Patrick lifted his thighs one at a time to peel them from the Naugahyde upholstery, his skin like the fruit leather he had relented and purchased at the kids’ request for snacking. He scanned through his phone. When he’d exhausted his other apps, he opened YouTube to search for his channel. There were now two videos of the kids; after their mountaintop lunch, he’d led them back outside, much as his own father had marched Patrick across numerous battlefields at the height of his own summer vacations. But instead of citing needless facts, the kind that his father had most certainly made up （“There was a pair of Siamese twins who were devoted Confederates, but only one twin was drafted and no one could figure out what to do!”）， Patrick taught Maisie and Grant to juggle the enormous pine cones that lay on the ground. Or tried to—they would invariably land on the kids’ heads to squeals of rapturous delight. So much for Maisie’s own theory that their skulls were soft. He had posted that video to YouTube himself （under Maisie’s tutelage） to spite Clara.
The recommended videos on the app’s homepage were foreign to him. One summer of handing his niece and nephew control of his phone and he’d lost his own identity in an algorithm of nonsense. Almost. At the bottom of the screen was one suggested video calling just for him—Liza Minnelli singing the title number from Liza with a “Z,” her 1972 television special directed by Bob Fosse. Patrick smiled and hummed to himself—he hadn’t completely been obliterated. He pressed play and watched as Liza expertly walked the microphone over to the stand. Her white blouse cut as low as her white tuxedo pants were high. She was luminescent, iconic in her Cabaret hair and dark eye makeup. Patrick hummed to himself as she spoke to the audience. In his mind he was the one clad in a white tuxedo, wowing a room, leaning into a mic stand and complaining that he had a problem with his name. People call me “Uncle”—WRONG!
He glanced up from his phone to see if anyone was watching. The hotel was empty, save for a woman across the lobby who stood with a walker, but she was preoccupied, waiting, he imagined, for a van. No chance he was bothering her. He jumped back into the video in time with the music.
That’s Guncle with a “G” not Uncle with a “U,” ’cause Uncle with a “U” goes UUH not GUH.
It’s “GUN” instead of “UN,” “CLE” instead of “CLEE.” It’s as simple as can be . . .
GUNCLE.
The sound of heels across the tile floor made him sit at attention, dropping the phone in his lap. Alas, the shoes disqualified their wearer. Clara wore more sensible footwear, suitable for walking, breathable for the heat. Patrick glanced and recognized the hotel’s concierge, she’d been back and forth across the lobby a few times now. She smiled at him in passing and Patrick returned his attention to his phone, already playing the next video in sequence: Liza singing “Ring Them Bells.” He searched for his own channel and for the video Maisie had surreptitiously posted. It now had two hundred and thirty-eight thousand views. Patrick lowered his sunglasses to make sure he was reading that number correctly. Almost a quarter-million people cared about some random video with Maisie and Grant? Unbelievable. He scrolled through a number of comments.
Y’all these kids is cyoot.
Hilarious.
Now one with Patrick, please.
I thought this guy was dead?
What did I just watch? This is some white people shit.
I wish Patrick was my uncle!
And several dozen comments that just read: First. Whatever that was supposed to mean; these anonymous viewers all thought they were Columbus.
The opinions were endless. He scrolled back through his camera roll, starting to consider what other content he might have. An audience of a quarter million wasn’t nothing. If he were to give in and post a third video, what would it be of? Him? The kids? He was so deep in the quandary, he almost missed his sister as she walked through the lobby’s sliding doors. Clara looked more confident than she had when she’d first touched down in the desert; she had acquired, at least, the proper wardrobe, and her sunglasses remained squarely on her face as if she were attempting a disguise. Patrick shrank in his chair, forgetting momentarily that his purpose here was to confront. He waited until she was right beside him.
“Ahem.”
Clara froze in place. Above them, floors of open corridors; a housekeeper running a vacuum across the top-floor hallway filled the open space with a gentle, distant hum. Whether it served to amplify or defuse the underlying tension, Patrick wasn’t sure.