Chapter 4
Tory woke Jeremy gently, not sure how he would respond. “Sorry. I didn’t know where to take you so I brought you to my place. You can sleep on my bed,” she said. “I will sleep in my son’s room.”
He nodded. “I can sleep in the car.”
“No, come on,” Tory insisted.
Tory collected her son, and headed upstairs. Jeremy followed, commenting that ‘James is a pretty solid sleeper.’ ‘Yeah, in the car.’ As they ascended stairs to the apartment, Jeremy looked about for evidence they were followed. Technically, they shouldn’t have to follow. They would have had her address from just the license plate. The apartment was comfortable, and near enough the square she could walk to school. She put her son in his bed and came out to make sure her guest was comfortable. She gave him access to her bathroom that could only be accessed from her bedroom. She was definitely a Marylyn fan, judging by the artwork adorning her wall. And a candle fan.
“Help yourself to anything in the kitchen,” Tory said. “I texted my friend I have a guest.
It’ll be okay.”
“I am grateful,” Jeremy said.
Tory turned on the light in the bathroom, collected a spare toothbrush from under the cabinet and handed it to him. She doctored her toothbrush.
“I have everything I need,” Jeremy assured her.
“Even toiletries? Oh, you just carry a library and you have everything,” Tory said. She leaned against the bathroom counter. “Why not just make money that way?”
“Most the time, money in advertisements is fake,” Jeremy said.
“What if we take a picture of real money…”
“Has to be film,” Jeremy said. “Film. The original Polaroid’s. Or glossy magazines. No photo copies.”
“Really?” Tory asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know. I got it down to a science. I know what works. What doesn’t,” Jeremy said.
“Kind of like that character in Pushing Daisies,” Tory said. “The pie maker.” “I am sorry, I don’t know this one,” Jeremy said.
“No electronics,” Tory said, musing. “I have a friend of a friend that has this problem. Ever since he had an NDE, he can’t turn on a light without blowing a circuit. He can’t drive a car. He can’t use a computer.”
“NDE?”
“Near Death Experience,” Tory said. “You’ve been reading the wrong books.” Jeremy stared at the floor.
“I am not picking on you,” Tory said, touching his arm. “I am sorry.” “I am okay. Sorting,” Jeremy said.
“Sorting?” Tory said.
“After my parents died, I attempted suicide,” Jeremy said. He stared hard at the floor, as if trying to discern an image. “I remember being in a light. Like sustain lightening. I remember my parents being there. They told me I had to come back. I told them no. I actually said fuck no. Then there was someone else there. I don’t know. A light being. He said I had to go back. There was no arguing with him. I woke up in ICU. I woke as if I had fallen from a great height.” Jeremy looked up. “I can see that event as if I am still there, living it. There are memories of childhood that aren’t this vivid, and I have a damn near perfect memory. Still things go. But not from that event.”
“That sounds like an NDE,” Tory said. “Lights, family, light beings. You’re missing the tunnel, but not everyone gets the tunnel. Not everyone gets the life review.”
“Life review?”
“You experience your whole life over again, not just from your perspective, but from everyone you interacted with experience,” Tory said. “You feel how you made others feel, good or bad, and how those emotions influenced people immediately beyond them. You’re aware that someone is watching with you, not judging so much, but definitely taking inventory. ”
“I feel everyone’s emotions now,” Jeremy said, his eyes filled with water, but they didn’t drop. “It’s too much.”
“Yeah,” Tory said. “Sometimes.” “You, too?” Jeremy asked.
“I am an empath. Probably because of past trauma. Probably because I had to walk on eggshells to keep the family appeased,” Tory said. “Jon says, nothing happens in a vacuum. I agree with that.”
“Jon?” Jeremy asked.
“My guru. Oh, don’t tell him I call him that. He doesn’t want that. He doesn’t like that, but he’s a damn solid as guru. He can open things in you,” Tory said. “I’d like to introduce you to him.”
“I don’t want to join a cult,” Jeremy said, lighting a candle on the counter next to the bathroom sink.
“Good, cause he’s not running one,” Tory said. “He does have some groupies. They’re mostly harmless. Most of the folks that fall into his orbit are serious good people. The other kind, they tend to get ejected fairly fast with their own momentum.” “I am not a good person,” Jeremy said.
“I doubt that,” Tory said. “We’ll argue more tomorrow if need be. Get some rest. And please, don’t leave without saying goodbye.” “Alright,” Jeremy said.
“Do you need anything?”
“Yes, please,” Jeremy said. Tory hung waiting. He waited to see if she catch it. “Turn the light off please.”
Tory seed confused and then caught up, nodded, flicked the light off.
♫♪►
Jeremy woke to the smell of bacon and eggs. He had slept on top of the covers, his clothes on.
He emerged from the room to find Tory cooking, James at the table coloring, and a twenty something female picking on a guitar. She was Hispanic, shoulder length brown hair, and likely under her BMI. She paused to sip at coffee, studying him as intensely as he was studying her.
“So, this is what the cat dragged in?” the girl asked.
“Maria, Jeremy, Jeremy, Maria,” Tory said. She pointed at a seat. “Sit. How do you want your eggs?”
“Um, not runny,” Jeremy said, sitting. “So, this is why you knew my reference to flibbertigibbet?”
“What?” Maria asked.
“How do you solve a problem like Maria,” Tory said. “Yep, I torture her with that song all the time.”
James asked Jeremy if he wanted to play ‘Minecraft,’ revealing he had a mild stutter.
“I probably shouldn’t,” Jeremy said.
“Mo, mo, mo, mom said it’s okay if I play with someone,” James said.
“No electronics for me. I brake them,” Jeremy said.
“You can, can, can’t break it. I will teach you,” James said.
“Baby, he said no,” Tory said.
James frowned and went back to coloring.
“Do you have board games?” asked.
“Sn, sn, sn, snakes and ladders?” James asked.
“Perfect,” Jeremy said.
“After you eat and we’re dressed. You have speech today,” Tory said. James picked at his bacon egg sandwich.
“So, what do you do?” Maria asked.
James looked at the table. “You want to box me by job category?” “So, you do nothing,” Maria said.
“Should I judge you for working at Amazon?” James asked.
“I have a job,” Maria said. She almost asked how he knew, but assumed an answer: by her gear that was hanging up. “I am putting myself through college, a BSN in nursing. You?” “You have a job. You’re also contributing to the illusion that people can get things fast and cheap, but that price is paid for by a workforce that is underpaid, treated as if they were trained, dancing cattle, high turnover rate because if you don’t perform like a robot and meet an unreasonable standard, you’re terminated, which is sustained by a growing population of people who can’t find other employment due to general downsizing and rotating layoffs to keep wages low, all the while generating enough profits to keep Jeff Bezos one of the wealthiest men in the world. A new class of rich. Ultra-rich entrepreneurs. They don’t really have a term for these new kids on the block, yet.”
“So, you’re jealous. Bitter. And unemployed out of protest.” Maria asked.
Tory put a plate down in front of James. He looked at her. She shrugged and proceeded to clean up the kitchen. She did pause to kiss James and remind him to eat. “Wa, wa, waiting for you.”
“My opinion of the situation isn’t predicated on conflict with outdated capitalistic ideals, or even a promotion of any form of Marxism,” Jeremy said. Tory interrupted him for coffee. “Black, thank you. Look. I am all for the new rich guys. I actually think people like Bezos, Gates, and Musk, these are the guys that are going to take humanity to the next phase of our existence. No matter how you measure it, life for all human beings has actually improved. There is still some imbalances, but across the board, crime is down, hard poverty has decreased, and there is more food available than ever before. I even like promoting that idea, but then I get frustrated when I try to explain why Musk launched a DeLorean into space. How is that not an evidence of hubris gone amok due to an extraordinary amount of wealth? I did it because I can?”
“T, t,t, Tesla Roadster,” James corrected. “N, n, not a DeLorean .”
Tory brought her breakfast to the table and sat down. “He knows cars. And space. And dinosaurs.”
“Cool. I like all of those, too,” Jeremy offfered, looking for a way out of the conversation.
“Really?” James asked.
“May I?” Jeremy asked.
He took crayon and paper and put a dinosaur in a Tesla Roadster, in space.
“I am a graphic artist,” Jeremy said to Maria. “Presently between jobs. Actually, never worked, officially. I am trying to make it on my own, through self-publishing and Deviant Art.”
“Artist are a dime a dozen,” Maria said.
Jeremy nodded. “No matter how much praise a person gets, no one wants to pay an artist when they can steal stuff for free on the net,” he agreed. “Hell, most of today’s movies are actually from journalism majors stealing from online fan-fiction.”
“I guess if people are putting their stuff out there for free, they get what they get,” Maria said.
“How does one get noticed if they don’t put themselves out there? Traditional publishing is limited; hard cover and paperback sells are down. Traditional publishing price schedule for electronics books is fucking unreasonable,” Jeremy said. “Sorry.” “M, m, mom says that word, too.” James said.
“There is no shipping and handling for electronic, but you’re paying the same for a hard cover?” Jeremy asked. “Fan-fiction, even with grammatical errors is often better written than what gets published through traditional channels, and it’s free,” Jeremy said. “Market’s changing. The thing is, with computers and automation, and artificial intelligence right around the corner, unemployment is going to rocket to nearly 90 percent. When these smart cars go online, that’s sixty percent of the market there, transportation wiped out overnight, drivers no longer needed. Uber without drivers, pure profit for Uber. People who aren’t working in direct service aren’t going to be employable. When Bezos gets those AI handlers, you and your peers will be unemployed, unless you service the droids that are servicing us. And if everyone is unemployed, why would it be appropriate to continue allow the present robber barons to continue making wealth through automated employees just because they were on top of the game at game’s end? I am not saying take away their stuff. But if no one can play the game, because there is only person left at the monopoly table, the game is over. Yay. Bezos wins. Now what?”
“Why did you bring a doom and gloom guy here?” Maria asked.
“Not doom and gloom,” Jeremy insisted. “I am awake. I want other people to be ready. We need a new measurement for what constitutes a human being, because when there is no employment to be had, how do you measure a man? Productivity and earning was never a good measure, and it will go away. We are not preparing people for the existential crisis that comes in the face of mass unemployment due to redundancy. Hell, we make a joke of midlife crises, but this is a real thing, and it will be worse when everyone does it at the same time. We don’t value art, or music, or philosophy. We don’t encourage people to pursue education or self-enrichment, because the only model has been to ‘work hard,’ while simultaneously disparaging anyone who does hard labor or cleans bathroom or cares for the sick or elderly, which is damn hard work, because we don’t really value ‘working hard.’ If we look at Japan, and its present suicide rate, that is a potential future for us all. Disenfranchised men who can’t connect with a society because they were never taught the value of ‘discourse over capital’ is a serious problem. It’s a serious problem for women, too, especially if you’re only capital is your looks. We can’t all be gladiators, goddess pop-stars, football players, or dancers. Men who can’t get jobs, and who bought into this idea you have to pay to have sex, end up going to war, because men want to be valued just as much as women want to be desired. All of us are still too much likely to fall back to violence, because we don’t teach dialogue. Witty, disparaging banter is not dialogue. Work place violence is increasing, because wit doesn’t serve people. It increases competition. It increases the idea ‘I’m clever therefore I’m justified.’ It pushes a script down the road with the illusions of substance, and if it’s particularly clever it will be an anchor that keeps people coming back, and brings more people in, but it’s a bright shiny empty archetype that doesn’t raise people’s spirits. Almost all the movies these days, they’re about violence, revenge, and fighting. It wasn’t enough that humans fight, they needed to bring titans and gods and superhero, because human fighting, that’s just child’s games. Hell, even the new Mary Poppins had to insert an external enemy. That wasn’t the original Mary Poppins. Mary Poppins saved Mr. Banks from his own internal discourse and reconnected him to his family; it was never about an external enemy.
In saving Mr. Banks, she saved the CEO’s of the bank. Seriously, the Great Depression and a dead mother was enough of a ghost antagonist, you didn’t need to distract the audience with an evil banker incarnate or dubious cartoon characters. We don’t teach people to look inside for the enemy; it’s all about an outside adversary. We have taught people they are their jobs, their cars, and their homes. Who are they when these things are gone? If you want a good external world, you have to fill the inside of people with good things.”
Jeremy made himself shut up. He was flushed with embarrassment. He couldn’t imagine the last time he had talked so much.
“I thought you couldn’t watch movies,” Tory said.
“I can go to the theatre,” Jeremy said. “I am far enough away that I don’t affect the projector.”
Maria nodded. “Okay,” she said simply, and smiled at Tory. “You can keep him.”
“What? This was a test?”
“If you can’t be interrogated by family, then you can’t join the club,” Tory said. “Maria’s family. Any questions for us?”
“May I please tune your guitar?” Jeremy asked.
Maria handed it over. “If you play, extra points,” Maria said.
“So I’m not in?” Jeremy said.
“Mostly in,” Maria said.
“You’re in,” Tory said.
“I can still allocate points,” Maria said.
Jeremy looked to James. “What do you like to sing?” “I s, s, stutter,” James said.
“No one taught you that singing turns off the stuttering?” Jeremy asked. He looked to
Tory. “You’re the movie buff. The King’s English? Okay, fine.” He considered for a moment, still tuning the instrument by hand. “Alright. Prepare yourself for magic. I am going to give you a song.”
“I c c can’t…”
“You will be fine,” Jeremy said, already picking at the chords, hinting at a melody.
“I d d don’t know t t t the words.”
“I will give you the words, just like my mom gave them to me,” Jeremy said. “Listen, then join in. It’s easy. It’s happy. And, if its sticks like it did with me, you will have it for the rest of your life and anytime you get sad or afraid, you put this song in your heart and everything becomes light.” He paused, as if reconsidering. “Oh, we should come away from the table.
Seriously.”
Jeremy went to the couch, playing an impromptu intro as he went. James followed, stood by the coffee table. Jeremy pushed into the song, ‘Sing a Song,” by the Carpenters. The opening was easy, just Jeremy and an acoustic guitar, but with each movement, it stepped up in intensity. The whole apartment came to life as if there was a piano and bass guitar. James found himself caught up inexplicably able to sing, even though he had never heard it, except for Jeremy having just given him the words and the melody. And then, as if it couldn’t step up again, here was a whole orchestra accompanying, and the ghost of Carol Carpenter came forwards to take over. James eyes were wide and he retreated to his mother. Tory picked up James, hugging him. Tory sang. Maria sang. Jeremy sang. Carol faded, touching James’ face, lightly, smiling- gone. The song ended. There was silence.
“In,” Maria finally said.
“In,” Tory agreed.
“Do it again,” James said.
“One song a week,” Jeremy said, handing the guitar back.
Maria accepted the guitar. Jeremy laid down on the couch.
“You okay?” Tory asked.
“Yeah, just going to shut my eyes for a moment,” Jeremy said. He dozed off.
“If he can float me around the room singing Day-O, I am going to marry him,” Mary said.
“We’ll have to share,” Tory said.
Chapter 5
Jeremy woke from his nap to find James was dressed and ready for his day. He was sitting on the coffee table watching him.
“Mom said let you sleep,” James said, minimal stuttering. Snakes and Ladders was on the table. “Will we play later?”
“Let’s see what later brings us,” Jeremy said.
“Is th, th, that a no?”
“No. It’s not a no. It’s not a yes,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know what today has in store for me. I believe you and I will meet again, and if that moment allows for play, you and I will play.
Alright?”
“Alright,” James agreed.
Tory was listening to this, in the shadow of a door. She entered the room in style. She was dressed in a black dress, one piece. The straps holding the dress crisscrossing in such a way as to make a star that connected to the neck. It was tight at the bosom, flaring out at the thighs. The boots hugged her legs, extending up above knees. She wore a wide brimmed hat, and was the perfect image of a modern gothic witch. She had a black bag with gold Ouija Board planchette as a clip.
“Alright boys, let’s head out,” Tory said, tossing Jeremy his backpack.
James grabbed his own backpack and led the way. Jeremy followed James, Tory pulled the door shut and locked the door.
“Don’t imagine I am a push over,” Tory said. “I run a tight ship. We’re always on time.”
“I am always early,” James assured her. “If you’re on time, you’re late.”
Tory patted his cheek as she passed him. “We’re going to be a great team.” Tory opened the door for her son and he climbed in. He put his pack down on the floorboard, climbed in his seat, and blocked mom from helping him with the buckles. “I g, g, got it.”
“Okay,” Tory said. “Hands. Closing the door.”
“You could buckle me in,” Jeremy offered. It was impulsive and there was the hint of regret.
“Are you flirting with me, Sir?” Tory asked, stepping closer, feigning offence. “I will have you know,