Her eyes looked back questioningly at him. Green eyes, the same deep shade of green as his own. She looked quite beautiful, lying there. It was strange how he had not noticed it before. That he had seen it and yet not noted it.
"I don't understand . . ." she began, "I woke up and you were sitting next to me at the Cafe Burgundy. I'd had too much to drink and I'd fallen asleep. I... I had been dreaming. We were talking. . . something about colors. . . and then I turned and looked across at the pagoda. You said something about all the birds escaping, and, yes, across the Green, I could see that it was so. There were birds flying everywhere. They'd broken out of their cage. Then, as I watched, one flew right at me, its wings brushing against my face even though I moved my head aside to avoid it. You were laughing. I turned and saw that you had caught the bird in your hands. I reached across and . . ."
She stopped, her brow wrinkling, her eyes looking inward, trying to fathom what had happened., "And?"
She looked straight at him. "And then I woke up again. I was here." She tried to shake her head and was again surprised to find it encased, her movements re-
strained. She stared at the webbing trailing from her neck, as if it should dissolve, then turned, looking back at him.
"I shouldn't be here, should I? I mean, I woke up once, didn't I? So this. . ." confusion flickered in her face and her voice dropped to an uncertain whisper, "this must be a tape."
He smiled. "Good," he said softly. "That's just what I wanted to hear."
He moved around her and began to unfasten the connections, working quickly, methodically, his touch as sure and gentle as a surgeon's.
"I don't follow you, Ben. Which was which. 1 mean, this is real now, isn't it? But that part in the cafe . . ."
He looked down into her face, only a hand's width from his own.
"That was the tape. My tape. The thing I've been working on these last four months."
She laughed, still not understanding. "What do you mean, your tape?"
He undipped the band and eased it back, freeing her neck. "Just what I said." He began to massage her neck muscles, knowing from experience what she would be feeling with the restraint gone. "I made it. All that part about the cafe."
She looked up at him, her head turned so that she could see him properly, her nose wrinkled up. "But you can't have. People don't make tapes. At least, not like that. Not on their own. That thing before—that cartoonlike thing. That was a pai pi, wasn't it? I've heard of them. They used to have dozens of people working on them. Hundreds sometimes."
"So I've been told."
He moved behind her, operating the stirrup controls, lowering her slowly to the floor. Then he climbed into the frame above her, untaping the lines of wire and releasing the pads from her flesh one by one, massaging the released flesh gently to stimulate the circulation, every action carried out meticulously, as if long re-hearsed.
"I don't like teams," he said, not looking at her. Then, squatting, he freed the twin pads from her nipples, gently rubbing them with his thumbs. They rose, aroused by his touch, but he had moved on, working down her body, freeing her from the harness.
"I set myself a problem. Years ago. I'd heard about pai pi and the restrictions of the form, but I guess I realized even then that it didn't have to be like that. Their potential was far beyond what anyone had ever thought it could be."
"I still don't follow you, Ben. You're not making sense."
She was leaning up on her elbows now, staring at him. His hand rested on the warmth of her inner thigh, passive, indifferent to her, it seemed. She was still con-fused. It had been so real. Waking, and then waking again. And now this—Ben, crouched above her, his hand resting on her inner thigh, talking all this nonsense about what everyone knew had been a technological dead end. She shook her head.
His eyes focused on her, suddenly aware. "What's the matter?"
"I still don't understand you, Ben. It was real. I know it was. The bird flying at me across the Green, the smell of coffee and cigars. That faint breeze you always get sitting there. You know, the way the air circulates from the tunnels at the back. And other things, too."
She had closed her eyes, remembering.
"The faint buzz of background conversation. Plates and glasses clinking. The faint hum of the factories far below in the stack. That constant vibration that's there in everything." She opened her eyes and looked at him pleadingly. "It was real, Ben. Tell me it was."
He looked back at her, shaking his head. "No. That was all on the tape. Every last bit of it."
"No!" She shook her head fiercely. "I mean, I saw you there. Sitting there across from me. It was you. I know it was. You said . . ." She strained to remember, then nodded to herself. "You said that I shouldn't be afraid of them. You said that it was their instinct to fly."
"I said that once, yes. But not to you. And not in the Cafe Burgundy."
She sat up, her hands grabbing at his arms, feeling the smooth texture of the cloth, then reaching up to touch his face, feeling the roughness of his cheeks where he had yet to shave. Again he laughed, but softly now.
"You can't tell, can you? Which is real. This or the other thing. And yet you're here, Catherine. Here, with me. Now."
She looked at him a moment longer, then tore her gaze away, frightened and confused.
"That before," he said, "that thing you thought happened. That was a fiction. My fiction. It never happened. / made it."
He reached out, holding her chin with one hand, gently turning her face until she was looking at him again. "But this—this is real. This now." He moved his face down to hers, brushing her lips with his own.
Her eyes grew large, a vague understanding coming into her face. "Then . . ." But it was as if she had reached out to grasp at something, only to have it ' vanish before her eyes. The light faded from her face. She looked down, shaking her head.
He straightened up, stepping out from the frame. Taking his blue silk pau from the bed he turned back, offering it to her.
"Here, put this on."
She took the robe, handling it strangely, staring at it as if uncertain whether it existed or not; as if, at any moment, she would wake again and find it all a dream.
He stood there, watching her, his eyes searching hers for answers, then turned away.
"Put it on, Catherine. Put it on and I'll make some coffee."
SHE lay THERE on his bed, his blue silk pan wrapped about her, a mound of pillows propped up behind her, sipping at her coffee.
Ben was pacing the room, pausing from time to time to look across at her, then moving on, gesturing as he talked, his movements extravagant, expansive. He seemed energized, his powerful, athletic form balanced between a natural grace and an unnatural watchfulness, like some strange, magnificent beast, intelligent beyond mere knowing. His eyes flashed as he spoke, while his hands turned in the air as if they fashioned it, molding it into new forms, new shapes.
She watched him, mesmerized. Before now she had had only a vague idea of what he was, but now she knew. As her mind cleared she had found herself awed by the immensity of his achievement. It had been so real. . .
He paused beside the empty frame, one hand resting lightly against the upright.
"When I said I had a problem, I didn't realize how wrong it was to think of it as such. You see, it wasn't something that could be circumvented with a bit of technical trickery; it was more a question of taking greater pains. A question of harnessing my energies more intensely. Of being more watchful."
She smiled at that. As if anyone could be more watchful than he.