Tru Luv

Nathan ruins a dinner party. And relates the darkness behind Tru Luv

Tru Luv

Neil Argent threw a dinner party to celebrate his engagement to Arora Bishop. Neil was selective--he invited only the most prestigious members of the newsroom. And also, Nathan.

"I don't wanna," Nathan told Cohen when they met for their monthly one-on-one in Cohen's Manhattan skyline office.

"Your choice," Cohen said, "but if you want my advice--"

"If your advice is anything but 'don't marry coworkers' using a colorful metaphor involving shitting where you--"

"My advice," Cohen interrupted him, "is to come. Neil's going places."

Jesus. But the man wasn't wrong. The dinner was obviously a celebration of their upcoming nuptials, but it was ostensibly meant to inaugurate the launch of the Argent / Arora celebrity power-couple podcast, 'Do The Math' under the network's multimedia umbrella.

On 'Do The Math,' Neil would explain to his adoring audience as well as an adoring and (Nathan had to admit, albeit bitterly, adorable) Arora Bishop how to accurately and objectively understand the world using, as far as Nathan could figure, his ability to average numbers.

Nathan found it bewildering that people would pay for this.

"Fine," he said. "Whatever. I'll go."

"Behave yourself," Cohen warned him. "You know. Maybe stick to soda water?"

Jesus.

"And wear a tie."

###

The irritation started as soon as Nathan walked through the front door. First, Neil's upper west side condo was about the size of Nathan's Brooklyn apartment, which was galling, but also it was full of designer furniture which was outright infuriating. "She made me throw away my couch," Neil was telling everyone like it was a funny joke or something. At least all the good stuff was Bishop's which made it slightly easier to swallow.

"There he is!" Neil said while Nathan was trying to find some place to hang his jacket. "Our Pulitzer Prize winning-someday author-to-be!" He walked over and took the coat. "How's it going?"

The unfinished book, he meant. "Fine," Nathan lied. "Nice place, man."

"Got it awhile back," Neil said. "Saw the trends in Manhattan real estate. Calculated the linear curve on urban property values and--"

Yeah, yeah. I get it. We all get it.

Neil was looking out into the hallway, searching for someone not present. "Where's your better half?"

"Jen's busy tonight," Nathan lied again. At least they'd put him at the far end of the table, next to Samantha and Mark, which was a goddamn blessing. Mark was oblivious and Samantha had as much contempt for Neil as Nathan did.

"Ready to get your nose rubbed in The Master of Math's good fortune all evening?" Sam asked when he escaped into the dining room where she was harshly judging the decor.

"Probably not," Nathan said. "Are you?"

She had a prescription pill bottle in her micro-bag. "I'm fortified. You want?"

"I promised Cohen I'd behave," he said.

"I," Samantha shook her head, "cannot imagine doing this sober."

###

"So," Neil was stat-splaining to the table, "you've got your right. Your left. Both sides say they're on the side of God and history!" He laughed because only an idiot would believe that. "But let's say you're not blue, you're not red. You don't do that color-team stuff, right? You just want to know what the truth is--"

Arora was watching him like he was a magician doing amazing tricks, endlessly pulling rabbits out of empty hats. She wasn't dumb, Nathan thought. She just... bought him. Bought what he was selling.

A lot of people did--Neil was selling capital T, Truth: objective, even mathematical truth. Nathan could understand the appeal even if he couldn't see it, himself.

"He's so smart," Arora told them. "How do you--"

"Figure out what the Truth is?" Neil asked, "Actually? Well, you do the--"

OhGodDon'tNeilPleaseForTheLoveOf--

"Math!" Arora laughed like a schoolgirl.

"Exactly," Neil said and raised his glass. "To Cohen, without whom 'Do The Math' would never have gone anywhere!"

Clinky-Clink-Clink.

Samantha, flashing the bottle below the sight-line of the table: you sure? He's worse than usual.

I need something stronger than Xanax, Nathan thought.

"The truth," Neil went on, "is going to be at the midpoint between the extremes. The objective center. You can do this with anything today. Anything in the culture. Take abortion, for instance. On the right, you've got, 'no abortions, no exceptions' and then on the left it's 'abortions right up to the moment of birth.' Both positions seem pretty extreme, right? So if you want to know what the exact right answer is--"

"Who wants abortions right up to the moment of birth?" Nathan heard himself say it. It wasn't like he wanted to, it just came out. Now everyone was looking at him. "I mean who's advocating for that?" he asked as innocently as possible.

Neil looked at him, with the faintest smile that suggested he had fully expected this.

"He wants to trigger you," Samantha had warned him earlier. "He loves contrasting his calm, cool, centrism to your bleeding-heart lefty--"

"I'm impossible to trigger," Nathan had snapped at her; she'd rolled her eyes. She was rolling her eyes right now.

"Nathan, buddy," Neil said gently, "I know you don't want to acknowledge this, but trust me. Your 'side' -- your 'tribe' -- is just as radical, just as... delusional as... Just as extreme as theirs is. I'm not just saying that. I can see it in the math."

"Oh, come on--" Bullshit, Neil, and you're definitely smart enough to know it.

"I'm serious," Neil told him, all of them. "I'll bet you... however much you want? Ten bucks?" Something even Nathan could afford, ha-ha. "For every right voice calling all abortion murder, I can find someone on the other side saying that unrestricted abortion is an inalienable right. And you know that's true; you just don't like it."

"Are you saying that elected officials are the same as rando's on Twitter?"

"X," Samantha said and kicked his ankle under the table. Stop it. Don't gratify him.

"Influencers," Neil was speaking slowly so Nathan could keep up, "are called that, Nathan, because they influence."

"Hey," Samantha said brightly, "Arora--so. Married, huh? That's a big step! How'd it happen?"

"I made a model," Neil was going to answer for her, "of the dot product of the potential couple-space in the newsroom and--"

"Hush, sweetie," Arora said and, to his credit, Neil did, "I don't know," she admitted. "I mean, I always thought he was cute--" Nathan thought he detected an unvoiced 'kinda,' "But we were working on the Fitweather thing together and I just..." she sighed. "I guess I just fell for him. You know? Love is mysterious."

Samantha would certainly agree with that. It was Matt, actually, pure in his inability to read the room, that brought things back to Nathan, undoing Samantha's skillful redirect. "Is it mysterious?" Matt wondered. He seemed to really, actually consider that. "Nat,? You did a story on that... what was it? That 'love doctor' lady?"

No, Matt. I didn't. Ass. Because it never turned into a story. But he did the research, the interviews. All the work.

He was still figuring out how to steer things in a different direction, when Matt turned to Cohen, "I'm not crazy, right?"

Cohen had shitcanned so many of Nathan's stories that they kind of blurred together but he recalled this one. And Cohen wasn't a great room-reader, either. "Dr... Cappuccino?"

Nathan: "Cappuccini."

"Right." Cohen remembered. "From... Columbia?" The university. "She had a matchmaking service?"

No, Cohen. And this was not a story you tell at a dinner party, unless you want to ruin the party. But they were all looking at him expectantly. I'll take a drink, Nathan thought, and let the liquor decide.

Nathan took a sip from the tumbler that'd been sitting in front of him, untouched all night. It burned lightly, beautifully, on the way down, a perfect mix of pleasure and pain.

"It wasn't a matchmaking service," Nathan told them, "but it was all about true love."

True love! Arora leaned in, enchanted. Effortlessly enchanting. Tell me more! Her eyes asked him.

Fine, the liquor said.

###

People paid a lot of money for the Cappuccini Procedure; that was the main thing. It went to credibility. Nathan's experience was that rich people were no more discerning than anyone else -- maybe less so -- but where money leads people follow, and where people follow, stories get published.

The other hook was that her procedure was surgical and highly illegal. A combination so rare and spicy that he thought, screw the website--he might be able to get a story about it in a glossy print magazine. It was all black-market medical device stuff. Super sketchy. It took a lot to get a conversation, and only then, because the FDA was investigating and Dr. Cappa-whatever wanted to get her side of the story out before she was indicted.

They met in her office, a neat room in the basement of a cozy old brownstone. She was mid-40's and, Nathan thought, pretty in a 'conventionally chubby' way. The office had plants and a waterfall in it; a garden out back with a high wall so that you couldn't see it from the street or pretty much anywhere else.

"I garden naked," she'd told him. "It's a nature thing. Not sexual." Since the FDA investigation broke, someone had been flying drones over her property and she was beyond irritated.

"Can you tell me about the procedure," he'd sat down across from her with a notepad because she refused to be recorded.

"I don't have anything to do with it," she'd said. "I don't manufacture anything. I don't solicit 'clients.' I don't conduct surgery. I did the original research. That's it." Except, he thought, for collecting payments. Houses like this in New York City don't come cheap, and they don't come at all on a professor's salary.

"I want to start with soulmates," she went on, not caring where he wanted to start.

###

"Soulmates!" Arora's eyes were full of stars. "Maybe that's what we are!" She nodded at Neil, who looked far less impressed, but was obligated.

"Maybe," Neil allowed. Uncomfortable and, Nathan thought, right to be.

You should build a model for that, Neil.

"Tell us about the soulmates, Nathan!" Arora was intrigued.

If you say so.

###

"Obviously not 'soulmates' in the classical sense of having a soul," Dr. Cappuccini had told him. "Immortal, transcendent essences are beyond science. I'm talking about the experience of meeting your soulmate. That is very real. Objective. Measurable." He'd written those words in his notebook with a question mark next to them. "An instant and deep, lasting connection that goes beyond sexual attraction.

"This is rare but an extant part of the human condition. When it's unilateral we call it a 'crush' or an 'infatuation,' and those can be scary. But when that feeling is reciprocal, it's... beautiful." She said the word 'beautiful' like someone who knew the lyrics, but not the beat. "One of the most powerful, meaning-giving experiences a person can have."

She waited for his pencil to stop. "Have you ever been in love, Mr. Bennet?"

The question shouldn't have caught him off guard, but it did. "I'm in a--" what? Serious? Long term? Committed? "A relationship," he said. He didn't like the way she nodded, the way her eyes noted he hadn't answered the question but told her everything she wanted to know anyway.

Then she showed him the device. It was tiny and looked at once flimsy and complex. There was a round metal disk -- maybe an electrode? Or a power supply? -- and dangling from it on a few thin, brightly colored wires, a printed circuit board. The whole thing was less than a centimeter in length, half that wide.

"This is the hypothalamic control frame," she told him. What they called Tru Luv on the dark web. "A hundred and fifty dollars of commercial parts," she was proud of that. "Mostly for a kinetic battery that recharges from ordinary biological movement, like walking or the heart beating." No service plan required. "Once it's in, and the incision is closed, you're done. And it's a microsurgical cut, usually behind the ear." She tapped the delicate spot above her neck. "The practitioner has clean, antiseptic access to the hypothalamus. 100% outpatient." She stopped, waiting for him to acknowledge he was caught up.

Nathan's note to self: what exactly is the hypothalamus, again?

"Implanted devices that regulate hormone production in the body are not entirely novel," she continued. "This one triggers a release of oxytocin."

Ah, right. He glanced up, "The 'love' hormone?'"

She clearly hated that. "Oxytocin regulates emotional, behavioral and, yes, sexual responses. It's a key component of pleasure--and attraction."

"So it creates attraction?"

Another look of distaste at his insistence on reductive simplifications. "Essentially," she'd allow. "The key here, though, is synchronization. The implant includes a short-range radio that transmits and receives a unique, encrypted key and is 'paired' to one and only one other such device." She lay a second one down next to the first. Together, Nathan thought, they looked like particularly ugly earrings. "One in each person. So that the oxytocin production--"

Right. Is synchronized. "So they have the same feelings at the same time."

She nodded. "And they associate the emotional component of the chemical release with the other person's physical presence. Over time -- a very short period of time -- this creates an organic-seeming attraction; a persistent, hormone-induced, sustainable state of... well..." she pursed her lips together. "Love, Mr. Bennet. The closest we can come to it in the laboratory."

His pencil hovered above the paper, unsure what to ask next or write. He had intended to ask her about the ramifications. What if it doesn't work? What if it's not meant to be? What if it's done nonconsensually? There were stories of breakups that ended in dual suicides. Families paying the coroner to remove the tiny device and make no mention of it in their official reports. There were also stories, maybe apocryphal, of marital bliss--fairy tale weddings that really did lead to 'happily ever after.'

"Is it love?" He asked. It wasn't a question on his list.

"What is love?" But when she answered, she did something she hadn't done earlier. She looked away.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I mean... caring. Supporting each other... growing old together."

"That's friendship," she told him.

"Sex?"

"With benefits."

Right. "You've been studying love for most of your professional life," he pointed out. "There's no answer?"

No answer for you, her eyes said. No answer I want to give you. She was doing this to go on the record so that if there was a court case, she'd have something like public sympathy. She was as allergic to press as any normal person would be. Maybe more so.

And yet. He had enough experience reading people that he sensed there was something she wanted to say. Something she was carrying that wanted to be given voice.

"Have you heard of the bicameral mind, Mr. Bennet? It's a theory--a controversial one--that men in the distant past, what we'd call 'antiquity,' had a less developed corpus callosum than we do today."

She saw his pencil stop moving.

"The neurological structure that connects the lobes of the brain."

Ah. Thank you.

"According to this theory, preserved reports -- if you can call them that. I suppose 'accounts' is better -- in literary or historical works..." She had confused him again. "I'm talking about the Iliad, Mr. Bennet."

Got it. Go on.

"They would write about the voices of the gods speaking in men's minds. Today we see that as obvious fiction, or poetic language, but the bicameral mind theory posits that they were hearing voices that seemed external to them -- voices that came from the less verbal lobe. To those men, in those times, the right hemisphere of the brain would 'speak,' and the hearer would 'hear' as if it came from outside."

Okay? He looked lost.

She shook her head and tried again. A different approach. "You may have heard that the ancient Greeks had no word for blue? That they described the ocean as 'wine colored' since that was as close as they could come?"

No? He shook his head. But: "What did they call the sky?"

"Bright," she said, but he could see her irritation that he was missing the point. "We assume that people in the past were much like we are today. We assume they saw the same colors, experienced thinking the same way, felt the same emotions. We cannot imagine these things being different across time and culture... so we don't.

"When we encounter art or literature from those times, we interpret them in our modern ways-- our eyes. Our minds. These are purely internal states--qualia, Mr. Bennet. By definition impossible to measure objectively. And very hard to explain with words."

"I'm sorry," he'd said, sincerely apologizing for not being smart enough. "I have no idea what you're--"

"We can no longer experience love," she said. "The emotion we call love today--attraction, infatuation, connection--exists. It's real. But it's not love. Not the way the poets and playwrights and story-tellers of old experienced it. That emotion--whatever it was--no longer exists."

This was, what reporters referred to, as a 'bold claim.'

"No more love?"

"Extinct," she nodded. "Since the mid 2000's, for sure. Maybe earlier than that. My guess is the eighties, but that's just conjecture."

"I don't understand."

"No one does," she assured him. "Like I said, this is nearly impossible to measure, or even describe. But I'm sure you know exactly what I'm talking about--it's not a surprise to hear me say it. It's all around us -- this... absence of love. This dearth. And what we've replaced it with is... well, at its best, it's a mild connection. A 'partnership.' At its worst it's pathological. When I asked you if you were 'in love,' you knew immediately you weren't -- that whatever it is you feel for your significant other is some pale imitation of what a young couple in love is supposed to feel. A counterfeit, Mr. Bennet."

Christ. But was that true? "I mean... I don't know," he said. "We do love--I mean we care about each other--"

"I'm sure she helps with the rent," Cappuccini said. "And I'm not judging. It isn't... my place to judge. But we can track these things, neurologically. I can put you into a PET scan." He'd looked that up later -- Positron Emission. Something to do with injecting antimatter into the brain, "and see the electrochemical pathways that light up when you think about your young woman. I've done this hundreds of times. I'm certain that if we did that, I'd see the same thing I always see."

Nathan shook his head, lost. Worried.

"An emptiness," she told him. "An absence. A hole where something is supposed to be, but isn't. I don't know what causes this. If it's the internet, or capitalism, or television... I don't know, Mr. Bennet, but I am certain that something has changed and it is pervasive. Without love... I don't know what happens to us. As a culture. A species. We got where we are because of this... transcendent connection that binds us together, that inspires us to incredible heights. We created skyscrapers and rocket ships and movies and art and..." she trailed off. "I don't know what happens now. But maybe this..." she looked at her little devices. "Maybe this can help. Something needs to save us because without love, I'm afraid we fall apart completely."

###

"Yeah," Nathan told Neil, his guests, Arora. "It was kind of a bummer."

There was no sound but the soft strains of some instrumental pop cover Alexa thought was 'dinner party music.'

Arora got up, made some excuse in words that didn't quite fit together into a sentence, and left. She had her phone out, maybe to pretend to call someone, or text.

Everyone was staring at him.

"Jesus Christ, Nathan." Neil shook his head in astonishment. "Jesus Christ. What's wrong with you?" He looked in the direction of his betrothed, maybe trying to decide whether to go after her, or stay here and punch Nathan in the mouth. "Baby?" He slipped his chair back and stood. "Arora?" Everyone watched him follow her into the front room and, not finding her there, out the door into the hall. "Honey?"

Sam shook her head in mild astonishment and even milder disgust. "Good one, Nathan."

Only the best for my dear friends. He turned his hands up to the ceiling. What was I supposed to do?

Mark had a different question. He was working through a mouthful of food, and when he swallowed, "Why didn't you run that?" he was asking Cohen.

Cohen shrugged. "We had a lot of followup questions but her lawyer advised her not to work with us." He frowned. Looked a Nathan. "Then she left the country, right?"

Right. "She went to Greece," Nathan said.

Yeah. Cohen's expression indicated he was trying to remember. "Before that, though. You went back to her place, right? One more time?"

"I might have." Nathan was looking down at his plate, fidgeting with his silverware. Because storytime was over. "Not sure--" and he took a nice big bite of sauteed pork so they could find something else to talk about, or someone else to ask questions of while he was chewing.

###

Cohen was right; he had gone back. Two months later, in the middle of rainy, cold, September. Jennifer's cousin was getting married in Fresno. They were going to be in the wedding party. Tuxedos. Ugly dresses. Expensive plane tickets, the whole miserable ordeal. Jennifer's younger cousin.

Now Jen was looking at bridal websites.

It was a blackout sky, pouring rain and thunder when he arrived at Cappucinni's door, knocking harder than he should have, feeling, for reasons he didn't fully understand, like time was running out.

She was wearing a bathrobe over a nightgown when she opened the door. "Mr. Bennet?" She must have seen desperation in his eyes; she let him in. He hung his soaking overcoat, and followed her back to the kitchen. There were suitcases in the narrow hallway, packed for a long trip; he'd read she was thinking about going overseas. He sat in her breakfast nook, watching distorted headlights parade past as she made tea.

"I don't know what to do," he told her.

"Do you love her?"

Do I even know what that means? "Of course I love-- I mean yes-- I mean--"

Right. "You love her as much as you've ever loved anyone," she nodded. "But you don't know if that's really love."

"I don't know what it is," he said. "What... I mean... should I...?" He glanced toward her study.

"You couldn't afford the implants," she said. "Besides, there's too much heat now. You'd have to get it done in Nicaragua or Thailand and that's not--"

No. It wasn't feasible. And he couldn't even imagine raising the topic with Jennifer. But he wasn't here for neural surgery. He was here because every instinct told him Dr. Cappuccini had studied the things she'd studied to answer questions for herself. "What," he wanted to know, "would you do?"

She poured tea into clay cups and set the cups in front of them before she answered. "I wouldn't get hormone implants."

"I know that," he said. Now she hadn't answered the question.

"Mr. Bennet--"

"I won't..." he wiped at water from his hair that was dripping onto his face. His hand came away wet. "I'm not here for a story. I won't write anything or tell anyone. Okay? I just... I want to know."

"You want to know... what?"

"Did you find love? Did you discover it? Define it? Does it still exist? If it's gone, is there any way to get it back?" He'd shaken his head. "You don't owe me anything. I'll leave right now if you want. But I know you kept looking. I know you didn't give up. You sold your research, your designs, for something. What was it?"

"Nothing," she said, "that will help you, Mr. Bennet. Nothing you'll feel better about knowing."

"Can you tell me? Please?"

He watched her struggle with cutting him loose and letting him drown, or telling him things that would not help. He watched her surrender. "The ancient Greeks understood love," she told him. "They... encoded lessons about it for us in their stories." She took a sip of tea. "Those stories were warnings, Mr. Bennet. What do you know about love in the old myths?"

Jesus? What? All he could think of was the god awful thing about the swan, and that didn't seem helpful. Or to be about love. Then: oh, right. "It never ends well," he said.

Her eyes, her faint smile said, 'Correct.' She took a small sip of steaming tea. "Passion, lust, obsession--they warned us about those things, too, but we know those can burn us; we understand those warnings, because we experience those emotions." You see? "The warnings we need are the ones we refuse to understand." She studied his face, looking into him as much as she could. "What are you refusing to understand, Nathan?"

His head was full of noise. "I... want to love her," he said. Was even that true?

"Love her like we love today? Or love her like Orpheus loved Eurydice? Because those things are very different." Her eyes asked him, reading his face for the answer: Do you remember Orpheus, Nathan? No? Not really? "Losing her broke him," she reminded him. "Destroyed him. It pulled him into the underworld after her and despite everything, he never really escaped. Not emotionally." Does he understand now? "You don't want that kind of love, Nathan. None of us do, anymore. It's too hot, too destabilizing for a life as..." she looked around the neat, well lit little room, "... as comfortable as ours."

"That's why we've built a world where that kind of love--authentic love--is not possible. A world that's filled with so many other things, no one will miss it. The truth is, that's actually what we want." She put down her cup. "Go back to her. Tell her you love her -- it's true enough. Try to forget about this whole thing. Put it out of your mind." She shook her head. "And if you can't forget all this, just try to remind yourself why we dispensed with love in the first place. Because of the cost."

Nathan swallowed. For a long moment what she was saying seemed unbearable and then a car honked and he realized she was right. It was practical advice. Smart advice. He cared for Jen as a friend. She was wonderful. But did he want to love her so much that if she died, he'd die with her? "What are you going to do?" He'd seen the bags in the hall.

She looked away. "I'm going to Taenarum in Laconia. There's a cave there. If you can go deep enough into it -- and that's very hard to do -- they say you eventually get to a river." She trailed off, staring into the distance.

He waited, the tea steamed. He wasn't sure she was going to return to him but just as he was contemplating going, she spoke. "If you drink from that river, Nathan, you forget. I could forget all of this--everything I learned. I'd be like everyone else. I'd get married. I could even have a family. I'd be 'happy' and 'fulfilled'--or whatever passes for those emotions today." She stopped again. "Or I could not drink," she told him, "and keep going. Orpheus hated that river. Even after love destroyed him, he refused to let go of it. One sip is all it would've taken but... no. He couldn't. That's what real, authentic love does, Nathan. It's terrible. We gave it up, because we can't endure it."

They sat in silence broken by the sound of the rain.

"Past the river there's things we've tried to forget. Secret things Orpheus knew, and taught. Somewhere in the darkness, there's everything we've lost. I don't know if I can even get to the river. And if I can, I don't know what I'll do there. Drink and turn back? Or go deeper?" She shook her head. "Either way, I don't think we'll talk again. Try to forget this, Nathan. Put it out of your mind--marry her. Have babies. Hopefully you'll be better at it than I am."

In the end, Jen had come to her senses--what they had was too nice to fuck it up with marriage. And Nathan had his own technique for forgetting things.

###

"They broke it off," Samantha told him the next day, over WhatsApp. He wondered if the unseemly glee he read into her terse message was real, or just an instant messaging mirage.

"Shit," Nathan sent back. He was relieved to discover he really did feel bad about his part in it, whatever that turned out to be when the accounting came.

"They're still doing the podcast, tho" she assured him. So everything's fine, he guessed.

Was there more? Not for a long stretch, and then two messages back to back. "U ok?" Sam sent first, and before he could answer, "That story you told -- total bullshit, right?"

He stared at his phone. Then: "Completely made it up."

"Knew it! Ha! You asshole!" The highest compliment Sam could give. "C u l8r, Nat. Take care."

He let his breath out. Nodding. "Take care, Sam. Let me know if there's any good gossip." Then he put his phone in his pocket and went down to the bar to celebrate the afternoon.