The Roberts Read online

  Dinner was a tour de force of taste and presentation, and for dessert there was a frosted heart-shaped cake. When it came, with a single candle planted in its center, the other diners glanced over, most taking care not to stare. Robert invited Grace to make a wish.

  She gave him a blank look.

  “It’s a tradition,” he explained.

  She didn’t know of it, which was no great cause for alarm. There were gaps in her knowledge, like missing teeth in an otherwise fully functional comb. A simulated upbringing, however thorough, did not compare to a real one, which in dedicated hands was known to be error- and trouble-free.

  “I don’t have a wish.”

  “Everybody has a wish.”

  “I have what I want.”

  “Everything?”

  It was a game. Now she understood. A strange one, where he seemed to be inviting her dissatisfaction.

  “Do you love me?” she asked.

  “More than I can say.”

  ”Then yes. The answer’s yes. I do.”

  Between them the candle’s flame burned soft and straight, while little blobs of rosy wax accumulated at its base, so that it seemed that a hole was appearing in the heart.

  “Everybody’s waiting,” Robert whispered.

  She glanced around. He was right. The room seemed poised for her reply, the men especially, as though they had more at stake than the women, a greater need to believe in this granting-of-wish tradition. It was also possible—and from their avid expressions she thought it likely—that what they really desired, these men, desired most, was that the women believe in wishes-come-true.

  “You’re asking for something I don’t have,” she said softly.

  “No wishes? No hopes? No dreams? Not one?”

  She hoped for happiness. She hoped for fun. She hoped that he would stop pestering her and that love would rule the world.

  “Make a wish, Grace.”

  To get him off her back she did. “There. Shall I tell you?”

  His hand shot up, palm outward, as though to ward her off. “No. Don’t. It won’t come true if you do.” A moment passed, and then he smiled. “But I think I know.”

  “I hope you do.”

  They held each other’s eyes, and Grace found she had a second wish: that the two of them be spirited away instantly. She wanted to be alone with him and away from the others, and she chided herself for being greedy.

  “The candle,” said Robert.

  “Yes?”

  “Blow it out.”

  She did, to hearty applause.

  Later, he took her home, halting just inside the door, where he wrapped her in his arms and kissed her. “I love you, Grace. Happy birthday. It’s time, I do believe, for your present.”

  “I have a present for you.”

  “For me? Why?”

  “Because I love you too, silly.”

  He shook his head in wonder and affection. Who was he to deserve such a woman? How lucky could one man be? He asked her to close her eyes, then left the room. A minute later, heart thumping, he returned with his gift. He took a moment to admire it and another to rid himself of a final, lingering doubt, the smallest—really, the most trivial—of misgivings.

  “You can open them now.”

  She did, then did more, her eyes widening, her jaw dropping, her hands rising to her mouth. She made a sound. Amazement vied with disbelief.

  “Surprise!” cried Robert.

  “It’s…it’s… “

  “What?”

  Him. It was him. Same face, same body, same everything.

  Robert was beaming. “Happy birthday.”

  “Happy birthday,” his duplicate repeated in the exact same voice.

  Grace was speechless.

  “Do you like it?”

  She nodded.

  The absence of audible appreciation suggested that, in fact, she might not. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You don’t.”

  “No…no…I do. I love it. It’s perfect. It’s just…”

  “What?”

  Funny. It was funny. Hilarious even. She wanted to laugh but of course she couldn’t. Instead she said, in all honesty, “it’s a beautiful gift. You know me better than anyone.”

  “But?”

  “But nothing. You’re amazing, Robert. It’s like you read my mind.”

  “Did I?”

  “Like a telepath.” She had to deal with her own doubt now, which had not been present previously. Fortunately, having been built, on general principle, to resist doubt’s corrosive influence, this did not take long.

  “My turn now,” she announced brightly. “Wait here.”

  She started out of the room, then stopped, gesturing toward the duplicate. “Does he have a name?”

  “Ask him,” said Robert.

  ”Do you have a name?”

  “Robert,” he said.

  Grace stared at him, then at Robert, then back. “You wait too.”

  “We’ll have to work on the name,” Robert said after she’d gone.

  His duplicate was about to reply, when Grace returned. “Close your eyes. Both of you.”

  “You didn’t have to get me anything,” said Robert. “You really didn’t. Not on your birthday.”

  “I like presents,” said the other Robert.

  “No peeking,” said Grace, bringing her gift into the room. Like his, hers wasn’t cheap, but at the time she ordered it, then picked it up, it seemed worth every penny. Now, with Robert’s gift to her, it seemed worth a little less, and also, paradoxically, a little more.

  “You can open them now.”

  Robert did, then gasped.

  Robert No. 2 burst out laughing.

  As instructed, Grace’s gift stepped forward and extended his hand to Robert. “Hello. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  Several seconds passed before Robert did the decent thing and took the hand.

  “What fun,” said Robert No.2.

  “I didn’t get your name,” said Robert.

  “Let me guess,” said No.2.

  “Quiet,” barked Robert, and for an instant the two of them locked eyes.

  “Please don’t fight,” said Grace.

  The new addition seemed to share her sentiment. He placed himself between the two men, and to Grace the effect was overwhelming. Her eyes seemed to be playing tricks on her. She felt dizzy.

  “I’m sorry,” the new man told Robert. “I should have introduced myself right off.” He paused, then grinned. “But really. Do I have to?”

  three

  Strictly speaking, the three of them were not identical. Robert No.2, who insisted on being called No.1, differed from Robert No.3, who didn’t care what he was called as long as everybody got along, for the simple reason that he was created by the original Robert and designed to be as close to the original as possible. No.3 started out with the same raw materials but was created by Grace (who herself was created by Robert), and while she did everything in her not inconsiderable power to duplicate her man, there were differences. Some were unavoidable; others, cautiously planned. And while she never would have been so crass or unfeeling or boastful to speak it aloud, in the quiet of her heart she did allow herself a touch of pride in having made, in her modest opinion, improvements.

  No.3 was more talkative than 1 or 2. He was more accommodating, more domestic, more attuned to others than himself. Good for a chat over tea or coffee. Good for a drive. Good for watching TV sit-coms or dramas with.

  No.2 was more project-oriented. He liked to do things more than talk about them. He had ambitions. He liked to stay busy. Barely a day went by that he didn’t wake up with a plan.

  The two of them shared a room and got along surprisingly well. More importantly, they got along with Grace, and she got along with them. They enjoyed each other as a threesome, and Grace enjoyed each of them individually. She and No. 3 liked to talk—about books, music, people, almost anything—and go for walks, or else stay at
home and putter around the house. She and No.2 (or No.1, as he would have it) also went on walks, but they were walks with a purpose, more along the lines of outings with a clear end in mind. They went to movies. They attended public events. One of these led them to join a political campaign. Another, to enroll in a tennis class.

  Initially, she’d been concerned that she would feel overwhelmed. And certainly she was busy, sometimes too busy, but the Roberts could and did take care of themselves. Her real concern was that Robert would feel this way, that he would have a negative reaction to the sudden doubling of bodies in the house, feel cramped, or worse, claustrophobic. But after several months there was little sign that he did. True, he tended to avoid the men, but this was because, he explained, they were meant for her. They couldn’t very well do their job if he kept intruding. When they did cross paths, he was cordial, although it was always a little strange. Especially with No.2, who as often as not met him with a smug, self-satisfied grin, as though in possession of some secret joke. Robert was always a little testy and guarded around 2.

  As for letting them do their job, he was less successful than he might have been. Instead of spending less time with Grace, which his (and her) gift was expressedly meant to facilitate, he spent more, hovering around her on one pretext or another, as though the last thing in the world he wanted was to leave. It was the classic story: relieved of obligation, he felt free to be himself, and that self wanted nothing more than what it had in its possession all along. His desire for Grace was greater than ever. She had never appealed to him more.

  But work appealed to him too, and in time his attention returned to it. The men, of course, were meant for him as much as her; they were his gift too. They allowed him the freedom to work if and when and how he wanted. And what he wanted, at a certain point, was to submerge himself in work, to give himself up to it completely. And he did, surrendering in much the same way, at other times, he surrendered to women.

  Julian was back in his life, with a new pitch. Or rather a recycled version of an old one. Pakki-flex had been a disaster, and both of them had suffered, though Robert, having more invested in nearly every way, had suffered more. For a while Julian had tried to solve the problem of Pakki-flex’s instability, but eventually he gave up. In his hands, at least, it would not be solved. Shortly afterwards, he left the world of the lab altogether, exchanging it for the world of business. The rigor of science was replaced by the rigor of the marketplace. The language was different, but the skill set was similar. He had been moving in this direction for quite some time.

  He got a job with a venture capitalist firm, scouting and evaluating biotech startups. Pakki-flex remained a thorn in his side, and from time to time he thought of the buildings that had been built with it, wondering if there weren’t something that could be done with them. Most of the public ones had been torn down as either nuisances, liabilities or outright hazards, but a few of the homes, now abandoned, remained standing. Every so often some journalist with nothing better to do wrote an article about them. Most were disparaging, but recently Julian had come across something different and unusual. The writer had a background in design, and he wrote of the Pakki-flex buildings as a cultural phenomenon, objects not necessarily to be lived in or to be considered as having practical, literal use. Rather, they should be understood as figures of speech, as emblems—icons even—of a social life and need that transcended utility. A sort of biosemiotic imperative. Works of form, not function; of flux, not stasis. Works, essentially, of art.

  There were links from the article to websites with photographs of existing Pakki-flex homes, all in various stages of puckering, sloughing and weepage. The one that caught Julian’s attention was a ranch house in Southern California at the edge of the Mojave desert. Beside it was a flashing neon sign announcing tours through “The Nightmare House” by a former resident, a bona fide survivor, who had “lived through Hell.” On an adjacent plot was a standard cinder-block home with a more hastily constructed sign: “See the Amazing Three-headed Chicken!” With a click you could watch a twenty second clip of the Pakki-flex do its thing for a busload of amazed tourists and with another click order tickets. Since its inception the website had gotten an astonishing fifty thousand hits.

  Julian had stared for a long time at the screen. He made some notes, and over the course of the next few weeks he made more. He talked to people, then flew to several major cities and talked to more people: city planners, private developers, art and museum directors, philanthropic organizations. Back home he met with realtors and consulted his firm’s tax attorney. At length he put together a proposal, sat on it for a week, reworked it, waited, re-worked it again, and finally presented it to his partners. They were not wholly unprepared, having been memoed, but they were a bit taken aback by the scope of what he conceived. Being prudent men, they took a good long while getting back to him.

  When they did, Julian put in a call to Robert. He had a business proposition, and there was no one else he’d remotely considered for the job. Robert agreed to meet but warned him that, whatever it was, he wouldn’t possibly be able to accept. He had more business than he knew what to do with, including a project in Brazil and another in Dubai. Julian was unfazed, and two weeks later they met in Robert’s office. Located in the heart of town, it was spacious, neat, airy, and six-hundred feet off the ground. The view from it, to the south and east, once sweeping, had been progressively pinched by competing high-rises. The sky was now represented by vertical slits of blue. There was a shadowy quality to the light that had not been present previously, and less reason to look outside, as if the eye had been requested—indeed, had been required—to turn inward.

  After exchanging pleasantries, Julian wasted little time.

  “We need a house to house a house,” he said smoothly, concealing his pleasure at the obviously rehearsed line. He pulled a photo from his briefcase and handed it to Robert. “This house.”

  It was the Domome.

  “I thought they tore it down.”

  “Nope. Didn’t.”

  Robert stared at the photo, then looked up. “What kind of house?”

  “A big one.” Julian paused. There had been a slight alteration in his manner since his change of career. A dramatizing. He was, in addition to everything else, a salesman now.

  “A museum, Robert.”

  “A museum.”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “For the Domome. For Pakki-flex. For you, Robert. For art.”

  “An art museum.”

  “Yes. Art and architecture. The Domome will be the centerpiece.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “It’s not.”

  “No?”

  “No. Not at all.”

  Robert considered for a moment. “It’s not only ridiculous, Julian. It’s unseemly. It’s also idiotic. And, I should add, insane.”

  Julian, of course, had expected this. Robert more than anyone had been wounded by the Pakki-flex debacle, and he wouldn’t be keen on reminding people of it, much less bringing one of the actual homes back into the public eye. Never mind that the Domome, with or without Pakki-flex, was a stunning piece of architecture. It had failed as a home. An architect juggled form and function, function and form, and he succeeded only by melding both. It was almost the worst criticism imaginable for a building to be considered solely a work of art.

  This was the first hurdle for Julian, and it helped to know how much of himself Robert had put into the Domome and how hard it had been for him to see it fail. Judging by his reaction to the photograph, he was still attached to it.

  “It’s a beautiful building. It deserves to be seen. To be shown.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  ”Why do you say that? Because it has a flaw? Because it doesn’t function the way you meant it to? There’re plenty of buildings that don’t, or that did but don’t anymore. Stonehenge. The Parthenon. The Catacombs. They’ve all outlived their usefulness, but only if you de
fine usefulness in one narrow and rigid way. And who does? No one. It’s insulting to these works. They have so much to offer beside what they were built for. They’re windows into a time and place. Into art and politics and technology. They represent themselves, but they also represent a world view.”

  “You’ve been doing some reading, Julian.”

  “The Domome used to be a building, now it’s that and also a comment on buildings. It’s historically and culturally and aesthetically interesting. It doesn’t have to house people, anymore than the Baths of Caracalla have to give people baths.”

  “I’d hardly put it on a par with the Baths of Caracalla. Or any of those monuments. With all due respect to your sudden erudition.”

  “But wouldn’t you like to try your hand?”

  “At what? Building a monument to myself?”

  “To an idea, Robert. A phenomenon. A vision. Of tomorrow.”

  “So you think we should re-christen Fairchild’s Folly. Is that what you’re suggesting? Along the lines of what? Fairchild’s Future? Fairchild’s Favor to Humanity? His Forward-Thinking? The Feather in his Cap? Or maybe we should be more honest and not try to re-write history. Stick with Fairchild’s Fumble. His Failure. Fairchild’s Flop.”

  “Forget the Domome. I’m talking about something else. Something different. A new way of looking. A new perception. If you don’t want to call it a museum or a monument, fine. Don’t. Call it whatever you like. Or don’t call it anything. Call it an opportunity. A dream. A chance.”

  “As in second chance.”

  “As in chance of a lifetime.”

  It wasn’t quite that. But it wasn’t nothing.

  “All right. Tell me what you have in mind.”

  “I’m not an architect.”

  “But you have an idea.”

  Julian shrugged. “Only that it should be something special.”