--14--

Virginia printed out the chapter and left the pages on the kitchen table for Amanda to read. Then she made herself comfortable on the bed with her iPad. Amanda wouldn’t be back until late; she had said she was meeting a guy for a drink after work. This was the first date she had had since Virginia came to stay with them, and Virginia had mixed feelings about it. Her daughter had always been the kind who fell in love easily, but her relationships didn’t tend to last more than a few months. It would be nice for her to meet someone truly compatible, but she hadn’t organized an all-out campaign, the way Virginia had. Of course she had a few other things to keep her busy, like a full-time job and two teenagers living at home, but Virginia felt that a more organized approach made more sense.

She kept these thoughts to herself. Virtually every time she had ever offered anyone unsolicited advice, not just her daughter, it had ended badly. There was that time she had suggested something to a co-worker, who thought that Virginia was insinuating she didn’t know how to do her own job. And mother-daughter relations, at least among her friends, always seemed to be sufficiently fraught without the addition of inadvertent or unintended criticism. You can’t start a comment with, “Don’t take this wrong, but. . .” because inevitably the person, once alerted to the possibility, was bound to take it wrong.

Amanda was a little touchy about her lack of success in the romance department, even though she pretended to joke about it. And no matter how much Virginia avoided voicing an opinion, Amanda could always tell if her mom didn’t like the guy. She did seem to have moved beyond the “I’ll like him just because you don’t” stage, which had been a very trying time, but Virginia wasn’t sure how much beyond it she was, and she didn’t want to push her luck. So she waited through all the Toms and Dons and Daves, most of them gone in the blink of an eye.

Matt had been a good father, and Amanda, predictably, had idolized him. It wasn’t surprising she hadn’t found anybody else to measure up. Virginia had already resigned herself to settling for something less than perfection, having decided that she didn’t need to do the marriage thing again, just find a good fellow walker for herself and Anax. She compared her compulsive online search to the dog’s begging looks at the leash and concluded that there were a lot of similarities. It bothered her more than a little to think of a relationship as a leash, but once the image occurred to her, she couldn’t get it out of her head.

Something about being a photographer made her think in pictures, and she decided to apply these visual insights to Steve’s writing. Maybe that was how other people came up with things to say in their book groups. Virginia had tried one briefly, but all she could think of to say were things like, “I can’t relate to this character,” or, “Why didn’t she just tell him to buzz off?” Although some of their comments weren’t that great either. Once the other women had literally gotten all wound up talking about what they liked to see from their kitchen window when they were doing the dishes. They were all nice people, that wasn’t the problem, but they were never going to make a living reviewing books, that was for sure.

So anyway, what picture came to mind about the latest chapter of Virtual Paris (or Whatever)? Those folks boxed up in a subway car not knowing where they were going to end up, but fixated on getting away from where they had been. Trying to escape without really knowing from what. Running away as not just an object in itself, but as a way of life. Was that what Steve had in mind? Or if she asked him, would he say, “Where did you get that idea?” Then again, he had made perceptive remarks about her photos, so obviously he was one smart guy, even if he was an accountant. Although she had nothing against accountants. Unlike the other women in her office she was actually friends with one of them, a woman named June who worked in the Business Office. June was quite young, and she had accidentally gotten mixed up in a messy situation that got people’s tongues wagging, but Virginia believed her and was on her side; it sounded to her as if what the guy was claiming had to be a lie. Office politics were always a pain, and it was best to stay out of it.

She decided to hang on to the picture of life being an eternal running away at least until she had a chance to read a little more of Steve’s story. One of her writer friends used to say, “Don’t ask me; I’m just the author.” It made sense to her that writers weren’t always completely aware of what their writing brought out in terms of inner pictures. Even though other writers were probably the best qualified to see what they were getting at, maybe there were times when a more visually oriented person, rather than a verbal one, was in the best position to seize a fleeting image and point it out.

So was the story believable? Was Virtual Paris (or Whatever) what was in store for us in the not too distant future? It sounded okay to her, except she kind of expected people to be fleeing in a spaceship rather than a virtual subway. But did it matter? How important was it that a story be believable? Especially a story about a time period that was, at the moment, a complete mystery to us. Was there some kind of contest where whoever guessed best won? She would vote for Steve, given a chance. That would be a fitting continuation of their story. A ballot would arrive in the mail—no, more likely by email. It would ask her to verify that she had read all the entries in the contest, which might include Dune, 1984, The Handmaid’s Tale, and Virtual Paris (or Whatever). Then it would ask which one she judged to be the closest to current reality. She would pick Virtual Paris (or Whatever) partly out of solidarity, because it would be cool if Steve won, and partly because—so far at least—it did seem more likely and in any case way less depressing than those other ones.

Come to think of it, Steve would win hands down in that distinguished company. Obviously their goal hadn’t been to guess right. Probably, if it came to that, Steve’s wasn’t either. She felt she was on the cusp of grasping something fundamental about speculative literature: It wasn’t meant to accurately predict the future. She quickly reviewed her admittedly limited experience. She had read all the biggies from Jules Verne to Robert Heinlein. In fact, she had devoured them with little discrimination. “Liked” was a big part of her vocabulary. “Found to be reasonable in its predictions” was completely absent.

Time to stretch her legs. “Hey Anax,” she said to the instantly attentive dog. “Ready for another trip to the park where the crazies hang out?”