Part 8 (1/2)
”That doesn't matter!” Andrew insists. ”I mean. . . I mean it does matter, but you can't just do nothing. You can't just sit by while somebody does something wrong, and not call them on it.”
”Why not? If calling them on it doesn't make any difference. . . the next time that guy feels like slapping his daughter around, do you think he's even going to remember you?”
”No,” Mouse says, surprising herself by speaking up, ”but the girl will remember.” Andrew and Dennis both look at her, and Julie smiles.
After lunch they go back to the Reality Factory, where Mouse starts losing time again. It's not unexpected; it happens just as Julie announces that it is time for Mouse to get to work. ”OK,” Julie says, ”let's you and Dennis and I go sit down and start --”
-- and the next thing Mouse knows she is alone, crouching in the s.p.a.ce between two close-set tents. Uncertain what she is doing there, she starts to get up, but pauses when she hears two voices coming from the tent to her left. One voice is Julie's; the other is Andrew's.
”-- textbook MPD,” Julie says. ”I talked to three, maybe four different people.”
”The parade,” says Andrew. ”That's what Adam calls it.”
”The funny thing is, I might not have recognized it if I didn't know you. I might have just thought, 'Wow, she's really moody!' But once you know what to look for. . . I got an inkling right away, when she snapped at me at Rudy's. But it wasn't until I b.u.mped into her again at the bookstore that I was sure.
After she got a couple drinks in her it was really obvious.”
”You got her drunk?”
”I didn't mean to,” Julie says, sounding defensive. ”I offered to buy her a gla.s.s of wine, and then she asked for a second. And then she went and bought three more gla.s.ses on her own.”
”Julie!”
”Well what was I supposed to do? I didn't even know who was ordering those last three drinks.”
”I hope you drove her home afterwards.”
”I tried, Andrew. Really I did. She wasn't acting drunk, but she's so little, and after five gla.s.ses. .
. but she wouldn't let me give her a ride. When I pressed her on it, this new person came out who I hadn't met yet, and he said -- he was male, definitely male, and his voice was stone-sober -- he said, 'No, she's going to need her car to get to work in the morning.' And I said, 'Are you sure she should be driving after all that wine?' And he said, 'Don't worry, I'll drive her home. I've done it before.' Even then I didn't just let her -- him -- go. I said good night, pretended to walk the other way, and then turned around and followed them. I figured I'd at least see that they got to their car all right. But they didn't go straight to the car, they went into a coffee shop. So I hung around outside for as long as I could, until I had to go get my car, and they never came out, so I thought, OK, they'll be fine, they're waiting to sober up. . . I felt bad about it, Andrew, but what else could I do? It wasn't -- it wasn't like that time you got drunk.”
Andrew makes a sound that Mouse, listening through the tent fabric, cannot interpret. There is a silence. Then Andrew says: ”So you offered her a job.”
”Before she had the second gla.s.s of wine, yeah. And she said yes.”
”Who said yes?”
Julie laughs. ”Yeah, that question occurred to me, too. She gave me her home number, so I called up early the next morning, partly to double-check that she really had made it home OK, partly to see if she remembered accepting the job offer.”
”And did she?”
”Somebody did. Whoever answered the phone. But when I talked to her again on Sat.u.r.day she seemed kind of clueless, like all of a sudden she didn't remember but was trying hard not to show it. To tell you the truth, I wasn't a hundred percent sure she'd show up this morning.”
Andrew asks: ”Why did you offer her the job, Julie?”
”Why?” Julie exclaims. She says it as if she is astonished that there could be any question about the reason, but even listening through the tent wall, Mouse can tell that her surprise is faked. ”Because she's a natural programmer, that's why. At least, one of her souls is. You should have seen after lunch today, even Dennis was impressed once he saw her in action.” A pause. ”What, you don't believe me?”
”I believe she's a good programmer,” Andrew says, ”but Adam thinks there's another reason why you hired her, and I think he's right.”
Another pause.
”Well. . .”Julie says.
”Well?”
”OK,” says Julie, ”OK, OK, here's the thing. Her programming skills really are the main reason I hired her -- I'd been thinking about bringing somebody new in, at least part-time, for a while now, so it really was in my head to sound her out about a job, even before I made the connection about the MPD.
That's the G.o.d's honest truth, Andrew. But when I did make the connection, I thought. . .”
”What?”
”See, the thing is, she doesn't know. I mean, some of her people know, obviously, like the one who told me he'd drive her home, but she -- the woman you met this morning -- she doesn't know. I'm sure of it. So I thought, maybe you, you could --”
”Oh, Julie. . . this is a bad idea.”
”I remember you telling me what it was like for your father, back before he built the house.
Before he knew. Like living in chaos, you said. Well. . . that must be what it's like for her too, right? Like living in chaos.”
”Probably. But Julie --”
”So I would think, having lived through that experience yourself, you would want to help --”
”I didn't live through that experience myself,” Andrew says. ”My father did. And neither one of us is a psychiatrist, which is what she needs.”
”OK, fine, but how's she going to get what she needs, if she doesn't even know --”
”If she doesn't know, it's probably because she's not ready to know. And trying to force the knowledge on her could do more harm than good.”
”You're saying she's better off being ignorant of her condition?”
”I'm saying that if you upset her by trying to tell her something about herself that she doesn't want to hear, she won't hear it -- she'll call out another soul to protect her from the information. And if you keep upsetting her, the protector may decide you're a threat, and try to get her away from you. Only she won't know what's going on -- she'll just wake up one day with a new job, maybe even living in a new city, and she'll have to cope with that change without understanding why it happened.”
”Well,” Julie says, sounding reproached. ”I wasn't. . . I'm not suggesting you should just drop it on her. My idea was that you'd get to know her first, make friends, then maybe share your own history with her. Tell her what things were like for your father and the others before the house got built --”
”Describe the symptoms?”
”Well. . . yes, actually. You could talk about how your father used to lose time, tell her about those lists he used to keep. . . and I mean, don't push, but if she says to you, 'Hey, that sounds like my life,' then --”
”I still don't think it's a very good idea, Julie. And I really wish you would have asked me about this before you hired her. I mean, speaking of dropping things on people. . . you've known about this for a week already, but the first I heard about it was this morning, from Dennis.”
”I know, I know. . . I should have told you. I almost did, but then I thought, I didn't want to prejudice your thinking.”
” 'Prejudice my thinking'? What does that mean?”
”It means. . . I wanted to see what would happen if you met her without being told about the MPD in advance. If you'd pick up on it without me pointing it out.”
”But you said it was obvious. Were you worried that maybe you were wrong, that she wasn't multiple after all?”