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  “Maybe that’s all the info he got.”

  “Oh, come on. His voice turned to ice. His Mr. Nice Guy act totally folded. I think he was genuinely happy telling us that Bette and Bud were nowhere to be found. Think whatever you want,” she added. “But I don’t trust him one teensy little bit.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I said. “But we might as well enjoy the new Sam while we can. You know, before the old Sam reappears.”

  “You enjoy him,” she said. “I’m not moving in too close.”

  I slipped into my jeans, and Megan pinned her hair on top of her head. As she dabbed on some eye makeup and pulled a fairly snug navy-blue T-shirt over her head, I couldn’t help but think about her and Sam.

  We both certainly knew him as a first-class sleazeball, but wasn’t it just possible that he had settled down? Megan wasn’t buying it “one teensy little bit.” I sure didn’t like the guy, but Megan actually hated him.

  Or at least that’s what she wanted me to think.

  Chapter 34

  THE MOST important event of the San Francisco conference was a totally mind-boggling surprise—a presentation by Thomas P. Owens, founder of the Store.

  The fact was that nobody in the organization really knew Mr. Owens. Everyone seemed to believe he was in seclusion. One source said he was on a ranch in Brazil. Another said he had a twenty-room penthouse in Sardinia. We investigated every lead, and everything led to a dead end. Almost no one had ever met the guy.

  Because of our secret book, Megan and I had some pretty hefty files on Owens. But even after we read all the information we had accumulated, even after we analyzed every business article about him, even after we tracked down and briefly interviewed a woman who claimed to be his illegitimate daughter, we knew just as little about Owens as everyone else did. Whether he was hiding behind a curtain somewhere in New York, in his hometown of Lorain, Ohio, or in the Land of Oz itself, nobody seemed to know. Yet everyone seemed to care.

  I had no business being at Gallery 16, the terminally hip modern art gallery and exhibition hall where Thomas P. Owens was to appear. But I lucked out.

  My new best friend, Sam Reed, had arranged for me to attend. A young doctor (at least I think he was a doctor) came to our room and administered an injection into my left elbow. He told me that the injection registered on a supersurveillance board and would allow me three-hour clearance and access to the event. Sam told me that this was standard procedure for admission to Owens’s appearances.

  When Sam, Megan, and I arrived at Gallery 16, Sam suggested, “You make yourself semi-scarce. You know, stand in the back with a few other illegal interlopers.” Both Megan and Sam laughed a bit, but I obeyed. I made myself semi-scarce with a bunch of waiters and Store photographers standing on the sidelines. Meanwhile Sam and Megan were in the high-class seats—first row, on the aisle.

  From where I was standing I had an excellent view of the eighty or so management members who filled the other seats. The men wore either blue blazers or dark suits. The women wore either dark slacks or modest dark dresses.

  But the conservative clothes and the traditional New Burg smiles (even Megan had pasted a smile onto her face) could not disguise the fact that the room was electric with excitement. People were embracing. Some looked on the verge of tears. Everyone was talking excitedly. There is really only one way to describe it: this crowd was waiting for the Messiah.

  Finally a woman walked to the front of the room. She stood directly in front of an Andy Warhol blue Queen Elizabeth II print. The audience became completely silent. The woman turned toward the audience and flashed the New Burg smile. I quickly recognized her as the woman who had presided over the disastrous Dr. David Werner lecture. She was apparently the official hostess for all off-site meetings at the Store.

  I could not resist speaking to the female stranger standing next to me.

  “That woman is wearing an Isabel Toledo dress,” I said.

  “Oh, good,” she said, then she moved a few inches away from me.

  The onstage woman spoke: “I must say that I share your exhilaration and anticipation at this very rare opportunity to meet and greet the Store’s founder and conscience, Mr. Thomas P. Owens.”

  The applause was wildly enthusiastic.

  “As such, you can imagine that I then share your deep disappointment in learning just a few minutes ago that Mr. Owens will not be able to join us this afternoon.”

  The moans, the shout-outs of “What?” “Why not?” “What happened?”

  “Mr. Owens sends his deepest apologies and his warmest wishes for a fruitful and invigorating conference in the Bay Area. Please enjoy the beverages at the various bars, and don’t miss the omelet and crepe station and the blini and caviar station.”

  The hostess walked away and into the groups of people that were forming around the room. The New Burg smiles had all but disappeared. Some people held one another. Others bowed their heads. A handful of them were dabbing at their eyes; they were actually weeping. Is this what happens when you’re expecting the Messiah and he fails to show up?

  I almost could not believe what I was seeing, and when I glanced toward the first row I truly could not believe what I was seeing. Megan and Sam.

  What the hell was happening? Megan was crying. I also saw that Sam Reed had his arms around her. Apparently he was trying to comfort her.

  Sure.

  Chapter 35

  I DIDN’T have time to be pissed off about the warm hug Sam had just wrapped around Megan.

  No. I had something much bigger to be pissed off about: Megan and I had been summoned for “an in-depth interview and analysis” at the Store headquarters.

  “It’s no big deal,” Sam told us. “They knew Megan was here, and of course they found out immediately that you had come along, Jacob. So it looked to the senior interview committee like perfect timing.”

  “But they asked us every conceivable question in the world when they interviewed us back in New Burg,” Megan said. “Does everyone get this interview treatment? Or is it just those of us who might be a little out of control?”

  “Not everybody has this interview. There’s no pattern to who gets it. It’s kinda random,” Sam said. “Look. It’s only around an hour, and everyone’s really nice, and it’s just for their records, and—”

  “And I guess we can’t say we won’t do it,” I said.

  The stern, nasty voice of the “real” Sam Reed returned.

  “I wouldn’t recommend it.”

  So that afternoon Megan and I sat in a very large, very stark conference room containing nothing but four comfortable leather chairs and a small glass coffee table on top of which sat a silver pitcher of coffee, another of tea, and four bottles of mineral water.

  Our interviewers were a man and a woman. Like everyone employed by the Store, they were unfailingly polite and friendly, but they did not offer their names when we shook hands. The two of them looked like they were in their twenties. They looked more like graduate students, and in fact I wondered if Megan and I were so unimportant in the great scheme of the Store that we were just practice interviewees for these “kids.”

  The woman said, “Let’s begin. But I should mention that you may find the first few questions a bit…shall we say…obvious or ridiculous.” Then she read from her laptop.

  “From the following list, select the group you would most likely want to be part of: A, the Church of Scientology; B, the Ku Klux Klan; C, the Store.”

  “Before I struggle to answer, let me just say you were almost right,” I said. “The questions are…shall we say…obvious and ridiculous.”

  “Well,” the young man said, “wait till you hear the next one.” Then he read from his laptop.

  “Of the many wonderful foods available at the various markets and delivery services in New Burg, what would you say is your family’s favorite?”

  It didn’t take a degree in psychology to realize that the whole “ridiculous” conversation was meant to dis
arm Megan and me, turn the interviewers and the interviewees into old friends. So the four of us chuckled along for a few minutes.

  But within five minutes, the nature of the questions began to change.

  “So a writer like you, Jacob, can’t be very satisfied gathering products down at the fulfillment center. You must be doing some writing in your spare time.”

  I had barely given my evasive, bullshitty response when the woman interviewer asked: “What private writing project are you working on now, Jacob? Something personal? Something autobiographical? Something about your employer? You can be honest with us.”

  Yeah. Sure. I would cut off my hands at the wrists rather than tell them the truth. So I said, “I am writing, but it’s nothing important, nothing that’s really come together. In a way it’s autobiographical. I’ll let you know as I get a little further into it.”

  With her smile in place, the young woman said, “I’m sure you will. That’d be great.”

  The young man leaned in toward us with that phony-looking concern usually found in insurance salesmen and annoying uncles.

  “The children—Alex and Lindsay. How are they adjusting to their new environment?”

  “Really well. They love school. They’ve made friends,” Megan said.

  “Yeah. The kids are probably doing better than Megan and I are.”

  The two interviewers looked unpleasantly or pleasantly surprised (it was hard to tell those two expressions apart in New Burg). Megan shot me a look that more or less meant, “Don’t be such an asshole.”

  The young man got us back on track immediately.

  “I understand that Alex is pretty much the star of the junior boxing team.”

  Alex? Boxing? The star? The only sport Alex was ever interested in is played on a big soft sofa. The equipment is an electronic device, and that device is attached to a television monitor.

  “In the spirit of honesty,” I said. “Alex’s boxing is complete news to me. Did he tell you about this, Megan?”

  “Oh, he may have mentioned it once. I’m not sure,” she said. As I said, she was not a good liar.

  Then the young woman spoke.

  “Perhaps he kept this information from you, Mr. Brandeis, because he knows of your abhorrence of rough contact sports like boxing and football.”

  “I’ve never discussed that subject with Alex.”

  “But my statement does correctly reflect your beliefs. You are opposed to boxing in principle.”

  “Well, yes. But I’ve never discussed that with Alex or anyone else. I mean, it’s a belief, not…I don’t know…not an obsession or a cause or a passion or…”

  “If we could, let’s return briefly to another subject. Mrs. Brandeis, do you assist your husband on the book he’s writing?”

  I stood up. And I was furious.

  “What the hell are you talking about—‘the book your husband is writing’? I just told you that I have some thoughts about writing a book. I’m not actually writing a book! I gotta tell you, I don’t even know what the purpose of this interview is. I realize that with all your cameras and spies and shit you know a lot about what we do. But this is all crazy. Absolutely crazy.”

  The woman suggested we take a break, and I stupidly realized, belatedly, that the two mirrors against the mostly bare walls of the room were most likely two-way, that we were being watched during the interview.

  “No. We don’t need a break. Because we don’t need an interview,” I said.

  “Jacob, please. Let’s try to cooperate,” Megan said, and frankly I couldn’t believe she was saying it.

  Then the young man spoke.

  “We really don’t have much more to cover—a few questions about a police raid at a house party you attended, and then—”

  “The interview is absolutely over,” I said. Now I was screaming. “We’re leaving.”

  Megan was still seated. I glared at her. She slowly stood up and picked up her pocketbook from the floor.

  “Do whatever you want with us,” I said. “Transfer us. Put us in jail. Shoot us. Whatever. We are out of here.”

  Chapter 36

  MEGAN HAS two kinds of anger: anger that screams and anger that doesn’t speak a word. There was no predicting which one was going to erupt. I had guessed that after my behavior at the interview there would be a lot of shouting and swearing and declarations of “I don’t care if I’m making a scene.” As is often the case, I turned out to be wrong. Dead wrong.

  Megan was completely silent as we walked back to the hotel. That’s precisely the kind of anger I didn’t want. I wanted her to scream at me and tell me how stupidly I had acted at the “interview.” I wanted her to get it out of her system, and by doing that to force me back into the frightening world of the Store.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, trying to force some reaction from her. “I was a complete fool. I should have listened and answered and played along.”

  She said nothing.

  “I know our whole future depends on writing this book. I know I’ve seriously jeopardized it. I know I behaved like an idiot. And I know you have every right in the world to be pissed off at me.”

  Still nothing.

  The very normal creepiness of the San Francisco streets only made things worse. This was a big, beautiful city version of New Burg: the drones clogging the sky, one of them clearly assigned to Megan and me; it moved like a big electronic umbrella over our heads. Then there were the tiny video cameras embedded in building walls and stop signs and the rims of trash cans. The trash cans themselves were models of Store efficiency: drop a piece of paper or plastic into the mouth of the garbage container, and the item was silently sucked into a below-ground recycling system.

  It was all perfect and neat and scary as shit…at least to me.

  Suddenly Megan stopped walking. Her head was bowed. I stopped also.

  “Listen to me, Jacob. This is important for you to understand. I’m not angry at you. I love you. But it feels like you’ve just gone over the edge. And I understand that. This new world, this new place, these new rules…they’re very hard on you. But your behavior makes things impossible for the rest of us—for Lindsay and Alex…and for me.”

  “But it was so outrageous what they were doing in that interview room,” I began.

  “Yes. Yes. It was outrageous. I know that, and you know that. But this sudden inability you’ve developed—the fact that you simply can’t hold your temper inside you for…for…well, the only way I know how to put it is ‘for the greater good’—has become kind of a problem. I’m worried.”

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I know that everything will—”

  “Turn out all right? No. You don’t know that at all.” Couples who are really invested in being couples can always finish each other’s sentences.

  Megan kept talking. “I’m worried about what you’ve turned into. We’re all on the edge. But I think you may have gone over the edge.”

  I put my arms on her shoulders. I moved in a step to hold her, hug her. She began to cry. Nothing big, just short little bursts of sobs.

  Shit! Was there any truth in what Megan was thinking and feeling and saying? Was I becoming a strange new person in this strange new world? Yeah, for sure I hated this insanity of complete automation—no books, no pens, no humans manning the trolleys and trains. I was not adapting. I was still always reaching for paper money to pay for things, yet in this new world only cards and cell phones tendered valid currency. I missed everything about my old life. I wanted to watch a crappy Knicks game on a TV set, not see the game on some handheld interactive screen. I wanted to go to the supermarket and squeeze the honeydew melons and get suckered into buying cereal we didn’t need. I didn’t want to push some buttons and have our pantry reload automatically.

  Even as I held Megan close, I looked around and could not feel calm. There were so many people on the street wearing masks and earphones and environmental-protection jumpsuits. The very air had a perpetual scent of a combination of r
ubber and ammonia as well as just a touch of something floral. I called it gardenia vomit.

  Megan looked up and smiled at me. “Gardenia vomit getting to you?” she said. Then we continued to walk.

  “Christ,” I said. “I hope I haven’t screwed things up for us.”

  I was hoping Megan would say something like “Of course not. Everything will be okay.”

  But she said nothing. We kept walking.

  We were at the hotel now. The drone that was trailing us drifted skyward. In-hotel devices would be taking over our surveillance.

  The doorman opened the door and spoke cordially. “Welcome back, Mr. and Mrs. Brandeis. There are two people waiting for you in the lobby.”

  Chapter 37

  “HEY, BRANDEISES! Over here!”

  It was a woman’s voice, happy and loud.

  “Look to your right. We’re over here,” shouted a man.

  Megan’s own voice suddenly changed to little-girl wonder.

  “Oh, my God! It’s Bette and Bud!” she shouted.

  Oh, my God. It was Bette and Bud. They both looked a little younger, a little thinner, a little…well, a little “cooler” than they did back in New Burg.

  We hugged. We kissed. We did that thing you do when you hold a person at arm’s length and then lean back and look at him or her from head to toe. Bette, Bud, and I sat on a sofa; Megan sat on a big club chair.

  “You guys look terrific,” I said. And I meant it. It felt like six months since they’d left New Burg, and now they were looking around ten years younger.

  “You really do look terrific,” Megan said. Since Megan was the thoughtful brains of our outfit, she added, “I mean, you always looked good, but you’ve both lost weight, and Bette’s haircut is très chic, and…I dunno…everything. Like, your skin is healthy, and these clothes are all Ralph Laureny.”