The Duration (19 page)

I nodded along. Jimmer was cruising.

“Right. So what we found is that when we could isolate and replicate certain scents, the subjects for whom these scents represented certain triggers were able to in effect store their associations in digital form, let them go, know they were safe, and free up huge amounts of cognitive space. Like, they would have a file on their computer where they could store gigabytes of their childhood, their parents, their travels, their great loves and triumphs and heartbreaks. Like an online photo album, except that the olfactory associations just blow the doors off the visual ones. You know, you see a picture, and you see the picture. But the smell of your dead mom's apple pie comes wafting into the room, or your grandfather's after-shave, and you are fucking bawling. And you know where to find it, whenever you want. No need to carry it around.”

“Wow,” I said. “Shit is nuts.”

Jimmer reached for the remote.

“I know,” he said. “Cool, right?”

“What happens if your computer dies?”

Jimmer paused.

“Like, what?” he said. “Like the hard drive is fried?”

“Sure,” I said. “Yeah.”

“Well, there's the cloud, and there are the Sment servers. But, yeah, I guess you could be theoretically fucked if you don't back up. Might be awesome, though. You might have to start fresh, revert to IRL stimuli.”

“Well,” I said. “That's not the worst thing in the world.”

Jimmer nodded. “Seriously, pal. You should see the folks for whom we've itemized trigger scents. They're like zephyrs. They move through life with no friction. They know where the shit is if they need it.”

I leaned back on the couch. Jimmer's forward focus was making me feel like I'd wasted my life.

“So, is there like a library of the world's smells? Do I have a smell?”

Jimmer laughed.

“You certainly do have a smell, but yeah, we're in the process of smell-mining. I mean, there are certain basic elements—we call them ‘smelements,' trademarked—that once you get them, you can combine to replicate pretty closely any other scent. But you know how it is, right? The thing sort of hinges on having the exact match—if you walk in a room and there's a smell that's almost like your baby blanket, it doesn't do anything. Almost doesn't cut it. So there are personalizing applications that we're working on.”

He stood up.

“Speaking of which, I have a couple of e-mails I need to deal with. You good out here?”

I stood up as well.

“Yeah, sure.”

Jimmer collected his electronics.

“Great.”

He looked up at me.

“It's really great to see you. Brings back memories.”

He paused, thought for a second.

“Like, actual memories.”

I regretted all that nascent jealousy in a second.

“You too, buddy,” I said. We hugged, briefly but enough.

“It's really good of you to come all the way out here to help with Chick,” I said. “Kid's kind of a mess.”

Jimmer looked away and chuckled.

“I hear.”

“I have a plan, though,” I said. “To straighten him out.”

Jimmer nodded.

“Good to hear,” he said, extending a hand to me. “Whatever I can do to help.”

“All right, pal,” I said, slapping him five. “Smell you later.”

The joke went unacknowledged. Jimmer went into the master and slid the heavy doors closed. I pushed the coffee table away and folded out the couch bed that was wider and had better sheets than my bed in Boston. I stripped down to my shorts and slid under the covers. The gang was all assembled. We had until Monday to put things in place. I would dream the architecture of a solution, a way it would all work out.

In the morning I brushed and picked my teeth with an obsidian courtesy toothbrush and scalded myself under the torrential showerhead. I used the courtesy lavender-thyme shampoo and conditioner and the courtesy oatmeal body scrub. I shaved and rubbed pink courtesy Rhinebeck lotion onto my skin. I padded around in a thick robe and thick slippers and felt moisturized in the best ways.

At 7:45, the double doors of the master bedroom were still closed. I eased them apart a hands-width and looked in on a bed the diameter of which exceeded my view. Jimmer lay surrounded by pillows, a mask over his eyes, a meringue of duvet enveloping his lower half.

“Yo,” I said.

He lifted his head slightly, did not remove the mask.

“We have to be at Welcoming in fifteen minutes.”

Jimmer put his head back down and pulled the duvet cover up to his chin. “I don't have to do anything I don't want to do.”

Could that be true? It sounded sort of revolutionary.

All I had to wear were my work clothes from Friday, a blue pinstripe suit and a smelly white shirt, but in the hall closet I found two sets of Head-Connect sweat clothes, one in earthen brown and one in vanilla. Pants, shorts, pullovers, and T-shirts, each emblazoned with a stylized evergreen. One set fit me nearly perfectly. On the floor of the closet were two pairs of bespoke cross-trainers, each stuffed with monogrammed socks. All that from a palm print?

I suited up and headed out.

I passed through the lobby and cut across the rotary to the Fleur-de-Lys mansion proper. The morning sky was pale and cold, but the sweatshirt was thicker than it seemed and had a cavernous hood. The material felt like a sort of elfin technology, magical, like those innocuous little flatbreads that sustained Frodo et al. on the march to Mordor. Eight or nine other people were crossing to the main building, all hooded against the chill, our outfits suggesting the start of some sort of conclave.

In the entryway of the main building, a big man with olive skin stood behind a wheeled cart, handing out coffee and juice. I took both. We were a baker's dozen in all, four corporate types yawning and slouching, three slender Asian men whispering in Cantonese, a minor movie star recently busted for drunk driving, what looked like a well-heeled mother-daughter pair, the luminous Vishy Shetty, an assistant who looked like a non–hi def version of Vishy Shetty, and me.

Ava Winston stood inconspicuously off to the side, a tablet under her arm. I felt bad about sort of lying to her, and caught her eye in an attempt to incept some sort of bonhomie. She was too busy taking attendance to care.

“Jimmer?” she mouthed at me, gesturing subtly around the room.

I shrugged, folded my hands to the side of my face.

Ava frowned and made a note on her tablet.

The entry foyer of the mansion was open and octagonal and seemed faithfully restored, at least based on the pictures we'd seen so long ago in Florence Banish's files. It rose straight up to a rotunda and had acoustics so refined that the smallest bell, rung to announce guests or mealtimes, carried throughout the mansion. Here was the hallway to the back ballroom. There was the landing on which Guy Van Nest stood with his rifle. We'd walked in the door through which the rhino had exited. Above us was a massive chandelier, environmentally retrofitted.

At eight sharp, the man behind the juice bar strode to the center of the marble floor. He was wide but smooth, his movements fluid like Shamu. He raised his hands to the sky.

“I am present and I am connected,” he said in a baritone loud enough to ripple the coffee in our cups.

We all looked at him. Was this a coup? Vishy Shetty turned the corners of her mouth down and bent toward her assistant.

The man lowered his hands to us and smiled. His teeth were perfect.

“Welcome, all, to Head-Connect. We are present. We are connected.”

He nodded to us. We nodded back, because what were we supposed to do?

“How is your coffee?” he asked. He had an accent I couldn't place. Something world-weary but generous.

We nodded again, some people offering more verbal assurances.

“I am glad,” the man said. “I am also glad that it is the last coffee you will have during your stay here.”

Fewer verbal assurances.

“I am Arvindo Blanc, Welcoming-Coordinator here at Head-Connect. What we do now will set the metrics, lay the foundation, and plot the blueprint for the rest of your time with us.”

He raised his right hand and extended his pointer.

“And the rest of your life.”

There was a murmur of appreciation for the dramatics, so flawlessly executed. Vishy Shetty took out her cell phone.

“Enjoy this last bit of caffeine. This last ‘fix.' You won't need it anymore. No more fixing. Nothing to fix. A cycle of dependence is a thing of your past. In a moment, you will begin your Welcoming, which will include a full physical and cognitive audit. The process is, of course, entirely voluntary, but we feel strongly that the success of your life-matrix depends on your candid and honest participation.”

He drew the last word out to its full five syllables.

He gestured to doors at the sides of the foyer.

“Ladies will pass through to my left and gentlemen to my right. First, though, we ask our guests for a small deposit.”

He looked around the room, a smile on his face. Then he waved his hands reassuringly.

“No, no money. Put your wallets away. Money is a four-letter word now. We ask only for a deposit of vice, hindrances, negative energy. We will hold these items for you in our Vice Safe. There they will remain throughout your stay here at Head-Connect, and upon checkout, you can choose to pick them up.” He smiled even more widely. “Or leave them behind.”

He swept his arms theatrically and heretofore invisible staffers opened a side door onto a small room. Within it, I could see a desk, a chair, and the large hinged door of a safe.

There was some mild snickering from the assembly. Arvindo Blanc smiled indulgently.

“Our Vice Safe has been in residence for over one hundred years here at Fleur-de-Lys,” Arvindo Blanc said. “It has held a century of secrets.”

He stepped aside dramatically.

“At your leisure.”

We all froze for a moment, not sure what to do, milking our last coffee for the grounds. Inside the room, small cards—the sort that might identify seating arrangements at a wedding—were fanned out on the desk, near an ornate pen.

Nobody moved.

“You want us to write down our vices on cards?” said one of the corporate types, a tall man with an executive's paunch. “And then leave them in the safe?”

Arvindo Blanc smiled benevolently.

“Leave them atop the Vice Safe. I will deposit them. They will be deposited.”

“How do we know you won't use them against us in some way?”

“To the contrary. You must know we will,” said Blanc. “Letting go is an essential pre-step of our process here at Head-Connect.”

Ava Winston piped in from across the room.

“There are, of course, significant financial and legal protections ensuring the confidentiality of Welcoming information, and indeed all information relating to our guests' time here at Head-Connect.”

Blanc nodded, then walked into the side room and lifted one card up, like a host, and touched it to his forehead. He closed his eyes and appeared, momentarily, to be entirely still. Then he opened his eyes, lowered the card, and held it out toward the safe, letting it drop like a leaf onto the solid top.

“And so,” he said. “We are present and we are connected.”

He stepped back into the foyer and stood along the wall, a surfer Buddha. Totoro.

The process was simple enough. You entered the room, sat at the pale wood desk, wrote your vices on a card, put that in an envelope, and left it in a wooden box on top of the safe.

The minor movie star went first, entered the small room, sat with the pen and note card, shrugged, and wrote for what had to be five minutes. Apparently he was committed. The corporate types crowded in next, together. I could hear murmurs about mission statements, about working to live, about creating a culture that actualized. Bullshit like that.

Mother and daughter followed. They went in together, but sat with the cards one at a time, and I could see the daughter staring at her mother when she wrote.

Vishy Shetty was next, gliding with her assistant across the vestibule. At the last second, Vishy Shetty gestured, a look, a slight raise of a forbearing finger, for her assistant to wait outside. The assistant blinked at her as though waiting for a command prompt and stood in the open doorway, blocking our view of Vishy Shetty. Despite the assistant's efforts, I could see through the crook in her arm as Vishy Shetty slid something from her sweatshirt pouch into an envelope, wrote something on the accompanying card, and deposited them both on top of the safe. The assistant caught me spying and gave me a look like she'd cut me.

The Asian cohort went next. They'd been quiet in the foyer, but once they got into the little salon with the safe, we could hear all sorts of chatter. It appeared they were collaborating on a statement but couldn't decide who would do the drafting. When they came back out, two were frowning and one smiling widely.