Dare to Know Read online

  No umbrella. Jesus.

  I broke up with Julia at a Starbucks just like this, like a shithead. She was moving to Bloomington and wanted me to come with her. I was in line to move up at Sapere Aude. If I stuck it out in Chicago one more year, Blattner and Hansen hinted, there was a good chance that I’d be promoted to the head office in San Francisco. I wasn’t about to sabotage my career by running off with her to Bloomington. I actually said to her, like a dick, “Who moves to Bloomington? Bloomington is a place you move from.” So I dumped her in a coffee shop just like this one, and bang, these coffee shops began popping up on every street corner, until in no time at all the country was blanketed with identical memorials to how I was a shitty twenty-five-year-old who couldn’t take his head out of his ass long enough to move to Bloomington and be happy with someone who loved him.

  Julia lives in San Francisco now.

  I’m still in Chicago.

  Forget it. Make this sale.

  I come into the Starbucks lugging my case full of Books of the Dead. I scan the tables. People tapping on their laptops, checking their phones.

  The nausea. The cloud of sickness clinging around each glowing screen. Not as bad as sometimes. I can deal with it. Even still, I take a roundabout route through the tables. Buzzing static in my guts. No need to make it worse.

  Multicolored string lights in the windows. Christmas carols playing. Candy cane decorations. Lisa Beagleman’s not here yet. Good. I brought my fresh suit out of my car, too, because I’d been taking meetings all over suburban Chicago nonstop in these wrinkled clothes since seven this morning. I looked rough. What I needed: fresh-pressed suit, ironed shirt, quick shoeshine, get my hair in order. In a negotiation, these things matter. It’s when I’m changing (in the men’s room, in the big handicapped stall, with my suit on the hook on the back of the door, hopping around on the pissy floor in my black socks, getting into new trousers) that my phone buzzes. It’s Erin.

  Buzzing head static.

  Just to be clear, I don’t hate Erin. The guys who, when I go out drinking, refer to their ex-wives as that bitch, implicitly inviting me to speak that way about Erin—I don’t respond in kind. It wasn’t a “good” divorce, but why hate her? Hating Erin would erase the good years when we were starting out, when the boys were young. I can’t help but feel those good times still exist, that those previous versions of Erin and me continue to inhabit a real location in space-time. I don’t want to deny or dishonor what was, probably, maybe, one of the better times of my life, or better than I’ll ever manage again. In short, Erin is not that bitch.

  I touch my phone. Brace myself for the sick. Everyone who works with thanatons eventually gets this feeling, this queasy sensation around computers. And of course your phone’s just another computer. In the old office we had workarounds. We actually installed analog rotary-dial phones, Bakelite antiques with copper wiring. Good luck finding those nowadays. But how ridiculous is it to be a salesman who can barely use a phone or email? That’s why we used to have secretaries, of course. Computers feel like nails on a chalkboard when we walk in a room, the way they calculate creates a repellent aura—no matter how sleek the interface, how stylish the design, their math stinks up the room. Jabbing, stabbing, primitive, brutal.

  I answer the phone, all business. That’s the deadening thing. Erin has to rearrange her work schedule and wants to know, can I take the boys this weekend instead of next? I can. Our voices, which used to be ecstatic together, or laughing together, or furious at each other, are now just working out scheduling details. In a way, ordinary conversations like this debase the old memories more thoroughly than if I had complained about that bitch.

  The boys, sure, I care about them, but by some genetic fluke, both of them look and act just like Erin’s lunkheaded brother Bryce. Go ahead, admit it. Bryce’s DNA dominated mine. As the years go by, and especially since the divorce, I have less and less in common with the boys. Stopped recommending books to them. They don’t read anyway. They gave up trying to talk to me about sports. I never cared about sports, there’s no point in faking it now. So yeah, I’m disengaged from my sons’ lives. Yeah, I should make more of an effort. I try to reengage, but I don’t know how. I see myself fading in their eyes.

  A few weeks ago, I was speaking at their high school for Career Day (and here I thought I was doing them a favor), trying to explain the rudiments of thanaton theory to their pizza-faced classmates, to convey to these teenagers some clue about the history of Sapere Aude, of Dare to Know, of what our company actually meant and stood for in the early days. But as I looked over the assembly gathered in the school gym, children with their eyes glazed over, children who were bored by scientific miracles, children for whom the startling implications of thanaton theory were yesterday’s news, irrelevant, quaint—I realized I couldn’t see either of my sons. I continued droning on with my PowerPoint, my mouth moving on autopilot as my eyes roved the crowd, as I began to understand that both of them must’ve simply skipped my presentation. And yet when I dropped by Erin’s that night and asked them about it, they were impatient that I even brought it up. No, they said, it wasn’t because of some dramatic reason, no, it wasn’t because they were ashamed of me—they both had just had something else they’d rather be doing. Okay, then, what were you doing? God, Dad, it doesn’t matter, let it go!

  They were ashamed of me.

  I hang up. The phone’s algorithms calm down. Put it in my pocket.

  The queasiness clinging to the thing ebbs. My stomach relaxes.

  I come out of the bathroom, buy a coffee to justify my existence, and sit down at one of the larger tables near the window. I start unpacking my Books of the Dead, opening to the bookmarked pages, arranging my papers of preliminary calculations, prepping for the assessment.

  It’s only once I’m fully settled in that I see that Lisa Beagleman is already there.

  In fact, I realize, Lisa Beagleman has been there all along. I must’ve walked straight past her on my way to the bathroom. There, in the corner—a large sour-looking woman with a gray sweatshirt, off-brand jeans, and squinting, distrustful eyes. Well, I’m no prize either. I should’ve recognized her but her nothing-colored hair was in a ponytail last time. Never could remember a face.

  I am here to tell Lisa Beagleman when she will die.

  She’s looking at me from her table, quietly amused. I understand right away that this sale isn’t going to go the way I want. She smiles at me and it’s a predatory, stupid smile.

  “Freshening up?” she says as I sit down at her table.

  “Thanks for being patient.” Off on the wrong foot; she has the upper hand already. She knows it. How to play it? Lighthearted. “And here I thought I was early.”

  “You still are.” Lisa Beagleman makes it sound like an accusation. I check my watch: yes, I’m still six minutes early. Her smile says it all. You really need this.

  “Before we start, just to confirm—” I make a show of going through some papers but who am I fooling? I produce the invoice. “If you can sign off on this and a few more pieces of paperwork…”

  She doesn’t even look at the invoice. “Well, the thing is, I just got off the phone with Martin McNiff—you know, Martin McNiff?”

  Don’t take the bait. “Uh-huh.”

  “And after talking to him, well, I just don’t know about twenty thousand dollars.” Seriously, even the littlest things about Lisa Beagleman are irritating, like why’d she put that meaningless emphasis on the word “dollars”? She’d prefer to pay in what, Krugerrands?

  Shut up. Let her talk.

  “You know?” Lisa gives a put-upon sigh. That nasal, wheedling voice. Quacking her midwestern vowels. “It’s just that for twelve thousand dollars Martin McNiff said he could tell me both when and how, and I thought, here I am with you, spending twenty thousand on just when.”

  Is Lisa Beagleman for real? Does she really
want me to explain it all over again? How I provide certainty while McNiff can only give her statistics? I’d explained it to her on the phone. I’d mailed her the brochures. Well, I’m not going round and round on this. Nickel-and-dimed by a Lisa Beagleman. Christ.

  I let the silence sit there.

  “You know?” she says.

  Hardball. “I’m sorry to hear that. I suppose you must’ve gotten off the phone with Mr. McNiff just now, or else you would’ve canceled our appointment and notified me sooner.” I gather my papers and rise. “I’ll let you go then—”

  A lie. But it works. I see it in her eyes. She’s overplayed her hand.

  “No, calm down, sit down,” she says. Trying to regain the initiative by implying I’m overreacting. Telling me to sit down is giving me an order. Putting me in my place. Obviously a dim bulb, but she might be a savant at small-time wheedling. Everyone’s good at something.

  I don’t sit down. “Twenty thousand.”

  “Okay, okay, okay,” she says, which isn’t an agreement but I sit down anyway.

  * * *

  —

  She got me down to sixteen thousand.

  Is it a smell that I give off? Some chump pheromone? It can’t have always been the case. I used to close multimillion-dollar deals. Must be like the invisible desperation you emanate when you haven’t been laid yet. Only when someone finally fucks you does the stink vanish. But still, even after that, fail too many times, accept too many nights alone, that stink sneaks back. Deep down I don’t really believe I’m a loser, although for the last few years the world’s been informing me otherwise. My problem is I don’t listen. I keep expecting everything will turn my way.

  Fifteen percent of sixteen thousand is twenty-four hundred, I’m thinking, as I start in on the standard introductory spiel for the millionth time. She’s almost certainly already seen actors recite this spiel on TV; by now it’s as ingrained in pop culture as the reading of Miranda rights.

  “I’m going to say some sentences that will seem like nonsense,” I begin. “I’d like you to respond to each sentence with the first words that come into your head, no matter how seemingly odd or random. Please don’t try to be clever or funny. Please don’t try to beat the system. The algorithm has taken those possible responses into account and it will only result in a longer session. None of the statements touch upon conscious personal information, and the responses we aim to elicit from you will also have no conscious personal content.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” says Lisa Beagleman.

  Spiel over. I initiate the stage one calculation I’d calibrated for her in the car. “Blue lady lays, a wending way around away, eels conceal the puck.”

  “Oh come on,” she says impatiently. “It really does work like this?”

  I make a note in my book. “Marry fluorescent chatter, romping willowy hunger flash.”

  “So stupid. Beep bop boop. I don’t know.”

  Another note. “Ornery ourobouros, kill sky love shield, raw throat lizard eyes.”

  Lisa Beagleman just shakes her head.

  I put my pen aside. Just use the scripted response here. I don’t have the energy to meet this woman on her own terms.

  “I’m going to pause the assessment,” I recite, “and remind you that you voluntarily asked for this information, were fully briefed on the process, and already paid your deposit. When we complete the assessment, I will be able to predict the date and time of your death to an accuracy of one hundred percent. If you continue to resist the questions, that will only make the assessment longer.”

  Challenging eyes. “And what if I don’t want to know now?”

  “That’s perfectly okay if you don’t want to know anymore,” I lie. “But you’ve already paid your ten percent deposit, and that’s nonrefundable.”

  I don’t mention to Lisa Beagleman that if she quits now, I only get a reduced five percent of that ten percent. My full fifteen percent only kicks in if she goes all the way, finds out when she’ll die, and coughs up the full twenty thousand—strike that, sixteen thousand. Bottom line: if she walks away now, I’d only be netting…Jesus, eighty bucks.

  I have to, have to close this thing.

  “Quintile merryman main bus undervolt,” I say.

  Lisa Beagleman wavers, then: “Hawaii.”

  * * *

  —

  Once I get them in rhythm, I’m good at keeping them locked in.

  “Salt hum winter cream,” I say.

  “Treat aunt cottage door,” she says.

  Time flies. I’m in the zone. After every exchange of seeming gibberish I consult the books, make the necessary calculation, derive the next words to say, then it all starts over again, faster, until we’re just jabbering letters and numbers at each other—“D 4 T G 8 9,” I say, and Lisa Beagleman rattles off “X 4 2 9 X 3 E”—and the thing is, I’m good at this, I enjoy it. Even though nowadays the assessment is standardized to the point where you don’t even have to be a real mathematician anymore—any technician can just execute the script—I get results faster using the original methods, plus a few custom shortcuts of my own. So I do it my way, which requires a bit of creativity, finesse, skipping and combining steps, closing off loops, and anticipating the algorithm’s zigzags, which keeps life interesting. But although it all seems to be going well, I sense it starting to go wrong.

  An inkling. But I’ve been trained to notice it. The twitch of Lisa Beagleman’s eye. The way she’s answering quickly but not eagerly. As if she’s rushing through it before she can change her mind. That’s it. She’s on the verge of changing her mind. But I have to make this sale. She is changing her mind. The difference between eighty dollars and twenty-four hundred. She’s changed it.

  Shit.

  I’m still zeroing in on a number, ping-ponging between six or seven different possibilities. A baby is crying somewhere in the coffee shop. Keep it together. Down to four possibilities. Lisa Beagleman herself might not know it yet, but I know it: she doesn’t want this anymore. The crying baby belongs to this man I can see over her shoulder. It’s just him and the baby. Maybe he’s a single dad, trying to take a break at this coffee shop and his baby is freaking out. Down to three possibilities. The baby is a girl. A handful. Last calculation, simple, just multiplying two numbers. Always thought I’d rather have a daughter.

  I have the answer.

  Lisa Beagleman is trembling. I clear my throat. She doesn’t want to know. Well, make her want it. I see her eyes darting, trying to get out of it. I’m about to tell her exactly how much time she has to live. She’s backing out. Don’t let her. Afraid. The naked fear. What I used to see.

  Lisa Beagleman opens her mouth but before she can say anything that would nullify the contract I say, “Lisa, you’re going to die in six years, eleven months, four days, and nine hours.”

  * * *

  —

  Oh Jesus, I fucked up. Shouldn’t have forced it.

  She breaks down crying. “I told you I didn’t want it,” she weeps, nearly screams, and it doesn’t matter that it’s not true, that she never explicitly told me she didn’t want it, but no, I messed up, it is my fault, because after all I could read it in her manner. Now she’s making a scene—this is why we used to do it in an office, not in public—and she’s wailing! Breaking down! I’ve never misjudged so badly, but I’m ashamed to admit that when her smug mask broke my first thought was, at least here’s someone who feels it. And when most people cry, it screws up their face, makes them look abject, but for some people, like Lisa Beagleman now, there’s a hidden dignity that’s unlocked when they cry, her eyes no longer so verminous, so calculating, even though I can’t understand what she’s saying through her tears except, “And I’m never even going to see Mandy go to high school, to puh-puh-puh-puh-prom,” standard shit. When they’re spiraling they always latch onto some random life milestone that they just then realize
they’ll never experience. The man with the baby comes over from the other table, “Is everything all right?” and oh Lordy, now super-dad is sizing me up, like we might have to “take this outside,” and I’m too stunned to do anything other than offer a handkerchief to Lisa Beagleman, but she swats it away and howls, “Six years.”

  “Practically seven,” I say, stupidly.

  “I told you I didn’t want it,” she weeps. From the way she’s interacting with super-dad as he comforts her and I sit there like a stone, it becomes apparent they know each other, that super-dad is “David,” that their kids go to preschool together, that “David” is stepping in as a protector. He turns to me and says, “It’s probably time you left.”

  Oh hell no. “I need Mrs. Beagleman to sign this confirming that she’s received the information.”

  “You can get her to sign it later, buddy.” Buddy! Now I’m “buddy.” David is hugging Lisa Beagleman now, comforting her. I’d judge her hysterics as over-the-top if I hadn’t witnessed the exact thing before, so many times—never on my watch, but when less adroit salesmen fail to stick the landing, amateurs who don’t have the balls or the backup to walk away when you’re supposed to walk away—well, this is why Martin McNiff does it over the phone, right? McNiff doesn’t care. Mandy and her puh-puh-puh-puh-prom…did you know McNiff has moved into the market for under-21? Used to be an unwritten rule you don’t do that, but it turns out the testing goes even quicker with babies and toddlers because there’s zero self-consciousness fogging up their assessment responses. Well, if you can look into the eyes of brand-new parents and inform them their child will die of cancer when they’re four years old (72.3%) or in a car crash when they’re twelve (23.8%), etc., and then have the transcendent balls to bill them for the pleasure, you’re welcome to it.