As we entered the room, one of the contestants said, “I’ll take ‘Famous Littles’ for a hundred,” and Alex said, “In this 1986 movie, Steve Martin played a goofy dentist.” Bodie Emmerich slammed his hand on the button, a buzzer sounded, and he all but shouted the correct response a second or two before the contestant on the program: “What is Little Shop of Horrors?”
The audience applauded, and I stood in the weird double grip of rage and incredulity, with my companions likewise halted by their disbelief. If I’d found Emmerich sprawled on the floor, playing with a puppy and cooing baby talk to it, I’d have thought, Well, Hitler was an animal lover; even psychopaths melt over cute puppies. Seeing this slave master, serial rapist, and probable murderer engaged with such delight in Jeopardy! suggested that the evil he committed was perpetrated with the frivolous intent of a dull boy who lacked the intelligence to grasp the consequences of his actions, a game-show savant whose extensive knowledge of trivia revealed a mind that was nothing but a warehouse of meaningless facts, where there was no capacity to know good from evil. Yet he was not stupid. Perhaps developmentally disabled in a moral sense. Or his conscience had been eaten away by the cancer of narcissism.
The contestant said, “Alex, I’ll take ‘Famous Littles’ for two hundred,” and Alex said, “Jodie Foster directed and starred in this 1991 film about a working-class mother struggling to keep custody of her gifted child.” Emmerich smashed the palm of his right hand into the buzzer on the word “custody,” and shouted, “What is Little Man Tate?” The contestant echoed him, and the audience applauded.
“Turn it off,” Sparky demanded.
Emmerich showed no surprise when he used a Crestron control to mute the audio, although he didn’t switch off the TV. He had known we were there from the moment we entered the arcade.
He turned to us. Fiftysomething. Lean, tan, well maintained. Only a few flecks of gray in his hair. Hands as long-fingered as those of a concert pianist, as powerful as those of a basketball star, the hands of a gentleman strangler. He was handsome in the sexless way that hosts of TV shows for children often are, his features soft at the edges. His expressive eyes were a warm golden brown, his stare direct. It was possible to believe that he was a man of the tenderest feelings—just as it was possible to believe that a hungry wolf in the wild is only a dog that will respond with a wave of the tail when offered a caring hand.
“Timothy,” he said, “this will be resolved. You may go.”
“No, he may not,” I said.
“Go, child,” Emmerich said. “I hold you blameless.”
Gun or no gun, Tim meant to heed the instruction of his master. He turned away from me and started from the room, no doubt with the intention of alerting others that the Oasis had been breached.
I quickly stepped after him, reversing my grip on the Glock. Holding it by the barrel, I slammed the butt down hard on Timothy’s head. All my anger was in that blow, and I hit the guy harder than maybe I intended, but I didn’t care. He was down and out, and that’s how I wanted him.
Bodie Emmerich remained at his personal game-show podium, his right hand resting on the frame of the Crestron panel. In addition to audio-video, climate, lighting, and other controls, that small screen might offer an icon that summoned help. I wondered if, when called, his misnamed children would come creeping in a silent horde or rush into the room like banshees shrieking a promise of imminent death.
If Emmerich knew that we looked upon him with abhorrence, he took no offense at our condemnation. He appeared to favor us with the loving patience that the Dalai Lama would extend to Buddhists who hadn’t yet achieved prajna. But he was no bodhisattva. In his case, the loving patience was pure pretense. His smile was a cold, thin crescent moon. I didn’t have to be psychic to know that he regarded us with amusement and contempt.
What I had done to Tim had no impact on Emmerich that I could discern, as though the soul child had meant less to him than a house pet, no more than an iRobot vacuum cleaner that I had disabled. His apathy revealed an absence of concern about those in his flock, but also a strange inability to assess the threat to himself in this situation.
As if speaking to errant children whom he could not bear to correct in other than the gentlest tone of voice, he said, “I see from your emanations that you are alphas, as are we all here. You need not resort to violence.”
Sparky said, “That’s reassuring, your majesty, but after a tour of your Playboy Mansion gulag, we still feel that a hand extended in friendship might be cut off at the wrist.”