Paranoia (37 page)

“I can’t eat that shit anymore. Mandingo here’s got a gun to my head. Why don’t you offer him one?”

Antwoine shook his head too. “No thanks, I’m trying to lose a few pounds. You’re the devil.”

“What is this, Jenny Craig headquarters?” I set down the box of donuts on the maple-veneer coffee table next to Antwoine. Dad still hadn’t said anything about the car, but I figured he’d probably been too absorbed in his TV show. Plus his vision wasn’t all that great.

“Soon as you leave this guy’s going to start crackin’ the whip, making me do laps around the room,” Dad said.

“He doesn’t stop, does he?” I said to Dad.

Dad’s face was more amused than angry. “Whatever floats his boat,” he said. “Though nothing seems to get him off like keeping me off my smokes.”

The tension between the two of them seemed to have ebbed into some kind of a resigned stalemate. “Hey, you look a lot better, Dad,” I lied.

“Bullshit,” he said, his eyes riveted on the pseudo-investigative TV story. “You still working at that new place?”

“Yeah,” I said. I smiled bashfully, figured it was time to tell him the big news. “In fact—”

“Let me tell you something,” he said, finally turning his gaze away from the TV and giving me a rheumy stare. He pointed back at the TV without looking at it. “These S.O.B.s—these bastards—they’ll cheat you out of every last fucking nickel if you let them.”

“Who, the corporations?”

“The corporations, the CEOs, with their stock options and their big fat pensions and their sweetheart deals. They’re all out for themselves, every last one of them, and don’t you forget it.”

I looked down at the carpet. “Well,” I said quietly, “not all of them.”

“Oh, don’t kid yourself.”

“Listen to your father,” Antwoine said, not looking up from the
Star
. There almost seemed to be a little affection in his voice. “The man’s a fount of wisdom.”

“Actually, Dad, I happen to know a little something about CEOs. I just got a huge promotion—I was just made executive assistant to the CEO of Trion.”

There was just silence. I thought he hadn’t been listening. He was staring at the TV. I thought that might have sounded a little arrogant, so I softened it a bit: “It’s really a big deal, Dad.”

More silence.

I was about to repeat it when he said, “Executive assistant? What’s that, like a secretary?”

“No, no. It’s, like, high-level stuff. Brainstorming and everything.”

“So what exactly do you do all day?”

The guy had emphysema, but he knew just how to take the wind out of me. “Never mind, Dad,” I said. “I’m sorry I brought it up.” I was, too. Why the hell did I care what he thought?

“No, really. I’m curious what you did to get that slick new set of wheels out there.”

So he had noticed, after all. I smiled. “Pretty nice, huh?”

“How much that vehicle cost you?”

“Well, actually—”

“Per month, I’m talking.” He took a long suck of oxygen.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing,” he repeated, as if he didn’t get it.

“Nada. Trion covers the lease totally. It’s a perk of my new job.”

He breathed in again. “A perk.”

“Same with my new apartment.”

“You moved?”

“I thought I told you. Two thousand square feet in that new Harbor Suites building. And Trion pays for it.”

Another intake of breath. “You proud?” he said.

I was stunned. I’d never heard him say that word before, I didn’t think. “Yeah,” I said, blushing.

“Proud of the fact that they own you now?”

I should have seen the razor blade in the apple. “Nobody owns me, Dad,” I said curtly. “I believe it’s called ‘making it.’ Look it up. You’ll find it in the thesaurus next to ‘life at the top,’ ‘executive suite,’ and ‘high net-worth individuals.’” I couldn’t believe what was coming out of my mouth. And all this time I’d been railing about being a monkey on a stick. Now I was actually boasting about the bling bling.
See what you made me do?

Antwoine put down his newspaper and excused himself, tactfully, pretending to do something in the kitchen.

Dad laughed harshly, turned to look at me. “So lemme get this straight.” He sucked in some more oxygen. “You don’t own the car
or
the apartment, that right? You call that a perk?” A breath. “I’ll tell you what that means. Everything they give you they can take away, and they will, too. You drive a goddamn company car, you live in company housing, you wear a company uniform, and none of it’s yours. Your whole life ain’t yours.”

I bit my lip. It wasn’t going to do me any good to let loose. The old guy was dying, I told myself for the millionth time. He’s on steroids. He’s an unhappy, caustic guy. But it just came out: “You know, Dad, some fathers would actually be proud of their son’s success, you know?”

He sucked in, his tiny eyes glittering. “Success, that what you call it, huh? See, Adam, you remind me of your mother more and more.”

“Oh, yeah?” I told myself: keep it in, keep the anger in check, don’t lose it, or else he’s won.

“That’s right. You look like her. Got the same social-type personality—everyone liked her, she fit in anywhere, she coulda married a richer guy, she coulda done a lot better. And don’t think she didn’t let me know it. All those parent nights at Bartholomew Browning, you could see her getting all friendly with those rich bastards, getting all dressed up, practically pushing her tits in their faces. Think I didn’t notice?”

“Oh, that’s good, Dad. That’s real good. Too bad I’m not more like
you
, you know?”

He just looked at me.

“You know—bitter, nasty. Pissed off at the world. You want me to grow up to be just like you, that it?”

He puffed, his face growing redder.

I kept going. My heart was going a hundred beats a minute, my voice growing louder and louder, and I was almost shouting. “When I was broke and partying all the time you considered me a fuckup. Okay, so now I’m a success by just about anyone’s definition, and you’ve got nothing but contempt. Maybe there’s a reason you can’t be proud of me no matter what I do, Dad.”

He glared and puffed, said, “Oh yeah?”

“Look at you. Look at your life.” There was like this runaway freight train inside me, unstoppable, out of control. “You’re always saying the world’s divided up into winners and losers. So let me ask you something, Dad. What are you, Dad? What are you?”

He sucked in oxygen, his eyes bloodshot and looking like they were going to pop out of his head. He seemed to be muttering to himself. I heard “Goddamn” and “fuck” and “shit.”

“Yeah, Dad,” I said, turning away from him. “I want to be just like you.” I headed for the door in a slipstream of my own pent-up anger. The words were out and couldn’t be unsaid, and I felt more miserable than ever. I left his apartment before I could wreak any more destruction. The last thing I saw, my parting image of the guy, was his big red face, puffing and muttering, his eyes glassy and staring in disbelief or fury or pain, I didn’t know which.

67

“So you really work for Jock Goddard himself, huh?” Alana said. “God, I hope I didn’t ever say anything negative to you about Goddard. Did I?”

We were riding the elevator up to my apartment. She’d stopped at her own place after work to change, and she looked great—black boat-neck top, black leggings, chunky black shoes. She also had on that same delicious floral scent she wore on our last date. Her black hair was long and glossy, and it contrasted nicely with her brilliant blue eyes.

“Yeah, you really trashed him, which I immediately reported.”

She smiled, a glint of perfect teeth. “This elevator is about the same size as my apartment.”

I knew that wasn’t true, but I laughed anyway. “The elevator really is bigger than my last place,” I said. When I’d mentioned that I’d just moved into the Harbor Suites she said she’d heard about the condos there and seemed intrigued, so I’d invited her to stop by to check it out. We could have dinner at the hotel restaurant downstairs, where I hadn’t had a chance to eat.

“Boy, quite the view,” she said as soon as she entered the apartment. An Alanis Morissette CD was playing softly. “This is fantastic.” She looked around, saw the plastic wrap still on one of the couches and a chair, said archly, “So when do you move in?”

“As soon as I have a spare hour or two. Can I get you a drink?”

“Hmm. Sure, that would be nice.”

“Cosmopolitan? I also do a terrific gin-and-tonic.”

“Gin-and-tonic sounds perfect, thanks. So you’ve just started working for him, right?”

She’d looked me up, of course. I went over to the newly stocked liquor cabinet, in the alcove next to the kitchen, and reached for a bottle of Tanqueray Malacca gin.

“Just this week.” She followed me into the kitchen. I grabbed a handful of limes from the almost-empty refrigerator and began cutting them in half.

“But you’ve been at Trion for like a month.” She cocked her head to one side, trying to make sense of my sudden promotion. “Nice kitchen. Do you cook?”

“The appliances are just for show,” I said. I began pressing the lime halves into the electric juicer. “Anyway, right, I was hired into new-products marketing, but then Goddard was sort of involved in a project I was working on, and I guess he liked my approach, my ideas, whatever.”

“Talk about a lucky break,” she said, raising her voice above the electric whine of the juicer.

I shrugged. “We’ll see if it’s lucky.” I filled two French bistro—style tumblers with ice, a shot of gin, a good splash of cold tonic water from the refrigerator, and a healthy helping of lime juice. I handed her her drink.

“So Tom Lundgren must have hired you for Nora Sommers’s team. Hey, this is delicious. All that lime makes a difference.”

“Thank you. That’s right, Tom Lundgren hired me,” I said, pretending to be surprised she knew.

“Do you know you were hired to fill my position?”

“What do you mean?”

“The position that opened up when I was moved to AURORA.”

“Is that right?” I looked amazed.

She nodded. “Unbelievable.”

“Wow, small world. But what’s ‘Aurora’?”

“Oh, I figured you knew.” She glanced at me over the rim of her glass, a look that seemed just a bit too casual.

I shook my head innocently. “No . . . ?”

“I figured you probably looked me up too. I got assigned to marketing for the Disruptive Technologies group.”

“That’s called AURORA?”

“No, AURORA’s the specific project I’m assigned to.” She hesitated a second. “I guess I thought that working for Goddard you’d sort of have your fingers into everything.”

A tactical slip on my part. I wanted her to think we could talk freely about whatever she did. “Theoretically I have access to everything. But I’m still figuring out where the copying machine is.”

She nodded. “You like Goddard?”

What was I going to say, no? “He’s an impressive guy.”

“At his barbecue you two seemed to be pretty close. I saw he called you over to meet his buddies, and you were like carrying things for him and all that.”

“Yeah, real close,” I said, sarcastic. “I’m his gofer. I’m his muscle. You enjoy the barbecue?”

“It was a little strange, hanging with all the powers, but after a couple of beers it got easier. That was my first time there.” Because she’d been assigned to his pet project, AURORA, I thought. But I wanted to be subtle about it, so I let it drop for the time being. “Let me call down to the restaurant and have them get our table ready.”

“You know, I thought Trion wasn’t really hiring from outside,” she said, looking over the menu. “They must have really wanted you, to bend the rules like that.”

“I think they thought they were stealing me away. I was nothing special.” We’d switched from gin-and-tonics to Sancerre, which I’d ordered because I saw from her liquor bills that that was her favorite wine. She looked surprised and pleased when I’d asked for it. It was a reaction I was getting used to.

“I doubt that,” she said. “What’d you do at Wyatt?”

I gave her the job-interview version I’d memorized, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted details about the Lucid project. “I’m really not supposed to talk about what I did at Wyatt, if you don’t mind,” I said. I tried not to sound too priggish about it.

She looked embarrassed. “Oh, God, sure, I totally understand,” she said.

The waiter appeared. “Are you ready to order?”

Alana said, “You go first,” and studied the menu some more while I ordered the paella.

“I was thinking of getting that,” she said. Okay, so she wasn’t a vegetarian.

“We’re allowed to get the same thing, you know,” I said.

“I’ll have the paella, too,” she told the waiter. “But if there’s any meat in it, like sausage, can you leave it out?”

“Of course,” the waiter said, making a note.

“I love paella,” she said. “I almost never have fish or seafood at home. This is a treat.”

“Wanna stick with the Sancerre?” I said to her.

“Sure.”

As the waiter turned to go, I suddenly remembered Alana was allergic to shrimp and said, “Wait a second, is there shrimp in the paella?”

“Uh, yes, there is,” said the waiter.

“That could be a problem,” I said.

Alana stared at me. “How did you know . . . ?” she began, her eyes narrowing.

There was this long, long moment of excruciating tension while I wracked my brain. I couldn’t believe I’d screwed up like this. I swallowed hard, and the blood drained from my face. Finally I said, “You mean, you’re allergic to it, too?”

A pause. “I am. Sorry. How funny.” The cloud of suspicion seemed to have lifted. We both switched to the seared scallops.

“Anyway,” I said, “enough talking about me. I want to hear about AURORA.”

“Well, it’s supposed to be kept under wraps,” she apologized.

I grinned at her.

“No, this isn’t tit-for-tat, I swear,” she protested. “Really!”

“Okay,” I said skeptically. “But now that you’ve aroused my curiosity, are you really going to make me poke around and find out on my own?”

“It’s not
that
interesting.”