It took a little while to find the channel on the set in the living room-it was channel 152 or something-but then we basked in the glow of Jim Avery’s greatest hits: Be Everything You Are and Why Settle for Less than your Whole Self? and the inevitable It’s Your World, chanted by Avery and huge crowds in LA, New York, Seoul, London, Rome, Frankfurt, New Delhi, Hong Kong, Moscow, Vancouver and Prague, among others. They had ads for Your World vacations and 24-hour video-on-demand.
“Wow,” Max said and I had to nod.
“You should ask him for a job,” I said. “He’s the biggest thing going.”
Max kept staring at the tube. “It’s him,” he said haltingly. “But that’s not his hair-it has to be a toup, or implants maybe.” He started pacing around the room, looking deflated. “I see why they laughed at me-whatever became of poor Jim Avery. Wow!”
“What did Cornwell say about the program?”
“There’s no program-hasn’t been in years. He said the only reason he could answer me at all was that there was nothing to it.”
“You believe him?”
“I’m not big on belief. I listened to the sound of his voice more than what he was saying, listened to the vibrations like a stress detector. If he was lying, I would know. And,” he added, “he was one of the people who debriefed me several years ago. So he knew I would know, which means there’s no point lying.” He tapped a finger on the table-the first two times it tapped; the next two it went right into the wood, disappeared right through. He was apparently doing it without being aware of it. This would get real confusing if somebody unaware saw him. Did he do it all time without being noticed? That was a scary thought all on its own.
“I asked him about L Corp,” he continued. “He said security was a sideline, they were mostly political consulting and lobbying, media management and such.” He shook his head. “Not the place you’d expect a Miriam Fine. Or platoons of thugs with feeble mindbender power.” He came back to the couch now. “We can research it later. First, I think we should go out to dinner.”
“Out? Isn’t that dangerous?”
He shrugged again. “Everything’s dangerous-it’s just a question of more or less. I don’t think they’ve found us yet.”
That sure didn’t sound very conclusive. I was hoping for something a whole lot stronger, but he didn’t seem to be offering. “Could they have traced the phone call?” I asked.
“I doubt it,” he said casually. “Fischel’s just a committee staffer-he’s not high on the food chain. If they were tapping him for some reason, it would take a minute to recognize this conversation as worth tracing. I bounced the call off two Soviet satellites that are still up there and I timed it-believe me, they’re not as fast as the movies.”
“That’s it? That’s all the reassurance the world’s best mindbender can offer?”
“If I wait for better than that,” he shrugged, “I never get to go out to dinner.”
The town downvalley was bigger than it looked-it had the remnants of a low-rent amusement park along with a reptile zoo, several hotels and restaurants clustered along the main roads leading out to the highway-there was also a Your World Center, which I gleefully pointed out to Max as we passed. We ended up in a shed-like place off the beaten track, with an electric sign bigger than the restaurant and a round dance floor in the middle of a raised circle of dinner tables. The signs hanging by the side of the door promised Kansas steak, local lake trout and 800 different beers from around the World. They had internet access-you could order dinner from Singapore, though it didn’t mention delivery. There were a crowd of customers, but mostly at the bar and dance floor. Max shook the maitre d’s hand and he stiffened and led us immediately to a table with a clear view of the entrance and easy access to the emergency exit.
The bar was filled with several clusters, milling and circulating and laughing a little too loudly, the general crowd trying a little too hard to have a good time, as opposed to the hard-core drunks at the small tables near the far end of the bar.
It’s funny how you can find the person you’re looking for in a crowd, even if you didn’t know you were looking. A bright-eyed dark-haired girl standing with her blonde friend right at the center of everything, for example, watching faces and sharing confidences and trying to look carefree. At first I thought, maybe they’re more than friends-they were hanging close and you can’t tell these days. But when she turned around, her eyes said she was looking and not finding. And it just hit me hard, as soon as I saw those eyes full-on: I just knew who she was. I knew what she was feeling all too well. It wasn’t a memory, it was like I was inside that feeling, inside her, the hope and bitterness flashing through me all at once. There are other feelings I’d have chosen to revisit before that one.
Max nudged me. “Ask her to dance,” he said. “Go on.”
“Go away,” I said. “We’re incognito.”
“You’re a man out for dinner with his business partner. We’re on a business trip-we leave in the morning. A convenient cover story. Get used to having one.” He leaned into my ear. “She’ll like you,” he said.
“You know that for a fact?” I asked but he just sat back, staring at the ceiling, all innocent eyes. When the waiter brought us our two out of the 800 beers of the World, I asked him to bring her and her friend whatever they were drinking. Max said, “No-ask her to dance,” but this was how I knew to do it. And, as soon as they got the drinks, she smiled at me and I smiled back and three seconds later, the two of them were sitting down in the booth next to us.
“I’m Tess,” she said, holding out her hand. “This is Cindy. Thanks for the drinks.”
“I’m Greg,” I said “and this is Max.” I hadn’t thought twice about it but when I looked over at him now, he looked petrified, frozen in place. He sat straight as a ramrod with his eyes flashing, sharp, like he was surrounded by a vile of snakes. The girls somehow didn’t seem to notice, which was kind of amazing.
Cindy offered her hand. Max shook it, jerky, out-of-synch. She didn’t seem to notice this either. Tess, meanwhile, was staring at me with eyes the size of flying saucers.
“You guys aren’t from around here,” she said.
“You know everybody around here?” I said and they both laughed, which was charitable-it wasn’t much of a joke.
“Actually, I do,” she answered. “I’m the county registrar. If you have a last name, I can tell you what you paid in taxes last year.” She nestled up next to me, our arms and legs touching-her skin was warm, nice muscle tone. She was actually pretty buff. “Assuming you filed.”
“Don’t tell her anything,” Cindy said and we laughed some more.
“We pay no taxes in this area,” Max said, forcing himself to speak. “We’re just here overnight-our businesses are upriver. We have inspections to do tomorrow.” I kicked him under the table- lighten up, dude. He was treating them like the Board of Directors.
“I didn’t think there was anyplace around here people wanted to go,” Cindy said; I laughed at this too before realizing she was serious.
Every time I looked at Tess, the world calmed down. I didn’t feel like I had to do anything in particular to get her to like me. At the same time, Cindy was listening to Max go over the details of our profit projections, all moon- eyes, like it was the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her. Max kept smiling really hard, which only made his face more frightening-looking.
“What do you do?” I asked Cindy, trying to keep the train from going completely off the tracks.
“I’m a trainer,” she said, with a little hesitation.
“Cindy’s a Worldie,” Tess said in a vague combination of envy and disdain.
“I’m a third-level,” Cindy burst now, with the zest of the true believer. “I train graduates and other trainers. We’ve got people who come back ten and fifteen times, to make sure they get it, to keep their hope level up. We’ve only been open a year here but we’ve already got a base of almost 200 just in this area.”
“If she keeps doing what she’d doing,” Tess added, “she’ll move up to state level.”
“It’s so spiritual!” Cindy exhaled. I saw Max shrinking into the corner of the booth but it was too late to stop myself-the words were already halfway out of my mouth.
“ Your World? Y’know, Max actually used to know Jim Avery.”
If a look could strangle you across a table, I’d have been dead in a dumpster one second later.
“Omigod, you know him?” Cindy turned with a beatific look. “He changed my life-he taught me to believe in my dreams. Isn’t it-?”
“ Knew him,” Max interrupted roughly. “ Knew. Years ago. For a very short period of time.”
