More thunderous applause attends this bit. Bradford basks in his glory, beaming, flexing his arms, enacting all manner of vulgar bravado. His wife joins him, and, grotesquely, they embrace and kiss.
Karl, the out-of-work truck driver, has been on his stool at the end of the bar. Now he rises to attention, salutes the screen, and recites the Pledge of Allegiance in his uneven baritone. His shirt is too small, exposing a trace of hairy belly fat.
Serena, on the other hand, breaks into a fit. “What’s next from this asshole, goddamn it? Is he going to call for a time machine to take us four centuries back so we can cut poor Galileo’s head off? Stop all progress in its tracks. In the fifteenth century, they burned men of science at the stake! Is that what he wants us to do? Kill all of the goddamn smart people?”
“There’s nothing more tragic,” Karl says as he draws toward us with heavy, menacing steps, “than bearing witness to what technology has robbed the hard-working people of this country of!”
In her heels, Serena is at least four inches taller than Karl. “Next,” she says mockingly, “you’re going to tell me that it’s my fault you’re in this condition.”
“America is a two-hundred-and-sixty-year-old cathedral being burned to ashes because of people like you!”
Karl and Serena stand chest-to-chest, he in his beer-stained T-shirt and she in her three-thousand-dollar suit with its overstated décolleté. Both look as wicked as born killers. Thank God for Lydia, who is a pro. She vaults over the bar, throws herself between them, and begins shoving Karl toward the exit.
“Now’s not the time, Karl,” she says.
“This isn’t over!” he says, lumbering off, his old dog by his side.
Serena is actually shaking. Her eyes are bugged and sweat is running down her face, smearing her makeup. But as quickly as she’d lost her head she’s regained it. On her stool again, whiskey in hand, she’s as composed as a queen. “You can’t stop progress!” she says.
7
The poetry of cemeteries has always spoken to me. A good stroll around the gravestones turns me into a morass of sentimentality. The trees, the flowers, the well-manicured grass—cemeteries are like marvelously serene parks where instead of smart-looking couples and their screaming children, you have marble tombstones and memorial plaques. People are so much more pleasant once they’ve passed.
My favorite tombstones have always been nineteenth century. The epitaphs of the era possess a somber religiosity that contrasts starkly with my modern views. Belief in God, it seems, would make life clearer and simpler. But having never had this light to lead my way, I’m afraid I’ve never defined any principles by which to live. How is a man to know if he’s compromising himself if he has no moral framework to abide?
In high school, I fell for a goth girl in my trigonometry class named Sarah Blackwood. She didn’t have much aptitude for the work, so I allowed her to copy mine. Beyond my academic prowess, I understood too late, she had little use for me. I didn’t have the gloomy aesthetic some of the other arty kids worked so hard to achieve. It’s astonishing how moved a teenaged girl can be by a fellow just because he’s got a pasty face glopped up with eyeliner and mascara.
Sarah dated the drummer of a band called Le Faux. They were the most popular group in our school. Le Faux played post-punk in the vein of Joy Division. In my opinion, they were terrible. Not only did they lack a talent for song-craft, but the rhythm section was loose and the singer’s voice was shrill and grating. I attributed their popularity strictly to the way they acted and looked—an unwavering commitment to stoic glumness. They exemplified that scourge by which we’ve long since been overrun, of aesthetics trumped by ideology.
While not as popular as Le Faux, my own band, The Blank Sets, were superior in nearly every way—tunefulness, musicianship, craft. We worshipped bands like The Replacements, Big Star, and The Pixies. And while we certainly paid homage to our influences, we were never derivative. The primary problem lay in our lack of “the look.” Our drummer, who grew up playing jazz and had the best chops of any musician in school, also played football and self-identified as a “jock.” He was roundly mocked by the school’s music community for his baseball cap and ill-fitting jeans. Our bass player had a tremendous feel for the instrument—always tasteful, never overplaying. His problem—he was extremely overweight, obese, really—making him ripe for ridicule amongst the cruel and unrelenting adolescents of Monte Vista High. I was the band’s guitar player, singer, and primary songwriter. It’s not a case of ego or self-delusion when I say that I was the most talented of the lot. Not unlike Davie Bowie or Paul McCartney, I had an almost mystifying gift for melody. Furthermore, I had keen sensibilities. Never did my songwriting get bogged down in overwrought sentimentality or twaddle. However, more than any other extenuating factor, it was me who prevented The Blank Sets from reaching the lofty heights to which we should have ascended.
To be brief, public opinion was not my friend. In a world where women anoint kings, the front man of a band has no choice: he must exude a certain sexual magic, or else. The singer for Le Faux had this. I did not. Until senior year—at five feet four inches tall, one hundred and fifteen pounds—I was a runt. Worse, to put it mildly, no one liked me. I was in fact excruciatingly unlikeable. I never missed a chance to trash Le Faux, for instance. I ranted about them to anyone who would listen, and even to those who wouldn’t, about their lack of ability, talent, and soul. Is it any wonder I was known in some circles as “the little prick”?
Unable to win Sarah’s affections with my prowess in music or math, I did something drastic. One day while touring the cemetery, I stumbled on the gravestone of a woman named Sarah Black, born in 1878 and died in 1912. Other than these dates, the stone was blank. My Sarah’s predilection for the morbid aesthetic of bands like The Cure and The Smiths was keen, I knew, so that night I dug the stone up and hid it under a tarp in my mother’s garage. Every night for three weeks, I worked on the stone until, finished, it said:
Sarah Blackwood
HANG THE DJ
The stone in my wheelbarrow, I schlepped it to Sarah’s house and mounted it in her front yard, facing her bedroom window, then hid in the oak tree across the street. At 7:00 a.m., Sarah’s father stepped out for the newspaper and shrieked. Had I not seen the man do this myself, I’d have said his scream was that of a spirit being torn from the body it had been. The rest of the family, of course, including Sarah, and, to my horror, most of the surrounding neighbors, as well, poured from their homes to witness the spectacle I’d created. Sarah did not swoon. Far from it, in fact. She fell to the ground in the fetal position and began to wail, where, for the better part of an hour, she was inconsolable.
The police traced the tombstone back to me, of course, and I was arrested. Still a minor with no previous record, I was given one hundred and fifty hours of community service and a $6,000 fine. This was nothing, though, compared to the mockery of my band mates and friends. For all intents and purposes, I was banished.
Despite the utter failure of my lovelorn sophomorics all those years back, I’ve never lost my faith in the romance inherent to a cemetery. In lieu of taking Taylor to the theater, therefore, I’ve invited her to a picnic amongst the dead.
The one meal I can cook is prosciutto-wrapped chicken, which I learned from an Anthony Bourdain cooking show that I watched on a cross-country flight many years ago. Squished between two wattle-faced businessmen, in the cramped middle seat of a Boeing 737, having only a bag of peanuts to satisfy my hunger, I forced myself to suffer through the entire episode, to ensure I obtained the recipe’s savory nuances. Back home, I prepared the meal for Rachel, and it was a smashing success. Sadly, nothing I’ve done since has impressed her as much.
Now, as I cook for Taylor, I’m struck by the wickedness of my behavior, and yet nothing I do can relieve me of my obsession for Taylor’s scent—grapefruit with notes of jasmine. Why is it that I can recall it so much easier than I can Rachel’s? My thoughts drift from
a consideration of her scent to a complete reconstruction in my mind of all Taylor’s sexual niceties—her subtle gestures, her caresses, her sighs. This succession of mental images of past sexual thrills evolves into something fresh, and now I’m dreaming up subtle variations, new perfections in technique—the sorts of things one picks up in porno films.
Strangely, on the other hand, these fantasies are comforting. Because my reveries are all sexual, I know I’m still clear from breaking Serena’s number one rule of infidelity: don’t fall in love.
Now, heading out with my meal, blanket, candles, and wine, I have just over two hours before Rachel returns home from her yoga class. It’s another hot night—ninety-two degrees according to Chloe. The year 2036 is the hottest in recorded history, as were 2035, 2034, and 2033 before it. A low-hanging orange moon casts a threatening light over the city. Signs along the road alert motorists of the continued “high fire danger.”
I arrive at the cemetery fifteen minutes before Taylor. A rusting wrought-iron fence with rounded spear points lines the perimeter. Six months ago, someone stole the old gate, and the new one, made by a robot, is ornate with cheap geometry.
I follow the worn path through the weeds, past the newest gravestones at the cemetery’s edges, into the center with its oldest, most elaborately adorned tombs. Under the canopy of a twisted oak, I lay out the blanket, arrange the flatware, and unpack the food.
Back at the entrance to meet Taylor, I watch as she steps from the car, looking not like a woman but a vision of Aphrodite herself. The sight of her sends me into jubilation.
“I asked for a trip to the theater and you bring me to a graveyard,” she says. “You have a strange way of romancing a girl.”
“Isn’t it wonderful?” I reply, leading her along the trail. “Surely you can appreciate that this place holds a hundred times more charm than some tired old production of Doctor Faustus.”
As I serve the meal, Taylor tells me how as a child she accompanied her grandfather to the funeral home to pick out his gravestone. It felt perfectly normal, she says, like a visit to the grocery store.
“Do you think the prosciutto is crispy enough?” I ask.
“I’m wondering,” she begins behind a fork heaped with chicken, lettuce, and rice, “did you get a chance to talk to your friend?”
I pat my brow with a napkin and cough. “It’s taking a bit more time than I had hoped.”
“It’s really important, Henri,” she says, and touches my cheek.
“Of course. But you have to consider that it might be an impossibility.”
“Are you saying I may end up in The Absolved?”
“I’m not saying that.”
“Because that would be like prematurely landing here—in a grave!”
“Nonsense!” I say. “There are countless ways to fill one’s time when not burdened by work. You could learn a new language, for instance.”
“You know very well I’d lose all rights to Basic Income if I were to leave the country.”
“You’ve got a bright, creative mind! You could write a book or become a painter.”
“What kind of monster do you take me for? I want to be a doctor—the most selfless vocation imaginable—and you’re suggesting I become an artist? That’s exactly the opposite of how I want to live my life. An artist, above all else, must be completely un-giving of himself to anything or anyone but her work!”
I quietly chew my food.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “I know you’re trying.”
By the time we’ve finished, I feel so wretched I almost don’t have it in me to make a move on her. Eventually, though, I manage to suppress my feelings and summon the courage and strength required for us to make passionate, glorious love.
8
Today Julian’s hologram chip will be implanted in his finger. The technology is only five years old, but the norms and protocols surrounding it have already evolved so much. At first the chips cost close to $10,000, excluding the $750 monthly service fee—making them cost-prohibitive to everyone but society’s most elite.
As an early adopter, I remember being hesitant even to show my gram in public—too afraid it would draw unwanted attention and put me at risk. Before opening it, I’d sneak off to the bathroom, check the stalls to make sure I was alone, and, only after I’d locked the door, open my gram at a size so small it was barely of use.
“Why should you be shy about your place in this world?” Serena would ask. “If those around you are jealous, all the better. Perhaps it’ll force them to get off their asses and make something of themselves.”
But in no more than two years, most professionals had implanted grams. They were practically required, in fact, to maintain decorum, even if people couldn’t afford it. Every single interaction and artifact is digitally stamped with the type of device that transmitted or made it, a savvy corporate ruse to shame consumers into buying a gram. In no time at all, any self-respecting professional was mortified so much as to talk on a smart phone. Until just last year, moreover, any kid with parents-of-means received a gram for their eighteenth birthday. But now that they’re funded by the National Healthcare Service, even second-graders like Julian are implanted. Grams are so common that one regularly sees whole groups of people staring into them, oblivious to all but the electrons and protons vibrating before them.
As for Julian’s procedure, Rachel sees it as a coming-of-age ritual, like a Bar Mitzvah or baptism, and is adamant that I attend.
“But I have twenty-two patients scheduled today,” I tell her.
“Some of them will have to reschedule, won’t they?”
Cancelling appointments is anathema to me. I can only imagine the grief and heartache it causes. For instance, one of my patients today, diagnosed with Stage 2 Leukemia, is only twenty-seven. All she wants to know is what is to become of her, but now she’ll have to wait another week to find out, because I’m being held hostage by my wife and child.
Julian is on the exam table nervously tearing away small strips of the paper beneath him. I’m impatient waiting for Dr. Patel—he’s five minutes late. Rachel, however, doesn’t seem bothered. She’s had her gram open since we arrived, applying rouge to her face, making her cheeks as red as apples—attempting to capture that perfect Snow White aesthetic.
“Is it going to hurt, Dad?” Julian asks.
“It’s barely a pin prick.”
“Will I be able to feel the chip in my finger?”
“At first you will, but after a little while, you won’t even notice it’s there.”
“I’m scared.”
Rachel closes her gram, and says, “You don’t have to do this, honey, if you don’t want to. We won’t be angry.”
“The hell we won’t,” I say, “I took time out of my day for this.”
Dr. Patel strolls in. He’s sucking on a lollipop, and when he opens his mouth to greet us, I see that his tongue is purple.
“How are you today, Julian?” he inquires.
“I can’t wait to watch cartoons on my gram,” he replies.
Rachel lifts a cautionary finger in my direction when I shake my head, as if to say, don’t you even think of ruining this for Julian!
Dr. Patel, with a gap-toothed grin, says, “They sure do grow up fast these days, don’t they!”
Dr. Patel rubs alcohol on the tip of Julian’s finger. The boy shuts his eyes so tightly that his entire face puckers. Rachel squeezes his free hand and hums the melody to “Whistle While You Work” while Dr. Patel examines his injector. A moment later, he’s pulled taut the skin on Julian’s finger and implanted the gram.
“Oh, honey, did that hurt?” Rachel asks as she kisses and blows on Julian’s finger after he lets out a yelp.
“No, not really,” Julian says, smiling brightly.
“You’re all set, young man,” Dr. Patel says.
As we leave, Rachel is showing Julian how to operate his gram, but at every point he brushes her off, having seen it all. He’s already so
deep inside of a game, he can’t hear me say good-bye.
9
Mr. Toczauer is so ill that he’ll receive his new round of chemotherapy in bed. Preparing to meet his family, I’ve made a note that states, “Any further treatment would be more toxic than beneficial.”
The first thing I notice in his room is the posters on the walls, each one featuring the baseball legend Cal Ripken.
“Cal Ripken,” Mr. Toczauer’s son says when I ask about the pictures, “played in 2,632 consecutive baseball games, a stretch that lasted over sixteen years. He’s the Iron Man!”
“That’s quite a feat,” I say.
“That’s Dad’s nickname, too—Iron Man.”
Everyone looks at Mr. Toczauer, more a shadow than a flesh and blood person. His little mouth languishes half-open, small bubbles of spittle fixed in its corners. His brow is lacquered with sweat.
“You’re scheduled to begin your chemo today,” I tell him. “Do you understand that, sir?”
“Yes,” he wheezes.
“Before we begin,” I say, “I’d like again to stress that there are other options available to you.”
“We’re not interested in other options,” his wife insists.
I lean in to Mr. Toczauer’s ear and whisper, “I’ve got the Euthasol, if you change your mind.”
“The suicide pill?”
“That’s right.”
“I just can’t, Doc,” he says. “Save it for someone braver.”
I tuck the pill away, and address the family.
“I’d like to discuss the chemo process, its side effects, and the prognosis, one last time, with you all.”
The Absolved Page 6