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  “Check it out, douchebags! Level three, yes!”

  Precisely at this moment in the car-pool lane, Michael Brubaker had reached an important milestone in his young life: level three in Death Vault. This required that he hack off a prodigious number of limbs and heads, then execute a twisting back flip and kick to the jaw of a particularly nimble gorgon near the end of the game. Very few players reached level three in Death Vault.

  “You want me to connect you?”

  “No, I, uh, I’ll call him in a minute. Thanks, Luce.” As she clicked off, Fritz muttered, “Shit.”

  “Da-ad,” Kristin protested, again employing the two-syllable variety of the word, useful for marking infractions of parental etiquette.

  “That’s enough from you.” He punched in the office voice mail, optioned through the menu, and sent a message to Frank: “Frank, Fritz, on my way in, see you soon. Try me on the cell.”

  Fourteen words: two lies and a deception. The first lie was implicit, that he had tried to call Frank; the second explicit, that he was on his way in, for he was motionless in the car-pool lane of the Chaney School (although the alcove was now in sight, and only five mastodons stood between him and enactment of the Good Parent Ritual). The deception was his invitation for Frank to try him on the cell, which Fritz now turned off.

  The line oozed forward. Fritz waved jauntily at the other good parents, who waved jauntily back. His cell phone flashed a message, advising him that one call had gone unanswered. “Glup glup,” went the DVD. “Yes!” Michael exulted, decapitating a gorgon.

  When they reached the alcove seven minutes later, the welcome teacher sang out, “It’s a beautiful morning!”

  Sprinting around the car, Fritz agreed that it was indeed a beautiful morning, and because good parents should express good cheer at all times, he nodded cheerily at the lipstick-red BMW X5 behind him. He opened the door and said, “Michael. Gotta go, son.”

  Kristin popped out of the vehicle, backpack slung, water bottle in hand. Without waiting for her brother, she flip-flopped over to the doors. This caused a quiet commotion among the moms in the car-pool lane. As always, they were monitoring the gravel path to Fielding with the cold scrutiny of fashion writers along a Milan runway.

  “Is that . . . is that Kristin? Well—hasn’t she grown up over the summer!”

  “Only a sixth-grader, and . . . hmm!”

  “Cute bob. Not sure I’d let Sara wear pants cut like that, though. Awfully low.”

  “Isn’t she growing up in a hurry, that Kristin Brubaker! Wasn’t she over at our place for a play date—when was it—last year? Several times, in fact, because her mother works, of course.”

  “Seems a little young to be wearing those J. Crew platform flip-flops. I suppose her mother isn’t around to see what she’s putting on in the morning.”

  “It does happen quickly, doesn’t it!”

  “Her mother is never around, works downtown or something.”

  “It’s too bad about the boy. They say he has a number of issues.”

  “Wonder if the Brubakers are going to get her into modeling . . .”

  Thus went the mental notes being made by the watchful mothers in the SUV line, as the unsuspecting sixth-grader entered Fielding. Back inside the Navigator, there was nothing cute about Michael. He was in the video zone, locked on Death Vault. Hacking a progress through a heap of limbs, more than halfway through level three, Michael had reached a trancelike higher state of digital agility. He was one with the joystick. He felt a surge of unearthly power. Every back flip severed a gorgon head. He had a shot at level four. He could feel it.

  “Michael, school time, big fella, let’s go.” A tight-lipped urgency.

  “Wait,” the boy commanded in that perfunctory manner so endearing to parents.

  “Michael.” Very firmly now. Water aboil, lid on but rattling.

  “Dad, I’m going for level—”

  “Michael!” In a kind of helpless, shipwrecked way, Fritz realized right then that he was losing it. He felt the very chipper but very firm, very attentive gazes of the good parents in the Chaney School car-pool lane. He felt the very courteous but very concerned smile of Mavis boring into his shoulder blades. He felt the blast furnace of a steel mill at his back. God, it was hot.

  “Michael!” he shouted again, caught himself, turned to smile at Mavis, tightly, no longer jaunty, a good parent trying to cope with a spirited child.

  At the Chaney School, each individual child was valued and cherished. Among its students were no bad children, and no stupid children, and no lazy children. There were only children with issues. Certain children had processing issues, and appropriateness issues, and sensory integration issues, and executive functioning issues. Michael Brubaker had his issues, as was generally and earnestly agreed in the staff room. But violence is never the solution (being, in fact, its own issue), nor is losing one’s temper. Fritz was losing his grip on this principle.

  Leaning into the Navigator, he spoke in a clipped cadence through set teeth: “Michael, turn that fucking thing off and get out of the fucking car now. NOW!” He was not smiling anymore.

  Michael began a calculation. He had inherited his father’s quick mind for figures. To Michael, “quantitative analysis” (which was what the Chaney School called math) was a snap. So he began to do the quantitative analysis. He knew that the word “fucking,” when directed toward children, was rare—his father’s word of last resort. It was the last clear chance before violence. On the other hand, violence at the alcove of the Chaney School, in the full view of the welcome teacher and a line of good parents, would be uniquely profane: roughly equivalent to rape on an altar during church services. It was extremely tempting. To be the victim of such violence would be almost heroic.

  Unfortunately, in doing the quantitative analysis, Michael neglected his zone of digital brilliance. Sensing weakness, a gorgon lashed out and snapped his head off, destroying the last of his protective lives and erasing his chance for level four.

  The gazes of the other good parents were now fixed on this interesting activity that seemed to be delaying things—just a little!—in the alcove. Perhaps the child had not been properly prepared, properly parented, so that he would issue smartly from the car, well nourished and happy, ready for the school day. Perhaps he had not been properly hydrated?

  Michael watched blood glup rhythmically from his warrior’s neck with anatomical verisimilitude. “You . . . asshole!” he muttered.

  “What?”

  Michael unbuckled his restraint harness (which was what they called seat belts at the Chaney School), glowered, turned his head away.

  “WHAT?”

  Fritz turned to the cheerful second-grade teacher and said, “Excuse me.” He was no longer losing it. “It” was now lost. He clambered into the Lincoln Navigator and pulled the door shut behind him. This was an unusual development, and the good parents in rank behind were not impatient, exactly, but keenly interested. Was the child in the vehicle all right? The tinted glass impaired their view, but there seemed to be shapes moving actively—perhaps even violently—within the SUV idling at the very threshold of the Chaney School.

  Two missed calls had now registered on Fritz’s cell phone.

  Inside the Navigator, he did not actually strike the child. Heaven forbid that. But Michael, wincing, thought maybe his number was up when he saw his father commit violence on the factory-installed DVD screen, tearing it from the roof of the Navigator and breaking it across his knee (a mistake, because the liquid crystal leaked out on his freshly pressed chinos and stained the new glove-leather seats). Fritz ripped the PlayStation joystick from his son’s hands and crunched it under his heel.

  This activity made an impression on Michael.

  A moment later Fritz escorted his son to the front doors (with more of the drawn and haggard look of the humiliated parent than the cheerful confidence of the good parent) and, returning to his car, waved curtly to the other good parents, some of whom
were wondering what that stuff on his pants was. At 8:35 he put the Navigator in drive.

  He drove off with Michael’s backpack, which contained the children’s sunscreen.

  2 MAIL BONDAGE

  AT THE MOMENT that Fritz Brubaker was completing his Good Parent Ritual by engaging drive in the Lincoln Navigator and preparing to leave the car-pool lane of the Chaney School, a very different ritual was concluding three thousand miles away. Marvin Rosenblatt, fifty-three, an equity partner in the Boston/New York/Chicago/London/Brussels/Tokyo/Fort Myers law firm of Elboe, Fromme & Athol LLP, was achieving climax in the king-size bed of a suite on the twenty-first floor of the Fordyce Hotel in San Francisco. Marvin had completed four and one half minutes of intercourse with Linda LeBrecque, Fritz’s wife.

  Marvin gasped, collapsed, and rolled over. “God!” he said.

  “God!” Linda agreed, to be polite. She was not winded at all.

  Breathing heavily, Marvin Rosenblatt lay on his back and (as was his habit after sex) folded his hands on his chest, as though composing himself for an open casket. His breathing slowed. He became calm. His breathing slowed some more, until it seemed like he was barely breathing at all. He breathed in. She waited. And waited. He breathed out. She waited. Then she really waited. Then she told herself not to get alarmed like she had before, that time when he had simply stopped breathing, as though he had forgotten how to breathe at all and it was alarming because he definitely WAS NOT BREATHING and so she simply had to look over and . . .

  Then he breathed in again.

  Early in the affair this behavior had alarmed Linda, but now she had grown more accustomed to it, although those forty-second pauses still got to her. At last, at peace, Marvin opened his eyes and squinted at the digital clock. Upon this clock the large blue numerals 5:36 now appeared, but Marvin, who was profoundly nearsighted, was not wearing his glasses and could see only blue fuzz.

  There was no further postcoital discussion, for each of them was in need of the twenty-first-century cigarette—e-mail.

  Marvin fumbled on the night table for his glasses and his BlackBerry remote wireless. Linda reached over to the other bedside table as though to fumble for her BlackBerry remote wireless. In fact, her BlackBerry was already in hand. It had occurred to her that it might actually be possible to receive e-mail while having sex, and so, as Marvin got going, she had surreptitiously grabbed the hand-sized plastic lozenge. However, the eensy buttons proved too difficult to work. She also realized that her idea might be misconstrued by Marvin as some kind of insult. So she hid the device in her palm while urging on her lover. But that was over now, and she was rather impatient to get her messages. After all, it was already eight-thirty on the East Coast. People might be e-mailing her.

  So, BlackBerry in hand, Linda sat up and joined Marvin Rosenblatt, leaning on the overstuffed pillows piled against the gold brocade of the headboard. Her little fingers began working the eensy buttons. His fingers began working his own eensy buttons. These useful devices enabled the lovers to review their many messages (which contained important news, such as Fred “got your e-mail” and Dave “will call you tomorrow”) and to message back with other vital bulletins (such as “Thanks” and “That will be fine” and “Let’s be sure to talk to Joan about that”). After the rush of passion, this instant access to the vital business matters in their lives helped calm the lovers and ready them for the day.

  To all appearances, Marvin and Linda were an unlikely couple, a fact that had helped them conceal their affair. She was blond, lanky, still possessed of the lovely, delicate bone structure that had made her so striking at thirty, although she had hardened a little. Linda had obliterated fat from her forty-six-year-old body with a ruthless regimen of aerobic exercise, all of which she carried out alone, indoors, in the dark, on expensive machines. She also fought a determined rearguard against age through an array of facial oils, creams, and unguents. This strategy was hard on her, but it worked. First impressions of Linda were generally things like “babe” (so slim!) and “probably lives in Dover” (correct), “smart” (correct), “probably skis at Vail” (incorrect), and “sure seems confident” (quite incorrect).

  Marvin was short and aggressively homely. He was a large-featured but quite small man with a narrow chest and arms like No. 2 pencils; except for carrying the wicker hamper from his Mercedes to the lawn at Tanglewood each Friday evening in July, then carrying it back again, he never exercised. His glasses were as thick as Orrefors crystal. He was the shortest man Linda had ever slept with and one of the shorter adult males she had ever kissed. He wore pajamas, even when they were, well, you know. First impressions of Marvin generally were “lawyer” (correct).

  But these were trifling limitations. Within the rarified world of Elboe, Fromme & Athol, Marvin had put them to rout. He chaired the corporate department and was regarded as something of a giant. Associates whispered in the halls about his towering intellect, his brilliant deal structuring (also his money); junior partners noticed how learned he sounded when he spoke to boards of directors, without ever actually committing himself to a declarative sentence. Clients weren’t sure what he was talking about, but they took comfort from having a genius on their team. Within Elboe, Fromme, Marvin had cemented his key-player status with a paneled office that commanded an unobstructed harbor view, in the center of which Marvin sat at a walnut desk with a desktop of Carrara marble. From this thirtieth-floor stronghold, he spent his days on conference calls, giving careful, immensely detailed, but noncommittal recitations of law to boards of directors, then dispatching teams of associates and junior partners to prepare documents. When he ventured out, it was usually to steering committee meetings.

  Physically, you never would have said they belonged together—not the way Fritz and Linda seemed to. Fritz and Linda were both lean, both fair, his face too narrow to be called conventionally handsome but with short-cropped curls framing such an easy and confident smile. She was more distant, though with those model’s looks that still turned your head. His sunny smile was a foil for her reserve; his contentment took the edge off her intensity and nerves. They looked like a set. People naturally said “FritznLinda”; even the words were an easy fit. If you saw one at a cocktail party, you expected to see the other nearby. There was a regularity about him to complement her quite irregular beauty, but they looked right together. They formed almost an aesthetic composition, like a bottle of champagne standing next to a single flute. The first is sturdy and convivial and full of cheer, elegant, yes, classic in its shape and line, but familiar and earthy. It welcomes you. Not so the second: the flute is striking, but its beauty is too exquisite on its own. The composition of the two is more comforting. So it was with Fritz and Linda.

  Yet the sad fact was that Linda was becoming a better match for Marvin. They were corporate lawyers to several large Boston-based firms, the grandest of which was Playtime. They were worriers, organizers, obsessors over detail, people who shot bolt upright at three A.M. because they couldn’t recall if the extra copies of the contract had been FedExed to the client or only mailed. They shared a confidence that everything would go wrong if left to its own devices.

  And they shared something else, a burning passion right at the core of the liver: the spirit of I Must Never Be Subject to Criticism. This was the essential element of each of their characters—that they should not be criticized. It had led each of them to a lifetime of good report cards. In schools, in entrance exams, in college; in law school, in job offers, in compensation. It led them to clothe their children a certain way and enroll them in certain schools; to live on certain streets in certain towns; to give to certain charities. (Marvin was Jewish, so he lived among elites of a different town—Newton—but the idea was the same.) It left them ever vigilant to fortifying all aspects of their lives against criticism—criticism that could come at any time from any quarter.

  Linda’s passion for a good report card had inspired a profound and bitter resentment over the $980,000 in
compensation she had been awarded in 2000 by Elboe’s management committee. Compensation was the ultimate report card. And while Linda would be the first to concede that nine-eighty was a lot of money (but not huge money, not something to get carried away about, not when you considered what they paid at investment banks and mutual funds, and not when you started to think about the cost of living in a place like Dover), the fact was that they paid Strickler (who’d made partner a year after Linda) a flat mil, and that guy Tor Anderssen (who was nothing more than a pretty face in the lucrative insolvency group, and who was in fact a walking malpractice liability) also got a flat mil. To cut her by a trifling $20,000—to pay her less than either one of those two—was a vicious and gratuitous slap. It was a bad report card, and she’d spent most of 2001 fuming about it. A bad report card offended the cardinal principle. Because there it was: there was something wrong with Linda LeBrecque, as compared to Strickler and Anderssen. In black and white: criticism.

  A corollary to the principle of I Must Never Be Subject to Criticism was I Must Always Be in the Loop. At 5:36 A.M. in San Francisco, this was where the little plastic BlackBerries came in. A lawyer’s delicate roots depended for nutrients on loop soil. Nothing else could nourish him. And nothing could be more dangerous to a lawyer than the desert rumored to exist out of the loop. In the desert, there were no important discussions, no key players. No one really knew what happened to lawyers in the desert. Linda shuddered to think about it.

  E-mail was the new loop. This made both Marvin and Linda, among other things, BlackBerry addicts. Plastic dopeheads. Always ready for a fix—reaching for an electronic mainline the moment an aircraft door opened or a conference flagged. And so, although all outside the Fordyce Hotel was blackness, in the suite there was the ghostly glow of the clock radio and the gray screens of the BlackBerries. Click-click-click, went the eensy plastic buttons, there in the darkened bedroom suite on the twenty-first floor.