Land of the Blind

by Jess Walter

  But most of my wealth came not from my legal work, but from tips and insights I gleaned about start-ups and new products, buyouts and takeovers. Each time I bought stock for myself, I picked up a few for Eli, too, and while he spent most of his money paying back investors and genuinely trying to turn Empire into a computer game, he managed to do pretty well alongside me, two unlikely success stories from Empire Road in the Spokane Valley.

  But while it is the most obvious, money wasn’t the only measure of my success, and not even the one that motivated me. I am a perception junkie, always have been; my drug is the way people see me. I had kicked the habit briefly during my ascetic phase following Ben’s death, but now I was back on the shit. And all of Seattle seemed to be tripping with me, a full-blown collective high.

  My own symptoms were so acute I began to doubt that I even existed when no one was there to see me. I craved that fleeting moment when I stepped into restaurants and people looked up, or meetings when it was my turn to speak. I dated every girl who would go out with me, always eager for new eyes in which to see myself. When I pulled to a stop at a traffic light I looked around for my reflection in the windows of buildings, my forty-dollar-trimmed hair, my tailored suit, my glass eye and sunglasses—near-perfection encased in a black BMW.

  I was chained again to this self-addiction, and it wasn’t long before I began to imagine the black tar of my particular habit—politics. I joined a few groups, a taste there and here—the Jaycees, a Bar Association committee on technology, nothing too extravagant. I got involved with the Democratic Party, and donated money to a handful of candidates. But the little tastes made me want more, until I found myself having the old daydream: a podium, bunting, my name on a banner behind me, a crowd of supporters: Mason. Mason. Mason.

  During those days, older, established lawyers occasionally sought me out to explain this new world of high-tech business, and I developed something of a reputation as an expert in my field. I spoke at conferences to rooms full of gray-haired lawyers about the speed and dexterity with which we would need to practice contract law to keep up with the demands of an industry that seemed to change by the minute. During these presentations I sometimes began sentences with the words “In the future,” and I rambled on about the day when client conferences would be video-streamed over broadband, when computers would automatically read through a trial transcript and make the appropriate appeal, when entire hearings would be held on the Internet and the lawyer would never have to leave his office (except, I suppose, to jetpack home to have sex with his robot girlfriend in his cryogenic sleeping portal).

  That’s how it happened that, in April 1998, I accepted a request to speak at the first annual “Spokane Technology Symposium” with various civic leaders, elected officials, and local entrepreneurs (always shy about such things, Eli had given them my name when they tried to recruit him for the symposium). The whole endeavor smacked of desperation, as the local leaders tried to spark the kind of twelfth-hour high-tech boom that had transformed Seattle and Portland—and much of the rest of the country—but passed Spokane by like a long-haul trucker on bennies.

  The symposium was held in the conference room of an airport hotel. We sat at round tables as waiters brought us fingers of chicken left over from some canceled flight, and a salad that consisted of cottage cheese and Jell-O. At each table sat a member of the city government and several representatives of the technology elite of Spokane.

  At my table was a frowning, buzz-cut retired air force corpsman who had recently been elected to the city council and who wanted to make sure the library computers weren’t being used to access porn; a junior high school student with razor-wire braces who won a computer science contest by using his laptop to graph local marijuana prices; the furtive founder of a local keyboard manufacturing company that was in the process of moving to Belize; and the manager of one especially cutting-edge firm called Jocko’s Soft Tacos: “We just got a new computer for our drive-thru window that has cut in half the number of Mexi-Bobs that we throw away.”

  I also spoke to the mayor, a nice older gentleman who had retired from “the carpet industry, myself,” and who ran for office because he was tired of gardening with his wife all day. He admitted that he was catching hell for failing to bring technology companies to Spokane, and for allowing sharp minds such as mine to escape.

  “My kids like the computers,” he said. “Me, I wouldn’t know how to turn the goddamn thing on if you put my hand on the crank.” He struggled to frame the problem, using his fingers to put quote marks around every eighth word. His opponent in the upcoming election claimed that to “attract” certain kinds of industry, cities must offer “incentives” to help convince entrepreneurs that a certain “atmosphere” existed.

  That’s true, I said. Tax incentives, growth districts, infrastructure—there were things a city could do to attract technology companies.

  “And how long does it take, all of that?”

  “Well…it can take years,” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s no good. I only got three months.”

  I suppose that’s when it first dawned on me that my newfound success connected at some point with my old dream—that I could be a kind of visionary figure, a political candidate for the twenty-first century. It would be more than a year before I would do anything about this vision, though, and even that day, I got drunk and didn’t give any more thought to my political career. And beyond that flash of inspiration, I suppose Spokane’s first technology symposium isn’t very important to the core of my confession—except for one other detail.

  After dinner (barbecued ribs and coleslaw) and several drinks, I staggered to the elevator fairly drunk—and not quite alone. That night, in a small room on the fourth floor of a hotel built into the hillside over my old hometown—the lights of Spokane sparkling below us like a lake of stars—I had sex for the first time with Dana Brett.

  2 | IT WAS UNBELIEVABLE

  It was unbelievable to me that Dana could’ve fallen in love with such a sneaky, coldhearted, lying bastard as Michael Langford. She seemed oblivious to his manipulation of her, his cheating of clients, his double-dealing with colleagues and competitors. She also seemed oblivious to his intense dislike of me. Oh, when we were around other people, Michael was friendly, but when it was just the two of us he berated me, called me a fraud, and taunted me with the fact that he had married the only woman I have ever loved.

  “Hello, Mason,” he would say when I answered the phone. “Who are you bilking today?” When I would say something he disagreed with, he’d say, “Mason, are you looking through your bad eye again?” When he didn’t return my calls right away, he’d say, “Sorry I didn’t get right back to you, Mason. I was nailing my wife.”

  Michael’s company was called Techubator. (He and his partners thought it was a clever name for a tech company incubator; I always thought it sounded like a machine to help jack the fatty.) I only got involved with Techubator in the first place to spend time with Dana, and with Michael’s constant disdain and vicious barbs it was the only reason I stayed as long as I did. But as I got deeper into the business, Dana’s role kept decreasing. Then, in early 1998, she left the firm entirely to devote herself to creating Web sites for nonprofit agencies.

  I was frantic. I tried to dissuade her through e-mails and phone calls, but she was adamant that it was time to move on. On her last day I flew down to Techubator headquarters in San Jose for her going-away party, and when the cake was gone and the chino-wearing staff had wandered back to their cubicles, I saw Dana sneak outside the office and found her on a park bench on a sidewalk in the business park.

  She said the pace had gotten to her. “We’re running on a treadmill. We never get anywhere. We start these companies and then move on to the next one before we know what happens. It’s like giving birth and never getting to see the babies grow up.”

  “We had three IPO’s in the last six months, Dana,” I said. “We have three more in the works.
How much bigger do the babies have to get?”

  She had grown her hair longer; it was brown and straight, and she pushed it back out of those cinnamon eyes. “I don’t mean financially, Clark,” she said. “All of the things that were supposed to happen…the transformation of our economy and our culture. What happened to all of that?”

  “My economy’s been transformed,” I said.

  She ignored me. “Besides, it’ll be easier on me personally.”

  I perked up, put my hand on hers. “Things tough at home?”

  She looked up. “No,” she said, not convincingly. “I just think it’s not good for a couple to live together and work together. And frankly, I’m sort of bored, Clark. I need a new challenge. I need something more.”

  In the time I’d spent at Techubator, Dana was always friendly toward me but she’d maintained a slight reserve. And yet, at meetings, I’d feel her eyes on me and I’d know she was thinking the same thing I was—that we’d somehow missed each other in the crash and whorl of our lives.

  That’s what I felt sitting on that bench. With the words “something more” hanging in the air, I looked into her eyes. She didn’t look away. The space between us seemed charged. Dana’s mouth opened slightly.

  “Dana—” I began.

  “There you are,” said Michael, an edge in his voice.

  We both looked up from the park bench.

  Michael came into the courtyard, bent down and kissed her full on the mouth, then rested his hand on her neck and looked down at me. “We’re so glad you could come, Clark,” he said. “Did Dana tell you all about our plans?”

  I said yes, and how impressed I was with her nonprofit Web site plans. Before coming to work for them, I reminded them, I’d done quite a bit of charity work myself.

  “Oh, right. In Portugal,” Michael said evenly, nearly masking his sarcasm. “Did she tell you the best part? In a year or so, we’re going to start having kids.”

  “No, she didn’t mention that part.”

  “Or two years,” Dana said.

  Michael squeezed her shoulders. “I can’t wait.”

  A few weeks later I left Techubator and accepted a job with the Seattle law firm. I still remained involved with some of the companies funded through Michael’s venture capital contacts, and we were both still shareholders of Empire—which was chewing up seed money with no hope of having a real game in the near future—but I knew I couldn’t stand to have any more regular dealings with Michael Langford.

  For four months I could think of no excuse to call Dana. But I found myself thinking about her every day, and I felt a charge, a gap in my breathing when I’d see her small oval face and those placid eyes.

  Then, in April of ’98, I was invited to the technology symposium in Spokane. I agreed to go only if they included a presentation on what I said was the fastest-growing segment of the industry—Web pages for nonprofits. I told them I knew the perfect expert to come speak on that topic, and that coincidentally this person had lived in Spokane, too. And then I made an anonymous donation to the symposium to pay for this expert’s airfare. For her part, Dana seemed excited to be back to Spokane, and to see me, and that’s how Dana and I ended up together in the lounge at the Airport Ramada Hotel and how we found ourselves at a corner table, laughing and throwing back White Russians and Cape Cods, as if we might drink enough booze to float us over the locks between us, which is, of course, the only really good thing about booze.

  I told her that her presentation had been great. (In fact she’d alienated the crowd a bit, contending that for every dollar a city spent attracting private technology firms, a city was morally required to spend a hundred dollars on computers for schools and other public projects.) I also remarked on the sorry state of affairs in Spokane, compared with new economy centers like Seattle and San Jose.

  “Oh, they’re better off without all that shit,” Dana said, raising her glass to ask for another Cape Cod. “Sometimes I think this is the last real place on earth, Clark. Sometimes I think I haven’t been right since I left here.”

  “Spokane?”

  “If Michael would do it, I’d move back here in a minute. Have a bunch of kids.”

  “What would Michael do here? There’s no technology base. There’s nothing.”

  She shrugged. “He could be a waiter. He was a waiter when I met him. A good waiter. He could hold nine water glasses.” When she was drunk her right eyelid fluttered, and it occurred to me that if the left eyelid got going too, she might just lift off the ground. “That’s something. Bringing people water. That’s basic goodness. Someone is thirsty. You bring them water. What has any of this technology”—she pronounced it teck-nodgy—“really done for anyone, Clark? Does it make them less thirsty?” She swilled her drink. “We used to go to the mall to buy our CDs. Now we buy them at our desk. What’s really changed?”

  “The whole world,” I said. “The whole world has changed.”

  “Is this what you saw us doing when we were young?” she asked. “We were idealistic. We wanted more than this, Clark. Remember? Remember what you wanted?”

  I stared into her fluttering eyes. “Yes,” I whispered. “I remember.”

  She stared back at me, confused, and then it seemed to register, what I was talking about. She laughed, tossed her head back, and snorted. “I don’t mean that, silly.” She waved her hand dismissively and knocked my drink into my lap.

  I jumped up and slapped at my crotch, where the Kahlúa had doused whatever had begun to smolder down there.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m a dope.” Then she took her drink, looked at it, and dumped it in her own lap, the vodka and cranberry juice making a small and inviting pool in her skirt. We both watched as the booze seeped into the small triangle between her thighs—until all that was left were six of the most fortunate ice cubes I’ve ever seen.

  “There,” she said. “Even.”

  Ten minutes later we were in her hotel room. I would like to say that the next eight minutes constituted one of those life-altering, transcendent moments that can occasionally occur when two people do what we attempted to do, but far too much liquor had crossed the breach for anything more than a boozy tumble. (Ow. Ooh, not there. Mmmph. Are you okay? Sorry.) We certainly did nothing to make good on the promise and longing of all those years.

  And yet, when it was over, we held tight and I spent the next hour staring at the tiny blond hairs on her temple, listening to her breathe on my neck, and we lay all night like that in each other’s arms, slowly sobering up, but not saying a word, not wanting to waste a second with talk or sleep, our fingertips lightly tracing each other’s bodies until dawn began to nudge at the curtains and we could stand it no longer and, aching, we pressed together again, and then all morning, clenching and arching and falling away. And I doubt that such things can be controlled, but the last memory I hope to indulge on this earth is the weight of Dana’s hand on my neck and the gust of her voice on my ear as she whispered, “Clark. Oh my God, yes.”

  When I finally gave in, it was to the deepest sleep I can ever remember. When I awoke, about three that afternoon, Dana was sitting in a chair across from my bed, talking on the phone. “No,” she was saying. “It was fine.” She listened for a few minutes. “I’m flying out tonight.” She listened again. “Clark?” She looked up at me. “Yeah, I saw him a little bit…. Well, we didn’t make any plans, but if I see him, I’ll tell him hi.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Love you too,” and hung up the phone.

  “Hi,” she said to me.

  “Hi.”

  She smiled sadly, and I had the inexplicable feeling there was someone else in the room with us—some version of our pasts or vision of our futures, some overwhelming sadness. “You have the worst timing of any person I’ve ever met,” she said finally.

  We showered separately, dressed, and drove into town. She wore a print dress that reminded me of the things she wore as a kid. She kept pushing her hair over her ears. We ended up
at the Davenport Hotel, which was just then beginning another renovation, and I stood quietly in kinship with it, my insides long ago gutted and abandoned, dead for fifteen years and now, against all reason and odds, crying out for rebirth.

  We drove out to the Valley, to her parents’ old house, in the apple orchards near the Idaho state line. They’d moved to Arizona a few years earlier, and Dana didn’t want to disturb the new owners. She sat low in the passenger seat of my rental car and traced the white porch railing on the car window. “We’re kids for such a short amount of time.” She turned and looked at me. “But forever.”

  Dana had never been to my house when we were in high school, and I said nothing as we drove past it. My mother was in the yard, her back to us, bent over a flower bed along the sidewalk in front of their house—her shoulders a little narrower, her hair a bouquet of gray. I passed behind her, a ghost in a rental car.

  “Where is it?” Dana asked a few blocks later. “I thought we were going by your house.”

  “It was back there,” I said.

  At the airport, I ordered a drink, but Dana didn’t want one. We sat at the end of the terminal, watching mothers preboard with their babies.

  “Have you thought about how you’re going to tell Michael?” I asked.

  “Tell Michael?” She cocked her head.