The Duration Read online

  He stood up.

  “Speaking of which, I have a couple of e-mails I need to deal with. You good out here?”

  I stood up as well.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Jimmer collected his electronics.

  “Great.”

  He looked up at me.

  “It’s really great to see you. Brings back memories.”

  He paused, thought for a second.

  “Like, actual memories.”

  I regretted all that nascent jealousy in a second.

  “You too, buddy,” I said. We hugged, briefly but enough.

  “It’s really good of you to come all the way out here to help with Chick,” I said. “Kid’s kind of a mess.”

  Jimmer looked away and chuckled.

  “I hear.”

  “I have a plan, though,” I said. “To straighten him out.”

  Jimmer nodded.

  “Good to hear,” he said, extending a hand to me. “Whatever I can do to help.”

  “All right, pal,” I said, slapping him five. “Smell you later.”

  The joke went unacknowledged. Jimmer went into the master and slid the heavy doors closed. I pushed the coffee table away and folded out the couch bed that was wider and had better sheets than my bed in Boston. I stripped down to my shorts and slid under the covers. The gang was all assembled. We had until Monday to put things in place. I would dream the architecture of a solution, a way it would all work out.

  In the morning I brushed and picked my teeth with an obsidian courtesy toothbrush and scalded myself under the torrential showerhead. I used the courtesy lavender-thyme shampoo and conditioner and the courtesy oatmeal body scrub. I shaved and rubbed pink courtesy Rhinebeck lotion onto my skin. I padded around in a thick robe and thick slippers and felt moisturized in the best ways.

  At 7:45, the double doors of the master bedroom were still closed. I eased them apart a hands-width and looked in on a bed the diameter of which exceeded my view. Jimmer lay surrounded by pillows, a mask over his eyes, a meringue of duvet enveloping his lower half.

  “Yo,” I said.

  He lifted his head slightly, did not remove the mask.

  “We have to be at Welcoming in fifteen minutes.”

  Jimmer put his head back down and pulled the duvet cover up to his chin. “I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do.”

  Could that be true? It sounded sort of revolutionary.

  All I had to wear were my work clothes from Friday, a blue pinstripe suit and a smelly white shirt, but in the hall closet I found two sets of Head-Connect sweat clothes, one in earthen brown and one in vanilla. Pants, shorts, pullovers, and T-shirts, each emblazoned with a stylized evergreen. One set fit me nearly perfectly. On the floor of the closet were two pairs of bespoke cross-trainers, each stuffed with monogrammed socks. All that from a palm print?

  I suited up and headed out.

  I passed through the lobby and cut across the rotary to the Fleur-de-Lys mansion proper. The morning sky was pale and cold, but the sweatshirt was thicker than it seemed and had a cavernous hood. The material felt like a sort of elfin technology, magical, like those innocuous little flatbreads that sustained Frodo et al. on the march to Mordor. Eight or nine other people were crossing to the main building, all hooded against the chill, our outfits suggesting the start of some sort of conclave.

  In the entryway of the main building, a big man with olive skin stood behind a wheeled cart, handing out coffee and juice. I took both. We were a baker’s dozen in all, four corporate types yawning and slouching, three slender Asian men whispering in Cantonese, a minor movie star recently busted for drunk driving, what looked like a well-heeled mother-daughter pair, the luminous Vishy Shetty, an assistant who looked like a non–hi def version of Vishy Shetty, and me.

  Ava Winston stood inconspicuously off to the side, a tablet under her arm. I felt bad about sort of lying to her, and caught her eye in an attempt to incept some sort of bonhomie. She was too busy taking attendance to care.

  “Jimmer?” she mouthed at me, gesturing subtly around the room.

  I shrugged, folded my hands to the side of my face.

  Ava frowned and made a note on her tablet.

  The entry foyer of the mansion was open and octagonal and seemed faithfully restored, at least based on the pictures we’d seen so long ago in Florence Banish’s files. It rose straight up to a rotunda and had acoustics so refined that the smallest bell, rung to announce guests or mealtimes, carried throughout the mansion. Here was the hallway to the back ballroom. There was the landing on which Guy Van Nest stood with his rifle. We’d walked in the door through which the rhino had exited. Above us was a massive chandelier, environmentally retrofitted.

  At eight sharp, the man behind the juice bar strode to the center of the marble floor. He was wide but smooth, his movements fluid like Shamu. He raised his hands to the sky.

  “I am present and I am connected,” he said in a baritone loud enough to ripple the coffee in our cups.

  We all looked at him. Was this a coup? Vishy Shetty turned the corners of her mouth down and bent toward her assistant.

  The man lowered his hands to us and smiled. His teeth were perfect.

  “Welcome, all, to Head-Connect. We are present. We are connected.”

  He nodded to us. We nodded back, because what were we supposed to do?

  “How is your coffee?” he asked. He had an accent I couldn’t place. Something world-weary but generous.

  We nodded again, some people offering more verbal assurances.

  “I am glad,” the man said. “I am also glad that it is the last coffee you will have during your stay here.”

  Fewer verbal assurances.

  “I am Arvindo Blanc, Welcoming-Coordinator here at Head-Connect. What we do now will set the metrics, lay the foundation, and plot the blueprint for the rest of your time with us.”

  He raised his right hand and extended his pointer.

  “And the rest of your life.”

  There was a murmur of appreciation for the dramatics, so flawlessly executed. Vishy Shetty took out her cell phone.

  “Enjoy this last bit of caffeine. This last ‘fix.’ You won’t need it anymore. No more fixing. Nothing to fix. A cycle of dependence is a thing of your past. In a moment, you will begin your Welcoming, which will include a full physical and cognitive audit. The process is, of course, entirely voluntary, but we feel strongly that the success of your life-matrix depends on your candid and honest participation.”

  He drew the last word out to its full five syllables.

  He gestured to doors at the sides of the foyer.

  “Ladies will pass through to my left and gentlemen to my right. First, though, we ask our guests for a small deposit.”

  He looked around the room, a smile on his face. Then he waved his hands reassuringly.

  “No, no money. Put your wallets away. Money is a four-letter word now. We ask only for a deposit of vice, hindrances, negative energy. We will hold these items for you in our Vice Safe. There they will remain throughout your stay here at Head-Connect, and upon checkout, you can choose to pick them up.” He smiled even more widely. “Or leave them behind.”

  He swept his arms theatrically and heretofore invisible staffers opened a side door onto a small room. Within it, I could see a desk, a chair, and the large hinged door of a safe.

  There was some mild snickering from the assembly. Arvindo Blanc smiled indulgently.

  “Our Vice Safe has been in residence for over one hundred years here at Fleur-de-Lys,” Arvindo Blanc said. “It has held a century of secrets.”

  He stepped aside dramatically.

  “At your leisure.”

  We all froze for a moment, not sure what to do, milking our last coffee for the grounds. Inside the room, small cards—the sort that might identify seating arrangements at a wedding—were fanned out on the desk, near an ornate pen.

  Nobody moved.

  “You want us to write do
wn our vices on cards?” said one of the corporate types, a tall man with an executive’s paunch. “And then leave them in the safe?”

  Arvindo Blanc smiled benevolently.

  “Leave them atop the Vice Safe. I will deposit them. They will be deposited.”

  “How do we know you won’t use them against us in some way?”

  “To the contrary. You must know we will,” said Blanc. “Letting go is an essential pre-step of our process here at Head-Connect.”

  Ava Winston piped in from across the room.

  “There are, of course, significant financial and legal protections ensuring the confidentiality of Welcoming information, and indeed all information relating to our guests’ time here at Head-Connect.”

  Blanc nodded, then walked into the side room and lifted one card up, like a host, and touched it to his forehead. He closed his eyes and appeared, momentarily, to be entirely still. Then he opened his eyes, lowered the card, and held it out toward the safe, letting it drop like a leaf onto the solid top.

  “And so,” he said. “We are present and we are connected.”

  He stepped back into the foyer and stood along the wall, a surfer Buddha. Totoro.

  The process was simple enough. You entered the room, sat at the pale wood desk, wrote your vices on a card, put that in an envelope, and left it in a wooden box on top of the safe.

  The minor movie star went first, entered the small room, sat with the pen and note card, shrugged, and wrote for what had to be five minutes. Apparently he was committed. The corporate types crowded in next, together. I could hear murmurs about mission statements, about working to live, about creating a culture that actualized. Bullshit like that.

  Mother and daughter followed. They went in together, but sat with the cards one at a time, and I could see the daughter staring at her mother when she wrote.

  Vishy Shetty was next, gliding with her assistant across the vestibule. At the last second, Vishy Shetty gestured, a look, a slight raise of a forbearing finger, for her assistant to wait outside. The assistant blinked at her as though waiting for a command prompt and stood in the open doorway, blocking our view of Vishy Shetty. Despite the assistant’s efforts, I could see through the crook in her arm as Vishy Shetty slid something from her sweatshirt pouch into an envelope, wrote something on the accompanying card, and deposited them both on top of the safe. The assistant caught me spying and gave me a look like she’d cut me.

  The Asian cohort went next. They’d been quiet in the foyer, but once they got into the little salon with the safe, we could hear all sorts of chatter. It appeared they were collaborating on a statement but couldn’t decide who would do the drafting. When they came back out, two were frowning and one smiling widely.

  I stepped over to the small room and looked back at Arvindo Blanc.

  “Don’t wait up,” I said. Gave him a grin.

  He just blinked at me, a long languorous blink. I looked around the foyer, but everyone else was gone except for the minor movie star, who clenched a fist in solidarity before following Ava Winston off to Welcoming,

  I entered the room.

  The safe was real, just as Chick had said. About 5 feet tall and at least 3 feet across, 4-inch walls of gray steel on thick clawed feet. The words “Cary Safe Co.” were inscribed on its heavy front. I took out a note card and thought about my vices. Sloth. Gluttony. Avarice. How many more were there? Loyalty. Hah. What did people say when asked in job interviews for their biggest flaws? I took the pen and wrote I tend to take on too much responsibility on the notecard. I folded it into an envelope and dropped it into the wooden box. Arvindo Blanc was still out in the foyer, but he had his back to me and everybody else had left. Something that Ava’d said the night before came back, and I tried to turn the great safe’s front handle toward the floor.

  The handle didn’t budge.

  I tried turning it up. Still nothing.

  This was a problem. A locked safe solved nothing, confirmed nothing.

  I gave the handle a final tug.

  The heavy door swung open with only token resistance.

  I took a quick look out to confirm that nobody was watching, and then rifled the safe.

  It had one central compartment, with notches along the inside edges for what must once have been shelves. There were no shelves in it now. Instead, on the bottom, there was a stack of wooden boxes, identical to the one above, each full of sealed envelopes. Here for the taking, the vices of the one-percent, or at least the ones they felt comfortable acknowledging. How boring would those be?

  I felt the interior walls to confirm that there were no hidden drawers, and if there were, they remained hidden.

  That was it.

  I closed the door, got up, and returned to the foyer. Arvindo Blanc smiled at me and gestured toward the morning rays flooding through the rotunda.

  “Brother sun is here,” he said. “But he is always here.”

  I gave him the thumbs up and walked through my M door. Whatever it takes, pal. I suppose I should have felt disappointed. We’d found the safe, and it was empty. But I didn’t, not at all. I felt relieved, relaxed, a load off my back. Jimmer was still asleep, probably, and Unsie was getting ready for work, and Chick was in a cold lockup up at the Berkshire House of Correction until Monday, but he was okay. There were no ghosts here at Fleur-de-Lys, nothing to chase except a better self

  I felt ready to enjoy a good workout, a biomass analysis, and a sea-cucumber colonic, if that’s what the day held in store for me. And if not, that was fine too.

  Kelly and I met in law school in Washington, D.C. She was the daughter of lawyers and seemed to know what she was getting into. I was the son of teachers and took the LSAT because my college roommates were taking it. In first-year legal theory class, Kelly and I had been in a study group together, and I’d made her laugh by confusing the con law theorist Ronald Dworkin with one of the dwarves who accompanies Bilbo Baggins to the Lonely Mountain. She thought I was kidding.

  Kelly was from California, a place I’d been only once before, but which had nonetheless shaped my identity growing up. I was a Magic Johnson fan, and Massachusetts, of course, was Celtics territory. I grew up at the tail end of the Big Three era, Bird, McHale and Parish. Magic’s struggles in the early ’80s playoffs—the Tragic Johnson days—were over by the time I started following him, and even with Jordan ascendant, Earvin Johnson was my man. Like Magic, I wasn’t a great shooter, and my dribble was a little high, but I could see the court. Inglewood, the Fabulous Forum, Pat Riley’s hair, the celebrities in the crowd—that was where I belonged.

  I caught a lot of shit from the CYC kids, from old George Harvey, from pretty much anyone who found out there was a Lakers fan in their midst.

  “Get your ass on the block,” George Harvey would yell at me, his testicles swinging in his sweats, whenever I tried to bring the ball up court.

  “None of that razzle-dazzle shit,” he’d say when I’d throw a behind-the-back pass.

  I practiced those passes for hours, and after Magic announced his HIV diagnosis, I practiced them even more.

  And then along came Kelly, raised in Sherman Oaks, schooled at UCLA, knew her way around an earthquake and a seven-lane highway.

  “What are you doing in the Northeast?” I’d asked her, as if maybe she’d just gotten lost.

  She’d shrugged, said something about wanting to see the Old Country, the Atlantic, the vertical cities along the coast. She wanted a history that didn’t exist out west. Twist my arm, right? When I got the job in Boston, Cradle of the Revolution, I asked her to come with me and she said yes. I showed her Plymouth and Salem and the Old North Church. We ate lobster and sat in traffic on the Cape, ate cannoli and stood in crowds in the North End. And then the Red Sox and the Bruins and the Pats kept winning, and the autumns did their thing, hot cider and pumpkins and hills that looked like piles of Skittles. I bought her a scarf, told her all my stories. We started weekending in the Berkshires. I figured we had her. I figured
that the hooks were set, that, like the rest of us, she was here for the duration.

  After she left, I had a dream about Magic Johnson. In the dream, it was early 1992, I was something like eight years old, and Magic had just gone on Arsenio to talk about his HIV. Some network guys decided that they would cast Magic in a remake of the Captain America TV series, but nobody had thought to adjust the wardrobe to fit a 6[']8["] guy instead of the regular-sized guy who’d previously played the role. So Magic Johnson is running around on a train loaded with explosives, battling bad guys, in a super tight red, white, and blue bodysuit that rides way up at his ankles and wrists. He’s got the hood on, with the little gold wings on the sides, and whenever it’s time for him to say a line, he just disregards the script entirely and looks at the camera and flashes that huge smile he has and says, “Man, I’m Captain America Man.” And the studio audience roars anyway.

  At Welcoming, a squadron of Head-Connect techs weighed us and pinched us and quizzed us about our diet and work life. My tech’s name was Tudd. Like Judd but with a T. Tudd was my age, maybe, it was hard to tell, with thin blond hair and ripped arms sticking out of a tight polo shirt. He used instruments that looked like pliers on my stomach. He asked me how much fish I ate and whether it was farmed or line-caught. He made me do math in my head. He asked me if I spoke French. He asked me how far I jogged and at what pace. He asked me to touch my toes, stand on one foot, and jump straight up in the air. In high school I could dunk. I told Tudd that, and he seemed skeptical.

  “It’s hard to stay in shape when you’re living a sedentary lifestyle,” he said. He said that in the first forty-five seconds of our session.