Food is free. Every meat and sip of liquor are easy to weave out of air and classic recipes. But we have to rent the restaurant chairs—a hundredth of a penny delivered to I-don’t-know-who. Robots bring our lunches and coffee and then wait for the chance to clear the table. There’s at least five public cameras, plus enough microphones to catch every mutter. We’re two people engaged in what looks like a normal conversation, telling one another that we’re single and happy. But we’re not quite happy, not really. That’s the goal of this show. An ad lib conversation, each word carrying its surface meanings as well as a subtext. That’s what ordinary people can’t appreciate. Our audience has an uncanny gift for finding information buried inside the voices. They’ll notice how hearts speed up and slow down, how sad fingers dance with dirty forks. We’re supposed to be two strangers desperate to know each other, and because of that, this is one of the richest dramatic playgrounds.
And maybe I’m a little bit desperate too.
Frankly, this is a big moment for me.
Sam is the plain and shy but always decent man, nervously watching the pretty woman who shocked him by asking him out for lunch.
I mention our fictional class.
"Remember our teacher?" he asks.
"Mrs. Patton," I say instantly, giving him a smile to work with. Pretending the name means something.
"You drove her nuts," Sam offers.
"Think so?"
"Sitting in front, talking and talking."
I did take Post-Event Medicaid, and Mrs. Patton was a nice older gal who welcomed my breezy input. But then again, I was a performer who can be goddamn funny when she wants. Which leads me to wonder: What if our overlords had wanted comedians, not actors?
Sam watches me, waiting on me. Our silence has already lasted a beat too long.
"I feel sorry for Mrs. Patton," I mention.
"Is that so?"
"Because of who she used to be."
Eyes narrow. The obvious question is ready.
I give the answer before Sam can ask. "Dr. Maureen Patton, a transplant surgeon. I looked her up. Respectable and very wealthy."
Here’s another tip for would-bes: There’s zero penalty in talking about The Event. From my experience, if you’ve got the juice, you can invest a full day blasting the machines with vindictive phrases and ugly hand gestures. Nobody cares. Words are the weapons of the defeated, and our audience knows that better than we ever could. What matters is doing a credible job of being angry, and that’s when the thick-skinned machines send you pennies.
Spinning an increasingly complicated lie, I tell Sam, "The poor lady dropped the ‘Dr.’ And her husband dropped her. She was teaching Medicaid just to keep herself busy. And I’m sorry if I made things tough on her. I know how it is. The Event hit a lot of good people hard."
"It did," he allows.
"And it makes me sad," I say.
"Well," he says. The best minimal word in any dictionary.
We sit through another silence. Sam is the quiet fellow left uncomfortable with this unexpected seriousness. But there’s a second Sam that starts to reveal itself. In the middle of our little stage play, he glares at me. And I don’t mean a warning look meant to steer me away from this topic. I’m talking about blood in the face and something quite hateful in the slight tightness of his mouth.
I see all that.
Our audience has to see it too.
For me, this non-verbal barrage has two takeaways. First, I’m eating lunch with a very successful man, and the true Sam Kahlil is thrilled with his life and the world that made his success possible.
"Don’t fuck with my apple cart," those eyes tell me.
And the second takeaway?
In this world, I’m the lesser-known face. But I have the strong sense that between us, if we want to be honest, I’m the better actor.
"Hit a lot of good people hard," I repeat.
Repetition gives the brain time to write fresh lines.
Sam has acquired a sudden fascination for his Cobb salad. What matters is holding his fork with a decisive hand, stabbing those bits of red indistinguishable from bacon, except for every pigless atom and every pigless chemical bond.
That’s when inspiration strikes at least one of us.
"I miss those old days," I say.
His shyness goes away, anger flaring. But then he remembers the situation and back comes the shy guy. With his face pointed down, his eyes turn up to me, just for an instant. Am I going to dwell on the fictional surgeon?
Not at all. "I’m talking about those couples, three months after The Event. Those were really interesting times, and I loved them."
Down goes the fork, and he sits back.
"All that drama," I say.
"I guess so," he says softly.
"I’m not talking about the world being transformed. Considering how much happened, it’s amazing how little genuine excitement that generated. Know what I mean?"
"I guess so," he repeats.
Working on his next fresh lines, probably.
"No, I’m talking about the crazy passion inside our heads." I tap my skull. Two taps feels like the right number. "Think about it. The landscape got reworked and reworked hard. The most unimaginative person can’t escape what’s obvious. She wakes to find herself without a job, without status. The unproud member of a species enjoying zero importance in the universe."
Sam offers a breathless little laugh.
"Which is pretty much how things were before," I continue. "Being nothing, I mean. Really, do you think the Earth’s conquest got half a mention in any alien newspaper? No way, never. But still, we once had this little planet, and for a few centuries we even got to be the biggest, most important creatures. Except for ants and bacteria, of course. But you understand my point, don’t you?"
No. Looking at those eyes, I can tell that my companion is utterly lost.
Thank you, Truman Capote.
"Nobody has work, but we have our pennies," I continue, my voice running a step too fast. "We get enough to live on, but some of us make a few more pennies. All we have to do is… well, you know what we have to do."
He nods.
"Sure," he starts to say.
I interrupt him, saying, "Imagine this restaurant, and it’s a month after The Event. What would we see here?"
The question triggers laughter. Sam holds some entertaining memories about that subject.
But I keep talking. "Remember how couples used to fight? Every public meal was an excuse for a battle. ‘You cheating bitch, you ugly bastard.’ That sort of mayhem, sometimes capped with sex on the tables."
A fond, rather embarrassed sigh. "Oh, yes."
"But mostly, it was curses, and every few minutes, someone threw a punch, and food, and dishes had to get broken. Our audience promised to pay for human drama, and that’s what people thought they were giving."
Sam looks at my eyes.
Honestly curious, I think.
"You know how real people look?" I ask. "When we fight, I mean."
"Not really," he says, sounding half-proud.
"I once had a couple boyfriends battle over me. ‘F-this, F-that.’ But when the words quit, everything got quiet. There wasn’t any breath to waste on curses. Quick movement and a lot of ugly swings. Each fellow was as likely to make himself fall as his opponent. The whole thing was pathetically fun, if you want my blunt opinion on this."
"When aren’t you blunt?" he asks.
This should be a funny moment. A kidding, happy moment. But nothing in his tight voice invites laughter.
I wave at our surroundings. "In a restaurant like this, every lunch would look staged. Know what I mean? Like people who never dance attempting Russian ballet. That’s how ridiculous it all was, and there’s something in that mayhem that I truly, deeply miss."