But this didn’t mean I couldn’t wonder if the actor ever thought of me.
“I had a vision of a plague, and when both my parents passed during Covid—a crisis I foresaw—that’s when I knew. I had to quit acting. I had to escape the secular media, go back home and begin rededicating myself to Jesus Christ.”
He sat on the edge of his garish CGI stage in his Slapdish worlde. It was a vulgar mix of a Gothic cathedral and a sports arena, titanic crossbeams soaring overhead (and there I was craning my neck to take it all in). He wore flowing white linen pants and a rugged tan shirt, his voice mournful. Despite years of owning the VR set, I found myself instinctively reaching up to touch his stubbled cheek. I was filled with sadness for this version of him. He wore the born-again shtick clownishly, his easy confidence replaced by the kind of evangelical desperation I’d seen in my childhood. It was hard not to be cynical about his motives—I vividly recalled his quick dismissiveness of religion—but maybe he thought it was a sincere transformation. One came to understand that we all purchased, voted, worshiped, and loved in unconscious obedience to narratives we thought were original, but which were largely dreamed up in sterile boardrooms like the one in New York. Then we went and called these stories our passions and dreams.
“We carry the sadness. The sadnesses of my life were drinking, loneliness, and walking away from my parents’ mission of carrying the news of Christ. I was on a journey to my judgment.”
His voice lowered. He looked as young as when I’d met him, but now he wore his hair slicked back. His eyes were still a deep and arresting blue from his contacts. His mic hand had a gold ring on the pinkie, glinting in the imaginary light of his virtual realm. I reached for the messaging function.
“We are living through yet another scourge, a plague, this one borne not on the back of a virus but a plague of consumption, addiction, and poverty of the soul, and man oh man, the times they just grow darker and darker, don’t they? And it means something, my friends. It does.”
“Text Linda Holiday,” I told my VR set. “What about this guy who just changed his name to The Pastor? Might be a good candidate for Emii and the gang. His Slapdish ratings are big. Send.”
“The times we live in—what we are seeing—call to mind Matthew twenty-four, six through eight: ‘And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines and pestilences and droughts and great storms. All these are the beginning of sorrows.’ ”
A text bubble popped up in my peripheral vision, but it wasn’t Linda replying. It was Fred: Flight got canceled. Tornado watch. What if we got a drink?
Pulling the bright scene from my eyes, The Pastor’s voice fading, I suddenly wanted company. Ached for it. While I slid toward J. Walter’s acquiescence, the sound of the rain came on like a switch. My living room had a view of the Chicago River and the former Trump Tower. Rain streaked down on the city. I texted Fred back to say there was no way I was going out in this.
Then I’ll come to you.
When he arrived, neither of us had the patience for the pretense of wine. He was soaked, his hair matted. He dripped water onto my hardwood floor. “This is just from the car to your lobby,” he said, and the part of me that felt how transactional this encounter could be was excited by it rather than guilty. Fred took his jacket off and kissed me with his hand fastened to my jaw, holding my face like a prize.
The wind and rain beat against the window. I led him to my bed and flipped the lights off. I hated having sex with the lights on—something to do with the way I could see the little blue veins in my breasts; a sign of age they hadn’t invented a cosmetic solution for yet. With the room dark, the city glittered, and gusts of wind sent hard sheets of rain through the light in eerie pulses.
“Was your flight really canceled?” I asked when we finished. He tried to put an arm around me, but I gently took it away. “Give me a minute. I’m sweaty.”
“I didn’t even leave my hotel. It was canceled when they saw the storm coming in.”
“You don’t have your ring on this time.”
He was quiet a moment. “I was thinking I should stop wearing it.”
“Pick up more women you work with that way?”
“It’s not like that.”
“Whatever.” I crawled out of bed onto the floor and pushed myself into an up-dog pose, feeling the stretch in my lower back and glutes. “You did a number on me.”
“Sorry—question mark.”
“No.” I grunted, feeling my hip pop. He’d had my knees at my ears. “It’s a good thing, trust me. My last relationship. I’ll just say I was never good and sated. You’re a sater. A satist.”
He chuckled.
“What client were you meeting with?” I asked, coming out of up-dog.
“It’s an ag company.”
“In trouble?” I slipped back into bed and let him curl beside me. He was still wearing the condom he’d produced from his sports coat, and I could feel the latex on my leg.
“I’ve never seen a cultural environment worse for business than right now. Everyone should be watching their backs.”
“It’s probably the same guys my dad sold the farm to,” I said.
Ice-blue lightning cracked the sky, sweeping the bedroom in staccato flashbulbs. The cannon fire of the thunder soon followed. When it was over, he said, “You know after this campaign, I’m looking to cash out and start this new thing. How do you like New York?”
“I’m more of a Midwest girl.”
“So maybe it’s time for a change of pace. This is me trying to say I really like the work you do. You think outside the box, and that’s becoming increasingly hard to find. I’m moving into finance. I’ve hooked up with some sharp people, and it really could be worth a fortune—”
“Hey,” I touched his shoulder. “Can we not talk shop? If you want to stay, that’s fine,” I said, hoping he heard the opposite in my voice. “I can’t leave Chicago anyway. My father passed away, and my mom’s not doing well with it.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
More lightning, now with the thunder right behind. We were quiet for a while. I thought he might be asleep, but then suddenly out of the dark, he said, “You should know that this is not about me being bored in my marriage. I told you my wife and I are living apart now.”
“Okay.”
“It’s complicated.”
“It usually is.”
“Our son has had problems.”