In Real Life

by Lawrence Tabak

  I shake my head. Mom has taken me to lots of art museums and exhibits, but if I’ve seen her paintings, I can’t remember.

  “I know, who is going to get that? As if my friends are art historians or something. I should take that down. I think I will as soon as I get home.”

  “You shouldn’t,” I say with surprising conviction. “It’s interesting. It made me stop and think. You know how hard that is to do on a Facebook page?”

  Then we talk about the courses we’re taking and find we have a couple of classes in common even though I’m technically a year behind her. But then we compare birthdays and we’re only like two months apart, because of the way the kindergarten start days work. So that makes me feel a little better, because it seems like girls don’t want to go out with younger guys. Anyway, all my classes are junior and senior stuff. Plus the math class that I’m signed up to take at UMKC, because I’ve run out of math at North.

  When the check comes Hannah grabs it and insists on paying. “You can get the next one,” she says when I protest. And I’m so psyched there will be a next one that I don’t utter another word.

  As we head back to the car I’m thinking she’s forgotten about the gaming stuff and still thinks I’m a fairly normal guy. But as she cranks the engine she turns and grins and says, “OK gamer boy. Let’s head to your place. I want to see you in action.”

  27.

  On the drive back I try to figure out how to tell her this is a bad idea. Because I’ve spent years trying to keep these things—school and gaming—in separate compartments. Virtually no one at North is onto my gaming life. And the local guys I game with—they’re mostly out of high school or go to different schools.

  But when I think about it, I really don’t know how to explain why I’ve kept these things separate. I guess because if girls like Brit thought I was a gaming nerd they’d never be seen with me. The guys I’ve seen her with, they’re the regular, popular guys you’d expect. They play sports, they’ve got dozens of friends, they walk the halls like they own the place. They’re all Garretts.

  So I direct Hannah to Dad’s place and when we pull up I say, “I guess you should know that my dad is out of town. I think he’ll be back tonight, but really late.”

  “And your mom is living in California, right?”

  “Right.”

  “So you’re telling me we’ll be all alone in your dad’s cozy little bachelor pad?”

  “Well, that’s not exactly what I meant.”

  “No?” Hannah cuts the engines and the lights so now when I look at her I can just see her silhouette. The streetlight down the block casts just enough light so that I can see a little glint from her eyes and the perfect curvature of her cheekbone and nose.

  “You weren’t planning on trying anything, were you?” she says, turning to look directly at me. Luckily it’s too dark for her to see me blush. I hope.

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  Hannah pops the door and says, “No, I didn’t think so.” But the way she says it makes me pretty sure she’s just punking me. And at the same time, the blood is rushing, thinking about being inside my place with her, just the two of us.

  As we walk up the front stoop I say, “Are you sure…”

  “Just open the stupid door,” Hannah says.

  So of course I fumble with the keys and drop them and when I finally get the door open and pop on the light Hannah steps through in front of me.

  She does a full take of the living room and says, “Well, I can tell your father is man of exquisite taste.”

  “Yeah?” I say, looking around at the velour couch, the big screen TV, the painting of the seascape as if I had never seen them before.

  “That painting is a nice touch—starving artists I bet. And that throw rug. It’s like the Dude’s rug in The Big Lebowski. It really ties the room together.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’ve often thought so myself.” Thinking, she can quote The Big Lebowksi. She’s even more awesome than I thought. And Mom, she would say the same thing about Dad’s sense of style. Back at our old house he had a whole room in the basement that was just for his sports stuff. The rest of the house was hers.

  “OK,” Hannah says. “Let’s see where you destroy the hopes of every little gamer boy in America.”

  Crap—my room. Which is completely covered with dirty clothes. And my computer desk looks like I’m some sort of world class Dr Pepper can collector.

  “Just give me a minute,” I say, and I run upstairs. Stuff all of the laundry under the bed, throw my bedspread over the messed covers and realize I’m just going to have to live with the cans.

  I’m breathing hard when I run back downstairs. I find Hannah in Dad’s study.

  “Nice room,” she says. She’s checking out the rows of Garrett’s basketball trophies, the framed pictures of his teams, the Chiefs memorabilia.

  “Well my dad thinks so.”

  She walks over and opens the refrigerator and glances at the rows of beers.

  She looks back up at me as she shuts the door and says, “My dad has his own getaway room too. It’s not beer and football. He’s more into classic rock and crime novels. But I get it.”

  Being in Dad’s room kind of creeps me out so I say, “Come on, you can be the first person to see my bat cave.”

  It is one of the dizziest, most exciting moments of my life. Leading Hannah into my bedroom. The scene of 1,001 fantasies, many of which have recently begun with, well, leading Hannah into my room.

  Hannah heads straight for my desk and begins looking over my computer equipment. I feel like giving her a hug just for not mentioning the general disarray and the expanse of Dr Pepper cans. When she touches the mouse it lights up and her hand jumps back as if it had shocked her.

  “That’s a weird-looking mouse.”

  I’ve got one of the better gaming mouses, a Logitech G6. When you touch it, it glows with a spiderweb of blue decorations. It has a couple more buttons than a normal mouse. My gaming keyboard glows red.

  “Serious gamers can get really particular about their equipment,” I say. “It’s like, I suppose, a musician. A couple of years ago my mom took me to see these old rock and rollers downtown, Elton John and Billy Joel. And Elton John, he just starts ranting about the problems with this grand piano he’s being forced to play, as if it’s a piece of junk and not a Steinway.”

  I put my hand on the keys. “I like this keyboard too. Here—type something.”

  Hannah leans over and pushes a couple keys that audibly click.

  “Weird,” she says.

  “It’s a mechanical keyboard. Most modern keyboards work with electrical contacts; this is more like the old style. But with a mechanical keyboard you get better feedback—you can tell if you’ve missed a stroke.”

  When I glance over at Hannah she seems interested. I sit down and start up the computer, then get up and grab an extra chair from Dad’s bedroom and set it next to mine. As the screen begins to glow a block of text appears.

  I’m anxious to boot up the Internet but as I reach for the keyboard Hannah’s leaning in tight.

  “Just a second,” she says. “What is this?”

  “Oh that doesn’t have anything to do with gaming. It’s not important.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.”

  Hannah reads the first line out loud.

  Below is a report on the Woltman Mersenne work you have queued and any expected completion dates. M9481531. Lucas-Lehmer test, 29 20:0909

  The chance that the exponent you are testing will yield a Mersenne prime is about 1 in 85843.

  After this box is another with a bunch of lines of code and numbers. “What the hell is that all about?” she asks.

  It’s bad enough that I’m giving myself up as a gaming nerd. But
a math nerd too? I see no way out so I sigh and say, “OK, I signed up to participate in this international effort to find the largest prime number. There are about ten thousand computers all working on the problem and I have the software installed that runs in the background. Basically it takes an insanely large number and divides it by every possible number. If none of them come out as a whole number, then I may have found it.”

  Hannah shakes her head. “And you just signed up for this, for what? Fun?”

  “Well, yeah. First of all it’s pretty cool, being part of that. And if the number I’m working on turns out to be the first prime number over twenty million digits I get my name attached to it and win a cash prize of $50,000.”

  I let Hannah soak that up while I click through Mozilla and start to boot up the Starfare server.

  “So what games have you played?” I ask Hannah.

  “I don’t know. A bunch of stuff. My brother is always begging me to play with him. He’s got a couple of those car racing games. I’m terrible at those. And Wii stuff like tennis and bowling. I’m actually pretty decent at Wii tennis. Back in New Jersey when we were in grade school we were into the Sims for a while. And last year some of my friends back there wanted me to get into Farmville but it never really took.”

  “You ever play any multiplayer strategy games?” I say as the Starfare screen pops up.

  “Not really, but I knew this guy back home. He got into one of those, I think it was called World of Warcraft. He just disappeared for a year.”

  I laugh as the IM screen lights up. “That happens a lot.”

  I punch through a series of pages to check on the latest ratings and see where I’m standing on the national list. Still number five.

  “What’s this? Hannah asks.

  I point to ActionSeth on the list. “National rankings. That’s me.”

  I click back onto the home page and get into the queue for an advanced one-on-one.

  Within a minute I’ve got a couple instant messages from players I know, throwing insults and asking me where the hell I’ve been.

  Hannah wants to know who all these people are and I tell her about a few of them. For instance, Grrr2 is a college guy. Real name, Saahil Bhupati. Computer science major at Carnegie Mellon. He’s always getting on these rants and is just generally hilarious. He played a lot more before he started college, but we still do some two-on-twos. Then a message from that girl who was at Nationals, RaiderRadar. Wanting to know if I could play a quick game.

  “Her real name is Morgan,” I say. “She’s probably the top-ranked girl in the country. I think my friend DT has a thing for her.”

  “And you?”

  “When we play, it’s all business,” I say. “If I don’t play my best, she’ll show no mercy.”

  “Why don’t you play her then,” Hannah says and I say fine.

  So I IM RaiderRadar and we get in the queue.

  Hannah is leaning over the monitor, trying to keep up with the banter when a message, all caps comes across.

  HEY PUSSY HEAR UR GAME IS STILL SHIT. U ALWAYS WERE A NOOB.

  It’s Stompazer. I shut down the IM window.

  “Well,” says Hannah. “I guess this gaming stuff is no different from the rest of the Internet. Hang out long enough and creeps will find you. ”

  “Yeah, that guy is a real jerk. He’s been on my case for a long time. Thinks he’s going to be world champ. And he would be too if you could just buy it. His old man is on every one of those ‘world’s richest guys’ lists.”

  Hannah is nodding. “Oh I know. We had a guy like that back in Jersey. Came to school in this million-dollar Porsche and expected everyone to kiss his shoes. His father hired Mellon Collie to play for his sixteenth birthday. Can you believe that?”

  Then my game comes up and after a twenty-second countdown I’m in. I can usually tell within three or four minutes if I’m going to have an edge, but Raider has always given me tough games. Naturally, I’m a bit distracted, thinking about what Hannah is thinking, but my hands seem to know what to do on their own.

  The first ten minutes can be extremely intense and I’ve got a lot of stuff going on at once, which means I’m all over the map, getting my munitions factories up and running while coordinating three different spybots which keep me posted of my opponents developments. If you were watching my hands, the way Hannah was, it wouldn’t make any sense at all. It would be like watching a little kid trying to pretend he was a piano virtuoso, my left hand a blur of action, the mouse clicking and weaving like it was alive and trying to escape my grasp.

  It’s over in about twenty minutes. As usual my endgame is just a little stronger.

  “Good game,” Raider IMs. “My honor, let’s do it again soon.” Then she signs off.

  “My honor?” Hannah says looking at the now-quiet screen. “What the hell was that anyway? I couldn’t make any sense of it, other than you seem to be really good at whatever it is.”

  I rock my chair back.

  “That, my dear, was a short display of some pretty damn high-level Starfare.”

  I click through to a site on the pro game. The title is “100,000 Fans Gather to Watch Starfare Finals.”

  Hannah leans in closer to the monitor. “A hundred thousand people to watch a video game?”

  “Only in Korea. That’s where the action—and money—is.”

  Then I show her the page which lists the pros’ year-to-date earnings. And when I tell Hannah my plans to get on that list, she doesn’t laugh or act like I’m nuts. So I just keep talking, telling her how it works, and how the American players haven’t really broken through, yet.

  And then, I almost faint because she asks if she can watch me play again. “I want to see that look on your face,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone that intense.”

  She doesn’t have to ask twice.

  28.

  When I’ve won the second game Hannah starts asking one question after another. “How do you learn this stuff?” “How many people play?” “Who are all the people messaging you?”

  Normally I don’t talk much, but once I start there’s no stopping me.

  “When did I start? Man, that’s like trying to remember when you had your first ice cream cone or the first time you saw the Simpsons. My mom says I was on the computer when I could hardly talk. Then my mom and dad started buying these stupid little computer games. If you looked at one of those now it would be like, I don’t know, seeing a horse and buggy. As I got older the games kept getting better and better and I just grew up with them.”

  For some of her questions I jump around the Web.

  For my online friends I show her a few profiles, which are actually pretty hilarious. We are looking at this photoshopped picture DTerra made of his head on a World of Warcraft ogre’s body then I hear a muffled ring tone so naturally we both pull our cells out. Hannah pulls out her cell and says hi.

  After a couple of “OKs” Hannah flips her phone shut. She’s sitting a little behind me and to my left. When I turn my head she’s right there. I’m not sure if the warmth is from my reddening cheeks or from her. I’m holding my breath, but with that last inhalation I smell her breath, sweet as vanilla.

  “You might be shocked to hear this,” she whispers. “But I actually had a really good time tonight. You know, this gaming thing is a pretty strange world. But I don’t mean bad strange. I mean most of the artists I like are pretty strange.”

  This is the time, I’m thinking, where I lean in and she closes her eyes and I kiss her. And I really want to. But it’s not like in the movies where everybody is placed just right and the background music is there and the director is saying to the actress, “Now close your eyes and lean in…” Because when I start to lean I can’t even reach her. And then she’s standing up.

  “I was s
upposed to be home ten minutes ago,” she says. “But there’s something…”

  I stand up. Now we’re close to being in the right position. But she’s turning, heading towards my bedroom door. She stops in the doorway. “I’ve got something I want to show you.”

  “Now?”

  She steps back into the room and reaches out. I’m about to grab her hand when she says, “Give me your phone.”

  I dig it out of my pocket and hand it over. She punches though the menus and fills out her whole profile. I’m trying not to be too obvious, peering over her busy fingers. When she puts in her actual address I’m pretty sure something like a gasp escapes my throat. She pretends she doesn’t notice.

  “Now I have to get home. Tomorrow. Call me.”

  I walk her to the front door. After she’s gone I head back to my room and flop onto my bed and look around. I’ve got a Starfare poster from one of their new release campaigns. A bunch of crappy little trophies on my dresser which you get for showing up for games from back when I was doing soccer and basketball. A bookshelf, mostly science fiction and fantasy. I’m thinking something’s different. It was like when my mom would come in and straighten things up. Or when I went to summer camp one year and she painted it. When I got home she took me into the room and said, “So what do you think?” And I couldn’t figure out what she was talking about, even though I could sense it. It was the same feeling. Something had changed, but I wasn’t sure what.

  29.

  I don’t hear Dad get in but when I wake up late I know he’s home. I can smell coffee. But by the time I get downstairs he’s gone. I’m into my second bowl of Frosted Flakes when I notice the note on the kitchen table.

  “Seth, call this number. Some Chinese guy.”

  I stuff the note into my pocket and head upstairs to check out some stuff on the Internet. After a while I get into a Starfare game and then another. I’ve just mopped up the second game when the landline rings. Usually I let it ring through to the answering machine but for some reason I go into Dad’s bedroom and pick it up.