David Shafer - Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

“No, please, Mark. You’re doing us an honor,” said Margo. “This is part of the Thorough Honesty that you yourself say we need if we’re to reach our own consciousclusions.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” he said. “And you know, Margo, I just have to…no, we just have to…add this knowledge to our work together. This…this doubt, this fear, this insecurity — this is a consciousclusion also. We fold this in, and our Knowledge Blanket just becomes that much stronger.”

“Oh, the Knowledge Blanket! I love that concept, Mark. I pull mine out all the time.”

“As often as you can, Margo. As often as you can.”

“So what will you do with it?”

“With what?” Mark sniffled.

“With that consciousclusion? That we are brought back ceaselessly? That even you can be muddled by your dead father, by a man who — I hope you don’t mind me mentioning — left you and your mother when you were young.”

“Oh gosh, no, I don’t mind. Mention away,” said Mark, who had puffed and massaged his middle-class upbringing at the insistence of his editors. He’d punched up the red dustiness of his southern Louisiana birthplace; he’d menialized his mother’s jobs, exaggerated the number of times they’d moved, called financial aid a scholarship. He left out the two weeks every year that he and his mother took driving vacations, she with a checklist of cultural and natural attractions she thought her son should see. He left out the tennis camp and the orthodontia.

“I suppose I’ll need to learn how to honor the part of me that is still a sufferer and, yes, a blamer. I have to listen to that part. To say: I believe you, sufferer, I hear you. But you can no longer hold me back. ” Mark seemed to brighten at the thought. “Because we all have our things, you know? And if you’re going to bring the inside out, you need to bring it all out; you need all the information. Once you’re free of secrets, you can be free of shame and certain that what you have is yours, that it’s not going to be taken away; certain that you deserve the success that lies within you, within all of us.”

“But how are we supposed to do that?” asked Margo, now leaning in to him. “I wake and I read the paper and I feel overwhelmed. The environment. Global warming. Poverty.” Everyone listening to Margo remembered to be overwhelmed by these things also. “Think of the hardworking mother or father or struggling artist who wants to be a help and be a more actualized, more present person. What is he or she supposed to do? You’re someone who went from poverty to Harvard, and then from being a — what? You wrote test questions for a living, you worked demolition jobs, you used marijuana?”

“I did all those things.”

“Well, now you’re in demand wherever you go. To motivate people. To make companies and families and individuals work better. I hear that you’re life-coaching some very important Hollywood stars. And, I mean, you look great…doesn’t he, people?” Margo looked out at her audience. They whooped and hollered, because Mark did look great. “And I understand — and I want everyone to hear this, I want you to hear this, Mark, since you brought up the subject of money — that you’ve put most of the profits from the sale of your book into a foundation, the Bringing the Inside Out Foundation. Isn’t that right?”

Ah, yes. The Bringing the Inside Out Foundation. Most of his profits? Well, it was a complex arrangement. The accounting people had explained this to him. Like a big sheltering stand of trees to keep the leaching wind of taxation away from the little berm of his money. “Well, yes, Margo, of course. I mean, I really am trying to teach something here. Though clearly”—he wiped the mist from the corners of his eyes one-handed, thumb and forefinger pinching the bridge of his nose—“I have a lot to learn myself.

“Yes,” Mark continued, “the Bringing the Inside Out Foundation is dedicated to helping young people become informed digital citizens. There’s so much opportunity out there that they should know about, so many chances to connect. So we provide these kids with all the tools they need. Including these new devices from SineCo. Actually”—he held up the spire of his index finger—“I have one here.” Mark dug through the pockets of his bespoke corduroy jacket, elaborately. “It’s more than a phone, certainly, and, well, it seems to me that it’s more than a computer even. Jeez, where is it?” He pulled out his keys and plopped them on the table like any working stiff would. Then a Velcro wallet, which he stared at as if he’d never seen it before. He gave Margo a look like Can you believe all this stuff that ends up in my pockets? He pulled out two crumpled pads (“Two pads. Always got ’em. Could be brilliant stuff, you never know”); pens (“Pens. Too many is never enough. Why is that?”); a napkin (“Napkin. Maybe I got lucky.” Margo swayed back, laughing at the very idea); a breadstick (“Oh, look, a breadstick”); and, shit, his tiny stone pipe. (“Lucky stone.”) He switch-palmed the pipe to his left hand and quickly dropped it into the Slydini pocket he had had sewn into the lining of his jacket. Making a big production with his right hand, he dug in his inside breast pocket.

“Ah. Here it is.” He drew out the Node, SineCo’s newest gizmobauble, the perfect size, the perfect weight. No seam or tiny screws, no back to pop off, entirely sealed in the factory. Battery life of seventy-two hours. “Thing’s amazing. Cheap too. I mean, low-cost. I mean, relatively. So easy to use. Maybe I’ll ditch these notepads soon. And the kids, Margo. They can just run circles around me. They have rich online lives, interconnecting with each other and other kids all over the world. And making music and poetry. It’s just amazing.”

There was the cross-integration. He had rendered unto Straw what was Straw’s, and Straw would be pleased.

“That does sound amazing. Doesn’t that sound amazing, people?” she asked the audience.

The audience whooped and cheered, because it did sound amazing.

“Okay, so you do all this great work, is the point,” said Margo. “But how? Tell me, tell us, one thing that we can all do to become more goal-attaining, more solution-centered.”

“One thing?”

“One thing.”

He felt warm all over, disembodied, at home before these cameras. One thing? Before he said it, he knew it would be the title of his next book, a book that would take him beyond talk shows. He returned his gaze to Margo and seemed about to speak. But then he paused again. Gray Skirt, beside one of the camera operators, maybe rolled her eyes.

“Try again tomorrow,” Mark said.

Leo Crane.”

The doctor spoke the name written inside the wings of a beige folder, open like a menu in his hands; he said the name like it was just words, which Leo supposed it was. The office was small. Leo was sitting on another piece of disempowering institutional furniture, a too-low, too-high-sided, tautly upholstered chair that encouraged surrender.

“So. How’re you doing?” said the doctor, looking at him now.

How’m I doing? thought Leo, sarcastic within his still-aching head. Wasn’t that a dumb question? Isn’t it safe to say that a person being intake-interviewed at rehab would be mortified, crestfallen, and anxious? That’s how he was doing, anyway. He raised his arms a little and swiveled his gaze to take in the office: the large window, through which he could see the green swale of grounds outside; the doctor’s hulking computer monitor; a desk phone festooned with Post-it notes; a pen cup that said Pens . And was that a Viagra-branded tissue-box cover on the table in the corner? Holy shit, it was a Viagra-branded tissue-box cover. All this meant to Leo that he had lost. He had been fighting, and he had lost. Here he was, on the sidelines, a loser man-child in a cubular chair.