Like light going on, I suppose, well, sure, she must've got hold of her tap root. Got it in some longish bubble bath at that cedar- shingled wreck of an apartment building they were in, over on Dover Street.

   Yes, well, I suppose that was it. Click you see, the light goes on, it simply goes on inside, and she'd be there nesting in her claw- footed, chipped-enamel bathtub over in that dump, taking time with a tepid soak.

   Yes, I suppose her brain worked that way. She slides down in the water sort of, to get her hair underneath those crackling bubbles; and like, she's pushing knees up at the same time, cooling their caps in the air. I suppose that wasn't very luxurious, not really; but perhaps it was just, you know, well, absurdly conducive to ideas, to really strange ideas. And, you know, she must've been wondering something like, well, like if her ancestors were midgets or something. Hell, sure, it would've been just like that, just like her to think that. Why were they all so tiny? She must've asked herself this; and then, on goes the light and she's thinking, thinking quite perceptively you see, that it was everyone else, too, not just yours, you know - eh? Then, of course, she'd belly laugh, make the water slosh over the side. She has a hell of a sense of humor, does old Jean. He made you small, she'd think, small enough for a proper bubble bath in an old- fashioned, claw-footed tub like this one. Yes, she must have thought that; and so, probably, she also must've thought they, the small ancestors, yes, that they actually must have invented it, the claw-foot that is, as a needed luxury. Thank you God, she must have thought then, on their behalf, and well, sure, we'll do it your way, as usual. Maybe you could invent a bubble shower! Yes, well, who knows, what with everybody getting so much bigger, maybe you really could do it. She must've thought that.

     But the light wasn't really on yet, no, I don't suppose so, not just yet, not from that little bit of thinking. No, I don't suppose it was; but I do suppose she must've been thinking all along, well, of course, she must have been thinking that, someday, someone would probably do that, be motivated by God to do it, who would not of course do it Himself. Every-thing progresses just like that she must've thought, under God. It did, and it couldn't do it otherwise - even if you had money!

     So that was how she got onto the subject of God. Yes,of course! So she must've laughed to herself then. Probably almost giggled right out loud, I suppose. Maybe it wasn't such a good tub-soak there in that old claw-foot, and she must actually have been struggling with it, too, trying to evade all the rest of it with that sense of humor; and at least she had that to fall back on all right. But she was struggling with the whole damned apartment thing, and even while she hated to admit having to hate it, she nevertheless did hate it, plenty; and there were certain issues, yes, a certain amount of trouble with her "angel", her Michael, too, whom she hated to admit loving. I suppose, really, I suppose it was almost like there were reversals of some kind wired into her brain, a switchboard of comprehension; but she knew down deep inside, that it was mostly the Michael thing.

     Their apartment building (nothing but an old, converted tenement house, I suppose) - it was rather tacky inside, and certainly all weather-beaten-to-hell outside, a dingy, white- shingled, dilapidated duplex, theirs being the walk up half - yes'm, it was poorly maintained. Yes, it was just your classic, second story tenement. And yes, indeed, knowing her, well, she must've thought this slightly falling down piece-of-junk could be loosely defined as some kind of "Greek Revival", Rhode Island variety. Yes, sure, but, no, really, it was, it was still-and-all, just a fucking shack, nothing more! (She must've thought, lying there with her just nose up out of the luke warm water now, must've thought, was thinking - oh Jesus, Greek revival - imagine!) The place was nothing but a big, ripped out, wooden box. You'd squeeze up into it from a narrow staircase constructed out of what used to be some sort of a dingy closet, a non-space. Yes, and she must have thought it's sort of like climbing a ladder just to get in (yes, and now she had to hold her nose to keep the water out while she giggled about this little bit of insight.) Yes, yes, yes indeed, yes, and, on the far side of that big, boxy, nothing-to-look-at room were her three "lady-and-the-tiger" doorways (maybe even Roman revival there she must have thought.) One of the doors led from the main room straight into their bed-room, like an antechamber (tres sportif she must have thought, yes, maybe French revival). And another one, well, it led straight into where she was now soaking, their antique bathroom with its chipped-enamel, yes, claw- footed tub and its water rusted sink and these two damned impossibly leaky faucets, and a dumper. Hey, no telling what kind of revival that was she must've thought, it was some kind of exposed revival, whatever else it was. And then right smack in the middle, right between the other two - ta da! - a door-way to her closet space which was so damnably un- useful and shallow it couldn't hold, well, couldn't hold anything except maybe a mishmash of her odd and ends, of crockery and assorted dishes and mis-matched flat-ware. What one really needed here, she must have been thinking, was a closet revival - a bunch of revived space for outerwear, at least, yes, when not being used in the summertime, or, to say the least, yes, space big enough to hold a reasonable complement of currently non-existing wedding linens, or her imaginary fancied anything else she might have or want - what the hell, a Jean revival, she thought; but all this God damn useless tiny hole in the wall of theirs could hold was a few old Salvation Army dishes and the stainless flatware with the old tines bent and some cutlery and a few odd pots.

     Just amazing, she'd think, since her Michael is a bona fide cook! Apparently cooks don't need to have kitchens at home. They didn't have any kitchen to speak of, and I suppose they never even talked about it. She might have mentioned it; but he never did. She'd apparently decided he was such a splendid cook, he could cook bloody well without cookery. He could cook holding it in his hands over a match. What the holies, he didn't have to cook and it cooked itself! All he even had to do, really, was be there. With him, it was a regular, everyday cooking revival! When she sat up a little and looked out over the lip of her tub into the big anteroom, she could see this pathetic space where Michael really cooked at an old cooker next to the old-fashion tin sink, right in the center of their outside wall under a small, dusty window. It was like an unplanned intrusion into their room, so that you had to arrange the furniture around it like it was the centerpiece. She could see all this because, quite naturally, there was no door to the bathroom; and I suppose if there had been one it wouldn't have been apt to be closed anyway. She could see out there because it wasn't there. In each of the other two so-called doorways, she'd actually replaced an original, black- oak door with her own hanging beads, her "Hindu" revival. There was no telling what those heavy colored beads might have been made of; but she'd already noted they weren't glass. No, they were some kind of baked clay, with a little color molded right into them, mostly black and tans, then thrown into the bake oven. They didn't shine or clink. They just hung there, like long strands, and if you looked carefully, you could see right through them. So they didn't do anything about privacy, no, except, well, they did indicate a sort of right to privacy, so that there wasn't any real mystery and, from both sides of it you knew right away who was there and what they were doing at all times. You could see right into the bedroom all right, whatever might be going on too, see right where she'd had just enough room to place an ancient cast
iron bed with brass nobs and it's creaky springwires and
a worn out, discolored mattress, fluffed up with eider-down.
That made it look somehow inviting, especially through all
those damn beads. Well, she thought, maybe it actually
looked comfortable because of the beads, like an invitation
to a sleeping revival she thought. I suppose she probably
didn't want to know. She probably didn't care. Who gives
a damn about the bed, she must have thought.

     Well, you do. You do anyway, I suppose. And so she
thought since there was no closet in the bedroom, or
anywhere else for that matter, it was quite in keeping to
place your clothing in a sort of "strewery" - her own term.
That's what she called it when she mentioned it at all, which
wasn't very often. And, so what, she must have thought, he
liked that. Her humor thing was going, I suppose. He treated
it that way anyway, she thought, and she must have liked it
because she put up with it, and laughed about it. For some
reason she'd probably thought even if you have no clothes
at all, a woman has to be neat, has to neatly sort out and
keep whatever it is she has and isn't wearing. Your man
might leave them any where he gets out of them and then
just expect them to wash and dry and iron themselves and
form neat piles for the next time he wants to wear them. The
bastards never cleaned their toilets either. Some cook.

     Jean did have these clothes she never wore, and didn't
even want to, although she had already deliberately cast off practically everything else she owned in order to live the
simple life with her Michael. What an angel he must have
been, or seemed anyway. You just - cast it all off, she must
have thought, sliding down a bit more so as to inch the luke
warm water over her cool wet tummy and up onto the top of
her nipples, but it all came on back anyway.

     The bathroom door that wasn't there had been replaced
by a set of hanging beads, too, which is one reason why the
mirror never fogged up. The bathroom had a plastic shower
curtain which she could pull across the opening in order to
give privacy for this bubble bath business, or, well, for any-
thing else. It was never pulled because Michael never
showered at home, and she wasn't modest otherwise. He
was a cook and therefore, he scrubbed himself up at work
before going on duty; and then he did it afterwards, too; and
at home, he'd clean his hands in a perfunctory way before he
did his cooking without really cooking, and she never took a
bath while he was around, so there, that was even. It was
almost as if they'd decided not to see each other's bodies,
except in the dark. And then, in bed it was mostly touching
anyway, a lot of that, not seeing, and maybe not doing much
of anything together but just touching and imagining.

     Intellect lies beyond the body minefield, she thought. Yes, it
works through it, but can it ever gain in the territory, as long
as the sexual explosions keep on occurring. Your intellect lies
beyond its own sexuality, she decided; but, do you know? hm?
what keeps them apart?

     Michael of course, was a convenience for her inferiority
complex. She'd had plenty of that going for her, which made
the inferiority seem deeper and more dismal. She'd tried to
steamroller the insecurity with her brash attacks on various
kinds of formal study; but these frontal assaults had only
resulted in her giving up continuity. She'd never finished
anything, anywhere or at once. That is, she'd kept on leaving
school because she knew those pressures were always just
too great for her to handle. She had mounted the attack to such
a point that she'd felt her being was going to be inverted. She
was going to be turned inside out so that she would have no
wrapping skin at all, would just have raw intellect hanging out
like, well, she didn't know what all would hang out.

     So, she was taking another bath (another bubble bath) in
the late, lovely spring afternoon, there in their shabby, walk up apartment on Dover Street before she would dress again and
begin to wait for Michael to come home from his cooking at the
hotel - and, wh-amo! the idea struck her.

     She came bolt upright, and the water went "thwuck!" and
then began to slosh all over the tub and out on the floor. Of
course! she said. Of course! A smile as big as the wide Missouri
River had just crossed her face. Yes, that's got to be it! she said.
The idea was so strong now, fairly pulling her up on her feet, standing her right up in the slick, chipped-enamel tub with its
cloudy water and the dying bubbles swashing and splashing
and leaping up on all sides; and she quite literally jumped out
on the floor and grabbed her towel off the rusty sink in a mid-
air swipe and ran out into the big, shabby, nothing living room.
And then, she stopped cold as if even that was a part of the
discovery, and dropped the towel and stood there naked,
mouth agape. Oh, my God, she said. She brought up both of
her hands to her mouth and started to giggle. Oh, my God,
of course, God, she said, letting it explode and not being able
to hold it off. Of course, that is God!

     Jean would never be the same again. I suppose I can tell
you that. I suppose she took this idea of hers to heart with
such a passionate vigor, that at first she didn't even want to
tell Michael that she'd had it, much less anything more about
it. Especially Michael, she thought. At least, she didn't want
him to know about it until she'd fully elucidated the whole
thing to herself, put arms and legs on it and let it walk around
inside her head for a while. She'd instantly made up her mind,
I suppose, standing there soaking wet and dripping before
she was even dry behind the - well, I suppose it turned from
a simple idea into a silly mood which was so damned good,
it erupted, instantly attacked and spontaneously just floored
Michael when he finally showed up, late and weary as usual,
coming up those stairs two at a time in a soiled white cook's
jacket. Jean was there all right, waiting; but now she was
agitated and sprinkled with L'Air du Temps (her eau de
cologne - for special occasions, I suppose) and talced all
over you see, and ready for a good time which she wouldn't
let him in on until she'd had a good time with it herself.
That's what it was, I suppose, a discovery followed by
a fade-out.

---

2

      But, of course, not for long. Having made this resolve to
keep her own private counsel for awhile, Jean shortly there-
after (like, the next day) came to understand that she would
have to tell somebody about it right away, anyway, a witness.
When you get an idea like this, she knew there was a feeling
that comes with it too, that everyone else in the world is going
to stumble on it, stumble and discover it also, maybe beat you
to the announcement of it, and you would get no credit. There
was no earthly use in having an idea like this, of this
magnitude, if it wasn't going to be yours. It was like a poet's
idea, she thought, it was special. It could render and fashion
and live on and be believed in, and it would make her satisfied
with herself if not famous with others, she thought. Hell, who
wants to be famous with an idea like that. They might crucify
you. All you wanted was the little bitty credit for having it in the
first place. All you wanted, she told herself, was to have them
kiss your ass for awhile. There! You would give it to the world,
for free, up yours, like the greatest mother perhaps; but no, not
like that she decided. Fuck you! Gender has no place in this
idea, at least not in its fundamentals. You would give it to them
like a god, yes, sort of like a signature act, from me! You would
give it and then, just know! Oh, she loved it.

    That evening, Michael presented her with a veal sauce which
she knew was going to go straight to her hips, but she didn't
care. She was ravenous with excitement. He had picked up on
her jubilant mood, and was quietly adjusting himself to it and to
her; and so he cooked up a storm and presented her with a great
meal, and they ate it together with a bit of good white wine and
talked and talked some more and then finally were a little tipsy on
the dregs of the chardonnay, and went to bed and made wild
love. All the while, of course, she was looking at him through the
darkness knowing that she would not tell him a thing. It seemed
to make him more lovable, even if he was a convenience. He was
now her sweet dumb convenience who could somehow act in
her behest but not intrude on her reality. He's like an archangel
she thought, which...

    Which! Yes, the "which" decided the issue - about telling
someone else, that is. You should never leave an archangel in
the dark without having a little evidence lying around somewhere,
in reserve. As far as I can tell, she had already made up her mind
by an early breakfast of crisp bacon on a toasted muffin that she would leave the bit of evidence around by telling her own boss,
a teaching fellow named Barton Stanley Shriver Jones. She would
tell him all this because he was an authority, the authority, as far
as she was concerned; and otherwise, you had no protection
whatever. I suppose she thought it was like getting a patent.

---

3

   So now, meet this Barton Stanley Shriver Jones. No, he isn't
really here just now; but you can meet him anyway, through his
aura. He sits when here, in a dingy office on one side of the
ground floor landing in an old "admin" building which sits just
inside the "Yard" - by the Holyoke gate coming in from Mass.
Ave. facing the kiosk (which of course he can't see.) He is not
there to bother; but his aura is certainly there along with this fine
64 bit Alpha work-station which is hooked up to a bunch of
massive mainframes sprinkled all over Harvard U. and networked
just about all over everywhere else, in turn, in a wierd world called
the "Ethernet"; and this network seemingly has its own "center"
of some kind, a "being" you might suppose, a being over there
configured inside the dome of "Mem" hall at MIT, next to the big
Xerox copy machine and printing complex. Hey, you flip on your
H-P in the morning and it "boots" itself, and then you go ahead
and work on it (ha, ha, you work the work station, thinks Jean,
how banal!); and then, when you need to know if anything is
happening, you code in your modem, and presto! bang bang!
you are printing it out somewhere else you don't even see.

    Jean was definitely not ready to admit that the computer has
a life of its own; but, her idea suggested to her an interesting if
perhaps gullible possibility. Perhaps, she thought, it was the extension of life, something in there and alive but not essential.
She thought of it fleetingly. No, it was not animate life of course,
but, life-like. Well, no, no matter, she thought.

     We are going to be meeting Barton Stanley Shriver Jones ,
who is not here just now; but his research assistant is here, and
Jean will tell her about the grand idea because she can't really
wait for him to be here. She will leak it, or, more appropriately,
it will leak out. She would rather tell Barton SS Jones right out
straight to his face; but he is not here you see, and his assistant,
a nice, skinny looking, female grad student named Jennifer
(oh god, please tell "Jenny" Jean thinks) who is serious, 
uncompromised and intelligent, is at hand and is all ears when it
comes to anything she thinks Barton SS Jones might want to
hear himself. A perfect filter Jean thinks, yes a perfect screen for
a perfect idea, which, after all, the perfect Barton Jones might
not like to take straight in because it might, she thought, threaten
his masculinity in some way. His being might be threatened,
Jean thinks, and I will not be the one to do it that way. Yes, big
time bio-chemist or no, he has to be judged by what was loosely
speaking hanging between his legs as well as by what was
clearly stuffed between his ears. He might be brainy, but he was
good looking too, and that was what made him dangerous when
it came to trusting. If he'd been there when she'd checked in that
morning to sort out the routine office mess, she would no doubt
have told him. She would have done it while she was getting
ready to do her own job, maybe even parking her purse under
the desk. She can even imagine it. Barton, she would say, I have
this idea which is going to blow your fucking mind out of its
skull. Huk! Huk! And you would look right at him she thought,
eh? He would just sit there on his ass trying to pretend that it
didn't matter, that it would be okay to ignore the whole thing,
ignore you. But it wouldn't work, would it, and her unspoken
"word idea" would itself operate to unlock something in his
stuffed-between-the-ears department. His fingers would fidget
and fuss on the keyboard in front of his monitor (ha, ha! she
thinks, plenty eager!), and he'd be longing to connect to the hum
of the mainframe "Diablo" over at M.I.T.; and yes he would just
look up expectantly, and say, yes?

    Then he would wait, try to give you the impression that
you had maybe three seconds to blurt out the whole juicy thing.
He'd try to make you think If you didn't, he'd turn the tables. And
then, if and when anything did come out, it would automatically
become his don't you see, the fucking son of a bitch!

    Well, I suppose it made the telling kind of scary, too. She had
to rehearse it all the way over, trudging from over from Dover St.,
about a six minute walk. God is a "thing" she said to herself. She went on a few paces, thinking that maybe she was feeling
a wedgie creep in. Oh shit, she said, I don't mean a thing - stupid!
No, not that kind of thing, but, a thing, anyway!

    Yuk, yuk, she fairly gurgled along the sidewalk with her own
unselfconscious laughter, tempted to fall over with glee. Oh my
god she thought to herself. No, you have to put it to him - hey,
listen up, Barto! Listen up bingo brain! Here's the story you ass
hole, god is genetic, something you fuck around with!

    Now, you would have his attention with that, all right. The
Stanley Shriver eyes would cloud up slightly, narrowing to slits.
Jennifer would be standing in back, becoming a set of ears
growing and glomming on through a hole in the wall, like, well,
octopus suckers. Jean could hardly walk straight. Now she had
to pee. She thought for an instant she might just plunge off the
curb in front of a bus. Oh, I know she was laughing.

     Yes, so that, by the time she got in to the office and thumped
her purse down on her reception desk (it weighed and thumped
like a ton), she was almost exhausted with the joy of experience.
Her mind was so full of possibilities now, she was almost
mentally supine, ready for anything. It made her look forward to
her three times a week, part-time job cleaning up this
unrecognizable mess created by Barton Stanley Shriver Jones
and his various assistants (particularly Jennifer), keeping track
so to speak, of all their puny ideas.

     And after things had settled down a bit and she was in her
place outside the inner door and Jennifer was parked in his
place inside while he was away, trying to be a surrogate for him,
she thought, she ruffled the pile of papers and said, very casually,
Jenny, did you know that Barton Jones and I have been talking
about a new idea?

     There was a long silence, just as she expected, breathlessly
kept; and she could almost hear labored breathing coming from
inside. It wasn't the work station now, was it she thought. Then
she heard a rather laconic, what?

     (Jean is starting to giggle now and I suppose she really
hopes she won't crack up and fall on the floor before she gives
it away. )

     Oh she said, looking casually over her shoulder, nothing.
It's just an idea, this idea.

     Like - what? The question now came flying in from the inner-
sanctum sanctorum as if it didn't know whether to shit or go blind.

     The was a pause - and then Jean told her. Like about the origin
of God she said, of the deity. She had her hand up close to her
mouth to squelch the unwanted giggle, if it came. You know, she
said, mincing her best pear shaped tones, the origination of our
acceptance, belief, knowledge, whatever you want to call it, about God. Barton now agrees. He says it's genetic.

    Now there was a really long silence here, while the jealous wheels of Jennifer turned over. You just give an idea the right pedigree Jean thought, and it spreads like wildfire, takes root every time. She knew she had Jennifer on the hook.

    There was an interval before Jennifer appeared in the doorway which had been separating them and it was long enough so that Jean was able to maintain control. It was like a fade-in in the moving pictures, where she just began to materialize there in the doorway, leaning too casually against the door jam, pretending to be indifferent so that she could go either way on this.

    You mean she said, that he talked to you about the way we perceive god. (It wasn't put as a question.)

    Yes.

    The genetic thing, the way our DNA sequence sets up - the tendency? (Now it was a question.)

    Yes. (But Jean is becoming momentarily apprehensive. Does she know something? Had he thought of it first?)

    Yes, well, I don't think he's ready to flog it Jennifer says.

    No?

    What's he said to you?

    Bingo! Jean has her fish. Listen she says, it's not so much what he says, but what he didn't say. It's not a secret or anything, it's just that he's still thinking about it.

4

    When Barton Stanley Shriver Jones was finally introduced to this, he also ate it like a hungry fish. Jean had now cleverly planted the seed that, somehow, there was a gene in the human genome that governed how man thinks of himself, that is, determines his self consciousness; and therefore it controls his impression of god. She didn't want to go all the way with him all at once of course. She just planted the seed and sat back, waiting for him to come to her, to educate her as to the consequences. She would let his own bio-chemical mind decipher the additional truth, that somehow the gene itself was god.

But she failed to reckon with the power of gullibility in others. Jean is so intent on being natural that she forgets about other people wanting to be natural too. She thinks they are natural, and that she is not. How could this be? Michael kept her in solace. He tried to convince her in subtle ways, appearing to her in soft voices and good meals, telling her not to despair, that she was just a real person, no more no less; but she persisted in believing that she alone had the problem.

Which is now probably why she got away with flogging this idea thing in the first place. She had decided that god was a gene sitting there on the spiral staircase of the human recombinant DNA, waiting for the rest of man (or his genes at any rate) to wake up and come cogently up to him. But suddenly Stanley Shriver took it by the horns a step further. He said to her, right out of the blue, well Jean, what if the gene is actually radio receptive, and what if what we have here is a bio-chemical transceiver, and we are picking up to varying degrees a non-specific radiation? Listen he said, what if this is the way we animate thought? His hands were on the
computer and she could suddenly see where he was going.

Jean is now in the sanctorum. She was invited in to receive - and he willingly gave her - the credit, the full nine yards. He's said to her, you know Jean, you get all the credit here. That
was a brilliant idea.

      But she said...

No, don't think I didn't know from the first he said. When Jenny started in harping on this I knew you had to be in on it too, maybe really behind it, because of the tack she took.

What?

Yes, sure, she started in on it as if the idea was already there, that I'd already had it. I didn't have it and I thought, what the hell is this? Then I started in thinking about it. You see, there isn't any other explanation for the existence of thought, and if we hypothecate something like this, even if it isn't true, isn't ultimately a proven hypothesis, it leads us on the way, it helps us explain things he said. Jean just looked at him, dumbly. She thought he would get a big laugh out of it. She wasn't prepared for his third degree seriousness about it, or the conversations which now began to buzz in the sanctorum between the "auraed" one and the fucking Jenny one, really deep. My god she thought, they're serious about this.

Indeed, he was. He began talking about the reason why artificial intelligence just wouldn't work on his computer. No matter what you put into the micros he told her, you had no idea about the transceiver. It was obviously bio-chemical, and you had no way to cross over at the molecular level. It was submolecular and he suspected also that it was not mineral based. Which leaves you he said, with some kind of carbon based long chain which lets this gene sit there like an antenna.

Jean has learned to look glowingly interested, adoring. She now has a true spark for him. He is going to be her hero and not a convenience; and he is going to call this thing "Jean's Gene". Hell, it's going to be her "GodGene" she thought. It is going to be her baby all right, and he is going to have it with her. She is now completely turned on.

I was thinking she said, maybe that's all there is to it. Maybe that is god. She wanted to say to him that that would be enough, that would be satisfactory to leave it at that.

But he looked at her in the way you might look at an old "aggie" that has these barber pole swirls of color inside it that might be man made but might also be purely accidental, which is to say, suspicious.

Why do you say that he asked.

She looked at him, dumbly. I don't know she said. He also had a way of deflating you along with your conversation.

Well he said, turning away from her, no matter. That isn't so just because you have a presence thing. This effect you see, is uneven, not everyone has the same perception of god. So you don't explain this by the size of the gene or the chromosomatic configuration or its existence or absence, because that would make our differences too radical to explain don't you see. What you do is explain it by mere reception. If you are talking about it's not actually being god but about it's being able to hear god, tuning in, then you make much more sense. Besides, I'm now convinced anyway that we can't explain everything by purely physical means. This gives you an answer he said, and unless my computer starts talking to me, it will do.

Oh, yes, he was hooked. For this prime tableau, you needed to know that Barton Stanley Shriver Jones was the Phoenix rising up out of three or four generations of family ennui - which is to say, the dung ash heap. He was so bored aborning, he was born bored before his boredom was born.

Sure, his mother was an outlander bitch. But this is the breeding stock of the New England Yankee, since the blue blooded strains had begun to turn out women that looked like their men, and vice versa. You'd see these handsome men who were really pretty men, and women who were handsome too in a bedless sort of way. So they threw in these solid genes, these hips and kissing mouths and tits, and bred themselves back into ordinary good looks. Still, some thought something was lacking, maybe it was in the brains department; but in any case, there was no lack of brains in the third generation Barton Jones strains, none at all. He was bright, eager to be the "best", properly pedigreed and quietly contemptuous of the "not me". In fact, he only tolerated Jean because she was from that early Vinal Haven stock that had moved on west, to Arizona or someplace, before getting reinvigorated with some itinerant Scottish seed, from the Highlands. Whatever these folks were, they were not to be trifled with, and were thus accepted everywhere the same way the English have always accept Americans, even
when they have Italian or Lithuanian names (as long as they speak like radio announcers).

5

Because she couldn't break down the conversation that went on inside the sanctum sanctorum where Jones and Jennifer held forth in semi-hushed voices, breaking down the human genome, Jean could not intervene in what she knew in her heart of hearts to be a disemboweling of her ultimate desire to be, well, recognized. Having denied her patron saint, the cook, she could hardly refuse the temptation to fall in love with her nemesis, the brain. His brain had cooked hers long before hers knew his. She listened in at her temporary outpost, and longed to interject, to intervene, to prevent what she knew was going on. She wanted to smash Jennifer in the face with a fish. She wanted to knock her teeth out so that when she smiled coyly at him her mouth would be full of black holes. She was a fucking black hole herself Jean decided. She'd probably sucked him clear in to the kidneys, head first the bitch. She would fuck him and litter and kill him with her secret demands. She would absorb his psyche, transform him into her plasma, make him female. She would steal Jean's gene and all of its associated, glorious potential, would sequence it into theory and then practice, taking the devil's command over who was and who wasn't god. She would usurp god himself, if god was himself. Worst of all, she would prevent Jean from being god's maker herself.

Well, it was going badly I suppose. They'd ripped right on past the issue of whether this idea was about being or whether it was about receiving, in favor of the receiving. That meant that god was not a gene on the human genome and that its mystery amongst the 200,000 gene possibilities was pedestrian. God was out there all right, but the fucking Barton Stanley Shriver Jones creep had tuned Him in and her out. Don't you think Jean asked him demurely, and then she had to trail off. No he didn't think you see. He knew. This was a matter of distinguishing between matter and spirit, a case of understanding with superior tools and certain wisdom that the ability to RECEIVE (boom! crash! bang! ta da!) the spirit would answer the ageless question, WHY AM I ME?

Would this ass hole never get to the question of what a "me" is? Would he sail right on past the real issue of self consciousness? Was this not in fact leaving god out in the cold too? Could god not be some gradation in the flesh, some special genetic phenomenon that appeared more acutely in some than in others?

Could it possibly appear in a cunt like Jennifer? Or in a cock fucking ass hole like her wonderful Barton Jones? Oh, gad, she hated them. She seethed. She bottled it up. What do you want she said to herself. Then, nothing, you want nothing. You want respect. Maybe you have it you see. Maybe you have the gene and they don't. Sure, why not. Maybe there is a devil gene too, maybe a mutation that half gives, half takes away.

She listened as long as she could take it, and finally decided to kill them both. She would pretend to leave at her usual hour, slip back and nail the both of them. With what she wondered. Well, she'd figure that out. First she'd get the pattern down, fix the odds.

No god wanted to be caught.

So she did slip back one late afternoon, and found them fornicating on his desk. Oh my god, was this science? She was so appalled that she forgot all about killing them with a hammer. They will kill themselves she told herself, fuck themselves into oblivion. No Nobel Prize has ever been given to a scientist who fornicates his research assistant, particularly an ex-acnied grad student with no tits to speak of and probably a mangy you know what. To hell with them. They will have maggoty offspring.

But I suppose going home that night, it all started to appear funny. Oh dear Jesus god she said, starting to laugh. Oh my god almighty. Did you see them or what? Were they popping the genes into place? Was he trying to shoot a godgene up her ass, or what? Jean fell down finally, collapsed on the curb and just had to hold her sides. No matter what she thought now, it was clear to her now that the flesh of people packaged whatever of god was in them, or around anyway. You were doomed and you'd better take it with good grace. The rest of it is too funny to think about.

So, overcoming the fleetingly imagined appearance of being a homeless bag lady, Jean struggled up to her feet and back into herself, and trudged on home, feeling lighter all the time.

6

In bed, Michael whispered softly to her, I've got you a little surprise, tweety. Oh, this is the kind of thing a woman who has been going through hell wants to hear. She snuggled and squeezed his arm and felt possibly reassured. She wouldn't even ask him what it was. What is it she asked him.

It's a surprise he told her.

I know she said. But why?

Because he said, I love you, crazy.

Jean sat up. You what!

No he said, pulling her back down. You are sort of nuts. That's why I love you.

How would you know that she asked him.

Because he said, I went around to see old Barton Jones. I told him who I was and he told me about your idea. He seemed a little defensive, like he was afraid you might do something, say something, maybe take credit or something. Were you going to do that?

Jean did a yuk yuk until she almost fell out of bed. Oh god she said, I caught him screwing!

Michael laughed and tried to hold onto her. Oh he said. Well, then I told him that you were grateful to him for giving your nice idea some legs, some life, some substance, even if it was only fleeting and they'd already taken it past any recognition.

Now Jean just stared at him in the half light. Oh she said. I was going to kill the mother fucker.

Michael broke out with a suppressed chuckle. I know he said. I knew you were going to do something. He's so transparent.

What about that bitch she said.

• Oh that. Well, she won't last I'd say, don't worry about that.

I did all right, plenty.

I know. But you get all you want too don't you? He winked at her in the dark.

Now Jean laughed easily, and snuggled back. Yes she said. You're a kook too.

Not like you he said. I'm nothing like you. You're wonderful.

You're a good cook she said.

I know it he said.

That was the surprise, as it turned out, a soufflé of great elegance served with the right condiments on a table set with real service borrowed from the hotel, and champagne, a vintage. It was sumptuous and welcome, and they had such a good, private, loving time. Finally she asked him, and he told her, smiling. Well he said, I've been made the head chef.

the end