War of the Encyclopaedists (11 page)

She hit Send.

Then there were the anthrax scares in October. Tamara forwarded her an e-mail just before the Halloween parade, saying there would be another terrorist attack—and this information was supposed to be trustworthy because it came from Israeli intelligence, and the Jewish community knew about these things. Tamara had been her best friend through their first two years at Barnard, but she'd changed that Tuesday, and their social interactions had become awkward. Her father hadn't been killed, but not being able to contact him that morning, when the cellular networks and landlines had been overwhelmed with traffic, knowing he was mere blocks from Ground Zero—Tamara had never escaped that fear. As a result, she hadn't ridden the subway since. It was
beyond reason. And frankly, a little narcissistic, though Tricia could never have said that to Tamara. Tricia was grateful for how lucky she'd been, that she'd known only futility, unable to help a soul that day, that she hadn't been infected by that paralyzing fear. That she'd emerged determined to do some real good in the world, to fight the cause, not the symptom. But it still saddened her that she and Tamara had grown distant.

Buzz. Flip.

just checked my schedule. mtg on other side of town at 11. can't make it. Sorry.

No prob. Maybe next time.

Next time? Next 9/11 memorial. An entire year from now. Tricia sighed. She was about to close her phone, but instead she navigated to Tamara's name.

Never forget.

Tamara replied almost immediately.
Never forget
.

Tricia typed out,
How are you?,
then stared at her blinking cursor and deleted the message.

• • •

Corderoy stood in his bedroom, his ear to the door. He'd been avoiding Tricia since the art show last week. In fact, he'd been avoiding everyone. Everyone except characters in novels. He'd started reading
Ulysses
and found that he much preferred immersing himself in the “mind” of Leopold Bloom to actually interacting with other humans. For Bloom was, by virtue of being fictional, fixed in time, no matter how dynamic and lifelike he seemed. This made him easier to grapple with than real people. And Corderoy grappled with Bloom to such a degree that there was no room in his mind for Maria Sardi or even for Mani. It was a kind of isolation that left him stimulated and focused on his schoolwork. And he was beginning to like it. Satisfied that the living room was quiet, he opened his door.

There was Tricia sitting in front of the muted TV. She turned to him and for a split second her face slackened as if disappointed he wasn't someone else. “There's a memorial service at Harvard soon. You want to go?”

Go join a crowd of people. Fuck. No. He didn't even want to be talking to Tricia. “Memorial for what?” he said.

“Duh.” She unmuted the TV. They were replaying footage of the Twin Towers billowing smoke, only this time with patriotic music in the background.

“I don't go in for that praying stuff.”

“If you don't want to go, don't go,” Tricia said. “But don't be disrespectful.”

Corderoy went into the bathroom and drained his bladder. When he came out, he threw on a jacket and slipped into his shoes. He felt socially bound to say something, so he said, “I'm going to the store.” Tricia glanced at him and shrugged, a response he was grateful for. He sauntered down the steps and outside, still wearing his flannel pajama pants.

After meandering through the aisles of the 7-Eleven, Corderoy bought a twelve-pack of Diet Coke and a can of Pringles. When he got back to his stoop, he realized he had forgotten his key. He rang the bell, but Tricia had apparently left. He stared at the door as if his frustration with his own stupidity could will it open. Then he collapsed on the stoop and cracked open a Diet Coke. As the sun warmed his face, he began to feel that the stoop was his stoop, his own small island, that the pedestrians passing by were distant ships on the horizon that had no intention of challenging his sovereignty.

A man in overalls walked up to the trash cans outside Corderoy's apartment and began to move them about, peering behind them.

Corderoy caught his eye, then looked away. Don't walk over here. Just don't.

“You live here?” the man asked with a noticeable Boston accent—live
heah
.

“Yep,” Corderoy said.

“Seen any rats?”

“Nope.”

“Good,” the guy said. He maneuvered a trash can back into place. “I trouble you for a Diet Coke?”

His hand extended casually toward the box of soda. The hand was calloused and dirty, though the nails were well manicured. A pattern
that, on closer inspection, recurred in many aspects of his appearance. His greasy brown hair, held back by a stained bandanna, only seemed to emphasize his high and noble forehead. His eyelids drooped down over his eyes in what would have indicated a stoner's disposition were it not for the eyes themselves, which were bluish-green and peered out with a brightness and curiosity emphasized by the polished wire frames of his glasses.

Corderoy handed him one in defeat. The guy sat down on the stoop next to him and, after a long gulp, said, “You remember where you was on 9/11?”

Corderoy focused intently on a manhole cover, wishing the guy would leave, but he just kept talking.

“I was at the dentist, had my mouth wide open with one of them rubber dams. And the dentist and all his assistants flicked on a TV somewhere and left me in the chair for five minutes. I couldn't see nothing but that overhead light, listening to that smooth jazz on the sound system and all them people behind me gasping and saying my God this, my God that. Never forget that dentist appointment.”

“I guess that's our Kennedy moment, huh. Imagine how many people were taking a shit when it happened, and they'll remember that shit for the rest of their lives.”

The man scrunched his mouth and rocked his head back and forth. “Not necessarily,” he said. “They call 'em flashbulb memories. People tend ta remember where they was that day that best fits their personal narrative of the event. Say you was taking a shit. Would you remember that or making an omelet that morning? Depends on your personal involvement. And on what makes a betta story. Right?”

Corderoy, surrounded by collegiate transplants from other parts of the country, had rarely had the luxury of enjoying the blue-collar accent Boston was famous for—and he wondered if his unfamiliarity with it somehow magnified its effect to his ear. “I was in Seattle,” he said. “It was seven in the morning. I'd been up all night playing
Counter-Strike
. I'm pretty sure I wasn't actually taking a shit.”

“What's
Counter-Strike
?”

Counter-Strike
was why Corderoy had almost dropped out of college. It was why he knew that an AK-47—though not as accurate as
the M4A1 carbine—used a 7.62 millimeter bullet, higher caliber than the M4, which meant you could drop a target with two body shots. Of course, a headshot would drop the target in one, but for that, he preferred to whip out his .50 Desert Eagle. His mother had called him at seven a.m., thinking she'd be waking him up, and he'd picked up while playing, clamping the phone between his shoulder and his ear.

“Sorry to wake you, Hal.”

“It's fine, Mom . . . what's up.” He was the only player left on his team, and he'd just planted the explosives. They were playing a map called
de_inferno
that had the look and feel of a quaint Tuscan village. Why on earth terrorists would want to bomb a quaint Tuscan village was beyond him. There were three enemies closing in on his position, to kill him, defuse the bomb, or both.

“Turn on your TV,” she said.

“I don't have TV, remember.”

“Oh, that's right, you download things. Well, look online, then. I'm sure it's everywhere.”

Fuck fuck fuck. He'd just strafed out from behind a large crate, firing a three-round burst from his AK, which had hit and killed one enemy. But he'd been hit by another, knocking him down to 12 health. He fled the piazza where he'd just planted the bomb. One more shot would take him out.

“New York was attacked. By terrorists,” his mother said.

“What? Mom, hold on.” He threw a flash bang into the piazza, then rushed in spraying with his AK. Most of his rounds missed, but the last few bullets lodged in the enemy's torso, and he collapsed near the bomb. Corderoy crept noiselessly behind a crumbling brick wall, then sat, hiding, waiting for the one remaining player to come out into the open. Only twenty-seven seconds left till the bomb exploded and he won the round. He reloaded his rifle.

“Hal. Listen, I know your friend Brian went to school in New York. The Twin Towers were hit by two airplanes.”

“What?”

“Terrorists hijacked two airplanes and flew them into the Twin Towers. In Manhattan.”

“Thanks, Mom. I'll check it out.”

“And call Brian.”

“Okay. Bye.” His mother hung up and he let the phone drop to the floor. The enemy crept out from behind a crate, and Corderoy unloaded with his AK, hitting but not killing him. He was out of rifle ammo, so he pulled out his pistol as the return fire impacted the wall next to him. His heart was racing, and he'd stopped breathing. The adrenaline surged through him, and his eyes widened. A small pause in the gunfire and he leapt out and fired one shot from his Desert Eagle. It sailed right through the enemy's head. He took a deep breath and let his hands relax. Only then, basking in the glow of that power, the triumph of having killed his enemy before he could be killed, did he register what his mother had said. A terrorist attack. But he'd never been to New York. He didn't even know what the Twin Towers were. And he wasn't even friends with Brian anymore; he had no way of contacting him even if he wanted to. He shut down his computer and went to sleep.

Sitting on the stoop now, he felt guilty for that moment, though he never had before. Everybody had to be doing something when it happened. He had been planting bombs and firing an AK-47. He'd rather have been taking a shit.

“It's a video game,” he said to the guy.

“Never really got into that stuff,” the guy said. “Though I did a little programming back in the day.” He stood up and took a key ring from his pocket. “Hey, thanks for the Coke,” he said. “I gotta get inside and fix the water heater.”
Watah heatah
.

“You're the . . .”

“The super, yeah. Name's Jack.”

“Hal.”

“You're locked out, aren't ya, Hal?”

Corderoy blushed, and Jack let him into the building.

13

Corderoy had already masturbated twice today—much needed head-clearing breaks between the three chapters of
Ulysses
he'd read—and now, too drained for a third go at it, he found himself browsing through girls on MySpace. The cold afternoon sun lit his room insufficiently, competing with the glow from his laptop screen.

There was an unreality to the social world of MySpace—a profile was, by its nature, a continually curated representation of the self. In this world, no one ever had a bad-hair day. The cookies always came out perfect. Nothing tedious. Nothing sad that was not also funny. It was thin, it was token, and it was the perfect substitution for the meaningful social world he was avoiding. In Seattle, he'd felt like the one guy outside of Plato's cave, seeing things for what they were rather than looking at shadows on the wall. And he'd had Montauk beside him to up his cool quotient. To go from that to friendless in Boston had been rough. And after his humiliation at First Fridays, after realizing how hard it would be to rebuild that kind of status, he had buried his head in schoolwork; he'd even gotten caught up in presidential politics, watching
The Daily Show
at night with Tricia—their only social time together. Last week, on his way home from class, he'd seen a guy about his age standing on the street corner, holding a clipboard, wearing a poncho, though it wasn't raining all that hard. He looked ridiculous.

“Registered to vote?” he'd asked.

“How much do you get paid?” Corderoy had said.

“I don't get paid. I'm a volunteer.”

“And what if I'm planning to vote for Bush?”

“Hey, man. I'm not asking who you support. I'm just getting people registered.”

Corderoy thought Bush was an idiot, and he was angry that American troops, including Montauk, were being sent to Baghdad, but he'd always distrusted large elections. He hadn't voted in 2000, when Gore had lost. Why bother replacing one rich Christian white guy with another rich Christian white guy?
But here was this volunteer, out on the street corner simply to promote the health of the democracy. He'd taken the form and filled it out.

He began reading political blogs. He subscribed to
Truthout
's mailing list. And when he wasn't reading and writing short response papers for his classes, he was getting drawn into e-mail debates with his uncle about the Patriot Act, about the possible link between Al-Qaeda and Saddam. But as much as he distracted himself with these new passions, he was lonelier than he'd ever been. He was in no condition for an actual human relationship; what he needed was nineteen-year-old
Sylvie
.

He scrolled through her gaudy pink profile. She had a short brunette bob and she held a classic MySpace pose, head angled up and to the right, eyes looking at the camera in her left hand, shooting for mysterious and seductive. She was beautiful, of course, but she also looked silly and immature, and it was that more than anything else that drew Corderoy to her. He read through her details.

Status: Single

Here for: Networking, Dating, Serious Relationships, Friends

Orientation: Straight

Hometown: Boston

Body Type: 5'1" / Slim / Slender

Ethnicity: White / Caucasian

Zodiac Sign: Scorpio

Smoke / Drink: No / No

Children: Undecided

Education: Some College

Occupation: Student

Income: Less than $30,000

Her top eight friends had names like Gadget, Shawn, and Firecracker. Her favorite movies: “Disney! TenthingsIhateaboutyou, anything with Edward Norton! Indiana Jones omgNightmare before Christmas.” Music: Daddy Yankee, whatever that was. Under “About Me,” she'd written the following:

Hi. I'm Sylvie. I like to meet new people and laugh and have fun. I like ghosthunting and playing Twister. And I love absolutely love funfetti cupcakes! If you make me funfetti, I'm you'res.

Under “Who I'd Like to Meet,” she had written one word: “You.”

Corderoy composed a flirtatious message asking what ghosthunting was and did she know any good places to go. For a second, he hovered over the Send button. He could hear the sounds of drunken carousing on the street outside, arms around shoulders, bumming cigarettes, pissing in alleys. Choosing not to message nineteen-year-old
Sylvie
because it was creepy (and would thereby make him
a creep
) would mean coming to terms with the state of his life: single, friendless, unshowered, wearing cum-stained underwear, and trolling for immature girls on MySpace. Sending the message involved none of these things. More important, a part of him realized that he had contempt for this girl purely from looking at her profile. She was emphatically not an Ivy League humanitarian. There was likely nothing he could learn from her. If anything, the opposite was true, which meant he couldn't get hurt. As disturbing as it was, that contempt was arousing, the way power was arousing. It wasn't something he wanted to think about. But one could always forestall troubling thoughts with hasty actions.

She accepted his friend request and responded almost immediately.
YOU NEVER WENT GHOSTHUNTING! you have to go, its the funnest. its when you go out to a place thats suppose to be haunted with like flashlights and camaras and stuff. you can also stay the night in sleeping bags but sometimes it gets cold and you have to cuddle together to stay warm

Corderoy wrote back,
You'll have to show me sometime. Do you go often?

i'm going next week! maybe you can come, but we have to talk more before i decide if i like you! ;)

Wow. Was it really that easy? It was the Internet, after all—it could accommodate all kinds of people.

• • •

Later that night, Corderoy discovered that he had new comments on his photos. On a photo of him riding a ferry to Capri,
Sylvie
had written,
cracka in a wife-beater. how stereotypical. but its hot.
On a photo of him at a restaurant in Vegas, angled from below,
thats the most impressive glare ive EVER seen coming off a forehead.
On his most embarrassing photo, a picture of him with his shirt off, wearing a red bandanna knotted in front à la 2Pac, flashing a West Coast sign,
Sylvie
had written,
and 150 lbs of pure destruction baby. supersexygorgeous, ma dear.
It was an embarrassing photo because it was misrepresentative—upon seeing him, she would certainly notice that he'd developed a little pudge around his scrawny torso.