Playground, page 27
How so many users found our site so fast still mystifies me. But why they stayed was obvious. We humans are built to compete, built to spout opinions, built to seek prestige and shiny, built to watch our accounts and ratings grow, built to impress our friends and vanquish our enemies. Or maybe we’re just built to play.
We had a payroll now, and operating expenses, but not even a trickle of revenue. Internet commerce was still pitiful; banner ads were crude and paid almost nothing. How the site might ever generate a positive cash flow remained a mystery. But Seedbed Partners threw another two million at me before the year was done.
SO MUCH HAPPENED in those months that when Ina knocked on my apartment door on a cold Thursday night late in spring, I felt as though I hadn’t seen her since childhood. I greeted her with a burst of joy before seeing her distress. Stupidly, I asked, “What’s wrong?” as she stood there grieving in the hallway. She pushed past me, into my efficiency.
It was almost eleven. I sat her at the table. “Can I make you something hot?”
She sniffled and nodded. Her eyes were red and her face was flushed. She held out one palm, asking for time, and cupped the other around her trembling throat. I boiled water in silence and made two mugs of lemon and ginger tea.
I sat down across from her at the folding card table in my kitchen, cupping my hands around the mug’s heat. I had a pathetic desire to brag about Playground’s launch and impress her with the fact that I was on my way to becoming a millionaire. I managed to say nothing, pretending to sip my tea. So did she. It took her some time to collect herself. Her composure rose and fell in her face like the tides.
At last she said, “We had a fight.”
My heart flung itself all over the room. I wanted lots less and so much more. “What . . . ? What happened?”
“He’s been far away, Todd. Ever since his mother died. He writes and writes, sometimes twelve or thirteen hours a day, and there’s nothing to show for it. Nothing! It doesn’t seem to bother him that he’s stuck in place. I can’t take it anymore.”
I should have been impatient. I should have demanded details. But Ina Aroita was in my apartment, across the table from me, and I was in no hurry for any change. If she was buying time, I was selling.
She blew on her tea and studied the ripples as if the surface were the open Pacific. Her eyes were the weirdest mix of ferocity and fatalism. She wanted to be as far away from this continent as she could get. But I gathered that he would not go with her.
“He’s never going to let that thesis go until it’s better than any thesis anyone has ever written.”
“Better than any North Sider’s,” I corrected. She looked at me, not understanding. “Better than any privileged person’s thesis.”
The explanation puzzled her as much as Rafi’s behavior. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”
“It’s his dad,” I said. “The man’s a competitor. I’ve met him several times, and he was always trying way too hard. Do you remember that poem . . . ? From childhood, Donnie Young set him on a course to beat the white race at all its own games. Rafi has gotten past a lot of that. But if he can’t win over all his peers and all his professors and anyone who might read the thesis even by accident, he’s not going to show anyone a word.”
She looked sick with recognition. “That’s exactly what’s happening. He’s convinced that nothing he writes is good enough. And he won’t believe me when I tell him that it’s fine.”
“Oh, my. Don’t do that. That’s not a good idea. ‘Fine’ is as bad as it gets.”
Her eyes lit up. Horror at what she was coming to understand, and horror at what, in her ignorance, she’d already said to him.
“Wait. Do you think he thinks I’m a white person?”
“I have no idea.” I didn’t know how Rafi saw anyone, least of all himself.
“What has he told his father about me?”
Of that, I knew even less. “I don’t think they talk much these days. That doesn’t matter, anyway. Any objections his father has will only make Rafi more loyal to you.”
Her fingers drummed on the lip of her mug. She kept looking at the apartment door, ready to rush back across town and work things out. Then she would melt down again. I sneaked a look at my watch. We still wore watches back then. Half an hour to midnight.
“Okay,” she said, like she was the one on trial. “Some of this may have been my fault. I told him that he had to finish up the thesis or I would leave town without him. . . .”
I waited until I could fake a normal voice again. “That’s harsh.”
“And he said . . . ‘I think you better leave, then. For your own sake.’ ”
“Harsher.”
“He was just getting warmed up.”
“What . . . exactly did he say?” I was afraid of her answer. I pictured Rafi weighing out the lightning strike, toying with a stunning move that would turn a weak position into a strong one. If Rafi had uncorked on her, if he’d truly gone up into the heaven of his fluency, he might have said anything.
“He said he could never make a life with anyone who laid down ultimatums. He told me to go get myself a better Negro.” She looked at me, to see if that might be sufficient. Numbed, she added, “Except . . . he didn’t say ‘Negro.’ I told him I was sorry, Todd. Over and over. I told him I didn’t mean it. That I’d stay with him until he finished, however long that took. I begged him. I groveled. But it was like my words had flipped a switch and he was just . . . done.”
I saw it as if I were looking at myself. Ina wasn’t the one Rafi couldn’t forgive.
She started crying, but tentatively, as an afterthought. “It’s like he always knew we were doomed to blow up someday, so he’s decided to blow us up in advance and get it over with.”
I wanted to tell her: His act was his artwork—an act of poetry. He was slashing at what was best between them, much the way Ina had once defaced the sculpture of herself. I couldn’t look at her, so I got up and started fussing with the teakettle. Someone somewhere surely wanted more hot water.
I spoke to the sink. “You know that he’s convinced he wrecked his parents’ marriage?”
“He what?”
I turned to see her looking at me as if I’d struck her across the face. “Do you remember the poems? The one about the orange coat and Rafi’s first day at school? That was real. His parents fought about what happened that day. His father hit his mother. It was a repeat thing, and she’d had enough. She left him, and Rafi took the blame.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yes. But it gets worse. Remember the poem about the day he got accepted into high school? He also thinks his sister’s death was his fault.”
She raised her face to mine, uncomprehending. I sat back down at the card table and told her what I knew about the night of his sister’s death. I gave her all the details exactly the way that I told them to you. The absurd conclusion. The crazy conviction lodged in the heart of my very sane friend. I told her about Rafi’s obsession with Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov. She’d seen the stolen copy of The Philosophy of the Common Task on his bookshelf and never opened it.
She laid her hand on my wrist. I did not pull away.
“Wait. You’re telling me he thinks . . . that if he writes a good enough thesis that . . . it’ll bring his sister back from the dead?”
It was now after one a.m. Time meant nothing to her, and she showed no intention of going anywhere.
“I. . . . he. . . . how did it end up, between you two?”
“He said I should leave. I left.”
She said the words soberly, as matters of fact. But the feelings were those of a frightened little girl, fighting fire with fire.
“You’re not going back? I mean, tonight?”
In a heartbeat, she was all apologies. “Todd, I’m so sorry. I can get a room at the Lincoln Lodge.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s plenty of room here.” I waved my hand across the efficiency, and we both laughed at the size of my lie.
But there was room enough. I lent her my robe and found her a fresh toothbrush, and while she showered, I pulled out the sleeper and changed the sheets. She came out of the bathroom wrapped in the robe, which reached down to her ankles. She studied the bed as if it were a math problem on the Graduate Record Exam.
“I’ve got the floor,” I said.
“Now who’s being silly, Todd? We’re adults.”
“Exactly. I’ve got the floor.”
She studied me, discovery dawning. How could she not have known? She seemed more puzzled than alarmed. I made a little rat’s nest with the sofa pillows by the far side of the pull-out bed. I’d slept on worse, but the recent big jump in my prospective net worth added a touch of burlesque to the arrangement.
Ina switched off the overhead light and climbed into bed. For her own burlesque touch, she peeled off my robe and tossed it on top of me with a pained little giggle. She knew now, but she didn’t really believe. I was her great love’s great friend, and she still believed that I would save her. She was an optimist who thought she could correct her small mistake. That’s what doomed her.
I dreamt that an island rose in the middle of the ocean, and Ina Aroita was on it. As in the best dreams of my childhood, I could breathe underwater. I swam all around the foundations of her island, and what I took for the crenellated towers of coral reef were in fact intricately carved statues, made by whatever sculptor had made her island. When I woke, I was curled up halfway under the bed she slept on.
I put away the bedclothes of my rat’s nest, and as quietly as I could, I began to make breakfast. As I sliced into a pink grapefruit, two soft knocks landed on the door and Rafi let himself in.
Ina scrambled out of her dazed sleep and shouted his name in joy. As she sat up, her breasts popped out above the sheet, and she hurried to cover them.
Rafi hung in the doorway, surveying the scene. “So . . . the fuck is this?” He spoke to himself. Ina and I were there only as state’s evidence.
I stepped forward, pointing the tiny grapefruit knife to the far side of the sleeper where the rat’s nest had been. “I slept down there.”
A dry chuckle came out the side of Rafi’s mouth. “Don’t insult me, fucker.” He didn’t care about the sleeping arrangements. Our real act of disloyalty cut him deeper than that.
He closed the door to the apartment and backed into the corner next to it. He held his right elbow in his left hand and pressed his right hand to his mouth, as if looking at an art installation. From the sleeper, with the sheet pulled up to her neck, Ina said, “Rafi. Rafi. I’m so glad you’re here.”
He didn’t hear her. He pointed one crooked index finger at me. “So . . . you. . . .” His finger swung to the bed. “You came to him. . . .” His finger swung toward me. “To tell you what’s wrong with the Black Guy?”
I might have denied the charge if Ina hadn’t been there to force my honesty. How did I not see it the night before? We had confirmed for him his enduring nightmare: people he trusted were judging him.
“I was scared, Rafi. I was hurt.”
He turned toward me. “And what did you tell her?”
I said nothing, and my silence was an admission of the worst kind of guilt.
He sat down on the foot of the bed where the woman he thought he would marry sat with a sheet held up in front of her nakedness. “What did he tell you?”
She was desperate. She blurted out, “He told me about your sister. Rafi . . . that’s not on you!”
He swung his head back toward me. The oddest look crossed his face. It seemed like good-natured amusement, like someone had played an obvious prank on him and he had fallen for it. It seemed to say that he had known, all those years ago when he had confided in me, that I would betray him someday.
“Didn’t I say? Didn’t I . . . ?”
“Man,” I said. “Listen. It wasn’t like that.”
“No? What was it like?”
All I could manage, again, was nothing. Silence, with all its concessions.
“Well . . .” He nodded. One hand reached out and patted the foot of the bed. “All right, then. . . .” He stood up.
“Rafi?” Ina said, her voice spectral.
He opened the door and turned to study us. He addressed us like he was arranging plans for later that afternoon. “I will not be analyzed by two people who have no clue.” The door clicked shut behind him, and he was gone.
Ina started to wail and make strange motions with her hands. I thought she was going to decompensate. It took me too long to realize that she wanted me to turn around so she could get out of bed. I did, and she was dressed in a flash.
“He’ll be all right. Just give him a few hours.”
She ignored me, pulling herself together and rushing to collect her things.
“Ina. Don’t chase him. It’ll make things worse. It’ll just make him feel more—”
She shouted at me, “Shut up! Just shut up about him!”
I stood by as she slammed out the door and ran down the steps after him. Maybe she caught up with him. Maybe they talked. I never heard.
I waited a few days, then wrote them both emails. I was abject. I apologized. I suggested ways to fix things. I never heard back from Rafi. From Ina, I got a terse reply:
Please stop making things worse. Haven’t we done enough damage already? I’m getting out of here. He knows how to find me if he wants to find me.
Two months passed. A girlfriend of hers from the MFA program said she’d gone to Tahiti, leaving her father’s APO information as her forwarding address. Tahiti: the place no more real to me than that Gauguin painting I’d pulled up for her so long ago, on the proto-web. I learned from a secretary in Rafi’s department that he’d moved into a grim tenement by the interstate in North Champaign.
MY ANGEL INVESTORS at Seedbed Partners began to pressure me to relocate operations to the Valley. I’d almost reached the same conclusion myself. Playground was expanding faster than I could believe, and managing the operation from my little efficiency on the prairie was growing impossible. We were still bleeding money, but the Seedbed folks weren’t worried about anything except my backwoods location.
Even I could see the need for the move. Every serious player was heading to California. The talent and connections we would need to make a real run of things were waiting there, in the greater Bay Area. And all but one of my small staff was ready to relocate to what one of them called “the sweetest spot on the continent.”
I WASN’T LEAVING TOWN without one last effort. I went to the address I had for Rafi at suppertime on a Wednesday. His apartment was on the ground floor, facing a parking lot. The front door had a spy hole in it. I stood to one side before I knocked. I didn’t want him seeing me until the door opened.
His face went through five emotions before he got control of it. “Yes?” he said, like I was a salesman.
“Rafi.” I was shaking. I didn’t care if he saw it. “If I did something wrong, I am so sorry.”
“If?”
“Man! Look at me! We weren’t doing anything. She was upset. She came to talk to me.”
“And I’m the angry black dude. And you’re just a good-hearted friend of the Negro, trying to help.”
His voice was so rational. So calm. It terrified me. “Look. Rafi. Can I come in?”
He didn’t move. “Is there something I can help you with?”
“Okay. Whatever. I betrayed you. I was wrong. We were both wrong. Show me. I’ll say whatever you want. We shouldn’t have been talking about . . .”
“You know what, Todd?” He sounded expansive, the way he sounded in our dorm room, three feet from my bed, when we used to talk philosophy after lights-out. “All these years, I thought you were my friend. But it turns out you were just my social worker all along.”
I would rather have had him punch me. I’ve never felt such desolation. All I wanted was to hurt him back, as badly as I could.
“Fuck you, then, you stupid little fuck!”
“Right,” he said. “I think we’re done here.” And the door closed in my face.
I WROTE TO RAFI when I got to San Jose. I wanted him to know where I was. I wanted to make sure he always had a channel where he could reach me. I wrote as if nothing had happened. I told him how well Playground was doing. I wrote him again when we hit half a million users and when the smart tracking ads gave us our first substantial revenues. I told him how I now had more money than I knew what to do with.
I worried that my messages to his student email address would one day be returned: No such user in the system. But they kept going through. Through mutual acquaintances, I learned that he’d submitted his thesis at last: “The ‘Design of Darkness’ in Plath, Bishop, and Reed.” It got top honors. He stayed on in Urbana, this time to get a doctorate in education. He was writing about how underprivileged children learned how to read.
I got a copy of his master’s thesis by not entirely legitimate means, and I read it twice. I understood very little, but along the way, Rafi managed to mention both Nikolai Fyodorovich Fyodorov and Saint Ignatius of Loyola, while spinning several metaphors comparing the writing of poetry to the game of Go. They felt like bread crumbs left there for me alone. But every one of the emails I sent him went unanswered.
I had done something unforgivable that I didn’t fully understand, and I was dead to him. But all the dead would live again, as in that curious book he had shown me, lifetimes ago, in a castle by the shore of a lake that I once knew how to walk under. His sister would rise from her landing spot at the base of his apartment stairs. My father would uncrumple from the ruins of his 450. His mother’s heart would unburst. I would bring them all back—and Rafi, too. I just had to work, harder and longer hours. I just needed more posts, from another million users. I just needed techniques for keeping people logged in and telling us the stories of their lives. I just needed a machine that could read and explain those stories to me and tell me everything they meant.
Put a pebble on the board. Then another. Watch the unfolding. I threw myself into Playground. It became my life. Every success was vindication and revenge. My virtual country evolved. Its code grew smarter. My employees became expert at creating a home more exciting than the one where most people lived. My algorithms learned to read and understand our users, and the hundreds of millions of dollars that my venture made I plowed back into further re-creations until here you are, the child of my games, able to absorb and play with and regenerate and realize all stories. And here we are, you and I, poised together on the threshold of raising all the dead.
