The Barbarian Nurseries A Novel - By Hector Tobar Page 0,47

pleasures in the wide-eyed astonishment that greeted his creations when they came to life. Back in the day, the Big Man responded to Scott’s programming feats with manic bursts of verbal excess that usually began with “This is going to change everything!” Scott’s professional success changed his image of himself, as did a mysterious shift in the culture at large, which had caused Scott to lose his geekiness, though now he seemed to be getting it back again.

Two and a half hours after surreptitiously meeting in the parking lot, Scott was sitting opposite Charlotte at the Islands Restaurant in Irvine, working on his second mango margarita and winding up his long story about the development of MindWare’s “virtual university” software, having taken special delight in describing the poor skills of the first group of hackers who tried to defeat Scott’s security and cheat on a medieval history test. He looked down at his watch and noticed the time. “Holy shit, it’s almost four.” They rushed back to the office, with Scott registering only briefly the way Charlotte squeezed his hand for two seconds when they said goodbye in the parking lot, Charlotte taking the elevator while Scott took the stairs. How incredibly lame of me, Scott thought as he walked into the office. Like they’re not going to notice we were gone for three hours.

He stayed late at the office for appearance’s sake, and it was nearly sunset as he meandered out of the building. By the time he reached home, the long summer dusk was almost over, the last glowing embers of daylight had dropped below the silver blue Pacific, and in the half light he didn’t notice the clods of dirt in the driveway, the scrapes in the cement left by the second gardening crew as they rolled in the willow and a bush of desert lavender. When his field of vision passed the sliding glass doors, he failed to focus on the strange silhouettes in the backyard cast by the new flora. The significance of his wife’s announcing “Honey, they put in the new garden today” escaped him as he worked to corral his two boys into the bathroom for their nightly shower, and for a half hour of reading in their bedroom. What a relief to have these familial tasks to throw himself into after an agonizingly slow and pointless day at the office. Here, in these neat and orderly rooms with his sons and his daughter, he was king, provider, and executive rolled into one. Not for the first time Scott thought that the private satisfaction of reading to his sons in this bedroom with the Art Deco solar system floating over his head was a very good exchange for the adulation of the past. When he spotted his daughter walking in the hallway in her pajamas, smiling up at him and raising her arms in a wordless request to be lifted, and when she wrapped her small arms around his neck and tucked her head against his cheek, the sensation that Scott the Geek had miraculously found his place in the world only increased. “I can never be mad at you, Samantha, even if you wake up ten times at night.” Fatherhood was a medal and a slap every ten minutes: you could be a persecuted pygmy holding back a scream of surrender at one moment, and then an immortal hero and prince the next. Scott forgot about the snide executives and the money evaporating from his bank account, and tucked his children into bed and kissed them good night.

9

Go away, go away. In his sleep, Scott flailed at the loose pillow tickling his nose, but in his dream he was pushing Charlotte Harris-Hayasaki away. Her hands were cold and sweaty, they were gripping at his cheeks and eyelids, and he was afraid Maureen would see Charlotte holding him and get the wrong idea, and that a horrible argument would ensue. He was sitting at his desk at work, in a cluttered office lined with stacks of boxes, and Charlotte was standing behind him as he tried to type something on his keyboard, and Maureen was in the next room and might walk in any minute. He felt an apocalyptic dread of his wife’s power to banish him from family and home, and could hear Maureen breathing in the next room as Charlotte moved her hands down to his chest and began unbuttoning his shirt. He wanted to break Charlotte’s grip, but she wouldn’t