Chapter 2 #2
Derek squeezes the back of Mark’s neck, a dude-bro clench that’s a touch too hard. “Glad you’re enjoying your weekend nights while you have ’em,” he says. “Once we start updating the customer-service modules, you’ll be sleeping on your desk blotter.”
“AI chatbots,” Mark says. “What could go wrong?”
The waiter materializes at Derek’s elbow. “A second round of everything,” Derek proclaims grandly. “And port my tab over here. I’ll cover all this.”
“That’s not necessary,” Mark says.
“And we’re good,” Rebecca says. “We just started on these.”
“It’s okay,” Derek confides in the waiter. “They’ll catch up.”
His credit card rises between two fingers. The waiter pockets it with grace and withdraws.
Rebecca feels Alexa’s eyes picking over her. Derek leans to the side, examines Mark’s outfit. “Nice pants,” he says. “Purple Label?”
“Thanks,” Mark says. “Second time I’ve put ’em on. I’m still amortizing them.”
Rebecca and Mark did well with their stock options, but Derek did spectacularly. He has a stunt plane and a private jet in a hangar in Santa Monica and restores antique Porsches in his spare time. The de Grasses have a passel of children, four or five—Rebecca has lost count.
“Isn’t that the dress you wore to the holiday party?” Alexa says. And then quickly: “I like it. It’s . . . cute.”
Rebecca shrugs. “I don’t remember. Probably.”
“I don’t remember much from that party either.
” Alexa laughs, and Derek stiffens slightly, an inadvertent show of unease.
“When I drink too much—wooo!” Her hands fly up, and sparkly bracelets slide down her forearms, glimmering.
She is wearing gold metallic gladiator heels, straps wrapping her calves, snakelike.
They look like sexy garters for the feet.
“Anyhoo, we’ve all been there.” She reaches those manicured nails for her husband’s cheek, smooths a lock of hair back around his ear.
Her eyes, an improbable contact-lens emerald, find Rebecca’s.
“Sorry to just flutter over here. Y’all looked so serious. What did we bust in on?”
“We were just talking about getting back to Maddy.”
“Ah.” Alexa lays her hand on Rebecca’s forearm, eyes intense with performative concern. “How is she?”
“Great,” Mark says curtly. “She’s great.”
“Good,” Alexa says. “That’s so good. She’s such a dear.”
“We sent ours off to boarding school,” Derek says. “New Hampshire. All four of them.”
“Derek’s alma mater. The house is so quiet.”
“But we love it.”
Alexa puts her hand to the side of her mouth, leans in to stage-whisper: “So much time to fight or fuck.”
Rebecca and Mark don’t fight or fuck very often anymore.
Their schedule is filled with hard work, parenting, recovery.
“Don’t you miss them?” Rebecca asks.
“Well, the academy sends us these once a week,” Alexa says, producing her phone and flicking through photos, her pointer finger bent to meet the screen with her print, the nail flared back.
Something about the toggling gesture feels suggestive.
She shows Rebecca several photos of their children, indistinguishably attractive and healthy, performing various athletic and scholarly feats. “Proof of life.”
“Gives me more garage time,” Derek says. “You should see the Targa I just got at auction, a 997.2 4S.”
“He outbid Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno.”
“But we get the kids for Thanksgiving, Christmas, ski week, all summer,” Derek adds quickly. “It’s good for them to get instruction elsewhere too. It was good for me.”
“I don’t know what we’d do with all that time,” Rebecca says.
“Oh, we figured out what to do,” Alexa says wickedly. Her eyes flash to her husband. “Should we share?”
Derek bites back a grin, gives a flirtatious single shoulder shrug.
Alexa turns to Rebecca, hands clasping her hand on the table, the kind of girlfriend-y clasp Rebecca never sees deployed outside of movies. “Do you want to know? Do you really want to know?”
Rebecca says, “Sure,” because there is no other answer to give.
The waiter returns, his tray brimming with drinks, and a conspiratorial hush falls over the table. Whatever the de Grasses have to share is not for just anyone’s ears.
Derek and Alexa study each other dramatically. “Are you sure?” he asks.
“Of course,” Alexa breathes. “They need it.” And then reassuringly: “We needed it too.”
Derek takes out his wallet contraption, a stubby metal rectangle with buttons.
Only Derek would have a mechanized wallet, likely something exotically Kickstarted by some life hack engineer in Bengaluru.
He pushes a button and a titanium business card pops free of the wallet as if from a toaster, a cheap magician’s trick.
“This,” he says grandly, “this is our plus-one.”
He displays the card.
It says: N0RM LLC.
There is a website, an email, a 1-800 number.
“Started by a South African technocrat.” Derek’s teeth are very shiny. So is his hair. He is handsome, too handsome to be attractive, strong of jaw, sculpted from marble. “A no-shit genius. I met him in Sun Valley, one of those thought-leader summits.”
“Very exclusive,” Alexa says. “The company’s clientele, I mean. Not the Sun Valley borefest.”
Rebecca takes the card, fingers the corner, testing it like the tip of a blade.
“Turn it over,” Derek says.
Stamped on the back: You’re in charge.
“We got in on the beta stage,” Derek says. “It’s extremely limited availability, but we’re allowed to pass on the offer to one other party.”
Mark asks, “What is it?”
“It’s a dream,” Derek says. “No—a fantasy.”
“Like . . .” Alexa contemplates, front teeth pinching a collagen-stung lower lip, crystalline green eyes tugged upward, a perfect selfie pose. “The ultimate retail therapy.”
Rebecca sets the card down on the table with a metallic click. “Perhaps some more specificity.”
Instantly she regrets the irritation she’s let leak into her tone, but the de Grasses do not take notice, at last a benefit of their self-centeredness.
Derek swirls his scotch, allows a theatrical pause. “What if you could have something that knows everything about you, everything you want, and could get it for you? While staying totally under your control?”
Alexa’s voice is seductive and slightly crass: “Let’s just say it’s designed for your gratification.
It’ll see to everything you really want.
In your darkest heart of hearts.” She rests a scarlet fingernail on the card, slides it across to Mark, and then leans close to Rebecca, her breath tasting of alcohol and perhaps a bygone cigarette. “This? This will change everything.”
Rebecca closes her eyes. Feels a phantom pulse of pain in her lower abdomen, across her back.
Sees the crimson handprint she left when she gripped the side of the bathtub.
Thinks about school drop-offs, visits with the nurse, the occupational therapist, the psychiatrist for Maddy.
Feels the sorrow like lead in her bone marrow, the grief she drags through her days.
She is much too young to feel so exhausted, so leached of optimism.
More than anything she feels stuck, her wheels churning in ever-deepening ruts.
No one ever taught her this, how torpor can be more oppressive than grief, a lead apron that pins you down, makes you want to quit struggling and just give up.
And she hates to admit—hates to admit—that dealing with Maddy and her special needs takes so much out of her.
Is the apple sauce too chunky? Are the lights too bright in the bank lobby?
Are her stuffties out of order on the shelf?
She’s just one kid, one sweet, lovely kid, and yet at the end of most days, Rebecca’s nervous system feels shorted out from hypervigilance.
She doesn’t like to see herself as desperate and yet here she is, barely treading water for herself and her little family, and here Derek and Alexa are, too, tossing her a lifeline.
She thinks about the allure of control and the promise of change, gift horses and mouths, beggars and choosers.
A thunderstorm of metaphors for the bare, naked fact that she would give anything—anything—just to feel different.
When she opens her eyes, Mark is looking at her, his gaze shiny with interest. He gives a hint of a one-shoulder shrug.
Rebecca picks up the card again.
And says, “Tell me more.”