head. “Look in those,” said the man in the space suit. “Maneuver by sticking your right hand in those slots and experimenting. The waiter will be around to take your orders.” His gaze lingered on Eddie for a moment before he left.
“What the fuck is this?” said Raleigh.
“Five million dollars’ worth of software,” Jack replied.
Eddie put his face in the viewer. It was more than a viewer; it wrapped around his ears as well, covering them with perforated foam pads. He was in a place of total darkness, total silence. Nothing happened. He felt for the slot in the side of the table, stuck his hand inside a hand-shaped hole that felt like rubberized plastic. He fitted his fingers in the right openings. Something happened.
First came a strange noise, an eerie whine, like interstellar wind. It filled his head. Then the sun rose, so bright it hurt his eyes. He moved his fingers. That turned him slowly around, and away from the glare of the sun. Now he was soaring through a blue sky. He tried pressing his thumb on the rubberized plastic. That tipped him forward, made him look down, down at a green jungle. He fell toward it with sickening speed. He moved his hand again, pressed with different fingers. That slowed his descent. He drifted down, closer and closer to the trees, then right into them, through a gap, down, down. Below was an emerald-green pond with a waterfall cascading into it. It roared in his ears. He fell into the emerald-green water; the roaring turned to pounding. He fell deeper and deeper, down to the gurgling dark bottom, toward a pool of light. In the pool of light was a bare-breasted mermaid. She smiled and said, “May I take your order, sir?” He shifted his hand to try to get a little closer. Everything went black.
Eddie drew back from the viewer. The mermaid was talking to Jack: “Heineken, Beck’s, Beck’s Light, Corona, Sam Adams, Moosehead, Bass, Grolsch-”
“New Amsterdam.”
“We don’t carry it.”
“Bass, then.”
“And you, sir?” she said, turning to Eddie.
Not the mermaid, of course, and not bare-breasted and fishtailed, but the woman who had played the mermaid, if
“I’d like water,” Eddie said, wanting all at once to be sober.
“Evian, Perrier, Volvic, Contrexeville, Saratoga, San Pellegrino, Ramlosa, Poland Spr-”
“It doesn’t matter.”
She went away. “Mine was the wild west,” said Raleigh. “What was yours?”
“Skiing in Zermatt,” said Jack. “Eddie?”
“Falling.”
Jack glanced into his viewer. “There’s a pissload of money to be made in this, if you knew who to back.”
“To be made in what?” asked Raleigh.
“Virtual reality.”
The words almost triggered a memory in Eddie’s mind. He came close to dredging it up, a worrisome, champagne-drenched memory, but Raleigh broke his concentration by getting up to go to the bathroom. Eddie found himself gazing at his brother.
“Something on your mind, bro?”
“I don’t know. Does an albatross have a mind?”
Jack smiled; that flashing smile, but his eyes were blank. “Run that by me again.”
“I’ve got lots on my mind,” Eddie said.
“Like what?”
Where to begin? Karen? Evelyn? JFK? Galleon Beach? Grand Cayman? It all began at USC, didn’t it? Eddie rose. “Tell you in a minute.” He went off in the direction Raleigh had gone.
The bathroom was part of the experience. It was all pearly light and rounded surfaces. For a moment, Eddie thought it was supposed to be a giant urinal. There was a female attendant, dressed in a little space skirt and halter top. Eddie, trying to take her presence in stride, said, “All it needs are holes in the floor.”
“Everyone says that,” said the woman, toying with the change on her plate.
Eddie found Raleigh soaking his nose on a wet towel. Their reflections studied each other in the mirror.
“Now would be a good time,” Eddie said.
“For what?”
“For telling me what happened at USC.”
Raleigh zipped up. “Ask Jack. Didn’t I say that already?”
“I want to hear it from you.”
“No can do.” He faced Eddie. “You’re going to beat me up in here, aren’t you? That would be the inmate thing.”
It was true, both parts. Eddie backed away. “You did something and Jack took the blame.”
“Keep guessing,” Raleigh said and walked out the door, passing the attendant without leaving a tip. Her eyes were on Eddie.
“He didn’t even wash his hands,” Eddie said.
“Ninety percent of them don’t,” the attendant replied. “I wrote a poem about it.”
“I’m listening.”
“It’s long,” said the attendant, “but it starts, ‘You stupid fucking fuckers / with piss-dripping dicks / and silver-dripping pockets / divine Manhattan Judases, artists of betrayal / so careful with every scheming breath / why do you forget to wash your pissy digits?’ ”
Quite different from the poem Eddie knew best, but he liked it. “I like it,” he said.
“You do? You’re not in publishing, by any chance?”
“No.”
“Maybe you know someone in publishing? A university press will do.”
“Sorry.”
“Shit.”
The door to one of the toilets opened. A man came out, short and fat, wearing a dark suit. It was Senor Paz. He went to the sink beside Eddie, washed his hands. They were plump pink hands with manicured nails; not what Eddie pictured as a surgeon’s hands. Eddie started to back away, thinking that Paz hadn’t recognized him. Then Paz spoke.
“Young lady,” he said, “will you leave us for a moment, please?”
She went out. Things came together in Eddie’s mind, and he realized where he was.
“I thought you were calling it Neuron.”
Paz smiled. “Or Synapse. But our consultants on Madison Avenue came up with Brainy’s. More impudent, they said, as though impudence were somehow desirable. What do you think?”
“I like Neuron better.”
“As do I,” said Paz. “You strike me as an intelligent man.” He sighed-theatrically perhaps, yet what wasn’t theatrical in a place like this? — and looked melancholy. “But isn’t there an English expression about being too smart for one’s own good?”
“Meaning what?”
“We’ll explore the subject of what it all means in good time,” said Paz. “Let’s just say some of us are very disappointed.” He glanced over Eddie’s shoulder.
Maybe it was the pearly light, or possibly the rounded surfaces. Both disorienting: dulling the fifteen-years- honed edge on Eddie’s alertness. He didn’t spin around, or start to spin around, until it was too late to avoid the first blow, that brought him to his knees, and the second, that sent him into unconsciousness.
Outside: Day 5
21
