Linger Awhile

24 Artie Nussbaum

30 January 2004. OK, so I didn’t ask dumb questions. Actually, after a while I became completely involved in what I was doing and I stopped worrying about legality and morality. Like the guys who worked on the first atom bomb, I guess. Once you see that something is possible, you’re damn well going to make it happen if you can.

After I gave Irv and Grace my shopping list they handed me one: a whole blood transfusion kit. Irv put the cash in my hand for the necessaries and I got everything at Chiron Medical Supplies near Middlesex Hospital. ‘We’ll need it for when she comes out of the soup,’ said Grace.

When our preparations were complete there was nothing to do but Justine Two. Irv and Grace assured me that Justine One had been created by this procedure so we did the same thing with isolating the image, lasering it through the diffraction grating, printing the interference pattern, then reducing the pattern to its particles and putting the particles into the soup in the drum. ‘There’s our suspension of disbelief,’ said Irv.

Grace said, ‘Please don’t say, “This is the moment of truth”.’

‘I’m not sure what kind of a moment it is,’ said Irv, ‘so I’m saying nothing.’ He handed Grace the 240-volt zapper we’d rigged up. ‘You do it,’ he said to her.

Grace closed her eyes and did it. There was a flash, a primordial electrical smell and somebody belched loudly. Then there she was rising out of the soup, all black-and-white in her sopping wet western clothes: Justine Two. ‘Jesus,’ she said, ‘where’s my fucking horse? Am I supposed to walk to El Paso?’ Then she stared wildly around and clambered out of the drum so violently that the three of us had to hold it to keep from spilling the primordial soup all over Grace’s studio. As it was, there was a big puddle and Justine Two stepped into it, sat down, and belched. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I don’t see anybody I know, so what kind of party is this?’

‘It’s not a party,’ said Grace.

‘Why are you talking funny?’ said J Two.

‘I’m English,’ said Grace. ‘You’re in London.’

‘That’s a crock of shit,’ said J Two. ‘There aren’t any London locations in this picture.’

‘You’re not in a picture now,’ said Irv. ‘This is reality.’

‘That’ll be the day,’ said J Two, and she fainted and fell back into the puddle.

‘I wonder if Istvan’s Justine started out like this,’ said Grace.

‘I wasn’t there so I couldn’t say,’ said Irv.

She was really an awful-looking thing in black-and-white, and when we got her out of her wet clothes it was even worse. ‘I forgot about clothes,’ said Grace. ‘We’ll have to get her other things to wear. Underthings as well, tights, shoes, whatever.’

‘Then what?’ said Irv.

‘I don’t know yet,’ said Grace. We’d been working for a couple of weeks to bring this creature into the world but Grace was looking at it, at her I should say, as if the whole thing was totally unexpected.

‘Well,’ said Irv to Grace, ‘while you’re thinking about it you know what we have to do.’

‘I know,’ said Grace, ‘and I’ll go first. Bleed me, Artie.’

‘I don’t want to take too much,’ I said. ‘Let’s just get her into full colour so we can see where we are with this.’ Mind you, while we were doing all this the rest of London was going on as usual. Some trains were running, some weren’t. The streets were full of buses and cars and pedestrians, the pubs were full of drinkers, and we were putting blood into this thing that had climbed out of our suspension of disbelief. Great.

As J Two filled up with colour I felt a little stirring of interest. She was a good-looking woman, you had to give her that. ‘Hello, honey,’ she said as she came round. ‘Why don’t you get naked with me.’ She stuck out her tongue which was quite a long one and gave me the wettest kiss I’d ever had. She tasted like a swamp full of incontinent crocodiles. My head went round, the room tilted several different ways, and the wall opened up to let some huge hopping thing into the room. ‘Mmmmm!’ said J Two. ‘Oh yes, gimme that old-time religion, do it, do it, do it.’

‘Are you talking to me or the huge hopping thing?’ I said. ‘I don’t usually tilt this much on the first date.’

‘Artie, try to come down a little if you can,’ said Grace. ‘Justine, you’ll have to slow down if you want to hang out with us. We’re actually a pretty quiet crowd.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said J Two. ‘Who died and left you in charge, Grandma?’

‘Watch your mouth,’ said Irv.

‘Up yours, Grandad,’ said J Two.

The room was heaving around and the thing that had hopped out of the wall was making obscene gestures but I still couldn’t see its face. Maybe I’m St Anthony, I thought. Is this a temptation?