Player One: What Is to Become of Us Read online

  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.”

&nb
sp; “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.

  Luke wonders what Shakespeare had to say about money. Something clever, no doubt. Goddam Shakespeare. Luke used to pepper his sermons with lofty Shakespearean quotes because he thought it made him look smarter than he really was, and it also made his flock feel smarter because it validated any years they’d spent in college or university. But lately the younger flock members have let it be known to Luke that his quotes are kind of boring and mechanical and remind them of those automatic quotes by Nietzsche or Kafka that web bots insert at the bottom of emails that somehow, in some almost impossible to connect way, funnel truckloads of cash into the ever-expanding Eastern European pornography industry. And a Scotch with ice certainly helps lubricate Luke’s belief that intelligence has been democratized and flattened. Luke feels both behind and in front of the curve.

  The curve. What the hell is “the curve”?

  Luke hates the twenty-first century.

  Luke is a thief.

  Luke remembers once believing in what he believed in: that one day he would no longer have to live inside linear time; the concept of infinity would cease to be frightening. All secrets would be revealed. Automobile ignitions would refuse to turn over; parking lots would melt like chocolate; water tables would vanish; and the planet would begin to cave in on itself. There would be great destruction; structures such as skyscrapers and multinational corporations would crumble. His dream life and his real life would fuse together. There would be loud music. Before he began to turn immaterial, his body would turn itself inside out and fall to the ground and cook like steak on a cheap hibachi, and he would be released and he would be judged and he would be found pure.

  But his congregation talks
about the afterlife as if it were Fort Lauderdale.

  Whatever. What matters now is that Luke is practically vibrating with freedom.

  And he has decided that, although he is a failure, failure is authentic, and because it’s authentic, it’s real and genuine, and because of that, it’s a pure state of being, unlike the now-hopefully-dead fakey-fakey Luke — and feeling authentic feels great! Heck, maybe I’m an outlaw now — I am an outlaw now!

  And now Luke has twenty grand in his pockets, and he’s watching a little red-headed dude come into the bar and put his hand on Karen’s thigh. She doesn’t look too happy to meet him. Screw it. They’ll both just keep looking until they each settle for someone equal to themselves on the food chain. That’s the way Charles Darwin works.

  Luke’s conscience suddenly rattles him. By force of habit, he talks to a God he once believed in, but this time with a small twist: Lord, I know that faith is not the natural condition of the human heart, but why did You make it so hard to have faith? And now it’s too late, because I don’t believe in You anymore. Why did I never discuss my doubts with any human beings? My elders could have set me on the righteous path. But maybe in the end it’s best to keep one’s doubts private. Saying them aloud cheapens them — makes them a bunch of words just like everybody else’s bunch of words. If I’m going to fall, I’ll do it on my own terms.

  Ironically, being honest with himself about his crime is making Luke feel genuinely spiritual as he looks at the cool Hitchcock blonde at the pathetic “business centre” across the room. He wonders if she’s noticed him. What would she think of his crime? Luke thinks she’d look at his shoes in particular, and those shoes would speak to her, and what they would say is “Payless,” and she’d write him off, so screw her; the moment he gets into town, he’s buying a pair of ultra-executive shoes in a swanky store, and he’ll never feel ashamed of his grim footwear ever again.