The Program

Chapter twenty-seven

You ever think about how our cells die, every minute of every hour? A skin cell lives only a couple of days. All our skin is dead on the outside. When you touch someone else, you're just pressing dead hide to dead hide." Randall's blocklike fists encased the top of the van's steering wheel.

Riding shotgun, Tim had the dubious honor of being the anointed beneficiary of Randall's morbid ruminations. Randall was considerably more social than Skate. He'd been social at the Radisson pickup, social up the 405, social along the 118 and the 210, and now social up Little Tujunga Road, the two-lane snake of asphalt that twisted through the fire-hazard hills of Sylmar. Tim found himself longing for Skate's sullen reticence.

In the back, four high-roller recruits sat crammed together, Shanna among them. Lorraine, the sole Pro, urged them into intimate conversation, gently rebuking them for missteps. Now that he'd endured the colloquium, Tim noted how uncannily her affect and speech shared similarities with Janie's and Stanley John's – TD's personality downloaded through yet another generation. Firming her austerely fastened bun of auburn hair with acute plunges of bobby pins, she informed Jason Struthers of Struthers Auto Mall that he was being in his head, a censure he acknowledged once Shanna seconded it. Don and Wendy Stanford, who'd gone to the seminar to fulfill their tenth-wedding-anniversary resolution to experience more growth in their marriage, wore sandals despite the chapping cold and matching fleeces sporting their machine-embroidered hedge-fund logo. They held hands until Lorraine informed them their clinginess indicated that they were two people simultaneously hiding behind each other.

Heavy tint opaqued the back windows, keeping the others oblivious to where they were headed. Tim had wound up in the front only because he'd been the last picked up, a happy stroke of luck. Being Randall's reluctant travel companion bought Tim an unobstructed view of the route. Dressed wannabe in designer jeans and an overpriced forest green lamb's-wool pullover, Tim shifted uncomfortably, smoothing his now-brushy goatee with a damp hand. The Program-provided thermos of juice he rested on the rolled-down window's ledge, releasing its contents in increments to the wind whenever the van slowed at a curve.

Randall forged ahead in his lecture, lowering his voice to imply discretion. "Your face looks the same as it did ten years ago, but it's just been re-created over and over, old cells shedding, new ones filling in. We're formless, really, always changing, always dying."

Horses nosed out of sheds. Wind-blasted signs designating dirt off-shoots announced shooting ranges, wildlife way stations, juvie probation camps. The hills billowed grandly, tinted russet by leafing scrub. Broken-down pickups languished in roadside aprons of dusty rock. Dead snakes sprawled on the baking pitch, smashed flat at axle-wide intervals. They passed a crew of youths clad in orange vests mechanically raking brush under the direction of a corrections officer accessorized with a steel whistle and failure – to – communicate mirror sunglasses.

As civilization receded, the others laughed, oblivious, and talked about perished siblings and deadening careers. Tim continued reviewing the world according to Tom Altman, a silent version of the Method actor's rehearsal he'd picked up as a kid watching his father try out new, affecting gambits in the bathroom mirror.

The sun beat down on the cracked dash, making Randall's arm hair gleam like black wire. "We've built our entire culture around sex. Orgasms, endurance, physique – the obsessions of modern man. But it's all a sham. Sex isn't anything." He turned off Tujunga onto an even more desolate road. The van hiccupped across the crude secondary asphalt, bouncing the passengers in their seats. Low branches of valley oaks screeched across the roof.

Confident from the recent spell of showers, a creek swept under them, bisecting the road. Chain-link fencing provided the van noisy traction across the mossy rocks, water assaulting the wheel wells. The others whooped and cheered.

They wound higher into the hills, bouncing in their seats a good twenty minutes until the van stopped. A waving Pro attended a metal gate bookended by pillars of river-rounded stones. He opened the immense padlock and waved them through. Randall eased the van up a crudely repaved drive. Wild mustard enlivened the hillside in Day-Glo splashes. To the right a barbed-wire fence rose from dense mats of ice plant, pointlessly guarding a cliff face. They passed a cluster of cottages, arriving at a broad sprawling building that resembled a school – the former treatment wing, according to the decrepit signage.

The wildlife way station, two and a half miles back on the county road judging by the van's speedometer, was apparently society's nearest toehold. Tim checked his cell phone – no reception, no surprise. He turned it off to conserve the battery.

"We tingle and want and lust, but it's just a prelude for the encounter of gametes, a ploy designed for our hungering genes to forge a zygote. Sex is a loss leader, an excuse our genes export to our heads and loins so we'll smuggle them from warm body to warm body. Do you ever think about that?" Randall pulled into a parking space among a few other cars and two school buses and threw the steering-column gearshift north.

The others spilled out excitedly.

Tim offered Randall a numb smile. "Not until now."

Shouldering the leather overnight bag monogrammed TA, Tim followed the trail of initiates into the building. The others gawked at the trees and barren hillsides, taking note of their surroundings for the first time. Lorraine hurried them inside. They passed a hospital-style check-in desk and several meeting rooms, antiseptic behind reinforced glass and rigid venetian blinds. Randall held open a door, and they shuffled in like pupils.

TD commanded a chair in the room's center. On the floor about fifteen girls encircled him, covenlike – the Lilies arrayed like hospitality girls. A single young man, a well-built Pro that Tim recognized from the Radisson, had been thrown in for good measure. Leah picked indolently at her shoelace, refusing to raise her eyes. Lorraine skipped a few steps and scooted into place among them, another perfect little daughter. Wearing the same sleeve-torn sweatshirt that showcased his shoulders, Skate stood with his back to the far wall.

"Where are we?" Wendy asked.

TD spoke. "You're in the here and now." One of the Lilies eyeballed Tim and whispered something to her neighbor. They giggled. TD looked at them, and they fell silent.

Randall started tugging the possessions from their hands.

TD said, "No books, no magazines, no Walkmans, no phones, no newspapers, no money – I follow these rules as assiduously as you will. This is a retreat, and retreat means a break from the distractions of the outside world. The more you sacrifice for yourself, the stronger and more fulfilled you'll become."

They relinquished their bags reluctantly. Randall and Skate searched them like airport security workers, sniffing perfume bottles, thumbing through makeup kits, and bunch-searching neatly folded clothes. Along with the items designated by TD, lighters, alarm clocks, vitamins, PalmPilots, and BlackBerries were placed in shoe boxes labeled by name. Don and Jason offered up their cell phones. Tim slipped off Will's Cartier and surrendered Tom Altman's keys and engorged money clip. The recruits' driver's licenses and credit cards would greatly aid TD in fleshing out their financial profiles.

The initiates were now pretty well trapped at the ranch – no cash for a cab, no cell phones to call for a pickup, not even loose change for a bus ride. Not that there was a bus within twenty miles.

Through all this the Lilies introduced themselves and offered testimonials.

"I used to eat to make my outer appearance match the way I felt about myself. I had an embedded need for others to see me as worthless and disgusting. I offloaded that need." Lorraine raised her tight sweater, revealing a pinched little waist. Wendy, who carried a bit extra in the thighs and rear, emitted a muffled exclamation.

In the corner Randall and Skate unzipped Tim's bag. A neatly folded polo underwent a good groping. His toothbrush holder was uncorked and eyeballed. The bag was turned inside out, a new pair of Nikes spilling to the floor. Tim prayed the false lining would hold.

"I used to be a real asshole," the male Pro, named Chad, was sheepishly conceding. "Just out for the buck. One of those idiots you'd see driving around Manhattan Beach, a USC B-school license-plate frame on my fully loaded Jag. I thought money gave me power." He made a derisive noise in his throat. "Now I have strength. Real strength."

Tim's book, Learning to Forgive…Yourself, was added to the growing heap of forbidden fruit, as was this morning's Wall Street Journal. The paperback he'd picked up yesterday and put through a few turns in the dryer to give it a well-thumbed appearance; the newspaper he'd crinkled industriously while awaiting pickup at the Radisson.

Fighting a twitchy smile into place, Leah related her rebirth into strength. "And I'd like to announce that I willed my rash away," she concluded. "It's gone."

Vigorous applause rewarded her. TD stroked her leg appreciatively. When he rose, she sat quickly. He gestured at the electronic organizers and reading materials. "Think of this as your Phoenix pyre." He pointed to the cover of Don's book, emblazoned with virile type guaranteeing a wealth of secrets and numerous habits of wildly successful briefcase toters. "This crap is precisely what you came here to delete." He snatched up Tim's book, reviewed it with a smirk. "This yours, Tom?"

Tom Altman smiled, in on the joke. "I'm beginning to think I might regret having brought that."

TD laughed, letting the paperback slip from his fingers to the floor. "You five have been assigned Gro-Pars who will be with you for the duration of the retreat. They're here to guide you and to make sure you're taken care of."

Randall stuffed Tim's belongings back into his bag. Tim let out his breath evenly.

"Congratulations. You're the chosen few. Welcome to the family." TD embraced them like envoys with questionable agendas, clutching their shoulders and appraising them straight-armed before pulling them in, his doubts allayed.

Around of full-bodied hugs ensued. As Chad embraced Tim, his hands patted about his torso skillfully, a stealthy, impromptu frisk for a wire. When Lorraine hugged him, she felt the cell phone he'd stowed in his pocket and relieved him of it. As Tim joined the line to pick up his expurgated bag, Chad approached Wendy. "Hi there, Wen. Let's get to it." He led her away. Don, distracted in conversation with a solicitous redhead, hardly noticed. Lorraine and Shanna went off arm in arm.

The abrupt tap on Tim's shoulder was a marked departure from the ready affection flowing elsewhere in the room. Leah said flatly, "I'm your Gro-Par. Follow me."

Not sure what to make of their pairing, Tim moved swiftly to catch up to her. "Leah. Leah."

She kept ahead of him, crossing a circle of soggy grass and entering one of the cottages. He followed her down a narrow hall past a few other bedrooms, into a room with splintery furniture painted a baffling shade of periwinkle. On the threadbare sheets, a spread of pamphlets awaited weary travelers in Gideon fashion: Optimizing Program Software. The Six Keys to Offloading Dead Weight. Think Strong!

Leah closed the door and whirled to face him. "You lied to me." Tim gestured for her to keep her voice down. She did but remained fierce. "Everyone lies to me. Tells me what to think. Well, I'm sick of it. I'm not some stupid girl who can't make her own decisions. You don't know a single thing about me, but you thought you'd just swoop in and rescue me, like some maiden in distress. Is that what you thought?"

"Yes."

"Well, some job you did." She was winding up into a panic, working her nails into her scalp at the hairline. "Who sent you? Will?"

"And your mother."

"Will's a dick."

"Yeah. He kind of is."

Her forehead crinkled. "So what are you doing here?"

She pointed at the first bed, and Tim unpacked a few shirts into the drawer beneath it. "I'm here because your situation is important to me and I want to find out more."

"And because my parents hired you to be here."

"No. I wasn't hired. I'm here as a favor to an old friend who knows them."

"You're wearing his watch." She yanked off her sweatshirt and tossed it. Purple bruises flowered along the backs of her arms, so dark Tim mistook them at first for tattoos.

"What happened there?"

She glanced down, covering her arms self-consciously. "None of your business." She retrieved her sweatshirt and pulled it back on, glaring at him.

He tugged a little too hard on the next drawer, and it came off its tracks. "I started this because of your parents. But it's become personal."

"Bullshit. You're a liar."

"I did lie to you, yes. I'm sorry. I won't do it again."

She took a step back and sank to the thin mattress of the opposing bed. He stuck his hand behind the discharged drawer and felt along the underside of the frame.

"I don't think I've had an adult apologize to me in my entire life." She remembered her indignation. "I love The Program. It's changed my life. This is where I belong. This is right for me."

"I'm not trying to take anything away from you."

"But you don't agree that this is right for me. You believe you know better. That you have the answers to what I need." She waited, arms crossed. "No lying, remember?"

"I don't think I have the answers. But no, I don't believe this is right for anyone. Except for TD."

"Stay here and I'll make you see it for yourself."

"That's a deal. You give me your perspective, I'll give you mine. We answer each other's questions. That's all I ask."

"We're not here to waste time on Off Program topics. If you cheat The Program, you're just cheating yourself."

"Then why didn't you turn me in? You've had plenty of opportunity. You could go tell TD now, in fact."

She seemed agitated and dismayed, at cross-purposes with herself, as if he'd just called a bluff she hadn't even known she'd made.

Someone banged on the door. A cheery female voice proclaimed, "Time for the Orae. Let's rock and roll to Growth Hall!"

"We don't want to be late. Put down your stuff and let's go. Not there – that's my nightstand."

"We're sleeping in the same room?"

From outside, "Move it, slowpokes!"

"We have to go."

"Not unless you agree on the deal. You proposed it." Tim extended his hand. Leah stared at it. "What's threatening about that? If I'm misguided, you should be able to set me straight. That's your job as my Gro-Par."

A manic thumping on the door made Leah jump. "Come on, guys!"

Leah seized Tim's hand, pumped it once, and threw it aside. "Now, let's go."

Outside, streams of Pros poured from the cottages. Tim and Leah joined the wake, climbing the hill. "Damn," Tim said. "I forgot my glasses."

"Forget it." Leah grabbed his arm, but he tugged free. "We don't have time."

"Keep walking." Tim turned, jogging backward. "I'll catch up to you."

She threw up her hands, exasperated.

He sprinted back to his room and ripped out his bag's lining, revealing a thin stack of papers. The padded tote strap encased five protein bars and a watch face, and beneath the Velcro hid a coiled-rod flashlight the diameter of a pencil. He yanked out the bed drawer and wedged the light, watch face, and four protein bars on the brief ledge beneath the frame. The papers he folded up and stuck into a Program pamphlet, which he left in plain view on the bed. He grabbed his glasses and zipped the bag back up, leaving the tab a finger's width from the stop. Wolfing down the protein bar, he banged into the bathroom, ripped up the wrapper and torn bag lining, and flushed the shreds down the toilet.

He raced back up the hill and caught Leah in line before the double doors to the Growth Hall. She looked nervous as they filed in.

Inside, everyone trod softly with mute reverence. Stanley John lethargically beat a kettledrum in the back. Using low-signature flash-lights like movie ushers, Pros directed incomers to sit on the floor in neat rows. When Zarathustra inevitably spake, Tim felt a Pavlovian dampness beneath his arms – an unsettling response conditioned into him at the colloquium. The theme music's timpani reached a crescendo, a sheet of radiance rose from the footlights, and there was TD, a dark silhouette splitting the light.

"Here in this room, right now, we're part of the awesome human experience man has striven for since the Egyptians raised the pyramids." TD adjusted the head mike, bending it closer to his mouth. Stanley John's drum began to beat again, so soft as to seem a mere vibration. "Lie flat on your backs and close your eyes. You want to focus on your feet…"

With a serene and deep-toned voice, he took the group under almost immediately.

Sensing the weight of his own face, which seemed to have a numb, post-Novocain droop, Tim comprehended for the first time how The Program applied layers of compliance. Even his guarded participation in the colloquium had implanted submissive behavior somewhere beneath his consciousness – now TD was presenting the cues to unlock it.

Bodies melted; heads lolled. Leah's breath hissed faintly when she inhaled; faint blue veins webbed through her fluttering lids. One row back, Lorraine whimpered and stuck a thumb in her mouth. The drum continued, heartbeat regular, a deep, soothing vibration that they'd known in their bones when they were still fetal-curled and breathing water. The room grew hot and damp – jungle weather, a climate of infinite possibilities. Tom Altman surely felt the allure; Tim himself was in danger of being pulled under.

"You're hovering above a new planet, in a distant solar system. Drift closer. See the red sands. The soft arcs of the dunes. You've never been to this planet before. No one has ever been to this planet before. It's impossible that anyone could ever get to this planet. See a single trail of footsteps leading over one of the dunes. Those are TD's footsteps."

Feeling encroaching drowsiness, Tim tuned out the drums and TD's voice. Biting his cheek, he let pain clear his head. Tom fell under the sway, letting his face and limbs go slack, but Tim remained vigilant inside him, calling forth an image of a locked safe and letting it expand until it blotted out sound and sensation. It was Tim's and Tim's alone, and no amount of prying at his senses would open it. He stayed with the safe for an hour, maybe two, aware of TD's voice only as a distant drone, the drums muffled like underwater reports. At one point, booted feet passed within inches of his face -Randall gliding through the dead-sprawled forms, a mortician taking roll. The feet paused – perhaps Tom's eyelids weren't flickering to code? – then finally moved on.

When at last Tim sensed the bodies around him pulling upward toward consciousness, he relinquished his hold on the safe and broke for the surface.

The drums faded, faded, stopped. Torsos rose. Arms stretched. Eyes blinked groggily. To Tim's left, Chad rubbed a knot out of Wendy's neck.

"In The Program, we defy inhibitions," TD said. "Inhibitions are lies implanted by society to hold you back. How many of you have ever been gripped with the urge to jump up on your school desk and scream? Or get up from your office chair and tell your boss to fuck off? Well, why haven't you done it? Worried what others will think? Worried about consequences? Denunciation? Ridicule? Shame? This retreat is your place free from all that. We are who we are, and we never apologize for it. The only thing we don't tolerate in The Program is fakeness. False behavior, intended to gratify. Intended to please others. To ingratiate."

"Who determines what's fake?" Wendy whispered to Chad.

"That's a great question. Hold on to it. It'll be answered soon." Eyes on the stage, Chad tapped his index finger against his lips.

"Take the hand of your Gro-Par," TD said. The Growth Hall rustled with torpid movement. Leah slipped her cool fingers into Tim's palm. "Release. Now kiss your Gro-Par. Feel the flesh of your Gro-Par beneath your lips. Feel how close you are."

Leah turned to him. The faintest traces of baby fat made her cheeks wide and firm, though her face was sculpted across the bridge of her nose, under her eyes, a band of womanly definition. Her hair shot in tufts around her neck, straight and layered. She closed her eyes lazily. Tim avoided the expectant lips and kissed her on the forehead – Tom Altman, man of scruples. Her eyes opened abruptly, more hurt than angry.

"Now turn to the person on your other side," TD said. "Kiss that person."

Tim and Wendy regarded each other awkwardly. They pressed cheeks like country-club matrons.

"Now with tongue," TD said.

The Pros engaged readily, as if returning to a well-loved game. Chad kissed the stubbled face beside him, his hands running through the other Pro's cropped hair.

"Deny your inhibitions. Repudiate your Old Programming. You're all consenting adults. You shake hands with people every day – hands touching hands. Who perpetrated the myth that touching tongues is somehow sacrosanct? Do you think you emerged out of the womb believing that? Come on."

Wendy shifted nervously, trying to locate her husband in the sea of undulating bodies, but the hall was too dim. She looked back at Tim, alarmed. Tom placed a hand on the back of her neck and drew her forward. He pressed his forehead to hers, which was slippery with sweat. Her damp skin brought out the floral scent of her perfume. Being this close to another woman made him feel peculiar and unsettled, which he imagined was precisely the point of the exercise. Clearly TD had a point about inhibitions.

"I don't want to do this," she whispered.

Tom nodded, relieved. They kept their faces pressed close.

A Pro in her thirties pressed her body up against a younger woman, her pelvis squirming on the woman's leg. Sounds of panting, deep-throated moans, rasping clothing.

"Stop," TD said. Activity instantly halted. Giggly and intoxicated, the Pros settled back into their places, the five flustered initiates following suit. Breathing hard, Jason Struthers cast an eye at his Gro-Par, whose attention was now devoted exclusively to TD.

A wave of levity radiated through the auditorium, the giddiness of relief.

"We're going to do an exercise called Stand Tall. It's played like this: Who likes the sunshine?"

The thunderous noise of sixty-eight Pros rising to their feet, Tim and Wendy following on a slight delay.

"Who likes the rain?" Stanley John called from the back.

About a third of the Pros sat. Wendy sat, but Tim and Leah stayed up. And so it progressed for about twenty minutes, TD, Stanley John, and Janie taking turns shouting out mindless questions as everyone tediously rose and sat like well-mannered camp kids.

Then Janie shouted, "Who's ever committed a crime?"

Tim stood, along with a good quarter of the room. All the ups and downs were making him light-headed. Heads swiveled as the Pros noted the movement of their peers. Stanley John, despite his projected mood of impulsiveness, scribbled notes on a pad.

"Who's had an abortion?" Janie cried out. "Come on – delete that shame."

Fifteen women stood, shifting uncomfortably on their feet. A few Pros nodded at them or yelled encouragement.

"Two abortions?"

All but six sat down.

"Three abortions?"

Only Wendy remained on her feet, her legs trembling. Janie was obviously working off previously acquired data, probably something dredged up in one of the colloquium's confessional drills. Rings of sweat stained Wendy's blouse at the armpits. Janie drew out the pause for maybe a full minute, leaving Wendy standing alone, enduring scrutiny from all sides. Finally Janie said, "Four abortions."

Wendy's hand flared out, searching for something, and Tim took it and helped ease her to the floor. "Don't let them judge you," he said. "Screw what they think." A surge of disquiet followed; he wasn't sure if the praise originated from Tom Altman or himself.

Stanley John again, standing proudly himself – "Who's masturbated in the shower?"

Rising. Sitting. Blushing. An anonymous giggle or two.

"Who's had an affair?" Janie yelled out.

Tim heard Wendy gasp. He followed her horrified stare across the room to where Don had risen. He was being love-bombed from all sides – from those standing and sitting – for having the strength to own his behavior. Beside him the redhead smiled enigmatically.

"Who's ever thought about killing someone?"

Tim joined a handful of others on their feet.

"Who's gone ahead and done it?" Stanley John sounded exhilarated by the possibility.

Tim found himself alone on his feet when Enya burst through the speakers, cutting the game short. He sat, rattled by his autoresponse, ignoring Leah's inquiring stare.

People were hugging and squeezing and rocking as if they'd just discovered sensation and movement and some new club drug. Pros exchanged soothing phrases with their Gro-Pars like vows of love. Chad clasped Wendy to his chest; she'd broken down weeping.

Leah gazed at Tim through sweaty bangs. "What did you do, Tom Altman?"