@Expectations Read online

  It has crossed his mind that Suntum sells high end customers tickets to their secret lives. His problem is hacking into the Suntum server and getting deep enough into the peculiar Suntum operating system to find out. Without leaving any tracks.

  Idealist, lover, Reverdy is also relentlessly political. Zan is right about one thing: he lives under unimaginable pressure. StElene is his psychic anchor, and at the moment his position is precarious. If they catch him, he’s fried.

  And Mireya has filed charges. Harassment. That he’s come to her house RL and threatened her life. Azeath has been out to get him ever since Reverdy mailed the warden from behind his firewall. The bastard is collecting evidence like a diamond prospector. If Az and Mireya find out that he’s hacking into the Suntum system and prove it, they’ll get him erased. The Directors are already debating whether to have the Dak Bungalow recycled because he is a gadfly here. If they take a vote and it’s positive, the character Tom has so passionately designed and so lovingly maintains will be eliminated. If the ballot passes, Reverdy will be @erased.

  The best part of Tom Dearden will cease to exist. And he is torn. He doesn’t have enough support to take StElene with him. Or enough inside information to bring Suntum down. Yet.

  He will do anything to maintain his position here.

  It’s time to go to the grand ballroom. Through the electronic miracle that everybody here takes for granted, he’ll teleport in to work the crowd. He has his constituents but he needs more. If Suntum really find grounds to erase him before he’s done hacking, the @erasure will come to a vote. He needs his support in place.

  But first he uses the second electronic trick they all take for granted—spying—he surveys the cast of characters already in the ballroom. He sees Mireya’s there. So is Azeath. It’s disturbing, knowing that he and Mireya are pledged to hate each other forever, when they used to be in love. It’s a puzzle, not knowing why they can’t put it behind them. Turn the page. Move on.

  He types: page Mireya, “I warned you to stop phoning Louise.”

  In the ballroom, Mireya will keep talking to Azeath as she secretly pages back: “As if you never told Harry about us. Are you going to keep paging or are you going to join me and have this out?”

  “You were already getting a damn divorce,” Reverdy pages, knowing as he does so that Mireya’s smooching her new lover, but never too busy to haul over the bad old ground. Why can’t they forget it and move on? At long distance, he taunts. “Harry? I did you a favor, I made him jealous, but Louise…”

  “Louise, Louise, she stopped fucking you long before I ever fell in love with you.”

  “In love?” This is a low blow, tugging at parts of him that still hurt. OK, Mireya loves to duke it out in the ballroom, in front of an audience. So does he! This abiding anger carries its own erotic power. He’ll go when he’s damn well ready. He pages, “Love. Love! What do you mean, love? I never even liked you!”

  Mireya taunts, “Rev-baby, come on down and say that where the people can hear you.” He knows what she wants. She wants to get him there and then scream that he’s attacking her. Another false charge.

  “And bring the Directors down on me?”

  Her response comes up on his screen almost before he’s done typing. “What. You’re too chicken to come?”

  To maintain his position here, he has to keep his head down and stay out of public brawls. Ah, but he loves baiting her. page Mireya “How’s Harry’s cute new wife?”

  Mireya pages, “What’s the matter, Rev. Can’t face me? Could you be … afraid???”

  Fine, Reverdy thinks. Full audience. Fine, even though he knows the Directors’ witnesses hover like shrikes, poised to pounce at his first false move. Log it. Post it for the world to see. There’s nothing the matter with a little danger; Reverdy gets off on personal risk. And he types, @be ballroom. And is there.

  A crowd is collecting to watch. Including Azeath. Including StOnge, the righteous Director who sits up nights thinking of ways to @erase him for good.

  “Fine,” Reverdy says to Mireya so the whole room can hear. “What is it this time? Pistols or daggers? Invective? Your lies?”

  “Acrimony,” Mireya snaps. “Oh right. And evidence of treason.”

  “Wonderful.” Does she know anything? “How did I guess?”

  Psychodrama, another of the staples on StElene. Reverdy scopes the room. The population seems to be fifty-fifty—friends, enemies. Azeath, the masked avenger, is already pissed, watch out. And Reverdy’s resentful ex-lover—a woman scorned. Mireya was the first. She may have been the best.

  “Idiot,” Reverdy says to her, more fondly than he’s ready to admit, “a happy fuck you!” And so Reverdy and Mireya move into the old dance like accustomed lovers sliding into the act. Blood will be shed before they quit. Accusations. Ugly disclosures about real lives. He and his old lover will fight to a draw, which each will claim is a win. They’ll taunt and rage until they’re both exhausted and Tom Dearden is shaking with anger here at his keyboard. They always do. Ugly old laundry hung out to dry and ironed to knife-point folds that cut like Ninja throwing blades.

  His life here is sharply focused. Intense. Where by daylight Tom Dearden’s life in the quiet house in the snowy stillness is circumscribed, Reverdy feeds on adventure. Enemies. Threats to his survival. StElene is like a hothouse. Loves blaze. So does hate. Excitement: on StElene the future shimmers in the vestibule of the uncreated. Life here isn’t only about power, it’s about passion. Sometimes fury is better than sex.

  They begin.

  At which point the bedroom door Tom thought he’d locked against intrusions swings open. His daughter Susie pads in, soft in her flannel nighties, and crawls onto his lap. He snuggles his child the way he always does even at heated moments like these, and with his chin resting in her sweet hair, keeps typing.

  “What are you doing, Daddy?”

  Absently, he says into her hair, “Working, honey.”

  “Daddy, it’s breakfast time!” She turns in his arms so she can see the screen. “What’s all that, Daddy?”

  “Words,” he says. “Just words.”

  Good thing the child hasn’t learned to read.

  Just as well, too, that Tom doesn’t know that in the fury of the interrupted argument, which is in its own way like an act of love cut short, Mireya has turned away from her terminal IRL and picked up the telephone. Zan may know she has a grave enemy in Mireya, but she does not know that in real life, in physical life outside the idealized world in the box where they spend so much time, Florence Vito Watson has cracked Zan’s site information and is on the way to getting the Wilders’ home phone number.

  seventeen

  JENNY

  “Go on, Rick.”

  Rick goes on.

  Daytime, my office. I am only Jenny Wilder, who loves her husband Charlie, hard at work. I know that Charlie loves me too, but not enough. Today I hurt a lot, whereas at night Zan is, I don’t know exactly—unassailable. Perfect. Loved.

  My patient says, “I can’t go out without wiping the knob a dozen times.”

  “I know,” I say, “I know.” I didn’t do a hugely elaborate job of describing Zan, but on StElene she can be with our lover in an eyeblink, even though he is thousands of miles away. Get into his soul. Can you even guess what that’s like? Reverdy tells Zan that she’s perfect. What a rush! Potentially perfect, I think, which is closer to the truth.

  Parts of us are out there waiting to be completed, me and Reverdy, Reverdy and me.

  “But I’m getting better about scrubbing my nails.”

  “I see your fingers have stopped bleeding, that’s a very good sign.” In Brevert I have Charlie, but up close, Charlie is just Charlie, with his rumpled hair and nice smile, and he is diminished by his cranky kids and distracted by his work while everything I want is glitters in the future like an electric dream. Oh God, how can I love Charlie and still be so wrecked in love?

  Did I groan out loud? My darkly appeal
ing obsessive-compulsive patient says, “Um, Miz Doc, did you say something?”

  We are close to the end of his hour. “No, Rick,” I say. “I just got snagged on something.” I’m hung up on love, I know, but can not say.

  “Something I said?” Rick’s been talking about the fact that every time he gets too close to a woman he finds a way to shoot himself in the foot.

  Look, the man is my patient, I owe him something. I say, “Related to something you said.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “The part about how you always get in trouble with a woman when you get too close.” I am thinking there is one arena where people see into each other’s souls without touching and somehow Rick and StElene get mixed up in my mind. As if he lives there too. The air in the room is soft and sweet and I am teetering on the brink of something, I don’t know what. I ask my patient, “Your compulsiveness. Is it a mechanism for keeping you from getting close?”

  “I never said that!”

  I’m not sure why my voice is shaking. “People find ways of putting obstacles between them and what they really want.”

  Rick’s my patient, I’m supposed to be helping him, but here he is saying in that gentle Southern voice, “If there’s a problem you’ll tell me, right, Miz Doc?”

  “Of course,” I say. “Now, if you’ll just let me help you pull those patterns out so we can have a look at them…” The poor guy can’t do anything or go anywhere without a dozen compulsive rituals. He’s already numbered the repetitive acts he has to complete before he can leave his home office just to come here. Rick talks on, but I don’t hear. I am fixed on my own secret, impossible love. I guard it like treasure, a present so tightly wrapped that only I can open it. What Reverdy and I have together is the creation of both our souls. It’s bigger than any love in physical life.

  Rick puts this in the room between us. “Could we talk about something else?”

  I say out of nowhere, “I’m thinking, you say that at least when you’re at your computer you have control.”

  “Exactly! Nothing I can’t handle, you know?”

  I don’t know what’s driving me. “And do you ever. Um. Go online?”

  “It’s a way of going out without having to go out.” He has a really nice smile.

  “Exactly,” I say. “And you. Um. Talk to people, you know, on the internet?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “What kind of people?”

  “Miz Doc, it’s not sex rooms!” Suddenly uncomfortable, Rick clears his throat. “So, Miz Doc, the clock says we’re done.” He does not get up. Instead he studies me, good-looking guy.

  “I guess we are.” I see that he wants to move this along from doctor-patient. If he tries, I’ll have to turn him over to Martha.

  Still, his voice is gentle. “But I was wondering. One more thing?”

  Like a teacher, I am responsible to the people I treat, it is my job to keep the relationship professional. I try to sound cool. “Yes?”

  “You look so sort of … Miz Doc, is there something going on with you?”

  I can’t help it, I turn color. “This isn’t about me, Rick. This is about you. I’m just thinking if your computer is one arena where you have control, we may be able to figure out a way for you to expand your area of control.”

  “We could make it about you.” He makes me think of Reverdy, but Reverdy is safe in the box, and Rick is here.

  “This is your hour, Rick, not mine.” This is an extremely attractive guy, my patient, and he cares enough about what I’m feeling to keep me talking.

  “Let’s don’t stop at an hour,” he says, smoldering the way he did when he offered the ride I didn’t take.

  Charlie’s distractions and repeated departures have left me in a weakened condition. I say, “No, Rick. If it stops being about you, I have to hand you over to another therapist.”

  “If you fired me, would you go out with me?”

  I shake my head, but I make no move to dismiss him. “Your areas of control. Beyond the techniques I’ve taught you, is there any place in your life where you feel safe?”

  “Tell me the truth, Miz Doc. What are my chances?”

  I say automatically, “If you want to get better, you will.”

  “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” In this light he is surprisingly good-looking.

  We are teetering on the brink of something. “Your computer. Do you ever go online?”

  Rick grins. “Online? Who, me? How do you think I get through the nights?”

  “Um,” I say; I can feel my belly tremble. Something may be happening. I think it’s one thing, and he … “What. Um, what kind of thing do you do on the net?”

  He thinks it’s another. Laughing, he shrugs. “You know, chat rooms. Singlz-R-Us, opera chat, I’m in one about scuba diving, forget I’m scared of water…”

  “Oh. Chat rooms.” I see the sprawl of StElene, with its mystery and complexity. I see Reverdy, and the knowledge that he’s out there, not here, leaves me weak with relief.

  On guard, Rick challenges. “Do you have a problem with chat rooms?”

  “Only if you’re using them to put off for solving your problems RL.”

  “Real life?” His head lifts. “Miz Doc, are you out there?”

  “Not like you.”

  “If you want me to give up chat rooms, I’ll give up chat rooms.” Rick’s look tells me he’ll do anything for me. “I’d much rather be here talking to you, or out somewhere, talking with you.”

  “We already are talking, Rick.”

  “Not like we could.” He says, “You don’t always look happy, Miz Doc, I just thought.”

  “No,” I say to him, to any kind of extramarital encounter. The life of the mind is one thing; getting down with this good-looking patient of mine, going out into the soft air where Charlie might see us together is another—the embarrassment of unfamiliar bodies, the difficulties of finding the right place, the awkward business of taking off clothes. “No, Rick. Let’s keep this on a professional basis. If we can’t…”

  “I know, I know.” Reluctantly, he gets up. “You’ll have to fire me.”

  “Nothing that drastic, it’s just.”

  “Next week, same time?” He won’t leave until I promise.

  “Next week, same time.” Relieved, I show him out.

  When I get to StElene tonight Reverdy will be there and everything will be perfect. Do you understand how that is?

  @eighteen

  ZAN

  In its own way, StElene is like Manhattan, wonderful on some days, good on most, and on some days, like the city, it can be a hard place. From the minute you arrive things start going wrong. Lark is nowhere around; Reverdy hasn’t been here since early morning and—new. He didn’t leave a note. Before she’s had a chance to read her other mail Zan gets a page from Harrald, who has big news. She joins him in one of the elaborate sitting rooms off the grand ballroom; it’s a trompe l’oeil room painted like a birdcage:

  Designed years before you were born, the room is painted like the inside of a cage. Around you, vines twine in and out of the bars, which protect even as they keep you in. The bars support several brilliantly painted birds. Stay here long enough and you will figure out how to make them sing. Stay too long and you will be forced to sing.

  “I’m getting married,” Harrald says breathlessly.

  Zan nods, unless it’s Jenny, chalking up one more patient she’s actually helped. “That’s wonderful! Where? When?”

  He says, “Here!”

  Zan can’t let him know how uncomfortable this makes her. “You’re getting MOOmarried?”

  “Oh yes. You think I’d do anything this stupid real life?”

  “MOOmarried,” she says. “Um. Who?”

  Harrald grins. “Velvet. Thursday week. She’s wearing red.”

  “Oh.” She doesn’t have to remind him that Velvet spends her nights on StElene seining the population for new men to take into the sex chambers. Love is supp
osed to be forever and Velvet’s a known slut. Odd, how Zan saws back and forth between two lives, responding, but not with the congratulations Harrald expects. Instead she asks the professional question. “How realistic is that?”

  “Oh, it’s real all right. We’re in love.”

  “As in, real love, here and off StElene too?” She is thinking of Reverdy. “As in, will you ever meet?”

  “You think I’m crazy? We’re meeting in Dallas RL at the end of the month. If we like each other, we may even…” He doesn’t finish.

  He doesn’t have to finish. “Um, be together.”

  Harrald shrugs. “Or not. You never know about these things.” Then he beams. “But however it works out, we’re getting MOOmarried and we’re staying MOOmarried no matter what her husband says RL…”

  Zan stirs uncomfortably. “She has a husband RL?”

  “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “That’s different.”

  She can’t see his face so she won’t know whether he is thinking, oh, sure it is. Harrald says, “Oh yes, but that doesn’t keep us from being married here.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good thing, Harrald. Being married only here.”

  “Take it from me, it’s the best. No recriminations. No morning breath.”

  “It depends on who you think you are.” With Reverdy, she thinks, it’s going to be either or. But she loves Charlie so much that she can’t know which either she means, or which or. In the mind, she thinks, I love Charlie with my whole heart and body but Reverdy and I love each other in the kingdom of the soul. Oh God I am confused.

  Then Harrald confides, “Don’t worry about me, I’ve been MOOmarried before.”

  “You have?”

  “Eletheria,” he says.

  Zan can’t stop herself. “That tramp?”

  “It was just a passing thing,” he says brightly. “I don’t want you to think for one minute that’s what broke my wife and me up.”

  “Your wife here?”

  “No, my wife RL.” Harrald goes on, pulling Zan into unwelcome complicity. “Faye, you remember Faye.”

  “I remember you telling me about Faye.”