@Expectations Read online

  When he talks about control through rhetoric, Reverdy points to the Memory Palace. In a way, StElene has a lot in common with the famous mnemonic device put in place by a long-ago Jesuit with a mission to China. This priest with a passion for organization went to enlighten the imperial court in fifteen something-or-other. Burning to teach, Matteo Ricci designed the Memory Palace—a system for organizing all knowledge, or everything the Jesuit knew. If Father Ricci understood that providing the rhetoric put him in control, he did not record it. He thought if he could only get everything of importance under the one roof, he could teach it better. How beautiful his scheme is, how orderly. Guiding his students into this palace in the mind, he would lead them to the light!

  Like StElene, Reverdy thinks, it is conceptual.

  The priest tried to organize all knowledge within the floor plan of an imaginary palace. His Memory Palace is vast and richly appointed, with treasures in its lavishly furnished rooms. Everything inside stands for something: the arts, theology, areas of knowledge, facts, dates. He put historic events in these chambers here, theological fine points over here, the arts in one wing and science in another. Within these imagined walls every major date, fact, happening, every concept has its signifier. Every object—each vase and tapestry and every porcelain stands for something. This intricate jade screen may represent the Punic Wars, that geometric Persian rug, The Gilgamesh. Memorize the layout and the location of objects, see them in the rooms where Father Ricci left them centuries ago, and you can know everything Father Ricci knew.

  There is a problem. With the Jesuit’s device, you can only see things his way. Results are built in. Creating the rhetoric for the exercise, the priest set the tone and the parameters—the way users move through his palace and what they will take away from it. Perfect, yes? Ricci’s scheme. His rules. Go through his rooms at his pace and you will make not your, but his discoveries.

  As with StElene, even though Reverdy fights it. Suntum Corporation put it up and their rhetoric defines it. Island, slightly romantic, with threatening bits for the gamers. Big hotel, it’s social. There are parameters: the code. Access, which can be denied. Thirteen Directors to enforce it. And if the Directors are out to get him? Well …

  But, he thinks, grinning, rhetoric can’t accommodate accidents and surprises. Maybe some of Matteo Ricci’s followers were so entranced by the beauty of the palace, so beguiled by its gorgeous furnishings that they forgot where they were going. Rapt, they marveled at surfaces without ever once seeing what the master was trying so hard to teach them.

  Now Reverdy is looking for the wild card. Some contingency Suntum’s system can’t cope with. If there is one, he is damn well going to find it and hack into it and play it. And if there isn’t one, he will, by God, invent one.

  Even the Memory Palace comes out of chaos. Look at the paradigm. The model that inspired the priest. In imperial days, courtiers were seated in the banqueting hall according to family, rank and station. Then during the emperor’s banquet God played a wild card. An earthquake leveled the palace, killing all the courtiers. Entering the ruins, survivors identified the dead revelers according to where they had been sitting.

  Location is everything.

  Sitting in the Dak Bungalow, he types, for no particular reason: “Welcome to StElene.” On the screen the program gives back,

  You say, “Welcome to StElene.”

  Say it, and it becomes. Welcome to the world of performative utterance, where what you say, is. Although all the world he cares about is on the screen in front of him, Reverdy hears his own voice. “Wonderful.” The way you look and what you do and what you own outside count for nothing. The only thing that counts here is intelligence. You are who you want because you say you are, and there’s nobody in the place who can disprove it.

  The potential is tremendous. Oh, God I love this place, he thinks. All this life, stored in a machine located at the headquarters of Suntum International. All this life, inside of what is, essentially, a box!

  Grinning, he checks to see where his new enemy is playing today. Time to stir up trouble. He is famous for testing the limits, to the point where StOnge has delivered the Directors’ last warning. One more offense and he’s erased. Barred forever.

  What’s life without a little risk? @join Azeath, he types. It is the excitement that keeps Reverdy here long after Zan is gone, while everybody he cares about sleeps. If you can’t make sense of life, you can at least make story.

  Never mind what’s going on outside the room where Reverdy sits typing; never mind what the physical world makes of him. His life inside the box is intense. It’s all that matters.

  five

  JENNY

  I’m on StElene almost all the time now, I even log on from the office; if a patient cancels, it’s like a gift of time. When Martha goes out to lunch I log on, dropping crumbs in the keyboard like bread crumbs in the forest so I can find my way back. Even when Reverdy’s not around I feel close to him, just hanging there. Right now my life with Reverdy on StElene means more to me than a week in Myrtle Beach with Charlie or a month in Marrakech, for that matter, or St. Tropez, but that’s because of what happened last night. And if more and more I leave Charlie behind and sneak away to StElene, it will serve him right. Put it down to what happened last night.

  It wasn’t exactly a fight. Charlie probably thinks it wasn’t anything.

  Whatever it was, it kept me awake for hours and then woke me up again at 4 a.m.; I lay there jangling for as long as I could stand it. At five I sneaked upstairs and logged on. Thank God Lark was there; trouble with his folks, he couldn’t sleep either.

  We’ve been talking ever since. Charlie just woke up, I can hear him rattling around. I hate to leave Lark but I have to go downstairs and cope. My friend Lark, a.k.a. Hubert Pinckney, is only nineteen, college dropout, claims he’s a mess in real life but when we talk I forget which of us is the kid.

  Downstairs Charlie calls: “Jen?” With a twinge of guilt, I ask Lark, “Do you think we’re running away from something here?”

  He grins. “More like running toward something.”

  “Real communication?”

  “Realer. Where else can people get inside each other’s souls?”

  It is a kind of vindication. “That’s it!” I hug him and disconnect.

  Downstairs, it’s time to take charge—find Rusty’s hightops, slosh milk over Lucky Charms and strawberries for Patsy, start buttering toast in the aggressively yellow kitchen while my Charlie sits at the maple table with his wet-combed hair shining, smiling as if nothing between us has changed.

  In a minute he’ll melt into me: “I love you so much!”

  And when he holds me like that, no matter how hurt I am, no matter how angry, my body can’t refuse and I melt back. And I kiss him goodbye and send him off to the base as if nothing is wrong here and I’m not homesick for the loft where my old life still sits like a favorite coat that accidentally got left behind in the rush.

  It is a relief to go in to the office and deal with my patients, who are hard to like and almost impossible to help. You bet StElene is an escape.

  But that’s only part of my love affair with the place. And Reverdy is only part of it. I can explain the rest for the rest of my life and if you haven’t been there, you’ll never understand.

  Have you ever gotten lost in a book? So deep in the story that it’s the only thing that matters and the world outside seems like the dream? Did you ever hear the people talking, so deep into what happens that you see what they see and feel what they feel?

  I have. I used to run home after school and hide inside a book. I went in so deep that I rolled with every punch. I was desperate to find out what comes next. It was the one place I always felt safe. Books taught me how to talk, what was funny and what was dangerous, I learned how to treat snakebite and how to find my way out of the forest if I got lost. And I learned about love.

  My mother hated it. Me, reading, while she toiled. “Why do you
always have your head in a book?”

  The truth would only make her cry. I loved her, but I liked the people I met in books a lot better. They had better lives! I fed on them. I could share what they felt and walk into their countries and be more at home than I ever was in the big old brown-shingled house in New London where everything was boring and my mother yelled at me, and if I’d known how to write books I would have done it, moved into the book and never, ever come out, it’s one of the best ways I know to get into a prettier world and make your story come out just the way you want.

  StElene is like going to live in a book.

  It’s the one place where I’m in complete control of my life. I can be in love and make my own story and write any ending I want!

  Stupid to think Charlie and I could do that IRL. In real life.

  I met him at Kath Cleary’s beach house. He stood at the screen door and called. “Hello?” The sun was at his back so I couldn’t see his face at first because the light dazzled me. For a second, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Wilder USMC, coming in the door, looked like my father, going out. Who knew Daddy would never come back? Who knew this handsome young officer would walk into my life? I dug my nails into my arm and drew blood. To mark one fact and remember it forever. This is not your father. He was killed, and you’ll never get him back.

  Then Charlie walked into the cottage and took off his cap. He smiled and I was lost. “I’m Charlie Wilder, who are you?”

  “Jenny. You’re a friend of Kath’s?”

  “Yes. No. I’m a friend of her brother’s. What are you reading?” Damn you, Charlie, I told you and you told me what you liked about the damn book!

  I took it as a sign. “A Marine, and you read?”

  “I do.” He laughed. “And without moving my lips.”

  “Ooop. I’m sorry. My. Uh. Father was a Naval officer.”

  “Then you know.”

  Our two lives added up. I heard the tumblers click. “I do.”

  “Then you also know I can do a lot of other cool things.”

  Talking to Charlie was so easy! “I bet you do.”

  We started seeing each other. We fell in love and told each other everything, or what passed for everything. I didn’t know what everything was until I met Reverdy. Going to the Carlyle to meet Charlie’s family that last afternoon, I was nervous and excited. “What if your mother doesn’t like me?”

  “Um, ah,” he said, “we’re not going to meet my mother. It’s. Ah.” He coughed. He stopped the elevator between floors and took my hands. This is how he set the terms of his betrayal. “Oh honey, something’s happened. I love you and I need you to be OK with it.”

  “Oh, sweetie, of course!” And I am, I try!

  About last night. It’s easier to deal with other people’s problems than to face your own, so I’m at the office. I let poor little Amanda Wetherall do her instant replay of last night’s dream while I brood over last night’s fight. By the time I see Reverdy again, I’ll have it by heart. Who else can I tell? He’s the only one who understands.

  The trouble is, reconsidered in broad daylight, it isn’t exactly a fight. It’s just another of those sweet, sad misunderstandings, where Charlie and I love each other so much that we run toward each other head-on, and then forget and miss the connection.

  Cross purposes.

  I want this so much! I was sure it would bring us together. Now I’m scared to death it’s going to blow us apart.

  It’s been on my mind, and after what Rusty said to me last night, it bubbled to the top. Charlie was late and we were more or less alone—the last two people in the world and Rusty was rigid with dislike. I don’t know what I thought I was doing but I slipped down onto the floor and tried to give the kid a hug.

  “Rus, I know how you feel about your mother, but it’s going to get better.”

  “No you don’t.” He turned away.

  “I do, Rusty. You want to know how?”

  “Not really.” He wouldn’t look at me.

  “Because it happened to me.” OK, I brought it on myself. “Like, when I was your age? My. Ah. Father got killed. In. Um. His submarine.” It still hurts but I had to try. “First I pretended it wasn’t true and then I felt awful and then…” for Rusty’s sake, I lied. “I kind of got over it. What it took was. Um. Time, and one other thing? Do you want to know what the other thing is?”

  “No.”

  “Keeping busy.” His ears were turning red but I couldn’t stop. “It didn’t make things any better, but it took my mind off it. OK?”

  He wheeled with a snarl, ready to bite. “Could we please not talk about this right now, please?”

  “Sorry! Let me give you a hug?”

  “Fuck you!” He lunged to his feet and blundered out, and I thought: I want at least one kid in my life that won’t push me away. And it came in on me. I want this so much! The idea snagged, it hooked me deep and I could feel my insides spasm. Crazy, this fit of neediness. I actually swore, I’ll leave Reverdy, I’ll never go back to StElene if Charlie will only give me this.

  It seemed like the answer to everything—the kids, the loneliness, the sense of loss that’s been walking on my shadow ever since I hit Brevert. I waited until Charlie got home, I waited while he ate. Then I waited until we were in bed and even though I know better than anybody that this kind of suggestion is contraindicated this early in any marriage, I put my face in his neck and I said, “Oh Charlie, what if we had a baby?”

  “A baby?” This is how little my Charlie thought of it and how far back his betrayal went, and how deep. Yawning, the man I married kissed me and turned, mumbling, “Why would I want a baby?”

  My mouth filled with water; I reached over and pulled him back so we were facing in the dark. “Charlie! What if I do?”

  “Shhshh, babe, shsshh.” And my blind, loving, sleepy, thoughtless Charlie kissed me on the nose and cut me loose forever. “We don’t need a baby, Jenny. I already have my family.”

  So that’s what I carried through the day, all day, and that’s what chased at my heels tonight when Charlie called from the base to say he wouldn’t be home because he had to fly to Cherry Point. And that’s why my heart did a joyful, guilty little flip when he said he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

  After I get the kids to bed I can go to StElene and if I want to, I can stay all night.

  @six

  ZAN

  @find reverdy.

  It’s always the first thing she types.

  Reverdy The Dak Bungalow Disconnected for 12 hours.

  Reverdy is not logged on.

  Am I in too deep? Jenny wonders, going to the grand ballroom instead. It is like coming home, at least here people are glad to see me.

  Wonderful Jazzy spots her immediately. “Zan.” They hug.

  “Zan!” Articular greets her with that grin and a hug.

  “Hey guys, it’s me.” Zan beams. For the first time today she’s among friends. And, waiting for Reverdy, she will cheer herself with the talk. The talk, the talk!

  StElene isn’t a substitute for life, she thinks; it’s a new kind of life.

  The speed and ease of connections, the anonymity intensifies life on StElene. Unseen, people can and will say anything they want, and if they don’t like the way things are going, they can just disconnect. They can joke or play with ideas, float theories or troll for sex or take out their aggressions, reducing unseen victims to tears. There are a few dynamic personalities—people like magnets, who know how to make others fall in love with them or fear them or want to murder them. Sometimes Zan suspects that they spend so much time here because IRL—in real life, they are quite different. StElene may be the one place in their lives where they have affect. Passing through the physical world without making a ripple, they come here to make waves. Like the ones who shout insults or secrets in the public rooms and then leave, feeling purged. Confession comes easy when you’re casting words into the dark.

  So does sympathy. There are a few blowhards who
come to brag or preen or posture, but most people come to the grand ballroom to talk. And talk, because the species loves to talk about itself. For lonely people like Zan, it is a Godsend. After a bad day in quiet Brevert it’s a delight to be surrounded by smart people with plenty to say. Skimming, she’s cheered because StElene may be supported by Suntum’s database, but the soul of the community is talk.

  “It isn’t the heartbreak that kills you,” someone says, “it’s answering the farewell note.”

  A dozen threads are overlapping in the grand ballroom, multiple conversations scrolling up Zan’s screen so fast that she forgets the frustrations of the day and starts to laugh.

  “Oh, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s just a club she uses to bash people over the head with.”

  “Art movie. Awful movie. Boring. Imagine Waiting for Godot in SlowMo.”

  “It’s a great cookbook but she’s a bitch about spices. ‘Don’t even dream that the spices from your supermarket are any good. By the time they reach your country from India, they are too old.’”

  “Amy? Amy! Is Amy here?”

  “Still driving a 486. Metallica T-shirt. You know the type.”

  “I do not want to be in one more fight about Mac versus DOS.”

  “What goes around comes around; in the next election, liberal backlash is bound to sweep the government clean.”

  The conversation becomes general. “Somebody ought to sweep the government of this place clean. The Directors. Really. Dictators!”

  “That’s what Reverdy says.”

  “Do you really think StElene is controlled by thought police?”

  “What do you think, hmm? As in, who do you think put up the database?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the nature of the questions determines the results of a quiz, Reverdy’s right. It’s all programmatic; what the program permits and doesn’t permit. We think we’re free agents, but the Suntum Corporation’s calling the shots.”