Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [103]
He laughs. “Who can best deal with obnoxious family members of our residents.” He looks up at me. “I’m a perennial winner.”
“Vince, I’m serious. Are you leaving to avoid being arrested or sued?”
“What do you want from me, Nat? What do any of you selfish, self-absorbed people want from me?”
“Are you serious? Answers and retribution for a start. My grandmother’s brain got baked.”
He harrumphs. “Are you so blind to what is going on?”
“Enlighten me.”
“You all pay lip service to your elderly parents and grandparents. You talk about how much they mean to you and how deep your friendships are and how valuable their contributions. But the truth is that you resent them. Not because they take up your time—that too—but because seeing them age makes you so fucking resentful. It’s like you’re looking into a mirror fifty years into the future.”
“You’re rambling.”
“I’ve spent decades trying to shield the residents from family members who take out their resentment in sometimes the most tiny, passive-aggressive ways—not paying bills, poking fun at their elders’ habits, bringing unnecessary gravity and drama to the otherwise small human indignities of aging. When the chance came along to let them record their histories, I was on the fence. On one hand, I thought, the technology would create some common ground between generations; maybe it would let your generation see and hear their generation as your peers, not some dried up, gray-haired, bed-shitting versions of yourselves. But I also knew that I was succumbing to the illusion of immortality. We’d keep their stories alive, live in the past, not embrace the beauty of aging. But then I succumbed, and for my own sick, selfish reasons.”
“Money?”
He drops the chalice into the packing box.
“Trust me, you’re not interested.”
“Trust me that I am.”
He sighs. “Sex.”
“Tell me that you didn’t . . .”
“Of course I didn’t have sex with any residents. How dare you. If you really want to know: I fell for one of the organizers of the Human Memory Crusade. Then I became vulnerable to the argument that we adopt the new technology.”
He seems content to leave it at that.
Before I realize I’ve thought it, I utter a name. “Chuck.”
His pupils widen.
“Chuck Taylor?” I say. “The military investor? You had sex with him?”
I’d sensed Chuck is gay. Pauline told me Chuck found me cute. Then Chuck’s father had reinforced my suspicions by ranting about how his son didn’t go for women.
“Not sex,” he says, quietly. “I mispoke. I meant seduction.”
I blink. I don’t understand. He picks that up.
“We kissed a few times. We connected. There was an implicit promise of something more, something real.”
“So Chuck seduced you, took advantage of you?”
“I make my own decisions.”
“Was Chuck the one who pushed the whole thing? Was he the first contact?”
“He worked with legitimate people. Very legitimate. I would never allow anything to happen to anyone who lived here.”
“You’re not answering my question. Was it Chuck who first proposed the idea of the Human Memory Crusade?”
“I thought you knew all about this.”
“I did not.”
“Then I can’t compromise the privacy of my residents.”
“What do you mean? One of your residents suggested adopting the Human Memory Crusade?”
He swallows hard.
“Who?”
“Mr. Idle . . .”
The revelation hits me hard.
“My grandmother?”
He breathes deeply.
“Lane came to me just over a year ago. She’d heard about this technology from her neurologist. She proposed it to me as a way to share stories from the past. She rallied other residents. She’s very charismatic that way, and passionate. She’s slowing now, but she got the momentum going, and then Chuck came in and used his wiles to convince me to try it.”
I want to say: Why would my grandmother do such a thing? But I know the answer. She needed someone to talk to—or something.
“Who brought the computers? What company, or individual?” I ask.
“Chuck and his business partners. They showed me documentation that they were working with retirement communities