The Roberts Read online

  He thought of work, which had given him such pleasure in the past and which now was so problematic. He thought of Felicity and Claire, both of whom had left him because of his inability to find the proper balance between work and love. Or more precisely, between love of work and love of them. A fine distinction: love, he had found, did not parcel out easily. When it flowed, it had a tendency to overflow, it spilled from one cup effortlessly into another. When there was love, there was enough for all…at least this had been his experience. But not theirs, which made him wonder if perhaps he was confusing love with something else. Euphoria? Hunger? Self-indulgence? Perhaps he had loved, not too much, but too much on his own terms.

  It was humbling, especially because he never intended to cause hurt or suffering. But it did seem to happen, and it hurt him in return, and if he could have changed, he would have, and now, by a stroke of luck, or fate, it seemed he had. Finding fault with women was a way to keep from getting involved with them. It was a way to protect them from him, the moral equivalent of wearing a condom. A man had to feel good about wearing a condom. He had to feel good about having morals. And Robert did.

  Unfortunately, there remained the problem of not being able to work. Of lacking motivation, inspiration and desire. And to that there seemed but one solution. For while men were the builders, women were the miracle workers. And so he pressed on.

  The weeks went by, stretched into months. He lost track of the number of ads he answered, and of the women who’d answered his, and of dates he’d been on, and of emails and phone calls. He had never met so many women in so short a time in his life—wonderful women, exceptional women, nightmares—and never felt so discouraged. It was Julian, finally, who came to his rescue. There was only so much a friend could take before intervening.

  They met over coffee in a diner by the waterfront, where waitresses on roller skates had once served drivein cars. Time had not been kind to the building, and in the current frenzy of urban renewal it ran the risk of getting a makeover, when what it needed was either to be razed completely or left to die a slow, dignified death of its own funky charm. Julian wore his signature black turtleneck, pleated polyester pants and tasseled loafers. His walnut-colored hair half hid his ears, softening the boxy geekiness of his thick-framed glasses. Being a lab rat with little money to begin with, he had suffered less than Robert financially when Pakki-flex imploded. Being constitutionally optimistic (a near pre-requisite in the world of science and particularly of the lab), he had suffered less emotionally as well. He had followed Robert’s decline with both sympathy and chagrin, offering various well-meaning and sometimes outlandish pieces of advice culled from chat rooms, blogs, immersible realities and the like, where he got much of his information, including information about the opposite sex. Women themselves, in the flesh, were more a mystery to him. But all mysteries, sooner or later, yielded to science and technology. This he firmly believed. And science and technology were nothing if not concrete.

  “I know a guy,” he said.

  A guy?

  “Used to work in the lab next door to me. Now he works for himself. Bit of an oddball. But he knows what he’s doing.”

  “What’s that?”

  “He’s a parthenogeneticist.”

  Good God, thought Roger. Had it come to that? The idea had crossed his mind, but it seemed too dangerous and risky. It also raised questions about his own august self. In a word, it was humiliating.

  “I don’t think so, Julian.”

  “Why not?”

  He listed his reasons.

  Julian suggested that he was over-reacting. The process succeeded much more often than not. Though of course there were no guarantees.

  Robert was skeptical. He was also intrigued. “Does he have a catalogue?”

  “No. No catalogue.”

  “But he has his own line.”

  Julian shook his head. “He only does custom work. Like you. He’s not into mass production.”

  “Not exactly like me.”

  Julian shrugged. “Build a house, build a man.”

  And Robert thought, why not? He’d give it a try. He’d make a man, by which, of course, he meant a woman. What did he have to lose?

  The man’s name was Stanović. He worked out of his home, a loft on the second floor of a warehouse in what was once the industrial part of town. It was meant to be a live/work space for artists, but few artists could afford it. Stanović, who worked in the medium of flesh and blood, could. He met Robert on the street, checked his ID to make sure he was who he said he was, then led him through a heavy steel door up a flight of wooden stairs that creaked beneath his weight, most of which was centered in his chest and shoulders, which were broad as barrels, and his ample belly, which strained like a racehorse against the rein of his belt. He had a pale complexion, close-cropped hair and sunken snow blue eyes. Beefy forearms and fingers fat as sausages. Had they passed on the street, Robert would have pegged him for a wrestler, a policeman or a bureaucrat.

  At the top of the stairs he stopped and drew a folded white handkerchief from his pocket, using it to wipe the beads of sweat on his forehead and neck that had accumulated from the climb. He then proceeded down a short hall to a door that opened into a room that had all the hallmarks of a bachelor pad. Against one wall was a seaweed green velveteen couch and beside it a faux leather recliner. Together they faced a plasma flat screen the size of a hockey rink. A low glass table littered with dog-eared magazines, stained papers and plastic discs sat top a shag carpet the color of mud. There were two other doors in the room, one in a long wall that did not reach the ceiling and seemed more a partition. Stanović made his way to the other door, where he paused, then, speaking over his shoulder as though to avoid the effort or inconvenience of turning, offered Robert a beer. It was early in the day, and Robert was not an early drinker, but in the interest of bonhomie he accepted. Stanović disappeared, and a minute later returned with two tall, frosted glasses. He handed one to Robert.

  “Talking is thirsty work,” he said, presumably a forecast, for as yet he had said scarcely anything. Lifting his glass, he took a long hard swallow. “You have the advance?”

  He spoke with an accent. German? No, warmer, more southerly. Balkan maybe. Robert, who had built a hospital in the ruins of Sarajevo, handed him an envelope, which contained a tidy sum in mostly borrowed cash, the first, if all went well, of three installments.

  “Maybe I should tell you why I’m here,” he said.

  Stanović glanced in the envelope and at the same time raised a hand to silence him. “Please. I will speak first. Afterwards, if you have something to say, you will tell me. We will listen to you.”

  Another pull on the glass, followed by a fastidious, almost dainty, patting of the lips with his handkerchief.

  ”First, I know why you’re here. There is only one reason why anyone is here, including myself. Second, you must prepare yourself for serious work. We do not go on picnic. No, my friend. The harder you work, the better the result, the more satisfactory. Anything less and there will be disappointment. That I promise you. One hundred percent promise, and I tell you why. It’s easy to make someone from scratch. No big deal. No problem. It was easy enough the old-fashioned way, and it’s easier now. The trick is to make the right someone, and the trick of that is to know what you want. And that, my friend, takes work. And why is that? I tell you. Because you may know what you want, but then you may only think you know, and on deeper inspection, deeper searching of your soul, you may discover that you don’t know nearly enough. So that is what we work on, what you know and what you don’t know you know and what you need to know, and what you think you know but is really mistake. And I tell you why we do this, because if we don’t, we end up with a mediocre product. Something shiny maybe, but it scratches in a minute, and in a minute more it falls apart. And then who’s happy? Not you. Not me. What a waste, eh? It belongs in the swimming pool.” He paused, then gave a chuckle. “You know what I mean, the swimming
pool?”

  Robert shook his head.

  “You look around, you’ll see. People swimming, going nowhere. Like fishes in tank. And not just these fishes, but what they swim in. It’s a pool…” He hesitated, knitting his brows. “Can I say a cesspool? A cesspool of mediocre fishes.”

  It was unclear to Robert what he was referring to. The world at large? The masses, disdain for which was not uncommon among professionals, especially thwarted, marginalized ones? Or did he mean his own particular world, the world of parthenogenetics, and if so, Robert wondered how he could say, much less know, that most creations were second-rate. Supposedly, man-made, designer humans were indistinguishable from natural-born ones, but maybe they weren’t. Maybe there was some telltale sign that was obvious to someone in the business, hidden to everyone else. Now that he thought about it, there were designer lines of humans, like designer shoes or designer clothes, with certain recurring and recognizable features and traits. Viewed separately, in the company of natural humans, a single such individual might not stand out, but viewed together, as in a collection, they were clearly related, variations on a theme, the theme of utility, say, athleticism, prurience, geekiness, smarts.

  “I have no interest in making automatons,” Stanović said with contempt. “If what you want is that, someone to do what you say and nothing else, to wait your table, take off your shoes and socks and then her panties, you go to someone else. Same deal if all you want is pretty face. Anyone can make this person. It’s hack work. I have better things to do with my time.”

  What those things were he did not disclose, and the tenor of his voice did not invite inquiry. He finished what remained of his beer, which seemed to calm him.

  “Here you get better than that. More spirit, more roundness, more character, more unique. An original person. You know what I mean original? Someone you want to see more than once. Again and again and again you want to see this person. Maybe you can’t think of anything else.”

  Robert liked the idea, though it sounded a bit extreme. “I’m not sure I want to be obsessed.”

  Stanović shrugged, as though this were out of his hands.

  “I want to love her,” Robert said simply, “and I want her to love me. And inspire me. And not be hurt by me. That’s key.”

  “You want someone impervious to hurt?”

  “Not impervious, but resilient, and strong.”

  “You want a woman.”

  “Yes. Of course. I’ve said that.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize that it was not a question so much as a recommendation.

  “Women are difficult.”

  “To make?”

  “Yes.”

  “More difficult than men?”

  “Men are difficult too. We do better with women. We have a higher success rate. Better results.”

  “Why is that?” asked Robert, and for this received a lecture in the fundamentals of filigree mo-bi, which Stanović was more than happy to dispense and which quickly blossomed into something so labyrinthine and obtuse that it could have come from the workshop, the very kitchen, of Mother Nature herself. Robert was impressed, though truth to tell, he had his own theory, which, frankly, he preferred. To wit: women had so many strengths to begin with, so many virtues and so few inherent flaws, that in making one, you were bound to be close to perfection. This seemed only common sense. How close depended, he presumed, on making as few mistakes as possible.

  Upon hearing this, Stanović stared at him, as though wondering what hole this sad, benighted creature had crawled out of, and whether to repeat himself and whether it would matter.

  “You are an architect?”

  “Yes.”

  “You build for people?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Women as well as men?”

  “Yes. Both.”

  “And you talk to them, these women? You meet with them? You get to know?”

  “Of course.”

  He seemed to find this hard to believe, given what he had just heard, but he had a scientist’s curiosity, and he studied Robert as he might a conundrum or thorny biologic puzzle. Slowly, his expression changed from incredulity to amusement and then, remarkably, appreciation.

  He raised his glass. “We make a toast. To you, my friend, and all you desire. To beauty and truth. To everything you want and nothing you don’t want. To satisfaction and hard work.”

  It took three weeks, three grueling, intensive, invasive, exhausting weeks. Robert had no idea how much he would be called upon to unearth, process and decide. He thought he knew, for example, how he wanted his creation to look, which was the easiest part, the appearance, and he did, but he didn’t know nearly enough. After spending just a few hours with Stanović, he understood what it was like for his own clients, trying to put an idea and a vision—for a dream house, say—into words. His personal vision had eyes and lips and limbs and shape, but she was also a feeling, and this feeling, rather than sharpening her features, made her harder to define, as if to observe her too closely changed her, blurred her, made her more intangible and abstract. It was not that she was vague but rather elusive, her personality most of all. Affectionate, cheerful, playful, intelligent…these were words he used to describe her, and they did and at the same time missed the mark. It wasn’t that they lacked meaning but that their meaning was relative, subjective, open to interpretation and therefore imprecise. It was like being a foreigner with a limited vocabulary. A million different women could be spun from his words.

  Stanović was used to this in his clients and had a number of ways to get a more detailed, exact and specific picture. Some of these involved instruments that he attached to the body. Some involved deep, internal probes. He used drugs to unlock Robert’s unconscious and other drugs to keep that unconscious from babbling incomprehensibly, to prevent it, in effect, from running amok. He used retrievable cortical and limbic retroviruses to identify and reproduce embedded engrams, and memory magnets to extract fluid neuronal circuits and fixed ganglionic nexi, the so-called “cloudburst webs.” His goal was to get at Robert’s core, the essence of who he was, and work from that, inside out, as it were. This required a certain shaking up of the parts. As an architect Robert understood: a building got built from the bottom up, not the top down. Even so, he dreaded these sessions. They left him feeling raw, weak and disoriented, and it took him days to recover and feel himself again.

  As if this weren’t enough, he had homework to do as well. Chins and cheeks and hips and breasts and skin tone and skin type and hair and height and weight and musculature to look at, gaits and postures and mannerisms to peruse, voices to listen to, laughter to hear, smells—of the mouth, the neck, the belly, the privates—to sample. But hardest of all, by far, were the personalities, which he was given to assess and which he also concocted on his own and had to interact with in simulated sessions. Hundreds of them, until his head was ready to burst, thousands, like swatches of paint, selecting, rejecting, revising, until he could barely tell one from the other and was ready to accept—or dismiss—them all.

  Finally, though, the work was done. Stanović had what he needed, and Robert had nothing more to do but wait. He passed the time walking around the city, making a circuit of its neighborhoods and taking in all the new construction, which stirred up feelings of excitement, envy and appreciation, along with the deep and chilling fear of being left behind. He loved his city and longed to build something for it, something timeless and fine. It seemed impossible that he never would, much less that he would never design and build any building whatsoever, except for the fact that he wasn’t able to, and no one was asking for him. With Stanović there was hope, but it was a sliver of hope. Still, with each passing day he found himself clinging to it ever more fiercely.

  At last the call came, and as before, Stanović met him at the front door. He looked tired and out of sorts, and save for a curt “Come in,” he didn’t speak. For a second Robert panicked, fearing something awful. His mind ra
ced as they climbed the stairs. Trapped behind Stanović’s plodding, silent bulk, he had ample time to second-guess himself and spin disturbing fantasies.

  Finally they reached the top and then the living room, where Stanović told him to wait, disappearing through the door in the long wall. The room smelled of stale beer. There were empty bottles on the table. The television was on but muted. On the couch was a rumpled yellow blanket and a lumpy pillow.

  A minute later Stanović returned.

  “She’s a little shy. They’re all a little shy at first.”

  He called through the door, and at length, noiselessly, she appeared. Stanović did not attempt to hide his pleasure. Nor his admiration. All trace of weariness was gone.

  Robert took her in at a single glance and opened his mouth to say something—introduce himself, welcome her, anything—but found he couldn’t speak. She was too beautiful to speak to. Stunningly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. Composure was simply out of the question.

  “Meet Grace,” said Stanović, the name that Robert had chosen for her. He held out his hand, palm upturned, and with a patriarch’s pride and the gentlest, most tender of gestures, presented her. “Grace, meet Robert.”

  two

  It is one of the imponderables of a man’s life that not every woman he loves sees fit to love him back. Robert loved Grace from the moment he laid eyes on her, but this was no guarantee that Grace would love Robert. Stanović had warned him of this, and several anxious weeks passed before he could say with any certainty that she did. How did he know? How does any man know? By the looks she gave him, by the lift in her voice when he entered the room, by the way she couldn’t keep her hands to herself or take her eyes off him. And by the words she whispered, and how, like a colt, she nuzzled against his neck, and like a rabbit, she nibbled his ear. And by the happiness he felt, the elation, the euphoria, the relief.