Version Control

by Dexter Palmer

  Kathryn was conversing with a guy who seemed like he was probably one of Victor’s underlings at his job—they even looked a little alike, though the guy’s suit was a touch threadbare, and his scalp was wavering on its commitment to baldness instead of going all in. Carson was sitting awkwardly between Kathryn and the larval-Victor, who were talking over him; he seemed perfectly at home with his own thoughts (and the expression on his face reminded Rebecca briefly of Philip’s, at times when he’d been at social gatherings and hadn’t been able to conceal his feeling that he’d rather be in the lab instead). Kathryn had placed her hand on Carson’s knee with the ease of familiarity and habit, their touch the sign of a second silent conversation they carried on as she talked about whatever it was with the Victor-in-training. That was good to see.

  “Can I offer you a drink?” Britt said as she drew Rebecca farther into the room, then: “Listen to me: a drink. Can I offer you a lot of drinks?” Whenever someone made an unprompted joke about knocking back a lot of booze like that, it made Rebecca paranoid. It made her wonder if she looked like an alcoholic, sallow-faced and sagging. If this dress had fit, if the Magic Matching Fit System hadn’t taken it upon itself to serve up a practical muumuu, then Britt wouldn’t have cracked that joke: she might have passively-aggressively offered her some water with no sparkle and a stick of celery on the side.

  “Let me show you what we’ve got at the bar,” Britt said as she slipped her arm into Rebecca’s and steered her toward a table draped with a simple white cloth. The man standing behind the table was not more than twenty-four: he stood at military ease with his hands clasped behind his back, his white shirt still showing the creases it had acquired in its cellophane package, his bow tie comically dwarfed by his tree trunk of a neck. Before him were rows of bottles of red and white wine; some beers and canned sodas in a plastic bucket with ice; some decent gin and vodka; and, off by its lonesome, a bottle of one of the Scotches that Rebecca’s father preferred on special occasions: Glenrothes, the squat spheroid bottle of dark amber begging to be cradled in the palm. “I’ll have a glass of that, neat,” Rebecca said, and the young bartender smiled with approval: gin- and vodka-drinking women of a certain age were likely to get suspicious looks, but a woman with a taste for good bourbon or single-malt Scotch could enjoy the pleasures of eighty-proof liquor while maintaining an air of mystery and class. The bartender broke the seal on the bottle, uncorked it, and favored her with what had to be somewhere between a double and a triple shot.

  “Oh, goodness, that’s more than Victor would pour for himself at home alone,” Britt said, the melody of her voice failing to mask the miserly nature of her reprimand. “But does it matter? We’re here to have fun, right?

  “Let me introduce you around, now that more people are showing up,” Britt said to Rebecca (and Rebecca shared a conspiratorial glance with the bartender as she turned away: the next time she came to the bar she’d pass him a palmed Reagan and ensure she got generous pours for the rest of the night). Then Britt leaned over and hissed in her ear, “I heard about poor Philip. I am so sorry.”

  She “heard.” As if this were seventy years ago, when the news of the day passed between gossiping housewives over back fences.

  After a couple more drinks (one of which gave Rebecca the chance to prove her bona fides to the bartender by slipping him the twenty and saying this particular vintage was pleasantly peaty), the party reached its maximum of around thirty guests: not so crowded that it was hard to move, but a little close. Despite the implication of the invitation that Rebecca had received from Britt—that this would be an intimate “getting the band back together” sort of thing—the gathering seemed to be dominated by Victor’s executive-level colleagues, most of whom had wives with them who looked decidedly younger. (Several probably actually were, but Rebecca had heard about a few people who’d gone through this extraordinarily expensive treatment that involved getting nanobots injected into your skin beneath the epidermis, where the microscopic, spiderlike machines went about the business of reconstructing your face at the cellular level, lightening dark spots and smoothing out wrinkles. It gave better results than plastic surgery hands down, but supposedly it itched like mad, twenty-four/seven, and antihistamines offered no relief: you had to learn to ignore it.)

  Rebecca found herself feeling wallflowerish, wondering again why she’d come. Kathryn and Carson had withdrawn to a corner by themselves, her hand reaching up to gently cup his shoulder (the public performance of her affection subtle but continuous). Britt was flitting from person to person, playing the hostess, too busy to talk: you never had fun at your own party.

  But: across the room, here at the party by herself apparently, munching a handful of Chex Mix, was Jen. She seemed…long? Not tall, but long. Her face had gotten longer, as if Time’s hands had grabbed her hairline and her chin and pulled. There was an odd dampness to her too: not as if she’d just stepped out of the shower, but as if a cartoon raincloud hung over her, constantly sprinkling her with a light mist.

  Jen had never exactly been one to cripple you with laughter, but any company was better than none right now. Rebecca angled through the gathering, holding her drink out ahead of her, trying to remember how to summon the music in her voice that signaled unexpected recognition. “Jen?” Yes. There it was. “So good to see you.” Now the lie. “You haven’t aged a day.”

  “I’m quite sure I have. But it’s good to see you, too. Chex Mix?” Jen proffered the bowl, but Rebecca waved it away.

  “I know how you feel,” Jen said. “If they could shell out for a college-boy bartender, you’d think they’d have those guys who come around with little doodads on trays. Like those little hot dogs that are wrapped in croissants.”

  “You’d think.” Rebecca already felt trapped. Her glass of Glenrothes still held a healthy serving—unless she drank it faster than alcohol of this quality ought to be drunk, she wouldn’t have an excuse to return to the bar for another forty-five minutes. Well, the gods of whisky would have to forgive this little indiscretion. She belted back a big swallow, trying to hide a grimace.

  Jen’s eyes suddenly lit up, like a child’s who had just caught the first glimpse of the gift that lay beneath the glittering wrapping paper. “I heard about your husband! That must have been awful.” She leaned forward expectantly.

  “I still miss him,” Rebecca said. “And how have you been?”

  Jen’s face fell slightly. “I came here alone, if you’re wondering. I was married for a little while, but then I got divorced. I didn’t have any kids, so there’s that. Now I cook all the time—I have a blog where I talk about my recipes; you should check it out—and I raise my basset hounds. I’ve got five in the house right now. The dog smell gets in everything, but I don’t mind. I like it. I hope I don’t smell too much like dog for you.”

  “I’m going to get another drink,” Rebecca said. “Do you want one?”

  Well. After that another drink was certainly called for. That would be her: third? Second? Third. But the level in the bottle was lower than Rebecca would have expected: clearly someone else around here was hitting the good stuff as well.

  She could see what the immediate future held: the fuzz that adhered to the edge of her thoughts indicated that she was past the point when she’d stop drinking this evening. Her third would turn into a fourth as people with other evening obligations (kids or spouses or other parties) drifted out; then the diehards would be left behind as the hosts began to gently hint they ought to go. Maybe the old gang would be the last to leave, and they could put a period on the evening with some pleasantly drunken reminiscences.

  Rebecca turned to see Kathryn looking up at her—she’d finally pulled herself away from Carson (and she saw him in the middle of the room, surrounded by a group of young men in suits, talking a lot with his hands: his bystanders sometimes found themselves dodging his expansive gestures). “He’s explaining the causality violation device to those guys,” Kathryn said. “But I’ve heard
his spiel before. How’re you doing?”

  “I’m okay. I don’t really know anyone here. Britt’s busy being Britt, and Jen’s, well…still the same.”

  “I know! She’s so gloomy that I practically had to run from her: she harshed my buzz so hard it felt like a punch in the stomach. She said she was sorry if she’d forgotten how to, you know, chat: she sometimes goes for days without talking to anyone but her dogs, and they’re not good at small talk. Jesus! She always got this kick out of bumming people out: I never understood why we didn’t just boot her out of the core group. Just sat her down and said, Look, you’re not pulling your weight here, the written warnings haven’t helped, and we’re going to have to let you go. Here’s a cardboard box for your personal belongings; a security guard will escort you out.”

  “Core Group Incorporated.”

  “Ha!” Kathryn sighed. “Listen to us. We’re so mean.”

  Rebecca looked around at the partygoers and the way they performed their laughter for each other, the women covering their mouths and looking away, the men tossing back their heads and letting loose with sequences of merrily bassoonish honks. “Everyone looks so happy,” she said.

  “I know, right?” said Kathryn. “Okay, you figure these people maybe just see each other online, where they’ve been keeping up appearances: like, you only post videos of your baby when he’s smiling and giggling, not when he’s bawling and crapping all over the place. You figure everyone censors the bad stuff because you do it! But then you meet in person and you think, maybe things actually are okay for everyone. I mean, I’m actually happy in my life right now, so it’s not impossible that everyone else is, too. You know?

  “Hey, Becca, can I tell you something that I guess I should have told you already?”

  “You sound like you’re about to tell me I’m adopted.”

  “No! I…I wanted to say I’m glad you set me up with Carson. I mean, I guess you didn’t actually set me up with him, so much as put us in a room together and let things happen.”

  Kathryn edged closer to Rebecca and dropped her voice as she slid a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. “You remember, you gave me this fussy talking-to about guys, like a year and a half ago, and I was like, Where does she get off? But I guess I got over it.”

  She drew her arms around herself and looked at the floor. “Honestly it scares me that he might be the guy, you know? I’ve never met the guy. And he’s not what I thought the guy would be, when I think back on what I thought my wedding would be like at thirteen. But that’s the thing, right? You have to realize that if you don’t find your dream guy like the one in the movies, that’s not settling—that’s just being real. You know?

  “So thanks.”

  Kathryn pulled a mockingly dour face. “Okay: that’s enough unburdening. I’m killing the mood. I’m gonna go rescue Carson from those pharma guys—or maybe rescue those guys from him, it looks like. Wanna come with?”

  “I’m gonna get another drink,” Rebecca said. “I’ll join you in a sec.”

  But by the time she got back to the bartender (after a side trip to the restroom, which involved waiting in line behind a couple of guys) the bottle of Glenrothes was almost cashed out. “Sorry about this, ma’am,” the bartender said as he poured the dregs of Scotch into her glass and tossed it away. “Everybody’s going to have to move to the cheap stuff soon: either that or start tripping on Siestalerts, if you got ’em.” “Don’t ma’am me,” Rebecca replied in a tone intended to be a little flirtatious, but the expression on the bartender’s face indicated that she hadn’t pulled it off. Well, too bad.

  Suddenly she just felt, geez, tired. Not full-on, passing-out tired: just enough to want to sit down for a bit. There was that nice cushiony leather couch that she had yet to try out, with an empty space right in the middle that was just asking for her butt to plop down on it, and the couch was placed so that it granted a great view of the windows through which you could see the high-rises on the opposite side of Central Park. It would be nice to sit there and watch, and just chill out for a little bit.

  The couples on either side of her shifted over to the ends of the couch to make room—they both seemed like they’d met at the party, and while the guy on her left made a big show of ignoring her in order to lavish attention on the woman who was beginning to find herself pinned against the arm of the couch, the guy on her right (to the slight dismay of the woman he was sitting next to) greeted her with a firm, businesslike handshake. “I’m Bruce,” he said. It was that guy that Kathryn had been talking to when Rebecca arrived at the party, the Victor version two. He had a glass in his hand like Rebecca’s. So that’s where the good Scotch had been going: some of it, anyway. “How do you know these guys?” He waved his free hand as the woman on the other side of him aggressively nestled closer to him.

  “Britt and I used to hang out together back in the day. Me and Jen and Kathryn and her.” Rebecca thought she’d made some kind of grammar mistake, something really embarrassing, and was aware, even as her perception of time began to alter and her eyelids got a little heavier, that that kind of extreme self-consciousness meant that she was on the edge of a drinking blackout, fighting against it, losing. Her hand brought her glass to her lips and tipped it back; she swallowed.

  “Jen and Kathryn and Britt and I, I should have said.” Was her head bobbing around or something? Did she look funny? The chick who was with this guy was looking at her funny.

  “Oh gotcha—what was your name?”

  “Rebecca.”

  “Nice to meet you. I’m Bruce! I’m one of Victor’s work buddies, though I guess what I should say is that I report to him. A lot of us here are in pharma. You must feel lonely.” He moved a little closer to Rebecca, a millimeter or so: Rebecca could hear the squeak of the couch’s leather as he shifted.

  “Not really,” Rebecca replied, though in other circumstances she might have been a little friendlier: the woman (who the guy was slightly pulling away from, and probably not consciously doing so) had placed her hand on Bruce’s leg about halfway up his thigh, and was sliding it toward the inside, in a gesture meant to be seen. If you have to pull that stunt you’ve already lost, Rebecca thought; the guy would sense the move as an admission of failure, and it’d blow up his ego beyond repair to have women on either side of him, having their quiet little war.

  Bruce moved another millimeter closer; the couch’s leather cried again. “Let me tell you something. My official title is…what is it. It’s Vice Chief Executive Director. I report to Victor, the Chief Director…Executive…Cheevector Directrix.”

  Rebecca tried to edge away from Bruce as he continued, but didn’t want to come too close to the guy on her other side, who was now leaning over and whispering intently into his potential inamorata’s ear. “I report to Victor, who reports to a guy who reports to the CEO!” Bruce continued. “Our CEO has written a very popular book about getting ahead in business. His secretary has even written a book, that’s not as popular but is still pretty popular, about being a woman and, you know, being powerful, in business, being in the proximity of power. It’s like, ladies can be badasses in the workplace but also they can be ladies too. It’s like, each chapter in the book gives you good business advice, and the chapters all start with pictures of bras: like there’s a sports bra, and a lacy thing, and a boostie-ay.” Bruce held his hands in front of his chest and mimed lifting invisible breasts upward. “It’s like, you don’t just wear a bra for support, but for identity. It’s like the bra you choose is the role you choose to play. But you can have plenty of different bras! And beneath your business suit you can wear any bra you want. It’s your choice.”

  “That’s…very affirming,” Rebecca said.

  The woman’s hand crept slightly farther into Bruce’s lap.

  But Bruce kept talking. And Rebecca soon realized that this wasn’t an attempt to pick her up by tossing around his job title and playing the sensitive feminist: he really found workplace politics legitimately
interesting. “Let me tell you about the world at the executive level,” Bruce said, and then dropped into a monologue riddled with business-speak: nominalized verbs, and verbalized nouns, and sentences like “So finally we settled on this list of action items, right?” Rebecca caught the other woman’s gaze and they shared a covert eye roll. Good: she’d know Rebecca had no aspirations here.

  The point of Bruce’s story appeared to be that Victor was an incompetent poseur. “He’s got the look,” Bruce said. “But anybody can get the look: I’m halfway there myself. When he got hired into that position he didn’t look like that. Beanpole thin; full head of hair. People are like, who’s the kid in the suit too big for him, got an office all by himself. I’m telling you he went bald as a pure act of will. To look the part. Ate steaks drowned in butter and gained six inches in the waist. If you asked him what goes on? Like in the company, right under his nose? He’d bullshit you with a bunch of bullshit, but he wouldn’t know. But I know.”

  Suddenly Bruce slipped his arm around Rebecca’s shoulders (no!) and leaned in to speak to her sotto voce (no! bad!). The other woman lifted her eyebrows as Rebecca tried to pull away.

  “I see you’re drinking his Scotch, too,” Bruce said.

  “Hey,” the other woman said, patting Bruce’s leg.

  “It’s okay,” Rebecca said. “Hey look I’m gonna get another—”

  “I don’t even like Scotch. I think it tastes like soil. But I’ve been drinking the most expensive stuff in the house because I hate the man, he’s a fucking fraud, I want to hit him where it hurts however I can, I can’t wait for the day when he gets caught out and shows his ass in front of God and everyone.”

  Bruce withdrew from Rebecca, breathing a little heavily. “Then I will be the Chief Executive Director,” he said, stabbing his chest with his thumb. “Everyone’ll be like: yeeeah.”

  “Hey,” the woman on Bruce’s other side said, squeezing his leg. “Let’s go have a cigarette.”