“Children aren’t compatible with our lifestyle,” Rutger Hauer finally said.
“We’ve never considered it,” she added.
“Would you like to take a look at the outside?”
“Could we see how the gas fireplace works?” he asked.
I picked up the remote control and turned it on.
“Can’t you make the flames any bigger?”
“Yes.”
I opened the panel and turned up the dial that controlled the heat.
“Is that the highest?”
“Yes.”
“You can’t get it any higher?”
“No.”
“Can you see the flames from the yard?”
“When you’re sitting on the patio?” I asked confusedly.
“Yes.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried.”
“Let’s do that now, then,” Rutger Hauer said.
“Sure.”
They went outside, and I opened the panel and turned the heat all the way up. I peered out at the two of them standing side by side in the yard. It was hard to tell if they were satisfied or not, so I gave them the thumbs-up with a questioning look. They made a vague hand gesture that could mean anything from “very nice” to “far below average.” Maybe they were replicant models that didn’t come with the hand-gesture package preinstalled, or maybe they had not had much of an introduction to empathy.
I was crying as I walked downtown to the library, but luckily it was raining. In response to Bj?rnar’s question about whether it had gone well, I told him they were replicants, which made it hard to relate to them and also made them impossible to read.
“Remind me what replicants are again?”
“Humanlike cyborgs with implanted memories, who can only be detected with questions that elicit their fundamental lack of empathy.”
“And the movie we’re talking about is . . . ?”
“Blade Runner.”
“Exactly. And you think they’re replicants because . . . ?”
“I guess they just gave me a replicant vibe.”
He nodded and was quiet for a minute, and I hoped his silence meant that things were looking up between us and that he didn’t think it mattered that I thought they were humanlike cyborgs.
“Are replicants allowed to own property?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I kind of hope so.”
I didn’t mention my suspicions to the real estate agent, but just said I thought the showing had gone well. When she called them, though, they denied having ever seen the place and said they weren’t interested in buying a house, anyway.
“Strange,” she said.
“Manufacturing glitch,” I said.
15
The following Monday the chair of the department summoned me to the meeting room.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” she said after I sat down in the same chair I’d been placed in the week before. “I hear you’re planning a mutiny, and I don’t like it.”
“Pardon me?”
She pulled out a sheet of paper with some scribbling on it.
“Do you deny writing this?”
“No. I mean . . . yes.”
“I’ve been informed that you’re the one behind this document,” she said, tapping her finger on the sheet of paper accusingly as she watched me expectantly.
“That’s incorrect.”
“Is it also incorrect that you’re going to play ‘bad cop’ at the meeting when we discuss the course revision? Is it also incorrect that Frank is going to play ‘good cop’?”
“Listen—”
“I think you’re the one who should be listening to me now.”
She leaned over her desk, took off her glasses, and looked me right in the eyes.
“How are things going on the home front?”
“Good, I—”
“You went to see the doctor about your dizzy spell?”
“Yes, I—”
“I’ve heard you’re trying to sell your house. Is it not selling?”
“No, but—”
“We couldn’t sell ours when we tried, either, the one on Lysegata. It was on the market for six months. I thought I was going to lose my mind. We lost an unbelievable amount of money on that, but we got back on our feet again.”
“It’s really hard,” I admitted. “And I—”
“My point, Ingrid, is that you can’t take out hostility you’re feeling—at the housing market or real estate agents or nonexistent home buyers—on your coworkers here. Documents like this”—she waved Peter’s piece of paper around—“aren’t constructive. The course revision is being imposed on us by the college. It’s not my place or your place or the place of any of the others in the department to agitate.”
I tried to get a word in edgewise, but she just brushed me aside.
“Cooperation, Ingrid, is the key. Not activities that undermine this institution.”
“No,” I said tiredly. “No, I do understand that.”
“And Ingvill as ‘hard-liner’? What were you thinking? She can’t stay focused for five minutes! And Peter as ‘leader’? Honestly.”
She laughed heartily and slowly ripped the piece of paper into little pieces.
“I think we’ll just forget this whole business,” she continued, “put it behind us. I won’t bring it up with the dean. You’re selling your house, you’re tired. It’s understandable. But this is unacceptable.”
“I’ll—”
“You’ll take over the local coordination work for the revision.”
“Me? But that’s the faculty coordinator’s job.”
“The faculty coordinator has enough to do. Anna has three kids and a husband who works in the private sector. We can’t saddle her with this. I’ll make sure you get the notes she’s taken so far. This is a time-consuming process with a ton of meetings and possibly some overtime. But not paid overtime. You should be prepared for that. Teamwork, Ingrid. Maybe it’s time you learn a little about that.”
“But I have three kids, too. And a husband who works around the clock. In the private sector. It’s not feasible for me to put in overtime. Especially now that we’re in the middle of selling the house. The house we bought cost—”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before, Ms. Bad Cop. And then maybe you should have . . . um, what was that again . . . ?”