Devil's Plaything

by Matt Richtel

  He shrugs.

  “Bullseye, there’s an important secret locked in here.”

  I’m thinking of Pete’s cryptic scrawl: three weeks. Three weeks until what?

  Bullseye’s begun looking at SportsCenter on the big screen television hanging over the corner of the bar. He’s losing interest or he surmises that even if we make progress in figuring it out, we’ll never be able to make use of the information. Or I’m projecting.

  “Can I take your worksheet?”

  “Can you buy me a beer?”

  I order him an Anchor Steam. I’m out of cash and I hand the barkeep my credit card. As she processes the charge, I remember that my card, for some mysterious reason, did not work a day ago. I’m about to tell the waitress to forget about it when she returns with the tab. Just as mysteriously as my card failed, it is now working again.

  “Someone thinks I’m no longer a threat,” I say.

  I think of Grandma, Polly, our zygote.

  Maybe I’m only a threat to myself, and them.

  It is drizzling when I arrive at Magnolia Manor. The start of November marks the end of the Bay Area’s Indian summer.

  At the front desk of the home, the attendant says he has a message for me.

  “Mr. Idle, the director said he’d like to see you as soon as you stopped in. He’s in his home, not the office.”

  “I’d like to see my grandmother first.”

  “The director says it’s critical.”

  Chapter 58

  The Human Asparagus is up to his ears in cardboard boxes. He stands in his living room, wrapping his belongings in white tissue paper and setting them into packing boxes.

  “Fleeing the scene of the crime?”

  In his hand is a small brass goblet, cheap looking, like something you’d win at a carnival. He raises it up with one of his gangly arms. “Governor’s Chalice,” he says.

  “The governor gives awards for allowing secret testing of old people?”

  “It’s from my peers in the industry. Annually, we vote on which retirement home director in the region is most deserving and that person holds the chalice for a year.”

  He’s melancholy. So I accede to his mood. “The chalice holder is the person who gives the best care?”

  He laughs. “Who can best deal with obnoxious family members of our residents.” He looks up at me. “I’m a perennial winner.”

  “Vince, I’m serious. Are you leaving to avoid being arrested or sued?”

  “What do you want from me, Nat? What do any of you selfish, self-absorbed people want from me?”

  “Are you serious? Answers and retribution for a start. My grandmother’s brain got baked.”

  He harrumphs. “Are you so blind to what is going on?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You all pay lip service to your elderly parents and grandparents. You talk about how much they mean to you and how deep your friendships are and how valuable their contributions. But the truth is that you resent them. Not because they take up your time—that too—but because seeing them age makes you so fucking resentful. It’s like you’re looking into a mirror fifty years into the future.”

  “You’re rambling.”

  “I’ve spent decades trying to shield the residents from family members who take out their resentment in sometimes the most tiny, passive-aggressive ways—not paying bills, poking fun at their elders’ habits, bringing unnecessary gravity and drama to the otherwise small human indignities of aging. When the chance came along to let them record their histories, I was on the fence. On one hand, I thought, the technology would create some common ground between generations; maybe it would let your generation see and hear their generation as your peers, not some dried up, gray-haired, bed-shitting versions of yourselves. But I also knew that I was succumbing to the illusion of immortality. We’d keep their stories alive, live in the past, not embrace the beauty of aging. But then I succumbed, and for my own sick, selfish reasons.”

  “Money?”

  He drops the chalice into the packing box.

  “Trust me, you’re not interested.”

  “Trust me that I am.”

  He sighs. “Sex.”

  “Tell me that you didn’t . . .”

  “Of course I didn’t have sex with any residents. How dare you. If you really want to know: I fell for one of the organizers of the Human Memory Crusade. Then I became vulnerable to the argument that we adopt the new technology.”

  He seems content to leave it at that.

  Before I realize I’ve thought it, I utter a name. “Chuck.”

  His pupils widen.

  “Chuck Taylor?” I say. “The military investor? You had sex with him?”

  I’d sensed Chuck is gay. Pauline told me Chuck found me cute. Then Chuck’s father had reinforced my suspicions by ranting about how his son didn’t go for women.

  “Not sex,” he says, quietly. “I mispoke. I meant seduction.”

  I blink. I don’t understand. He picks that up.

  “We kissed a few times. We connected. There was an implicit promise of something more, something real.”

  “So Chuck seduced you, took advantage of you?”

  “I make my own decisions.”

  “Was Chuck the one who pushed the whole thing? Was he the first contact?”

  “He worked with legitimate people. Very legitimate. I would never allow anything to happen to anyone who lived here.”

  “You’re not answering my question. Was it Chuck who first proposed the idea of the Human Memory Crusade?”

  “I thought you knew all about this.”

  “I did not.”

  “Then I can’t compromise the privacy of my residents.”

  “What do you mean? One of your residents suggested adopting the Human Memory Crusade?”

  He swallows hard.

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Idle . . .”

  The revelation hits me hard.

  “My grandmother?”

  He breathes deeply.

  “Lane came to me just over a year ago. She’d heard about this technology from her neurologist. She proposed it to me as a way to share stories from the past. She rallied other residents. She’s very charismatic that way, and passionate. She’s slowing now, but she got the momentum going, and then Chuck came in and used his wiles to convince me to try it.”

  I want to say: Why would my grandmother do such a thing? But I know the answer. She needed someone to talk to—or something.

  “Who brought the computers? What company, or individual?” I ask.

  “Chuck and his business partners. They showed me documentation that they were working with retirement communities across the country. It was all very legitimate.”

  “But it was a trap. It ate their brains. Help me expose this and get to the bottom of it.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m leaving.”

  “You spent your life protecting your residents and now you’re abandoning them?”

  “It’s over, Mr. Idle.”

  I’m too incredulous to speak but my sigh betrays my emotion.

  “Do I care that their memories faded a little faster?” he says. “Do I care that they pee in their beds? Does the world get angry at an infant for doing that? No, we find it adorable. Why? Because babies are filled with potential, not frailty. Let them lose their memories. Let them die in peace and celebration—the way they came into the world. Let people live and die in peace, Mr. Idle.”

  I shake my head and laugh. “I can’t believe I’m not recording this.”

  “Maybe you agree with me.”

  “Not in the slightest.”

  “Your grandmother is in love. Do you know that she had to hide it her whole life?”

  “These issues are unrelated.”

  “No. No. No. You and your world of chroniclers are obsessed with living in either the past, or the future. You are rehashing what happened or trying to predict what will. But the people who live here—this is their last
moment to Just Be. They are living right now, farting and graying and shuffling and being in love. Stop making them fodder for your stories.”

  I’ve had enough. He’s a man with a broken philosophy and honor code, defeated and wrapping compact discs in tissue paper and stacking them in a packing box.

  “Why do you hate me, Vince?”

  “Because you can’t stand the idea of getting old.”

  I walk to Grandma’s room. She’s not there. I find her in the recreation center, which has been reopened since the sprinklers destroyed the Crusade computers.

  Grandma sits at a round table with Harry, Betty Lou, and Midnight Sammy. On the table is a Scrabble board. Sammy pulls letters from his tray and plunks them on the board.

  He has spelled: “M-I-S-R-B-L-E”

  “Miserable,” he says. “Seven-letter-word.”

  “Isn’t it missing an ‘e’?” Harry asks.

  “I’ll allow it,” Betty Lou says, and then looks at me. “He’ll quit if he doesn’t get his way.”

  “I may quit anyway,” Sammy says.

  I pull up a chair.

  “Can I play?”

  Betty Lou raises an eyebrow. What am I up to?

  “Everyone, I’m sure you’ve met my grandson,” Lane says.

  “We’ve met him.”

  “Lane, can I play Scrabble with you?”

  “I love Scrabble. I used to play all the time. I’ve probably told you before, but if you get a ‘U’ you should save it in case you get the ‘Q.’ There are a few words that start with ‘Q’ that don’t require a ‘U,’ but I can’t recall them right now, and I’m not sure that they were ever allowed under the rules.”

  Harry is smiling.

  He takes his weathered hand—sturdy fingers encased in wrinkled skin—and puts it on top of Grandma’s and gives her a pat. On Harry’s right ring finger is a gold band.

  Grandma smiles.

  “May I ask a question?” I ask.

  “I don’t know if your grandmother is in the mood for anything too serious,” Harry says gently. Around his neck I notice a thin silver chain. On the end of it is the number 45 and an American flag. His Army unit.

  I look at Betty Lou.

  “My question is whether I have to use vowels, or can I play by the same rules as Midnight Sammy?”

  “Anyone not using Metamucil still has to use vowels,” she says.

  “There’s a joke in there somewhere about Bowels and Vowels,” I respond.

  Midnight Sammy laughs.

  An hour later, we’ve played two games, and I can hear around me the sound of shuffling and chatter, the almost imperceptible sound of life’s twilight. I feel joy.

  Midnight Sammy stands, bids us farewell and walks off, his air tank in tow.

  “I’d like to lie down,” Grandma says.

  “That can be arranged,” Harry responds.

  I look at the chain around Harry’s neck.

  “Grandma?”

  “I’m right here.”

  “Do you remember how you first heard about Pearl Harbor?”

  “I listened to a news report on a black radio.”

  “That’s a very specific memory, Grandma.”

  “If you say so.”

  I stand.

  “Had enough of a beating?” Betty Lou asks.

  I nod. Time to go.

  I really want to spend a few more minutes in the moment, playing word games, untroubled by the past or the future. But I have an idea.

  Chapter 59

  I’m thinking of a short, ornery man I saw a few days earlier for a few fleeting seconds. He was walking out of the pretend dental offices. He wore a jeans jacket with a patch: “Khe Sahn.”

  I call Directory Assistance. I ask for the main number for the Veterans Administration Hospital. I’m transferred to it, wind my way through an automated phone tree, get a live operator, and ask if there’s a Khe Sahn survivor organization, or club, office, anything of that general description.

  There indeed is such a place. It’s in the Mission neighborhood, at Twenty-fourth and Valencia.

  America’s greatest tensions play out in the Mission, in the form of a battle over the proper ingredients for a taco.

  For many years, the neighborhood was a center of Mexican-American culture and a refuge for low-income residents huddling in the shadow of gentrification. The place was dotted with taquerias that served tortillas stuffed with rice, beans, and your choice of chicken, pork, or beef.

  Then along came the organic tofu-crumble taco joints.

  They and their brethren—the Bohemian brunch spots with meat substitutes and martini bars with elderberry-flavored vodka lite drinks—are the mainstays of the hipsters moving into the gentrifying neighborhood.

  Their parents experimented with drugs and sex, but the hipsters are playing out their discontent by inventing new combinations of omelet ingredients using farm fresh produce and biotechnology.

  In a way, the two cultures need each other. The low-income renters give the hipsters Bohemian legitimacy and flare, the hipster entrepreneurs hire the renters to serve the gluten-free wheat cakes—but the co-existence can’t last long. The cost of living is destined to drive out both and leave the rest of us with alternating Chili’s and Verizon outlets.

  Certainly, there won’t long be room for the likes of 455 Twenty-fourth Street, the worn-down storefront that is home to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Mission District Center. It is a decidedly narrow property sandwiched between a pawnshop and Ike’s Ironic Organic Yogurt Creamery. (A sign reads: “Ike Taylor Green Tea Tofugurt packs a wallop!”)

  The man sitting behind the computer at the Veterans Center looks like he might pack one too.

  I recognize him from the dental offices—a compact fellow wound tight with unkempt facial hair and a bent-over posture that went out of style 800,000 years ago.

  He does not look up when I walk in.

  I approach his desk tentatively.

  “What,” he demands, without looking up.

  My own onboard computer almost crashes trying to process this creature’s multitude of medical issues. The bottom of his right ear is missing, I’m guessing from a war wound. A scar on his neck suggests tracheotomy, or shrapnel or puncture wound. His right hand, the one gliding the mouse, shakes. Doesn’t feel like Parkinson’s, so the movement probably speaks to side effects from an antidepressant.

  “I’m Nat Idle. I’m a writer interested in the Human Memory Crusade.” “Writer” sounds exotic, “journalist” threatening.

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “It’s the program on your computer that lets you talk about your memories.”

  He smirks. “My memories stink.”

  “I heard about the technology from Chuck Taylor, one of the higher-ups from DOD who’s helping design the software.”

  “I don’t use it anymore. They took the computer and gave me a faster one.”

  I step closer so I’m standing next to the desk. His computer is a new-model HP. On the screen is an image of a woman wearing a cheerleading skirt and she’s topless.

  “Did they let you keep the transcripts of your conversations with the computer?” I ask.

  “I don’t know about that.” He crosses his arms, defiant and irritated, finally looking at me.

  “My grandfather served in the Pacific in World War II.”

  Just after I say it, I feel my teeth clench. He’s watching his own reaction. My grandfather Harry. Too weird.

  “So.”

  “Maybe he should tell the computer about it.”

  He shrugs. My efforts to bait him into a conversation are failing.

  On the wall next to the desk hangs a calendar. The picture of the month is a sexy woman wearing a bikini and tortoiseshell reading glasses and reading a copy of Stars and Stripes. She sits on a tank.

  “I’ve got a random question,” I offer.

  “I’m shipping out soon.”

  “It’ll be quick. I was wondering what kind of
car your father drives?”

  He looks up at me. His eyes are snake holes, dark and deep.

  “A van. What the fuck do you care? You’re writing about cars now?”

  Snake alert.

  “My grandfather drove a Chevrolet.” The other grandfather, Irving.

  “Good for him.”

  From what I can tell, this guy is not programmed like Grandma. He’s an uncooperative tinderbox, and maybe he doesn’t know a damn thing anyway.

  “Where?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Where are you shipping off to?”

  “Trip to China.”

  “China?”

  His eyes glance down at the desk. I follow the gaze to a brochure for the Pan-Asian Games. It looks to be some kind of quasi-Olympic athletic competition held in Beijing, just like the actual Olympics but with a lot less TV coverage.

  “They say everything’s changed over there. I’d like to see that with my own eyes. I sure would like to see things different over there.”

  He looks back at me, his eyes softer.

  “In 1970 or 1971, I got interviewed by Rolling Stone. They were doing a story about a band that was popular with the guys coming back. I spent two hours talking to the writer. And you know what? He used one sentence of mine and it didn’t sound like me at all. It sounded like some asshole who was pissed off at the world.”

  “I’m not going to do that to you.”

  “Exactly. Because I’m asking you to leave me alone. Please.”

  The way he says “please” makes the word sound aggressive. Like he might feel justified giving me a hand through the plate glass window.

  Another dead end.

  My next stop is Noe Valley, and Chuck’s house. It’s raining—hard. It would be a desultory and depressing moment but I’ve just spent a blog item’s worth of income on a quadruple shot from Starbucks and I feel like I’m wired enough to fly by flapping my arms.

  I pull up to his house, and I’m thinking about what strategy to employ, or what I hope to accomplish, when Chuck walks outside under an umbrella. He sees me. He nods. He puts up a finger, asking me to wait a minute. He goes back into the house and returns a few moments later. This time he carries a manila folder under his arm.