Virtually Dead

by Peter May

  Yuri glanced up sharply. Michael’s penchant for irony often baffled native Californians. It was something he had learned during an East Coast upbringing at the hands of an acerbic-tongued Scottish mother. Yuri pursed his lips and opened the file on the desk in front of him. “Well, fortunately, this bank had the good sense to secure your loan with the house in Dolphin Terrace, Mr. Kapinsky.” He drew a short breath. “Which is just as well, since I’m going to have to call in our collateral now.”

  Michael frowned. “You can wait till the house is sold, surely? I mean, it’s not going anywhere.”

  “We can’t afford to wait, Mr. Kapinsky. You are several payments behind, and at $16,000 a month, we’re already looking at a shortfall of over $100,000. Just imagine where we’ll be in a year’s time if you still haven’t sold.”

  Michael had no answer to that.

  “Which, I’m afraid, leaves us no option but to take possession of the house as soon as possible. We’ll be sending someone over to do an appraisal and put a value on it.”

  “But I stand to drop at least a million if you do that.”

  Yuri adopted the sympathetic smile that doctors reserve for giving bad news to terminally ill patients. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kapinsky, but unless you can find…” he glanced again at his folder, “…$3,173,000 by this time next week, I’m afraid we’re going to have to take your house and sell it ourselves.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mora had built the house in Dolphin Terrace on one of the most sought-after plots in Corona del Mar, high up on a ridge that looked down over Balboa Island, the harbour, the peninsula beyond, and the vast blue expanse of Pacific Ocean that led the eye on a clear day to the outline, in silhouette, of Santa Catalina Island.

  It was a square, single-storey building with shallow-pitched, red Roman-tiled roofs that sloped into a central open-air courtyard where they were supported on classical columns. A semicircular hot tub was built into one corner of the courtyard, and paving stones led through a profusion of shrubs and flowers in bloom to glass doors on all sides. The views into the house gave, in turn, on to views over the harbour, the entire front of the house being divided into three panoramic windows, like framed masterpieces of living landscapes.

  In the central space stood the grand piano, down a short flight of steps. More glass doors opened on to a terrace that ran along the full width of the house at the front. To the left of it was the sitting room, with its own views of the harbour. And to the right, the office that Michael had shared with Mora, windows opening left and right on to the side and front terraces. It was here that they had planned their trips, mapped out their itineraries, laughing together in excited expectation of a whole world out there for them to explore.

  The main impression that visitors had of the house was one of light. Light that drifted in from the central courtyard. Light that poured in through the picture windows at the front. Light that fell down through cleverly placed skylights set at angles in the ceilings. Its other virtue was its openness. The dining room gave on to the kitchen which gave on to the living room, which was open to the piano room. Only the office and the bedrooms had the privacy of doors that shut.

  The courtyard, and the side and front terraces, provided unexpected little nooks where tables and chairs lurked to offer the opportunity of breakfast in the shade, or lunch in the sunlight, or dinner with a view of the sunset over Catalina, the harbour channel below glowing crimson before fading through purple to black.

  Michael loved the house. He loved its curves and corners, its angles and arches and columns, the slatted trellis over the front terrace which divided the sun into long slices that fell through the window of the piano room. He loved its light and space, and the way it always lifted his spirits. It somehow captured the very soul of Mora, who had played such a major role in its design. It was her house, and just being in it made him feel close to her. It was breaking his heart to have to sell it. Like losing the last part of her, finally, six months after she had gone.

  As he moved from the garage into the utility room, he could hear voices in the kitchen and his heart sank. He recognised Sherri’s simpering laugh, and a couple of other voices he didn’t know.

  Sherri was his realtor. A blond, fifty-something, surgically perfected, large-breasted, thin-waisted, wide-eyed, thrice-married native of Newport Beach. She had been trying, unsuccessfully, for three months to sell his house. It was a wonderful property, she had assured him. People would be falling over themselves to buy it. Three-and-a-half million at least. Maybe even four.

  The best offer, to date, had been two-and-a-half.

  She was standing on the far side of the breakfast bar with a middle-aged couple who seemed to be scrutinising his home with a critical eye. Sherri gushed enthusiastically when she saw Michael. “Oh, what good luck. Here is the owner now. Michael, how are you?” But she didn’t wait to hear. “This is Mr. and Mrs. Van Agten. They sooo love your house.”

  Michael glanced at the couple, whose faces conveyed a slightly different impression. But they nodded politely.

  “Just take a wander round yourselves,” Sherri told them. “While I have a word with Mr. Kapinsky.” As she led him by the arm toward the office, she called back over her shoulder, “I’ll be with you in just a minute.” Immediately they were in the office she closed the door, and her smile faded. “Michael, you have to do something about the courtyard. It’s completely overgrown. A damn wilderness. It gives such a bad first impression.”

  Michael wandered toward the desk where his computer’s screensaver played an endless slide show of Mora. He lifted up a pile of unopened mail. Bills. Unpaid bills. Reminders. Final warnings. “I had to terminate the contract with Mo, Blow, and Go, Sherri.”

  She stared at him, uncomprehending. “Mo, Blow, and Go?”

  He smiled sadly. “It’s what Mora called the Mexican gardeners. They would descend on us every Tuesday like a whirlwind, mow the grass and weed the borders, blow away all the fallen leaves and debris with one of those motor blowers. And then they’d be gone. Mo, Blow, and Go.” He looked up, but Sherrie wasn’t smiling. “I couldn’t afford them any longer. I’ve paid off the pool guy, too, the guy who serviced the hot tub and the reflecting pool. Oh, and the one who came every couple of days to feed the fish.”

  Mora had installed a fish tank in the wall that divided the bedroom from the hall, visible from both sides. High enough that no one could see in through it, but not so high that you couldn’t stand and watch the fish darting in and out of the coral and pebbles. Feeding them was something Michael figured he could do himself now.

  “Well, I wish you would do something about those boxes piled up all over the place. You should have waited until the house was sold before getting rid of furniture and starting to pack. People like to see a house that’s lived-in. You’re really not doing either of us any favours, you know.”

  “Well…” he paused for just a moment. He was going to have to break the bad news to her sometime. “It doesn’t make any difference now, Sherri. The bank’s foreclosing on the loan.”

  He watched her blue eyes turn cold as she saw her commission disappearing in a puff of smoke. “That’s not fair. I’ve invested months of work in this place, Michael. In time and advertising. You can’t do this to me.”

  “It’s not me, Sherri. It’s Mr. Yuri. He thinks the government made a mistake in propping up the economy with bad loans.”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “I’m just telling you there’s nothing I can do about it. If you can’t sell the house for me before next week, you’ll lose your commission, and I’ll lose my home and a helluva lot of money.”

  They were startled by a soft knock at the door. A young man sporting a baseball cap and tennis shoes opened it and smiled in at them. He wore shorts and a tee-shirt, and a tool belt around his waist that was hung with an array of small gardening tools and a fine-spray water bottle. “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Kapinsky. Just wondering if you had my check. You know, for th
e bill I left you last time.”

  “Oh, yes, sorry. Forgot about that, Tim.” Michael opened a drawer to take out his check book, and started rummaging through his cluttered in-tray to find the bill.

  “I’ll go back and talk to the Van Agtens,” Sherri said, and he heard the chill in her voice. “But we’re going to have to talk about this, Michael.”

  When she had gone, Michael shrugged at Tim and pulled a wry smile. “I’m in the doghouse.”

  Tim smiled. “Know the feeling.”

  Tim had been working for Mora for years. He arrived once a week to water and tend the myriad houseplants she had collected at great expense over time.

  Michael signed the check and handed it to the young man. He smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to let you go, Tim.”

  “Is the house sold, then?”

  “No, not yet. But I can’t afford to keep you on.

  Tim looked crestfallen. “Who’s going to water the plants?” They were like his children.

  Michael shrugged helplessly. “I’ve no idea. Me, I suppose. If I can remember.”

  “You’ll need to work out a schedule, Mr. Kapinsky. Leave reminders for yourself. Some of these plants will be gone in a matter of days if you don’t take care of them.” He paused. “What are you going to do with them when the house is sold?”

  “I hadn’t thought about it. Maybe the new owners will take them.”

  “There’s a few thousand dollars’ worth there, Mr. Kapinsky. Maybe I could sell them for you. Some of my other clients might be interested.” Like foster parents.

  “That would be great, Tim. I’d appreciate that. Mora would have appreciated that.”

  Michael sat alone in his office for a while then, listening to Tim moving around the house, the voices of Sherri and the Van Agtens as they went from bedroom to hall, to dining room, to kitchen. And he felt depression settle heavily again upon his shoulders. Finally, he got up and slid open the door to the terrace and wandered out to stand with hands thrust in his pockets and gaze out over the view.

  From the low parapet that contained the terrace, the ground dropped away steeply, eighty or a hundred feet down to the road below. Trees and bushes and shrubs and flowers grew thickly on the slope, a root network binding soft soil to prevent erosion in heavy rain. Boats motored their way up and down the harbour channels around Balboa, a couple of kayaks fighting against the swell and the sea breeze. In the distance, clusters of spindly, tall palms, like giant green dandelions swayed in the sunlight, and the water glittered and glistened beneath clear skies, jewels of light scattered across its ruffled surface. He felt emotion well from his chest and into his throat. He was going to miss this place, nearly as much as he missed Mora.

  He turned at the sound of a door sliding open, and saw Tim stepping out to spray the potted cacti that stood sentinel on either side of it. A small, wrought-iron table was set beneath the trellis, two chairs facing each other across a chess board, a game in progress. Tim moved one of the chairs.

  “Careful,” Michael called to him. “Don’t disturb the game.”

  Tim glanced at the table. “Oh. Sure. Who are you playing, Mr. Kapinsky?”

  “Mora.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  “How often did you play?”

  “Every morning. It was a kind of ritual. We got up at the same time and had an exercise and stretching program that we did together. Then we had breakfast in the courtyard, before moving out to the terrace to play chess for an hour.”

  “Who was the better player?”

  “Oh, Mora was. I never beat her.”

  “She’d been playing a long time, then?

  “No, she hadn’t. That was the irony of it. It was me who taught her to play, and right from the start she beat me every time. She had some kind of extraordinary visual memory. She could hold thousands of pictures in her head, a chess board in any number of configurations. Pure instinct. But she was unbeatable.”

  “So what was the point in playing, if you both knew she would win?”

  Michael smiled. They had talked about that often. “It wasn’t the winning, Angela. It was the playing. Time we shared together. Just us. No one else. A meeting of minds. The world simply went away.”

  Here he was again in the same darkened room. The same cracks of sunlight around the blinds. The same impatience with him that he felt emanating from his therapist. He wondered if she meant to convey that feeling, if it was part of the therapy. Or if she was just genuinely frustrated by him.

  “But you still play?”

  “Yes.”

  “On your own.”

  “No, with Mora.”

  “She’s dead, Michael.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Tell me.”

  He drew a long, slightly tremulous breath. “I make one move a day. Day One, I start. Day Two, I change seats. I’m Mora. I try to get inside her head. Day Three, I’m me again. I make my second move.” He paused. “It’s like she’s there with me again. Sharing my thoughts, my time, the game.”

  “Who wins?”

  “Mora, of course. As always.”

  There was one of those long silences that Angela seemed so fond of inflicting upon him. Then he was aware of her leaning forward in the dark. He could almost feel her disapproval. “That is literally self-defeating, Michael. You have to stop this game. You’ll never get over her if you persist in giving shape and form to her ghost like this.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to get over her.”

  “Yes, well, then that’s the root of your problem. You have no desire to move on, to leave Mora in your memory. You don’t want to start living in the present.”

  Michael blew air through pursed lips. “I have tried, Angela. Going back to work was a part of that.”

  He heard her sigh. “Well I suppose it was at least a step in the right direction.”

  “No. The key’s in the words. Going back to work. Trying to pick up where I left off before meeting Mora. I can’t. I’m not the person I was. It’s not working for me, Angela. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Probably pack it in when my contract’s up. Head back east.

  “There’s that word again, Michael. Back. And you’re right. Back is not good. We have to find a way of moving you forward.”

  Michael took a deep breath. “Not we, Angela. Me. I’m going to have to find a way to move forward on my own. I’m afraid I’ve got to bring our sessions to an end.”

  He heard the concern in her voice. “Because you don’t feel we’re getting anywhere?”

  “Because I can’t afford you anymore.”

  “Oh.”

  More silence. Michael wondered how much each minute of silence was costing him, and if it had ever been worth the money. Eventually she stood up and tilted the slats of the blinds to let in the day, and turned to face him across the room.

  “Well, I can’t help you with your financial problems. But you could continue in therapy.”

  “I told you…”

  She cut across him. “At no cost, Michael. Well…nominal.”

  “I don’t understand. How is that possible?”

  She eased herself back into her chair and looked at him earnestly. “I’ve been experimenting with a new form of group therapy, Michael.”

  “Group therapy? You mean a bunch of people sitting around telling each other their problems?”

  She smiled. “In a manner of speaking.”

  He shook his head. “I couldn’t do that, Angela. In many ways it’s hard enough just talking to you. I couldn’t face the idea of unburdening myself about Mora, sharing my inner thoughts with a group of strangers.”

  “It wouldn’t be like that. In fact, you wouldn’t really be there at all. You’d send an emissary to speak for you.”

  He frowned. “What?”

  She laughed. “Oh, Michael, I know it sounds crazy.” She grinned. “But, then, that’s my field.”

  “Explain.”

  “For some months no
w I’ve been conducting group sessions with patients in a 3D virtual world called Second Life. Have you heard of it?”

  He shook his head.

  “It’s a simple concept, really. You download a piece of software. Free. Install it on your computer, and then access the virtual world through the internet. It is a completely parallel world, not unlike the real world in that its residents create everything in it. Buildings, roads, shops, products. And do all the kinds of stuff that real people do in real life. Buy things, sell things, gamble, listen to music, buy property, flirt, play games, watch movies, have sex. There are whole continents, seas, islands. It is already populated by nearly 14 million inhabitants.”

  Michael shook his head. “It really doesn’t sound like something for me, Angela. I’ve never been interested in computer games.”

  “It’s not a game, Michael. Most definitely not a game. Any more than life itself is a game. There is no manufactured conflict, no set objective. It’s an entirely open-ended experience. Literally, a second life.” She chuckled. “Although for some people it has almost become a first one.”

  He stared at her across the room, hardly able to imagine it. “You said I would send an emissary. What did you mean?”

  “To go into Second Life you have to create an avatar. A virtual representation of your real life self. You can make it look like you, or you can create your fantasy self. The point is, that nobody knows who is really behind your AV. The beautiful blond who asks you to dance might be a fat old man. Who cares? In SL you are who you want to be.”

  Michael shook his head, still doubtful. “I don’t know…”

  “Look, Michael, just try it. It’ll cost you nothing, and if it doesn’t work for you, then you can drop out. But I have to tell you, my experience so far suggests that people find it much easier to express themselves freely from behind the anonymity of their avatars. And I’m breaking new ground here. Using my SL experiences in virtual group therapy to write a book. So I’m not charging my patients.” She smiled. “In a way you’re my guinea pigs. But we can all benefit.”