Campbell (2 page)

“Do you think she’s got the Midwest?” Tal asked. “Any more word on that?

“No,” Connor grumbled, pulling out his notebook and jabbing his finger at a crudely drawn organizational diagram. “They’re all over the fucking place. You can’t get a straight story out of any of them.”

They didn’t know much about the Midwest. There was some trading, but West didn’t have a lot of things they needed, whereas the Midwest had a lot of things West wanted, especially when it came to agricultural products. Unfortunately, movies or West’s burgeoning tech manufacturing operations didn’t seem of interest to them. They were Midwesterners; farm kids, strong and driven, with a variety of skills that most of the kids in LA would never acquire. In early days, Tal had pushed for contact with them, in the hopes of being able to match the Silicon Valley geniuses with mechanical knowledge. That was rejected by Connor in terms of forging alliances with Mexico and the rest of the coast, for overseas trading. The kids in the Midwest were challenging to communicate with, and their leadership was fractured at best. They did form a necessary buffer between East and West, however.

East scared the shit out of Tal.
 

“They don’t deserve it.” Connor pulled into his driveway. “We deserve it. Look what we’ve done for people. We’ve given them everything.”

After mostly agreeing on philosophies with Connor for most of their lives, as of late, Tal wasn't interested in discussing what they'd done for the kids that trusted them. Not after his recent travels north.
 

He put on a smile. “I need to get home. Leah’s pulling up the garden. I told her I’d help. I’ll walk from your place.”

“Vancouver, next week. I’ll get the jet ready.” Connor grinned back, his green eyes gleaming as he pulled into the driveway of his large home, once immaculate but now overgrown, decaying, and desperate for a paint job and extensive repairs to the driveway. From its appearance, one never would have guessed at the obscene extravagance inside. Tal knew Connor had expensive taste, but four stuffed tigers with gold teeth shipped in from India were a little ridiculous, in his opinion.

“Say ‘hi’ to Leah for me, and don’t stress about it. We’ll get them back.”

Tal swallowed, and knew it was time to say what he’d been thinking for a while. “Look,” he said, climbing out. “I’m maybe not the best person to go with you.”

“Why?” his oldest friend questioned, hopping out of the car. At around six feet, Tal wasn’t exactly tall, but Connor, at five inches shorter than him was short. Really short. “You’re my guy.”

Tal shook his head. “I’m not
that
guy. You should take Colin. Colin’s more fun, and he’s got the connections with those crazy girls, the ones that’ll do anything.” He closed the door. “I’m not going to sell it like Colin.”

“You’re coming. You’re the numbers guy, and the VP.” Connor took a step back. “And people listen to you. We always go—”

“I need a break. Take Colin.” He started up the driveway. “I’m not a good cheerleader.”

Connor shook his head. “You know what? We’re going tomorrow. I’ll pick you up in the morning,” Connor shouted after him. “You’re coming!”

Tal froze and his face grew hot. “Tomorrow? Connor, I can’t—”

He tapped his watch and headed towards the house. “We need to get on this. If we wait a week, she’ll take it all. There’s no time to waste.”

Tal shook his head, since he really didn’t have much choice in the matter, and that Connor was right. In the twenty years he’d known him, Tal had realized Connor’s decisiveness wasn’t something easily argued with. It had started long before the death of their parents, over things like choosing between whether they’d play
Grand Theft Auto
or
Carmageddon
on his Playstation. More recently, his decision-making extended to areas like where they’d invest money outside of films, and the laws regulating the grandfathering of land in key parts of LA. Tal may not have always agreed with Connor, but his logic had made them very rich.
 

It was about a half hour walk to the home Tal shared with his cousin Leah. His father had bought the house in the 1980s, after he landed his first few big clients, including Connor’s father John Wilde, star of several successful action movie franchises and frequent tabloid fodder. Their fathers worked together, but had also been friends in many ways, despite their often fiery working relationship. Tal remembered overhearing a number of conversations between his parents over what a dumb asshole Connor’s dad was when he’d insist on doing a stupid space ninja movie, or invest in some sort of pipe dream scheme that wasn’t good enough to make an infomercial for and almost always resulted in lost income.

Connor and his dad, despite a number of physical similarities, were cut from very different cloth. Connor had been investing in the stock market since he was seven, and knew a great deal about strategy after developing an interest in high stakes gains and losses after reading a fairly well-written, but entirely illogical script his father had been sent for
The Art of War
at nine.

Tal rarely disagreed with Connor’s rationales, because he’d seen first-hand how frustratingly right he usually was, and how many steps ahead he thought. He’d made accurate predictions when it came to their takeover, and how almost everything had been handled since then. They’d had disagreements, sure; a lot of them over the years, but when push came to shove, Connor had known what to do to keep himself and those he loved in the lifestyle they’d always been accustomed to, which was a huge challenge with the drastically reduced economic base which they had to draw from.

Tal’s family home was a fairly modest house for the Hills, five bedrooms, three bathrooms, a pool. He’d done what he could to keep it up, relying heavily on a Reader’s Digest home repair book that he’d found on a high shelf in his study, spine uncracked, but like Connor’s place, sometimes things went—a broken window in the second-floor bathroom, a busted element on the stove. They’d never replaced the microwave when it blew up a few years earlier. Maintaining a household was a tricky task: they had the resources to do all the things that needed to be done, but doing them would draw attention to their wealth in a way that was dangerous, especially now. Everyone’s house needed a paint job.
 

“I’ve got everything ready for planting. You missed all the hard work,” Leah said, poking her head around the corner when Tal let himself in, a bright smile on her face. She froze when she saw his expression. “What’s wrong?”

“I can’t do this anymore,” he muttered as he collapsed into his mother’s favourite recliner. “I can’t go and pretend everything’s all right when it’s not.”

Leah slumped down on the couch and smiled sympathetically. “It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be. Everything’s chill. It was just a little riot—”

“You haven’t been to the central coast lately. They’ve got nothing up there, and everything looks like shit, and they work around the clock to supply LA so we have stuff to trade with Asia, for a pittance.” He flopped down beside her. “There’s no balance, and they’re angry. Angrier by the day, and there’s a lot of them.”

“There was never balance before either,” she said quietly. “Don’t be naive. You know that. We’re here, and they’re there, and that’s how it is. Luck, or chance, or whatever.”

Tal shook his head. “We’ve had ten years to right things. We got to start from scratch, and nothing’s changed. We just take and take, and he wants me to try and convince everyone that that’s the right way. They should send us everything, because we entertain them, and because we were born into this life, and they were born into theirs. It’s not going to work forever.”

Leah sighed and frowned at him. “I thought you liked the system. I like the system.”

He nodded and shrugged. “Look where we are. It’s starting to flake away bit by bit, and we’re going to be on the wrong end of it then. It’s the fucking French Revolution all over again, and they’ve found their voice with that family from buttfuck-nowhere Canada.”

“I heard that we lost Vancouver, huh?” She lowered her voice. “I thought that might happen.”

“Campbell scooped them up, without any effort at all. She’s, I guess it’s the girl...she’s doing the opposite of what we’re doing. They’ve got all these social programs, which leaves kids to concern themselves with fun, and life, and all those things we all missed out on when we were young. It’s fucking communism, and you know how that spreads.”

Leah pulled her dark hair back in a ponytail and picked some garden dirt off her hands. She loved the garden. It calmed her, gave her something to work at that was uncomplicated, she’d once told Tal. It was the one thing that she really focused on, the one thing she cared about. She helped out with the movie industry, but pretty casually and unreliably, because she never felt that she got the credit she deserved and Connor wasn’t willing to give it to her. Tal had called her dispassionate more than once, but she always said she was level-headed instead.
 

“What does that mean for us?”

“It means we’d better work something out with the Campbells, or we’re at risk of losing support and that spreads too.” He cradled his head in his hands. “Leah, we’ve got more money than we need. It’s useless if we can’t spend it, or if someone just comes in and takes it.”

She looked up thoughtfully. “You think they’d—”

“Kids...they can’t handle their own stuff. Look at what’s happened in East. It’s fucking militant over there because it’s the only way to maintain order.”

“Everyone’s okay here. I mean, things are looking up. There are lots of jobs, and...” She trailed off, seeing her cousin’s less-than-enthusiastic expression.

“Do you remember early days? How hungry everyone was?” He cringed at the thought. “Not all of them are as lucky as we’ve been and they still remember those years, and things haven’t improved that much. Not enough.”

“They’re not hungry now.”

Tal looked at his cousin and sighed. “I’m not sure of that. Are you sure of that?”

She shook her head. “I guess I just hoped….”

“I’m going with Connor to Vancouver tomorrow. I...” he took a deep breath. “I didn’t want to go, but he kind of insisted.”

“Tomorrow?” Her voice wavered, and then cracked. “You’re going tomorrow?”

He took a deep breath, locked eyes with her and hoped she’d understand, because he couldn’t stand it when she was mad at him. He knew she shouldn’t be alone, on that day of all days. “I have to.”

Leah’s lip tensed and a single tear streamed down her tanned cheek. “Okay. Okay.”

Tal swept it away with his finger, and his hand lingered on her neck for a second too long. “I know...I know what day it is, and I know I should be here, but this...it’s so important. I’ll make it up to you. I promise. Whatever you want. We’ll go to the beach, whatever you want when I’m back.”

Their eyes met and her hand reached for his. He flinched before leaving it in place, as she covered his with hers, interlocking their fingers. She leaned in towards him, smelling of sunshine and dirt from the garden.

He knew what she wanted. His heart beat hard and fast, an almost deafening thud in his head. After every time, he’d said that was it. Convinced himself that the next time he’d say no with conviction. He’d say no and mean it, and that would be it. They’d stop.

Her palm pressed against his, their fingers lining up the same way they had for years, and he curled his around her shorter ones.

“Leah…I...” he stammered, as he found himself flustered and unable to formulate words. He wasn’t like that with anything else. He’d been in negotiations with guns, he’d lived through the riots, helped people get to safety. He wasn’t weak. He was well-respected, a leader amongst his peers.
 

With her, he was someone else entirely. He crumbled.

She placed her finger over his mouth, and shook her head, her dark eyes locked with his in a way that made him embarrassingly hard, without fail. “Come on,” she whispered, licking her lips ever so slightly.
 

“We shouldn't,” Tal said, swallowing, as she moved closer, her other hand relocating to his chest, as if to encourage his heart to beat even more erratically. “We know that.”

She shrugged ever so subtly and sighed. “Tal, I think we’re past the point of preaching morality.”

“We need to stop,” he murmured, as he pulled his cousin to her feet. “And you know why, and you know it’s true.”

The repercussions of what they did ate away at him. Devoured his self-image.
 

Her hands moved to his cheeks, gently cradling them before she pressed her lips firmly against his. He froze for a moment, like he always did, his stomach churning, leaving him feeling both aroused and nauseated at the same time. It was hard to believe ten years had passed. To Tal, sometimes it felt like a lifetime, and sometimes it felt like the day before. At thirteen, the first time they’d done it, they’d been broken, having lived more life than they had ever aspired to in ninety or a hundred years. It had started with only a lingering touch on that night too, but by the time they’d passed out after finishing a bottle of wine, their relationship was changed irreparably.
 

Ten years later, they’d both come and gone, spent time with other people, but never let the other go entirely. Their relationship was a security blanket of sorts, Tal recognized. Something familiar. Something twisted that filled him with self-loathing and disgust, but held nostalgic appeal. Knowing that, and giving Leah up, however, were two very different things. He didn’t want her with anyone else. Didn’t want anyone else touching her, sharing the things they shared. The only time he’d ever hurt someone had involved Leah.

He pulled her close to him and deepened the kiss, backing her against the fridge as he peeled off her sticky tank-top, revealing new tan lines from her time in the garden, her small breasts, pink nipples, and the navel ring she’d given herself at sixteen. He tossed the shirt aside, his eyes darkening to match hers as they separated briefly and wordlessly revealed their shared intentions. Leah paused for the briefest moment before sprinting towards Tal’s bedroom, the room formerly occupied by his parents at the far corner of the house. He followed, pursuing her through the house at breakneck speed, knocking over a small table in the upstairs hallway before tackling her onto his bed, both of them breathless and flushed.