The Last Days of Video

by Jeremy Hawkins

  “You what?”

  “She just realized it’s bullshit.”

  “It is?”

  “I told you, it’s a pyramid scheme. She’s actually paying them, probably her life savings, for the privilege of recruiting for them.”

  Jeff reported how much money Alaura had said she was paying.

  “I mean, fuck!” Waring bellowed. “It’s a business scam wrapped in new age self-help mumbo-jumbo bullshit. I knew it, and now she knows it, too.”

  “You got all of that from talking to her for, like, a minute?”

  “She’s my best friend.”

  Waring—realizing he had divulged more than he intended—lit a cigarette, focused on the road.

  “But what exactly are we doing when we get there?” Jeff said.

  “We go in, be loud and obnoxious, bring Alaura to her senses, and bring her home with us.”

  “You could really do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “How do you barge into a place? Where do you get the . . . the confidence?”

  Waring glanced at Jeff, and he realized that the kid’s question was entirely serious. Then Waring thought, for some reason, of his ex-wife. Her dark hair, her smart-ass sense of humor, her small body next to his in bed. Years ago, after their separation, he had planned to storm into her office in Manhattan and make a scene in the hopes of winning her back. But he had never done it. Because she hated him. All of his bluster would have been for nothing. That he’d loved her didn’t matter.

  But he could help Alaura now.

  “I’ve got no advice for you, Jeff,” Waring said. “You just fucking do it.”

  “But Karla, did you follow a script?” Alaura asked again—she was straining to keep her voice calm. “In the diner, at brunch with Constance, when you first told me about Reality. Were you following a script?”

  Karla frowned. “Where is this hostility coming from, Alaura?”

  “I’m not hostile. I’m feeling strange. About recruiting.”

  “It’s not recruiting, Alaura.”

  “It feels like recruiting.”

  “You’re sharing your experience, Alaura, with those you love.”

  Alaura tried to roll her eyes, tried to act tough.

  Then Thom Trachtenberg emerged from a door labeled “Private”; he walked toward them and laid a casual arm over Karla’s shoulders.

  “Hello, beautiful people!” he said. “Everything positive?”

  Alaura watched Karla poke forward her perfect honeydew breasts, activate her internal radiance. “Alaura is experiencing apprehension with her goals for the future.”

  “Is she?”

  “No, I’m . . . well . . . not excited about recruiting,” Alaura said.

  Thom shuddered with intense disappointment. “Recruiting?” he said.

  “No,” Alaura said, realizing her mistake. “Not recruiting. What I meant was—”

  “Alaura, I think we’re seeing some of your self-doubt springing forth.”

  “No, we’re not. It’s only that Karla used a lot of the same wording when she asked me to come here. The same wording from the script.”

  Thom’s voice lowered: “It’s a guide, Alaura, not a script.”

  “But the thing is—I don’t have many people to call.”

  “Nonsense. I’m sure you have friends and family.”

  “I don’t,” Alaura protested, almost whining. “Really.”

  She looked down at herself, at the midnight blue Calvin Klein business suit she had purchased for today—she had never owned a business suit before.

  Thom removed his arm from Karla’s shoulders, stepped forward, and snaked his other arm around Alaura—a smooth transition from one acolyte to another. “Alaura,” he said soothingly, now guiding her back to her cubicle. “It is very important that we take this step. It is only through helping others that we learn to love ourselves.”

  “Maybe that’s true,” Alaura said, “but maybe this isn’t . . . my path. Maybe this isn’t how I help people.”

  “Sometimes our path is not clear to us, and we have to break through our fears, through those things that terrify us the most.”

  “But aren’t there some other energy exercises we can do?” Alaura asked weakly. “I’m sure there are some things about my past I haven’t told you yet—”

  “Now is the time to act. Now is the time to move forward.”

  Alaura realized she was back in her cubicle, sitting in her chair, almost as if she’d been teleported here. She looked around her; Thom and his musky odor had evaporated.

  But who could she call?

  Oh God, she was on the verge of tears. She had to have friends who wouldn’t think she was entirely psychotic for calling them about the Reality Center.

  She thought again of Jeff. She had his e-mail address memorized. But God, what the hell had she been thinking? She’d been minutes, inches from seducing Jeff. It had been wrong, so wrong. Disgusting. She was over ten years older than him. And now he probably hated her, which she certainly deserved.

  Finally a name popped into her head. Helen Silber, customer account number W443521. Helen always rented two Bob the Builders and the latest British comedy. She seemed sad, always that tired slump to her shoulders, always that same strained smile, so Alaura tried to be extra nice to her, tried to keep her away from Waring. Maybe Helen would benefit from Reality.

  Another name: Bill Scranton, W423222. His son had Down syndrome. A nice man. Always asked how business was going. Never got frustrated when his son misbehaved, but still he always seemed exhausted by his life.

  And another: Ed Clyde. She couldn’t remember his customer number, but he always hung around, wanting to talk movies for hours. Jesus, he seemed so lonely, no one better to talk to than the tattooed girl at the video store.

  She knew the names and stories and rental histories of a hundred Star Video customers. Sometimes, out in public, at bars or in grocery stores or on the sidewalk, customers would approach her and ask how she was doing, and more often than not, she could not remember their names—outside the confines of the shop, she was helpless. But now her memory seemed to crack open, a treasure trove uncovered in desperation, names rushing before her like the late-return list emerging from the Star Video printer.

  This is a mistake, she thought. I won’t call them.

  But she Googled anyway, found their phone numbers easily.

  They all like me, she reassured herself. And some of them seem like they could really use this.

  All she had to do was call.

  The moments inside the Reality Center transpired for Jeff in painful confusion. But he had promised Waring that he would not leave his side, would not try to escape before they found Alaura.

  Waring pulled the Dodge to a skidding halt, sprawling slantwise across two parking spaces. Waring hopped out of the car at once, and Jeff followed, hands thrust in his pockets, trying to look nonchalant. The structure in front of them that corresponded with the address in the phonebook was a dull, two-story building composed of an unidentifiable brown material and flat black windows and was surrounded by perfect maple trees that might have been clipped out of a magazine from the 1950s. The place looked like it had been designed to house an assortment of offices—optometrists, therapists, tax preparers—and not a weird life-training cult.

  A sign above the building’s main entrance, written in a font worthy of an evil corporation from a 1980s sci-fi movie, read:

  WELCOME TO REALITY

  “Let’s do this,” Waring said.

  “Okay,” Jeff said.

  Waring led the charge. He pushed through a revolving door, and they found themselves in an expansive, immaculately clean lobby with black marble floors. It was warm in the building. Lined on the walls around them were several flat-screen televisions, all of them showing slideshows of people smiling, holding hands, walking around lakes, and doing trust falls.

  “Ew,” Waring said.

  They kept moving. A moment later, th
ey’d passed through a brightly lit hallway and entered a wide-open, empty conference room. The ceiling here was thirty feet high. Upon a small stage to their right stood a lonely microphone stand, like both a musician and her entire audience had just fled the scene.

  “What the hell is that?” Waring said, pointing upward.

  Above them, running along the wall below the ceiling, was a series of weird quotes printed on large white boards.

  “The Future Is Now,” Jeff read. “Isn’t that, like, a contradiction in terms?”

  “Yes, Jeff,” Waring said, smiling and nodding at his employee. “That’s absolutely fucking right.”

  Then a woman appeared in front of them. She was a well-put-together business type with an impossibly tight ponytail. She asked politely, but with a note of concern in her voice, if they needed help. Jeff was too embarrassed look at her, but he heard Waring say steadily:

  “I’m Alaura’s brother. We have a family emergency.”

  “Alaura is unavailable, sir. I’ll give her a message as soon as she’s free.”

  “No,” Waring said, his tone quickly rising, angry. “This is a real emergency.”

  “Sir, I—”

  Waring walked past her.

  Jeff muttered an embarrassed apology and followed.

  They moved down a hallway. Waring tested several doors.

  “Sir!” the woman called after them.

  Around them spanned more posters:

  REALITY IS NOW

  TECHNOLOGY IS A TOOL

  PROGRESS IS FREEDOM

  “Ugh,” Waring muttered, holding his stomach as if nauseated. “You’d think they’d avoid all this 1984-type shit.”

  Finally they entered a large room divided into cubicles.

  “Alaura!” Waring called out.

  All at once, twenty heads popped into view, and Jeff found Alaura’s face near the center of the room. Her eyes were wide open and bloodshot, and Jeff noticed that all of the people, even Alaura, wore suit coats. The women’s hair was all neatly in place. The men were all cleanly shaven. Jeff became immediately aware of the scruff on his own chin, tinged a rebellious red. And he had not visited a barber in over a month—the unattended hairs on the back of his neck seemed to gain weight, pull at his skin. He knew he looked terrible, grungy, unkempt. More like Waring than anyone else here. Had he even showered that morning?

  Waring stepped forward and began to navigate the cubicles. Jeff followed, and soon they reached Alaura. She was standing there, facing them, clutching her purse—as if ready to leave. And for the second time since meeting her, Jeff saw that her heavy eyeliner was dripping down her face. She had been crying.

  Then, even more confusing for Jeff, Alaura said to Waring, “Why are you here, you fucking assholes?”

  “I’m Thom Trachtenberg,” announced a deep voice. “What are you people doing?”

  The voice had emerged from a solid-looking man who had materialized a few feet away from them, in the center of the main walkway between the cubicles. To Jeff, the man looked both ridiculous and frightening; he had a feathered mullet and chiseled jaw, and his arms were spread wide as if he were attempting to perform a miracle.

  “We’re taking Alaura home,” Waring snarled at the man.

  “It is her choice to be here,” Thom said.

  “It’s my choice to take her home, you sack of shit.”

  Thom crossed his arms, raised his strong chin. “We are helping guide Alaura into the future.”

  A moment later, Jeff saw that several young men and women—Alaura’s classmates, including a gorgeous redhead with mesmerizingly full lips—were standing behind Thom. And like Thom, they all crossed their arms.

  Jeff heard Waring snort.

  The snort quickly turned into a chuckle.

  The chuckle into cackling laugher.

  “Did you hear him, Jeff?” Waring finally managed to say. “He said they’re . . . they’re—”

  “Is this a time for laughter?” Thom’s voice boomed.

  Waring leaned forward, held his stomach, and whaled—Jeff didn’t know exactly why his boss was laughing, yet at the same time, it made total sense.

  “Yes, I think it is a time for laughter!” Waring said. “I think you guys are fucking hilarious!”

  Jeff realized Alaura was standing next to him. Her head was pressed against his shoulder. Like that night last week, on the couch in her apartment. He looked down at her, but her head hung so low that he could not see her face. He placed his hand on her waist, felt her weight give way into him.

  “We’ve heard all about you, sir,” Thom was saying to Waring. “You are most certainly Alaura’s drunken, abusive employer. I can smell the alcohol and cigarettes on your person. Why would you try to impede Alaura’s progress in improving her life?”

  Waring, still laughing, turned again to Jeff. “They’re standing there like they’re the fucking Boondock Saints!”

  Jeff looked at the group of suits standing in front of him—Waring was right, they did look like a nerdy little military—and Jeff found himself beginning to laugh as well.

  “Sir,” Thom continued, “isn’t it obvious that the modern world will be one of interconnectedness? That those who shut themselves off from the world, those who push away their problems and drown them with means of escape, will be left behind? Look at everyone here. We’re all trying to connect with others. You must know that with your unhealthy influence and your dead-end business, you are holding Alaura back from achieving her full potential.”

  Waring’s laughter stopped instantly.

  He stepped toward Thom.

  “Her full potential?” Waring said in a low voice. “Look at her.”

  Alaura was now completely curled under Jeff’s arm, bent forward, near collapse.

  And with a voice harsher, meaner, and sincerer than Jeff had ever heard him use, Waring said slowly:

  “Alaura wants her money back. And if you ever mess with her again, if you ever call her, mail her, anything, I promise that I . . . will . . . kill . . . you.”

  For a moment, Thom held Waring’s intense stare.

  “I’m sorry, Thom,” Alaura said softly. Jeff looked down at her; she was still huddled weakly against him.

  “Alaura?” Thom said.

  “I need to go home.”

  “But you’ve come so far, Alaura. You’ve been so strong. You’re one of us. All we’ve asked of you, Alaura, is to be yourself. And to make some phone calls.”

  Alaura glanced at him. “Thom?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thanks for everything, but if I hear you repeat my name one more time, I think I might kill you myself.”

  The man with the feathered hair scowled, his lips curling inward like a spoiled little boy who’d just overheard his parents insulting his mediocrity.

  A moment later, he seemed to recover; donning an obviously fake smile, he turned to the other classmates and raised his hands, cleansing himself of this fiasco.

  And without another word, Waring turned to Jeff, nodded, and they walked out of the room with Alaura between them.

  Five minutes later, Waring piloted his Dodge back onto I-40 and headed west toward Ehle County. Jeff sat on the passenger side. Alaura lay in the backseat like a sick child. Waring had no idea what to say to her. He wanted to fix everything. But he knew that if he spoke, anything he said would be wrong. The interstate traffic had picked up—Raleigh rush hour. People driving home in their little air-conditioned bubbles, singing along to their radio or yammering into their cell phones. Waring’s car was by far the oldest and rustiest on the road, and it rattled and squealed every time traffic forced him to decelerate. At this rate, it would take them over an hour to get home.

  “Alaura?” Waring said finally, unable to stand the silence.

  “What?” she murmured.

  “I want it to be known—I could have massacred that asshole.”

  Alaura: no response.

  “I could have,” Waring went on. “I wanted t
o. He looked like Khan, by the way. I can’t believe you paid them.”

  “Not now, Waring. Please.”

  “Of all your religious excursions, this is by far the stupidest. I can’t believe Karla fell for it, too. You’d think that with a body and face like hers she’d be smarter—”

  “Please,” Alaura said, sniffling. “Just don’t.”

  “Leave her alone, Waring,” Jeff said.

  Waring glanced at Jeff. “Okay, freshman, just calm down.”

  “I am calm.”

  “And did you actually do a trust fall?” Waring said to Alaura, as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all, looking at her in the canted rearview mirror. “I thought you were over that religious crap.”

  “It’s not a religion.”

  “What’s wrong with religion?” Jeff asked.

  “It’s . . .” but Waring’s voice trailed off.

  “What?” Jeff persisted.

  “It’s just wrong, okay, Jeff? It’s the twenty-first fucking century. Religion is part of the whole human thing.”

  Jeff laughed, and he turned to look calmly out the window at the lumbering traffic. “Man, what are you talking about?”

  “The Reality Center isn’t a religion,” Alaura muttered.

  “Alaura understands,” Waring said. “Or she should, after today’s fucked-up experience.”

  Now Alaura’s breathing had gone wet and heavy; she was crying. “Stop it,” she said.

  Waring looked at her in the rearview. “Alaura, are you really—”

  “Just stop it! Please don’t be an asshole, Waring. Please!”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “I know it was fucked up, okay?” she said. “I put a lot of money on my credit card. I bought this stupid outfit. I bought a damn iPhone. Why? What am I going to do with an iPhone? How am I going pay off my credit card? I’m such a fucking idiot.”

  “No, you’re not, Alaura,” Waring said quickly. He felt his face stinging, like he might start crying himself. “Stop it, sweetie. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  “And I almost called . . . a few . . . of our customers.” Alaura heaved for breath. “I looked up their numbers. I was going to call them. But then . . . then . . . then you guys showed up. But I was going to call. I really was.” She blew her nose into a napkin she’d found on the floorboard. “I’m pathetic. So pathetic. I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any friends.”