Yoav stomps up to Wendy. His cape waves in the wind. With his sandals, tan, and bowling-ball paunch, he calls to mind a retired superhero who spends his days drinking beer on a Tel Aviv beach.
“What are you cutting for? We had a moment there.”
“The wrong moment,” says Wendy. In heels, she has half a foot on the director. Caffeine courses through her body. She pokes Yoav’s chest.
“Ow,” he says.
Wendy pokes again, this time with force. The director is caught off-balance, and must steady himself by grabbing hold of a chair.
“Please stop,” says Yoav. “I easily bruise.”
“This isn’t a beer commercial,” says Wendy.
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s not supposed to be cute.”
“I don’t understand,” says Yoav again.
“Make yourself understand,” says Wendy. “Or I’ll find someone who will.”
She takes three steps away, stops, turns back, and adds, “While you’re at it, take off that fucking cape.”
23.
The game room, a monument to obsolete technology, complete with a working Ms. Pac-Man machine, is Stuart Mixner’s pride and joy, and his single contribution to the world since the birth of Rachel. When the transformer plant closed in ’91, Stuart, a mid-level engineer, was laid off. He’s been cooped in this room ever since.
The room is filled with consoles of nearly every gaming system from Atari on, including 100 percent of Nintendo’s four-decade output—a bright red Virtual Boy holds pride of place atop a pyramid of cardboard boxes—as well as Sega’s, Sony’s, and a host of less-remembered devices like the Neo Geo and the Amiga CD; even earlier stuff like the German-made VC 4000; and, the jewel of the collection, a never-played ’72 Magnavox Odyssey. Not to mention all the cartridges, floppy disks, CD-ROMs, and old issues of Wired and Nintendo Power organized in wobbling stacks that Michael worries might crash at any moment and bury his oblivious father.
Surrounding the stacks and the father himself is the detritus of a life lived in unforced confinement. Coffee cups and wax sandwich wrappers litter the floor. The blinds are broken and don’t open. Four television screens and three computer monitors are arranged like workstations, the ceiling tiles are covered in soundproofing Styrofoam, and at least ten speakers dangle precariously from various surfaces, all hooked up to a master mixing board which itself connects to the monitors and hardware, a creatively configured surround sound system.
These days, most of this stuff is for show, or else storage. The house can’t accommodate Stuart’s collection anywhere else, and he refuses to throw things away or sell them for what might be considerable sums because, for the last two years, he’s been playing Shamerican Sykosis. When Michael enters, his father is asleep in an office chair. His hair’s half gone and half static, his eyelids look purple, and his nails are bitten to yellow nubs. His reading glasses, having fallen from his nose, rest in his biblical beard. He wears an SD bracelet.
Michael nudges his father, who says, “Sail toward the sun,” so Michael nudges him again, and with this Stuart wakes, and before saying hello, clicks into Shamerica to check his holdings. After a moment, he turns his attention to Michael, though he angles the chair to maintain a peripheral view of two screens. The game is played across all devices—cellphones for trading Shamerican stocks and bonds, AR helmets for exploring Shamerica’s cityscapes, laptops and tablets for designing cars, buildings, and avatars—but Stuart likes these giant monitors due to failing eyesight, and also, Michael thinks, because it makes him feel like a real mogul instead of what he is, a senior citizen in sweatpants playing games. For most players, Shamerica’s primary appeal is strapping on a helmet and seeing the cars, avatars, and structures of their making in the 3-D world, but Stuart rarely leaves the house. He’s more interested in playing the in-game markets and attempting to accumulate SD, though he does correspond with other players through in-game messaging. The irony of this bond-trading gamelife, when his own son performs the same task as an actual profession, is lost on Michael’s father.
“You scared me,” says Stuart. “I’m very on edge these days.”
“Me too,” says Michael.
“Your friend,” says Stuart. “Terrible what happened.”
“Ricky,” says Michael. “You knew him too.”
“Nice kid. A bit fruity for my taste, but these are different times. Now I even have a son who thinks he might be gay.”
“I don’t think I might be gay.”
“Not you; Quentin.”
“Quentin?”
“Quentin. My son.”
It takes Michael a moment. “Your son in the game, right. Why do you think he might be gay?”
“He told me. The other day he said, ‘Dad, I think I might be gay.’”
“In real life or the game?”
“Is there a difference?”
“I’d like to think so, yes.”
“You’re kidding yourself if you think there’s a difference.”
Stuart adjusts his glasses, though the pair is so crooked that adjustments create further imbalance, the left lens askew when the right is aligned, and vice versa. Michael’s factory-distressed father has always looked prematurely old, but now he seems ancient.
“How old is Quentin?” Michael asks.
“Twelve.”
“In real life or the game?”
“Real life,” says Stuart. “In the game he’s a thirty-seven-year-old Oxford grad who designed half the riverboat casinos on the Gulf of Shamexico. I’m very proud.”
“But you said there was no difference between real life and the game.”
“You’re taking me literally. It’s always been your problem. So literal. One plus one equals two—that sort of thing.”
“One plus one does equal . . .”
“These guys my age, they . . .”
“In real life or the game?”
“In the life you consider real, okay. We’re talking about guys my age. Sean Hunter’s dad, say, because Mom saw him at Stop & Shop. Mom saw him, and guess what he told her? He told her he bought a yacht. Like she should be impressed.”
Stuart checks the stock index again.
“These guys my age, they’re all buying boats. What
