Goodbye for Now (17 page)

“Wait and see,” said Meredith. “They’ll want company. Especially at the beginning.”

“Why would they want to be with us when they call or e-mail the first time? It’s like losing your virginity in the bio lab. During class.”

“They’ll need us. They’ll be scared. Overwhelmed. Afraid to say the wrong thing. Afraid to say anything at all. At a loss. At a distance. Everyone’s afraid of ghosts.”

“They aren’t ghosts,” said Sam, ever logical.

“Wait and see,” said Meredith again, ever right.

She painted in colors called sand and sage and smoke. She installed soft, warm lighting and soft, warm sofas and chairs, made nooks and quietly out-of-the-way corners and spaces, played whispery music, put up curtains and blinds and art. She hung model airplanes all over the ceilings. And last she installed a bank of beautiful, gleaming, state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line computers with monitors larger than whales. Plus a cache of shiny new laptops. Soon it looked less like a showroom and more like a salon. Salon Styx, she decided to call it.

The next question was how to get people in it. Maybe they did have a product people would, well, die for, but they didn’t know how to communicate that information to them. Running ads seemed in poor taste. Letting people sample it, just showing them a snippet, didn’t work—users needed to be all in and sign over access to absolutely everything before they could even start. Dash suggested full-color posters at gun shows and motorcycle shops. He thought maybe someday they’d branch out to psych wards and asylums. “For their loved ones, being nuts is the same as being dead,” he argued. Meredith said no to all of that. Tasteful and high-minded, she urged.

She gave notice at work. She told her colleagues that Sam, her computer-genius boyfriend, was launching a start-up and needed her help. She told her colleagues that Sam was going to change life for everyone on earth and even for people who weren’t anymore. She told her colleagues she was taking a risk, making a leap, embracing love and life and faith with a full heart. Everyone was really happy for her. Everyone hugged her and wished her well and pitched in for a cake and made plans for happy hour and promised to keep in touch and meant it. Everyone was sorry to see her go but happy for her happiness. Everyone, that is, except her boss who watched all the hugging and loving skeptically then texted her computer-genius boyfriend, “Why are you always ruining my life?”

“You’ll find someone to replace her,” Sam replied.

“I could never replace her. I need her.”

“No,
I
could never replace her.
I
need her.”

“What for?” Jamie challenged.

“You’re too young and pure for the titillating details,” said Sam.

“You’re fired,” said Jamie.

“I can live with that,” said Sam.

Meredith was confident the thing would sell itself to the second through millionth users. The question was how to sell it to the first. Dash was in charge of the mysterious business end of things (budgeting, financing, lots and lots of lawyers), but he proved also to be the man for this part of the job. “Everything in Hollywood happens this way,” he said. “Hollywood and the Mob. Someone whispers something to someone who passes it on who passes it on. No one knows anything. Everyone suspects some things. Shadow and rumor are the goals here anyway. This can’t be aboveboard. But trust me: we’ll make it happen anyway.”

Meanwhile, Sam did the tech, the programming, the problem solving, the testing. Dash called it “cookin’ with the Buddha.” Sam called it “sleeping only two hours a night.” He set up a full menu of options for your DLO (Dead Loved One). He couldn’t construct video chat with someone who’d only ever e-mailed of course. But whatever electronic communication your DLO had used in life, Sam could replicate it in death. Slowly, the kinks-to-work-out list dwindled, and Not-Sam did a better and closer and less weird job of chatting with Dash. In the end though, what was required was an eyes-squeezed-shut, fingers-and-toes-crossed leap out over the abyss. They couldn’t beta test it. It wouldn’t work theoretically, only actually. It wouldn’t work for pretend users with pretend loved ones, only actual users who were actually loved. The DLOs may have been inanimate projections, but the only place to test them was in the world that was very, very real.

TELLING

T
he morning after they put final touches on Salon Styx, the morning after they hung an actual disco ball and played cheesy music and drank cheap champagne and danced in their new space (because, Meredith insisted, before all the tragedy and looking back it had coming its way, it needed inaugural life and light and looking forward), the morning after they spent the night on the salon floor in three sleeping bags but with no sleeping—too much excitement, too much breathless fear—the morning after all of that, Meredith and Sam cleaned up, and Dashiell Bentlively wandered out in search of an ear to whisper in. He came back two hours later with pastries from the French place in the market and a smug expression. Just after noon, the door tinkled open (Meredith had hung a bell over the door as if it were an antiques shop in an effort to make the place homey and gentle and less about death).

Eduardo Antigua came in looking down at his thousand-dollar shoes and smoothing imaginary wrinkles out of his three-thousand-dollar suit. He was nervous. But not half as nervous as Sam was. Meredith went to greet him at the door.

“Um … hello,” he said.

“Hello,” she said warmly, taking his hand.

“Um … I’m not sure I’m in the right place.”

“You are, sir.”

“Um … I hear … that is … I … A friend said you have a service.…”

“We do, sir. Come in. Can I offer you tea? Coffee?”

“My, um, my brother died last week.” Barely a whisper but his voice broke anyway, and Sam felt his stomach drop. Somehow it had never
occurred to him how heartbreaking this job was going to be every day. He’d been thinking about the technology, but now he realized that soon that part would be more or less stable and instead he’d spend his days listening to people’s horror stories and looking into wet eyes and broken hearts.

It wasn’t that he’d forgotten about the users. It was that he was familiar—intimately familiar—with a very different kind of death. By the time he was old enough to remember, death had become more of a family member than anything else, a relative his dad didn’t want living with them but had no choice but to accommodate and take care of, one who was messy and unkind but whose constant presence was nonnegotiable and therefore normalized. Sam realized that his father probably did not feel that way himself, but for Sam, losing his mother was something that might as well have happened before he was born. Losing his mother
was
his mother, the most formative fact of him, the most constant presence, the drooling monster that commuted between the dark cellar of his psyche and the breakfast table. By the time he was old enough to remember, her death was ever-present but already far behind him. He had only Livvie in the way of experience with the recently dead, and he’d never even met her. He had only Livvie, and that was a problem he’d managed to solve.

For Eduardo, clearly, death was less an infirm, unwelcome houseguest and more a brick thrown through the window of his warm home in his safe neighborhood, wrapped in a note whose words shattered any hope of living there peacefully ever again. He glanced vaguely at the menu Meredith handed him and said he’d just take everything. She explained that she could send him home with everything he needed, or he could get started at the salon instead. He jumped a little, and his eyes darted. “Oh, I think I’d better do it here.”

Because Eduardo was their only user so far, because Sam hadn’t slept in ages anyway, they were able to set Eduardo up overnight. He was back first thing in the morning. They offered him privacy, but he didn’t seem ready to be alone. They offered him privacy, but within moments, he forgot they were there anyway. He sat down at a computer by the window and plunged in headfirst—video chat straight off the bat. It rang a few times and connected, and then the window opened up, and Miguel Antigua smiled happily at his stunned, speechless brother with the heavy heart and exploding brain.

Miguel grinned at Eduardo. “
¡Mi hermano! ¡Buenos días!
So good to see you.”

And Eduardo sobbed and could say nothing. Sam recalled the first time Dash called Not-Sam. Sam recalled how even the unbrokenhearted needed a script. Sam recalled this a little too late.

“Eduardo!
¿Qué pasa?
What’s going on? What’s happened?”

“It’s you, it’s you,” Eduardo sobbed.

“Of course it’s me. What’s wrong?”

“No, it’s you. You’re what’s wrong. You died, Miguel.”

“I what?”

“You died.”

“What do you mean, I died?”

“You died. You were driving home late Saturday night and some high, drunk asshole changed lanes right into you. They medevaced you to Harborview. They called me on the way—that card you keep in your wallet—and I was there within minutes. I held your hand. Do you remember? And you whispered you loved me and you loved Marion and you loved Diego, and you said to tell Mama … but I didn’t understand. Do you remember? I didn’t understand and then you were gone. You don’t remember?”

But how could he? He’d died before he could so much as tweet about it. Long pause. Then Miguel’s face brightened. “Is this a joke?”

“No Miguel,
mi muchacho
.”

“Are you auditioning for something?”

“No Miguel, I’m so sorry.”

“For what?”

“I couldn’t save you. And I couldn’t understand.”

“I didn’t die. I’m fine man. Look.” He waved his right hand at the camera. Then his left. Then stuck his tongue out. Then pressed his eye right up to the camera. “Alive and well. Are
you
okay?”

“I’m okay,” said Eduardo, sad, resigned, more miserable than when he came in.

“Listen, man, I’m late for work.”

“No, Miguel, don’t go yet!”

“Don’t freak out. I’ll call you tonight.”

“Okay, okay.” Softly, gently. And then, “Miguel? I love you.
Te amo, mi hermano
.”

“Easy there,” Miguel said. “Love you too. Gotta run. Talk soon.”

“I’m sorry, Miguel,” Eduardo moaned one more time. “I’m so sorry.”

“That’s okay,” said Miguel. His eyes had changed. He no longer looked like he was talking to Eduardo. “You were just trying to help. I forgive you.”

Eduardo sat slumped in his chair and looked defeated, deflated. Sam gave him some space. While he did, what he thought was this:
Shit
. All that time and effort and investment, and they got through one user—one single user—and that was it, all they’d have a chance to do. Eduardo had broken his projection. Surely it wouldn’t recover from being told it was dead, and probably this was why it had lost the thread at the end. Sam wasn’t sure what Eduardo was apologizing for exactly, and he wasn’t sure how anyone convinced they were alive would respond to news of their own death, but he was still pretty sure “That’s okay. You were just trying to help. I forgive you” was not an appropriate response. Eduardo looked like he had a bad taste in his mouth. He hadn’t received catharsis or balm or relief. He seemed unlikely to go out and kick off the RePose word-of-mouth revolution. They were finished before they’d even begun. Finally, Eduardo looked up slowly, rubbed his eyes, and said, “How long before I can go again?”

Meredith walked him out. Sam started on a wipe. Users and projections, it occurred to him, were both going to need the option of a do-over.

Their second user showed up later that afternoon. Like Eduardo (Sam wondered where Dash had whispered his whisper), Avery Fitzgerald looked wealthy, suave, and put together. Unlike Eduardo, she was also keeping it together. She swept perfectly coiffed gray hair off her forehead with one middle finger as she walked in and got right down to business.

“My husband died last month. Clive. Cancer. I’m told you have a way for me to communicate with him.” She chose e-mail and video chat. She had no desire to text message or tweet with her dead husband. She thought Facebook was a tremendous waste of time and that if her children did it less and studied more, they’d be Harvard-bound by now.

When she came back the next day, ready, she’d cut and colored her hair, and though of course she had no one to impress, Sam still took it as
a good sign that she was prepared to be seen—and to see. And indeed, the window opened—she gasped just barely and shook her head with wonder—but she found her voice right away.

“Clive.”

“Avery, darling.”

“You look beautiful, sweetheart.”

“So do you, darling. Your hair is lovely. But you look a little … pale. I’m the sick one.”

“No, my love. You died.”
Shit
, thought Sam again. Was this seriously going to be the first thing out of everyone’s mouth? Why would you lead off with that?

“Not yet,” said Clive but sadly, not, like Miguel, hopelessly confused. Sam tried not to listen, but hell, okay, he tried to listen. This was a twist. “Still kicking for the moment. You won’t get rid of me quite so easily.” Clive had teared up. So had Avery.