The Circle by Dave Eggers
Mae’s phone went off again and again it was Annie.
“Okay, good news sooner than expected. I checked and it’s not a big deal. We have about a dozen other parents on the plan, and even some siblings. I twisted a few arms and they say they can get your dad on.”
Mae looked at her phone. It had been four minutes since she’d first mentioned all this to Annie.
“Oh shit. You’re serious?”
“You want your mom on the plan, too? Of course you do. She’s healthier, so that’s easy. We’ll put both of them on.”
“When?”
“I guess immediately.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“C’mon, give me some credit,” Annie said, breathless. She was walking briskly, somewhere. “This is easy.”
“So should I tell my parents?”
“What, you want me to tell them?”
“No, no. I’m just making sure it’s definite.”
“It is. It’s really not the biggest deal in the world. We have eleven thousand people on the plan. We get to dictate terms, right?”
“Thank you Annie.”
“Someone from HR will call you tomorrow. You guys can work out the details. Gotta go again. Now I’m really late.”
And she hung up again.
Mae called her parents, telling her mom first, then her dad, and there was some whooping, and there were tears, more praise for Annie as the savior of the family, and some very embarrassing talk about how Mae had become a real adult, how her parents were ashamed and humbled to be leaning on her, leaning so heavily on their young daughter this way, it’s just this messed-up system we’re all stuck in, they said. But thank you, they said, we’re so proud of you. And when she was alone on the phone with her mother, her mother said, “Mae, you’ve saved not just your father’s life but my life, too, I swear to god you have, my sweet Maebelline.”
At seven Mae found she couldn’t stand it any longer. She couldn’t sit still. She had to get up and celebrate in some way. She checked the campus that night. She’d missed the Sahara kickoff and already regretted it. There was a poetry slam, in costume, and she ranked that one first and even RSVP’d to it. But then she saw the cooking class in which they were going to roast and eat an entire goat. She ranked that second. At nine there was an appearance by some activist wanting the Circle’s help in her campaign against vaginal mutilation in Malawi. If she tried, Mae could get to at least a few of these events, but just when she was arranging some sort of itinerary, she saw something that obliterated all else: the Funky Arse Whole Circus would be on campus, on the lawn next to the Iron Age, at seven. She’d heard of them, and their reviews and ratings were stellar, and the thought of a circus, that night, most matched her euphoria.
She tried Annie, but she couldn’t make it; she would be in her meeting till eleven at least. But CircleSearch indicated a bunch of people she knew, including Renata and Alistair and Jared, would be there—the latter two already were—so she finished up and flew.
The light was fading, threaded in gold, when she turned the corner of the Three Kingdoms and saw a man standing, two stories tall, blowing fire. Beyond him, a woman in a glittering headdress was throwing and catching a neon baton. Mae had found the circus.
There were about two hundred people forming a loose fence around the performers, who worked in open air, with minimal props and what seemed to be a decidedly limited budget. The Circlers ringing the performance emitted an array of lights, some from their wrist monitors, some from their phones, out and aglow, capturing the proceedings. While Mae looked for Jared and Renata, and cautiously kept an eye out for Alistair, she watched the circus swirl in front of her. There seemed to be no definite beginning to the show—it was already underway when she’d arrived—and no discernible structure to any of it. There were ten or so members of the circus, all of them visible at all times, all of them wearing threadbare costumes that reveled in their antique humility. A smallish man did wild acrobatics while wearing a terrifying elephant mask. A mostly naked woman, her face obscured under a flamingo head, danced in circles, her movements alternating between ballet and a stumbling drunk.
Just beyond her, Mae saw Alistair, who waved to her, and then began texting. Moments later she checked her phone and saw that Alistair was putting on another, now bigger and better, event for all Portugal enthusiasts, next week. It will be thunderous, he texted. Films, music, poetry, storytelling, and joy! She texted that she’d be there and could hardly wait. Across the lawn, past the flamingo, Mae saw him reading her message, watched as he raised his eyes to her, waving.
She went back to watching the circus. The performers seemed to be not just affecting the air of poverty but to be living it—everything about them seemed old, and smelled of age and decay. Around them the Circlers captured the performance on their screens, wanting to remember the very strangeness of this band of homeless-seeming revelers, to document how incongruous it was here at the Circle, amid the carefully considered paths and gardens, amid the people who worked there, who showered regularly, tried to stay at least reasonably fashionable, and who washed their clothes.
Mae, making her way through the crowd, found Josiah and Denise, who were delighted to see her, but both seemed scandalized by the circus, the tone and tenor of which, they thought, had gone too far; Josiah had already reviewed it unfavorably. Mae left them, happy they’d seen her, had registered her attendance, and went looking for a beverage. She saw a row of booths in the distance and was making her way to them when one of the performers, a shirtless man with a handlebar mustache, raced over to her, carrying three swords. He seemed unsteady, and in the moments before he reached her, Mae grasped that though he wanted to seem under control, that this was part of his act, he was actually going to run into her with his arms full of blades. She froze, and he was inches away from her, when she felt her shoulders being grabbed and thrown. She fell to her knees, her back to the man with the swords.
“You okay?” a different man asked. She looked up to see he was standing where she’d been.
“I think so,” she said.
And then he turned back to the wiry sword-man. “What the fuck, clown?”
Was it Kalden?
The sword juggler was looking to Mae, to assure himself that she was okay, and when he saw that she was, he turned his attention to the man in front of him.
It was Kalden. Now Mae was sure. He had Kalden’s calligraphic shape. He was wearing a plain white V-neck undershirt and grey pants, as skinny as the jeans she’d first seen on him. He had not struck Mae as someone quick to fight, and yet he was standing, chest out and hands awake, as the circus performer assessed him, eyes steady, as if choosing between staying in character, in this circus, following through with the show and getting paid, and paid well, by this enormous and prosperous and influential company, or tangling with this guy in front of two hundred people.
Finally he chose to smile, theatrically twirl his mustache by both ends, and turn.
“Sorry that happened,” Kalden said, helping her up. “You sure you’re okay?”
Mae said she was. The mustache man hadn’t touched her, had only scared her, and even then, only for a moment.
She stared at his face, which in the suddenly blue light was like some Brancusi sculpture—smooth, perfectly oval. His eyebrows were Roman arches, his nose like some small sea creature’s delicate snout.
“Those assholes shouldn’t be here in the first place,” he said. “A bunch of court jesters here to entertain royalty. I don’t see the point,” he said, now looking around him, standing on his tiptoes. “Can we leave here?”
They found the food and drinks table en route and took tapas and sausages and cups of red wine to a row of lemon trees behind the Viking Age.
“You don’t remember my name,” Mae said.
“No. But I know you, and I wanted to see you. That’s why I was near when the mustache came at you.”
“Mae.”
“Right. I’m Kalden.”
“I know. I remember names.”
“And I try to. I’m always trying. So are Josiah and Denise your friends?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Sure. I mean, they did my orientation and, you know, I’ve talked to them since. Why?”
“No reason.”
“What do you do here, anyway?”
“And Dan? You hang out with Dan?”
“Dan’s my boss. You won’t tell me what you do, will you?”
“You want a lemon?” he asked, and stood. He kept his eyes on Mae as he reached his hand into the tree and retrieved a large one. There was a masculine grace to the gesture, how he stretched, fluidly upward, slower than might be expected, that made her think of a diver. Without looking at the lemon, he handed it to her.
“It’s green,” she said.
He squinted at it. “Oh. I thought that would work. I went for the biggest one I could find. It should have been yellow. Here, stand up.”
He gave her his hand, helped her up, and positioned her just away from the boughs of the tree. Then he threw his arms around the trunk and shook it until lemons rained down. Five or six hit Mae.
“Jesus. Sorry,” he said. “I’m an idiot.”
“No. It was good,” she said. “They were heavy, and two hit me in the head. I loved it.”
He touched her then, shaping his hand around her head. “Anything especially bad?”
She said she was fine.
“You always hurt the ones you love,” he said, his face a dark shape above her. As if realizing what he’d said, he cleared his throat. “Anyway. That’s what my parents said. And they loved me very much.”
In the morning, Mae called Annie, who was on her way to the airport, heading to Mexico to untangle some regulatory snafu.
“I met someone intriguing,” Mae said.
“Good. I wasn’t crazy about the other one. Gallipoli.”
“Garaventa.”
“Francis. He’s a nervous little mouse. And this new one? What do we know about him?” Mae could sense Annie speeding the conversation along.
Mae tried to describe him, but realized she knew almost nothing. “He’s thin. Brown eyes, tallish?”
“That’s it? Brown eyes and tallish?”
“Oh wait,” Mae said, laughing at herself. “He had grey hair. He has grey hair.”
“Wait. What?”
“He was young, but with grey hair.”
“Okay. Mae. It’s okay if you’re a grandpa chaser—”
“No, no. I’m sure he was young.”
“You say he’s under thirty, but with grey hair?”
“I swear.”
“I don’t know anyone here like that.”
“You know all ten thousand people?”
“Maybe he’s got some temporary contract. You didn’t get his last name?”
“I tried, but he was very coy.”
“Huh. That’s not so Circly, is it? And he had grey hair?”
“Almost white.”
“Like a swimmer would? When they use that shampoo?”
“No. This wasn’t silver. It was just grey. Like an old man would have.”
“And you’re sure he wasn’t some old man? Like some old man you found on the street?”
“No.”
“Were you roaming the streets, Mae? Are you into that particular smell of an older man? A much older man? It’s musty. Like a wet cardboard box. You like that?”
“Please.”
Annie was entertaining herself, and so continued: “I guess there’s comfort there, knowing he can cash in his 401(k). And he must be so grateful for any affection at all.… Oh shit. I’m at the airport. I’ll call you back.”
Annie didn’t call back, but texted from the plane and later from Mexico City, sending Mae pictures of various old men she saw on the street. Is this him? This one? That one? Ése? Ése?
Mae was left to wonder about all of this. How did she not know Kalden’s last name? She did a preliminary search in the company directory, and found no Kaldens. She tried Kaldan, Kaldin, Khalden. Nothing. Maybe she’d misspelled or misheard it? She could have done a more surgical search if she’d known what department he was in, what part of campus he might occupy, but she knew nothing.
Still, she could think of little else. His white V-neck, his sad eyes that tried not to seem sad, his skinny grey pants that might have been stylish or horrible, she couldn’t decide in the dark, the way he held her at the end of the night, when they’d walked to where the helicopters landed, hoping to see one, and then, seeing none, they walked back to the lemon grove, and there he said he would have to go, and could she walk to the shuttle from there. He pointed to the row of them, not two hundred yards off, and she smiled and said she could handle it. Then he’d brought her to him, so suddenly, too suddenly for her to know if he planned a kiss or grope or what. What he did was a flattening of her shape against his, with his right arm crossing her back, his hand atop her shoulder, and his left hand far lower, bolder, resting on her sacrum, his fingers fanning down.
Then he pulled away and smiled.
“You sure you’re okay?”
“I am.”
“You’re not scared?”
She laughed. “No. I’m not scared.”
“Okay. Good night.”
And he turned and walked in a new direction, not toward the shuttles or the helicopters or the circus, but through a narrow shadowed path, alone.
All week she thought of his retreating form, and his strong hands reaching, and she looked at the big green lemon he’d picked, which she’d retrieved and thought, wrongly, would have ripened on her desk if given the time. It stayed green.
But she couldn’t get hold of him. She put out a few all-company zings, looking for a Kalden, careful not to look desperate. But she got no response.
She knew Annie could figure it out, but Annie was now in Peru. The company was in some moderately hot water over their plans in the Amazon—something involving drones to count and photograph every remaining tree. Between meetings with members of various environmental and regulatory officials, Annie finally called back. “Let me do a facial rec on him. Send me a photo.”
But Mae had no photos of him.
“You’re kidding. Nothing?”
“It was dark. It was a circus.”
“You said that. So he gave you a green lemon and no photos. Are you sure he wasn’t just visiting?”
“But I met him before, remember? Near the bathroom? And then he came back to my desk and watched me work.”
“Wow, Mae. This guy sounds like a winner. Green lemons and heavy breathing over your shoulder while you answer customer queries. If I were being the slightest bit paranoid, I’d think he was an infiltrator of some kind, or a low-grade molester.” Annie had to hang up, but then, an hour later, texted. You have to keep me posted on this guy. Getting increasingly unsettled. We’ve had some weird stalker people over the years. Last year we had a guy, some kind of blogger, who attended a party and stayed on campus for two weeks, skulking around and sleeping in storage rooms. He turned out to be relatively harmless, but you can see how some Unidentified Freaky Man would be cause for concern.
But Mae wasn’t concerned. She trusted Kalden, and couldn’t believe he had any nefarious intentions. His face had an openness, an unmistakable lack of guile—Mae couldn’t quite explain it to Annie, but she had no doubts about him. She knew, though, that he was not reliable as a communicator, but she knew, also, she was sure of it, that he would contact her again. And though being unable to reach anyone else in her life would have been grating, exasperating, having him out there, at least for a few days, unreachable but presumably somewhere on campus, provided a jolt of welcome frisson to her hours. The week’s workload was heavy but while thinking of Kalden, every query was some glorious aria. The customers sang to her and she sang back. She loved them all. She loved Risa Thomason in Twin Falls, Idaho. She loved Mack Moore in Gary, Indiana. She loved the newbies around her. She loved Jared?
And finally, on Friday morning, Annie returned, and they made plans to meet just before the Dream Friday. There was supposed to be a presentation about the future of CircleMoney—a way to send all online purchases through the Circle and, eventually, obviate the need for paper currency at all—but then the presentation was cancelled. All staffers were asked to watch a press conference being held in Washington.
Mae hurried down to the lobby of the Renaissance, where a few hundred Circlers were watching the wallscreen. A woman in a blueberry-colored suit stood behind a podium festooned with microphones, surrounded by aides and a pair of American flags. Below her the ticker: SENATOR WILLIAMSON SEEKING TO BREAK UP THE CIRCLE. It was too loud at first to hear anything, but a series of hissing shushes and volume increases made her voice audible. The senator was in the middle of reading a written statement.