Face Value

by Lia Matera

  He took the papers from me and began reading them.

  I’d been ushered through his “quantum hostel,” a whitewashed farmhouse with cushion-strewn wood floors. From the uneven stone patio in back, we had a view of the lush tiny island that took hours to reach. It was gorgeous, no denying it. Beyond a benign tangle of orchard, the sea shone a flat platinum. Mossy islands rose from a ribbon of mist.

  I’d seen perhaps a dozen people so far, surrounded by books and notebooks in an extensive library, or plying mops or trimming mammoth hedges. I’d passed one room where a circle of devotees sat with heads bowed, saying nothing. Video cameras on tripods whirred at center circle. In the kitchen, two men and a woman communed with computers as vivid as televisions. At the sink, a man chopped chickens.

  Brother Mike looked up from the papers. “I’ve heard what happened at The Back Door. Do you have any details?”

  I felt my muscles knot. He’d found out quickly. “Only what’s generally known, that six employees and a man were murdered.” I wouldn’t tell him anything I hadn’t told Sandy, hadn’t told the police. That protected us both from his conscience, if not mine.

  “I know several of the women who work there—I met them through Arabella. It’s been frustrating not knowing which of them.”

  “The police have probably released the names by now. At least some of them.”

  He paled. “Who should I call to get that information?”

  “I’ll take care of that for you, if you like. But it raises a point I need to discuss with you. Arabella de Janeiro was beaten last night outside The Back Door.” I continued in a rush. “In my experience, it’s unpredictable what a traumatic event like that will do to litigation plans. She may delay or drop the whole thing. She may blast ahead because she needs money to pay her hospital bills.”

  He sat heavily back. “Beaten? Badly?”

  “Badly enough to require hospitalization, but with no lasting injury, I gather.” My god, I’d asked Sandy so few questions about her—about someone who was planning to sue my client. Sandy must have found that astonishing.

  “Who did it?” He watched my face as if reading an instrument panel.

  “I don’t know. I’m sorry, I’ll get details soon. As soon as I get back.”

  He started to say something, then fixed an unfocused stare on the pines behind me. With a slight shake of the head, he resumed reading the agreement. Before he’d finished, he pulled a pen from his pocket and signed. His script was almost illegible, very backhand. “I’ll have Roy cut you a check before you go. I hope you’ll stay the night.”

  “Thank you.” I hated the thought of being surrounded by people all evening. After my antisocial winter, spring, and summer, I was having trouble adjusting even to small talk. It didn’t outweigh my need for this retainer. “My flight leaves tomorrow.” What I needed to learn about Brother Mike’s videos might take more than a few hours. It hadn’t made sense to book a same-day return flight. “I’d be happy to stay.”

  “Sometimes,” he said, “I look around and wonder what the entity looks like to outsiders. If you can be honest with me, that would be a lot of fun.”

  “I’ll have no trouble being honest,” I assured him. “I’d be useless to you otherwise.”

  “Gretchen is impressed by your self-confidence.”

  “I notice you refer to this, um, place as an ‘entity.’“

  He rose. “Not just the place. The whole thing. Do you want to walk around, see the island?”

  “Fine.”

  The house was ringed with evergreens and fresh-cut grass. The smell of sea and fir mingled. We walked through the yard and behind a stand of gnarled fruit trees. I was astonished to find what looked like an orchard of roses.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such big bushes.”

  His murmur of assent made it clear he’d grown used to, even a little bored, with them. “The reason I call it an entity is it has a life of its own. Honestly, it does.” He ran a hand over his thick hair. I noticed he walked with a slight stoop, paying no attention to his surroundings. “I’ve thought about this a lot, and the best I can come up with is … Well, I always liked to kick around ideas. I was very taken with Plato’s Republic when I was a kid, with the depiction of Socrates as someone who didn’t pretend to know the answers and deflated anyone who thought he did. My starting point has always been: As soon as you fall in love with a method of analysis, it imprisons your thinking. It becomes jealous of competing analyses and locks you in like an angry lover. I used to spend hours trying to get my college friends to let go of their tight little perspectives and try out some other possibilities. I was surprised how many things they refused to even think about. They’d decided in advance, for instance, that there could be no such thing as telepathy or spirit or God—or lack of God. Or no such phenomenon as a subatomic universe, or an implicate order of reality which differently manifests itself to different people. Or whatever. Things we can’t possibly rule out—or prove.”

  “So you began assembling a group of”—what should I call them?—“followers back then?”

  “You could say that. I always had ten or twelve other students in my dorm room, and I’d stay up all night arguing with them. All I really had to say was, ‘Let go of your way of looking at things because it keeps you from looking at things in other ways.’ Not much of a message, although they argued furiously with me. After a while, around campus I’d hear people repeat things I’d said—and I didn’t know a thing back then, truly. What I said would get changed a little bit. And then people would argue about that, and they’d come back to me with their arguments, and I’d refute them. Somehow the ideas became terribly pompous by the time they came back around. Solidified, as if I wanted people to believe particular things instead of just keeping their minds open. And it went on and on. Pretty soon it seemed that whoever was in my group—and it would change at least in part from year to year—we’d be arguing about different subjects. It was wonderful for me. I learned so much about how thinking gets constricted. That helped me take some huge intuitive leaps. That’s certainly been true the last few years. I’ve been surrounded with intellectually nourishing companions.”

  I could understand his appeal, at least surfacely, for Gretchen Miller and Margaret Lenin. He came on like a mentor, not a preacher. Unlike Jim Jones, he hadn’t plugged into a fundamentalist Christian preaching style. He seemed more secular, more idea-oriented. But that was just a first impression. I hadn’t heard any of his philosophy yet.

  He stopped beside a bush of blown white roses with hips the size of apricots. He tapped one, watching its petals fall. “Most recently, the people around me have wanted to explore sexuality. A few years ago, I’d have said the group was political in its orientation, concerned with evolving an ethic that was de-rigidified and de-Americanized. They wanted to expand their thinking beyond what they’d learned in college core courses. But there was a shift, some people left, others came in. AIDS, I think, was a big factor. San Francisco’s a very sexual town, and it was a shock to it, closing the bathhouses, all this latex after years of freedom. The energy has to be expressed in some form.”

  “Why videos? Why not just conduct your sessions?” I wondered how accurate it was to call them “his” sessions. I wondered what he thought about, rambling instructions that resulted in activities in which he had no other part, activities that might be considered kinky.

  “Ironically enough, it was Arabella who made me consider it. I knew as soon as I met her that she’d take me in a new direction. She’d been in a number of films, and she taught me a lot.”

  “So Arabella suggested making the videos?” I felt a chill, discussing her. After last night, hearing her name was like touching a Pandora’s box of memories and speculations.

  “Suggested? I don’t know. But the idea arrived with her. I realized my observations would be easier for people to accept if they
were on a screen. Rather than tell someone, ‘You’re not enjoying your sexuality because you’re using it to try to assuage and flatter others,’ I’d make a tape of that person being fondled and caressed. I’d animate-in auras working like frantic little butlers, trying to please her partner. Simultaneously, they’d be creating discomfort for her. Or, if two people were making love and one got selfish, I’d make his aura huge and infantile. Nothing fancy—especially at first. But I realized I was dealing with a generation that took its notions of reality from the television screen. They learn more readily by icon and image than by word. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It just is. I thank Arabella for showing me that.”

  “Is she bitter toward you? Does she believe you used her just to get your videos made? Or that you were making some kind of statement when you reimaged her?”

  “No, no. She understood what was important. Or so I thought.” He turned so we were face-to-face, very close together. “The main thing is to take the technology farther. There’s so much to create and explore. The kind of future being made possible now, it will change us as a species. It’s that dramatic. Truly.”

  “Change us in what way?”

  “Imagine a holographic, totally three-dimensional reality in which literally anything you think of can happen. That’s where the technology is heading.”

  “We’ve always had our imagination.” I shrugged.

  “But now we’ll unlock it, we’ll free it. We’ll make it as close to physical as anything else you perceive. We’ll blur the lines: What’s quote-unquote real, what isn’t? Is this reality”—he waved his arm to indicate the tranquil landscape—“a hologram, as well? Projected from where? By what? Our whole way of thinking about mind and matter will change. We’ll finally have to abandon our rigid preconceptions about spirit.”

  People disposed to think in those terms would continue to do so, and people not so disposed, wouldn’t. I didn’t see how holographic video games would change that.

  To my unspoken skepticism, he replied, “How could it not happen? How could it not change everything?” He placed an earnest hand on my arm. “That’s why my work is so important. The closer I get to constructing a new reality, the closer we all get to understanding what’s behind this one. That’s why my devotees are with me. That’s why I’m pushing the technology. For them, for me, for Arabella. She understood that. I thought.” His shoulders drooped. “How sad what happened to those women. I won’t— I don’t want to use it against Arabella that she’s a sex worker. I don’t want that to be a defense or whatever. I agree with sex workers’ advocacy of tolerance and open-mindedness. I don’t want to stand on them to make myself look taller.”

  “Have you been to The Back Door?”

  He nodded. “After-hours with Arabella. So she could film some of her friends.”

  “I meant for the shows.”

  “No.”

  “To me, it looked less like a political statement than a very difficult and exploitative job.”

  “But to single out sex work for censure and criminalization is …”

  “Is a separate issue. I agree with you. And as I said, I don’t know if Arabella’s work will become relevant. I don’t even know for a fact she’ll go through with suing you.”

  “The Rs brought another letter from her lawyer this morning. She’s demanding the masters of my videos.”

  I tried not to look happy. If this turned into a case, it might be emotionally trying. But it would pay the bills.

  “Don’t send them. If they sue, they can subpoena them. I’ll want a copy of the letter. And I’d like copies of the unchanged tapes and copies of every changed version you have. But I’ll send you a comprehensive list of what I need.”

  He blinked rapidly, looking a little overwhelmed. “I’ll have the Rs take care of you.”

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard him correctly. But as long as someone took care of me, it didn’t matter.

  “What else can you tell me about Arabella de Janeiro?”

  “Well, in terms of her impact on the group, she touched a nerve. I won’t say I’m an ascetic or anything like that, but my own orientation is more, I don’t know, call it ephemeral. I hadn’t focused much, on sexuality.” He leaned closer, as if mere eye contact were not enough. “But of course I grew up in this culture, I saw all the magazines, a few of the classic X movies. I could feel people’s desires, all that energy under there, under the surface. Even before Arabella came along, I knew it was something to be addressed.” He looked suddenly disconcerted. “You’ve heard of water witches?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how I think of myself sometimes. When I’m with people, I pick up things about them. I divine their energies—their intellectual and emotional motivations—especially the dark ones, the quote-unquote crazy ones. I don’t mean to sound grandiose —I’ve worked at suspending judgment and remaining attuned. I’ll sit with people and listen a while and find I know what they want and dread, what they’re ashamed of or want to act out. Especially—although they might not know this—what they want to get free of.”

  “To what do you attribute this … gift?” I hoped I wasn’t going to hear some story of cosmic or religious rebirth.

  “Subatomic physics,” he said simply. “We recognize the existence of certain waves—like magnetism—by the effects they have on surrounding matter. Well”—he shrugged—“it seems obvious to me that if I’m picking up these energies from people, then the energies are, first off, being broadcast. And, just as obviously, that I’m open to and able to receive them. Beyond that, I’d just be guessing.”

  “How many of the sexual sessions have you done?”

  “Oh, my. When I was still down in San Francisco, we were doing them twice a day sometimes. For months. Like I said, Arabella was part of the impetus, but a lot of other people fed into it. By the time we got into the filming, I was coming up here three, four days a week to clear my head. I was shorting out, you might say.” He looked tired just talking about it. “Having devotees is like any relationship. At times, you’re immersed. When it fatigues you, you worry that you’ve become crazy in exact complement to your partner. So you take a step back. Until you can reconnect without that fear.”

  “Did your devotees pay for this place?”

  He nodded, putting a gentle finger behind my elbow to cue me to continue walking. Past the rose orchard the ground sloped, commanding a view of jade islands in a flat sterling sea. A few scant acres, ending in sea-lapped rock, were dotted with hive-shaped structures, some of them topped with antennas.

  “I didn’t have a cent of my own, really,” he continued. “Never did have. I went through college on scholarships. By the time I graduated, a few people pooled together to pay my expenses. Good people.” He smiled fondly. “I grew a lot with them. I suspect I come across as the absentminded-professor type. I’ve been lucky to be surrounded by people willing to take care of my material details.”

  “So people chip in for your support?”

  He nodded, stuffing his hands into his slacks pockets.

  “What are all those structures? With the antennas?”

  “Receivers. Some transmitters.”

  “What are you receiving and transmitting?”

  “Maybe nothing.” He spoke as if slamming a door. “I don’t really like to talk about that level of my work. I don’t discuss it with my people. It has nothing to do with the sessions or the videos.”

  “All right.” Get flaky on me. “I’d like to talk to you about your reimaging. I’d like to see where and how and to what extent you do it.”

  He flashed me a huge grin. “With pleasure. We’ll do that right now, if you want.”

  “Fine.”

  He took my arm, turning us back toward the house. We walked in silence. He was certainly more amiable than I’d expected, less posturing, less preachy. But support him? It was
hard to imagine people in the cynical nineties wanting to support a man of mere ideas.

  As if in reply to my thought, he said, “It’s because of the water-witching aspect, not the ideas. That’s what I’ve grown to think.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean.”

  “Well, you, for instance. You put your sexuality into other things, things of a highly competitive nature. So you tend to exercise the physical part of the drive in less competitive arenas. No, no, don’t take it wrong: I’m not calling you an unsexed woman. If anything, I’d call you a sexy lawyer. But in terms of your sexual alliances, I’d guess you gravitate toward damaged or unsuccessful men: maybe younger, less accomplished, handicapped. Because the heart of your sexual energy is in competition and achievement. Maybe your earliest sexual relationship left you feeling powerless and degraded, and now you put your energy into being on top.”

  I stopped walking. “I’m not your devotee,” I said carefully. “I will not discuss my sexuality or any part of my personality with you unless you feel it bears on my ability to represent you.”

  “You’re angry.” He sounded surprised. “But I was only showing you what I mean. About the witching.”

  “And I’m telling you: you’re apparently in the habit of a certain level of instant intimacy. Well, ours is not that kind of relationship. I’m your lawyer. You’ve drawn conclusions from my demeanor and my reputation, and your conclusions are dead wrong. But even if they weren’t—”

  “You know, if you’d like to sit in on any of the sessions here this weekend, you could get free of some of the—”

  “I don’t need to get free. Certainly not of my ambition.” Goddam it. How many variations were there on the old, All you need is a good screw?

  Were his people so desperate for attention they believed his spot analyses? Were they like needy horoscope readers, comforted by the ersatz-personal and blind to the generality?

  “I was just trying to explain …” He sighed. “You don’t have to participate, but you’re welcome to sit in on the sessions.”