Kingdom (29 page)

He heard Meghan laughing and when he looked up, he saw her sprinting off the beach, towel pressed to her chest with one hand, waving his shorts like a captured flag with the other.

Dylan sat on the shore for a minute, naked, catching his breath as he watched her go. Then he rose to his feet, shaking himself dry before sprinting up the path after her. Halfway to the house, he heard the outdoor shower kick on, the pipes rumbling and groaning, years of rust falling away, their purpose restored. And then he was opening the door to the shower, his cock growing hard at the sight of Meghan, naked, her back turned to him, running
her fingers through her hair as the dual shower heads blasted away the salt and sand. He started kissing her neck, his hands reaching around, squeezing her tits. With one hand, she braced herself against the stained cedar walls; with the other, she reached between her legs and, grabbing his cock, guided him inside of her, her breath catching as he pushed deeper, steam rising out of the shower like an offering to the fading afternoon sun.

For the next week, Dylan and Meghan stayed at the house: They went for runs along the water in the morning, swam in the afternoon, sat out on the beach until long after the sun had vanished in a flare of red. They read some of the old books stashed throughout the house; watched old movies when thunderstorms rolled through:
Ghostbusters, Caddyshack, Top Gun
. They found a case of Veuve Clicquot in the basement next to the washer and dryer and drank entire bottles at night, making love on the living room floor, on the dining room table, in Dylan’s old bed. They got sunburned. They left the door to the master bedroom shut.

Meghan brought the kitchen back to life, dusting off pots and pans that had been dormant for the last decade. They bought groceries in town and cooking smells—bread baking in the oven, steak on the grill—began gradually to replace mildew and decay. When Meghan cooked, Dylan would landscape, raiding the garage for equipment that, despite the cobwebs and rust, was still in decent shape. Someone had arranged for a service to tend the property, but the effort was half-assed at best: It probably didn’t take the landscapers very long to figure out nobody was paying attention. So Dylan laid siege to the overgrown oak trees and the branches scraping the side of his father’s house, to the weeds choking his mother’s garden, ripping them out until his fingers bled. He even found a ladder and, with Meghan holding the base steady, he climbed onto the roof, tossing off clumps of rotting leaves, plunging his hands into the gutters, cold murky water up to his wrists as he scooped out the black sludge that, when it rained, would spill down the side of the house, leaving black streaks in its wake.

Dylan felt his body mending, growing stronger by the day, the damage from the overdose fading like his sunburn.

Dylan said, “I feel good.”

Meghan said, “You look better.”

“Better than what?” he asked.

“Just better,” she said.

Neither one of them mentioned his nightmares, or the fact that when they let go of one another he would lay awake for hours, sweating as he listened to the house shift and groan, his mind racing, wondering why his father killed himself—not the reason he was given but the real reason, the truth he knew was out there—and considering the dozens of things he was convinced he could have done to prevent his mother’s death, the past pressing down on him with such intensity that his chest would constrict and he would shoot upright in bed, gasping for breath and scaring the shit out of Meghan.

“I’ve got some issues,” Dylan said.

“You buried your mom a few weeks ago. Give it time,” Meghan replied.

But the champagne was running low and a cold front swept up the coast: It rained for three days straight and Dylan began to feel restless. He started wandering the halls of the house at night, after Meghan fell asleep, talking to himself, to his father’s ghost. One morning, Meghan found him passed out on the floor of the master bedroom: The lock had been smashed but he couldn’t remember if he had done it—let alone how or why.

“You must have done it,” Meghan said. “How else did you get in?”

Dylan frowned. He could feel the house coming back to life: pipes and wiring resurrected; wood and stone and steel reborn. Maybe he had spoken to his father last night; maybe it was just another nightmare.

The next morning it had stopped raining but the beach remained raw and damp. Gulls wheeled through the sky, their cries echoing off the empty beach. As they sat atop one of the dunes, staring toward the horizon, the last bottle of champagne wedged in the sand between them, Dylan turned to Meghan and said, “It’s time.”

The Journal of Senator Robert Fitzgerald
Excerpt # 5

To Dylan,

My relationship with Michael Morrison is unusual to say the least. He was the force behind my decision to enter politics; he and his company, Morrison Biotechnology, have funneled millions of dollars to my campaign over the years. He has legions of consultants, spin doctors, and security personnel, all of whom have played a massive role in the not only my success, but in the rise of the Progress Party as well.

But Morrison also plays another role. In my previous letter I mentioned that, after the incident in the limo, once I was aboard the helicopter, I received an injection from one of Morrison’s security personnel. This wasn’t a mere sedative—for years now, Morrison and his team have been working to help me control these attacks, these meltdowns. I routinely travel to New Mexico, to Morrison Biotech HQ where Morrison runs extensive tests on me—I am unique, he tells me. I ask him for specifics but all he will say is that more tests are needed. I’ve sought other opinions, but other doctors just advise me to get a little more rest; I’m just working too hard they tell me. But otherwise, the consensus is unanimous: I am the model of physical health. And yet, I feel like every fiber of my being is unraveling, disintegrating. And so I will continue to work with Morrison, continue to allow him to run his tests. The injections he provides seem capable of warding off madness at least temporarily, so I will continue with those as well.

Why am I burdening you with this knowledge? My blood runs through your veins and I fear that whatever it is that has left me so isolated from my fellow man, from my wife and child, may come to torment you as well. I want you to be aware that there is something else out there—something beyond the immediate physical world, something I can apprehend but cannot ever truly experience. This is my condition. It has no name and I can only pray it has not passed on to you.

Love,
Your Father

Tiber City
Sept. 11, 2015
11:29 a.m.

S
itting in the backseat of a idling Mercedes SX in an alley next to Tiber City’s Museum of Modern Art, Morrison could feel the entire city humming with anticipation—an expectancy fueled by days of Internet rumors, rampant message board speculation, and the ever-amorphous “industry buzz.” Such expectations, for Morrison, were only natural: The last time Morrison Biotechnology held a similar black tie gala for investors, senior researchers, and management, its CEO announced the development of an AIDS vaccine.

The Tiber City Museum of Modern Art was a monument to Bauhaus architectural egoism. Devoid of any decorative details like cornices or eaves, the eight-story building was a concrete maze of smooth, hyper-hygienic facades and nondescript cubic shapes. The color scheme was a blur of whites and grays, beiges and blacks, blending each room into the next, the parade of monotones interrupted only by the occasional red splashed across a canvas. The décor’s purism appealed to something at the center of Morrison’s being: The emphasis on straight edges; smooth, slim forms; and uber-functional shining steel furniture sprinkled between exhibits seemed the architectural
embodiment of the city’s present drift into numbing, anesthetized nothing. It was, in Morrison’s opinion, the perfect setting for tonight’s presentation.

Yet, Morrison had chosen the Tiber City MOMA not only for its aesthetic but also for its penthouse-level ballroom, which was home to the world’s largest collection of Zero Movement art. It was in this ballroom, surrounded by the Zero collection, where Morrison would make his announcement.

Stepping out of the car’s climate-controlled interior onto the concrete, the door held open for him by a giant piece of muscle stuffed into an expensive black suit, Morrison was enveloped by four additional security guards who escorted him the two dozen or so feet from the idling car to the back entrance of the museum. Morrison’s security team had swept the immediate area several times over the past two hours, purging the blocks surrounding the museum of its tiny homeless population.

The rest of the neighborhood—expensive brownstone co-ops inhabited by yuppie trustafarians; an overpriced organic market whose profits were driven by “herbal supplements” produced by a subsidiary of Morrison Biotech; a bank that despite having changed names three times since its construction in 1998 sought to convey a sense of timeless dependability with its entrance framed by two massive stone columns—seemed to pose little threat, but snipers lined the roof just the same. Plainclothes operatives, armed to the teeth, roamed the storefronts and coffee shops, studying the population for any potential problems. While annoying, such draconian security measures had become necessary—the number of credible death threats against Morrison continued to spike. And although Morrison had enough men on the ground to neutralize any assassination attempts by rival corporations—Japan’s Optika Group, for example, seemed to consider such tactics a necessary component of the mergers and acquisitions process—given the importance of this evening’s proceedings, the extra precautions seemed prudent.

Taking one final glance over his shoulder, his eyes seeking out the horizon where the sun had begun its final descent and the skyscrapers and spotlights were already bursting to life, Morrison felt like the air was a living thing—as though there were so much information coursing through the atmosphere it had coagulated and taken on a texture, a weight, an
identity
of its own. And as this weight pressed down on the city, driving its inhabitants mad, Michael Morrison couldn’t help but smile: This was his kingdom. And
then he was gone, disappearing into the back of the museum as his security agents continued to swarm, preparing for the arrival of yet another VIP.

Standing alone in the museum’s control room, Morrison watched as footage from a series of security cameras played back across several large monitors—his guests had begun to arrive. He had invited most of his top-level staff: the dozen or so vice presidents and directors of various corporate subdivisions, his senior research staff, and, most important, his communications people—those masters of media and spin who, each time the company’s research facilities shattered another natural barrier, convinced the world there was nothing to fear. It was rare for Morrison to gather his people together like this: He only did so on special occasions. And tonight was a very special occasion indeed.

The footage continued to stream across the monitors, transmitting video of Morrison’s employees filtering from the reception in the lobby, up the elevators, and into the penthouse-level ballroom. The room was huge, with vast stretches of shiny hardwood flooring running from end to end, interrupted only by a series of sculptures, collections of metal, fiber optics, and circuit boards twisted together and scattered seemingly at random across the floor. Waiters in tuxedos carried trays of hors d’oeuvres—salmon, foie gras, fatty tuna sushi—all shaped to resemble DNA helixes, as electronic lounge music pulsed low in the background, snaking its way across the room, its only competition the sound of heels echoing off the hardwood, the clinking of champagne flutes, and the subdued roar of human social interaction: greetings, introductions, acknowledgements, pleasantries, speculation on the purpose of the evening. All of these details, however, were mere footnotes compared to the ballroom’s walls.