Content with the Mysterious
by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
Illustration by Darryl Elliott
Ken Shaw stared at the manuscript without really seeing it. The lines were gray blurs, a pattern of irregular stripes. He knew what it said, though; he’d read the march of words beneath his wife’s byline.
“You’ll love it,” she said. “It’s brilliant,” she said. And he’d had no reason not to believe her. Most of what Lissa wrote, if not brilliant, was at least very good: sharp, cogent, witty. This, however—he grimaced—this was arrogant, self-congratulatory, and sarcastic. He imagined telling her that. Not pretty. He’d critiqued her before, of course, edited her prose. That was his job. But, at the moment, he didn’t feel like editing, he felt like doing a hatchet job.
Sighing, Ken rolled his chair across the anti-static carpet and over to the office window. He was people-watching and contemplating taking a walk down the Embarcadero when he saw her charging through the manicured courtyard four stories below. She moved like a tornado with a fix on a trailer park. She always did. It was one of the things he loved about her. She researched her articles the same way, flying in, shredding, reducing the subject to matchsticks that could be easily vacuumed up—neat, tidy, and looking nothing like the original item.
Ken rolled himself back to his desk and tried to collect his thoughts. They refused to coagulate. Fear of the storm, he thought wryly, and slipped the article under the October issue cover layout. Maybe she’d grant him a reprieve. Let him bring up the article.
A moment later, she was breezing into his office, notebook computer over one shoulder, trendy but dilapidated safari jacket open over a black silk jumpsuit. “Well?” she said. “Have you read it?”
So much for a reprieve. Ken pulled the manuscript out from under the cover art and nodded.
“And?” She perched on the corner of his desk.
“It’s well-written.”
Pale brows shot up under a thatch of strawberry-blonde hair. “Well-written? Oh, Mr. Shaw, that’s editorspeak for ‘I hated every word of it.’ What’s wrong with it?” She got up, leaving her notebook on the desk, and began to pace. “I did good research. I conducted searching interviews. I collected solid evidence, evaluated it objectively—” She stopped in the middle of ticking off her processes and turned to stare at him bemusedly. “What? What’s that sour expression for, my puckered pal? You look like you just swallowed some Vilex.”
“You weren’t objective.”
The stare turned into a glare. “What do you mean, I wasn’t objective?”
He shrugged. “You weren’t objective.”
“About what?”
“About anything in here.” Her hands were on her hips, he noticed. A bad sign.
“Give me an example.”
“OK. The meditation class.”
She shrugged. What about it? her eyes asked.
He rubbed the bridge of his nose—a habit dating from when he had had to wear glasses. “Lissa, you were rude.”
“Rude? Ken, the woman was having a room full of people meditate on a crystal that didn’t exist. They took turns holding the damned thing.”
“Did that give you the right to humiliate her?”
“Oh, please.”
“Admit it, Liss. You didn’t research this article, you went on a witch hunt. You didn’t interview people, you played Inquisitor.”
“I simply asked them to produce proof of their outrageous claims. I asked a woman who said she could read auras to read me a few. And that clairvoyant character, Dreyfus—all 1 asked him to do was foretell the outcome of a simple test.”
“Did you hear yourself? ‘That clairvoyant character’? He was ‘that clairvoyant character’ before you even met him, wasn’t he?”
She glowered, arms folded.
“Well, wasn’t he?”
“So?”
He flipped the first page of the manuscript over and read, “ ‘Your job is not to debunk—leave that to the vice squad. As a scientist, you are not out to disprove or reject any claims out of hand, but to discover positive evidence in favor of them.’ ” He flipped the page back. “Despite that noble disclaimer, this article is prejudiced, Lissa. It’s arrogant. Worst of all, it’s not scientific inquiry.”
Now she was gawking at him. “I don’t believe my ears! You’re defending this crap!”
“No. I am defending objective analysis, which is absent from this article, despite your claim to the contrary.”
“Come on, Kenny. These people are fakes. They may be well-meaning, or misled, but they are fakes, nonetheless. If I can disabuse even one person of their irrational, puerile—”
“Fine, but don’t try to pass your crusading off as objective, scientific inquiry. Above all, don’t try to do it in my magazine.”
“I don’t believe this!” She turned her back on him and stalked across the room to fume in front of an Oriental print. “So, I suppose you want me to soften it, or some such nonsense.” She raised a warning finger. “I don’t believe in that. And I didn’t think you did either; call pseudo-science pseudo-science—that was the Skeptical Review’s ideal.”
“This is beyond softening, Lissa. Your methods, the tactics you espouse—”
She spun to face him. “What’s wrong with my tactics?”
He covered his face, rubbing at a headache that was trying to gain a foothold in his brain pan. He groaned.
“What do you mean, ‘they’re low?”
“I didn’t say that, I just… groaned. I’ve got a headache.”
“Which I’m responsible for, no doubt. And I heard you, clear as a bell. You accused me of using low tactics.”
“You heard what you expected to hear. I groaned. But you’re right. They were low.” He pulled his hands away from his face and tapped the manuscript. “Infiltrating their ranks, attending their meetings, even offering to give seminars or work on the newsletter, passing yourself off as a ‘true believer’—all so you can debunk them. You advocate lying—”
“Ken, everything they stand for is a lie.”
He opened his mouth.
“And don’t you dare say ‘two wrongs don’t make a right.’ ”
“I guess I don’t need to—you just took the words right out of my mouth. And you’re right. It’s tantamount to lying on behalf of the truth. I find that hypocritical. I certainly can’t advocate debunking agenda in the pages of the Skeptical Review.”
“Debunking is too strong a term. I was investigating.”
Ken picked up the manuscript, flipped to the last page. “ ‘Once you’ve gained yourself a reputation as a true believer, it may be a while before the locals tumble to the fact they’ve invited a hat pin onto the Hindenberg.’ ”
She smiled. “Clever, isn’t it?”
He shook his head. “Clever debunking, Lissa. You were intentionally setting out to explode myths—having already decided they were myths. That’s bias. It’s prejudice. It is not good scientific investigation.”
“You want me to rewrite it.”
“Are you willing to lose the smug tone? Are you willing to ask questions without supplying the answers?”
“Wait a minute. Are you telling me to re-conduct my interviews, my tests?”
“Not all of them. Several of them would stand up just fine, if you reported the results more objectively. Although…”
“Although, what?” she asked warily.
“You did seem to go out of your way to make your participants… uncomfortable.”
“I used a scientific facility.”
“You subjected a woman with a verified formaldehyde allergy to the chemicals in a lab. She was, in your words, demonstrably uncomfortable.’ You cite fear of failure. Maybe it was because her mucous membranes were swelling up and her stomach was turning over. She still did better than 50 percent on the aura readings.”
“I will not redo my research. And as for the interviews and confrontations—I can’t just throw them out. They’re what gives the article punch. I will not rewrite it.”
“Fine. Then sell it to a cult-basher. I won’t print it.” He tossed the manuscript to the edge of his desk.
“Fine. Someone else will.”
“I’ve no doubt. As I said, it’s well-written.”
She snatched up the article and her notebook and tucked both under one arm. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re suited to editing a skeptical journal. Maybe the National Tattler would be more your style. Or maybe the UFO Times.” She turned and headed for the door.
Oh, great he thought. This ought to be good for about three days of silence.
“I’ll talk to you again in about a week… if you’re lucky,” she said, and was gone.