Dana Spiotta - Eat the Document

“Too soft and squishy…” Miranda turned away from him. She couldn’t really be surprised by anything Josh did — he was deliberately full of surprises, which naturally became anything but surprise.

She had to admit that when she finally got here she felt a pang of longing for spotless suburbia. After she stepped over yet another kid at the Black House. Or just the odor from the fridge. And Josh’s house was the highest realization of suburban splendor she had ever seen. His room was very large. Past the desk and entryway a carpeted step led down to the area where the bed was. The room was done in shades of gunmetal gray-blue. Sleek and spotless. No pictures of Che, no volumes of Noam Chomsky. In the corner of the sunken area, a large double bed, neatly made, and beyond it two door-sized windows that led to what looked like a balcony. Above the bed, a skylight. To the right a door to his private bathroom. This was the sort of contemporary home in which there were at least as many bathrooms as bedrooms.

“Okay, done.” He turned to her on his swivel seat. He reached in a drawer and pulled out a small bag of pot. He started to roll a joint.

“You just keep it in your desk, out in the open?”

Josh smiled. “Oh yes. They would never look in my drawers without my permission.”

Miranda shook her head.

“I mean, does this look like the room of a pot-smoking loser?” he asked.

“No, it doesn’t even look like the room of a human being.”

“That is lesson number one. You control what people believe to be true about you. All of it is subject to manipulation. You can avoid interference very easily. Most people are quite shallow about their judgments. Even parents.” Why, Miranda thought, does everyone think I need lessons all the time?

He sat on the floor by the balcony, careful to blow the smoke out the open door. She noticed a small symbol affixed to the wall above his desk. Slightly to the left of the monitors. It was a small linocut print of a cat, stylized in futurist blocky black-and-white. The sabot cat, the anarchist symbol for sabotage. It looked creepy and unsettling here among the titanium laptops and infrared mouses.

She sat on the floor beside him and took a hit. The long light of the fading sun crept into the room as they smoked, making the metal grays almost rosy silver, glittering and glowing with reflected warmth.

Josh also had a tiny tattoo of the sabot cat on his chest. Miranda noticed it every time she undid the buttons on his shirt, revealing the smooth, nearly hairless chest, the white, clear skin and the small tattoo, sharp and black. It impressed her and reassured her. He had been this way for a while. He was committed. This was how Miranda measured commitment: the will to etch permanently your beliefs in skin. Here he was, in a development of three-car garages, cathedral ceilings and fifteen rooms, here he was with his two hundred e-mails and his clinically precise manipulations, already in possession of a genuine secret life. She thought of these things as she pulled him toward his bed.

Skin so milky and smooth it reminded her of marble statues, or melamine plastic plates, or ultramodern computer casings. He began some nice kissing on her stomach, just grazing her bra-clad breasts, edging around them with tantalizing restraint. His lips were coral pink and very soft. His mouth looked slightly swollen from rubbing her skin — he was almost girlish, pretty. He didn’t seem at all like her, with her sudden curves and subtle scents. She felt randomly colored, with tan lines and freckles, a bruise, a bump, a broken capillary. They tangled for hours on the bed, it seemed, with clothes loosened but not quite off, and long, deep kisses that unnerved Miranda at first but then made her want more and more. She drifted in and out in the darkening room, no music, no talk, just his generous mouth and his hands stroking her lower back, or her long hair, which even she had to admit probably felt nice to touch.

She did not yet love Josh. Not yet. But.

He was the real thing, wasn’t he? A serious person, a tactician, an expert. A certainist. He gave her his jacket and led her out on the balcony. From there they climbed on the roof, where the lone tree by the house gave a modicum of cover. It was hardly dark with all the ambient light from the streetlamps and pouring out through sliding glass “entertainment” doors. And tastefully lit pools, in the contemporary style, not seventies aqua-blue but a dark, econatural moss blue-green, with monument-style lighting. And here they lay back on the roof and smoked again. She ached and wanted to climb against him. Instead they lay shoulder to shoulder, nearly touching, staring at the sky. Josh told her of all the actions he had done, and then he laid out his future targets. And why.

She stared into the suburban night from their secret perch and listened.

Miranda messed with the radio. It had a search button on it, so it found a strong signal, stayed for a few seconds, then went on to the next strong signal.

“You’ll never get the college stations with that search button,” Josh said.

“I hate bad reception.”

“All the alternative stations have weak signals, though.”

“I have to pee.” They had taken Interstate 5 until they reached Ashland, Oregon. From there they went west to coastal Route One. Taking this detour was her idea. Miranda liked Route One. It was a highway, not a freeway, and you could see the difference in the surrounding areas. You could see redwoods and coastal views. Run-down old logger towns that seemed more a part of Oregon than California. Fields after fields of grapevines. Sad motels built with tree tourists in mind. The kitschy tunnel made in the base of an enormous ancient redwood so you can drive your car through and marvel at the size. She liked the lonely creaking of the trees when you walked under them, and their size. Not because big things impressed her per se but because she felt humbled and finally had a perspective of her own life in the history of the world. She felt a grasp of the spiritual, something hard for her to feel normally, walking along Fifteenth Avenue, or talking to her friends, or brushing her teeth. She loved knowing these trees would outlive her. And how tiny her life was, a blink of the universe. It comforted her, she didn’t feel insignificant, just part of something long and large and beyond her grasp. The world beyond her life and desires. It was then she felt a largeness of spirit and a generosity.

“There isn’t anywhere to go to the bathroom. If we took the interstate we could go to a rest stop,” Josh said and looked at his watch. Miranda switched off the radio.

“Why did you turn it off?”

“There’s a cafe. I’m hungry anyway.”

“There has to be at least one public station we can pick up.” It was Josh’s plan to drive down to Alphadelphia. She insisted on Highway One even though it added at least three hours to the trip. She was curious about Alphadelphia. She was curious about who actually lived there. When first inaugurated by its corporate underwriter, Allegecom, it was everywhere in the news. Allegecom — the massive corporate entity that contained everything from pharmaceuticals (through its offshoot Pherotek) to genetically modifying seeds with coordinated, matching pesticides (through its biotech arm, Versagro) — was taking an unprecedented foray into developing and running an entire community. Then the press attention abruptly stopped, as it always did, and no one mentioned it again. So how many years had it been?

“Five years. Population is now five thousand people.” Originally, three people applied for every open spot. She remembered hearing about what criteria were applied. How people tried to buy their way in. The stringent rules of Allegecom.