Lost in arcadia a novel, p.5
Lost in Arcadia: A Novel, page 5
He’d even set up a small fitness room in the back of the apartment so that he wouldn’t need to head to a gym or worry about how constantly staying inside—almost always either sitting or lying down—might ravage his body. Not that it mattered here, since no one would see him, but Gideon knew that one day he might wish to return to the rest of the world. He had a bench set up, plus free weights and an elliptical. He hadn’t used them with anything approximating regularity, but they were always there waiting for him, and because of their presence he felt fully self-sufficient.
Never having to leave the apartment meant more time for himself, more time to do what he, rather than his ex-wife, wanted. More time watching movies and listening to music, no tedious shopping or worries about what the apartment looked like if someone wanted to pop over. More time for relaxing in bed, more opportunities to roll over and see that it was eleven o’clock and then, since there was no particular reason to get up, falling back asleep. (As an experiment, he spent an entire day in bed, apart from using the bathroom, to see if he liked it. At first he did, but at the end of the twenty-four hours, he felt awful, wracked with unhappiness for reasons he hadn’t been able to decipher, and hadn’t tried it again.) The cogs he’d set into motion for his job required a fair amount of effort to keep turning, but not as much as he’d guessed, and being out of the office meant that he got back all of the time most people wasted on nonsense, the coffee breaks and meetings and progress reports that until now made up what he knew of as adult life. Most of all, staying in the apartment meant endless time online, endless content on Arcadia. And that meant looking at women.
None of the streaming girls were around all the time, in fact most of them were pretty damn unpredictable, but that didn’t matter too much to Gideon. Sometimes he had two on in different windows, but usually he just watched whichever of his favorites happened to be streaming at the time, the result of hours spent searching through camfeeds until he found someone he couldn’t get enough of. One he followed because when he first happened upon her channel, she was masturbating with her mouse and he’d never seen anyone do that before. Another reminded him of a girl he’d known in college, something in her eyes or maybe smile. She was pretty tame by web standards, only stripping or lightly playing with herself, but he still liked sitting in on her sessions and watching her giggle.
He’d spotted his newest favorite at the end of a long day, more than ten hours of staring at his computer screen. He had begun to doze off, and at first he thought he was hallucinating. She had long dark hair, skin nearly the same shade, and eyes that seemed too big for a real human, more like an idealized version of a face than one that could occur by nature. With most girls he didn’t even look at their faces—what was important was the way their body parts fit together, like pieces of a puzzle—but with hers, he couldn’t look away. Gideon had since become what was known as a “devotee” or “regular.” Not a stalker, but more than just a guy who visited frequently. A lot of the more popular girls had some, and even he had to admit it was a strange relationship, as regulars tended to be more defensive of the girls’ privacy than the women themselves were—jealous of anyone asking too many questions, like a spouse or significant other.
He’d found her soon after separating from Claire, first visiting her occasionally and then subscribing so that he’d be notified whenever she turned on her camera. He knew what music she liked, that she didn’t like her hair so long, considered cutting it regularly but never did. He knew that her nose had a slight crinkle to its left side and that sometimes she became so absorbed in what she was reading or playing online that she completely forgot she had a camera running. Despite their lack of titillating content, these were some of Gideon’s favorite times with her. He knew from watching her bedroom for hours that she read a lot but only physical books, never on a reader, which was either quaint and old-fashioned or a hipster affectation, depending on who you asked. He knew that she used K-Y lube and preferred wearing dark colors regardless of the season because she thought they went better with her skin tone. He knew that she was so embarrassed about her face that she refused to look in mirrors. He knew that she had a brown mole right next to her anus and that she was the tiniest bit bow-legged. He had seen all the contours of her body, was more familiar with them than he was with either his own or his ex-wives’. While he’d felt theirs, he had never just stared at them, examining every inch of skin for hours like a masterpiece in a museum.
What Gideon didn’t know was her name. That is to say her real name, not the screenname NightXAngel that she unfailingly used online. Or where she lived, or who she was friends with. He was fully aware that they were not in anything remotely approximating a traditional relationship. But none of that made his feelings for her any less real.
“So today I was thinking we’d play a game of Truth or Dare,” she said, speaking directly into the camera mounted above her laptop monitor so it looked like she was addressing each member of her audience individually. “But you know that there are some things I won’t talk about.”
She smirked and touched a finger to her lips. “Let’s keep things completely sexual here.”
Which was probably fine for almost everybody else in her channel, but he wanted more. Her name, of course, but really he’d be happy with any glimpse into her life outside the hour or so a day she spent on camera. What was she like when the computer was off?
GetItOn: Truth
SpanksfortheMammaries: Dare
Guest113: Dare
“I heard a truth first, so what should I tell you guys?”
Guest244: Dare
JonsonsJohnson: How many guys have you slept with?
SurlyDizknee: Dare
Guest113: Do you like it up the butt?
Guest12: What really turns you on?
GetItOn: Do you live alone?
“I think I’ll answer … Guest Twelve, who asked what turns me on.”
SpanksfortheMammaries: Fuck that, let’s do a dare.
“I like a man who’s really … faithful. I like it when I don’t have to worry whether he’s a big horndog sleeping around the town. If I know he has eyes only for me then I want to fuck his brains out.”
Guest88: Cmon bitch do a fucking dare and show us your cunt.
“Guest eighty-eight, I think you should leave.”
**Guest88 has been banned from the channel**
“That being said, I gave a truth, so now let’s do a dare.”
Gideon minimized the window. He knew how things would go from here. She’d stick something into an orifice and pretend to be getting off on it, which the guys would love and in return send her “tips” in the form of Arcadia points and positive reviews. And he couldn’t complain, because most of the time he spent watching camgirls that was what he hoped for, too. But he kept her window open and the sound on so he’d know if she went back to talking about herself.
He pulled up the analytics on last night’s show and started preparing for a presentation he’d be giving (via videochat) next week on the plan for Gravedigger’s next few months. Five minutes into it, though, he became distracted by noise from the channel and maximized her chat window again.
When she logged off for the day, he cleaned up his desk with tissues before diving back into work with a whole new idea for what Gravedigger should do next week on The Tonight Show, which in deference to the lead guest would be shot in Arcadia using avatars for the host, band, and audience. He knew his boss would love it, not that Gideon gave much of a fuck about what he or anyone else thought at the moment. He felt too unhappy to register anything but the task at hand, and concentrated on losing himself in writing the fucking inane banter that would make this appearance go viral when it aired several weeks later. Her video streams were the closest thing Gideon had to human contact these days, and when they went off he felt not just alone, which was why he’d cordoned himself off in the first place, but lonely—not that he could admit that fact, even to himself.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Teresa stabbed a piece of chicken with her fork, but noticing her grandmother’s glare from the far side of their dinner table, she left it on the plate. “Slow down a second,” said Granny T. “We need to say grace.” They always started meals this way, but she still always hoped they would forget, that they could just eat like a normal family without this arcane speedbump.
The three of them bowed their heads. “Gracias te damos Señor por el alimento que nos has dado y que las almas del santo purgatorio descansen en paz. Amen,” said her grandfather. It seemed like the hungrier she was, the slower he spoke, but there was still something soothing in these words she’d heard repeated thousands of times.
They sat around a small, square wooden table on chairs covered by homemade cloth covers, sewn by her grandmother when their seats ripped apart. Teresa ate quickly, out of both hunger and a desire to leave the table as fast as she could. Her grandparents always made dinners last an entire evening, stretching them out until her energy and patience had been sapped away by inane questions, but sometimes when she finished, they’d let her leave.
They ate in silence for several minutes, devouring reheated chicken enchiladas from yesterday that tasted just as good as they had the night before. Granny T didn’t like cooking, even though she was the only member of the family who’d ever made a meal more complex than a sandwich, so she tried to do as much of it as possible at once and to stretch her dishes out for an entire week sometimes.
“And as I was saying about tanning,” said Granny T.
That was the other problem with dinners. Teresa was stuck, forced to listen to how her loving but undeniably out-of-touch grandparents viewed the world, and worse, how they wanted her to live in it. She’d ducked out of this conversation earlier today, knowing it could lead nowhere good, but that didn’t mean her grandmother was ready to drop the subject.
“I don’t understand, it’s not like I even … Granny, who even needs to get tanned in a bed—we live in a desert. If I want to get tan, all I have to do is walk around outside for five minutes. It’s so bright out there you can actually watch as the cancer grows on your skin.”
“Bullshit,” said Granny T. Her ancient back was straight, and this posture made her look younger than she was, despite her gray hair and lined face. While she was stout and had the worst resting bitch face Teresa knew, Granny T was also quick to smile or laugh. The only truly talkative member of the family, she was also never willing just to be quiet and agree in order to make life easier, which Teresa thought was both admirable and stupid. “Folks said that when I was growing up, too, but kids used them back then, and I’m sure they do now. White girls always want to look like they’ve got some brown in them, eh? If you do it, though, you’ll just look like burnt toast, and who wants that?”
“Mm hmm,” said Grandpa Luis. He was too busy trying to make a straight cut with his knife to really care what else was going on in the room. He was the same way with everything, approaching tasks slowly but with absolute devotion. Even with his hands shaking he could carve a turkey cleaner than the food in catalogue pictures, or cut wood in perfect curves while working in the garage. He was regularly consulted by neighbors for advice on problems too tricky for them to work out on their own. Teresa had heard them refer to him as wise, saying that his unflappable, dawdling pace was a sign of his intelligence, but usually it just drove Teresa crazy. The math lessons he’d given her years earlier had been some of the longest hours of her life, so excruciatingly time-collapsing that she’d briefly fantasized about running away from home just to avoid them. The one time he’d needed to write an email, Teresa let him use her computer and returned two hours later to find him still editing its three sentences.
“Granny, everyone’s known those things are dangerous since before you were born. UV rays aren’t exactly a new discovery.”
“That doesn’t mean people don’t do it. Don’t pretend you haven’t smoked a cigarette, and everyone knows what cancer sticks do to you. I’m just saying you should be careful about what you try on yourself. I’m sure those makeups you buy online are chock full of hazardous materials, toxic waste and, and parabens and whatnot. Unless you grow it yourself, you can’t be sure it’s safe.”
Luis and Theresa (Teresa had been named after her grandmother, but apparently her mother hadn’t known the correct spelling of Theresa’s first name, so her daughter ended up with a name inspired by, but one letter different from, her grandmother’s) watched the local news three times a day and were some of the few remaining subscribers to the Albuquerque Journal’s print edition, a luxury that they justified by living with practically no other luxuries whatsoever. They tried to keep informed about the world but distrusted almost everything they read or watched, saying the media exaggerated constantly to keep viewer and reader numbers high. Teresa had almost no memories of what they’d been like before retiring, but now that they had, the pair rarely left the house except for church or groceries. She assumed that everything they told her about the world and the people in it came from either dubious reporting or events that occurred before she was born, in which case their recollections were at best outdated and most likely riddled with specks of dirt and dust.
“I don’t use ‘cancer sticks’ and I never did. But if I did, it’d be with the full knowledge of what I’m up to, same as with tanning beds. I’d never use one, but if I did I would do it as an adult, fully aware of its possible consequences.”
“Okay, dear,” said Granny T. “It’s just you’ve been wearing a lot of makeup lately. And I know you may be hearing things about what it takes to look pretty, what boys like and all of that nonsense.”
“Is it a crime to care how I look?”
“No. I know that. We both know that, don’t we?” She looked back to Luis for approval.
“Mm hmm,” he said, dipping a tortilla into the remaining sauce on his plate. He liked to eat his food one item at a time, which drove Teresa crazy whenever she noticed it. Afterward he would drink in the same manner, but never while he was eating because he was so engrossed in the food. Back in high school, when she’d first moved in, Teresa used to wonder whether he enjoyed eating more than she did, whether for him it was a wonderful experience while to her it was just like filling a car with gas.
“And I was just seeing that on the news the other day,” said Granny T. “I don’t know when it was but I made sure to remember it because it was something you missed and I knew, I just knew that it would be something you should hear about.”
Teresa simply stared back at her, having decided that the best possible way to leave the table was to let her grandmother ramble. That was always the way. They talked, she listened, and while she loved her grandparents dearly, this was also why she so desperately wanted to move out. Having nearly finished with their lives, all they had left to do in this world was to advise hers.
“There was this young girl, about your age I think, maybe a little older,” said Granny T. “And if I remember correctly she was trying to impress some boy or something. Wasn’t that it?”
Grandpa Luis looked up, swallowed his food, and answered. “No. No, they didn’t actually say why she did it.”
Teresa was shocked by this reaction, and so, it seemed, was Granny T, who took a few moments to recover. The pair rarely disagreed and for the most part functioned as a unit. It was sometimes hard even to think of them as separate people. Sure, Luis would be out in the garage making table legs while Theresa spoke on the phone with faraway friends that she rarely ever saw. But for the most part they seemed like two organisms that had somehow combined into one, with memories, thoughts, and feelings that only ever complemented each other. They’d been together for more than sixty years, at least that’s what Teresa guessed, though she was far too embarrassed to ask. She could probably figure it out if she knew one of their ages, but she’d never asked about that either. While they’d always been old to her, their aging seemed to have slowed down so that they were perpetually old yet never decrepit or enfeebled. Age attached itself to them, adding more wrinkles and liver spots but leaving their routines and personalities untouched.
“They … are you sure?” asked Granny T.
“Yes,” said Luis.
Teresa interjected. “Not important. What’s the rest of the story?”
Granny T looked back at her husband, but he was already back to his second helping of enchiladas. “Well I thought it was about … well anyhow, it might’ve been a lot of things, but this girl … for whatever reason she goes into a tanning salon to get herself prettied up. You know there are legal limits on how much time you can spend in one of those things. Just because they’re legal doesn’t mean the government isn’t aware that they’re bad for you.”
“I know they’re bad. I don’t need to resurrect the FDA to tell me what I can and can’t do to my body,” said Teresa.
“What with Haight in the White House deregulating everything he can find and erasing immigrant rights, saying that the federal government shouldn’t be—”
“The story, abuela? El cuento?”
“Sorry, I just get so frustrated sometimes with those politicians. What I was saying, dear, is that after they make her leave one tanning salon, she goes and visits another one. She visits … I think it was four salons a day?” Granny T looked up, then continued when Luis made no move to respond. “It must’ve been four a day for maybe like a whole week. Or it might have been longer, I can’t remember. But then she started smelling funny.”
