by Dani Lamia
“I’m calling us a car,” says Ben. “Actually, can I ask you for a favor?”
“Yeah, you can ask,” I say.
“Would you mind picking Olivia and Jane up from school tomorrow?” he says. “Olivia can’t bike home now, and she probably shouldn’t be walking home, and it’s the end of the year, so for me that means the Quiz Bowl. We’ve got after-school practice tomorrow for the big tournament this weekend.”
Ordinarily, I would relish the opportunity to steal them for an afternoon. But I can’t swing it.
“Actually, I hate to say it, but tomorrow is terrible for me,” I say. “Can’t they just take Ubers home?”
“That’s what I said,” agrees Olivia.
“I just don’t feel comfortable with them taking cars like that,” says Ben. “They really aren’t old enough.”
“Fine, well, I can send a car from Nylo around for them,” I offer.
“You really can’t just swing by?” says Ben.
“I really can’t,” I say. “Not tomorrow. I’m busy as well, and what I’m doing is way more important than your Quiz Bowl.”
“Oh yeah, sure, okay, I’m sure it is.”
“I just mean in the greater scheme of things,” I say. “Obviously this Quiz Bowl is very important to you.”
“And to all the children I teach,” he says. He looks stubborn and pained. Whatever amorous stirrings were being provoked by his scent and by his attention to our daughters simmers away, cooked off by his weird inferiority complex energy. The sex was always good between us, but I guess he was the first one to realize that it was only good because we hated each other. Maybe I just didn’t mind the hate as much. Our hate did eventually lead to the creation of human life.
The worst part is that I can tell that Olivia and Jane are both a little disappointed that I won’t be picking them up. I can’t fathom why. All they do lately is “merely tolerate” me. I feel like I’m blowing a chance to make a connection, to scoop up a trick that Ben is leaving on the table. But I can’t make any promises, not with this game going on.
“So what, then? Two weekends from now?” says Ben.
“Yeah, that should work,” I say.
The Uber rolls up and Ben opens the door for the girls. We help Olivia duck inside, but she honestly doesn’t seem that hurt by what has happened. She’s way tougher than I would be. I am such a baby when it comes to pain and sickness and injury and all that. Jane gets in next to her and Ben slips into the front seat.
I find myself leaning forward as if by habit to give him a kiss on the cheek, to wish them all safe travels, but I’m not allowed to do that anymore. I am still allowed to be overwhelmed by silent rage and resentment, though, so I do this instead as they drive away and leave me alone on the sidewalk.
14
I drink more White Coke and bourbon alone up in my study at my Townhouse while thinking about the events of the day, just like General Zhukov would have done.
Zhukov is an underrated general, but he isn’t my favorite. My favorite is Grant. He was legitimately strategically interesting and always dependable, not particularly prone to dramatic flights of romantic fancy. He wasn’t as skittish or paranoid as many men of his era, or many men after. I admire his strategic acumen and also his ability to keep cool while his own country was “torn asunder.”
It’s hard to kill a foreign enemy. It’s almost impossible to kill rebels in your own country, inspiring your troops to be merciless against their former friends and family.
Grant was a short, sad, stoic drunk whose best quality was his loyalty to his men and officers. He wasn’t put in charge because of connections or because he looked good in uniform. He achieved command of the Union forces as a result of being one of the only generals who was not afraid to take risks, to execute bold plans, to follow up and chase retreating rebels in order to capture men and materiel. He successfully split the Confederacy in half, and then in half again, doing the hard work in a long war. He was elevated to his command as a result of what he proved that he stood for, not what he said. He was unconflicted and uncompromising.
I log on to the proprietary Nylo online board game platform, Kingmaker. I open one of my many anonymous accounts and start up a new game of Paperclip, which is a strategy game where you compete with the Soviets in order to abduct-slash-rescue Nazi scientists in a collapsing WWII-era Germany.
It’s a fun game. There are two separate games, actually: a card-based dynamic where you work as the OSS versus the KGB trying to bribe and kidnap scientists inside Berlin, and then a war-game dynamic where you try to beat the Nazis faster than the Soviets in order to get a better position for the postwar. Also, some scientists are worth more points than others. Mengele doesn’t help you much, but Wernher von Braun basically wins the game for whoever manages to capture him.
I drink my White Coke and bourbon and play Paperclip for hours, trying not to think about Ben or my kids or my father or any of my rotten siblings. I play a game against someone from Minnesota with the handle VikingLightning. I randomly draw the Soviets.
VikingLightning is pretty good, but he focuses a little too much on the card game part. He keeps trying to make big plays, ignoring the late game positioning and troop-movement dynamic. It becomes clear that I am going to get to Berlin first. VikingLightning starts to make bigger mistakes, playing prissily out of frustration rather than trying to win, even when he snakes some big plays away from me.
I can’t help but start getting maudlin as the evening wears on. I think about how Ben and I first met and what we were like back then. First of all, I didn’t give a shit about things like history or generals. That was all his fault. Back then, he didn’t like rich people. Hated them, in fact. It was a wonder and a majesty that we even survived our first date.
I asked him out after he came in last at a Magic: The Gathering tournament, which he seemed to have entered as a joke. Everyone knew me there already, and while I wasn’t one of the top contenders, I was certainly holding my own. I enjoyed the competition, even though, like I said, Magic is mostly a game where you can buy your way to victory.
We were in some smelly food court in Koreatown where everything was too bright and where the whole place smelled like sesame oil and cheap meat. It was mostly empty, but people were still tending the food court booths, texting on their phones and serving the occasional customer coming in to get a plate of hot cheap buns between lunch and dinner on a Sunday.
The entire back section of the food court seating area was filled with Magic players, taking advantage of the long cafeteria-style tables to run the tournament. Ben was there with a group of his teacher friends.
He was obviously the most attractive guy in the place, and I was obviously the most attractive woman. It felt like we were the last two people on Earth, surrounded by shambling hordes of the bungled and botched. Everybody in the tournament was making fun of him, but he didn’t seem to care. He didn’t even quite know the rules, but he did seem to be learning a little more each time he played a game.
We were never paired up against each other. In fact, he didn’t make it past the first bracket, which meant that he became part of the audience, leaning over the shoulders of his friends as they played. There is no more hated interloper than a cool person in a den of nerds, and so he was basically shunned. I felt for him. At the time, I was trying to reverse-engineer what worked about collectible card games in order to begin the process of developing our own knockoff version for mobile devices at Nylo. Even so, I had managed to actually place in a few tournaments and I was in the process of getting enough points to qualify for nationals.
These nerds knew I wasn’t one of them, but I respected what they loved, so they didn’t give me any shit. They were merciless to Ben, however, especially when I started openly flirting with him.
I was enjoying the dynamic. It was erotic, especially since Ben had no interest in the game at all.
These nerds hated the way he revealed that the dominance ritual of the game was purely second-order symbolism. Being fuckable in a sea of the unfuckable can be quite an aphrodisiac.
“Come on then, I know you’re bored,” I said to him, grabbing his hand and leading him away while his friends “ooooooooohed.” I took him into the food court men’s room.
People from the tournament awkwardly peed and then left without saying a word while we made out in the bathroom. I got him hard but didn’t finish him off. I just wanted him as conquest, as tribute.
The erotic pitch of the afternoon brought us to the boiling point. We both knew where we stood. I made him ditch his friends and take me out for gogi-gui and he told me all about teaching the poor unfortunates, referring to them by name as if they were his own children. At the time, I found this noble or something.
For the first three months, I let him pay at bars and restaurants and then I put an end to that. It stopped being fun to watch him spend his teeny government paycheck on me.
However, unlike a lot of guys I have dated, he didn’t seem to mind me picking up the tab. He was completely cool about it. Grateful even. He let me take him to the nicest restaurants in the city and then he let me take him away for weekends upstate and then down to Miami. We widened our orbit as we began to trust each other. Before long I wasn’t even leaving him behind when I went away on business for the weekend in Hong Kong and Prague and Tel Aviv.
I finish beating VikingLightning from Minnesota and then I log off of Kingmaker. I think about watching some television, but then I remember the Playqueen meeting tomorrow. I panic, wondering how I’m going to sell this acquisition to Dad, and then I remember that I don’t have to explain anything to Dad ever again.
If I want Playqueen, I can have it. All I have to do is write up a report that addresses the concerns of the lawyers. I want Playqueen’s niche and I don’t want to reinvent their business. By tomorrow evening, Playqueen will be a signed and sealed asset of Nylo. A new prize for the same old humiliation of having to play dumb games against sweaty nerds.
On the player rank screen, VikingLightning goes down a point and my rank remains unchanged. One of the beauties of having a moderator account is that I don’t have to deal with the addictive neurosis of worrying about where I stand. I can simply enjoy playing.
I draw myself a bath in my big claw-foot tub. I have just taken my clothes off when I hear the Nylo Corporation theme song play from my purse. I walk to the big easy chair beside my bed and fish out the game phone, wondering if this means that somebody has lost a life. Who will it be, Henley or Bernard?
I see that I am still in first place, followed by Gabriella, and then Alistair, and then Bernard after all. I guess it will be Henley who comes in last.
Suddenly, the screen changes to a “loading” icon, which is our father’s grinning face spinning in a circle. I guess he thought this would be funny when he was developing it, but now it just seems gruesome.
The spinning beach ball of my father’s severed head is replaced by a closed-circuit video feed. What am I watching here?
I realize after a few moments that I am looking at security camera footage at the Empire State Building. The elevator bay is empty of people, but a janitor strolls into view, half-heartedly pushing a mop bucket. I recognize the way the janitor moves. I recognize his insouciant stroll. It’s Henley. He’s dressed in a janitor uniform and sporting a weird fake handlebar mustache. The black mustache doesn’t match his russet-colored hair.
He waits for cage 1 to open up. He gets inside.
The camera footage cuts to a view from the top of cage 1. Henley gets inside and the doors close. He pushes a button. The elevator starts to rise, and Henley stands there for a while, unmoving, clutching the mop handle. Eventually, he takes out his big game phone and stares into it. He holds it up to the ceiling, raising his hand above his head as far as he can reach.
I know he must be interfacing with the box in the ceiling. He brings the phone back down and looks into it.
All of a sudden, Henley flies into the air. His head cracks against the ceiling and water from the mop bucket flies everywhere, soaking him, soaking the camera. The elevator is falling.
Henley’s neck is bent at an impossible angle and his arms are flailing as he is suspended in the air. The elevator seems to fall for an impossibly long time, and then the feed goes black. The phone returns to the player rank screen. Henley is in last place. Above his rank, a little tombstone appears, and flowers sprout up in front of it.
I am staring at the phone in my hand, unsure of what I am seeing. My other phone, my real phone, starts to ring.
15
It’s Alistair. He is giddy, horrified, confused.
“Was that Henley?” I ask.
“It had to be,” says Alistair.
“We’ve got to call the Empire State Building,” I say.
“And the cops.”
“You call the police and I’ll call the Empire State Building.”
I hate talking to cops. I hang up just as a call comes in from Gabriella. I don’t have time for Gabriella. I don’t bother answering.
I realize that I am not exactly sure how to call the Empire State Building. I run back to my computer and Google it. There are a lot of phone numbers, but none of the ones for security or the front desk are listed.
“Fuck it,” I say. It’s just after midnight. I order myself a car, throw on some clothes, and head downstairs.
The Uber picks me up and we get over the bridge and then snake up the east side into Midtown. I call Gabriella back.
“What the hell was that?” she says dramatically. “Was that Henley?”
“It was probably just some kind of hoax,” I say. “Just part of the game or something.”
“It didn’t look like a hoax,” she says. “It looked like it was really him. It looked like he broke his fucking neck.”
“I’m on my way to the Empire State Building,” I say. “Do you want to meet me there?”
I consider calling Bernard, but I assume he is asleep. Should I wake him up? I don’t really want to deal with him, and we also don’t know anything yet.
“I’m actually at a friend’s place,” says Gabriella.
“You should call Bernard,” I tell her, passing on the duty and knowing that there’s a good chance she won’t bother.
I take out the game phone, flipping it over, staring long and hard at my name on the back. The name is in my father’s handwriting. The screen now just shows the character-creation page. I don’t have a superpower. My travel method is “train pass.” I realize that I can’t turn the phone on or off. How does it even stay charged? I try to press buttons, to make something happen, but nothing I try does anything. The game phone is definitely a one-way device. Eventually, it goes black again.
The car drops me off on 34th Street. Parked in front of the Empire State Building are an ambulance and two police cars, but no officers are in sight. I run to the front doors of the building, but they are locked and it’s dark inside. I bang on them and then run over to a service entrance and bang on that door, too. I don’t quite know what to do. After a few minutes, a tired-looking man in his late twenties walks out of the service entrance. He has a cigarette in his mouth, but he hasn’t lit it yet.
“Hi, hello, excuse me,” I tell him. “Was there an accident in there? Did an elevator just crash? Was there a person in the elevator?”
The man stands there stupidly, looking at me. He seems like a waiter or an out-of-work actor. He has light brown skin—Middle Eastern, maybe?—and is almost attractive. He’s covered in a sheen of sweat.
“I’m a police detective,” he says. “There’s a police substation underground, connecting all the buildings. How do you know about the elevator crash?”
“You are a detective?” I ask dubiously.
“Lieutenant Pete Jay,”
he says.
“Well, Detective Jay, did an elevator just crash?”
“How do you know that?” he asks. “It just happened thirty minutes ago. Are you a reporter?”
“No,” I say, cringing. “I’m his sister. The sister of the man in the elevator. Is he okay?”
“You are the janitor’s sister?” he says.
“He isn’t really a janitor,” I explain. “He’s my brother. We were playing this game… my father is making us play it. I don’t know, but I think it’s all some kind of a hoax.”
The detective lights his cigarette. He sucks in and then blows a bunch of smoke out through his clenched teeth.
“You’re going to have to slow down,” he says. “There was an elevator crash and there is one fatality. But you say you are a relative? Not a reporter?”
“Fatality,” I say, feeling faint. I sit down on the curb.
Another man comes out through the service entrance. He is roughly the same age as Detective Jay, but more intense and smoldering. He has a jumpy, frenetic energy, like a street preacher or a smartphone salesman at a kiosk.
“She knows about the crash,” says Detective Jay. The other man shakes his head.
“Craziest damn thing, huh?” he says. “I’m Detective Carter Rutledge.”
“Listen,” says Detective Jay. “You can’t go anywhere, ma’am. We need to ask you some questions about why your brother was in the building. We are so sorry and we understand if you are upset, but we are still trying to figure out what happened. We’re having a hard time getting the body out of the wreckage, if I may be perfectly blunt.”
I sigh, shuddering. I put my head in my hands.
“You seem like a lady who can handle blunt,” says Detective Jay. “Now could you please tell us the name of the man?”