Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

Dodger addresses him, “Bert, this is Dark Meadow. He doesn’t like video. It’s only pictures for him.”

Without turning from his screens, Bert says, “Old-school.”

“Dark Meadow’s the one who posted that article,” Dodger says. “He’s here to make sure our servers are clean.”

The tables are tall and ringed with director’s chairs. When we sit, Dodger says, “You don’t know how glad I am to see you, old friend. Your article touched on a matter of grave concern for us. Can you lend us your expertise?”

“You’ve got a regular server farm in there,” I say. “Do you have a T1 line?”

Dodger lifts his hands. “Our business requires it,” he says, and he starts detailing all their hardware configurations.

I can feel there are other rooms down a short hall, maybe veterinary exam rooms or rooms filled with animal cages. When I glance over at Bert’s screens, I see footage of a girl. She is naked except for her socks. She walks into the shot, facing away from the viewer, and she approaches a table. Bert backs the footage up so that she enters again, approaches the table again, and leaning forward slightly, she places her hands palm-down upon it.

“This should be no problem,” I tell Dodger, even though I haven’t completely heard him. Such is the absorbing power of video. “Let me grab my diagnostic drives from the van.” I glance again at the screen.

Dodger catches me and smiles. “He said he didn’t like videos,” he tells Bert.

“I heard,” Bert says.

“Who could blame you?” Dodger says. “She’s special, brand-new. Look at her, knock-kneed and wobbly. She doesn’t even know where to look. I have them leave their socks on. It’s one of those touches.”

On the screen, a naked man with pale skin enters. He approaches the girl from behind.

“She needs a name,” Dodger says. “All the good ones have been used up — Dazzle, Sparkle, Crush, Taffy, Daphne, Tumble, Twist.”

“What about Trample?” Bert asks.

“Go back to your editing,” Dodger tells him, then says to me, “Bert has no sense of beauty, he appreciates nothing.”

On the screen, the man nears the girl. He reaches around her and places his hands firmly atop hers, pinning them. Behind his large frame, she disappears, her little-girl self is gone, and I activate. It happens so fast that a shudder races through me and I feel my body jerk. The man’s body hitches as he begins, and then she’s gone, there’s nothing of her left.

“Whoa,” Dodger says when he sees my face. “Looks like we have a new fan. Bert, burn an extra copy of this, Dark Meadow here’s an admirer.”

Bert turns and gives me a sour look. He looks like he hasn’t slept in a long time.

“You can’t even see the girl,” he says. “This is the part I’m editing out .”

“What works is what works,” Dodger says. “You said you didn’t like videos, but this does it for you, yes? Help us out, and I’ll give her to you. Give our servers a sweep, and she is yours.”

For the first time, I notice that the table in the video is stainless steel. And just as it dawns on me that I, too, am at a stainless-steel table, a girl walks into the room, right past me. She’s carrying a bowl of cereal in both hands. The cereal’s the kind with rainbow marshmallows and the bowl is filled to the brim, milk threatening to spill, so she’s moving slowly, eyes glued to the rim. I see that her hair is wet, that she’s wearing a bathrobe, and this is her, this is the girl on the screen, and I understand that when Dodger offered her to me, he was not talking about a video file.

My arms rise as if in self-defense, and I stand so fast that the director’s chair is knocked to the ground. The girl turns to look at me, milk sloshing onto her hands. We lock eyes for a moment, and then I am running. I drop the thumb drive and run. I bump Bert’s table, his monitors threatening to tip, and I almost take down a tower of servers as I race for my van.

At home, I drag my computer out front, and on the cement driveway, I start swinging a hammer. With the claw, I split the aluminum casing. I carve out the GPU and the optical drive and the RAM cards. I scrape all the circuitry off the motherboard. I pull the drives from their bays, and I think, I am a bad guy, I am a broken guy . I start to bang on the drives, actuator arms flying off, spindles cracking. “I am bad,” I mutter to myself. “I am broken.” I pound and I pound until there is nothing left but crumbs of plastic and aluminum meal. Of the hard drives themselves, the alloy discs knurl under the waffled face of the hammer into raw nuggets. Rhonza walks by. She casts a quick glance, but if she formulates an opinion, she keeps it to herself.

Hammer in hand, I rise and turn to look at my house. What kind of person lives here? I know there are those who are born. But what of those who are made? Do they also have a choice? Can they still choose?

—

I drive all day. I drive to the marina and park in its blindingly bright lot. I make my way along the floating docks, and things are familiar — ice being shoveled into plastic coolers, a charter captain hosing down saltwater tackle. But when I reach the slip where a sailboat named Ketchfire perpetually resides in my mind, I find nothing. There is only a rainbow sheen of spilled diesel on the water. Were there other boys? Was I the only one? My mind won’t let me picture the Skipper except in snapshots: white-soled shoes, tanned forearms, grey stubble.

Just off La Cienega was a pizza joint Skipper used to take us to, and when I drive there, it is still open. In fact, it is still filled with boys — soccer teams, Little League, a brigade of boys in matching black karate uniforms. I drink diet root beer from a red plastic cup and stare at their faces. I study them as they hold pizza slices and tromp around in their cleats, and I don’t care if people eyeball me. This is where, after our troop was formed and we sailed the Ketchfire for the first time, Skipper brought us for pizza and gave us our nicknames. Other boys got names like Nav and Crusher and Sparks and Cutter. Then he looked at me. He must have seen something in me. There must have been something about me. He said, “And you are Dark Meadow.”

I head up Topanga Canyon, passing the Charlie Manson ranch and the lodge where Jim Morrison wrote “Roadhouse Blues.” I suppose I should share the fact that there was another sound in the bottom of the boat. The Skipper had a camera, the old disposable kind. It used real film, and to advance the roll, he had to turn a plastic wheel three times— scritch, scritch, scritch . There would be a whine as the flash charged. He framed his pictures carefully, taking his time, and you never knew when that bright light would blind you.

I park at the Santa Ynez trailhead and walk up, above the dog park with its barrels of eco-bagged dog shit, above the footpaths where multicolored condom wrappers flutter in the thornbushes. Up here, tawny grass surrounds a giant coastal oak. According to the newspaper, this is where it happened. There is a stiff breeze. Looking west: a panorama of ocean. I study the ancient tree, with its burdened trunk and gnarled branches, and I wonder which limb Skipper Stevenson threw his rope over.

—

It is dark when I arrive home. The Tiger and the Cub are on my porch.

When I approach, the Tiger says, “There was someone outside our window again.”

“We heard him,” the Cub adds.

“Seriously,” the Tiger says. “He was super-creepy.”

“Was there really someone out there?” I ask.

They both go quiet.

“I don’t want to go home,” the Cub says, and the Tiger nods in agreement.

“Come on,” I tell them, and open the door. Inside, I turn on all the lights and, in the kitchen, retrieve three milks.