New Year Island (5 page)

She refused to let it have any power over her now.

For the next couple of weeks, the bridge would be a nonissue anyway. Feeling the thrill of anticipation, she scanned her tidy kitchen, the living room with its stylish urban-loft decor, and the cozy, inviting bedroom. Everything was in its place, and she would be seeing it again soon enough.

Work-wise, the timing was perfect, too. They were in postproduction right now. Besides, she had just turned thirty. She grinned back at the clown fish. A little adventure was exactly what she needed.

She looked at the figurines on her shelf: a red-haired cowgirl, a spaceman, a one-eyed green monster, a lovable boxy robot.
Wish me luck, old friends.
Camilla sometimes wondered if her attachment to these cartoon characters was entirely healthy, but it made sense to her. When she was a child, their Disney predecessors had helped her through some dark years.

On the wall above the figurines, the clown fish watched her from the glossy movie poster, surrounded by his underwater friends. Signatures from her production crew crawled around the margins. She had another poster from the same movie, but she had taken it down because the grinning shark startled too many visitors. Her brand-new award, the crystal Anglepoise lamp, now held pride of place in the center of the shelf.

Camilla loved her apartment. Still, living in the city did have its stresses. The headlines this morning had been the usual grim litany: a carjacking, another prostitute gone missing, a police shooting, a killer stalking women, financial irregularities in the mayor’s campaign. It would be nice to get away for a little while.

She slid her jacket on and grabbed the handle of her rolling travel bag. Then she picked up the invitation, in its embossed envelope, from the counter.

• • •

Riding in the cab, Camilla felt a prickle of unease. The driver was heading away from the water, up Divisadero. She had expected to stay on Bay Street and curve along the waterfront. According to the news, three local women had disappeared recently… But on a Friday evening, the waterfront would be jammed with pedestrians, and it was almost the same distance either way. She watched to make sure the driver turned on Geary, then relaxed, sliding the invitation out of the envelope again.

A contestant in a reality show? Not really something she had ever imagined doing.

Camilla watched reality shows occasionally—the better ones, anyway. She was always amazed by the dumb mistakes people made, the way they alienated their peers. With her talent for teambuilding, she would make a killer contestant. Some of those shows were pure trash, though. If she smelled even a whiff of tacky, she was out of there.

The letter did not seem tacky at all. Its linen cardstock and embossing looked expensive, like a trendsetter’s wedding invitation. Also, the enclosed five-thousand-dollar check had put some of her doubts about its legitimacy to rest. The money had raised other questions, though. Camilla tucked her hair behind her ear and read the letter again:

Dear Ms. Becker,

Please accept this invitation to join us as a possible contestant cast member when we reveal the details of our flagship reality entertainment project on Friday, December 21, 2012. The event will be held aboard our yacht,
Leviathan
, departing at 4:00 p.m. from the America’s Cup Village Marina, Pier 18, in San Francisco.

The invitation is undoubtedly a surprise. Rest assured that you were not chosen arbitrarily. Vita Brevis Entertainment is a new studio—an independent venture backed by leading industry players. We’ve dedicated a lot of research and effort into finding the ideal mix of contestant skill sets for our show, which is a team-oriented competition. We believe that you are an excellent prospect because of your specific skills and other qualifications.

We applaud your charitable work with orphans. The competition’s grand prize is a significant sum. Should you win, we will make a matching grant to your foundation as well. Even if you don’t win, Vita Brevis will dedicate helpful publicity to your foundation’s efforts.

Naturally, you bear no obligation to Vita Brevis Entertainment. You may attend this event and listen to the details of the show, and then choose either to accept or to decline further participation. If you do commit, you will be sequestered along with your fellow cast members for up to two weeks during the recording of the show.

The enclosed check also comes with no obligation. Even if we never hear back from you, the money is yours. Consider it a thank-you for taking the time to consider this opportunity. And also for your absolute discretion, which we humbly request: For competitive reasons, we ask that you do not reveal the fact of this invitation to anyone else.

We hope to see you aboard the
Leviathan
this Friday. All will be made clear then. Please bring with you clothing and toiletries sufficient for a few days.

Very truly yours,

Julian Price
Vita Brevis Entertainment

Camilla looked out the cab window. Sleazeball recruitment tactic maybe? Industrial espionage by one of the big studios? She pursed her lips, amused.

As if.
She wasn’t some starry-eyed intern who would get drunk and discuss her company’s release road map. But she didn’t think that was what this was about. Five thousand wasn’t chump change, but it was too little to be an attempted bribe. The invitation was probably real. Still, she would go in with both eyes open.

The part about “team-oriented competition” told her they had zeroed in on her real talent. That seemed a little odd for a reality show. Creepy, even. She tapped the invitation against her knee, thinking. How had they found her in the first place?

A background search of Vita Brevis Entertainment had come up blank. No surprise there—major studios often launched their riskier ventures this way, creating separate labels for them at first. The studios did it to protect their established brands in case the venture failed—especially with the edgier stuff. The “leading industry players” behind Vita Brevis would stay unidentified—until the show was a success.

Camilla knocked on the glass divider. “Gough, then Golden Gate onto Sixth, and down Folsom,” she said to head off any scenic-route meter padding. The driver tilted his head to listen, then nodded.

Camilla considered the invitation’s vague wording again. A worm of discomfort wriggled through her thoughts. What were her “other qualifications”?

The cab cut across Market Street, headed down Sixth, then turned onto Folsom. Camilla monitored the cab’s route absently, still deep in thought. She looked up as they passed the white concrete facade of Moscone Convention Center.

Survivor.

Her heart gave an ugly jolt.
What?
The word had leaped out at her from somewhere, snagging in her subconscious.

Pulse slowing again, she scanned the signs announcing convention events. The headline “2012 American Psychological Association Meeting” stood out in large bold letters. She spotted the word, lurking underneath, where it loomed from the title of an event listed for today’s date: “The Survivor Personality, 3:30 p.m. Lecture open to the public.”

No thanks, I’m good.
Camilla felt the skin on her arms tighten.
We’ve got that subject pretty well covered.

She turned her head. She wouldn’t let it spoil her mood. And then they were approaching Embarcadero, the bay sparkling before them and the Bay Bridge stretching away overhead to the right.

At the stoplight on Embarcadero, her eye was suddenly drawn to a family on the wide promenade sidewalk. The mom was holding a to-go latte in one hand and her phone with the other, talking into it, distracted. Her latte hand rested on the handle of an infant stroller. But it was the other child, maybe 3 years old, who had caught Camilla’s attention. The boy was pulling at his mom’s sleeve and pointing across the street, bouncing with excitement. Camilla’s pulse accelerated.

She was already reaching for the door handle when the boy dashed into traffic.

Horns blared. Brakes squealed. She threw open the door and levered herself out of the cab.

The boy stood frozen in the middle of the street, scared now.

A big gray truck was headed for the intersection, going too fast.

The mother screamed.

Camilla ran.

The boy stood directly in the truck’s path.

She wouldn’t reach him in time.

Something black buzzed past Camilla with an angry metallic snarl. It flashed across the path of the oncoming truck, right where the boy stood. A half-second later, the warm air from the truck’s passing blew Camilla’s hair back. She stumbled to a halt. With a scream of brakes, the truck slid to a stop a hundred feet farther up the lane of traffic. Her heart racing, she stared at the spot where the boy had been. He was gone. Then her eyes tracked farther, to where the black shape had stopped on the sidewalk.

It was a motorcycle. One of those high-tech racing-style ones, wrapped in glossy black fiberglass. Its motor burbled, now idling. The rider turned sideways, still astride the motorcycle, and handed the terrified boy to a startled passerby. He—it had to be a he—wore a one-piece black leather racing outfit. The full-face helmet swiveled toward her. She couldn’t make out the rider’s expression through the tinted face mask.

Camilla realized that her jaw was hanging open. She closed it with a snap.

The rider raised a hand, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger:
everything’s okay.
The gesture was for her. Then he faced forward again. The passerby he had handed the boy to asked something. The rider raised his shoulders in a shrug. He leaned forward on the bike. It snarled to life and bumped down off the sidewalk, disappearing into traffic just as the hysterical mother ran up.

It all had happened so fast—the stoplight hadn’t changed yet. Camilla returned to her cab, her heart rate slowing to normal. She put her hand on the top of the open door and paused, looking back in the direction the rider had disappeared. Why hadn’t he stuck around?

• • •

Fifteen minutes later, Camilla was settled in at a sidewalk table in the America’s Cup Village, sipping an espresso. She had a great view of the Bay Bridge overhead and Treasure Island across the water. The entrance to Pier 18 lay directly in front of her. It was the gateway to the largest and most exclusive of the new docks built for the 2013 America’s Cup. These docks would provide berths for the largest superyachts and megayachts to visit San Francisco Bay during that event. Several of them were in use already.

The largest of the yachts berthed at Pier 18 dwarfed all the others. Camilla felt pretty sure it was the
Leviathan.
The name was fitting, anyway. With a sleek profile longer than a football field, and five levels of gleaming white fiberglass, smoked glass, stainless steel, and titanium, the ship dominated the waterfront. Other captains and yacht owners cast envious glances toward it. From the promenade, tourists and native San Franciscans alike pointed and speculated. Ships like that were infrequent visitors to the Bay. Two hundred million dollars? Three hundred million? She had never been aboard a ship like that before. Few people ever got the chance to.

While she waited, her thoughts drifted back to the “Survivor Personality” lecture at the Moscone Center. Seeing its title had put her subconscious to work. She remembered what she had read over the years about survivor psychology—the common personality patterns and behaviors that many of them seemed to share. Much of what she read, she had recognized in herself.

The knowledge hadn’t been much help, though. She had read that a lot of survivors—even the extroverted ones—also went through periodic cycles of withdrawal, times when they just didn’t feel like dealing with other people. Knowing that others experienced the same things you did was comforting. But it didn’t tell you how to change those aspects of yourself.

Camilla checked the time:
3:35 p.m
. The lecture would already be under way now. She felt a tightness in the back of her neck and tried to think about something else. The incident with the little boy came back to her, the rescuer on the motorcycle. Strange, that. What kind of person saved a child’s life, then shrugged it off like it was no big deal?

Moscone Convention Center, San Francisco

“I
n a life-threatening emergency or a natural disaster, why do some people live, while others die?”

The lecturer paused. Outside the auditorium doors, the broad hallways of the Moscone Convention Center were quiet. His listeners sat with quiet attention. He wondered, how many of their lives had been touched personally by his topic? How many stories of tragedy and triumph lay behind the silent faces? He looked down at his notes again.

“Following in the footsteps of pioneers like John Leach and Al Siebert, psychologists have studied the phenomenon of human survival extensively. In an extreme life-or-death situation, we find that, at most, ten percent of the population is mentally and emotionally equipped for survival. Only those ten percent are able to perceive the situation correctly, to react quickly and effectively, and to make the necessary adaptations to survive. These ‘survivor types’ are the individuals who, time and time again, surprise us all by crawling from the wreckage or reaching the shore or walking out of the jungle alive.

“There are wide differences of opinion on whether survivors are born or made. But there is general agreement on one thing: the people who are most likely to survive in extreme circumstances share certain common characteristics.”

The lecturer wrote “WILL TO LIVE” on the board. He underlined it.

“Survival is as much mental as physical. Under the most extreme circumstances, some people simply lose their will to live. They die, often without obvious medical cause. The opposite is true of survivors. Survivor types diagnosed with terminal illnesses frequently defy the odds, confounding their doctors and resuming healthy lives.”

“Physical size and strength do not seem to be much of a factor. Quite frequently, smaller women or even children survive under the same circumstances where healthy, fit men perish. There are even documented cases where, to overcome some life-threatening obstacle, survivors have exhibited bursts of strength, speed, or endurance far beyond what was considered medically possible for them.”