Perfect Life

by Jessica Shattuck

  But then, when she pulled into the driveway and started up the steps to the kitchen door, she could see inside to where Jeremy lay stretched out on the flower-print rug, making a spring-loaded caterpillar shimmy in front of Colin. The baby looked delighted with this—absolutely amazed at the movements of the fuzzy, shiny object, and Jeremy himself looked completely absorbed in the activity. There was a real closeness between them, and an intensity to Jeremy’s movements, which stopped her in her tracks.

  And she could not go in.

  As she watched, Jeremy leaned forward and lay his head down on the rug, almost in the boy’s lap, and Colin banged his little hands down on Jeremy’s soft hair, excited by the unfamiliar texture. She could not see Jeremy’s face, which was turned away from her, but the tiredness of the gesture brought a wave of grief through her unlike anything she had experienced yet.

  What was he thinking about with those little hands on his head? Listening to the coos of a boy he might, in all likelihood, never see become a man?

  She was suddenly overwhelmed by grief for this man she had married—for his old life and, with this, for her own. Crazy, ani-mallike sobs started to burst from her. She bent over and held her breath, trying to rein them in. But she could not stop. And she could not go to him like this. So she pulled into the garage and sat there, sobbing for God knows how long, until finally, when she was spent, she slipped into the kitchen and Jeremy was gone. Napping, Maria informed her, and Jenny did not wake him.

  When Jenny got back from her run that evening, her mother had arrived. She was standing at the kitchen sink peeling potatoes. At the table, Maria sat nervously trying to pry yogurt into Colin’s mouth. “Do you have any pudding?” Jenny could hear her mother saying. “There’s nothing like pudding for a picky child.” She was speaking in the loud, clear, talking-to-immigrants voice that made Jenny cringe. It had, maybe, been a terrible idea to let her come.

  “Ah, pudding! Yes! Very good, I tell Jeneefer to buy pudding.” Poor Maria sounded downright panicky.

  Jenny hurried to the kitchen to diffuse the tension. But weirdly, uncharacteristically, at the sight of her mother she burst into tears.

  “Oh, honey,” Judy Callahan said, taking her daughter into her arms.

  3

  ROD EMERUS TURNED THE LAPTOP computer screen around to face Neil and gave him a hard look across the conference room table. “What is this?” he asked.

  The image on the screen was from the second level of Promo II. It was the slick, futuristic highway that the geologists in possession of the Sphinx had to traverse to escape their pursuers. On one side it was skirted by a vast purple oil spill. On the other it was flanked by billboards—a series stretching as far as the eye could see. Each of these was plastered with a bright, creepy photo of a woman’s smile and the word “Setlan” printed in neo-Gothic lettering across it.

  “And this?” Emerus typed a command into the computer and the same eerie smile appeared, this time on the side of the transport truck that was one mode of transportation for the geologists and their precious cargo.

  “And this?” He typed another command, which called up the kitchen of the underground bunker in which the geologists lived. The creepy smile was everywhere: on the side of the box of cereal they would expend twenty-five monetary points on in exchange for energy, on the door of the “food safe,” aka the refrigerator, on the place mats on the table. If you looked closely, you could even see it reproduced in nearly microscopic proportions on the side of their bottled water.

  “This is some kind of joke?” Emerus said.

  Sullenly, Neil shrugged. “Just following orders.”

  Emerus glared at him. “No orders you received here.”

  Neil did actually feel somewhat sheepish about it. He had written the images into the game before the incident with Galena, the thought of which still turned his stomach.

  “Apologies,” he muttered. “I’ll take it out.”

  Emerus leaned back in his chair, putting his hands behind his head in a pose of self-conscious consideration. “I don’t understand you, Banks,” he said. “You took this job and from day one you’ve had a pole up your ass about it. And now—” He raised a hand to head off Neil’s halfhearted attempt at self defense. “And now I understand you are in the business of stealing corporate secrets.”

  “What?” Neil was unsure he had heard the man correctly.

  “If that was what you were after all along, why choose this job as a way to go about it? You could have saved yourself a lot of hassle getting a job as copy clerk with Genron.”

  “What the fuck?” Neil paled.

  Emerus did not respond to this but instead rocked gently in the Aeron chair, keeping Neil fixed in his gaze.

  “I think you’ve got a screw loose, Banks. You’re an angry young man.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about. Really,” Neil said almost pleadingly.

  Emerus sat forward in a sudden movement that for a moment Neil thought was an attempt to jump across the table at him. He flinched.

  In fact, Emerus was calling something up on his computer screen, fingers rat-a-tatting on the keyboard like machine gun fire. Then he spun the computer back around and showed Neil the screen. Neil squinted at it.

  It was an email.

  Dear Rod, it began.

  A troubling matter of professional indiscretion has been brought to our attention recently. As liaison between the Setlan marketing team and your company, I have to report the inappropriate activity of one of your employees, Neil Banks.

  As a game developer at your company, Banks had access to pertinent marketing materials for the drug Setlan. However, he managed through his position as a ZGames employee to also access, without authorization, highly sensitive marketing materials for a drug still in development here at Genron. We are deeply concerned about his motivations for this.

  We put our trust in your employees to honor the nondisclosure agreements you signed when we commenced our relationship. We put our trust in you to appropriately vet your employees before assigning them to the task of working with us. The Setlan marketing team here at Genron has reviewed the situation with care and great concern. As a result of this breach of professional conduct we kindly ask that you remove the said employee, Neil Banks, from this project immediately. Failure to do so will result in an immediate termination of our contract.

  Neil’s mind barely registered the words. His eyes had skipped immediately to the bottom of the email, signed Galena Ibanesku. Her name leapt out at Neil like a shot in the heart—of course, of course. Had he not felt the premonition of this, whatever the hell this was, in her apartment?

  “Jesus Christ.” Neil pressed his face into the palms of his hands. He pressed hard enough that his eyes swam with tiny sparky stars.

  “I’ll tell you, I don’t know what this is, Banks. And it smacks of bullshit. But”—Emerus nodded gravely—“I’m going to have to take you off the project.”

  “Christ,” was all Neil could muster up.

  “I can’t afford to lose this account and they’re on us about this now. They can pull out in a second. And”—here he raised his eyebrows at Neil—“you haven’t exactly demonstrated great enthusiasm for your work here. This garbage, for example”—he waved his hand at the computer, presumably to indicate the in-game Setlan placements—“begs a few questions.”

  “Man.” Neil sat back. He felt sick. His brain struggled to process what was unfolding. Galena had gotten him, all right. She was a snaky little bitch.

  But “the Setlan marketing team”? It made his blood pound heavily in his ears. Could this be true? That would mean that Jenny was aware of Galena’s actions. Had “reviewed” them, even, whatever that meant. There was a part of him that balked at believing this. It was not possible, even from Jenny. He was the father of her baby, for Christ’s sake! She knew him. And she knew he wasn’t a corporate spy or whatever the implication of this garbage was. His whole self was suffused with a kind of dumbfounde
d rage.

  Slowly, gingerly, Neil rose from his seat. “I’m not going to beg you to keep me,” he said, and his voice sounded gravelly and thin in his ears. “But I will tell you this is bullshit.”

  “The world is full of bullshit, my friend,” Emerus said. “You’ve got to learn how to keep it off your hands.”

  It was packing up his things—throwing CDs and papers and as much expensive level-building software as he could find into a ZGames duffel—that Neil thought of it: the creature. He was stewing with anger. And it was the one thing he could do—the one grain of dignity and self-respect that he could salvage. He was taking the fucking Sphinx. They could put Steven Closter back on the job, make the fate of the Perfect Life universe rest on his ugly, unimaginative, and graceless monster. But not on the beautiful, perfect life-form Neil had created. That was his idea, and it was coming with him.

  His knock on Emerus’s office door was too loud. He had not intended for it to echo so jarringly across the floor. Several of the programmers who sat nearby jumped in their seats. Emerus opened the door with a startled expression.

  “I’m taking the Sphinx,” Neil said.

  Emerus raised his eyebrows. “Would you like to come in?”

  “Not really.” Neil’s anger animated him, made his body feel wiry and sharp. He stepped inside anyway and Emerus shut the door behind him.

  “What is this?” Emerus asked, sitting down behind his desk and gesturing for Neil to sit as well.

  Neil remained standing. “I’m taking the Sphinx. You can use Closter’s monster.”

  Emerus frowned. “The contents of Prometheus Syndrome II belong to ZGames, you know.”

  “Right. But not the creature. That’s my idea. Before me it was just a fucking ‘digital tablet.’ I came up with the life-form.”

  Emerus looked over his glasses at Neil, eyebrows raised. It was a gesture that was both obnoxious and condescending. “Do you really think the employees of ZGames own their ‘ideas’?”

  “You know, I don’t actually care,” Neil said. “I’m just telling you that the Sphinx belongs to me. I came up with it and I’m taking it with me.”

  “You know, you’re beginning to waste my time,” Emerus said acidly.

  Neil stared at him, his fingers spread in agitation. He was incredulous. But why? it occurred to him. Why should he be surprised? What was he, some idealistic moron? He stood there watching Emerus sit down at his desk and begin clicking through emails. The absurdity and helplessness of his situation washed over him.

  “Fuck you,” he said, in the only gallingly childish recourse he had. Then somehow he managed to turn on his heel and walk out the door into the cube zone. And he could feel the eyes of the room on him—all the peons of this despicable empire.

  He had already exited into the slick, stone-floored reception area when Joe caught up to him. The kid was sweating, as usual, and breathing as if he had chased Neil much farther than the fifty yards to the exit.

  “Neil,” he said. “Neil!” and Neil whirled around to face him.

  “I’m sorry,” Joe panted. “I’m sorry, dude, you know…” He brushed the bangs off his face in a now-familiar gesture. “I’m sorry—it’s really fucked up that you’re leaving.”

  Neil nodded and started to turn again.

  “I just want you to know I’ll try to keep Prometheus II up to your standards. I mean…” He seemed embarrassed by the grandiosity of the statement—in all likelihood he would be demoted to intern once again, they both knew that. “I just wanted to say you were awesome, man—your ideas—”

  “Thanks,” Neil said curtly, and started toward the door again. But Joe was persistent. He kept pace, just behind him, like a heeling dog.

  “You know, I feel like you kind of made me think about things, you know, even outside the game.”

  “Ha!” Neil snorted, and Joe looked alarmed. But it did not deter him.

  “No, I mean like biology. And DNA. You know, I was thinking how it’s true—in a real apocalypse, I mean in the real world, that’d probably be our key—just like in Perfect Life. Fusing and tinkering with genes, like retrofitting our species. And they’ll look back at Perfect Life and be, like, wow, that was prescient.”

  They had reached Neil’s car. “I just wanted to tell you,” Joe said, still breathing heavily.

  “Great.” Neil thrust his hands into his pockets. He was too angry to slow down, but he understood, on some semi-inaccessible level, that Joe was a sweet young man. The boy’s chubby face trembled slightly with the expenditure of effort. And out of the damp, jellyfish mass of this, his eyes shone a bright pale blue—they were much sharper than the rest of him.

  Neil climbed into his car and backed it out of the parking space. As he revved the engine and pulled out of the parking lot he could still see the kid standing there, watching him depart, one hand raised in a kind of static, almost militaristic gesture. And it did something—not much, but a little—to defuse Neil’s rage as he angled the car out onto the road and watched the anonymous concrete box that was ZGames disappear from the rearview mirror.

  4

  “SHE DID WHAT?” Jeremy’s eyes opened and stared at Jenny with a lucidity that she had not expected. He looked truly amazed.

  “Nothing, nothing—no big deal,” she said hurriedly.

  They were sitting in a pleasant—by hospital standards anyway—room in Brigham and Women’s, facing out over Olmsted Park. And Jeremy was hooked up to an IV, which was delivering his first dose of chemo. He had seemed to be nodding off, letting his mind drift while his body absorbed the poison that hope rested on. Tell me about work, he had said. What about it? Jenny had asked. It had been a long time since he had expressed any interest in this. Anything. Whatever. Just talk to me. And so she had launched into a description of the Setlan campaign: her inspiration, the mock-up the ad firm had come up with, the initial focus group results (overwhelmingly positive), the new sales strategy. Jeremy had not seemed to be listening. It was probably just the sound of her voice he wanted. And so she had rattled on and come to the sticking point—the “Neil Incident,” as she had come to think of it. It was, she realized, why she had chosen this subject to prattle on about. It had been simmering beneath the surface of her mind, begging to be addressed. She had just had too many more pressing things, more immediate things, to think about (the logistics of Jeremy’s treatment, of the move, of the Setlan PPD launch). But the situation was incredible, really—completely ridiculous—that Neil Banks, the man she had chosen (impulsively, irresponsibly even, it now seemed to her, but still…) to father her baby, would be accused of corporate spying! Galena’s email had come to Jenny’s attention ex post facto. The girl had apparently gone over Jenny’s head, straight to Eric, who had given her the okay to send it.

  Jeremy was staring at her lucidly. His expression was horrified.

  “I don’t know why I’m blabbing about this,” she said nervously. “It’s the last thing you need to think about.”

  “Well, now you told me,” he said, shifting against the gray vinyl of the reclining chair. “And I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, it’s just stupid. The girl was sleeping with him and it got ugly, I guess. I don’t know why Eric even gave her half an ear on it.”

  “But you didn’t stop her from sending this email?”

  “I didn’t know about it!” Jenny said defensively.

  “You didn’t correct it after you found out?”

  “Correct it how?” Jenny stopped short as the simple moral imperative of what her husband was suggesting struck her. It had been her responsibility to undo it. Somehow. The accusation was false. The motivation behind it was impure. It had rested on her shoulders, however overburdened already, to say so.

  “I’m planning to talk to Eric,” she said, mustering a crisp, slightly defensive tone. “I’ll straighten it out.”

  “When did she send the email?” Jeremy asked.

  “I don’t know!” Jenny said exasperatedly. “A week ago
, maybe. I don’t know!” she threw her hands up in the air. “I guess I fucked up. I guess I had a few other things on my mind and wasn’t thinking too clearly.” It was a low blow, she knew as soon as it was out of her mouth.

  Jeremy closed his eyes. The bag of chemicals suspended on its delicate silver cross dripped steadily into his arm.

  “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean…” Jenny began.

  Jeremy was silent for a moment. “You’re right. I don’t need to be thinking about this.”

  Jenny sighed and stood up in agitation. She was not used to the feeling of self-loathing that swept over her. It made her physically sick. She had been wrong not to address the situation as soon as she had learned of it. She should have been more forceful with Galena. She should have talked to Eric, issued some retraction…Was there some little part of her that had stood back simply because it would be easier—it would be better for her—if Neil was forced to go away? Back to that cave of a home in Los Angeles where she had found him? No. She was not that selfish. The idea was repulsive. No, she would go to Eric tomorrow, straighten out the misunderstanding, and hope it was not too late.

  “Do you want more water?” she asked. “Or something to eat? I’m going to get some coffee.”

  Jeremy rolled his head No against the back of the chair, keeping his eyes closed.

  “Music? Do you want the music?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  Jenny slipped the CD into the compact Bose player they had brought with them. The sounds of Simon & Garfunkel filled the room. Jeremy’s choice, not hers. It had been an odd thing, choosing the music. It was the hospital’s suggestion and dutifully they had followed it despite the fact that neither Jenny nor Jeremy was at all “into” music. If someone had offered her a million dollars she wouldn’t have been able to guess what her husband would pick out. And here it was: Simon & Garfunkel, John Coltrane, and less surprisingly, a classical “sampler” she put on when they had company for brunch or cocktails. These were the sounds Jeremy wanted to listen to while his body waged this battle.