Devil's Plaything

by Matt Richtel

  “So you went to Vince and asked his help getting back Lane?” I ask.

  “He was livid that you’d taken her,” Betty Lou says. “He feared you were involved in this strange computer project, maybe experimenting with the residents so you could write an article. He thinks you love a great drama.”

  “So he’s not involved with the Human Memory Crusade?”

  She shrugs. “You’ll have to ask him.”

  I fall silent for a moment, then continue theorizing aloud. When Grandma’s friends came to Vince for help, he suggested that they essentially kidnap Grandma. It was Vince’s idea to use chloroform to drug me.

  “It was mine,” Harry says.

  “Why?”

  “You wouldn’t have given her up. Rightfully so. I wouldn’t have given her up. I wouldn’t have . . . if I had to do it over again.”

  I’m not sure what to say to this, if he’s ready to bring up the elephant in the room.

  “We thought that if we took Grandma, you’d be inspired to figure out what is going on—with all this computer nonsense,” Betty Lou offers. “We just didn’t want you to do it with Grandma by your side. She’s not your sidekick. She’s a woman deserving of peace.”

  “But by drugging me, you scared the hell out of me,” I pause. “You took my grandmother from me.”

  I’m surprised myself by my raw emotion. I have hit a place of undiluted truth: Hello, my name is Nat Idle, and I love my grandmother. I care about someone as much as I care about myself.

  Harry looks down.

  “Your grandmother put up a fight on her behalf,” Betty Lou says. “She gave Vince a fierce karate kick to the leg.”

  Hence the limp.

  Again, I fall silent.

  Finally, Harry speaks: “Betty Lou, can you leave me alone with the young man? We have a few things to talk about.”

  Chapter 50

  From his back pocket, he pulls a piece of paper.

  “She has beautiful penmanship. But when the ink started to fade, I typed this up. That was probably 1954. I’ve retyped it a few times since.”

  I take the piece of paper.

  I read:

  September 5, 1942

  Dear Harry,

  I’m sitting in the park where the boys play baseball. I have a bench to myself, but there are lots of people around. One nearby picnicking couple just stood up and started to sway to music coming from a speaker somewhere. The song is Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller, and it is making me sad.

  The man is wearing a Navy uniform. I want to ask him where he’s going. I wonder if you’ll meet him, and save his life. (Could I be any more dramatic?)

  I got the letter you sent to the post office. Your poem was so funny (“occasion” has two c’s). I’m sure you’re making your bunkmates laugh. They don’t expect it from you.

  I’m not sure I should be writing in response.

  Two nights ago, two men in uniform stopped by the house on the corner of the block. The Bensons live there. You probably never met Tommy. He went by “Stork” because of his long neck. He’s a year older than you, or he was a year older. He died crawling across a field in Italy to help an injured friend. That’s what the men in uniform told Mrs. Benson. I haven’t slept in two nights. I hope you are safe. I just know you are taking care of yourself. But I worry that you think you are invincible. I read an article that said all young men think they are invincible and immortal and that’s the reason why we send them into war. You’re different from that, maybe worse. Sometimes I think you don’t mind finding out what’s on the other side. You’re very curious and genuine about exploring the world and I mean that as the highest compliment. You were genuine and curious about discovering the real me.

  Every day in the paper I recognize the names of people who have been killed.

  When you shipped out, I was sure I would see you again, and I still want to believe that is the case.

  I decided that I should write to you because I have something I should tell you. I don’t want you to be hurt by it. I wouldn’t ever want to hurt you. But I feel you should know everything.

  I married Irving.

  Irving is a good man. He’s not going to go into the war because he had his appendix removed when he was very young and the surgery could create medical problems if he were sent into combat.

  He’s going to take good care of me and our family. He doesn’t like to have adventures and he doesn’t like to lose himself in the world, if that makes sense. But he has things under control. He doesn’t mind if I say the things that I think, and sometimes he doesn’t even notice exactly what I mean. I guess that’s a good thing and a bad thing. You seem to pay such close attention to me. You hear things that I don’t even realize that I’m saying, and then I realize how good it feels to be heard.

  I know I shouldn’t be writing these things or even thinking these things. I feel like a harlot. But the worst part is that I don’t totally mind. I find it exciting to feel like I am alive. You make me feel that way.

  I am trying to have it both ways. That is worse than being a harlot.

  That’s enough sad talk. I wish they’d turn off the stupid music.

  Please wear your helmet. Don’t drink water that isn’t clean. Change your undergarments! Don’t volunteer for any adventures or give any other girls secret books. I know that I am not entirely making sense, but there are things I’d like to tell you that don’t belong in this letter. Please just know that you have made a great impression on me, much bigger than you can know at this moment. You are alive inside of me.

  Sincerely,

  L.

  I look up from the letter at Harry. He is pale, his skin pallor betraying tension beneath his unflinching demeanor.

  “One time you threw up on a snake,” he says.

  It’s a jarring statement and it takes me a moment to adjust to it. He’s referring to the time I was at the reptile zoo with Grandma. The curator forced me to touch a boa and I got scared and threw up.

  “Grandma told you about that?”

  “I watched it from behind a museum post,” he says. “I watched your Uncle Stevie play in a band, and I took a volunteer job at the concession stand so I could watch your dad play high-school baseball.”

  “Did you teach me to swim?”

  He nods.

  I’m remembering the time my grandmother took me to Santa Cruz when I was five. We met an old lifeguard, or so I thought. It was Harry.

  “You were a natural,” he says.

  “Holy shit.” I’m having another revelation. His face tightens. Harry doesn’t like cursing.

  I continue: “You were the man in the rowboat.”

  When Grandma used to take me to Stow Lake, she hired a man who worked at the boathouse to row us into the center. She’d ask me about my life. Harry would listen to the interview in silence.

  He nods.

  “You got Grandma pregnant before you shipped out. She didn’t know, or tell you, until you came back?”

  “Your grandmother did what she had to do. She didn’t know if I’d make it back. She didn’t know if what we had was the real thing.”

  I am speechless, but calm.

  “She’s a fine woman.”

  He’s so noble, old school. I can’t reconcile this man with the creative romantic who seduced Grandma on a first date with a secret note and a hidden library book.

  “Did Grandma know you were watching us?”

  He nods.

  “I never went against her. I want you to know that. Your grandmother and I had a secret friendship, but it was only a friendship.” He pauses, and adds: “Mostly, just a friendship.”

  “You had your own family?”

  He shakes his head in the negative.

  “It must have been so difficult.”

  He looks down.

  “I didn’t graduate from high school,” he says after a pause. “I worked in a concrete yard.”

  “How is that relevant?” I ask, gently.

  �
�We came from different backgrounds but your grandmother and I had something I can’t explain very well. I’m a different person with her than I am with anyone else. I think she’s a different person too.”

  We fall silent.

  “Did my grandfather . . . did Irving know?”

  “If he did, he never said a word about it—not that Laney told me about. He was a good man. He treated her well. If you know Lane, you know she can’t live just one life. She needed to know there was something else out there.”

  I take this in. He continues.

  “I saved money and took trips and gallivanted some. I ran with the bulls in Spain, and I dove off cliffs in a Chilean rain forest, and other things. I sent your grandmother letters. I’m not much for writing or telling stories, but I tried—for her.”

  He stops talking. He’s done.

  “When she realized she was losing her memory, she decided to tell her story. She was going to tell me and then decided to tell the computer,” I say.

  I see the first raw emotion on Harry’s face. His eyes are wet.

  “She’s getting better. She’s remembering better, now that she’s away from the machine.”

  “Did you know it was causing her a problem?”

  “I don’t know anything about those foolish computers. I just know that in my day, we trusted our secrets to people.”

  Now I see he’s looking in her direction. I follow his gaze. Grandma’s eyes are open. She’s looking ahead, and she is smiling.

  “Harry,” she says.

  “Laney.”

  “I had a wonderful dream.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “About what?”

  “Your dream.”

  “Come sit with me,” she says.

  He walks over and sits by the side of the bed. He seems almost shy about it. She takes his hand.

  “This is nice,” she says.

  I watch them for a moment, finding I can barely speak for the tears.

  From my pocket, I retrieve the paper I’d taken from Pete’s library. I unfold it and I walk to Harry.

  “Does this mean anything to you?” I ask.

  He shakes his head, then turns back to Lane.

  I use Betty Lou’s cell phone to retrieve the messages from my own phone. There is one left by someone with a nervous, high-pitched voice.

  “I’m sorry that I ran away on Halloween. I was afraid. Come visit me tomorrow on the basketball court. I have something I think you’re looking for. You know who this is. I’ll be waiting.”

  I close the clamshell phone and put it back down. I lean over and kiss my grandmother on the forehead.

  “Does she want the world to know about this, about you, her secret?” I ask Harry.

  “She’s getting better. When she’s not at the computer, she seems more like herself.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Maybe she can answer your question herself in a few days.”

  Outside the room, Vince stands guard.

  “They offered us free computers,” he says. “I was trying to make their lives better.”

  “I believe you. But we still have a lot to talk about.”

  He nods.

  “You don’t need to make a story out of this,” he says. “That’s about you and your career. Think about all the people whose lives you will ruin.”

  “Keep my grandmother safe.”

  “She’s safe. Guard around the clock. This is all over now.”

  I wish he were right. I head into the night.

  Chapter 51

  I’m scraping my hippocampus for memories of the shadow man who flitted in and out of my life, making brief cameos and little concrete impression.

  Did I sense something about that man at the time? Did I intuit the import of Harry, the Pigeon-man who was Grandma’s true love?

  Did I deliberately bury this instinct? Was it too strange for a child to contemplate? Or record as memory?

  I honestly can’t remember.

  I’m aware of the failings of my own memory, its fragility.

  Something else strikes me. Perhaps I wasn’t particularly aware of Harry’s periodic presence. But perhaps I was aware of something else: the changing moods in my grandmother.

  Sometimes she seemed happier. Sometimes she sang a little bit more, seemed purer and less distracted. Sometimes, so inspired.

  Were those the times Harry was near?

  Did I sense that Grandma led a double life? Or that she needed more than one thing to keep her happy?

  Does it scare me to feel so connected to her malady?

  Chapter 52

  I stand at the doorstep of Polly’s flat. Sleep deprivation and delirium should have me shrouded in my own personal fog. But I feel alive with both hope and misgivings.

  The door is unlocked. Polly is too trusting. She shouldn’t be so cavalier and open in such a dangerous world. The house is quiet.

  “Polly?” I call upstairs, then down.

  No response.

  I drop my backpack and start to run. I speed up the stairs to her bedroom.

  The bedside light is on. On the bed lies Polly, a pillow clutched to her chest. She’s sleeping, then hears me, and starts to stir.

  “You’re okay,” I exclaim. Utter relief.

  She rubs a beautiful eye with the back of her hand.

  “Why wouldn’t I be? My God,” she says and pulls herself into a sitting position. “What ran you over?”

  “It’s no biggie. I got attacked by the U.S. military and the biotech industry. A day in the life of a blogger.”

  She blinks, the vulnerable Polly. Tears in her eyes. “Would you mind making me some tea?”

  I make her rosebud herbal tea, which she says she’s been craving all night. It’s just past midnight. We sit on the love seat across the wall from her bed. Dim light from a lamp gives the room a hollow feeling. Polly, chilly, wraps herself in a blanket.

  I’ve sensed for days something has been bothering her. “You’re not telling me something.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Are you part of it?”

  “I told you about my brother.”

  “Philip. Crystal meth.”

  “I love him so much. I’ve taken care of him. I always will.”

  “What did he do? Is he involved in this thing?”

  She looks at me quizzically.

  “I know you think I’m some corporate drone, a crazed MBA looking to change the world and charge a lot of money for it, but . . .”

  I don’t know where she’s heading. “Polly . . .”

  “I’m not that. I am waiting for the right thing to invest myself in, not just my business.”

  “Are you part of the Crusade? Are you in league with Chuck?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Then what are you talking about?”

  “Nat, I really wanted you to come to this on your own. I didn’t want to put pressure on you. I know who you are and I have no need to change that.”

  I’m baffled.

  “Please, Polly. Tell me what’s going on.”

  She smiles.

  “There’s someone I want you to meet.”

  I look around.

  She takes my hand with her cold grasp. She stretches out my fingers and extends them toward her belly.

  “Meet your son.”

  Lightning in my head. An explosion of quiet emotion, like watching the aurora borealis inside my brain. In the last couple of days, I’ve learned the fragility of memory. I know immediately I will never forget this moment.

  “But . . .”

  “It only takes once.”

  I look at her, incredulous.

  “Accident. We took precautions.”

  “The night . . .”

  “September twenty-seventh,” she says.

  I know that date. She’d circled it on the calendar in her office.

  “But you already know it’s a boy?”

  It’s not medically
possible to know that so soon.

  “I just know,” she says.

  I smile.

  Part of me must have suspected. Maybe it explains my garrulous confessions to Grandma the last few days about my feelings for Polly.

  I start to say something.

  “Don’t,” she says. “I’m going to have him. We’d love you to be part of our lives in some capacity, but I can handle this. I’ve handled lots more.”

  I put my arms around her.

  “Don’t say anything,” she whispers. “Sleep on it. You’ll need a few nights. I did.”

  We walk to the bed, and climb under the covers. I put my arms around her, and I collapse into sleep.

  In my dream, I am attending a funeral. I look at the program and am surprised to learn I am supposed to deliver the eulogy. I don’t even know who has died. The name of the deceased is not on the program. I am standing in line to view the open casket. I approach, feeling sick.

  When I get to the casket, I see that it is me lying inside. I turn around and see my grandmother waiting in line behind me to view my body.

  “They’ve got a string quartet outside,” she says. “They’re wonderful.”

  “I’m dead?”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” She smiles. “You’ve already died a thousand times and you’ve never taken it this hard before.”

  Chapter 53

  I wake up to discover I’m having sex. I am so groggy that I don’t realize when it began, only that Polly has made her intentions eminently clear, and nature takes its course.

  “Pregnancy has left me with a craving for sex and pork ribs,” she says after we finish.

  I laugh, and wince. Even smiling is causing pain to ripple through a corpus that for two days has been through a menu of near misses by fire, bullet, and knife, chloroform, scarf, and flashlight.

  “Nat, I’m not asking for anything and I’m not negotiating.”

  “I know.”

  “But I have to tell you the truth.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re not a great blogger.”