Songs of Love & Death

Even afterward, Martin never could bring himself to blame the laptop. Rather, he blamed his foolishness in buying a computer at once so far beyond his means, his needs, and his abilities. “Goddamn bells and whistles,” Lorraine told him scornfully at the time. “LEDs, apps, plug-ins, backup gadgets—you’ve always been a fool for unnecessary extras. You think people will look at that thing and think you’re a real computer geek, an expert.” She gave that little sneeze-laugh he’d once found endearing, and went off to call her buddy Roz and relate his latest idiocy in detail. Sucking a forefinger, cut while he was struggling to open the box, he heard Lorraine saying on the phone, “And on top of that, he bought the thing from his cousin Barry! That asshole. You remember—right, right, anything that falls off a truck is legally Barry’s. I am telling you, Roz…”

The trouble was, of course, that she’d been right. Martin was fond of Barry—if he thought about it, he’d have to say that Barry had been his closest friend since childhood, given a very limited experience with close friends. But he had few illusions about his cousin’s probity or loyalty: even in the first flush of his infatuation with the new computer, he’d known that nothing Barry told him about it was likely to be true. The brand was completely unfamiliar, the keyboard had too many function keys beyond the usual twelve, and there were other keys and markings with strange symbols that Barry never even tried to explain to him. “It’s one of a kind, absolutely unique, same as you. I feel like I’m in Shakespeare, bringing two great lovers together.”

Directions had not been included, but Jaroslav, the amiable graduate student two doors down the hall, who actually did know quite a lot about computers, came over to set up Martin’s laptop for him. It took considerably longer than expected, due in part to Jaroslav’s unfamiliarity with the operating system, and in equal measure to his fascination with the computer’s programs and connections. “No, that cannot be it, that makes no sense. Well, I suppose that would work, it seems to work, but I cannot understand… yes, that works, but why… ?” He made no more sense out of the keyboard than Barry had, and was clearly only half-joking when he muttered, “With this thing, I am lucky to know to set the clock, where to plug in the mouse.” By the time he was done his Iron Man T-shirt was sweated through, and he was talking to himself in Serb. Afterward, Martin noticed—on the occasional times they passed in the lobby or hall, or outside the building’s laundry room—that Jaroslav avoided meeting his eyes.

Despite Martin’s vast ignorance of the workings of his new computer, however, it functioned better than any machine he had ever owned since a beloved bathtub motorboat that ran up a flag and fired pellets at his rubber ducks. Lorraine had once commented that electronic devices seemed to commit suicide in Martin’s presence, and it was a hard point to argue. Yet the strange laptop never misbehaved: never froze, never crashed, never devoured work he had forgotten to back up—never, in short, treated him with the kind of spitefulness that had always been his lot from anything involving electrons and wires. He realized that he was actually grateful, and from time to time found himself thinking of it not as a machine, but as a quiet and singular friend.

Often now, when he came home in the evening from the large chain grocery where he was the produce manager, he would sit at his worktable (dinner having long since evolved into a solitary pursuit for both Lorraine and himself), and let the computer talk to him, either on-screen or through the excellent earphones that Barry had grandly thrown into the deal. The computer had a sound system, with built-in speakers, but Lorraine complained about the noise, and Martin liked the earphones better anyway. They gave him a curious private peacefulness that made him feel as though he were at the bottom of the ocean in an old-fashioned diving suit, talking with a companion he could not see. Not that he had ever worn any sort of diving suit, or actually been in water deeper than his high school swimming pool. Martin had not been to very many places in his life.