Side Effects

by Harvey Jacobs

  Seeing his own blood flow from the gash left him hysterical. Francine yelled to Victoria, “Hurry, bring the bottle of Librium and a Band-Aid.”

  11

  If the sky rained fire over Glenda while an earthquake splintered the town, it would have been less frightening to Simon Apple than watching his father cry.

  His mother’s tears were no novelty; Francine wept rivers over onions, romance novels, at movies, weddings, funerals for far distant cousins.

  Simon’s own eyes were ready faucets. Every frustration led to a tantrum; every tantrum drowned the world. Victoria rocked him when he slobbered, chanting what she called her Simon Song:

  If tears would turn to diamonds, how rich this boy would be!

  He’d buy the earth and sun and moon and give some stars to me.

  Sometimes, for unfathomable reasons, she cried along with him. Simon learned that for women tears breed tears the way fire breeds fire. He hated being a hydrant. His father was a dry well immune to leakage. That simple fact was a touchstone for Simon, the Gibraltar of his infancy, the sign that he was safely protected against the blood-sucking vampires, snot-eating goblins or flesh-ripping giants that populated stories Victoria whispered to him at bedtime.

  Robert J. did not wet the bed and did not cry. Simon thought of him as dripless. The water his father drank had only one permissible exit and a single destination. Simon potty-trained based on that conviction.

  After patching Simon’s bloody nose, Victoria carried him to his room, got him into pajamas, praised him when he swallowed his dose of Nonacripthae, then tucked him into the junior bed that had replaced his crib. The night his mother spoke of divorce, loud voices were raised in the Apple home. Screaming was usually Francine’s weapon but this time Robert J. yelled back. Sounds of his parents fury made Simon tremble.

  Victoria held his head against the ocean of her generous chest. He clung tightly to her, a paper boat rising and falling with her every breath. Simon heard the outside door slam shut. The shouting stopped. It was replaced by the blessing of silence, a balm that soothed the sense of dread that still lingered in the house. Simon listened to the steady drumbeat of Victoria’s heart, felt a wave of love for his protector, then fell asleep.

  He woke from a sugary dream of drifting clouds, surprised to find himself alone, frightened, bathed in sweat. His bladder was empty, he wasn’t thirsty, he didn’t feel sick, his night-light gave a comfortable glow. There was no excuse to call for Victoria.

  Then he heard sniffles and little choking gasps float through the walls of his room, drifting like the clouds in his dream. Simon left his bed, careful to be quiet as a shadow. He followed those wet, swampy sounds into the dim hallway. They drew him toward the master bedroom, his parents’ sanctuary.

  Simon dropped down on all fours and crept along like a stalking cat. The door to that sacred temple had been left half open. Simon saw Robert J. sprawled on the king-size bed, convulsed with sobs. His father’s arms were wrapped around Francine’s puffy pillow, his legs kicked like a swimmer’s, his face pressed against the padded headboard covered with the same fabric as the picture-window drapes. Francine was gone. Robert J. Apple was crying. Simon felt a hideous emptiness, a subtraction of self.

  He wanted to go to his father but his hands felt nailed to the carpet. There was a smell in the air he recognized as stale cigar smoke but Simon had the thought that he was smelling time. He watched the hands on his mother’s bedside clock jerk through another minute, and yet another.

  Then he saw Victoria come out of his parents’ bathroom carrying a towel. She knelt to sponge Robert J.’s neck. Simon’s horror was confirmed; his father’s face was a puddle. It got worse. Victoria sang to him, her special song about tears and diamonds. Simon felt his feelings change from amazement to sorrow to contempt to outrage while he watched Victoria take off his father’s shoes, slip off his socks, unbutton his shirt, click open the silver cowboy buckle of his belt, slide off his pants, pull the let quikpix help you develop T-shirt over his head, yank away his boxer shorts. Robert J. was naked, still crying. He never stopped crying when he gave up Francine’s pillow and grabbed for Victoria’s hair. He cradled her cheeks, dared to move his fingers over her breasts. Victoria helped him with that sacrilegious exploration, her hands guiding his.

  In seconds she was as bare as he was, the two of them clinging together. Robert J. kissed her nipples, then sucked at them while she moaned. She pulled away, blew air across his belly, moved her head between his thighs, took his nozzle into her mouth. Robert J. wriggled around, found Victoria’s sex and tongued slowly as if he were lapping at a saucer of milk.

  While Simon felt himself on the verge of throwing up, he wondered if his father had swallowed Victoria’s penis. No question, it had certainly vanished. Whatever happened, at least it stopped Robert J.’s crying. Then something snapped in Simon’s brain. He was released from paralysis. He stood, howled, and attacked the defiled bed swinging a fist at Victoria’s face while he grabbed for his father’s balls and squeezed.

  Victoria Wyzowik left early the next morning, forever banished from the Apple residence. It wasn’t clear exactly why she had to go but at some level her exodus made sense to Simon who missed her more than he did his mother. He wished a thousand times that he’d stayed in his own room, locked in a dream.

  There was no replacing Victoria. Robert J. hired a long series of pseudo-Victorias but none came close to the original. Simon’s feelings for those women were as distant and formal as his cold relations with his broken father.

  After Victoria left, the “power tyke” had regressed to diapers. His ersatz nannies forced him to spend endless hours on cold toilet seats until “he got the message.” They commanded his bowels to run on time. They tried to seduce him to use the plumbing with history’s most successful lie, arbeit macht frei, but none of their transparent tricks worked.

  Victoria had insisted on using cloth diapers; Simon’s dirty laundry was stored in a bin until, once a week, a uniformed stranger came to collect it as if it were a gift to the gods. That gave Simon a sense of worth and purpose. Victoria’s pathetic replacements used disposables. What remained of Simon’s ego was tossed out with the garbage. He refused to accept the demeaning change.

  Still, for all his domestic misery, the Apple child looked like a winner. Dr. Fikel’s bulletins to Regis Pharmaceuticals remained deservedly upbeat.

  12

  “Shall I continue with this flashback?” Agent Beem said. Simon nodded a wan yes.

  Beem reached into his pocket and pulled out a batch of folded papers, unfolded them, smoothed them against his pants leg.

  “I get the creepy feeling that my whole life is passing before your eyes,” Simon said.

  “Do you want me to stop? Want to talk about the weather?”

  “How did you choose Brother Lucas for Simon Apple to kill?”

  Agent Beem lowered his voice to a whisper. “There were valid reasons for the Bureau’s concern. Luke did have meetings with several publishers. But it turns out he wasn’t peddling an exposé. He was trying to sell recipes for homemade laxatives. Regularity for the retentive. Whole grains. No additives except for faith.”

  “Fiber optics. On a clear colon you can see forever,” Simon said.

  “Even though there was no evidence that Lucas was considering a tell-all book, the consensus was better safe than sorry. We felt that a preventive strike was not out of order. Luke’s profile strongly suggested a powerful urge to purge. Today, organic laxatives, tomorrow who knows what? One way or another, he had to go and the timing was right. We needed a corpse.”

  “Sometimes things fall into place,” Simon said. “Rarely, but sometimes.”

  “These papers are official documents. Strictly for the archives.” Beem lifted a pair of gold-framed reading glasses from a leather case and positioned himself under the eternal light in Simon’s cell. He kept his body between the paper and a surveillance camera set in the steel ceiling. “I hate people rea
ding over my shoulder,” Beem said. His voice dropped an octave. “Event Reconstruction File RX 3266780. Top Secret.”

  “I’m flattered,” Simon said.

  “Please, Apple, no wiseass remarks and no interruptions. This might be the ultimate bedtime story.”

  “Here we go loop-the-loop,” Simon said.

  Beem cleared his throat and read from the file: “On the very night of Brother Lucas’s disappearance, all members of the Holy Order of Digital Shadows were gathered for their annual Vesting Ceremony. As things stood, the event presented us with an unusual opportunity to tie up some embarrassing loose ends relating to the possible identification of Agent Brian Beem.”

  “Protecting your ass. What a unique idea. Please read on.”

  “Brother Lucas’s devoted followers were puzzled by the absence of their missing leader, especially since their Vesting ritual was so crucial, a basic doctrine of the Order. All postulants, on the occasion of their ordination, were granted stock options in the mother corporation (Future Perfect, Inc.) that owned and operated the monastery, i.e., all its buildings, lands, the winery, products, the gift shop, web site and all subsidiary properties including books, pamphlets, CDs, videos etc. in this or any future world. It was understood by the Digitals that, at the proper moment, to be determined by Elder Shadows, the Holy Order of the Digital Shadows would go public with a listing on the NASDAQ exchange. Those Elder Shadows were empowered to offer converts much more than just posthumous rewards.”

  “They got stock options?” Simon said.

  Beem continued reading: “Brother Lucas often told potential believers that Digitals didn’t pass around empty baskets every Sunday pleading for charity. ‘Instead,’ he said, ‘we offer cosmic and financial cornucopias, waiting to be emptied.’ He kept a sign on his desk that read, vows of poverty are chapter 11 in a digital’s book of life. Near the sign he displayed a ceramic hippopotamus he’d jokingly named IPO, an acronym for initial public offering.

  “The Vesting Ceremony was quick and simple but very emotional. Male and female Shadows gathered on one side of their chapel, acolytes on the other. Traditionally, the text of a brief but passionate sermon—Cybertime, The Hour of Underglass Revelation—was read aloud by Brother Lucas himself. His sermon reminded the Digitals of their vital role at the time when most of life’s business, pleasure, science and art would be virtual, conducted online.”

  “I’m thinking of converting,” Simon said.

  Beem lost his place on the page, then found it with a finger and kept reading. “Of course, there would be opponents to the new world order. It was then that the call would be sounded and the Shadows would come boldly forth to fight the great fight. The pinched, parched, obsolete spawn of an apocalyptic past would be denied all hope of grace unless they accepted the doctrine of the Rom Triumphant, the Cybervoid, a shining new vision of Site Solemnity, Internet Immortality. In short, unless they joined the Order after paying an initiation fee as yet to be determined.

  “The Blessed Vested would serve as exorcists, merciless reamers, expunging pulpy soul-waste and replacing the fetid mess with Serene Celestial Connectedness to the Pulsating Quantum. The goal of every Digital Shadow is to experience Electronic Nirvana, Pixel Paradise—a sensuous realm where Secure Commerce Penetrates Essence, when the Blessed Alliance Between Business and Belief is openly celebrated.”

  “Inspiring,” Simon said. “Regarding heaven as a profit center. Hallelujah.”

  “There’s more,” Beem said, rattling the report.

  “I’m all ears,” Simon said.

  Beem wet his upper lip with his tongue. “As a snide swipe at the past, that sermon was written on a parchment scroll like the Hebrew Torah, peppered with footnotes openly acknowledging certain contradictions in Digital theology. Luke anticipated frontal attack from Christians, Jews, the Islamic crowd, Hindus, Buddhists, the whole shebang. So he asked the questions he knew would come flying at the Order.

  “How, for example, could even a devout Shadow reconcile embracing and profiting from an organized, digitized world while recognizing its hollow, robotic assault on the soul, that misty essence of triumphs and pratfalls once hailed as mankind’s better nature? Brother Lucas is pleased to remind his brethren that every religion is seasoned with seemingly impossible contradictions which conceal doorways to larger truth. He firmly states that any doubts will be replaced with specific details crystallizing into generic revelation. Meanwhile, waiting for answers, the Gospel of Brother Lucas urges his Digitals not to sweat the small stuff.”

  “Amen.” Simon said.

  Beem cleared his throat and went on. “After the Vesting sermon came the singing of Plasmas, hymns composed by the more musical Shadows, during which Brother Lucas would confer certificates legalizing the stock options granted to the chosen. That explosive climax was tempered by a cooling down, a Poweroff, an hour of deep meditation when all present were encouraged to seek peace wandering through Inner Meadows Where Wildflowers Bloom, taking time to Navigate Calm Seas At The Center Of Being And Becoming before Rebooting.”

  “Excuse me,” Simon said, “but how in the age of screwed up software did anybody swallow that garbage? Didn’t any of those people ever lose a file on Windows?”

  “We still enjoy freedom of speech in the good old U.S.A. so let’s not be too judgmental here,” Agent Beem said. “Those Shadows gladly gave their worldly possessions to the Order. Of course, the majority of them had lost a high percentage of those worldly possessions in the dotcom fiasco of the late nineties. The majority of the Digitals were recruited among the walking wounded from Silicon Valley. We’re not talking about dunces—these people had huge jobs before the collapse so the idea of recouping some of those terminal losses in the market had profound appeal.”

  “Could you skip the theology and get to the part about how I murdered an entire Holy Order?”

  “You weren’t accused of murdering them. Only of aiding and abetting their violent extermination,” Beem said.

  “Excuse me,” Simon said. “I didn’t mean to take too much credit.”

  13

  Agent Beem ran his finger down the document like a pointer, flipping past pages he considered irrelevant. Beem was sympathetic with Simon Apple’s impatience to learn as much as he could before such concerns became moot. On the other hand, there was no need to overload Simon with too much information on the day of his death.

  Nobody could say for sure how the universe worked or what happened when a traveler crossed the border to eternity. Was there some kind of celestial debriefing? In the face of such uncertainty, a sensible position for the Bureau was to keep God on a need to know basis.

  When Beem was ready to resume his litany, he cleared dry webs from his throat. Simon offered him a glass of brown prison water to lubricate his vocal cords but that sludgy cocktail was waved off. After a few minutes of gagging, Beem quit coughing, found his voice. He read in the same raspy whisper he’d used to thwart the electronic ears that were surely listening.

  “The Vesting ended with an elaborate feast. Cocktails of homemade wine and soy milk were followed by a mesclun salad dressed with canola oil and vinegar. The main course was stuffed blowfish, fugu, a Japanese delicacy personally prepared by Brother Lucas’s own sushi chef, the beloved Jiro Kiuki, famous for his handling of that delectable but dangerous dish. Kiuki described his fugu as edible haiku, the gastronomical equivalent of multiple orgasms. The blowfish had to be freshly taken from safe waters and expertly rendered. In the hands of a novice, fugu can be deadly poison.

  “Of course, Kiuki knew his way around a blowfish. He was a tyrant when it came to selecting and cooking the fugu served at a Vesting, especially since he himself was a member of the Order, fully vested at the highest level. While his knife worked miracles, isolating lethal blowfish bladders, Kiuki recited ancient poems about the exquisite titillation of balancing terminal risk against transcendent pleasure. By way of example:

  I lick the fuzz on Death’s moist thighs,<
br />
  I smile at the menace in her eyes.

  She beckons me to taste her flesh,

  I say, “Your dew is taste enough.”

  Fugu, fugu, fugu, fugu

  Can any dish compare with you?

  “Emily Dickinson?” Simon said.

  “Pearl Harbor,” Beem said. “Keep focused.”

  “Sorry. Do proceed. This might be enlightening.”

  Beem read: “At the hour prescribed by precise computations of astrological confluences, the ceremony proceeded. Absent Brother Lucas was replaced at the podium by a certain Brother Rochelle who’d resigned his position as Marketing Manager of the prestigious Ordelan Winery in Burgundy to join the Holy Order as a novice and quickly became one of their most respected Shadows.”

  “Didn’t anybody question the whereabouts of their misplaced mentor?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Beem said, turning a page then picking up the narrative. “Despite an undercurrent of restlessness, even apprehension, over the missing Brother Lucas (as detected in the Bureau’s analysis of various audio and video tapes recovered from church security systems, etc.), the prospect of tasting Fugu Kiuki kept the crowd more cheerful than concerned. Brother Rochelle enforced the sense of normalcy, remarking that Brother Lucas’s disappearance was no accident, that their leader wanted his children to regard him less as divine and more as mortal and replaceable. Rochelle pointed out that it was exactly like Brother Lucas to deliver that message in a dramatic fashion and that it should surprise nobody if their beloved mentor appeared suddenly to expound on the subject of inevitable succession. These comments evoked shouts of No! Never! and were followed by the spontaneous singing of “Go Softly Forth Dot Com” (a favorite Plasma). When the song ended, dinner was served.” Agent Beem twisted his head left to right, then bobbed it up and down to loosen a muscle knot in his thick neck.