The Emoticon Generation (29 page)

“Yeah?”

“A friend of mine was going to study there, at the same time actually, when he changed his mind.”

“Hmm ...”

“Was it a big class? Two hundred people? Three hundred?”

“No, this is the BBC we’re talking about. They take what they need, and it’s almost impossible to get in. There were ten of us.”

“Ten? So you knew the rest of the students well?”

“Oh ...
Intimately
.” Steve smiled.

Tony felt the blood drain from his body and knew his face had just gone white.

“‘Intimately,’” Tony did his best to smile back and sound nonchalant. “Sounds like a few ...
improper
things went on there.”

“Oh,
more
than a few, that’s for sure.” Raised his hand. “No, actually, the
really
improper things came
before
London.”

“Yeah?”

“I was coming off of a bad and long relationship that just exploded six months before that. So after two months of mourning and running after her and begging her to take me back and ...”

“Yeah.”

“I got into four quick-as-hell, crash-and-burn, born-to-be-smashed rebound relationships. The last one ended two weeks before the semester started. And during those two weeks I got my head straightened out. I had gotten her out of my system. There would be no more rebounds, no more trying to make up for what was. I was ready, really ready
inside
for the first time in my life for a permanent relationship.

“And ... You know how it is when you’re not in a relationship and you’re about to go to a new place with a lot of people, and you’re absolutely sure you’re going to meet some woman there ... ? I mean, you know how you just
know
something’s going to happen?”

“Yah.”

“That’s how I felt. I was so sure I’d meet someone. And that this time she’d be ‘The
One
’, the one I’d spend the rest of my life with, the one who would be the prize for going through all those other relationships.”

“The one you were meant to be with.”

“Yes, I guess so.”

“I had that feeling, too. ... Did you meet her?”

“Well ... Yes and no. Yes, I met someone. She was also a student at the school. She was sort of my type, sort of ... We
did
get married eventually. And I’m sure that the main reason for my infatuation with her was because of my certainty that I’d find ‘The One’ there.

“But feelings are feelings, they’re not facts. I felt I’d meet ‘the one’ when I came to the school. I treated it as a fact, and I went ahead and married the first woman I saw who actually came close. But my feelings were wrong.
She
wasn’t waiting for me there. Someone else was. I treated my feelings as facts and I got burned for it.”

Tony couldn’t take any more. He looked at his watch, feigned being surprised, and ‘remembered’ a meeting. He apologized profusely as he paid the check.

“No, I understand,” Steve said. “In fact, I won’t be going back with you. There was some problem with the hotel, so we had to check into a place outside town called The Sunnyside Motel. Anyway, I have to check up on the crew.”

“I see.”

“But ... Tomorrow I’d like to start talking to people. Get a feel of the place.”

“No problem. Come over at ten.”

“Great.”

Tony rushed back to the lab and back to Matt.

“You’ll be happy to hear,” Matt told him. “That past a certain number, Steve Adams is everywhere.”

Tony sat down in a chair near Matt, with a clear view of the monitor. “Show me,” he said.

Matt pressed a key. For a while, there was no motion at all in the familiar settings. Except for Steve, who was seated where Tony used to sit, looking at ‘the camera’ with concern in his eyes, the room was empty.

Suddenly, a car veered into the hospital room, and crashed into the far wall, behind Steve, creating a hole in the room. Tony almost jumped at the violence that shattered the inactivity. Smoke was coming out of the front of the car.

Steve got out of the driver’s seat and looked at the ruins of his car. A tall and horrendously skinny and wrinkled man came into the room, and began to yell at him. Steve yelled back, clearly motioning for him to go back where he had come from. The man relented. Steve pulled out his cellphone and called someone. A minute later, he hung up, and dialed another number.

After two minutes, he was still talking. Tony looked at Matt. “We have Steve talking on the phone?”

“You have to wait for it,” Matt said.

While Steve was talking on the phone, the elderly man entered the room again, shouting at Steve, and waving a broom.

“The old man’s new, too, right?” Matt said. “Did Tony know him?”

“No,” Tony said simply, not taking his eyes off the screen.

Steve turned around, and yelled back at the man. The man cowered, and rushed out of the hospital room.

Suddenly Tony, looking the way she did before she died, carrying totebags, came into the room, walking behind Steve.

Tony, watching this, almost gasped. God, how she looked! How true to life these images were!

Steve hung up the cellular and turned around, seeing Tony. The two talked like old friends. They knew each other, there was no doubt about that. And they were glad to meet again, too. Tony obviously asked him about the car. Steve explained. Then the conversation carried on with Tony and Matt unable to make out anything they were saying. But as they talked, they leaned on the hospital wall, and it seemed to Tony to mirror exactly the time he and Tony had met, the way they’d sat on the hood of the car.

Tony and Steve talked and talked and talked. Tony watched, his stomach turning.

Then, suddenly, they were gone. The hole, the car, Steve, Tony – everything and everyone were gone, and the hospital room had returned to the way it has always been, with Steve looking at the dying Tony.

The entire scene had taken fifteen minutes.

Tony stared at the monitor for a few seconds, then looked at Matt. “What the hell was that?”

Matt gave a short, helpless laugh. “I have no idea.”

“What does it mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything.”

“According to you,
none
of this means anything. It’s just random numbers.”

“That’s right.”

“But it
can’t
be just numbers. And it
can’t
be random. It has
meaning
!”

“You
assign
it meaning. By itself it’s nothing.”

“You’re wrong, Matt. And I know for a fact that you’re wrong.”

“How do you know?”

Tony turned, reluctant to say anything.

“How do you know?”

“Because!” Tony turned around, exploding. “Because they’ve never met! In all the years they’ve been alive, they have never seen each other! And yet here he is, inside her brain, not someone who
looks
like him, not someone who
may
be him. But him! At this age, the way he looks today, right down to the mole on his right cheek!”

“But that’s exactly the point. She
had
to have seen him sometime.”

“No.” Tony shook his head. “No. I just grilled him on this for the last hour. He’d left the States before she was born. He came back once – just once! – only to turn back immediately and go back to Europe. That was during the Paris riots, when Tony was in San Diego. And he’d never been on TV till today. This is his first time in front of the camera. She couldn’t have possibly seen his face. Ever. Don’t you see?”

“So what’s he doing in her head?”

“Matt ... The fact that he’s there, inside her head, is not because they’ve
already
met. He’s there because they
should
have met.”

Matt stared at him. “
What
?”

“Two years ago. She was going to go to the BBC School of Communications. He was there, at the same year, at the same time. There were only ten students. He was ready for a permanent relationship.
She
was ready to settle down. God, I know that
well
, because she settled down with me and for that she gave up on the BBC.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Matt. You don’t know what an impossible
fluke
it was that Tony and I met. If not for the most unlikely circumstances, if it was a minute this way or that way, we would never have met. The computer is telling us that he – that Steve – that he’s the guy she should have been with. He’s the guy she was ...” he trailed off.

“He’s the guy she was what?”

Tony found it almost impossible to say. Then it exploded, “Destined for! He’s the guy she was destined for!”

Matt’s jaw hung open. “Are you serious?”

Tony lowered his eyes. “Yes,” he said softly.

“There’s no such thing as destiny, and you know it.” Tony didn’t look at him. “Tony, you
know
there’s no such thing.”

Tony looked up suddenly, shouting, “Then what is he doing
in her head
?! Her meeting me was just luck. At the school, she would have met him again and again and again,” he struck his hand desk each time he said ‘again’. “Until they would have clicked. ... Until they’d have married. And they’d
be
married today. Because
their
bond is stronger.”

“‘Their
bond’
?
What
bond?! You don’t know how strong their bond would have been, and you don’t know that they would even have had a bond.”

“They would have had a bond, trust me,” Tony said petulantly.

“Follow your own logic!” Matt was standing up, furious at Tony. “Destined to be together?
Destined
? Obviously not, because she met
you
, and she chose
you
, and she married ...” he blinked, then fixed his sentence, “and she would have married
you
!”

“You don’t know what a fluke –”

“I don’t
need
to know, because I’m following the
facts
!
Destined
to be together?! First she meets you and not him. Then she decides to marry you and not him. And now she’s dead. She’ll
never
be with him. She never
was
with him. You call that destiny? That’s not destiny. There
is
no destiny! There’s only blind luck!”

“Then what’s his picture doing in her head?”

“It’s just blind luck.”

“Blind luck?”

“Blind luck. Has to be. Given enough time, if we look at enough numbers, I’m sure we could find
any
human face there. ... Tony,” and his voice softened. “You don’t know that anything would have happened. You don’t know anything for sure. And you
know
that.”

Tony made a face and said nothing.

Matt continued, “Besides, even if she had never met you, even if she
had
gone to England, you can’t possibly know for a fact that she would have been attracted to him.”

“She
would
have been. I know what kind of men she likes. I know what kind of man she’d always dreamed of. I know who she’d be attracted to.”

“Well ... even if you do, and I doubt it ... But even if you do, you don’t know that
he
would be attracted to
her
. You don’t know what his type is, do you?”

Tony suddenly straightened. “That’s right. I
don’t
know.” And Matt saw that Tony had calmed down a bit. He missed the spark in Tony’s eyes, the spark that said: ‘But I
will
know.’

~

Tony woke up the next day, the clock still ticking in his head. Six more days till the wedding.

Oh, enough of this, he told himself. I’m pathetic.

He got up. As he slowly drank his coffee, showered, and got dressed, Tony’s calendar was always there, nagging at him to see what she would have done today, where she was supposed to be now.

No, no, no.

He left the house without looking at Tony’s calendar.

~

“The women I’m attracted to I like to call ‘Inbetween Women’,” Steve said. He and Tony had been sitting in Tony’s office with the door closed for the last two hours. It began with a conversation about Eternity Plus, and slowly degenerated into ‘men talk’. Tony took out some Bourbon, and the topics slowly grew more and more personal.

“‘Inbetween Women’? What’s that?”

“Women on the cusp, on the verge. Women that have a wild, wild side, but they also stand on the verge of order, of living an organized life, of becoming someone’s wife. The women who bind their hair real tight behind the back of their heads, and dress sharply. You know, to show you that they’re in control of the situation, that they control everything, and that you can’t control them. But the thing is, they need to show you this. Which means that it’s not real, they just
want
it to be true.

“That’s why I usually like them when thirty, give or take a couple of years. They’re leaving the wild side behind, they feel this monumental need to settle down and to have an
orderly
life, a
home
, a husband, kids, sometimes even at the expense of what they really want, even if it means spending their lives with a man that they’re only marginally interested in.”

“I
think
I know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah?”

“But I’m not sure.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll give you an example of this woman I know, that I think is your type, and you tell me if that’s what you’re talking about.”

“Okay.”

“This friend of mine met a woman about two years ago.”

“How old is he?”

“He was twenty-nine then. They got together, lived together, and set a wedding date for almost exactly a year after they met.”

“Okay.”

“And then, two months before the wedding, she cancelled. They never told me exactly why, so I can’t be sure. From what I heard, I do know that she was worried because she couldn’t make up her mind about ‘forever’. She wanted it now but she didn’t know if she wanted it forever.”

“Yeah, I get that.”

“And there was also something about him widowing her.”

Steve sat up in his chair. “He’s a businessman?”

“Yeah.”

“And he spends endless hours at his job, and some weeks she hardly ever sees him?”

“Yes.”

“So what happened then?”