The Participants Read Online Free Page A

chicken
nuggets microwaved to a soggy mess while they watched the local
news. Zack listened to a segment on road construction around
Pittsburgh while Lacey pushed food around on her plate. “One of us
needs to learn how to cook before the baby gets here.”
    “I know how to cook,” Zack said.
    “Microwaves don't count, hon.”
    “I cook food at work every day.”
    “That thing at your work is just a big
toaster. I'm talkin' about real food.”
    The news anchors began discussing a recent
crime spree targeting hubcaps. “Real food, huh? Don't you think
it's hard to define real food when no one is certain what is real
in the first place?”
    “Real is when you can see and touch
something. It's not complicated, Hon.”
    “It's not just seeing and touching. It's
perceiving and remembering, which are unreliable mental processes.
Let's give a hypothetical situation where the world began five
years ago.”
    Lacey snorted. “World's lot older than
that.”
    “How can anyone really know the age of the
world? If the world sprang into existence five years ago, fully
formed with a complete but false history, no one would know. Fake
memories would match fake records.”
    “And Santa Clause has a magic sleigh too,”
Lacey said.
    Zack smiled. “Who knows, right?”
    “Pretty sure I know.”
    “You think you know.”
    “I know what you do at work ain't real
cooking.”
    “How about making candy bar milkshakes? Is
that real cooking?”
    “Hell no. And you still owe me a new blender
for that.”
    “It tasted good, though.”
    “Not as good as Dairy Queen.”
    The news returned to the story of the
shooting. “Today in Sarver, a robbery goes bad and an employee
loses his life. Except he's completely unharmed. Watch the security
footage and decide if this is a miracle or a hoax.” Zack turned off
the television. Seeing himself on the news drove home the
realization of how bad he had screwed up.
    “Wow,” Lacey said, “I didn't think anything
could make you skip the news.”
    “Just make sure the baby comes at a
convenient time.”
    “You watch the news in the delivery room and
I'll put the remote where you don't want it.”
    After they finished dinner,
Zack washed the mismatched dishes in the sink and replaced them in
the cupboard while Lacey painted her nails at the table, filling
their cramped trailer with fumes that couldn’t be healthy. Zack
grabbed a Penn Dark from the fridge and sat across from his
wife. Cue a comment about the cost of
microbrews.
    “Y’know, if you didn’t have to buy fancy
Penn Brewery beer, we could get cable.”
    “Cable costs a bit more
than that, Lacey.” Next she’ll mention
texting.
    “ We could at least get
texting on our plan. I’m the only person at work without
it.”
    Zack began to peel the label, watching Lacey
from the corner of his eye, waiting for her to mention Kelly Green,
a former friend and compulsive label peeler whom Lacey
despised.
    “You know that annoys the hell out of me,”
she said.
    Zack grunted. Usually he could direct her
side of the conversation for at least five exchanges. Once he got
twelve in a row, but he hadn’t managed a roll like that in over a
month. Instead of becoming more predictable with familiarity, Lacey
grew increasingly temperamental. Zack thought that was his fault.
His intimate influence rendered Lacey a contaminated subject.
Instead of observing her behavior, he was observing her reactions
to him.
    He turned his attention to the bottle in his
hands. The brewery was half an hour south, on the north side of
Pittsburgh. It produced a range of beer varieties, but Penn Dark,
their version of a German Dunkel, was his favorite. He thought it
might be nice to visit the place one day, but his daily routine
already demanded too much energy from him.
    Zack wondered if he would have been happier
under different circumstances. When this world sprang into
existence, he was given the identity of Zack Vernon,
twenty-year-old heir to a recently deceased