by Mike Heppner
Olden leaned over his desk and showed Gray the computer screen. Blocks of information spooled in tight columns as the program executed a smooth routine—shapes drifting, evolving, everything timed to fire in sequence. Near the top of the page, an egg revolved, then cracked apart. A boy emerged from the broken shell and sat cross-legged, his eyes radiating a kind of all-knowledge, vaguely Oriental. Gray looked at the boy, then at his lap, the dark floor between his feet. His tongue seemed to expand inside his mouth. “What the hell’s that?” he asked.
“That, sir, is the Egg Code, and it’s been out for, oh, I guess about a month now. I just sent some more shit to the server.”
Gray swallowed; a solid shape passed from his throat to his stomach. All at once, the world seemed microscopic—one boy, one Web site, one furniture store. Still floating over the crushed eggshell, Simon Tree-Mould crept out of his squat and assumed a coquettish pose. Little faggit. Fuck him.
Olden crossed his arms, proud of himself. “I’ve been getting about three thousand hits a day. That’s worldwide, but it’s still pretty good for an educational site.”
Gray squinted at the text and read aloud, “In 1816, when the former emperor declared his allegiance to a band of proto-socialists . . .” He laughed and swiped at the monitor. “Educational, right. Sounds sincere.”
“It isn’t. But at least it’s subtle. I mean, look at it!” Olden scrolled down the screen. “This is just the first installment. One click takes you there. All the major commercial sites now have links to my Web page: Amazon, The Washington Post—”
“They let you do that?”
“No, but I did it anyway. I even hacked fucking eBay.”
Gray looked back at the screen, then shook his head and laughed. “I don’t know, man. Aren’t you worried about the feds?”
“No. I never got along with those assholes anyway. It’s not like they’re not making enough money. If a few million people get nervous and decide to cancel their online accounts, that’s not my problem. That’s just good common sense. That’s the system policing itself.”
Dark shapes crept across the monitor, hot foxtrails of gore-red wonderglo. Gray suddenly felt very sleepy. He could feel the dimensions of his brain, the split between hemispheres where lightning frayed and spindle-backed neurons tossed chemicals over the gap. He blinked and rubbed his face. He saw himself no longer working at Enthusiasms, Inc. The old life, resumed. The priceless, long-forgotten luxury of writing every day, fifty hours a week—just like a regular job, but a job that other people respected and regarded as real work. “Gimme the address to this thing,” he said.
Surprised, Olden rooted through the trash, found a scrap and wrote down the URL. “There you go,” he said, laughing at his friend’s stunned expression.
Gray took the note without looking. “Yeah, thanks, I . . .” The words ran out; he felt different, holding the address. “I’ve got a long drive back. Better head out.”
Olden lifted a finger, then ducked behind the desk. “Stay for a few drinks,” he said, coming up with a crumpled paper bag, something round and fat inside. “I found this bottle on the street. Fuckin’ Benedictine. Brand-new. Never opened.”
“Ooh, gift from the gods.” Gray smiled, aware of something phony in his voice. “No, I . . . I gotta get back.” He pointed at the door. “The construction. They’re making you go slow now. But this weekend. Next weekend. This weekend or next.”
Olden uncapped the bottle and took a swig. He frowned, disgusted; a spurt of brown syrup dribbled over his chin. “Okay,” he said, gagging and laughing as he set the bottle down. “Watch out for possums.”
They walked outside and shook hands. Alone again, Olden wondered about his friend’s strange reaction. It wasn’t the bogus information, he knew, that caused Gray to leave in such a panic. It was the boy, the pictures of the boy. Some things in this world were still unacceptable. Using a child as a sex object was one thing; but using a child as a subversive object was something else. It ascribed to minors an intelligence most adults lacked in themselves. Now that’s offensive, he thought, delighted at the way things were turning out.
XVII
Promises Broken
The Price of Fame
When Lydia slapped Simon, everything changed. They stood on stage—Lydia holding the boy’s jacket, Simon huddled over the script, fucking everything up, even the easy words. The other kids waiting to audition sat in the first three rows, coats slung over the chair backs. The auditorium was dark; a janitor moved between aisles, vacuuming the carpet. Lydia watched the boy’s performance, then, hearing enough, raised one hand and slapped him across the face. Simon saw colors, blue and then orange. This was the only way he could understand the pain—as colors, as fluctuations of hot and cold. He could not understand that his mother didn’t love him, that she hated everything about him, the failures he implied—her embarrassing marriage, her inability to live up to the great name of Kay Tree. Instead, Simon saw colors, hot colors and cold colors, orange and blue. He staggered away, not crying, just blowing his hair out of his eyes and trying to look cool.
Alone on stage, Lydia felt singled-out, the kind of desperate parent she herself had tried not to become. Driving home, she imagined horrible things happening to her son. In a flash, she saw herself cutting through his body with a long, tapered saw. The blade made an awful noise as it bit into his bones, but he did not bleed, and when she kicked the two halves apart, she found no organs, no neat compartments of divided sacs and chambers, but rather two smooth, wood-white planes of solid protein, like the split halves of a peanut. She could not stand these visions, nor believe herself capable of imagining them in such detail. Just ahead, her home appeared through the trees, a strange vehicle blocking the driveway. Cutting the headlights, she parked and started up the path, Simon trailing a few feet behind. Deep male voices—her husband and another man, Jim Carroll probably—filled the entrance as she stepped inside and hung up her coat. She hadn’t expected a dinner party, was not aware of a previous engagement. This was not what she’d hoped to come home to. Steve’s friends were such pricks—little men, pumped-up and pathetic. Jim was a handsome if somewhat generic-looking guy in his late thirties. His hair was dark and thick, traveling straight up in a continuation of his high forehead. Coming into the kitchen, she noticed that both men looked tired; December was a bitch, with long hours, mean women, polystyrene Santa Clauses slumped in the stockroom, buttfucking in big bags of fifty. They probably deserved a night away from the store. Lydia understood entirely, and yet she did not want him here, did not need another evening’s worth of tiresome war stories, the same old rant—sexual frustration sublimated as sales goals and interdepartmental rivalries. Enough of that. She wanted to talk to Simon. She wanted to explain.
“Lydia, where the heck were you? Soup’s just about on!”
“Oh, I don’t have to tell you where I go all the time, do I, Steven? . . . Hi, Jim.”
“Lydia.” Jim nodded, holding a drink. He was still dressed in his work suit, nametag pinned upside down for a lark.
Steve wore a chef’s apron over a Christmas-colored pullover, the sleeves bunched up to his elbows. “I tell ya, Jim and I had one heck of a day, hon—ain’t that right, Jim?”
“What was it, twenty-two-fifty when we left?”
“More like twenty-four, Jim, almost twenty-five thousand dollars, jeezo-pete, gimme a little credit here!”
“And that was at five p.m.”
“You’re darn tootin’. I told my night manager, I said, ‘The minute we get up to thirty, you get on that phone and give me a call!’ ’Cause that’s going on the board! That’s going all the way up to Cam Pee, boy!”
“Better believe it.”
“Enough of this junk about not hittin’ a million dollars by January first. We’re gonna hit it, Jim!”
“Betcha.”
“And I ain’t whistlin’—”
“No sir.”
“I ain’t whistlin’ Dixie!”
Lydia’s knees creaked as she rooted under the sink, searching for a bottle of Gallo. “Steven, you didn’t use up all of my sherry, did you?”
“Sherry? What do you need sherry for? I’ll buy you some sherry, a million bottles of the stuff, boy, I’ll tell ya . . . we’re on our way!”
“All I need is one glass, Steven. I don’t need a million bottles. I need one bottle, one glass, I don’t know where you hide things in this house.”
Jim laughed, chugging his vodka tonic. “I think she wants a drink, Steve.”
Steve dropped a wooden stirring spoon into a pan of steaming milk. “Yeah, I guess so.” He looked at his wife with an insincere smile. “We’ll get you taken care of, hon. Just give me a minute and I’ll be right with you.”
“If you’d just show me—”
“No, no, I’ll take care of it. We don’t want to make you unhappy.”
“I’m not unhappy, I just want—”
“It’s okay, not a problem, merry Christmas and the whole nine yards. Jim, I’ll be right back, just keep stirring this for me, will ya?” He handed the spoon to Jim and led his wife down the hall to the basement. Out of earshot, he hissed, “Who the heck leaves these lights on all the time?”
“You’re always so accusatory. Maybe you left them on.”
“I didn’t leave them on because I don’t come down here. You’re the one who does the laundry eighteen times a day, runs up the cottonpickin’ water bill till it’s three thousand dollars a month.”
“Oh, stop.”
They took turns skipping the broken landing at the bottom of the steps. Steve threw open a strange cabinet door, the top edge cut to fit under the staircase. “Look, right where we keep the rest of the booze.”
“Fine, thank you. Do you need another bottle of Absolut for you and Jim?”
“Why would we need another bottle of Absolut?”
“I’m just asking, since I don’t know how long he’s planning on staying. I didn’t even know he was coming tonight, because it’s obviously not important for me to know these things.”
“Well, I’m sorry! Jim was nice enough to help me out with my two-by-twos and endcaps, and I said why don’t you stop by.”
“Fine, now he’s here and everything’s wonderful, so let’s just get the fucking goddamn bullshit fucking thing over with.”
“Look, Lydia, if you want to take your bottle of sherry and go right up to bed, be my guest!”
“Oh, don’t I wish. I’m tired, I’ve had a horrible day, I’m upset and I can’t take this anymore!” The bottle fell from her hands and rolled without breaking toward a rusty drainage grate. She covered her eyes and cried silently, her head bobbing up and down.
“Gee. Look, Lydia. Relax.”
“What do you care.”
“Shhh. Shhhh.”
“I just want to lie down.”
“I don’t want you to feel like—”
“Ow, ow!”
“What?”
“Rub my neck . . . it’s starting.”
Palm flat, Steve touched her neck. He could actually feel the cramp between his fingers; it seemed to dart out of reach like something living underneath.
“It’s just that Jim Carroll, honey . . . Jim Carroll . . .”
“Jim Carroll is the big cheese, and we all have to be nice and smile, and I understand all that, Steve. Really, I get the idea.”
“It’s my job.”
“It’s your job, that’s right.”
“I mean, Jim and I, we’re equals now, you know? I’ve got to show him that I can schmooze and chit and chat and do all those good things. I’m gonna be regional veep someday. We’re gonna have to get used to these people.”
“Stop.”
“What?”
“With the rubbing.”
He took his hand away, afraid of her now. She hated this—Steve’s obedience, the way he always capitulated to her wilder moods, as if womanhood were a kind of black magic, warned about in guidebooks. Giving up, he turned and carried the bottle upstairs. Voices resumed in the kitchen. Lydia’s eyes stung with mascara; cursing herself, she washed her face at the laundry sink. A lock of hair fell over her forehead and danced in the gush of the faucet. Turning off the tap, she stared at the bare lightbulb hanging above the washing machine. The filament glowed like a melting skeleton, an orange construction of joints and limbs. As she climbed the steps, a bright figure floated across her vision, moving wherever she looked. Simon was waiting for her at the top of the stairs, dressed in his winter parka. She squinted and grabbed onto the rail. The lightbulb filament turned from orange to scabby red, tracing his spine, his fragile hands and feet. She felt sick. The thought of alcohol made her stomach curl.
“Mom, I’m not hungry.”
“You’re not? Daddy’s making a good dinner.”
“I wanna go out and look at the lake.”
She swallowed without closing her mouth. “You won’t be hungry later? You won’t wake up in the middle of the night and tell me you’re starving?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
The filament dissolved, leaving a dark impression. Lydia reached to zip up his jacket, then stopped, hand frozen, palm buzzing with awful memories, skin slapping skin. Her hand, his cheek. She glanced at the wall and saw her purse hanging from a brass hook. Rooting through the bag, she found her wallet, a trifolded husk of leather, heavy with change, credit cards arranged in a staggered column like wide steps leading up to a fantastic temple.
“Fine, darling. Go play. Here. Take some money.”
“I’m just going outside.”
The twenty-dollar bills felt slick between her fingers as she counted out a stack of ten, passing the bills from one hand to the other. “You always need money. In an emergency. Or maybe you’ll spend it later. The next time we go downtown, darling. You’ll see something in the window and you’ll want to buy it, and you won’t even have to ask me first because it’s your money. See? Look at all this money Mommy’s giving you. Mun-eee mun-eee mun-eee mun-eee.”
“Wow, thanks.”
Simon took the bills, counted them quickly and put them in his pocket.
Lydia felt calmer now, instantly better. “And there’ll be more money in a few days, because you know what?”
“Christmas!”
“Christmas, right! I’ve bought you so many nice things for Christmas, darling, and even if you don’t like them, you can take them back to the store and exchange them for money!”
“Cool!”
“You could be a very rich little boy. Do you know how much money I’ve spent on your Christmas presents, just this year alone? Over four thousand dollars, darling. Which is a lot of money, but I do it because it makes me very happy, and because you’re such a sweet kid.”
“Neat!”
“Go play, love.”
“Gee, thanks! Thanks a lot!”
Simon popped out the back door and walked to the edge of the yard, a few hundred feet away. He could see the house from here, but it was small and partially blocked by the bare winter forest. A thick moon mist covered the land with its milky, luxuriant soup. The cold ran up his legs—a pleasant sensation, like Christmas and extra-long vacations. This was the kind of cold that made you more aware of yourself, that made your genitals shrink and your nipples hard. Rushing forward, he saw the tower across the lake, black against the moon-filled sky. He felt drawn to it—a tower amidst the trees, the only one of its kind. There were times when Simon felt like the only boy in the world. Then another feeling came over him with a fury so awful and abrupt that he wanted to cry. He wanted to be naked. His heart thrust against his chest as he pulled his jacket up over his head. He felt out of place, the only person compelled to do this thing. He imagined all sorts of lewd tortures as his fingers worked to free the buttons, the zipper, the tight laces knotted twice. Naked now, he looked at himself, his tiny penis hanging from a smooth place between his legs. Hopping up and down, he smiled as it bobbed from its root. He remembered those
times late at night—mashing it with his hand or against a pillow. Whatever happened next was something so bad—like wetting the bed or crapping in your underwear—that he always stopped, afraid of the end result. Standing on the frosty beach, he wanted to shit in the sand, but his bowels were empty and he couldn’t pee either because his dick was too big for peeing. He wished he could lick his own penis. He wished he could put it inside his mouth and then bite it off, wedging it between his teeth and the inside of his cheek until finally it grew out from under his tongue like a piece of potato root.
Still naked—wherever he’d left his clothes, he couldn’t find them now—he crept back to the house, where he could hear the sounds of his parents yelling at each other. The cold returned to him after the excitement of the past few minutes. Now he wished to be indoors, alone and in bed. The house seemed so cozy inside, so nice, so civilized. He could see directly into the dining room, where his mother and father sat at either end of a long table, jabbing and sparring with bright butter knives while the man with the high hair concentrated on his meal, twirling the spaghetti with obliged intensity. A seam ran along the middle of the table, marking the place where the two halves came together. Simon always liked to jiggle the seam, teasing it with his knee until the night when the joint gave way and a bowl of lobster bisque fell into his father’s lap, and Steve jumped up and screamed something like “DAG-GON-IT!” and his face was red and there were tears standing in his eyes as the oily stain spread across his lap and the bowl fell to the floor, and the soup was so hot that Simon could see steam coming from his father’s pants, and he could remember how his dad had labored over the stove, saying things like “Mmm, boy, this is gonna be gooooood,” tasting it every two minutes and smiling that slow smile of his, the shape of his smile curling around the curve of the spoon—all that forgotten now as Simon nudged the table, just enough to make the plates shake, and his mother would probably say something like “Simon . . .” in her low warning voice, but no one would actually do anything about it, and so he would continue, subtly ruining the dinner until the dessert course arrived—but instead the hinge snapped and the bowl tipped over and drenched Steve’s lap with a great clapping splash, and his first facial expression—his facial expression at the moment of impact—was a stiff-necked look of white-faced terror, body lurching to grab the empty space as he jumped up and screamed “OW! DAG-GON-IT!” and from across the table his mother threw down her spoon and said, “Now you’re in trouble.”
