Page 23 of The Dream Hotel
J ulie wakes to the wind howling, and the front gate rattling as if a mob is trying to storm the house. The ruckus must have roused Peter, because it’s not even six yet and he’s in the shower. She gropes for her reading glasses on the bedside table and starts scrolling through the day’s mail on her phone: an invitation to the soccer parents’ association meeting, two airline mileage offers, a Brentwood fire safety update, and a tech news roundup, all of which she deletes unread. Then she pulls up her calendar and realizes she has a debrief at ten, a safety training at noon, and a team meeting at two. It’s only her first day back at work, and already her schedule’s filling up. And she has to host that dinner party tonight, too. She adds a reminder to leave work early, scrolls through the news for a bit, then toggles over to Ocean he always misses that spot. He mumbles something as he roots around for underwear in the dresser. “What was that?” she asks, taking off her glasses.
“I said, what’s new?”
“Oh. Remember how James Wesley is getting married? Turns out, Jodie Franklin is four months pregnant.”
“Who’s Jodie Franklin?”
“You know, the new anchor for RotDotDot? It’s that augmented reality show all the kids are watching. Anyway, they were keeping their relationship hush-hush because her divorce from her husband hadn’t been finalized, but her pregnancy forced their hand and they had to make an announcement.”
“Maybe they’ll invite you to the wedding.”
“Haha. Very funny.”
“Why do you read that stuff, anyway?”
“Because. It’s fun.”
“It’s fun to know who’s shagging who this week?”
At least someone is getting shagged. When was the last time he even looked at her? Lately he’s been using his AR contacts during sex, and she suspects he has them set to Nicki Alfonso, with whom he’s been obsessed ever since she led her team to a World Cup win. Who knew hairy legs could be so titillating? She pushes the covers aside and slides out of bed, but her momentum is thwarted by the pain that shoots from her lower back through her right hip and down her thigh. She shouldn’t have done twenty reps on the deadlift yesterday, not after three weeks off her routine, and her trainer did try to warn her, but it felt so good to be back in the gym she couldn’t resist the temptation. Steadying herself against the bedpost, she rises carefully to a standing position. “What’s with the sanctimony so early in the morning?” she says irritably. “Do I shame you when you check your football news?”
“It’s not the same thing.” From his closet he pulls out a light pink button-down shirt and a gray silk tie. He must have a client meeting today. “I keep up with games, I’m not interested in what the players do off the field.”
“Oh, please.” She slips her feet into the bunny slippers Max gave her for her birthday last month. “Just the other day, you were complaining about the Seahawks quarterback getting wasted in Vegas.”
“I only complained because his partying is starting to affect their season.” He turns to face the mirror, buttoning his shirt.
Peter is an attractive man, with unaffected charm and a great sense of humor. Julie has seen him command a room while she stands awkwardly against the wall, her cocktail glass sweating in her hand. Sometimes she lets herself forget this fact, but when he looks as he does at this exact moment—rested, full of life, ready to banter—it comes back to her in its haunting undeniability. She’s about to change the subject when he says, “I wonder what the scientists and engineers you work with would think if they knew you read gossip sites first thing in the morning.”
“All right, then. You win. You’re the better person.”
“It’s not a competition. I was just saying.”
“You’re always just saying.” She limps to the bathroom. “Does it ever occur to you that not saying anything is also an option?” The bottle of Tylenol is in the back of the medicine cabinet, behind Peter’s probiotic supplement and antiemetic capsules. She takes two pills, washing them down with water from the sink. When she looks up, he’s watching her in the mirror, trying to decide whether to push the matter or let it go.
Ruby pokes her head into the bedroom suite. She’s already in her school uniform, her long hair pulled into a prim ponytail tied with a white ribbon.
“You should knock first, honey,” Julie tells her. And then, less sweetly, because Ruby is ignoring her: “Or else someday you’ll see something you don’t want to see.”
“Ugh, gross. Who’s picking me up after soccer practice?”
“I’ll do it, sweetheart,” Peter says. “Just make sure you come out to the Wilson gate, it’s easier for me to find parking on that side.” He puts his arm around Ruby’s shoulders, leading her downstairs to the kitchen. “Ready for your calc test this morning? You want me to go over anything with you?”
It’s just like him to stir the pot, Julie thinks, then find an excuse to walk away.
She gets in the shower, standing so that the hot water hits her lower back. She feels revived by the time she gets out, but when she glances at the mirror she’s startled by how pale she looks. She rummages through the vanity, finds the foundation Ruby picked out for her a couple of months ago. She dabs it on, but she must not be doing it right, because the lines around her eyes seem even more noticeable after she’s done. See, this is why she avoids makeup; she has no talent for it. It was sweet of Ruby to help, though.
Or was it self-serving? Ruby didn’t want to go thrifting this weekend, even though she used to beg Julie to drive her to the Goodwill in El Sereno, which she says has a better selection of vintage clothes than the one near them in Brentwood. And she said no when Julie offered to take her to a movie of her choice. Who says no to a movie? Come to think of it, it’s been ages since she’s wanted to do anything together. With Peter, she’s not like that at all, she tags along with him whenever he asks, even when he’s only running errands around town.
My daughter doesn’t want to be seen with me, Julie realizes with belated clarity.
It’s just a stage, she tells herself.
But being away from home for three weeks made it worse. The eyes that meet her in the mirror seem even more tired now, and the prospect of walking around in gobs of makeup doesn’t help. She washes it off her face, then shuffles to the walk-in closet, where she pulls out a paisley shirt and wide-legged knit pants, the only pair she can put on without feelings jabs of pain in her lower back. For added flourish she ties a green silk scarf around her neck. It’s nice to have some color on after all that time in white.
At breakfast Peter is on his phone. “I got fifteen alerts from the front-door camera,” he complains, swiping on his screen and deleting emails one after the other.
“I told you, you have to take down the Mike Myers,” Julie says. When Peter pulled out the mannequin in blue coveralls from the garage, she suggested he seat it on the bench out front, but he thought it would look more threatening if it was standing, so he propped it up against a pillar and secured it with strings from the rafters. It’s been swinging ever since, like a convict hanging from the gallows. Everything is such a spectacle with Peter. “There’s more wind on the forecast,” she warns.
“Do we have to take it down?” Ruby asks from the table, where she’s going over her notes for the calc test. A whole-wheat toast with peanut butter and banana sits in front of her. “Can’t it wait till after Halloween?”
Peter is still deleting alerts. “All right.” He can never say no to Ruby.
Max is oblivious; he has his headphones on. He’s drinking some kind of synthetic fruit and vitamin mix his karate coach recommended for building muscle strength. Standing where she is by the island, Julie can see that he put the mixer in the sink, but didn’t bother turning on the water. Which is an improvement over leaving it on the counter. One step at a time.
Ruby turns off her tablet and stuffs it into her backpack. “You guys know Max has an English quiz today, right?”
Peter looks up from his phone. “He does?”
“He’s eleven,” Julie says with a sigh. When did her daughter become such a narc? The new school she’s attending has made her obsessed with tests and grades, reward and punishment. “He’ll be fine.”
On the screen above the island, Nimble confirms that the utility bills were paid today and that her car is due for a service next week. It also has a menu suggestion for the dinner party tonight based on the guests’ dietary profiles, their tastes and calorie limits, as well as the items Julie has in the fridge: shrimp aguachile, cucumber and tomato salad, chicken-stuffed Anaheim peppers, and strawberry sorbet. All she has to do is buy the shrimp. That sounds perfect; she approves the menu, sending her order to the fish market. “Can you pick up flowers on your way home?” she asks.
“What kind of flowers?”
“Zinnias, maybe? Or roses, if they have them in fall colors. But don’t get anything long-stemmed. I want an arrangement we can keep on the table while we’re eating.” She senses he’s about to ask her more questions, so she grabs her purse and motions to the kids. “Ready, guys? Let’s go.”
Ruby heads for the door. But Julie has to turn off Max’s playlist from the Nimble screen before she can get his attention, help him find his art project, which he left in the den last night, and then his trombone, and then his water bottle. By the time they come out of the house, Ruby is waiting in the car, leaning her head against the passenger-side window, her face beaming with the tolerance of long-suffering saints.
—
When Julie arrives at work an hour later, protesters held back by barricades crowd either side of the main gate, waving signs that say My Body, My Dreams and We the People, Not We the Products . There was just a handful of them when Dreamsaver Inc.’s two-tier security system was revealed in a leak to the press, but over the three weeks she’s been gone their number has swelled to a couple hundred. She’s not entirely without sympathy for them, she remembers well what it’s like to be young and full of passion, but she wishes they’d go home already. If they thought about it, they’d realize that the system was put in place for good reason. It would be too dangerous to sell data collected from government officials, military personnel, business leaders, people with sensitive occupations.
One of the security guards motions to her to slow down so the LPR can identify her car. She hits the brakes, and in that pause one of the protesters launches a placard that lands with a thud on the windshield of her car before sliding away to the side. The LPR flashes green, and she releases the brakes, driving past the protesters without making eye contact, exactly as DI’s security manual advises.
Once inside, though, she finds the campus quiet. A contractor in a green uniform is clearing leaves from the cement pathways, stepping aside to make room for a mail-delivery robot on its way to the south building. Two security guards are huddled over a broken temperature sensor, talking to someone from maintenance over the phone. A sudden gust of wind blows Julie’s hair across her face. Holding it back with one hand, she faces the east building entry camera and speaks her name: “Julie Renstrom.”
The doors unlock.
The main screen in the lobby is playing the most recent ad Dreamsaver Inc. rolled out, featuring testimonials from real customers who’ve had the neuroprosthetic implanted: a home health aide who cares for an Omaha couple in their nineties; a single father of three in Seattle; a night-shift private cop in Denver; the entire cabin crew of a New York–Singapore flight. “Payment plans are available,” the Oscar-winning actress who’s doing the voice-over says, sounding like she’s trying to coax a reluctant child to jump into the pool.
Julie walks past the screen to the cafeteria on the ground floor, where she gets breakfast, then slides gingerly into a window chair. The Tylenol she took this morning has barely dulled the pain, and she’s still hours away from being able to have another dose. A couple of years ago when she saw a pain therapist for a different injury, he suggested she use distraction techniques, like reading a book or doing a crossword puzzle or playing with a stress ball. “The goal is to think of something else, Julie,” he said in his thick Bosnian accent. “To feel something else. A taste, for example.”
The eggs are creamy, the toast is crunchy, the pineapple too sweet, the coffee heavenly.
It works for a minute or two, then the pain returns.
Outside the sky is hazy, muting the shades of green on the rhododendrons that border the courtyard of the building. Two software engineers walk by on their way to the lab. They’re recent hires, brought in to code one of the new products DI is developing, and have the devotion of fresh converts; they even wear company-branded shirts. Still absorbed in their discussion, they stop briefly across from the café. Julie waves hello, but a middle-aged woman is invisible to them. She might as well be a table or a potted plant, so little do they take notice.
“Can I clear this, ma’am?”
“Yes, thank you,” she says.
She rises slowly out of her chair and takes the elevator to the fifth floor. She’s in the bathroom brushing her teeth when she hears a muffled sob from the stall at the far end. A minute later the door opens, and Souza from Engineering comes out. Her eyes are puffy, her lips bitten. She’s another new hire, brought in just a few weeks before Julie left for her field observation, which makes this even more awkward. They lock eyes in the mirror, and Souza immediately looks away. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” Julie replies, her mouth still full of toothpaste. This is something she has tried to teach her daughter—stop apologizing when there’s nothing to apologize for. Sometimes she thinks Ruby has learned the lesson too well. Julie spits in the sink, but with her limited range of motion a glob of toothpaste lands on her shirt. Great. Just great. She grabs a napkin from the holder and starts dabbing at the stain. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Souza says, shaking her head.
She must’ve just come out of Gaspard’s code review, Julie thinks. All the engineers crammed into the glass-walled conference room, presenting their projects on a huge screen, while Gaspard presides over the meeting, a remote control in hand, ready to turn off the screen if he doesn’t like what he sees. The Friday reviews are supposed to be an opportunity to receive feedback, but more often than not the experienced coders use the time to deride or condescend to the younger ones. It’s a hazing ritual Gaspard instituted years ago: the new hires come in as outsiders, and they come out as DIYers.
The napkin is slowly breaking into pieces; Julie gives up dabbing at the stain. If anything, it looks worse now, with paper crumbs all over it. She rummages through her tote bag, and pulls out a bottle of ice water she got at the café. “This is cold. It will help with the puffiness.”
“I’m fine,” Souza says lightly. She ties her thick curls into a loose ponytail and splashes cold water on her face. Her skin is a beautiful shade of brown, and completely lineless. She can’t be more than twenty-four or twenty-five, one of those engineers recruited out of graduate school with promises of a good salary and a chance to develop groundbreaking technology without having to apply for government grants or submit to pesky oversight. She’s pretty, too, which doesn’t help in a place like this.
“Don’t volunteer to go first,” Julie advises. “Wait for one of the last spots to present your project. They’re usually out of steam by then and they’ll give you actual feedback you can use.”
“What? I— It’s not that.”
“What is it, then?”
Souza stares at her appraisingly. She seems to want to say something, then thinks better of it. “I don’t work for Gaspard,” she says after a minute. “Not directly.”
“Oh. I just thought—who do you work for, then?”
“McClure.”
“McClure?” The name is enough to set Julie’s teeth on edge. “What’d he do?”
“Nothing.”
Then why is she crying in the handicap stall of the fifth-floor bathroom at 8:30 in the morning? Women used to leave anonymous notes for each other on the cubicle walls of that stall. Don’t go to lunch with Reynolds. Watch out for Ruiz. Walker gets handsy. Then H.R. disciplined a female programmer who was caught with a permanent marker and issued a policy against leaving notes in the bathroom. But this was long before Souza was hired, and for all his faults McClure doesn’t seem like a harasser.
Or maybe he is—what would Julie know? Isn’t Souza a replacement for the engineer who packed all her stuff in a box three months ago and walked out without a word, never to be heard from again? Whenever someone asked McClure why she left he’d shrug and say Couldn’t cut it.
“Come on,” Julie prods. “What’d he do?”
In the mirror, Souza frowns.
Julie realizes she’s pushed too far, too fast. She picks up her bag. “I was just trying to help.”
—
Floor-to-ceiling windows, a dozen cubicles, a small lounge. The R others because they believe in the lifesaving benefits of the device. But she’s here because she wants to unlock its full potential. The statistics classes she took in college twenty years ago relieved her of the notion that people were ineffable mysteries. Everything they said or did could be quantified in a thousand different ways. The more she saw their behaviors laid out in linear regression models, the more she became convinced they were nothing more than discrete combinations of data. If the study she’s conducting proves successful, there’s no telling how wide the applications of the Dreamsaver could be.
On her desk she finds a handful of pens and pencils, two dirty spoons, a pile of books teetering dangerously close to the monitor, a set of resistance bands, and a half-empty bottle of insect repellent. Ordinarily the chaos would bother her, but after three weeks at Madison the disarray in her workspace feels to her like she’s getting reacquainted with herself. In any case there’s no time to tidy up; she has to get started on her report. She faces the computer, waits for the system to recognize her, and starts typing.
The tremendous popularity of its sleep-aid devices has enabled Dreamsaver Inc. to bring to market a number of exciting services, including medical alerts, psychiatric diagnostic tools, psychotherapy assistance, and data brokerage to corporate and government clients.
But while targeted advertising remains a core strategic goal for the company, our experimental trials have not been successful thus far, in part because test subjects became aware upon waking that an image was inserted in their dreams, which led to negative feelings toward both the neuroprosthetic and the product being marketed.
Therefore, reducing ad awareness is key to cultivating positive attitudes and boosting purchase interest. In this study, we examine the feasibility and effectiveness of product placement in dreams.
The study was conducted over a three-week period at Madison, a 120-bed retention facility owned and operated by Safe-X. The facility is located in Ellis, ninety-seven miles east of Los Angeles, and was chosen for this study because it provides a closed environment, where user behavior can be observed and product sales monitored. As with previous studies, Safe-X agreed to our R it must be the fire in San Bernardino County she heard about on the radio this morning. Traffic on the freeway is moving along, though, and if she leaves the office on time she should be able to make it to the dry cleaner’s and the fish market before they close.
“Welcome back,” Snyder says, as she takes the seat across from him at the table. He’s in a soccer jersey and jeans, and on his wrist he wears a bright blue band in support of some charitable cause or other.
“Thanks.” She smiles. “It feels great to be back.”
“I can imagine.”
“How was it?” Farooqi asks, his voice a gentle bass that makes the room feel smaller, more intimate.
“It was fine. A little scary, but overall, fine.”
“Three weeks is a long time, though.” Trevino coils a strand of hair around a finger as he speaks—a persistent tic. “Being quarantined with people like that.”
“There were some real characters in there, that’s for sure. One of them did time in state prison for assault and battery, and another one was arrested twice for disorderly conduct. A few of them had restraining orders.” She shakes her head. “But for the most part, they were people waiting to have their cases cleared. There was lots and lots of waiting.”
“Weren’t you bored?”
“Not at all. I had to work when they worked, and I spent the rest of the time recording my observations, so I was busier than I expected.”
Still no sign of McClure and Gaspard. Are they meeting somewhere in private? It wouldn’t surprise her, given how close they’ve grown in the last few months. All this waiting is making her even more nervous about presenting the results of her study.
She is getting herself a cappuccino and an oatmeal cookie at the credenza when McClure comes in. He doesn’t have a tablet or a notebook with him, a sign that whatever the other team members have to talk about is of no importance to him. That guy’s interested only in himself.
“How’s everyone doing?” McClure asks as he sinks heavily into a chair.
“Pretty good,” Snyder replies. “Excited for the weekend. Meg and I are gonna drive up to Solvang for our anniversary.”
“That’s the Swedish village, right?” Farooqi asks.
“Danish, actually.” Snyder explains that he heard about it from another engineer, like him a transplant from New York. Farooqi is from Connecticut, and he hasn’t had a chance to see much of California, either. There’s talk about what to see and do in Solvang: the windmills, the ostrich farm, the kringles.
“You could visit the mission,” Trevino offers. “Mission Santa Ynez. It’s one of the places where the Chumash revolted, in the 1820s. It started after a soldier beat a Chumash boy who was visiting one of his relatives in Mission Santa Ynez, and grew into a massive rebellion as word spread to the other missions. The Spanish padres had to call in the military to put it down.”
“Interesting.” Snyder writes it down. “How do you spell Chumash?”
Julie sips her coffee.
“How about you, Renstrom?” Farooqi asks. “Any plans?”
“Nothing as exciting.” A weekend in Solvang sounds amazing right now; it’s been years since she and Peter went away without the kids. Vacations are his department, but he never makes the effort to organize something for just the two of them.
At last, Gaspard arrives. “Jesus, it’s freezing in here.” He pulls the hood of his brown sweatshirt over his bald head before taking a seat at the head of the table. Now comes a smile, and yet Julie finds it impossible to guess what mood he’s in today. Grumpy Gaspard she’s used to, she finds him almost endearing, and once or twice in the last seven years at DI she’s caught a glimpse of Genial Gaspard, but it’s Vicious Gaspard that terrifies her.
“Let’s begin with some project updates,” he says. “Farooqi.”
“I’m plugging along on nightmare blocking. Legal sent me another complaint they received, from someone claiming the implant makes it harder for them to wake up from recurring dreams about a domestic assault they were in years ago. Right now, I’m still logging the data and running comparisons, but I should have enough in a week or two to test blocking of user-selected concepts.”
“You’ve been at this, what, three months now?”
So it’s a Vicious Gaspard kind of day.
But that doesn’t seem to bother McClure, who’s scrolling on his phone. On his wrist is a neon yellow watch, and it takes Julie a second to realize it’s his glucose monitor. When he joined the company a couple of years ago, he bought an extra-large bottle from the store downstairs and refilled it with water throughout the day. Julie told him to get his blood sugar level tested, because she remembered that dry mouth was one of the symptoms her aunt had when she was diagnosed with diabetes. He was relieved and thankful to have caught the condition early. They were new colleagues, then, on the cusp of a work-friendship, if not a life-friendship. But after Gaspard announced he would appoint a program manager by the end of the year, everything changed between them. McClure started to watch her, point out every mistake she made, challenge every claim, laugh at every suggestion.
Gaspard is still dressing down Farooqi. “The sooner you come up with a prototype the better. This isn’t an academic problem, dude, it’s the real world, all right? We have to have some kind of response if this thing gains traction, and you’re not giving me anything to work with. So get me something by next week, or I’ll find someone who can. Okay. Trevino.”
“I’m working on improving accuracy rates for the predictive algorithm. We still aren’t doing great in scenarios that fuse real and representational images. So, for example, we had one sequence where a fox was running down a hole that was shaped like a womb, except the womb was stylized sort of like how you’d see in a European medieval drawing. Or maybe Renaissance? I don’t know much about art history. Anyway, the AI didn’t recognize the womb as a womb, thought it was a foxhole, and assigned it an interpretation based on that.”
“That’s happening with the more complex sequences, correct? Longer than five GFTs?”
“Mostly,” Trevino says, but his hand flies to his hair, and the vigorous coiling tells Julie he’s trying to put on a brave face. “We had a few cases where it happened with three GFTs. Basically our interpretations get exponentially worse when artistic renderings appear, especially if they’re woven in seamlessly with concrete objects.”
“But how common are images of art, anyway?”
“That’s what I thought, too. But they show up often enough to affect accuracy rates on this set.”
Gaspard shakes his head. “I’ll get you another set. And next time bring me your best suggestion about how to fix it, will you? I can’t do everything around here. McClure.”
“We already talked about it this morning.” Then he turns to the rest of the team, as if reluctant to repeat himself to the plebs. “So I’ve been working on a social-sharing feature that will allow users to post their dreams to a circle of friends, comment on them, offer interpretations, et cetera. The feature is ready, but the question is how to calibrate it, right? How do we help users see this as a way to showcase their personality, but with enough safeguards that it won’t feel like a safety violation?” He drones on about how important it is to have the right tool. “I had Souza write an app to help me test this. So I’m pretty much done with the experimental design. I’m partnering with my old lab at Tulane to find volunteers.”
“It’s exciting stuff,” Gaspard says. The hood of his sweatshirt slips, revealing a bald head circled by a sparse fringe of brown hair. “Eric asked me about it when we had our call. He’s eager to launch the new feature because the retention stuff is hurting sales. People don’t want their data sold to the RAA.”
“That’s stupid,” Snyder says. “Are they gonna give up their phones, too? Their door cameras? Their cars?”
Gaspard shakes his head. “This stuff’ll blow over when the new feature launches.”
Julie shifts in her chair, and pain shoots across her back.
The coffee is lukewarm, the air is cool, the light is bright.
She should’ve taken a few more days of rest before returning to the office. She’s not quite ready for all this yet.
“Renstrom. Welcome back.”
“Thank you. It’s good to be back.”
“How’d it go?”
Julie crosses her arms to conceal the toothpaste stain on her shirt. “It went very well. I was a bit apprehensive about the test site, but Safe-X was an excellent partner on the study, they provided security and assistance, and everything went without a hitch.” Gaspard rests his chin on his palm. She needs to stop babbling and move on to the study results. “Product placement was successful for the intervention group, and so far I see no evidence of detection. Credit for that goes to Ethan Nordell, of course.” She moves the cappuccino cup aside and swipes to unlock her tablet. “Now, controlling for age and BMI, we have higher sales on the featured product, though the numbers aren’t large enough yet to reach statistical significance. Once I throw in menstruation cycle as a factor, I see bigger numbers, but unfortunately the sample size is pretty small. What’s clear already is that exposure has—”
McClure cuts her off. “What’s your p level?”
Julie pretends she doesn’t hear him; it’s early yet for reporting something like that, she still has to massage the data, take a closer look before tying herself down to a specific p result. But Gaspard raises his brows at her and she has no choice but to answer.
Disappointment passes across his face.
It would almost be easier if he got angry, told her she was wasting her time, and the company’s resources. But disappointment means he had high hopes for the study, that like her he saw its potential. A social-sharing option is exciting, sure, but image insertion is the future. She knows it, Gaspard knows it. It’s time to take a risk, she thinks, follow her hunch.
“I did notice something, though,” she says quickly, before she loses her nerve. “Actually, it could be a big thing. I collected three dreams featuring carrots—actual carrots, not the packaged product—and for that individual I’m seeing a nice little spike in unit purchases. Now of course, it could just be a coincidence, but what if her brain translated Ethan’s code in a more idiosyncratic fashion and came up with its own execution of what we asked it to do?”
And just like that, she has Gaspard’s attention.
—
In the earliest footage the subject appears gaunt, her kinky hair pulled in a bun that brings out the sharp angle of her jaw. Her face is blank and her eyes remain cast down, but soon it becomes clear that she’s paying careful attention. When she speaks it is only to offer crucial advice—that Julie should accept a job assignment—then resumes her silence.
Her unease seems to disappear over time. In later clips she looks straight into the AR contacts whenever Julie speaks, though she still doesn’t engage much in conversation, whether the subject is food or fitness or work. It’s only when the subject of Toya Jones’s extension comes up that she stirs, becoming agitated in her friend’s defense.
In the final clip she is aggressive, maybe suspicious.
Is it cheating, to want to know more? The profiles that Safe-X gave Julie include only the names, pictures, and biometric data of the fifty-eight participants in the study, but now she wants to find out everything she can about Sara T. Hussein—her tastes, habits, predispositions, the synaptic connections that translated the inserted image into something different, and just as effective.
If Julie could conduct a postexposure interview with her, she might be able to have additional context for the dreams in question. But how to go about something like this? Post-study contact with the participants wasn’t part of the agreement, so she would need to get some kind of permission from the chief retention officer. That could take a while, especially if she has to negotiate payment. Maybe she should cut the red tape, find a way to talk to Sara without disclosing her reasons.
Just then Ethan Nordell appears at the entrance to her cubicle. He’s in a T-shirt and jeans, with a string of mala beads around his wrist. How does he manage to look so relaxed when he has so much responsibility? But then again, he’s always been even-keeled; it’s what she likes best about him. She stands up to give him a hug.
“So, this is it?” he asks, pointing at her screen.
Julie nods. She clears the guest chair and they sit side by side while she shows him the three dreams she pulled out.
He whistles. “What did Gaspard say?”
“He was definitely interested, but then McClure suggested that maybe your code—”
“No.” Nordell shakes his head. “No, no. There’s nothing in what I wrote that would’ve modified the image like this. Can you play that last one again?”
Julie hits the restart button.
“This could be big.”
Julie nods, feeling gratitude wash over her. Nordell has always been a good sounding board for her, going back to their days at Stanford, long before she met Peter. Sometimes she misses grad school, when they spent so much time in the lab together they could finish each other’s sentences.
“I should get going,” Nordell says, standing up. “Should we bring anything tonight?”
“Just your lovely selves.”
“All right then.” He waves at Julie as he heads out. “See you later.”
—
Melissa Ward-Nordell is on her third glass of white wine by the time dinner is served. Julie feels a little light-headed herself, though she’s better at holding her drink. She should’ve served some hors d’oeuvres, she realizes, maybe the mushroom puffs that have been sitting in the freezer since Labor Day or that organic artichoke dip the kids like so much, but she was so late getting home that she barely had time to change her shirt. She had to call Ruby from the car to ask her to iron the linen tablecloth and set up the table. And after all that, Peter forgot to marinate the chicken for the main course so it took another hour for the food to be ready. Everyone is ravenous. When Melissa reaches for the bread, she nearly topples the sunflowers Peter brought home from the florist.
“Let me get these out of the way,” Julie says, standing up. Pain shoots down her leg; the long commute home has made her worse. She places the flowers on the sideboard and limps back to the table, lowering herself carefully into her chair. The bread is delicious, the tablecloth is pretty, the wine is chilled.
“I think you’re getting tipsy, honey,” Nordell tells his wife.
“You like me when I’m tipsy,” she replies.
They smile at each other like teenagers.
Julie excuses herself and goes across the hall to the den, where she left her purse when she came in from work. The Percocet is in a green enamel case decorated with a gold serpent, an antique she bought years ago, when the kids were in diapers. They’re splayed on the sectional now, watching a horror movie and eating pizza with the Nordells’ eight-year-old daughter. As she passes them again, Julie notices Ruby staring. “What?” she asks.
“Nothing,” Ruby says. She pulls a piece of pepperoni glistening with grease from the slice on her plate and drops it into her mouth.
“How was your calc test?”
“I already talked to Dad about it.” Her eyes return to the television screen, where a young Drew Barrymore is on the phone, screaming with fear but not daring to hang up on the caller.
It was Max’s choice to play a classic movie tonight. Julie should’ve suggested something less scary, for the sake of the Nordells’ daughter at least, but she was too tired to think of an alternative. The speakers practically rattle when Drew Barrymore screams.
“God, she’s so dumb,” Ruby sneers.
“Did it go okay?” Julie asks. “Your test?”
“It was fine.”
Why do I bother, Julie thinks. She walks back across the hall to the dining room. It is pitch-dark outside and without the yard lights the entire scene is reflected in the windowpanes, as if they are staging a play in which they are actors and audience all at once. Peter is telling the Nordells that he made the shrimp aguachile from an old family recipe his Mexican grandmother gave him. “Abuela used to make it for us whenever we visited her in Guadalajara.”
Julie takes a bite and, for a brief, blissful moment, the fiery taste of the chiles consumes all of her attention. When she got to the fish market after work they were already out of Louisiana Organic Farms Shrimp and although the vendor said this brand was just as good, she’s not so sure. The shrimp is a little chewy, it seems to her, but probably no one else has noticed it, they’re all eating. With a bit of food in her, Julie feels herself relax a little. She drains the rest of her wine, and fills up her glass again.
“Easy there,” Peter says.
She glances at him, then takes a huge sip. “I’ve had a long day.”
Nordell folds a tortilla around the shrimp on his plate. “I wish they wouldn’t schedule so many meetings on Fridays. It gets so busy. Did you hear that McClure got put on administrative leave?”
Julie nods. She swirls the wine in her glass, debating whether to tell Nordell that it was she who spoke to H.R. this afternoon. He might find her behavior underhanded, and think less of her. But enough was enough. She couldn’t stay quiet anymore about McClure; she had to act to protect Souza.
Melissa looks up. “Which one’s McClure?”
“You don’t remember him?” Nordell says. “Tall guy, red hair? He was hired by Gaspard the month before you quit.”
“But why was he put on leave?” Peter asks.
“Wait,” Melissa says, holding up a finger. “Was he the one who left half-eaten tubs of ice cream in the freezer?”
“No, that guy’s not at DI anymore,” Nordell tells his wife. “I think he went to Nabe. McClure’s the one who had a gallon-size water bottle.”
“Oh, right.”
“Why was he put on leave?” Peter asks again, staring at Julie.
She frowns. What does he care all of a sudden? He usually finds shop talk boring.
“Well,” Nordell replies. “There’s only two reasons for that. And let’s just say he never handled anything financial.”
A scream of horror and delight comes from the den, followed by the movie’s theme music. Julie touches a button on her phone and lowers the television volume. “I told Gaspard from jump that McClure wouldn’t be a good fit.”
“Is that why you were late coming home?” Peter asks.
“No,” Julie says, reaching for another tortilla. “I was late because I had to pick up your dry cleaning.”
“I don’t miss dealing with H.R. issues,” Melissa says. “Like, at all. It didn’t happen very often, because most people aren’t litigious, but every once in a while H.R. had someone who’d make noises about suing and they’d call me to sort it out. I hated it.”
“Well, you don’t have to do it anymore,” Nordell says.
Melissa fills her glass again. “And thank God for that.”
“Thank the IPO,” Nordell says with a laugh. He looks lovingly at his wife.
The shrimp is spicy, the tortilla is warm, the wine is sweet.
“It sucks for McClure, though,” Peter says. “Getting news like this on a Friday.”
“There’s no good day for news like this,” Julie replies, running her hand flat on the linen tablecloth. There are still creases everywhere. “Does anyone else smell smoke?”
Melissa sniffs the air. “No, I don’t smell anything.”
Julie touches the NaarPro app on her phone, and is relieved to see that it has already activated the air filtration system in the house. Outside, the wind picks up, rattling the front gate.
“McClure was always a bit of an ass,” Nordell continues. “I remember he had a problem with Liu, a couple of years ago.”
“What kind of problem?” Julie asks.
“Something to do with a division-wide memo he sent, right around the time when we had that issue with the warehouse workers. I forget the details, but Liu complained about him all the time. I guess he had it coming.”
That he did, Julie thinks. It’s not her fault he’s not a team player. Maybe if he’d stayed in his lane and stopped trying to upstage everyone, he’d still be at DI right now.
“Me, I always liked him,” Peter says. “He was one of the few people to talk to me at you guys’ office parties. And now he’s probably gonna be out of a job.”
The concern on his face appears genuine. McClure’s been trying for months to steal the promotion she’s been expecting. If Peter paid any attention to her when she talked, he’d know that.
Peter looks around the table. “Anyone want seconds? There’s more in the kitchen.”
“By the way,” Julie tells the Nordells, “Peter’s grandmother wasn’t Mexican. She lived in Mexico for the first seven years of her life while her parents were stationed at the U.S. embassy there. Then she moved back to Virginia. She’s about as Mexican as I’m French. He got the recipe from Nimble.”
Peter looks at her for the first time. “Julie.”
“What? You don’t need to make up a story about the recipe. The food tastes great without it.”
“You don’t get it. The story improves the taste. Plus, my grandmother considered herself Mexican.” He looks around the table. “And who am I to contradict her?”
“Well, three cheers for the chef,” Melissa says, raising her glass. “It was delicious.”
“Because I used Abuela’s recipe.”
Melissa laughs at Peter’s stupid joke; she has a lot of tact. It served her well when she worked at DI, Julie thinks, especially when one of the business people talked about their weekends of drinking and debauchery. Nordell picks up on his wife’s cue, and raises his glass to the chef as well.
“Except the story’s not true,” Julie insists.
“Goodness. You’re acting like I committed a crime.”
Not a crime, she wants to say. But that doesn’t mean it’s right. Peter loves to exaggerate, doesn’t he. Twist her words and make her seem like she’s crazy. She takes a long sip of wine. The knot between her shoulders is loosening, finally. Her husband’s voice seems to come from far away. “I just don’t understand why you make things up.”
“What’s that? Your words are getting slurred.”
“I said, I don’t understand why you make up stuff,” Julie says, reclining in her chair, stretching her legs under the table. For the first time today, the pain is gone. She closes her eyes, luxuriating in a freedom she has not tasted in so long. The room is warm. Her lips tingle. “I definitely smell smoke.”