The Search for Philip K. Dick Read Online Free Page B

breathtakingly beautiful, but at the same time I was aware that something was wrong with her proportions. Her head was slightly too large for her shoulders—although it may have been an illusion due to her heavy black hair—and her chest was somewhat concave, actually hollow, not like a woman’s chest at all. And her hips were too small in proportion to her shoulders and then, in order, her legs were too short for her hips, and her feet too small for her legs. So she resembled an inverted pyramid. Her voice had a rasping, husky quality, low-pitched. Like her eyes it had a strong and intense authority to it, and I found myself unable to break away from her gaze. Although she had never seen me before—laid eyes on me, as they say—she acted as if she had expected to see me, as if I was familiar to her.
     
    Phil told me that after his first “flying saucer” meeting he was terrified that Claudia was going to come to his house and “get him” and he wouldn’t be able to keep from being involved with her and her group. When later she did come and knock on his door, he hid. Kleo and I laughed together at the thought of Phil hiding in his own house. The rest of the evening we talked about books and ideas. It was after midnight when the couple left. It had been a wonderful evening.
    After that, they came over almost every day. We ate together and played soccer, baseball, and board games with the children. Sometimes Phil came over alone when Kleo was at work. I found him to be the best conversationalist I had ever met. I even stopped talking long enough to listen to him. We found we had endless ideas, attitudes, and interests in common. Both of us were shy, though we hid our shyness. Both of us were trusting to the point of gullibility and very romantic. Both of us had been expected to be big achievers by our parents. Both of us loved animals, books, and music, though Phil’s tastes ran to Baroque music and opera and I liked modern classical music, “moldy fig” jazz, and folk music.
    Both of us had been cherished children. Phil’s mother, father, and grandmother had doted on him. I had been affectionately spoiled by my father, mother, our housekeeper, and my two much-older brothers. Both of our mothers were rather domineering. Phil’s mother had wanted him to be a writer, mine wanted me to be a college professor. Both of us had lost our fathers at an early age. Mine died. Phil’s mother divorced his. I told Phil about my two big brothers who had carried me around on their shoulders when I was small, about my brother who had died suddenly when he was only thirty-eight, about my father who had died suddenly when he was only forty-two. Phil told me about his twin sister who had died three weeks after his birth and how he felt guilty about this. He said that he carried his twin sister inside him.
    When I read about twins later to learn more about Phil, I found out that it isn’t unusual for a surviving twin to feel that he or she carries the dead twin inside him or her
.
    “And she’s a lesbian,” he told me seriously.
    I hardly had been able to take in this remark, much less respond, when he topped it. “When I was a teenager, I had ‘the impossible dream.’ I dreamt I slept with my mother.”
    I was taken aback. Why would he tell me this?
    “I won my Oedipus situation,” he continued. When Phil spoke, a pleasant lilt in his voice, it was easy to go along with whatever he said. In the past I had always had a retort for anything that anyone would say, but I have to admit that some of the things that Phil came up with were so far outside my mental framework that I was struck dumb.
    When I talked, Phil paid flattering attention. His responses were quick, detailed, and imaginative. It seemed as if we could go anywhere in the universe as we talked. Phil was unselfconscious, funny, delightful. I never had met anyone I enjoyed so much. I told Phil about Richard—that he hadn’t been very happy in the luxurious