“Suppose I wanted to get to this connection point at the highest possible speed, never having played before?” Nate asked.
Craig looked bewildered. “Uh…why? Why would anyone do that? Wouldn’t that spoil the whole thing and, you know, like, defeat the purpose?”
“Not my purpose,” Nate said. “I’m more interested in how the game works than in the gaming experience itself. You can’t spoil it for me.”
Craig looked worried. “Um, okay,” he said hesitantly. “Well, there’s different adventures, and all of them are cool. You can get to the Forest of Heliox, the Celestial Realm, the Eagle’s Crest or the Ebring Fei Desert, and all of them will get you victory points and big upgrades.”
“Just give me the dirt on the communication point,” Nate repeated patiently.
Craig leaned over the counter. “So this is the deal,” he said in a hushed voice. “You gotta go straight to the Ebring Fei. You’ll already be at least at level ten if you make it that far. Otherwise nothing. And it’s not easy to get there. You’re gonna get killed, like, hundreds of times. So just expect that from the outset.”
Nate nodded. “Great. Good to know. Tell me more.”
“The Ebring Fei is huge,” Craig said. “Lots of ground to cover. There’s this dried out riverbed there, and there’s a cave in it. This huge underground hole.”
Elisa and Nate exchanged glances.
“It’s pitch black in there,” Craig went on. “So you have to bring your own light, or else you fall off this cliff into the chasm and die. And you have to go deep. You’re looking for the Obelisk of the Lost Tribe of Aras, but it’s guarded by the slaughtered priestesses of Aras, so you gotta make a sacrifice to them if you wanna go any further.” Craig looked around the store surreptitiously. “Um. I’m actually not supposed to talk about gaming in here, ‘cause I end up talking too much. My boss said if I did it again he’d fire me. So if I talk for too long, just tell me, okay?”
“You can’t possibly talk too much to us, Craig,” Elisa assured him. “Have at it.”
“We intend to spend a lot of money in here today if you tell us what we need to know,” Nate told him. “So at least today, this is just good customer service.”
Craig needed no further encouragement. Nate held up his smartphone and recorded his lengthy monologue, which was disjointed and full of detours, but still packed with useful details. Craig also gave them a list of the best YouTube video guides for finding their way through the Ebring Fei, locating the dry riverbed and avoiding deadly pitfalls. Of which there were many.
“I read in a forum that the game designers named it Shards of Ruin because you can have a bunch of different, completely separate adventures, and you can get torn to pieces in a gazillion different ways,” Craig said enthusiastically. “So it’s like, the stories are broken into pieces, too. Into shards, get it?”
At a certain point, Craig began to repeat himself, and Nate stopped the recording. He bought two gaming consoles, two monitors, and two copies of the game. Elisa pulled out her wad of saved tips to pay for it, but Nate just gave her an incredulous look.
“Really?” he said. “We’re still there? Aren’t we in this together now?”
“I’m really glad of that, and I’m grateful, but that doesn’t mean you have to pay for all of it,” Elisa protested. “You already covered the hotel, for God’s sake.”
“Jeez,” Craig said wistfully. “Your girlfriend wants to pay for your gaming gear? Dude, you’re living the dream.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty sweet,” Nate agreed, sliding a couple of bills discreetly across the table. “Thanks for all the tips. We appreciate it more than you will ever know.”
Craig’s eyes went big as he looked down at the money. “Holy shit! I, umm…I don’t think I’m supposed to, ah…”
“You really helped,” Nate assured him. “You were very generous.”
They wheeled the shopping cart piled with boxes out to the Jeep and packed them into the back, and Elisa got back into the passenger’s seat, but Nate hesitated.“One more little thing,” he said.
“What?” she demanded. “Let’s go back. Now. Let’s get started.”
“There’s a woman’s clothing store right there,” he said. “Let’s just grab a few things for you. You’ve got nothing except what’s on you right now. You need some stuff.”
“It’s a sweet thought, but I’m not in the mood for shopping,” Elisa said. “I want to get into that game and hit it hard, right freaking now.”
“I understand, and we totally will, but it’s just a few minutes,” he coaxed. “Just a few little things. You don’t have to try things on. Just eyeball them. Indulge me.”
He kept at it until she gave in. After all, he held the car keys.
Predictably enough, she ended up walking out of the store with her hair practically on fire and four huge shopping bags filled with clothes. Underwear, socks, boots, T-shirts, sweatshirts, sexy nighties, jeans, teddies, fluffy sweaters, fleecy pajamas. Cashmere and mohair sweaters, sexy wrap tops. Nate had just grabbed anything he saw that he liked and tossed it in. And he liked freaking everything.
“You’re insane!” she fumed, once they were back in the car. “I’m not a doll to be dressed!”
“Of course not. But I can’t wait to see that blue silk thing on you. So hot.”
“That was unnecessary and absolutely extravagant!”
“Sure,” Nate’s voice was mild. “But if I see something pretty that’s nice quality, I just want you to have it. You deserve nice things.”
She was opening her mouth to scold him…and the words dried up, as she thought of those years with Gil. Buying all the costly clothing, working out every day in the gym, dieting anxiously. Always hungry. Learning to apply makeup like a pro, getting her hair done all the time. Trying so hard to live up to his expectations.
And it was never enough. She never felt deserving of his approval. There was always something to criticize, something to correct. Her hair, her speech, her choice of words. Her laugh was too high-pitched, her smile wasn’t wide enough, her eyes were always half-closed in the publicity photographs, she was too stiff in front of the cameras, too uptight in the interviews.
She was too stiff and uptight in bed, too. Surprise, surprise.
You do want to improve yourself, don’t you? Gil had always asked that question when she protested his relentless criticism. Don’t you want to grow? Do you just want to sit back? Give in to mediocrity? Shall I just lower my standards right now?
Put that way, it had been hard to defend herself. What was she defending, anyway? Mediocrity? Laziness? Sloppiness? Sloth?
It was embarrassing to think how long it had taken to understand what she should have known all along. That Gil wasn’t the goddamn arbiter of her worth. He didn’t get to set standards for her. She didn’t deserve to be scolded and derided.
She had to fight so hard for that realization, but hey. Better late than never.
Being with Nate was so different. It was like night and day. It felt so strange and lovely, this wild idea that she just deserved approval, for no particular reason. Without having to earn it or win it by being perfect. Just for being who she was.