Smoke & Mirrors (34 page)

Opening his cell phone, Ward called Natasha to explain the delay, but got their home answering machine. He had spoken to her only once in the three days he’d been away, when he’d called from the airport upon arrival there for the memorabilia-suppliers trade show. Of the six or seven times he’d called since, he had left short messages. He wasn’t alarmed, because Natasha often turned the phone’s ringers off, or ignored them. She carried a cell phone but rarely turned it on unless she needed to answer her emergency beeper.

Sudden jazzy notes of youthful laughter froze Ward, and he turned slowly to see not the young boy he expected but a young girl of eight or so playing tag with a smaller child. He exhaled loudly and looked down at his paperback, feeling the sudden tears running down his cheeks. Several times each day for the past year, something brought Barney into his mind, and, with that trigger, a choking gloom descended over him like a wet curtain. It could begin with a familiar odor like iced tea, a flash of a red shirt, sudden movement in his periphery, a flag snapping in a brisk wind, a child with blond hair, a bicycle lying on a lawn—just about anything at all. Any thought of Barney brought Ward back to the memory of clutching a small, limp body in his arms as hell closed in on him.

Barney’s given name had been Ward McCarty III, but he chose the name Barney himself at the age of five because he so admired that unidentified person who dressed in an insipid purple dinosaur suit.

Often there were the dreams—some of which included a cameo by Barney, or, if Ward was very lucky, a starring role. Those double-edged dreams were sweet torture, leaving his soul lacerated and leaking some essential nectar. He always woke with an odd feeling of being both full and empty at the same time.

What consumed a great deal of his waking hours was the thought that every decision a creature made led to a path with unknowable consequences. An animal’s choice of an action—or path—might find them a mate, shelter, or food—or the possibility of becoming another animal’s dinner. By the same token, some bean counter with a sharp pencil might choose to install a less expensive—and less protected—electrical outlet in a garage, which could lead to the tragic death of an angelic child. Ward thought about this faceless man in some generic office day after day. He saw no relief to being forever haunted by the avalanche that began with the simple decision of a budget-conscious man.

Sometimes, when Ward McCarty looked at animals, he wondered if they ever dreamed alive their dead the way people did.

Thankfully, as a contrast to the 116-degree Vegas heat of the day, it was cool inside the wide-bodied craft. When Ward arrived at his assigned row, he found the center seat already occupied by a young girl with blond hair accented with bright red and blue streaks, who was plugged into an iPod. He opened the overhead compartment and somehow managed to wedge in his carry-on.

The girl looked up at him, and when he met her dull green eyes, she smiled, showing small teeth with silver wire braces. Ward pointed to the window seat beyond her, whereupon she unplugged her earphones, got up, and moved into the aisle to let him pass, leaving her cloth tote bag on her seat.

Sitting, Ward pushed his briefcase under the seat ahead of him and buckled his seat belt. The girl returned to her seat and put the iPod’s earbuds back in place. He figured her age to be somewhere between thirteen and seventeen. She was barely five feet tall, and the dull yellow too-large-by-a-mile sweatshirt had the famous “Welcome to Las Vegas” sign screen-printed on it, which contrasted with her red shorts and blue flip-flops. He couldn’t help but notice that each of the nails on her fingers and toes was painted a different color.

Ward spent the first two hours alternating between watching the movie on a small screen in the ceiling over the aisle and, out of the corner of his eye, observing the electronic activities of the girl beside him.

The black tote bag in her lap contained an assortment of electronic devices, and like a child with a short attention span, she went from her iPod, to a Game Boy, to plugging a set of airline earphones into the armrest to watch the movie, then back to the iPod. Just when he had decided that she was closer to seventeen than thirteen, she took out a DVD player and watched a cartoon clearly geared to very young children. She watched intently, laughing melodiously here and there as the cartoon played.

Thirty minutes out of Charlotte, he dropped his tray, reached into his shirt pocket, and pulled out one of the monogrammed index cards he carried to list things to do. As he lined up his thoughts, Ward began sketching a small, familiar face in one corner of the card.

“Hey,” the girl said suddenly, interrupting his drawing.

As she stared down at the card on the tray, she pulled her earphones off.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked.

“Thinking,” he replied.

“You’re a good drawer,” she said. “Could you draw me?”

Ward studied her round face and reproduced her likeness in less than two minutes, all while her eyes moved from his face to the drawing and back, like someone watching a tennis match. Ward had the ability to sketch what he saw, and faces were what he drew best.

When he finished the sketch, she smiled. “Cool. Are you a professional artist?”

He answered, “No. I do some light designing.”

A confused look briefly took over her features. “Like what kind of lights do you design?”

“Oh,” he said, smiling. “My company makes and markets NASCAR memorabilia. Cars, hats, T-shirts, mugs, key chains.”

“No shit?” she said, too loudly. The word earned her a frown from the man beside her. “My mother is a race-car fan.”

Ward reached down, took out his briefcase, and opened it, taking out the model car to show her.

“My father had it made in Japan. Nowadays, they are made mostly in China. See, we take pictures of a real car from several angles, and a factory makes the model from the pictures, which they produce, box, and ship to us, and we distribute them from our warehouse. We just change the art on the car depending on whose car it is, since every race team has different sponsors.”

“This is so fucking cool. Could I get one?”

“Well, not this one. This one is the first one my father had made,” he explained. “This is the prototype. He didn’t have a lot of money, and that car raced only one year. As it turned out, he made other models and they did sell and so he ordered more, but this one was handmade. Mostly he used it to show to bankers and investors, who weren’t all that impressed. In those days, NASCAR was popular with only relatively few people.”

He started to tell her why he had it with him, but didn’t. What he did say was, “I can get you a new one—driver of your choice.”

“No shit?”

“Absolutely none.” He took another note card and scribbled his office number on it. “Call and ask for Kelly, and she’ll send one to you for your mother. We have thousands of them in our warehouse.”

She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “How much will it cost?”

“My treat.”

“No shit? Thanks. That is so sick.”

“Sick?”

“Sick as in cool.”

“Who’s your mother’s favorite driver?”

“I dunno. I can find out.” She ran the wheels back and forth on her lap and made a motor noise as she did this. “Is this you on the card?” she asked, meaning the note card he’d given her. “Ward McCarty. That’s you?”

“It is,” he told her.

“Why were you in Vegas?” she asked. “Gambling?”

“No. Work stuff. You?”

“I fly back and forth a lot,” she said. “My dad lives there, and I live with my mother in Charlotte. You married?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your wife do?”

“She’s a pediatric surgeon,” Ward said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Pediatric means children,” Ward said.

“I know that. So she, like, cuts little kids open?” Her eyes were wide, her mouth a circle.

“Yes, but I think it’s more complicated than making cuts.”

“Y’all got any kids?”

“No,” he said.

“You’re, like, too old?”

“I expect you’re right,” he said, trying to smile. This wasn’t true…as far as he knew.

When she handed the car back, Ward put it back in his briefcase, closed it, and placed it under the seat.

“I need to slip out past you,” he told her.

“Why?” she asked.

“Visit the little boys’ room.”

After the man beside the girl unbuckled his seat belt and stood in the aisle, she tucked her feet up in her seat so he could get out.

When Ward returned to his row, the girl, who was now listening to her iPod, smiled up at him and pulled up her feet to let him get into his seat.

When the plane landed ten minutes later and parked at the terminal, the girl grabbed her bag of toys and was off the plane before Ward got his carry-on and filed out.

He thought about what the girl had said about him being too old to have children, and realized it wasn’t true. He and Natasha hadn’t talked about having another child since Barney’s accident, and the thought comforted him. For the first time in a very long time, Ward McCarty felt a degree of optimism about the future.

ALSO BY JOHN RAMSEY MILLER

Too Far Gone

Side by Side

Upside Down

Inside Out

The Last Family

Available from Bantam Dell

SMOKE & MIRRORS

A Dell Book/April 2008

Published by

Bantam Dell

A Division of Random House, Inc.

New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2008 by John Ramsey Miller

Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

www.bantamdell.com

eISBN: 978-0-440-33753-9

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