The Eye of the Beholder
“I GUESS I FEEL LONELY. OR ALONE. I don't feel like we are on the same page as a married couple and I can't figure out why."
On Coupe's left was the decor and buzz of the Gordon Ramsey Pub in Caesar's Palace. On his right was the casino floor, all lights, cigarette smoke, and tourists hoping to bag a huge jackpot in direct defiance of the laws of commerce and probability. Directly in front and across the two-top was his wife of the past seven years.
She looked down at her wedge salad.
How can they charge $23 for the laziest salad on the planet? They don't even chop the fucking lettuce up. I could do this for the cost of the wedge! he thought.
Coupe hated to see his wife sad or uncomfortable in any way, so he backpedaled a bit.
"What I guess I mean to say is that we're going in the same direction but it feels like there's a long stretch of plexiglass in between us. Parallel paths but separated, right? Anyway, we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. It's my birthday, you brought me to one of the few Ramsey restaurants I haven't experienced, and I should just quit being melodramatic. Maybe it's that birthdays leave me blue or something."
She looked up and smiled. Something about the smile made Coupe uneasy.
That was abrupt. Her smile seems almost, I don't, mechanical? Like I just saw some uncanny valley moment. It's the way she is smiling but looking past me or...
“Is your lobster mac-n-cheese good?” she asked as if he hadn’t said anything at all.
“Uh… yeah. I suppose I’m not really that hungry. I’ll rally here in a minute but that feeling that, you know, all is not right in the world is taking up a lot of space.”
Again, her face shifted slightly into what seemed like a programmed version of the appropriate emotional reaction. This looked to Coupe like a plastic version of empathy but he still couldn't decide if it was he or she generating this perception.
"How long have you felt this way? Felt lonely?"
"Or alone. Not so much lonely as alone."
"So, when could you say you started to feel this way?" She leaned in and put her elbows on either side of the salad and rested her face in her hands.
He thought for a moment. He looked up again into her eyes. It was not-quite-right, the look in them. He really did feel alone at this moment because she, his wife of seven years, was not there.
"I suppose I began to feel like I was sort of navigating this marriage solo around, I don't know, maybe just before the pandemic? Two years?"
"Two and a half."
"Sure. Two and a half. You were always kind of just going out and about for stretches of time but sometime around then you stopped being happy to see me when you came back."
"What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. Christ. Sorry. I feel like I'm being psychoanalyzed. Let me switch it around. Do you feel like we're in this together? I mean, is it just me feeling this way?"
She smiled that imitation smile. "No. I think you're right. I think Las Vegas has changed me. We were more connected in Chicago. I feel like a flower in a pot that I've outgrown."
"And I'm... I'm the pot?"
"No. Not you. You're great. You've always been great. You're like the superheroes you love so much. No, the pot is humanity. This body. These feelings. I feel like I'm beyond all of it."
He immediately felt sick to his stomach. He flagged the waiter.
"Yes sir. Is everything tasting good?"
"Yeah. Yeah, awesome. Can I get a double shot of Whistlepig Rye and a beer chaser, please?"
"We have Budweiser, Bud Light, Modelo ..."
"Don't care. Surprise me."
"You are upset." She said it monotone. Not concerned but only observational. A statement of the obvious.
"Are you thinking about divorce?"
"No. Of course not. Do you want to divorce?"
"Not on my freaking birthday, I don't. Holy shit. It's just—and no disrespect—but that whole flowerpot thing seems like an immature approach to divorce. I'm sorry but I'm not entirely certain what it is we're talking about."
"You're right," she said after a beat. "It's your birthday today so maybe I owe you at least an explanation."
The waiter swung by with the glass of whiskey and a bottle of Lagunitas IPA. "Will there be anything else?"
"Yeah. Give me ten minutes and hit me again with the same."
"A little early but it's five o'clock somewhere, right?"
"Right." Coupe slugged the rye in one gulp. It burned but in a clarifying way.
What the hell can of worms did I fucking open here?
I was walking down the Strip and a man with a brown van complimented my shoes. We started talking. He kept mentioning my eyes and I thought he was trying to pick me up or something. Instead, he offered me $100 for my left eye."
She pushed her salad to the side and sat back in her chair. "Do you remember the month before the pandemic when I was out all day and told you I was in the park reading and you didn't quite believe me?"
He remembered. She left early in the morning and hadn't come back until it was pitch black.
In Chicago, they used to have arguments about her wanderlust. Once she came home at 3:30 a.m. smelling like pot and beer. She didn't want to wake him but he was already up, worried. She'd met a couple of guys at a bar and went back to their house to smoke weed, drink beer, and listen to music. When he questioned it, she lost her shit and accused him of being controlling so he let it go.
The day in the park felt like that except she didn't come as clean as he thought she should. She was out. She was reading. Getting some sun. People watching. Had gone to a pool but her clothes were completely dry. He was skeptical. She went to bed and then acted as if nothing had happened the next morning. Again, he let it go but wondered.
"I remember."
"I didn't go to the park. I was walking down the Strip and a man with a brown van complimented my shoes. We started talking. He kept mentioning my eyes and I thought he was trying to pick me up or something. Instead, he offered me $100 for my left eye."
"What? Your eye?"
"Yes. He showed me a whole lab set up in the back of the van and these robotic body parts—including eyes—that were better than the real thing. He showed me how the replacement was mostly painless, that he could replace my own eye with one that matched exactly but would never age. He's done it with thousands of people. I don't know how to really explain why I took the money and let him extract my eye but I did."
"Are you fucking serious with this? This is ridiculous. If you just want a divorce say so."
"I do not want a divorce. Are you going to let me explain or keep interrupting?"
The beer was empty and he frantically looked around for the waiter.
"I let him strap me in and perform the procedure. It was even kind of pleasurable. After he replaced my eye with the new one he told me I needed to walk around and use it in the world so it could calibrate to my natural eye movements. That's why I was out for so long. I don't why I didn't tell you. I guess I thought you'd be judgmental."
She leaned in close and reached up to her eye and popped it out between her fingers. The eye was still looking at him.
Coupe jerked back in his chair and tilted over. The chair pivoted and both he and the chair sprawled over into the aisle. The waiter rushed over with his fresh drinks and helped him up.
"Sir! Are you alright?"
Her eye immediately secured back in its socket, she jumped in. "I think his chair is faulty. Could he get a different chair?"
"Oh my. So sorry about that. I'll get you a new chair right away. And those," he pointed at the second round. "Those are complimentary." And the waiter spun, grabbed a chair from the next table and swapped it out. He left before any more drama ensued.
"You've had a... a bionic eye for two and half years?"
"Oh, they're both replacements. The guy introduced me to whole consortium of technicians, each with his own specialty. There was an Asian man who replaced my liver, kidneys, and stomach. A Pakistani gentlemen who bought my hands and feet for... well a lot more than $100. Remember when I went housesitting for three weeks in L.A.? I had my entire skeletal system replaced. Isn't that amazing?"
"Why?" He was so freaked out that the only word he could force out of his head was that. "W-why?"
"I think maybe the whole never aging stuff really resonated. I dress like I'm twenty-two but I'm pushing forty and the clothes make me look sort of desperate. That's only going to get worse. I mean, look at you. It's your birthday and with each one, you look a little bit more worn out. Not only will I always look like this but I feel extraordinary. You can't imagine how strong I am now. Empowered, even."
There was a surreal quality to things and the rye was doing its trick. Sometimes when presented with the fantastic, the outrageous, the human mind finds a way to accept it. Coupe's mind was grappling with this new reality and finally found purchase.
Holy Fuck. I'm married to a character from Westworld.
He settled back into his new chair. "How much of you is left? Or how much is machine? I don't suppose I'm asking that correctly so forgive me."
She looked up and to the left. "Six percent."
"Six percent?"
"There's just shy of 6 percent of the old me left. Mostly some brain tissue. I can get that switched out but that's the gold standard. Instead of getting paid for that procedure, I have to pay. Once that's done, I'll live forever young."
"Is it a lot?"
"It is but I have an idea I've been thinking about. If you wanna get out of here, I want to show you something if you're interested."
He nodded. She paid the check—it was his birthday, after all—and they walked out into the casino and toward the Self Park. They were not headed for his car but he followed, still reeling from the whole eyeball trick. They turned a corner and there was a brown van. She stopped and turned.
"Coupe. I know this has been a shock. I didn't know how to tell you and sort of compartmentalized keeping the truth from you." She stepped closer, put her hands on his face tenderly, and leaned in for a kiss.
"You really have the most beautiful eyes."
And with the same effort she'd use to flick her hair to the side, she snapped his neck.
Coupe felt his legs go and as he dropped, as the darkness started edging around the borders of his vision, his last living thought floated out into the ether.
She didn't even touch that fucking wedge salad.
