Eden’s face was still a medium for the sorrow that had been inscribed there by such a wickedly heavy hand, but something was off.
Somehow she was alive again; there was an illicit flare to her nostrils, as though she was carrying a great secret. Indeed she was. She was a 9/11 widow who’d regained her substantial nature. It was almost as though she could move her body again.
They put you inside what? I said.
Inside the building. But it’s specific to you. To what you need.
Cognitive therapy? I said.
No, she said. There’s nothing therapeutic about it.
Sign me up, I said. Do they yell at you about what a piece of shit you are? I’d pay five hundred an hour for that.
They might, she said, wincing.
Ohhh, I said. It’s—
No. Well, I think they have the equipment, if that’s what works for you … but that’s not really their main line of business.
Can you just fucking tell me what it is? Is it Fight Club?
It’s Fight Club, she said.
Fight Club’s for little boys, I said. What are we talking about here?
It depends. There are a lot of variables. What they did for me isn’t what they’ll do for you. Unless that’s what you want. It’s bespoke.
Oh, perfect, I said.
I’m fucking this up, she said. It’s not bespoke. Everyone who goes gets something different. And they will figure out what you want. You can be honest or lie but if you lie you’ll probably just have to keep going back, so it’s cheaper to be honest.
Honest about what?
About everything. Everything. There’s a question about, you know, what’s your greatest fear or something. It’s more subtle, but that’s what they’re after. And I gave them the usual bullshit at first, you know, like, What have I got to be afraid of at this point? Nothing scares me now except my own face. And this woman, she’s a shrink, she writes that down and goes on with the rest of the questionnaire and then at the end she says, Would you like to die? As in, If you would like to die right now I can make that happen for you.
She what?
This woman, if I’d said yes, I would like to die, she would have, I don’t know, shot me right there, pulled out a needle, whatever. I knew it like I know my own name. She was totally calm about it. It was an adult conversation and we both knew exactly what she meant. The way a doctor tells you it’s stage four and you’re terminal. She let me know that she knew I’d already weighed the options and could make a perfectly informed decision.
And you said?
I said, No, thank you, not today. And she said, What, then, is your greatest fear? And I was like, All right, I get it. I understand. And we talked some more and finally I said: I’m afraid that he’s not dead. I’m afraid that he’s still out there.
Okay. Right.
And she says, Good. We can work with that. And they did.
What do you mean? I said.
I mean they worked with that.
They made a hologram of him?
Jesus, Hazel. They applied the information I’d given them, and …
And what?
They built a complication for me. They call them complications. They built his office. His desk, where he sat, what he saw out the window. And I got to sit in his chair and look in the drawers and look out the windows—I guess they were screens or something, but they were hi-def, and I didn’t see the same boat twice on the river. There was the bullpen, you know, the traders, and the analysts, Bloomberg terminals, TVs on the walls. I mean, they pulled out all the stops. And they said to me, you know, Now sit in his chair, and become him. Take your time, as much time as you need, and when you feel comfortable, allow yourself to occupy his body. And so I did. I watched the boats on the river, and a helicopter went by, and when I was ready I said, I’m ready, and the phone rang, and it was Tyrone Flint on the other end, because he was talking to Tyrone Flint when the plane hit. Because Tyrone Flint reported to me himself—the guy who insisted that I meet him in Central Park, face-to-face, do you remember that?
I remember.
And I’d told them this, they’re very thorough, and I say, Hello? and there’s Tyrone Flint on the phone about some cross-border lease agreement that was tied up in legal. And, you know, he called before nine deliberately to miss Stephen. He wanted to dump a message on voice mail. So I say, Ready, and the phone rings, and it’s, Oh, Stephen! I didn’t think you’d— Tyrone Flint at Crutchfield Alliance here!
And the time on the phone is 8:45, so I have sixty seconds, give or take. I have questions, of course. But he won’t shut up. I don’t think it was a recording, but he didn’t let me get a word in edgewise. And he kept calling me Stephen.
Do you think it was really him?
Who knows. They seem to have the ability to— I don’t know. They seem committed to providing good service.
And?
And then it’s 8:46. And everything turns into a furnace. The whole office—like a volcano. The walls are gone. Vanished. The desks flew up, the TVs exploded, the fire ate everything. Everyone was on fire. The black smoke. Everything exploded.
What do you
