The Dream of Doctor Bantam by Jeanne Thornton

started digging through one of the dirty piles of laundry.
    What are you doing? asked Patrice.
    Julie looked up; Patrice had gotten down from the bed. That aura of calm she’d had—Jesus, is that what being on the Machine gave you? That kind of calm, even for people who were basically born to be emotional wrecks?—it had disappeared, and she was wringing her hands, watching Julie dig through her dirty skirts and underwear.
    God, I’m just getting a sheet or something, Julie said. You’re such a baby.
    She got a sheet and made sure to knock over the rest of the pile of laundry in the process.
    She spread the sheet out over the couch and lay down, fully clothed, then folded half of it over herself like a human pita. She looked up at the ceiling and she watched the spots from the headlights on the Machine run over the stucco and Christmas lights, dull blue now and quickly disappearing.
    She was still awake when Patrice came in.
    I’m just getting my cigarettes, Patrice said, standing in the hallway with just her hand reaching around the corner.
    So get them, said Julie. This is your apartment.
    Patrice danced into the room across Julie’s peripheral vision. She grabbed the cigarettes and danced back into the hallway; she lit one and stood there, watching Julie on the couch and smoked it. Julie kept looking at the ceiling. She breathed in the smoke, secondhand, fresh from Patrice’s mouth. She tried, thoughts moving through strange pre-sleep alpha waves, to isolate the taste of Patrice’s mouth from the taste of the smoke.
    I’m not going on that Machine again, she said.
    I think it would help you, said Patrice.
    I don’t care what you think, she said quickly. You’re in a cult.
    The smoke circled over her head.
    Then maybe we can help each other, said Patrice. Who knows?
    Julie turned on her side and wriggled around, adjusting the blanket over herself.
    I’m sleeping, she said.
    Good night, said Patrice. Keep smiling.
    When she opened her eyes the overhead lights had been turned off and the apartment was dark, except for the Christmas lights, glowing like neon candles. She rolled to the left and remembered that she was sleeping on a couch at just the moment when she tumbled over the side and landed on the floor. A pile of covers moaned from the carpet nearby.
    Awake now, she crawled on her hands and knees. Patrice was wrapped in the covers from the bed, asleep on the carpet just under the left arm of the couch, just under the place where Julie’s head had been resting. Her lips were moving.
    Je ne veux pas travailler , she chanted. Je ne veux pas déjeuner .
    Julie looked down at her, hovering over her on all fours.
    She lost the ability to count time; she had no idea how long she remained there.
    She resisted for as long as possible the urge to shrug the covers off of Patrice’s shoulder. The summer night was warm; Patrice was wearing a long T-shirt, midthigh. Somehow Julie was sure that she was not wearing anything else.
    She resisted for as long as possible the urge to put her hand on Patrice’s knee, and she resisted for as long as possible the urge to slide her finger, slowly, like peeling tape off of skin, up Patrice’s thigh to the hem of the long T-shirt. She let her finger rest against the edge of it, let her finger slip under the edge of it. She bounced its light weight, let it flip up and fall back down, until she accidentally bounced it too hard and it flipped too far, stuck via the laws of static against her hip, and no, she was not wearing anything else; her boss’s vast bare hip glowed orange in the blue night.
    Julie quickly scrabbled backwards on all fours and got to her feet once she was a safe distance away. She didn’t look at Patrice lying there, still asleep, and she tiptoed into the bathroom, took the knob, and didn’t turn on the light until she was sure that the door was shut completely.
    She was in the mirror with her back flat to the door. Her short hair was stuck up in the back from