Is she there now? I go to the window, but even pressing the side of my face to the glass, I can’t see the corner store from here.
I get my shoes.
* * *
—
SAFF ISN’T OUTSIDE THE CORNER STORE. No one is. I project Saff’s picture over the wall. It matches. My heartbeat is chittering away like a deathwatch beetle ringtone. The cashier is peering out at me from behind the counter. He’s new. I don’t know him; he doesn’t know me. It’s pretty obvious he doesn’t like me standing here outside the store.
I take my own picture of the not-a-heart graffiti, trying to line it up just the same as Saff’s. I send it back. Just as I’m telling myself she won’t reply, my screen chitters in my hand.
You’re there.
I stare at the message, waiting for the words to coalesce into another picture.
My thumbs twitch as I type, Where are you?
“Hey!” the cashier calls from inside. “Hey, you!”
The reply comes: Not there.
“What are you doing?” he shouts.
“Nothing. Just taking a picture.” I lift my screen as if to show him.
He comes out from behind the counter. “You can’t take pictures here!”
I nod—Okay, okay—and back up, hands raised, and head toward home. But when I get to our building, I keep going past it. I don’t know. I can’t stand to be up there right now with Mom’s fake animal models, the images of algae floating across my bedroom walls, the bathroom scale splotched with the exact same soap stains that have been there for years. There’s a bus stop two blocks over. I get on the 28, which goes to Dad’s apartment. I’ve only been there once since he moved in, but I’m thumbed into the locks.
As I ride, I snap pictures: the scratched-up bus window, the slicked-down back of the bus driver’s head, a gray brain of chewing gum stuck on the side of the seat. I send them to the unknown number one after the next—five, ten, dozens—so many they could be frames in a movie, so many you could use them to follow my trail.
Dad’s apartment is on the third floor of his building, but I take the elevator all the way to the fifth, which is the top. I take a picture of the five button and its nimbus of light. Send it.
The roof is a cement plateau with industrial fans and a waist-high stone lip. The building’s garden boxes are filled with cacti, someone’s idea of a joke or just an easy way to comply with the green-roof regulation. I pick a particularly wicked-looking cactus and take a close-up shot of its needles; then I go sit at the edge of the roof, not up on the edge, but at the base of the cement lip so that I can lean my back against it.
I try to think of Saff. I make my memories of her into still pictures—there and there and there. There was a time when she was so important to me, and now she’s gone. Maybe it’s just that we’ve known each other the exact amount of time we’re supposed to know each other. I don’t send the picture of the cactus needles after all. I’m not feeling prickly anymore. Not sad either. More empty, like a wind is blowing through and fluttering the edges of me.
My phone chitters. Poor Saff. I must’ve sent her over a hundred pictures. She must think I’m crazy. I make myself look at the message.
I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye.
I blink at the words.
She did, though. Saff did say goodbye. We both did, back in January.
I needed to get away.
I know you’re someone who can understand that.
The screen is shimmering, which means another message is about to come through. I stare at it, waiting.
I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten you.
Or didn’t care.
And then I get it.
Val? I almost say into my screen, but don’t. I don’t want her to know I mistook her for someone else.
That’s okay, I say instead. I’m okay. Thanks for the pictures.
You’re welcome.
Goodbye, I say.
Goodbye.
After a little while, I stand back up and take a picture out across the city, other rooftops, taller buildings, patches of better-tended gardens, and there’s surprisingly no fog today, so also the horizon.
“Rhett?”
I turn and Dad is at the rooftop door.
“The HMS said you were in the lobby. I couldn’t figure out where you went.”
“Oh. I didn’t think you’d be home. I came up here.”
“And I found you!” He points at me. Dad. More delighted by the solution than worried about the mystery. “Did you want to come downstairs? Hang out for a while?” He reorients his finger so that it points straight down.
I try to picture him and Mom together again. I used to wish for it when I was a kid. So much. In fact, even now when someone talks about wishing for something, I think of that: being thirteen in the bedroom of the apartment Mom and I had just moved into, in a room that I could almost pretend was my old bedroom when the lights were out, except even in the dark I could somehow sense that the bed was against a different wall, that the furniture wasn’t where it was supposed to be, wishing—wishing to the point of whispering—that everything would go back to how it was before. Wouldn’t it be funny if my parents got back together now? Now that I’m grown and gone?
“Let me guess,” Dad says. “That expression on your face means, Yeah, sure, Dad. Sounds like a fun afternoon.”
I look at him, and suddenly I’m not mad at him anymore.
“Yeah, sure, Dad. Sounds like a fun afternoon.”
He is visibly pleased.
“Just—let me send this.”
“To Saff?”
“Someone else.”
I send Val the picture of the rooftops, the horizon.
* * *
—
IT’S 7:42 P.M. IN SAN FRANCISCO, which means it’s 10:42 a.m. tomorrow in Beijing. My bedroom window is darkening dusk, but on the mountaintop it’s always midmorning. I get up from the vinyl chair where I’ve been sitting for a while now. I walk to the head of the trail and look down the mountainside. Past the snow and the sand, there’s a figure just emerging from the trees. In a second, he’ll raise his head and see me here, tiny at the top of the trail. In a second, he’ll come to meet me.
10
Tell the Machine Goodnight
Pearl couldn’t identify precisely when she’d begun talking to her Apricity. Sometime in the past year, after Rhett left for college and she was living alone once again. Once again? No, the past year was the first time she’d ever lived alone. She’d grown up with her parents and older sisters, had bunked with roommates through college, and had moved in with Elliot directly after graduation. When Elliot left, Rhett had remained. Once Rhett left, it was at last only her, only Pearl. And somehow the small murmurings one directs at one’s machine—the Where are you?s, the Hurry up, will you?s, the Stupid thing!s—had become full sentences, had become conversation, had become confession. It was now routine that when Pearl returned home in the evening she would slide the machine from its case, set it out on the kitchen table, and talk with it while she prepared dinner.
“This garlic smell is going to be on me for the next two days.” She’d pause mid-mince and give her fingertips a sniff. “I don’t know. I kind of like it.”
After dinner was made and eaten, the machine would take its place on the couch cushion next to hers, where they would count out the hours until bedtime, the opposite wall flickering with a movie and Pearl’s glass of beer sinking in on itself. “Ach!” Pearl would cry with a gesture toward the actress on the screen, the one everyone was saying would be the next Calla Pax. “She’s going to do it, isn’t she? She’s going to open that door. She is. Just you watch.”
At the end of the end of the day, the machine would come to rest on the nightstand, where, if she wished, Pearl could turn her head and see it, a sleek rectangle, di
stinct in the dim light. She did not go so far as to tell the machine goodnight.
* * *
—
NOW THAT RHETT was back for the summer, Pearl made a concerted effort not to talk to the machine, at least not out loud. After all, she was not dotty. She spoke to it silently, even now, as she walked toward the bar and the man she’d arranged to meet there, the machine in its case brushing against her hip in the rhythm of her stride, as if nodding along with the conversation.
One drink, she promised the machine. No matter how good or bad it is. One drink and then goodnight.
Pearl could not linger even if she wanted to. Rhett would notice if she stayed out late. The thought came with a swell and a sigh. She was elated to have Rhett home, though a tiny part of her would miss her lonesome routine.
Not “lonesome,” the machine spoke. And not “lonely.” “Lone.” Your lone routine.
The machine did not speak aloud either. Apricity was, despite Carter’s best efforts, still voiceless. The plan to have it deliver its reports in Calla Pax’s voice had fizzled when, at the last minute, Calla had refused to sign the contracts. Of course, Pearl was called in to persuade. A few days earlier, Pearl had seen the girl swallowed by a crowd so dense they’d had to dispatch Apricity security guards to fish her out. Calla had emerged from the press of flesh unscathed and, it seemed, with a new purpose.
Pearl hadn’t recognized the girl who approached her in the Apricity lobby yesterday. Only when she’d said Pearl’s name in that famously husky voice did Pearl look closer at the shorn hair and translucent brows and lashes.
“Calla?” she asked, and the girl put a finger to her lips with a conspiratorial smile.
“Not anymore. I get to pick a new name.” She glanced around the lobby at all the people walking by unstopping and unstaring. “I’m thinking Gert.”
Pearl marveled. It wasn’t just hair and makeup; even the line of Calla’s posture, even the bones of her face, looked different.
“I’m leaving the business.” Calla said it lightly.
“You are? And Marilee—”
“Agrees. It was her idea.”
“What are you—”
“Going to do? Travel for a while. With a friend.”
“That was scary the other day.” Pearl put her hand on Calla’s arm. “I’m glad you’re retiring.”
“Oh, I’m not retiring!” She smiled and her nose crinkled, amused at Pearl’s naïveté. “I’m just disappearing for a year. Creating buzz. For my comeback.” She snatched Pearl’s hand from her arm and pressed the palm to her lips for a quick kiss, then blended anonymously into the crowd. After a few steps, she turned back and called across the lobby, “Sorry I can’t be your machine!”
When the machine spoke to Pearl now, she wasn’t sure whose voice it used, but it wasn’t Calla’s.
Your lone routine, the machine repeated.
Her lone routine. Yes. Why was she going on a date tonight anyway?
Elliot, the machine supplied.
Right. She’d scheduled the date because of Elliot.
Even though the bar was filled to the brim with the after-work crowd, Pearl spotted the man, her date, right away. He was at a table in the back corner, seated so he faced the door, with one of those folding bicycles curled up at his feet like a dog. His hairline was ceding ground to his forehead, but the wrinkles looked like the right kind, made by smiles, not frowns.
The machine reminded her of his name: Mason.
When she reached the table, he stood. Is that nice? That he stood?
Yes, the machine replied. In this overcrowded, underwhelming world, any gesture, no matter how slight, expressing that one person recognizes another person is a nice thing indeed.
But if he pulls out my chair, Pearl thought, that will be too much.
Pulling out your chair would strike the tin note of insincerity, the machine agreed.
Mason did not pull out Pearl’s chair, merely shook the hand she’d made offer of and asked if he could fetch her a drink.
“Vodka martini,” she told him, “with a splash of olive juice.”
“Splash of olive juice,” Mason repeated, and disappeared into the crowd.
“Dirty” was the way you were supposed to order this preparation, but Pearl did not want to say the word dirty in the first sentence of her first date in however many years.
Three, the machine supplied, it’s been three years since you’ve gone on a date. Three years and five months, to be precise.
Three years (and five months) ago she’d dated David, and him only briefly. David the divorcé. David the orthodontist. David the good citizen, who devoted one weekend each month to a different cause in need. Pearl was intimately familiar with David’s altruism, emphasis on intimate. During sex, David liked to wear the thank-you T-shirts he’d gotten for his volunteer work. “Homeless Youth Food Drive” on the top and naked on the bottom. “Skin Cancer Fun Run” on the top and naked on the bottom. Pearl began to think of these sessions as “charity fucks.” Suffice it to say, it hadn’t been love.
You had a date last week, the machine said slyly. If you count Elliot.
No, Pearl did not count Elliot. Nor did she consider the nights he stayed over to be dates. Elliot didn’t know Pearl was here at the bar. Didn’t know that she’d created a profile on Spark Stats, a process that the app had informed her would take thirty to forty-five minutes but had taken Pearl a mere ten, her hastiness a performance of her nonchalance. For her favorite movie, she’d written the title of the last one she’d seen. For her profile picture, she’d used the photo from her work badge. UV light and her bangs all funny—who cared? Not Pearl.
“Olive juice,” she muttered like a curse.
Did you know that if you mouth the words olive juice, the machine said, it looks like you’re saying I love you?
We used to do that when we were kids, Pearl replied.
Who did? Not you and I. I was never a kid.
I meant me and the other kids in my neighborhood.
Did you ever notice how people do that? the machine asked. Use we to mean the people they were children with, without any names or other reference?
I hadn’t noticed, Pearl admitted. But you’re right. People do that.
A glass was set in front of her.
“Vodka martini, splash of olive juice.” Mason slid into his seat, lifting his heels back up on his bike and tenting his hands over the small pooch of his stomach.
“When we were kids,” Pearl told him, “we used to mouth the words olive juice. Then when the other person said, ‘I love you, too,’ we’d laugh and tell them we hadn’t said, ‘I love you,’ we’d said, ‘Olive juice.’”
Mason raised his eyebrows, the lines on his forehead rising in accordance. “Don’t tell me you’re saying ‘olive juice’ on the first date.”
So he has a sense of humor, the machine observed.
An hour later, despite earlier promises to self, Pearl stayed for a second drink. And the machine joined them, sitting within a proscenium of empty glasses Mason arranged for it, shining and sober. She’d only gotten it out of its case because Mason had asked if he could see it.
“I went to a palm reader once. I’ve been to a therapist”—Mason shielded the side of his mouth in a mock whisper—“more than once. My ex-wife hired an interiority designer who changed all our light fixtures, which was supposed to fixture all our troubles.” He tapped his heels against his bike. “I exercise. I’ve done a lot in the name of happiness—”
“You’re going to say that you’ve never sat for an Apricity,” Pearl interrupted.
“That’s right. That’s what I was going to say.”
“And then you’re going to ask if I can do one for you now. But I can’t! I don’t have my swabbing kit, and besides”—she touched the edge of the machine—“they keep track at wor
k.”
“No freebies, huh? I get it. Bad for business.”
This wasn’t strictly true. Pearl could’ve done the assessment. She knew how to get around the tracking software. And it was tempting, the idea that she could discover Mason’s secret desires right here and now, instead of years later when he left her for a pink-haired twenty-something and then, done with that, returned to her doorstep, head hanging from his neck at the same dejected angle as the bottle hanging from his hand. And she’d let him in! Like a fool, she’d let him in!
“But maybe—” Pearl began. I could make an exception, she was going to say.
Bad idea, the machine cut her off. Adding, You’re drunk, you know.
And she was, Pearl realized, or at least tipsy, her typical nightly beer no match for the two martinis she’d sipped to nothing. She planted her hands on the table and pushed herself to standing. “Excuse me,” she said.
The bathroom was single occupancy, and of course there was a line. When she finally gained entrance, Pearl sat on the toilet and then sank forward, her chest pressing against the tops of her thighs. Her ears rang in the sudden silence. What the hell was she doing? She wished she had a machine designed to answer that question. She’d told herself that she was signing up for Spark Stats as a gesture of independence, but she could see now that the gesture had been an empty one, that she’d expected to go on a bad date or two with horrible men and then return to Elliot feeling she’d somehow balanced the scales. But that wasn’t independence; that was spite. And anyway Mason wasn’t a horrible man. He was here to find companionship, connection, happiness.
Someone knocked on the door.
Tell the Machine Goodnight Page 21
