Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 8:25 A.M. EST} The Tryst, Part Three

Gentle Tweeter,

Tinny music fills the hotel bedroom. It’s the Beastie Boys singing “Brass Monkey.” It’s the PDA on the bedside table announcing a new text message.

Restored to the bed, my dad explains, “We asked a panel of doctors to study the security videos.” His hairy hand reaches into view, patting the tabletop in search of the ringing phone.

Words Ctrl+Alt+Fail me. Not even emoticons can convey the horror I feel upon hearing this. Like the subject of some patronizing panocular coming-of-age saga in the dirt-eating hinterlands of New Guinea, my not-clothed childhood antics have been observed! My formerly faithful, formerly devoted father is blatantly cheating on my mother, yet he deems me flawed and not likable! Yes, Gentle Tweeter, I might be emotionally withheld and lacking in superfluous, superficial social bonds, but I am not unproud of the fact that I failed to self-stimulate my virginal hoo-hoo for the Peeping Tom anthropological kicks of some voyeuristic child psych consultants. It’s monstrous, the idea that strangers watched me. Even my parents. Especially my parents.

Babette asks, “Antonio?”

My father hums something in reply.

Simpering, she asks, “Why are we here?”

My father’s hairy suntanned hand, it retrieves the PDA, and his voice says, “We’re accompanying Camille’s ghost hunter in room sixty-three fourteen.” Encircling his finger, his gold wedding ring looks like a tiny dog collar. “You remember, the guy who Leonard told us to hire? From People magazine?” he says. “The one who takes boatloads of that animal tranquilizer?” The pace of his delivery slows, punctuated by the faint beeps of him pressing PDA buttons. My dad’s still talking, but he’s distracted, checking his messages. He proceeds to describe the out-of-body effects of tripping on some anesthetic, ketamine, what the counterculture hero Timothy Leary described as “experiments in voluntary death.” He explains how this freelance ghost hunter triggers at-will near-death experiences by ingesting intentional overdoses of it. My father, Gentle Tweeter, can talk any subject into the ground. He describes what scientists call “emergence phenomena,” wherein the ketamine abusers swear their souls take leave of their bodies and can commune in the afterlife.

Babette says, “You miss my point.”

“Leonard told us to hire this freak and to camp out here, at the Rhinelander.”

“But why am I here?” Babette prompts.

“I picked you up on Halloween—”

“The day after Halloween,” Babette interrupts.

“I picked you up for the same reason I spit in the elevator on our way here this afternoon,” my dad says. He talks even slower, as if he’s giving orders to a stone-deaf, Somali-speaking maid. “I want to get my wings, too,” he says. “Babs, honey, I’m only porking you because the tenets of Boorism command me to.”

The bed creaks with his weight shifting. The shrieking mattress sounds begin anew, shrill arpeggios less like love-making than like the substitute screams in a movie where someone’s getting stabbed to death in a motel shower.

Breathless, my dad’s voice says, “Even if my daughter wasn’t perfect, I love her.” He says, “I’d lie, cheat, and kill to get my little girl back.”

The incoming message on the PDA, it was from Camille Spencer. The “Brass Monkey” song is unmistakable; it’s my mom’s signature ring tone. And the message? It consisted of three words: “SHE IS RISEN.”