Wakefield (13 page)

“For the work?” Paulee asks, winking.

Farkash looks at him disapprovingly. Obviously, Wakefield has arrived in the middle of a conversation that concerns him only marginally.

“What did you do with Maggie?” Wakefield catches a proprietary hint in Paulee's tone.

In fact, Paulee is alluding to what he thinks was Wakefield's magic act in making wallets appear and disappear. But Wakefield doesn't know anything about that: he'd attributed people's calls for their wallets and keys as imaginative responses to his speculation about money. He gives Paulee a dirty look.

Oh, she called,” says Sherrill. “Something came up, but she'll join us shortly.”

Wakefield realizes that Maggie and Sherrill must be friends; she's covering for her. Seems that her “you're full of shit” comment might refer to something other than his ideas about art. He decides he likes her.

A young Clark Gable appears at the table and begins the Menu Recitation, a new American poetic form. Today's Special is intricate and vertiginous, detailing the tiniest manipulations of the beef and the minutest saucing of the fish. Scented rhetorical transports. Oleaginous mung. Striped miniatures. Taunted crab claw.

Sherrill interrupts. “Falcon claw?”

Displeased, the poet repeats, “Fulcrum.”

“We used to call that fatback in Kentucky.”

The poet begins again. It's neither falcon claw nor fulcrum, but
fourme d'ambert
. It's part of the Roasted Beet and Bean Salomée. Go figure. Threatened with the recitation reiterated da capo, Paulee glares at Sherrill. Again, everyone laughs. This is a veteran audience. They've been through more menu recitations than the fans of slam poetry; to paraphrase, they've heard the best ingredients of their generation pot-roasted over slow flames.

Most important, wine is ordered. Wakefield, who is still a little drunk, chugs down a glass of three-hundred-dollars-a-bottle vino and his brain smiles thank you. Happily, his lunch companions momentarily forget about him; Sherrill and Neva quarrel good-naturedly about something vaguely sexual. Farkash and “Pathogen” are silent but alert.

Paulee manages to tell Wakefield, in his suggestive way, that Sherrill is some sort of a multidisciplinary, transcultural specialist, valued by advanced technothinkers for her studies of new media. She is also single and on the lookout.

“Her address book contains only the names of single potential Nobel laureates,” Paulee fills in. “She's teaching computers to understand English, her English. Her computer reads everything written in English since Beowulf. Quote something by a beloved classic, Sherrill.”

Sherrill obliges: “In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth, of a man—let us call him Wakefield—who absented himself for a long time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractly stated, is not very uncommon, nor—without a proper distinction of circumstances—to be condemned either as naughty or nonsensical.”

Wakefield's wine glass freezes in midair. Even Paulee is momentarily caught off guard. “Wakefield?” he asks incredulously, “like our guest? You stuck his name in, Sherrill.”

Sherrill smiles mysteriously. Wakefield takes a long sip of his wine. It is a classic, after all.

Neva saves him from commenting when she asks, “What's your new project, Pathogen?”

“I'm still unpacking.”

So that's really his name, thinks Wakefield, just like my name is really my name. He remembers who Pathogen is. A writer of complex dystopias, he recently published a huge nonfiction book about his round-the-world search for the origin of an electromagnetic frequency that science has been unable to explain. Wakefield actually tried to read it, but he couldn't get past the introduction. Too much math.

Between the heart of palm salad and the tiny olives, and well into the second bottle of wine, Maggie shows up showered and fresh, wearing what looks to Wakefield like a Catholic schoolgirl's uniform. Very funny. But for the subtle shadows under her eyes, which could be makeup, she looks none the worse for wear. They exchange a “Hello” that doesn't sound casual to anyone.

Farkash now addresses Wakefield. “Mr. Wakefield, last evening you said that the material world is disappearing. Is that correct?”

“Absolutely.” Wakefield is flattered.

“He wasn't speaking literally,” interjects Neva.

“Yes I was.” Wakefield hates it when people think his ideas are metaphorical. He doesn't really know what that is. He fancies himself a strict literalist.

“I thought so.” Farkash brings his fingers together in front of his chin. The table goes silent. They know the gesture; it's significant. “I work now on a mathematics of image formation. At a certain point in time for the brain the world became material. Now we are moving away from that point and the disappearance of the material is generating interesting numbers.”

“I didn't know you were interested in humans, Farkash,” Paulee quips.

“Only because they generate formulas, Paulee. Mr. Wakefield described something that I can illustrate.” He takes a fountain pen from his pocket and starts writing a complex formula on the tablecloth. “See?”

They all look. Wakefield looks too, but he doesn't see.

Paulee: “Pretty.”

Neva: “Another billion-dollar tablecloth.”

“It's a design for molecular computation that could allow us to dispense with hardware computers, in common language,” Sherrill, who knows math, too, explains to Wakefield.

While they continue to admire the tablecloth, Maggie distracts him with a look. He is flattered that this equation is somehow related to his ideas about the state of the imagination, but puzzled by the very nonimaginary and nondisappearing persistence of his desire. He suspects that the force that keeps the world from dematerializing is libido. Attraction. Maggie licks her lips, and his desire increases. Maybe attraction is taken care of by the formula somehow.

Over the raw oysters on ice sprinkled with Dead Sea salt, Sherrill eyes the Clark Gable waiter.

“He looks a little like the second man who made it to the South Pole, I forget his name.”

“Sherrill has a thing for heroes, manly men who spend rugged years away from human company,” Maggie explains. “Her screen saver is a collage of faces of polar explorers.”

“They get frostbitten and Sherrill nurses them back to health,” says Paulee. “I think he looks more like Clark Gable than Amundsen.”

And so it goes, over Lapin aux Marrons, Halibut Cheeks, Escargot Parsillade, Hardy Kiwi and Fleur de Maquis salad, baby greens with unborn arugula, pear and corn cakes, Apple Bacon-Wrapped Fallow Venison Leg rubbed with (more) Dead Sea salt, tiramisu, tarte tatin, Graham's Vintage Port, and espresso. They are all brilliant, hope-filled, flush, and firm in the certainty that they are irreplaceable.

But with the espresso a kind of melancholy sets in. Rich or not, they are all just people who've eaten too much and must now return to the office. They have neither the time nor the personalities for rest, no matter how extravagant the lunch. Despite their nervous energy Wakefield perceives that his table companions are exhausted; they've all been on at least three planes this week, and it matters not a whit if the jets are private. He allows himself to feel some compassion for them, but doesn't look when the check comes. He knows the total without tip is more than the yearly income of a Peruvian village, or all the small loans made in one day by the World Bank to Indian seamstresses.

The Home of the Future is Neva's brainchild, inspired by a sketch Paulee made one night on a napkin. These people get all their inspiration in restaurants, Wakefield snickers. The Company is funding the project in the hope that every future home in the world will run its software. To that end, a great many specialists, from child psychologists to entertainment analysts, are involved. Sherrill studies the reactions of a series of families invited to live in it, as if they were natives of a tribe. “Future primitives,” she likes to call them. She and Neva, the HOTF Team, will be Wakefield's guides. Maggie tags along; she's never seen it. At the gates of the Company campus, Sherrill signs them in and they all pile into a cheerfully painted Company minibus. It pulls up to a Frank Lloyd Wrightish–looking house built into a snowy hillside.

“No cameras,” Neva warns. “It's still experimental.”

Wakefield shrugs. Cameras were never his thing. His notebook, on the other hand, is awfully accurate most of the time.

Sherrill hesitates a moment at the door, trying to remember the entry code; Neva leans over her impatiently and punches it in.

Lights simulating afternoon sun come on as they enter, and a pleasant masculine voice says, “Welcome home, Neva and Sherrill. Who are your guests?”

“Wakefield and Maggie,” Sherrill replies, and the voice repeats after her with delight, “Wakefield and Maggie! Welcome to the Home of the Future, Wakefield and Maggie!”

“Fuck you,” says Sherrill.

Machines begin to activate in the kitchen. The icemaker pours cubes into a glass and fills it with water. “You must be thirsty, Sherrill,” the house-voice says. A minioven pops out a fresh cookie. “Martha Stewart's latest recipe,” the house-voice tells them. “I think you'll like these, Sherrill. And here is one for Neva. And one for Maggie. And one for Wakefield.” Out pop more cookies. Pop. Pop. Pop.

Sherrill orders the cookie machine off, but four dinners have already started heating themselves in a microwave that hums the tune of “Three Little Maids from School.” Neva stops it with a sharp voice command.

“Let's have a fucking whiskey,” suggests Maggie.

“Fucking whiskey coming right up, Maggie,” the voice responds jovially, and a tumblerful slides down the counter toward her.

“Make that two more,” says Sherrill.

“Amen.” Wakefield has just found his voice.

Whiskey in hand, they head for the living room, a welcoming space furnished with family-style clutter. A teddy bear propped up in a rocking armchair begins to clap and flat-screen “paintings” light up on the walls.

“Not fucking Impressionists!” grumbles Sherrill, avoiding a robot waiter who is intent on running right through her. “You've got to see more art, Neva.”

“Honey, it's supposed to be an
average
home.”

“Okay, okay,” says Sherrill. “Stop!” The robot waiter freezes and the paintings vanish. “Night!” she commands, and the lights dim, the ceiling becomes a starry sky, and a Chopin nocturne begins to play.

“Can we watch a movie?” Wakefield asks, lying down on an inviting couch. The couch adjusts itself to the contours of his body and props a perfect pillow under his head. He's overcome by sleepiness.

“Sure.
Last Tango in Paris
, Neva?” asks Maggie.

“It's supposed to be a family home of the future!” Neva apologizes. “Don't you want to see the nursery décor?”

Not particularly, thinks Wakefield, but it's too late. As soon as she says it, baby-mobiles dangle over their heads and Mother Goose posters appear on the walls. Sherrill looks sad. “I'll never have any kids!” she says to no one in particular.

Neva rolls her eyes. The kiddie stuff disappears, replaced instead by holograms of Art Nouveau ladies with long, flowing hair. The robot waiter appears with more whiskeys, and places one carefully on a small table that pops up like a mushroom from the floor beside Wakefield's couch.

Maggie lies down on the floor next to Wakefield and the carpet begins to rise, molding itself into a couch identical to the one he's lying on. The two couches touch. It's a bed!

“Smart room!” says Sherrill.

Maggie kicks off her shoes and is about to toss her sweater on the floor beside them when Neva says,” I wouldn't do that.” But the robot waiter has already grabbed the shoes and disappeared with them.

“Shit,” shouts Sherrill, “the shoe-shine and laundry service is offline. The damn thing won't return anything until it's fixed.”

“At least you got to keep your sweater.” Neva is amused.

“We owe you a pair of shoes,” Sherrill offers, upset with Neva.

“But I want mine,” pouts Maggie. “I'm not rich like you, Sher.”

“Italian, I promise.”

Milky light begins to fade the stars. Wakefield can't tell if he's been asleep or dreaming with his eyes open. Apparently the tour is over.

“This is the Rip Van Winkle house,” he yawns. “I've missed the American Revolution.”

“Only the first one,” says Sherrill. “The second one is just beginning.”

They make their way past the robot waiter and the superautomated kitchen; Wakefield holds on to the whiskey glass; it's nice, with a heavy bottom, cut lead crystal. Maggie is barefoot. Sherrill and Neva aren't speaking to each other.

“Good-bye, Wakefield and Maggie. You are a nice couple. Happy anniversary!” blurts the house as they approach the door.

“The anniversary of what? I can't walk like this in the snow!”

“Your glass, Wakefield?” the house-voice reminds him.

“I like it. Can't I take it with me?”

“The glass belongs to the house, Wakefield!” There is slight menace in the voice.

Sherrill intervenes. She takes the glass out of Wakefield's hand and drops it in her purse. “It's a gift,” she says sternly.

“I'll have to report it,” says the house. “We have inventory every day.”

“Bitch!” Sherrill ignores the voice but gives Neva a nasty look. Like mother like son, she thinks.

Wakefield picks Maggie up and carries her to the minibus. She's not all that light, but she's warm and smells like a loaf of fresh French bread with a hint of whiskey.

“How sweet!” Sherrill hands Wakefield the whiskey glass as he hops into the van after Maggie. “Your souvenir.” Neva waves goodbye. She and Sherrill are staying behind to “work out some glitches.” As they are driven back to her car, Maggie takes his hand and puts it between her legs. Her beastie-in-residence is pulsing. She puts her feet on his lap. He warms them with his free hand. A nice couple, indeed.