Adventures of the Artificial Woman by Thomas Berger Read Free Book Online

been in love with Phyllis I.
    That feeling grew more profound in the months since he found himself in a condition for which he could use no other term than heartsick, and he despised himself for it. Brilliant as he was, there was obviously something wrong with him if he could be so obsessed with something he had made from scratch yet spinelessly allow it to walk out on him.
    He went to bed with Janet every Friday night after a restaurant dinner and a movie either in a theater or on DVD, and then often enough put another, an oldie, on television while they had sex and looked at it intermittently. They were thoroughly comfortable with each other by now, so much so that they rarely conversed.

4
    W hen first on her own Phyllis had no address. She could not use most of what was offered by an abode. She did not eat, sleep, or require a bathroom. Heating and air conditioning were personally meaningless to her.
    To charge her batteries a source of electrical power was necessary periodically. She used the 110-volt outlets provided at public-library tables for laptops needing a boost, where the other patrons were scholarly solipsists.
    She spent a good deal of time at libraries, doing research into show business, in trade papers or on the internet. She learned that even to get a toe in the door could not be done without acquiring an agent, but little was more difficult than persuading one to sign you on unless you already had some work, which situation was another of the apparent absurdities in human affairs.
    But before looking for an agent, she had to establish a reliable means by which he could get in touch with her if he found her a job. Having no home and lacking the money with which even to rent a room, she had no telephone.
    At first a public phone on a street corner seemed to be the answer, but in choosing the right one she attracted the interest of some other women walking nearby. They were prostitutes. As soon as they determined that Phyllis was not the competition, they became friendly with her and, illogically, invited her into their ranks, another of the absurdities almost routine when trafficking with human beings.
    At the outset, Phyllis thought practicing this profession temporarily might provide her with an income with which to acquire a domicile where she could have a telephone. As a whore she would have certain strengths peculiar to a nonhuman: immunity to disease or pregnancy, tirelessness, and a constitutional incapacity to be offended physically, emotionally, or morally by any demand.
    But it turned out that streetwalkers were handled by agents known as pimps, who wore elaborate clothing and cruised in gaudy cars, and according to the working girls to whom Phyllis spoke, commandeered the moneys so earned, returning to them only meager allowances.
    This arrangement, which made no sense to Phyllis, because the pimp brought them no customers, all of whom the girls hustled themselves, was however perfectly agreeable to the hookers who were her informants. “He really love us bitches,” said Lily, six feet tall counting the height of the red wig, to which Ashley, shivering in her skimpy satin teddy on a 40-degree night, added, “And we motherfucking love that daddy. It’s a family, Phyl, you know what I’m sayin’?”
    But Phyllis could see no advantage for herself in this calling. She also learned that selling one’s body for sexual purposes was illegal though lending it for free was not. Human beings could also legally sell their own blood.
    Ashley did make one suggestion that seemed viable, namely, that Phyllis might want to try her luck at a strip club with what looked like a good body that hopefully, unlike Ashley’s own, was unscarred by surgery done by butchers and free of the track marks conspicuous on Lily’s skin-and-bone forearms.
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    â€œNice tits. Now drop your drawers,” said Eddie, a balding man wearing a dark suit over a black T-shirt, behind a desk in the