Том Светерлич - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him, never knowing what to say.

“We’ve all lost,” says Timothy, smiling without his eyes smiling. “That’s my enduring association with Pittsburgh—when people ask where I was, I see that hotel room shower and hear my wife screaming—”

“I hear ‘Pittsburgh’ and my mind flashes to that sports bar in Columbus. Ohio State Buckeyes—”

“God created us with the ability to move on from overwhelming grief,” he says. “Coping involves understanding our own innate worth, understanding that if we’re the ones surviving tragedy, death, divorce or change, then we’re the ones ultimately responsible for sorting our complex emotions in order to fulfill God’s plan for us—”

“Is that what you believe?” I ask him.

Kramerbooks & Afterwords for dinner—a café and bookstore, a haunt of students and the chic intelligentsia, young professionals, writers. I’ve been here before, several times. We’re seated among the books, at a corner table. We order pasta—butternut squash ravioli and parmesan cheese. Hungrier than I realized.

“Lydia and I—our marriage wasn’t strong enough,” says Timothy. “After Pittsburgh I confessed everything about Emily—”

“Emily must have been the woman you were seeing?”

“Emily was there for me when my wife wasn’t,” says Timothy. “She was a beautiful, bright young woman, but she had self-esteem problems and before I fully realized what I was doing, I was taking advantage of her. We met through the clinic. I’m not proud. I still miss her. Of all the people I lost that day, I still think of Emily the most—I wish things had been different. I’m telling you this because I understand how you’re suffering—”

“Letting go’s difficult,” I say.

“Well. It is difficult,” says Timothy. “Lydia and I tried to work through it, but never stood a chance. Healthier for both of us, I think, when we separated. I moved out here to work in the psychology department at Georgetown—I was listless. I bought into a full suite of Adware—top-of-the-line stuff, at least for back then. I used to come home from campus and lie down on the basement couch and lose myself streaming the Victoria’s Secret catalog, that sort of thing—the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Agent Provocateur vids. Soft stuff, promotional kink—there was a scenario where two girls went to a country manor wearing nothing but lingerie. I streamed it so often that even now I could close my eyes and lead you through that manor house room by room, telling you everything that happened to those two girls. I didn’t do anything else with my life—I didn’t go out to eat, I didn’t have any friends, I’d just eat cereal or SpaghettiOs for dinner and stream this stuff. I’d spend entire days searching for perfect faces in the streams, trying to find the perfect model, the perfect scenario, and I’d snap from the Adware dehydrated and aching, my eyes bloodshot—”

The waitress delivers the check and Timothy pays for both of us.

“I was once like you,” he says, “drugs to realize the streams, my brain hardwired to pornography, secretly photographing girls in my classes with my retinal cams, girls I’d see on campus. I sank very low, Dominic—you wouldn’t believe what I was capable of. Think of the worst type of man—that was the man I was. I need you to know it’s possible for a man to change. Do you believe that a man can change, Dominic?”

“I don’t know,” I tell him.

“A man can change—”

“The scales fall from our eyes, is that it?”

“I’d spend twenty, twenty-one hours a day streaming pornography, but I bottomed out—I blacked out in Georgetown Cupcake, of all places. I just collapsed. I woke up in the back of an ambulance, hooked up to an IV. Familiar?”

I nodded that it was familiar, yes, “Numerous occasions,” I tell him. “But you pulled through—”

“I didn’t pull through. I was saved, Dominic—”

“Saved?” I ask him.

“I experienced grace—”

“Look, I appreciate your interest in me, I do, but I’m not religious. I’m not looking to be saved. I don’t think I’m interested in this pitch—”

“I know better than to evangelize to my patients,” he says. “This is about finding the light within you that has gone out and flipping the switch so it comes back on—”

“Responsible immersion techniques, that sort of thing? How you get along with the streams?”

“Matthew 18:9,” says Timothy. “‘And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.’”

“I don’t understand—”

“I plucked it out, Dominic. I cut at my scalp with an X-Acto knife and pulled out the wiring. You can peel it right off the skull plate and just yank it out of your brain. I was in the hospital for three months recovering, but I was saved. Corneal laser surgery for the damage pulling out the lenses, but I was saved. Even if I would have lost my sight or lost my life at that moment, I would have gained my soul. When I recovered, he was there waiting for me—”

I glance at him and notice now that the scar tissue showing through his thinning hair is different from the usual Adware scars, not the grid ridges most people have, but an ill-healed white tangle.

“You’ve got to be kidding me if you think I’ll tear out my Adware—”

Timothy laughs. “My story—my personal story—is that I accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior and my faith in Christ gave me the strength to overcome my addictions. I don’t know what your personal story will be, Dominic. I’m hoping to help shepherd you to that crisis of change, and I’m hoping that you’ll come through that crisis a new man. I have a proposal for you—”

“I’ll just complete the group sessions, Dr. Reynolds. I really don’t want to get involved with any of this. No offense, I can tell you feel strongly—”

“Waverly,” says Timothy. “The man who was waiting for me in the hospital was a man named Waverly. He had a business proposal for me—a partnership. He needed my expertise for the work he was involved in and I believe he’ll need your expertise as well. Not everyone gets an opportunity to meet a man like him, but you came along at the right moment, Dominic. Dumb luck, in a way. If you work with Waverly, you won’t need to worry about Correctional Health Board regulations or completing therapy; you won’t need to worry about your arrest records, the felony charge, about money, your future employment status. He can release you from all these restraints, freeing you to take care of your own health, find your own change, pursue your own happiness. Waverly’s an influential man, Dominic. I think he can help you—”

“Let’s leave this stuff about happiness and change on the table for a moment. This man Waverly can clear my felony charge?” I ask him. “Is that what you’re telling me? Get me out of therapy, offer me work?”

“I just want you to meet him,” says Timothy.

Timothy offers a ride home, but I need to be alone. I need time to clear my thoughts—to Google Waverly, if nothing else. I take the bus. Empty at this hour, the rear seat’s vacant so I stretch out, unwelcoming to anyone who might board and find their way back here. Scan for signals—the bus’s router’s exceptional, Metro.net a stronger signal than the citywide Wi-Fi, so I switch connections even though it’s only good for a half-hour slot. New Hampshire to M, hoodie pulled low to block the city lights and the flash of passing ads. Waverly + DC nets hits—Theodore Waverly, Ph.D., head of something called Focal Networks, a consultancy firm it looks like. Adware marketing. His client list includes multinationals, the Chinese government, the European Union, the United States. A press-release bio’s repeated on every site he’s mentioned: a survivor of Pittsburgh, chair of the Human-Computer Interaction program at Carnegie Mellon, work in artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology for DARPA. Developer of something called precognitive bypass communication. Deep roots in DC—an adviser to the Republican Party, a donor to the Washington Ballet, the DC symphony. He sits on the Kennedy Center board of trustees. Not much personal information, nothing specific—not even a picture of the man.