@Expectations Page 21

  “You hate him?” Vinnie still doesn’t know what makes him so mad, that she hates Reverdy more than she loves him? “OK, prove it!”

  “You bet I’ll prove it. I’m going to kill him.” Yes! Then Mireya said something that didn’t exactly register in the frenzy, except it did. It’s stored on Azeath’s hard disk, for retrieval later. “No. I’ll call him up! Hell no! I’m going to his house!”

  Reverdy. She knows the bastard’s phone number!

  Of course she hurried to patch it up. She was so wild she let a detail slip. “Oh, you think I told him those things and you’re hurting. Oh Azeath, my best beloved, I would never let Tom…”

  “Tom?” Tom. The motherfucker’s name is Tom. Well on StElene, the motherfucker is dead.

  “I mean Reverdy—Reverdy is a programmer. Don’t you think he knows how to sneak into our places and plant listening bugs?”

  OK! Sitting here in Wardville, Vinnie got a great big hardon. Nobody ever called him “beloved” anything ever before.

  They celebrated by going to the ballroom, that was when Precious a.k.a. Reverdy blew his cover and Azeath was right on top of it. He followed the bastard, he was loaded for bear. Nailed Reverdy in the middle of, like, you would never believe. Shame coming down on StElene, this thing could wreck Suntum if it got in the papers, it could land Reverdy in jail. And Azeath was there. He followed Precious into Reverdy’s private place and secretly logged everything that came down. What Reverdy a.k.a. Precious said to the mark, what the mark said.

  Gotcha! Perfect. Azeath logged the evidence and queued it to every one of the Saints. They had a secret conclave about it. Reverdy was toast.

  So after he trashed Reverdy on StElene, Azeath and his best beloved—shit, he has a best beloved now!—he and Mireya had a little victory party in Mireya’s Boudoir and after they quit congratulating each other and having MOOsex they got to talking and Azeath focused: she knows where Reverdy is RL. So that is eating at him, but you don’t tell them that. Instead he hugged Mireya and danced this dance of triumph which at the end of it, and who knows what causes these things, Azeath said, “We have to meet. RL.”

  “Meet!” Like that. Some women, you make love to them in the dark and they go, “Oh let’s don’t spoil it,” but not Mireya. Mireya rushed into it, typing so fast that it scared both of them, “When?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Soon.” What Vinny meant was, I’m getting out soon, but he couldn’t say that because Mireya knows what he does at work, but he’s never said where he does it. He never fucking told her where he logs on from. It never came up. They exchanged vows. “I, Vincent Fuller, promise to meet you…”

  “Florence.” Mireya smiled. “Florence Vito Watson.”

  Florence! “That’s a pretty name.” Trouble is, it’s not.

  “And we are going to be together, Vincent…”

  Typing, he formed the word with his mouth. “Vinnie.”

  “Dearest Vinnie!”

  “And we are going to do it. Do it. Do it!” Typing with this neverending hardon. “We are going to do everything. And soon.”

  So that was that night. And ever since then, he and Mireya have made incredible, triumphant love IVR and now he and his lover Florence are closer than he’s been to anybody RL ever.

  They slipped into it, and he knew: I’m getting out soon. Soon I am getting out. Thoughts running through his head, Mireya all loose and excited, wham, it sort of escalated, love and craziness boiling up, he could pull this love out of the box and set it on real fire, real bodies in a real bed in a real place.

  Then last night on StElene they were making love online, so easy, so often, so sexy, so safe, and when Azeath least expected it everything kind of came in on him, how he didn’t know where he was going to log on after tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock, and he could feel fear like fingers crawling through his scalp: what if Reverdy gets back onto StElene in spite of what he did and I can’t connect and fight him? What if? What if?

  Getting Reverdy bounced off StElene isn’t enough.

  He wants him dead. And on his hard disk: she knows where he is. Which is not really why he proposed. Look, Vinnie Fuller really has never been anybody’s beloved before in any life and he needs somebody to call him “beloved” while they fuck. He needs to fuck! It all piled up, he got filled up to choking with imperatives, have to this, have that, Mireya called him “my best beloved” one more time and it spilled over and came out of him. “We’re getting married.” The words fell out on the screen and it was as good as done.

  “Married!”

  “And we’ll find other, better things that I can do to you.”

  “That I can do to you,” she said. “And soon.”

  So fast! “Tomorrow,” he typed, and told her where to come.

  She’s meeting him in Wardville tonight! But he’s got a double agenda with this beautiful girlfriend that he’s never met, so he’s going to have to take it easy, play it cool. Other guys, their squeezes write regular, they come on visiting days. Their women will be waiting outside the gates with the motor running, take ’em home and love them to death knowing where they’ve been all this time, whereas Azeath. Vinnie will tell her who he, Vinnie/Azeath, is RL, OK, but he’s got to soften her up first, like, make amazing love to her before he breaks the news. And maybe find out what he needs to know so he can move on to what’s next. At the back of his mind Reverdy sits like a god that has to be destroyed: Tom. His name is Tom. Tom something. She knows what. She knows where the bastard is.

  They’re meeting in front of the Burger Chef on Central in downtown Wardville at six p.m., which gives him time to take the bus to town and walk over, pretending that he has a car but he just parked it somewhere else. A friend in the laundry got him this nice shirt to go with the state’s suit and he’s been growing his hair so play your cards right Vinnie, and your woman not only will never know what you were in for, she’ll never guess you’re an ex-con.

  You bet it should be the happiest day of his life. In a funny way, he never expected it, even though he knew it was today. You spend 10 to 15 in the can on a 24-hour basis and see if you still believe there’s life outside. He’s getting out! He’s going to meet his lover soon. They’ll go someplace together and do everything for real for once, tumbling in a great big bed.

  Then why isn’t this the happiest day of his life?

  It is and it isn’t, Azeath thinks, taking one last look around at Azeath’s Little Hell. Reverdy, he thinks. I wanted him to squirm, I wanted him gutted and twisting in the wind and the Directors just. It happened too fast.

  In another ten he has to go and see the warden. Before that, he has to disconnect. He types @find reverdy but he knows what he’ll see. Reverdy is no more. If the Directors are right, he’s @erased. Gone for good. He’s gone but he isn’t gone, you know? It went too fast. There are things Azeath has to say to him. Things Vinnie Fuller wants to do to him. It isn’t finished, it is not … He’s getting out today. He’s meeting his lover at six. But before he can do any of this he has to disconnect.

  His hands freeze on the keyboard. He watches the ballroom convo go scrolling by. StOnge has just asked him a question. If he logs off, how can he answer? It makes him writhe. I can’t! But the screw is standing over him. Yo, Fuller. “You’re not getting weird, are you?”

  “Who, me? Fuck you!”

  The screw says mildly, “Some of them do.”

  “Well not me.”

  “Some of the hardtimers do.” Fuck, right. Ten years. He stares at Vinnie until Vinnie types @exit and turns off the machine.

  So like a man overboard, Azeath flounders. He has to be led down to the warden’s office and led outside. He paddles into the ambiguous light of five o’clock. After ten to fifteen with time off for good behavior, Vinnie Fuller is loose in the world.

  It is bigger than he thought. The bus driver waits while he stares down at the coins in his hand and then, like a vendor in a foreign country helping a tourist with the currency, reach
es over and fishes five quarters out. Then he stares until Vinnie lurches down the aisle to a back seat and sits down.

  By the time he reaches the Burger Chef excitement has outrun fear and he has the old Mireya hardon. It stays with him for the better part of an hour which is just as well because he ends up waiting for the better part of an hour. Jangling, he paces up and down. It takes him too long to realize that a small, squat woman in a raincoat has been pacing on the same loop for quite some time now, going along with her collar turned up and her hatbrim pulled down. Customers go in and out and every time a good-looking woman goes by, he jumps. Odd, every time a good-looking guy goes by, the woman jumps. Finally they both turn and face facts. She says,

  “Vinnie?”

  Shit! “Um. Florence?”

  Her voice is up but her face falls. “Vinnie. I didn’t know you.”

  “Yeah right,” he says drily. “Me too.”

  Falsehood in advertising. Right. You’d think the woman would rush to hug him. He ought to hug her, but he won’t. He’s been inside too long. He’s too far outside of these social situations for too long to be able to say the right things in them. Instead he opens his fucking mouth and these words fall out. “You don’t look anything like her.”

  It’s a relief to see that she is more angry than hurt. “Well,” she says. “You don’t look anything like him.”

  Vinnie thinks. I’m going to fucking kill him. He says, “You’ll get used to it. I love you. We’re getting married. I got a motel room. Let’s go.”

  twenty-nine

  I

  “Don’t be scared, Lark. I promise not to hug you.”

  It’s just as well Charlie let me out in front of the house and drove away; it’s just as well that his kids are still at the sitter’s, because it’s all I can do to handle Lark right now. No. It’s all poor Lark can do to handle me. He is jittering like a space module waiting for liftoff. Personal contact! In spite of all the confidences we’ve exchanged online, this prematurely old kid or very young man is so shy that after the first agonized flash in which his eyes stab mine, blazing with pain at the intimacy of recognition, he won’t look at me.

  “Oh, Lark.” I’m gentle but he keeps flailing, all spit and embarrassment. “Lark, I know it’s you, but will you please do something to confirm that it’s you so we can go inside now?”

  He shakes his head. He can’t. Oddly, except for the fact that he’s in a Dr. Who T-shirt instead of the baggy sweater, Lark looks just the way I thought he would: skinny, pinched and highly intelligent, like an overtrained chess prodigy. Anxious.

  “You look so cold. It’s summer, Lark, why are you so cold?”

  The silence is killing me, not knowing what’s happened to my love is killing me. Here is the only known witness and he can’t talk! I need to hear every line Reverdy said so I can scour the text for clues, but I can’t press Lark. I know better than to touch him or try to renew eye contact. One word and I’ll flush him like a wild bird and lose them both. Instead I sit down on the steps and wait for Lark to sit down next to me which he does, finally, but only after an agonized interlude in which he strangles on unspoken words and I sit, resolutely staring straight ahead. When finally he sits, staring at the exact spot I’m fixed on, I say with a doomed feeling, “It’s about Reverdy.”

  All the air rushes out of him. “Yes.”

  “But you. Are you OK? It’s OK, you don’t have to tell me. I just care, is all.” Then I hold my breath because this is a delicate bird and the least disturbance will panic him.

  “Oh fuck,” he says finally.

  I bite my lip. Don’t ask, wait. Don’t say anything.

  “My week is up and I’m out on my butt,” Lark says finally. He’s managing not to cry. “I don’t have anyplace to go.” His shoulders are rattling like coat hangers in a windstorm. “Oh, Zan. They kept my stuff, they kept my stuff!”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “They fucking disowned me and kicked me out.”

  “That’s terrible.” I want to touch him but he won’t let me. I can’t even tell him what I want to say, I’ll take care of you. He’d fly apart. I decide on, “How did you get here?”

  He can’t find the answer. “You’re the first person I thought of to tell.”

  “I love you, Lark.”

  “I love you too, Zan.” He still can’t bring himself to look at me and I’m still afraid to touch him; he might self-destruct. “I thought if anybody knew what to do, you would.”

  “Come in. I’ll get you a sweater.”

  Lark is buzzing with passion but he can’t start. He fans crumpled papers. My letterhead. A receipt for his bus ticket—on Howard’s plastic, what did the poor kid do to make his way here, pretend to be mute and pass notes? He’s shivering like a bluebird in an arctic chill. I feed him soup, I feed him a six-pack of English muffins, I feed him leftover Indian takeout nuked in the microwave. Wondering at how cold he seems here in the soft Carolina night, I wrap him in Charlie’s sweater and after the first bit in which I ask if he wants more of this, some of that, after I pour him a little wine, he takes a deep breath and expands.

  It’s as if his soul has just come back. “I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do!”

  “You’ll be all right.” I want so much to hug him and can’t.

  His grip here is tenuous. “I’m trying.”

  “I’m glad you came. Maybe I can help.” I’m rummaging in my head for resource people, placement possibilities, best money says work with a college and then sort out the rest; I know he has more than this to tell me. My mind is drumming: @find reverdy, @find reverdy, @find reverdy “Get you back in school.”

  “I don’t know.” Lark assimilates this offer; I see the click as he stores it for processing later. He blurts, “Without Reverdy, what’s the point?”

  So it’s OK to start the conversation. “What do you mean, without Reverdy! I came back to StElene and oh Lark, he was gone. It’s as if he never lived there. As if he’d never been.” My heart falls out. “Where did he go?”

  Lark hugs his skinny shoulders. “He isn’t anywhere.”

  “What happened?”

  “I can only partly tell you.”

  “Lark, look at me!”

  “I trust you, but I still can’t look at you. Is that OK?”

  “It’s OK,” I say. “Of course it is.”

  His eyes flick here, there. “Is this where you log on?”

  “Here? Home instead of the office, yeah. Third floor.”

  Like a hopeful child, Lark asks, “Should we go up and give it one more try?” It is a measure of our lives in the imagined kingdom that we’re both straining toward the stairs as if we can solve all our problems or at least stave them off by logging on.

  “We could.” Two addicted players confecting reasons to connect, as if the familiar will ease the pain that gnaws our hearts. I brighten. “Maybe he’s not gone after all.”

  “Forget it. He’s gone as hell,” Lark says. “Big tribunal, they tried to keep it a secret but I know. They purged him.”

  “Tribunal!”

  “The Directors. The Suntum site man. They had to act fast. The corporation was scared shit it would get into the papers.”

  “The papers! What would get into the papers? What do they say he did?”

  “That’s the problem, he really did it.”

  “Did what?” I’m trying to sound professional, but I’ve lost it. “They can’t just purge him. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”

  “It’s their sandbox,” Lark says sensibly, “they can do anything they want. One guy against the corporation? Sure they axed him. They can’t allow anything that makes them look bad.”

  “Execution with no trial. No proof of guilt. It’s illegal! We’ll go to court to get him back online if we have to,” I say irrationally. “Publish the logs.”

  “The logs are gone. Wiped off the database, along with all the angry posts everybody sent.” Lark has the smooth, untroubled look of
a person who knows he’s tried everything. “You don’t think I checked while you were, like, totally gone just when everybody most needed you?”

  “I couldn’t help it!” Don’t cry! “Charlie took me. He took me away!” Inside me, something changes. Charlie. How can I forgive him for this? “Oh God, if I’d been there maybe I could have…”

  “No way. When it came down, nobody could help him. Not me, not you.”

  “Oh, Reverdy!” Loss tears through me like a forest fire. I miss him. I miss him! “What got him?”

  “He kind of got himself,” Lark says heavily. “But who really nailed him was fucking Azeath. Azeath followed him and logged the whole deal and got the Directors involved and they nailed him. It was so fast!”

  “Nailed him? You make it sound like he was…” I don’t finish.

  “Well, he was. They got him for just cause. I’m only a geek dropout, but I know stupid when I see it. Rev was, like, doing his Precious thing? And Az…”

  “Oh, Azeath. Azeath’s a…” Yes I am angry. “He was doing his what? What Precious thing?”

  Accidentally, Lark looks straight at me. His eyes are blue! “You mean he never told you about Precious?”

  “No.” I feel—not betrayed, exactly, just different. It is as if I’ve lost him twice. “I thought he told me everything. He does!”

  “Nobody does. On StElene, nobody tells everything. It’s OK,” Lark adds hurriedly, to make me feel better. “It’s no big thing. Just this, like, game Reverdy used to play?”

  He lays it out for me then, the illegal second character Reverdy used to humiliate outsiders who mistook StElene for a sexual smorgasbord. “So that’s one thing they got him for, the illegal second, but that isn’t the only thing they got him for. He was…”

  I’m quick. “Playing a game.” Reverdy, with his saturnine grin, his darkly beautiful declarations of love, Tom and I have lived inside each other’s heads for so long that the vacancy is killing me.

  “Reverdy, he got this player in the Precious Den, he hadn’t bothered to sweep the place, you know, to be sure nobody saw what he was up to and nobody came in? So he didn’t know Azeath had sneaked in there, much less that he was logging the whole fucking scene. Used it to kill him, chapter and verse. He’s @erased. Look,” Lark says. “I called his house. I can’t get him on the phone.”