In Persuasion Nation

by George Saunders

  I’m going today, Carolyn said. As soon as possible.

  And Mr. Dove looked at me and said, Jon, Randy, whoever, are you prepared to go today?

  And I said no. Because what is her rush, I was feeling, why is she looking so frantic with furrowed anxious brow like that Claymation chicken at LI 98473, who says the sky is falling the sky is falling and turns out it is only a Dodge Ramcharger, which crushes her from on high and one arm of hers or wing sticks out with a sign that says March Madness Daze?

  And Slippen said, Guys, guys, I find this a great pity. You are terrific together. A real love match.

  Carolyn was crying now and said, I am so sorry, but if I wait I might change my mind, which I know in my heart would be wrong.

  And she thrust her Exit Paperwork across at Mr. Slippen.

  Then Dove and Andrews and Delacourt began moving with great speed, as if working directly from some sort of corporate manual, which actually they were, Mr. Dove had some photocopied sheets, and, reading from the sheets, he asked was there anyone with whom she wished to have a fond last private conversation, and she said, Well, duh, and we were both left briefly alone.

  She took a deep breath while looking at me all tender and said, Oh Gadzooks. Which that broke my heart, Gadzooks being what we sometimes said at nice privacy moments in our Privacy Tarp when overwhelmed by our good luck in terms of our respective bodies looking so hot and appropriate, Gadzooks being from LI 38492 for Zookers Gum, where the guy blows a bubble so Zookified that it ingests a whole city and the city goes floating up to Mars.

  At this point her tears were streaming down and mine also, because up until then I thought we had been so happy.

  Jon, please, she said.

  I just can’t, I said.

  And that was true.

  So we sat there quiet with her hands against my hands like Colonel Sanders and wife at LI 87345, where he is in jail for refusing to give up the recipe for KFC Haitian MiniBreasts, and then Carolyn said, I didn’t mean that thing about the rabbit, and I scrinkled up my nose rabbitlike to make her laugh.

  But apparently in the corporate manual there is a time limit on fond last private conversations, because in came Kyle and Blake from Security, and Carolyn kissed me hard, like trying to memorize my mouth, and whispered, Someday come find us.

  Then they took her away, or she took them away rather, because she was so far in front they had to like run to keep up as she clomped loudly away in her Kenneth Cole boots, which by the way they did not let her keep those, because that night, selecting my pajamas, I found them back in the Group Closet.

  Night after night after that I would lay or lie alone in our Privacy Tarp, which now held only her nail clippers and her former stuffed dog Lefty, and during the days Slippen let me spend many unbillable hours in the much coveted window seat, just scanning some images or multiscanning some images, and around me would be the other facility Boys and Girls, all Assessing, all smiling, because we were still on the twice-a-day Aurabon®, and thinking of Carolyn in those blue scrubs, alone in the Lerner Center, I would apply for some additional Aurabon® via filling out a Work-Affecting Mood-Problem Notification, which Slippen would always approve, because he felt so bad for me.

  And the Aurabon® would make things better, as Aurabon® always makes things better, although soon what I found was, when you are hooking in like eight or nine times a day, you are always so happy, and yet it is a kind of happy like chewing on tinfoil, and once you are living for that sort of happy, you soon cannot be happy enough, even when you are very very happy and are even near tears due to the beauty of the round metal hooks used to hang your facility curtains, you feel this intense wish to be even happier, so you tear yourself away from the beautiful curtain hooks, and with shaking happy hands fill out another Work-Affecting Mood-Problem Notification, and then, because nothing in your facility is beautiful enough to look at with your new level of happiness, you sit in the much coveted window seat and start lendelling in this crazy uncontrolled way, calling up, say, the Nike one with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (LI 89736), and though it is beautiful, it is not beautiful enough, so you scatter around some Delicate Secrets lingerie models from LI 22314, and hang fat Dole oranges and bananas in the trees (LI 76765), and add like a sky full of bright stars from LI 74638 for Crest, and from the Smell Palate supplied by the anti-allergen Capaviv® you fill the air with jasmine and myrrh, but still that is not beautiful enough, so you blink on End and fill out another Work-Affecting Mood-Problem Notification, until finally one day Mr. Dove comes over and says, Randy, Jon, whatever you are calling yourself these days-a couple of items. First, it seems to us that you are in some private space not helpful to you, and so we are cutting back your Aurabon® to twice a day like the other folks, and please do not sit in that window seat anymore, it is hereby forbidden to you, and plus we are going to put you on some additional Project Teams, since it is our view that idle hands are the devil’s work area. Also, since you are only one person, it is not fair, we feel, for you to have a whole double Privacy Tarp to yourself, you must, it seems to us, rejoin your fellow Boys in Boys.

  So that night I went back with Rudy and Lance and Jason and the others, and they were nice, as they are always nice, and via No. 10 cable Jason shared with me some Still Photos from last year’s Christmas party, of Carolyn hugging me from behind with her cute face appearing beneath my armpit, which made me remember how after the party in our Privacy Tarp we played a certain game, which it is none of your beeswax who I was in that game and who she was, only, believe me, that was a memorable night, with us watching the snow fall from the much coveted window seat, in which we sat snuggling around midnight, when we had left our Tarp to take a break for air, and also we were both sort of sore.

  Which made it all that much more messed up and sad to be sleeping once again alone in Boys.

  When the sliding wall came out to make our Gender Areas, I noticed that they had fixed it so nobody could slide through anymore, via five metal rods. All we could do was, by putting our mouths to the former gap, say good night to the Girls, who all said good night back from their respective Privacy Tarps in this sort of muffled way.

  But I did not do that, as I had nobody over there I wished to say good night to, they all being like merely sisters to me, and that was all.

  So that was the saddest time of my life thus far for sure.

  Then one day we were all laying or lying on our stomachs playing Hungarian Headchopper for GameBoy, a new proposed one where you are this dude with a scythe in your mother’s garden, only what your mother grows is heads, when suddenly a shadow was cast over my game by Mr. Slippen, which freaked up my display, and I harvested three unripe heads, but the reason Mr. Slippen was casting his shadow was, he had got a letter for me from Carolyn!

  And I was so nervous opening it, and even more nervous after opening it, because inside were these weird like marks I could not read, like someone had hooked a pen to the back leg of a bird and said, Run, little bird, run around this page and I will mail it for you. And the parts I could read were bumming me out even worse, such as she had wrote all sloppenly, Jon a abbot is a cove, a glen, it is something with prayerful guys all the livelong day in silence as they move around they are sure of one thing which is the long-term stability of a product we not only stand behind we run behind since what is wrong with taking a chance even if that chance has horns and hoofs and it is just you and your worst fear in front of ten thousand screaming supporters of your last chance to be the very best you can be?

  And then thank God it started again looking like the pen on the foot of the running bird.

  I thought of how hot and smart she had looked when doing a crossword with sunglasses on her head in Hilfiger cutoffs, I thought of her that first night in her Privacy Tarp, naked except for her La Perla panties in the light that came from the Exit sign through the thin blue Privacy Tarp, so her flat tummy and not-flat breasts and flirty smile were all blue, and then all of the sudden I felt like the bigges
t jerk in the world, because why had I let her go? It was like I was all of the sudden waking up! She was mine and I was hers, she was so thin and cute, and now she was at the Lerner Center all alone? Shaking and scared with a bloody hole in her neck and our baby in her belly, hanging out with all those other scared shaking people with bloody holes in their necks, only none of them knew her and loved her like I did? I had done such a dumb-shit thing to her, all the time thinking it was sound reasoning, because isn’t that how it is with our heads, when we are in them it always makes sense, but then later, when you look back, we sometimes are like, I am acting like a total dumb- ass!

  Then Brad came up and was like, Dude, time to hook in.

  And I was like, Please, Brad, do not bother me with that shit at this time.

  And I went to get Slippen, only he was at lunch, so I went to get Dove and said, Sir, I hereby Request my appropriate Exit Paperwork.

  And he said, Randy, please, you’re scaring me, don’t act rash, have a look out the window.

  I had a look, and tell the truth it did not look that good, such as the Rustic Village Apartments, out of which every morning these bummed-out-looking guys in the plainest non-designer clothes ever would trudge out and get in their junky cars. And was someone joyfully kissing them goodbye, like saying when you come home tonight you will get a big treat, which is me? No, the person who should have been kissing them with joy was yelling, or smoking, or yelling while smoking, and when the dudes came home they would sit on their stoops with heads in hand, as if all day long at work someone had been pounding them with clubs on their heads, saying they were jerks.

  Then Dove said, Randy, Randy, why would a talented young person like yourself wish to surrender his influence in the world and become just another lowing cattle in the crowd, don’t you know how much people out there look up to you and depend on you?

  And that was true. Because sometimes kids from Rustic Village would come over and stand in our lava rocks with our Tastemakers & Trendsetters gum cards upheld, pressing them to our window, and when we would wave to them or strike the pose we were posing on our gum cards, they would race back all happy to their crappy apartments, probably to tell their moms that they had seen the real actual us, which was probably like the high point of their weeks.

  But still, when I thought of those birdlike markings of Carolyn’s letter, I don’t know, something just popped, I felt I was at a distinct tilt, and I blurted out, No, no, just please bring me the freaking Paperwork, I am Requesting, and I thought when I Requested you had to do it!

  And Dove said sadly, We do, Randy, when you Request, we have to do it.

  Dove called the other Coordinators over and said, Larry, your little pal has just Requested his Paperwork.

  And Slippen said, I’ll be damned.

  What a waste, Delacourt said. This is one super kid.

  One of our best, Andrews said.

  Which was true, with me five times winning the Cooperative Spirit Award and once even the Denny O’Malley Prize, Denny O’Malley being this Assessor in Chicago, IL, struck down at age ten, who died with a smile on his face of leukemia.

  Say what you will, it takes courage, Slippen said. Going after one’s wife and all.

  Yes and no, Delacourt said. If you, Larry, fall off a roof, does it help me to go tumbling after you?

  But I am not your wife, Slippen said. Your pregnant wife.

  Wife or no, pregnant or no, Delacourt said. What we then have are two folks not feeling so good in terms of that pavement rushing up. No one is helped. Two are crushed. In effect three are crushed.

  Baby makes three, Andrews said.

  Although anything is possible, Slippen said. You know, the two of them together, the three of them, maybe they could make a go of it-

  Larry, whose side are you on? Dove said.

  I am on all sides, Slippen said.

  You see this thing from various perspectives, Andrews said.

  Anyway, this is academic, Delacourt said. He has Requested his Paperwork and we must provide it.

  His poor mother, Dove said. The sacrifices she made, and now this.

  Oh, please, Slippen said. His mother.

  Larry, sorry, did you say something? Dove said.

  Which mother did he get? Slippen said.

  Larry, please go to that Taste-and-Rate in Conference Room 6, Delacourt said. See how they are doing with those CheezWands.

  Which mother did we give him? Slippen said. The redhead baking the pie? The blonde in the garden?

  Larry, honestly, Dove said. Are you freaking out?

  The brunette at prayer? Slippen said. Who, putting down her prayer book, says, Stay where you are, do not get distracted, have a content and productive life, and I will be happy too?

  Larry has been working too hard, Andrews said.

  Plus taking prescription pills not prescribed to him, Delacourt said.

  I have just had it with all of this, Slippen said, and stomped off to the Observation Room.

  Ha ha, that Larry! Dove said. He did not even know your mom, Randy.

  Only we did, Andrews said.

  Very nice lady, Delacourt said.

  Made terrific pies, Dove said.

  And I was like, Do you guys think I am that stupid, I know something is up, because how did Slippen know my mom was a redhead making a pie and how did he know her exact words she said to me on my private Memory Loop?

  Then there was this long silence.

  And Delacourt said, Randy, when you were a child, you thought as a child. Do you know that one?

  And I did know that one, it being LI 88643 for Trojan Ribbed.

  Well, you are not a child anymore, he said. You are a man. A man in the middle of making a huge mistake.

  We had hoped it would not come to this, Dove said.

  Please accompany us to the Facility Cinema, Delacourt said.

  So I accompanied them to the Facility Cinema, which was a room off of Dining, with big-screen plasma TV and Pottery Barn leather couch and deluxe Orville Redenbacher Corn Magician.

  Up on the big-screen came this old-fashioned-looking film of a plain young girl with stringy hair, smoking a cigarette in a house that looked pretty bad.

  And this guy unseen on the video said, O.K., tell us precisely why, in your own words.

  And the girl said, Oh, I dunno, due to my relation with the dad, I got less than great baby interest?

  O.K., the unseen voice said. And the money is not part?

  Well, sure, yeah, I can always use money, she said.

  But it is not the prime reason? the voice said. It being required that it not be the prime reason, but rather the prime reason might be, for example, your desire for a better life for your child?

  O.K., she said.

  Then they pulled back and you could see bashed-out windows with cardboard in them and the counters covered with dirty dishes and in the yard a car up on blocks.

  And you have no objections to the terms and conditions? the voice said. Which you have read in their entirety?

  It’s all fine, the girl said.

  Have you read it? the voice said.

  I read in it, she said. O.K., O.K., I read it cover to freaking cover.

  And the name change you have no objection to? the voice said.

  O.K., she said. Although why Randy?

  And the No-Visit Clause you also have no objection to? the voice said.

  Fine, she said, and took a big drag.

  Then Dove tapped on the wall twice and the movie Paused.

  Do you know who that lady is, Randy? he said.

  No, I said.

  Do you know that lady is your mom? he said.

  No, I said.

  Well, that lady is your mom, Randy, he said. We are sorry you had to learn it in this manner.

  And I was like, Very funny, that is not my mom, my mom is pretty, with red hair in a bun.

  Randy, we admit it, Delacourt said. We gave some of you stylized mothers, in your Memory Loops, for your own go
od, not wanting you to feel bad about who your real mothers were. But in this time of crisis we must give you the straight skinny. That is your real mother, Randy, that is your real former house, that is where you would have been raised had your mother not answered our ad all those years ago, that is who you are. So much in us is hardwired! You cannot fight fate without some significant help from an intervening entity, such as us, such as our resources, which we have poured into you in good faith all these years. You are a prince, we have made you a prince. Please do not descend back into the mud.

  Reconsider, Randy, Dove said. Sleep on it.

  Will you? Delacourt said. Will you at least sleep on it?

  And I said I would.

  Because tell the truth that thing with my mom had freaked me out, it was like my foundation had fallen away, like at LI 83743 for Advil, where the guy’s foundation of his house falls away and he thunks his head on the floor of Hell and thus needs a Advil, which the Devil has some but won’t give him any.

  As he left, Dove unhit Pause, and I had time to note many things on that video, such as that lady’s teeth were not good, such as my chin and hers were similar, such as she referred to our dog as Shit Machine, which what kind of name was that for a dog, such as at one point they zoomed in on this little baby sitting on the floor in just a diaper, all dirty and looking sort of dumb, and I could see very plain it was me.

  Just before Dinner, Dove came back in.

  Randy, your Paperwork, per your Request, he said. Do you still want it?

  I don’t know, I said. I’m not sure.

  You are making me very happy, Dove said.

  And he sent in Tony from Catering with this intense Dinner of steak au poivre and our usual cheese tray with Alsatian olives, and a milkshake in my monogrammed cup, and while I watched “Sunset Terror Home” on the big-screen, always a favorite, Bedtime passed and nobody came and got me, them letting me stay up as late as I wanted.