"The ones that are going on all over the country."

　　'That's the point," she said. "Every day on the news there's another toxic spill. Cancerous solvents from storage tanks, arsenic from smokestacks, radioactive water from power plants. How serious can it be if it happens all the time? Isn't the definition of a serious event based on the fact that it's not an everyday occurrence?"

　　The two girls looked at Heinrich, anticipating a surgically deft rejoinder.

　　"Forget these spills," he said. "These spills are nothing."

　　This wasn't the direction any of us had expected him to take. Babette watched him carefully. He cut a lettuce leaf on his salad plate into two equal pieces.

　　"I wouldn't say they were nothing," she said cautiously. "They're small everyday seepages. They're controllable. But they're not nothing. We have to watch them."

　　"The sooner we forget these spills, the sooner we can come to grips with the real issue."

　　"What's the real issue?" I said.

　　He spoke with his mouth full of lettuce and cucumber.

　　"The real issue is the kind of radiation that surrounds us every day. Your radio, your TV, your microwave oven, your power lines just outside the door, your radar speed-trap on the highway. For years they told us these low doses weren't dangerous."

　　"And now?" Babette said.

　　We watched him use his spoon to mold the mashed potatoes on his plate into the shape of a volcanic mountain. He poured gravy ever so carefully into the opening at the top. Then he set to work ridding his steak of fat, veins and other imperfections. It occurred to me that eating is the only form of professionalism most people ever attain.

　　"This is the big new worry," he said. "Forget spills, fallouts, leakages. It's the things right around you in your own house that'll get you sooner or later. It's the electrical and magnetic fields. Who in this room would believe me if I said that the suicide rate hits an all-time record among people who live near high-voltage power lines? What makes these people so sad and depressed? Just the sight of ugly wires and utility poles? Or does something happen to their brain cells from being exposed to constant rays?"

　　He immersed a piece of steak in the gravy that sat in the volcanic depression, then put it in his mouth. But he did not begin chewing until he'd scooped some potatoes from the lower slopes and added it to the meat. A tension seemed to be building around the question of whether he could finish the gravy before the potatoes collapsed.

　　"Forget headaches and fatigue," he said as he chewed. "What about nerve disorders, strange and violent behavior in the home? There are scientific findings. Where do you think all the deformed babies are coming from? Radio and TV, that's where."

　　The girls looked at him. admiringly. I wanted to argue with him. I wanted to ask him why I should believe these scientific findings but not the results that indicated we were safe from Nyodene contamination. But what could I say, considering my condition? I wanted to tell him that statistical evidence of the kind he was quoting from was by nature inconclusive and misleading. I wanted to say that he would learn to regard all such catastrophic findings with equanimity as he matured, grew out of his confining literalism, developed a spirit of informed and skeptical inquiry, advanced in wisdom and rounded judgment, got old, declined, died.

　　But I only said, "Terrifying data is now an industry in itself. Different firms compete to see how badly they can scare us."

　　"I've got news for you," he said. "The brain of a white rat releases calcium ions when it's exposed to radio-frequency waves. Does anyone at this table know what that means?"

　　Denise looked at her mother.

　　"Is this what they teach in school today?" Babette said. "What happened to civics, how a bill becomes a law? The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the two sides. I still remember my theorems. The battle of Bunker Hill was really fought on Breed's Hill. Here's one. Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania."

　　"Was it the Monitor or the Merrimac that got sunk?" I said.

　　"I don't know but it was Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

　　"What was that?" Steffie said.

　　"I want to say he was an Indian running for office. Here's one. Who invented the mechanical reaper and how did it change the face of American agriculture?"

　　"I'm trying to remember the three kinds of rock," I said. "Igneous, sedimentary and something else."

　　"What about your logarithms? What about the causes of economic discontent leading up to the Great Grash? Here's one. Who won the Lincoln-Douglas debates? Careful. It's not as obvious as it seems."

　　"Anthracite and bituminous," I said. "Isosceles and scalene."

　　The mysterious words came back to me in a rush of confused schoolroom images.

　　"Here's one. Angles, Saxons and Jutes."

　　Déjà vu was still a problem in the area. A toll-free hotline had been set up. There were counselors on duty around the clock to talk to people who were troubled by recurring episodes. Perhaps déjà vu and other tics of the mind and body were the durable products of the airborne toxic event. But over a period of time it became possible to interpret such things as signs of a deep-reaching isolation we were beginning to feel. There was no large city with a vaster torment we might use to see our own dilemma in some soothing perspective. No large city to blame for our sense of victimization. No city to hate and fear. No panting megacenter to absorb our woe, to distract us from our unremitting sense of time—

　　time as the agent of our particular ruin, our chromosome breaks, hysterically multiplying tissue.

　　"Baba," I whispered between her breasts, that night in bed.

　　Although we are for a small town remarkably free of resentment, the absence of a polestar metropolis leaves us feeling in our private moments a little lonely.

　　24

　　It was the following night that I discovered the Dylar. An amber bottle of lightweight plastic. It was taped to the underside of the radiator cover in the bathroom. I found it when the radiator began knocking and I removed the cover to study the valve in an earnest and methodical way, trying to disguise to myself the helplessness I felt.

　　I went at once to find Denise. She was in bed watching TV. When I told her what I'd found we went quietly into the bathroom and looked at the bottle together. It was easy to see the word Dylar through the transparent tape. Neither of us touched a thing, so great was our surprise at finding the medication concealed in this manner. We regarded the little tablets with solemn concern. Then we exchanged a look fraught with implication.

　　Without a word we replaced the radiator cover, bottle intact, and went back to Denise's room. The voice at the end of the bed said: "Meanwhile here is a quick and attractive lemon garnish suitable for any sea food."

　　Denise sat on the bed, looking past me, past the TV set, past the posters and souvenirs. Her eyes were narrowed, her face set in a thoughtful scowl.

　　"We say nothing to Baba."

　　"All right," I said.

　　"She'll only say she doesn't remember why she put it there."

　　"What is Dylar? That's what I want to know. There are only three or four places she could have gone to get the prescription filled, within a reasonable distance. A pharmacist can tell us what the stuff is for. I'll get in the car first thing in the morning."

　　"I already did that," she said.

　　"When?"

　　"Around Christmas. I went to three drugstores and talked to the Indians behind the counters in the back."

　　"I think they're Pakistanis."

　　"Whatever."

　　"What did they tell you about Dylar?"

　　"Never heard of it."

　　"Did you ask them to look it up? They must have lists of the most recent medications. Supplements, updates."

　　"They looked. It's not on any list."

　　"Unlisted," I said.

　　"We'll have to call her doctor."

　　"I'll call him now. I'll call him at home."

　　"Surprise him," she said, with a certain ruthlessness.

　　"If I get him at home, he won't be screened by an answering service, a receptionist, a nurse, the young and good-humored doctor who shares his suite of offices and whose role in life is to treat the established doctor's rejects. Once you're shunted from the older doctor to the younger doctor, it means that you and your disease are second-rate."

　　"Call him at home," she said. "Wake him up. Trick him into telling us what we want to know."

　　The only phone was in the kitchen. I ambled down the hall, glancing into our bedroom to make sure Babette was still there, ironing blouses and listening to a call-in show on the radio, a form of entertainment she'd recently become addicted to. I went down to the kitchen, found the doctor's name in the phone book and dialed his home number.

　　The doctor's name was Hookstratten. It sounded sort of German. I'd met him once—a stooped man with a bird-wattled face and deep voice. Denise had said to trick him but the only way to do that was within a context of honesty and truthfulness. If I pretended to be a stranger seeking information about Dylar, he would either hang up or tell me to come into the office.

　　He answered on the fourth or fifth ring. I told him who I was and said I was concerned about Babette. Concerned enough to call him at home—an admittedly rash act but one I hoped he'd be able to understand. I said I was fairly sure it was the medication he'd prescribed for her that was causing the problem.

　　"What problem?"

　　"Memory lapse."

　　"You would call a doctor at home to talk about memory lapse. If everyone with memory lapse called a doctor at home, what would we have? The ripple effect would be tremendous."

　　I told him the lapses were frequent.

　　"Frequent. I know your wife. This is the wife who came to me one night with a crying child. 'My child is crying.' She would come to a medical doctor who is a private corporation and ask him to treat a child for crying. Now I pick up the phone and it's the husband. You would call a doctor in his home after ten o'clock at night. You would say to him, 'Memory lapse.' Why not tell me she has gas? Call me at home for gas?"

　　"Frequent and prolonged, doctor. It has to be the medication."

　　"What medication?"

　　"Dylar."

　　"Never heard of it."

　　"A small white tablet. Comes in an amber bottle."

　　"You would describe a tablet as small and white and expect a doctor to respond, at home, after ten at night. Why not tell me it is round? This is crucial to our case."

　　"It's an unlisted drug."

　　"I never saw it. I certainly never prescribed it for your wife. She's a very healthy woman so far as it's within my ability to ascertain such things, being subject as I am to the same human failings as the next fellow."

　　This sounded like a malpractice disclaimer. Maybe he was reading it from a printed card like a detective informing a suspect of his constitutional rights. I thanked him, hung up, called my own doctor at home. He answered on the seventh ring, said he thought Dylar was an island in the Persian Gulf, one of those oil terminals crucial to the survival of the West. A woman did the weather in the background.

　　I went upstairs and told Denise not to worry. I would take a tablet from the bottle and have it analyzed by someone in the chemistry department at the college. I waited for her to tell me she'd already done that. But she just nodded grimly and I headed down the hall, stopping in Heinrich's room to say goodnight. He was doing chinning exercises in the closet, using a bar clamped to the doorway.

　　"Where did you get that?"

　　"It's Mercator's."

　　"Who's that?"

　　"He's this senior I hang around with now. He's almost nineteen and he's still in high school. To give you some idea."

　　"Some idea of what?"

　　"How big he is. He bench-presses these awesome amounts."

　　"Why do you want to chin? What does chinning accomplish?" What does anything accomplish? Maybe I just want to build up my body to compensate for other things."

　　"What other things?"

　　"My hairline's getting worse, to name just one."

　　"It's not getting worse. Ask Baba if you don't believe me. She has a sharp eye for things like that."

　　"My mother told me to see a dermatologist."

　　"I don't think that's necessary at this stage."

　　"I already went."

　　"What did he say?"

　　"It was a she. My mother told me to go to a woman."

　　"What did she say?"

　　"She said I have a dense donor site."

　　"What does that mean?"

　　"She can take hair from other parts of my head and surgically implant it where it's needed. Not that it makes any difference. I'd. just as soon be bald. I can easily see myself totally bald. There are kids my age with cancer. Their hair falls out from chemotherapy. Why should I be different?"

　　He was standing in the closet peering out at me. I decided to change the subject.

　　"If you really think chinning helps, why don't you stand outside the closet and do your exercises facing in? Why stand in that dark musty space?"

　　"If you think this is strange, you ought to see what Mercator's doing."

　　"What's he doing?"

　　"He's training to break the world endurance record for sitting in a cage full of poisonous snakes, for the Guinness Book of Records. He goes to Glassboro three times a week where they have this exotic pet shop. The owner lets him feed the mamba and the puff adder. To get him accustomed. Totally forget your North American rattlesnake. The puff adder is the most venomous snake in the world."

　　"Every time I see newsfilm of someone in his fourth week of sitting in a cage full of snakes, I find myself wishing he'd get bitten."

　　"So do I," Heinrich said.

　　"Why is that?"

　　"He's asking for it."

　　"That's right. Most of us spend our lives avoiding danger. Who do these people think they are?"

　　"They ask for it. Let them get it."

　　I paused a while, savoring the rare moment of agreement.

　　"What else does your friend do to train?"

　　"He sits for long periods in one place, getting his bladder accustomed. He's down to two meals a day. He sleeps sitting up, two hours at a time. He wants to train himself to wake up gradually, without sudden movements, which could startle a mamba."

　　"It seems a strange ambition."

　　"Mambas are sensitive."

　　"But if it makes him happy."

　　"He thinks he's happy but it's just a nerve cell in his brain that's getting too much stimulation or too little stimulation."

　　I got out of bed in the middle of the night and went to the small room at the end of the hall to watch Steffie and Wilder sleep. I remained at this task, motionless, for nearly an hour, feeling refreshed and expanded in unnameable ways.

　　I was surprised, entering our bedroom, to find Babette standing at a window looking out into the steely night. She gave no sign that she'd noticed my absence from the bed and did not seem to hear when I climbed back in, burying myself beneath the covers.

　　25

　　Our newspaper is delivered by a middle-aged Iranian driving a Nissan Sentra. Something about the car makes me uneasy— the car waiting with its headlights on, at dawn, as the man places the newspaper on the front steps. I tell myself I have reached an age, the age of unreliable menace. The world is full of abandoned meanings. In the commonplace I find unexpected themes and intensities.

　　I sat at my desk in the office staring down at the white tablet. It was more or less flying-saucer-shaped, a streamlined disk with the tiniest of holes at one end. It was only after moments of intense scrutiny that I'd been able to spot the hole.

　　The tablet was not chalky like aspirin and not exactly capsule-slick either. It felt strange in the hand, curiously sensitive to the touch but at the same time giving the impression that it was synthetic, insoluble, elaborately engineered.

　　I walked over to a small domed building known as the Observatory and gave the tablet to Winnie Richards, a" young research neurochemist whose work was said to be brilliant. She was a tall gawky furtive woman who blushed when someone said something funny. Some of the New York émigrés liked to visit her cubicle and deliver rapid-fire one-liners, just to see her face turn red.

　　I watched her sit at the cluttered desk for two or three minutes, slowly rotating the tablet between her thumb and index finger. She licked it and shrugged.

　　"Certainly doesn't taste like much."

　　"How long will it take to analyze the contents?"

　　"There's a dolphin's brain in my in-box but come see me in forty-eight hours."

　　Winnie was well-known on the Hill for moving from place to place without being seen. No one knew how she managed this or why she found it necessary. Maybe she was self-conscious about her awkward frame, her craning look and odd lope. Maybe she had a phobia concerning open spaces, although the spaces at the college were mainly snug and quaint. Perhaps the world of people and things had such an impact on her, struck her with the force of some rough and naked body—made her blush in fact—that she found it easier to avoid frequent contact. Maybe she was tired of being called brilliant. In any case I had trouble locating her all the rest of that week. She was not to be seen on the lawns and walks, was absent from her cubicle whenever I looked in.

　　At home Denise made it a point not to bring up the subject of Dylar. She did not want to put pressure on me and even avoided eye contact, as if an exchange of significant looks was more than our secret knowledge could bear. Babette, for her part, could not seem to produce a look that wasn't significant. In the middle of conversations she turned to gaze at snowfalls, sunsets or parked cars in a sculptured and eternal way. These contemplations began to worry me. She'd always been an outward-looking woman with a bracing sense of particularity, a trust in the tangible and real. This private gazing was a form of estrangement not only from those of us around her but from the very things she watched so endlessly.

　　We sat at the breakfast table after the older kids were gone.

　　"Have you seen the Stovers' new dog?"

　　"No," I said.

　　'They think it's a space alien. Only they're not joking. I was there yesterday. The animal is strange."

　　"Has something been bothering you?"

　　"I'm fine," she said.

　　"I wish you'd tell me. We tell each other everything. We always have."

　　"Jack, what could be bothering me?"

　　"You stare out of windows. You're different somehow. You don't quite see things and react to things the way you used to."

　　"That's what their dog does. He stares out of windows. But not just any window. He goes upstairs to the attic and puts his paws up on the sill to look out the highest window. They think he's waiting for instructions."

　　"Denise would kill me if she knew I was going to say this."

　　"What?"

　　"I found the Dylar."

　　"What Dylar?"

　　"It was taped to the radiator cover."

　　"Why would I tape something to the radiator cover?"

　　'That's exactly what Denise predicted you would say."

　　"She's usually right."

　　"I talked to Hookstratten, your doctor."

　　"I'm in super shape, really."

　　"That's what he said."

　　"Do you know what these cold gray leaden days make me want to do?"

　　"What?"

　　"Crawl into bed with a good-looking man. I'll put Wilder in his play tunnel. You go shave and brush your teeth. Meet you in the bedroom in ten minutes."

　　That afternoon I saw Winnie Richards slip out a side door of the Observatory and go loping down a small lawn toward the new buildings. I hurried out of my office and went after her. She kept close to walls, moving in a long-gaited stride. I felt I had made an important sighting of an endangered animal or some phenomenal subhuman like a yeti or sasquatch. It was cold and still leaden. I found I could not gain on her without breaking into a trot. She hurried around the back of Faculty House and I picked up the pace, fearing I was on the verge of losing her. It felt strange to be running. I hadn't run in many years and didn't recognize my body in this new format, didn't recognize the world beneath my feet, hard-surfaced and abrupt. I turned a corner and picked up speed, aware of floating bulk. Up, down, life, death. My robe flew behind me.

　　I caught up to her in the empty corridor of a one-story building that smelled of embalming fluids. She stood against the wall in a pale green tunic and tennis sneakers. I was too winded to speak and raised my right arm, requesting a delay. Winnie led me to a table in a small room full of bottled brains. The table was fitted with a sink and covered with note pads and lab instruments. She gave me water in a paper cup. I tried to dissociate the taste of the tap water from the sight of the brains and the general odor of preservatives and disinfectants.

　　"Have you been hiding from me?" I said. "I've left notes, phone messages."

　　"Not from you, Jack, or anyone in particular."

　　"Then why have you been so hard to find?"

　　"Isn't this what the twentieth century is all about?"

　　"What?"

　　"People go into hiding even when no one is looking for them."

　　"Do you really think that's true?"

　　"It's obvious," she said.

　　"What about the tablet?"

　　"An interesting piece of technology. What's it called?"

　　"Dylar."

　　"Never heard of it," she said.

　　"What can you tell me about it? Try not to be too brilliant. I haven't eaten lunch yet."

　　I watched her blush.

　　"It's not a tablet in the old sense," she said. "It's a drug delivery system. It doesn't dissolve right away or release its ingredients right away. The medication in Dylar is encased in a polymer membrane. Water from your gastrointestinal tract seeps through the membrane at a carefully controlled rate."

　　"What does the water do?"

　　"It dissolves the medication encased in the membrane. Slowly, gradually, precisely. The medicine then passes out of the polymer tablet through a single small hole. Once again the rate is carefully controlled."

　　"It took me a while to spot the hole."

　　"That's because it's laser-drilled. It's not only tiny but stunningly precise in its dimensions."

　　"Lasers, polymers."

　　"I'm not an expert in any of this, Jack, but I can tell you it's a wonderful little system."

　　"What's the point of all this precision?"

　　"I would think the controlled dosage is meant to eliminate the hit-or-miss effect of pills and capsules. The drug is delivered at specified rates for extended periods. You avoid the classic pattern of overdosage followed by underdosage. You don't get a burst of medication followed by the merest trickle. No upset stomach, queasiness, vomiting, muscle cramps, et cetera. This system is efficient."

　　"I'm impressed. I'm even dazzled. But what happens to the polymer tablet after the medication is pumped out of it?"

　　"It self-destructs. It implodes minutely of its own massive gravitation. We've entered the realm of physics. Once the plastic membrane is reduced to microscopic particles, it passes harmlessly out of the body in the time-honored way."

　　"Fantastic. Now tell me what the medication is designed to do? What is Dylar? What are the chemical components?"

　　"I don't know," she said.

　　"Of course you know. You're brilliant. Everyone says so."

　　"What else can they say? I do neurochemistry. No one knows what that is."

　　"Other scientists have some idea. They must. And they say you're brilliant."

　　"We're all brilliant. Isn't that the understanding around here? You call me brilliant, I call you brilliant. It's a form of communal ego."

　　"No one calls me brilliant. They call me shrewd. They say I latched on to something big. I filled an opening no one knew existed."

　　"There are openings for brilliance too. It's my turn, that's all. Besides, I'm built funny and walk funny. If they couldn't call me brilliant, they would be forced to say cruel things about me. How awful for everyone."

　　She clutched some files to her chest.

　　"Jack, all I can tell you for certain is that the substance contained in Dylar is some kind of psychopharmaceutical. It's probably designed to interact with a distant part of the human cortex. Look around you. Brains everywhere. Sharks, whales, dolphins, great apes. None of them remotely matches the human brain in complexity. The human brain is not my field. I have only a bare working knowledge of the human brain but it's enough to make me proud to be an American. Your brain has a trillion neurons and every neuron has ten thousand little dendrites. The system of intercommunication is awe-inspiring. It's like a galaxy that you can hold in your hand, only more complex, more mysterious."

　　"Why does this make you proud to be an American?"

　　"The infant's brain develops in response to stimuli. We still lead the world in stimuli."

　　I sipped my water.

　　"I wish I knew more," she said. "But the precise nature of the medication eludes me. I can tell you one thing. It is not on the market."

　　"But I found it in an ordinary prescription vial."

　　"I don't care where you found it. I'm pretty sure I'd recognize the ingredients of a known brain-receptor drug. This one is unknown."

　　She began to shoot quick looks toward the door. Her eyes were bright and fearful. I realized there were noises in the corridor. Voices, shuffling feet. I watched Winnie back toward a rear door. I decided I wanted to see her blush one more time. She put an arm behind her, unlatched the door, turned quickly and went running into the gray afternoon. I tried to think of something funny to say.

　　26

　　Isat up in bed with my notes on German grammar. Babette lay on her side staring into the clock-radio, listening to a call-in show. I heard a woman say: "In 1977 I looked in the mirror and saw the person I was becoming. I couldn't or wouldn't get out of bed. Figures moved at the edge of my vision, like with scurrying steps. I was getting phone calls from a Pershing missile base. I needed to talk to others who shared these experiences. I needed a support program, something to enroll in."

　　I leaned across my wife's body and turned off the radio. She kept on staring. I kissed her lightly on the head.

　　"Murray says you have important hair."

　　She smiled in a pale and depleted way. I put down my notes and eased her around slightly so that she looked straight up as I spoke.

　　"It's time for a major dialogue. You know it, I know it. You'll tell me all about Dylar. If not for my sake, then for your little girl's. She's been worried—worried sick. Besides, you have no more room to maneuver. We've backed you against the wall. Denise and I. I found the concealed bottle, removed a tablet, had it analyzed by an expert. Those little white disks are superbly engineered. Laser technology, advanced plastics. Dylar is almost as ingenious as the microorganisms that ate the billowing cloud. Who would have believed in the existence of a little white pill that works as a pressure pump in the human body to provide medication safely and effectively, and self-destructs as well? I am struck by the beauty of this. We know something else, something crucially damaging to your case. We know Dylar is not available to the general public. This fact alone justifies our demands for an explanation. There's really very little left for you to say. Just tell us the nature of the drag. As you well know, I don't have the temperament to hound people. But Denise is a different kind of person. I've been doing all I can to restrain her. If you don't tell me what I want to know, I'll unleash your little girl. She'll come at you with everything she has. She won't waste time trying to make you feel guilty. Denise believes in a frontal attack. She'll hammer you right into the ground. You know I'm right, Babette."

　　About five minutes passed. She lay there, staring into the ceiling.

　　"Just let me tell it in my own way," she said in a small voice.

　　"Would you like a liqueur?"

　　"No, thank you."

　　"Take your time," I said. "We've got all night. If there's anything you want or need, just say so. You have only to ask. I'll be right here for as long as it takes."

　　Another moment passed.

　　"I don't know exactly when it started. Maybe a year and a half ago. I thought I was going through a phase, some kind of watermark period in my life."

　　"Landmark," I said. "Or watershed."

　　"A kind of settling-in-period, I thought. Middle age. Something like that. The condition would go away and I'd forget all about it. But it didn't go away. I began to think it never would."

　　"What condition?"

　　"Never mind that for now."

　　"You've been depressed lately. I've never seen you like this. This is the whole point of Babette. She's a joyous person. She doesn't succumb to gloom or self-pity."

　　"Let me tell it, Jack."

　　"All right."

　　"You know how I am. I think everything is correctible. Given the right attitude and the proper effort, a person can change a harmful condition by reducing it to its simplest parts. You can make lists, invent categories, devise charts and graphs. This is how I am able to teach my students how to stand, sit and walk, even though I know you think these subjects are too obvious and nebulous and generalized to be reduced to component parts. I'm not a very ingenious person but I know how to break things down, how to separate and classify. We can analyze posture, we can analyze eating, drinking and even breathing. How else do you understand the world, is my way of looking at it."

　　"I'm right here," I said. "If there's anything you want or need, only say the word."

　　"When I realized this condition was not about to go away, I set out to understand it better by reducing it to its parts. First I had to find out if it had any parts. I went to libraries and bookstores, read magazines and technical journals, watched cable TV, made lists and diagrams, made multicolored charts, made phone calls to technical writers and scientists, talked to a Sikh holy man in Iron City and even studied the occult, hiding the books in the attic so you and Denise wouldn't find them and wonder what was going on."

　　"All this without my knowing. The whole point of Babette is that she speaks to me, she reveals and confides."

　　"This is not a story about your disappointment at my silence. The theme of this story is my pain and my attempts to end it."

　　"I'll make some hot chocolate. Would you like that?"

　　"Stay. This is a crucial part. All this energy, this research, study and concealment, but I was getting nowhere. The condition would not yield. It hung over my life, gave me no rest. Then one day I was reading to Mr. Treadwell from the National Examiner. An ad caught my eye. Never mind exactly what it said. Volunteers wanted for secret research. This is all you have to know."

　　"I thought it was my former wives who practiced guile. Sweet deceivers. Tense, breathy, high-cheekboned, bilingual."

　　"I answered the ad and was interviewed by a small firm doing research in psychobiology. Do you know what that is?"

　　"No."

　　"Do you know how complex the human brain is?"

　　"I have some idea."

　　"No, you don't. Let's call the company Gray Research, although that's not the true name. Let's call my contact Mr. Gray. Mr. Gray is a composite. I was eventually in touch with three or four or more people at the firm."

　　"One of those long low pale brick buildings with electrified fencing and low-profile shrubbery."

　　"I never saw their headquarters. Never mind why. The point is I took test after test. Emotional, psychological, motor response, brain activity. Mr. Gray said there were three finalists and I was one of them."

　　"Finalists for what?"

　　"We were to be test subjects in the development of a super experimental and top secret drug, code-name Dylar, that he'd been working on for years. He'd found a Dylar receptor in the human brain and was putting the finishing touches on the tablet itself. But he also told me there were dangers in running tests on a human. I could die. I could live but my brain could die. The left side of my brain cquld die but the right side could live. This would mean that the left side of my body would live but the right side would die. There were many grim specters. I could walk sideways but not forward. I could not distinguish words from things, so that if someone said 'speeding bullet,' I would fall to the floor and take cover. Mr. Gray wanted me to know the risks. There were releases and other documents for me to sign. The firm had lawyers, priests."

　　"They let you go ahead, a human test animal."

　　"No, they didn't. They said it was way too risky—legally, ethically and so forth. They went to work designing computer molecules and computer brains. I refused to accept this. I'd come so far, come so close. I want you to try to understand what happened next. If I'm going to tell you the story at all, I have to include this aspect of it, this grubby little corner of the human heart. You say Babette reveals and confides."

　　"This is the point of Babette."

　　"Good. I will reveal and confide. Mr. Gray and I made a private arrangement. Forget the priests, the lawyers, the psychobiologists. We would conduct the experiments on our own. I would be cured of my condition, he would be acclaimed for a wonderful medical breakthrough."

　　"What's so grubby about this?"

　　"It involved an indiscretion. This was the only way I could get Mr. Gray to let me use the drug. It was my last resort, my last hope. First I'd offered him my mind. Now I offered my body."

　　I felt a sensation of warmth creeping up my back and radiating outward across my shoulders. Babette looked straight up. I was propped on an elbow, facing her, studying her features. When I spoke finally it was in a reasonable and inquiring voice—the voice of a man who seeks genuinely to understand some timeless human riddle.

　　"How do you offer your body to a composite of three or more people? This is a compound person. He is like a police sketch of one person's eyebrows, another person's nose. Let's concentrate on the genitals. How many sets are we talking about?"

　　"Just one person's, Jack. A key person, the project manager."

　　"So we are no longer referring to the Mr. Gray who is a composite."

　　"He is now one person. We went to a grubby little motel room. Never mind where or when. It had the TV up near the ceiling. This is all I remember. Grubby, tacky. I was heartsick. But so, so desperate."

　　"You call this an indiscretion, as if we haven't had a revolution in frank and bold language. Call it what it was, describe it honestly, give it the credit it deserves. You entered a motel room, excited by its impersonality, the functionalism and bad taste of the furnishings. You walked barefoot on the f?re-retardant carpet. Mr. Gray went around opening doors, looking for a full-length mirror. He watched you undress. You lay on the bed, embracing. Then he entered you."

　　"Don't use that term. You know how I feel about that usage."

　　"He effected what is called entry. In other words he inserted himself. One minute he was fully dressed, putting the car rental keys on the dresser. The next minute he was inside you."

　　"No one was inside anyone. That is stupid usage. I did what I had to do. I was remote. I was operating outside myself. It was a capitalist transaction. You cherish the wife who tells you everything. 1 am doing my best to be that person.

　　"All right, I'm only trying to understand. How many times did you go to this motel?"

　　"More or less on a continuing basis for some months. That was the agreement."

　　I felt heat rising along the back of my neck. I watched her carefully. A sadness showed in her eyes. I lay back and looked at the ceiling. The radio came on. She began to cry softly.

　　"There's some Jell-O with banana slices," I said. "Steffie made it."

　　"She's a good girl."

　　"I can easily get you some."

　　"No, thank you."

　　"Why did the radio come on?"

　　"The auto-timer is broken. I'll take it to the shop tomorrow."

　　"I'll take it."

　　"it's all right," she said. "It's no trouble. I can easily take it."

　　"Did you enjoy having sex with him?"

　　"I only remember the TV up near the ceiling, aimed down at us."

　　"Did he have a sense of humor? I know women appreciate men who can joke about sex. I can't, unfortunately, and after this I don't think there's much chance I'll be able to learn."

　　"It's better if you know him as Mr. Gray. That's all. He's not tall, short, young or old. He doesn't laugh or cry. It's for your own good."

　　"I have a question. Why didn't Gray Research run tests on animals? Animals must be better than computers in some respects."

　　'That's just the point. No animal has this condition. This is a human condition. Animals fear many things, Mr. Gray said. But their brains aren't sophisticated enough to accommodate this particular state of mind."

　　For the first time I began to get an inkling of what she'd been talking about all along. My body went cold. I felt hollow inside. I rose from my supine position, once again propping myself on an elbow to look down at her. She started to cry again.

　　"You have to tell me, Babette. You've taken me this far, put me through this much. I have to know. What's the condition?"

　　The longer she wept, the more certain I became that I knew what she was going to say. I felt an impulse to get dressed and leave, take a room somewhere until this whole thing blew over. Babette raised her face to me, sorrowing and pale, her eyes showing a helpless desolation. We faced each other, propped on elbows, like a sculpture of lounging philosophers in a classical academy. The radio turned itself off.

　　"I'm afraid to die," she said. "I think about it all the time. It won't go away."

　　"Don't tell me this. This is terrible."

　　"I can't help it. How can I help it?"

　　"I don't want to know. Save it for our old age. You're still young, you get plenty of exercise. This is not a reasonable fear."

　　"It haunts me, Jack. I can't get it off my mind. I know I'm not supposed to experience such a fear so consciously and so steadily. What can I do? It's just there. That's why I was so quick to notice Mr. Gray's ad in the tabloid I was reading aloud. The headline hit home. FEAR OF DEATH, it said. I think about it all the time. You're disappointed. I can tell."

　　"Disappointed?"

　　"You thought the condition would be more specific. I wish it was. But a person doesn't search for months and months to corner the solution to some daily little ailment."

　　I tried to talk her out of it.

　　"How can you be sure it is death you fear? Death is so vague. No one knows what it is, what it feels like or looks like. Maybe you just have a personal problem that surfaces in the form of a great universal subject."

　　"What problem?"

　　"Something you're hiding from yourself. Your weight maybe."

　　"I've lost weight. What about my height?"

　　"I know you've lost weight. That's just my point. You practically ooze good health. You reek of it. Hookstratten confirms this, your own doctor. There must be something else, an underlying problem."

　　"What could be more underlying than death?"

　　I tried to persuade her it was not as serious as she thought.

　　"Baba, everyone fears death. Why should you be different? You yourself said earlier it is a human condition. There's no one who has lived past the age of seven who hasn't worried about dying."

　　"At some level everyone fears death. I fear it right up front. I don't know how or why it happened. But I can't be the only one or why would Gray Research spend millions on a pill?"

　　"That's what I said. You're not the only one. There are hundreds of thousands of people. Isn't it reassuring to know that? You're like the woman on the radio who got phone calls from a missile base. She wanted to find others whose own psychotic experiences would make her feel less isolated."

　　"But Mr. Gray said I was extra sensitive to the terror of death. He gave me a battery of tests. That's why he was eager to use me."

　　'This is what I find odd. You concealed your terror for so long. If you're able to conceal such a thing from a husband and children, maybe it is not so severe."

　　'This is not the story of a wife's deception. You can't sidestep the true story, Jack. It is too big."

　　I kept my voice calm. I spoke to her as one of those reclining philosophers might address a younger member of the academy, someone whose work is promising and fitfully brilliant but perhaps too heavily dependent on the scholarship of the senior fellow.

　　"Baba, I am the one in this family who is obsessed by death. I have always been the one."

　　"You never said."

　　'To protect you from worry. To keep you animated, vital and happy. You are the happy one. I am the doomed fool. That's what I can't forgive you for. Telling me you're not the woman I believed you were. I'm hurt, I'm devastated."

　　"I always thought of you as someone who might muse on death. You might take walks and muse. But all those times we talked about who will die first, you never said you were afraid."

　　"The same goes for you. 'As soon as the kids are grown.' You made it sound like a trip to Spain."

　　"I do want to die first," she said, "but that doesn't mean I'm not afraid. I'm terribly afraid. I'm afraid all the time."

　　"I've been afraid for more than half my life."

　　"What do you want me to say? Your fear is older and wiser than mine?"

　　"I wake up sweating. I break out in killer sweats."

　　"I chew gum because my throat constricts."

　　"I have no body. I'm only a mind or a self, alone in a vast space."

　　"I seize up," she said.

　　"I'm too weak to move. I lack all sense of resolve, determination."

　　"I thought about my mother dying. Then she died."

　　"I think about everyone dying. Not just myself. I lapse into terrible reveries."

　　"I felt so guilty. I thought her death was connected to my thinking about it. I feel the same way about my own death. The more I think about it, the sooner it will happen."

　　"How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn't they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for a while? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise."

　　"What if death is nothing but sound?"

　　"Electrical noise."

　　"You hear it forever. Sound all around. How awful."

　　"Uniform, white."

　　"Sometimes it sweeps over me," she said. "Sometimes it insinuates itself into my mind, little by little. I try to talk to it. Not now, Death.'"

　　"I lie in the dark looking at the clock. Always odd numbers. One thirty-seven in the morning. Three fifty-nine in the morning."

　　"Death is odd-numbered. That's what the Sikh told me. The holy man in Iron City."

　　"You're my strength, my life-force. How can I persuade you that this is a terrible mistake? I've watched you bathe Wilder, iron my gown. These deep and simple pleasures are lost to me now. Don't you see the enormity of what you've done?"

　　"Sometimes it hits me like a blow," she said. "I almost physically want to reel."

　　- "Is this why I married Babette? So she would conceal the truth from me, conceal objects from me, join in a sexual conspiracy at my expense? All plots move in one direction," I told her grimly.

　　We held each other tightly for a long time, our bodies clenched in an embrace that included elements of love, grief, tenderness, sex and struggle. How subtly we shifted emotions, found shadings, using the scantest movement of our arms, our loins, the slightest intake of breath, to reach agreement on our fear, to advance our competition, to assert our root desires against the chaos in our souls.

　　Leaded, unleaded, super unleaded.

　　We lay naked after love, wet and gleaming. I pulled the covers up over us. We spoke in drowsv whispers for a while. The radio came on.

　　"I'm right here," I said. "Whatever you want or need, however difficult, tell me and it's done."

　　"A drink of water."

　　"Of course."

　　"I'll go with you," she said.

　　"Stay, rest."

　　"I don't want to be alone."

　　We put on our robes, went to the bathroom for water. She drank while I pissed. On our way back to the bedroom I put my arm around her and we walked half toppling toward each other, like adolescents on a beach. I waited by the side of the bed as she rearranged the sheets neatly, put the pillows in place. She curled up immediately for sleep but there were still things I wanted to know, things I had to say.

　　"Precisely what was accomplished by the people at Gray Research?"

　　"They isolated the fear-of-death part of the brain. Dylar speeds relief to that sector."

　　"Incredible."

　　"It's not just a powerful tranquilizer. The drug specifically interacts with neurotransmitters in the brain that are related to the fear of death. Every emotion or sensation has its own neurotransmitters. Mr. Gray found fear of death and then went to worl on finding the chemicals that would induce the brain to make its own inhibitors."

　　"Amazing and frightening."

　　"Everything that goes on in your whole life is a result of molecules rushing around somewhere in your brain."

　　"Heinrich's brain theories. They're all true. We're the sum of our chemical impulses. Don't tell me this. It's unbearable to think about."

　　"They can trace everything you say, do and feel to the number of molecules in a certain region."

　　"What happens to good and evil in this system? Passion, envy and hate? Do they become a tangle of neurons? Are you telling me that a whole tradition of human failings is now at an end, that cowardice, sadism, molestation are meaningless terms? Are we being asked to regard these things nostalgically? What about murderous rage? A murderer used to have a certain fearsome size to him. His crime was large. What happens when we reduce it to cells and molecules? My son plays chess with a murderer. He told me all this. I didn't want to listen."

　　"Can I sleep now?"

　　"Wait. If Dylar speeds relief, why have you been so sad these past days, staring into space?"

　　"Simple. The drug's not working."

　　Her voice broke when she said these words. She raised the comforter over her head. I could only stare at the hilly terrain. A man on talk radio said: "I was getting mixed messages about my sexuality." I stroked her head and body over the quilted bedspread.

　　"Can you elaborate, Baba? I'm right here. I want to help."

　　"Mr. Gray gave me sixty tablets in two bottles. This would be more than enough, he said. One tablet every seventy-two hours. The discharge of medication is so gradual and precise that there's no overlapping from one pill to the next. I finished the first bottle sometime in late November, early December."

　　"Denise found it."

　　"She did?"

　　"She's been on your trail ever since."

　　"Where did I leave it?"

　　"In the kitchen trash."

　　"Why did I do that? That was careless."

　　"What about the second bottle?" I said.

　　"You found the second bottle."

　　"I know. I'm asking how many tablets you've taken."

　　"I've now taken twenty-five from that bottle. That's fifty-five all told. Five left."

　　"Four left. I had one analyzed."

　　"Did you tell me that?"

　　"Yes. And has there been any change at all in your condition.

　　She allowed the top of her head to emerge.

　　"At first I thought so. The very beginning was the most hopeful time. Since then no improvement. I've grown more and more discouraged. Let me sleep now, Jack."

　　"Remember we had dinner at Murray's one night? On the way home we talked about your memory lapses. You said you weren't sure whether or not you were taking medication. You couldn't remember, you said. This was a lie, of course."

　　"I guess so," she said.

　　"But you weren't lying about memory lapses in general. Denise and I assumed your forgetfulness was a side effect of whatever drug you were taking."

　　The whole head emerged.

　　"Totally wrong," she said. "It wasn't a side effect of the drug. It was a side effect of the condition. Mr. Gray said my loss of memory is a desperate attempt to counteract my fear of death. It's like a war of neurons. I am able to forget many things but I fail when it comes to death. And now Mr. Gray has failed as well."

　　"Does he know that?"

　　"I left a message on his answering machine."

　　"What did; he say when he called back?"

　　"He sent me a tape in the mail, which I took over to the Stovers to play. He said he was literally sorry, whatever that means. He said I was not the right subject after all. He is sure it will work someday, soon, with someone, somewhere. He said he made a mistake with me. It was too random. He was too eager."

　　It was the middle of the night. We were both exhausted. But we'd come so far, said so much, that I knew we couldn't stop just yet. I took a deep breath. Then I lay back, staring into the ceiling. Babette leaned across my body to turn off the lamp. Then she pressed a button on the radio, killing the voices. A thousand other nights had ended more or less like this. I felt her sink into the bed.

　　'There's something I promised myself I wouldn't tell you."

　　"Can it wait until morning?" she said.

　　"I'm tentatively scheduled to die. It won't happen tomorrow or the next day. But it is in the works."

　　I went on to tell her about my exposure to Nyodene D., speaking matter-of-factly, tonelessly, in short declarative sentences. I told her about the computer technician, the way he'd tapped into my history to produce a pessimistic massive tally. We are the sum total of our data, I told her, just as we are the sum total of our chemical impulses. I tried to explain how hard I'd struggled to keep the news from her. But after her own revelations, this seemed the wrong kind of secret to be keeping.

　　"So -we are no longer talking about fear and floating terror," I said. "This is the hard and heavy thing, the fact itself."

　　Slowly she emerged from beneath the covers. She climbed on top of me, sobbing. I felt her fingers clawing at my shoulders and neck. The warm tears fell on my lips. She beat me on the chest, seized my left hand and bit the flesh between the thumb and index finger. Her sobs became a grunting sound, full of terrible desperate effort. She took my head in her hands, gently and yet fiercely, and rocked it to and fro on the pillow, an act I could not connect to anything she'd ever done, anything she seemed to be.

　　Later, after she'd fallen off my body and into a restless sleep, I kept on staring into the dark. The radio came on. I threw off the covers and went into the bathroom. Denise's scenic paperweights sat on a dusty shelf by the door. I ran water over my hands and wrists. I splashed cold water on my face. The only towel around was a small pink handcloth with a tic-tac-toe design. I dried myself slowly and carefully. Then I tilted the radiator cover away from the wall and stuck my hand underneath. The bottle of Dylar was gone.

　　27

　　I had my second medical checkup since the toxic event. No startling numbers on the printout. This death was still too deep to be glimpsed. My doctor, Sundar Chakravarty, asked me about the sudden flurry of checkups. In the past I'd always been afraid to know.

　　1 told him I was still afraid. He smiled broadly, waiting for the punch line. I shook his hand and headed out the door.

　　On the way home I drove down Elm intending to make a quick stop at the supermarket. The street was full of emergency vehicles. Farther down I saw bodies scattered about. A man with an armband blew a. whistle at me and stepped in front of my car. I glimpsed other men in Mylex suits. Stretcher-bearers ran across the street. When the man with the whistle drew closer, I was able to make out the letters on his armband: SIMUVAC.

　　"Back it out," he said. "Street's closed."

　　"Are you people sure you're ready for a simulation? You may want to wait for one more massive spill. Get your timing down."

　　"Move it out, get it out. You're in the exposure swath."

　　"What's that mean?"

　　"It means you're dead," he told me.

　　I backed out of the street and parked the car. Then I walked slowly back down Elm, trying to look as though I belonged. I kept close to storefronts, mingled with technicians and marshals, with uniformed personnel. There were buses, police cars, ambulettes. People with electronic equipment appeared to be trying to detect radiation or toxic fallout. In time I approached the volunteer victims. There were twenty or so, prone, supine, draped over curbstones, sitting in the street with woozy looks.

　　I was startled to see my daughter among them. She lay in the middle of the street, on her back, one arm flung out, her head tilted the other way. I could hardly bear to look. Is this how she thinks of herself at the age of nine—already a victim, trying to polish her skills? How natural she looked, how deeply imbued with the idea of a sweeping disaster. Is this the future she envisions?

　　I walked over there and squatted down.

　　"Steffie? Is that you?"

　　She opened her eyes.

　　"You're not supposed to be here unless you're a victim," she said.

　　"I just want to be sure you're okay."

　　"I'll get in trouble if they see you."

　　"It's cold. You'll get sick. Does Baba know you're here?"

　　"I signed up in school an hour ago."

　　"They at least should hand out blankets," I said.

　　She closed her eyes. I spoke to her a while longer but she wouldn't answer. There was no trace of irritation or dismissal in her silence. Just conscientiousness. She had a history of being devout in her victimhood.

　　I went back to the sidewalk. A man's amplified voice boomed across the street from somewhere inside the supermarket.

　　"I want to welcome all of you on behalf of Advanced Disaster Management, a private consulting firm that conceives and operates simulated evacuations. We are interfacing with twenty-two state bodies in carrying out this advanced disaster drill. The first, I trust, of many. The more we rehearse disaster, the safer we'll be from the real thing. Life seems to work that way, doesn't it? You take your umbrella to the office seventeen straight days, not a drop of rain. The first day you leave it at home, record-breaking downpour. Never fails, does it? This is the mechanism we hope to employ, among others. O-right, on to business. When the siren sounds three long blasts, thousands of hand-picked evacuees will leave their homes and places of employment, get into their vehicles and head for well-equipped emergency shelters. Traffic directors will race to their computerized stations. Updated instructions will be issued on the SIMUVAC broadcast system. Air-sampling people will deploy along the cloud exposure swath. Dairy samplers will test milk and randomized foodstuffs over the next three days along the ingestion swath. We are not simulating a particular spillage today. This is an all-purpose leak or spill. It could be radioactive steam, chemical cloudlets, a haze of unknown origin. The important thing is movement. Get those people out of the swath. We learned a lot during the night of the billowing cloud. But there is no substitute for a planned simulation. If reality intrudes in the form of a car crash or a victim falling off a stretcher, it is important to remember that we are not here to mend broken bones or put out real fires. We are here to simulate. Interruptions can cost lives in a real emergency. If we learn to work around interruptions now, we'll be able to work around them later when it counts. O-right. When the siren sounds two melancholy wails, street captains will make house-to-house searches for those who may have been inadvertently left behind. Birds, goldfish, elderly people, handicapped people, invalids, shut-ins, whatever. Five minutes, victims. All you rescue personnel, remember this is not a blast simulation. Your victims are overcome but not traumatized. Save your tender loving care for the nuclear fireball in June. We're at four minutes and counting. Victims, go limp. And remember you're not here to scream or thrash about. We like a low-profile victim. This isn't New York or L.A. Soft moans will suffice."

　　I decided I didn't want to watch. I went back to the car and headed home. The sirens emitted the first three blasts as I pulled up in front of the house. Heinrich was sitting on the front steps, wearing a reflector vest and his camouflage cap. With him was an older boy. He had a powerful compact body of uncertain pigmentation. No one on our street seemed to be evacuating. Heinrich consulted a clipboard.

　　"What's going on?"

　　"I'm a street captain," he said.

　　"Did you know Steffie was a victim?"

　　"She said she might be."

　　"Why didn't you tell me?"

　　"So they pick her up and put her in an ambulance. What's the problem?"

　　"I don't know what the problem is."

　　"If she wants to do it, she should do it."

　　"She seems so well-adjusted to the role."

　　"It could save her life someday," he said.

　　"How can pretending to be injured or dead save a person's life?"

　　"If she does it now, she might not have to do it later. The more you practice something, the less likely it is to actually happen."

　　'That's what the consultant said."

　　"It's a gimmick but it works."

　　"Who's this?"

　　"This is Orest Mercator. He's going to help me check for leftovers."

　　"You're the one who wants to sit in a cage full of deadly snakes. Can you tell me why?"

　　"Because I'm going for the record," Orest said.

　　"Why would you want to get killed going for a record?"

　　"What killed? Who said anything about killed?"

　　"You'll be surrounded by rare and deadly reptiles."

　　"They're the best at what they do. I want to be the best at what I do."

　　"What do you do?"

　　"I sit in a cage for sixty-seven days. That's what it takes to break the record."

　　"Do you understand that you are risking death for a couple of lines in a paperback book?"

　　He looked searchingly at Heinrich, obviously holding the boy responsible for this idiotic line of questioning.

　　"They will bite you," I went on.

　　"They won't bite me."

　　"How do you know?"

　　"Because I know."

　　"These are real snakes, Orest. One bite, that's it."

　　"One bite if they bite. But they won't bite."

　　"They are real. You are real. People get bitten all the time. The venom is deadly."

　　"People get bitten. But I won't."

　　I found myself saying, "You will, you will. These snakes don't know you find death inconceivable. They don't know you're young and strong and you think death applies to everyone but you. They will bite and you will die."

　　I paused, shamed by the passion of my argument. I was surprised to see him look at me with a certain interest, a certain grudging respect. Perhaps the unbecoming force of my outburst brought home to him the gravity of his task, filled him with intimations of an unwieldy fate.

　　'They want to bite, they bite," he said. "At least I go right away. These snakes are the best, the quickest. A puff adder bites me, I die in seconds."

　　"What's your hurry? You're nineteen years old. You'll find hundreds of ways to die that are better than snakes."

　　What kind of name is Orest? I studied his features. He might have been Hispanic, Middle Eastern, Central Asian, a dark-skinned Eastern European, a light-skinned black. Did he have an accent? I wasn't sure. Was he a Samoan, a native North American, a Sephardic Jew? It was getting hard to know what you couldn't say to people.

　　He said to me, "How many pounds can you bench-press?"

　　"I don't know. Not very many."