by Fiona Maazel
“Adopted,” he said. “Just found out, actually. Not even six weeks ago.”
“That come as good or bad news?”
“Both.” And he thought, You are what you are until you are not. Not the genetic progeny of Larissa and Max T. Hammerstein. Not an only child. Yes, a child with a twin, who, for being a girl, was not palatable to Larissa and Max T., who remanded her to foster care on the day she was born, thirty-three years ago.
“Sounds bad,” she said. “But great Prereq.” And she rubbed her eye with the fat of her palm, which jutted from a sweater sleeve that was too long. “You know, like whatever in your life sucks enough to count as prerequisite for wanting to join the Helix.”
Ned smiled. Thinking, This woman’s all right. She hates her wrists.
“Me, I don’t normally do this kind of thing,” she said. “Mostly I set up other people, even if I like the guy, because I figure the other person could make him happier than me. So it’s like doing service.”
“Wow. Sounds like you have good Prereq, too.”
“I know. You got a rash?”
He’d been farming for a spot, several spots, on his back. Anxiety Itch. So many women, so much to tell. Sweat began to front along his hairline and rill down his face.
“No,” he said. “I mean, yes. I get nervous around people.”
“You read the helper lit?”
He shrugged.
“Me too,” she said, and she tugged at her hat—a beanie, really—which saved her at least one confession: I’ve got a crew cut, and whatever the reason, it’s not good.
She reached in her bag for the brochure. It was glossy, picture heavy. Smiling people who didn’t look brainwashed so much as happy, and, of course, a snap of Helix honcho, Thurlow Dan.
They looked over the material, which seemed to fortify the whys of their finding themselves here. What else was there to say? From the lounge came news of the birthday. Happy birthday, Olgo Panjabi, happy birthday to you. The voices sang at length, they sang with joy. The hodgepodging of ethnicities in this man’s name was all very beautiful—very consolidating—and people wanted to think about that, especially now.
“That was nice,” she said.
“You’re nice.”
“We should hang out at work,” she said, though he just stared at her blankly.
Ding, and the MC’s voice: “We are taking a break. Mingle.”
There was birthday cake in the lounge. There was Bruce Bollinger, whose lips were kissed with ganache. There was Olgo Panjabi, source of it all. Olgo, who was now sixty and in whose face was a foreboding about his new year of life, tempered by this impromptu swell of affection for him. There was, also, Anne-Janet and Ned. Interior claimed fifty-eight thousand employees; here were four. They had just met.
From the TV: “Each age is a dream that is dying or one that is coming to birth.” The president quoting FDR, who himself quoted an Irish poet.
From the TV: We have seen the threads of purpose that unite us. Two terms with this guy. That nasal voice. Those platitudes.
The bartender snorted. He was fluent in drinks that made you sick. Tonight was $5 Trips to Hell, a multi-schnapped, Red Bull, Jägermeister shot he mixed for six at the counter, saying, “The Helix probably pulled in ten thousand people tonight, events all over the country, and this jerk-off is saying we’ve seen the threads that hold us together? Unless he’s Helix, too, he hasn’t seen a thread in years.”
There was laughter. And secret looks. Half the bar was Helix already. Out to recruit, then back to the Bond. The Helix had bought personal data from ten Internet dating sites, which meant it had the emails and psychological vitae of more than fifty million people who had already contributed to the effort of finding each other, and, as such, were reasonably disposed to attend these events. Rest of Your Life Socials. And when the RYLS didn’t produce—when, in fact, they depressed everyone—a Helix Head would swoop in to suggest an alternate means of camaraderie. Weekly meetings. Daily meetings. A lovely house not five miles from here.
Ding.
“So this is my theory,” Ned said. “There is no more famous prototype for twins asunder than Luke and Leia. You know, from Star Wars.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And a twin rent from its other will always feel the loss.”
“Sounds reasonable. Only wasn’t there something hanky-panky about Luke and Leia?”
“No,” he said, appalled. “Luke is an ascetic.”
“Do you have a job?” she said, though her voice was so slouched in boredom, she sounded like a teller at the DMV.
“I guess. But it’s weird. I was reading a lot about weather-modification offices in China, silver iodide and cloud seeding. You know, how to make rain and stuff. It’s big in Texas.”
“And?”
“I got a call.”
“Saying what?”
But Ned did not want to say. It was too personal, even for this. He was obsessed with the Vonnegut brothers—one a scientist who discovered the prowess of silver iodide, the other a novelist whose ice-nine plunged the world into the next Frost—and it was Ned’s idea to be like a hybrid of the two. So when he got a call, the decision was easy. Did Ned want to do something for the Department of the Interior that had something to do with changing the weather, which itself had everything to do with snubbing his powerlessness in the world? Why yes, yes he did. Ned had been with Interior for three weeks. But no one had asked him about the weather or anything else.
“It’s boring,” he said. “Tell me about you.”
“I’m anorexic—what more’s there to say?”
“Do you want help?”
“Oh, hell no.”
They laughed until the bell.
Anne-Janet pressed her napkin into a tear blooming at the corner of her eye. You were not supposed to sit with the same person twice, but there are glitches, there is fate.
She looked at Ned and said, “My mom broke her hip yesterday morning. I got home at about six and found her on the floor. Know what that means?”
“God, that’s awful. Is that why you’re crying?”
“Seven hours on the floor. Just lying there. She’s asleep now. I hate hospitals.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Being here isn’t so bad, though. You think you’re gonna join up?” she said. “The Helix?”
He shrugged. “I’m kind of a member already. But just for stuff like this. I’ve got this twin sister now and have never felt lonelier in my life. So I’m not in it for the politics or whatever. I think that part’s bullshit, anyway.”
“Which part?”
“The armed-and-dangerous part. You hear rumors, but I don’t believe them.”
“Oh, that,” she said. “Probably right, only I have a couple friends who joined a Bond and now no one knows what’s up with them because they won’t talk to anyone but each other.”
“A Bond?”
“Like a commune. People living together in some house or building. They’re all over the country. But I gotta say, I actually think it sounds nice.”
“I bet the Branch Davidians thought their gig was nice, too.”
“No, but they were bonkers. And anyway, how do you know? Maybe they knew they were in a cult and just liked it that way.” She cast her arm like it was the line and she was fishing.
Ned tilted his head, gave her a look. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Do I know you from someplace else?”
Her face said it all. “I work four doors down from you, Ned. I see you every day.”
“Oh, jeez. How embarrassing.”
“That’s okay. I’m not all that stand-out.”
Ding.
Ned thumbed through his date cards. Five dates, one match. AnneJanet 358. He returned to the lounge for a last drink and a closing look at her because he was determined to remember her face. He found her with Bruce. Bruce and Olgo.
Ned said, “Happy birthday, Olgo Panjabi.”
Bruce said, “So what is that, anyway? Italian-Indian?”
“Okay, one more,” said Bruce, as he assessed the détente in his gut—would it keep until home? He had a bad stomach.
When asked, Bruce said he once did consulting. And Olgo? “Arbitration. I used to envoy proposals between people who hate each other. I wrest accord from the teeth of hostility.”
“Wow.”
“My wife put that on a business card for me once. Just for fun. Olgo Panjabi: Wresting accord from the teeth of hostility since 1945. Year I was born.”
Bruce said, “I used to work in TV. Trial by Liar—my baby.”
Anne-Janet laughed. “And now we all work for Interior, and none of us knows why.”
A man tapped Ned on the shoulder. He was the organizer of the night. He was saying: Nine minutes, nine women. When you do eight, or four, you leave a woman in the lurch. There is a woman in the lurch, and she is demanding satisfaction.
Good grief. Ned was directed to a private room, which was empty barring a single woman at a table and, weirdly, a security detail in the nooks. These guys were so conspicuous. So maybe this woman was a higher-up. Maybe she had powers. Not that powers were such an asset if they meant having to take your security team on a speed date. This woman had a stoop—he could tell even though she was sitting. And though there was supposed to be an age limit here, the woman’s neck said fifty. Drapes of neck. Cascade of neck.
“Ned Four Four Four,” she said. “Sit.”
There are men, it’s true, who like to be bossed around. Men who want to be called bitch and slave and whore. Typically these are men in power who just want to give it a rest. Ned knew such men. His father—his faux father—was such a man, though no one had known. At least not until two months ago, when he had confessed, in his sleep, to having affinities at odds with his wife’s temperament in bed, so much so that he was pleading for things of which she had never heard. What, for instance, was a hog tie?
His mother might well have let it go—a dream is but a dream—but she didn’t. Instead, she flew into such a rage that she intimated gratitude for Ned’s lineage unknown—thank God he could not inherit this sickness, this depravity!—at which point, she realized, the game was up. The truth will out: he was adopted. Ned left home with a folder of documents and letters, and a sense that the wasteland he’d come to regard as his inner life owed its provenance to strangers.
He sat. The woman produced a clipboard. “Drugs?” she said.
“No.”
“Illnesses?”
“None. My dad has hypertension, but then I guess that means nothing for me anymore since he’s not really my dad.”
She checked things off as she spoke.
“This is efficient,” he said. “Do you multitask at home? I’ve got it so I can piss, shave, and brush my teeth at the same time. Assuming you’re man enough to sit on the toilet, it’s no problem.”
“You’re very talented,” she said, and she seemed to lean forward, though perhaps it was just the illusion produced by her nose and jaw, as though these features wanted off her face and were just waiting for the chance.
He checked his watch. Seven minutes to go. He said, “What’s your name?” and looked at his date card. Because, in a way, this bossy little woman was hot. Twenty years older than him, but hot. Go figure.
“My name is Lynne.”
He leaned forward, wanting to whisper something about the security detail, only as he moved in, so did they. One got his forearm between Ned and Lynne so fast it came down like a tollgate. The arm appeared to say: Sit back. Good thing Ned had powers of deduction, since the man also appeared incapable of speech. He was so much brick, there were probably bricks all up and down his throat.
The woman waved him off—“Martin, enough”—and the Brick went back to his corner.
Ned retracted. Pulled out his chair. “This is getting uncomfortable,” he said. “I don’t think I’m the guy for you.”
But Lynne kept to the script. Fears? Phobias? Allergies?
“I don’t handle eggplant all that well.”
“Anything you can tell me that your basic spy wouldn’t catch within a week of surveillance?”
He had to think. He scratched his back with kitchen utensils, wore Star Wars costumes to relax, and sometimes talked to Kurt Vonnegut in the bathroom because the man’s photo—from a magazine—was taped to the mirror.
“No,” he said. “Probably not. Though if you had someone spying on me, it’d be for a reason, which would make me way more interesting than I am. So it’s sort of an unfair question.”
“Okay, let me ask you this: Do you ever feel like you want to do something great? Something that will make you king of the world?”
He sat back. Studied her face. Did he know this woman, too? He didn’t want to risk asking.
“I guess,” he said. “That’s why I study weather modification. I mean, if you can turn water to ice, you are powerful. You are allpowerful. So who knows? Defy Nature in a small way and maybe you can do it in a big way.”
“And that appeals to you?”
“I’d like to be in charge of my own life, yes.”
She seemed to approve. “So you just found out you’re adopted, is that right?”
“How could you know that?” he said. “Okay, please tell me you are just really into me and did some research.”
“Is that what you’d prefer?”
“Don’t write that down! Am I safe in assuming we’ve long since ended our date? I’m going to try to be smart about this and venture you are from Interior and are, uh, interviewing me for one reason or another.”
“Don’t be silly. I just overheard what you said earlier. And anyway, here comes the bell.”
“You are weird,” he said. “That was weird.”
“Nine-minute dating is weird. Get over it.”
He watched her leave the room, security on either flank.
In the lounge were the bartender and backs. A few guys watching golf highlights. A woman saying it might be nice to watch the minority response to the State of the Union, and another saying: Bohhhring.
Ned grabbed his coat from the stand. He felt for his gloves and was reassured to find them there. Outside the window, he caught sight of one of his dates getting in a car with the security guy of brick. One date and then another, and Lynne bringing up the rear. Well, how do you like that? The silent brick thing was not supposed to work. The Helix said so. Equity theory said so—only people in receipt of a self-disclosure will respond by sharing about themselves at a companionable level of intimacy, which was code for putting out, and yet there was the Brick with half the bar in his pants. Ah, the world was a mystifying place. And being in it was not so much an exercise in humility as disjuncture.
Ned checked his watch. It was only nine. Guess he’d go home and pelt the TV with wasabi peas. Or have a drink like his boss, the Secretary, who would inherit the earth if the Capitol blew up on this night of all others. Somewhere in a safe house mandated by the doomsday caveat to the Succession Act of ’47, the Secretary was sipping Bénédictine and napping through the State of the Union like everyone else. Probably, though, Ned would go home and study the weather. Rawinsonde data from balloons one hundred thousand feet in the air; thunderstorm identification, tracking, analysis, and nowcasting info; Stüve diagrams and the CAPEs of every cloud deck within ten miles. An hour’s worth of study that would help him counter dread of the unknown with his command of the fates. He needed all the help he could get for that moment when he’d find his sister and disclose their kin. He had, after all, seen Star Wars a thousand times.
LUKE: I’m Luke Skywalker. I’m here to rescue you.
LEIA: You’re who?
He spotte
d Anne-Janet on her way out and ran to catch up with her. “Hey,” he said, “if you’re not doing anything right now, maybe we could have a beer or something?” Because, romance or not, it’d be nice to have a friend at work. Share your boredom, and next you know, you’re streaking the Pentagon for kicks.
“I can’t,” she said. “I have to get back to the hospital. Mother calls.”
He nodded and felt like he didn’t need the Helix to get this one right. He understood perfectly. We are put on this earth to rue the family that comes apart. Look after you and yours.
Anne-Janet took the long way back, and when she found out her mom was still asleep, she went to the lounge. Most unhappy place ever, the hospital lounge, except maybe the playground after a miscarriage. It was empty but for a coffee station and snack machine with offerings strangely antagonistic to health. Not just candy bars and chips, but the really caloric foods, like Marshmallow Fluff shortbread and maple honey buns. Honey buns in a bag. Anne-Janet bought water and a pack of gum. She sat on a couch frayed at the arms and pecked with holes. Nails burrowed into the fabric while people waited for death.
She retrieved her Helix membership card from her back pocket. She should laminate the thing and yoke it to a string around her neck, just to advertise her need. That or rip it up because, really, those people were lame, the socials were lame, and just because the energies of the lonely tended to mobilize in vigilant and constant pursuit of an end to loneliness, that did not make their aggregate any less lame.
Even so: Nine men, one match. Ned Hammerstein. She’d spent most of her first weeks at Interior trying to find out more about him. But the results were minimal. So either he was this wonderful enigma or the most boring man ever. It didn’t matter which, only that Anne-Janet liked to know in advance what she was getting into. She hated surprises. As a girl, just knowing when her father was coming took the edge off the assault. In time, she hardly cared what he did because she was prepared. On the other hand, nights he showed unexpectedly, she sobbed into the dishrag he thrust in her mouth.
She put the card away and crossed her ankles. Was about to go to her mom’s room when Nurse Lynne plunked down on the couch and said, “There you are. Been looking all over.” She seemed out of breath. And looked as if she’d applied her eyeliner in an earthquake. What kind of nurse had a hand that unsteady?