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And now, he knew this thing in his heart, this embarrassing wanderlust leading him away from Sue and toward Blythe would be exploited if they felt like it.

The only escape was to pretend he felt nothing. The only thing to do was to be completely honorable.

So far that hadn’t been working. So far he’d been an open book. He cringed inwardly as he merged into the line of cars ribboning along the freeway. He imagined what sort of music they’d put to this fascinating, thrilling drive home. Could the jerks make rush-hour entertaining?

He frowned at a new thought. Was he being self-centered to think the Editors would even notice his ridiculous blushes around Blythe and the tiny infidelities he was experiencing about her in his heart? Rubbing his forehead as he eased his car forward a few feet on the freeway, preparing to turn control over to the vehicle, he realized he was being one of the indulgent, self-absorbed people who made special efforts to gain notoriety on the feeds. Didn’t it take that sort of mentality to arrive at the conclusion that the Editors would pay special attention to him?

No one would make a musical montage of his life. No one would even notice the way his hands got sweaty around her, the way he couldn’t form articulate sentences when he looked into her eyes, the way he burst into laughter without warning about the most inane things. He was sure if he could see it from the outside, it would be apparent that everything was in his head. That the things he was interpreting as chemistry and interest were all in his imagination.

Hobbling down the road, hands relaxed impotently in his lap, thinking these self-recriminating thoughts, his phone suddenly beeped. He had a new message.

It was probably his wife. He took a deep breath to calm himself. 

It was Blythe.

“Can you meet me at Perfect Brew? It’s about the patent. Half an hour.”

*****

Walking back to her apartment in the cool night, Marci kept the slate close to her face. She switched to a feed on Blythe at some point during her marathon viewing session. The lawyer was at a coffee shop, sitting alone, sipping a latte. Her slate rested on the table before her. She gazed at it, but her eyes seemed glazed as though her attention was focused inward. Occasionally her painted fingernail drifted lazily to glide across its surface. The Editors put a filter over the scene—the colors were rich and lush while the background was blurred. A melancholy song about forbidden love had been added to the scene. Something was obviously going to happen.

In real-space, a skateboarder rolled by and conversations floated about her. She was dimly aware of their passing, and a few voices called derogatory things to her about the lack of attention she gave to the path she walked.

“Stupid anti-feed jerks,” she muttered to herself, ignoring them. The song continued to play, the title hovering in the bottom left of the screen. She took note of it, liking the way the music accented Blythe’s apparent turmoil.

Was it wrong that Marci wanted something to happen between the actors? She scoffed and murmured “hardly” to her own question. The feed had pulled in thousands of viewers. By sheer volume of people endorsing it, it must be good. 

These things, these events that arose in life—new loves, affairs, wandering hearts—that was the way it was. That was life. It had always been that way, and finally people were making good use of it. At some point, Marci would face these same dilemmas.

But they weren’t dilemmas. They were fun. They made a person feel alive again. Ramone, for example. He’d been married for a long, long time. He’d probably been feeling dead inside. Blythe was making him want to live again. She was putting him in a good mood. It looked to Marci like Ramone had just been just plodding through his life before encountering Blythe. Marci had seen. She’d gone to the feed archives and had watched some of the capsules of his life before Blythe.

Blythe was a veritable savior for Ramone. If only he’d realize that.

Marci reached her apartment as night fell. The streetlights along her block blinked to life; somewhere a dog barked. She pushed the front door open, stumbled through, and dropped her backpack on the battered coffee table before slumping into the couch, the slate still poised before her face. Tapping a few commands, the feed switched to Ramone’s viewpoint.

“Now then, where are
you
Ramone?” Was he going to meet Blythe? Marci’s fingers felt sweaty. A song had been playing over Ramone’s feed—an airy affair that made Marci want to imagine a dance on the beach with prince charming. The male vocalist could easily enthrall her—it almost made
her
fall in love with Ramone.

For a split second she wanted Ramone to come to her. A strange feeling twisted like a corkscrew in her chest, through her ribs. The glow of the slate and the light from the end-table lamp—though dim and hardly warmed up to full power—suddenly seemed brighter. She squinted at the screen. Ramone’s eyes glittered in the twilight as he glanced in his rearview mirror. His brow was furrowed. For the first time, Marci noticed the color of his eyes. Blue with flecks of brown like the earth seen from space. The lines and age seemed to vanish from his face. Creases at the corners of his eyes that once seemed to cry out old man, became gentle markers of wisdom and experience. She wondered what made them. Laughter? Suffering? The gray in his otherwise black hair that made her mock him and classify him as ancient suddenly became appealing in a primitive way that Marci knew she couldn’t explain. It was sexy.

“Still have your nose stuck in that video feed?” a voice asked, interrupting her musing. She tipped the slate and glanced up. It was Stewart, her roommate. Marci hadn’t heard him come in. He shrugged off his red jacket and tossed it onto the armchair.

“Can’t help it. Have you been watching this one?”

Shaking his head, he went into the kitchen and poured a glass of juice.

“I think I’m in love,” she said.

“With the lady or the old man?” Stewart asked with a sarcastic grin, returning the pitcher to the fridge. The kitchen and the front room were really one big room. It was expensive living in the city and rent was the one thing her parents required her to contribute.

“Well, both, if you think about it. But I just fell in love with the old man.”

“You’ve always had that Oedipal thing going on.”

“It was the song the damn Editors played a second ago.”

“Think about it, Marci. You’re bound to fall in love with someone you spy on that much. It’s inevitable.”

“What do you know, anyway? It’s not spying, either. Maybe I just realized he’s more amazing than I gave him credit for.”

“You could fall in love with anyone.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Everyone has something to recommend them, right? When you really get down to it. That’s why I don’t discriminate. I love everyone.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. I get crushes on everyone. You, my professors, my coworkers, our neighbors.”

She snorted. “Everyone gets crushes. They don’t mean anything.”

Stewart shrugged and took a drink. “Is that what you’re feeling for the old man? A crush?”

She lifted her slate. Ramone was arriving at the coffee shop. “Maybe. Can’t talk now. Something’s about to happen.”

Before she could protest, Stewart had crowded next to her on the couch. He pressed his face close to hers so he could see what was happening. “What’s going on?”

“Don’t talk. Just watch,” she said.

*****

Weaving through surface-street traffic after exiting the freeway to reach the coffee shop, Ramone thought hard about what he was doing. Why insist on meeting like this? If it was the patent, couldn’t it wait until morning? Did lawyers always work these hours?

A storm raged inside him. His stomach pitched, roiled, and fluttered. He turned the news station down to get a grasp on things.

It would be all right. He took a deep breath and sent a quick message to Sue as he waited at a traffic light: “I have to make a work-related stop on the way home,” the message read.
Work-related stop?
He wasn’t very good at lying. Not that it was totally a lie. It
could
be work-related. It could mean he’d be able to leave the company, retire, and do all the things he’d been planning to do with Sue now that their children were grown.

Sooner than he would have liked, he was fighting for a parking space at the coffee shop. College-age kids walked in groups past the parking lot along the sidewalk, laughing, wearing outrageous clothing, and unnatural haircuts. Ramone noticed one boy completely covered in tattoos. Not a bare patch of skin was visible. And his unnaturally black hair was twisted into a single horn sticking straight off the crown of his head, like a unicorn. Ramone shook his head in dismay. He stopped paying attention to these things after the feeds really took hold, when he realized there was little difference now in the savages still living in the jungles and the people outside his office window. In fact, the so-called savages of the uncivilized parts of the world were in many ways more civilized than the people around him.

With a sigh, he stepped out of his car, adjusted his shirt and belt and moved toward the coffee shop. Laughter from somewhere behind him made him blush and duck his head before he realized it wasn’t directed at him. The smell of roasting meat wafted from the shish-kabob restaurant next to the coffee shop. It dissipated as he reached the entrance and was replaced by the faint odor of roasting beans.

Somehow he managed to push his way into the coffee shop, though his arms felt weak and his palms were damp with perspiration. Ramone was slightly aware of the seething crowd of college kids, some were laughing in small groups, others were talking animatedly as though their discussion might solve all the ills of the world, while a few quiet individuals were hunched over their slates studying. Ramone noticed one or two in armchairs thumbing ironically through newspapers like someone out of a 1950s film. All that faded when his eyes found her. There, at a table against the wall. A loose strand of hair hung in front of her eyes as she stared down at her slate. The knot in Ramone’s belly tightened. His legs felt heavy as he approached her and tried unsuccessfully to shake the sensation of moving sluggishly through water. She looked up. Something flickered across her face. Was she happy to see him? Or was that regret?

He wondered briefly if he should turn around and leave. He’d never done this before.

Done what? I’m not doing anything. This is work.

He suddenly recalled, for some reason, the first time he’d been with a girl. In college. He’d met her in Vienna when he’d been there for two weeks. She took him to a small village up in the hills where they sat by a lake in the afternoon and swam naked beneath the full moon. He did things like that back then. The entire time he wanted her, but hadn’t known what to do, exactly. He’d
known
known, but not from experience. Everything had a sense of direction. That was what he discovered. He just had to let the current sweep him along. This felt like that. Like he wasn’t supposed to fight it, that it would just happen.

But nothing’s going to happen.
They were meeting about the patent. It wasn’t like Vienna at all.

He sat stiffly across from her. She put her arms on the table, on either side of the slate, and smiled.

“Thanks for coming,” she said.

He blinked. “Of course. I was on my way home anyway. It was just a small diversion from my normal course.”

She laughed comfortably and studied him. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thanks. I can’t do anything at night with caffeine.” He suppressed a grimace.
Did that sound like he was referring to sex?
A sigh escaped his lips before he could stop it. Everything sounded like a reference to sex.

“They have decaf, you know.” She smiled as though she didn’t catch the possible reference.

“Still too much caffeine for me,” he said politely.

“Let me buy you a drink, Ramone. After all, you’re here because of me,” she said, rising. Before he could protest, she’d made her way to the bar and ordered a drink for him. He was there for her, that was true. But he should have been buying her the drink. And then, afterwards, maybe dinner. And maybe they could go for a drive, escape the perpetual crowds and public spaces for a few moments and speak freely about the patent, about possibility, about anything. Not that a single private spot existed these days.

He hoped to change that.

“Here you go. I hope you like a foamy cappuccino. Sorry, I didn’t ask you what you liked before I ran off.” She set the mug before him, sat down, and took a sip of her own cappuccino. “On these cool autumnal nights, I feel they really hit the spot.”

“Thank you. It’s fine. Everyone likes a cappuccino.” Ramone really had never seen her this relaxed before. She was being
affable
. Of course he’d imagined her this way. But had he truly believed he’d see her like this? Not at all. He absentmindedly took a sip, thinking about how the reality was matching up to what he’d imagined. His fingers quivered being so close to her and he tried vainly to still them.