarter from the counter-top. 'Watch.' He opened his hands to show Mia they were empty, then closed them. When he opened them the second time, the quarter gleamed dully in the center of his right palm.

Mia laughed. 'Cool,' he said.

'Seems like magic, right?'

Mia nodded, his expression suddenly thoughtful. 'Like you pulled something from nowhere.'

'Now watch,' Thomas said, doing the trick again, this time at a right angle so that Mia could follow the quarter the whole time. 'Our thoughts are no different. They seem to spring from nowhere, but only because of a neurophysiological sleight of hand, because the brain is baffled by its own tricks. They seem magic. Special. Supernatural.

Spiritual. Pull aside the veil of bone, and that magic evaporates.'

'But there is a difference,' Mia said. 'We
are
our thoughts.'

Thomas nodded. 'Exactly. That's what
we
are. Brains glimpsing themselves through peepholes, seeing magic where none exists.'

Mia seemed to stare past him, as though testing his words against the immediacy of his own experience. 'So you and I, sitting here…'

'Are just two biomechanisms, processing inputs, churning out behavioral outputs, which in turn become further inputs. All the reason, the purpose, the meaning, is simply the result of the fact that the neural machinery responsible for consciousness has access to a mere sliver of what our brains process—a sliver that it confuses for everything. Outside that sliver, there's no reason, no point, no meaning. Just…' He shrugged. 'Just shit happening.'

Scowling, Mia regarded him for a long moment. 'So when I go to the mall, I'm surrounded by herds of… biomechanisms? They only
seem
like people?'

Thomas wondered what Neil would say. Would he tell stories of how he had played this or that alleged terrorist like a puppet without them having the faintest clue? Or would he simply grab Mia and give him a first-hand demonstration?

Thomas pinched the bridge of his nose. 'They only seem like people because you can't access the processes that make them tick. So they become floating instigators, things that can only be tracked and predicted via your own neural systems. Our brains are exquisitely attuned to one another, to the point where everything you do or say triggers the same patterns of neuronal activity in my brain as in yours. They network by continually mirroring each other's processes. But since consciousness can't access these processes, we simply "get it".' Thomas hooked his lips in a mock smile. 'People seem like people for the same reason we seem to be free thinking, act-initiating selves.'

'Because our brains,' Mia said slowly, 'can't see what's going on inside themselves. Because they constantly confuse the middle for the beginning.'

Thomas nodded. 'Thus the illusion that we stand outside of the arrow of time. That we somehow transcend the statistical clockwork around us.' He watched his thumb trace the rim of his coffee cup, glanced back up at his Number One Neighbor. 'That we possess souls.'

Mia was no longer looking at him or through him or anywhere for that matter. He had fallen back in his chair, his hands poised between a gesture of warding and disgust. 'So all of this…
this
right here right now… is a kind of magic trick? A
dream
,'

Thomas stared down at his socked feet, cursed himself for wondering, once again, what Neil would say.

'Tommy? This isn't
true
, is it?'

'Neil certainly thinks so,' he replied without looking up. 'And no one knows the science like him.'

'It's just more reductive scientific bullshit,' Mia declared with an air of angry resolution. Like most Marxists, he possessed the unsettling ability to take abstractions personally. 'They can't even figure out what foods are fucking healthy.'

Thomas stared at him for a moment, fending the urge to argue, to press and pin. He could tell Mia it wasn't about what was more fundamental than what, but about which kinds of claims people could take seriously. He could remind him of Hiroshima, or any of the other horrors and wonders that so set science apart. He could remind him that other claim-making institutions, including those that reduced scientific fact to 'social constructs',

'Language games', or the work of Mammon, had no way of arbitrating
any
of their assertions.

Instead he asked, 'How's your coffee?'

'No you don't,' Mia exclaimed. 'I know that look—'

'Daddy! Daddy!' Frankie cried out from the living room.

Thomas turned to see his son come thumping into the kitchen.

'I found Sam's underwear!' he proudly declared. He waved Samantha's white panties over his head, panty-liner and all.