@Expectations Read online

  “No!” As if to drown out the news I replay our last moments, Reverdy’s and mine—Reverdy, who knows me better than Charlie ever could and, yes, loves me more!

  “Yup.”

  Loves me and phones Lark RL instead of me. It’s like discovering an infidelity. My lover doesn’t give me a clue where he goes when he leaves StElene. He lets himself be @erased without even trying to warn me it was coming, or explain. Erased. I say defensively, “So what if he plays a few games? What’s StElene about if it isn’t about games? How many other people play jokes on guests and newbies and, OK, on us?”

  “Yeah well,” Lark says. “That’s the problem. Like, who he was playing it on. You know, the, like, victim, that filed the complaint and got Reverdy whacked?”

  “Some idiot complained?”

  “Bigtime. Az put him up to it.”

  “Azeath. Azeath would.”

  “Rev always said he could tell a dirty old man when he met one? Well this time he made a huge mistake. Turns out his Precious was pretend doing the nasty with…”

  “What, Lark. What?”

  Lark coughs. “OK, he scared the crap out of some stupid twelve-year-old kid whose folks let him stay up too late. And the dad is a lawyer. One flame and the dad is on the phone with the corporation. Threatening to sue.”

  “But. Precious. Nobody knew Precious was Reverdy.” I give him a sharp look. “Except you.”

  “Yeah right,” Lark says bitterly. “Do you really think I would … Face it. The people who find out about these things, that would only be the people that, like, Reverdy wants them to know.” His tone makes it clear that he too feels betrayed. “Reverdy knew Azeath was out to get him, no question.”

  “He should have been careful!”

  “No.” Lark shakes his head. “It’s like, you want to commit suicide but you want somebody else to come in and do the job.”

  “Suicide!” I groan. “Oh!” Reverdy is gone. Vanished from my life. We are in my kitchen discussing a virtual loss, and it turns out to be more profound than any I’ve felt RL since Daddy. Intolerable.

  “He knew what he was doing,” Lark says. “He blew his cover with Azeath right before Precious led the Guest off to her lair.”

  I dodge this point. I am studying Lark, who’s spoken to my virtual lover IRL, who knows where he lives. Does he really know where Reverdy lives? “He wouldn’t throw it all away.”

  “But he did. Like he was asking for it.”

  “Lark.” I am swallowing hard. My throat is so dry that I can hear my lungs squeak. “You’ve talked to him since it happened?”

  “No.” We move into the next phase. “He’s not taking calls.”

  “Email. We could mail him! He’s mailed you!”

  “Forget it. No. I’m worried as hell about him.”

  “Me too.” I am moving carefully, constructing something I can work with. The next thing I say is equally true; Lark’s color is bad, he’s like a complex mechanism chattering toward implosion. “And I’m worried about you.”

  “I’ll be OK,” Lark says, but he’s gulping air. “Just as soon as I … As soon as Rev helps me figure out what to … Oh Zan. If I could only talk to him!”

  “Yes! If only I…” So I’m not enough for Lark, the poor kid needs Reverdy as much as I do. Part of me is drifting out the door, as if I can fly into the ether as swiftly as I do on StElene, @finding him and @being in the physical space where Tom lives, RL. But the faculties I have on StElene don’t travel. We’re earthbound, stuck in the realm of planes, trains and automobiles. This is how quickly a plan forms, how fast a professional woman in her right mind can construct a farewell note in her head, and how this woman, who is married IRL, can make plans with her gawky visitor, who is her best friend in the world next to Reverdy. This is how a person can make a life-changing decision in less time than it takes to log on in the realm of the imagination. “If only we could talk to him.”

  What I’m planning is wrong but when I see Lark’s face brighten as he divines where this is going, I think we are doing the right thing after all. This feels so good it can’t be bad. After all these months of subterfuge I’ll come clean with Charlie and be done with this. What I really mean is that I love Tom Dearden now more than I love my life and I can not make the leap in reason from there. I can’t know what Tom will say or what we’ll do the first time we see each other, I only know that I have to find out. I am proceeding on hope. Unless it’s on faith.

  Of course we try to phone. It shakes me when the voice on the answering machine—“We can’t take your call right now but leave your number…”—turns out to be a woman’s voice. Reverdy’s married, yeah, but I know all about cold, vindictive Louise. And if the voice on the machine sounds light, almost sweet, well, I know better. Tom’s told me what it’s really like. At the beep I hand the phone to Lark, mouthing: “Message?”

  He shakes his head.

  My heart shudders. I enter Phase Two. I mouth the words, “Surprise him?”

  “Yes! Let’s go.”

  “OK.” Gently, I disconnect. “Where does he live?”

  Lark still won’t look at me but his voice is steady. “It’s pretty far. Zan, I can’t use Dad’s plastic again, I almost got busted charging the ticket to get here, and I—I’m pretty broke.” The face-to-face encounter is too much. He’s shaking like a badly made model in a windstorm.

  “Lark, shhshh. Don’t. You came all this way to tell me what happened, it’s the least I can do. I’ll put both plane tickets on my card. I’ll go anywhere to help Tom but oh Lark, I don’t know where he is!”

  Then Lark pulls out a third piece of paper—folded and refolded and re-refolded, fingered to a high gloss like a pious old woman’s holy card. This is a snailmail from Tom Dearden—an old fashioned letter in an envelope with a first-class stamp. It is typed. No letterhead, no pen changes, but it is signed. “I got a letter.”

  For the first time I see Tom’s handwriting—bold strokes in a black pen. The first outward and physical sign that the man I am in love with really exists outside my mind. I am liquid with excitement. Tom. Everything fuses and becomes real. “Let’s go to him.”

  “When?”

  This is terrifying. Love comes true. No. It’s been true. It’s becoming real. I proceed cautiously. “You know where?”

  He is fishing in his back pocket. “It’s on the envelope. I had it right. Oh never mind, I memorized it.”

  It’s important to be matter-of-fact. “Charlie has the car. We’ll have to cab to the airport.” After all these days of being strung out, I am finally on the move. Testing, I ask Lark, “Are you OK with planes?”

  Sweet. Lark’s smile, now that it comes, is delirious, as careless as a baby’s. He looks improved. Stronger. Better. I have a plan. “I got here, didn’t I?”

  “You’re not just saying that, right? You’re sure?”

  My gosh he is almost looking at me. His head comes up and he is fixed on something I can’t see. He says, too loud, “I always wanted to see Alaska.”

  “Alaska!”

  “Alaska. Didn’t you know?”

  No, I didn’t. I didn’t know, and he told Lark and that hurts. It’s hard.

  Writing the note is even harder.

  CHARLIE, I LOVE YOU. I LOVE HIM BETTER. FORGIVE ME.

  How can I leave Charlie a note like that? He doesn’t even know there is a Reverdy in my life. How can I tell the man she’s married to that Tom Dearden, whom I’ve never seen RL, Tom Dearden and I are desperately in love?

  I tear up the note and start over.

  CHARLIE, SOMETHING IMPORTANT I HAVE TO DO. I’LL BE BACK.

  Covering my bets, I add, even as I go out looking for Tom Dearden—no, Reverdy—no, Tom. I add because I really do still care about Charlie,

  PLEASE UNDERSTAND.

  thirty

  FLORENCE AND VINNIE

  Motel room, looking about the way you think it would, Florence Vito Watson in the shower, washing Vinnie Fuller out of the fold
s and creases in her—only an English teacher would say it, her too, too solid flesh, and thinking at least the sex is good; clearly they both needed it but this is nothing like the love Mireya and Azeath make on StElene; it’s nothing like the love Mireya made with Reverdy in the palmy days, and in the lexicon of push and shove Mireya/Florence wishes she had kept this one in her gauzy boudoir on StElene because sex is sex and it looks different when you get too close. On StElene it is sex in the abstract and bizarrely exalted, but this! This is definitely not anything you’d ever want to take home or come home to, but now to her surprise this guy Vinnie Fuller is in the shower with her and that’s OK except he sinks sharp teeth into her shoulder and she digs an elbow into his ribs and when they both crackle with the pain that he mistakes for ecstasy he shouts, “We did it! Fucking Reverdy is wiped off the face of StElene.”

  “He’s gone,” she says with her heart breaking. “And we did it.” She can’t believe she will never see Reverdy again.

  “We did,” Vinnie says, soaping his hairy belly, white and round where his legs are white and scrawny, whereas Azeath’s description was so perfect, so burnished, big, buff body with every muscle outlined; Vinnie is gurgling … “You and me.”

  “You,” she sobs. “And me.” Even the Dak Bungalow is gone.

  Vinnie says cleverly, “So if we did it, how come I don’t feel better?”

  Automatically Florence says what she would have typed, “You want me to make you feel better? Just wait till I wash my hair,” but her heart hurts. If we did it, how come I feel so bad? A part of her life is over; her marriage to Harry Watson is over, so is her long love affair with Reverdy. She has to go back to StElene—loves/hates him, can’t live without it—but as soon as she gets out of here she’s done with Azeath, breaking up in the fluidity of conceptual space is hard to have over and done with, but she will manage it. Still she and this Vinnie person have to get through the rest of this encounter so she can proceed. Afterward she’ll lie on the bed and wait for him to fall asleep. Then she can get dressed and go.

  He says, “But when we fuck it’s gotta be perfect.”

  She’s not too good at dissembling; all she can manage is “Mmm.”

  As it turns out, Vinnie is in the grip of a bright idea. “It’s OK, I know how to make it perfect. I know what we’ll do.”

  Uneasy, Florence says, “It’s already perfect. Look at us! We’re here.” Disappointment drives her voice into the cellar. “IRL.”

  “Hell no it isn’t perfect. We have to find the bastard.” He lathers Florence roughly and rinses her and steps out of the shower, waiting for her to follow. Clearly he’s ready for another round, when all she wants is to get this over with. He goes on talking in that reedy, nasal voice so unlike anything she imagined for him. “You know how to find him and you’re going to help me find him,” Vinnie says.

  She stiffens. Rigid, she lets the water beat down on her head.

  “And then, oh boy count your blessings baby, it’s going to be perfect.” The voice is reedy but the tone is pure Azeath, all bluster and bile. “It’ll be pretty near perfect when the bastard sees it’s us that came to get him, and better than perfect when he figures out what we are doing.”

  Alarmed, she tries, “We don’t need anything more. We’re perfect now.”

  “Bullshit.” Vinnie’s voice hardens. “You’ve got this guy’s site information, you already told me, so don’t try and claim you didn’t because I know. And I know that isn’t all you know, Florence, so after we get to where he is we’ll just.” A mass of tangled synapses, he regroups, wheedling. “I don’t have to tell you what I want baby because I know you want it too…”

  Her face opens under the steaming shower in a suppressed scream. She wants to turn off the water but her hands won’t obey her. “Vinnie, I.”

  “Us together forever baby, right? And perfect.” His next words freeze her solid. “It’ll be perfect when we fuck on his grave.”

  thirty-one

  JENNY

  It’s as if Lark and I have spun through several lifetimes just getting where we are going.

  As soon as the airport taxi cleared town and headed into the low marsh country that lies south of Brevert, I said goodbye to all that. And was not sorry; I am leaving my old life behind. Riding along under the arches of liveoaks, with Spanish moss hanging down like mummies’ wrappings, I knew it was time. When we hit the last long causeway into Savannah the marsh started slipping past at great speeds, spooling past the windows like a background process shot in a movie about Jenny, going away. Then the cab driver let us out at the airport, Lark came alive and we began to talk. We sat together eating frozen yogurt in the Savannah airport, so focused on talking that I lost time and boarded the plane without noticing. We sat together eating airport nacho plates and Buffalo wings in Atlanta and Chicago and Minneapolis, dry-mouthed and short on sleep because air travel in America may be as fast as any once the planes take off, but the hours between connections are weighted with delays. This is nothing like travel on StElene.

  Now Lark and I are in Seattle, waiting for our last plane. We are in the departure lounge, planted like rocks in a stream of travelers. We’ve been together for so long now that we’re like near relations, spiritually joined at the hip. In the hours we’ve been on the road we’ve told each other everything and now we are bonded by all that talk and by what we think we’re doing. The right thing. We’re doing the right thing.

  We’re going to Reverdy. Everything in me is rushing ahead to the moment. He needs me. This isn’t only in the kingdom of imagination. I don’t just imagine he needs me. I know!

  Like all committed players who meet outside the game, Lark and I talk about everything in the world, knowing that in the end we will talk about the game. The locations and characters are as real to Lark and me as we are to each other sitting here, welded to molded plastic seats under this unremitting fluorescent glare. We make our own private space in spite of heavy sighs and footsteps pounding along the concourse behind us, in spite of CNN on the ubiquitous area TVs and the blue tweed industrial carpeting that spreads at our feet like what passes for grass in some ugly future we don’t want to think about. I say to Lark, “You seem to be OK with people after all.”

  “These aren’t real people,” he says.

  I grin. “It’s as real as it gets.”

  “RL.” Lark says mildly, “This is the most people I’ve been around since I got sick.”

  “You’re not sick any more.” I reach for his hand, but it’s too soon. Keep him strong so we can help Reverdy, I think, not knowing what that means. I say, “Look. You made it this far.”

  “It cost me.”

  “Yeah, but you made it. I know a lot of sick people, Lark. You’re not give-up-and-let-it-wash-over-you sick.”

  “Yeah I am,” he says almost easily, “but I’m getting used to it. It’s like when you get trapped in the hospital and they keep sticking things in you and turning you upside down and stuff? After a while, you stop caring who looks.”

  I laugh. “That sounds like better.” I can work with this. Get him back into college, fix his life. It’s nice, in a time when I’m sick with worry and crazy in love, to see my friend Lark hand himself over to me. He follows my lead with a sweet, bland look of undiscriminating approval. It is as if for the purposes of this trip, at least, he has relaxed into trust.

  “You wish.”

  “Not to worry. I’ll take care of you.” Better. I know I can take care of him. All the best parts of me are running after Reverdy, but IRL I can still cope. I’m even good at it; he’s in better shape than he was when we started out. I can tell from the easy way he sits in the plastic seat, mainlining chocolate. I can tell from the way he eats without worrying about what eating looks like to the people he’s usually convinced are watching him. The way he lifts his head and looks around. For now, he’s become my child. Closer, at least, than Charlie’s kids, and as for any of my own? I can’t go there right now. I can’t afford to
go there. My heart stops at Lark.

  Then he reminds me who we really are. “When was the last time you connected?”

  “Myrtle Beach, just five minutes. My God, it’s been two days.”

  “Some airports have these post-thingys where you can connect?”

  “Email kiosks.” I don’t mean to sigh. “Not this airport. I looked.”

  Lark shrugs. “I guess we’re in StElene detox.”

  “You could call it that.” No surprise. We are both twitchy because we haven’t connected in days. Maybe it really is a physical addiction, but there’s more. My friend Lark says he’s more at home in electronic space than he is inside the trap of his body, in this life. Wait. So am I.

  He nudges. “Think we’ll get used to it?”

  “Too soon to tell.”

  Then Lark says, “I talked to StBrêve right before I left for your house. I told him how pissed I was over what they did to Reverdy. They erased him without a public hearing!” He is in mourning. “They gave the gazebo to Azeath.”

  “That’s terrible!” I say irrationally, “They ought to be in jail. And Azeath. He ought to be in jail.”

  “Oh, Azeath. Azeath’s a fuck.”

  “He does what Mireya tells him to.”

  “Or not. StBrêve wouldn’t even come down to the lobby to tell me what they did to Rev. He made me come up to the top of the hotel, into the boardroom, like I was on trial or something, when they’re the ones that did wrong.”

  “Mireya.” I am bitter for more than one reason—those phone calls to Charlie, that made him take me on the road. “Mireya started it.”

  “Whoever,” Lark says. “Anyway, StBrêve sat me down in the big mahogany chair at the far end of the big mahogany table with the lions’ feet? And do you know what he said? He said they @erased my best friend for the good of the fucking community.”