Big Egos Read online

  “So they’re saying she was using black market Egos?” says Vincent.

  “That’s the implication,” I say.

  “Do you believe them?” asks Angela.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Did anyone ever have any inclination that Chloe might have been buying off the black market?”

  I’m answered with shrugs and shaking heads.

  Chloe had been working with us for less than six months, so none of us knew her that well. Whatever secrets she had, she took them with her to Metropolitan. And what happened with her isn’t leaving this building.

  We’re all under a legal gag order not to talk about what happened to Chloe outside of the company. Not to friends. Not to family. And definitely not to the press. It’s part of the nondisclosure agreement we all signed when we started working here.

  “What about the anomalies?” says Angela. “Did that come up in conversation?”

  “No,” I say, shaking my head.

  “What anomalies?” says Vincent.

  “We found them in the Icons,” says Angela. “People who’ve injected certain fictional characters over a period of three years have shown a tendency toward a couple of repetitive behaviors.”

  “What kind of behaviors?” asks Emily.

  “Seeing zeros or having them come up in conversation,” says Angela. “And repeating some specific or unusual phrase.”

  “What? You mean like super-duper or I like peanut butter?” says Vincent.

  “It varies from customer to customer,” says Angela. “It’s unique to each person, but it’s there. The data confirms it.”

  Out in the office, I can still hear Neil doing his thing. I look at my watch and see that it’s 5:05. Sure there’s a zero with the other two numbers adding up to ten, a one and another zero, but it probably doesn’t mean anything.

  Truth is, it’s just a number.

  “Do you think what happened to Chloe is related to these anomalies?” asks Emily.

  “I don’t know,” says Angela. “I suppose it’s possible. Though Applied Research doesn’t think there’s anything to be concerned about.”

  “Well, that makes me feel better,” says Vincent.

  Sarcasm noted.

  “Can we access Chloe’s records to determine how often she used the Egos she took home?” asks Emily.

  “Her records are confidential,” I say. “But she didn’t work here long enough to be exposed to as many Egos as the rest of us. And we’re all fine.”

  I look around the table at everyone, but instead of looks of confidence, I see expressions of doubt. I can’t blame them. I’m still trying to come to terms with the idea that I might be a serial killer.

  “So maybe she did use black market Egos,” says Vincent.

  “Maybe,” says Angela. Her head shakes once, not much more than a twitch. An involuntary movement. I watch her, looking for signs that it might be something more significant. But then she goes back to the wrestling match between her hands as she continues to chew her lower lip.

  We sit there in silence for several moments, the last of the daylight having succumbed to an early November dusk as Neil continues his end-of-the-day ritual.

  Open, close. Open, close. Shuffle, shuffle, slap.

  Is it just me, or is he taking longer than usual?

  “So what do we do now?” says Emily.

  “About Chloe?” I say.

  “Actually,” says Emily, “I was thinking more about us.”

  I glance at Vincent, who nods in agreement. Next to him, Angela chews on her lower lip. Past her, I can see Chloe’s workstation, which seems emptier than the others. Almost as if it’s haunted.

  I can still see Chloe’s blank stare and the drool pooling on her shirt and hear her strange, incessant call.

  Whoop, whoop, whoop.

  “I think I’m going to stop using for a while,” says Vincent.

  The way he says it makes it sound like he’s a drug addict and this is a Narcotics Anonymous meeting and we’re all trying to get clean.

  Maybe that’s not so far from the truth.

  “Me too,” says Emily. “At least until I know what’s going on.”

  I don’t know about Vincent and Emily, but I don’t think giving up this lifestyle is going to be all that easy. Not when you’ve been doing it for the past three years. Not when sampling and testing Egos is part of your job description. Not when you’ve been going undercover two to three nights a week for the past few months to help eradicate black market Egos, only to discover you may have been killing people instead.

  I tried to get a meeting with Bill Summers to share my concerns about the antidote, but he’s out of town on business and won’t be back until next week. So for now, I’m just going to try to think happy thoughts and avoid any more Ego parties until I’ve cleared this up with him.

  The burgeoning autumn night presses against the windows, the air thick with doubt and concern and the weight of Chloe’s absence as Neil’s OCD allegro comes to an end. Moments later he emerges from his workstation and walks toward the meeting room, dressed all in navy blue, looking sharp and polished in a three-piece suit and tie. Maybe it’s just my current state of mind, the way my thoughts keep coming back to all of these black market Ego deaths and the role I may have played in them, but he looks like a police officer.

  CHAPTER 24

  There’s a police officer at the front door.

  He’s talking to my mother, who’s standing in her bathrobe, holding it closed with one hand, her other hand holding on to the door—her hair disheveled and her feet bare on the tiled floor. Red and blue lights flash in the darkness behind the open door and through the windows.

  Nobody notices me.

  I’m eight years old and standing down the hall where it makes an L shape, peeking around the corner outside of my bedroom, dressed in my favorite pajamas with the monkeys on them. The ones I received for Christmas the year I found out Santa Claus was a hoax.

  Not that I’m bitter or anything.

  I watch my mother with the policeman and I notice the way her head is shaking back and forth like she’s disagreeing with whatever he’s telling her and how she looks like at any moment she might fall down. I notice the officer’s badge and his belt and his gun and how they all look so shiny and perfect and clean, like his uniform. He seems solid standing there, in control, projecting a sense of authority, a sense of order. Except when I look at the officer’s face, he looks like Alex Trebek, only he’s a lot shorter than he looks on television and this isn’t a game show.

  I’ll take Confused Children for two hundred, Alex.

  The police officer continues to talk to my mother, who looks at him with an expression of confusion and disbelief, like she doesn’t believe he’s real, either.

  And then my mother starts to cry.

  I’ll take What the Hell Is Going On for six hundred, Alex.

  I don’t know why he’s here. Or what he’s saying. Or why my mother’s crying. All I know is it’s after one in the morning and I’m standing outside my bedroom wondering why it isn’t my father at the front door talking to the police officer.

  He was supposed to get home tonight from his business trip to Seattle, in time for my ninth birthday. He missed my last birthday. And the one before that. But he promised he’d be back in time this year. He also promised he’d bring me a gift from Seattle.

  I walk down to the end of the hall and look into my parents’ bedroom to see if my father is there. The bedside lamp is on, illuminating a corner of the room, and the covers are pulled back from my mother’s side of the bed, the green digital numbers of the alarm clock on the night stand glowing 1:27. My father’s side of the bed hasn’t been slept in. The bathroom door stands open, the bathroom dark and empty.

  I go into the bathroom and turn on the light. Behind the frosted glass of the shower door, I see a shape and I think it’s my father hiding in the shower, playing some kind of game, maybe hide-and-seek. Except my father doesn’t play games. W
hen I open the shower, what I thought was my father is just a bath towel hanging on the shower caddy.

  I walk out of my parents’ room and glance back down the hallway at Alex Trebek consoling my mother, who is shaking her head and saying “No” over and over as if she’s just learned a new word. A few moments later, she collapses to the floor, her bathrobe falling open, revealing the nightgown she’s wearing beneath.

  “Mom?”

  She doesn’t hear me, but Alex Trebek does. He looks up and sees me standing down the hallway. He doesn’t say anything but just nods once, his expression serious, then he turns his attention back to my mother.

  I want to go to her, to hug her and make her stop crying, to ask her where my father is and why Alex Trebek is at our house after one on a Tuesday morning. Instead, I just stand in the hallway and watch my mother as she continues to cry.

  CHAPTER 25

  Delilah stands in front of me in a red thong and a red bra. I can see the little scar on her left hip and the mole just beneath her left breast. I can also see the outline of her nipples and her labia, but I’m not interested in exploring her anatomy at the moment.

  Right now, I’m more interested in watching the news and searching the Internet, trying to determine if any black market Ego deaths have occurred since I stopped going to parties and giving out the antidote.

  “Are we going out tonight?” says Delilah.

  I’m on the leather couch trying to watch the TV through my 3-D glasses and Delilah’s mostly naked figure. It’s not easy to do, even considering that she’s only a hundred and twenty pounds wearing chain mail.

  And don’t think we haven’t played Sir Lancelot and Guinevere before.

  “I have work to do.” I shift to my right so I can see the television. On MSNBC is a news conference with the CEO and the executive vice president of EGOS.

  “Work?” says Delilah.

  “Work,” I say, turning up the volume.

  The CEO is saying that the recent tragedies involving black market Egos should be a reminder to everyone that you can’t cut corners when it comes to personal safety. I tap my glasses and change the channel to CNN, where they’re talking about how the recent deaths might have a positive impact on the holiday sales of legally manufactured Egos.

  Delilah takes the 3-D glasses off my face and tosses them on the couch. “You’ve been coming home late a lot lately.”

  “I can’t help it,” I say.

  “You can’t help it?”

  “It’s part of the job.”

  “It’s part of the job?”

  Either Delilah has echolalia or she’s beginning to lose her hearing.

  I make a move to retrieve the 3-D glasses but Delilah pushes them farther away, out of my reach. I look up at her standing there in her red underwear, staring at me. If she’s waiting for an answer, I already gave her one.

  “You’ve been acting different lately,” she says.

  “I’ve been acting different?”

  “Are you seeing someone?”

  “Am I seeing someone?”

  Great. Now I’m doing it.

  She stares at me, her arms folded beneath her breasts, making them look fuller than normal.

  While I’ve always appreciated the way Delilah looks, both in her underwear and out of it, even when she’s au naturel, she’s not really. In addition to her breast implants, she colors her hair, whitens her teeth, has had a nose job, and gets regular collagen injections to make her lips fuller. So there’s nothing really naturel about her.

  I’ve traded my mother’s fake meals for my girlfriend’s fake body.

  “No,” I say. “I’m not seeing anyone.”

  “So where is it you’ve been going at night?” she asks.

  “I told you. It’s work-related.”

  “Related how?”

  “Related in that it has to do with work.” I get up off the couch and walk into the kitchen to get myself a beer.

  “Meaning what?”

  “Meaning I can’t tell you,” I say, opening the refrigerator.

  “You can’t or you won’t?”

  “There’s not really any difference.”

  “There is to me.”

  “It’s classified,” I say, pulling out a Guinness.

  “Classified? You’re not a secret agent, you know. Not in real life.”

  I look at the unopened beer in my hand and I’m suddenly getting a James Bond vibe. For a few seconds I feel him moving around inside my head, taking charge, filling me with a sense of invincibility. Then he’s gone.

  The Taoist philosopher Lao Tzu said to be content to simply be yourself. But sometimes I’m not sure who I am anymore. What I’m supposed to be. The role I was meant to play. And when you have unlimited access to a product that allows you to be a famous person or a fictional character and you’re used to playing those roles as many as five nights a week, it becomes harder and harder to be yourself.

  The problem with pretending to be someone else is that eventually you start to forget who you were in the first place.

  I put the beer back in the refrigerator. “I think I’d rather have a martini.”

  “A martini?” says Delilah. “How can that be your response?”

  “Response to what?” I grab the jar of olives and set it on the counter. “I didn’t realize you’d asked a question.”

  “It’s the same question I’ve been asking you for the past few minutes.”

  “Which is?” I set the bottles of Grey Goose vodka and Boissiere vermouth on the counter next to the olives.

  “Why have you been spending so much extra time working?”

  “I told you.” I pull out a martini glass. “It’s none of your business.”

  Delilah grabs the martini glass and throws it against the wall, where it explodes like a fireworks display. Then she stands there, staring at me, her fists clenched, her breasts rising up and down with her breathing, her nipples hard, her skin flushed, her eyes staring at me, full and unblinking, daring me to retaliate.

  I walk up to her, grab her hair by the back of her head, and look into her eyes. At this point I’ve forgotten about my martini. But I’m definitely getting that James Bond vibe again.

  I kiss her, my lips pressing roughly against hers, and she kisses back, our mouths open and our tongues searching. I reach behind her with my other hand and unhook her bra in one fluid motion and then my hand is under her bra and cupping her breast, flicking her nipple and then pinching it. She gasps and kisses me harder and presses up against me, pulling at my pants, unbuttoning and unzipping them, her hand reaching inside my boxers and grabbing hold of me.

  I let go of the back of her head and reach down to slide my hand inside the waistband of her thong. She beats me to it and peels off her underwear. At the same time, I drop my pants and boxers and then I’m grabbing her and lifting her up and her arms are wrapping around my neck, her legs wrapping around my waist. I slide inside of her and she lets out something that’s between a gasp and a moan and I do the same. Then I’m walking out of the kitchen and into the living room, wearing Delilah like a redheaded bulletproof vest, my hands holding on to her ass, pulling her thighs farther apart as I sit down on the couch.

  Next thing I know Delilah’s beneath me, her legs and arms still wrapped around me and her lips brushing against my ear, her breath coming out in rapid exhalations and encouragements. I thrust harder, our tempo building, our bodies entwined and locked and moving together, grinding and rotating, slick with sweat.

  “Who do you want me to be this time?” she whispers, biting my ear, her fingernails digging into my back.

  While I’ve always enjoyed having sex with Delilah in all of her role-playing and her different Ego incarnations, right now I want her just the way she is.

  But even when she’s being herself, I’m not sure what role I’m going to get. Sometimes I get the quiet introvert. Sometimes I get the outspoken socialite. Sometimes I get the brooding teenager. But it’s never the same from on
e night to the next. And more often than not, whoever she ends up pretending to be follows me into the bedroom.

  I guess that’s what I get for getting involved with an actress.

  Sometimes I wonder how much of what I like about Delilah is her and how much is just an act. Sometimes I’m not sure where she ends and the fantasy begins.

  When I look down at her, she’s not Delilah but Ann-Margret. I blink and she’s Scarlett O’Hara. I blink again and she’s Jessica Rabbit.

  I don’t want her to be any of these other women. I just want her to be Delilah. But all I see when I look at her is someone else. So I close my eyes and I bury my head in the crook of her neck.

  She smells like cinnamon.

  CHAPTER 26

  The smell of cinnamon drifts down the hallway into my bedroom.

  “Honey!” my mom calls. “Come and get it!”

  “Be right there!”

  I finish cleaning my room, putting away my toys and my dirty clothes, then I stop in front of the mirror and I look at myself. I’m ten years old. I can tell because I don’t have the faint scar above my left eye from the time I rode into a ditch and flew over the handles of my bike and cut my forehead open, which happened in August before sixth grade, just a couple of days after I turned eleven. Nat was there. Panicked, of course. Screaming for help even though we were out in the middle of the Sepulveda Dam Recreation Area and the only ones listening were a pair of crows picking at the carcass of an unfortunate jackrabbit.

  Some memories are more detailed than others.

  I didn’t panic. Not even with blood pouring from my forehead and turning my L.A. Dodgers T-shirt into an impromptu Rorschach test.

  It looks like two Charlie Sheens high-fiving each other around a vagina.

  But that’s another memory for another time.

  Right now, I’m a ten-year-old boy in my ten-year-old room with my ten-year-old thoughts, no Charlie Sheens or vaginas in sight.

  “Come on out when you’re done, honey,” my mother calls from down the hall. “We’ve got a big day ahead of us.”

  I walk out of my room, a sense of excitement building inside me as I wonder what the big day is my mother has planned. But along with the anticipation is an underlying apprehension. I don’t remember any big days with my mom, especially after my ninth birthday. But I’m hoping maybe I just forgot this memory. I’m hoping we’re going to Disneyland or Magic Mountain or even the Santa Monica Pier.