Player One Read online

  Oh well. Rick has serenity now. Kind of. Yet by and large he wonders why it is that we’re trapped inside our bodies for seventy-odd years and never once in all that time can we just, say, park our bodies in a cave for even a five-minute break and float free from the bonds of earth.

  At least music allows you to escape your body — in its own way. Rick feels nostalgic for the lounge’s pianist, Lenny, who was fired two weeks earlier for consistently making up the lyrics to songs as he played. Rick was used to it, but patrons hated it. When the night manager called Lenny to the bar area for his third and final warning, Lenny said, “The lyrics of a song are important only to a point. You probably don’t even remember the words to your favourite song, and that’s why you like it — because you like the words your brain made up to fill in the gaps. A good song forces you to invent your own lyrics.”

  “Lenny, it’s the goddam Beatles singing goddam ‘Yesterday.’ You do not invent lyrics for one of the most famous songs in history.”

  “I bring myself into the song. I am an artist. People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that’s always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge, you’re free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.”

  Poor Lenny, now jobless, but Rick remembers what Lenny said about leaving your body for a little while — Rick remembers liking that bit — and in memory of Lenny he cranks the Miles Davis CD now playing — music without lyrics. Instead of inventing words to the music, your body invents emotions for the music.

  Rick sees a rogue glass shard from a bottle of southern-hemisphere Chardonnay he dropped the night before. As he bends to pick it up, he remembers Tyler’s seventh birthday, sitting with his son in a bedroom fort made of whisky boxes and blankets and sofa cushions, and he remembers shining a flashlight through his fingers and through Tyler’s, trying to convince his son that people are made of blood. He misses the good days and fondly remembers the rare mornings that were magically free of hangovers and when his head felt like a house in late spring with all the doors and windows wide open. And he wishes he hadn’t knocked over the twenty-ounce Aladdin souvenir plastic drinking cup full of $8.99 Chardonnay that night he was allowed to babysit Tyler while his ex-wife, Pam, was at her sister’s stagette party. Half a squeeze bottle of organic dish soap and six towels washed and dried twice, and she’s barely in the door, sniffing and saying, “That’s it, Failure Face. You’ve had your chance. Out. Now.”

  Mercifully, one thing people rarely tell Rick about is their dreams — both actual dreams and the dreams they have for the rest of their lives. We’re always hearing about “following your dream,” but what if your dream is boring? Most people’s dreams are boring. What if you had a dream to sell roadside corn — if you went and sold it, would that mean you were living your dream? Would people perceive you as a failure anyway? And how long would you be happy doing it? Probably not long, but by then it would be too late to start something else. You’d be screwed. Rick now believes that there is much to be said for having a small, manageable dream. Rick has a small, manageable dream, except nobody knows about it but him. He is going to spend the $8,500 he’s cobbled together since he sobered up, and he’s going to spend it all on the Leslie Freemont Power Dynamics Seminar System. Leslie Freemont’s compelling television ads promise Power! Control! Money! Friends! Love! . . . none of which Rick currently possesses.

  Mister, you can’t just leave the world. You can’t just kill yourself. That’s not an option. So you have to change your life. You’re worried. You’re worried that you’re never going to change. You’re worried that we might not even be able to change. Aren’t you!

  I am!

  Mister, I am here to speak to you about transforming your life and yourself. Making choices and changing who you are. You’re going to become different. Your behaviour will be changing. Your thinking is going to change. And people will watch these changes in you and they’ll come to experience the world in your new manner. You will become a teacher yourself. Are you ready to change, to join, to become part of What’s Next?

  Yes!

  Is the price of reinvention worth the effort?

  Yes!

  Reinvention costs $8,500, and as Rick wipes the rims on a set of Pilsner glasses, he remembers being at Tyler’s peewee soccer game and making the mistake of confiding his enthusiasm for Leslie Freemont to Pam. She said, “Jesus, Rick, only losers make decisions when things are bad. The time to rejig your life is when things seem smooth.”

  That’s Pam, and that’s her way of looking at the world. But Leslie Freemont believes there is nothing human beings can do that cannot be considered human or magnificent: passion, crime, betrayal, loyalty. Leslie Freemont asks his followers to think of a single act a human being could commit that would be considered nonhuman. It’s impossible; as soon as a human performs any act, that act becomes human. Leslie Freemont says we know what dogs do: they bark and they form packs and they circle their beds before they lie down to sleep. Leslie Freemont says we know what cats do: they rub your shins when they want tuna and they can be hypnotized by dangling yarn. But humans? Humans are special because humans do all things. There is no emotion possessed by any other creature on earth that is not also experienced by humans. Leslie Freemont says that makes us divine, and Leslie Freemont can help Rick tap into all of that.

  Rick is giddy because Leslie Freemont is soon going to be in this very hotel; he’ll be entering this very cocktail lounge. Leslie is on his way here because Rick’s basement neighbour, Rain Man, saw that Leslie was in town doing seminars and tracked down Freemont HQ on the Internet and convinced Leslie to come in on his way to the airport — a mission to meet a Common Man for a photo op.

  Rick would have tracked down Leslie himself, except that his PC died ages ago and is now out on his balcony, collecting birdshit and grit. Its dead keyboard covers his canister of protein powder on the kitchen counter, the original plastic lid having long ago been sacrificed as a Frisbee for Rain Man’s Rottweiler, whose fangs mangled it into chewy red lace, making Rick think, Man, Rick, at what point did your luck turn? At what point did you switch from being a story to being a cautionary tale? People’s lives shouldn’t have a moral attached to them — they should be stories without morals, told purely for joy.

  But the Leslie Freemont Power Dynamics Seminar System can strip Rick’s life of pathos, and Leslie will be arriving at any moment. Rick knows this because Leslie’s press woman, Tara, phoned to say that Leslie wants to personally shake Rick’s hand and have a photo taken with him as Rick hands over his $8,500 in cash. Rick feels almost the way he used to halfway through his third drink, his favourite moment, the way he wishes all moments in life could feel: heightened with the sense that anything could happen at any moment — that being alive is important, because just when you least expect it, you might receive exactly what you least expect.

  ___

  Rick said to the woman, “Where are we — trapped inside a Bob Hope movie?”

  The woman at the bar, a nice little brunette, looked at Rick. “Very funny. Is it so wrong for a girl to order a Singapore sling?”

  “I’m going to have to look it up in my mixology book back here.”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll google it on my thingy. Wait a second . . . there . . . you’ll need one ounce of gin, a half-ounce of
cherry brandy, four ounces of pineapple juice, the juice of half a lime, a quarter-ounce of Cointreau, a quarter-ounce of Benedictine, a third of an ounce of grenadine syrup, and a dash of Angostura.”

  Rick looked at the woman. “You’re here on an Internet hookup, aren’t you?”

  His customer’s head did a chicken bob. “Honey, you are good. How did you know that?”

  “I can always tell. Where’re you from?”

  “Winnipeg, and you didn’t answer my question.”

  “Okay, you asked, so I’ll answer. I can tell you’re here for an Internet hookup because you’re sitting with good posture on a bar stool but you’re not a hooker. Hookups never sit in booths, because it makes them look sad or desperate, but a bar stool — especially when you have good legs like yours, I might add — says to someone new, ‘Hey, let’s get it on.’ Also, you’ve got a tiny carry-on bag, which means you’re most likely not staying at this hotel or any hotel.”

  The woman asked, “In general, how do these hookups usually go?”

  “It’s always hot or cold. No middle ground. You either both click and you’re out of here and upstairs pronto, or there’s an awkward forty-five-minute drink of doom followed by several lonely drinks for the person who stays behind while the other one flies home.”

  “I hope there are no drinks of doom for me.”

  Rick scanned the room with its mismatched grey fabrics and furniture. His eyes rested on the astonishingly beautiful young woman — nineteen? — who’d been using the world’s most cobbled-together Internet booth across the lounge. The computer carrel comprised a power bar covered in duct tape attached to a brick-like North Korean monitor and hard drive, all shaded by a dusty plastic ficus tree. The beautiful girl’s computer made a casino slot machine’s ching-ching-ching noise. It stopped as soon as it had started. Rick called out, “Another ginger ale?” The girl looked emotionlessly at Rick. “No. I am properly hydrated.”

  The woman raised her eyebrow at Rick. “‘No. I am properly hydrated’?”

  “She’s a weird one, Miss Ginger Ale is. Cold fish, but not a cold fish. Like something’s missing.”

  “She spurned your advances?”

  “She’s too young for me, thank you. And she’s not the advances type.”

  “Too pure for this world?”

  “Please. It’s a challenge to the laws of physics that someone that beautiful is even in this lounge.”

  “Thanks for making me feel great.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  She nodded. She and Rick looked at the only other person in the bar — a trainwreck of some sort who probably used to play hockey on weekends but now he’s going fleshy, maybe halfway between William Hurt and Gérard Depardieu. He sure looked like he could use a nap.

  Rick felt a bond of alertness between him and the woman, of having something to look forward to. Rick looked at his watch.

  The woman said, “It seems to me you’re expecting someone, too.”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, I am.”

  “Really? Who?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “I’ll see? What — is it George Clooney, maybe? Or perhaps Reese Witherspoon with a posse of Muppets?”

  “Someone you’ll recognize.”

  The woman was intrigued. “You’re serious.”

  “I am.”

  “Huh. When is our celebrity supposed to arrive?”

  “Any time now. What about your Mister Hookup?”

  “Any time now.”

  Rick, disinhibited by the imminence of Leslie Freemont, threw out a conversation starter: “You know, I’ve been thinking about time a lot today.”

  “Have you?”

  “I have. Wouldn’t it be kind of cool,” he said, “if time stopped right now?”

  “How do you mean, if time stopped?”

  “Like this. I was in England once, taking my father to see my grandmother, who was dying of emphysema. So, one morning we were on a train headed from London to wherever, when suddenly the train stopped with our car halfway inside a tunnel, and then the conductor turned off the train and an announcement came on that we were to observe two minutes of silence, and everyone went still and looked at their laps, even the soccer hooligans and their cellphones — and it was like the universe had suddenly turned itself off and the world was almost holy, like life was suddenly religious, but good religious, and suddenly everyone became the best version of themselves.”

  The woman looked at Rick. “I’m Karen.”

  “Rick.”

  They shook hands as the trainwrecky guy down the bar stared, breaking the moment by asking for a neat Scotch.

  Luke

  Luke is nursing a Scotch and wondering why it is that having money makes people feel so good — medically, scientifically, clinically good. What chemicals does it release? What neurons does it block? And just why is it an absolute given that having money — some money, any money — always feels better than having no money? There was a quote at the bottom of the snarky email sent to him yesterday by the Bake Sale Committee, one of those automatically attached quotes from some Internet program, and, as it was written by Oscar Wilde, probably went unread by the dutiful committee member. It said, “The thing about being poor is that it takes up all of your time.” So true.

  But Luke is a pastor at a church locally known as “The Freeway Exit Church” more than by its proper name, The Church of New Faith, and so he has his own spin on money. He knows that what makes human beings different from everything else on the planet — or possibly in the universe, for that matter — is that they have the ability to experience the passing of time and they have the free will to make the most of that time. Dolphins and ravens and Labrador dogs come close, but they have no future tense in their minds. They understand cause and effect, but they can’t sequence forward. It’s why dogs in dog shows have to be led from task to task, because they’re unable to sequence. They live in a perpetual present, something humans can never do, try as they may. And the reason Luke is thinking about time and free will is because he believes that money is the closest human beings have ever come to crystallizing time and free will into a compact physical form. Cash. Cash is a time crystal. Cash allows you to multiply your will, and it allows you to speed up time. Cash is what defines us as a species. Nothing else in the universe has money.

  Luke — shaggy haired, a bit pudgy, and slightly rumpled, in designer garments nabbed from the church’s flea market the previous April — currently has lots of money, because just this morning he looted the church bank account. It wasn’t something he set out to do when he woke up, but now, with a few drinks in him, he understands that it was a long time coming, and that it took a specific incident to trigger the theft. The incident transpired like this: Late yesterday afternoon, Luke met with the women from the Bake Sale Committee to discuss the upcoming sale. Luke doesn’t normally like chairing these meetings and has long-time volunteer Mrs. McGinness do it, but Mrs. McGinness is still in Arizona, helping her meth-whore daughter through her latest divorce. So Luke was sitting there, ready to chair the meeting, and eight women were supposed to be there, but only seven showed up. Luke
asked, “Where’s Cynthia?” and the ladies at the table mumbled whatever, so Luke said, “Isn’t it funny that the Rapture finally happens and the only person to be taken away is Cynthia?”

  Talk about the dog farting. Seven sour faces gave Luke the permission he didn’t know he needed or was looking for to empty the church’s renovation fund and vanish. It was such a clear, lucid moment, like the fugue he feels just before the onset of one of his small seizures. If the bank had still been open, he would have gone right then. And if he had any doubt about his new criminal calling, it was squelched by Sharon Truscott’s clipped little email a few hours later saying that the ladies didn’t appreciate having their piety mocked.

  And now Luke is in a cocktail lounge that’s meat-locker cold and smells of cleaning products in a city he’s never visited before, with twenty grand in his jacket pockets, bundles of cash that sit like stones in a suicide’s garment, weights meant to take one faster and more thoroughly to the bottom of the river — or perhaps they’re more like helium balloons that will only take him higher and higher.

  Or perhaps they will make him drunker.

  Luke orders another Scotch from the bartender, who looks like one of those guys with multiple DUIs and revoked driving licences, and who’s busy chatting up a middle-aged, barflyish, Sharon-like woman. He has just overheard them introducing themselves as Rick and Karen. Karen is obviously there to hook up with someone she’s met on the Internet. Luke can’t believe how many people meet on the Internet these days. It came out of nowhere and now it’s the cause of over half the problems his flock comes to him with: online gambling debt, get-rich-quick schemes, porn addiction, parents freaked out about the sites their kids visit, shopaholism. He can’t even call the things people do on the Internet sins, because it’s all so dull, really, just people sitting in front of screens, and what’s that? Who cares? Ministering to souls was way more interesting when people actually interacted in real life. He hasn’t had a shoplifter or an affair within his flock in years. Now that’s interesting — oh so human — but Internet sinning? Nope. Goddam Internet. And his computer’s spell-check always forces him to capitalize the word “Internet.” Come on: World War Two earned its capitalization. The Internet just sucks human beings away from reality.