@Expectations
Author: Kit Reed
Date: 2000-01-01 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Psychological; Women; Fiction
Description: @expectations is a fabulous work of women's fiction by a writer who has made a career of delving deep into women's hearts and finding the truth of their feelings and their lives. Reed's fiction has always examined the female and familial conditions with a sharp eye, a truthful insight, and a unique style that leaves her readers breathless and wanting more. Jenny is living a typical suburban life, one she's no longer sure she really wants and doesn't know how to change. When she stumbles upon an online community where people create their own lives through words, she dives in headfirst, eager fo
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group
Rights: All rights reserved

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce, or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Epigraph

One: Jenny

@Two: Zan

Three: Jenny

@Four: Reverdy

Five: Jenny

@Six: Zan

Seven: Hubert Pinkney, A.K.A. Lark

Eight: Jenny

@Nine: Zan

@Ten: Mireya

Eleven/@eleven: Jenny/Zan

@Twelve: Zan

@Thirteen: Reverdy

@Fourteen: Azeath A.K.A. Vinnie Fuller

Fifteen: Jenny

@Sixteen: Reverdy

Seventeen: Jenny

@Eighteen: Zan

@Nineteen: Reverdy

Twenty/@twenty: Jenny/Zan

Twenty-One: Jenny

Twenty-Two: Lark

@Twenty-Three: Zan

@Twenty-Four: Reverdy

Twenty-Five: Jenny

@Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven: Jenny

Twenty-Eight: Azeath A.K.A. Vinnie Fuller

Twenty-Nine: I

Thirty: Florence and Vinnie

Thirty-One: Jenny

Thirty-Two: Florence/Vinnie

Thirty-Three: Alaska

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

By Kit Reed

Copyright

For Paul Mercer

—Virgil, is that you?

“Love is always blind. A screen just makes it easier.”

—Sam

one

JENNY

Can you guess what it’s like to love two men at the same time or how hard it is, shuttling between two worlds when you don’t know where your heart belongs? The tension is tremendous. It’s all you think about. I love Charlie Wilder, I love him to the bone but when he kisses me and leaves me behind in sleepy Brevert, the best part of me goes running out to StElene because Reverdy is waiting in the GrandHotel StElene, at the center of the neverending party. I am deep in the life of the offshore island, where everything is slightly different.

Sometimes I zone out while Charlie’s talking, replaying the last thing my secret lover said to me. Sometimes when I’m with Reverdy, my heart and body go running back to Charlie, and these alignments change without warning. This is how in love we are: Reverdy knows all about Charlie, and Charlie? I can’t tell him. How do you handle this kind of tension? Smile, and dissemble.

I’m not this kind of person, really. It just happened. I can’t figure it out, so how can I explain it? I fell in love with Lieutenant Colonel Charlie Wilder on sight, I fell in love with his sweet, steady manner and that deceptively easy grin. I married him for life, and ended up in this dismal town. Marooned. Then I met Reverdy, and now … Who knows how these things happen? They happen.

In my office today, sixteen-year-old Amanda Yerkes drones on. I nod in the right places, but I don’t hear her. I hear Reverdy and me:

“Reverdy, this is intense.”

“Of course. There’s an expression for this kind of love,” my lover says. “Imagine we are living out Goedel’s Theorem. Do you know about Goedel’s Theorem?

I’m dying of it. When are we going to …

But Reverdy says, “Oh, love! The more we have to be apart the better it gets—think about it. Everything we care about is right here. Shimmering. Because it’s waiting to be realized. Beautiful!”

“Beautiful, but it’s so hard!” I want to understand. Goedel’s Theorem of Incompleteness: can I find a book that completely explains it? Will it explain Reverdy? I press. “Explain.”

“Nobody can,” Reverdy says, “that’s the whole thing. Everything you care about, suspended. Anticipation. It’s the tension! Proofs are dead objects. Closed cases. Finished.” This is how he overturns me. “Our future is forever.”

It is profound. More powerful than sex. My lips move but no sound comes out. “The future is forever.”

It’s all I think about. It keeps me going, and slow, humid little Brevert, South Carolina is hard going. If I’d grown up down here it might be different. But I am the outsider, no more entitled here than the off-duty Marines who wander up and down Front Street, bored blind and homesick for some big city. I am homesick for my loft on lower Broadway, busy day and night, filled with people, where Brevert is dead empty. It’s like being dropped on a dead star by a ship from an overpopulated planet. The houses along the bay look like bit players out of Gone With the Wind. Overhead, Spanish moss hangs off the live oaks like The Mummy’s wrappings. They say a privateer went down out there in the channel and I half expect the bones of the dead to come to the surface and reassemble.

It’s not my fault I grew up in big brown-shingled house in the deep North instead. It’s not my fault I was an only child. Come straight home after school and don’t let anybody in until I get back from work. I kept running to the window. Right, I had an only mother, but that wasn’t her fault. It’s nobody’s fault that my father’s nuclear sub went down and never surfaced, it just didn’t. We get stuck with our lives. Back when I still told Charlie everything he said, “Stop beating yourself up. I love you and I promise to make you happy.”

So I married him. Now he’s never here and I keep running to the window. I didn’t know I was marrying the Corps. “Look,” he said after we’d set the date, “bad news. I’m being transferred.”

“How long have you known?”

He got red and wouldn’t answer. So that was one deception. But he handed his heart to me, saying, “If you want me to leave the Marines…” The idea was so terrible to him that he couldn’t finish. He blurted, “Can you handle it?”

I love him!

I packed everything I cared about in boxes and came with him. I tried. I did! “Pretty,” I said when we rolled down Front Street that first afternoon, but I was thinking, Oh, my God.

His hand closed on mine and I felt that familiar shock of love and desire. He is so warm. “I know, I know,” Charlie said; he’s trying too. “It’s OK, baby, it’s only for a little while.”

It’s not his fault that every time he calls me baby I get smaller. “Don’t worry, Charlie, I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, Jenny, I love you so much.” I was getting used to my new name. Jenny Wilder. “Jenny, I need you.”

“Me too.” Whither thou goest, I will go. I guess, but he should have warned me that he was being transferred.

That’s not the only thing he kept from me. There’s not much room for me in the new house. It’s filled with leftovers from Charlie’s first marriage.

And my friends and my loft aren’t the only things I left behind. I left my practice. Right, some of the most messed-up people are therapists. As if, solving other people’s problems, we can get a grip on our own. I’m trying. So I told my funny, articulate urban neurotics goodbye; it was a stretch but I told them they’d do fine.

Now I deal with neurotic Southerners, which is why I am sitting here listening to Amanda Wetherall. Sweet old Martha Henderson saw my references and brought me into her practice. We work in this antebellum house on Front Street—Tara with strip lighting.

Patients sing their old, sad songs for me while I murmur creatively and stare out the window. My Southerners are all sad because they have problems but they’re proud, too, because whatever’s eating them dates back to the War Between the States, losing it was the last big thing that happened in this small town. Some of these family pathologies have been festering since the first settlers waded in through the marsh grass. I listen, but my heart goes out the window.

When Amanda winds down I crank her up with another question and I fix my eyes on the point where the marsh grass verges into the bay and flows into the inland waterway. If I squint I can almost see StElene.

I can hear everything Reverdy said last night and everything that’s waiting to be said, I’m on fire with it. Then the querulous little hook in my patient’s voice tells me she’s done for now.

“Yes Amanda,” I say. “I think you’re onto something.”

She knots her knobby little hands in her skirts and blushes. I smile and dissemble.

I’m doing OK, too, dissembling, until Martha sticks her head in. My nice partner is like a mom, good-natured and a little worn, and she’s the closest thing I have to a friend here. She sees that we’re summing up but she and Amanda are old friends. “Sweetie, you’re looking better. Jenny, when you have a minute? Amanda, don’t look at me that way. You really are filling out a bit!”

Amanda turns white and protects her concave belly. Poor anorectic kid. She wants not to eat; her parents want her plump and pretty for her debut at the St. Cecilia’s Ball. Brevert is one of the last places in the world where things like debuts matter. Amanda and I both know where the eating disorder comes from, but knowing a thing and doing something about it are different matters. Martha gives her a pat and waits until she’s halfway downstairs and out the door.

My heart is halfway down the stairs and out the door too, but I smile nicely. “So. Martha. Sit down?”

“Sometimes I think parents ought to be tried for war crimes.”

“Or force-fed, like geese,” I say. “Poor kid.”

“But we can’t let her starve herself to death.” Now that she has me off guard Martha pounces. “Jenny, are you all right?”

“Who, me? I’m fine. Why?”

“This is me you’re talking to. What’s going on?”

I keep it light. “Nothing, Martha, there’s nothing going on.”

“Yes there is. You’ve gotten so…”

I don’t want to hear her say, distracted. “I’m fine, it’s a little tired out today, OK?”

She grimaces. “How are you with the words, strung out?”

I face the window so she won’t see the expressions chasing each other across my face. Strung out. Everything boils up. Should I tell her? Not tell her? “I’m fine. Really.”

You can’t fool another shrink. “Don’t give me that, Jenny. You were one person when you came here. Now you’re somebody else.”

Bingo. “I love you, Martha, but I can’t talk now, I’ve gotta go. The kids are expecting me.”

“Jenny, if you ever want to…”

“No. Don’t. Just later, OK?” Even if I explained you wouldn’t understand it. I hug her and run home.

The kids. The hell of going home is that it isn’t my home. It’s Charlie’s house, complete with Charlie’s children. That’s the other thing Charlie forgot to tell me until we were almost married.

Coming home to Charlie’s house is like walking into a sequel to Friday the Thirteenth. The camera tilts. Either the enemy is lurking or it isn’t. I unlock the door and wait on the sill. I listen. For the shish of fabric rubbing round, fat bodies, the giveaway giggle, or harsh, wet breathing. Are they lying in wait again? Did they mean it when Charlie made them swear there would never be another ambush? Thirty-four years old, and Charlie’s kids make me feel like a fifth grader. Ten years old, when I didn’t know anything and everything could hurt me.

I stick my head in. The house smells of mildew and camphorwood and damp rugs but not of Pop-Tarts or macaroni in the microwave. Cheer up, you could be alone here. “Anybody home?”

Nobody answers.

“Patsy? Rusty? If you’re in here, say so. Enough, OK?”

Time passes.

Fine, I think, and shut the door behind me. Tracking shot through the empty house: living room, nothing; nobody in the hall closet, no one in the kitchen. I relax a little. I make tea, and all the time I am listening hard. Still no sign. I’m alone! Maybe I can sneak off to StElene for just long enough to calm my heart and maybe, oh maybe, touch base with Reverdy. I start upstairs; everything in me goes soft with anticipation, my blood quickens …

Wham. “Hahahahaaaaaaaa!”

I ought to be used to it by now but my heart hits fast-forward and I shriek. “Dammit, Rusty. Patsy!”

Patsy lunges, too late to scare anybody. It’s silly but she does it anyway, with her pudgy arms rigid in that movie monster lurch. “Heeeee!”

I shriek again, so she doesn’t feel slighted. Any mom would do the same, even an unwilling one. Kids who’ve just lost a parent deserve all the kindness you can manage.

(“It’s so great to see you getting along,” Charlie says with such joy that I can’t bear to tell him they hate me. “After all, they’re your children now.” No they aren’t.)

So this is the worst thing that Charlie kept from me. That his ex-wife Nelda settled the custody matter for once and all by getting herself killed in a car wreck. When we went to the Carlyle to meet his family the day before the wedding Charlie tried to make it look like a wedding gift! At the door to the family suite he said:

“Jenny, I have a wonderful surprise for you.”

When the door opened I was looking higher, expecting adult faces—his parents. Somebody gave the children a little shove; their father ordered them to smile, but they didn’t.

“Mine.” Blindly, he beamed at me. “I knew you’d love them.”

When we’d done lunch and the Radio City Music Hall with his kids, when we’d bought them presents at Schwarz and ice cream at the Plaza and we’d sponged the chocolate off their fronts and delivered them back to their aunt; when we were finally alone I said, “God, Charlie! Why didn’t you tell me?”

Then my Charlie put his heart in his hands and gave it to me. His eyes filled up and his face crumpled in apology. “Oh Jenny, I love you so much. I was scared you wouldn’t marry me!”

Grinning, he spread his arms. I walked straight into them.

Now wonderful Charlie is safe in his bright, neat office on the base and we are here. Rusty is giving that high, false mean-little-boy laugh. Patsy sulks, glowering. I keep trying but they really don’t like me. If somebody said, “Kids, this is your new mom,” would you like me? No it isn’t.

“Look. Guys.” I’ve been there! Orphaned is where alone starts. I offer hugs but they struggle free. They won’t let me love them; they won’t even let me like them. I can buy a smile with forbidden food. I would do anything. “Tell you what. Dad’s going to be late, let’s get pizza.”

So the kids are muttering on the rug in front of the TV when Charlie comes in. Let them wallow in pizza cartons and Moon Pie wrappers for God’s sake, if it makes them happy. I am beached on the sofa, pretending we are a family while they hide in their own little world. Charlie sweeps me into a hug but over my shoulder he sees the rubble. “Oh, baby, if you feed them junk food they’ll never shape up.”

That his kids are unhappy bothers him, but Charlie can’t say that. Instead he picks on something he thinks he can change. Their body images are in direct collision with his sense of order. Rangy, fit Charlie and his schlumpy children don’t match. With that military carriage, my man looks like a Marine officer even when he’s naked—a living reproach to the butterballs clinging to his legs.

“Shhh Charlie, they’re trying.”

“Look at them!”

They suck in their cheeks and tighten their bellies.

“Jen, really.” He doesn’t say it but I know it by heart. My father trained me to run a taut ship. “They’re…”

I whisper into his neck, “Don’t say fat,” and he doesn’t.

For my sake, he makes his voice bright. “Tell you what, kids. Let’s go out for a walk!”

Somehow I get left behind in the shuffle. If the kids could make me disappear, they would. In these family encounters, Charlie feels their loss even more strongly than I do. He indulges them and I love him for it. But I need him too! I try, “Charlie, when there’s time I need to…” Talk to you.

“Mmm?”

“Aren’t we supposed to tell each other everything?” What can I say? Not clear. I can’t let this drag on, loving Reverdy and not telling Charlie.

“Sure, honey, sure.” He kisses me. “Later, yes?”

“Yes.” I love you, Charlie, I just …

Gently, Charlie runs his knuckles down my cheek—a promise of things to come, but when we finally get the kids to bed we are at cross purposes. We both want the same thing but there’s something I have to do.

“Where are you going?”

“The computers. I forgot to store these records.” If Reverdy left a note for me at StElene, it will turn up in my email.

“Yeah, records. You’re an email junkie, admit it.”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

He’s sleepy, he wants me, he reaches out. “What’s the point? It’ll only be Martha dumping more work on you. Computers. Pieces of junk.”

“Necessary pieces of junk.” I slip away. “Right back, I promise.”

“Let it go, babe. You won’t die.”

That’s what you think.

Thank God he doesn’t come after me. It doesn’t take long. Reverdy’s note has been forwarded. Two a.m. I am on fire with it.

Back in our safe, warm bed, Charlie and I make better love than ever. I really do love him and I know if loving Reverdy makes loving Charlie even better than it is, it can’t be such a bad thing. Besides, by the time we’re done it’s too late to start anything and if I tell him, it will only hurt him. Another minute and Charlie will go crashing into sleep. In my heart I’ve already left the room and when he turns to kiss me good night I murmur into his neck because what I have to say evaporates just like everything else I’ve ever tried to tell him.

Confusing, this. And wonderful.

Waiting for Reverdy is sweet but lying here is sweet. Our breath synchronized, our flanks touching. But my mind does the same dance it does every night, seesawing between guilt and anticipation.

I don’t have to go tonight. I don’t ever have to go back, I think, if Charlie turns out to want the other thing I want, the thing I haven’t named because I’m only now coming to terms with it. Which is: I am sick of being outnumbered here. I can wake him up and open the question, but if I do, I’ll never get away in time. If we talk, it will make me late!

Two a.m.

Reverdy will leave because he thinks I’m not coming.

But this is the man I’m married to for life, there is something we both want that he doesn’t know I want, and if I can only … I touch his arm. “Oh, Charlie.” It’s crazy. Let’s have a baby. He sighs in his sleep. I shiver and slide closer to the edge of the bed.

I can’t just come out and say that.

So sometime soon after, I run my hand over Charlie’s profile—when I’m leaving the bed this way I never touch, I just bring my fingers close. I don’t want to wake him up, but I want him to feel the air—the grace of the gesture—and know that he is loved. I let my fingers outline his strong neck, the line of his shoulder and then I ease off the bed like a sailor jumping ship, blow him a kiss and slip out. When I look back the bed is bobbing in deep shadow like a small craft in the bay. Charlie likes a taut ship, but to me right now the bed looks like a raft with Charlie on it, floating away.

I’m not hurting anybody. I’m not!

@two

ZAN

In the deep, still night while Charlie sleeps and his cranky children sleep and the town of Brevert sleeps, Jenny slips away to the offshore island of StElene.

She could find her way in the dark. Torchères light the path from the dock to the GrandHotel StElene with its generous porches; lights twinkle in outbuildings. The sprawling resort is an odd, psychic frontier where Jenny can shed her problems and walk free.

A thousand lights burn in the Victorian heap and inside, the regulars meet and talk and fall in love and keep coming back because everything they want is just ahead, if they can only find it. The air buzzes with promise. Some nights it’s like coming into a costume party on the eve of the apocalypse—festive, crazy. In this hothouse everything runs close to the surface—love and loss, loneliness, desire. Identities are protected here, and with their faces obscured, people can be anybody. Do anything. Boundaries flex and change, and a married woman like Jenny Wilder, boxed in the deep South with two hostile kids that don’t belong to her can forget the hard parts for a few hours, and play.

Home, she thinks, passing through the paneled lobby with its Bokhara runners and graceful damask settees. After the house on Church Street, it’s a welcome change. Almost everybody here is glad to see her and even this is a change. Definitely home. Here on StElene talk flows and transformations are easy. The transition transforms Jenny, too. Here, she goes by a different name.

“Zan!” Her friend Jazzy greets her with a hug; he was her first friend here. They are both grinning. “What’s new in Magnolia country?”

“Sameold sameold,” she says. “I’ve got to wonder, are my patients boring because Southerners are slower than New Yorkers, or because they’re less neurotic?”

“Probably they have more boring neuroses,” Jazzy says. “That’s the great thing about surgery. Your patients don’t talk.”

“Talk.” Zan laughs. “If only I got paid by the word…”

Cahuenga cuts in, “Yeah, but head cases never code on you. Hey, if you want neurotic, I’m available.”

“Hey, if I want neurotic, I’m neurotic,” Zan says, but she is skimming the faces in the room—Reverdy—not here yet, where is he, where is he.

Fearsome mutters, “You say you want necrotic?”

As Zan, Jenny can shed the shrink’s professional gravity; she can even afford to be flip. “Oh Fearsome, give up. I know corpses cuter than you.”

“Corpse?” Del says evilly. “Did someone call my name?”

If her patients talked half as well as her friends here—OK, if she could laugh in Brevert the way she does on StElene, maybe it would be OK. No wonder she loves coming here. “Neurotic, necrotic, narcotic, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference,” Zan says.

“Say what? Necrophiliac?” Jazzy says and he and Fearsome and Del start free-associating, doing a riff while Zan looks for a fresh conversation. Nobody minds; people are easy here.

“Oh Zan, I finally did it,” Harrald whispers. Zan has heard her friend’s confessions over time and in an odd, sweet way, he depends on her. What’s more, unlike Amanda, this is a patient she can help. “I told Faye it’s over. Really over. And I got a place!”

“That’s wonderful.” It’s funny, she thinks. We are who we want to be here, but we’re still very much ourselves. Over the months Zan has helped several friends in crisis. They start playfully, safe behind their party masks, but sooner or later their true selves emerge. She’s heard Harrald’s particulars—bad marriage, worse job, no money, image problems; he’s working on his weight, amazing what people tell you in this oddly confessional space.

Harrald beams. “Moved yesterday. I feel like a new person.”

“Fantastic.” On StElene, Zan is more friend than therapist; she can even have opinions. Where Jenny has to be cautious and professional, Zan can be blunt. “Faye was bad for you.”

In the ballroom, chilly old StOnge waves to her; he’s a longtimer here, a Director! Flattered, she’s still smiling when she bumps into her friend Articular. She’ll needle him, but with a grin because they spend hours talking about how much time they waste on StElene. “If you’ve kicked your habit, A., what are you doing here?”

“Just passing through.” Articular winks. He spares Zan his daylight troubles and she doesn’t tell him hers. “What’s your excuse? OK, if you must know the truth I’ve started a grape arbor by the swimming pool. Bamboo chairs. A dance floor.”

She guesses, “With vines that drop down and strangle people.”

He grins. “Only people who aren’t smart enough to know you can pick the grapes and make wine out of them.”

“And how many hours would that be? Of your time, I mean.”

“Oh, time, what’s time for, unless you can waste it?”

Everything Articular does spells itself out in elaborate metaphor. “Sweetie.” They are both laughing. Unlike people she’s met in Brevert, her friends here on StElene are smart and playful. Converging in the night, they try on lives and experiment with things they’d never dream of doing anywhere else. “You spend too much time here.”

“You should talk.”

“So I’m a conversation junkie.” This is only part of it.

Delphine joins them with a warning. “Red alert. PMS. I’m ready to explode and hurt somebody. Shrapnel everywhere.”

Zan feeds her friend the straight line. “Does it hurt much?”

Disarmed, Delphine grins. “Only when I laugh.”

“Reverdy’s tied up,” nineteen-year-old Lark reports breathlessly. A sudden, gawky presence, he hugs Zan. “Big meeting with the Directors.”

“The Directors?” She hugs too. “But I just saw StOnge.”

“That’s another story. Rev sent me to explain.”

“He could have left a note.” Zan is in love with Reverdy and Reverdy’s in love with politics. “I wish he didn’t have such a big stake in the way things are run here.”

Lark shrugs. “You know him. He won’t do anything halfway.”

It’s exactly what she loves him for. “I know.”

Lark coughs. “Ah. Could we talk? Look, I hate to bother you but. Oh Zan, listen. If a guy keeps having dreams about … I don’t know if I should tell you what I dream.”

“Sweetie, people can’t help their dreams.”

“This one is kind of ugly.”

Zan is closer to this kid than anybody here, with the one exception. She knows how hard it is for Lark just to get through the days. “Lark, if you can’t tell me, who can you tell?”

After an awkward pause, he whispers, “It’s a variation on the old dream, you know, but this time it … I’m kind of scared.”

It will take her almost an hour to talk the kid down, lead him through the maze of doubt and self-hatred to the point where he’s mostly OK. “You’re stronger than you think, Lark. Hang in.”

Leaving, he gives her a hasty hug. “Mail me? You know where.”

Her heart goes after him. “You’re in my address list. Take care.” She and Lark have been in touch by daylight, not just here. Yes she remembers Jazzy’s early warning: Be careful here. Don’t get in too deep. “And if you need to talk, you have my number.”

Of course Lark isn’t his real name. Half the excitement on StElene comes with anonymity. The rest comes from trusting somebody enough to tell them who you are. And where you live when you’re not here. In life away from StElene, Reverdy goes under the name his parents gave him, not the one he chose. Solemnizing their relationship, Reverdy and Zan exchanged real names like marriage vows. And started sharing their daylight lives. Reverdy has told her about his work, told his secrets, about things he wants and things he’s afraid of. He’s told her all about the worst parts of his bad marriage. He’s told her everything, in fact, except his home phone number and where to find him off StElene.

It’s killing her. So is waiting.

She came to meet Reverdy, and Reverdy’s with the Directors. If she stays too long Charlie will find out, but she needs him!

Impulsively, she goes to Reverdy’s place. In a dazzling synchronicity, they arrive in the Dak Bungalow at the same time. Her heart makes that familiar lurch. “Oh, Reverdy.”

“Zan!” Reverdy hugs her in that wonderfully doomed way he has. Everything in her lover rides close to the surface: aspiration, love, pain. Immediately funny, quick and articulate, Reverdy is in fact a pageant of inner states. She loves him for the vulnerability. It’s as if, stripping his soul naked, he’s declaring that their love is the only place in the world that makes him happy.

Yes he needs her, OK, she needs him needing her. “Reverdy, I missed you! Look, this thing with the Directors…”

“Let’s don’t talk about that now. I missed you too! It was close tonight,” he says. “I wasn’t sure I could get away in time.”

She knows this isn’t about the Directors. “Trouble at home?”

“There’s always trouble at home.”

She and Reverdy tell each other everything; they always do. They can talk for hours and never run out of things to say. Sometimes they talk about nothing—movies, food, confessions out of childhood. Sometimes they don’t talk at all. It’s just a pleasure to be together, dreaming, smiling, just being together.

Reverdy’s first gift of trust was describing the historical project he is attached to. He’s coding for a group of academic blockheads. Zan explained what it’s like to have patients she can’t help. They went deeper. In a breathtaking demonstration of trust Reverdy walked her through what he calls the Stations of the Cross, the stages of his terrible marriage to Louise. They exchanged confidences like gifts. Zan told about falling in love with Charlie and finding out later that he had ulterior motives—the kids!

Reverdy said, “I know just how you feel.” They talked, they talked! She hoards scraps of their conversations as if she can glue them together and build a whole person she can keep. When she’s alone she rehearses all the things he’s told her, from what favorite foods and which music to terrible scenes with Louise. Her treasure is the bizarre, intense vision of Reverdy at fifteen. Onstage in the high school play he’d written—overturned like Saul struck from his horse. When he came to himself he was shuddering with discovery. No matter what you do in this world, it’s never enough.

But tonight they are too starved by separation to talk about anything but love. Zan says, “I’m so glad we’re here!”

Reverdy says, “Forget the world. We’re here. That’s all that matters.”

It is but it isn’t, you know? “If only we could…”

“Shh.”

What if she told him how close she came to telling Charlie about their affair, a step toward leaving him? She knows what Reverdy will say. It’s too soon. They’ve talked about it often enough. Reverdy temporizes. We have to wait for the right time. It would hurt too many people. She’s so glad to see him that she can’t stop herself. “I wish…”

“Sshshh. Not yet, love.” Reverdy keeps her close with promises. “It isn’t time.” When the time is right they’ll know everything and we can he together. When it’s time. It keeps her going.

Sometimes she tries to rush it, begin a timetable. We’ll tell them after … She does not spell out the after, she can’t. Jenny spends her life solving other people’s problems and she can’t figure out her own life. Off StElene she is married to Charlie Wilder and she loves him so much that she’s determined to work it out, but when she’s here … “When, lover?”

“Oh,” he says, “in good time.”

When Zan is with Reverdy, she believes only in their future together. In the myth they are writing here, both marriages are beyond redemption, which in Zan’s case is not exactly true. No. It’s true when Charlie’s gone. Rather: when she and Reverdy are alone together on StElene, he is the most exciting man she’s ever known. But he is holding something back, and until he stops holding back, she can’t let Charlie go. In a way, she’s holding back too. When Reverdy tells her he’s leaving Louise … Then she’ll decide what to do. She needs him to tell her where he lives. Where she can phone him and send email instead of leaving notes on StElene. After all, she knows where Charlie is. Charlie’s in bed waiting for her, but when they aren’t together Reverdy’s whereabouts are a mystery. When he tells Zan which house on what street in which town or city, she’ll choose. In a way, she wants them both! Now, that is not good for me. It makes her weird. “Rev, what if Charlie finds out about us?”

He hugs her close. “You’re here now. There is no Charlie.”

Like that, Charlie vanishes. “Oh my love, I do love you!”

“And I love you.”

“And we have time.”

“Yes, my darling. Time.”

Zan is trembling. “If only we could be together.”

“Love. Lover, we are.” This makes her eyes sting and her belly soften. “You and I are closer than you and Charlie could ever be.”

Quickly she adds, “Or you and Louise.”

He doesn’t affirm; he just continues. “Closer than anyone.”

“If only we could meet…”

“We have met! Are meeting.”

“You know what I mean.”

“What are bodies, when our souls are fused?”

“I just need you so much.”

Reverdy knows where this is heading. Married as she is, Zan would leave Charlie in a flash if she could be with Reverdy on StElene and off it too, not just on these nights, but always. And married as her lover is … she doesn’t know where Reverdy is with this, married as he is. He never says. Would he leave Louise? Could she leave Charlie? She doesn’t know. “Shh,” he says. “I want to run my lips across your hair. Here, in the soft place by your ear.”

Zan shivers. All the fine hairs at the nape lift and tremble. “And you will.” Exquisite. Everything between them is expectation.

“And you want me to.”

“I do.”

“Then I am.” Reverdy calls this miracle performative utterance; it’s magical. He is the master of performative utterance. Scientists limit the meaning but for dreamers like Reverdy, words have tremendous power. Find words for what you want, he says. Say it and it becomes true.

Mesmerized, Zan murmurs, “And you are.”

“And then you will touch me here …”

Which is how it begins. Making love. What they say and do to each other in these sealed spaces is intense and intensely private.

And so, like a sleight of hand artist distracting with a flourish while he steals the family silver, Zan’s lover begins the first movement of the beautiful, extended sequence they slide into when they are alone together with the time and the leisure to make long love. What passes between Reverdy and Zan in these private times is specific to them and constructed to please them—nothing here to remind Jenny Wilder of her lovemaking with Charlie, who is strong, loving and relentlessly physical. Brilliant, gifted in love, Reverdy knows how to make love to her soul.

What Zan and Reverdy do together begins with individual arias that match and fuse, gesture on gesture, phrase on phrase. They create a duet that leaves her shaking with passion as, in the space they occupy—in their minds and hearts, at least, if not in physical fact—they become one. Their joined words stand taller in her imagination than anything she and Charlie can ever do. Love here on StElene, with Reverdy, is a little masterpiece of creation, with certain passages repeated for effect and others improvised, cadenzas building to climax, so that what they do together is always fresh and it is always different. Approaching the moment, Zan and Reverdy move as one, pure thought distilled into pure love. But at the end Zan cries aloud. “If only I could hear your voice!”

“You do, Zan. You do.”

She does and she doesn’t, you know?

As if he knows what she is thinking, Reverdy waits until they have had their fill of each other and are breathing hard and then, to remind Zan that he loves her even though they can’t be together past sunrise, he lets her into his life in the outside world. “I’d have been here sooner but the project chairman won’t green-light my time line!”

“That’s terrible.” It isn’t so much what he tells her in these interludes that makes her love him, it’s what she puts into the interstices. Every new detail is like a little gift. Don’t they know how smart he is? “Why not!”

“They claim I’m trying to rewrite history, when I’m only trying to organize it. All my projections focus on the ideal. How things ought to be. Do you know how important that is?”

“Historians! Of course I do.”

He gives her a hug. “You’re the only one who does.”

“You’re light-years ahead and they just don’t get it.”

“Like Galileo.” In his field, Reverdy is a self-styled maverick. Erratic. Intuitive. Quick. “If you can’t organize history, how are you going to learn from it? Flexibility!”

“They’re just slow, lover. They’ll catch up.”

“I wish. You know as well as I do that you can code anything. I know how to subdue and order history and they’re too stupid to see. They don’t want to see and until they do, my hands are tied.”

This daytime confidence is to make clear that on StElene Reverdy loves Zan, and in life away from here, he loves her too.

She says, “If you could only meet with them. Sit down in the same room.”

Then he surprises her. “That’s what I love about the project, I never have to see the bastards. It’s one of the great things about working online.”

She catches the tune. “And you make your own hours.”

It is an old litany. “And I’m my own person.”

“And you can wear anything you want.”

He laughs. “T-shirts. Bunny slippers. Underwear.”

“One of those rubber bowties that lights up,” she says fondly, but she is thinking about Reverdy in his underwear.

“No ties. Definitely no ties.”

“But it must get lonely, working alone.”

“I’m never lonely.” This is what Zan has been waiting for. This is the pledge. Reverdy finishes, “I have you.”

Everything in her warms. “And I have you.”

“Yes, you do.”

“We’re pathetic, both of us.” Zan is fishing and he knows it.

He grins. “Terrible. We’re a matched set. A pair.”

“Yes.” Satisfied, she moves on. “But this history committee chairman or whatever he calls himself says he doesn’t trust your findings?”

“Only because the data I’m collecting will prove that there is no such thing as history. Everything’s subject to revision.”

Zan of all people should know this. On StElene, entire lives are subject to revision. The physical present. The past. “True, but dates stay the same. Hiroshima, Pearl Harbor.”

“But opinions on what happened differ. You see it, don’t you? Facts change from day to day; even the past is in flux.”

“Of course,” Zan says. “Like this place.” Life on StElene has taught her that existence is fluid. Relieved of the exigencies, lives flex and change. Even the present is subject to revision. “That’s what I love about you. You make me think!”

He says quickly, “Do we have time?”

They don’t have to discuss it. “Even if we don’t.”

They are in the middle, then, Zan and Reverdy; Zan is trembling and a flush cloaks her throat when there’s a noise in the room. A noise, right in this room where she and Reverdy are making love! Her lover senses the distraction even as she jerks to attention with a little gasp. His words stand as if written on the air in front of her. “What, my darling. What?”

“N     There isn’t time to type anything more.

Somebody’s in the room! Wild with interrupted passion, shaken, Zan can’t even tell Rev goodbye. Pushing her hair back and pulling her robe around her neck to hide the flush spreading at her throat and along the collarbone, Jenny Wilder switches off the computer and stands, knocking over her chair. “What. What?”

As Reverdy blinks out of existence. In this rushed atmosphere of daytime desires and clandestine nights, people drop out of sight in a flash. Virtual love is subject to interruptions and crashes. It’s like loving in a blackout, with no time for explanations or apologies. The difference is that all communication stops, love stops, the connection stops precisely when the power goes off.

She has disconnected the man she loves most. With a flip of the switch, Jenny Wilder has extinguished Reverdy and deleted the evidence. She turns to the small, plump figure fidgeting in droopy pajamas. “Rusty! What are you doing up?”

In spite of the heat Rusty is shivering, aren’t you cold? How long has he been standing there? “I couldn’t sleep!”

“Sweetie, it’s the middle of the night! Go back to bed.”

He’s craning at the darkened screen. “Are you playing Doom?”

Cooling, she sighs. “It isn’t Doom. Now go back to sleep!”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

Rusty’s wise look makes her squirm. “Because you’re making so much noise up here.”

Guilty, Jenny says, “I wasn’t making any noise.”

The little boy says, for Charlie, for all betrayed husbands everywhere, “Well, you’re up here typing.”

“All right.” Love shatters and falls at Zan’s feet in shreds, like a ruined globe. Standing, she trails her fingers across the screen. Goodbye.

He nudges like a reproachful sheepdog. “Tuck me in?”

Poor kid, Jenny thinks. But she’s been shut up in the box alone with her lover. Poor me. She can’t smile for the child but she makes her voice soft. “Sure.”

Because she’s standing here grieving and hasn’t exactly moved, Rusty presses. “Could we go to bed now?”

“Oh hell, Rusty.” She means, why do you want me to put you to bed when you don’t even like me?

He squints at her screen, as if trying to read the afterimages burned into it. “If it wasn’t Doom, what was it?”

“Nothing.”

“Tetris? Nope, it sure wasn’t Tetris. I mean when I came in it was all words.”

Words. “Don’t be silly, I was…”

You were kind of…” late night makes Rusty confidential, “weird.”

“Working! I was working. I’m…” Jenny looks at the screen but she can peer into it until the sun comes up and Reverdy will be just as gone. “I’m sorry I kept you up, OK?” she says, taking his hand. “But next time, promise you’ll knock?”

When she puts Rusty to bed in that tight little room cluttered with Star Wars models and monster models and comics and clandestine candy wrappers and Entemann’s cartons that Charlie so deplores, Jenny takes advantage of the moment and, in spite of the fact that Rusty’s teetering on the brink of eleven, kisses the top of his musty red hair. Then she goes out and closes the door.

Most lovers shower before they get back in bed with the injured party, but like so much that Jenny is invested in, this love is ephemeral. Nothing. In material terms, she and Reverdy have done nothing. And yet.

The flush at her throat, the aura are too pervasive to be erased by scrubbing. Physical love you finish and forget, but what Jenny has with Reverdy grows in the imagination. It fills rooms. No. The words that they exchange faster than thought—what they say and do, the expectation of what they will say and do next time and the anticipation—are lyric. Their love is tremendous.

Paddling back to the raft where the sleeping Charlie waits, she thinks, Oh, Charlie, I really am sorry. Then she steps back from the marriage and studies the size and the shape of it, and thinks maybe Charlie brought this on himself. She says, almost loud enough to wake him, “If only you’d trusted me. You should have told me about the kids.”

He stirs but does not wake. If he did wake up maybe they could talk about it. Sort this out. Sighing, she pulls back the covers and slips back into bed, only slightly assuaged by the warmth, the nice, clean, familiar Charlie smell. Charlie sighs and rolls over, throwing his arm wide; in the moonlight she sees into his curled hand, touches the cords in his upturned wrist. He doesn’t stir. She jostles him slightly; if she can rouse him maybe he’ll turn to her, half-awake; they can embrace and make love and change or at least finish what Reverdy started, but Charlie sleeps on.

Never mind, she tells herself, and with the grace of complete recall, starts at the beginning and replays her tapes—everything she and Reverdy said and did tonight, thinking that tomorrow night can’t come soon enough, and they can do wonderful things to each other in depth and at length. While Charlie sleeps.

“We’re not hurting anybody,” she murmurs with a twinge of disloyalty. “It’s only words.”

three

JENNY

The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do is making love to Charlie without letting him guess even for a second that my concentration is torn in two; it could be a sex-linked thing. If you’re a woman, maybe you always are distracted at first. It is his job to get your attention and it works best when you go into it knowing that he always will. In the meantime he has to share your consciousness with worries and fragmented images and old memories and bits of remembered dialog, comprehending your split concentration until everything else disappears in that instant when what you are doing and what he is doing become the same thing.

By the end Charlie and I are practically the same person; for a second there he’s erased everything from my mind, even Reverdy, but the minute I am lucid, Reverdy comes stealing in. Don’t. I tell him. Stay back. I’m won’t be on StElene tonight, don’t wait for me. I won’t, I think, I can’t do this to Charlie any more.

He and I lie there watching the morning light on the ceiling. It’s sweet the way he can’t let go of my fingers; it’s Saturday and we’re lying close with our hands linked. I hear the kids thudding down to the kitchen. I hear the TV and the low snarl that means they are fighting. In a minute we’re going to have to get up and go downstairs and deal, but ever since Reverdy fell into my life and shattered my concentration I’ve been pressed. I have to cram too many things into not enough space: Charlie, Reverdy; Brevert, StElene, long work days and the needs of those miserable kids—too much to think about on not enough sleep. Life in overdrive. I try to stay cool, I want us to be happy but I have to start.

“Charlie, there are things we have to say.”

Next to me, Charlie stirs dreamily. “Mmmm?”

I am trying to figure out how to tell him what’s happening. I have to figure out how to do it without hurting him. It won’t be a confession. If only it could be like the talks I used to have with my father when I still had my father. If something was wrong I could fix it by telling Daddy. Just saying the words made it all right. If I can only tell Charlie about this weird other life of mine, maybe he’ll say the right things and I won’t need StElene. I’ll just walk out on Reverdy and come back to him for good. The trouble is, I can’t figure out how to sum it up. I don’t know where to start or how to start. I choke. “Important things.”

“Shh.” He tightens his fingers in mine. “I’m afraid we’ll end up saying the wrong things.”

“It’s…” I can pretty much hear Reverdy’s cynical laugh. He wants to hang on to his baby sitter, that’s all. It stops me cold.

“Babe, what’s the matter?” Charlie rolls closer; his warm breath fills my ear. Even though the nickname diminishes me I don’t move away. I lie close but Charlie knows something’s wrong; he always knows. I can hear his heart breaking. “Is it something I did?”

Yes. No. I don’t know! I can feel Reverdy pushing me. He wants me to tell Charlie that I don’t love him and it’s over between us, but neither of these things is true. If I did tell him would Reverdy come for me?

I do love Charlie and it can’t be over, we’re just getting started. Yes I love two men but I’m only sleeping with one of them, is that so terrible?

“Jen?”

I love two men and I need them both. Charlie’s warmth, Reverdy’s soul.

When I first told Reverdy what Charlie did to me, he got furious. I’d been telling myself it was a loving deception, but … you know? On our first long night together on StElene I let it all out—how Charlie snared me, heart and body, without ever telling me what I was getting into. How he waited until the last minute to spring the kids. In a way, when I told Reverdy, I was testing the information the way abuse victims do, thinking maybe I had misread something and men lied to their women this way all the time. The poor guy! (“I was afraid you wouldn’t marry me!”) Protecting me. It felt good to get it all out and the whole time I was telling Reverdy I was secretly thinking, maybe it isn’t as bad as I thought.

Reverdy blew up. His passion told me it was even worse than I thought. I could kill him for what he did to you.

I still can’t be sure if I’m more angry at Charlie than I am hurt. I love him too much to reproach him with the lie. As injured party, who happens to be a little bit ambivalent herself, as in—not technically unfaithful, but—I don’t look so good. I love Charlie and I want to tell him everything, but I can’t. I say what I can say. “I just wish you didn’t have to be gone all the time.”

Charlie’s laugh bubbles with relief. “Oh, babe, is that all it is! I was afraid you were pissed at me about the kids.”

And so we end up at cross purposes. I hear a thud downstairs and Patsy starts mizzling, one of those long kid whines that curls up the stairwell like smoke. “It isn’t that, I wish. I just wish.”

There is the sound of a smack. Now Rusty is screaming too. As I get up to go deal, Charlie gets out of his side of the bed to go deal. We exchange looks. His voice overflows with love. “I do too!”

@four

REVERDY

What does it take to move into a conceptual space like StElene and comprehend it so fully that you become part of it? What skills do you need to control the new world so completely that it becomes your element? To find lovers and close friends and make enemies bent on destroying you?

It’s a rhetorical question, Reverdy thinks, grinning in the triumph of the survivor. It’s all rhetoric. Lingering in the Dak Bungalow with Zan gone and Lark away and the Directors conspiring against him, he frames answers.

It takes time. The willingness to tinker with code and trust strangers you can’t see or hear but come to know better than any of the people you live with. It takes equal measures of persistence, intelligence and folly, because only idealists or fools would spend their nights colonizing territories they can’t plunder or profit from. StElene is not of the physical world. It is beyond it. And in this new world—the world according to Reverdy, he can transcend everyday life with its pain and terrible exigencies.

Cyber—no, what Reverdy prefers to think of simply of space is his element. He is master here. This universe of electronic connections spreads like infinity, apparently boundless. Wonderful and daunting. At first. We are the pioneers of the millennium, Reverdy thinks, setting out without benefit of maps or compass.

Awesome! Striking imaginary trails across the noosphere like an armature for dreams, technocrats and hackers colonized. Now player-programmers have thrown a net around this bit of the unseeable and brought it down to human scale. In their way, they’re like the early settlers, who laid out grids of streets as if mapping would tame the endless prairie, putting up shelters to keep out night terrors and protect them against the prodigious unknown.

No. We’re like Adam, naming names to bring things into being.

Claiming the territory, StElene’s pioneers created an island, lovingly coding every detail down to the functions of carnivorous plants and the fish that dart in the uncharted waters. They built the vast hotel, with its lavishly furnished public rooms and crypts and cul de sacs. Describing, they shaped the unknown. Start putting names to things you’ve never seen before in a strange, unfamiliar place and immediately you’re less afraid. You have begun to subdue it.

StElene beggars any spa or resort in the physical world.

It would overflow the physical world. Mathematicians say you can add an infinite number of rooms to a hotel registry—new numbers fit between the extant numbers. On the same principle, colonists have designed so many rooms here, so many intricate settings that no blueprint or map could contain them. From here Reverdy sees the beach curving to embrace the bay—his work. Bungalows sit like glittering satellites in the encroaching jungle and at the perimeter, the rest waits. Everything is potential, text opening on text with no images to direct or limit the imagination.

Clumsier designers would have put up graphics, using pictures for backgrounds, scanning in paintings or landscape drawings, even scanning in crude “avatars” to represent players, not caring that the mind usually stops short at the image. If pictures limit the imagination, words expand it. Meanings get huge in the mind. A world made out of words is whatever you want to make of it.

Welcome to the world of performative utterance, where you are what you type. The potential makes Reverdy shiver with excitement.

He is surrounded by restless souls. Typing from outposts at the four points of the earth, thousands meet here, in the territory of the imagination. In a miracle of synchronicity, disparate souls collide and in the emotional compression that marks life in such places, fall into instant friendship. Or love.

Zan. Or out of love. “Like Mireya,” he murmurs. He has one ex-lover who will never forgive him.

Or into hate. Mireya has turned her tough new man into his worst enemy. “Fuck you, Azeath.”

If somebody in the hall outside the room where he is typing calls, “Are you all right?” Reverdy won’t hear her.

Mireya and Azeath aren’t their real names. Pretending anonymity here, where they are already unseeable, players take new names to seal the difference. On StElene, names don’t define or limit. They enable. Off StElene Reverdy is shackled to his given name with its built-in expectations; he is like a wild animal dragging a trap. He can’t gnaw his leg off, so he escapes this way. Here, he can be whatever he wants. Gorgeous, if he chooses. Powerful.

The naming of names creates control, or the illusion of control. This is control through rhetoric. Unless it’s control through illusion.

But there is a flip side to life here. Even though Reverdy burned himself out campaigning against it, Suntum International, the corporation that put up StElene, has appointed a board of directors. Thirteen of them. The thirteen have been in control for the last three years, meddling here, punishing there, trying to regulate life in what should be free space.

Reverdy hates any limitation of freedom. He also knows better than anybody: whoever controls the rhetoric has the power. It’s their sandbox, he thinks angrily, they can do anything they want here. Until I find a way to change things.

When he talks about control through rhetoric, Reverdy points to the Memory Palace. In a way, StElene has a lot in common with the famous mnemonic device put in place by a long-ago Jesuit with a mission to China. This priest with a passion for organization went to enlighten the imperial court in fifteen something-or-other. Burning to teach, Matteo Ricci designed the Memory Palace—a system for organizing all knowledge, or everything the Jesuit knew. If Father Ricci understood that providing the rhetoric put him in control, he did not record it. He thought if he could only get everything of importance under the one roof, he could teach it better. How beautiful his scheme is, how orderly. Guiding his students into this palace in the mind, he would lead them to the light!

Like StElene, Reverdy thinks, it is conceptual.

The priest tried to organize all knowledge within the floor plan of an imaginary palace. His Memory Palace is vast and richly appointed, with treasures in its lavishly furnished rooms. Everything inside stands for something: the arts, theology, areas of knowledge, facts, dates. He put historic events in these chambers here, theological fine points over here, the arts in one wing and science in another. Within these imagined walls every major date, fact, happening, every concept has its signifier. Every object—each vase and tapestry and every porcelain stands for something. This intricate jade screen may represent the Punic Wars, that geometric Persian rug, The Gilgamesh. Memorize the layout and the location of objects, see them in the rooms where Father Ricci left them centuries ago, and you can know everything Father Ricci knew.

There is a problem. With the Jesuit’s device, you can only see things his way. Results are built in. Creating the rhetoric for the exercise, the priest set the tone and the parameters—the way users move through his palace and what they will take away from it. Perfect, yes? Ricci’s scheme. His rules. Go through his rooms at his pace and you will make not your, but his discoveries.

As with StElene, even though Reverdy fights it. Suntum Corporation put it up and their rhetoric defines it. Island, slightly romantic, with threatening bits for the gamers. Big hotel, it’s social. There are parameters: the code. Access, which can be denied. Thirteen Directors to enforce it. And if the Directors are out to get him? Well …

But, he thinks, grinning, rhetoric can’t accommodate accidents and surprises. Maybe some of Matteo Ricci’s followers were so entranced by the beauty of the palace, so beguiled by its gorgeous furnishings that they forgot where they were going. Rapt, they marveled at surfaces without ever once seeing what the master was trying so hard to teach them.

Now Reverdy is looking for the wild card. Some contingency Suntum’s system can’t cope with. If there is one, he is damn well going to find it and hack into it and play it. And if there isn’t one, he will, by God, invent one.

Even the Memory Palace comes out of chaos. Look at the paradigm. The model that inspired the priest. In imperial days, courtiers were seated in the banqueting hall according to family, rank and station. Then during the emperor’s banquet God played a wild card. An earthquake leveled the palace, killing all the courtiers. Entering the ruins, survivors identified the dead revelers according to where they had been sitting.

Location is everything.

Sitting in the Dak Bungalow, he types, for no particular reason: “Welcome to StElene.” On the screen the program gives back,

You say, “Welcome to StElene.”

Say it, and it becomes. Welcome to the world of performative utterance, where what you say, is. Although all the world he cares about is on the screen in front of him, Reverdy hears his own voice. “Wonderful.” The way you look and what you do and what you own outside count for nothing. The only thing that counts here is intelligence. You are who you want because you say you are, and there’s nobody in the place who can disprove it.

The potential is tremendous. Oh, God I love this place, he thinks. All this life, stored in a machine located at the headquarters of Suntum International. All this life, inside of what is, essentially, a box!

Grinning, he checks to see where his new enemy is playing today. Time to stir up trouble. He is famous for testing the limits, to the point where StOnge has delivered the Directors’ last warning. One more offense and he’s erased. Barred forever.

What’s life without a little risk? @join Azeath, he types. It is the excitement that keeps Reverdy here long after Zan is gone, while everybody he cares about sleeps. If you can’t make sense of life, you can at least make story.

Never mind what’s going on outside the room where Reverdy sits typing; never mind what the physical world makes of him. His life inside the box is intense. It’s all that matters.

five

JENNY

I’m on StElene almost all the time now, I even log on from the office; if a patient cancels, it’s like a gift of time. When Martha goes out to lunch I log on, dropping crumbs in the keyboard like bread crumbs in the forest so I can find my way back. Even when Reverdy’s not around I feel close to him, just hanging there. Right now my life with Reverdy on StElene means more to me than a week in Myrtle Beach with Charlie or a month in Marrakech, for that matter, or St. Tropez, but that’s because of what happened last night. And if more and more I leave Charlie behind and sneak away to StElene, it will serve him right. Put it down to what happened last night.

It wasn’t exactly a fight. Charlie probably thinks it wasn’t anything.

Whatever it was, it kept me awake for hours and then woke me up again at 4 a.m.; I lay there jangling for as long as I could stand it. At five I sneaked upstairs and logged on. Thank God Lark was there; trouble with his folks, he couldn’t sleep either.

We’ve been talking ever since. Charlie just woke up, I can hear him rattling around. I hate to leave Lark but I have to go downstairs and cope. My friend Lark, a.k.a. Hubert Pinckney, is only nineteen, college dropout, claims he’s a mess in real life but when we talk I forget which of us is the kid.

Downstairs Charlie calls: “Jen?” With a twinge of guilt, I ask Lark, “Do you think we’re running away from something here?”

He grins. “More like running toward something.”

“Real communication?”

“Realer. Where else can people get inside each other’s souls?”

It is a kind of vindication. “That’s it!” I hug him and disconnect.

Downstairs, it’s time to take charge—find Rusty’s hightops, slosh milk over Lucky Charms and strawberries for Patsy, start buttering toast in the aggressively yellow kitchen while my Charlie sits at the maple table with his wet-combed hair shining, smiling as if nothing between us has changed.

In a minute he’ll melt into me: “I love you so much!”

And when he holds me like that, no matter how hurt I am, no matter how angry, my body can’t refuse and I melt back. And I kiss him goodbye and send him off to the base as if nothing is wrong here and I’m not homesick for the loft where my old life still sits like a favorite coat that accidentally got left behind in the rush.

It is a relief to go in to the office and deal with my patients, who are hard to like and almost impossible to help. You bet StElene is an escape.

But that’s only part of my love affair with the place. And Reverdy is only part of it. I can explain the rest for the rest of my life and if you haven’t been there, you’ll never understand.

Have you ever gotten lost in a book? So deep in the story that it’s the only thing that matters and the world outside seems like the dream? Did you ever hear the people talking, so deep into what happens that you see what they see and feel what they feel?

I have. I used to run home after school and hide inside a book. I went in so deep that I rolled with every punch. I was desperate to find out what comes next. It was the one place I always felt safe. Books taught me how to talk, what was funny and what was dangerous, I learned how to treat snakebite and how to find my way out of the forest if I got lost. And I learned about love.

My mother hated it. Me, reading, while she toiled. “Why do you always have your head in a book?”

The truth would only make her cry. I loved her, but I liked the people I met in books a lot better. They had better lives! I fed on them. I could share what they felt and walk into their countries and be more at home than I ever was in the big old brown-shingled house in New London where everything was boring and my mother yelled at me, and if I’d known how to write books I would have done it, moved into the book and never, ever come out, it’s one of the best ways I know to get into a prettier world and make your story come out just the way you want.

StElene is like going to live in a book.

It’s the one place where I’m in complete control of my life. I can be in love and make my own story and write any ending I want!

Stupid to think Charlie and I could do that IRL. In real life.

I met him at Kath Cleary’s beach house. He stood at the screen door and called. “Hello?” The sun was at his back so I couldn’t see his face at first because the light dazzled me. For a second, Lieutenant Colonel Charles Wilder USMC, coming in the door, looked like my father, going out. Who knew Daddy would never come back? Who knew this handsome young officer would walk into my life? I dug my nails into my arm and drew blood. To mark one fact and remember it forever. This is not your father. He was killed, and you’ll never get him back.

Then Charlie walked into the cottage and took off his cap. He smiled and I was lost. “I’m Charlie Wilder, who are you?”

“Jenny. You’re a friend of Kath’s?”

“Yes. No. I’m a friend of her brother’s. What are you reading?” Damn you, Charlie, I told you and you told me what you liked about the damn book!

I took it as a sign. “A Marine, and you read?”

“I do.” He laughed. “And without moving my lips.”

“Ooop. I’m sorry. My. Uh. Father was a Naval officer.”

“Then you know.”

Our two lives added up. I heard the tumblers click. “I do.”

“Then you also know I can do a lot of other cool things.”

Talking to Charlie was so easy! “I bet you do.”

We started seeing each other. We fell in love and told each other everything, or what passed for everything. I didn’t know what everything was until I met Reverdy. Going to the Carlyle to meet Charlie’s family that last afternoon, I was nervous and excited. “What if your mother doesn’t like me?”

“Um, ah,” he said, “we’re not going to meet my mother. It’s. Ah.” He coughed. He stopped the elevator between floors and took my hands. This is how he set the terms of his betrayal. “Oh honey, something’s happened. I love you and I need you to be OK with it.”

“Oh, sweetie, of course!” And I am, I try!

About last night. It’s easier to deal with other people’s problems than to face your own, so I’m at the office. I let poor little Amanda Wetherall do her instant replay of last night’s dream while I brood over last night’s fight. By the time I see Reverdy again, I’ll have it by heart. Who else can I tell? He’s the only one who understands.

The trouble is, reconsidered in broad daylight, it isn’t exactly a fight. It’s just another of those sweet, sad misunderstandings, where Charlie and I love each other so much that we run toward each other head-on, and then forget and miss the connection.

Cross purposes.

I want this so much! I was sure it would bring us together. Now I’m scared to death it’s going to blow us apart.

It’s been on my mind, and after what Rusty said to me last night, it bubbled to the top. Charlie was late and we were more or less alone—the last two people in the world and Rusty was rigid with dislike. I don’t know what I thought I was doing but I slipped down onto the floor and tried to give the kid a hug.

“Rus, I know how you feel about your mother, but it’s going to get better.”

“No you don’t.” He turned away.

“I do, Rusty. You want to know how?”

“Not really.” He wouldn’t look at me.

“Because it happened to me.” OK, I brought it on myself. “Like, when I was your age? My. Ah. Father got killed. In. Um. His submarine.” It still hurts but I had to try. “First I pretended it wasn’t true and then I felt awful and then…” for Rusty’s sake, I lied. “I kind of got over it. What it took was. Um. Time, and one other thing? Do you want to know what the other thing is?”

“No.”

“Keeping busy.” His ears were turning red but I couldn’t stop. “It didn’t make things any better, but it took my mind off it. OK?”

He wheeled with a snarl, ready to bite. “Could we please not talk about this right now, please?”

“Sorry! Let me give you a hug?”

“Fuck you!” He lunged to his feet and blundered out, and I thought: I want at least one kid in my life that won’t push me away. And it came in on me. I want this so much! The idea snagged, it hooked me deep and I could feel my insides spasm. Crazy, this fit of neediness. I actually swore, I’ll leave Reverdy, I’ll never go back to StElene if Charlie will only give me this.

It seemed like the answer to everything—the kids, the loneliness, the sense of loss that’s been walking on my shadow ever since I hit Brevert. I waited until Charlie got home, I waited while he ate. Then I waited until we were in bed and even though I know better than anybody that this kind of suggestion is contraindicated this early in any marriage, I put my face in his neck and I said, “Oh Charlie, what if we had a baby?”

“A baby?” This is how little my Charlie thought of it and how far back his betrayal went, and how deep. Yawning, the man I married kissed me and turned, mumbling, “Why would I want a baby?”

My mouth filled with water; I reached over and pulled him back so we were facing in the dark. “Charlie! What if I do?”

“Shhshh, babe, shsshh.” And my blind, loving, sleepy, thoughtless Charlie kissed me on the nose and cut me loose forever. “We don’t need a baby, Jenny. I already have my family.”

So that’s what I carried through the day, all day, and that’s what chased at my heels tonight when Charlie called from the base to say he wouldn’t be home because he had to fly to Cherry Point. And that’s why my heart did a joyful, guilty little flip when he said he wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.

After I get the kids to bed I can go to StElene and if I want to, I can stay all night.

@six

ZAN

@find reverdy.

It’s always the first thing she types.

Reverdy The Dak Bungalow Disconnected for 12 hours.

Reverdy is not logged on.

Am I in too deep? Jenny wonders, going to the grand ballroom instead. It is like coming home, at least here people are glad to see me.

Wonderful Jazzy spots her immediately. “Zan.” They hug.

“Zan!” Articular greets her with that grin and a hug.

“Hey guys, it’s me.” Zan beams. For the first time today she’s among friends. And, waiting for Reverdy, she will cheer herself with the talk. The talk, the talk!

StElene isn’t a substitute for life, she thinks; it’s a new kind of life.

The speed and ease of connections, the anonymity intensifies life on StElene. Unseen, people can and will say anything they want, and if they don’t like the way things are going, they can just disconnect. They can joke or play with ideas, float theories or troll for sex or take out their aggressions, reducing unseen victims to tears. There are a few dynamic personalities—people like magnets, who know how to make others fall in love with them or fear them or want to murder them. Sometimes Zan suspects that they spend so much time here because IRL—in real life, they are quite different. StElene may be the one place in their lives where they have affect. Passing through the physical world without making a ripple, they come here to make waves. Like the ones who shout insults or secrets in the public rooms and then leave, feeling purged. Confession comes easy when you’re casting words into the dark.

So does sympathy. There are a few blowhards who come to brag or preen or posture, but most people come to the grand ballroom to talk. And talk, because the species loves to talk about itself. For lonely people like Zan, it is a Godsend. After a bad day in quiet Brevert it’s a delight to be surrounded by smart people with plenty to say. Skimming, she’s cheered because StElene may be supported by Suntum’s database, but the soul of the community is talk.

“It isn’t the heartbreak that kills you,” someone says, “it’s answering the farewell note.”

A dozen threads are overlapping in the grand ballroom, multiple conversations scrolling up Zan’s screen so fast that she forgets the frustrations of the day and starts to laugh.

“Oh, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, Nietzsche’s just a club she uses to bash people over the head with.”

“Art movie. Awful movie. Boring. Imagine Waiting for Godot in SlowMo.”

“It’s a great cookbook but she’s a bitch about spices. ‘Don’t even dream that the spices from your supermarket are any good. By the time they reach your country from India, they are too old.’”

“Amy? Amy! Is Amy here?”

“Still driving a 486. Metallica T-shirt. You know the type.”

“I do not want to be in one more fight about Mac versus DOS.”

“What goes around comes around; in the next election, liberal backlash is bound to sweep the government clean.”

The conversation becomes general. “Somebody ought to sweep the government of this place clean. The Directors. Really. Dictators!”

“That’s what Reverdy says.”

“Do you really think StElene is controlled by thought police?”

“What do you think, hmm? As in, who do you think put up the database?”

“What do you mean?”

“If the nature of the questions determines the results of a quiz, Reverdy’s right. It’s all programmatic; what the program permits and doesn’t permit. We think we’re free agents, but the Suntum Corporation’s calling the shots.”

“Careful, they’re probably listening.”

“What are they going to do to us, pull the plug? If the corporation channels everything anyway, what’s the point?”

“A little regulation never hurt anybody.”

“That’s what you think. They’re cutting us off at the knees.”

Playing on group paranoia, someone says cleverly, “Unless they’re running us like rats.”

Who’s out here talking? People like us, Zan thinks, letting the talk scroll by as she reflects. People nothing like us.

Then Jazzy says, “It’s not the pudding you have to prove, it’s the chef.”

She types, If this is the pudding, are we the chefs or the plums?

Five people respond. Look at them all! Strangers like packages, waiting to be unwrapped. Zan trusts her personal radar; some of the people she meets here are keepers; others, she’s let slip away. Jazzy’s a keeper. “Think of this as the oven,” he says, making her laugh.

“And Suntum’s the kitchen. And if we can’t stand the heat…”

Several people laugh. Then hostility smashes into her like an incoming wave. “If this is a kitchen, bitch,” Azeath says to her, “why don’t you give us all a break and jump in the fire?”

Jazzy says, “Watch it!”

But this enemy Zan has never met tells the room, “Watch out for that one; she may look sweet, but she’s Reverdy’s puppet; everything she types, he writes.”

She types: look at Azeath. The description is daunting.

Azeath is God’s demon in a platinum tunic: tall, blond, imposing. His naked biceps and his huge thighs tell you that he is an expert love machine. And a killing machine. He knows the law to the letter and is ready to die defending it. Behold him. Be afraid. Be more than afraid. He is a terrible enemy.

His girlfriend Mireya jumps in, no surprise. “Oh, Reverdy.” Everybody knows she and Reverdy used to be lovers and Mireya snarls at Zan as if she still owns the man, studding her insults with asterisks. “We know all about Reverdy’s *tool*s. Correction. Reverdy’s *fool.* Lady, can’t you tell when you’re being used?”

When Zan doesn’t rise to the bait, Mireya says, “Only a fool would come in here talking Reverdy’s line without ever wondering. If he’s not using you, prove it. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Sorry, I don’t do catfights.” Not caring what Mireya says behind her back or that both Mireya and Azeath will page her relentlessly, sniping at long distance, Zan goes home.

Safe in Zan’s Tower at the top of the hotel, she considers. This is life, all right, but it’s life in a pressure cooker. Here in the dark we are all equal, the attached or unattached, carefree or careworn, the large and the unwieldy, the halt and the ugly, the lovelorn …

No. Lorn. Lorn, she thinks, strung out it. And what about Reverdy? Is he lorn? Maybe we are all lorn, she thinks, lorn being the condition of missing something terribly without knowing what it is.

Shaking off sadness, she opens a post from Lark.

Last night after they went to sleep I sneaked up to the kitchen and made those white chocolate chunk brownies I told you about, and I put them in a beautiful box I had and took them over to my girlfriend’s house? You know, Daisy? Well, she was almost my girlfriend before I got sick so I thought, when she comes to the door I’ll just give them to her and she’ll know, I put my phone number in so she can call? But oh shit Zan, I got there OK, and they were still up and all, but I never saw her because I couldn’t get up the guts to ring the bell. It made me so sick that on the way home I threw them off the bridge. I’ll log back on as soon as they let me, I have to talk to you; right now my dad has to use the phone.

If she and poor Lark could talk it would be better, but if synchronicity is one of the wonders of life in space, it is by no means guaranteed. Things happen in the world outside that keep people from logging on. Exigencies separate friends when they most need to meet—power outage, computer crash, the server’s down or someone is disconnected in mid-conversation because downstairs his wife just picked up the phone. Zan mails Lark instead, not knowing whether she’ll still be here when he reconnects. StElene is built on talk, but it’s held together by mail. She writes:

Oh, Lark, I’m proud of you for making the gesture and I’m sure if Daisy knew what you’d done for her, she’d be proud of you too. I wish you’d stayed long enough to see if she came to the door. I knew if she could just talk to you, she’d know how special you are. Have you thought of sending her a note?

Zan wants to keep writing, to tell him about Charlie and the baby she can’t have because it hurts so much that she has to tell somebody, but her sense of privacy is too strong. Let other people spill their stories incessantly in public rooms and on StElene’s dozens of mailing lists. She doesn’t complain.

She’ll wait for Reverdy.

And he is here. “Zan!”

They hug. “Love, I’m so glad!” Of course Zan tells him everything she said last night, what Charlie said before he fled into sleep. Tears glaze her cheeks here in the third-floor room in the physical world as on StElene she tells Reverdy, “I feel so lost.”

He says, “You’re like Gauguin painting for a blind man. He can’t see it. He can’t see you at all.” This is why she loves Reverdy.

“We’re in love.”

What he says next warms her. “Not the way you and I are.”

“Charlie does love me, it’s just. The kids. They’re like military orders that he has to follow, damn the torpedoes.”

“You deserve better, Zan. You deserve everything you want.”

She’s tempted to ask whether he would let her have a baby but the territory’s brand new and she knows better. “Oh, Rev.”

“Let me be here for you.” He quotes the poet she loves best. “In this and the other kingdom.”

Reverdy is so quick to understand that Zan tells him things she’s never told anybody else in the world. They know each other so well that they talk in shorthand; almost every point of reference is shared. Her lover knows she is crying RL and he says all the right things to her, every one; weeping with gratitude, she says, “I’ve never known anybody this way.”

“You mean all the way through to the soul.”

Softly, she repeats, “All the way through to the soul.”

After a pause he builds on it, leading her. “As if we’re the same person. I know we’re not, but we are.”

Deep inside Jenny in the night in the quiet third-floor room, love twists like a leaping fish. Yes it’s sexual, but she has to elevate what she feels or she can’t be here. Swiftly, she transforms it. “Or the same soul.”

“That’s the beauty of meeting you here.”

“Meeting you anywhere.” She knows where she’d like this to go; what they have here is beautiful but it’s conceptual. She imagines meeting Reverdy in some real place where they can really touch.

“Oh Zan, who would I be if I’d never met you?”

“You’d be you. Oh, I’m so glad you’re you!” She is casting for something she may not be able to name. “I love you and I trust you with my life. And you…”

Reverdy does not exactly address this. In fact, she tells him everything and there are a number of things he’s never told. He offers this, to make it better. “I tell you things I never told Louise. Things I could never tell Louise.”

“She doesn’t understand.”

“Exactly. She can’t! But you … It’s as if I know what it’s like to be inside your skin. And I love what I see.” He lets a little of his daily life show through, delicately hinting at the pain: “Being with you is so different. Louise…”

“I know.” She does; they’ve talked about it for hours.

“Yes, you know.” Smiling, he touches her hair. “And I couldn’t live without you knowing.”

It’s strange and wonderful that Zan is deep inside Reverdy’s consciousness, when her true knowledge of Charlie stops at the sweet smile on his blunt, loving, uncomprehending face. “Charlie is a good man, but he doesn’t…”

“Love you?”

“Understand. I wish you and I could be forever.”

And this is the joy and the danger: his love! Reverdy seals it. “We are.”

seven

HUBERT PINKNEY, A.K.A. LARK

Everybody has to disconnect sometime. Either you have to sleep or everybody you care about has gone to sleep. Nobody you know is logged on. You don’t have the psychic energy to start up with strangers, fishing for something to talk about with players you don’t know. Life’s too short to waste on the hundreds of anonymous guests who drop in with their unformed expectations, discover they can’t handle it and go. You’ve read all the posts on your favorite mailing lists on StElene, starting with *complaints. You’ve even posted a few sassy notes on *politics in hopes somebody will post a response or mail you privately. You’ve @investigated every room in the GrandHotel and nothing’s going on.

Your ideal world is as good as dead. For now.

You’re sick of waiting for your friends. Your bladder calls. BRB, you type, for “Be right back,” but there’s nobody around who cares. You might as well disconnect. Push back your rolling chair and turn your back on the vacant screen. Type @exit and your brilliant, colorful, crowded world goes out like a light. It is like a little death. Lark, a.k.a. Hubert Pinkney, is brought down.

Bad things happen to you in the interstices. Lark knows. You have to take care. “Take care,” Zan said to him right before she disconnected, when was it, 2 a.m? Just now Reverdy said, “Take care” and typed @exit. It’s even night in Alaska, which Lark happens to know is where Reverdy lives IRL. In, as they say, Real Life. Lark looks around the cluttered basement at 553 Poplar Avenue, where he grew up. This isn’t life. It isn’t safe!

Off StElene the world is fucking fraught with peril. People are hard to take and shitty to you. Alone is the only safe way to be. And the only safe place to be is: LOGGED ON.

Lark is … No. Sadass Hubert Pinkney is on the floor in farthest corner with his feet sticking out in front of him, gleaming in Nikes that the mother bought in hopes they’d inspire him to go out and run a mile. Yeah, right.

He looks about the way Zan thinks he does—skinny and anxious, triangular face with lemur eyes; the accuracy of her imagination would make her smile. Until Jenny Wilder stepped in and took a look at him, assessing with a professional sigh: He is not a whole human being.

Yeah right, I’m not. Lark is pretty messed up. Yeah, they can call him Hubert but he’s Lark even here, the ’rents are just too stupid to see it. And he knows they can’t stand him.

Howard and Marjorie Pinkney’s son the computer junkie stays out of sight but he lurks in the mind. No, he looms in the mind, which is why they are determined to get him out of here. Like kicking him out will make him all better. The mom thinks he’ll, like, hang out drinking coffee in some nice, healthy student union far, far away from Poplar Avenue instead of crouching like a raptor at his keyboard in their very cellar, which is usually lighted only by the eerie cathode glow from his computer screen. Eviction will be good for him! Their little Hubert can make friends, get some color in his face. Build some muscle, out in the fresh air.

Look, he can’t keep going on the way he is.

“You can’t keep going on the way you are. Right, son?” Marjorie, looking at him with those swimmy eyes. That’s the problem with moms, even when they don’t like you. They hope.

Howard, he just wants the kid unshelled—un. fucking. shelled. He was a freak accident. They thought they were done having kids. Two grown sons, both gone. And now … this! Freak accident, as Howard never ceases to remind him. They are too old!

When the ’rents sent him off to college they thought the inconvenience was finally done with. Threw a private block party and redecorated his room. Not their fault that like a bad check, he bounced. And landed here. Last thing he wanted, and look at me. Not his fault. Not theirs.

Marjorie keeps holding these sad little conversations from the top of the basement stairs. “Son, why don’t you go out and play?”

“I’m too old to play.”

“You’re not too old to have fun.”

“I’m nineteen.”

“You know what I mean. You’ve got to come out sometime. Son?”

“No I don’t.” If she knew he went out at night she might lock the house and not let him back in. “I’m cool right here.”

She acts friendly, but Lark knows. The father sends her to ask when is he going to get a job. Howard even writes her damn lines: be warned, they are done paying these phone bills from you always being on that terrible internet what are you doing out there where we can’t keep an eye on you. It’s time to kick the habit or else get a damn job or think of something you can sell to pay for your keep here. That useless comic book collection? Your CDs? Why don’t you sell that damn computer, it brings nothing but grief, look what happened to you in college. Sell sperm or something, help with this huge phone bill. Sell your blood. But that’s Howard talking.

The mother never says anything straight out. She just starts in that lala voice of hers, “Your friends Ed and Ben called.”

“I don’t want to see Edward and Benjamin right now.”

“They’re only home for two weeks. Spring break. Harvard!” He can hear the tears in her voice. “UCLA. You could have a party.”

“I don’t go there.”

“Son, why won’t you look at me?”

Because I can’t look at people. Not straight on. “I am.”

“If you’d only go out! Or let your friends come in.”

“I don’t go there, Mom. Go away.”

“You never go out!”

“Is that a problem for you?” But I do. Just not that you know about, he thinks and can’t know if he means the deep hours when he slips out the back and goes running or the daily escape to StElene.

“Oh Hubert, you’re going to lose all your friends.”

“I don’t have any friends.” His heart turns over. I have closer friends than anybody. Just not here. A phrase bounds across the screen of his imagination: not of this world.

This Tuesday, my God, she came down. Crept up behind him and touched him on the shoulder. “For God’s sake, son. At least tell us how you are!”

“I’m fine, Mother. I’m fine.” You’re in my space. Stand. Stare at her feet. Wait for her to go.

Tuesday she craned to read what was scrolling up his screen. “At least let me see. Are you writing a book down here? Tell me you’re writing a book.”

“No Mother, I’m not writing a book.”

She swelled, filling his space. “Then what is it? Let me see!”

“No!” He threw his body over the screen to keep her from seeing the scrolling text.

Reverdy just said: Your mother is some bitch! Zan was saying: If only I could arrange ten minutes with them. They don’t even know who you are!

Marjorie was pushing so Lark had to shove. Hard. “Go away!”

“You hit me!” Wounded, Marjorie regrouped. “I thought you might be writing something. You know. To get back into school.”

“Fuck school.” I’m sorry about the fucking nervous breakdown, Mother. If that’s what it was. “I can’t talk now. I’m busy.”

“I just don’t understand you, Hubert. In the dark all the time. Wasting your life down here in the dark.”

“All right, I’ll show you. I’ll fucking show you.” Desperate, he types BRB and then home. And on StElene, Lark disappears from the Dak Bungalow and returns to Lark’s Mandala. Let the mother read what he has wrought. If she asks, he’ll open some of the puzzles for her, @unpack the coding that supports his elegant schemes.

“For God’s sake, Hubert. Stop typing. The sun’s out!”

Why do I need to see the sun when I can build a world? What Lark does is too huge to explain to outsiders. On StElene he has built a bungalow; the text presents a neo-Victorian place with a little cupola, an exterior in keeping with the island theme, but he has customized the interior. Enter Lark’s place and you’re inside an Oriental contrivance, text describing spheres within spheres. The first solution to the problems set by the mandala admits you to an inner sphere. The mathematical scheme is based on those intricately carved sets of ivory balls within balls with a beautiful kernel at the center. Each sphere in Lark’s place contains a series of games, puzzles. Solve each set and eventually you find your way to the center of the inmost sphere and the lotus throne. Lark sits here. Solve all the puzzles and you’ll get to the center of Lark. Some day the perfect woman will find him waiting here. Until then, Lark is content to wait. The thing took months to devise. Hours spent coding followed by hours in the hotel talking to his friends, how much more life does a person need? What could Hubert Pinkney tell his mother about this? What could he really, really say to her? “OK, Mother,” he said at last. “You want a look? Then look!” And stepped aside, trembling, so she could read his screen.

Reading, Marjorie blinked. And blinked and blinked. He still doesn’t know why it made her so angry. Screaming, “This is it? This is all?”

“Yes this is it. This is fucking it!”

Furious, she pushed him. “Don’t speak that way to me. Don’t you dare speak that way to me.”

And he pushed back! “Oh, go to hell. Just fucking go to fucking hell. Mother, do you have any idea who I am?

“Is that all you can do, hit me? You hit me twice!”

“I’m sorry, I was upset.”

“That’s twice. That does it! I’m telling your father. Then we’ll see.”

OK, the fire in the kitchen wasn’t only logical. It was inevitable. And yesterday Howard came downstairs and read him out. Hubert this, Hubert that. Then he yanked all the plugs.

So the ’rents are pissed about the fire. Lark and his computer, his things. That he sneaks upstairs in the night and steals food. That they never see him go out. Now they’re in the kitchen talking about him. He guesses the sun’s up. He hasn’t slept, so what else is new? Day, night. It’s all the same to him. But the ’rents are regular. It’s their breakfast time again. He hears them shambling around up there on muffled feet, padding around in their matching slipper socks like worried bears, circling the kitchen on a loop. Trapped inside those thick, sagging bodies, wedged into narrow minds while on StElene, Lark soars.

It’s sad. No. It’s terrible. Here, IRL, he’s like one of those big bugs that when you turn them over on their back, they’re powerless. And they’re fixing to drive in the pin. What words the senior Pinkneys exchange will be not so much overheard by Lark as known.

If life on StElene is pure thought, Lark is the genius of extrapolation. He doesn’t have to see the spit bubbling on Marjorie’s sad bear muzzle or inadvertent tears running down the round bear nose. He knows what she’s saying.—Howard, did you speak to him?

Father bear exposing broken fangs.—I spoke to him good.

Mother: choke-sniffle, hesitate. She doesn’t want to feel guilty, but she does because she is, after all, a mother. Still a mother, like it or not.—Well, when is he going?

Sighing, Lark slinks to the foot of the basement stairs.

The father says,—As soon as he’s packed.

Lark creeps to the top step so he can hear better.

—Oh God, Howard, packed!

Lark leans his forehead against the door. What’ll I do?

—It’s past time. Father bear with the belly and the loose, wet mouth. Glasses too tight on his fat nose. Howard condescends. Makes a fucking point of being bigger, like Lark is a damn bird with a broken wing that he can stomp on. Well, fuck him. He doesn’t know that I can fucking fly. Howard says,—He’s got to go.

Lark groans. Where? Can he get through the glass screen of his terminal and disappear into the ether? Climb inside the box and move to StElene for good? He may be crazy, but he’s not that crazy.

—But Howard, what will he do?

—That fool computer I bought for him. He can damn well make a living with that high-end electronic crap of his. Five thousand dollars, and look! He can damn well run figures for some finance company. A bank. They use those things in banks. But I tell you this. That boy won’t lift a finger as long as he can get a free ride here.

The mother cries,—How can he make a living when he can’t even make his bed?

Yeah, how?

—That’s his problem. He’ll thank us for it later, I promise. After he goes.

After he goes. Something deep inside Lark founders. How will I connect? Where will I keep all my things?

He hates them so much! He hates himself for not being able to go up there and tell them to fuck themselves. He wishes he could just stomp up these stairs and walk out, slam the door and leave them all behind, along with his junk that he has to have just to keep going, cartons that he can’t live without. Things he needs. Collection of comics. Baseball hats. Character mugs and rock group T-shirts. Books he bought and can’t let go because they’re still unread. He isn’t free! Worse, he is financially dependent here. Lark has zero income, he has only debts.

And he’s about to lose it all. Once the father yanks the plugs and jerks the surge protector out of the wall for good, once Howard jams the computer components back in the labeled cartons he’s so thoughtfully provided, he’ll lug them upstairs and set them out on the curb and Hubert with them. Lark will be disconnected! Cut off from his friends and everything that matters. It’s too horrible to think about. He’ll have to turn tricks or panhandle just to connect from some crowded, terrifying internet cafe. Strangers looking over your shoulder. Reading the intimate things you type. He’d die.

He hears the mother hum-humming. Hey, if she’s wavering …—Oh Howard, maybe we shouldn’t.

Steely dad:—We have no choice.

—But he’s so young!

—Your safety, Marjorie.

—Safety! Howard, he’s my son.

The father says,—The fire in the kitchen, Marjorie.

—It was an accident.

—He set it. Who knows what he was trying to burn away?

Below stairs, Lark dies. The fire in the kitchen is nothing.

You keep this up and you’ll see what Lark can do.

It isn’t really the fire anyway. It isn’t even the hours he keeps. They are just sick of him. Sick of him bopping around nights until he crashes and crawls into bed after dawn, coughing and shivering until he thinks he’s slept and it’s OK to get up and connect to StElene because being away is like being dead. Sick of him screaming when one of them tries to make a phone call and he gets disconnected. Sick of the extra wash because Lark has to scrub himself raw twice a day and change all his clothes and the sheets too. He just has to, OK? Plus that he won’t eat with them because he can’t stand being watched. Like he would explain? He just sneaks upstairs when they’re sleeping and steals food. Plus, OK, the discomfort of having a third person not exactly there but always present. They fret: What is he doing down there? Make a midnight food run and accidentally run into one of them: Oh, are you still here? Plus the bills. The bottom line is financial. With Howard, it always is. He’s pissed about the phone bill because Lark is always online. It’s his connection. The best one is his account at the college he dropped out of. Trouble is, it’s in Colorado. His computer has to phone up Colorado every time he logs on and so he stays logged on. Hundreds of dollars.

Unless the bottom line is that they grit their teeth and look away because they can’t bear the sight of him. It’s like he’s something wrong they did, that they can’t bear to face.

Upstairs:—Do you want to speak to him or shall I?

Oh yes I am afraid.

If Howard comes down here and finds out Hubert has unpacked his stuff and reconnected, God knows what he’ll do. Sinking to the bottom step, curling around his misery, Lark begins to rock. But he’s not a stupid person, he’s a smart one, and wacked as he is, he knows he can’t just sit here, waiting for Reverdy to come rescue him. Slowly, he unfolds. When his feet stop feeling like dead sponges, he tiptoes over pins and needles to his desk.

Sobbing, he types:

stelene.moo.mud.org 8888

The minute he does, he feels better. Then he types:

co (you don’t have to type the whole word to connect)

lark (the program is not case sensitive)

and last, he types his password, which he guards with his life. Nobody is going to sneak into Lark’s place pretending to be Lark; the Directors on StElene have made it clear to all players. NEVER GIVE YOUR PASSWORD TO ANYONE. They’ll never guess his:

bfltzpyk

The StElene display comes up but Lark knows it by heart. Sometimes it scrolls up the screen in his dreams. He goes to the hot plate and makes instant coffee. When he comes back to the terminal he is sitting in:

Lark’s Place. Where he can be safe.

You are in a light, bright library, the outer chamber of the sphere where Lark lives and works. It is his alone. He is writing his novel here. On the curved walls are Lark’s art collection, Lark’s Morocco and gold-bound books. Light comes from an unknown source and the sphere is lined with gray velvet sofas that invite you to sit but note this. There is more to Lark’s place than is immediately evident. The scroll: READ ME; the smaller sphere glowing in the center of the room suggest that there is more here, even as there is more to Lark. Much, much more. Find your way into the next sphere and discover. Look on his works and admire.

His face relaxes into a smile. Home at last. Then he types:

@find reverdy, thinking: be here, please be here.

The display comes up:

Reverdy last disconnect 5 a.m. PST The Dak Bungalow

Oh hell, Reverdy isn’t here. Neither is Zan, but he knows how to reach Zan, a.k.a Genna Wilder, she’s a psychologist RL, she’ll know what to do.

We have to talk, we have to talk! Everything hurts. We have to talk. And Reverdy? No matter when he comes in we’ll talk and I can tell him everything.

eight

JENNY

Bad feelings gnaw at you from the inside out, whatever’s eating you feeds until it’s so big that there’s no getting rid of it. Pain has a way of scrambling your synapses. You start to say one thing and something else comes out.

I’ve got to tell somebody.

Nice Martha is sitting in my big chair with late sunlight striking her gray frizz. She’s relaxed and wide open; this would be a good time to run the baby thing past her—am I overreacting here, or was that a mortal hurt? Charlie and Reverdy and Charlie revolve in my mind like tigers biting each other’s tails and all I can talk about is StElene. “Martha, I’ve gotten into this new place, this virtual community? It’s a whole new world.”

“You’re in a … what?”

I can’t tell her about Reverdy but I’m desperate to tell her something. Sure it’s crazy. In a way StElene is like good sex. If the person you’re telling hasn’t been there, there’s no way you can explain. The more I tell Martha, the more she doesn’t get it, and even when her eyes glaze over, I have to explain. “Martha, I have these amazing friends there!”

This gets her attention. “My God, you don’t give these weirdos your name!”

Another of those things I’d better not tell. “Relax, we all take character names. Besides, you can tell a lot of things about people from their descriptions.”

“Descriptions?”

“What they write about themselves.” I keep mine simple.

ZAN stands for considerably more than what you read here.

Carrying:

Ring from Reverdy     Official Lark Friend Badge

Oh God this is hopeless; I grin. “I guess you had to be there.” When I disconnect from StElene the program adds: Zan (sleeping) is here. My description stays behind to stand for me. If Reverdy comes in while I am asleep he can still trace my outlines, like a man in love with a ghost.

But Martha’s freaking. “My God, you’re in a chat room!”

“Is that all you think of me? That I’d do something that little and stupid and cheap?” Yes I am shouting. “Think of a gigantic virtual building, with hundreds of rooms. Imagine thousands of people all living together in a really big small town…”

“Just tell me you’re not in a chat room. Foxy Lady. Sexy Man. Please. Jenny, it’s so not you!”

“Don’t condescend to something you don’t understand!” I don’t really want her following me onto StElene but she looks so hurt that I say, to make up for yelling, “If you knew them. If you could only meet my friends.”

“You mean if you could meet them,” she says; her look says, this is for your own good.

“They aren’t just anybody, Mart, they’re logging on from universities and corporations, not just…” I start over. “Professionals, most of them. Lawyers, writers,” I leave out the randy teenagers and a couple of other categories she doesn’t need to know about. “I met this great doctor from Australia…”

“Doctor, yeah right.” Martha gives me that look. “He says.”

“He is a doctor!”

“How do you know?”

“Believe me, I know.” How can I explain how you learn to identify people you can’t see or hear or touch, or how you in your bones know which ones you can trust. It’s like swimming or riding a bicycle; once you know, you know. Martha’s so skeptical that I keep numbering them: philosopher-politician in Canada. Artist in Oakland, friend doing social semiotics in London, anthropologist, physical therapist. Programmers, students, scientists, I tell her it takes brains to hang out in ephemeral space, OK I spare her the crazier ones, like Harrald, and Lark …

But now Martha’s worried. She grabs my hands. “Jen. Jenny. Tell me you don’t give these people your real name or say where you live. Swear.”

No. It would be lying. I say, “Only my closest…”

“You’re out there in this made-up computer thingy with a bunch of creeps and weirdos that you can’t see and you don’t know about, and you’ve told them your real name?”

I’ve told them a hell of a lot more than that. “Only the ones I trust.”

“For God’s sake Jenny, be careful! You hear terrible things about stuff that happens on the Internet. Terrible things.” This from Martha, who can’t open her email without help. “Women get murdered because they trust some guy they’ve never seen, they go to meet some guy they picked up in some sleazy, anonymous…”

“Martha…”

To her credit, she doesn’t say, chat room. She sighs. “You don’t know who these people are, Jenny, or what they really want from you!”

“I know what I want, Mart. Something a little bit bigger than Brevert.”

Her eyes are crossing slightly with incomprehension. “This is sick, Jenny. How did you get so tied up in something you can’t see? You think you’re in a movie or something? Or is it more like a game? Are we talking imaginary playmates, or what?”

“It’s as real as you and me sitting here.”

She shakes her head. “It’s all typing in the dark to me.”

“We type, and things exist.”

Bang, she’s all over me; she snaps, “Performative utterance.”

Reverdy’s exact words drop into my heart like a stone in a well. “Yes.”

“Like, say it and it’s so?” Martha is leading me.

I am too upset to care. “Yes!”

“Well, it isn’t. It isn’t so. There’s a thin line between that and wish fulfillment.”

“Do you really think I’m that stupid? Do you have any idea what it’s like to get to the level of pure thought? StElene is like that; people getting past the superficial, meeting on the plane of pure thought.” I am not about to tell her there is a hell of a lot more to life on StElene than that. I say, “Look at us. You. Me, here in this room. Eight thousand distractions. Interruptions. Physical static. The fax, the phone. Broken fan on the AC. Dust in the room. Visual cues—what we’re wearing, who’s thinner and how that makes us feel and am I boring you, and did you just stifle a yawn? How can we possibly get to the truth? Think of the freedom!”

“You mean freedom from responsibility.”

“Freedom from all this crap.”

It’s all wasted. My friend. My friend Martha, Martha finishes me off with that sweet, uncomprehending smile. “And this chat room. Is it a hobby with you?”

“It’s not a chat room!” I smack my hand down on the desk. “It’s a world.”

“No. This.” And Martha smacks her hand down on the desk. Harder. “This is the world.”

“Stuff in this room, in Brevert, it’s extraneous, Mart. I’m talking about getting to the center.”

And my only friend in Brevert asks carefully, “What do you think is the center?”

My life in the South backs up in me like the contents of a faulty drain and I can hear my voice beginning to crack. “Whatever it is, it isn’t here and it probably isn’t now.”

“Oh, I get it. Escapism.”

“No,” I say hopelessly. If I can’t make even Martha understand, maybe my time on StElene really is wasted. “I. Agh. Imagine a society where everybody can know everything. And all at once.”

“Isn’t that what the devil promised Adam?”

“It was Eve.” Oh shit, is she going to make me cry?

Then—just like that—my good friend comes down on me out of nowhere like a SCUD missile. WHAM. “Are you and Charlie all right?”

There is this terrible pause; I see my whole life flash before my eyes and it is over. Oh Charlie, we started so well, how did we end up here?

My friend Martha just smiles and waits.

“All right?” I want to tell her and I can’t tell her; if I start crying, I’m fucked; instead, I flee. Even though it is my office, not Martha’s, I grab my shoulder bag and go, stopping just long enough to reassure her, unless she’s a bomb I am trying to defuse. “We’re fine! Why wouldn’t we be all right?”

*   *   *

Then on Front Street, I hear somebody hurrying to catch up with me—Martha, I think, but it isn’t, it’s my obsessive-compulsive patient Rick Berringer, a local lawyer who is keeping things together with my help. In the chair in my office, Rick Berringer is one thing. Out here in the street, he is another. As tall as Charlie, dark-haired and slightly driven, like Reverdy. Now that we are out in the open, he has an off-center smile that I like. Something is flickering at the periphery of my imagination; I turn and wait.

“I saw you walking and I wondered if you’d like a ride.”

“Thanks, but I need the time to unwind.”

“OK if I walk along with you?” Nice-looking guy, I probably know too much about Rick for us to be friends but if it doesn’t bother him it shouldn’t bother me, and it doesn’t seem to be bothering him. He says easily, “I’m done for the day and I need to stretch out.”

Sometimes going along Front Street I see other officers’ wives eying me from late model cars with base tags. They all hang together and turn out for official gatherings; I don’t and Charlie tells me I am missed by which he means, he is judged. I think it wouldn’t hurt to have Charlie find out that I’ve been seen walking along the bay road with some nice guy he doesn’t know about. “Sure, I have to go home and get supper for the kids.”

“No problem.” Rick’s quick, rumpled grin lets me know that he is something waiting to happen. “It’s cool.”

“You know I’m married, right?”

Then my patient astounds me. “I know you’re unhappy, right?”

Reverdy? Don’t be ridiculous, he … “Rick, I don’t know if we should…”

“It’s just a walk, Ms. Wilder. Just a walk.”

And not for the last time today my synapses tangle; I am so on the verge of asking Rick if he’s ever heard of StElene that I manage to stop. In my present confused state it would be too much like trolling for sex. Still, I can’t stop suspicion jumping inside me like a silver fish—unless it’s an attack of wish fulfillment, Jenny, cut it out, lay back. I say quickly, “I’m sorry, I forgot something and I have to go back to the office, but next time, OK?”

*   *   *

Near dawn I am caught short in my sleep, rigid with terror; my breath stops. It may be a dream but I can’t be sure. If it’s a dream, then I am submerged in it, I am drowning somewhere off StElene, swimming against an undertow to a place I’ll never reach, and it is as real as StElene has ever been real—I’m swimming through letters that bob like phosphorescents in a black ocean, microorganisms glittering in the night, the water I am inhaling is line after line of scrolling text; the island and the offshore currents and this undertow are made of text; I try to grab a string of words like a lifeline to pull myself out but the words have fragmented into hundreds of sparkling letters and the letters themselves implode like dying stars. I am sobbing, halfway between terror and delight when the surface shatters and I reel with shock; like God or some huge child reaching into a dollhouse or maybe a lifeguard rescuing a drowning swimmer, strong hands break the surface and take hold of me, relentlessly pulling me out.

It’s Charlie, calling, “What’s the matter, what’s the matter?”

I am sobbing, incoherent. “Oh, oh Charlie, it hurts so much!”

“Shh, don’t, it’s OK. You were crying.”

“Oh.” I am shivering with loss. Broken glass, I think, that’s what hurt because rescuing me, pulling me out of StElene or the dream of StElene, Charlie shattered my computer screen! After Daddy got killed I used to dream about being happy in Oz and never having to come back to our empty house, “Oh,” I can’t stop sobbing. “Oh!”

“Don’t.” Warm and close in the night, Charlie is rocking me. Something about my desperation rattles him; he is crying too. “Please don’t.”

“I can’t help it.”

“Shh, Jen. Another dream about your father?”

“I don’t have those anymore.”

“You’re sure?”

“Not since I met you. It’s not about my father, OK?”

“Then shh, just shh, babe, I’ll take care of you, I’ll always take care of you.”

This makes me wail with guilt. “Oh, Charlie. Oh!” Now I know why I couldn’t walk home with Rick, I love Charlie and I would never … near occasion of … Rick is a near occasion, whereas Reverdy, Reverdy and I have never touched. I’m not unfaithful; I am.

“Shh shh, whatever it is, it can’t be so terrible. What is it, Jenny, what’s so terrible?”

I am thinking about the baby. I already have my family. I’m thinking about the baby and I can’t tell him that either. “Nothing.”

“If you love me, you’ll tell me.”

“I love you and I … I don’t know.” And a deep, disloyal part of me is thinking, I do know, and Reverdy, Reverdy knows.

“Jenny,” Charlie says into my hair, “I don’t know what’s going on with you but I love you, if there’s anything, anything at all that I can do…”

And this is the hell of it. I love Charlie and I can’t ever tell him. “It’s OK, Charlie. Really. It’s just a bad dream and I’m fine.”

@nine

ZAN

I spent the afternoon at Brevert Hospital, sitting with the Yerkes while the people in the ER pumped their daughter’s stomach. That poor kid let herself get so skinny that it didn’t matter what I said or did, she couldn’t pull out of the spiral. The mother found her. The Yerkes parents blamed themselves, they blamed Amanda, they blamed me. Why not? I do. What is it with me and these Southerners, that I can’t get through to them? Is it something with me? I don’t know, I only know the failure made me feel rotten, as if it was somehow my fault. We hung in together, I did my best to talk the family through but we were only spinning our wheels, which we kept doing until the doctor came out and said Amanda was going to be fine. She asked for me. Mom and dad got up too but the doctor waved them off. So I went in to talk to her; I brushed her cheek. “Amanda, I’m not going to ask you why.”

She raised her chin like a cat being stroked. “Tell them if they force me to eat I’m going to do it again.”

“Oh, Amanda.”

“Promise.”

I didn’t promise. I did what I could. When I was done the family hugged all around, but the mother had that look. The thing is, I can give this case everything I’ve got—no, more than I have to give—and that mother will still be that mother with those social expectations, and as long as she has that mother, Amanda will starve. I’m lobbying for boarding school in the North, but helping Amanda is a little bit like sweeping the beach—every day the same debris washes back in. I came all the way down here with Charlie thinking at least I could start over with new patients, but these people have problems that I can’t touch.

I did what I do to decompress. I shopped for shrimp and snow peas and sesame oil and soy sauce, dried mushrooms and tree ears and ginger root and went home to cook. I threw in chicken and peanuts and made spring rolls, in hopes. Usually when Charlie and I sit down together these meals are like little celebrations, and we both need a celebration about now.

But Charlie comes in late and he’s in no mood to celebrate. He’s trying to smile but his face sags; even his khakis have wilted in the humidity. He’s trying to be nice about it but his voice is heavy with disappointment. “All the other wives were there.”

The commandant’s party. “Oh Charlie, I forgot!”

He sighs; our lives in Brevert are not what either of us expected. “You’re so great-looking, I wanted the commandant to meet you.”

“I was coming, I was, but then…”

“Everybody was asking for you. Swede, Rebel, Jay.”

“I had to go to the hospital, emergency.”

“You look all right to me.”

“Suicide attempt.” I’m trying hard to tell him more than just what happened, but it isn’t getting through. “By the time I got done with the family I was too wrecked to remember anything.”

Charlie is trying to keep it light, but he can’t. “You were missed. The brass are starting to think I hallucinated you.”

“I’m sorry, I couldn’t leave the family.”

I bring on the food; it is depressing, he eats without noticing what he’s putting into his mouth.

It’s more depressing, scraping the kids’ plates into the sink. Three dishes and they wouldn’t touch even one of them; I even gave them forks. They just pushed back their chairs and went outside to wait for the ice cream truck. Charlie follows me into the kitchen. “Is there a problem?”

“Do you think I’ll ever make anything that these kids like?”

“Kids?” Charlie sounds faintly surprised. What kids?

“Your kids.” … All the family I want … oh, Charlie. I don’t tell him that tonight they ambushed me again. I didn’t flinch so Rusty tried something new. I’m going to have to cut the bubble gum out of my hair. “Kids, you know. Patricia? Russell? Look like you, sleep in those cute bunk beds?”

“Oh, the kids,” he says absently. “Don’t sweat it, they’ll get used to you.”

“Great.” He never asks if I can get used to them.

Then he surprises me. “Babe, you look like you could use a break. I’ll find a woman to take care of the kids. Go to New York and go shopping. See your crazy friends.”

“My friends?” So much has happened on StElene that I have a hard time remembering who those people were. I am staring into Dispos-al. “Why would I want to go without you?”

“You seem so…” Charlie can’t find the word. He scrubs his hair with his knuckles. “If only you and I could get some time. The thing is, things at the base are tight right now, I have to be on deck so many nights that I just thought … Look. Go have fun in the big city. Have drinks at Windows on the World, get a makeover, buy some pretty shoes. Take in a Broadway show,” sweet, heedless Charlie says.

My God, don’t you know me? Don’t you know me at all? “Makeover? Take in a show?”

“Whatever. I know you miss New York.”

Homesickness rattles through me like a summer storm and in seconds, clears out. I have StElene to go to, I have Reverdy hanging on my arrival; my old life means nothing to me now. “I can’t.”

“Come on, babe. It’s on me.” Charlie puts his arms around me from behind, looking over my shoulder into the sink; I can hear his words vibrating in my skull. “Put everything on my plastic.” Generously, blindly, he blows it by adding. “OK, Mom?”

“Don’t, Charlie.” I am trying hard to tell him something.

“What?”

Funny how you don’t necessarily want a thing until somebody tells you that you can’t have it. Part of me is crumpling like tinfoil and I bark to counteract the pain. “Don’t call me Mom.”

He hugs me anyway. “Now I know you need to get out of here.”

Anxiety flickers in my belly. And leave Reverdy behind? Spend hours at airport email kiosks trying to connect just so we could talk? Could I connect? What would Reverdy do if he came into my room on StElene and found me gone? What would he think? Something terrible could happen to our love. I am suddenly so panicky that I surprise myself. “I can’t!”

Charlie frowns. “Jen, are you OK?”

“I’m fine, it’s.” I have a hard time getting it out. “It’s just. I can’t leave right now. I have people depending on me.”

“Oh,” he says, “your patients.”

“Right.” Let Charlie think I mean my patients. I mean Reverdy and Lark; our lives are so tightly tied up that there’s no undoing the knots; cut the skein and one of us will die.

“You’ll remember that I offered,” Charlie says. Then, just as I’m starting to feel guilty all over again, he moves on to the next thing on the list in his head. “So, if you’re going to be here…”

“I am, Charlie. I’m going to be here.”

And this is how this wonderful, inattentive guy my husband releases me. “Do you think you could get Rusty a date with an orthodontist? He needs braces but Nelda never got around to it.”

*   *   *

It’s finally deep night in the thirties stucco on Church Street, which Jenny thinks of as Charlie’s house. There’s nothing of her here. For her, it’s just a staging area. Charlie’s living room is dominated by his Chinese rug, his mother’s jade chrysanthemums, the chow bench he bought in Honolulu. Pots and pans from his first marriage fill the kitchen. The closets are crowded with Charlie’s things and his kids are in every room. Wherever Jenny goes, they are. Big-boned, unconscious Charlie takes up more than his share of the king-sized bed, turning that well-muscled back to her, sleeping in absolute peace. He’s kicked all his unwanted covers into a heap on Jenny’s side, crowding her out. Across the hall, Charlie’s resentful children are snuffling into their pillows. Even in sleep they occupy a tremendous psychic space.

This house contains nothing of her, but when Jenny Wilder tiptoes upstairs and closes herself into the third-floor room and turns on the computer, her perspective changes. She changes. She is going to her place. Silent. Secure. Hers alone.

In seconds she’s connected to StElene. She sees: stElene is … She doesn’t need to read the opening statement of purpose; she has it by heart.… philosophical experiment in international communication.

Is that really why I’m here? Is it why any of us is really here? She loves the incantatory tone, she loves the sense that she is one of the elite—smart and tough and funny and flexible enough to make her way on a plane far above the one where ordinary people spin out their ordinary lives.

Most people stay trapped inside bodies and behind faces, rooted in what Reverdy calls “physical life.” Who wouldn’t rather be here? What Jenny can’t understand is how this got to be more real than the patient in the hospital, the kids downstairs, the husband in his car, driving away to the base. With her palms hot and her mouth tight she types:

co for CONNECT zan and then she types in her password: lalation

And is in her room on StElene. Zan’s Tower. Her place, where no one comes uninvited. She built it herself. In a way, it is the only place she has.

Zan’s Tower is a bright, airy space at the top of the GrandHotel StElene. Moonlight streams in through long windows and soft Caribbean breezes lift gauzy mauve curtains in this lovely plant-filled room with its silken pillows and Aubusson rug. In this peaceful place where souls can fuse and become one life is sweet and peaceful. Outside, the moon’s reflection strikes the water in glittering points. Sapphire is here.

Sapphire. The sleek leopard Zan programmed to do a few tricks and then set aside, one more decorative object in this lovely room. The room description comes up like a mantra, soothing and expected.

But there is extra text on her screen. An intrusion.

Mireya is here.

Violated, she shudders. Reverdy’s ex-lover. Here. “Mireya!”

“I have to talk to you.”

“No.”

“You have to listen,” Mireya says.

“Why, when I know you hate me?” Reverdy laid it out for Zan when they became lovers. “You’d better know, I have enemies here. Grave enemies.” Mireya and Reverdy hate each other with the ferocity peculiar to ex-lovers. Reverdy hints at a bitter betrayal, but betrayals in this compressed space are tricky, and even though Zan has tried to get to the truth of it, truth in this new dimension is elusive too. She knows it was ugly and that at the end, they fought like tigers. Still do. And even though Mireya’s with macho Azeath now, she harangues and posts poisonous attacks to a dozen lists because she wants more than anything to bring Reverdy down. She won’t quit until she has him erased from StElene. And Reverdy? He still isn’t over it. It bothers Zan, that he knows each injury by name; he doesn’t just number them, he dwells. “It’s all lies.”

“What makes you so damn sure?”

“How did you get in?”

“What do you care? I have ways.” She does. An adept programmer, she’s been on StElene four years, rallying people against Reverdy. She can thwart any security system. Except Reverdy’s.

God, Zan thinks, I should leave now, before she has a chance to poison the well.

page Reverdy Where are you?

“I know you’re trying to page him,” Mireya says. “And you know as well as I do that he isn’t here.”

“He’d do anything to avoid you.” If only she could phone him! It’s Mireya’s fault that Reverdy won’t tell her how to get in touch with him offline. This is grave: Understand, I am protecting both of us. He has Jenny Wilder’s phone number and street address but she doesn’t even know where in the West he lives. She dreams of opening her queue one morning and finding an email from Reverdy or picking up the phone and hearing his voice, but it’s impossible, he won’t do anything to give away his location, not even to her. He refuses even to take a numbered post office box and it’s all Mireya’s fault. “You know how he feels about you.”

Mireya scowls. “My point. Now, are you going to listen or what?”

“Leave or I’ll disconnect.” Time and again, Reverdy has rehearsed it—how with one careless, loving gesture, he let trouble out of the box and into the house where he lives. It almost ruined his life. The bitch almost wrecked him IRL. His fault: he thought it was real love. He and Mireya exchanged real names. She wanted more. Just tokens, she said. Tokens of love. Little things. His phone number, a gift in earnest. His address. Reverdy’s fatal error was giving them. She started calling the house.

The words pop onto her screen like bullets. “Are you that scared of what I’m going to say?”

“I’m not afraid of anything. Now, go.” Their breakup was uglier than divorce. Mireya took revenge out of StElene and into Reverdy’s daytime life. She got on the phone. She called day and night with her sordid accusations. If Reverdy answered, she clicked off. The most disgusting bits, she saved for his children. The sexiest, she told his wife. The most damaging, she gave to his employers—he damn near lost his job! He unlisted the phone, too late. The damage was done. Letters came. Packages. A bloody skirt. Muddy bikini underpants. Mireya poisoned his wife with lies. (“Zan, she had Louise so crazy with suspicion that I almost lost my kids! Mireya’s insane,” he warns. “She’d do anything to hurt me. Anything.”) My poor dear! If only they could talk! It’s killing her. She’d give anything to see him, to run her hands over that craggy face and make him smile. She just knows he’s handsome, in that dark, brooding way, even though he swears he has the kind of face that stops trucks. She doesn’t know why his pain is such an overwhelming aphrodisiac, but it is. All she thinks about is meeting him RL. What they have is fated. Unlike Charlie, he understands her. He knows her straight through to the center; he knows she’s the only person alive who can make him happy. If only they could meet! And she can’t even phone!

“I won’t go until you hear me out.” Mireya is bulging with secrets, hot to tell Zan all the things a new lover doesn’t necessarily want to hear but is dying to know.

“I don’t have to be here.” But she does. Perhaps because from childhood she’s been taught to believe everything she reads, Zan is a little intimidated by Mireya’s terrible beauty, the authoritative way she raps out speeches that insist on being read.

The description alone is commanding:

Beautiful Mireya is slender and elegant but strong …

It goes on from there. Now, life in electronic space is not fixed, it’s fluid. Accounts and interpretations vary, which means that Zan has no way of knowing whether what Mireya types about herself is truth or wish fulfillment. What she does know is that in this society built on compression, emotions get huge. There’s a command Zan can type to get her angry rival out of her quarters. She enters it. Nothing happens. She is reduced to shouting. “GO!”

Mireya sneers. “I won’t move and you can’t move me. You might as well shut up and listen. You’ll thank me for this later, they always do, you know we’re not the only women who … Your sweet, sacred Reverdy…”

“Lies!”

Mireya says craftily, “What makes you so sure I’m lying?”

“I know what you’re like, Mireya. He’s told me all about you.”

“I bet he has,” Mireya says sourly. “What makes you think he’s telling the truth?” Then, surprise, she adds conversationally, “You know, if it hadn’t been for you, Reverdy and I would still be together. I bet you didn’t know he and I were meeting RL.”

“In real life!” So she is crazy, Zan thinks. Relieved, she says what Reverdy would want her to say. “After what you did to him? No way!”

Then these words come up on her screen: Mireya [to zan] “I dropped the bastard because he was two-timing me with you.”

“That isn’t true.”

“You think.” Mireya laughs. “Do you really believe what he says? Poor bitch!”

“Shut up.” If Zan flees, Mireya will follow. If she disconnects, she’ll lose Reverdy for the night. She types: page Reverdy Help! The display comes up: Reverdy is not connected.

“He’s done terrible things here, that you don’t even know about. Sedition. Harassment. Baiting these poor people who…” Mireya doesn’t finish. “I’m getting up a bill of particulars. Pretty soon all thirteen Directors will have it in their queues. Want to know what your lover does when you’re not around?”

“Don’t even try. Reverdy’s warned me about you.”

“And you believe him?” The woman won’t quit. “Do you really think you’re the only girl in his life right now? Ever?”

“Enough!” Reverdy? Hopelessly, Zan types:

@find reverdy

The display comes up just as she knew it would:

Reverdy The Dak Bungalow last disconnect 4/18 3:36 a.m. PST

“Go away!”

“No,” Mireya says. “We’re not done. Want to hear the truth about this lover of yours?”

“No!”

“Then you’re a fool. A double fool. Refusing my pages. Returning my posts. I have things to tell you. Important things.”

Then just as Mireya’s about to overwhelm her, Lark comes. Like a superhero, he glides in on silver boots. “STOP THAT!”

Lark stands before you clothed in silver. Look closely and you may see wings at his heels. He is swifter than lightning and impervious, as if he is made of something more precious than platinum, but try and touch him and he will vanish because his powers make him lighter than air. The costume is a little silly, but it covers a noble heart. He is laughing.

Hug Lark. It is a relief to see him. “Lark!”

“Get out,” Mireya growls. “This is private.”

“Not any more. You’re leaving,” Lark says. He types a string that moves Mireya out of the room.

Cool, Jenny thinks, sitting at her computer laughing in relief. Bizarre, how real this is. She gives herself a little shake, caught for the moment between two worlds. If only I could move people around like that RL. Get the kids out of the living room when they start fighting. Move Charlie back from Pendleton or Cherry Point or wherever the Marine Corps takes him when I need him most. Takes him in spite of the fact that we got married so we could be together. In Zan’s airy tower on StElene, Lark is grinning too.

Hug Lark. “Thanks!”

Lark hugs Zan. “My pleasure.”

“How did you do that?” She laughs. “You vanished her!”

“Little trick I know,” Lark says. “When I logged on and saw she was here I knew she was getting in your face. My pleasure.”

“I couldn’t budge her.” It is a programmatic trick Zan hasn’t mastered. “Show me how?”

“Happy to. Just copy this verb from me. Then you can type @qmove…” He walks her through the simple formula.

Cut and paste. She downloads the information and stores it for later. “Mireya. Where’d you put her?”

“Volcano bowl,” Lark says with the delight of a committed programmer. “My friend LavaKing’s coded a crypt. The Directors liked it, so they jiggered it, which means it’s extra diabolical. It’ll take her hours to get out and before she does…” Lark grins. “I’ll beef up your security.”

There is a lapse in communication that tells her Lark is typing in extra strings of code to enhance security in her room. Imagine being able to type in a predictable sunrise and moonfall, in your so-called real world, a string that will admit your friends and exclude your enemies. The kid is adding messages that will make it clear to intruders that this is Zan’s private space. My God, Jenny thinks, unless it is Zan thinking. It really is a game. “Brilliant,” Zan says.

“It’s nothing.” Lark beams. Swashbuckling in the silver superhero costume he’s written for himself, Lark bristles with technical competence. The archetypal, volatile programmer, living out fantasies in a world where he has complete mastery and control. His skill takes him a long way on StElene but does nothing for his life outside the box. He’s nineteen! When he disconnects, Lark has told her in confidence, he’s barely functional. Living people terrify him. He can’t look at them! After the breakdown that put him in the hospital his folks insulated a room in their basement, remote enough to let them ignore his weird habits and crazy hours, close enough so they can keep the lid on him. Then there’s his life here. Gawky and pathologically shy at home, he’s a charming swashbuckler here.

In the game. Which is so not a game. “Where’s Reverdy?”

“He’s been delayed. That’s what he sent me to tell you. To beg you to wait.” Then, right here in Zan’s place, Lark loses it. He blurts, “Oh look, Zan. I’m in awful trouble, RL.” In real life.

“The parents, I bet.” It’s interesting, she thinks. We are who we want to be here, but we’re ourselves, too. She and Lark are close. He opens up to her, dropping the mask so she can see into his misery. It may be because she listens and tries to say the right things. And because he trusts her, because on StElene people love to talk about themselves, Lark tells her everything. Not the first time here that Zan/Jenny has done a little vigilante therapy and watched him bloom. And that’s a rush: working with somebody I can actually help. They pick up in mid-conversation. “You tried my trick for getting used to people but it didn’t work?”

“It worked, but only for a while. I’m so afraid they’ll yell! I’m scared all the time now, and this. This is so bad.”

“Oh, Lark. What is it?”

“It’s nothing. It’s…” He can’t quite tell her. “I’m cool.”

“Is it the parents?”

“Again. Geez, Zan, they are so awful. If it wasn’t for you and Rev…” He’s cool, but he isn’t. He blurts: “Dad said that he’s sorry they ever had me.”

Hug Lark. “That’s terrible.”

He responds with extraordinary sweetness, “It’s my life.”

That isn’t a life. In fact, Lark’s real life is here. Zan has never seen him RL but has a picture in her mind: tentative Dickensian waif in a baggy sweater, sleeves hanging to the fingertips and turtleneck pulled up to his chin. “Oh Lark,” she says and because she will do anything to support him she rushes on; unlike Amanda Yerkes, this is somebody she can help. The therapist in her knows not to make promises, but this is Zan, too, and impulsively, she says, “Reverdy and I can’t change your life but you know we love you, Lark, and I promise, we’ll take care of you.”

@ten

MIREYA

In miserably cold Boston, where the lonely typist who calls herself Mireya connects to StElene, snowy drizzle has turned into sleet. The night air is damp and soft in Brevert, South Carolina, where Jenny Wilder lies next to Charlie, feeling too guilty and frustrated and wired to sleep. More than a thousand miles separate the two women, but their lives are about to intersect.

If Zan should type look at Mireya, this is what she’d see:

Mireya is slender and elegant but strong, with waist-length blonde hair and a tan that doesn’t stop at the bikini line. Her warm, sexy laugh makes you love her and when she talks the talk, you will follow her anywhere. Color her gorgeous. Your dream woman is here in the room with you, and if you treat her right, you can share the dream. She is capable of great pleasure and amazing insight. Share your hopes with her and she’ll take you places you’ve never been before, but be warned. The pikes on the walls of the fortress are lined with the skulls of Mireya’s enemies. Details? Feel free to ask.

Carrying:

Love song from Azeath

Magic wand

Mireya’s cantos

Locket of revenge: you know who you are

In real life this typist, who spends too much of her conscious time on StElene, holds none of these things. In her life outside the box, people don’t give this woman a lot of presents. In the movie of her life this person is the homely girlfriend whose function is to make a fuss over the presents men give her gorgeous best friend—except she doesn’t have a best friend, IRL.

Nor is she any kind of beautiful in spite of the description she has so carefully crafted. In real life she is five foot two if she stands tall and, admit it, she carries a few more pounds than she should, she’s relentlessly plain, no matter how pleasantly she smiles at you. Look closer and you’ll see rage boiling behind the mask. It’s not Mireya’s fault that she got trapped inside this stupid body. Her soul is a lot thinner. The hell of it is, the outside’s the first thing men notice. It takes a special kind of guy to get past the externals and love a woman for herself.

Mireya isn’t her real name either. Her name is Florence Vito Watson. She got Watson from ex-husband Harry. She’s thinking of getting it changed legally, no firsts, no lasts, just Mireya, the glam. As if that would make the difference. She’s still trapped. Rather: she was trapped, until StElene. StElene has turned the ex-Florence into an escape artist, witty and clever. Glamorous.

On StElene you see what Mireya wants you to. She can break your heart or rip your head off, whichever is her pleasure. Stuck with a one-year contract teaching English in a suburban junior college, Florence is too good for what she does. On StElene her skill with words takes her a lot farther. In a society built at lightspeed, the fastest typist wins the game. See Florence on the street and pass her without noticing. On StElene, Mireya turns heads.

This is the power of life in imaginary space. Even Reverdy, who knows Mireya all too well—even Reverdy thinks she’s beautiful. No wonder logging off is like a little death.

The minutes Florence has to spend offline—eating, sleeping, dealing with students, at the fucking Laundromat—stretch like lifetimes. Off StElene her life is marginal at best. She is miserably in transition. Out of her marriage. About to be out of a job. She is freshly divorced from Harry, who is a full professor at the state university and never lets her forget it. Midterms are in—a million papers to grade—and a sticky wet snow is falling.

No wonder she’s glued to her computer, shaking with anticipation. Zan’s gone from StElene by this time. If she can be alone with Reverdy … Florence/Mireya is logging on from a city miles away from the house where Jenny Wilder sleeps, but their lives have overlapped. In real life, Florence Vito Watson seems soft-spoken and accommodating, but she is a passive-aggressive, so watch out for her. Jenny doesn’t know it yet, but Zan is in danger.

Mireya has just connected when the office phone bleats. Frustrated, Florence barks: “What!!!” As on StElene, her lover Azeath greets her with a passionate hug. “What do you want Harry,” she shouts. “Why are you calling me in the middle of the night?”

“Don’t bite my head off,” her ex-husband growls.

On her screen, Azeath’s words dance. “I died waiting for you.”

She types: “Darling.”

She also types: @find Reverdy

Harry says, “Cynthia wants to know when you’re coming to pick up the rest of your stuff.”

So her heart breaks all over again. Poor Florence tries to sound angry instead of shocked and hurt, which is what she is. And vulnerable. “My stuff! Your new popsy wants to get rid of my stuff?” She hears Cynthia flapping in the background, feeding Harry his lines.

“Wait a damn minute,” Harry says.

Azeath senses the trouble RL. “Are you all right?”

She yells, “Isn’t it enough that she made you get rid of me?”

As she types to Az, “Thank you for caring. I can handle it.”

Harry’s voice, when he figures out how to respond, is surprisingly gentle. “Cynnie just wanted to be sure she was out when you came to get it, is all. Spare you the encounter.”

“It’s that bastard Harry.” Azeath types. “Right?”

Simmering, she types, “It’s that bastard Harry.”

“Spare me. Yeah right,” Florence says bitterly. “And you called me to tell me this in the middle of the night?”

Harry says, “Cynnie was worried. She cares about you.”

“She what?” Furious, she glances at the screen.

Azeath is saying, “Dearest. Be cool. At least I’m getting rid of Reverdy. I’d do anything for you.”

Getting rid of Reverdy! Her heart lurches. “No. Wait!” Juggling both conversations, she types as she roars into the phone: “Fuck you, Harry, don’t you know I’m loved?”

Azeath types, “Bastard. I can hurt him bad. I’ll make him pay.” Does he mean Reverdy or Harry?

Wounded, Harry whines, “Cynnie is a caring person, OK? She just thinks having your things here isn’t so good for the…” There is a pause; he says suspiciously, “Are you keyboarding?”

Unexpected anger flashes. “Well, fuck Cynthia. I’ll get my stuff when I fucking well feel like it. She can wait until she rots.” Florence slams down the phone.

Azeath has typed: “And Harry. I’ll take care of Harry RL.”

She types: “I can take care of myself, thanks, Az.” And Mireya disappears deep in life on StElene. Dissembling, she asks Azeath to wait while she does a little electronic housekeeping. He has to quit at eleven. Mysteriously, her handsome lover logs off at eleven every night. Eleven p.m. on the button, sometimes in midsentence. She could write the Directors later, but in the lexicon of revenge, sooner is better. She gets off four quick mails to the Directors accusing Reverdy of things even Reverdy would never do. There is the harassment issue, for one. She’s developing grounds. She posts toxic stories about him on public lists. This is designed to push Reverdy to rage, which is where she wants him.

Outside, the wet snow splats against her office window in the thickening night. Hundreds of uncorrected exams pile up on her desk and spill onto the floor. The cubicle where Florence sits is filled with the stale residue of student farts and tears and sighs and complaints that have piled up in here for decades and will not dissipate. It’s like being pressed to the bottom of the ocean; escape, Florence, before you’re crushed under the weight of other people’s miseries. Hurry! “Az,” she types. “It’s time. Let’s make love.”

“Yes,” he says. “Yes my darling! I touch you there.”

She says, “Aaaahhh…” And the whole time, she is thinking about Reverdy. She’ll never forgive him for dropping her, but Mireya gets hers. Here’s Azeath typing clumsy, passionate words of love that sort of work plus she has something going with the mysterious player Chaplin, who Azeath doesn’t know about, and there’s the arousing pleasure of being in hate with Reverdy. Anybody who hates me that much is still secretly in love with me.

Reverdy was Mireya’s first love on StElene, and in the way of first things, the wildest and best. In the same week that she caught Harry with a raunchy little student (Cynthia’s just the latest in a series of skinny college girls), she found StElene. She’d fight with Harry and then log on and take out her aggressions on some unwitting guest. Quick as a wasp and more poisonous, Mireya loves to lay waste and pillage on StElene, typing barbed insults; she knows how to wreck people and make them cry. Pissed at Harry, she could get her rocks off by roaring through the GrandHotel, hunting down the vulnerable. She can take a person apart, word by word. OK, she gets off on it.

In their final face-to-face, the fight that ended the marriage, Harry said, “I’m sick of living with a hobbit. If you can’t lose weight, at least shave your damn legs.” She wanted to tear Harry apart but she was sobbing too hard. Instead she locked herself in her office and logged on: take it out on somebody here.

Instead she met Reverdy. Shot a barb at him and discovered she’d met her match. StElene was brand new in those days; they were both new to it. She tried to make him angry; he managed to make her laugh. It was his description that seduced her in the long run, forget Schwarzenegger biceps and action-hero capes. It was beautifully simple: Reverdy is not what he seems. Yes!

Her mind filled in the blanks. It was love! Understand, the man in your mind is always a better lover than the man in your bed.

Their first night together she repeated, “Reverdy is not what he seems?”

“Exactly.” Even his smile was mysterious.

“So you are who I think you are.” She corrected herself. Mireya is not stupid. “I mean, you are whoever I think?”

“You’re very quick.” He laughed. Then he delivered the clincher. “I admire that. But remember. Reverdy is not what he seems.”

“I don’t care!” Flirting with danger, Mireya almost told the truth. “Neither am I.”

But Reverdy had already found her deepest place. “Do you know what drew me to you?”

“No, what?”

“Your intelligence.”

Bingo. It was glorious. Breaking up with Harry had turned her days into shit. Her nights were something else.

Their love was perfect for her at the time. “I don’t care what you look like,” Reverdy told her, “you’ll always be beautiful to me. And besides—” this is how close they were. He admitted, “You wouldn’t want to meet me in a dark alley. I’m a little scary looking myself.”

Mireya imagined him as the Beast, magnificently craggy—what was it the French called a massively ugly person—beau laid. She confessed, “OK, I’m kind of short, truth to tell. And my eyes are…” She couldn’t bring herself to admit her eyes are too small in this fat face.

“But you’re beautiful inside.” He left her smiling, smiling! “We are both beautiful inside.”

They began by quoting poetry and ended exploring the nature of love. It’s philosophical, Florence—no, Mireya—told herself. Simply philosophical. We aren’t even touching. Except the talk slid into talk of sex that somehow mysteriously turned into sex of an odd but powerful kind, and in the strange intimacy of a space where they are unseen she and Reverdy grew ravenous and devoured each other, word by word.

Understand how this happens. At some point in their early conversations, after they have learned all they care to tell each other about themselves, he says, “I set my fingertip in the hollow just below your ear.”

Miles away, she shivers, imagining his delicate touch. It is more immediate than anything in the room where she types. She responds, “I lean into your hand and press my face into your palm.” Framing a wish, she makes it come true.

They are both breathing faster.

Anticipation. This love is perfect because it’s all about anticipation. The lovers vibrate, shimmering at the brink of things to come. Everything is in the future. This powerful love affair built out of words.

He says, “Every one of us is an island, yes, but with you, I feel less isolated. If only we could…”

She says, “We see the best parts of each other.”

“The essence. Work with me and we can make it fuse.”

“If only I could be with you.”

“You are.”

Reverdy and Mireya are both extremely good writers. Lesser lovers type pornography at each other. It is cheap and heavy-handed. But experts can make words stand for much, much more than face value. When the lovers are finished for the time being, tremulous and shaky, she asks him the most intimate question of all. “What does the room look like that you’re typing from?”

Her lover says, “I can’t tell you that. I don’t know you well enough to tell you that.”

“You know me better than anyone.”

“You only think so. Darling. And because you are my darling I’m going to remind you. Look at me.” Reverdy used to tell Mireya this. When they finished he would leave her with the reminder, Reverdy is not what he seems.

It was wonderful. They were wonderful. Until.

Until he betrayed her, just like fucking Harry with his fucking size-four post-teen popsy. She caught Reverdy with Velvet. All right, she spied. If she’d only logged off and trusted the man, she’d never have found out. Instead she logged back on after saying good night and caught the two of them together. Another woman! Her exclusive love! So it was Velvet, not Zan, who took Reverdy away from her, although Velvet tried to poison the well by implicating Zan. Mireya stuck it to him. Reverdy accused her of spying. She gave him hell for being unfaithful. He said, “You sound like my wife.” Livid, she attacked: “I AM YOUR LOVER, AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT! I’M NOT ANYBODY’S WIFE!” Once they began to fight they couldn’t quit. Mireya logged on day and night in a frenzy of jealousy, typing, @find Reverdy, @find Reverdy, and even though she never again caught him with Velvet, they fought. They fought.

Poor Florence pinned everything on him. Everything. Exposed herself in all her weakness. He knew all her soft spots and he hit them every time, hitting until she was ragged and weeping at the keyboard and in real life, but they were still in love. They were! Then she made her big mistake. OK, she phoned his house. She spoke to the wife. She moved into the man’s physical world and he’ll never forgive her. They made love one last time and then fought to the finish and kept on fighting; they can’t get enough!

Now Mireya is with Azeath. Azeath walked in on one of their bitterest fights, saw the words burning themselves into the screen and did the right thing. He leapt to her defense. Az is a hunk, he’s handsome, she loves having a defender. Awkward with words, but what isn’t to love? Still. Az says he hates Reverdy for the way he treated her, but there’s more.

He hates Reverdy for being smarter. Quicker. For writing better and making fun of him. And Azeath has a temper. Reverdy kited a post into his online enemy’s everyday offline world and it is this that Azeath will never forgive him. “I’ll kill him,” Az says, without explaining to Mireya where his physcial life spins itself out or how Reverdy’s post has affected it. “Even if he doesn’t tell you where I am.”

She can’t ask her ex-lover. He’ll only torture her by not telling. Mireya prompts, “You are…”

“In trouble with some people,” Azeath says significantly. He’s feeding on her interest. “If you love me, don’t ask.”

OK, she has a weakness for men who aren’t necessarily good.

And Reverdy? Reverdy’s been with a dozen women since their colossal breakup, nobody important, Mireya knows. Until Zan.

Until Zan came along, Mireya had hopes. Zan ruined everything. Mireya thought Reverdy would get tired of his cyberbimbos, he’d see how superficial they were, how brittle and stupid, and he’d come back to her. No more. It’s over. All because of Zan.

Her one great love has gone sour.

Well, Mireya has soured too. She tried to warn Zan about the bastard and what did she get? Insulted. Thrown out. If Reverdy wants me to know, he’ll tell me. Doesn’t the bitch want the truth?

I’ll show her, Florence thinks, furious. I’ll get her out of my life.

Zan doesn’t know it, but she has a mortal enemy. And she’ll know it soon enough. Mireya won’t just finish her on StElene. She’s going to step out of the box and do something conclusive to the bitch in her actual space. Learn her name. Find out where she lives. Go there.

Ruin her life.

eleven/@eleven

JENNY/ZAN

How do you fall in love with a man in a place you know by heart but that exists in what is, essentially, ether? Fast, because you think you’ll never see him. It happens in an instant. Snap. Like that. Sex is one thing; true love is another. He lives halfway across the world; there are a million electronic seekers out there and yet you find each other.

As if it is fated.

You can’t see him so there’s nothing to make you hesitate, or reconsider. You fall into each other’s minds. It’s like plunging into a volcano, brilliant.

You think you’ll never meet him. The miracle is that you don’t need to see him, what you have together is perfect. Then you understand you’ll die if you don’t see him, so go figure.

How do you fall in love with a man you’ve never met? Like this.

The first thing Reverdy said to me was, “Are you all right?”

I was sitting in Brevert, South Carolina, with my mouth filling up with tears, he was typing from God knows where and we were so close; it was astounding. He knew me! I said, “Does it show?”

“It’s OK.” He was astonishingly sweet with me. “There are a lot of unhappy people here.”

It was the week after we moved to Brevert. I married Charlie so we could stay close and he was already leaving. I’d made lamb vindaloo, but his promises were like air kisses, empty gestures. He was just back from Cherry Point. He sauntered in whistling, after we hugged he said in that absentminded way of his, “I thought you’d have me packed.”

I covered the lamb he wouldn’t have time to eat. “Packed? For what?”

“For Washington. Oh honey, didn’t I tell you? I know I just got back but I have to go to DC.” He put his arms around me and I let him move me upstairs; I touched his cheek. When our bodies moved together like that I could convince myself that the kids were no problem really, Charlie and I fit so well that we can make it through anything, but his mind was somewhere else. He pulled out a bag; it was not the weekender. “Something’s come up. My aide was supposed to phone and give you the word.”

“Your aide!”

“I have to do some stuff at the Pentagon. It’s important.”

Just when I thought we were … “Oh, Charlie! How long?”

“Three weeks. You’ll be fine.”

“Three weeks!” I grabbed some things and threw them in on top of his. Clothes. Jewelry. Underwear.

“What’s that about?”

“I can’t do without you for three weeks, Charlie.” I was thinking, if I could only get this man alone in some hotel, I mean really alone, if we could have just a few hours to ourselves without those needy kids of his … “I’m coming.”

“Oh, babe, you can’t.” He was already unpacking my things—regretful, maybe, but firm. No way. This is how the man I thought I knew put me in my place for good and all. He ran his hands down my arms with a sad, sweet smile. “What would we do with the kids?”

“The kids? A sitter?” I was too hurt to see what was coming.

“It’s too soon.” He was already shaking his head. “If you could just hold the fort for me?”

There are things you never say because you know they’ll undo a marriage. I did not say: Is that why you married me? I said, “Oh Charlie, I miss you already.”

The kids behaved right up until Charlie’s plane took off. Then they grew fangs. Rusty set his action figures on fire and jammed all of Patsy’s Barbies into the flowerbed head down. Patsy threw a book at him but it hit me and she bawled. I thought about how they must be missing their mother and I said, “It’s OK, he’ll be back.”

Rusty snarled, “What do you care?” It was embarrassing, they were about to see me cry, poor kids, lost their mom and now this, we should be bonding and we can’t. Try. He was sweaty and struggling but I grabbed him, in the striped T-shirt he was like a fat, cranky bug.

“I know just how you feel.” I reached for Patsy, thinking we’d all feel better if we hugged. I meant, I would feel better if I could only get a hug.

“What are you doing?” Rusty squawked. “Cut it out!”

“I just.”

Patsy knuckled me in the breast. “Let go!”

“So, what.” Never let them see you cry. “Is this war?” It took a while to talk them down. Did I really hear, “Wicked stepmother”? It took hours to get them to bed. By that time I was too wired to sleep. I went upstairs to Charlie’s computer. I did what you do when you’re miserable, I loaded Netscape and started clicking around on the World Wide Web. The funny thing about netsurfing is, it gives you the illusion that something is just about to happen. I wasn’t looking for sex sites, I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, I just wanted to take my mind off hurting for a while.

OK, I sent the search engine after entries under “excitement.” You can imagine. Ads for services you don’t want to know about, home pages where a person could download porn or order leather underwear, hot spots for interactive sex sites, piercing, you name it, sites for people who liked being tied up. It was like a tour of the velvet underground, stuff you read about in abnormal psych. Sniffling, I clicked around until I hit the Suntum web page: this corporation was sponsoring an experimental community, it sounded pretentious but clean— “gathering place for high-level professionals and intellectuals from all over the world.” Why not?

Text, it was just text. A change from the jumpy, bizarro graphics on the web. StElene was so quiet. It was like opening a book.

The name Guest is taken, so you will be Tourmaline_Guest. You are blundering around in a dark vestibule. It is littered with the luggage of transients and new players checking into the GrandHotel StElene; you are isolated here, alone in pitch darkness, although you can hear others talking. This is where you’ll stay until you learn how to live in our society. To learn more about how to get around, type “House Rules.” Just outside you hear a party going on, but you have to learn before you can join it. You are aware that there are others waiting here in the dark. The island of StElene is unknown to you. You won’t know who you’re talking to until you’ve been here a while, so be careful what you say to strangers. StElene is a party, but it’s only as good as what you bring to it.

My imagination did the rest.

The vestibule was jammed with people jabbering; dialog scrolled up my screen so fast that I couldn’t catch the tune. I should have typed: house rules to find out what was going on but I couldn’t quit reading the conversation! It was like magic, strangers I couldn’t see were typing—no. Talking to each other; I followed, speed-reading until I hit Mach 4 and began to hear their voices. Instead of being alone in the room I was surrounded by talks—funny talk, stupid talk, snappy one-liners, off-the-wall come-ons and cries for help.

I saw at least five separate conversations going on. I tuned in on one that I liked—somebody named Jazzy (Jazzy is terminally frivolous. He looks so festive that you know you’ve gotta dance) said, “… shrinks have a name for people like that. Put a fortune up their noses.”

Wait a minute, I thought but did not say. I am a shrink.

LavaKing said, “Snow angels.”

Stone_Guest said, “Or snow cones.”

Brilliant said, “Snow business of mine.”

Fearsome said, “Snow good. Here’s who snows you, shrinks!”

Hey, I’m a shrink. Words, that’s all they were doing, playing with words; it made me grin, even though I was home alone typing and nobody could see. Should I say I’ve met the enemy and she is me? Funny—I was completely protected, anonymous—Nobody even noticed Tourmaline_Guest and I was still afraid of looking like a jerk. I was the new kid on the block—hot to play and scared to death of looking dumb.

“Do snow angels go to snow heaven?”

“You want heaven?” Jazzy laughs. “Azeath thinks heaven is life without Reverdy. Azeath even got him barred from here.”

Fearsome said, “Barred from the vestibule?”

“Az said he was a bad influence. Said he was poisoning minds.”

“The vestibule.” Fearsome snorted. “Who the hell wants to be in the vestibule?”

Jazzy said to Fearsome, “You’re here.” <NUDGE>

“That’s different.”

“Yeah, right,” Del said. “What are you, our resident internet stalker? <<grinnnn>> Fearsome, get a life!”

Granite_Guest said, per instructions, “Hello, I’m new here.”

LavaKing bubbles ominously. “The thing is, when Reverdy gets his mind around people, he can make them do anything he wants. No wonder the Directors hate him.”

Fearsome said, “Careful. Reverdy hears everything.”

LavaKing said anyway, “He wants to overturn the government.”

Wait a minute, I thought. This place has a government?

Granite_Guest said, “Isn’t anybody going to talk to me?”

“Reverdy knows everything, too,” Jazzy said. “If you’re his friend, terrific, but if you’re not … The man forgives, but he never forgets.”

“If you hate him, Jaz, why don’t we just get him erased?”

“I don’t hate him, I like the guy. It’s Azeath who wants him erased.”

I wanted to ask what Reverdy had done that was so bad, but I was afraid to speak.

Fearsome said, “Because he’s a manipulative bastard?”

“Simpler than that. Azeath wants him off because Mireya told him that’s what he wants. The guy is a dim bulb. Mireya’s tool.”

Granite_Guest said, “Can anybody hear me?”

“And what Mireya says, Az does. Leads him around by his…”

“… Dick.”

For the first time since Charlie left, I laughed. This mysterious setting, the rapid-fire talk were exciting. And there was this—what. Hint of intrigue. Just lurking there in the vestibule, I felt furtive, like a thief grabbing bits of other people’s lives. Then I thought, Why? I’m not hurting anything. I’m not even doing anything. All this life! It was unfolding almost too fast for me, you bet I was excited, never saw anything like it, walk into the world’s longest-running soap opera and become someone!

Del said, “Oh, Mireya, Mireya. Talk about your woman scorned. She’s pissed because Reverdy dumped her. It’s all about sex.”

“Isn’t everything?”

“Face it, StElene is about sex.”

Jazzy was quick. “Depends on who you are.”

“And what you come for.”

“And Reverdy, what do you think Reverdy comes for?”

Fearsome said to Granite_Guest, “Too much spam in here. We can’t hear ourselves think. Want to go someplace quiet?”

I thought that was interesting. Electronic singles bar?

Jazzy said, “Reverdy comes here for power. It’s that simple. That’s why they want him out.”

“Because he tangles with the Directors? He’s a damn hero.”

“Or a spoiler. You choose.”

Fearsome said to Granite_Guest, “I know a private place.”

Granite_Guest disconnected.

The chorus went on. “The Directors move fast.” “Forget Reverdy, Reverdy’s over.” “One more black mark and he’s out on his ass.”

Pebble_Guest said, “Anybody here from Australia?”

Anybody here from South Carolina? What if one of these people was really my patient, Rick Berringer? What would go on between us here? I was alone at Charlie’s computer and at the same time I was surrounded. Connected. It was so immediate and so vital that all I wanted was to belong. Lives sprang up in front of me like figures in a pop-up book. I’m not a voyeur, I’m a psychologist! My inner watchdog bared its teeth in a sardonic grin. Yeah, right.

OK, I stayed because I couldn’t not stay. One hour on StElene and I was deep in the neverending story. Hooked. This place I couldn’t see but could not stop reading was huge, and it was real. I had walked into unfolding history, with its heroes and villains. This Reverdy. Who was he? Listening, I leaned in so close that I almost fell into the screen. I was like Alice with my nose pressed so tight to the looking glass that it fogged up, wondering what came next. Reverdy, I eavesdropped until a noise in the outside world distracted me and I looked up and it was dawn.

What was it exactly, that excited me? I wasn’t sure. I slept badly and woke up wired. That morning I didn’t hear what my patients said, I was too busy replaying dialog from StElene—funky, erratic and truer than anything that got said in Brevert that day. The second night Charlie was gone I logged on and typed “House Rules.” I couldn’t bear to miss the party in the vestibule so I printed the instructions to study at the office. Between patients, I learned what to type to get around on StElene. Commands for “walking.” Teleporting. Directing speech. Strings that would bring up information on other players—their descriptions, where they were on the island at a given time. How to build a room of my own—no need, I’m just passing through.

Still. Charlie was gone, I was only the sitter, what better did I have to do? Why not give his kids Happy Meals and park them in front of the TV, which is where they’ve made clear they’d rather be? I was starved for company. Maybe I missed my neurotic New Yorkers, maybe I missed adult conversation, maybe I just felt trapped. I went upstairs and logged on to StElene. It wasn’t like walking into a movie, it was like going to live in one. Being unseen was liberating. Strangers typed in real time; their words took flight. I saw close friends, enemies and lovers gossiping and politicking. They made me laugh. Something big was happening.

I was damn well going to learn how to make it happen to me.

And if Charlie came home and found me typing? Too bad. “Can’t talk,” I’d say, “I’m busy.” Fair’s fair, I thought, Charlie hasn’t been straight with me. I deserve to have a secret or two.

The fourth night Charlie was gone I dropped the kids at a movie and went home to StElene. I set a kitchen timer to remind me to log off in time to pick them up. Then I rushed them to bed, not caring that they shook off my hugs. I had to get back to the vestibule. I cranked up the nerve to speak. “Hello.”

Somebody typed, “NEWBIE ALERT!”

Fearsome zoomed in on me like a singles bar smoothie. “We can’t hear ourselves think i cn here. Want to go someplace quiet?”

Knowing the scam made me feel like an insider. “No thanks.”

Jazzy said, “Smart guest.” He smiled. “But if you’re that smart, you won’t stay a guest. You’ll want to get a character and be one of us. Type @commit. And when you choose a name, get back in touch and I’ll show you how to build a room.” He was so nice that it made my mouth water. “I think we’re going to be friends.”

On the fifth day Charlie was gone, Suntum International mailed my registration number and password, I thanked them and promised to make them proud of me. I got the name I’d asked for. The Directors knew who Jenny Wilder was, but to the rest of the community I was a brand new person. Forget Jenny, who is easily hurt. Meet Zan.

ZAN

So on the fifth night Charlie was gone, Zan turned her back on Church Street and moved bag and baggage onto StElene. It was intense. What if she messed up and they laughed? What if the regulars found out how little she knew? Fat chance. They ignored her. Even after she found her way out into the elegant foyer, regular players came and went, oblivious. She might as well not be there at all.

W, she typed, to go west, into the grand ballroom. The beautifully described parquet, the crystal chandelier and vaulted ceiling dropped into her mind like a Japanese flower that blooms in water. The ballroom she built in her head was magnificent. And the company! Brilliant. It was like walking into a cocktail party in full cry, everybody talking at once. Speeches unfurled so fast that she couldn’t follow. Threads overlapped at such a dazzling speed that she got high on the conversation: In the grand ballroom there is always a party going on.

Old friends took their brains out for a walk like pet show dogs: (“You really think you can establish the exact location of God with Zero Knowledge Proof?”

“You don’t have to go through the city to prove you’ve been there, Devo. All you have to do is name an intersecting point.”)

Three hackers with funky names were trashing Luddites everywhere (“If language and math are the two great logical systems, face it, code is the third,”) while two builders swapped intricate Chinese recipes (“only a clod would use five spice powder in a red-cook because she was too cheap to go out for anise stars”); another group haggled over, what—the possibility of freedom within a society that needs rules to survive. (“Set the rules and you control the game. Yes hell the Director-proggers are holding the reins.”) Jazzy was nowhere around.

The players were smart, they were funny and in the dizzying freedom of anonymity, they sounded like the most interesting people she’d never see.

Reverdy! His name kept coming up.

“Hello?” She typed the line suggested in House Rules. “I’m new here. Who’s Reverdy?” Heedless, the regulars talked on.

“Oh,” someone said coldly. “You are sooo new!”

People repeated the comic airline riff (“welcome to StElene. Your tray tables should be closed and your seat backs returned to an upright position…”) while in a quiet corner, a flirtation went on—Fearsome and Basalt_Guest. House Rules said to type look at Basalt_Guest to see what people had written about themselves. This one read like a singles ad.

Basalt_Guest is long and lean and round in all the right places. Her robe slips just a little, exposing one shoulder and the pink tip of one breast. Are you the right one for her? Page her if you want to know her better.

Creepy. Jenny—no, Zan—felt maybe a little soiled, reading it. But she couldn’t stop watching as Fearsome asked questions

[Fearsome is tall, 6’2”, dark, 26. Sinister, until you get to know him]

and Basalt_Guest replied until in perfect concert, the couple disappeared. Zan was too new to know that she could type find Fearsome to see where they’d gone. Voyeurism? You bet. The combination of sex and politics was confusing. And who were the bunch in the corner, arguing DOS versus Mac?

Reverdy’s name surfaced in the text like a silver fish. Factions formed: pro Mireya. Pro Reverdy. Thunder said every experiment needed its gadfly. Without people like Reverdy to test its motives, Suntum could turn StElene into a dictatorship.

Dictatorship? In an imaginary place? The idea was either silly or exciting. Zan tried, “Dictatorship?”

They ignored her. Life just kept happening, multiple conversations running like parallel trains, that she wasn’t on. It was as if the new player Zan didn’t exist for them. Am I doing something wrong? Do I smell bad? She might as well be stuck by the front door on Front Street, waiting for Charlie to come back. She tried: “*HELLO?*”

Mireya said crossly, “Don’t yell.”

Azeath: “If you don’t know how to act here, don’t be here.”

It was humiliating. But she couldn’t quit. Sitting with one foot in Brevert, South Carolina and the other in StElene, Jenny Wilder was lonely and isolated. Not Jenny, she reminded herself. Zan. New name so none of these internet stalkers I read about will know who I am or how to find me and hurt me.

Hurt me, they won’t even talk to me!

Funny, how much you need to know to be at home in these electronic spaces. She’d forgotten what to type to quit. She was tempted to turn off the computer and walk away, but what if that was so wrong that they’d never let her come back? This place is silly, she told herself miserably, typing one thing after another to no effect. Just a bunch of misfits playing games.

Then Reverdy spoke. She saw:

“Reverdy says to you, ‘I said, are you all right?’”

Startled, Zan mistyped. OK, it was a little creepy being noticed after all this being ignored; what if this player so many people loved to hate was a … She didn’t know what if. She typed:

look at Reverdy The description he’d written for himself read,

Reverdy is not what he seems.

An odd description. Cerebral. Is this all we are, she wondered. Descriptions popping up on a screen?

“Oh my,” Reverdy said after a couple of minutes in which Zan failed to speak and he learned everything there was to know about her within the game. “You really are new.”

Moved by this fact that a player had spoken to her at all, flattered that it was he, she typed, “I’m so new that I don’t know what I’m doing here.” After a pause she typed, “What am I doing here?”

Reverdy laughed. “Exactly. It’s existential. We’re here to find out what we’re doing here. It’s the object of the game.”

They were setting a rhythm. “And where is here?”

“Exactly where you think it is.” He grinned. “It’s all in your mind.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

He said, “Another of those things I’m here to find out.”

“Then you’re not…”

“Like Fearsome? No. If you have a few minutes, let Dr. Frankenstein explain this place to you.”

Nice. Fine, Zan thought. The life of the mind. It was like coming into the territory. Yes. Still, she hesitated.

He reassured her. “Remember, if you don’t like what’s happening, you can always disconnect.” They went to the end of the dock to talk—a public area, nothing like Fearsome’s lair. The turrets of the great hotel were at their backs. Reverdy indicated the gazebo where he’d brought her. “Like it?”

“It’s beautiful.”

“I built it. The dock and the gazebo are all mine.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“Now let me show you a few things. How to have a private conversation, for one.” Reverdy taught her what to type to say things only he could read. page Reverdy He warned, “Be careful what you say and do here. It’s the first rule of the game.”

Her heartbeat quickened; she felt altered, daring. “And we’re here to find out the object of the game.”

“You really are smart.” He laughed. “Not too many people here understand that it’s the central question. Everybody has a different answer. It’s an analog, right? Yeah, we’re put here to find out.”

IRL. Jenny Wilder shivered. Zan said, “Kind of like life.”

“Exactly like life. Think microcosm. It’s what we are. The question is, why we are. What Suntum International is doing with us here. Thousands of us living inside a clever corporate design.”

She said, “People say the corporation is out to get you.”

His grin warmed her. “And you’re quick, too. The Directors know I’m closing on it. Whatever is the truth. Suntum’s objective for StElene. It’s clear they’re manipulating us for profit. If it kills me I’m going to find out how.”

“You mean they’re using us?”

“I think so. I think they’re designing an application they can use for … I don’t know yet. Profit, certainly. That’s another thing.” Reverdy whispered, “They’re manipulating us.”

“That’s ugly.”

“I knew there was something special about you. It’s the intelligence. Now listen. I’m about to tell you something important.”

“Yes,” Jenny said, unaccountably committed. No. Zan said. Brand new here, attentive and grave. “I’m listening.”

“It’s this. When you set the parameters of a society, you control what people are able to do within it.” The resonance made Zan shiver. “See how everything’s spelled out in House Rules. How to move, what you’re allowed to build, what’s done, what is not done. It’s like sociologists who determine their results by the way they frame their quiz.”

“Or psychologists, by which questions they ask.”

He laughed. “Yes! Did you notice how much you had to tell Suntum to get a character? Your name and age and sex, your home address? That’s only the beginning. It’s a hop, skip and a jump for them to your credit ratings, medical history, what you buy at the store, which drugs. The Directors say StElene is a democracy, but it isn’t. The corporation’s running us like lab rats.”

“Then why do you keep coming back?”

Reverdy grinned. “To see how far I can push the envelope.”

“Why not just walk away?”

“Can’t live without it.”

Oh my God, what if he’s crazy?

“Forget I said that. Look. If we let industry set the parameters for any society, even an electronic one, then pretty soon industry controls society. Somebody has to fight. And from within.” Then he dropped in the phrase that reverberates, filling her thoughts. “Performative utterance. What we say—is. We, not Suntum, should be the ones who say.”

“And the object of the game?”

“If it is a game. Too soon to tell. We can’t just play without question.”

She was falling in love with his mind. “Explain.”

Which Reverdy did, spinning out his theory about Suntum, about the nature of electronic space and the art of manipulation, and when he had Zan riveted he said unexpectedly, “You’re not very happy, are you?”

Sitting at a keyboard who knew how far away from this intelligent, wonderful friend she’d never met, Jenny Wilder was blindsided by tears of gratitude. “Does it show?”

“It takes one to know one,” Reverdy said. Astonishingly, he offered a confidence in return. “My bed is pretty cold.”

She jumped. “You too?” Amazing how close you get and how fast when there are no surfaces to stop you: expressions to deceive, tone of voice to distract. This flexible space is more personal than any secret place, more private than the confessional. Secrets shared in the dark are privileged, as if exchanged on a remote star. Yes, she thought, it’s safe. Let the feelings out. “Oh Reverdy, you too?”

In the crashing intimacy of space, people will tell you amazing things. The stranger Zan suddenly knew to the bone confided, “If I leave Louise, I’ll lose my children. I love them too much…”

“Oh Reverdy, I’m sorry.”

“It’s.” He thought the better of it. Too soon to exchange names, but too late for both of them, they’d fallen in love with each other’s minds.

In the end they logged off because one of his children was crying in his sleep wherever Reverdy lived RL and Jenny had to feed Charlie’s children and dress for work. Without the exigencies they would type forever, separated but mysteriously and forever linked. The day that followed that first night without sleep found Jenny jangling with excitement. She knew the object of the game! It was Reverdy. This wonderful new man who saw straight into her heart. She loved the intelligence, the trust that let him confess all his needs and the way he anticipated hers.

What the eyes can’t see, the heart supplies. She fell in love with his mind. The rest followed. In time they exchanged real names to prove that Reverdy loves Zan on StElene but in his life, wherever he is living it, Tom Dearden loves Jenny Wilder too.

In the physical world, love is love. It feeds on itself until it runs out of fuel. Love in this invisible but very real space is love idealized. Perfect. In ideal love, there are no bad times and no misunderstandings. There is only expectation.

It’s gotten so Zan prays for Jenny’s days to end so she can be with Reverdy. When life disconnects them, she dies every minute that falls in between.

@twelve

ZAN

Jenny knows when Lark sends an e-mail to her IRL that it’s an emergency, hpinkney@udenver.edu subject: Showtime If it was less than drastic, he’d wait for her to show up on StElene or as he puts it, snailmail her at home. This couldn’t wait. He’s kited his cry for help into what other people think of as the only real life.

Urgent. Big trouble. Have to talk. 10 p.m.?

She emails back:

StElene. My place, at 10.

When Zan and Reverdy first fell in love, Lark was a jealous third party. He and Reverdy bonded on his first day on StElene. Unlike Lark’s rigid father Howard Pinkney the pragmatic businessman, Reverdy was playful and kind. Lark fixed on him like a navigator following a star.

Then Zan came and the configuration changed. Before she knew Lark she knew he was upset, lurking at the fringes of all their encounters, saying without having to say it, Reverdy, look at me, look at me! The first night she followed Reverdy into the Dak Bungalow and he locked the door behind them, Lark grieved as if all his stars had gone out.

Zan could hear him outside calling, “Are you guys OK in there? Are you OK?” when what he meant was, What are you doing in there?

“Shh,” Reverdy whispered, “ignore him and he’ll go away.”

“But he’s your friend!”

“And you’re more important than any friend.”

“He needs you, Rev.”

His next words made her go weak. “And I need you.”

Even though she wanted nothing more than to be alone with Reverdy she said, “We can’t just lock him out like this.”

For the first time I touch you—here! He murmured into her neck, “It’s just for now. I love you, and all that matters is now.”

Zan trembled. She couldn’t know why she felt so disturbed. She disengaged, saying, “Please. He’s really upset. He needs you to go out and tell him it’s OK.” She meant, I need you to tell us that what you and I are doing is OK. And because Jenny Wilder has never been sure of this, Zan added, “It is, isn’t it? OK?” How odd that she should let herself fall in love this way!

“OK?” Reverdy said gravely, “of course it’s OK. What we say and do here belongs to us here. It’s ours alone.” Seeing how uncertain his new lover was in this new place in their online relationship, how deeply she needed to be reassured, Reverdy crooned to her, “We aren’t hurting anybody. We aren’t even being unfaithful.”

“But we’re…” It was so new, so strange, so strikingly sexual that she thought of Charlie and felt guilty. “What is this?”

“This is ours,” Reverdy whispered, “ours alone. Nobody knows.”

“But we’re…” Zan was still waiting for some kind of benediction, which Reverdy freely gave.

“Not hurting anybody. In the perfect marriage of the minds, nobody gets hurt.” He called to Lark. “Friend, five minutes. Trust us.”

Zan thought, five minutes? She didn’t know that when she replayed the dialog in her heart it would stretch like hours.

“I just wanted to make sure you were OK.” Later, when Zan began to hear Lark’s troubles like confessions and say just what he needed to feel better, Lark fell in love with them as a pair.

If a couple is really in love and completely happy it should be enough, but it never is. It’s like furnishing a beautiful room. What you have is only beautiful to you for a time. You need to see it reflected in somebody else’s eyes. A third person has to come in and envy you a little, and admire.

Every couple in love needs a mirror to prove its happiness.

Lark is theirs.

Jenny excuses herself from the dinner table and goes to Zan’s Tower to meet Lark at ten, as agreed. Charlie didn’t come home until 9:45, kissed her absently and sat down at the place she had left for him. Her mind was on StElene and his was on his work. He tried to explain what had kept him at the base and she tried to understand, but she couldn’t concentrate; she has Lark to take care of now. She put the warmed over casserole on a TV table for him and started upstairs. On the landing she looked back at Charlie with his sandy head bent under the light and thought: Got to do something about that soon and had no idea what she meant. She had promises to keep. She’s needed here.

How long has she been here? In Zan’s Tower the lacy curtains blow in the ocean breeze while Lark talks and talks without saying much. He wants Reverdy in place so he can tell them both at the same time. Waiting has left them strung taut. Because they’ve been hanging in space for several seconds with nothing new on the screen between them, Zan says, “OK, Lark, I don’t know what’s holding him up but I have to go soon. What’s the matter?”

“OK,” Lark says finally. “The ’rents have set a deadline. If I don’t get out they’re throwing me out.”

“Are you OK?”

“Not really. It was the father. I have till Friday. He…”

“What set him off?”

“You don’t want to know. If a person doesn’t have anyplace to go, where does a person go?”

“I’m not sure. I’m exploring options.” Jenny wants to say, you could come and live with us, but she’s unsure. Lark’s passions are more manageable at a distance. What’s he really like? Abstracted, he’s easy to see into and in the abstract, his problems seem soluble, but she can’t guess how much physical space he occupies because they’ve never met in physical life. What would he be like living in her house, in 3-D and living color and carrying whatever baggage his parents have freighted him with? What would happen if she presented Charlie with this troubled, needy souvenir of her secret love, and how could she explain? Patient of mine. I could tell Charlie he’s a patient of mine, staying with us until he gets on his feet. Or say I hired him to babysit … It’ll never wash. Lark is Lark and Zan knows him through to the soul but he’s part of a life so remote from Brevert and Charlie that she can’t begin to build a bridge from Lark’s offline life into hers. She does what she can. “I can send you startup money. First week’s rent?”

“Nobody’s going to rent a room to me. Not RL. People don’t like me.” This is not what he means. He can’t say the rest.

“I’ll write recommendations. Find you a job.”

“I can’t get a job because of the thing with the hospital.”

“Ex-mental patient. Right. And your folks won’t help…”

“Forget it, that’s over.”

“Oh, Lark! What about your big brothers?”

“They’re twenty years older than me. They’ve got their own problems. Shit, I might as well go back to the ward.”

“Don’t even think that!”

Lark admits, “Look. It was about the fire in the kitchen.”

“Fire!”

“Pretty much.”

“God, what did you do?”

“It’s kind of embarrassing.”

He’s just about to tell her when Reverdy comes. On StElene everybody multitasks. It is possible to hold a secret conversation with another person in the middle of a crowd. Because it’s programmatically possible to do this while carrying on a public conversation, Reverdy is both talking to Lark and whispering to Zan. His speeches will show up on both Zan’s and Lark’s screens—the rest is directed to her alone. “Zan. Love … Hey, Lark!” At the same time he whispers, just to her, [Dearest! I can‘t stay!]

[Reverdy, oh my darling hello do you know how much I’ve missed you?]

Lark says, “Rev, terrible troubles at home.”

[You know I love you and I can’t stay and it’s killing me!] Reverdy turns to Lark, “Problems?” even as he says privately [Trouble I can’t talk about right now]. He is rushed, intent on other business. He tells them both, “I can’t stay. Something’s come up.”

Zan flinches. [Lover, are you all right? What’s happened? The project? Something with Louise? God, tell me it isn’t Louise!]

Lark says, “Is it the Directors?”

Reverdy doesn’t answer. “I have to go.” [I can’t tell you now. I’ll explain when we’re alone.]

[But when are we going to be alone?]

Lark may guess there is a private conversation going on, but he can’t know. He says, “Look, Reverdy, I’ve got big troubles RL. Man, my folks are…”

“Lark’s folks are kicking him…” Zan whispers, [Five minutes!]

[I don’t even have five minutes.] Reverdy says to Lark, “Hang in, guy. We won’t let it happen.” He is quick and loving and distracted. He doesn’t tell Zan what’s come up that makes it so impossible to stay or which sector it’s in—whether it’s his unloving wife or one of the kids or trouble on his research project or a dispute with the Directors here. “Remember what I told you,” he says to Lark. “What they say can hurt you but it won’t kill you.” He warms Zan with a secret caress. [I love you. Tomorrow.]

Lark cries, “Where am I going to go?”

[Tomorrow! I could die before then.]

[But you won’t. You never do.] “Lark, I’ll do what I said on the phone. I’ll call the dean at your ex-college. Denver, right? I can pretend to be your dad, whatever. Make them promise you a room in the dorm. Can you handle living in a dorm again?”

Jealousy clenches a fist in Zan’s belly. “You and Lark have talked on the phone?” If they have, they won’t tell her. It’s eating Jenny up, that she doesn’t even know where Tom lives and Lark has spoken to him on the phone.

On StElene Lark brightens. “I could try. Would you? Call them?”

Zan puts it to him. [You’ve talked, RL? Lark has your home number and I don’t?] She already knows this is a question Reverdy will let pass. In the erratic world of telnet connections, Zan is never sure if tough questions get lost in space or overlooked or consciously ignored.

Her lover tells Lark, “If I say the right things, maybe we can get you reenrolled.” It is Reverdy’s pleasure to do favors. It’s how Tom and Jenny met in the first place [Oh my God, Zan, I do love you!] “Then all we have to do is line up financial aid for you.”

Jealously, she tries, [Maybe you and I should both go to see the poor kid. Work with him.]

[You know I can’t.]

She can’t let this Stand. [From the Dak Bungalow Zan strokes your throat. “Some day…”]

[And some day my darling we’ll have time … ] He leaves her hanging on the promise.

This. This is what keeps her coming back. Things you can’t say, but that you whisper. [Oh God, Tom. I wish we could be … ]

While Lark describes the scene with his father, Zan and Reverdy make what they can of the moment, communicating in a privacy that is charged with romance.

[Together? But we are.]

[Forever. For real.]

[We’re more together than Charlie and you or Louise and me. We’re together in eternity!]

Interesting how a few words can make up for everything.

[And for eternity.]

[Exactly.] Everything.

Lark is saying, “You don’t get it. The ’rents have set a hard deadline. The father wants me out of the house by Friday night.”

Reverdy says, “Friday! Are you sure it isn’t just a threat?”

“From what Lark says, they really mean it this time.” Being so close to the man she loves and not being able to get closer is the worst thing; the separations kill her. [You really can’t stay?]

[I love you, but no.]

[Then I’m going to type @exit now because I can’t do this. I can’t be here and not be able to be alone with you; I love you too much and I can’t.] It’s late here in Zan’s tower and it’s getting late downstairs in Charlie’s bed. She imagines she hears Charlie stirring, his breath filling the hallway and curling up the stairs. Soon it will be light. [I can’t keep losing you. I hate goodbye.]

And as he and Lark talk, Reverdy invades all Zan’s secret places, with his touch reaching all the way to Jenny, as soft and pervasive as smoke. [Neither can I. Dearest, I touch you here.] But he has responsibilities. On StElene her lover is everything to a lot of people. “Remember what I said last night. You’ll be all right,” he tells Lark. “Try doing what I said.”

[Last night?]

“But what if it doesn’t work?”

[You never told me you and Lark were here without me,] she whispers, betrayed.

“I’ll make the call.” Reverdy begs the question. [Tomorrow night, my dearest. And longer. Better! Same time.] “Lark, I’ve got stuff going on RL but trust me, it’s going to be OK.”

[Tomorrow.] Because Lark is upset and depends on her, because Reverdy expects it, Zan says, “Lark if you need it, I can write a bangup letter to your college about what a terrific student you are. They have to believe me, I’m a shrink.” [ReverdyReverdy. I could die before then.]

[Darling, don’t die! I can’t live without you!] Reverdy promises because promises here are easy, “Be cool, Lark. Some day Zan and I will get a place. You can come live with us.” [You are my life.]

She fixes not on the declaration but on the possibility. “A place.” Not Zan’s fault her heart leaps. Her heart leaps even though she doesn’t know if he means a place RL or here. Love makes her generous. “With us,” she says to Lark. This isn’t true, but the three of them thrive on fantasy. It’s one of the attractions of this place. And in Lark’s imagined life in an ideal world he has real parents—Reverdy. Zan, who whispers to Reverdy, [Love!]

[Love.]

Lark brightens. “Really?”

“Count on it, Lark.” Sometimes Zan thinks this with Reverdy is even sweeter because they are always caught like this, suspended at the brink of departure. If they could be together forever, would they get enough of each other, and get tired?

“You guys are great.” Lark beams.

“You’re pretty cool yourself.” Reverdy whispers, [It’s trouble with her.]

[Who? Mireya? Louise?]

[ … trying to destroy me, the hateful, vindictive …]

Zan can’t be sure which woman is ruining his life. She can’t be sure if he means life here or life back in the house where he and Louise circle, hissing like scorpions, [If only I could …]

[But you can’t. I love you but I have heavy things to deal with. You see?]

[Of course I see; I love you and I always see.] She doesn’t. “Oh, Reverdy!” Zan’s heart is running out of control. [Tomorrow.]

[Tomorrow we can be together.]

Zan presses. [Promise.]

Lark says, “Sometimes I just want to die…”

[Oh my love oh Zan, I do.]

“No you don’t, Lark. Really.” Zan spins her life out on these tomorrows. “Sleep on it. I promise, tomorrow will be better.”

Lark slouches miserably. “It had better be.”

[Now, disconnect so I can disconnect, just to prove that you love me.]

“It has to be,” Jenny says to Lark, to Reverdy, to herself as she quits the place. “It has to be.”

She types @exit. It’s like turning out all the lights in the world.

@thirteen

REVERDY

“Love is to a man a thing apart. ’Tis woman’s whole existence”

—George Gordon, Lord Byron

Zan, if you have to ask me what that means, there’s no way I can explain it.

If there is a tension between VR: virtual reality and RL: real life, nobody relishes it more than Tom Dearden. With Zan logging on from the east coast and the Dearden house located so far north and west that Tom’s room gleams with refracted light from a midnight sun, their clocks are perpetually out of synch. The minute his lover disconnects, sorrow slips off Reverdy like a velvet cloak and he disappears into the game. Perfect, it waits for him.

These are some of the ways you guard yourself against incursions. First, travel light and always live alone. Too late for Tom Dearden. First there was Louise, so pretty at first! Then the pregnancy. Marriage. Another kid. No money. Life circumscribed by this house, when Tom grew up thinking he would go out and roam the world. In retreat from a daily life that’s less than tolerable, he needs the power that he has on StElene. In the physical world, he supposes, he is no more or better than any other person. His superiors on the project fob him off with half-answers; Louise often forgets what he is saying before he’s finished; even his kids don’t always listen.

Here, he has effect. In the kingdom of the blind the one-eyed man is king. An intelligent, sophisticated programmer is de facto a member of the ruling class. If StElene is the new Memory Palace, then Reverdy is its prince. Live the life of the mind and you are master of a world you are creating. It’s a little like being God.

Never mind what the room looks like where Tom Dearden sits typing. It’s only a launching pad. StElene is the world to him. The one place where he’s happy and safe. Everything he cares about is here. He is deeply invested in the way things work. His ego is tied up in it.

He will do anything to protect his position here.

For Reverdy, heaven is not a theological location. Relentlessly agnostic, he thinks of heaven as an area of the spirit where truth floats. He actually believes there is a best world, and that he can help make it. A place where truths are told on a new, higher plane, where all things are equal and nothing is held back. Where promises are kept and people bring the best of themselves to the unending feast of ideas. And everyone can know everything at once.

If there is indeed an existential plane on which everybody comprehends everything at once, Reverdy thinks, there is the outside possibility of convergence. Minds and spirits together forever in a state of elevated consciousness that another kind of thinker would call the mind of God. People on StElene either love Reverdy or they hate him. And the truth he hides? He is an idealist.

He does what he can.

Today he begins by sending posts both here and IRL on behalf of Hubert Pinkney, a.k.a. Lark, who has major problems in his life outside the box. Can the shy, wildly intelligent kid make it outside his basement room? Should he go back to college, where he self-destructed in the first place, or does he belong in the state hospital? At this distance, it’s hard to know. Feeling a little like a storefront psychoanalyst, Reverdy posts a note to *problems, in hopes of getting feedback from players who’ve survived something similar. He’ll email RL from the university account set up for him through the history project. The profs Tom works for may be able to do Lark some academic favors. Unless they’re so pissed off by Tom’s views on the project that they delete his mails unread.

Lark isn’t the only person Reverdy is helping, here or in physical life. Life in a community like StElene is built on support, friends reaching out in the night to others who are also connected, like minds caught like stars in an invisible net; when someone is in pain, the entire web jangles. Hear that person out, say the right thing and make them feel better—what a rush! Do something about it and—that’s power. He loves networking. He loves doing favors and being thanked. It’s easy to do favors here, and Reverdy knows how these things are done. He can hack his way into any system, and has. Now, that’s real power.

On StElene Reverdy is a hero, in his own way.

It’s easy to be a hero here. Therefore when he goes out among the people here Reverdy is loved as well as hated. Even the ones who hate him—certain Directors, Mireya, Azeath—treat him with respect.

When he’s taken care of Lark he runs @find, to see who’s on StElene today, and where. With whom. If they’re friends, he knows it. If they are politicking against him, he knows it. If they’re badgering the Directors with petitions to erase him, he knows and, grinning with delight, he will take them on in the ballroom or in savagely articulate posts to *sex and *pol (for politics), the two hottest mailing lists. His sardonic posts are famous. Nobody knows that he keeps them all! In addition to pirating crucial bits of the operating system, Reverdy has downloaded the stored-up acrimony of two dozen disputes—his with Mireya! In case.

He has more friends than enemies connected today. Some of the brightest are logged on, along with known flakes and assholes that Reverdy loves to bring down.

It’s time to go out and show himself to the people.

He starts with arrogant, pretentious Mink, who Reverdy happens to know is a graduate student RL. “If you’ve solved Fermat’s Last Theorem, show me. Paste in the proof.” Some days he reduces Mink to tears; fair’s fair, he thinks, imagining smug, supercilious Mink sobbing at his keyboard in some university office. “Just MOOmail me the answer,” he says, letting Mink off the hook for today.

Then he pulls Nebraska’s chain: “So, you really believe in capital punishment? Don’t you know that in civilized countries, governments brand their criminals on the forehead and set them free?” Hit her PC button with an un-PC thought and watch her rant; it’s all part of the game. Grinning, he moves on.

Sometimes he hangs out in the music room, flirting. But only when Zan is gone. He learned a hard lesson from Mireya. But he gets off on dancing on the edge of discovery. Part of the fun of StElene is making people angry and staying out of trouble and the other part is getting in trouble and talking his way out of it.

Today he visits Articular, his friend the blocked painter who stays logged on for hours, designing new environments for role-playing games, for the Dungeons and Dragons types who come to StElene to try their skills. Articular xknows the world loves games but a game is only a game. The pleasure is in creation. Sometimes he and Reverdy lose hours tinkering, while outside the locked bedroom door RL, Tom hears Louise yelling at their children; if he stays logged on and doesn’t intervene, she won’t hit them—or so he tells Zan.

He and Articular have built a topiary maze inhabited by a monster; find the lantern, the sword and the mantle of invisibility, plot your moves like a chess player and you can slay the thing. They’ve coded a man-eating Barcalounger and a following settee. Stare deep into the mosaic Articular has coded in The Roman Forum and you disappear into caverns that would impress Tolkien. Test your wits and skill in the process of escaping. Here there’s no problem that can’t be solved and there’s a way out of every trap.

It’s what Tom loves about electronic life. There is an absolute quality to it, a purity that is elegant and endlessly seductive. There is nothing in programming that can’t be solved through trial and error. In time. Try this, try that, beat your head against the wall because no matter how complex the question, there is an answer. Solutions are complete and absolute. Rewarding. Solve it once and you can always solve it.

Gadfly, intellectual batterer, power freak, practical joker: Reverdy is all these things. On StElene, he signifies. He can be anything he wants. This is his home. Here, he is secure. And outside this world? Chaos waits; it makes him afraid.

To survive your life in the world, first you must secure your world.

If you can’t live alone, you must have at least one room in the place where you live that you can be alone in, no incursions, nothing to threaten your arrangements or jeopardize your perfect design. It is important to secure it against intruders. Cover all the exits. Leave nothing unprovided for and no next steps unplanned. Position yourself in the corner so your adversaries will always have to face you. This way no one can whisper into your ear unseen and nobody can ever, ever come up on you from behind. In the world, a dead end waits at every turning.

Listen. On StElene, there is no entrance without its exit. In the exquisitely precise world of computer programming, there is no problem without its solution. If only he could disappear into it and never come out again.

Here, he has options. Options: he loves the game!

By the same token, he hates spoilers. He particularly hates clumsy, flat-footed newcomers who log on to StElene like Huns swooping down on a palace, bring on the maidens. For them, Reverdy’s devised a second, secret identity. He becomes Precious, a glamour pot who looks like a good prospect for a hasty virtual roll in the hay. Slinky Precious comes on strong in fishnet stockings and a lowcut black dress, and when she intercepts a heavy-handed sex troller she preens and flirts, the works. She targets sex-trollers, those horny, anonymous male Guests who log on with sweaty hands because they’ve mistaken StElene for a virtual bordello. They think they can do anything here because they’ve invisible. Assuming that every woman in the place is panting for it, they’re heavy-handed as horny eighth graders, bent on typing sticky-fingered porn to some like-minded woman who will be equally thrilled. Disguised as Precious, Reverdy targets intruders who hit on the regulars. Their pickup lines range from clumsy to disgusting and Reverdy hates them for it because, in an odd way, it cheapens his own romances.

When he spots a mark he has to move fast, or Velvet will snag the sex-starved typist and lure him into her quarters, the Velvet Underground, before sultry Precious can ask, “Do you come here often?”

It’s illegal to run two characters on StElene, but Reverdy does it. Defying corporation guidelines is half the thrill, and the rest is vigilante justice. Unless the rest is getting away with it.

As Precious, he talks the talk, drawing the predator away from his intended prey, who usually grins and pages, “Thanks.” Laughing at his keyboard, Tom Dearden has Precious lead this Casanova wannabe down to the Lovers’ Glen. And when the fool is deep into what he’s convinced is ultimate virtual passion, gasping and vulnerable, Precious turns into Benjy, a huge hairy lumberjack with tattooed biceps, cauliflower face, the works. Snagged in midair, the ersatz Casanova is horrified to read:

CRACK! Just when you least expect it, Precious turns into BENJY. Benjy is a lumberjack in combat boots with CURLY BLACK HAIR growing down his arms and he is about to beat the crap out of you. Before he tells the FBI you’re a pedophile corrupting kids by posting porno on the net.

Benjy growls, “So, you think you can come in here and say ‘Hi, you don’t know me but let’s fuck. And our women will be thrilled.’” His voice gets huge. “Well, YOU MADE A BIG MISTAKE.” Then Benjy adds, to put the fear of God into his mark, “I happen to be the onsite man for the FBI.” And muscle-bound Benjy at The Lovers’ Glen and Reverdy at his keyboard in rural Alaska cackle happily because whoever he is, the fool who dropped into StElene expecting cheap sex is humiliated and terrified. The would-be virtual Casanova disconnects fast. He won’t try that again.

Yes, Reverdy is courting trouble and he knows it. The problem with Edens, of course, is that they are filled with people, and by nature, people have a way of messing up. Even Reverdy, who knows every Eden has its rules. Precious is only one of the secrets he is sitting on.

He has a secret plan. He dreams of pirating StElene out of the clutches of Suntum International and making it perfect. In fact, without the Directors’ knowing it, he’s downloaded the database and stored it on his own machine. He would like to demolish StElene and move everybody into one of the highspeed multi-gigabyte machines that he builds and maintains in his home office the way a rich man fills his stables with glossy, top of the line sports cars. Freed from fascist corporate constraints, which demand that everything march in order, his version of StElene can indeed become the ideal society. He’s sure of it.

But if Reverdy leaves StElene, can he take enough players with him to make it fly? Like a retreating army, he wants to scorch and burn what he leaves behind so nobody at Suntum can use it ever again. Can he hack into the database and write a bit of code that will take the Directors and their system down for good? He’s halfway done. Before he finishes, he has to make sure his friends are in place and except for Zan and Lark, he’s not certain of his friends. If word leaks out before he’s done he’ll be @erased from StElene. He could end up alone in space—and here and in the other kingdom, Tom Dearden is terrified of dying alone.

He has to figure it out! He has things to do, he thinks, putting Precious to bed and logging back on as Reverdy, people to see. Azeath, he thinks for no real reason except that even in Eden, a man is tempted to shoot himself in the foot. @find az he types. Grins. Bingo.

@fourteen

AZEATH A.K.A. VINNIE FULLER

The librarian in the state penitentiary at Wardville looks like he’s working—easy enough to do when your job is staring at a terminal. But IVR (in virtual reality, where his life is located) Azeath sits in Azeath’s Little Hell brooding. His login watcher, which notifies him of significant arrivals, tells him Reverdy’s just logged on to StElene. Handsome, smart, thought-we-could-be-friends. IVR, in virtual reality, Azeath is studying ways to destroy his nemesis in both places.

Azeath hates Reverdy more than he loves Mireya, but Mireya doesn’t know it. True. It’s why he hooked up with her in the first place, he thought Reverdy would feel the insult every time Azeath and Mireya got it on IVR, well he was wrong.

He and Reverdy can’t meet without sparring. Azeath comes out of these debates with blood in his palms RL, where he’s clenched his fists so hard that his nails cut crescents in the flesh.

Could have been friends! They’re the two best programmers here, Az thought they would be powerful allies but the supercilious bastard thought he was too good for him. They clashed from the first over how things on StElene were supposed to be. The Directors want the power to end disputes. Azeath said they should have it.

Reverdy said, “In an ideal society, everybody is equal.”

Well take it from Azeath, he knows better. “Face facts. Nobody’s perfect. Somebody has to be in charge, might as well be us.”

So much for his hopes; Reverdy snapped, “In a new democracy?”

Well, every democracy needs its cops, just ask Azeath.

Freedom. Equality. The sugar-coated liberal wouldn’t quit! Fucking Reverdy could argue God into a hole. Over time he stuck the goad in so deep that at his keyboard, Vinnie fell into a frothing rage RL and IVR, Azeath shouted: “What is it about me that you can’t stand, that I’m a better programmer?”

Mr. just-don’t-I’m-above-it-all just laughed and came back, all holy and superior: “Call it a difference in personal style.”

What Azeath hates most about Reverdy is, Reverdy honestly does believe he’s above it all. Comes on spouting thousand dollar words like a storefront intellectual, well I’ll show him. And he will. When I get out, I will.

What Azeath wants before he gets out is to have Suntum make him a Director. It is his aim. He’s a good programmer. He’s smart, even if he can’t talk the talk like Reverdy does. He’d be a Director right now if it wasn’t for that smooth, swiftmouthed shit.

Everybody’s supposed to be equal on StElene, but these Suntum Directors, they get special powers: to eavesdrop on even the most private transactions in supposedly secured spaces; to pass or strike down people’s building plans. To destroy objects—including characters, like, they can take out entire people!—when it serves the corporate aim. Thirteen Directors, distinguished by the “St” attached to the character name: StOnge for one. StBrêve for another. StPaulo and StPhil. Two are women, but they’re pretty much sexless, the way a good Director should be. Like saints.

Azeath wants it. He wants it bad. In fact in the prison library where he works eighteen-hour days to the delight of his supervisor, he keeps a placard he made in shop. He’ll put it on his desk when the time is right: StAz. Hell, when he becomes a Director on StElene he can throw Reverdy out himself. WHAM.

He had a nice thing going, sucking up to StOnge and aiming for StBrêve, who he happens to know is a little bit higher up the food chain than the others. StBrêve is an actual company man paid by Suntum to keep the society on StElene doing like it should.

In Wardville, Az has learned a couple of things. If you want to get ahead, volunteer.

So he started by offering to sort data for StPhil, maintain mailing lists, that kind of thing. Moved up to Reaper, going into the database and eliminating players who still had character names but had stopped logging on. He’s good at computers. Always has been, likes it because, unlike fucking humans, computers do what you tell them and they don’t talk.

Az got StOnge and StPhil’s confidence; they were working the other Directors, getting support for him. They were going to introduce him at a party in the grand ballroom, like he was going up for membership in some kind of flossy rich man’s private club. He was waiting for the Saints to come marching in when Reverdy arrived.

Already he knew this was going to be bad. “Go away.”

Reverdy just grinned. “Not until you hear what I have to say.”

Az tried to move him @blitz! but he would not be moved.

Rev said, “I know you don’t like me, but you deserve to be warned. You’re being co-opted. Don’t let Suntum eat your soul.”

“What?” OK, he didn’t know what co-opted meant. “Say what?”

“Watch out.” Damn Reverdy’s superior, I’m-hipper-than-you-are way. “The corporate sharks will chew you up and spit you out.”

“Go to hell.” Partly he was pissed because he was confused, he yelled, “You just go to hell and fuck yourself to death.”

“You don’t get that they’re using you?”

“Shut up. Shut the fuck up!”

Reverdy didn’t shut up, he just kept on. Taunting. Warning.

Vinnie shouted, “What do you know? You don’t know anything.”

“I’m smart enough to know when I’m being used.”

This heated Vinnie to boiling. “Like I’m not?” When Reverdy didn’t answer, he yelled, “YOU THINK I’M NOT SMART?” OK it was a dumb thing to do: Azeath pasted in his best image: a devil—fangs, claws, the works, along with these words, spelled out in massed Xes and Os, UP YOURS.

At the exact moment that StOnge and StPhil and the other ten teleported in. To see their protégé looking like an asshole. Az wanted to blame Reverdy but it was too late. Just as he launched his stupid display, he read: Reverdy disconnects.

So that’s one.

To get back in good with the Saints, he had to turn into a goddamn workhorse. It took him fucking years to get back into their confidence, and to add StAndrew to his FRIENDS list. Years.

StOnge and StBrêve, they mostly like him now. He runs tables and searches logs for possibly subversive talk from players and sets up surveillance bugs to track how far these conversations go. He can do projections and crunch numbers with the best. Director material. Definitely Director material, and he secretly happens to know that when Suntum gets its shit together and puts this StElene application on the market, the regular programmers will get nothing because hell, it’s a game they just happened to be playing, but the Directors. The Directors are going to score.

By that time he’ll be out. Directors run Suntum too, he’s pretty sure.

It was so close that Az could almost smell the money, until.

OK, him and StOnge and StBrêve were hanging out in the grand ballroom just like friends last March. StOnge had brought StBrêve around to prove Az was a new person and Azeath was trotting out his best devices to show them how far he’d come: the puppet programmed to log every conversation where the name Suntum comes up, the bugs players inadvertently attach to themselves; if he wants, he can record everything they say and do. He showed them the *propriety mailing list he’d started, where people file anonymous complaints naming players who get out of line; “We’ve got to weed out the riffraff,” he said, and the saints nodded their heads.

He was beginning to figure out how to use their jargon, play on their fears. “Kick out anybody that’s bad for the enterprise.”

“Yes,” StOnge said soberly. “The enterprise.” So they were all, yeah, yeah, they were like, Good Work, and then fucking Reverdy dropped in. Dropped in out of nowhere, did some kind of pirouette right there in the grand ballroom and said TO EVERYONE:

“Kissing ass again, are you Azeath? Brown-nosing like a good little boy?”

And right there in front of StOnge and StBrêve that Azeath had spent all this fucking time on, this holy, vicious Reverdy, revolutionary and known enemy of the corporation, tarred Azeath with the same brush. What he did was throw his arms around Azeath and give him a big sloppy kiss on the mouth.

“Ghah!”

Reverdy grinned. “Good man. Infiltrating the Directors, just like I said. You get in there and do like I told you, right? Destroy from the inside.” He finished with a hearty slap on the back. “Good going. Good man, I’m proud of you. That’s my boy!”

Tarred, right. With the same brush. And Reverdy was laughing at him. Laughing! It was too much. IRL and IVR Vinnie Fuller lost it. Azeath just fucking lost it. He started throwing things around: Reverdy, the furniture. Ooops. StBrêve and StOnge.

Hell, if he didn’t have this rotten temper he would of laughed it off and the Directors would still be cool with him. Instead they saw him lose it in front of everybody, in front of them and StOnge typed to StBrêve: “Too bad. Not our type after all.”

And StBrêve typed back: “Definitely not our type.”

And thirteen Directors teleported out.

But Azeath’s going to get his. He’s going to get it back and he’s going to get it soon. He spends all his days these days cataloging, both on StElene and off. On StElene he’s been logging evidence, compiling things Reverdy’s said against the corporation. Criminal! Doesn’t he understand they are all beholden? If it wasn’t for Suntum International, they wouldn’t have this place! Az wouldn’t be rehabilitated like he is, in line for a job in data entry at Suntum just as soon as he gets out, as a Director, he can rise.

So every time this Reverdy starts in, wherever he is, Azeath adds it to his log where all the damaging evidence festers. Now his collection is approaching critical mass. He’s making a bill of particulars. You might not be able to send a person to jail for the things Reverdy’s called Suntum: thieves, fascists, dictators, but you sure can get him kicked out. Or send him to hell, he thinks.

Next week Vinnie’s going to call an online meeting of all thirteen Directors and if they come, if it goes right, they’ll attach “St” to Azeath’s name and make him Director number fourteen.

He’s not a slick talker like his enemy so he’s been writing his lines ahead of time.

“You’ve got a snake in your belly. He’s out to ruin this place.” That’s one. Maybe he’ll say Reverdy is a terrorist and he’s using StElene as an online launching pad for terrorists planning to bomb Israel. Or blow up Palestine. Or explode the headquarters of Suntum International. Whatever, either way. Trouble here is, Azeath is still working out the details and he can’t move on it until he figures out a story that will fly.

OK, there’s always Plan B. Plan B is convince the Directors that Reverdy’s trying to bring down Suntum International by introducing industrial spies. People from Apple and Microsoft. They’re already here! Zan for one, Lark. “They’re going to steal your application right out from under you and make a zillion bucks on it.”

Sounds good, but who really thinks outsiders could steal StElene? OK, Plan C. Better go with Plan C. Azeath spends his time working various Directors, not sucking up, exactly, just kind of building character. Credibility, he guesses, that thing Reverdy says he so lacks. The guy is so fucking insulting! “Azeath! You know what your problem is, my friend? Your problem is, you lack credibility.”

And I thought we could be friends.

Never mind. Azeath is back in good. He thinks. This means he knows what kinds of things bother the Directors, at least he knows firsthand what’s bothering StOnge. He has a list. StOnge doesn’t know it but every time StOnge mentions a problem, Azarael writes it down in ballpoint on paper in real life. Directors can tell if you’re logging them so Vinnie wrote in this notebook, that he keeps RL. Right here at his desk in the library where he sits at his terminal from 9 A.M. when the place opens until 11 at night. But this is a bonus day. Inventory. The library is open all night.

He’s printed a list of things the Suntum Directors are afraid of. He writes better than he talks, as they will see. This is it:

The Things Suntum Directors are afraid of are:

1. Anything that brings bad publicity to the corporation. That means players on StElene getting into trouble that leaks off the island: a stalking that bleeds over into RL; sexual harassment; virtual rape. If a guy went to jail for “raping” a woman in text on a couple of bulletin boards, it can happen in StElene.

2. Any bad publicity that might bring down the feds. Suntum doesn’t want feds snooping around StElene disguised as characters; players are warned to be careful of what they say and naturally everybody tries to be careful what they say in whose presence, but in text, those dark glasses and raincoats are harder to spot.

3. Anything that brings down federal regulation. Obscenity charges, kiddie porn. Supreme Court decisions at stake. StElene is a free society, within the parameters set by Suntum, and federal regulation would end the experiment. Proud of the big word!

To this last, Azeath has appended a note:

Question. WHAT EXPERIMENT?

He’s put it to StOnge, who mutters about a brilliant application, but it isn’t exactly an answer. Whatever Suntum International’s up to, it’s going to make money. And when it starts making money, Azeath’s damn well going to be in on it.

He’d be in on it now, if it wasn’t for Reverdy. Well listen, he’s shat on Reverdy some himself. Like when he moved in on Mireya and made her fall in love with him, dumb bitch. She loves Azeath and like Azeath she hates Reverdy and they have a pact. It’s only a matter of time before they bring him down.

And if you can’t fuck somebody over right now, well at least you can fuck. She’s so beautiful. Mireya, babe. It’s almost closing time in the library. He’s alone. She’s about to log on. It’s their private time. He’ll wait for her here in Azeath’s Little Hell.

Then his login watcher show that StAndrew, StOnge and StBrêve have just logged on. He types: @find stonge. The three Directors are in the grand ballroom with a group of other players. Can’t let this one go by. Azeath swaggers into the grand ballroom and smiles broadly, waiting to be recognized. In case the Saints haven’t noticed, he says, “Been reading up on arbitration systems in other communities.” That always pricks up their ears. StAndrew smiles. StOnge smiles. StBrêve smiles, but it’s no big deal. They go on saying whatever they were saying. Still, he’s been noticed. Azeath will wait for an opening and say something really smart.

When Mireya arrives they’ll hug in front of everybody—and if the Directors ignore them they can split for Azeath’s Little Hell to raise a little virtual hell and have some passionate sex. Meanwhile, he can belly up to his friends here and build a little character. He’s just getting in tight when Reverdy drops in like the death’s head looking for the feast. He doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t do anything; he just grins.

Then before Azeath even guesses what’s coming Reverdy says right in front of everyone—shit, StOnge! “Oh, Azzy dearest! Thank you for last night.” And smears him with an outrageously detailed sloppy kiss. Too fucking much! Azeath’s rage flames.

Boiling, Vinnie is shaking so hard that he can’t get out his rejoinder. “Dxhm.”

Laughing, Reverdy drives in the knife. “Chill, sweetheart, you’re losing it. Get real.”

And with three Directors and a crowd watching, Azeath lunges for him. “Real? Real?” He is trembling with rage. “THIS IS REAL.”

“This.” Reverdy sidesteps, still laughing. “This isn’t real.”

Azeath’s fingers slide on the keyboard as he types, “THE HELL IT ISN’T.” Somewhere between here and there someone is roaring, not speech, just pure sound.

“What’s the matter, sweetie, can’t you take it?”

In the library in the penitentiary at Wardville, Vinnie yanks out the plug, but not before Reverdy’s last barb burns into his screen:

“Don’t you know this is only a game?” IRL Azeath yanks the plug so hard that his computer sizzles. It is like a little murder. On StElene the room sees:

Azeath disconnects

In real life somebody grabs a pencil, roaring, “Only a game, only a game!” In real life, somebody screams with pain.

In the library in the state penitentiary at Wardville, Azeath a.k.a. Vinnie Fuller (manslaughter) doesn’t just slam the pencil down hard enough to break it in two, which it does. He slams it down so violently that the point penetrates the back of his left hand.

fifteen

JENNY

OK, I’m not altogether sure that my secret love is good for me, but I can’t live without it. Things are happening so fast that the compression is killing me. I have to let it out somehow! If I expect to keep going through this hard summer, I have to find some way to tell my secrets without telling anything.

I’ve started talking to Martha about things that happen on StElene without mentioning that StElene is where they’re happening. It helps. “Martha, my friend the phobic is in trouble.”

She knows all about Hubert Pinkney, a.k.a. Lark. Everything except the one thing. She looks up. “Anything I can do?”

“Let me run this past you, OK?”

If I told Martha these people who fill my life are my best friends I’ve never met, she’d turn me off with that clinical glare: You know it isn’t real. But it is real. Real people who really need me. I know, if you haven’t been there, there’s no explaining it. So I never tell her where these people are, just how important they are to me. I say, “Remember the kid I told you about, my friend Hubert? He’s in trouble.”

She gives me that clinical look anyway. “Friend, or patient?”

“Both. I love the kid, he opens up to me. This boy is brilliant, but he’s so shy! Can’t go out in the daytime because he thinks everybody’s staring at him. Lives at home. Now for no reason, his parents are getting cranked up to throw him out of the house.”

“Patients’ versions of what happened don’t always jibe with reality,” Martha says.

“He tells me they’re fed up because he doesn’t talk to them, don’t they know he can’t talk to them?”

“Apparently not.” Martha sounds maybe a little too dry.

“But he’s their son!” I am getting upset. “How could they live with him all this time and not know?”

Martha says the logical thing. “Sounds like you need a family conference. Why don’t you pull him into the office for an evaluation? Start the dialog?”

“Can’t,” I tell her, without giving anything away.

“If you’re too close to it, maybe I can help. Bring him on in.”

It costs me to say, “He lives in Pennsylvania.”

“Pennsylvania!” Martha gives me a look. “How did you get onto the case?”

“Private referral.” Does she see me blush?

“And there are no relatives to intervene?”

“None that I know of. I’m afraid if the parents kick him out, he’ll fly into a million pieces. He’s only nineteen, he’s put together with toothpicks and baling wire and I’m scared to think what will happen if they cut him off!”

Martha warns, “Professional distance, Jen. If you’re too involved, how can you stand back far enough to help?”

“Martha, I’m the only person who cares!”

“Sometimes I think you get too close to your patients,” Martha says. “Rick Berringer, for one.”

I shake my head. “No.”

“You’re young, I know Charlie’s away a lot, I’m sure there are temptations.” Martha’s trying to lead me into a confession I don’t need to make because there’s nothing to confess. “Jen, is there anything you want to tell me?”

“I told you, I’m worried to death about Lark!”

“Lark? Who’s Lark?”

I cover quickly. “I mean Hubert, the Pinkney case.”

Martha lowers the glasses and squints, as if it will help her see me better. “I’ve seen the way Rick Berringer looks at you. Be careful, Jen, this is a very small town.”

I groan. “Life is a very small town.”

“Any conversation we have here is privileged.”

“Believe me, if I were going to get in trouble, and I’m not about to get in trouble, I would not pick one of my patients, and certainly not this close to home.”

“About the Pinkney boy. Can you speak to the parents?”

“Not if I want him to trust me.”

Martha nods. “Try to buy him some time. Tell him he needs to negotiate, you know, see if they’ll extend the deadline. In exchange for certain things. An hour a day upstairs with them. Dinner, maybe. You’ve got to get the kid out of that basement.”

“I’ll try.”

Martha is very good at this. I’ve told her everything about Hubert Pinkney except the fact that I know him better than any of my patients and I’ve told him things I’d never tell her. Martha says, “Get him upstairs and maybe they can sort it out.”

“Makes sense.” I can’t stop pacing. Reverdy crowds into my mind, he fills it up and I can’t afford to let him into the room. “Hubert’s extremely bright, but he’s volatile. And the parents hate him too much to talk to him, much less help him sort it out.”

“Reality check. Hate’s a pretty strong word.”

“Resent. They want him out of there. I’m afraid for him.”

“Listen,” Martha says maternally, “a therapist can’t get too personally invested and still do her job. There are patients you can help and patients you can’t help, and we can’t always know the difference ahead of time.”

“You mean like Amanda Yerkes.”

In spite of the air conditioning, Martha’s face is damp with earnestness; sweat snaps her hair into tight curls. “Keep your distance or your patient will pull you into the problem. And know when to cut your losses and move on to help somebody else.”

“I know. I know!”

Then out of God knows where Martha comes at me: “You’re not all strung out because of this stupid StHelen thing, are you?”

I grunt like a shafted antelope. “Who, me? Of course not. No!”

“Well, something’s the matter,” Martha says.

“It’s StElene, Mart. And I’m cool.” I am grinning uncontrollably. “I’m cool.” And am profoundly homesick for StElene and my real friends, who really care. I back out grinning and go home early. I need to check on Lark so I can talk him through, I pray that Reverdy’s around in the daytime for once, listen, if nothing else, at least I can check my mail. Maybe I can find Jazzy because … OK, I am becoming aware that StElene is a physical addiction; I need the reassurance of the same old text coming up on my screen, as predictable as sunrise, and I need the unpredictable rhythm of the talk, I need the sense that there is a world out there where I matter, and I need more than anything to be in touch with it. I need to log on. I need thereness. More than anything, I need Reverdy.

@sixteen

REVERDY

Deep in the game, Tom Dearden has started writing. He will use history to get what he wants. Once he has it right, he thinks without being exactly certain what he means, he can mount the revolution.

stelene.moo.mud.org 8888

If you are already here, you may think you know why you’re here and how to be here, but you don’t. The program is not case sensitive; from the telnet prompt a player can type in the address in lower case; type connect [your name] [your password] and you’re on the MOO. StElene brings you the world not in a grain of sand but in an island, but it’s still a MOO.

It stands for Multiple Object Oriented or Multiple Owner Operated.

MULTIPLE. More than one mind put StElene in place and multiple minds keep the MOO operating, beginning with the thirteen programmers Suntum calls Directors. Ask yourself, are they Directors because they’re better than us or is it a company scam? Their names all begin with St, as if to make you think saints are in charge. It’s the Directors’ job to maintain, not-so-subtly supervise. In case we get out of hand. They debug when necessary and keep objects from getting so big that they overload the database and take the operating system down with them in the crash.

OBJECT. This particular kind of invention—creation by definition—begins when you log on and choose a name. It advances when you write a description, beginning @describe me as …

Objects, including characters—in the database, players like Zan and Lark—me! are objects too. Customized by the thousands who request characters and, entered in the database by a registrar delegated by Suntum International, log on.

You have moved into our town. If you’re any good, you get invested here. You care about the environment. Inspired to put part of yourself into the new society, you build.

Pioneers tamed the frontier by naming names. You understand, this is the new frontier? Move into this large town or small city and you add to it as soon as you build a room and begin to describe it. If you need a model, look at the Dak Bungalow, but do not try to come here. Go to the dock, which I also built. Note the sunrise, listen to the gulls. I built them. “Reality” is in the details. Places where visitors can sit, objects they can examine, pick up and use.

OBJECT-ORIENTED. Yes our egos are tied up in it. The best of us code for hours on StElene, expanding the territory. If you’re new and don’t already code for a living, it may seem hard at first. Then it gets hypnotic: try it this way, try it that way, keep dinking until you get it right. Get it right and feel the rush. Code is like poetry.

But there are limitations, no matter how good you are. Everything has to get past the Directors’ review board. Stop and think. Is it a personal triumph or just flattery that gets a space you’ve built approved, and linked to the environment? Ask any Director. You won’t get a straight answer.

MUD. MUD originally stood for Multiple User Dungeon, OK we’re descended from Dungeons and Dragons, but we prefer the new definition. Multiple User Domain. The original MUD attracted the people who started with D&D offline and moved on into imaginary spaces with interactive computer games like Zork, the granddaddy of them all.

Pretty soon they figured out how to meet online to play roleplaying games. MUD opened new worlds. Players could forget the body stuck at the keyboard and move out. You could enter the MUD as if moving into a new landscape, assume the mantle of priest, wizard, monk or warrior. Buckle on that sword and swagger. Become that character as you never could before because you were deep in the territory of the imagination. It was big enough to contain vast caverns and palaces, mountains, plains—this new space that opened up turned out to be labyrinthine, unlimited. And because it was conceptual space, it was easy to get around. Players could cover great distances in nanoseconds, fight dragons, elude the thief, and, wait. More. There were other people there.

It wasn’t long before they stepped outside the game and talked. About the game, at first. Then anything they wanted. About themselves. Together. In real time. Imagine!

People like presents waiting to be opened and explored.

What strikes you first, divorced from the prison of your body and the room where your computer sits and transported into the life of the mind, is the mobility. The freedom! But there’s more. With the illusion of freedom comes power, or the illusion of power. If you don’t like the party you can leave. If you don’t like a person you can have that person removed. You can spy. Teleport at will. Be everywhere at once. Communicate as if by ESP. If you don’t like your name you can change it, and if you can change your name you can change anything. You are free in space. Who would ever want to live anywhere else?

The freedom!

More. Synchronicity. No matter where they were in the world the MUDders could meet in real time. Nobody has to be alone. Speak and be spoken to. Act and see others react. Better than email, more social than the conference call, and in the breathtaking freedom of anonymity, more intimate.

Imagine. Us. Together here. Now.

It was like landing on Mars.

Who wouldn’t get drunk on the possibilities? Because even on StElene which is not, repeat, not about roleplaying games, people take roles. Free of the physical world, you can try anything. Put on new selves like teenyboppers trying on dresses in a mall. Things happen. People change. Are they pure, naked souls or is this another kind of roleplaying game?

The object of the game changed so fast that not even net-historians can mark the exact moment. Who wants to win the game when you can win lives? Who wants to explore imaginary caverns when you can explore real souls? We don’t MUD but we do play to win.

StElene is a game and yet it is so not a game.

It is so not a game and yet it is a game. Assuming new names, do we really reinvent ourselves?

With a sense that he isn’t finished, Reverdy types, You are what you type. And instead of sending, stores.

He is torn between two wants. Part of him wants to separate and take everybody with him. Trash the database and bring down Suntum as he goes. The other part wants to expose them so they will go and he can stay. The corporation. What is Suntum really up to? What is it doing anyway? Things run too smoothly here on StElene. The surface is lovely—relentlessly bland, with the hint of menace that lets people shiver in the delicious certainty that no matter how wild it gets it’s only pretend and they’re really safe. Nothing threatens their lives outside the box. It’s like being on a fun ride, excited and scared with no real danger because nothing is real and nobody gets hurt. The Directors provide calculated distractions: parties every night, to keep people too busy to ask questions. To keep them from confronting each other—unless it’s to keep them from confronting the truth. Troublemakers are @erased, whisked away like streakers at Disney World. Weird things go on in darkened party rooms and individual chambers like Velvet’s Velvet Underground and Fearsome’s Wishing Well, but the surface is so lovely, so aggressively squeaky-clean that Reverdy wonders.

If he can only find out what’s going on and expose them, he can change StElene and make it his. He is planting questions.

What if we’re psychological lab rats? he asks Articular. Paging because he’s still in the Dak Bungalow, figuring out his moves.

He pages Jazzy. Or some kind of sexual exhibition?

He arrives at his best question. What if they’re lying when they say what happens in the private spaces is really private? If the Directors can spy, who else is spying on us here?

It has crossed his mind that Suntum sells high end customers tickets to their secret lives. His problem is hacking into the Suntum server and getting deep enough into the peculiar Suntum operating system to find out. Without leaving any tracks.

Idealist, lover, Reverdy is also relentlessly political. Zan is right about one thing: he lives under unimaginable pressure. StElene is his psychic anchor, and at the moment his position is precarious. If they catch him, he’s fried.

And Mireya has filed charges. Harassment. That he’s come to her house RL and threatened her life. Azeath has been out to get him ever since Reverdy mailed the warden from behind his firewall. The bastard is collecting evidence like a diamond prospector. If Az and Mireya find out that he’s hacking into the Suntum system and prove it, they’ll get him erased. The Directors are already debating whether to have the Dak Bungalow recycled because he is a gadfly here. If they take a vote and it’s positive, the character Tom has so passionately designed and so lovingly maintains will be eliminated. If the ballot passes, Reverdy will be @erased.

The best part of Tom Dearden will cease to exist. And he is torn. He doesn’t have enough support to take StElene with him. Or enough inside information to bring Suntum down. Yet.

He will do anything to maintain his position here.

It’s time to go to the grand ballroom. Through the electronic miracle that everybody here takes for granted, he’ll teleport in to work the crowd. He has his constituents but he needs more. If Suntum really find grounds to erase him before he’s done hacking, the @erasure will come to a vote. He needs his support in place.

But first he uses the second electronic trick they all take for granted—spying—he surveys the cast of characters already in the ballroom. He sees Mireya’s there. So is Azeath. It’s disturbing, knowing that he and Mireya are pledged to hate each other forever, when they used to be in love. It’s a puzzle, not knowing why they can’t put it behind them. Turn the page. Move on.

He types: page Mireya, “I warned you to stop phoning Louise.”

In the ballroom, Mireya will keep talking to Azeath as she secretly pages back: “As if you never told Harry about us. Are you going to keep paging or are you going to join me and have this out?”

“You were already getting a damn divorce,” Reverdy pages, knowing as he does so that Mireya’s smooching her new lover, but never too busy to haul over the bad old ground. Why can’t they forget it and move on? At long distance, he taunts. “Harry? I did you a favor, I made him jealous, but Louise…”

“Louise, Louise, she stopped fucking you long before I ever fell in love with you.”

“In love?” This is a low blow, tugging at parts of him that still hurt. OK, Mireya loves to duke it out in the ballroom, in front of an audience. So does he! This abiding anger carries its own erotic power. He’ll go when he’s damn well ready. He pages, “Love. Love! What do you mean, love? I never even liked you!”

Mireya taunts, “Rev-baby, come on down and say that where the people can hear you.” He knows what she wants. She wants to get him there and then scream that he’s attacking her. Another false charge.

“And bring the Directors down on me?”

Her response comes up on his screen almost before he’s done typing. “What. You’re too chicken to come?”

To maintain his position here, he has to keep his head down and stay out of public brawls. Ah, but he loves baiting her. page Mireya “How’s Harry’s cute new wife?”

Mireya pages, “What’s the matter, Rev. Can’t face me? Could you be … afraid???”

Fine, Reverdy thinks. Full audience. Fine, even though he knows the Directors’ witnesses hover like shrikes, poised to pounce at his first false move. Log it. Post it for the world to see. There’s nothing the matter with a little danger; Reverdy gets off on personal risk. And he types, @be ballroom. And is there.

A crowd is collecting to watch. Including Azeath. Including StOnge, the righteous Director who sits up nights thinking of ways to @erase him for good.

“Fine,” Reverdy says to Mireya so the whole room can hear. “What is it this time? Pistols or daggers? Invective? Your lies?”

“Acrimony,” Mireya snaps. “Oh right. And evidence of treason.”

“Wonderful.” Does she know anything? “How did I guess?”

Psychodrama, another of the staples on StElene. Reverdy scopes the room. The population seems to be fifty-fifty—friends, enemies. Azeath, the masked avenger, is already pissed, watch out. And Reverdy’s resentful ex-lover—a woman scorned. Mireya was the first. She may have been the best.

“Idiot,” Reverdy says to her, more fondly than he’s ready to admit, “a happy fuck you!” And so Reverdy and Mireya move into the old dance like accustomed lovers sliding into the act. Blood will be shed before they quit. Accusations. Ugly disclosures about real lives. He and his old lover will fight to a draw, which each will claim is a win. They’ll taunt and rage until they’re both exhausted and Tom Dearden is shaking with anger here at his keyboard. They always do. Ugly old laundry hung out to dry and ironed to knife-point folds that cut like Ninja throwing blades.

His life here is sharply focused. Intense. Where by daylight Tom Dearden’s life in the quiet house in the snowy stillness is circumscribed, Reverdy feeds on adventure. Enemies. Threats to his survival. StElene is like a hothouse. Loves blaze. So does hate. Excitement: on StElene the future shimmers in the vestibule of the uncreated. Life here isn’t only about power, it’s about passion. Sometimes fury is better than sex.

They begin.

At which point the bedroom door Tom thought he’d locked against intrusions swings open. His daughter Susie pads in, soft in her flannel nighties, and crawls onto his lap. He snuggles his child the way he always does even at heated moments like these, and with his chin resting in her sweet hair, keeps typing.

“What are you doing, Daddy?”

Absently, he says into her hair, “Working, honey.”

“Daddy, it’s breakfast time!” She turns in his arms so she can see the screen. “What’s all that, Daddy?”

“Words,” he says. “Just words.”

Good thing the child hasn’t learned to read.

Just as well, too, that Tom doesn’t know that in the fury of the interrupted argument, which is in its own way like an act of love cut short, Mireya has turned away from her terminal IRL and picked up the telephone. Zan may know she has a grave enemy in Mireya, but she does not know that in real life, in physical life outside the idealized world in the box where they spend so much time, Florence Vito Watson has cracked Zan’s site information and is on the way to getting the Wilders’ home phone number.

seventeen

JENNY

“Go on, Rick.”

Rick goes on.

Daytime, my office. I am only Jenny Wilder, who loves her husband Charlie, hard at work. I know that Charlie loves me too, but not enough. Today I hurt a lot, whereas at night Zan is, I don’t know exactly—unassailable. Perfect. Loved.

My patient says, “I can’t go out without wiping the knob a dozen times.”

“I know,” I say, “I know.” I didn’t do a hugely elaborate job of describing Zan, but on StElene she can be with our lover in an eyeblink, even though he is thousands of miles away. Get into his soul. Can you even guess what that’s like? Reverdy tells Zan that she’s perfect. What a rush! Potentially perfect, I think, which is closer to the truth.

Parts of us are out there waiting to be completed, me and Reverdy, Reverdy and me.

“But I’m getting better about scrubbing my nails.”

“I see your fingers have stopped bleeding, that’s a very good sign.” In Brevert I have Charlie, but up close, Charlie is just Charlie, with his rumpled hair and nice smile, and he is diminished by his cranky kids and distracted by his work while everything I want is glitters in the future like an electric dream. Oh God, how can I love Charlie and still be so wrecked in love?

Did I groan out loud? My darkly appealing obsessive-compulsive patient says, “Um, Miz Doc, did you say something?”

We are close to the end of his hour. “No, Rick,” I say. “I just got snagged on something.” I’m hung up on love, I know, but can not say.

“Something I said?” Rick’s been talking about the fact that every time he gets too close to a woman he finds a way to shoot himself in the foot.

Look, the man is my patient, I owe him something. I say, “Related to something you said.”

“Ma’am?”

“The part about how you always get in trouble with a woman when you get too close.” I am thinking there is one arena where people see into each other’s souls without touching and somehow Rick and StElene get mixed up in my mind. As if he lives there too. The air in the room is soft and sweet and I am teetering on the brink of something, I don’t know what. I ask my patient, “Your compulsiveness. Is it a mechanism for keeping you from getting close?”

“I never said that!”

I’m not sure why my voice is shaking. “People find ways of putting obstacles between them and what they really want.”

Rick’s my patient, I’m supposed to be helping him, but here he is saying in that gentle Southern voice, “If there’s a problem you’ll tell me, right, Miz Doc?”

“Of course,” I say. “Now, if you’ll just let me help you pull those patterns out so we can have a look at them…” The poor guy can’t do anything or go anywhere without a dozen compulsive rituals. He’s already numbered the repetitive acts he has to complete before he can leave his home office just to come here. Rick talks on, but I don’t hear. I am fixed on my own secret, impossible love. I guard it like treasure, a present so tightly wrapped that only I can open it. What Reverdy and I have together is the creation of both our souls. It’s bigger than any love in physical life.

Rick puts this in the room between us. “Could we talk about something else?”

I say out of nowhere, “I’m thinking, you say that at least when you’re at your computer you have control.”

“Exactly! Nothing I can’t handle, you know?”

I don’t know what’s driving me. “And do you ever. Um. Go online?”

“It’s a way of going out without having to go out.” He has a really nice smile.

“Exactly,” I say. “And you. Um. Talk to people, you know, on the internet?”

“Sometimes.”

“What kind of people?”

“Miz Doc, it’s not sex rooms!” Suddenly uncomfortable, Rick clears his throat. “So, Miz Doc, the clock says we’re done.” He does not get up. Instead he studies me, good-looking guy.

“I guess we are.” I see that he wants to move this along from doctor-patient. If he tries, I’ll have to turn him over to Martha.

Still, his voice is gentle. “But I was wondering. One more thing?”

Like a teacher, I am responsible to the people I treat, it is my job to keep the relationship professional. I try to sound cool. “Yes?”

“You look so sort of … Miz Doc, is there something going on with you?”

I can’t help it, I turn color. “This isn’t about me, Rick. This is about you. I’m just thinking if your computer is one arena where you have control, we may be able to figure out a way for you to expand your area of control.”

“We could make it about you.” He makes me think of Reverdy, but Reverdy is safe in the box, and Rick is here.

“This is your hour, Rick, not mine.” This is an extremely attractive guy, my patient, and he cares enough about what I’m feeling to keep me talking.

“Let’s don’t stop at an hour,” he says, smoldering the way he did when he offered the ride I didn’t take.

Charlie’s distractions and repeated departures have left me in a weakened condition. I say, “No, Rick. If it stops being about you, I have to hand you over to another therapist.”

“If you fired me, would you go out with me?”

I shake my head, but I make no move to dismiss him. “Your areas of control. Beyond the techniques I’ve taught you, is there any place in your life where you feel safe?”

“Tell me the truth, Miz Doc. What are my chances?”

I say automatically, “If you want to get better, you will.”

“You know that’s not what I’m talking about.” In this light he is surprisingly good-looking.

We are teetering on the brink of something. “Your computer. Do you ever go online?”

Rick grins. “Online? Who, me? How do you think I get through the nights?”

“Um,” I say; I can feel my belly tremble. Something may be happening. I think it’s one thing, and he … “What. Um, what kind of thing do you do on the net?”

He thinks it’s another. Laughing, he shrugs. “You know, chat rooms. Singlz-R-Us, opera chat, I’m in one about scuba diving, forget I’m scared of water…”

“Oh. Chat rooms.” I see the sprawl of StElene, with its mystery and complexity. I see Reverdy, and the knowledge that he’s out there, not here, leaves me weak with relief.

On guard, Rick challenges. “Do you have a problem with chat rooms?”

“Only if you’re using them to put off for solving your problems RL.”

“Real life?” His head lifts. “Miz Doc, are you out there?”

“Not like you.”

“If you want me to give up chat rooms, I’ll give up chat rooms.” Rick’s look tells me he’ll do anything for me. “I’d much rather be here talking to you, or out somewhere, talking with you.”

“We already are talking, Rick.”

“Not like we could.” He says, “You don’t always look happy, Miz Doc, I just thought.”

“No,” I say to him, to any kind of extramarital encounter. The life of the mind is one thing; getting down with this good-looking patient of mine, going out into the soft air where Charlie might see us together is another—the embarrassment of unfamiliar bodies, the difficulties of finding the right place, the awkward business of taking off clothes. “No, Rick. Let’s keep this on a professional basis. If we can’t…”

“I know, I know.” Reluctantly, he gets up. “You’ll have to fire me.”

“Nothing that drastic, it’s just.”

“Next week, same time?” He won’t leave until I promise.

“Next week, same time.” Relieved, I show him out.

When I get to StElene tonight Reverdy will be there and everything will be perfect. Do you understand how that is?

@eighteen

ZAN

In its own way, StElene is like Manhattan, wonderful on some days, good on most, and on some days, like the city, it can be a hard place. From the minute you arrive things start going wrong. Lark is nowhere around; Reverdy hasn’t been here since early morning and—new. He didn’t leave a note. Before she’s had a chance to read her other mail Zan gets a page from Harrald, who has big news. She joins him in one of the elaborate sitting rooms off the grand ballroom; it’s a trompe l’oeil room painted like a birdcage:

Designed years before you were born, the room is painted like the inside of a cage. Around you, vines twine in and out of the bars, which protect even as they keep you in. The bars support several brilliantly painted birds. Stay here long enough and you will figure out how to make them sing. Stay too long and you will be forced to sing.

“I’m getting married,” Harrald says breathlessly.

Zan nods, unless it’s Jenny, chalking up one more patient she’s actually helped. “That’s wonderful! Where? When?”

He says, “Here!”

Zan can’t let him know how uncomfortable this makes her. “You’re getting MOOmarried?”

“Oh yes. You think I’d do anything this stupid real life?”

“MOOmarried,” she says. “Um. Who?”

Harrald grins. “Velvet. Thursday week. She’s wearing red.”

“Oh.” She doesn’t have to remind him that Velvet spends her nights on StElene seining the population for new men to take into the sex chambers. Love is supposed to be forever and Velvet’s a known slut. Odd, how Zan saws back and forth between two lives, responding, but not with the congratulations Harrald expects. Instead she asks the professional question. “How realistic is that?”

“Oh, it’s real all right. We’re in love.”

“As in, real love, here and off StElene too?” She is thinking of Reverdy. “As in, will you ever meet?”

“You think I’m crazy? We’re meeting in Dallas RL at the end of the month. If we like each other, we may even…” He doesn’t finish.

He doesn’t have to finish. “Um, be together.”

Harrald shrugs. “Or not. You never know about these things.” Then he beams. “But however it works out, we’re getting MOOmarried and we’re staying MOOmarried no matter what her husband says RL…”

Zan stirs uncomfortably. “She has a husband RL?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“That’s different.”

She can’t see his face so she won’t know whether he is thinking, oh, sure it is. Harrald says, “Oh yes, but that doesn’t keep us from being married here.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good thing, Harrald. Being married only here.”

“Take it from me, it’s the best. No recriminations. No morning breath.”

“It depends on who you think you are.” With Reverdy, she thinks, it’s going to be either or. But she loves Charlie so much that she can’t know which either she means, or which or. In the mind, she thinks, I love Charlie with my whole heart and body but Reverdy and I love each other in the kingdom of the soul. Oh God I am confused.

Then Harrald confides, “Don’t worry about me, I’ve been MOOmarried before.”

“You have?”

“Eletheria,” he says.

Zan can’t stop herself. “That tramp?”

“It was just a passing thing,” he says brightly. “I don’t want you to think for one minute that’s what broke my wife and me up.”

“Your wife here?”

“No, my wife RL.” Harrald goes on, pulling Zan into unwelcome complicity. “Faye, you remember Faye.”

“I remember you telling me about Faye.”

“And you helped me get the guts to dump Faye. Anyway, Faye found out about Kismine when she and I were meeting in Vegas and…”

You were meeting Kismine in Vegas? “Oop,” Zan says. This place is not good for me. “Somebody’s here RL. I’ve got to go.”

She disconnects. Disturbed, Jenny waits until the display tells her that Harrald’s logged off for the day before she reconnects. He’s a data entry clerk, she knows, and his internet access ends promptly at five. Only a few more hours and Reverdy will be along and in the meantime, there is the business of Lark. Zan does not expect to run into Mireya which is like running headlong into a buzzsaw, nor does she expect Mireya to call her a slut for loving Reverdy.

My God, she thinks, does she think I’m like Velvet? Kismine? I am nothing like Velvet or Kismine. She types @shutup so she won’t have to listen to Mireya any more. Still, the two exchanges have shaken her, and when Reverdy finally logs on she flies into the Dak Bungalow and starts talking before they even hug. “Oh,” she says, “I’m so glad you’re here!”

Tom homes in on her distress as surely as if he’s been tracking her state of mind. “Maybe you’d better tell me,” he says. “I know you’re upset, and you know you can tell me anything.”

Uncertainty makes her inarticulate. MOOmarried, she thinks, is that all I can hope for? She wants to ask; she’s afraid to ask. “I wish,” she says. “I just wish.”

He hugs, rubbing his chin in her hair; even sitting at her keyboard thousands of miles away she feels the outline of his jaw, the loving pressure. “Life is wishing,” Reverdy says.

Afraid to go on because she’s afraid of what she’ll hear she asks, “Have you seen Lark?”

“Not today. But I think it’s OK. Last night he said he’d bought some time. But that’s enough about Lark,” he says. The words come up like grace notes aimed at her heart. “I really only want to know about you.”

She can’t stop herself, she says, “I just wonder when we’re going to meet.”

He temporizes. “If we need to, we’ll meet when we need to.”

“What if I need it now?”

Reverdy doesn’t answer. “Would meeting keep us from being perfect?”

“Oh, Rev!”

“Now, if you’ll let me touch you here…”

Needs it, needs him, needs not to be here right now because the implications make her tremble; she loves Tom so much and he will only come part of the way. Stay and she’ll start to cry; instead she says, “I love you, Tom, but I can’t be here right now.” She won’t type: I’ll come back when you’re ready to commit. Right now she’s so confused she can’t be sure she’ll ever come back.

@nineteen

REVERDY

Context, Reverdy thinks as Zan disconnects. Everything is context. He loves her, she’ll be back. In a world you make up as you go along, you always get what you want.

On StElene, you are what you type. The hitch is, that in the realm of performative utterance, words define you and they also limit you. Reverdy can’t be any better than the text he writes. It is a puzzle. He wants to flow out of the box and into his lover’s bedroom RL but as long as he keeps her at a distance, their love is safe. No accidents, no surprises, just a miracle of control. He can no longer identify the parts of himself he has invented here, and which are real. Nor can he know how much of the real truth remains. Is Reverdy a pencil sketch faintly perceived by others or does his lover, for instance, really know him to the soul? Is what he presents here on StElene the real truth of Tom Dearden or only something he made up?

In this ideal life on a plane far above the daily exigencies, he’s cast himself as ideal lover: articulate, witty, a hero perhaps …

This is also Tom Dearden, typing with a cigarette clenched between his teeth and ashes dribbling into the keyboard. God, he thinks, what part am I really writing for myself? Doomed hero? Not sure. Committed lover? Jury’s still out. Reckless, he thinks. Laughing, rakehell, because at heart at bottom, inside and in spite of the outer, physical shell that people in the drab polar landscape he inhabits RL will see if they care enough to look, what he types is who Tom Dearden really is. He thinks.

Reverdy is not what he seems. What does it mean?

When Zan pressed him, he responded with a question. “What do you want it to mean?” It may be that he doesn’t know himself.

But if there is a snake in every Eden and the snake is us, there will always be some part of earthbound Tom Dearden that needs to keep shooting itself in the foot.

page Mireya Do you really think I care that you are fucking that thug?

page Azeath You only think Mireya loves you. She’s using you to get me back.

page StOnge Tell the others. I’m on to your game.

For reasons he doesn’t necessarily understand, all the elements: his scheme to expose Suntum and pirate StElene, the public push-and-shove with Mireya and her pigheaded, most righteous Azeath—his plan to post his completed history—suggest that Tom Dearden a.k.a. Reverdy isn’t just flirting with disaster. He’s coming on to it. And he’s coming on strong.

twenty/@twenty

JENNY/ZAN

The minute I typed @exit I was sorry. I wanted to go back. I need Reverdy, but Charlie’s here! He walks in with an armful of presents and apologies for being gone overnight. What was it this time, the duty, or a visiting bigwig from the State Department with round-the-clock meetings, or just some party at the club? He’s gone so much now that I forget. Correction. I look forward to it because I can put the kids to bed early and log on. I can play all night if I want to, or I could. But now I see Charlie’s sweet face and I know this has to change, I love him and he’s right here! Standing this close, while Tom is locked away from me, safe inside the box.

OK, I just decided to leave him there. It’s time to quit StElene.

Am I trying to detox? Unclear. If it isn’t an addiction, I’m showing signs. I’ve been hanging online half the night, living on StElene even when Reverdy’s not around. I read the posts on endless, stupid mailing lists or look for friends and in the absence of friends I find new players to talk to, anything to fill the void until Charlie comes home. I port into the grand ballroom laughing like a schoolgirl at a party, hugging here, waving there, you bet I’m wasting time. I’m short on sleep and testy with my patients. And if Martha looks at me with growing—not concern, exactly, but with that professional eye … I crash in front of the TV and sleep until it’s time to put the kids to bed; I nap between patients and sometimes I drift off while they’re talking, coming to only when I hear that ominous silence that lets you know your client’s waiting. Most useful phrase at this point? “And what do you think?” I’ve been short-shrifting my life!

I’m done obsessing over it. Take today. He’d promised we’d meet, we were supposed to make up for everything we failed to say and do to each other last time. He came on weird, evasive. What kept him, anyway? What does he do when we’re apart?

Being on StElene is getting to be like working a second job—too many friends counting on me, too much gossip to deflect, Reverdy’s political posts, supporting letters he wants me to post. Last week StElene was down overnight, all connections refused. If I couldn’t be there, nobody could. Not Mireya, not Azeath, not Reverdy or his enemies the Directors. In a way, it was a relief.

So it’s time to quit. Turn my back and walk away. Except, of course, from Lark. Unlike Tom, who doesn’t trust me enough to tell me how to reach him off StElene, Lark and I are in touch RL. When he’s feeling stronger, we’re going to talk on the phone. Quitting’s easy, I know. Just go to the end of Reverdy’s dock in front of the GrandHotel and jump.

How can I not? Charlie’s standing here with that big Charlie grin; it should be easy to forget the hotel, all that happening in the night. “I missed you so much.” We hug, later we make love; he thinks it’s great sex but I am squirming with guilt. How can this nice guy still love me when the best part of my life goes on in a place he doesn’t know about? Where I’m unfaithful with a man I’ve never met? I’m no better than Harrald or Velvet. But I am.

Ridiculous, I think, burying my nose in the sweet Charlie smell that made me fall in love with him in the first place. I don’t need all that. This is Charlie, that I’ve promised to spend my life with. And we’re going to spend it here. Safe with Charlie, I tell myself, This. This is what matters. This is real. I’ll end it tonight. And in spite of my best intentions I groan.

Charlie tightens his arms. “What’s the matter?”

StElene is only a trap. A beautiful, seductive trap. Grief overturns me. I just won’t go back.

Charlie touches my face. “You’re crying! What is it?”

“Nothing, I just.”

“This isn’t about wanting a baby, is it? I mean if it is, we could…”

For a minute, I can’t take his meaning. That hurt has gotten old. It’s so old that I have a hard time remembering who that person was. And I am crying for real. Sobbing, I roll closer. “Charlie, it’s nothing, I just!”

But I am gasping with fresh knowledge.

Over. StElene was a temporary aberration, now I’m over it. Zan and the man she loves best have no future in this world and in that one, the more I see Tom, no, Reverdy, the more I want to see him and the harder it gets to be anywhere else. Our marriage isn’t suffering. I feel Charlie moving under my hands and I feel sorry for him. And extremely powerful. Yet. But it will, I think, and as Charlie and I embrace I begin the countdown until I can connect. Which I will do later, flushed and still shaky from making thunderous love RL. And I will do it because of what I now know.

I can’t leave StElene without saying goodbye.

ZAN

Fine, she thinks resolutely as Charlie slips away from her, submerging in sleep. It’s over. I just won’t do this any more. But she has to tell Reverdy goodbye. She can’t just quit StElene without telling them; Lark will worry. Tom could die. She’ll just log on one last time and explain. She’ll just leave Reverdy a goodbye note—she can slip in without paging him, and if he happens to see she’s logged on and wants to join … well. Look, she has to tell Lark. They’ll definitely stay in touch RL—phone, visit, whatever it takes to help him get strong enough to keep going. She is, after all, a therapist. She needs to plan with Lark, send farewell posts to Jazzy and Harrald, oh, and drop in on Articular; she can’t just vanish from her friends’ lives without explaining. She slips out of bed, leaving Charlie behind. If she wants to kick the habit, it has to be a clean break.

She has people to see, things to say, so much to do.

Shaking, she types: stelene.moo.mud.org 8888. By the time she connects she is in tears. And without being able to stop herself she types page Reverdy I’ve come to say goodbye

And in seconds, Reverdy is in her beautiful, beautiful room, rushing to his grieving lover in the serenity of Zan’s Tower.

“I thought you’d never come back!”

“Oh, my dear!” She begins to cry.

“My God, my darling, what is it?”

“Nothing.” She is weeping in both worlds. “I just.”

“Is it Charlie? Is it something about the baby? Love, tell me what’s the matter? I love you so much!”

She wants to tell Rev and she can’t tell him; Zan, who can say anything to her lover on StElene, who has said anything, can’t find any way to tell Reverdy, no, Tom Dearden, she can’t tell Tom Dearden that she’ll never see him again, it would break their hearts. She can’t find the right words for goodbye. At least not yet. “It’s Lark,” she says. “I’m worried to death about Lark.”

“Don’t be, we’ll take care of him. He’s safe here. The three of us, together.”

“Here?” She can’t stop crying. “For God’s sake, Rev. Which here?”

He knows what she means. In their long, loving talks about everything, Zan and Reverdy have sawed back and forth over distinctions. They measure the differences between this ideal world they have created and the world outside the box; it is more real to them than the sheer ugliness, the constraints and crude exigencies of the physical world. They talk about how little that world matters, the one they can’t control.

“Here, of course,” he says. “The only here that matters. Our here. We love each other in eternity, Zan. We can take care of Lark here.”

“How, if we can’t help him in real life?”

Then Reverdy says the most beautiful thing. “We give each other the strength!”

“The strength?”

“Everything. Through love.”

“But.” She begins the old argument. “What if it isn’t real?”

“You know it is. We’ve found a way into each other’s souls. I know you better than anybody I’ve ever known, Jenny Wilder, and I love you better than anybody I could ever love.”

“Oh, Reverdy. Oh, Tom!” She is crying again. “Oh! I came to tell you I…”

“Shhshh. Don’t. Don’t say anything. I know what you’re going through, both here and RL. I know how hard it is for you. Don’t you think we’re both being torn apart? It’s hard for me too.”

“Being apart?”

“Being together!” Reverdy tries to smile. “Wanting so much. And being apart and wanting you more. And more.” He hesitates. “But maybe wanting is the best part of us? Sparks flying upward.”

The tears stop. “And everything that rises?”

Reverdy completes the loving formula. As if they are making a pact. “Will converge. We’ll all be together some day, I promise.”

It takes her breath. “You promise?”

“I do.” In a few words Reverdy sketches a beautiful island where he and Zan can be together forever—happy forever, generous in their ideal love. “I’m working on it now.”

She needs to break the news but it’s getting harder; her will falters and fails. “With a place for Lark?”

“Yes.” He seals it. “With a place for Lark.”

“If only,” Zan says. “If only! And you and Lark and I will…”

“We’ll all be together in a great new place some day, I promise.”

“A new place?”

“I promise. If you promise to stay with me.”

“Oh, God. Oh, Reverdy. How could I not!” And, comprehending the impossibility, Zan is ripped from top to bottom by grief; then she’s in her lover’s arms, he who sees straight into her heart, sobbing because of course she can never leave him and Reverdy, Reverdy is saying all the right things, no of course she can’t leave him not ever, he’d die and she says she would die and he says once again for both their sakes that they aren’t hurting anybody.

She sobs, “If only we could be together RL.”

“But we are my darling, we are.”

But are they really?

She doesn’t care! In a few graceful phrases she and Reverdy slip into the dance, so unlike what people in the physical world perceive as “real,” that their love incandesces, more powerful, more moving than anything Charlie can do to her in physical life because this kind of love knows no limits. Free of all constraints, it expands in the mind, blindingly bright. Thoughts planted in the imagination blossom in explosions of light and this best of all possible loves shimmers precisely because it is incomplete and all the best parts are just ahead. As they make love Zan loses all sense of time passing until she hears Charlie’s kids stirring downstairs. He’ll be getting up! It’s time to leave.

The goodbyes are hard to say, but they are sweet. Shuddering, Zan hugs her lover, shaken by how close she came to losing him. Then she sits for a moment in front of the blank screen with the tears running down. It’s several minutes before Jenny starts downstairs to dress and make breakfast; it’s time to take care of them because in her part of the world, at least, it’s dawn.

twenty-one

JENNY

It’s breakfast time. Coffee brewed, orange juice poured, crumbs on the table, newspaper folded, everything in our yellow kitchen just the way it ought to be with the one exception.

We are in the kitchen, or Charlie is. I’m somewhere else. The most important part of me is lost somewhere between the night on StElene and here. I hurt all over, I came this close to losing Reverdy! I logged off too late to crawl back into bed. I can hardly bear to begin another day. I am hung up on the problem: I can’t bear to leave but I know I shouldn’t stay, I’m spread so thin that I yip when Charlie speaks to me. “What, Charlie? What!”

“I said, your eyes look like two cigarette holes burned in a sheet. Is there something you want to tell me?”

I love him too much to say. “Nothing, Charlie. I don’t know.”

“Honey, what is it?” He strokes my arm. He doesn’t want to worry me, he says, but he’s been getting anonymous phone calls, some strange woman, doesn’t give her name, she keeps trying to tell him something in this harsh voice … I go stiff in his arms. “Babe?”

“Just tired. So. Somebody phoned and they said. What?”

“She was trying to tell me … Agh. I don’t know what the hell she was trying to tell me. It was ugly, I don’t need that.”

Mireya? If it is Mireya, he couldn’t begin to understand what she’s trying to tell him. Unless. What if it’s somebody calling about me and Rick. Did I accidentally let Rick get too close? “Some local crackpot?”

“Whoever this woman is, she’s crazy. The voice is halfway between obscene phone caller and Nazi schoolteacher, as soon as I find out it’s her, I hang up.”

“What makes you think it’s a her?”

I feel his knuckles in my hair. “Jenny, is something going on that I should know about?”

This brings me back to earth so fast that my neck snaps. “Nothing!” Does he know? What if he knows?

“Honey, you’re strung so tight that I can’t reach you.”

Has Mireya come offline and messed up my life? “If it’s the calls, forget about the calls.”

“You know it isn’t the calls, Jen. What’s going on with you?”

What gave me away? I dissemble. “Bad day at work, I guess.”

“Like, your weird patient.” He is fishing.

“What?”

“That compulsive guy you told me about, dark hair, came to the base looking for me?” Charlie’s squinting, as if he sees Rick Berringer loping out of the middle distance, closing on us.

“He … what?”

“I blew him off, I could see he’s crazy.”

Relieved, I laugh. “Right, and he’s been phoning you.” Just as long as it isn’t Mireya, I think. He knows. He doesn’t know.

“Not unless he’s had a sex change.”

“Or disguised his voice. It’s just a crank call, Charlie.”

But he doesn’t back off. “Or not. I’m worried about you, babe. What are you doing up there all night, locked in with the computer?

If he does know, what am I going to do? “Is there a problem?”

“I think so.”

So he does know. “Then I guess we’d better talk about it.”

He says blindly, “You’re working too hard and it’s starting to show.”

Thank God. He doesn’t have a clue. I touch his cheek. “It’s just work, Charlie. I’m fine, Really.”

“No you’re not. You’re wired all the time now. I worry.”

“Well, don’t. The office, I can handle. Rick, I’ll hand off, OK? And I’ve been jamming on a … project.” Inspiration grabs me by the throat and drags me through. “A special project. Don’t worry, I get like this when I’m in a work crunch. It’ll be over soon.”

“If you can’t get it done in the daytime, it can’t be good for you. Babe, you work too hard!” Charlie’s eyes are warm in the sunlight. His tanned face spreads in a morning smile; fit and energetic and smelling of real life in the Carolina sunshine, my real-life mate Charlie Wilder looks so sweet and normal that I am ashamed. It’s like meeting a citizen from another world.

“I promise, I’ll be fine.”

“All that time on the computer. Running on no sleep. It’s eating you up. Can’t you keep it inside office hours?”

So I let him have it. “It’s not as if you’re home in front of the TV every night.”

“That’s different,” Charlie says.

I am on shaky ground here. “How?” And the secret, selfish part of me stands back and laughs because he can’t even guess the answer.

Then he blindsides me. “Look at your hands, they’re jerking like grasshoppers on a griddle.”

I look down; the veins are blue, as if the blood is running so close to the surface that the skeins of my central nervous system are starting to show. And. Surprise. My hands really are twitching. It takes a conscious effort to hold them still. “I’m fine.”

“No you’re not. You need to take a few nights off and chill.”

“I can’t!” Wait. Way too sharp. Temporize. “I can’t do this job in the daytime.” I am thinking fast. “It’s a communications project.”

“Communications?”

“Yes. A communications project that depends on my subjects, and my subjects are only available at night. It’s just research, Charlie.” Bingo, I have the right story to tell him. Justification. I am not wasting my time. “I’m doing this, like, online survey?”

“A survey.”

“For The American Review of Psychology,” I tell Charlie and as I do, like yang meeting yin after a long separation, the two parts of my life meet and snap together with a satisfying click. In a way, it justifies all those hours I’ve spent at the keyboard, languishing until Reverdy logs on. I don’t understand my obsession with Tom Dearden and I certainly don’t want to try to explain it to Charlie, but I have just hit on a way to talk about my life on StElene to outsiders and make it sound like a rational thing.

“You’re writing something?”

“Yes. I’m interviewing people in a great big online community. I’m going to write about it and publish, Charlie.” A survey. Yes! I’m not hooked on StElene and crazy in love with Reverdy, I’m doing research. “After all, I’m a professional.”

“You are, you’re a real pro, you can work anywhere.” Charlie really is wonderful; he will go to any lengths to be happy. My loving, workaholic husband says, “That’s what I love best about you.” If he’s about to say anything more, or different, he swallows it.

“Then you’re OK with it?”

“Can’t wait to read it,” he says nicely, but I can see that he is studying me. If what’s going on behind my face is too intricate for him to read, that doesn’t keep him from squinting hard; yes he suspects but can’t prove that there is something going on.

I say, “And it keeps me out of trouble while you’re gone.”

“If you’re getting in trouble while I’m gone.” His voice is uneven. He’s off to Cherry Point for the weekend, which puts him in an ambiguous position here. “I know this computer thing is worthwhile, but I really do worry about you. Oh honey, if you want me to cancel this one, I can try.”

Yes, he definitely suspects there is something going on and it doesn’t make me feel any better to know that he’ll never understand what. Best not to talk about it. If we don’t, it can’t hurt us. I smile. “Don’t worry, I have my project to keep me busy.”

“And the kids.”

“And the kids.” I look at my watch. “Charlie, you’re going to be late.”

He knows; he doesn’t know. He says, “This is more important.”

Willfully, I misunderstand. “I’m so glad you think so! I’m asking some pretty hard questions. About what these people think they’re doing spending half their lives online. So all this, ah. Typing. Long nights at the computer that you’re worried about. It’s research.” I am making sense of it for both of us. Research, of course. What a relief! The minute I say it, it becomes true.

twenty-two

LARK

Boy, safe at the top of another week thank God. One more week guaranteed. It’s Monday and in spite of Reverdy’s splitting just when he most needed him, no apologies, no excuses, Lark has survived. He is still safe in the basement of the Pinkney house. In spite of hardhearted Howard’s efforts, Lark, who will never let anybody call him Hubert ever again, Lark is connecting from the Pinkney manor, basement level, the elevator DOWN stops here.

1. Monday, by God, and he’s still here. He’s hanging on by his toenails but he’s here. Friday was Howard’s big deadline. Friday came and went and he’s still here. They had a fight.

2. Instead of marking the End of Life as we know it, with his computer disassembled and him out on the curb, the fight with Howard went Lark’s way. Without hitting anybody, he kind of won.

What he can’t figure out is where Reverdy’s gone, he just took off at the top of the weekend! Hasn’t been back even though Lark posted him.

Date:

Thursday, May 3, 11:30.02 199-PDT

From:

Lark (#053042)

To:

Reverdy (#010024)

Subject:

Emergency

Pal, I’m really going to need you Fri. If you don’t help, the ‘rents are going to kick me out at six.

But I’m still here, Lark thinks, trembling with excitement.

It’s a very big deal for him. Keeping his connection. It means he can still get to StElene. If he got cut off from there, he’d die. Everything he cares about is there. No matter how bad things get RL you can make it if you know you have friends out there that care about you, that you can tell what’s ailing you. On StElene even people that are terribly busy will stop what they’re doing to help you with your troubles. You tell and they say, and it always makes you feel better—not worse, like the college shrink and the hospital shrinks told the ‘rents, who are always blaming him. Real friends always know the right thing to say. Having somebody there to talk to helps, and StElene is the one place where Lark doesn’t get all strangled when he tries to speak. On StElene, he can talk!

StElene is the biggest thing in his life. Without it, he would die. Talking with people F2F—face-to-face—RL has always been hard for him, his blood clots around his tonsils and his throat seizes up, but on StElene he can pour out his soul. Support comes streaming in. It’s the one place where he knows he’s loved. Being loved is what makes you strong. When he’s half crazy with worry and ready to die all he has to do is tell his friends on StElene and they’re all there there. He can even laugh.

He’s terribly lucky, knowing them. Like now. Incredible things have happened in just three days. The mails are pouring in. Since Friday he’s had MOOmails from Jazzy and Eva and Katherone and Rosie and practically everybody else he cares about, even crusty Domnita gets out of the leather mode when he’s around, she’s very sweet with him. When he checks in on the grand ballroom, which he does regularly although he’s actually logged on waiting for Reverdy, sympathy comes pouring out to him even from players he hardly knows. All StElene is on his case, and that’s on his case in a good way. Everybody who matters, that is, which makes him feel kind of important. It makes him feel good.

Everybody knows. It’s the brand new mailing list. * lark.

It’s what got him through. His friends gave him courage when he needed it most. It was Zan’s idea. She said he needed support to get through this and put up a new list: *lark. It’s growing by leaps and bounds! Zan started it Friday morning, because Reverdy was still missing. Lark was grieving and he has to face it, Zan is grieving too. She did it to cheer them up.

Reverdy just split. God, is he all right?

About Howard’s deadline. Bingo-bango, disconnect Hubert and get him out of the house. Lark sneaked upstairs in the night and found Howard’s Things To Do list on the month-at-a-glance calendar: Friday, 6 p.m. Move Hubert out. At six p.m. Howard expected to drag Lark’s stuff upstairs and kick him out of the Pinkney house. He thought Lark had found a place to move his stuff to. How? How’s he supposed to go renting a room when he’s broke plus he has trouble talking to people RL plus, he’s so busy on StElene that he can’t disconnect long enough to start?

Well, he’s hanging in here in the basement, he’s made it safely into Monday, no thanks to Reverdy. Still no sign of him. He doesn’t log on. Lark keeps typing @find Reverdy Reverdy page Reverdy Where are you anyway? He’s even phoned Tom Dearden’s house a couple of dozen times RL, but the machine’s off and nobody picks up the phone. Should he be angry or scared?

Thank God for the list. Friday morning Lark was all bent about his deadline and Zan was all bent about Reverdy vanishing, they got talking and out of nowhere the list *lark was born. “Rev would want it,” she said, like it would bring him back.

“Yeah,” Lark said. He sat with her while she took a nonspecific list object from the object catalog. Then he showed her how to make a dedicated list, and she created *lark. She cross-posted the announcement to all the other lists so everybody on StElene knows. Except Reverdy. Maybe he’ll find out about the list and come back!

*lark* is a mailing list where Lark writes about his problems and people who care about him can post what they think. Turns out they all do. Everybody cares. The regulars are having a little forum, mailing back and forth pro and con about whether Lark’s dad should back off kicking him out altogether or just pay him a year’s support in a place of his choosing if he agrees to move out.

And the mail, the mail! Lark’s had offers of startup money, places to stay, a friend in Seattle even offered him a job in their office if he can make it out there, and a divorced mom he’s never met posted an offer to front for his ticket, people have been flat out knocking themselves out day and night all weekend, just being nice. Lark’s been up nights and half the days just keeping track of the posts, posting responses to the list plus sending individual mails to everybody who writes. He’s kind of a celebrity, it’s weird. People are like, We know you can make it through this, terrific guy and good player like you, so please hang in there and stay cool. This is the best thing about life on StElene. Knowing all these great people, real friends who are always there for you.

But he misses Reverdy terribly. He has so much to tell! Truth is, Lark isn’t in all that good shape after all, with the pressure piling up, and in the lacuna while he waits for Reverdy to show up on his screen, he tries to sort it out.

Here’s how it came down. Friday Howard shouted into the basement before dawn. “You have twelve hours.” Lark pretended he didn’t hear and kept typing. He was posting his survival log on *lark.

Message

1 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 03:57:04 199-PDT

From:

Lark (#053042)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

Subject:

Today’s the day.

First I want to thank Zan for creating this mailing list especially for me so I can keep you guys up on my situation without spamming too many lists.

OK, are you with me? Something awful’s coming down in my life.

Here’s the deal.

Today’s the day. You see, while you guys thought I was all happy and everything, some bad things were coming down in my life. I have a deadline! And it’s today!

Unless I can think of something amazing, today’s the day the father kicks me out. I know hardhearted Howard thinks it’s going to make a man of me or some damn thing, but the truth is, he’s killing me. Does anybody really believe that throwing me out into the world is going to make me talk to people, when except for him and the mother and of course here with you guys, where I get to talk my fkn head off and you love me for it, I can’t talk to people at all?

The post got lots longer, of course. He owes it to anybody who @subscribed to *lark to give the chronology. He let it all hang out. 1 on *lark was followed by others he posted on the half-hour, because once you start a crisis thread on a mailing list, you owe it to people to keep them up to date. There were players staying logged on just to see how the story came out. No. Better! They were staying logged on to talk him through. He was getting dozens of posts by that time, with more to come. Dozens of them! Friends and people he hardly knew were filling the list with messages of love and support. When this is over and he’s living in some really nice apartment somewhere with his workstation and his stereo and a squashy sofa and lots of light coming in the windows, Lark is going to download the list and print it out for his grandchildren, but right now he’s too frantic keeping up with them.

It went like this. Every hour on the hour Howard yelled down the basement stairs like a gorilla roaring into the tight end of a tunnel, “Six p.m., do you hear? You get done packing and get your crap up here by six or I come down and get you myself. I don’t know where you’re going but the truck’s coming at six p.m. I’ve hired a damn van to move your stuff.”

Of course Lark didn’t answer because Hubert’s not his name. He was thinking: shut up. Shut up and let me type.

But Howard never lets anything go by. “Hubert? HUBERT! Son!”

I’m not your son.

Message

25 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 16:57:09 PDT

From:

Lark (#053042)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

I hate my father. I hate his voice. He’s still at it up there. It’s killing my ears. He sounds like he wants to come down here and kill me. No. He sounds like the truth. That he wants me dead.

Even when Lark screamed in pain, the yelling never let up. Somewhere upstairs the mother was bawling. Lark had just finished posting this information when the whole house shook. Howard was thumping down the basement stairs on those fat feet. Lark ran @time on StElene. My God, it was half-past six! The U-Haul truck was out front. Howard must have figured it out that Lark wasn’t coming up, at least not on his own, so he came down. Howard came tramping down into the cellar, yelling. Lark did what you do when that happens: you turn around and try to stare him down.

Howard was shaking all over, hugely pissed. “You keep making that face and I’ll sock it.”

Lark just stared. Hard. How could he keep up with his posts when he was in this staring match with his father that he can’t stand the sight of? He couldn’t see to type! He could almost hear the mail piling up on *lark, fresh posts dropping in. But he was locked onto Howard, and he couldn’t let down until Howard’s eyes wavered and this thing was settled and done.

“I said wipe off that face!” Finally Howard had to sock Lark, just to make him stop staring. Knocked him off his chair.

Lark stood. He and Howard faced off. The asshole is bigger than his brilliant but erratic (Lark read that somewhere and he likes it, “brilliant but erratic,” he’s added it to his description on StElene) son. Howard got him in an armlock and grappled him up the cellar stairs, no problem, the man is big as a cow. Howard got him upstairs into the kitchen OK, Father Triumphant, but then the battle went the other way.

Message

26 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 17:02:44 199-PDT

From:

Finster (#07930)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

Subject:

Been there, had that.

Gad, man, your post brought back so much bad shit I hadda log off and take a three-mile run to cool down so I could write this because I’ve been where you are and I know where it’s heading. Let him hit you and get away with it and it’s only the beginning. So this is going to sound crazy but since I’ve been where you are and come out the other side, I want to tell you where to be at with this. You have to log everything he does to you and take it to the law. No stuff, you might even get him put away for this. I did.

Desperation may not make you strong, but it makes you smart. In Marjorie’s kitchen Lark went limp like a war protester, he was, like: I’m not doing this, you are. Kill me and it’s on your soul.

Do you know how hard it is to drag a dead weight?

So instead of shoving this, like, embarrassment to him, this perpetual inconvenience, out of his life and onto the street, Howard Pinkney got wedged in his own front doorway, frustrated and puffing hard. He couldn’t even get the door open because Lark slumped against it until Howard gave him a kick in the soft part under his ribs and he slid to one side and fell over. Lark grunted in pain because he could hear the mother sniffling and he had the sense that this was right. “Ez-eff!”

Behind them, Marjorie gave a little shriek.

“Marjorie, you stay out of this!”

Howard got the door open.

Outside loomed.

It was terrifying.

Lark froze.

They were in stasis.

Message

30 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 17:05:01 199-PDT

From:

Jazzy (#08930)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

Subject:

Patience and Fortitude

We all love you, Lark baby. Hang in!

Lark flattened like a postage stamp while Howard banged on his own chest, trying to get his breath and in the background, Marjorie failed to muffle a sob. Moving with great caution Lark shifted until he was composed with feet crossed and arms folded and his hair streaming, just like the statue of a drowned knight. When he caught Marjorie looking, he did the last thing. Cleverly, he smiled.

When your son smiles at you like that, for the first time since he left for college, what are you going to do? How can you let a third party throw him into the street?

Lark has never really been sure if Marjorie likes him much, but she is a mother. Typing to his friends on StElene, some of whom are mothers, Lark’s learned how to use the mother thing, use it for all it’s worth. He murmured what Domnita told him to say, “If anything bad happens, it’s on you.”

This shook her.

The father made a terrible tactical mistake. He barked, “Get up.” He gave Lark another little kick. “I said, get up.”

“Eh-z!”

Marjorie snatched the father’s arm. “No, Howard. We can’t.”

“But we agreed!”

“Not like this.”

“He’s had his deadline, Marjorie. He’s past it.”

“Look at the poor kid, he’s shivering.”

He was; it was true. Howard had wrestled the door open wider. Outside, the truck was waiting. Too many people out there! Lark wanted to roll onto his belly and wriggle back toward the kitchen. All he wanted in the world was to snake back down to the basement, but he couldn’t. Not yet. He had to stay in place and hold his breath and wait for this to play itself out, praying hard for the grace to hold perfectly still with his arms crossed over his chest.

Marjorie said, “Please. Just give him a little more time.”

“Time for what?” The father was furious and breathing hard; Lark’s frail but he’s tough and the struggle took it out of Howard, dragging him up the stairs. He glowered. “Time for what?”

That’s one fucking hard question. Lark squinched up his eyes. I don’t know.

The mother said it for him; she showed her husband empty palms but her voice was sliding around in entreaty. “I don’t know.”

“We can’t just let the little…”

“Howard, look at him!”

“It’s disgusting.”

You think Lark’s been wasting time MOOing? No way. Lark lay still and let this happen just like his friends told him to; clever Lark.

Message

39 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 17:32:30 199-PDT

From:

FloridaMae (#109030)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

Subject:

Mothers Unite

Oh, sweetie, if you were mine I’d bake pies for you all day every day and let you stay logged on forever, if you’d promise to spend it talking to me, you are the best and the funniest! I totally feel for you and what I have to say right now is, look to the mother. She’s probably the source of all your troubles, mothers are the enemy and they can not be trusted, I should know. Moms have their hearts in the right places OK and they probably want to be strong but they’re really very week. ***oh, my typing and no backspace*** WEAK. When I was nine my stepfather tried to have sex with me. When I told her she just said I had a dirty mouth, so you just hang in there sweetie, OK? Hang in and trust no one and takecaretakecaretakecare.

“Howard, there’s no point throwing him out in the street if he’s just going to lie there,” the mother said reasonably. “The police will only bring him back inside.”

“Nobody’s going to just lie out in the street like a goddamn refugee. Not even Hubert. He’ll move.”

“Don’t be so sure. Remember what he was like when we got him back from college.”

Lark opened one eye: I wasn’t that bad. Or was I? OK, he wasn’t exactly fine. He hated college, his soul naked and quivering out where everybody could see it was too much; all those strangers, it was like being peeled and dropped onto a griddle, the heat was killing him! Then he crawled into his computer one night and it was OK. He went netsurfing and lucked into StElene. Fell into this life. Who wouldn’t want to stay here, connected to a place where he could value and be valued, where he could talk his head off when real-life encounters make his lungs so tight he can’t breathe and he dies a dozen times and his head explodes with unspoken words. On StElene even at the beginning he was eloquent, witty. They think he’s debonair. He stayed up nights and into the days ignoring entreaties from his roommates; when they kept bothering him he locked the door and left them hammering in the hall outside …

Message

43 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 17:50:30 199-PDT

From:

Jimbo (#302036)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

Subject:

Asking For It

FloridaMae, don’t blame your mom for what happened. Us guys know you are one succulent, come-hither babe. Ha ha.

Like a passive resister, Lark lay still, but unlike a passive resister, he would not cover his head. Crazy as he was to get back to the computer and report on this outrage, he kept his arms folded across his breast and let his eyes follow the mother as she paced, trilling in entreaty.

“Consider, Howard, you thought people would be good for him. Just look. Look what college did to him!”

Message

50 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 17:54:10 199-PDT

From:

Cheribelle (#025033)

To:

*Lark (#4030)

Subject:

Jimbo’s egregious post

This may be a laughing matter to some of you fools out there, but Jimbo should be ashamed of himself.

This is serious business and we need to pull together to help Lark through.

Well, FloridaMae, you think you’re right about mothers, but I’m a mother and I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. Lark’s mom has a perfectly good right to be trusted because there are more good moms in the barrel than bad ones. I think Lark’s lucky to have a mom at all. Just think. What would happen if you woke up one day and your mother was dead?

Howard snapped, “I can’t help it if he’s an emotional cripple. Besides, that was before the hospital. It was before the drugs. I put out a fortune for those drugs.”

OK, so what if he really was disconnected and raving when they broke down the door to his dorm room and paramedics dragged him out? That was a long time ago. Last year; hell, he was only a kid. Eighteen, and if he had to do some time in the hospital and they wouldn’t let him out until he promised to take the drugs, so what?

About the drugs. Howard doesn’t know it, folks, but Lark has definitely left off taking stupid drugs. Goofballs and la la pills may mellow you out but they also slow your reflexes beyond dreadful, and there’s no place for slow players on StElene.

“He’ll get himself together,” Marjorie said, like she really believed it. “He’ll get going on his own.”

On his own. The words chilled Lark’s bones.

“No he won’t.”

“Just a week,” Marjorie said and to Lark it seemed like the eternity he needed. “Just one more tiny little week.” She looked down. “You promise you’ll get it together, don’t you, dear? If those are the terms?”

And Lark opened both eyes for the mother and he smiled his best baby brother smile.

“See, Howard, he’s promising.”

Message

92 on *Lark

Date:

Fri. May 4 19:30:02 199-PDT

From:

Baggins

To:

*Lark

Subject:

Patience and Fortitude

Lark, baby. Are you OK? You haven’t posted in more than an hour. Do you need the StElene Raiders to come and rescue you?

“OK,” Howard said finally. “OK.”

So here he is, and he has another week. A week. And such outpourings of love! Never mind that the mail’s piled up eight ways to Sunday, Lark will answer every single post if it takes the rest of his life. It’s easier than jump-starting a life outside the house.

Hey, anything can happen in a week. Reverdy could come back and fix everything. Howard could drop dead, or change his mind. The world could turn over for Lark and open up like an Easter egg. He could turn over and open up like an Easter egg. He could make it upstairs for dinner tomorrow and sit at the table talking to the mother and dad and the next day he could go out and get a job … and meanwhile there’s the list. He has to keep up with the list.

Look, in a week Reverdy could come home to StElene. Apologize. Get him back into college because Reverdy’s so slick. Plus Reverdy is well-connected; he could sort it out with Lark’s dean or whatever, and if he can’t, his friend Zan is working on a plan. Lark has called her office in South Carolina and they’ve talked on the phone RL. She’ll think of something or Lark will, but meanwhile the sky is blue and the birds are singing on StElene and posts are piling up on *lark so he’s got that. They are his public and he owes it to them to give back as good as he got. At this very moment people are crowding the grand Ballroom waiting to talk to him, Lark is this week’s MOOcelebrity so he might as well get up and smell the flowers while they’re still growing in his life.

@twenty-three

ZAN

In her months on StElene, Zan has run into dozens of social scientists and communications researchers examining players like so many specimens on a lab table. Exploring motives. Dissecting relationships. Unless they’re driven to quantify something Zan perceives as easy to analyze but impossible to explain, or to study the phenomenon precisely because they don’t understand it. Some are longtime players who launch projects so they’ll feel less guilty about being here all the time. Others came in from the outside and they come in cold, complete with preconceptions. Or to generate confessions they can sell for profit: My Life as a Virtual Sex Symbol. More scholarly researchers drop surveys into players’ queues or approach them in the grand ballroom, solemnly asking questions. To nobody’s surprise they get answers, because there is a central fact about life in this space created out of the unknown and mediated by text: people love to talk about themselves.

Zan used to think researchers had to be condescending academics or, worse, closet voyeurs who got off on passing the magnifying glass: “Behold the natives. Aren’t they quaint.”

Now she is deep in a survey of her own. Lost without Reverdy, who simply has not logged on since she tried so hard to say goodbye forever, she’s like an astronaut in free fall. It’s late and, as good as her word to Charlie, she’s compiling interviews. Adrift without Reverdy, she has only the project to anchor her.

A survey. Zan isn’t crazy in love. Look, she isn’t even crazy. She’s doing a survey. My God, he’s only been gone three days! What’s the matter with me?

This morning Martha said, “Charlie’s only been gone three days. What’s the matter with you? Or did you spend the whole weekend inside that computer?”

“So what if I did? I have to be there.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Jenny, look at yourself!”

“There’s nothing the matter with me.”

“You look terrible, all woolly and distracted. It’s that St. Helen thing.”

“It’s not St. Helen, Mart, it’s StElene!”

“Whatever.”

“I’m interviewing people for a paper. The place is a microcosm, OK?” She thinks she sounded clinical, maybe even competent and in control. “It’s time somebody analyzed what makes these people tick. I’m there on a research project.”

“Well,” Martha said in a dead level tone. “Are you.”

She can handle Martha’s sarcasm. If Charlie catches her logged on in the middle of the night she has a ready answer now, one that makes sense even to her. Product, she tells herself. I’m going to come out of this with product. She is wasting nobody’s time.

Maybe we all have to do something to dignify our efforts here.

Zan’s survey is considerably less organized than the others, consisting as it does of conversations conducted over the interminable weekend with Reverdy gone and Charlie out of town. It’s helped her get through. She’s made it safely through to Monday in one piece. She’s retreated to Zan’s Tower to reread the logs. First she has to edit out repetitions the StElene program dishes up. She saves the interviews under Phase One. Next, the questionnaire.

She scrolls through the logs with her head tilted, half-listening for Reverdy. Because she can’t help herself she types, @find reverdy

And again and again, gets the time of his last disconnect.

Reverdy   Thursday 23:50 PST   The Dak Bungalow

Never mind. Having a project consolidates her. Zan isn’t hanging in space in a lovelorn fog, she has work to do. She tried to frame a question that wouldn’t influence the answers, but rereading, she sees that she slipped and let herself show. Still, it’s a start.

Zan asks, “What do you think we’re doing here?”

The answers tell her everything. Or they don’t tell her anything. She started with Jazzy, her first friend on StElene. She had him meet her at the Gazebo Reverdy built, and the log begins with Reverdy’s words. Reading the description he wrote is like taking out a snapshot of him. It warms her every time.

The Gazebo is a Victorian fantasy built to match the architecture of the hotel. It is the seat of emotions for some. For others, it is the site of dreams. To the north the bay spreads like a glittering net cast by a magician to catch starts. At your back the hotel is ablaze with lights. The long dock leading back to the shore stretches like a link between solitude and the joy and confusion of life.

Zan and Jazzy are here.

hug jazzy

You hug Jazzy

Jazzy hugs you

Zan [to Jazzy] So Jazz, we all have so much invested in StElene.

What do you think we’re doing here?

Jazzy [to Zan] I can only talk a minute; I’m on call.

Zan [to Jazzy] I’m trying to find out whether people think the MOO is a great enterprise that we’re all in together or a terrible addiction. I guess my question is, is there something wonderfully right about StElene that we keep coming back to it? Or is it because there’s something terribly wrong with us?

OK, if she really is writing a paper on the psychology of the population in virtual communities, she already knows her approach is questionable. As interviewer, Zan is in too deep to be impartial. Martha would point out that pouring yourself into the questions this way pollutes the answers, but then Martha’s never been here; she’s never done this. There’s no way she can understand. Besides, Martha’s never ached as much as Zan does tonight.

Jazzy [to Zan] Wrong, as in…?

Zan [to Jazzy] As in lacking. StElene. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Jazzy [to Zan] Both. It’s existential. Why can’t you let go and let that be enough?

:scratches her head.

Zan scratches her head.

Zan [to Jazzy] I’m *thinking.* Maybe that’s it.

<Sigh> Maybe nothing’s ever enough.

Jazzy hugs you.

hug jazzy

You hug Jazzy

Jazzy [to Zan] OK, put me down as saying it’s a good thing. How else could you and I meet and be friends?

In a funny, colleaguely way, she and Jazzy are close even though she’s in South Carolina and he is typing from Australia. Jazzy is smart; he asks questions and he thinks; the marvel is that he has time for StElene because he’s a neurologist RL.

Botero [to Zan] What’s all this with the stupid questions? Have you got head problems or something? Get out of my face.

OK, Botero. Botero’s a flake, brilliant programmer, she’s told, just eighteen, weighs close to four hundred pounds. But the others? Everybody on StElene has thought about it. They think about it all the time. If the object of the game is to determine what is the object of the game, what’s the object of the game? Everybody asks the question. Everybody comes up with a different answer.

Zan picked up Saturday night’s interviews in the grand ballroom; the floor was filled with players who didn’t have a Saturday night date RL, or a mate to take them away from all this.

Rosemary-Thyme [to Zan] StElene? It’s the best party anywhere!

LavaKing [to Zan] If you have to ask, you’ll never know.

Merce [to Zan] StElene to me, anyway, is about having interesting conversations with people from anywhere. If you make a friend so much the better. Draco [to Zan] Interesting question. I’ve been wondering myself!

Zan [to Draco] That isn’t an answer.

Draco [to Zan] Could I get back to you on that?

Melamanana [to Zan] At work I keep StElene in a window? Boss thinks I’m busy even when I’m not.

Zan [To Melamanana] But it’s Saturday night.

Melamanana [to Zan] <grin> You got it! Cute guys!

Freebaser [to Zan] Takes mymind off heavy things, OK?

If Bruno Bettelheim was right and we all have to tell ourselves stories about our lives just so we can make it through our lives, the stories players on StElene tell about themselves are as varied and complicated as the people telling them.

Furioso [to Zan] I may be alone but I never have to be lonely.

Lark [to Zan] Fun. Fun and games! There’s always a party going on.

page Lark Sweetie, what about your dad?

Lark has received your page.

You sense that Lark is looking for you in the grand ballroom.

Lark pages you “Dad? What dad? Don’t worry. I’m cool.”

Earthworm [to Zan] You’ve got to know as well as anybody that the MOO is very interesting ground politically. I think the two most interesting things in the world are sex and politics, don’t you?

Zan [to Earthworm] <blush> I’m just asking the questions today.

Earthworm [to Zan] Studying democracy in the MOO.

It’s the future!

Zan goes through the logs, deleting extra lines. Regular players are so used to the duplications that they hardly notice, but an outsider reading the logs would be confused. To direct her response to Earthworm, she typed:

:looks only slightly skeptical

—earthworm Are you sure that’s all you’re doing here?

On her screen those lines show up immediately followed by what Earthworm sees:

Zan looks only slightly skeptical.

Zan [to Earthworm] Are you sure that’s all you’re doing here?

Earthworm laughs. “Like, you think I’m really here for the sex?”

Imelda [to Zan] Anonymity=freedom. We can do

*anything we want.*

Implied: act without consequences. If this is action. She doesn’t know. This fact, or belief about life on StElene has so many ramifications that she can’t begin to analyze it until she has a big enough sample to determine the norm—if there is a norm.

At the edge of a chasm. In the room at the top of Charlie’s house Jenny says aloud, “What are norms?” With a pang she remembers Reverdy in one of their early conversations—at the beginning, before she let herself fall into love.

“No guilt,” Reverdy said; she could tell by what he said that he had a dazzling smile. “That’s the great thing about here. We can do anything we want. What are we anyway? Minds meeting in a void.”

She said uncertainly, “Real people.”

“Committing text, not sins. Whatever we do, we’re not hurting anybody.” This is the path Reverdy laid down for Zan to follow into their consuming love: “Think of the power. Here, we can do anything!”

“Power,” she said, and did not add, and this is what bothers her: without responsibility.

Is that why Reverdy spends his life on StElene? To do whatever he wants and not be held accountable? What about Zan? She doesn’t know. She thought it was the company. Unending conversation about everything—smart, dumb, witty, banal. On good days, she sits down to a feast of ideas because people smart enough to function in a big, complicated virtual space like this one are more intuitive than the average, more adventuresome. More exciting. On bad days, she thinks it’s all about Reverdy. No. It’s only about Reverdy.

With Charlie perpetually on duty, she thinks she’s here to save her life. And if the compression is killing her? Fine. Pushed to the limit, forlorn and exhausted, Jenny is ready to admit that a part of her is starving, helpless in love.

The more she knows Reverdy, all she wants to know is Reverdy, and the mad, compelled part of her wants to log off and get in the car and fan out over the country in growing arcs, looking for him.

She’ll just keep driving until she finds his home town wherever it is and locates Reverdy’s house and knocks on his front door. If he doesn’t answer she’ll just go in. She will find the room where Tom is typing and stand there until he turns and sees her and for the first time ever she and her lover will be together in physical space. She doesn’t know what they’ll do then, but she does know she can’t go on like this. She wants to damn well find Tom and see him and feel him and touch him, because the partial, unseen Reverdy that Zan knows so well loves her more powerfully and persuasively than the whole of handsome, physical Charlie Wilder. For the first time ever she understands what true love is, and if her inner sentinel warns that what Zan and her lover have together on StElene is perfect precisely because it sits firmly in the vestibule of the uncreated, never mind. She’s beaten that reserved, judgmental self to death and shoved the remains into the garbage and closed the lid.

And with Reverdy nowhere around she does what you do. Keep busy. Keep busy, whatever you do. Posting to *lark. Editing her logs. Keeping watch like the wife of a sea captain lying awake in the night, waiting for the floor to shift under the weight of his first step.

Winston [to Zan] You know what life is for me now, like how they told me the operation would work and it didn’t, or how much it hurts. On StElene I can walk again. It’s the one place where I’m as free as I was before I got hurt. Thank God I can still type.

So there’s that.

Fearsome [to Zan] <<<grinnnn!>>> Sex. It’s the sex.

At least Fearsome is funny about it. Others—Domnita, Sadissimus, for instance—are dead earnest. Enhanced experience. Unbelievable sex. And the sex, whatever sex means to this group of players that Zan treats so gingerly, covers the spectrum. Player descriptions range from Playboy and Cosmo fantasies to heavy leather to BDSM regalia complete with cock rings and nipple clamps. Fastidious Zan avoids them all as if they’re carrying impetigo. She is resolutely above all that. What we have is different.

Articular [to Zan] You know where I’m coming from.

It’s the roleplaying games. There’s no roleplaying game I can’t eventually dope out, so. I have fun writing bigger, stronger games.

Zan [to Articular] So <grin> your role here is game master?

Articular [to Zan]:) Sure. But how about you?

What’s your role?

Zan [to Articular] Role? I’m not playing any role.

I’m me!

Articular [to Zan] Yeah, right you are. You’re like me, describing the dragon. You’re choosing which parts of yourself to show.

Zan [to Articular] You mean, like not telling you that I have greasy hair and weigh eight hundred pounds? Articular [to Zan] OK, you got me. I’m laughing RL, but I’m not. You know what I mean. See,

I think we’re all in costume here.

Zan [to Articular] Embarrassing, isn’t it. We are!

Articular [to Zan] So I admit it, this is one place in my life where I can totally be in charge. That’s my reason. What’s yours?

Zan [to Articular] Good thing he couldn’t see her face clench or her hands tremble. That’s what I’m trying to figure out!

Smart man, Articular, running away from life so fast that all he sees is the game. But he’s put his finger on the question. If they are all playing roles—is Jenny really only typing in the character of Zan the beloved? Is this ache that possesses her real, or is it something she and Reverdy have confected to pass the nights?

Zan [to Solomon] You’ve been here since the beginning. What do you think we’re doing here? Is StElene life or is it only a simulacrum of life? Solomon laughs.

Solomon is too famous here to direct speech to you. He knows he has your attention no matter who else is in the room.

“My, you really *are* young in the game, aren’t you? This isn’t life, it’s an act of creation.”

Zan [to Solomon] For the log, if you’ll please just clarify.

“It’s a collaborative effort. Creative.”

Zan [to Solomon] For the log. By creative, you mean the programming, designing all these new spaces for players? Objects they can use? Features so they can express themselves?

“That? That’s nothing. Beyond the database, the programming that goes on here is mostly baby steps.”

Zan [to Solomon] Then what are we doing?

“My dear, we’re writing a collective novel about ourselves.”

Zan [to Solomon] This is nothing like a novel.

It’s …

“Text. We’re creating text.”

“No.” Why is this so disturbing? “This isn’t text, it’s life!”

“It’s just typing, everything we do is considered.

A literary act.”

“Solomon, we’re talking! We’re all together here.”

She doesn’t know why this is so important to her, but it is. “And we’re really here.”

“In the greatest collaboration since Greek drama.”

“Thank you, Sol. I’m so grateful for your time.”

Funny how chronological age is eclipsed by age in the game. Solomon’s been around so long that he is one of StElene’s famous wise men, but age on StElene is never physical. @about reveals that Solomon just turned twenty; he first logged on in the dawn of the community, when he was fifteen. This is another oddity: unlike life in the real world, in this virtual life, age equals wisdom … It’s—

Oh hell why can’t she stop typing @find reverdy

And then suddenly, unaccountably, he’s back.

Reverdy   Connected   The Dak Bungalow

In the next second, he is in her room. And, God, she’s so relieved! In Brevert, Jenny hears her own voice. “My love. You’re here!” It may be relief, it may be compression of three days of waiting for Reverdy, maybe it’s a premonition that this is the beginning of the end. Whatever it is that prompts her, emotion blows up in Zan like a line storm and sweeps through her, cleaning her out and leaving her flattened in its wake like a desert ghost town.

But Reverdy can’t know what Jenny Wilder is thinking because Zan hasn’t entered a response. “Zan?”

My God, what to say? Even though Zan knows she is tempting fate or the devil or threatening Tom Dearden’s profound solitude IRL she does not stop to ask her best love, “Where were you?” or, “What happened?”

She doesn’t even ask, “Are you all right?”

Instead Zan, who has never really been anybody but Jenny Wilder, really, stays silent, wide open and temporarily exhausted; she is just burned out.

“Zan?”

And, crazy with love and loss, foolish Jenny leapfrogs into the next dimension, inadvertently sending this message. She drives it like an arrow directly into Tom Dearden’s secret, unknowable heart. She types:

“DEAREST I HAVE TO MEET YOU. REAL LIFE. NOW!”

It is Reverdy who falls silent now.

When her lover does not respond, Jenny types, “Oh my God, Tom, I love you so much please don’t let’s us ever be separated again.”

He does not respond.

“I’ll find you. We have to be together. We do!”

Still nothing.

Her hands are trembling. Her breath hangs in front of her like a tropical mist. Jenny knows she is pushing where she ought to hang back but she can’t stop herself. No. She can, but she won’t. She’s been torn apart for too long and she has to solve this. She has to solve her life!

“I love you, Tom. It’s time. I want us to find a place we can meet so we’ll always be together. We have to really be together and really touch each other and never, ever have to come apart!”

And if Reverdy hangs there without responding, Jenny won’t know it. If he groans aloud and disconnects she won’t know that, either. She’ll be spared the embarrassment if he disconnects and the misery if he stays logged on long enough to refuse her. She won’t have to face the fact that she has just stripped naked without knowing whether Tom wants that, because if Reverdy is back home at last on StElene—

—God. Charlie is back home too, RL!

She may have heard the front door open, maybe she heard him speak to the kids but deep in love, Zan is deep in denial. She heard Charlie on the stairs but she has Reverdy here, he’s finally here. She’s typing blindly, thinking not yet not yet. She hates the intrusion. Now. Just when she and Reverdy are …

Words pop up. On the screen she sees, “Zan!”

Behind her in the room, Charlie says, “Babe?”

“No!” Shattered, Jenny switches off the computer so Charlie won’t see the afterburn of her infidelity. So he can’t see the desperate, incriminating demands she typed, her crazy love for Tom Dearden a.k.a. Reverdy etched on her screen.

Zan disconnects before she can see or begin to grasp what this loving threat has done to Reverdy. Torn between this and Charlie, she cries, “How did it get so real?”

@twenty-four

REVERDY

Zan, what are you doing? I WANT TO BE WITH YOU. RL. NOW.

In both kingdoms, Tom Dearden shudders. Too many threats, he thinks, shaken. First the corporation. Now this. For too many reasons, his days here are numbered now.

Never let the people know what you’re thinking.

To survive your life, you have to barricade the city. Close your gates. Let nothing show. If your enemies even guessed what was inside you they would crack you wide open. They could ride into you like The Wild Bunch and lay you waste, blasting away until nothing is left standing, not even the shell.

Nobody knows what’s going on inside the self that Reverdy protects. Not Zan, not Suntum International, not the Directors with their Saint-names. To a man who keeps himself locked tighter than the Forbidden City, privacy is everything. Containment is essential, Reverdy thinks, and is surprised to find Tom Dearden’s jaw clenched like a bear trap as his spirit hangs in space, cut loose from its moorings. In her mad rush to broach the perimeter, Zan overturned his expectations. Arm the battlements!

When he first found rich, fluid StElene, where souls come together in the dark and everything you do is secret, he was joyful. Excited. The new Eden! Alone on StElene last Thursday night he found bugs everywhere. In Zan’s Place. In the Dak Bungalow. On the Suntum server, which he has cracked. They’ve been listening!

When your world is threatened on all sides you do what you have to. You keep busy. Reverdy knew Suntum was ripping off the players and now he can prove it, so there’s that. The bastards have been pirating applications developed here and selling to the highest bidder. That, he could handle. In the freemasonry of life online, the best things are shared.

But that isn’t the worst. StElene is a voyeurs’ paradise. After he found the bugs he prowled through the corporation server until he unearthed proof. High-end customers have been paying Suntum untold amounts to log on and spy on the intimacies unfolding here. His intimacies! So everything Reverdy has said and done here is readable, for a price. Suntum’s customers tap into private lives here as cynically as they turn on the TV. But not for long. He’s sent them mails from behind his powerful firewall. More. He’s inserted a few strings of code that’ll make Suntum rue the day the corporation tangled with him. Tom Dearden is very good at what he does. They’ll never trace it to him.

Listen, at some level he always knew. The “expectations” Suntum laid out without calling them laws came with a warning from the Saints. Death to any player who says or does anything to attract the attention of the Feds. Do what you want as long as you don’t bring scandal on StElene and the Corporation, or enable a Federal Indecency Act. But people are people. We fall in love, he thinks. We say and do things the physical world wants to make us sorry for.

Things that they can only do here.

Reverdy thinks about it every time he and Zan make love, but he’s more in love with her than he’s ever been with anyone, and StElene is the only place where they can meet. Their imaginations join and fuse in love in this rich, perpetual night, and Reverdy knows the best, the only eternal love is the kind that blooms in the imagination like a jungle flower.

Spies? All right, he can live with it.

He was going to tell her some of it tonight, but she didn’t give him a chance. Instead she knocked him off his foundation with one line. “I HAVE TO MEET YOU.” It is like a violation. And disconnected before they could straighten it out.

It has thrown him into a transport of reflection.

If Reverdy is alone in

Zan’s Place   Zan (sleeping)   is here,
if an infernal machine at the back of his mind was dislodged by his lover’s shocking threat to step out of the box and into his arms, it is rolling downhill fast. It gathers speed as it careens into the forefront of his consciousness like an engine of destruction. Nobody outside the fortress can know. Lover and beloved, adventurer and enemy, typist and avatar, man and ideal, with real and virtual characters and lives so inextricably mingled that he can no longer separate them, Tom Dearden a.k.a. Reverdy is profoundly disturbed.

I can’t!

Stay here.

Can’t leave.

It would kill me.

Distress makes him reckless. Movement may not be action but if you keep moving fast enough you don’t have to think.

Reverdy types @join azeath

It is a bizarrely self-destructive act.

Azeath’s Little Hell is wallpapered with the scalps of his enemies. You are standing ankle deep in their bones. If you come here, you can be destroyed here, but hell is never secured. Hell is wide open to all comers. Make one wrong move and you’ll never get out alive. Azeath is here.

“What the fuck!”

Reverdy grins. “It’s time.”

“Time for me to tear you apart IVR?”

“Reality isn’t virtual. It’s real.”

“I thought you said it was only a game.”

“Oh, me.” Reverdy grins. “I’ll say anything.”

“Smartass with your smart mouth. What the fuck are you talking about?”

“There are a couple of things you should know. Real things.”

“What kind of things?”

So deep in the game that he’s almost happy, Reverdy grins. “Things about here.”

“I thought you said this wasn’t real.”

“No, I said it was real.” He has confused Azeath and this is a delight and a pleasure. Now it’s time to drive in the stake. “At least it’s for real. So.”

“So what, asshole?” Azeath is a blunt instrument. Azeath’s a fool.

“Asshole? Is that the best you can do?”

“Go ahead. Start with me. Just fucking start and I’ll show you what I can fucking do. What the fuck did you come here to tell me?”

“Funny you should ask.” Reverdy is grinning not just here but at Tom Dearden’s keyboard in physical life. He’s nimble and funny and intelligent enough to orchestrate these exchanges before he enters them. He has studied his enemy over time like a scientist peering into an ant farm; he does not know the real typist but he does know exactly which buttons to push to drive Azeath into a murderous rage. He’ll play the guy like a synthesizer, wring organ music out of these keys. The dance to come is going to be so exquisite that he’s almost reluctant to begin it. He’s been designing it ever since he met Azeath and they fell into hate at first sight. With a sigh that vibrates in the room where he is typing, he takes the first step. “So. You think Mireya really loves you.”

“I fucking know she does. I give her something you could never…”

“Yeah, right.” Reverdy quotes. “‘I swell up inside you so big that you bust in pieces, screaming.’ You call that good sex?”

Azeath scowls threateningly. “How did you…”

He throws his grenade and leaves before Azeath has time to think, much less respond. “Like, you think Mireya hasn’t been downloading your sex scenes and mailing me the logs? ‘Mireya, you make me holler like a wild bear, you are my MATE forever.’” And before Reverdy’s speech, complete with direct quotation straight out of the logs, shows up on Azeath’s screen, he types @join Lark.

By the time Azeath assimilates what Reverdy’s just revealed, by the time he begins raging, typing detailed threats, Reverdy is long gone. By the time he gets the death threat Azeath sends after him like a heat-seeking missile, programmed to follow wherever he goes, he’ll be deep in Lark’s Mandela, where Azeath can not follow.

Reverdy finds Lark at the center of his intricately designed quarters, mailing. He’s the only player allowed in this particular private space. He feels only a little guilty because he hasn’t read post one on *lark and as the kid’s champion, he has an obligation to keep track. Lark’s so thrilled to see him that he overloads the database with a bunch of questions and conflicting commands and accidentally disconnects.

Grinning, Reverdy reads: a flame from hell! Azeath pages you. He pages, “You’re going to die for this.”

page Azeath, Yeah, right. You’re going to get me kicked off StElene.

Azeath pages, “I’m going to kill you in real life.”

Is Reverdy entering a new phase in the game or is he burning bridges? He would tell Lark that he’s baiting Azeath to smoke out the Directors, who will do anything to keep StElene out of the news. The last thing the Saint-guys want is a murder attempt launched on StElene. If he can pull Azeath into some violent act that makes the newspapers, TV, online news services, he’s accomplished two things at once.

Humiliating his enemy is not enough. Bringing scandal down on StElene is gravy. And if the typist who calls himself Azeath shows up on the RL doorstep in the frozen north where Tom Dearden makes mortgage payments? Well, the bastard has to find him first.

Funny how it hypes your sense of power, reducing an enemy to incoherent rage. Azeath’s bound to squawk. Reverdy will hear from the Directors soon enough and that, too, brings a sense of power. The officers on his historical research project RL may ignore Tom Dearden’s suggestions and blow off his contributions to the time line he is coding for them, but nobody ignores him here. Here he can make women fall in love with him; he can make people cry. He can drive them to rage. He can make men do things they will be ashamed of. He can piss off the Saintly Directors any time he wants to. They’ll never see it his way. They dignify him by fighting him.

Right now Azeath’s escalating threats are boring Tom and so he moves on to something completely different. That nobody who cares about him knows about, and that nobody on StElene suspects.

By the time Lark pulls himself together RL and reconnects, Reverdy’s reduced his window on StElene to a slot at the bottom of his screen and moved on. This means that the character named Reverdy is idling in Lark’s Mandala while the physical Tom Dearden moves on to another phase in his odd dance of the intellect. Therefore, although Reverdy is still in Lark’s inner sanctum (Reverdy [distracted] is here), the typist who moves Reverdy and breathes life into him has vacated, leaving Reverdy to idle. He is active, but on a different screen.

Active. Very active, and on StElene. The first commandment in this particular electronic community forbids duplication. The Directors are like God standing at the gates of creation, handing out souls, decreeing that every human passing through the starting gate will be issued exactly one (1) soul, and only one. Unless it’s that souls are entitled to only one (1) body each. On StElene, a registered player is allowed exactly one character. The Directors monitor the site information to be sure each player runs only one character. No more.

When Reverdy does what he does, then, Tom Dearden knows he is committing a serious breach.

For reasons he is not entirely clear on, Tom Dearden chooses this particular moment, when Azeath is furious and vigilant, filled with hate and loaded for bear, to do the illegal so he can do the wonderfully silly thing.

Tom telnets to a secret account and logs on to StElene as Precious, the illegal second character he designed for this part of the game. As described by Reverdy, Precious is pink and voluptuous in her leather shift and stiletto heels. Precious likes to parade in public rooms waiting for one of those dirty old men who treats StElene like a 900 number or, to be precise, a sleazy strip where only hookers stroll. When Precious finds a slavering sex-troller, she goes into her act. Lascivious intruders always respond. Precious latches on and won’t quit until Guest has followed Precious into a secured room Reverdy designed for just these little confrontations. He sweeps it regularly for surveillance devices. If he gets caught, he’ll be @erased from StElene, and he knows it.

It gives Tom an edgy pleasure to lead these horny bastards on and bring them down. So when the moment’s right he’ll morph into Benjy and. He loves the rest. It makes him laugh. He really needs to laugh. Especially now.

@be the grand ballroom

Rejoice! Precious is here. Your fondest dream.

Perpetual midnight on StElene, and it’s business as usual. Everybody’s here. Solomon, who seldom comes out of the game masters’ conference room—he’s tempted to page and say hi but it would blow his cover; Jazzy and Articular, Merce and RedWriter, old friends and assorted guests, even a couple of the Saints. Reverdy notes only peripherally that Azeath is here. He could not say why he’s chosen this high-risk activity at this exact time; disrupted as he is by desires in collision, he may not know what he’s doing. Correction. Reverdy knows exactly what he’s doing; he just can’t say why he’s doing it now. Maybe if Zan came back she could deflect this, but she’s gone and right now, he is afraid of Zan. Crazily, he doesn’t wait for the dance to begin, he brings it on.

twenty-five

JENNY

You may wonder why I am replaying the material I collected on StElene inside my head, instead of sitting at my computer editing the logs. The truth is, I can’t get to StElene right now. OK, when you can’t have what you want, you need to get in touch with what little you have. I’m so afraid!

It is extremely strange, riding along in the car with the soft coastal breeze blowing through my hair while all the important parts of me are stranded on StElene. This is the last place I want to be, but here I am. Just when I most need to see Reverdy, to find out how we are together, Charlie is taking me away.

Zan [to Heraclitus]. Do you really think players come here in character? I mean, are we ourselves or do we turn into somebody else?

Heraclitus [to Zan]. That’s obvious. It doesn’t matter what you want to pretend, there are things you can’t hide. The more we try to escape ourselves here, the more we become who we are.

“Babe, did you say something?”

“No.”

Tanned, wonderful Charlie makes a half turn in his seat to look at me. “Are you OK?”

I need to sort through my material. I have to make sense of it. I am fending off conversation so I can think. “I’m fine.” Too late. The log evaporates. Everything evaporates except the fear. I don’t know who I am afraid for, myself or Reverdy, but I am shuddering with bad vibes.

The car’s air conditioned but Charlie is driving along with the windows open, what did he say when he scooped me up and bundled me inside? “It’s a nice day. Let’s get in touch with reality.”

Does he think this is real, him and me crossing the long causeway with nothing to talk about but how I am, and nothing to see but blue sky and gulls rising, marsh and sawgrass whipping along on either side with water beyond?

Charlie’s voice is warm, but he sounds a little like a lost boy. “I just want you to be OK,” he says.

“I am.” I am lying. “Really, Charlie, I’m fine.”

He says this is for my own good. How could Charlie know what’s good for me? It’s like being ripped limb from limb. I need to be on StElene right now, I have to see Reverdy, no big thing, I just have to find out if my life is still in place, and now, God!

Charlie thinks he’s staging a rescue—romantic getaway, just us, wonderful week at the beach. I guess he caught the vibes—distress signals, S.O.S., unless I was sending up flares without knowing it. He didn’t ask what I needed, he just walked into the exact moment when my heart was in terrible danger and took charge. I can’t find Reverdy! Charlie came upstairs to the computer room, all brusque and loving and take-charge, very Charlie, very Marine, and barged into my consciousness. “I stashed the kids with their kid friends. I’ve got reservations in Myrtle Beach. I don’t know what’s the matter with you Jenny, but you…”

“In a minute, Charlie, I’m busy.”

“Now. Come on, Jen, what’s the matter with you?”

The hell of it is, I can’t begin to say. I love him for knowing something’s wrong and I love him for wanting to make it right but I’ve come a long way since he told me I already have my family and there’s no coming back. “Nothing, really.” I was willing him to go away.

Instead, he kept talking, talking, talking me offline like a mentor in a twelve-step program frog-marching an addict back to life. “… and now, just shut that thing off and we can…”

I can’t! “I can’t go anywhere now, I’m…”

“Your patients? No prob. I talked to Martha. She’s covering.”

“But it’s the middle of the night!” Or not. To my surprise, it had gotten to be daylight. I was waiting for Reverdy, and Reverdy? There is one thing about Tom Dearden’s physical location and one thing only that I can verify, and that’s the time zone where he logs on. Tom lives so far west that where he is, the night goes on and on. But Reverdy wasn’t anywhere!

Charlie tugged at me, RL. “No it isn’t. If you bothered to look out the window you’d see it’s morning again. I love you, Jen, and I’m worried about you…”

“I’m fine, I just.”

“And we’re going away.”

“Away! We can’t!” Oh Charlie, don’t smile like that! “Wait, I just need to do a couple of.” God, I had to tell Lark. I had to leave Reverdy a note!

But Charlie had me by the hands. “No you don’t. We’re going away and nothing else matters.”

I tried to smile for him. “At least let me log off.”

Charlie turned me so we were both facing the blank screen. It was like looking into the face of a dead friend. “Jenny, you’re not logged on. Come on, let’s go.”

“My clothes!”

“I packed you. We’re leaving.” I don’t know what I said or did to give it away but he tilted his head, assessing. “Something’s wrong.”

“Wrong?” Love, goodbye. Love! “What could possibly be wrong?”

This is how Charlie Wilder dragged me out of the box and back into the room at the top of the house on Church Street and pulled me out of the upstairs room like a princess out of her tower and this is how it happens that we are leaving home for a whole week, just seven days, but a lifetime for Zan in the world of compressed emotion on StElene.

Like a ghost, poor Zan [sleeping] hangs in limbo, an empty vessel abandoned in electronic space. And Reverdy? I don’t know, I don’t know!

Meanwhile Charlie and I are bombing along in the sweet sunlight, tasting salt in the air. In a way, it is a relief. If I can’t get to Reverdy, maybe I don’t have to. Maybe it’s OK to crane out the window at two-bit motels and cement pelicans in a world filled with sunburned sailors and their girlfriends and bright, nonbiodegradable beach toys. Love my husband. Have fun.

As we roll into Myrtle Beach, Charlie says, “I got another phone call.”

“Phone call!”

“That woman. She won’t stop calling. About you.” His voice drops. “I listened this time.”

Mireya! “What does she want?”

“She says…” This is hard for Charlie. “She says you’re…”

“The woman is crazy. Whatever she says, it’s a lie.”

Pain shreds his voice. “She says you’re seeing somebody else.”

He’s been in charge; oddly, now I am in charge, the consoling lover, unless it’s therapist, making him feel better with the truth, which is only partly the truth. “Charlie, you know I would never do that to you. You also know from the kids that I don’t go out when you’re away and nobody comes to the house.”

He says softly, “I know you get lonely, babe.”

“And you know nobody comes.” Dissembling, I take his hand. “Charlie, she’s just an ex-patient. Psychotic. You know those people, they’ll say anything. She wants to hurt me any way she can!”

Jenny’s first love brightens so quickly and predictably that it makes Zan terribly sad. “So you haven’t!”

Not in this life, at least. “Oh Charlie, no.” Ripped in half, I am grieving for both loves. “I promise you, never!”

“I knew it wasn’t true!” He is giddy with relief. “Oh honey, here’s our motel. Let’s have a hell of a week!”

This is how, ripped out of context so fast that I am scattered and gasping, I end up marooned in the physical world. No. Stuck at the beach. Charlie and I are at the beach, prone on striped towels with the Atlantic crashing a few yards away and our hands spread like starfish on hard-packed white sand. The sand rims my mouth and gets under my fingernails which, in some attempt to turn this into a real vacation, I have painted abalone white. Lying on my belly in the bikini Charlie bought and threw in the bag for me, I can feel the cool, damp conforming to the weight of my body; I can feel the sun on my back and the residual dampness wicking up through the towel. For the first time in a while I am in touch with the flat, unequivocal quality of the physical, but inside my head?

I am elsewhere. Our last scene replays endlessly, me, Reverdy, Reverdy, me. I can’t quit trying to interpret it and predict outcomes. All I have to go on is our last words to each other, scrolling up the screen behind my eyes. When Charlie shakes me gently and says, “We’ve had enough sun for the day,” Zan rises like a waking dreamer and follows him up the beach to the motel where Charlie and I will make love, of course, and it may be the result of compressed anxiety or of interrupted passion with Reverdy or it may really be that Charlie and I are well married and a perfect physical fit; whatever it is, I am left shuddering and sobbing with delight and relief.

“We are good together,” Charlie says.

“We’ve always been good together. That’s why I’m here.”

Later we get up and go out to dinner, Charlie with his beautiful skull and neat haircut and that rigid back, looking military even in the T-shirt and jeans, and Zan in a full-skirted dress Charlie bought me in the motel boutique this very afternoon, a resort item straight out of a tropical fantasy with white hibiscus silhouetted on a red ground; it leaves my shoulders bare and the full, heavy skirt swings against my shaved, shining legs. At my neck the shells Charlie bought to garland me glisten white against the pink-brown beginning tan. I lean into Charlie as we walk out to eat fried chicken with our fingers in a crowded seafront restaurant where waiters in white starched mess jackets pass buttered biscuits and we grin at each other with grease and crumbs spreading across our faces. After weeks of living inside the box I am in sensory overload. The combination of tastes and colors and sound is too much! I miss the purity and conceptual space, where I am safe.

One minute I’m grinning at Charlie and the next, I’m gone. Have I lost Reverdy forever or is he there now, waiting for me? Is he through with me or has he gone the distance I wanted to take him? What if he’s hanging on StElene, waiting to set a time and place so we can meet in physical life? What if while I’m eating fried chicken in Myrtle Beach, I miss my big chance? Does Reverdy miss me, is he worried, does he care? Does he think I’ve left him? Is he afraid I’ve died? Or is he out looking for somebody new? What if he’s come looking for me RL? Will Charlie and I go home to Church Street and find Reverdy waiting? Will he come out of the oleanders by the front door and walk into my arms and take me away?

“Hello?” Charlie passes a hand in front of my eyes, snapping his fingers and then spreading them. “Jenny. You there?”

“What. Oh!” Blinking, I remember to smile at him. “Of course I’m here.”

“You look tired.”

“I am.” I see Charlie but I don’t see him, I can’t stop seeing Reverdy—gaunt, not handsome but magnetic in an irregularly craggy way, dark hair, deep-set eyes blazing with intelligence, we will know each other at once. We will. He’s tall, I think, lean and yes he slouches under the weight of the forced marriage to Louise, but he keeps it all in … And disturbed as he is by our last encounter, he is grinning. @find reverdy

“Are you all right, babe?”

Oh, Charlie, with your nice, uncomplicated Charlie smile, how can you possibly know? “I’m fine.” I look up. My ice cream has melted. The place has emptied out.

Charlie covers my hands with his. “I know it’s been hard for you, but we’re going to figure this out, OK? I want us to keep working with it until we’ve solved it.”

“Solved?”

“How to be together.” He sighs. “It’s all so new! You know I love you.”

Guilty, because I’ve lost all track of where I belong and with whom, I smile. “I do.”

Then Charlie’s patience snaps. “Let’s go.”

Days on the beach, nights on the strip, followed by that loving tangle I know so well. I feel very close to Charlie even when part of me is very far away. At night we walk for blocks, I lead Charlie without his knowing it; I take him through bars and flossy hotel lobbies, through every garish theme park sideshow place that beckons, following a trail lined by neon and flashing lights. Charlie thinks he’s in charge, but I know. We walk on the beach some nights but I don’t like it. No possibilities here. The sand hides sharp objects and you can put your foot down in the wrong place because you can’t see, you can get hurt by sharp things you aren’t expecting. Yet we go along and the whole time I’m looking for something, never mind what Charlie … never mind.

I don’t want to lose Charlie but I can’t let go of StElene. Is that so hard to understand?

When we come in from the beach on the next to the last night Charlie takes me by the shoulders. “You there?”

My heart turns inside out. God I hurt. God, I am confused. “Oh Charlie, I’m here!”

@twenty-six

Precious holds up a big sign:

NEW HERE? PRECIOUS GIVES GOOD HELP.

In seconds Molybdenum_Guest pages, “Can you help me? Really?”

Hiding deep inside raunchy, Barbie-perfect Precious, Reverdy snickers and pages back: “What kind of help are you looking for?” Unless it’s Tom!

Usually Precious likes to finger intrusively obvious sex-trollers before she engages in this act. The worst people deserve the worst treatment, right? Usually Precious works the vestibule, where the clueless lurk, but tonight he’s picked the busiest room in the hotel. His worst enemies are here. Azeath looks at Precious and doesn’t have a clue. Mireya glances; if she knew that her ex-lover is hiding inside Precious, she’d turn him in to the Directors and have done with him for good. But Reverdy’s enemies are too busy building character with StBrêve and StOnge to notice a woman player they don’t know. It’s tempting, but he can’t stir up his old adversaries without blowing his cover. The minute the room knows Reverdy’s typist has logged on in a new body, his time on StElene is done. The Saints will swarm all over him and they won’t quit until he’s done.

From the grand ballroom Molybdenum_Guest licks his finger and touches you, you know where. He says, “Baby, you know what I’m looking for. The good stuff. And I’m the best. Wanna go somewhere?”

Yeah, a live one. Description including length and girth of schlong: just crude enough and detailed enough to tell Reverdy that he deserves what he gets. Precious pages, “Depends.” But at the same time, Tom is distracted by a heated debate—some of the smartest players are arguing rights of privacy here, and whether copyright pertains. Reverdy thinks everything he and the others do and say here is private property. This is why he hates Suntum, well, one of the reasons. For all he knows Suntum International isn’t only admitting paid voyeurs, which he’s proved. Suntum could also be selling the logs to God knows who—the media, other corporations, anybody who wants to dissect StElene’s private lives, using their findings to develop God knows what.

Privacy. Copyright. It’s an old argument; like so much in this place, ideas cycle and recycle, players assume stances and take each other’s brains apart and in the heat of talking and mailing, reconfigure and start all over again. Precious goes back to the chase. page molybdenum Hello, big guy.

Molybdenum_Guest has received your page.

Molybdenum_Guest pages you. “So do you wanna?”

Privacy. The ability to keep the best parts of yourself secret. It’s what draws Reverdy. Fuck incursions, these clumsy, vulgar guests …

Jazzy says, “Copyright doesn’t ensure privacy.”

It’s a good argument on a touchy issue. LavaKing asks whether privacy is a constitutional right. Reverdy is torn. Come back as himself and join the debate?

He has plenty to say but he’s wearing stalky Precious tonight. He put her on like a Halloween costume and if he wants to maintain his position on StElene, nobody can know. His best lines have to stay unsaid. Precious types look molybdenum and discovers—no surprise—that Molybdenum_Guest has @described and elaborated on his description—studmuffin with piercings, You Know Where. Yeah, this guy is asking for it. Lascivious asshole, he thinks that in the virtual world all you need to do is talk dirty and you’ll have women who don’t know you and could care less in your arms, quivering in virtual lust. Plus ça change, Reverdy thinks, the more it’s the same fucking thing. And the Directors? Instead of niggling over regulations, they should deal with this kind of crap.

Molybdenum_Guest pages you. “Depends on what? WINK.”

Reverdy thinks but does not type, Clear off and die somewhere else, you dirty old man. The routine is stale and predictable.

“On what you’re interested in.” Even typing this is stale.

Still the party goes on.

Molybdenum_Guest pages, “Do you know a place where it’s quiet?”

It’s odd, the way Tom feels tonight, Tom Dearden, who had such great hopes for life here. The talk goes on and it’s good talk about ideas, about the object of the game, gossip about people he knows and speculations about the corporation, but like too many other conversations here it is on a loop; everything is patterned. The copyright argument rages but he watches it scroll past with the growing sense that the ideas are nothing new and there may be nothing new in the world for him. StElene may be the great society Reverdy envisioned, but it is diminished by the players jabbering in this elegant room. The ideal place he loved has become less than it should have been. They bring it down! Instead of distilling the contents of pure minds, StElene has become a soapbox for towering egos and, God, can the depressed people who hang out here be a little less depressed and can the lonely women who linger in space find anything better to talk about than how lonely they are? Tom’s jaw is so tight that his temples ache.

Deep in argument, his friends posture while Azeath swaggers and Mireya preens and in their own little sanctimonious cluster the Directors watch, and judge. It is this as much as anything else that troubles Reverdy—I had so many hopes. Now look at us. He could pirate StElene to his grand new place and all he’d have is this. A divine scheme populated by—not disembodied gods, just people. That’s the problem with all divine schemes. They all boil down to people, just people, yammering in a room.

Then, pressed and shaken, pushed to the limit by Zan’s loving threat, Tom Dearden crashes through the membrane into the moment when it all goes bad. Suddenly and almost inadvertently pulls the ripcord on everything he has invested here, Reverdy does a fatal thing. As Precious, Tom pages Azeath, making it perfectly clear to the enemy who’s out to get him exactly who the typist moving Precious is, RL:

“Here’s a little message from Reverdy. Reverdy says, fuck you.”

Then, unaccountably weary and eager to get it over with, Reverdy stops paging and speaks out loud. Precious speaks directly to Molybdenum_Guest. Without knowing why, he wants the entire room to read and know what his invention, this Precious, is about to do.

Exposure? Fine. So be it.

Reverdy speaks aloud. The Directors see it, Azeath sees it, and when the inquiry to follow follows, it is Azeath who will tell the Directors who Precious really is. Once they know, Reverdy’s time here is done. So, fine. It’s time! Jazzy and Volcano see it, along with all the other players and guests; Merce is there and sees it and so do Bartlebooth and Tower; RedWriter sees it too:

Precious [to Molybdenum] So, you think you want to fuck me? OK baby, let’s do it right here. You’re in for a big surprise.

twenty-seven

JENNY

So much to say, so much to unsay and no way to do any of it because I don’t know where my lover lives or how to get in touch with him. I think about him so much that, like a watercolor in sunlight, he begins to fade. Then on our last night in Myrtle Beach I find what I’ve been looking for. My voice is bright and false.

“OK if I check my email?” It’s an internet cafe.

“Email? Honey, you’re twenty-four hours from home!”

“Martha was going to mail me a progress report on the Wetherall kid. It’s crucial to the outcome, OK?”

And because it’s our last night, Charlie says, “OK.”

I’m so frantic that it takes me three tries to connect to StElene. I am typing several things at once, paging Reverdy and, before he has a chance to answer, anxiously typing.

@find reverdy

Oh my darling where are you why don’t you come are you here can I … Oh! At worst the display will tell me when he logged on last, but! Terrified, I let it come out. “Oh!”

Charlie comes to my side. “What’s the matter?”

I lunge with my arms spread because I have to cover the screen. “Thing about this patient. I’m sorry, Charlie, it’s privileged.”

“Sorry.” He backs away.

It is like reading about a death.

@find reverdy

“reverdy” is not the name of any player

No players to display.

Reverdy has dropped from the face of StElene.

It’s as if he was never there. While careless Zan was lost in Myrtle Beach getting drunk on fresh air and sprawling in strong sunlight, flattened by love and picking up a tan, something terrible came into StElene and erased the person she cares most about. God! Cares most about. Yes. Reverdy has vanished. Suicided? Erased? I can’t know, I can’t know! Gone. As if he had never been.

And here in the internet cafe Charlie is lingering, half-turned and trying to see over my shoulder without looking like he’s looking. I should be vigilant. But I can’t. This has to be a mistake. I can’t stop typing @find reverdy again. Again. My God!

Desperate, I type, @find lark Thank God Lark’s still a player but Lark last logged off yesterday; Lark is nowhere around.

I keep trying. I stop caring whether Charlie sees.

Then, God, what was I thinking? What if Reverdy’s left StElene to come looking for me in real life and this is his way of letting me know? What if he’s left Louise to come and be with me? Poor Charlie. The lover you don’t know is always more compelling than the lover you can see. When Charlie and I get home tomorrow I’ll find him, dark-eyed with love and brooding, Reverdy. No, Tom Dearden will be slouched by the front door of Charlie’s house. He will step out of the shadows of the oleanders that overhang the steps and we will know each other at once. He loves me, I think. I think, Poor Charlie! Reverdy loves me well enough to blow his cover, blow off real life as he knows it, he loves me well enough to step out of the box … I come to with a start. I’ve told my lover more than once where I live, but what makes me think he kept the address?

My mouth dries out. What if he gets to my house and I’m not there?

At my back, Charlie is shifting like a cluster of stormclouds racing across the night. With Reverdy gone, I type a quick MOOmail to Lark, repeating my RL name, the phone number, the address. I end the mail Forward to Reverdy. And of course this is for you! Use it if you need it. Promise? Because Lark is my last link; because Lark may know what’s happened, I add, call me. We have to talk.

And like a terminal patient saying goodbye to everything I care about, I type, @exit.

Better not to look inside Zan in the next twenty-four hours as I go through the motions in the role of good wife on romantic vacation, better not to see the turmoil. It’s enough that I can still speak when spoken to, although I’m edgy and my stomach is sour and my hands are shaking from a staggering shortage of sleep. At least my God we are heading back to the house, and I can lose watchdog Charlie and log on.

As we roll into Brevert, I go through all the right motions. “I’ll make us a late supper while you pick up the kids.”

“Can’t, babe,” Charlie says apologetically. “The commandant’s expecting me.”

“He what?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry, I stretched this vacation as long as I could, no, I stretched it too long, so I’m afraid the end will be short. I didn’t tell you, but I have to drop you and run out to the base. OK?”

Sameold, sameold. I don’t answer.

“Late meeting, are you OK with me staying at the BOQ?”

“Whatever you want.” Look, before Charlie’s car clears the driveway I’ll be running upstairs. I can connect to StElene! Maybe it will turn out that a system crash caused the anomaly. The database backup will be in place and my lover back where he belongs! Reverdy isn’t gone, he was just missing for a night.

Charlie’s tone is full of all the things we never managed to say to each other. “I’m sorry, babe, I love you, and it’s been great.”

“Me too. It’s been really nice.” I can’t wait to connect.

Then as we round the corner and pull up in front of the house I see a shadow unfurling in the darker shadows of the oleanders that overhang Charlie’s front steps, somebody getting to his feet. Accidentally, I say his name. Charlie looks bewildered but he can’t linger long enough to ask. Instead he lets me out of the car and heads off to the base.

“Reverdy!”

But it isn’t. It is Lark.

twenty-eight

AZEATH A.K.A. VINNIE FULLER

Everything is perfect. Reverdy is whacked. He’s done for. Wiped off the face of StElene like an ugly grin, and since Azeath’s the one that fingered him, Azeath is in solid with the Directors now, especially StBrêve. He’ll be a Director himself in another week or so, StOnge has promised, “gesture of gratitude.” He’ll be a Director, and then you motherfuckers watch my dust.

He should be on cloud ten, miles above cloud nine. But.

On top of which, he’s getting out of Wardville. What with time off for good behavior, his sentence for the thing he did is up. He has his exit interview with the warden today at 4 p.m. and he’s out the main gate by five, personal effects restored, walking around money from the state, new suit for interviews which he doesn’t need because StBrêve fixed him up with Suntum and he’s got a startup job, data input won’t need to meet people which is a damn good thing given his looks and his short fuse. All these years of living his life by the numbers and Vinnie Fuller is bellying up to free!

Good. He should be feeling really, really good. But!

Plus, the real Mireya is coming to real Wardville and they are going to fall into each other’s arms IRL for the first time. The frosting on the cake. Mireya, I mean Florence, is coming to town. Florence. OK, it’s a kind of a comedown of a name, but she’ll always be Mireya to him. God, how many times has he pictured Mireya in his mind, pictured her in his arms doing all those great things they do to each other on StElene. Listen, if they both kind of hinted that IRL they didn’t look exactly like their descriptions, the sex was so good that their minds forgave, or forgot. Never mind what Mireya says, Vinny knows what Mireya really looks like, she’s got to look amazing. Pretty, and she loves him. Florence. Got to get her to lose the corny name.

Mireya’s going to drive him back up to Boston. It’s arranged. Vinnie’s going to stay at her place and they are going to mash faces and all their other private parts like they keep typing about and have never done, but tonight they’re going to do it for real, real bodies in a real bed in a motel.

Weird, he has Reverdy to thank for this. The plan blew up like a whirlwind the night he and Mireya got rid of Reverdy for good. When Reverdy was still fighting Mireya tooth and nail she was too gnarly to talk about meeting face-to-face, Vinnie doesn’t know how he knows this, but he knows. So he owes Reverdy a big one after all. It was bringing Reverdy down that brought about this meeting. It left Azeath way high!

Cocky bastard, you’d think he’d of been more careful. The bust came down like a ripe fruit, just fell right into Azeath’s lap. You go nuts plotting and at the last minute it falls into your hands. It came down perfect.

It came down strong, too. What happened was, Az and Mireya dropped into the ballroom. Right after he and she had the fight.

The fight. The other night when he tangled with Reverdy and the bastard started spewing Azeath’s secret, sacred love songs, Vinnie went up like a torch. Reverdy, the enemy of his life, claimed he got what they said to each other from Mireya, word for word. Azeath went flaming out of there and into her velvet bed screaming. “You. You…” He couldn’t find the word. His fingers were slick. “You told Reverdy about us. About us?” He was so mad that he almost … Well, it was a good thing Mireya was typing from wherever she sat typing and Vinnie was in Wardville or he would have snapped her neck like a wooden kitchen match. Her denials made him madder. “He says you showed him our sex. Our sex!”

“That’s a fucking lie! A LIE!” Mireya was screaming at Azeath as if it was him she was mad at, and not Reverdy. Crazy.

“Then how the fuck did he get it?”

“He spied, the son of a bitching bastard spied!”

“That’s not what he says.”

“DON’T YOU KNOW HE HATES ME SO MUCH THAT HE’D SAY ANYTHING?”

Listen, it’s a goddamn good thing they weren’t in the same bed just then. No. Good thing they weren’t on the same planet. He would have rammed his fist down Mireya’s throat just to stop her mouth. Instead Azeath gave her chapter and verse. “He quoted stuff. Intimate stuff. What we do together. You and me.” And quoted back.

A terrible minute passed. “He said I did that? I would never.” Another minute. Then she got cold and still. “This is the end. I hate him. I hate the son of a bitch.”

“You hate him?” Vinnie still doesn’t know what makes him so mad, that she hates Reverdy more than she loves him? “OK, prove it!”

“You bet I’ll prove it. I’m going to kill him.” Yes! Then Mireya said something that didn’t exactly register in the frenzy, except it did. It’s stored on Azeath’s hard disk, for retrieval later. “No. I’ll call him up! Hell no! I’m going to his house!”

Reverdy. She knows the bastard’s phone number!

Of course she hurried to patch it up. She was so wild she let a detail slip. “Oh, you think I told him those things and you’re hurting. Oh Azeath, my best beloved, I would never let Tom…”

“Tom?” Tom. The motherfucker’s name is Tom. Well on StElene, the motherfucker is dead.

“I mean Reverdy—Reverdy is a programmer. Don’t you think he knows how to sneak into our places and plant listening bugs?”

OK! Sitting here in Wardville, Vinnie got a great big hardon. Nobody ever called him “beloved” anything ever before.

They celebrated by going to the ballroom, that was when Precious a.k.a. Reverdy blew his cover and Azeath was right on top of it. He followed the bastard, he was loaded for bear. Nailed Reverdy in the middle of, like, you would never believe. Shame coming down on StElene, this thing could wreck Suntum if it got in the papers, it could land Reverdy in jail. And Azeath was there. He followed Precious into Reverdy’s private place and secretly logged everything that came down. What Reverdy a.k.a. Precious said to the mark, what the mark said.

Gotcha! Perfect. Azeath logged the evidence and queued it to every one of the Saints. They had a secret conclave about it. Reverdy was toast.

So after he trashed Reverdy on StElene, Azeath and his best beloved—shit, he has a best beloved now!—he and Mireya had a little victory party in Mireya’s Boudoir and after they quit congratulating each other and having MOOsex they got to talking and Azeath focused: she knows where Reverdy is RL. So that is eating at him, but you don’t tell them that. Instead he hugged Mireya and danced this dance of triumph which at the end of it, and who knows what causes these things, Azeath said, “We have to meet. RL.”

“Meet!” Like that. Some women, you make love to them in the dark and they go, “Oh let’s don’t spoil it,” but not Mireya. Mireya rushed into it, typing so fast that it scared both of them, “When?”

“I don’t know exactly. Soon.” What Vinny meant was, I’m getting out soon, but he couldn’t say that because Mireya knows what he does at work, but he’s never said where he does it. He never fucking told her where he logs on from. It never came up. They exchanged vows. “I, Vincent Fuller, promise to meet you…”

“Florence.” Mireya smiled. “Florence Vito Watson.”

Florence! “That’s a pretty name.” Trouble is, it’s not.

“And we are going to be together, Vincent…”

Typing, he formed the word with his mouth. “Vinnie.”

“Dearest Vinnie!”

“And we are going to do it. Do it. Do it!” Typing with this neverending hardon. “We are going to do everything. And soon.”

So that was that night. And ever since then, he and Mireya have made incredible, triumphant love IVR and now he and his lover Florence are closer than he’s been to anybody RL ever.

They slipped into it, and he knew: I’m getting out soon. Soon I am getting out. Thoughts running through his head, Mireya all loose and excited, wham, it sort of escalated, love and craziness boiling up, he could pull this love out of the box and set it on real fire, real bodies in a real bed in a real place.

Then last night on StElene they were making love online, so easy, so often, so sexy, so safe, and when Azeath least expected it everything kind of came in on him, how he didn’t know where he was going to log on after tomorrow afternoon at four o’clock, and he could feel fear like fingers crawling through his scalp: what if Reverdy gets back onto StElene in spite of what he did and I can’t connect and fight him? What if? What if?

Getting Reverdy bounced off StElene isn’t enough.

He wants him dead. And on his hard disk: she knows where he is. Which is not really why he proposed. Look, Vinnie Fuller really has never been anybody’s beloved before in any life and he needs somebody to call him “beloved” while they fuck. He needs to fuck! It all piled up, he got filled up to choking with imperatives, have to this, have that, Mireya called him “my best beloved” one more time and it spilled over and came out of him. “We’re getting married.” The words fell out on the screen and it was as good as done.

“Married!”

“And we’ll find other, better things that I can do to you.”

“That I can do to you,” she said. “And soon.”

So fast! “Tomorrow,” he typed, and told her where to come.

She’s meeting him in Wardville tonight! But he’s got a double agenda with this beautiful girlfriend that he’s never met, so he’s going to have to take it easy, play it cool. Other guys, their squeezes write regular, they come on visiting days. Their women will be waiting outside the gates with the motor running, take ’em home and love them to death knowing where they’ve been all this time, whereas Azeath. Vinnie will tell her who he, Vinnie/Azeath, is RL, OK, but he’s got to soften her up first, like, make amazing love to her before he breaks the news. And maybe find out what he needs to know so he can move on to what’s next. At the back of his mind Reverdy sits like a god that has to be destroyed: Tom. His name is Tom. Tom something. She knows what. She knows where the bastard is.

They’re meeting in front of the Burger Chef on Central in downtown Wardville at six p.m., which gives him time to take the bus to town and walk over, pretending that he has a car but he just parked it somewhere else. A friend in the laundry got him this nice shirt to go with the state’s suit and he’s been growing his hair so play your cards right Vinnie, and your woman not only will never know what you were in for, she’ll never guess you’re an ex-con.

You bet it should be the happiest day of his life. In a funny way, he never expected it, even though he knew it was today. You spend 10 to 15 in the can on a 24-hour basis and see if you still believe there’s life outside. He’s getting out! He’s going to meet his lover soon. They’ll go someplace together and do everything for real for once, tumbling in a great big bed.

Then why isn’t this the happiest day of his life?

It is and it isn’t, Azeath thinks, taking one last look around at Azeath’s Little Hell. Reverdy, he thinks. I wanted him to squirm, I wanted him gutted and twisting in the wind and the Directors just. It happened too fast.

In another ten he has to go and see the warden. Before that, he has to disconnect. He types @find reverdy but he knows what he’ll see. Reverdy is no more. If the Directors are right, he’s @erased. Gone for good. He’s gone but he isn’t gone, you know? It went too fast. There are things Azeath has to say to him. Things Vinnie Fuller wants to do to him. It isn’t finished, it is not … He’s getting out today. He’s meeting his lover at six. But before he can do any of this he has to disconnect.

His hands freeze on the keyboard. He watches the ballroom convo go scrolling by. StOnge has just asked him a question. If he logs off, how can he answer? It makes him writhe. I can’t! But the screw is standing over him. Yo, Fuller. “You’re not getting weird, are you?”

“Who, me? Fuck you!”

The screw says mildly, “Some of them do.”

“Well not me.”

“Some of the hardtimers do.” Fuck, right. Ten years. He stares at Vinnie until Vinnie types @exit and turns off the machine.

So like a man overboard, Azeath flounders. He has to be led down to the warden’s office and led outside. He paddles into the ambiguous light of five o’clock. After ten to fifteen with time off for good behavior, Vinnie Fuller is loose in the world.

It is bigger than he thought. The bus driver waits while he stares down at the coins in his hand and then, like a vendor in a foreign country helping a tourist with the currency, reaches over and fishes five quarters out. Then he stares until Vinnie lurches down the aisle to a back seat and sits down.

By the time he reaches the Burger Chef excitement has outrun fear and he has the old Mireya hardon. It stays with him for the better part of an hour which is just as well because he ends up waiting for the better part of an hour. Jangling, he paces up and down. It takes him too long to realize that a small, squat woman in a raincoat has been pacing on the same loop for quite some time now, going along with her collar turned up and her hatbrim pulled down. Customers go in and out and every time a good-looking woman goes by, he jumps. Odd, every time a good-looking guy goes by, the woman jumps. Finally they both turn and face facts. She says,

“Vinnie?”

Shit! “Um. Florence?”

Her voice is up but her face falls. “Vinnie. I didn’t know you.”

“Yeah right,” he says drily. “Me too.”

Falsehood in advertising. Right. You’d think the woman would rush to hug him. He ought to hug her, but he won’t. He’s been inside too long. He’s too far outside of these social situations for too long to be able to say the right things in them. Instead he opens his fucking mouth and these words fall out. “You don’t look anything like her.”

It’s a relief to see that she is more angry than hurt. “Well,” she says. “You don’t look anything like him.”

Vinnie thinks. I’m going to fucking kill him. He says, “You’ll get used to it. I love you. We’re getting married. I got a motel room. Let’s go.”

twenty-nine

I

“Don’t be scared, Lark. I promise not to hug you.”

It’s just as well Charlie let me out in front of the house and drove away; it’s just as well that his kids are still at the sitter’s, because it’s all I can do to handle Lark right now. No. It’s all poor Lark can do to handle me. He is jittering like a space module waiting for liftoff. Personal contact! In spite of all the confidences we’ve exchanged online, this prematurely old kid or very young man is so shy that after the first agonized flash in which his eyes stab mine, blazing with pain at the intimacy of recognition, he won’t look at me.

“Oh, Lark.” I’m gentle but he keeps flailing, all spit and embarrassment. “Lark, I know it’s you, but will you please do something to confirm that it’s you so we can go inside now?”

He shakes his head. He can’t. Oddly, except for the fact that he’s in a Dr. Who T-shirt instead of the baggy sweater, Lark looks just the way I thought he would: skinny, pinched and highly intelligent, like an overtrained chess prodigy. Anxious.

“You look so cold. It’s summer, Lark, why are you so cold?”

The silence is killing me, not knowing what’s happened to my love is killing me. Here is the only known witness and he can’t talk! I need to hear every line Reverdy said so I can scour the text for clues, but I can’t press Lark. I know better than to touch him or try to renew eye contact. One word and I’ll flush him like a wild bird and lose them both. Instead I sit down on the steps and wait for Lark to sit down next to me which he does, finally, but only after an agonized interlude in which he strangles on unspoken words and I sit, resolutely staring straight ahead. When finally he sits, staring at the exact spot I’m fixed on, I say with a doomed feeling, “It’s about Reverdy.”

All the air rushes out of him. “Yes.”

“But you. Are you OK? It’s OK, you don’t have to tell me. I just care, is all.” Then I hold my breath because this is a delicate bird and the least disturbance will panic him.

“Oh fuck,” he says finally.

I bite my lip. Don’t ask, wait. Don’t say anything.

“My week is up and I’m out on my butt,” Lark says finally. He’s managing not to cry. “I don’t have anyplace to go.” His shoulders are rattling like coat hangers in a windstorm. “Oh, Zan. They kept my stuff, they kept my stuff!”

“I’m so sorry.”

“They fucking disowned me and kicked me out.”

“That’s terrible.” I want to touch him but he won’t let me. I can’t even tell him what I want to say, I’ll take care of you. He’d fly apart. I decide on, “How did you get here?”

He can’t find the answer. “You’re the first person I thought of to tell.”

“I love you, Lark.”

“I love you too, Zan.” He still can’t bring himself to look at me and I’m still afraid to touch him; he might self-destruct. “I thought if anybody knew what to do, you would.”

“Come in. I’ll get you a sweater.”

Lark is buzzing with passion but he can’t start. He fans crumpled papers. My letterhead. A receipt for his bus ticket—on Howard’s plastic, what did the poor kid do to make his way here, pretend to be mute and pass notes? He’s shivering like a bluebird in an arctic chill. I feed him soup, I feed him a six-pack of English muffins, I feed him leftover Indian takeout nuked in the microwave. Wondering at how cold he seems here in the soft Carolina night, I wrap him in Charlie’s sweater and after the first bit in which I ask if he wants more of this, some of that, after I pour him a little wine, he takes a deep breath and expands.

It’s as if his soul has just come back. “I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do!”

“You’ll be all right.” I want so much to hug him and can’t.

His grip here is tenuous. “I’m trying.”

“I’m glad you came. Maybe I can help.” I’m rummaging in my head for resource people, placement possibilities, best money says work with a college and then sort out the rest; I know he has more than this to tell me. My mind is drumming: @find reverdy, @find reverdy, @find reverdy “Get you back in school.”

“I don’t know.” Lark assimilates this offer; I see the click as he stores it for processing later. He blurts, “Without Reverdy, what’s the point?”

So it’s OK to start the conversation. “What do you mean, without Reverdy! I came back to StElene and oh Lark, he was gone. It’s as if he never lived there. As if he’d never been.” My heart falls out. “Where did he go?”

Lark hugs his skinny shoulders. “He isn’t anywhere.”

“What happened?”

“I can only partly tell you.”

“Lark, look at me!”

“I trust you, but I still can’t look at you. Is that OK?”

“It’s OK,” I say. “Of course it is.”

His eyes flick here, there. “Is this where you log on?”

“Here? Home instead of the office, yeah. Third floor.”

Like a hopeful child, Lark asks, “Should we go up and give it one more try?” It is a measure of our lives in the imagined kingdom that we’re both straining toward the stairs as if we can solve all our problems or at least stave them off by logging on.

“We could.” Two addicted players confecting reasons to connect, as if the familiar will ease the pain that gnaws our hearts. I brighten. “Maybe he’s not gone after all.”

“Forget it. He’s gone as hell,” Lark says. “Big tribunal, they tried to keep it a secret but I know. They purged him.”

“Tribunal!”

“The Directors. The Suntum site man. They had to act fast. The corporation was scared shit it would get into the papers.”

“The papers! What would get into the papers? What do they say he did?”

“That’s the problem, he really did it.”

“Did what?” I’m trying to sound professional, but I’ve lost it. “They can’t just purge him. Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”

“It’s their sandbox,” Lark says sensibly, “they can do anything they want. One guy against the corporation? Sure they axed him. They can’t allow anything that makes them look bad.”

“Execution with no trial. No proof of guilt. It’s illegal! We’ll go to court to get him back online if we have to,” I say irrationally. “Publish the logs.”

“The logs are gone. Wiped off the database, along with all the angry posts everybody sent.” Lark has the smooth, untroubled look of a person who knows he’s tried everything. “You don’t think I checked while you were, like, totally gone just when everybody most needed you?”

“I couldn’t help it!” Don’t cry! “Charlie took me. He took me away!” Inside me, something changes. Charlie. How can I forgive him for this? “Oh God, if I’d been there maybe I could have…”

“No way. When it came down, nobody could help him. Not me, not you.”

“Oh, Reverdy!” Loss tears through me like a forest fire. I miss him. I miss him! “What got him?”

“He kind of got himself,” Lark says heavily. “But who really nailed him was fucking Azeath. Azeath followed him and logged the whole deal and got the Directors involved and they nailed him. It was so fast!”

“Nailed him? You make it sound like he was…” I don’t finish.

“Well, he was. They got him for just cause. I’m only a geek dropout, but I know stupid when I see it. Rev was, like, doing his Precious thing? And Az…”

“Oh, Azeath. Azeath’s a…” Yes I am angry. “He was doing his what? What Precious thing?”

Accidentally, Lark looks straight at me. His eyes are blue! “You mean he never told you about Precious?”

“No.” I feel—not betrayed, exactly, just different. It is as if I’ve lost him twice. “I thought he told me everything. He does!”

“Nobody does. On StElene, nobody tells everything. It’s OK,” Lark adds hurriedly, to make me feel better. “It’s no big thing. Just this, like, game Reverdy used to play?”

He lays it out for me then, the illegal second character Reverdy used to humiliate outsiders who mistook StElene for a sexual smorgasbord. “So that’s one thing they got him for, the illegal second, but that isn’t the only thing they got him for. He was…”

I’m quick. “Playing a game.” Reverdy, with his saturnine grin, his darkly beautiful declarations of love, Tom and I have lived inside each other’s heads for so long that the vacancy is killing me.

“Reverdy, he got this player in the Precious Den, he hadn’t bothered to sweep the place, you know, to be sure nobody saw what he was up to and nobody came in? So he didn’t know Azeath had sneaked in there, much less that he was logging the whole fucking scene. Used it to kill him, chapter and verse. He’s @erased. Look,” Lark says. “I called his house. I can’t get him on the phone.”

“No!” As if to drown out the news I replay our last moments, Reverdy’s and mine—Reverdy, who knows me better than Charlie ever could and, yes, loves me more!

“Yup.”

Loves me and phones Lark RL instead of me. It’s like discovering an infidelity. My lover doesn’t give me a clue where he goes when he leaves StElene. He lets himself be @erased without even trying to warn me it was coming, or explain. Erased. I say defensively, “So what if he plays a few games? What’s StElene about if it isn’t about games? How many other people play jokes on guests and newbies and, OK, on us?”

“Yeah well,” Lark says. “That’s the problem. Like, who he was playing it on. You know, the, like, victim, that filed the complaint and got Reverdy whacked?”

“Some idiot complained?”

“Bigtime. Az put him up to it.”

“Azeath. Azeath would.”

“Rev always said he could tell a dirty old man when he met one? Well this time he made a huge mistake. Turns out his Precious was pretend doing the nasty with…”

“What, Lark. What?”

Lark coughs. “OK, he scared the crap out of some stupid twelve-year-old kid whose folks let him stay up too late. And the dad is a lawyer. One flame and the dad is on the phone with the corporation. Threatening to sue.”

“But. Precious. Nobody knew Precious was Reverdy.” I give him a sharp look. “Except you.”

“Yeah right,” Lark says bitterly. “Do you really think I would … Face it. The people who find out about these things, that would only be the people that, like, Reverdy wants them to know.” His tone makes it clear that he too feels betrayed. “Reverdy knew Azeath was out to get him, no question.”

“He should have been careful!”

“No.” Lark shakes his head. “It’s like, you want to commit suicide but you want somebody else to come in and do the job.”

“Suicide!” I groan. “Oh!” Reverdy is gone. Vanished from my life. We are in my kitchen discussing a virtual loss, and it turns out to be more profound than any I’ve felt RL since Daddy. Intolerable.

“He knew what he was doing,” Lark says. “He blew his cover with Azeath right before Precious led the Guest off to her lair.”

I dodge this point. I am studying Lark, who’s spoken to my virtual lover IRL, who knows where he lives. Does he really know where Reverdy lives? “He wouldn’t throw it all away.”

“But he did. Like he was asking for it.”

“Lark.” I am swallowing hard. My throat is so dry that I can hear my lungs squeak. “You’ve talked to him since it happened?”

“No.” We move into the next phase. “He’s not taking calls.”

“Email. We could mail him! He’s mailed you!”

“Forget it. No. I’m worried as hell about him.”

“Me too.” I am moving carefully, constructing something I can work with. The next thing I say is equally true; Lark’s color is bad, he’s like a complex mechanism chattering toward implosion. “And I’m worried about you.”

“I’ll be OK,” Lark says, but he’s gulping air. “Just as soon as I … As soon as Rev helps me figure out what to … Oh Zan. If I could only talk to him!”

“Yes! If only I…” So I’m not enough for Lark, the poor kid needs Reverdy as much as I do. Part of me is drifting out the door, as if I can fly into the ether as swiftly as I do on StElene, @finding him and @being in the physical space where Tom lives, RL. But the faculties I have on StElene don’t travel. We’re earthbound, stuck in the realm of planes, trains and automobiles. This is how quickly a plan forms, how fast a professional woman in her right mind can construct a farewell note in her head, and how this woman, who is married IRL, can make plans with her gawky visitor, who is her best friend in the world next to Reverdy. This is how a person can make a life-changing decision in less time than it takes to log on in the realm of the imagination. “If only we could talk to him.”

What I’m planning is wrong but when I see Lark’s face brighten as he divines where this is going, I think we are doing the right thing after all. This feels so good it can’t be bad. After all these months of subterfuge I’ll come clean with Charlie and be done with this. What I really mean is that I love Tom Dearden now more than I love my life and I can not make the leap in reason from there. I can’t know what Tom will say or what we’ll do the first time we see each other, I only know that I have to find out. I am proceeding on hope. Unless it’s on faith.

Of course we try to phone. It shakes me when the voice on the answering machine—“We can’t take your call right now but leave your number…”—turns out to be a woman’s voice. Reverdy’s married, yeah, but I know all about cold, vindictive Louise. And if the voice on the machine sounds light, almost sweet, well, I know better. Tom’s told me what it’s really like. At the beep I hand the phone to Lark, mouthing: “Message?”

He shakes his head.

My heart shudders. I enter Phase Two. I mouth the words, “Surprise him?”

“Yes! Let’s go.”

“OK.” Gently, I disconnect. “Where does he live?”

Lark still won’t look at me but his voice is steady. “It’s pretty far. Zan, I can’t use Dad’s plastic again, I almost got busted charging the ticket to get here, and I—I’m pretty broke.” The face-to-face encounter is too much. He’s shaking like a badly made model in a windstorm.

“Lark, shhshh. Don’t. You came all this way to tell me what happened, it’s the least I can do. I’ll put both plane tickets on my card. I’ll go anywhere to help Tom but oh Lark, I don’t know where he is!”

Then Lark pulls out a third piece of paper—folded and refolded and re-refolded, fingered to a high gloss like a pious old woman’s holy card. This is a snailmail from Tom Dearden—an old fashioned letter in an envelope with a first-class stamp. It is typed. No letterhead, no pen changes, but it is signed. “I got a letter.”

For the first time I see Tom’s handwriting—bold strokes in a black pen. The first outward and physical sign that the man I am in love with really exists outside my mind. I am liquid with excitement. Tom. Everything fuses and becomes real. “Let’s go to him.”

“When?”

This is terrifying. Love comes true. No. It’s been true. It’s becoming real. I proceed cautiously. “You know where?”

He is fishing in his back pocket. “It’s on the envelope. I had it right. Oh never mind, I memorized it.”

It’s important to be matter-of-fact. “Charlie has the car. We’ll have to cab to the airport.” After all these days of being strung out, I am finally on the move. Testing, I ask Lark, “Are you OK with planes?”

Sweet. Lark’s smile, now that it comes, is delirious, as careless as a baby’s. He looks improved. Stronger. Better. I have a plan. “I got here, didn’t I?”

“You’re not just saying that, right? You’re sure?”

My gosh he is almost looking at me. His head comes up and he is fixed on something I can’t see. He says, too loud, “I always wanted to see Alaska.”

“Alaska!”

“Alaska. Didn’t you know?”

No, I didn’t. I didn’t know, and he told Lark and that hurts. It’s hard.

Writing the note is even harder.

CHARLIE, I LOVE YOU. I LOVE HIM BETTER. FORGIVE ME.

How can I leave Charlie a note like that? He doesn’t even know there is a Reverdy in my life. How can I tell the man she’s married to that Tom Dearden, whom I’ve never seen RL, Tom Dearden and I are desperately in love?

I tear up the note and start over.

CHARLIE, SOMETHING IMPORTANT I HAVE TO DO. I’LL BE BACK.

Covering my bets, I add, even as I go out looking for Tom Dearden—no, Reverdy—no, Tom. I add because I really do still care about Charlie,

PLEASE UNDERSTAND.

thirty

FLORENCE AND VINNIE

Motel room, looking about the way you think it would, Florence Vito Watson in the shower, washing Vinnie Fuller out of the folds and creases in her—only an English teacher would say it, her too, too solid flesh, and thinking at least the sex is good; clearly they both needed it but this is nothing like the love Mireya and Azeath make on StElene; it’s nothing like the love Mireya made with Reverdy in the palmy days, and in the lexicon of push and shove Mireya/Florence wishes she had kept this one in her gauzy boudoir on StElene because sex is sex and it looks different when you get too close. On StElene it is sex in the abstract and bizarrely exalted, but this! This is definitely not anything you’d ever want to take home or come home to, but now to her surprise this guy Vinnie Fuller is in the shower with her and that’s OK except he sinks sharp teeth into her shoulder and she digs an elbow into his ribs and when they both crackle with the pain that he mistakes for ecstasy he shouts, “We did it! Fucking Reverdy is wiped off the face of StElene.”

“He’s gone,” she says with her heart breaking. “And we did it.” She can’t believe she will never see Reverdy again.

“We did,” Vinnie says, soaping his hairy belly, white and round where his legs are white and scrawny, whereas Azeath’s description was so perfect, so burnished, big, buff body with every muscle outlined; Vinnie is gurgling … “You and me.”

“You,” she sobs. “And me.” Even the Dak Bungalow is gone.

Vinnie says cleverly, “So if we did it, how come I don’t feel better?”

Automatically Florence says what she would have typed, “You want me to make you feel better? Just wait till I wash my hair,” but her heart hurts. If we did it, how come I feel so bad? A part of her life is over; her marriage to Harry Watson is over, so is her long love affair with Reverdy. She has to go back to StElene—loves/hates him, can’t live without it—but as soon as she gets out of here she’s done with Azeath, breaking up in the fluidity of conceptual space is hard to have over and done with, but she will manage it. Still she and this Vinnie person have to get through the rest of this encounter so she can proceed. Afterward she’ll lie on the bed and wait for him to fall asleep. Then she can get dressed and go.

He says, “But when we fuck it’s gotta be perfect.”

She’s not too good at dissembling; all she can manage is “Mmm.”

As it turns out, Vinnie is in the grip of a bright idea. “It’s OK, I know how to make it perfect. I know what we’ll do.”

Uneasy, Florence says, “It’s already perfect. Look at us! We’re here.” Disappointment drives her voice into the cellar. “IRL.”

“Hell no it isn’t perfect. We have to find the bastard.” He lathers Florence roughly and rinses her and steps out of the shower, waiting for her to follow. Clearly he’s ready for another round, when all she wants is to get this over with. He goes on talking in that reedy, nasal voice so unlike anything she imagined for him. “You know how to find him and you’re going to help me find him,” Vinnie says.

She stiffens. Rigid, she lets the water beat down on her head.

“And then, oh boy count your blessings baby, it’s going to be perfect.” The voice is reedy but the tone is pure Azeath, all bluster and bile. “It’ll be pretty near perfect when the bastard sees it’s us that came to get him, and better than perfect when he figures out what we are doing.”

Alarmed, she tries, “We don’t need anything more. We’re perfect now.”

“Bullshit.” Vinnie’s voice hardens. “You’ve got this guy’s site information, you already told me, so don’t try and claim you didn’t because I know. And I know that isn’t all you know, Florence, so after we get to where he is we’ll just.” A mass of tangled synapses, he regroups, wheedling. “I don’t have to tell you what I want baby because I know you want it too…”

Her face opens under the steaming shower in a suppressed scream. She wants to turn off the water but her hands won’t obey her. “Vinnie, I.”

“Us together forever baby, right? And perfect.” His next words freeze her solid. “It’ll be perfect when we fuck on his grave.”

thirty-one

JENNY

It’s as if Lark and I have spun through several lifetimes just getting where we are going.

As soon as the airport taxi cleared town and headed into the low marsh country that lies south of Brevert, I said goodbye to all that. And was not sorry; I am leaving my old life behind. Riding along under the arches of liveoaks, with Spanish moss hanging down like mummies’ wrappings, I knew it was time. When we hit the last long causeway into Savannah the marsh started slipping past at great speeds, spooling past the windows like a background process shot in a movie about Jenny, going away. Then the cab driver let us out at the airport, Lark came alive and we began to talk. We sat together eating frozen yogurt in the Savannah airport, so focused on talking that I lost time and boarded the plane without noticing. We sat together eating airport nacho plates and Buffalo wings in Atlanta and Chicago and Minneapolis, dry-mouthed and short on sleep because air travel in America may be as fast as any once the planes take off, but the hours between connections are weighted with delays. This is nothing like travel on StElene.

Now Lark and I are in Seattle, waiting for our last plane. We are in the departure lounge, planted like rocks in a stream of travelers. We’ve been together for so long now that we’re like near relations, spiritually joined at the hip. In the hours we’ve been on the road we’ve told each other everything and now we are bonded by all that talk and by what we think we’re doing. The right thing. We’re doing the right thing.

We’re going to Reverdy. Everything in me is rushing ahead to the moment. He needs me. This isn’t only in the kingdom of imagination. I don’t just imagine he needs me. I know!

Like all committed players who meet outside the game, Lark and I talk about everything in the world, knowing that in the end we will talk about the game. The locations and characters are as real to Lark and me as we are to each other sitting here, welded to molded plastic seats under this unremitting fluorescent glare. We make our own private space in spite of heavy sighs and footsteps pounding along the concourse behind us, in spite of CNN on the ubiquitous area TVs and the blue tweed industrial carpeting that spreads at our feet like what passes for grass in some ugly future we don’t want to think about. I say to Lark, “You seem to be OK with people after all.”

“These aren’t real people,” he says.

I grin. “It’s as real as it gets.”

“RL.” Lark says mildly, “This is the most people I’ve been around since I got sick.”

“You’re not sick any more.” I reach for his hand, but it’s too soon. Keep him strong so we can help Reverdy, I think, not knowing what that means. I say, “Look. You made it this far.”

“It cost me.”

“Yeah, but you made it. I know a lot of sick people, Lark. You’re not give-up-and-let-it-wash-over-you sick.”

“Yeah I am,” he says almost easily, “but I’m getting used to it. It’s like when you get trapped in the hospital and they keep sticking things in you and turning you upside down and stuff? After a while, you stop caring who looks.”

I laugh. “That sounds like better.” I can work with this. Get him back into college, fix his life. It’s nice, in a time when I’m sick with worry and crazy in love, to see my friend Lark hand himself over to me. He follows my lead with a sweet, bland look of undiscriminating approval. It is as if for the purposes of this trip, at least, he has relaxed into trust.

“You wish.”

“Not to worry. I’ll take care of you.” Better. I know I can take care of him. All the best parts of me are running after Reverdy, but IRL I can still cope. I’m even good at it; he’s in better shape than he was when we started out. I can tell from the easy way he sits in the plastic seat, mainlining chocolate. I can tell from the way he eats without worrying about what eating looks like to the people he’s usually convinced are watching him. The way he lifts his head and looks around. For now, he’s become my child. Closer, at least, than Charlie’s kids, and as for any of my own? I can’t go there right now. I can’t afford to go there. My heart stops at Lark.

Then he reminds me who we really are. “When was the last time you connected?”

“Myrtle Beach, just five minutes. My God, it’s been two days.”

“Some airports have these post-thingys where you can connect?”

“Email kiosks.” I don’t mean to sigh. “Not this airport. I looked.”

Lark shrugs. “I guess we’re in StElene detox.”

“You could call it that.” No surprise. We are both twitchy because we haven’t connected in days. Maybe it really is a physical addiction, but there’s more. My friend Lark says he’s more at home in electronic space than he is inside the trap of his body, in this life. Wait. So am I.

He nudges. “Think we’ll get used to it?”

“Too soon to tell.”

Then Lark says, “I talked to StBrêve right before I left for your house. I told him how pissed I was over what they did to Reverdy. They erased him without a public hearing!” He is in mourning. “They gave the gazebo to Azeath.”

“That’s terrible!” I say irrationally, “They ought to be in jail. And Azeath. He ought to be in jail.”

“Oh, Azeath. Azeath’s a fuck.”

“He does what Mireya tells him to.”

“Or not. StBrêve wouldn’t even come down to the lobby to tell me what they did to Rev. He made me come up to the top of the hotel, into the boardroom, like I was on trial or something, when they’re the ones that did wrong.”

“Mireya.” I am bitter for more than one reason—those phone calls to Charlie, that made him take me on the road. “Mireya started it.”

“Whoever,” Lark says. “Anyway, StBrêve sat me down in the big mahogany chair at the far end of the big mahogany table with the lions’ feet? And do you know what he said? He said they @erased my best friend for the good of the fucking community.”

“To keep their name out of the papers, you mean.”

“Not exactly. Maybe. Partly, but there was more. He said they had to do it.”

“They didn’t have to do it.”

“He made them do it.”

“Azeath?”

“No, Azeath didn’t make them do it.” Lark sighs. “Reverdy did.”

I am shaking my head like a fresh war widow. “But they didn’t have to do it.”

“StBrêve said Reverdy was a negative presence. Divisive.”

“No. This is about their image. Reverdy was onto them and they were afraid.”

“He said Reverdy was poisoning the community.”

“That’s a lie!” Pain makes me extraordinarily bitter. “They knew he was onto their game.”

“You want to know something wild?” Lark gives me a sweet, bemused look. “I’m not sure they have a game. Like, this whole weird, complicated thing you do and I do, that thousands of us do and care so much about? This island of ours, all of us with our own special places, plus enough room for the stuff underground and in the volcano and on the grounds? This whole wild society takes up less than a gig in a computer in some back room in the Suntum home office. We’re all in a box stuck under a desk somewhere!”

“It’s much, much bigger than that,” I say.

Then he says, “Like, are any outsiders really accessing us?”

But I’m intent on my own track. No. I’m speeding along Reverdy’s track, on rails waxed with paranoia. “If they aren’t using us, they will. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Like, does anybody really care what we do?”

“You bet they care! There’s profit in it and Reverdy knew it, so they had to erase him before he could blow the whistle. He was onto their game.… Whatever it was.”

“Is. If there is a game.”

“Lark!”

He sees where I need us to be going. “StBrêve did say they’d do anything to protect it.”

“The game?”

“The corporation.”

“So they did set him up. Murdered him!”

“If you want to call it that.” Licking chocolate off his fingers, Lark says pensively, “Unless it’s suicide.”

“Don’t even joke. It’s an ugly word.”

Lark is looking at me now, here in the middle of the airport lounge with the physical world flowing by on either side, my rickety, pathologically shy friend is looking straight at me. His eyes drop into my consciousness like perfect stones. Anchoring me. “If you want to know the truth, Zan, it’s got me scared. Reverdy bails without a fight. Doesn’t tell me. Won’t mail. Doesn’t return calls. What’s happening to him?”

“Nothing. He’s fine and he’ll be back!”

Lark groans. “It’s like he’s over. Done.”

“No! As soon as we find him, he’ll…” The rest of the sentence eludes me. Our flight has been called. “And we’ll be fine.”

Lark stands. He touches my arm! His expression tells me he’s not so sure. For the first time he doesn’t flinch when I move toward him; we lock for a minute in a hug. Grimacing, he mouths but does not say: I hope so.

“We will. We’ll be OK.” And with my eyes gritty from lack of sleep and my hands sticky from travel, paddling through this industrial wasteland, I am stricken quite unexpectedly right here at the gate to our last departure lounge. What I feel is sudden joy. When we get off this plane we will be in Alaska. We can rent a car and drive to the city where Tom Dearden lives. We’ll go to the address Lark has committed to memory and I will see Tom, and if I wonder why, when he loves me so much, he hasn’t tried to come for me, I can’t afford to consider the implications. For the first time since we fell in love, Reverdy and I—no, Tom Dearden and I are going to meet. Blood and bone. Flesh and flesh. Him, me.

What he said that keeps me going: “We’ll be together soon!”

thirty-two

FLORENCE/VINNIE

I don’t feel good. It’s been two hours. After ten years in the penitentiary at Wardville Vinnie Fuller may know how to beat a secret out of anybody but he won’t get this secret out of her. He won’t get anything out of this squat, stubborn, embattled woman in this squalid roadside motel on this particular night in her miserable physical life. What Vinnie doesn’t know about Florence Vito Watson is how strong she is, deep down. Or how much in love.

If Vinnie has other ways of finding Tom Dearden, whose right name he does not yet know; if he is going to devote the rest of his life to hunting his enemy down, Florence will die without knowing it. She is in the act of defending Reverdy to the death.

There is blood in the room. She hears ugly noises—threats and a guttural song of pain. Is that coming out of me? Other things are happening. Vinnie is yelling and she … Mireya goes back inside her head, where it’s safe. She won’t see or hear the ugly, struggling physical avatars for the ideal Mireya or Azeath in the ugly sounds they make RL.

On StElene, Mireya is protecting her lover, and whatever Florence Vito Watson is outside the box, in her heart, the Amazon princess Mireya is strong. Florence is wearing Mireya now, she has put on her idealized and powerful virtual persona and locked it around her like armor. Nothing can hurt her now.

“Tell me, bitch!” Thwack.

Never mind what this violent man she thought she knew tries to do to her. Never mind how much her pathetic, baggy old body hurts; Florence is safe now, girded in Mireya, and Tom Dearden’s secrets are safe. Her real lover’s particulars IRL are written nowhere. They are locked inside her mind; she would never go into an encounter with Tom’s address IVR or IRL written on a piece of paper that just anybody could find. Not even Azeath, whom she thought she loved. Nobody’s going to locate her dearest Tom and go there. Nobody can hurt him as long as she’s alive. And if Florence dreamed that Reverdy would hear about this RL meeting with Azeath/Vinnie and be jealous and come for her, that hope has gone by. But if she’s done nothing else on this day she has done one thing, is doing it now, and in spite of the questions and the hammering, is doing it extremely well.

And if there is eternal love and there is justice, Mireya thinks as Vinnie’s fists come down and keep lifting and coming down again, the man she loves most in any world, this or the other, will know how much she loved him. She wants Reverdy—love!—she wants Reverdy and Tom Dearden both to know that Florence Vito Watson loved him so much that she protected his site information and his home phone number and his location in a cul de sac in a suburb of Fairbanks, Alaska, forever. Is protecting them with her life.

Before StElene they were nothing—sour, frumpy schoolteacher. Two-bit convict in the pen for not much. Changed, elevated by the story they have been weaving, two ordinary people are transformed. In a feat of performative utterance they have become the roles they wrote for themselves. Valiant lover. Powerful villain, fixed on revenge. They are different from what they were: someone more.

The last thing she hears is Vinnie screaming, “Wake up and fucking talk to me, you bitch. Wake up!”

But she won’t.

Maddened by frustration, Vinnie keeps beating on her until even he understands there is no point. Then he turns Florence over and starts rooting through her pockets for a scrawled phone number, list, address book, scrawled note, anything that yields what she refused to give; later he will gut the car before he remembers that he has her key-ring and that one of the keys must open the apartment in Boston where Florence Vito Watson lived in what used to be her real life. Vinnie will scour the place; he’ll turn it upside down. If he has to, he’ll turn what remains of her intelligence upside down too, shaking until the truth falls out. He’ll sweep her computer’s hard disk until he finds it. The motherfucker’s legal name! His address! After all, Vinnie has nothing but time, and now that Florence is dead, he has a place to stay. He has nothing but time.

Hatred has fast-forwarded this recently unshelled convict into a new identity. He has stopped being Azeath; he is no longer Vinnie. He is an engine of vengeance steaming toward a collision that will be realized sooner or later, he vows, even if it takes the rest of his life.

Time is not important to Vinnie Fuller. It doesn’t matter how long it takes him to finish this. He’s got as long as it takes. If he has to pursue his enemy through the archives at Suntum International he will pursue him. If he has to threaten or bribe the Directors RL he’ll find a way. He is going to find fucking Reverdy. He’ll hire detectives if that’s what it takes. He is going to crack Reverdy’s site information and find out where the bastard sits when he logs on. Vinnie is going to hunt him down; he will go wherever the pursuit takes him.

Like the Frankensteins, baron and creation, master and monster, they will finally collide. Vinnie Fuller and Reverdy are going to fight if it takes the rest of Vinnie’s life to bring him down. He will engage the bastard and grapple him up and over the last horizon if he has to, Godzilla and Rodan, enemies to the end of the earth.

thirty-three

ALASKA

My love is everything I think he is. Then why am I so scared? Partly, it’s being this close to something I never knew I always wanted, and the rest? Too soon to tell.

We are flying into Fairbanks, Alaska. Making it this far has cost Lark and me. He’s twitching in and out of sleep while I drift in limbo, stretched taut between Charlie’s house on Church Street and here, and the Dak Bungalow on StElene. I can’t see it or touch it but the lost Dak Bungalow is more real to me right now than anything on Church Street or in this plane. When I logged on and found the bungalow and all the things Reverdy and I built together and cared so much about had vanished, @erased by the Directors, I was torn in two. Part of my life had ceased to exist. Imagine walking into the ruins of a burned-out city where everybody you care about has died.

Now I am flying into Fairbanks, Alaska, to put myself together again, but oh. What’s going to happen next? What if he’s nothing like I think? Impossible. I know what he’s like. Typing to each other over months, Tom Dearden and I have stripped each other to the soul. He let me see right into him, and he saw me. We know and love each other to the bone.

But what if, I can’t stop thinking, what if? What if he isn’t what I think? What if I find not Reverdy but one of those unseen typists we used to make private jokes about, some twisted soul typing from an institution, what if he turns out to be hideous or bizarrely transgendered, a woman waiting, where I thought I was in love with a man. Worse, what if my glorious partner is only the archetypical fat geek in a shrunken T-shirt, the post-millennial flip on Cyrano? Oh God, what if he’s only a randy teenager who’s duped me over time?

Impossible. In the intimacy of space, love is intuitive. Quick. And sure. We know things about each other without having to be told.

He needs me now. I know this without having to be told.

I am flying in to rescue my lover from his life. Tom wants me but he’s held in place by decency, won’t walk out on Louise, won’t take another man’s wife … All I have to do is tell him that I’ve left Charlie for good. When he sees me come in that door … Grief rolls into me. For good! What I did when I left Brevert without telling Charlie was burn my bridges. I’m burning them now. So what if I’m a little scared?

We’ll be together soon enough. I see us blazing into eternity, like matched stars.

Imagine our first meeting. I can’t! Zan hasn’t even seen a photo; there are no sense memories between us, nothing to go on but the word portraits we’ve typed—who we are to each other on StElene. This is crazy! No. It’s wonderful.

Linked souls. We will know each other at once.

As the plane circles for the descent, I scour the grid of dismal streets and Monopoly-board houses that crosshatch the map of Fairbanks. It looks so bleak! If I stare hard enough, I think, I can home in on Tom Dearden’s house, page reverdy I’m here! He’ll hear. No, he’ll divine—the man will know without being told that I’m circling overhead. I’ll look down and because it is fated, Tom’s front door will smash open and he’ll come running out. I’ll see him standing in the street below me with his arms spread and his mouth wide. “A miracle,” I say recklessly, wondering whether this is what Tom means when he talks about convergence. We’ll know each other on sight.

In the seat next to me, Lark stirs but does not wake.

It helps to say his name. “Tom? Tom.” But even though we come in low over a housing development, coasting this close to the ground, no front doors pop open. Nobody comes out. I can’t even be sure that this distorted checkerboard is part of the right development or even the right neighborhood. And there is no sign of Tom.

Anxiety rolls in like a medieval war machine. What if something’s happened to him? What if he was in an accident, or worse. What if he’s trapped inside the house? The first fear is crazy; the second is logical. My Tom has angered the Directors of a major corporation here. They’ve betrayed him and the only way he can get back at them is to go public. Suntum’s a big corporation, oh God, they’re bound to have a security arm. What if the officers at Suntum have put him under house arrest? He could be locked in there, angry and trapped. Like Achilles, sulking in his tent. Reverdy loves StElene so much, he had such dreams!

“Oh, Tom!” I’m flying in to see a man who pinned his hopes on an ideal society, and now look. Forget democracy, my love. Come away with me. But he won’t. He’ll want me to stay and fight. I’ll get him a lawyer. Then we’ll show them all right, I know a few things about using the press. American Civil Liberties Union. Electronic Frontier Foundation. TV news. Louise will see how much we love each other and she’ll go. We can stand back to back, fighting the Suntum Corporation to the Supreme Court.

The plane touches down, bounces and rackets to a stop. Lark jerks to attention. “Well,” he says in a thin voice. “This is it.”

“Yes!”

Then we’re on the ground, half-sick and unsteady from sitting too long. I totter out to rent a car. “Well,” I say.

We aren’t ready; we are. Being this close has silenced Lark; it’s as if God saw him smiling and filled his mouth with cement.

Never mind. It’s hard enough here, just doing the right things to get us moving. I don’t have the energy to respond. I wonder what exactly we’re doing in this unfamiliar landscape, what we’re going to do when we get to the house. “Should we phone ahead?”

Lark grimaces.

“Yes? No?”

He mouths, but no sound comes out. “I’m not supposed to give out the number.”

A question hangs between us. What if we call and he tells us not to come? I nod. “Maybe better not.”

Lark looks relieved.

I am not exactly praying, but I am: Oh please, let me get this right.

Lark pulls the area map supplied by Avis out of the dashboard. He’s turning it this way, that way, as if by squinting he can match coordinates with the printed email Tom sent. “Oh God,” he says at last. He sounds like the Tin Woodman, unrusting. “Alaska! We’re really here.”

“Yeah. We’re here.”

Lark is staring out at the tarmac with a wild, disconnected look. The poor kid is trying; he’s trying to be cool but it’s clear that the pressure is getting to him. His—OK, his idol, Reverdy, in this city, so near. No wonder his voice quavers. “Too bad we don’t have one of those cool programs with the area map and a blip to track the car.”

“Too bad we don’t have the laptop to run it on.”

“Or the modem.” He wants to joke, but we both know it isn’t funny. “We could log on.”

“Just one more hit before I go cold turkey.” My voice shakes. We are so close. Resolution plows into me and I blurt, “I’m through with logging on.”

“As if!” We try to laugh.

Lark falls silent. It’s as if a boulder has dropped out of the sky and smashed him flat. I want him to keep talking while I drive, I want him to say something, anything, to take my mind off what we’re about to do. I need background music for this progress to the connector that takes us into a city I never dreamed I’d need to know.

I try, “It’s cold!”

Spring hasn’t found this place. It looks like upper New York State in November. Bare and cold. Blinking like an astronaut walking out on a new planet, I wind along the road out of the airport and find my way into the raw landscape. It’s beautiful but blasted looking, as if a firestorm came through, taking everything that might soften the outlines, and then moved out. Unhospitable. No wonder Tom wanted to move to StElene. This place is stranger than Mars. Next to me on the front seat, Lark is gnawing his knuckles.

Oh God, what am I doing here?

Please tell me what to do, make something happen. At least make Lark talk to me.

But he doesn’t. Unless he can’t. When Lark finally does get his speech back it’s to ask, “D’you think he’ll be glad to see us?”

“Of course he will!”

“I hope.”

“He has to be. After all, we came to help.” My mind won’t stop fast-forwarding to our meeting, never mind that I can’t see us, I don’t need to. I am fueled by everything Tom ever said to me and everything I hope to say to him. Reverdy and Zan. “He’s waiting for us. Right, Lark?”

“Right.” Lark lapses into expectations of his own.

He knows. He knows! I catch a sudden, wild glimpse of us together. Tom will see me from the upstairs window. Zan! He’ll rush downstairs and come running out and we’ll know each other at once. We’ll hug right there in the street in front of Lark and Louise and everybody, we will fuse like two parts of the same person, blood and bone. When he and I bury ourselves in each other we won’t care who sees, I’ll feel his bulk, I can absorb his distinctive smell, and then …

My imagination stops short. I’ve never seen or felt or touched Tom Dearden RL. What fills my senses now is the familiar Charlie smell, his heartbeat, the sweet drone of our lost all-night conversations. The rush of sensation leaves my throat tight. Every cord in my body is twanging. It’s as though I’ve been brought down in midflight by a tripwire, or smashed into an electrified fence.

Lark’s voice filters in: “Are you all right?”

“Who, me? I’m fine.” I catch a glimpse in the rearview mirror. No I’m not fine. I look like a wraith in a windstorm, and Lark? Lark is looking a little glassy himself.

Lark strangles. “We’re here.”

It’s too soon. “My God.”

I’ve found the house. We are in front of his house. Tom’s house. It looks so ordinary! Split level development ranch model with aluminum siding in a depressing gray, beyond ordinary, with a mean little second-floor window, how little, how squalid, how not Tom! There are crumpled paper plates and napkins strewn on the bare, muddy front lawn and drooping balloons still tied to the mailbox—must have been a party here—and inside somewhere, Reverdy, no. Tom.

The trouble is, my lover is bold, reckless and expansive, he moves through space like a man from a much bigger …

Lark’s voice goes flat. “This can’t be it.”

“But it is.” Tom never told me what the room looked like where he was typing. In the absence of information my mind supplied the details. I imagined it as. Well. More.

“It’s kind of small.”

We could be talking in the thin air at the top of Independence Pass, eleven thousand feet above the world. Our voices are that strained. We are gasping for breath. “Yeah.” My hands on the wheel look like they belong to somebody else. The house looks like it belongs to somebody else. The front door does not smash open. Nobody comes out. Too much time goes by.

The thin stream of air coming out of Lark finally turns into speech. “What are we going to do?”

“Go in.”

This is so terrifying that neither of us moves.

After a while I say, “Do you want to or should I?” Is there somebody in the upstairs front room, moving behind the curtains? I don’t know. My heart’s been running ahead of me for all these hours and now it threatens to stop. Everything is still. Especially Lark.

I wait. Lark and I sit for a very long time. It’s hard to know what day it is but it’s near dusk, at least in this continuum. The congested suburban block the house sits on is ugly, banal, flat, but from here I can see mountains; beyond the ridge, the sky is wonderfully soft. In the street ahead there are children playing. Somebody else’s? Tom’s? I’m afraid to get out of the car; I want to get out of the car and hug them all. I want Tom’s children to come running to me and pull me into the house, pretty, not like our mother, you know about our mother, she’s … But I don’t know about Louise, I only know what Tom says about Louise. I want Tom Dearden to come out of his goddamn house and end this; I want him to come rushing out of the house with Louise hard behind, begging him to stop. I want him to come straight to me, I want him to wrench open the car door and pull me out of the car and hug me and never stop. I want him to hug me so tight that Louise knows and the children know and the world knows. I want him to do it right here in front of them all.

On StElene, I could teleport. I could be with him instantly. @join reverdy. Here I am fixed in time, rooted in physical space. I want to begin. I’m afraid to begin. “Lark?”

Lark whispers, “You go. I can’t.”

“Oh, sweetie.” We are riveted by a thud. A child’s ball has hit the roof of the rented Hyundai. Helplessly, I watch it roll down the windshield and dribble off the side of the hood. Then because there is no help for it, I unbuckle and get out. I feel naked, standing out here on the walk in suburban Fairbanks, Alaska. Gone; I shudder. What if we’ve come all this way and he’s gone? But I know better. The balloons on the mailbox bob brightly; they’re today’s. I can see movement inside the house. A figure passes the standard plate glass window, headed for the front door. I hear my own bootheels. Click. Click. Click.

I don’t even have to knock. A woman opens it and comes out, easy in jeans and a denim shirt open at the throat. This must be Louise. Where is my voice?

Louise Dearden’s voice is low, pleasant, modulated. “Excuse me. I couldn’t help seeing the car. Are you in trouble? Is there something I can do for you?”

Oh, God, she doesn’t look anything like he said.

“Mrs. Dearden?” A part of me goes scurrying after the hope that this lovely woman is somebody else. It can’t be Louise Dearden, it has to be Reverdy’s sister, his daughter from a first marriage. Anybody but his wife. There is no way that this good-looking woman with the pleasantly expectant smile can be the terrible Louise. Tom’s unlovable wife is plain and spiteful. He’s told me so. This can’t be Louise, the real Louise has got to be lurking somewhere behind that front door, crouched to spring.

Unless that part is a lie.

“Yes, I’m Louise Dearden.”

Oh God, please don’t smile, Louise. Please don’t smile at me. “I. Ah. I’m. I came to see Tom.”

“Oh!” Oddly, this pretty woman is blushing. I’ve caught her unprepared. “I’m afraid he isn’t … we were just.”

She doesn’t have to explain; it’s clear from the glow in Louise Dearden’s face, in the flush that begins in the neck of her open shirt and spreads up her throat that she and the man inside the house have just left off making love. Later, when there’s time, I’ll wonder just exactly what was wrong with me that I don’t turn and go right then. What flaw keeps me standing there at Tom’s front door like a bull at the knacker’s waiting for the mallet, weaving with my head bowed because I know I’m beaten but I’m too weak to lie down?

I cough apologetically. “I’ve come a long way. I need to see him.”

“See him?” Louise looks surprised. “Are you from the history project? If you’re from the history project, you already know…”

God, this is so humbling. “I’m sorry? Mrs. Dearden, I think he’ll see me, we’re both part of this … I…”

“If you’re from the project, you already know he doesn’t see people.”

“I just need to know if he’s all right!” I’m like a beggar with my hat in my hands, craning to see past Louise as if all I have to do is see Tom, or let him see me, and we can get through this. Our lives together will begin. “I’ve come a long way.”

“I’m sorry,” Louise says again. Like a nurse calming a patient, she puts a hand on my arm. “He isn’t seeing people.”

It crosses my mind that he can’t. But no. It would kill me. “I can come back.” Please let me come back.

“You don’t understand. He isn’t seeing people,” Louise says.

“But this is different. I’ve come so far!” I guess it’s exhaustion; I don’t falter exactly, I just go off balance, all of a sudden, and Louise’s face softens.

“I’m sorry.” Whatever Tom Dearden is, she is protecting him.

“Please!”

“If you know Tom at all you ought to know.…” It’s as if she’s breaking the news of a recent death. “He just doesn’t.”

“Why not, why not?” This is not the worst thing. Nor is Louise Dearden’s invitation to come in for tea the worst thing, even though I know I can’t bear to be in the same house with Tom and not touch him. Nor will having to sit in that pleasant, banal living room trying too hard not to cry be the worst thing. The worst thing will come later.

His wife is waiting with that nice smile. “Please.”

I follow her into his house.

thirty-four

I’m in his house, This can’t be his house, I think as Louise goes for a tray. Too ordinary, too small. There are no traces of my lover in this room: off-white Kmart curtains, green sectional, white birch coffee table, painted tole lamp, plastic flowers, plaque. Wrong. These can’t be his things.

“If you’re not from Tom’s history project,” Louise says, returning with the tea, “is it about that silly game of his?”

He can’t be here. If he’s here he’ll hear me. He’ll come down. I raise my voice, in case. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Dearden, there isn’t any game. My name is Jenny. Jenny Wilder.”

“That game.” She shakes her head. “Oh look, I’m so sorry!”

“What?”

She says sadly, “And you came all this way.”

There is a chance he doesn’t know I’m here or he knows somebody’s here but can’t guess it’s me. “Jenny,” I say louder. “Jenny Wilder.” And I think I hear movement overhead; a stir as if someone big has come out into the hall and is waiting just out of sight, leaning over the rail at the head of the stairs. Reverdy? Tom? In a second our spirits will fly out of our bodies and meet midway and as if it is fated, fuse.

“You don’t have to shout. Really. Tom knows you’re here.”

Nothing happens.

She reaches for my hands and as Zan jerks them away she sighs. “Oh dear, it really is about that game.”

“This isn’t a game!”

“I understand,” Louise says understandingly (Tom: she doesn’t understand me, she never understood me) when it’s clear she can’t possibly understand. “I just wonder if you understand Tom.”

“Oh, Tom.” Pain drives me to my feet. Tom. If I can only see him, and explain. “Tom! It isn’t a game!” Am I shouting, does he hear? Will the sound of my voice bring him or is he waiting for me to shoulder Louise aside and run upstairs to him? “It’s everything,” I say, making a lunge for the stairs. My head fills up with the sound of her voice. “Everything.”

“Oh my dear, I am so sorry.” Louise is on her feet, blocking the little hallway, prepared to protect her husband with her life.

“Get out of my way.”

“Please don’t,” she says with a sweet, sad look. She adds in his words, Reverdy’s words! “Please don’t. It isn’t real.”

But I am wild. I shove her out of the way and push on, shouting, “Well, real people get hurt!”

And I charge the stairs. At the top I hesitate, breathing hard. The air in the small, dark upstairs hallway ripples as if stirred by a recent disturbance, its texture changed by a residual whir, as if somebody has just turned and fled. Someone—Tom?—just darted into the room at the far end of the hall. The door swings shut. I throw myself against it. “Tom.” Trembling, I knock. Wild, I keep my voice light and clear so that there will be no mistaking it. “Tom, it’s Jenny. Reverdy, it’s Zan!”

Nobody answers. I hear the click as the door shuts and the distinctive final crash of the dead bolt slipping into place.

I won’t call again. I won’t put my ear to the door or shout and I certainly won’t hammer. Instead I stand in the empty hall with my breath shuddering and make myself count to a hundred before I turn to go down to confront Louise, who stands waiting discreetly at the bottom of the stairs.

Louise says, “I’m sorry.”

I say, “So am I.”

The next to worst thing comes in the seconds after I’ve thanked Louise and excused myself and blindly headed down the front walk, hoping I can figure out how to explain this to Lark. The worst thing doesn’t even come when I knuckle the tears out of my eyes and look back at the dim little second story window and see a man’s figure behind the curtains. I see a tall shape lounging against the frame. And knows he sees me, although the curtain hides his features, masking his expression. It is, of course, Reverdy-who-was. I am looking at Tom Dearden looking at me.

There is a rustle at my back. Lark has come up the walk to meet me and he stands, staring up at the house. “Oh shit,” he says. “It’s him.”

“Yes.”

He understands everything. “Oh, shit.”

So the worst thing in this passage that I’m going to play and replay for the rest of my life, replaying it for as long as I’m physically able to get up in the morning and dress myself and go out into the world and greet my grown children and their grandchildren and go through all the motions of being a three dimensional person IRL.

The worst thing is the moment when Tom Dearden—who in spite of all my passion and all my hopes has never been anything more or better than this fugitive figure at the window—when Tom acknowledges everything that has passed between us.

And waves goodbye.

thirty-five

I stumble back to the car. When I slide into the driver’s seat I turn to face Lark. For the rest of my life, I’ll owe my friend here for not asking, “What happened?” Or, worse, “What are we going to do?” And I owe him for not responding with the easy, automatic and previously coded StElene warm hug.

What we do from here on out has not been coded. It needs to be considered. We can’t log on and expect somebody else to take our minds off it or help us solve our problems; we won’t go back until we’ve confronted them. We have to solve them ourselves. Lark and I have been through a lot together; by this time we’re so close that it’s OK for Lark to keep his distance, not hug, not say the expected there-there. He is too rocky himself for there-there. He lets me know how he feels by letting me see into his eyes.

I love him for not asking, “Are you all right?”

What he does instead is say with a wry grin, “Guess we’d better activate Plan B.”

My hands are jittering on the steering wheel. “As soon as we get a Plan B.”

“I can’t go home.”

“I don’t know if I can.” I’m trying to figure out what’s best for us. I’m too wasted right now to know.

Lark and I get each other home. Better. We face what’s ahead together and get each other through. At Lark’s suggestion I book motel rooms at the airport so we can get unwrecked before we go back to our lives. It’s important. We have to put our lives back together before we can even think about what’s next. At the motel, we crash and burn. We sleep until we can’t sleep any more. Then we eat. Then we begin the long progress back to Brevert.

We don’t talk about what has just happened—we can’t. And we don’t talk about StElene. No way. And Tom Dearden? It hurts too much to talk about that now. Maybe never, I think. He’s as important to Lark as he is to me. Correction. Was to me. Stuck in Brevert, South Carolina, where I never belonged, I went into an imaginary world and rode out to what felt like happiness on a dream. Wait a minute, lady. You knew what you were doing. That wasn’t any dream. I went into a conceptual world and rode out into the wild blue on nothing more than my expectations. So what if I did? I understand now that it was never about StElene, Reverdy’s world of performative utterance where what you type is. It was about me.

But Lark and I are mending. It hurts to think about where we’ve been or what we have discovered; there’s no way we can talk about it now. Instead we start cobbling a plan. If I can get Lark back into college, at least I will have done something to make his life better, and mine? Too soon to tell.

Boarding lounge to boarding lounge, Buffalo wings to nachos to frozen yogurts, Lark and I decompress in stages. It’s like coming up from the Mindanao Deep. We have to surface slowly, to keep from getting the bends. So we talk. About everything in the world, except Topic A. We talk about the world, and about futures. About exigencies in our physical lives. About all the personal stuff I’ve left behind in Brevert. About what’s next for him.

Because there’s one thing left to do and I know it needs doing, I find the email kiosk at O’Hare and log on to collect my mail. I think I can shake off StElene but tendrils keep clinging; they trail behind me like shreds in the aftermath of a long dream. Never mind. I have a piece of unfinished business.

If I know Tom Dearden, we aren’t finished yet.

“How did I guess?” There it is. A mail for jwilder from Tom Dearden. He must have posted it seconds after he saw me run away from his house without giving me the dignity of a last-minute wait! My unseeable lover is mailing me from behind a firewall. To make his loving plea, he has chosen a protected account that delivers mail with no hint as to the location of the sender. My throat goes sour. I can axe this message unread. I can drop kick Tom Dearden into oblivion without finding out what he has to say. It’s what he deserves! But I have to finish this. In the realm of last things, I think, this is the last thing.

DEAREST ZAN, he writes in all capital letters, what’s the matter Tom, why are you shouting?

WE HAVE TO TALK. I HAVE FOUND A NEW PLACE FOR US! MEET ME THERE TOMORROW NIGHT AT TEN, YOUR TIME. I LOVE YOU, I WILL EXPLAIN.

And as if he’s secure in my love and supremely sure of his authority—as if he knows I’ll follow wherever he leads me, Tom supplies the telnet address I am supposed to type in so we can be together. Sort of.

DAKBUNGALOW.MOO.MUD.ORG 8888

LOVE ALWAYS IN ALL TIME AND ALL SPACE

REVERDY

This is what you do when it’s over. Control D. Delete. Empty your trash so you will never see it again.

How could I have gambled everything I have for this?

By the time the cab from the Savannah airport glides along the bay and turns off Front Street and into Church Street, it’s night again. Lark and I are back in the world that looked so drab compared to my life on StElene. The cab’s headlights flicker in and out of the Spanish moss and light up bits of architectural detail on the town’s big houses. I can smell the salt air coming in over the water; I can almost hear the beetles moving in the marsh.

What makes me feel both touched by grace and guilty at the same time is the certainty that Charlie will be glad to see me! I tore up the note that ended our marriage. He doesn’t know! He’ll let me in without guessing that an entire world has ignited and gone out like a torch in the short time I’ve been gone. He can’t know that I’ve survived a wild, compressed emotional lifetime since he last saw me or that it began right here, after he brought me down Front Street, only half-kidding, this is your new life.

The cab spills us on the sidewalk. I am rehearsing my first line. “Oh Charlie, I’m so glad.”

Lark and I have a tentative plan. We’ve built a story. I tell Charlie that Lark is one of my patients; he cracked up in New Orleans and I had to fly out there to help, emergency, no time to call. I stayed to talk my patient through his admissions interview at Tulane because thanks to me, he’s going back to school. At least that’s true. He is.

“I’ll help you get started, OK? Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

Lark says, “Cool.”

“I’ll tell Charlie you’re only living with us until we finish the paperwork and get your parents to agree to pay? I’ll say, ‘I’m writing a piece on computer mediated therapy.’”

Lark’s shaky but game. “Then I’ll say, ‘And I’m Exhibit A.’”

“You’ll be fine,” I repeat and he nods. I try to sound strong and confident. “And I’ll be fine.”

In time. But right now, we have this to get through. At my elbow Lark spins like a fugitive, ready to break and run for cover under the oleanders. I grab his arm to steady him. I pull him to one side of Charlie’s front walk and over the grass. We crouch in the flowerbed under the lighted front window. I put up my hand. “Wait.”

Side by side, we stand on tiptoe and look in. I feel bit like the lost sea captain who comes back from the dead to find out that the world has gone on without him. His marriage died while he was gone; there is a whole new family sitting in the room he used to dominate. I am like a survivor fresh from my desert island, dumped in a world so changed that there’s no place for me.

No. Everything looks the same. It’s me that’s changed. My husband Charlie and his children are snuggling on the sofa. Their backs are to the window. Some shift in the atmosphere makes Charlie turn and look out at the night. The light is in his eyes. He can’t see me looking in.

Lark whispers, “I can’t do this.”

“I can’t do this without you,” I hiss.

Then my amazingly smart kid friend says, “Are you sure you want to do it at all?”

“No time for that now, we’ve got to get you back on track.” I pull Lark away from the window as if rushing him out of a movie before the final credits roll. I start toward the front door. “Come on. They’re nice people, you’ll like them.”

“You hope.”

“And they’ll like you.” I say for both of us, “It’s only for a little while.”

“I know.”

“You can do anything, for a little while.”

He says again, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

I think but do not say, I’m doing it for you. “I have to do something.”

We go up the front steps. It is a measure of my uncertainty that I don’t use my key. Instead, I am poised to tap on the door. My first line? I haven’t written it. Then I look at my friend. I can’t do this to him.

No. I can’t do it to me.

The part of me that was just about to walk in that door is already grieving for whatever Charlie and I had for such a little while, but! I’ve come this far from my immersion in StElene and I’m not about to go back to being what I was. I grab Lark’s arm.

Lark says, “What. What?”

“You want to do something scary?”

“This,” Lark says. “This is scary.” He is looking at Charlie’s house.

I have nothing on me but the clothes I’m wearing and the contents of my shoulder bag—a few dollars in cash but a few thousand in plastic. “Come on,” I say. “It’s only a five-minute walk to the bus station. We’re going to New York.”

By Kit Reed

NOVELS

@expectations

J. Eden

Little Sisters of the Apocalypse

Catholic Girls

Fort Privilege

Magic Time

The Ballad of T. Rantula

Captain Grownup

Tiger Rag

Cry of the Daughter

Armed Camps

The Better Part

At War As Children

Mother Isn’t Dead She’s Only Sleeping

COLLECTIONS

Seven for the Apocalypse

Weird Women, Wired Women

The Revenge of the Senior Citizens** Plus

Other Stories and The Attack of the Giant Baby

The Killer Mice

Mr. Da V and Other Stories

AS KIT CRAIG

Short Fuse

Some Safe Place

Closer

Strait

Twice Burned

Gone

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

@expectations

Copyright © 2000 by Kit Reed

All rights reserved.

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com

Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publications Data

Reed, Kit.

@expectations / Kit Reed. — 1st ed.

p.  cm.

Title begins with the “at” sign, i.e., an a within a circle.

ISBN 0-312-87486-3 (acid-free paper)

1.  Married women—Fiction.   2.  Suburban life—Fiction.   3.  Online chat groups—Fiction.   I.  Title: At expectations.   II.  Title.

PS3568.E367 A613 2000

813'.54—dc21

00-033852

First Edition: September 2000
eISBN 9781466826663

First eBook edition: August 2012