The Return of the Player, page 20
…
Jessa heard the screaming, the slamming, and the pots and pans. Her mother and father would never know of Jessa’s hatred of them. She hated Lisa too, hated them all without knowing yet the words to define the nuance of her contempt, more like a vibration she could align with. She will find others like her in a few years, in high school, and more of them in college and after—the ones who don’t complain, the quiet ones, the ones who don’t cheat, the ones who make their own beds—and what they will do when they arrive together with language, mind, memory, instinct, education, ambition, and hatred—hatred for their divorced parents, hatred for their badly married parents who suffered in silence or noise for the sake of their children, hatred for their angry fathers and crazy mothers, hatred for the alcoholics and hatred for the parents in recovery, hatred for the ugly rich and hatred for their lackeys—they might just stand their parents against a wall and fire when ready, fire at will, fire until they empty the guns and then reload and fire again. They might. They probably will. They probably should. Jessa knows this, not in words.
…
Ethan, lying face down on the floor, gritty like a desert highway after a sandstorm, waved a hand without looking up. After Lisa walked out, Ethan emptied all the spice jars on the floor. His face was powdered yellow with turmeric, on his lips a black crust of poppy seeds.
…
Griffin heard the noise downstairs, and June, calling him.
Jessa heard her father, on the stairs, call for Lisa. June called out for Jessa. She opened her door. “Yes, Mother.”
“Would you be with Willa for a bit?”
“Yes. Come on up, Willa.”
“Thank you, hon. Willa, why don’t you go up to your sister and just be with her for a bit?”
…
Griffin and June walked to the maid’s room through the mess, rice and cereal creaking like icy snow. Neither had anything to say to Ethan. The photograph of June rising from the swimming pool and kissing Jessa, through the camera was held by a magnet to the refrigerator door.
Lisa asked for a glass of water. Griffin waited for June to say, “I’ll get it,” or “Griffin, would you?” but instead June said, “You know where the glasses are.”
Lisa went for the water and Ethan waved at her as he had waved to his parents, and Lisa said, “Hey.”
…
June sat on the floor, looking up at Griffin and Lisa on the couch.
“We have a very bad situation right now.”
“I’m sorry, June.”
“This is not the time to apologize for murdering my boyfriend in cold blood, Griffin. That’s the easy way out of your problems, it’s always been the easy way out. That’s why you married me.”
“That’s why he married me too,” said Lisa. “Because it was easier for him to get divorced and me pregnant than for him to look you in the eye and make love to you, but now he can’t even make love to me.”
“And that’s not important now either,” said June. “The only thing that matters is that we have three children in the house and they all need both of their parents. The sofa opens up to a bed. I’m going to tell you what I’ve been thinking. And I’m going to say some things that sound weird, but it’s the only way. First of all, I believe that you can never get divorced. Once you’ve been married, you’re married forever. When you get legally divorced, the altar cries because it knows the pain you’re facing. The souls are bound together; the flesh and spirit grow together. That’s what children are for, to prove in flesh the bonding of the souls. But I also believe that when you get divorced and you remarry, then that’s a real marriage too. God hears the vow—don’t interrupt me—God hears the vow and accepts the vow and blesses the vow. So we’re stuck with a big problem. Griffin, you’re married to me and you’re married to Lisa, and Lisa and I are sort of married to each other because of that, because we both carried your children, half of us is in your children and half of you, and in some way that I can’t explain, Lisa and I mix together because of that. It’s the reason for divorce being so painful. You’re tearing the spirit, which won’t be torn without screaming, and it keeps trying to grow back. We have to live together. We have to live under one roof. Griffin, Lisa, listen to me. Willa will never feel safe with you, Lisa, not completely; she needs protection, and I’m the only one who gives it to her, me and Jessa. And Ethan needs his father—that’s all—and not just a few days a week. He needs to see his father become a man. You’re not a man yet, Griffin, not even with blood on your hands. Do you understand me? I’m not asking you to just live under the roof, do you understand where I’m going with this? I’m lonely. I haven’t been fucked hard in so long I can’t remember.”
“Neither can I,” said Lisa.
June applauded. “Then you know a little bit of what I feel, but not all of it, because you may not get fucked, but you do get cuddled, a man holds you in his arms at night, or you roll over in bed and put one hand on his head and your other hand on his hip and a foot between his feet and a knee against his knee, and you hold him for your own comfort. A man doesn’t know what that feels like to a woman, the pure animal security of that feeling, the friendship with a man when you know more about him than he knows about you, and you know he’s a better man than he knows.”
“There’s more to it than that,” said Lisa. “When he’s asleep you can hold the man you want him to be, and if you breathe with him and into him with enough love, he’ll absorb your love and be stronger for it. We know this isn’t true, and men don’t understand the love we give them, but we try anyway.”
“But we sometimes fail them too,” said June. “And I’ve been thinking about this. In what department of marriage do we fail them the most? We fail our men by not holding them accountable. This is tricky because I don’t mean responsibility; that’s a category that doesn’t need explanation, and it’s the category by which the men fail us when they don’t do the work they owe us. Men have duties they owe their women. And we have duties we owe them. But our failure to hold them accountable means that we know our men keep a secret ledger of their lives, and by not helping them with the balance, the marriage falls into moral and romantic bankruptcy. That’s the beginning of hatred and divorce. Accountability means time. What they do with their time, when they use time secretly, and we close our eyes. We just try to force our way through. Most marriages are like the Little Engine That Could, huffing and puffing up the hill to a golden anniversary. But half the trains get uncoupled, because they just can’t pull the weight anymore, and instead of blaming the worn-out engines, we blame the drivers. I’m happy for the marriages between people who earned their love for each other, but the three of us don’t have that, not yet. The three of us failed at marriage. Lisa failed at marriage when she fucked a married man, and then when she hit her child. Griffin failed at marriage because he didn’t marry for love, he married out of guilt and fear.”
“I loved you.”
“How do you know? Because you got a hard-on around me? Because my skin is smooth? Because I let you fuck me in the ass more than once? Because I pushed you around a little and you liked it? Because I slapped you sometimes? Because you took me to Cannes? Because I went with you to the Oscars? Because you bought me a BMW? You must have loved me, because otherwise why would you buy me a BMW? That’s the way most of the guys around here know they love their wives, by how much shit they buy them and how big a suite they get at the Four Seasons on Maui. Or did you love me because you gave me children and then left me for Lisa?
“And I failed at marriage because I couldn’t find another husband, and I tried. I debased myself and I tried. I made a fool of myself, a schmuck of myself, if you want to know. You can’t believe what I went through. But the only good was, and I’m going to tell you this so you understand everything, I found the one true American God, and his angel, Moroni, as introduced to me by two girls, Shifra from New Zealand and Puah from Idaho. They were named for the first two women mentioned in Exodus, the midwives who saved the life of baby Moses. If I hadn’t gone to Park City with this disaster of a man, I wouldn’t be saying this now. There wasn’t any one thing wrong with him, but nothing was right. There must be twenty million men like this guy. Lisa, you have someone to talk to and watch the news with. You have someone to pick up something you need on his way home from work. You have a grown-up in the house. I don’t. And I had two children with you, Griffin. I tried to find another man but I couldn’t, and I never will. Not a good man, not a bad man, no man. I have two kids and I don’t bring much more to the table than that. I look good enough, but I’m forty-two and I’m not rich. I need you just as much as Lisa needs you. And Lisa needs you just as much as I need you. In every way.”
She stopped talking and took the glass of water from Lisa and drank what remained. Lisa refilled the glass from the bathroom sink instead of going back into Ethan’s disaster in the kitchen.
“We’re going to live together, the three of us. You’re going to sell both houses, and get one big house with an apartment above a detached garage, and that’s where I’m going to live. And when the children are all grown and in college, we’ll have linked bedrooms in the main house. We’ll remodel so we can have that.”
Griffin needed clarification. “Do you mean we’re going to fuck each other?”
June lifted a hand and tilted the palm to Lisa, who said, “We’ll have to, at least once, to get it out of the way. And if we like it, we’ll do it again.”
“But the point of this,” said June, “isn’t group sex, the point is the children. You’ll have your public life together. I can live without a public social life if I have to, for the children.”
“But you’re talking about a private life with us, and the children will see us in bed together.”
“No,” said June. “Some things can’t be changed, and you’ll wake up with Lisa. But there will be some nights when you come to me or I come to you. And there will be nights when you and I have the kids, nights when you and Lisa have them, and we can take turns just going out to the movies or doing whatever we want to do.”
“Fucking included?”
“Yes. That’s the point. This is it. This is the solution. This is the answer to the dilemma of the modern marriage. This is the accountability. You want to fuck, and we want our children to have fathers. We can pretend that men follow the rules and don’t fuck around and then, when they do, punish them as though that’s a singular offense. So there we have it. We can lie to ourselves or we can admit that only a few men are really faithful to one woman. Most want it, and what they want they get, or try to get.”
Griffin said, “It’s late. The kids have school tomorrow. Let’s put them to bed. We’ll clean the kitchen later. What a mess.”
Thirteen
Two years later, the second week of July, and Gunther Hitt finishes his introduction: “Our friend, our colleague, our leader, our genius, Griffin Mill.” Griffin is a few joyful weeks from his fifty-fourth birthday, his life extended by the applause for him as he walks to the lectern in front of the big projection screen. He has $750 million—all in one stock, that’s true, but the Initial Public Offering price was $15 a year ago and today, at the market’s opening, the price was $48. At the end of the meeting, when he finishes his presentation, the fund managers and investment bankers in the room, the stock analysts for brokerage houses, and the financial reporters for the newspapers and news channels will all have seen the future, and they will recommend that investors buy before the stock goes to $70. The company has no debt and a growing community of subscribers. Phil Ginsberg now has a little more than $2.3 billion; Gunther Hitt has even more. In gratitude, Ginsberg has bought Griffin a private jet for $25 million and, as he said, “for the heck of it,” is paying the fuel bill for two years. In an hour, after Griffin finishes his talk, he’ll meet his two wives and three children, plus a big fluffy dog, at the Telluride airport and fly to his island.
“It’s great to be here with all of you. We’re happy today. We should be. And we’re going to be happier, once I show you Only Connect Release Two. But as I lead you through the new design, I want you to remember that it’s human loneliness that makes us so successful. There’s a big word we make fun of too often, alienation, but it’s the modern condition. Let’s face it. Most of us are trapped in jobs we don’t like—if we have jobs—in careers over which we have no control, in a service economy that requires perpetual numbing belligerent happiness. Most of us feel like shit. Most of us hate ourselves and can’t imagine anyone loving us. This even happens in most of our marriages. But the human heart, the soul, the flesh, they all cry out for contact. This is natural, and yet most of us live in solitary confinement, surrounded by a billion others in the same condition. This isn’t true for everyone; we know that. Some of us are blessed. But for the rest, all we want is to connect, only connect.
“Two years ago, people, some of you in this room, said, It can’t work. OnlyConnect can’t work because every Internet service provider already has a dating program, and there’s also Craigslist, and Lavalife, and Nerve.com, and Match.com, and Jdate, and so on. We said, We have a new idea. Those of you who bet on us were right. We knew we were right.
“Now I’m going to take you through the new OnlyConnect. I’m going to show you what we’ve changed, now that technology has finally been able to deliver full-screen streaming video. So look at the monitor.”
With a keypad and mouse on the podium, Griffin clicks on the OnlyConnect icon.
“OnlyConnect is already the most successful relationships-and-romance portal in the history of the Internet, and we’ve achieved that status with what, until today, has been a standard interface, pages of head shots beside biographical text. All of that is about to change. This is big news and I’m announcing it here.
“Part one: OnlyConnect has acquired the W Hotels group. W Hotels is a large chain where each hotel provides a level of high design that feels personal, a hotel that, without embarrassment and without being coy, promises sex and discretion and, more than that, surroundings that are so perfect that everyone looks beautiful. The secret is cinematic lighting. I come from Hollywood, so I know how lighting is sometimes everything; if the lighting is right you can look like a movie star and be someone that others will fall in love with. That’s what we want here, not just for people to meet and screw—there’s plenty of that on the Internet—we want a site that encourages love and commitment. A site that encourages honesty. And we have it. Look at the monitors. You’re looking at a hotel lobby. You see people coming and going. Each one of those moving figures onscreen that looks so real is a computer graphic representation of an OnlyConnect member. So now I can announce Part Two: OnlyConnect has signed an exclusive joint partnership with Pixar Animation Studios and our good friends at Starbucks Coffee.
“Watch the monitors. What you see is the first of two thousand reconfigured Starbucks outlets. Eventually we’ll have kiosks like this in every mall in the world. The world! Fifteen thousand kiosks is what we’re expecting to install. They’re simple to run, as you can see. Watch the model, that’s Gavin Whalley, our head of customer service. Gavin is walking into the OnlyConnect booth at a Starbucks—this is actually the original Starbucks in Seattle—and he’s standing in front of a green screen. Here you see the trained OnlyConnector placing twenty-five reflective disks on Gavin’s face and body. This is the same technique that the genius director Peter Jackson used to endow King Kong with such brilliant emotions. Now you see Gavin follow a few simple directions, raising and lowering his arms, turning around, smiling, frowning, making a happy face and an angry face, and laughing. Then we record his voice, first his speaking voice, reading the beautiful sonnet “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways …” and then singing “Jingle Bells.” The combination of both reading and speaking voices gives the avatar tremendous warmth. All the data are entered into the computer, and presto! the new member of the community now has his personal avatar, the member’s online physical representation. As you can see, the computer graphic detail is pretty damn lifelike. Ready for love, or ready for adventure.
“So, watch the monitor. Home page. The hotel. Your avatar is ready. Look at it. All those other avatars you see in the street and coming and going into the hotel are the avatars of members of our community online right now, in real time. Look at the quality of that image. In the beginning of the computer era, it was the military, it was atomic war, that pushed the computer into advanced technology. And then it was the entertainment industry, the military entertainment complex, if you will, that pushed the computer into greater speed and capacity. And now—well, now it’s love. It’s love that drives the quality of those graphics; the believability of their movements and expressions is at the very highest advanced state of the art. There is nothing available to surpass what we have developed for OnlyConnect. The avatars on screen look like people, move like people, and talk like people.
“Now, a quick demonstration of the basic plot. You see these people crossing the lobby. You click on whoever interests you and follow that person out of the lobby to what we call the Lounge. And whoever you’re interested in takes you to the lounge of their sexual affinity or their romantic dream.
“There’s Friends Lounge, for people who aren’t looking for something as dramatic as love, they just want someone to see movies and hang out with. Men and women together; it’s very loose. Then, of course, there’s Dating Lounge. We tried different names but they seemed a bit forced—Love Lounge, Romance Lounge, there was too much pressure in those names for the hotel guests to succeed. Dating is a pretty neutral word; it is what it is. Then there’s the Lesbian Lounge and the Gay Lounge, for lesbians and gay men; there’s Alternate Lounge, for BDSM, transgendered people, and we’ve made it a bit Goth, just to be playful. And then there’s Couples Lounge. We’re not calling it Swingers Lounge or Lifestyles Lounge because we find those words a little too—can I say, seventies? You know? And this is the future, not the disco past. And then we have the national minority lounges: India Lounge, Latin Lounge, and so on. These can be developed as subscribers look for ethnicity; the categories expand as subscribers define themselves according to whatever labels they want to use. This can be a hotel of a thousand lounges.
