Are You There and Other Stories

by Jack Skillingstead

  “No, I think it’s fine.” He sat back down. “I didn’t even know they could do that, I mean the thing with the superimposed head.”

  “Oh, yeah, they can do it. The jector’s in my necklace. Look, do you really think this is all right?”

  “I don’t know. It is if we want it to be.”

  She seemed to consider that, then closed her menu. “I’m going to have the bouillabaisse.”

  *

  Beverman’s firm was only a few blocks from Larson’s midtown office. He walked over the next day, without an appointment. In the outer office a young clean-cut man named Frenkle told him he could expect to wait half an hour before Beverman would be available. “Unless you’d prefer to make an appointment. . .”

  “I’ll wait.” Larson installed himself in a chair, tabbed into Business Week magazine and began turning virtual pages, his mind and eyes skimming lightly over an article about the new Chinese ascendancy in commercial aviation.

  “Good boy,” Frenkle said in a quiet voice.

  Larson looked up. Turned aside from his desk and bent forward in his chair, Frenkle was making little petting motions in the air just above a downloaded ‘Corky’ poodle. Larson’s stomach muscles tightened. He closed the magazine. The virtual dog was looking at Frenkle with adoration.

  “Isn’t that frustrating,” Larson said.

  “Isn’t what frustrating?” Frenkle said.

  “Pretending to pet a dog that isn’t there.”

  “Corky’s there. I can’t touch him, but it’s easy to imagine what it would feel like. I used to have a live dog. And Corky reacts just as if I were petting him. Honestly, I never thought a virtual dog could be such wonderful company.”

  “Yeah, who would have thought it?”

  A few minutes later Frenkle said, “Mr. Beverman will see you now.”

  Larson strode into the office like he was storming a beach.

  *

  In bed Vina was generous and patient, which inspired Larson to be the same. So different from his love-making with Kristine. His ex with her beautiful, model-perfect features and body—it was like he was always watching himself make love to her, separating the person from the body. His body and her body. Like it was the bodies that mattered.

  “That was so nice,” Vina said, lying in his arms.

  “It really was.”

  She snuggled and kissed his neck. “Can I ask you a personal question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Why did you and my boss get divorced?”

  “Uh—”

  “You don’t have to answer that. I’m so dumb sometimes.”

  “No, it’s okay. I don’t think I could explain it, though. I mean, you’d have to have been there.”

  “I understand.”

  “I wish I did. Do you think I’m too gloomy? That was one of Kristine’s raps against me.”

  “I don’t know. You seem okay to me.”

  “I think I’m okay.”

  “You two didn’t have any kids, did you?”

  “No. Just Cory.”

  “The poodle?”

  “Right.”

  After a while, Vina asked, “Do you ever miss her?”

  “He’s right in the next room.”

  “Her—your wife.”

  “No, not really,” he said.

  “Not really but sort of, or, No, you don’t miss her?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Vina nuzzled his neck and sighed.

  But later on, after she fell asleep, Larson acknowledged to himself that, yes, he did miss Kristine. He didn’t miss fighting with her all the time. He didn’t miss the stress. But he did miss her sometimes. For instance, he missed lying in bed with her after making love—after the self-conscious performance part. And he missed walking into a party with her on his arm—Kristine the great beauty in full-on gorgeous mode. Who wouldn’t miss the feeling of being the lucky one, the guy with the most beautiful woman in the room?

  But he didn’t miss miss her. He just missed the idea of her, sometimes. The idea of certain aspects of her, not the whole picture.

  *

  On Saturday afternoon Larson and Vina took Cory for a walk in the park. Larson had been avoiding the park, after his encounter with DeVris and his Corky download. For a while it seemed half the population of New York City owned a copy of Larson’s poodle. But today it wasn’t like that; maybe the fad was over and everybody deleted Corky or left him as an unused data file, like a real dog dropped off at the pound and forgotten.

  “It was just one of those stupid web-fads,” Vina said. “I don’t know why it bothered you so much.”

  “I don’t know. All those nanoswarm copies, I felt like it cheapened my real relationship with my dog.”

  “Why would it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “When you think about it, there’s no reason it would unless that’s what you wanted it to do.”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  Cory plodded along at the end of his leash, his head down, ears and tail drooping. He stopped once in a while to sniff at the grass, but he wasn’t as lively as the fresh air and sunshine should have made him. He wasn’t lively at all, and that worried Larson.

  Vina slipped her arm around Larson’s as they walked. “I might take Cory to the vet,” he said. “Poor little guy doesn’t have any zip, lately.”

  “How old is he?”

  “Nine and a half.”

  “That’s getting up there, for a dog.”

  “It’s not that old.”

  Vina hunkered next Cory, who was snuffling at nothing visible for no discernable reason. She ruffled Cory’s fluffy head. “You’re a good dog, aren’t you,” she said.

  Cory raised his head but his ears did not twitch up alertly like they would have if he was feeling better.

  Looking at the top of Vina’s head, at the part in her thick, coarse hair (so different from Kristine’s angel-soft blond tresses), Larson felt a surge of undiluted affection and companionability, which he identified as love.

  “Hey,” he said.

  Vina looked up.

  “I’m having a really good day,” he said.

  “Me, too.”

  “And you know what?”

  She smiled. “What?”

  “I’m having it because I’m with you.”

  Her smile got a lot bigger. “I’m having a great day,” she said.

  They continued their walk, crossing a sunny meadow. Three girls in short, pleated cheerleader skirts and tank tops practiced gymnastically difficult moves, their tight and tan midriffs exposed as they stretched into slow backward flips and executed high, pom-pom waving leaps.

  Vina noticed him noticing the girls. Larson couldn’t help but notice other girls. His cheating days were over, though. “Show offs,” Vina said about the cheerleaders, like she couldn’t care less, which maybe she couldn’t

  “It’s a disgrace, all right,” Larson said.

  “Did you know I tried out for cheerleaders back in high school?”

  “No kidding.”

  “Yeah, I’ve got some serious moves. Watch me!”

  She skipped a few steps ahead of him, and Larson hated himself for noticing her relative dowdiness. Only minutes ago he was noticing her, the girl he was falling in love with. Now the idiot part of his brain was making comparisons. She wore a pair of black Levis and a light gray button down shirt, and when she executed an ungainly cartwheel the shirt fell away, revealing her pasty white skin and love-handles. The cartwheel fell apart and she tumbled onto the grass, laughing. Sitting there, legs spread wide and arms crossed like a pouty child, she said, “Did I make the cut, coach?”

  “You bet, kid.”

  *

  In bed a month later, transported by passion, Larson said, “You look good enough to eat.”

  “I’ve been working out.”

  “Really.”

  “Going to the gym every day on my lunch-break. What do you think?”

 
“I think you look great, but I always think you look great.”

  “You’re sweet to say that.”

  “I mean it. But—”

  “But what?”

  “I don’t know. You don’t seem like the gym kind of girl.”

  “I’m not really. But I thought it was time to get in shape.”

  “Remember when we used to have sex on our lunch breaks?” Larson said.

  “Of course I remember. Geeze.” She threw the sheet off, exposing her whole body. So, what so you think of the new me.”

  He traced his fingertips over the slight swell of her belly. “I think you could take me with one hand tied behind your back. But I liked the old—”

  She sat up suddenly and pushed Larson over on the mattress, hands locked on his wrists, pinning his arms down, straddling him. “Maybe. But I think I’m going to use both hands.”

  *

  Larson was alone in the apartment and it was raining hard. Vina was at the gym. She was always at the gym. Working out and ‘getting in shape’ was stealing more and more of her time. Larson missed her. He didn’t miss the idea of her, or certain aspects of her—he missed her.

  Cory lay curled in his little basket bed. He spent a lot of time in the basket. The vet had diagnosed him, somewhat vaguely, as suffering from intestinal difficulties—something they needed to keep an eye, since it might or might not be serious. Cory’s meds made him even more listless than he’d already become.

  The phone trilled. Larson touched it, and Beverman’s avatar appeared courtesy of Projektrix. “You’re going to love this, Travis. Love it.”

  “Love what?”

  “I found a way to get Kristine on the Corky thing.”

  “I thought you said there was no language in the divorce settlement to—”

  “There isn’t. I’m not talking about the divorce settlement. I’m talking about intellectual property law. We can successfully argue that you made Cory the poodle he is, by diligent training and a daily regimen. Before you got hold of Cory he was just a generic dog. You said yourself that Kristine had nothing to do with the training, care and feeding of the beast, right?”

  “Right. But there’s no such thing as a generic dog.”

  “Just listen to me. Think of Corky—”

  “Cory.”

  “Whatever. Think of Cory as a piano you and Kristine bought. This piano sits in the living room, takes up space and collects dust. Because nobody seriously plays the piano unless they’ve always played the piano. But you did play, my friend. You wrote songs on that piano. And then when the divorce came, Kristine appropriated a copy of the piano—which was a harmless deed. But she also appropriated the songs you wrote on it, which she then promptly infected all over the web.”

  Larson pressed his fingers to his temples, squinting at his attorney’s avatar. “Cory isn’t a piano.”

  “You’re missing the point! What made the Corky download popular wasn’t the fact that he was a cute poodle. What made him popular was what you trained the poodle to do. Around and around and around, for example.” Berverman’s avatar made a silly whirling motion with his finger. “What made Corky popular were the songs you wrote on him. In other words, Kristine has stolen your intellectual property.”

  The attorney’s avatar rubbed virtual hands together like Scrooge McDuck in a bank vault.

  The real Cory struggled up on his feet, whimpering, and dragged himself to his water bowl. Larson kept the bowl close to the poodle’s bed, but Cory still had to get up to drink. It was painful to watch.

  “What does all that mean?” Larson asked Beverman. “What can we actually do about it?”

  “Oh, nothing much.”

  “Then what’s the point?”

  “Travis. The poodle is already out of the bag, so to speak. There is no recapturing the information, or retrieving all the thousands of virtual Corkys. But a judgment against Kristine will wound her credibility in the legal profession. If you want to strike back, this is how we do it. Trust me. We could even exact damages, if you want to go that route. But the point is to strike back for your emotional suffering.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? That’s it? After all the—”

  “Okay.”

  Larson killed the avatar. Rain gusted in gritty waves against the wall-to-wall windows. Mid-afternoon and it was dark enough to require lamp light. Cory struggled back to his bed.

  “Good dog,” Larson said.

  Cory’s little stub-tail wagged briefly.

  Emotional suffering.

  *

  Every day, Larson returned to the apartment at lunch to check on Cory, give him his afternoon meds, and see if he needed to go out to the little green patch at the side of the building and relieve himself. The Tuesday after the call from Beverman, Larson found the poodle lying unnaturally still in his little bed. On the floor next to the bed there was a puddle of vomit threaded with blood.

  Larson’s mouth opened and the breath halted in his chest. He stared hard. Usually you could see the poodle’s flank rising and falling when he slept. This time: nothing. Grief rose in Larson’s chest. And then Cory opened his eyes and blinked at him.

  The vet wanted to keep Cory overnight, sedated. In the morning they would do an athroscopic examination.

  “What do you think it is?” Larson asked, holding the dog in his arms.

  “We won’t know until tomorrow. For now there’s no sense in speculating.”

  Larson didn’t have the heart to go back to work, so he returned home early to the apartment. Vina was already there. He surprised her in the spare bedroom, which was directly across from the entry. She was wearing his ex wife’s head, modeling herself naked, except for the Projectrix necklace, before the full-length mirror. She turned suddenly at the sound of the door opening, her full breasts swinging, so unlike Kristine’s model-modest chest.

  “Travis! I—” Her voice behind the blank, motionless, dead expression of Kristine’s face.

  “Jesus,” Larson said. Could you turn that off, please?”

  She touched something on the necklace and the Kristine head vanished. “That’s so embarrassing,” Vina said. “I was just, I don’t know.”

  “Look, don’t do that anymore, okay?”

  “Okay. Hey, what’s wrong? Are you crying or something?”

  “I just want you to be you.”

  “That’s easy. I am me.” Vina pulled on a robe. She touched his cheek. “Hey, I love you.”

  He held her. “I love you, too. And you know I don’t want you to be like Kristine.”

  “I know that. I was just playing around with the head. Really.”

  “And I don’t want you to spend every second at the gym, not if you’re doing it because of me.”

  “I’m not. Well, maybe a little bit because of you. It hurts when I see you looking at other girls. But mostly I work out for me.”

  “It’s just looking. It’s nothing. And you’re perfect already, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t care about other girls.”

  “Aw. You’re perfect, too, Trav.”

  They kissed. “Hey,” Vina said, pulling back. “You are crying. Travis, where’s the dog?”

  *

  Larson couldn’t sleep. He stared at Vina’s face on the pillow beside his. For all her dieting and exercise her features were still thick and plain; she was still Vina. Which is all he wanted. He remembered lying next to Kristine and how calm it felt to be with her sleeping body after all the stress and tension of their waking conflicts—Kristine’s sleeping face presenting her absence. But Larson was tired of absence.

  He slipped from the bed and into the hallway, pulling the bedroom door shut behind him. In the living room he called Beverman’s office and left a message, keeping his voice down so he wouldn’t wake Vina.

  “I’m dropping it. We’re not going to sue Kristine.”

  Larson fixed himself a drink and sat in the living room, listening to the rain. The bourbon helped Larson keep his fear at bay. That�
��s what Kristine used to do for him. She used to keep the fear at bay by her presence. But presence wasn’t always enough. Eventually you had to be there all the way, and you had to let somebody else be there all the way, too. Without that, little comforts counted all out of proportion. Even the comfort of a dog that wasn’t really there. People needed that. It was a small thing and you were petty to begrudge it. The world only went around so many times in a person’s life. If you made it harder than it already was, you were really just this gloomy person—this shouter.

  Rain blew against the windows. Larson poured another bourbon and stood looking out at the city, at the world moving through one dark night and already on the way towards the next one. Around and around and around.

  *

  Yes, this is a story that wasn’t in first edition. How clever of you to notice!

  Thank You, Mr. Whiskers

  Hadley Yeager was old and widowed and miserable. She hadn’t always been that way. She used to be younger and in possession of a breathing husband. Actually she had been the possession. And the misery had been constant and enduring. Now Hadley couldn’t find her grocery money. She had hidden it because she was worried about that dark boy breaking in and robbing her. But she couldn’t remember where she’d hidden it. Hadley was hungry, and if she didn’t find the money soon things wouldn’t be pleasant. Not that they were, generally.

  Hadley sat in the kitchen and cried. Her stomach ached with hunger. Briefly she wished she owned a cat. Franklin (or Soopy, or Mrs. Pussyfoot, or Mr. Whiskers) would rub against her leg and purr and be a comfort. But there would also be the horrid droppings and the sofa shredded, and probably Franklin would make her sneeze. Then she remember Franklin was the name of her husband (even his name sometimes drifted away from her), and she determined to put the whole idea out of her mind.

  Hadley started to stand up and a wave of dizziness swelled through her. The room seemed to darken, then it passed and her vision cleared and she stood up more steadily. She would stop crying and fetch the mail. No one normal wrote to her anymore, but once in a while, among the bills, there was an envelope proclaiming her a WINNER!!!! and these cheered her until she recalled the truth.