Goodbye for Now (23 page)

“Shouldn’t your hot yoga studio be open for Take Your Daughter to Work Day? So your yoga teacher could take her daughter to work?”

“She took her to her day job,” Meredith upside-down shrugged. “Her daughter doesn’t like the heat. It makes her queasy.”

“I know how she feels,” said Sam. “And you can’t do room-temperature yoga for one day only?”

“Nope. Once you go hot, you can’t go back. I’m so much more flexible this way.” She was drenched—wetter than he was, and he’d been running in the rain for an hour—and flexible indeed. She’d somehow flipped into a backbend with feet and hands planted firmly on the floor and the entire front of her straining in a perfect arc toward the ceiling. The bottom half of her tank stuck to her stomach and rose and fell as she panted through the pose. The top part, he noticed, just fluttered with her heartbeat underneath. She was breathing hard.

“You’re messing up my breath,” she accused him as sweat trickled down from her forehead, through messed hair, onto the mat beneath her in steady drops.

“I can’t tell you how bad I feel about that,” said Sam. He removed his muddy shoes and socks on the way over and spread his feet just outside of hers, shoulder-width apart (Sam had occasionally tried yoga as a way to meet women). He pressed himself against the current apex of her, and she took a deep breath in and curved herself deeper, pushing her bottom half more firmly against him but her top half further away. Sam couldn’t have that and reached forward to trace fingers through the pool of water at the hollow of her throat, down over her chest and between her breasts, and over her stretched-taut stomach, and she breathed into him for another moment, two, before somehow flipping back into downward dog. Sam had barely moved but now found himself pressed luxuriously into the only part of her that was pointing up. He found he also had more leverage now and draped himself over her, dog over dog, the outsides of her hands and feet pressed to the insides of his, his entire body laid out over the entire length of hers. He felt her draw a deep breath in. He balanced against her, against the mat, and managed to free his right hand from the floor. He reached between his own thighs to run his fingers up the inside of hers, then under her top, over her sweat-drenched stomach, underneath her bra. There, he cupped her breast, ran his thumb underneath and then over her nipple, and felt her heart beating beneath his palm as she struggled to hold the position, his weight and hers, against slippery hands and a tongue licking wet salt from the back of her neck. She balanced again, somehow freed her left hand, and twisted it behind her and into Sam’s shorts. He was
quite impressed—hot yoga was doing wonders for her balance and her strength. Deep breath in, out. Then his left hand slipped and he tumbled on top of her, knocking them both into a heap on the mat.

He lay there for a moment, just feeling her underneath him, making them both wait, until she pressed him gently off her from behind and cleared enough space to flip over so they were front to front, all the whole length of them. When he lowered himself back on top of her, he found her all his again—nothing bent away, no balance to be maintained to keep her there, and slippery had ceased to be an impediment of any kind. He stopped licking her neck and kissed her instead with a deep, begging slowness belied by his racing pulse and breath he could not slow and hers. In revelation of having two hands free, he slid both under her shirt and bra and peeled them off her skin and over her shoulders in one long movement. He slid her out of her shorts the same way, thrilled to be so slippery, overjoyed to have both hands available for the job, one for the removal of clothing, the other to explore what it found beneath. Meredith did the same. Then he lay naked on top of her, slick and hard everywhere, both of them, and they drew impossibly hot air into lungs already on fire and moved entirely together, inside each other like puzzle pieces, soaked and soaking until they were done and lay panting and dripping and buzzing lightly on the mat with puddles forming all around them. Sam raised himself slightly, shifted his weight so as not to hurt her, but couldn’t quite tear himself away from the breath and heartbeat and body beneath him. She was the most living thing he had ever felt in his life.

“The contrast between you and work is breathtaking,” said Sam who had never imagined he’d be working so closely with death in his day job.

“I don’t think that’s what’s breathtaking,” said Meredith.

He traced a slow trickle of sweat with his finger down her cheek. “I love you, you know.”

“I know,” said Meredith. “I could tell.”

Then her phone started ringing. And Sam’s phone started ringing. They ignored them, but neither of them stopped. Finally, Meredith got up, got a towel, and answered. On the other end was the
Seattle Times
—local, friendly, fine. On the other end of Sam’s, after a shower he insisted on before dealing with whatever was going on, was CNN—less local, less friendly, and much less fine. The
Times
had just gotten wind of RePose and
was interested in a local piece—what it was, how it worked, the genius behind it, the technology that made it go. CNN had just gotten wind of RePose too, but it was an ill wind.

“We’ve been looking into the service that’s been called ‘Dead Mail,’ ” investigative reporter Courtney Harman-Handler told Sam abruptly. “We’ve had undercover reporters in there. We’ve investigated the technology. We believe you’re defrauding your users. We’ll be running an exposé, and we’d like to invite you to comment on the record. The public has a right to know. It’s not real.”

“It’s totally real,” said Sam.

“We’ve uncovered evidence that reveals you’re faking these ‘projections,’ as you call them.”

“Nothing’s faked,” said Sam.

“Our evidence reveals the opposite—everything’s being faked. People’s ‘dead loved ones,’ as you call them, are not being reanimated or brought back to consciousness or sentience. They cannot communicate with anyone.”

“By ‘real’ you mean ‘alive’?” Sam was stunned.

“Of course, Mr. Elling,” said Courtney Harman-Handler. “That’s what everyone means by ‘real.’ ”

“Well then of course it’s not real,” said Sam.

“Let me remind you that you’re on the record, sir.”

“We aren’t claiming to raise these people from the dead. That
would
be something to get upset about.”

“You’re defrauding your users out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. You claim that they’ll be able to communicate with their dead loved ones, but it’s all smoke and mirrors.”

“Well duh.” Sam thought Courtney Harman-Handler might benefit from having it dumbed down a bit.

“So you admit this is fraud?”

“No. Not fraud. You were right the first time. Smoke and mirrors.”

“Sir?”

“Really, really impressive-as-hell smoke and mirrors. Smoke and mirrors is what people are paying for.”

“A fake?”

“It’s not fake. It’s real. The computer is really studying then really
compiling then really projecting users’ loved ones. It’s not me back there in a box with gears and levers furiously composing e-mails and hoping they sound right. It genuinely is what these people would really say if they were alive to say it.”

“How do we know that’s true?”

“You come in and use it and find out.”

“We believe it’s a hoax.”

“A hoax is deceptive,” said Sam. “There’s no deception here. The only one who’s suggested real equals alive is you.”

In seeming contrast, Meredith’s reporter, Jason Peterman, asked her out to lunch. She met him at a café in Belltown. They chatted for a couple hours. Meredith elevator-pitched how it worked and why. She effused about how glad they were for the opportunity to help people through the hardest parts of their lives. She described the salon and the lengths they went to to make sure no one had to be alone while they were RePosing or while they were mourning. She handed over the names and contact info of a couple of their users who were willing to talk. And then Jason Peterman asked her the biggest question of all: “Tell me about Sam Elling. What’s he like? How did he come up with such a unique idea?” There was no one more qualified to answer this question than Meredith and nothing she’d rather discuss. The interview went on for another hour from there.

“He’s brilliant, for starters. He doesn’t think things can’t be done; he just thinks they haven’t been done yet. He’s a problem solver. You know? My grandmother died, and he was so … sad for me? Everyone else said, ‘I’m so sorry for your loss,’ or, ‘That sucks so much,’ or, ‘I remember when my grandmother died,’ or something like that. Sam said all those things. But he also said the thing no one else in the world would which was, ‘Well, maybe there’s a way to make her less dead, less gone.’ ”

“Isn’t that kind of a … weird response?” said Jason Peterman.

Meredith shrugged. “There are only weird responses at that point. We don’t really know what to say to people in mourning. As a culture, we’re terrible at it. We just want people to get over it already. Cheer up and move on. That’s what we think when we’re not grieving ourselves. And
then our own loved one dies, and we move into the bereavement room, and we have to be alone in there because then everyone else is outside awkwardly saying, ‘I’m so sorry,’ and meaning, ‘Hope you feel better soon so we can go to happy hour and have fun again.’ ”

“But isn’t that an important part of the process?”

“What do you mean?”

“Does RePose help you grieve? Or does it just help you be more cheerful about it?”

“Both. It helps you feel better in an immediate way because you have to miss your loved one less. It helps you remember because you get to spend time with the person you’ve lost. And it helps people talk about it. Sam’s given us something to be besides sorry. A new way to address tragedy and loss.”

“But doesn’t that mean that you never really grieve and so never heal and get over it?”

“No one wants to get over the death of a loved one,” said Meredith. “Forgetting, moving on, not caring anymore … that’s worse than death.”

“But healing, reconciling, growing?”

“You still get to do that,” Meredith insisted. “Only you get help from the person in your life who is most able to give it.”

“Was,” said Jason Peterman. “Was most able to give it.”

“Not anymore.”

The next day the ticker at the bottom of the screen on CNN read, “RePose creator admits, ‘… of course it’s not real.’ ” And the
Times
headline was, “Grieving, Healing, Moving Forward? New Seattle Company Says ‘Not Anymore.’ ”

Then it seemed to Sam like every newspaper, magazine, TV network, and online press in the world called him up and asked rude things rudely. Dash argued that any publicity was good publicity. Sam argued that people were stupid, and who cared if they got it or not, and let them believe what they wanted to believe. But it started to break Meredith who knew better than anyone what RePose gave you back and the heart of the man who’d made it possible.

“I wish they could see your kindness and generosity,” she told Sam, “why you did this in the first place.”

“To get laid?”

“To give me this incredible gift. To help people deal with death. For all human history, death has been this immutable thing. This devastating sadness. You’ve changed that. It’s a miracle.”

“No wonder you’re in charge of PR,” Sam tried lightly.

“And I wish they could see how smart you are.”

“It’s a hard thing to see,” said Sam. “You have to be smart enough to get it. Brilliance is never appreciated while you’re alive. After I’m dead, I’ll be hailed as a genius.”

“Yeah, but you’ll be dead.”

“My projection will finally feel vindicated though.”

“That doesn’t help me,” said Meredith.

“Actually, it doesn’t help
me
,” said Sam. “It helps you quite a bit.”

Meredith’s call from the
Seattle Times
was followed by one from the
L.A. Times
and then the
New York Times
and the
Times of London
(“At least we keep moving up to better
Times
,” said Dash), all accusing her of exploiting the dead and profiting off of tragedy. “We are trying to help people be happy again after their sadness,” Meredith protested at first. Then, “We are easing their pain. We are helping them grieve.” Then, “Aren’t there people you miss so much you’d give anything just to be able to talk to them again?” Then, “We are miracle makers!” On the fifth call, Dash finally took the phone away from her ear.