Did he?

Yes. Me too.

That’s the general tenor of it?

If you’ve grasped the general tenor of it you’re way ahead of me. He’d talk about science but he would usually get it wrong. He liked to quote but he would get that wrong too. He’d sometimes affect accents but they were pretty bad. Or he’d quote passages from texts that I’m pretty sure didnt exist. There was a book on female sexuality called The Damp and the Angry that he cited several times. Try looking that up. He would talk about upcoming acts. Which never materialized. Quaint phrasing.

Acts.

Yes.

What kind of acts?

Things he would put together. Vaudeville acts. Chautauquas. That never showed up of course. Things like The Gypsy from Poughkeepsie. Or The Barnfowl Follies featuring the Rooster from Worcester. Coming attractions that never arrived. If I brought it up he’d pace up and back and wave his flippers around. He said that you could hardly expect these high-end acts to appear at the snap of a finger. He’d try and snap his fingers but of course he didnt have any and he’d just sort of flap his flippers.

What else.

Nothing much. He’d wind up spouting some sort of gibberish. It would be nice to think that there was actual data encoded in these spiels but I’ve been listening to them for years and Turing couldnt untangle them. We did actually have a minstrel show early on. When I was twelve. They announced it as the menstrual show. In honor of. All of it wretched beyond telling. Most of the time I’d just curl up in bed and work on math problems. Sometimes I’d look up and everybody would be gone except him. Still pacing. He’d go over the books on my shelf and suggest further reading. All of it nonsense of course. Some of it funny. Probably not to him. I certainly never saw him laugh. Just this bogus yukking he would do. I told him once that he was wasting his time. That I wanted to be a warrior. Not a being of the spirit but of the flesh. I was a born classicist and my heroes were never saints but killers. He would look quite serious and then hold forth with a diatribe concerning the longheld strongholds of rugmold.

Did you come to see him as something of a guardian? That’s an odd question. I suppose.

I think in the end I came to see him as what I was left with. That’s not very reassuring is it? Well. No. It’s not.

Do you ever have dreams about him?

As in whether his ersatz reality might speak against his admission to my dreamscape?

Something like that. Ersatz reality?

You can call it something else.

Do you have troubling dreams?

Is there some other kind?

Do you?

Yes. I have troubling dreams.

Any thoughts about that?

Sure. This little slut has thoughts about everything. And opinions, dont forget.

Is that me?

No. Just me.