In the text box, is a single letter: “Z.”
In the other box is “122.”
Bullseye stares in silence.
“This string of ones and zeroes corresponds to either the number one hundred twenty-two or the letter Z?” I ask.
He nods.
“I’m underwhelmed. So we’ve traded one string of meaningless ones and zeroes for an equally meaningless number of 122 or a random letter of the alphabet.”
I close my eyes and search the inside of my head for something that would give this meaning. Have I heard anything the last few days that would make sense of this?
“You remember a few days ago the Pentagon computers got hacked into?”
Bullseye nods.
“Why did that happen?” I ask.
“Because the encryption scheme wasn’t good enough. Hackers penetrated safeguards and got to secret information.”
“Interesting.”
“You think your grandmother has something to do with that?”
“Not at all. I’m just wondering if she’s carrying around some information, something that someone would want — and want it off the grid, not in a server somewhere. But she’s carrying it in the form of her story.”
“Something encoded, encrypted?”
“Like maybe someone wrote over her fallow memory with a bunch of seemingly meaningless details. And this”—I hold up the piece of paper from Pete’s office—“this is the encryption key.”
He shrugs.
“Bullseye, there’s an important secret locked in here.”
I’m thinking of Pete’s cryptic scrawl: three weeks. Three weeks until what?
Bullseye’s begun looking at SportsCenter on the big screen television hanging over the corner of the bar. He’s losing interest or he surmises that even if we make progress in figuring it out, we’ll never be able to make use of the information. Or I’m projecting.
“Can I take your worksheet?”
“Can you buy me a beer?”
I order him an Anchor Steam. I’m out of cash and I hand the barkeep my credit card. As she processes the charge, I remember that my card, for some mysterious reason, did not work a day ago. I’m about to tell the waitress to forget about it when she returns with the tab. Just as mysteriously as my card failed, it is now working again.
“Someone thinks I’m no longer a threat,” I say.
I think of Grandma, Polly, our zygote.
Maybe I’m only a threat to myself, and them.
It is drizzling when I arrive at Magnolia Manor. The start of November marks the end of the Bay Area’s Indian summer.
At the front desk of the home, the attendant says he has a message for me.
“Mr. Idle, the director said he’d like to see you as soon as you stopped in. He’s in his home, not the office.”
“I’d like to see my grandmother first.”
“The director says it’s critical.”
Chapter 58
The Human Asparagus is up to his ears in cardboard boxes. He stands in his living room, wrapping his belongings in white tissue paper and setting them into packing boxes.
“Fleeing the scene of the crime?”
In his hand is a small brass goblet, cheap looking, like something you’d win at a carnival. He raises it up with one of his gangly arms. “Governor’s Chalice,” he says.
“The governor gives awards for allowing secret testing of old people?”
“It’s from my peers in the industry. Annually, we vote on which retirement home director in the region is most deserving and that person holds the chalice for a year.”
He’s melancholy. So I accede to his mood. “The chalice holder is the person who gives the best care?”
He laughs. “Who can best deal with obnoxious family members of our residents.” He looks up at me. “I’m a perennial winner.”
“Vince, I’m serious. Are you leaving to avoid being arrested or sued?”
“What do you want from me, Nat? What do any of you selfish, self-absorbed people want from me?”
“Are you serious? Answers and retribution for a start. My grandmother’s brain got baked.”
He harrumphs. “Are you so blind to what is going on?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You all pay lip service to your elderly parents and grandparents. You talk about how much they mean to you and how deep your friendships are and how valuable their contributions. But the truth is that you resent them. Not because they take up your time — that too — but because seeing them age makes you so fucking resentful. It’s like you’re looking into a mirror fifty years into the future.”
“You’re rambling.”
“I’ve spent decades trying to shield the residents from family members who take out their resentment in sometimes the most tiny, passive-aggressive ways — not paying bills, poking fun at their elders’ habits, bringing unnecessary gravity and drama to the otherwise small human indignities of aging. When the chance came along to let them record their histories, I was on the fence. On one hand, I thought, the technology would create some common ground between generations; maybe it would let your generation see and hear their generation as your peers, not some dried up, gray-haired, bed-shitting versions of yourselves. But I also knew that I was succumbing to the illusion of immortality. We’d keep their stories alive, live in the past, not embrace the beauty of aging. But then I succumbed, and for my own sick, selfish reasons.”
“Money?”
He drops the chalice into the packing box.
“Trust me, you’re not interested.”
“Trust me that I am.”
He sighs. “Sex.”
“Tell me that you didn’t…”
“Of course I didn’t have sex with any residents. How dare you. If you really want to know: I fell for one of the organizers of the Human Memory Crusade. Then I became vulnerable to the argument that we adopt the new technology.”
He seems content to leave it at that.
Before I realize I’ve thought it, I utter a name. “Chuck.”
His pupils widen.
“Chuck Taylor?” I say. “The military investor? You had sex with him?”
I’d sensed Chuck is gay. Pauline told me Chuck found me cute. Then Chuck’s father had reinforced my suspicions by ranting about how his son didn’t go for women.
“Not sex,” he says, quietly. “I mispoke. I meant seduction.”
I blink. I don’t understand. He picks that up.
“We kissed a few times. We connected. There was an implicit promise of something more, something real.”
“So Chuck seduced you, took advantage of you?”
