He nodded and smiled and asked Isolde what she thought, and since I’d told her that the Americans might be living in the Mangyongdae District, on the west side of town, I expected her to wile a tour of the area and a visit with at least one of the Americans for an autograph.
“What do I think?” she said. “I think that movie was crap.”
From then on, I was sidelined. They talked about Elizabeth Taylor, Peckinpah, and the displacement film Westworld, set in a recreational frontier town of cyborgs. Isolde railed against cartoon movies and bristled when asked whether she agreed that Friday the 13th was the best horror movie ever. That honor she reserved for Evil Dead II.
The liquor was cognac, and I was starting to feel ill from thought of my caloric intake for the day, well in excess of what my diet allowed. I looked out the window and was certain we’d passed this bridge before. I despaired of this drive ever coming to an end.
I sat back. I was exhausted. The man in the leisure suit asked me about my family, and when I told him about my wife and child — how much I missed them — he finished the last of his drink and appeared to shut down. Stopped talking. Leaned back and stared at his hands with an expression so leached of feeling, it was as though you could source the country’s bleakness to his face. Perhaps he was a paid look-alike, but no matter. I liked him and began to pity the fallout of having to live as we did, at the top of our field, commanding the people and forging ahead. I expected Kim Jong-il’s personal life was no less dismantling than mine. He had four wives, seven offspring; I wondered how many of his wives couldn’t stand him, either. I had the urge to pat him on the knee and say I understood. But the moment passed. And next I knew, we were back at our hotel. It was a Monday morning, 7 a.m., and the city, for its millions, was dead.
That afternoon, I met a low-level official who took notes on the Helix — our numbers and stats — and that was that. Homeward bound. Home to this, which is soon to be a eulogy. Can you hear what’s happening outside? It’s the madding crowd, come to hang the king.
There were choppers overhead. News crews just beyond a perimeter that berthed the house at fifty feet, and guys in bucket trucks who had already started to deforest the grounds. There was tension about when to aggress against the Helix House, and tension between SWAT, which would have welcomed the elevated vantage of a tree-house bower, and the National Guard, which wanted to tank through Cincinnati without stop.
Thurlow trolled the halls. Light from the clerestory windows had vanished behind clouds that had rolled in fast. Even the weather seemed to have been conscripted into the narrative of doom being written outside. People in Cincinnati always liked to talk about the tornado outbreak of ’74 and its follow-up in ’99. In ’99, eight of the city’s civil defense sirens malfunctioned or lost power, which betrayed the stupidity of relying a bad-weather siren on electricity when electricity tends to fall victim to bad weather. Most civil defense sirens made use of a minor third to sennet bad news. The sound was not the clamor of police or medical transport but a howl that seemed to exercise the grief of things unsaid; cf. the sob that issued from the Thunderbolt apparatus of downtown Cincinnati when a tornado was afoot. Thurlow had modeled the house alarm on it so that if the house were breached, the news would anguish for miles. But for now, all being inside, he was safe.
He checked his watch, seven o’clock, which meant he was expected online for his weekly appearance. Showing up today was probably not a good idea, though it might be fortifying to gauge the mood of his people. Maybe no one actually cared what was happening at the Helix House, in which case he could cut himself some slack.
On the back end of the website were chat rooms, among them one for the members wanting sex. Critics said that organizations like the Helix encouraged bacchanalia, and that as leader Thurlow must be an incorrigible roué, but it wasn’t true. Or not entirely true. He’d made these rooms accessible by video because the I Seek You protocol rewarded disclosure at a clip, and faces could help. Or so he’d thought until the Play Room took hold. In there, what strides the video option had made toward facilitating intimacy were Pyrrhic.
Just last night he’d seen a man fellate himself with a Winnie the Pooh hand puppet, though what had Thurlow rapt was the affection and solicitude the man’s free hand lavished on the bear, as if the only way to thank ourselves for love received was through displacement. This show, one among thousands. People registering disbelief and gratitude for what was being offered them. A longing for more. Please don’t sign off until I am done. Don’t leave, please. It was a peacocking of misery that reasserted the virtue of what Thurlow was trying to do with the Helix, and so depressing as to keep him riveted for hours.
Now he fixed on a live stream of Sophie18, who was a man in thong and thigh-highs, watching Lena04, who wore the same. They were doing for each other what could not be done otherwise. And so, for a second, Thurlow loved this chat room because it was a mercy killing of at least some of the self-hate grown in his heart for what he was soon to do to the people who supported him most.
Before he signed off, he scanned a thumbnail list of users and noticed someone new. A guy not looking for pleasure; he just wanted to talk. He asked if his camera was working. He didn’t understand all this technology, but his wife had given it to him so that he might get out and make friends, he being incarcerated in his house and the Internet being the next best thing to bingo at the lodge. He was pecking at the keyboard with his index fingers. Thurlow wrote back immediately. He wrote:
Dad, can you find some other chat room to be in? There’s about ten million to choose from.
Dad, can you find some other chat room to be in? There’s about ten million to choose from.
But Wayne wanted to talk about how his life was being dismantled from the inside out. How his marriage was on the skids. The torpor and routine. Mutual disinterest in all things relating to the home, money, or politics. Thurlow wrote back.
But u don’t care about these things, Deborah or not.
Dont be smart ass.
But codependency and trust and comfort are important. Marriage is a sum of parts, some good, some bad, but maybe the sum is still good.
Wayne smirked.
Dad, sometimes u gotta take risks to get what u want.
??? Son wha ts the mater w/ y ou?
But u don’t care about these things, Deborah or not.
Dont be smart ass.
But codependency and trust and comfort are important. Marriage is a sum of parts, some good, some bad, but maybe the sum is still good.
Wayne smirked.
Dad, sometimes u gotta take risks to get what u want.
??? Son wha ts the mater w/ y ou?
This was not the first time they’d had a conversation that veered in this direction, though its precedents were few.
“Dad, stop typing — you are driving me nuts. We can talk, you know. There’s a microphone.”
Wayne got up close to the screen and pressed his ear to the camera, which felt like the lewdest thing Thurlow had seen in this room to date.
“Dad, stop it, just sit in your chair.” Only the volume was on high, and, since Thurlow was not whispering, Wayne recoiled from the speaker with shock and began to chowter, “Stupid machine. Who ever heard of this talking machine?” So Thurlow said, “Dad, I can hear you,” and again with the shock, and because Thurlow was so strung out he couldn’t remember who he was to whom anymore, he said, “Dad, don’t make me demote you, too.”
Finally Wayne sat back, which gave view to what Thurlow expected to be his room but was not his room at all.