“It’s all right.”
“It’s not. It’s like a white person saying something like ‘Jeez, I never would have guessed you were a nigger’ to someone with a very light skin.”
“You like to think of yourself as more fair-minded,” Eddie said.
“What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common, I should think, but yes—I like to think of myself as more fair-minded. So please accept my apology, Eddie.”
“On one condition.”
“What’s that?” she was smiling a little again. That was good. He liked it when he was able to make her smile.
“Give this a fair chance. That’s the condition.”
“Give what a fair chance?” She sounded slightly amused. Eddie might have bristled at that tone in someone else’s voice, might have felt he was getting boned, but with her it was different. With her it was all right. He supposed with her just about anything would have been.
“That there’s a third alternative. That this really is happening. I mean . . .” Eddie cleared his throat. “I’m not very good at this philosophical shit, or, you know, metamorphosis or whatever the hell you call it—”
“Do you mean metaphysics?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I think so. But I know you can’t go around disbelieving what your senses tell you. Why, if your idea about this all being a dream is right—”
“I didn’t say a dream—”
“Whatever you said, that’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? A false reality?”
If there had been something faintly condescending in her voice a moment ago, it was gone now. “Philosophy and metaphysics may not be your bag, Eddie, but you must have been a hell of a debater in school.”
“I was never in debate. That was for gays and hags and wimps. Like chess club. What do you mean, my bag? What’s a bag?”
“Just something you like. What do you mean, gays? What are gays?”
He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. “Homos. Fags. Never mind. We could swap slang all day. It’s not getting us anyplace. What I’m trying to say is that if it’s all a dream, it could be mine, not yours. You could be a figment of my imagination.”
Her smile faltered. “You . . . nobody bopped you.”
“Nobody bopped you, either.”
Now her smile was entirely gone. “No one that I remember,” she corrected with some sharpness.
“Me either!” he said. “You told me they’re rough in Oxford. Well, those Customs guys weren’t exactly cheery joy when they couldn’t find the dope they were after. One of them could have head-bopped me with the butt of his gun. I could be lying in a Bellevue ward right now, dreaming you and Roland while they write their reports, explaining how, while they were interrogating me, I became violent and had to be subdued.”
“It’s not the same.”
“Why? Because you’re this intelligent socially active black lady with no legs and I’m just a hype from Co-Op City?” He said it with a grin, meaning it as an amiable jape, but she flared at him.
“I wish you would stop calling me black!”
He sighed. “Okay, but it’s gonna take getting used to.”
“You should have been on the debate club anyway.”
“Fuck,” he said, and the turn of her eyes made him realize again that the difference between them was much wider than color; they were speaking to each other from separate islands. The water between was time. Never mind. The word had gotten her attention. “I don’t want to debate you. I want to wake you up to the fact that you are awake, that’s all.”