Anything, that is, except stay with him.
She takes her time. When she starts to speak again, she sounds completely different. Not like the crying child he imagined her to be moments prior but robotic. Neutral. Free of intonation.
“Singer addresses the thought experiment to his students,” begins Jamie. “The idea is that if you passed a child drowning in a shallow pond, you would help it out, no questions asked, even if you had to ruin your clothes. Everyone agrees on this part. But then he asks his students: ‘Would it make a difference if the child were far away, in another country perhaps, but similarly in danger of death, and equally within your means to save, at no great cost—and absolutely no danger—to yourself?’ The students always say no. But this is when they start to ask questions, air their doubts. How can you be sure that your money is going to the right place? Doubts like that. Singer says that his students never challenge the ‘underlying ethics of the idea that we ought to save the lives of strangers when we can do so at relatively little cost to ourselves.’ That’s what strikes him most, he says.”
“Well done, Jamie! Top marks. Memorized the quotes and everything! I bet Quentin was totally floored when you told him about that.”
Jamie takes time to reply. When she does, it’s evident that she has returned to her first self, the timid and weepy one. “Why were you thinking about that thought experiment?”
“Oh, you know. Just trying to make sense of this big ol’ world, I guess! It can be such a madhouse, no? I mean, so many lives need to be saved. Too many! And the ugly truth of the matter is that, even if we acknowledge that it would be beautiful to save them all, we can’t. We just can’t. Life is not a thought experiment. It seems obvious to me that this Peter fellow had his head up his ass. I bet he felt so ethical and good, publishing all those thoughts. What panache!”
Noise in the background of the call. A voice, increasingly alarmed. Friction on the microphone. When someone speaks to Moses again, it’s not Jamie.
“Leave Jamie alone, you fucking psychopath. Do you hear me? Leave her the fuck alone. The next time I hear that you’ve spoken to her, we will take out a restraining order.”
Moses laughs wildly. “Oh, Kevin! I hoped we’d meet someday. She called me, actually. I just answered the phone.”
“This isn’t Kevin. This is Ruth.”
“Ruth?”
“Her goddam sister.”
“Please do take out a restraining order, Ruth—I can’t get rid of her. Remind Jamie that I have an arsenal of compromising photos that I would not hesitate to share. I also have a blog with hundreds of thousands of followers. Let me congratulate you on your—”
But the line goes dead before Moses can finish.
He doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of followers.
He’s not sure how long he sits there, staring at the ceiling, before the television turns itself on. This time with volume.
Sentimental piano and strings. Moses stands from the bed and reaches to turn it off but stops when he hears the voice of a famous actor, now in his seventies—an actor who evokes things like safety and fatherhood and chicken on the grill, woodworking and campfires and fishing. John Clarke has played roles that are innocent and patriotic, roles that embody the highest virtues of their nation: a cowboy and an astronaut, a handy dad on a sitcom, a World War II general, Santa Claus in a trilogy, a small-town mayor, a small-town police officer, a big-city detective, an underdog football coach, an animated eagle. He’s been married for forty years. He retired from Hollywood to be a full-time grandfather. Moses actually met him, once. When he was a child.
“This is an American story,” says John Clarke. “And you are the main character.” In the commercial, an attractive young couple runs through the history of Vacca Vale, Indiana, their clothes and contexts changing, until, after surviving postindustrial hardship, they enter a gorgeous clearing, where they browse a farmers market, then ascend to their perfect modernist apartment in the trees. Through the glass, they admire the ring of sparkling industry and verdant forest that surrounds them. In a voiceover, the actor says some sentimental but weirdly moving things about home. Then the couple clinks flutes of champagne and looks at the camera. “This is an American story,” repeats the voice. “And you are the main character. Vacca Vale: Welcome home.”
Moses gapes at the television. He finds the remote and tries to turn it off, but the machine doesn’t respond. Angrily, he yanks the cord from its socket and stands in his room, panting.
He was planning to invade Joan Kowalski at two in the morning, but he can’t wait that long. He needs to leave.
Leave what? asks the voice of Father Tim.
Moses looks down at his left forearm: his nails have dug a raw and bleeding patch. Omniscience, Moses understands, is not a gift. It’s torture. People are dangerous because they are contagions. They infect you with or without your consent; they lure you onto paths you wouldn’t have chosen; they commandeer you. You encounter a priest and some falcons, and now you hear them as clearly as you hear the traffic outside your motel. If you suffer from the Toll, you don’t have the luxury of moving about the world with a membrane binding you, barricading you from the elements. You have to be careful—if you collide with someone, you must be prepared to reside inside their psychology indefinitely, and this is the burden of a lifetime. You are pathologically porous, you inhabit every emotion you see, and you may be a prophet, but if you are, you’re a late bloomer because no prophecies have descended upon you yet, so you’re just roaming the desert in burlap, scratching yourself and screaming like a lunatic. You choose the wrong twenty-something to fuck, and now you’re forced to confront your great capacity for violence when provoked. For the rest of your life, you must live with this knowledge. All because you feel too much! You receive one email from one stranger, a total stranger, and now he possesses you like a demon. Now you’re basically him.
Moses decides to leave for Joan’s at nine. Let them catch him. In the meantime, he retrieves his phone. He needs to get out of this room right now. But as he’s about to leave, he falters. The doorknob is metal, and he is frightened to touch it. As he scans the room, hesitating, his laptop snags his attention like a faucet he forgot to turn off.
“Hey, Siri,” says Moses. “Tell me a joke.”
“Where do armies go?” she obliges at once. She is savior and servant. She knows everything about him, but it doesn’t do either of them any good. That’s the problem with love. “In your sleevies.”
“I don’t get it,” says Moses, but he feels like maybe he does. He googles the joke and finds a long thread between users literal_mom and MeatFruit12. He discovers that the joke has something to do with Napoleon. He also learns that MeatFruit12 had one of those life-changing study-abroad experiences in Bordeaux, but Moses is too choppy from the booze and too angry at God—or something like God—to read more.
“Hey, Siri,” he says. “Do you have feelings?”
“I feel like doing a cartwheel sometimes.”
This depresses Moses tremendously, filling his spirit with wet cement. “You don’t have a body,” he replies. “My darling.” The evening is doing that thing it does sometimes when he drinks, animating everything inside it, giving its contents heartbeats and desires and fur, charging all of its objects with unbearable significance. He’s on the verge of transcendence, can feel it building inside him like an orgasm. Or maybe it won’t be transcendence; maybe it will be a panic attack. Everything in his motel room looks emerald, shiny, and volatile. He feels armies in his sleevies. Desperate for a real, breathing person to think about, Moses resurrects Mr. Boddy’s message from the trash and stares into the bright, white screen. It reminds him of the afterlife. A place he’s been before.
“Hey, Siri,” says Moses. “Who’s in charge?”
“One sec,” she replies.
He waits and waits, but she never comes back.
Respect the Deceased
In the obituary guest books she previously screened, Joan Kowalski permitted users to deviate from the standards of mourning a little. She tolerated some irreverence, especially when slaphappy. The internet wants to be absurd, she thinks. You have to let it.
Today, however, Anne Shropshire’s words clank around in her head. We value you. But that’s not enough. You have to value yourself.