Sensation Machines Page 15

  “I’m sorry, but what’s this about?” says Donnell, still trying to angle around the urine mime and talk to Steve about shifts.

  “I need you to come with me to the station to answer some questions.”

  “Some questions?” says Donnell, now looking for Jackie. Steve’s trying to calm the urine mime by explaining that, while her warranty does not protect against water damage, he can probably get her a 10 percent discount on a brand new iPhone so long as she mails in the rebate.

  “How about I pee on the rebate instead?”

  “That would be your choice,” says Steve.

  “We just have a few questions about your participation in the protest last week,” says the detective. “I’m sure it won’t take much time.”

  “If you don’t mind,” says Donnell, “I just need to speak to my manager about a scheduling problem, and then I can answer whatever questions you have.”

  He tries again to push up to the counter, but this time the detective squeezes his arm and anchors him in place.

  “Mr. Sanders, I need you to come with me to the station.” A hint of annoyance has crept into his voice.

  “I’m here with my daughter.”

  “Which is why I suggest you come with me so I don’t have to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?” says Donnell, louder than intended. “I thought you said you had questions.”

  “Sir, I’m asking politely.”

  People are looking. Jackie steps out of line and moves toward Donnell.

  “Dad?” she says.

  “Mr. Sanders,” the detective says.

  “Fuck your rebate,” says the urine mime. She throws her phone at the iPad display. Amid this distraction, Donnell tries to free himself from the detective’s grip. He finds his legs kicked from under him, face pressed into the un-vacuumed carpet, cuffs clasped around his wrist.

  14.

  In the photo, Ricky still sports the bedhead haircut he had in college—part Ross from Friends, part roadkill—a look he wisely ditched for a politician’s side part around the age of twenty-eight. Still, there’s something endearing about the old style, an innocence bestowed upon its owner. Wendy understands why this is the image that Lillian’s chosen.

  Lillian leans over Wendy’s shoulder carrying the combined scents of spearmint, wasabi peas, and a perfume that should be called Hookah Bar. She chops at Wendy’s back like she’s ending a massage. She says, “Sucks to be this guy.” She walks away.

  It occurs to Wendy that her boss is an insensitive bitch. Not that Wendy and Ricky were close, but now he’s dead, murdered, and here’s Wendy, days later, setting up a Facebook memorial page.

  “We need to strike while the kettle is hot,” Lillian had relayed.

  Wendy pictured a steaming mug of Earl Grey.

  “When someone is murdered it’s an invitation for the press to go digging for skeletons, and your friend’s got a few of those fuckers. We need to remind the world that just because he liked to have a few drinks and snorts and rolls in the gay hay with some big-dicked heroes of the American underclass does not make this anything other than a heinous hate crime for which the responsible party or parties will pay.”

  Wendy understands, sort of. Her job is now, in essence, prosecutor of #Occupy. Still, they could have let Greg handle this task, especially as Wendy’s already busy with tomorrow’s shoot, a last-minute effort that has her putting calls out to casting directors, scouting for a space that fits the vision she had in bed last night, and overseeing the shot list and storyboard drafts. Wendy’s job title is Director of Strategy and Content, a vague classification that means she has a hand in all the company’s doings, from concept to execution, and is subject to Lillian’s impromptu left turns and irrational wonts. None of which, she might add, compare to the outright folly of trying to pull off this shoot on two days’ notice. And now they want her to rebrand Ricky as well?

  But Wendy understands. This is what she excels at: spin, counter-spin, creative solutions. And though turning Ricky into a martyr for the maligned one percent may be her toughest challenge yet, there is a part of Wendy that feels she owes it to Ricky, or if not to Ricky then to Michael. Because surely there’s something noble in protecting Ricky from the ruthless churn of the news cycle by presenting a clean-shaven and unimpeachably humane counter-Ricky, a heroic counter-Ricky, even if that counter-Ricky might have to be invented by Wendy herself.

  She stands, yawns, and checks her neighbor’s monitor, amazed for the millionth time that these guys spend most of their waking hours staring at code. She used to think it looked boring, but now she sees the appeal of rote math and script mastery, of rearranging brackets until some desired result is achieved; never having to worry about the morality of one’s work; never having to read people’s thoughts or infer subtext or even interact at all with the various parties who call or email Wendy each day, pushing separate obscured agendas; never having to prioritize one task over another as their assignments are handed down in a line, then neatly ticked off like items on a grocery list.

  She passes Lillian’s office on the way to the bathroom. The door is cracked. Lucas sits on the corner of the desk, and Lillian leans in so that her breasts are presented, shelf-like, as if he might need somewhere to rest his cup of coffee.

  It’s hard to gauge the sincerity of Lillian’s flirtations, whether she’s earnestly horny, or working an angle. Wendy doesn’t know what to make of Lucas, either. She doesn’t trust his caginess about the product or Communitiv.ly’s broad and shifting role in its launch. She pictures Lucas’s backers as the kind of men who sit in wing chairs and steeple their fingers. The kind who hold emeritus positions in Southern megachurches and kill coeds in speedboat accidents.

  But there’s a magnetism too. He pays such close attention when she’s speaking, always nodding, providing confirmative okays. His gaze never strays over her shoulder. He never checks his phone or looks bored. He gives full focal attention to her mouth, as if it’s not even his ears that are hearing her words, but his eyes quite literally seeing them, parsing meaning from the subtle fluctuations of her face.

  Back at her desk, Wendy scans the headshot, does light touch-up and color correction, and proceeds with the memorial page. The headshot is the cover image, and she uses her discretion, as instructed, to select a handful of other photos from Ricky’s Facebook: Ricky holding his diploma; Ricky on a ski trip in Aspen, suntanned and smiling; Ricky—and this one’s for Lillian—looking broad and buff in a formfitting golf shirt, standing on a balcony, waving down at last year’s Pride parade.

  For text, she pastes the press release she drafted yesterday. The release includes quotes from Ricky’s mother (“A darling boy”), Edward Jin (“Brave”), and Theo MacIntyre, executor of an LGBT Small Business Grant that Ricky had apparently funded. Wendy doesn’t know where Lillian found this guy, but she’s glad she did; MacIntyre’s praise of Ricky’s “game-changing generosity” goes a long way toward the construction of Ricky 2.0, the beloved victim whose death leaves a hole in the great American tablecloth. In Wendy’s hands, Ricky has been transformed into an “energetic jester” who was “fun loving and full of life.” She posts the page and moves on to outreach.

  The intuitive move might be to gather the right-wing media around this cause, but what good would it do to (a) have Republicans rally their red-state base re: #Occupy, and (b) unloose a possible shit-storm of homophobia from the alt-right? Instead, what Lucas wants is the center-left media to wave the flag of Ricky’s cause, publicly mourn, and call out #Occupy for going too far.

  Unlike an ordinary PR firm, where Wendy would have to blast the media herself, mass-emailing the memorial page and press release to uninterested editors, Communitiv.ly has got a stable of journalists raring to sell their integrity for fifty cents a word. She’s guessing they’ll jump at the opportunity she’s offering, which is a hundred-dollar bonus for any anti-UB
I piece they publish that mentions the riot and/or the murder, the hundred coming on top of whatever they’re paid by the publication itself. Lucas wanted to go with five hundred, but Wendy assured him that was unnecessary.

  Quality, content, and forum are irrelevant. People don’t read articles anymore, but if they’re exposed to enough headlines and pull quotes, they develop a false sense of being comprehensively informed. This is terrifying for all variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the researched and considered narrative is drowned out by the mob with the most stick-to-itive chant, but it’s great for someone like Wendy who controls the volume knob. All she has to do is write a short bulletin with the offer, post it to the freelancers’ job board for paid members, and wait for the responses to roll in.

  Her final task is the targeted outreach Lucas insisted she perform. She writes to GLAAD, and includes a tailored version of the press release that features a paragraph on Ricky’s invented support of the organization and years of patronage. She’s banking on GLAAD being so thrilled to claim the martyr that no one will bother to check the records. No mention of #Occupy, here. She’s got to be subtler than that. This is about painting a terse, sympathetic picture of Ricky, and letting its recipients take it from there. She sends a version of the same to It Gets Better, the Point Foundation, and GLLI. In fact, she emails every org that comes up on the first fifteen pages of her Google search. These letters include the press release in full and also link to Facebook where friends or concerned strangers are free to leave supportive comments, which will be moderated by Wendy.

  By the time she’s done, the office is empty. Wendy fetches a beer from the mini-fridge and kills the overhead lights. There’s an envelope with her name on it sitting squarely in the center of her desk. She’s been eyeing it all day, but has restrained herself from opening it. Now she does, using her fingernail to detach the flap. She looks inside, just for a second, before placing the item in her purse.

  15.

  Kate’s talking to Devor, but he’s watching TV news with his laptop open, contemplating an email from Michael Mixner, who wants to buy him a matcha and quote unquote pick his brain. The email’s tone ranges from nineteenth-century austere (“Ricky’s memorial is this weekend. I expect it to be a sober affair . . .”) to faux academic (“. . . of which my thesis will be interwoven through an ekphrastic reading of Curtis Hanson’s 2002 film 8 Mile . . .”) to casually bromantic (“Dude, can’t wait hug it out!”), and includes Devor’s least favorite phrase—“pick your brain”—a mainstay of emails from junior colleagues and pestering strangers, which always raises the image of his skull as Chinese takeout carton, chopsticks stirring its contents.

  Instead of writing back, Devor scans the draft of his third op-ed in as many days. The more he touts what he refuses to call a conspiracy theory—it’s not paranoia if it’s true—about a right-wing lobbying group masterminding what’s now being called the Gatsby Murder, the more traction this theory gains online. And it’s like the movement’s on amphetamines elsewhere, unions gone wild, from Midwestern fruit pickers, to California almond farmers, to pharmacists, radiologists, and all strata of middle management. These unions have put so much pressure on the Senate that the UBI may pass by a wide margin. And while violence did not beget violence as Devor had imagined—he’d pictured riots flaring at investment banks worldwide—he’s feeling cautiously optimistic. With each hour that passes, the prospect of his indictment seems to fade.

  Kate sips her diet Cuba Libre, weary from her day teaching seventh-grade life science at a charter school in Harlem. She attempts to penetrate the force field of distraction that surrounds her boyfriend by leaning on his shoulder, but Devor shucks her off with a jerk of the remote, switching from CNN to MSNBC and back, then stirring his spoon in his empty bowl, trying to scrape a final bite of quinoa.

  “Can I ask you something? says Kate. “And I swear that this is the last time I’ll ask.”

  She makes her way to the kitchenette and begins doing dishes, hoping Devor will get the message and join. He stays seated, so she yells, in part because the room’s loud with running water and dish clatter, but also because it feels good to project, to let her irritation manifest in volume.

  “I’m just going to ask one more time,” yells Kate. “Why didn’t you tell me you went to Sophia’s after the rally? I mean, I get why you did, I think. I’m not accusing. I’m just asking why you didn’t tell me.”

  They’ve been over this a dozen times.

  “I forgot,” says Devor at regular volume, meaning Kate can’t hear over the noise.

  “What?”

  “I said I forgot,” yells Devor.

  Kate turns off the faucet. She walks back to the couch and grabs the bowl from which Devor still scrapes, despite it being empty. She gets up close to his face and says, “Seems like something you wouldn’t forget.”

  “Other things on my mind,” says Devor. His eyes continually dart toward the window, as if the cops might arrive at any moment, having changed their minds about letting him go.

  Or maybe Kate’s the one being paranoid. The job has her down at the moment, its endless hours, low pay, and sorry benefits; the parents who get worse every year, either in negligent absence or unemployed over-involvement; the bright kids bounding into this bleak future; the school shooting statistics that scare her despite Devor’s reminders that it’s only ever white kids who shoot up their schools (he’s right, but she still worries); the paper-bag lunches; the matronly cardigans and functional flats she has to wear every day while women like Sophia strut around in belly shirts, demanding attention.

  Kate brings the bowl back into the kitchen. In the early months of their relationship, she’d solved problems like this one by reading Devor’s email—he never logged out—but that had to end when Kate found something she’d rather not have seen—an exchange with Sophia that referenced nude photos they’d taken and that Devor presumably still had in his possession—and couldn’t stop herself from bringing it up, causing a conversation that ended with her promising never to read his email again and mostly keeping to that promise.

  Kate makes her way to the bedroom, having left the dishes on the off chance that Devor will scrub them clean before coming in. She takes out her contacts and puts on a nightgown and slips under the comforter, propping herself on a pillow, browsing for a new couch that Devor doesn’t want, he being perfectly content with his old bachelor futon. But oh, it would be so nice to watch the plastic wrap fall to the floor. To screw in the rubber stoppers. To sit on fresh upholstery, turn the TV off, and fall into his arms.

  16.

  Wendy’s at a barstool, sipping beer, watching Penny from behind, the bartender’s clamped butt cheeks hardened by hundreds of SoulCycle sessions, as Wendy knows from stalking her Instagram. Penny presses a button and music plays, a caterwauling white man over drums and guitar. The bar is empty, which Penny explains is due to student migration to a new place on Columbus with a hundred beers on tap and a vape license. For a while, 420 was the only green-friendly establishment in Morningside, but others have opened since. The problem is not competition, however, so much as a wane in public vaping since the laws banning outside herb that encouraged bars to serve their own strains at markup. Smokers have gone back to buying street weed and toking at home out of plastic bongs, which are enjoying a moment of retro-popularity. The place still fills sometimes, but tonight it’s only Wendy and some guys watching the game.

  Wendy was surprised to see Penny still pouring and Penny was surprised to see Wendy, period. Wendy’s still the ginger beauty she was in college, though her face now contains a heaviness that suits her, gives her a sultry, been-through-shit, badass vibe. Penny says she’s sorry about Ricky, that it’s horrible. She asks how Wendy and Michael are doing? Wendy says Michael’s a mess. She doesn’t answer in regards to herself.

  “And how are you?” Wendy asks.

  Penny says, “St
ill working on the old PhD if you can believe that,” which Wendy cannot.

  Penny knows how pathetic she must sound to a woman like Wendy, Bloomingdale’s bag draped from her barstool, while Penny parades in a halter that shows off full-sleeve zebra stripe tattoos. She explains that she put her research on pause to have a baby about ten years ago with an asshole who’s no longer around, though it was all for the best because Sean, her son, is the light of her life.

  Wendy’s face does not betray it, but something inside her shifts at the word baby. While Penny speaks of her son, who’s in third grade, loves soccer, and wants to be an ROS developer, Wendy is elsewhere. She’s in the hospital room as the doctor hands over Nina and Wendy holds the infant to her chest, amazed at its heaviness, as if death might have lightened the load. She’s in that same room watching Michael’s face when the doctor asks if he wants to hold their daughter and Michael turns his eyes toward the overhead TV that, for some reason, plays a muted tennis match. Michael took Nina after a second’s hesitation, but there was that pause, there will always be that pause. She’s in the shower at home, watching the remnants of her pregnancy—blood and amniotic fluid—spill from her body. She’s on the couch, clutching her stomach that sags with Nina’s nonattendance, skin shriveled and stretch-marked, milk dribbling from nipples. She’s at her laptop, taking down her pregnancy photos from Facebook, but not before examining each one for signs that something was wrong.

  Penny tells Wendy that being a single mom is hard, which is why it’s lucky her sister lives nearby and can babysit while she bartends nights. But anyway, sorry she’s said so much about herself, when of course Wendy must be in a serious state.

  “Yes,” Wendy says.

  Penny pours them tequila shots. Wendy hasn’t drunk tequila since the last time she was at this bar, but she can’t say no without seeming snobbish and above it, so she toasts with Penny and downs her shot. Ten seconds later she’s drunk.