“Sure. Sure I do. Those kinds of memories never really die—But the box—there was a box of pictures like the one that you’re describing—I seriously doubt there’s anything with Ben in there, but—OK, scooch over a little, darling, and let me help you look.”
So over she stepped and plopped down on her knees beside Eddie, who himself was sprawled out flat on the floor again. He had some cardboard cartons on the Turkish rug beside him that he’d already taken out and rummaged through; but there were more in there unexplored as yet. And pictures as old as the college photos he was looking for would be buried deeper than the skeletons that had already been exhumed, and so….
Out came another carton, and another underneath. Eddie sifted through one, Charlotte through the other. But nothing yet, and so he pushed the two aside and reached in for a couple more.
“So what do you need it for, sweetheart?—The picture, I mean. Bennie wouldn’t want it—that’s for sure. We can’t even talk to him about what happened back then. Carole says she never even mentions Lizzie’s name anymore. When she did—in the old days when she used to—he went into that funk of his for days.”
“No, I realize that—I never mention Lizzie either—It’s not for him, though. It’s—You know that deal we’re working on? The Internet whiz kids I told you about? You remember me telling you?”
“Umm, vaguely. Was it that early morning meeting you had last month?”
Eddie propped up awkwardly on one elbow and nodded yes.
“That’s the one, yeah. There’s this kid—this crazy goddam kid—I think he’s autistic or something—Anyway, he needs a picture of Ben when he was young—back at Princeton or Wharton or whatever. And I told him I’d try to find something he could use. He’s been bugging the hell out of me for days—well, not him exactly, he doesn’t do the bugging himself—he doesn’t talk that much, to be honest with you.” Eddie chuckled a little at that. “But he’s got this sidekick—An Indian kid—nice guy, smart—He’s the one who communicates. But the weird one’s been asking for a picture of Ben as a kid. And if I don’t come up with one soon, the weird kid is gonna drive the nice kid totally nuts!”
“So—what does he want it for, anyway? Do you know?”
Eddie knew, all right, and explained it as well as he could in a limited number of words. He explained about the website and the matching and the good impression the two kids wanted to make on Ben. Charlotte signalized her sympathetic understanding with a nod.
“OK, so give the kid a picture of Benny now. He’s in all the money magazines, isn’t he? And on TV and the papers too. Send the kid a picture from Business Weekly or Forbes or one of those. We must have some copies in the den.”
“Yeah, I did that already; I told him. He went out and got the magazine pictures first, but he didn’t like the quality. So then I had a bunch of publicity shots from Graphics delivered—which were better, I guess—Actually I know they were, ‘cause they scanned them in and emailed some matches to me the other day. They don’t have a helluva lot of middle-aged people in their files as yet, so they’re going younger—But what they sent me doesn’t come close to matching up with Ben the way he looked back when he was in school—It’s something about the eyes mostly—You know those penetrating eyes of Bennie’s—Anyway, the pictures I sent so far just don’t cut it, and the kids want something of Ben when he was younger, and they want it pretty quick, so….”
“OK, so—let’s say we don’t find the college stuff—how young a picture does your autistic fellow need? What about after Lizzie died? Ben was still in his twenties then, so….”
“You mean when he came back from India? Jeez—you gotta be kidding! Don’t you remember what he looked like then?—With that disgusting beard and all? He looked like a homeless wino for a couple of years after India. Who would have wanted a picture of Bennie looking like that? …
“And then afterward (Eddie continued)—when he was in his late twenties-early thirties, Benny looked pretty much the same as now. He hasn’t changed a lot in the past twenty years. But after Lizzie died—That aged him more than anything. No, these guys want a picture of Ben when he was a young fresh-faced kid, and even though he’s a handsome fellow now in a grown-up kind of way, he was never a young kid again after all the agony he suffered through. That picture would show him like he was if I could find the goddamn thing, but—well, who knows?— maybe it’s not here anymore. Maybe all this goddamn searching is just a waste of time. Anyway—go on to bed, honey, you don’t need sit here all night to humor your crazy husband. I’ll stay up myself a while and look.”
But Charlotte said no. She’d gotten curious herself about that box and what surprises might be lurking within. She’d go through another carton or two—And after all, there were only a few of them left to search. Ten minutes more and they’d be done.
So Eddie pulled another couple out, and then a couple more—down near the bottom at last, the penultimate two cartons on the carpet where they worked, only two still remaining on the closet floor. Wedding photos, Christmas cards with pictures of families forgotten years ago. Then letters from ex-employees: Nice letters, too; for he and Ben had treated people in the business like their own. Notes, pictures—stuff scattered everywhere, sifted through, then piled back into the cartons haphazardly. Down to the bottom of the barrel, so if the picture he was looking for wasn’t there in those last two lonely cartons on the floor, it wasn’t anywhere.
Eddie pulled them out, one for him, one for her. They sifted, they probed—And then, all of a sudden, Charlotte hollered out:
“Hey, Eddie—Eddie! What’s this? Look. Look here. Is this the box you’re looking for?”
Eddie looked—Hmm, maybe it was. Eddie grabbed it from her hands and set it on his crisscrossed knees. It was old enough, dusty enough, musty enough; that was for sure. A battered old shoe box that Charlotte had dug out from the clutter in the carton she was just beginning to rummage through. No label, no writing anywhere besides the length and width of a pair of shoes long ago worn to shreds; but it looked familiar—albeit distantly familiar—And when they opened it together, wide-eyed, expectant, peering in, they saw….
Yes, yes, old pictures: Old—really old. The two of them—he and Charlotte—at the senior prom, all fresh and eager and young. Then more. High school, college, dancing in some after-hours club, frat parties—those were some crazy times, all right—posing on the boardwalk in Asbury; a show on Broadway, standing below the marquee, Ed with wide lapels, Charlotte all pretty in blue. Benny had gone through their photos back in the awful times after the tragedy and had pulled out the memories he didn’t want preserved. No one argued with him back then. No one really wanted those memories anymore anyway; that’s how unbearable the pain had been. Besides, Bennie had a reason for everything he did, and if the mere existence of all-too-vivid memories was harmful, then maybe it was better that all the memories be gone. So he took everything from everyone, ransacked their homes, burned up all the relics of his past in an old metal trashcan in his folks’ back yard. Then he up and went away to India. And when he came back two years later, skinny as a rail, sick as a dog, frizzy-bearded like the derelict he was, at least a little part of him had healed.
“Here!” Charlotte, despite her habitual placidity, had practically screamed this out, right into her husband’s ear, making Eddie flinch. “Here, honey,” she yelled at him—“Look!”
For she was pawing through a stack of photos just as Eddie was, wet-eyed, remembering….
And there it was.
There. Like a gem-encrusted icon rescued from the recess of a wall. There—there!— What a gorgeous pair the two of them had been! What memories! What sorrow!
Ben as handsome as a movie star, his blue eyes flashing out like laser beams—And Lizzie: God! How hard it was to even fathom what a gorgeous creature she had been. There they were in the happiest of times, arms about each other, clinging together as though they knew it all would end too soon. Just before the fatal time too—that’
s when it was snapped—that last glad summer of her shortened life, the two of them united in love, grasping, him to her and her to him the way they always did, the way they always had from the beginning, ever since that dance in Red Bank High Eleventh Grade. Ben and Lizzie, Lizzie and Ben. Eddie swallowed hard and wiped some unrepentant moisture from the corner of his eye.
“Make a copy though—don’t give them that one,” Charlotte whispered. She whispered, you see, for it was an occasion too solemn for outright talk. “I didn’t know we had it,” she said, “but I wouldn’t want to give it up.”
“No, me neither. I’ll have the guys in Graphics make a bunch of copies and blow some up to send, then we’ll tuck it away again for another thirty years. It wouldn’t do for Ben to see it, do you think?”
“No, no; I know it wouldn’t do. You gonna cut Ben’s picture out to mail it?”
“I don’t think so, Char. Even in a goddam picture I’m sending to a crazy kid, the two of them should never be parted again.”
14
The numbers said it all: Within six weeks—a month and a half after the Atherton-FaceMate deal was signed, subscribers to the site hit two-hundred-million with explosive growth by the day—pretty nearly by the minute! Eddie had been right to get pumped that Friday morning when the Braverman folks were due—This was promising to be bigger than Facebook—bigger than anything since Apple, since Microsoft, since Walmart, and MacDonalds and Diet Coke all wrapped in one. Hell, maybe even bigger than the whole of the Dow Jones basket put together. A cash-in of inestimable proportions was merrily on its way.
Alex’s new parameters were going great guns as well, and that had helped increase the rate of growth. More info in, meant more info out; and within the first few weeks after the introduction of the questionnaire, amazing correlations were daily brought to light.
Example one: The college research folks were calling in. “Is it true you’re seeing a correlation between nostril size and chronic lung disease?” “Is scattered dermal pigmentation associated with polyposis?” There were many such associations coming forth; things never noted in the journals before. And FaceMate was uncovering them. There seemed no limit to what miracles the brand new website could perform.
And Alexander Daugherty?—The crazy kid was having FUN!
ALEX: U C THE #S??
Rajiv read the patois on his computer screen, clicked respond, and emailed back:
RAJIV: The numbers? You mean sign-ups?
ALEX: YS
RAJIV: Saw them, sure. Passed 200 Mega today. How are you doing with the program?
ALEX: JST PT THE BIO IN
RAJIV: The biography? Just a biographical sketch, right? You can’t have too many words, can you.
ALEX: 400 WDS—ENUF 2 TELL
RAJIV: So—you think you can gauge a person’s intellect from a 400 word biography? Is that reliable?
ALEX: I CNT—CPTR CAN.
RAJIV: Well you essentially ARE the computer, aren’t you?—You programmed it—So if YOU can’t gauge a person’s intellect from a 400-word biographical sketch, how is the computer going to do it?
ALEX: IT WILL. DNT WRRY. IT WILL
And it did. Knowing Alex, Rajiv wasn’t the least bit surprised that it did, when it did. After some selective testing in more detail with a scattering of online volunteers, the biographical analysis for intellect was found to have 99+ percent accuracy. It analyzed word choice, grammar, proper usage, selection of relevant data—‘ENUF 2 TELL,’ just as Alex had said. And it was, indeed, enuf 2 tell.
And those facial parameters: Who would have guessed? but they were found to be extraordinary correlates to the other factors newly supplied. Not just weird medical syndromes newly being brought to light, but less critical factors too. Not life-saving, true, but no less fascinating for their relevance. Every day—almost every second—new and more amazing correlations emerged:
Intercanthal distance, for example—the space between the eyes—It was found to have an 80% linkage to reasoning ability. The curvature and size of the nose in males had a 70% correlation with virility. As more and more facts emerged, facial analysis was turning out to be a better predictor of human health, habits, and propensity than even genetic analysis had proven itself thus far—at least from those scamming online DNA hucksters, it sure did. Twenty bucks to FaceMate might well be the best investment even the miserliest skeptic among the populace could make.
Everything was running smoothly, all right, but Alex had that fixed obsession in his mind that couldn’t be appeased:
ALEX: U GET THE PCTR YET?
RAJIV: The one of Ben? Like I told you, man, all they’ve got is the publicity photos they sent us already. The ones you already scanned in.
ALEX: NEED YNGR PCTR
RAJIV: Hey, I can’t give you what doesn’t exist. Anyway, we’re getting a lot of older sign-ups now. Maybe we’ll find a better match in those.
ALEX: WHAT DID EDDIE SAY?
RAJIV: He said the pictures of the kids we sent were not too bad, but not quite on the money. And the older matches weren’t even close.
ALEX: NEED YNGR PCTR. GET IT.
RAJIV: Hey, I’m doing my best, Alex. If you don’t like the way I’m handling things, call Eddie yourself.
ALEX: RIGHT. SURE. LOL—GET PCTR
RAJIV: OK, OK, I’ll call again. Eddie said last night he’s going to rummage through some stuff he stashed away in a closet, so maybe he’ll come up with something good.
ALEX: CALL RT NOW & CHK. GET IT—NEED YNGR PCTR—NEED YNGR PCTR—NEED YNGR PCTR NOW
RAJIV: OK, I’ll try. I’ll do my best—But one question, if you don’t mind telling me—do you mind?
ALEX: DNT MIND. OK 2 ASK
RAJIV: Why are you so obsessed about Ben? We’ve got the deal wrapped up, we’ve got the financing you wanted, and now we’ve got a ton of cash coming in as well from the user fees. Besides which, I don’t think Ben is all that concerned about the matching anyway—So why are you so obsessed?
ALEX: NT OBSESSED. I DNT GET OBSESSED!
RAJIV: OK not obsessed then—let’s just say interested—So why?
ALEX: I LK BN—GD MAN.
RAJIV: Good? In what way good? Like, kindness good or business good?
ALEX: ALL GD
RAJIV: I’m still not understanding 100%, Alex, my man. Can you explain better? Please? I don’t like to hassle my brilliant partner, but I really need to understand.
ALEX: OK / CLARITY RAJIV / BEN IS GOOD / ALL WAYS & ALWAYS GOOD / OK NOW? / No MORE ?S / GDBYE.
15
Dottie Mulroy set her purse on the hallway table and dropped her car keys into the Reno-Tahoe souvenir ashtray that hadn’t been used for ashes since Connor stubbed the last of his cigar butts in there seven years before.
‘Dottie’ was what the folks all called her, but she didn’t much like the name. What she would have been called if she had her druthers was the moniker she’d been gave at birth; the one she gen’rally scribbld on her checks. But when your mom gets to hollerin’ for you to get your little backside in for supper—well, ‘Dorothy’ gets to be a pretty hefty mouthful if a parent’s got to yell it out lots and lots of times. So ‘Dorothy’ got shortened to ‘Dot’, or sometimes Dottie’—‘Dottie’ sounded apter, she figured, for a skinny, red-haired, freckled kid who’s always wanderin’ off, so that’s the one they’d generally called her by. Not ‘Dotsy’, though—She put her foot down to ‘Dotsy’ and simply wouldn’t come when they called her that.
Sometimes, though, the name ‘Dottie’ came in handy. One day, back maybe six years back or thereabouts—not long after Connor died, right around St. Patty’s Day, that much she could remember—Well, that St. Patty’s Day she’d come on into work with a green polka dot scarf to decorate her uniform; that’s the only thing she could find around the house that contained a little green, you see. So what happens when she ups and wears it in? Well, next thing, what do you know, but one of her reg’lars points it out, and laughs, and says: He says “Hey
, there’s Dottie with the polka dots.” So then next thing you know, ‘Dottie with the dots’ gets to be a kind of joke around the diner. But a good joke, though. Good, meaning that people start to remember her like that—not just her smilin’ face, but her name gets stuck on too. “I want Dottie’s table,” they got to asking pretty quick, now that they know what name to call her, and that did wonders for her tips way over and above what they ever used to be a year or two before. So nowadays she was doin’ pretty good as far as money was concerned, and she kept the dotted scarfs a-goin’ as a sort of trademark, sometimes green dots, sometimes blue, red, whatever’s topmost in the drawer—And as a result of that, them hefty tips and all, well there was plenty of little extras for her and for the kids nowadays, way more than they needed to just get by. Of course with Tommy’s extra income he slipped her on the side to help things out—not that she’d ever asked him for nothin’, of course—and the free ride at school he’d earned—smart as a whip, that boy; he’d always been. Yep, the three of them were really pretty comf’terble with regard to money these days, even without a husband round to help.
Well, quarter after ten by now, so said her twelve buck watch: she oughta see about her little girl at least. Yeah, but right at the moment—whew!—just a-gettin’ home after fourteen hours on them miser’ble feet, she plain old felt the need to set her body down a bit.
So into the living room, leavin’ the bags she’d carried in from the diner on the floor, and plop! onto the old beat-up lounge chair facing the blank TV. Off went the shoes so’s she could rub them achin’ toes back the point of gettin’ some feelin’ in ‘em. All day trompin’ up and down—Up at quarter after five to get to the diner at six on the nose, then two hours cookin’ up the pies—a pretty decent bargain for bakin’ ‘em at two bucks a pop—thirty-somethin’ pies for sixty-somethin’ bucks—great money; everything came in handy—Then waitressin’ for the duration—first the breakfast crowd, half of ‘em askin’ for her by name, for ‘Dottie with the dots’—red dots today, yesterday blue—though she could pick and choose which of her reg’lars was the better tippers and decide to wait on them and leave the cheapskates to the younger girls who didn’t have no dots—Hah! Seven years seniority and Cosmo let her do what she liked. So then, startin’ at eleven, the lunch crowd came in, and after they cleared out she normally headed home. Gen’rally she did, yeah, but leave it to Angela to call in sick—Sick! Most likely one of her low-life boyfriends again takin’ up her time. And who else but Dottie to fill in when Angie wasn’t there?—So there you were.
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