Cat's Pajamas by James Morrow Page A

I contemplate the Castle Bravo explosion while drinking a glass of sherry.
    The mushroom cloud, I realize, is in fact a Nuclear Age inkblot test, a radioactive Rorschach smear. In the swirling vapors I briefly glimpse my has-been diva from The High and the Mighty as she speculates that nobody will miss her if the airliner goes into the drink. Next I see my Alamo character, the insufferably selfless Blind Nell, giving her husband permission to enter into a suicide pact with the boys instead of wasting his life taking care of her. And now I perceive the school teacher in Lock and Load, telling Duke to be the best obsessive-compulsive loose-cannon police captain he can be.
    Slowly the quotidian seeps into my consciousness: my TV set, my VCR, my sherry, the cat on my lap—each given form and substance by my dawning awareness that the film called Lock and Load does not exist.
    Was it just the booze and the dope? I simply couldn’t decide, and Stuart had no theories either. Despite his unhappiness with postmodern scorched-earth relativism, despite his general enthusiasm for the rationalistic worldview, he has always fancied himself an intellectually vulnerable person, open to all sorts of possibilities.
    â€œIncluding the possibility of a mind-body cure,” he said.
    â€œA mind-body cure is one thing, and Kieran Morella’s deranged quantum physics is another,” I replied. “The man’s a goofball.”
    â€œSo you’re not going back?” asked Stuart.
    â€œOf course I’m going back. Duke’s paying for the weed. I have nothing to lose.”
    Kieran normally spent his Wednesdays downtown, teaching a course at the New School for Social Research, Psychoimmunology 101: Curing with Quarks, and Thursdays he always stayed home and meditated, so Duke and I had to wait a full seventy-two hours before entering Treatment Salon Number Three again. In a matter of minutes we were all primed for transcendence, Duke afloat on a cloud of Jack Daniels, Kieran and me frolicking through a sea of grass. Our therapist announced that, before we tried generating any more quantum vibrations, we should take a second look at Tuesday’s breakthrough.
    â€œWhatever you say, Doc,” said Duke.
    â€œIt was all a mirage,” I said.
    â€œSeeing is believing,” said Kieran.
    I retorted with that favorite slogan of skeptics, “And believing is seeing.”
    Kieran fastforwarded the Conqueror cassette to Hunlun treating Temujin’s wound. He pressed Stop, then Play.
    Against my expectations, Hunlun’s aura was still there, covering her like a gown made of sunflowers and rubies.
    â€œThundering Christ!” I said.
    This time around, I had to admit that the aura was too damn intricate and splendid—too existentially real —to be a mere pothead chimera.
    â€œIt’s a goddamn miracle!” shouted Duke.
    â€œI would join Mr. Wayne in calling your gamma-ray shield a miracle, but I don’t think that’s the right word,” said Kieran, grinning at me as he pressed the rewind button. “‘Miracle’ implies divine intervention, and you accomplished this feat through your own natural healing powers. How do you feel?”
    â€œExhilarated,” I said. Indeed. “Frightened.” Quite so. “Grateful. Awestruck.”
    â€œMe too,” said Duke.
    â€œAnd angry,” I added.
    â€œAngry?” said Duke.
    â€œMad as hell.”
    â€œI don’t understand.”
    â€œAnger has no place in your cure, Ms. Rappaport,” said Kieran. “Anger will kill you sooner than leukemia.”
    As with our first two sessions, Duke’s third attempt at kinetotherapy got him nowhere. Temujin went through the motions of the plot—he seized Bortai, speared Targatai, met with Wang Khan, suffered the Tartar arrow, endured imprisonment by Kumlek, won Bortai’s heart, fled Kumlek’s camp, conspired with Wang Khan’s soothsayer,