“I understand you left a pretty disturbed bunch of pedants up at Boston,” Nicholson said, watching him. “After that last little set-to. The whole Leidekker examining group, more or less, the way I understand it. I believe I told you I had rather a long chat with Al Babcock last June. Same night, as, a matter of fact, I heard your tape played off.”
“Yes, you did. You told me.”
“I understand they were a pretty disturbed bunch,” Nicholson pressed. “From What Al told me, you all had quite a little lethal bull session late one night—the same night you made that tape, I believe.” He took a drag on his cigarette. “From what I gather, you made some little predictions that disturbed the boys no end. Is that right?”
“I wish I knew why people think it’s so important to be emotional,” Teddy said. “My mother and father don’t think a person’s human unless he thinks a lot of things are very sad or very annoying or very-very unjust, sort of. My father gets very emotional even when he reads the newspaper. He thinks I’m inhuman.”
Nicholson flicked his cigarette ash off to one side. “I take it you have no emotions?” he said.
Teddy reflected before answering. “If I do, I don’t remember when I ever used them,” he said. “I don’t see what they’re good for.”
“You love God, don’t you?” Nicholson asked, with a little excess of quietness. “Isn’t that your forte, so to speak? From what I heard on that tape and from what Al Babcock—”
“Yes, sure, I love Him. But I don’t love Him sentimentally. He never said anybody had to love Him sentimentally,” Teddy said. “If I were God, I certainly wouldn’t want people to love me sentimentally. It’s too unreliable.”
“You love your parents, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do—very much,” Teddy said, “but you want to make me use that word to mean what you want it to mean—I can tell.”