Heat and Light (34 page)

“And tell him enough is enough!”

And tell him enough is enough!

The actor bounds from the stage to shouts and whistles, a controlled roar of applause. Music pours from the loudspeakers, the loping rhythm and bright upbeats of what might as well be the only reggae song ever recorded.
Get up, stand up. Stand up for your rights
.

“Now what?” Rena shouts over the noise. “It's over?” Across the quad, two Jews for Jesus are folding up their table. The drumming circle piles into a Dodge Caravan.

“Looks that way,” Lorne says.

“Maybe we should get on the road,” she says, not because she wants to. Because Mack, because her whole life, is waiting.

“Not yet,” he says. “There's someone I need to see.”

THE EARTH SCIENCES BUILDING
is tall and sky lit, filled with sunlight. Lorne Trexler crosses the hallway to study the directory, an alphabetical listing affixed to the wall.
Dr. Amy Rubin, Associate Professor of Geology.

At that moment, across the lobby, doors open. Amy Rubin steps out of the elevator, rubbing at her blouse with a napkin. She looks stunned to see him, stupefied: the mute peasant girl in a Balkan village who sees the face of the Virgin floating in a cloud bank, or burnt into a slice of toast.

“Unbelievable. It's like you sensed I was in the building. Some unseen force pulled you into the elevator and delivered you to me like a pizza.” Lorne treats her to the slow smile she once loved and later hated. “Hi, Rubin.”

“What are you doing here?” It takes her a moment to collect herself. Because this doesn't happen every day, your past coming to find you. The fuse that started everything, the blast that birthed the world.

He's aged, no question. His hair, still long, is more gray than black. The lines around his eyes are new, the deep grooves from nose to mouth. And yet Lorne will never be old to her. She sees him as he once was, an involuntary parallax. It's all that's left of her adolescent infatuation, this glitch in her vision, a reflexive generosity he doesn't deserve.

“Oh, right,” she says. “The protest.”

“You saw it?”

“For a second.” She is miserably aware of the coffee stain spread across her sternum, the reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck.

“Pretty good turnout, for the first day of classes. We had at least a thousand people.”

“You organized it?”

“That would be overstating. I gave some advice here and there.” Lorne tips back his head and stares up at the vaulted ceiling. He whistles low like a rube in the city, a broad pantomime of looking. “Some digs you've got here, Rubin. You must have generous benefactors.”

“So you've said.”

A silence.

“I saw your letter to the editor,” she says, because why pretend? “How did you phrase it?
Calamitous effects on the integrity of scientific inquiry
?”

“A direct quote. I'm flattered.”

“Dr. Rubin's corporate underwriters have a direct financial stake in the outcome of her research.”

“Tell me I'm wrong. Bearing in mind that we're standing in the Oliphant Earth Sciences Center. I drove up here today with a dairy farmer from Saxon County. She's waiting for me in the student union. You ought to come and meet her. Her cows are grazing downhill from a well contaminated by Dark Elephant. Small world, no?” He studies her. “You look good, Rubin. Corporate skullduggery suits you.”

The comment is pure Lorne: first the caress, then the wallop. Somehow, Amy forgot this.

“You know nothing about my life.”

“I beg to differ. That first paper on the Marcellus was quality work. Don't look so surprised. I've been following your career—lately, with a kind of morbid fascination.” He takes a step toward her. “I can accept that you're a lost cause, but what is this saying to the next generation? I met some of your students today. Despite your uninspiring example, they still believe they can make a difference.”

Amy thinks, Get a haircut.

“Oh,
that's
what you're doing! Shaping the next generation. Like you did with me.”

“I seem to recall you had a hand in that.”

It's true, of course. She knocked at his door.

“I was nineteen.”

“People go to war at nineteen, make babies at nineteen. It's fashionable, now, to treat them like helpless children, but that's ahistorical. I looked for you at the rally,” he says. “I figured you'd at least come check it out. Weren't you even curious?”

“Please. I've seen demonstrations before. Last fall we had a couple hundred Occupiers sleeping in cardboard boxes. Apparently it's what democracy looks like.”

“What's happened to you? They say the eyes are the first thing to go”—he glances meaningfully at the reading glasses—“but I say it's curiosity. People hit middle age and they stop questioning. That's aging. That's the beginning of the end.”

“
Questioning
? Give me a break. You figured out the world in 1979, at a Grateful Dead show probably, and haven't questioned anything since. Well, demonstrate all you want, if it makes you feel righteous. But trust me, that's the only benefit.”

“
Rubin.
Read the papers, will you? There is concerted, organized opposition in this state, and it's been remarkably effective. New York has a moratorium on drilling, the last time I checked.”

“And Pennsylvania?”

In the tall vaulted foyer of the Oliphant Earth Sciences Center, a satisfying silence.

“Pennsylvania is a conundrum,” he admits. “Pennsylvania makes no fucking sense.”

“Well, let me enlighten you.” Amy's heart races pleasantly; there is pleasure in this. Oftener than she'd ever admit, she has practiced this speech in her head. “You're so busy being right that you refuse to acknowledge a basic fact. Which is:
People want this.
”

“People are idiots,” he snaps.

Aha!
she thinks. Lorne Trexler the famous populist, champion of the working classes until they dare to disagree with him.

“That's a heartwarming sentiment. But before you dismiss the entire population of Pennsylvania, at least consider the possibility that they know something you don't.”

“Which you're going to explain to me,” says Lorne.

“Good God, somebody should.” Her voice echoes in the cavernous space. “Has it occurred to you that virtually every dollar that's ever come into Pennsylvania is an energy dollar?”

“You're exaggerating.”

“Yes, but not much. Even Beth Steel would never have set up shop there, if it weren't for the coal.”

“Beth Steel?
That's
your argument? Jesus, look how well that turned out.”

“But it
di
d
! It did until it didn't. Nothing lasts forever.” Not youth or love or wonder, not anything.

Once, long ago, she knocked at his door.

“Look, it's got to come from somewhere,” she says wearily. “You taught me that. So what's the alternative? Keep on burning coal?”

“That's a spurious argument and you know it. Drilling the Marcellus is costing billions. If we invested
half
that much in renewables, we'd have a permanent solution to this mess instead of swapping one fossil fuel addiction for another. Gas is no more sustainable than coal or oil. At best, we're postponing the inevitable.”

“Life
is postponing the inevitable.”

They stare at each other across a wide chasm, a frozen lake of incalculable depth, the scene of a mortal accident: the drowning of Amy Rubin, her youthful idealism, the way she once loved him. Her young self is possibly still down there, trapped beneath the ice.

“Lorne, this is bigger than all of us. You can't stop it. Nobody can, when there's this much money involved.”

“My God, you're cynical.”

“I'd like to know what world you live in, if you're not.”

A silence.

“It's not a perfect technology,” she admits. “I know that. Everyone knows that.”

“Not everyone. Every day I meet people who sign leases and have no idea what they're in for. That's what we're fighting against. We won't change everybody's mind, but we can make sure they know the facts. That's my mission.” Again the slow smile. “What's your mission, Rubin? And don't give me that I'm-a-scientist crap. I didn't just roll off the turnip cart.”

“I don't have a mission.”

And there it lies, the fundamental difference between them. The way other people believe in Allah or Jesus, Lorne Trexler believes in his own power, his ability to affect outcomes. Amy has a sudden vision of him twenty years older, a hippie in his dotage, still fighting battles long ago lost, or long ago won.

The outcomes have already been decided.

The collision of large forces, or their collusion. The machine that can't be stopped.

T
he point of dynamism moves inexorably. Only its wake is discernible, the atmospheric waves and eddies. Kip Oliphant is living, now, in the divorce apartment, the furnished penthouse suite of Gulf Vista. Ten years ago it was the best address in Houston—thirty glittering stories of mirrored office tower, built in the boom years when the sky rained money. Now Gulf Vista stands nearly empty, a bleak lesson in the laws of the universe, the unseen, inexorable workings of the game.

Seasons of fortune and decay.

In the divorce apartment—the apartment associated with this particular divorce—he begins each day precisely as he did when married, with the 24 Hour News Network.

His hunger for news is reflexive, insistent. It rouses him like a morning erection. He reads the paper while listening to the TV, a habit his last wife found confounding:
All that bad news first thing in the morning! It's so depressing.
In eleven years of marriage, Gretchen had failed to grasp a basic reality: sleep, to Kip, was unwelcome. After five hours he woke in a blind panic, as though he'd dozed off behind the wheel. An infusion of news was then necessary, an immediate debriefing on all he'd missed during his regrettable nightly lapse.

“America's middle class has endured its worst decade in modern history, according to the Pew Research Center.” The morning anchor, Meredith Culver, wears a tailored jacket with a camisole
underneath, as though she's come straight from her boudoir. Her mouth is her most notable feature—blossom-shaped, plump as fruit.

He ignores the cell phone ringing in his pocket.

A weather forecast crawls across the bottom of the screen: sunny in Kansas City, tornado warnings in Omaha.

Kip attacks his
Chronicle,
rearranging the sections in order of interest: Business, National, everything else. He has a habit of marrying the wrong kind of woman. Next time he'll choose one interested in the world, a Meredith Culver type. He puts down his paper and studies the face on the screen—the dewy skin, the tumescent mouth. The camisole is silky and wine colored, the same shade as her lips. She is a product of the 24 Hour News Network, native to the studio, conceived and raised there. Kip imagines her a precocious child, an awkward teenager, coming of age against the vibrant blue background, clear and luminous as a desert sky at dawn.

Seattle is reporting rain.

The crawl at the bottom of the screen turns from blue to red. His tech stocks are up, his Intel and Apple. He watches the crawl, waiting for the number.

That mouth could sell lip gloss or toothpaste.

His cell phone rings and rings.

Finally the number comes crawling. Dark Elephant is trading at twenty-two dollars a share.

“Son of a bitch,” Kip says aloud.

From the high windows of the divorce apartment, he watches calamity rain down.

SEASONS OF FORTUNE AND DECAY.
The weather changes with little warning. Kip has learned to look for signs, like an Old Testament seer dreaming of wheat.

The current season began two months ago, disgustingly. A backed-up toilet was the harbinger of his doom.

More than he misses his ex-wife, Kip misses his ex-bathroom,
the granite-and-marble temple designed to his exact specifications: halogen lighting, heated floors and towel racks; a glass-enclosed spa with six showerheads aimed strategically (a vision he described to the architect by telephone, while driving through an automated car wash). Opposite the spa sat the bathroom's showpiece, a limited-edition angular toilet, the signature design of an Italian sculptor with a three-year waiting list—Enrico Scarpacci, toiletmaker to the stars. Kip's Scarpacci has been featured in swank design magazines:
Houston Living, Urban Homestead.
Visitors to the house regularly asked to see it. Like a marble saint of the High Renaissance, the Scarpacci sat majestically in a recessed apse, beneath a custom-built arch that mirrored the tank's contours.

Two months ago, on a Tuesday morning, Kip had flushed thoughtlessly. Looking back, he is touched by his own innocence. He flushed in pure naïve faith, never imagining the ruinous chain of events he was about to unleash.

Beginning, horribly, with the befouling of his personal sanctuary.
Plumber!
he shouted to no one in particular.
Somebody call a plumber!

Already running late, he closed the door on the mess and ducked into his wife's bathroom, where every surface was littered with female clutter, as though a high-end hair salon had been devastated by an earthquake.

Spitting out his toothpaste, he noticed, at the edge of the sink, a plastic compact of birth control pills.

He found Gretchen in the sunroom running on the StairMaster. He'd bought her a half-dozen new cardio machines over the years, but she always went back to the StairMaster, which delivered a more unpleasant and thus more effective workout.

“What are these?” he demanded.

His wife was flushed with guilt or, perhaps, simple exertion. The machine was at its highest setting. “My pills. What were you doing in my bathroom?”

“Never mind that. Why did I get a vasectomy, if you're taking pills?” He was so angry he could barely speak. The procedure had nearly killed him, his balls swollen grapefruit-size by a freak infection. Ten years later, the misery and indignity were still fresh.

“I was nursing Allie then. I couldn't take them.”

“Why do you need them?”

She explained that the pills improved her complexion. Also, they made her boobs bigger.

“Your boobs are fake,” Kip said.

Which, honestly, was a matter of record: Kip had paid for the surgery himself. None of it made sense until, a few days later, he viewed the footage, shot from a hidden camera. Years ago, when Allie was small, the sunroom had been her playroom. The security system was installed at Gretchen's insistence, so she could keep an eye on the revolving cast of nannies who came and went. The system was fully automated. They had simply never bothered to turn it off.

The footage was a little grainy. Kip didn't, at first, recognize Gretchen's trainer. He barely recognized Gretchen herself, naked except for socks and sneakers, awkwardly straddling a weight-training bench.

Now, in the divorce apartment, his cell phone rings and rings. Kip glances at the display: his broker, Taffy Campbell. It's only 7:00
A.M
. in New York, which implies some urgency.

He hits the Ignore button.

In the current cycle, it's wise to stop and think before picking up the phone.

“SUING ME,” HE REPEATS DUMBLY.
“What do you mean, suing me?”

He is sitting in the downtown offices of Mahenny, Garner and Bunch. His attorney—known to the wide world as Piggy—hands over a sheaf of paper.

“Not you. Dark Elephant.”

“I
am
Dark Elephant.”

“Not legally, you're not, praise the Lord. Or praise me, if you are so inclined.”

Kip scans the paper. The print swims before his eyes. “What am I looking at, Pig?”

“In a nutshell? This group of shareholders is claiming that you—that Dark Elephant—overstated the value of some acreage in Arkansas.”

Kip stares in disbelief. “I made these people a fortune.”

“They don't see it that way. They see you playing fast and loose with their money, is what they see.”

“MY MONEY TOO!” he shouts. “I never asked anybody to take a risk I wouldn't take myself.”

“Don't get excited.”

“What's this going to cost me?”

Piggy reaches into the desk for his tin of lemon drops, a nervous habit. “Nothing, I hope. In your current situation you can't afford it. How's the divorce going?”

“Better than the last one.” Last time Piggy had recommended a lady lawyer:
You'll do better with female counsel.
By the time it was all over, Kip had lost a Mercedes, a Land Rover, and one of his houses. With male counsel, would the judge have taken his teeth?

“I hate to kick a man when he's down, but there's more bad news. Water problems up in Pennsylvania. Also, a group of shareholders is claiming you've been using the company jets improperly.”

“Horseshit,” Kip says.

“That's your official position? Because I'm here to tell you, it may be untenable. They have proof.”

“Of what?”

“In an unfortunate confluence of events, there is a separate complaint.”

Kip sinks low in his chair. “Just give it to me, Pig. Don't make me guess.”

“The incident in question happened on a flight to Bermuda. The plaintiff is Megan Somebody. Ring any bells?”

“Bermuda?” Then, suddenly, Kip remembers: last spring Gretchen had thrown a bridal shower there for one of her friends.

“That one's a personal injury suit. Facial disfiguration.”

“What?”

“According to the complaint, this lady was having an injection in her face aboard a Dark Elephant company jet. I guess they hit some turbulence. You're a codefendant, along with something called Serenity Day Spa.”

“Fine. Let her sue.” Lawsuits do not rattle him. He's been sued for breach of contract, for nonpayment. He's been sued by six separate municipalities in the state of Texas, and for divorce by four separate wives.

“I'm not so worried about that one. That one we can probably settle for cheap. But the shareholders—” Piggy hesitates. “It's worse than you think, Whip. They've named you in the suit. They're going after your personal assets.”

Kip is dumbfounded, stung by the ingratitude. Men who'd made their fortunes off his nerve and hard work, his unerring instinct, his willingness to imperil himself. For two years, nearly three, they had bathed in money.

“You'll need counsel,” Piggy says. “Technically I represent Dark Elephant. I can't represent you personally. Jill could do it.”

Another lady lawyer.

“No, thank you,” Kip says.

“Also, you're carrying a lot of debt.”

“Me-me? Or Dark Elephant-me?”

“Both,” Piggy says. “I warned you about this. All those new wells are costing you a fortune. You-you.”

“I know it.” The Columbus Clause had been Kip's own invention, a provision unheard of in the industry. Piggy had groused about it, but in the end wrote the language into Kip's contract, a
clause that let him buy a two percent share in every Dark Elephant well. The terms are simple, elegant. Two percent of the operating costs come out of his own pocket. In return, he gets two percent of revenue when the well comes in. His instinct and ingenuity, his unflinching nerve, have made fortunes for other people. It seems only fair that he keep a little for himself.

“You need cash, amigo. No two ways about it.”

Rigs to maintain, supplies to buy, crews to pay. Two percent of expenses doesn't sound like much, until you drill five or ten thousand wells.

Kip says, “Let me make some calls.”

AT WORK HE STEPS LIGHTLY.
His stepfather's office, on the eighth floor, is serviced by a high-speed elevator. Kip takes the stairs. It seems prudent, even with Dar out on sick leave, to avoid the executive washroom, the company cafeteria, anyplace his stepfather is likely to go.

“You're out of breath.” Kip's secretary eyes him up and down. “Dar is looking for you.”

In his pocket the cell phone vibrates.

“I know it,” Kip calls over his shoulder. “Tell him I'll catch him later.”

He turns the corner to his office and sees, too late, Dar sitting behind his desk.

“Catch me now.”

Kip manages a weak smile. “Hey, stranger. What are you doing here?”

“Aging.”

“Sorry. I was just over to Piggy's. You're looking good.”

Dar looks like hell. Last week he keeled over on the golf course, surprising no one. The actual surprise came later—his death implausibly postponed by an emergency angioplasty, unsettling all who knew him, Kip's mother especially.

“Don't give me that.” Dar clutches his side. A girdle of bandage is visible between his shirt buttons. The paramedic who administered CPR broke two of his ribs. “We need to pull the plug on Pennsylvania. For now, anyway. The bubble has burst.”

“You can't be serious.”

“You see me laughing? It's been a long time coming, buddy. I've given you plenty of rope.”

“You're talking about a third of our business. You can't kill it just like that.”

“Watch me.” Dar eyes him levelly. His left one looks milky, the beginnings of a cataract. “I would've done it a week ago, but I been otherwise occupied.”

“You got a good scare.” Kip lowers his voice, a trick that sometimes works with horses. “I understand that. Don't let it make you lose your nerve.”

“Nerve's got nothing to do with it. These Marcellus wells are putting me in the poorhouse. I blame myself. I never should have let you run off half-cocked.” Again Dar clutches his side. “Time to circle the wagons, buddy. Get back to our core business.”

Kip says, “Oil's in the toilet.”

“It'll come back. Always does.”

“Gas will come back, too. I made you a lot of money, Dar.”

“Cost me plenty, too.”

Kip thinks,
You are not my father.

HE IS DRIVING AWAY
from the office when the phone rings.

“Here's the situation.” Taffy Campbell speaks at the speed of a cattle auctioneer. “You are fatally undercapitalized. With Dark Elephant trading at twenty-two, your shares don't have enough value to back a loan of this magnitude.”

“Give me a week,” says Kip. “One godblessed week. I guarantee that number is going up.”

“There are no more weeks. I need cash now, or I'm going to have to sell your stock. We're out of options.”

Kip swerves into the passing lane.

“We talked about this,” says Taffy. “I warned you this could happen.”