frogger13: double-click on the envelope
John pauses. The command seems so simple, so innocuous, which is precisely why it makes him so apprehensive.
frogger13: double. click. on. the. envelope.
John draws the arrow to the center of the browser window. He watches it hover over the icon.
frogger13: DOUBLE
frogger13: CLICK
frogger13: ON
John taps twice on the bottom of the mouse pad. A little ball flies to the download icon at the top right corner of the browser window. A jolt of revulsion hits his gut as he sees the progress bar filling.
frogger13: very good.
Clicking on the download icon, John sees that the folder contains over 20GB of files, transferring rapidly to his hard drive.
1 minute remaining…
Oh God, what is this? Some kind of awful virus?
30 seconds remaining…
He never downloads anything to his computer without first scanning it.
Seconds remaining…
The download completes.
A succession of images floods the screen like an uncontrollable hemorrhage.
The images are pornographic. Hard-core stuff.
And the models are… Oh, God. They’re children.
John can’t breathe. He scrambles to close out the images, x’ing them out one-by-one, but they keep coming, faster and faster, cascading onto the screen. It’s hard to believe so much of this trash even exists.
The door opens. John looks up. A flash of light shocks his eyes. Dresden, arm wrapped in a blood-soaked towel, stands in the doorway holding John’s iPhone, looking at the display. He’s taken a picture of the scene—John sitting pantless at his computer as those vile images fly across the screen.
“Holy shit,” says Dresden, “I wouldn’t’a pegged you for a pervert, doc. A pussy, to be sure, and kinda dense—but not a pervert. Never can tell I guess.” He lets out a hideous nicotine-laced cackle.
John’s hand goes slack on the mouse pad, giving up the fight against the torrent of images assaulting his home screen. Beneath Dresden’s laughter, he hears once again the ping indicating a new message from frogger13. And another. And another. And another. Sifting through the mess of smut jamming up the screen, he locates the dialogue box and sees the messages waiting for him.
frogger13: now weve really got you…
frogger13: BY
frogger13: THE
frogger13: BALLS
A final ping…
frogger13: bye felicia
… and then the message “frogger13 is off-line.”
Dresden goes on laughing as John slowly closes the computer and begins to get dressed.
CHAPTER SIX: The Long Way Home
9:58 p.m.
He should be home by now. Would be if he hadn’t gotten held up at the Madrid-Barajas Airport, trying to navigate all those shuttles. He would be home by now if he could have communicated with the attendants ushering him this way and that—aqui! ahi!—if, say, he had taken Spanish back at Hebron Academy instead of choosing French at his then-girlfriend’s urging.
Rebecca. Lynn. Barry.
The name threads itself into a stiff knot in his throat.
If Matthew is being honest, as he’s tried to be over the past few months, he’s still a bit in love with Rebecca. He hasn’t mentioned her to any of the girls he’s dated since high school—with the exception of Colleen, the woman, fifteen years his senior, he shacked up with for a few nights in Paris.
Would he even call that dating, the thing with Colleen? He doubts that she would. It was an experience, an encounter, nothing more. It was short, simple, and sublime, but undoubtedly no more than a blip on her extensive romantic timeline. Sipping Bordeaux from plastic cups in her narrow kitchen, ankles intertwining as they leaned against counter-tops opposite one another, the woman’s chestnut hair flirting with the freckles on her chest. She asked him how he had learned to speak French, and out it came, the love he hadn’t spoken of in years, pouring out of him in a flood of words and tears; and he and the woman made love right there on the counter, riding in the wake of that flood.
That night was the start of it, he thinks now, looking out the window of the transatlantic flight beginning its descent into JFK—his first night in Paris, talking about Rebecca, realizing probably for the first time (five years after their split) that it’s actually over; feeling the regenerative effect of naming it, acknowledging it, honoring it. The elemental forces of life had begun to move in him again. Finally, after four years of sleepwalking through college, barely living, barely conscious, barely human, finally—by God—he was alive again.
It wasn’t just the split with Rebecca, of course, that had sent him into a tailspin—his heart, brain, and spirit all atrophying. It wouldn’t be fair to pin all that on her. Their break-up may have been the catalyst, sending him hurtling through the crucible of higher-educational achievement with zero connection to anything he really cares about, his soul withering within his hefty psychic armor. It was everything—leaving home, going to college, making new friends. Most of all, it was the expectations—
• Attend your parents’ alma mater
• Keep those grades up while securing a place on the lacrosse team
• Keep an active social calendar, but party only on the weekends and never during playoffs or finals week
• Internships in NYC
• Lunches with corporate recruiters
• Grad school applications; top-tier only, if you please, for someone with the impeccable record, intimidating test scores, and disarming social skills of Mr. Matthew H. Lavando
—the untenable load of expectations bearing down on him at every moment. That’s what really got to him.
He’s gotten it right, more or less, every step of the way, keeping his GPA at dizzying altitudes, creaming his opponents on the field, always having a date but never going out with anyone for more than a few weeks because he doesn’t want to get distracted, never getting close to anyone. All that effort, it was going to add up to something, right? It had to add up to something. Happiness deferred. Just around the corner. Coming. When this next paper’s done. When you make it to semifinals. When you graduate phi beta kappa, summa cum laude, egregia cum facie, etc. etc. etc. Just ride that wave of hopes and expectations, and you’ll make it into shore one of these days, buddy. You’re destined for success (satisfaction to follow). Have faith in that.
Have so much faith, in fact, that there’s basically no point in applying to any business school but the one you really want to attend. Chicago Booth—where the big dogs go to cut their teeth. Forget those other applications. Delete them from your hard drive, clear them from your browsing history. Keep your eyes on the prize.
He had worried during the first few legs of his European trip that his parents would catch wise. All they’d have to do is go to the University of Chicago website and they’d discover that—whoops!—the school doesn’t offer deferred admission. His story would come apart. A little click-click-click, and his folks would find out that he isn’t taking the year off because he decided it was important to clear his head before jumping into the pressure cooker of a world-class MBA program; he isn’t taking the year off so that he’ll be in tip-top shape next fall, having gained perhaps a bit more perspective than the other boarding-school-to-boardroom pipeliners he’ll be studying with; no no no, the honest-to-god truth is he’s taking the year off because, in spite of near-perfect grades, eye-popping test scores, luminous recommendations, and a personal statement he paid three separate consultants to review; in spite of all the best preparation that a fine young mind with a whole lot of wherewithal could muster, in spite of reviewing his materials at least twenty-seven times before clicking ‘submit,’ the application seeming literally to gleam on the computer screen; in spite of doing everything, in short, that someone in his shoes could possibly do to secure entry into his chosen world-class graduate business program, which basically every
thing in his whole life has been gearing up to—in spite of all of this, he Didn’t. Get. In.
“You don’t need a fallback plan unless you’re planning to fall back,” he had told himself. Fucking catchphrases—they’d be the death of him.
The trip to Europe had started as a way to shield himself from prying eyes, to skirt his parents’ questions and the unavoidable shame that would attend them—public shame if he tells the truth, private if he keeps up the charade.
The plan was working well enough until he got to Paris and met Colleen. That was the beginning of his reawakening to life. He had risen from her bed that night, unable to sleep—not from the astringent restlessness that had vexed him back home, but a crystalline sense of presence in the world. It was night in the Western hemisphere, and he was wide awake. Sitting by her window, looking out at the Rue de la Pompe, imagining the Balzac-ian characters that might have walked these roadways before they were flooded with money from retail shoppers and real estate developers, lamenting the loss but thrilled by the insouciant power of time’s long march, empowered to know that, for whatever time he has on this earth, he is an inextricable part of that march; at that moment he was still in love with Rebecca, but he was also in love with the older woman sleeping in the next room, in love with the occasional pedestrian passing under the street lamps, in love with the streets themselves, and the unseen horizons the streets run off to.
He was in love with all creation.
The feeling only grew over the next few weeks, as he struck out on his own, abandoning the cadre of fellow trustafarian travelers he’d cobbled together in the hotel & hostel circuit, seeking out the hidden places, where people look past the glitz and the glimmer, not content to skate across the surface of life, numbing any quaking of their souls with the balm of purchases and parties, drugs and debauchery. He looked for and found the real underground, meeting poetic prophets on the streets of Paris, Eastern-bloc bodhisattvas in the hills of Budapest, purveyors of shamanic medicines en route to remote Mediterranean coasts; everyone and everything he meets drawing him in deeper, closer to the true destiny that he senses is there… right there… just around the corner…
The flight attendant tells the guy sitting next to Matthew to raise his seat to the upright and locked position. The guy huffs and puffs about it, fussing in his seat like a toddler. This jerk has been about nine kinds of obnoxious during the 14-hour flight, but Matthew doesn’t give a damn. He’s found a direct line to the great womb of the world, the source of all life, and nothing’s gonna get him down.
The only thing standing in the way of his progress toward total transcendence is the deception. The lie hanging over him. His family needs to know that his reason for leaving was not what he told them, and that he’s now on a new course. He could settle all this in a phone call or an email, but he figures it will stick better—convincing them and himself that, yeah, he’s serious about this—if he has the guts to do it in person. If he can look his parents in the eye and tell them that every plan he ever had in life until a few months ago, every award, every accomplishment, every hard-won victory, means nothing to him now… if he can do that, it will mean he’s really committed to his new path.
The horizon tilts in the frame of the window as the plane angles toward the earth. The guy in the seat beside him continues to grumble, as if citing an obscure clause in the cosmic plan that’s dedicated to his comfort.
Sorry, buddy, that’s an accommodation none of us gets.
Even if everything is set up for your success, and you supplement that privilege with every bit of effort that’s asked of you, you’re still liable to get the shaft. Just ask Matthew. He oughta know.
The young woman’s palms press against the counter. “Are you absolutely sure there’s nothing you can do.”
“I’m sorry, miss,” says the agent, “but the computer won’t even let me get past this page.”
The young woman groans, looking up at the ceiling as the rental agent—a middle-aged guy with wet-looking hair pulled back into an unfortunate man-bun—slides her ID across the counter.
“Is there a supervisor or something I can talk to? Anybody?”
“Not at this hour, not on a Sunday. It’s just me here.” The guy speaks with what Matthew supposes to be a Brooklyn accent, though he hasn’t spent enough time in the New York Metro area to pick up on the fine distinctions among the various borough’s speech patterns. Man-bun could just as easily hail from Queens, Long Island, Jersey, making the long commute to this barren corner of Southeast Brooklyn five, six days a week to spend his hours standing at an Enterprise Rental kiosk, interfacing with folks who are eager—more than fucking God anything—just to be on their way.
The young woman taps her foot anxiously. “Can you run it again?”
“It won’t do any good,” man-bun tells her. “The system says it’s not a valid license number. That’s it. When it turns up that result, it slams on the brakes. No moving forward.”
“You don’t seem to understand… I need to get back to New Hampshire tonight.”
“No, you don’t seem to understand—” three minutes into this, the guy is finally starting to get a bit testy “—there is no way you’re getting a car tonight. Not from us. And any other vendor that’s open, they’re gonna tell you the same thing. We all got the same security protocols. It’s industry standard. You’ll have to wait ‘til the morning and catch a bus home. Now, if you would step aside…” He looks around her and gestures to Matthew, who’s the only other customer in line.
Matthew starts to step forward, but the young woman wedges herself in between him and the counter. His hand brushes the side of her denim overalls. He almost apologizes, but she doesn’t seem to notice; her attention is elsewhere.
“Okay,” she says, “I’m sorry about my tone and, like… manner. It’s just that…” she looks down and swallows, as if forcing down a lump in her throat “… it’s been a very trying day, and it’s really important that I get home tonight.”
“This isn’t about your tone. It’s about your driver’s license. Try finding a real one next time you want to rent a car.”
Matthew can’t see her eyes, but he imagines, from the way her body has gone totally still, her shoulders raised combatively, that they’re narrowing in cool fury at the guy. She doesn’t say anything else, just snatches up her ID, grabs her backpack from the floor, and stomps off down the corridor.
“I’m sorry about that, sir,” says the agent, with a can-you-believe-people-sometimes shake of his head.
“It’s all right,” says Matthew, eyeing the girl as she heads in the direction of the food court.
The agent reaches up and pinches his tightly wound nub of hair, testing its integrity. “Do you have a reservation?”
It’s been a while since Matthew has eaten fast food. They don’t have Taco Bell, Burger King, or Sbarro in the places he’s been lately. He’s not exactly eager to insult both his body and the earth by consuming this junk, this carcinogen-laden, factory-slaughterhouse-sourced garbage. On the other hand, a big old carnitas burrito slathered with salsa verde sounds delicious as hell right now.
He and his father have a standing debate about which variety of hot sauce is best, Matthew arguing for the clean, bracing heat of Mexican and Caribbean styles, his father preferring the tangy American kick of Buffalo sauce, Louisiana Hot Sauce, or even—uggh—Tabasco.
“You might as well dip it in vinegar if you’re gonna put Tabasco on it,” Matthew would say whenever his dad brought the stuff out.
“What’s wrong with vinegar?” John would say. “You ever heard of fish & chips?”
“People put vinegar on fish & chips?”
“Not just any vinegar—malt vinegar.” To which Matthew would grip his stomach and pretend to wretch.
He smiles, thinking of this recurring theme the two elder Lavando men would take up, Jacob just shaking his head, agreeing with his mother and sister that spicy food is overrated anyway. The knot forms in his th
roat again. He’s growing nostalgic, and a bit rueful now as well.
His family won’t understand him anymore—the choice he’s making, the path he’s following, the seismic shift that has taken place in him. He doesn’t expect them to understand, and he won’t ask them to. It’s not like their relationship will be over; he’ll continue to love them as much as he ever has—but his love will now be matched by his love of the birds in the trees and the random strangers he meets. He’s a member of the human family now, a child of the universe, so of course his involvement with his immediate family is bound to become a bit strained. Just ask Jesus. Ask the Buddha. Ask Muhammad. Ask anyone who’s entered into cosmic consciousness.
Normally, he would eat on the road, but he’s worried about getting something on the seats of the rental, navigating routes he doesn’t know with a burrito in his lap. He sets the crinkling Taco Bell bag on one of the food court tables. As he’s pulling his backpack off, he hears a voice behind him: “I wanted to go to Swarthmore.”
He turns and sees the young woman from the rental car kiosk. She’s standing a few feet away from him, holding an open bag of Sun Chips.
“Or Amherst,” she adds. “Amherst would have been good, too.” She takes a chip from the bag and crunches it between her teeth, eyes wide open, looking Matthew up and down, settling on the sweatshirt declaring his college of choice.
“Did you apply?” he says.
“Uh uh. My guidance counselor wanted me to, but my mom never could have paid for that, so it was kinda pointless.”
“There are scholarships, financial aid.”
“Right,” she laughs, “cause a big ol’ loan payment is exactly what my life is missing. I’m already helping my mom pay her second mortgage.” Another chip. Crunch. Still looking at him.
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