No Such Thing as the Real World

by M. T. Anderson

  ALEC: Yeah. And I can’t stand to read instructions.

  SAM: It’s a little pathological.

  ALEC (protesting—a routine): There aren’t any people in the diagrams. It creeps me out. Everything moves by itself in those fucking pictures. The screws all suck up into their holes. And the plug is there crawling toward the wall. All the parts are looking at each other like they’re getting cozy. Dotted lines. The whole thing comes together without anyone touching it. Like the world is empty except for machines.

  SAM: It’s rough, honey.

  ALEC: I can’t stand it. And when there are people in the pictures, they don’t have faces. Maybe just a nose. They’re completely blank and white. They put shit together, and that’s it. There’s a…I don’t know…a…

  SAM: Sterility?

  ALEC: Yeah. Like they can install, but they can’t care. They don’t give a shit.

  SAM: They can’t enjoy their own appliances.

  ALEC: Those instruction books freak me the fuck out. I can’t even touch them anymore. They’re like some post-human Book of Revelations.

  SAM: That was good.

  ALEC: Thank you, thank you.

  At this point, they are smiling at each other. They are each delighted by the cleverness of the other and their banter.

  SAM (suddenly shy again): We’re good at this.

  ALEC (not shy at all): We are. (Lies down on the sofa. He taps his feet together.) Brett and Farooq have to case the joint. They have to be thieves.

  ALEC: I think it’s supposed to be Brett’s joint. And he doesn’t know his joint is being cased.

  ALEC: Really?

  SAM: That’s what Daley said.

  ALEC: Sucks for Farooq. He’s like the least criminal person I ever met. A bunch of us were in Framingham the other day, and he found out he was going to be back like fifteen minutes late for prefect duty and he fucking freaked on us and forced us to get a cab. It cost like forty bucks to get back. It was rush hour. It was insane.

  SAM: So thievery will be good for him. He can play against type.

  ALEC: John and Della are a nurse and an old guy in a wheelchair. I think Della should be the guy. Who painted these sets? They’re crap.

  SAM: They’re from last year. The Indelible Mr. Sprocket.

  ALEC: The robot musical.

  SAM: Yeah.

  ALEC: Were you in that? Oh—sorry, I didn’t see it.

  SAM: Yeah.

  ALEC: I can’t see any play about robots.

  SAM: Like the instruction manuals. You can’t stand machines getting along by themselves.

  Alec touches the tip of his nose and winks.

  ALEC: You were really good in Oklahoma!

  SAM: Thanks.

  ALEC: No, really.

  SAM: Thanks, really.

  ALEC: I thought it was going to suck ass.

  SAM: It’s a lot of corn.

  ALEC: But it had a kind of a good, old-timey feel to it. The corn.

  SAM: It was as high as an elephant’s eye.

  ALEC: You did a great job. You really got into it.

  SAM: I was as high as an elephant’s eye.

  ALEC (briefly a Hollywood director): You were bigger than that play, baby. I’m going to make you a star.

  SAM: Don’t say that while you’re lying on the casting couch. I might just…

  That’s just awkward enough that they don’t know what to say now.

  SAM (to disturb the silence): Have you ever been in a play?

  ALEC: Yeah. A role-play about camping safety.

  SAM: That sounds incredible.

  ALEC: The Times raved, but it flopped in Europe.

  SAM: So why are you taking this class?

  ALEC: Four months to graduation. I’ve suddenly become real interested in drama and pottery.

  SAM: Do you know where you’re going?

  ALEC: Whichever school opens their arms and shakes their boozoms. I didn’t apply anywhere early decision. You know yet?

  SAM: Yeah. But I oddly enough am taking the class because I like acting.

  ALEC: You’re good at it.

  Pause.

  SAM: Thanks.

  ALEC: I don’t have any natural talent for it except my rugged good looks and my incredible fucking charm.

  Pause. A little awkward. Alec gets up again and surveys the set.

  ALEC: How long are we supposed to improv?

  SAM: Until we’ve come up with material.

  ALEC: What’s material?

  SAM: A situation.

  ALEC: That’s a little vague.

  SAM: A conflict.

  ALEC: Why do we keep this picture up, darling? We look awful. It’s totally unflattering. We look like fucking manatees. I mean, except, of course, honey darling, you look like the most beautiful manatee in the world.

  SAM: Sure. Sailors mistake me for mermaids.

  ALEC: Are we going to the Higginses’ on Saturday? Marty Higgins sent us an invite. I’m assuming we’ll go.

  SAM: Sure.

  ALEC: Why don’t you disagree with me?

  SAM: Why? I love the Higginses. Jessica cracks me up.

  ALEC: Conflict.

  SAM: We’re great at parties. We’re a hit. (She thinks.) Well, you are.

  ALEC: I am. It’s true. I tell a good story. I can put away whisky sours with the best of them. You’re shy, but I always draw you into the story.

  SAM: You wear a blue blazer, don’t you?

  ALEC: I do. I have a lot of stories to tell. I’m a prominent spy. The ladies love me.

  SAM: You’re a hedge-fund manager.

  ALEC: I say prominent spy.

  SAM: No one’s a prominent spy.

  ALEC: I am. You would not believe the shit my car does. Hovercraft is the fucking least of it.

  SAM: A spy can’t be prominent.

  ALEC: Yes, they can.

  SAM: A prominent spy can’t spy anymore. A prominent spy is a crappy spy.

  ALEC: Oh, touché, Miss Moneypenny.

  SAM: I’m just saying.

  ALEC: Was that a conflict?

  SAM: That was pathetic.

  ALEC: I’m working on it. Are you going to the graduation party at Trent’s out in Vegas?

  SAM: Yeah.

  ALEC: It’s going to be off the leash.

  SAM: No. Because we’re going to find out Trent doesn’t really live in Vegas. He lives somewhere in the desert about an hour or two away from Vegas. It’s completely desolate. It’s somewhere near Death Valley.

  ALEC: So do we end up going, honey? Do we remember it years later? Oh, the good times. We tell the kids about it.

  SAM: Yeah, we remember it. It was amazing. We were driving along the highway and the heat was rolling in through the windows. It was less like air and more like Oriental carpets. Big, hot folds. Heaped up, you know? And you’re in the middle of nowhere and all there is is a restaurant called the Bun Boy with a giant rectal thermometer sticking out of it reading a hundred fifteen degrees Fahrenheit. And there we were, going down the highway, speeding, the way we’re supposed to be when we’ve just graduated.

  ALEC: I guess Farooq wasn’t fucking driving. That kid would rather take a bullet than break the speed limit.

  SAM: It’s required you speed after graduation.

  ALEC: So someone can wrap tragically around a tree?

  SAM: There weren’t any trees. It’s Death Valley. The speeding’s so you can feel full of life and change. And so you can hold your arms out the window, and all the hairs on our arms were sticking straight out because of some weird static electricity thing, and for a minute, our bare arms rubbed together—I mean, yours and mine—and I’d had a crush on you all through high school—and there were our arms, touching—and I thought, Whoa. This is it. I’m alive.

  ALEC: And then—okay, get this—and then we got lost, the whole carload of us, and someone—Melissa—she freaked, and screamed, “We’re in Death Valley and we don’t know where we’re going,” and this was so fucking funny that we all start
ed to chant, “We’re lost in the Valley of Death! And we don’t know where we’re going! We don’t know where we’re going!”

  SAM (pointing): Cute!…Symbolic!

  ALEC: And there we were, driving through the night, thinking we didn’t know where we were going, but over us there was a whole, like, a whole big, flat, desert sky for us to drive into, and any direction we could go. Any direction at all. Pick one and you’ll end up someplace. Nothing can fucking hold us back, man!

  SAM: Well done.

  ALEC: Thank you.

  SAM: It’s perfect.

  ALEC: So is that when we got together?

  SAM: No. We were just friends through college. I didn’t see you for like two years. Then there was a party at Bonnie’s on Nantucket. It was amazing. I hate Bonnie’s music collection—it sucks—but she had Bill Derringer do the music, and we were all dancing in the saw grass. We didn’t even realize until later that our legs were getting all cut up. Someone was making chocolate margaritas and we both got totally drunk off our asses and late that night we started making out. God, it was incredible. The light in the morning was amazing. We kept looking around and we couldn’t believe how vivid everything in the world was. Every blade of grass had a shadow. And there we were, together. Unfortunately, you’d been so drunk you didn’t remember any of it. I was too shy to tell you. I drove back to school and cried for about a week. But after that we started to send each other messages all the time. You asked my advice about all the girls you went out with. Once while one of them was doing you. You kept up this monologue.

  ALEC: Okay. This is getting a little weird.

  SAM (shrugs): You asked.

  ALEC: You know I have a girlfriend.

  SAM: Yeah. Right now.

  ALEC: Okay. Let’s move on.

  SAM: The summer of our junior year in college, we went with Bill and about four other people to China. We finally did it in Gansu. I mean, made love. We hadn’t taken a bath for about three days. There was something incredibly human about the way we smelled.

  ALEC: All right. Okay. Fine. You’re freaking me out.

  SAM: Sorry. I can’t believe you don’t remember.

  ALEC: Ha-ha.

  SAM: I’m sorry, Alec.

  ALEC (somehow uncomfortable that she’s using his name): Sure. Whatever.

  SAM: I’m really sorry. I don’t mean to scare you.

  ALEC: Yeah. Look—jokes aside—there’s Madison. And it’s weird.

  SAM: Okay.

  ALEC: Okay. Thanks.

  An awkward pause.

  SAM (trying to reestablish their rhythm and banter from before. She points out the window to the nonexistent neighbors): Jed McMasters takes you heli-skiing. You know, drops you in the mountains and you ski down.

  Alec, unwilling to play, just nods.

  SAM: Have you seen Jed in the city recently?

  ALEC: No.

  SAM: Too bad.

  ALEC: Yeah.

  SAM: It’s not often you meet someone with a helicopter and an airplane.

  ALEC: No.

  SAM: He’s gone, I think.

  ALEC: Oh.

  SAM: He and Greta were at a party, and while Greta was off talking to someone, he met this beautiful Russian woman who said she wanted to go home to St. Petersburg. So he told her he had his pilot’s license and he’d take her. Boom. Gone. Off they flew. Leaving Greta alone.

  ALEC: Too bad.

  SAM: Yeah. Greta had to get a ride home.

  ALEC: You mean, he took off right from the party? He flew to St. Petersburg from the party?

  SAM: Yeah.

  ALEC: Your material is starting to suck.

  SAM: It sounded kind of Great Gatsby to me.

  ALEC: Okay. I’ve had enough. What’s our situation?

  SAM: You’re not even playing along anymore.

  ALEC: I’ll play along if we can just decide what our fucking situation is.

  SAM: We’re supposed to feel it out.

  ALEC: Don’t say things like “feel it out.”

  SAM (teasing): Here’s what happened. I’d had a crush on you through high school. I finally told you in China. And the rest is history.

  ALEC: See? Stop it. What’s our actual situation? And what are these fucking machines?

  SAM: They create images. Projections. Sounds. That’s our situation.

  ALEC: Why is that our situation?

  SAM: Because you’re a projection.

  ALEC: You’re kind of fucked up.

  SAM: That’s also part of our situation. I’m grieving.

  ALEC: Let’s talk about something normal. Do we come back for alumni weekends? Yes. Yes, we do.

  SAM: You know what’s depressing? Each time we go back—ten, twenty, twenty-five, fifty—

  ALEC: Fifty? Shit.

  SAM: Each time, we keep hoping the beautiful people will look decrepit and awful. Paunches. Jowls. Bellies. But that’s the problem with going to a private school. Years pass, and everyone’s still beautiful. They have too much money to age badly.

  ALEC: Jesus Christ. I think you’re right. The bastards. At least I’ll retain my boyish good looks.

  SAM: If you say so.

  ALEC: That doesn’t sound good.

  SAM: You might get a turkey wobble. A little turkey wobble. Don’t worry about it.

  ALEC (protecting his neck): No way. I’ve seen those alumni staggering around the campus. No fucking way. (Dodders.) “I say, Jeffers, ’twasn’t it in the belfry that we buggered O’Shaunessy?”

  Sam laughs.

  ALEC: “Is that the library?…Near the dining hall?…I wonder whether they still have God in the chapel. In my day, there was a God in the chapel. Remember? Crucified chap.”

  SAM: Each time, we drive there joking about how people will have lost some of their youthful energy. Then we get there and they’re all doing great. They’re all headed off to invest in dude ranches in Venezuela. It’s incredibly depressing. We drive home in hysterics.

  ALEC: They must have slowed down by the fiftieth.

  SAM (a little reluctant): You don’t…You aren’t there at the fiftieth. You don’t…You haven’t made it.

  ALEC: I’m a very active man.

  SAM: A lot of people start getting cancer. A lot.

  ALEC: I’m extremely hearty. I go heli-skiing with Jed McMasters.

  SAM: You work out all the time. You take the kids swimming when they’re younger. Yeah, sure, and skiing, and we go hiking.

  ALEC: So why are you killing me off?

  Pause.

  SAM: I’m sorry, Alec.

  ALEC: Wait. Why do you get to say what I do, honey? You seem to have a lot of opinions about that, honey. Well, I’m a fucking prominent spy, and I don’t take any shit. That whole hedge-fund-manager thing is a ruse, darling. We can decide together about where we’re going for vacation or what sofa to get or what little Jimmy gets for his allowance, but thank you very fucking much, I think I get to decide when I die.

  The room seems chilly, sad, and fragile.

  SAM: You do, in a way. (Pause.) Before you do, you sit down and record your persona. You have an imprint taken. In your will, you tell me how to access it. The imprint. You tell me I can have you with me whenever I want. Projected.

  ALEC: I don’t get it.

  SAM: A few months before you died.

  ALEC: So it is up to you to decide when I died.

  SAM: You decided when you died.

  ALEC: Thank you.

  SAM: I knew the night before…I mean, one way or the other, it was only a matter of weeks. Because of the cancer. (Increasingly in a reverie.) That night, I was almost out of your hospital room, and you called me back. I shut the door and came back to your bedside and you said you wanted to hold my hand. We held hands. Then you smiled and said thank you, and I started to leave, and just as I was almost out the door, you called me back again. You said you wanted me to hold you. So I came back and held you. I mean, as well as I could. There were wires and tubes. And then I said not to wor
ry, I’d be back the next day, and you said you knew. And I went outside and started walking down the hall, and I heard you calling me back again, so I went in, and you said you wanted to hold my hand again. That was when I knew you were going. (Pause.) Or that’s how I remember it now. Maybe I didn’t know. I’m not sure how I couldn’t know. I wouldn’t have left if I’d known…. Right?…Anyway, I left and came back the next day to read with you. Then they told me. I…didn’t…

  ALEC: Don’t tell me about this.

  SAM: I’m sorry. What do you want to talk about?

  ALEC: I don’t care.

  SAM: What do you want to know?

  ALEC: Anything. I don’t know. About the kids.

  SAM: They’re wonderful kids, Alec. Sometimes they’re here. Two of them. Five grandchildren. Two of the grandchildren die of the cancer. Suresh, the oldest of the grandkids, is going to Juilliard. Piano. (Lovingly.) He’s as handsome as you, and as charming, but not as much of an asshole.

  ALEC: I don’t understand. Is this supposed to be the situation?

  SAM: It is the situation, Alec. It’s always the situation.

  ALEC: The situation is you sitting here in a room alone. And everything looks how it used to. And I’m just a figment of your imagination.

  SAM: No. You’re a figment of your own imagination, recorded. You have responses. They’re reconstructed. But yes, everything looks how it looked, while the machines run. I look how I looked. You look how you looked.

  ALEC: And the machine stores all my memories.

  SAM: No. You didn’t record the two years you lived with Greta McMasters. You were too kind to let me know what that was like.

  ALEC: So all my memories are yours. My whole life is about you.

  SAM: No. They’re your memories. They’re yours. Your persona is reconstructed. Just like you wanted. Whenever I wish. Sometimes it’s Christmas. Sometimes we talk about the kids, nothing but the kids. Sometimes we’re on vacation, in Thailand or Cambodia. The kids are teenagers again. Petra’s about to graduate. Or Petra’s pregnant with Suresh, calling on the phone and begging us for furniture. (Pause.) Sometimes I sit by you while you’re dying. When you ask me to come back and hold your hand, I don’t leave. Not immediately. But sooner or later, I have to get up and go…. This time I know. I know that you’re not going to be there when I get back. But I can’t sit there forever. I have to let you do what you did…. (Pause.) Sometimes we’re having breakfast. Sometimes we’re making up stories about people, just like this. It’s something we always return to. Sometimes we’re making love, but I can’t feel anything. You don’t have any weight, you’re on top of me, groaning, but you don’t have—