She was looking intent. “I think maybe it’s coming back to me. How do you know about that? I had totally forgotten about that. He had a name, right? Tell me the owl’s name.”
“Oh dear. I’m not sure that’s retrievable. Um…” I went banging through the empty, windswept rooms of memory. “Louis?”
“Nah.”
“Are you sure? What about Osbert? Leonora? Golden-eye? I’m drawing a blank.”
“You need to tell me. I need it as proof.” There was something swaggering in how she said it; she was starting to enjoy torturing me like this.
I shrugged. I had no idea. What a colossal waste of time all those hours spent imagining owls had been. It was hard to believe I had done it. If only I had stayed up and spent even twenty minutes per night, my God, even fifteen, practicing my tones in Mandarin, how much more effective I could have been.
“One more thing,” I said. “It’s just…never mind.”
“What?”
“Even though you’re good at lots of things, you don’t believe you’re going anywhere. You want to do something great, but it seems like it won’t happen, that you’re stuck, that everyone you know has known you all your life and has written you off as nothing special.”
She tipped her head to the side, taking this in.
“You feel like if you only had a chance, you could do something exceptional and prove them wrong.” I watched her; she was listening.
“What’s that?” she said. I’d taken off my jacket and as I did my T-shirt rode up, exposing part of my side. I pulled my shirt down, but not before she saw the scar, like a red fern, that covers my trunk.
“Are you OK?” she said.
“It’s nothing.”
“But what is it?” I saw the problem; she was worried it would happen to her.
“It’s not a big deal,” I said. “I was, um…running in a marathon and one of my veins exploded in mile nine.” I looked to see how she was taking it.
She looked into me as if she couldn’t decide if I were lying. “That’s got to be bullshit.”
“Swear to God.” I could tell she wanted to believe me. “It doesn’t hurt, even though it looks like it would have. It was just stupid, I did back-to-back marathons, and—”
“You really think we’re the same person?”
I nodded.
“Whatever. I’ll just avoid marathons.”
“Probably wise,” I said. “They are very hard on our knees.”
* * *
—
“I don’t really believe any of this,” she said, popping the last bite of her cheeseburger into her mouth, and wiping her chin with the palm of her hand. “But…on the chance that you’re right, tell me the fun stuff! I mean, if you’re right—and who knows?—you can tell me what happens!” Her face shone, not just with grease. “I mean the exciting parts, of course. What exciting things will happen to me? With being in plays or movies”—she cast a critical look at my hair—“or just theater, that’s fine, that’s OK too, or, um, this guy…”
“You want to be in plays?”
She nodded excitedly. “What roles have you had?”
“Roles? Let’s see, I was a project manager and then a director, then a VP, and then—”
“I mean, what have you been in?”
“In? Are you asking about industries? Well, you know that American manufacturing is on the downswing and has been for some time, but the tech sector—”
“Acting! Theater! I assume you’re an actor, right? In plays, films? That’s why you travel and are here…isn’t it?”
I stared at her. “I’m a CEO of a tech company. I started out in engineering and computer science,” I said, “and then I went to a startup after college. Then I moved into a managerial role, and I’ve been lucky in my career development; my startup went public and dominated the online payment space, and I had some big wins there—”
She interrupted. “So when do you act? At night and on weekends? Community theater?”
“Theater?”
“How do you practice your craft?”
“Oh! Well, that never happens. Oh, don’t look so crestfallen. You were never much of an actor. Strong public speaker, yes.”
“Never? I must have done it for five or ten years, at least. A few professional roles? Come on, be serious. One? Not even one?”
I shook my head. Huh, I thought. I’d been so different before the lightning strike. Funny how completely we replace old priorities with new ones.
“I never make it into a single play? If I work really hard, won’t I make one audition? I’m sure there’s something I can be in…I was kind of thinking of movies. Not big parts or anything, just good character parts that I’d bring a lot of nuance to…”
“No,” I said. “Look, don’t be that upset. It’s fine. Engineering is where it’s at. Look, I know this might not seem as glamorous as being what’s-her-name in King Lear, but someday you’re going to have the honor of being selected as one of Forbes’s Forty Under Forty.”
“Cordelia,” she whispered hotly. She covered her face with her hands.
“I don’t think that was one of them. There were very few women on the list that year.”
She crawled up against the headboard and wrapped her bent legs in her arms, sulkily. “I don’t believe you.” Her brashness had deflated. “I don’t want this. It’s not what I want.” She waved her arms around at the suite. It reminded me of Rafe, just a few nights ago, in a different suite. “I don’t think I like you very much.” I’ve heard variations of that so often you’d think it wouldn’t hurt anymore. After a moment she looked up, fiercely, as if she had come to a decision. “It’s just a matter of hard work. I’ll work harder than you ever did.”
“Maybe,” I said. I didn’t mention my scars. “Or maybe you need to learn what it is you’ve got to sell.”
Angrily, she ate the rest of her French fries. She licked a swipe of mayonnaise off her fingers.
“Want another?” I said. “How about dessert?”
“You aren’t worried I’m going to clog up your beautiful bourgeois arteries?”
What a nice way to talk to someone who just expensed you a twenty-eight-euro sandwich, I thought. “Not really,” I said. Also, though I did not say this, I’m squarely a one-percenter, not a bourgeois, but I knew this was just her limited frame of economic reference. “Also, I know you smoke.”
She looked furtive and her eyes moved to the window. “Only a little.”
“Oh, right. Save the lies for your mother.”
“Do you?” She pretended to be uninterested.
“Never,” I said, bringing my fist down on the bedspread. “My God, never,” and she looked relieved. “Well, a few times a year or so, if I have to work for a couple of nights running to close a big deal, maybe, possibly. Just to power through. But very rarely. The important thing, what matters here, is I don’t crave it. It’s so, so bad for you,” I said sternly.
“Was it hard to quit?”
“You’d think, but I have tremendous willpower and I just decided, enough, and that was it.” However, circumstances being as they were, I took a pack out of the minibar and went onto the balcony and lit one. I inhaled deeply.
“I do not have tremendous willpower,” she assessed, correctly.
“You will when you grow up.” This was true enough—I didn’t need to tell her more.
She tilted her head from one direction to the other, as if she were weighing this on a balance inside her head, and she accepted it. She followed me out onto the balcony.
For a while we gazed out at the dark street, the yellow streetlights, the invisible people with their raucous voices stumbling home, far below. She was a much more practiced smoker than I was.
“I don’t want to get old,” she wailed. “I don’t want to stop being me and become a boring, corporate shill. And have my hair get so blah and flat and volumeless.”
I ignored this insulting construction on the situation. “What’s odd
is I don’t remember this. I should remember it, if you’re me, minus twenty years.”
“You think that’s the odd part?” she said. Finally she said, in a quiet, worried voice: “Does anything good happen to me?”
“Sure! Tons of stuff! Just a taste…you’ll get to launch an amazing e-commerce platform…”
“What about a fun thing? What about a guy? There’s this one, his name is, uh, Tate…?”
I groaned. “Tate Bromberger.”
“Does anything ever happen with him?”
I stuck out my tongue. “Ugh. Yes. You could stop that, actually. Don’t do it.”
“I will totally do it!” she sang out. “When? What happens? What do I do? Do we get married?”
“Oh, Lord.”
“Well, do we…?”
“Just trust that enough happens that someday you will never want to hear his name again, or think about him, ever.” I pretended to vomit over the railing.
“Yay!” she said. She sighed happily. “Tell me about my other future boyfriends. What about this other guy—wait, are you married?”
“I’m partnered,” I said, because I choose the language of equality whenever I can.
“Do you mean I’m a lesbian? Because I am really surprised, although sometimes I do think about—”
I cut her off. “I’m married,” I said. I quickly added, “To a man.”
“Well, duh. You’re married. What’s he like? What’s his name?”
“I’m not going to tell you.”
“Is he somebody I already know?”
“Thank God, no.”
“So tell me. Are you worried that I’ll meet him and not like him and ruin it for you?”
My thoughts hadn’t netted it out that far, but now that she said it, that was a vulnerability I should have anticipated. I thought of Rafael the way he was the night we met: so quick, such nice eyes, such a sharp take on my company’s market positioning. When we’d talked, I’d felt a little shivery. I had kept reminding myself that he wasn’t that handsome, but I found him very much so.
“He’s not your type. He’s a wonderful guy, kind, generous, a very capable executive, well respected in the private equity space. But you wouldn’t appreciate him yet.”
“If you say so. But you’re in love, right? It’s true love?”
I thought of Rafe now, of the look in his eyes when I got up from dinner to take a work call, or how he left his beard clippings stuck to the sink after he shaved. We were opposites in so many ways, and over time it was harder, not easier, to bridge those differences: he was messy, I was neat. He was charming and good at talking to people, I was good at anticipating their computing needs. He loved Macs, I preferred PCs. He was into squash and I liked to do high-intensity interval training in the office between meetings. He was fun, I was generally regarded as un-fun. He was overpaid, I was probably underpaid. He liked to make and eat delicious meals, and I tried to optimize for protein and speed, which is why I was so seduced by complete liquid nutrition. He’d grown up poor, and I’d had an easy, wonderful childhood packed with ballet lessons, music, gymnastics, and Little House on the Prairie–related field trips. But opposites attract, I guess. We were both fascinated by innovation and wanted to work on bleeding-edge technology. We used to talk about advancements in tech the way other people talk about whatever other people talk about. “It’s blissful,” I assured her.
“Do you have kids?”
“I do.” I smiled, thinking of them, at home half a world away.
“Can I ask, is this a terrible question, but is your vagina very slack?”
I ignored her.
“When did you become such a prude?”
“While I have your ear, you should take up running,” I said. This was like a meeting getting out of control, and I brought it back to order. “And yoga and Pilates. I do yoga and run and kettlebells and free weights and eat a mostly vegetarian diet, except when on work travel, when I allow myself lean proteins for jet lag—I consider myself a flexitarian—and I do meditation and tai chi and—”
She interrupted me, looking down at the street. “Why are the cars so…blah-colored and roundish? They look overweight, like normal cars on steroids.”
“That’s how cars are,” I said.
“Not really.”
“It’s better this way,” I said. “More aerodynamic. More the way it’s supposed to be. Progress!”
“Says robo-you.”
“It’s good you’re being so calm about this,” I told her.
“It’s just a dream,” she said. “I’ll wake up and be relieved that none of it is real. I saw the future—the cars are all dirty-dishwater-colored and lumpy and people carry tiny televisions and I have become a ballbusting bureaucrat.” She yawned. “I’m ready to wake up now.”
* * *
—
Inside the hotel room, she sank presumptuously onto my bed. She seemed, finally, a little worried. Or maybe she was sucking up so I wouldn’t toss her out into the night.
I stared at her. Doubt prickled my skin. Maybe it was the temperature change from coming inside. “Do you feel completely real?”
“What’s that mean? Do you feel real?”
I pondered this. “No,” I said. “I often feel like an imposter, but this is a common experience of women in power.”
“Tell me things I should know,” she said. “Just in case? Please? Give me the shortcuts.”
“Well,” I said, “I think the more coding classes you can take the better, because even though the languages change and C++ isn’t cutting-edge anymore, it’s still good discipline and teaches you how to think in computer terms. It’s exercise for the mind. I would take as many advanced engineering electives as possible and expand your coding skills. And I’d wake up early to spend at least forty minutes first thing practicing character writing in Mandarin, because it’s just a tough thing to find time to shoehorn in when you’re helming a startup.”
“I meant more like, if I go to the Kentucky Derby which horse should I bet on? Give me the Super Lotto numbers. Or, actually, here’s a real one, what the hell, it can’t hurt: Do you happen to remember if, on your macroeconomics final, there were questions about the Keynesian cross? I have to take econ to fill my distribution requirements.”
“Uh, I’m not sure. Wait, I know! There’s this green dress—it’s a sheath style—and when you go to Hong Kong and stay at the Mandarin Oriental, you leave it behind and the maid claims it isn’t in the room, but I am sure it is. Be very careful with that dress.”
“It might not be my style,” she said, looking me over. She was sprawled on the bed and she laid her head down. Her eyes were closing as she spoke.
“And your retainer. Wear that. Look at this.” I showed her my cockeyed teeth on my lower jaw. “My biggest regret,” I said, pointing at a tooth. “Just wear it.”
“That’s your biggest regret?” she said. “That you didn’t wear your retainer? Couldn’t you get a new one made if you care that much?”
I opened my mouth but couldn’t say anything. “Well, I don’t believe in regrets,” I said. “I believe that working within constraints can be good for creativity and innovation, and that we have to keep our eyes on what’s coming. Anyway, you can’t sleep there. Here, come.” I led her into the sitting area. She lay down on the narrow sofa and seemed immediately asleep, then turned over. She lifted her head and smiled at me very sweetly, and then closed her eyes again. I got her a pillow and a blanket from the closet, but when I came back she was sprawled on the floor, like my indecorous, loose-balled, and brain-damaged childhood English spaniel, Chili.
I hadn’t thought of Chili in ages. I felt some kind of surge of happiness. Might as well say it. An experiment, a test. “You look like Chili,” I said quietly.
She rolled over. “Chili-dog?”
I blinked. What was that, tears? Funny. “Lying like that. Yeah. How’s Chili?”
“Chili’s good,” she said. “He’s a good boy. Is he…?”
Her expression changed. “I guess he’s dead now, right?”
“He has a good long life,” I said. “A really good long, happy life.”
She smiled at me and curled around the pillow. I walked to the door and when I got there, I turned. What if I were right about her? This was my chance.
“Couple quick things: Make sure you get coffee with the founder of a biotech startup when he comes to visit his cousin who’s in your econ class! Will you remember that? And don’t drop your upper division comp sci classes, no matter how hard they are at first!” I said, but she was still and unresponsive. “Make sure you take upper division comp sci classes. Go to all your professors’ office hours! And floss your teeth. That’s the one people always say is a big regret. In movies.” I went into the bedroom and closed the door.
* * *
—
In the bedroom, before I fell asleep, I took out a notebook and wrote down a list of the things I wanted to tell her.
These were things that seemed harmless enough not to upset the broad scheme of her life, but that might make a significant difference in retrospect. I took out a yellow legal pad and drafted a list:
1. If you ever get a gooey eye, don’t mess around, see a doctor, even if your schedule is packed.
2. Please don’t ever not use condoms. Please keep in mind that it is your own older and wiser self telling you this. It’s not propaganda.
3. Try running—you will like it. Has Pilates been invented yet? Do that. I wish you would pay attention to your laterals. Stay fit. Keep in mind that it will reduce cellulite acquisition.
4. When Grandma gives you a Krugerrand for your twenty-first birthday, have Dad put it in his safe deposit box because you will lose it, I promise you.
The Glitch_A Novel Page 11