The Perfect Wife
“I think the chicken came first,” you say.
“Why’s that?”
“The egg doesn’t have legs. It would still be stuck on the starting line when the chicken was crossing the finish.”
He stares at you for a second, nonplussed, before he gets it. “That’s brilliant,” he says wonderingly. “You took an age-old conundrum and turned it into wordplay. That’s fantastic.” He looks at you with all the pride of a scientist who’s just taught his favorite lab rat to juggle.
You know perfectly well what eggs are, of course, and you got the joke from the internet, but Tim didn’t know that. You’re reestablishing yourself as the pupil to his teacher. Galatea to his Pygmalion.
Over dinner he talks about his day. The company is still planning on making an offer of settlement to Lisa and the rest of the Cullen family. As to the issue of ownership, no one appears to be seizing that particular bull by the horns right now. But it seems from what Tim’s saying that this crisis has precipitated a kind of battle for the soul of Scott Robotics. It’s hardly surprising. For years Tim has surrounded himself with weak, easily led yes-men; not intentionally, but because those were the only kind who would stick with a boss like him. Now, with another domineering alpha around in the form of John Renton, they’re starting to wonder if they shouldn’t get behind Renton instead.
“I’m talking too much,” he says at last. “How was your day? Any ideas about where to look for Abbie yet?”
You shake your head. “Just questions.”
“Any I can help with?”
“Well…” You make a point of hesitating, as if you’re reluctant to even ask this. “Would you say Abbie was hypersexual sometimes?”
Tim’s eyes narrow. “Why do you ask that?”
“Nothing,” you say quickly. Then: “Just that in some of the photos, she seems to be wearing clothes that aren’t really suitable for a young mother. And I found what looked like some vibrator batteries in her pantie drawer. I’m just wondering if there might be a clue to her disappearance in that aspect of her personality.”
He’s silent for a moment. “She had quite a strongly sexual nature, that’s certainly true,” he admits. “And sometimes it did seem to me she…indulged that side of herself a little too much. But she’d settled down since she had Danny.”
You note that indulged. “But you never felt she was sexually dissatisfied?”
“Of course not,” he replies uneasily. “Why? Where’s this going?”
“Just something I wanted to double-check, that’s all.” You change the subject back to his work.
After dinner, getting up from the table, you say, “Tim, I want to talk some more about Abbie. But would you mind if I made myself more comfortable first?”
“In what way?”
You touch your cheek. “Now I know Abbie’s alive, it feels weird to be wearing her skin. Would you mind if I took it off sometimes? Just while we’re alone?”
“Well, okay.” He sounds bemused.
“I’ll be right back.”
Upstairs, you feel for the seam at the back of your head. Then, carefully, you peel away the rubbery flesh, exposing the glossy white plastic underneath. You pull it off, all the way down to your feet.
As you step out of it, you catch sight of yourself in the mirror. You remember the disgust you felt the first time you saw these white limbs, this blank, glossy face. How much has changed since then.
You reach for a bottle of perfume, then think better of it. The less feminine artifice you use, the better. You content yourself with giving your face a polish with the towel, then carefully pick off some dust and lint attracted by the static.
When you’re pristine, as shiny as a supermarket apple, you look at your reflection again.
Frankly, I’d say you’re a far better match for Tim Scott than the real Abbie could ever be. He just hasn’t realized it yet.
“Everything okay?” Tim’s voice floats up the stairs.
“Of course. I’ll be right there,” you call back.
“Now, tell me all about Abbie and you,” you say when you’re downstairs again, curling up beside him on the couch. “I want to know everything.”
57
You’d been hoping Tim would talk to you. Really talk, that is. About the cracks in his marriage, about what he and Abbie were like when everyone else had left them and they were alone. And you’d thought, in that context of honesty and intimacy, you’d begin to forge your own, individual connection with him.
But all you get is more of this unrelenting, sappy drivel about how wonderful she was. You want to scream at him to wake up, that no one’s that perfect, but of course you don’t. You nod and smile and say uh-huh and that’s nice and oh, how sweet.
Inevitably he ends up talking mostly about himself, this grand vision for humanity’s future that he and Abbie supposedly shared.
“And she changed me. There are plenty of people in Silicon Valley who think AIs will end up smarter than humans, so effectively we’ll become their puppets. And there was a time when I’d say, well, they can hardly do a worse job of running the planet than we do, so bring it on. But Abbie made me see that a society of incredible technological brilliance but no richness of human experience would be like Disneyland without children. If it hadn’t been for her, I’d never have started thinking about the whole area of machine empathy.”
“Wow,” you say. “Amazing.”
It’s a good thing you can’t yawn.
* * *
—
Eventually Tim says he needs to go to bed.
“Tonight reminded me so much of those early days with her,” he adds happily as he gets up. “Talking into the small hours about the kind of world we were going to create. I’ve really enjoyed this evening. Thank you.”
As you lie down on your own bed a quotation comes to you. There is surely nothing finer than to educate a young thing for oneself; a lass of eighteen or twenty years old is as pliable as wax.
Who said that?
You wait, and sure enough, that comes to you too. Clunk.
Adolf Hitler.
58
As you drift off, you find yourself thinking again about those websites Abbie signed up to. When you were fourteen and in junior high, the worst insult that could be directed at a girl was that she was a prude. Three years later, it was that she was a slut. The girls all called themselves feminists, but they also told each other not to sleep with a boy on the first date, not to admit how many sexual partners they’d had, not to make the first move. They claimed it was about earning a boy’s “respect” but, really, it was about proving they were respectable.