FaceMate

by Steven M. Greenberg

  At any rate, they got the picture quick enough, especially the boy, young Thomas, who reminded Eddie more and more of Ben as the minutes passed. The penetrating look in those azure eyes, the penetrating questions—Just like Ben at that age, sitting in the classroom at school pointing out subtle little points his teachers—even the best ones—had previously overlooked, putting facts into perspective, then collating and re-organizing those facts into a meaningful whole. Ben could get to the heart of any issue almost instantaneously and come to a conclusion that would resolve the issue just as fast. That’s what made him rich. That’s what made him awesome.

  And this kid—It was incredible!—The way his mind worked—you could see it in his eyes, you could hear it in his words, you could feel it in his calm, deliberate manner: The questions, the inferences when he got the answers to what he’d asked—Damn if this Tommy fellow wasn’t just exactly—amazingly!—like the old familiar Ben!

  An hour into the flight, Eddie had to suppress a powerful urge to move across the aisle between their juxtaposed knees, plop down beside the kid, and hug him, hold him, open his heart to this living, breathing relic of his youth. Why so strong a feeling? Because this was his childhood buddy in the veritable flesh, brought to life again unwittingly, like an amnesiac beamed forward in time through a wormhole in the fabric of space and time—Maybe Tommie didn’t remember being Ben thirty years ago, but that’s just who and what he was.

  Yep, Ben exactly, but with a somewhat different background and skill set. Hey, when you’re smart, you’re smart all over, however you use those brain cells doing what your inmost nature makes you do. Ben picked business—or maybe it picked him, who knows? But with this brilliant kid it was mechanics, science, engineering: Cars, for practical purposes, while for Ben his practical purposes at that age wound up being making lots of cash. And the fundamental understanding that Ben had of generating cash when he was twenty-two, this kid had in spades with regard to engines, mechanics, anything metal that made you move. But he had Ben’s kind of intellect; that was obvious from the instant you looked at that steely bluish gaze and from the moment you heard him speak. Example? It took him all of twenty minutes to get Ben’s story assimilated, analyzed, and an appropriate response to it figured out. At which point he looked a little bored. At which point he got up, walked over, stuck his head into the cockpit, and started talking—what? Well, what else but aeronautical physics, with the fellow piloting the plane.

  Brandon, of course, couldn’t hope to keep up with the spate of questions the kid was pouring out. Eddie couldn’t either. And what Eddie heard, sitting outside the open cockpit door, he couldn’t hope to understand. The kid asked: Are these the new Pratt and Whitney’s or the standard Model so-and-so Rolls Royce? What’s the thrust at maximum altitude? The fanjets are a lot quieter than the turbos, aren’t they, but at speed, they don’t really have the punch. Did Brandon ever fly military? Tommie asked—Sure he did, he told the kid; that’s where he learned his trade. You ever fly a Phantom with the GE J-79? No, he hadn’t—Shit, Eddie could have answered that: Of course he hadn’t. You think Ben would have hired a fuckin’ fighter pilot, for God’s sake? You want him doing loop-the-loops and barrel rolls with your thirty-million-dollar plane while you’re sitting back there going over stocks? Hey, Brandon flew cargo in the Air Force and spent twenty years and a couple of zillion hours in the air handling freight. That’s why he always got you where you had to go without a hitch.

  A terrific pilot, but no aeronautical physicist, so with regard to all those questions he was being asked, he turned out something of a dud. Five minutes after the questioning began, it was finished, and Young Mr. Mulroy was back in the seat beside his sister, smiling across the aisle at Eddie in his slightly bored and thoroughly penetrating way—And ‘penetrating’—that was the key word, alright. Watching him, listening to him, was like watching and listening to Ben. Thirty years of sitting at the side of a genius, you get to recognize his traits—And watching and listening to this kid’s questions, after thirty years watching Ben, some striking similarities emerged.

  There are two types of people who ask very detailed questions—like fanjets, for example, and thrusters, and all that kind of arcane shit. First of all, there’s the windbag, the know-it-all, who asks questions that he knows the answers to before he even asks. He’s the expert, see? So he wants the guy he’s asking to know how smart he is, how much of the arcane stuff he already knows. He wants everybody to know how well-informed he is, so the questions he asks tend to be loud, broadcast to the rafters, letting the whole world hear how bright he is in comparison to the dumber guy who can’t answer what he asks. That’s your standard type of questioner. They’re a dime a dozen, and Benny never did have a lot of use for them.

  But then there’s the other kind of questioner—the genuinely smart one. He asks his questions more reservedly, more delicately, and all he’s really interested in is learning what he needs to know. While the first guy keeps asking even when the answers don’t help him much, the smart guy—the brilliant guy—breaks off his questioning the instant he ceases to learn. If the answers aren’t teaching him anything, he’ll excuse himself politely, thank the other fellow for his help, and get on to something else. And this Tommy Mulroy kid? What he was doing at the moment, now that Brendan had run out of answers, was sitting across from Eddie, getting on to something else.

  The something else being: Well having done with aeronautics for the present, let’s get more info about Ben. What was the girl like? Lizzie, he meant, and Eddie described her to the best of his humble abilities. Did Ben have kids? No. Why? Well—and this was a supposition on Eddie’s part—he’d had a disastrous loss in his formative years, right? Sure—the kid got the concept right away. You didn’t have to lay it out for him, didn’t need to paint a picture. He intuited, he extrapolated, he reasoned stuff out just the way Ben did—exactly the way Ben did. Damn! It would be fascinating to see two of them together, playing off one another, one-in-a-million meeting another one-in-a-million. Gears would mesh and sparks would fly! Benny was gonna be thrilled!

  Halfway across the continent, Eddie got to thinking: The sister—Rachel—she wanted to see the beach, didn’t she? And by the time they landed and debarked and loaded in the limo and hauled it all the way to Asbury, it was gonna be—well, nearly eight, pretty close to dark. Why not fly direct to Asbury, show the kid the boardwalk, have the limo meet them there and drive them back to Red Bank? Oh hell, why not?

  So Brandon made some calls and worked it out. Hardly any traffic coming in, so they didn’t have to wait in line to land. And Luther had the limo waiting on the tarmac as the Gulfstream taxied in.

  Then something else very interesting happened that impressed Eddie to no end. As Brandon opened the door to lower the steps so his passengers could clamber out, Tommie took him by the elbow and told him quietly:

  “Sorry, Brandon, I didn’t want to bother you while you were busy with the flight, but—Did you hear a little whistling noise from the engine on the left? You call it port side, right?”

  “Yes, sir. Port side engine is correct.”

  “So did you hear the whistling? It’s faint but noticeable.”

  “I think I did, matter of fact” said Brandon. “I think there’s been a noise like that for a while—a couple of weeks or so, I’d guess. Why? What do you think it is?”

  “Not ‘think’. I know. That’s a fan bearing. It’s not a problem for a while, but if you’ve got to fly any significant distance, I wouldn’t do it till you get the bearing fixed. Oh, and one more thing: This isn’t major, but when they do the bearing, have your mechanics replace the shock on the wheel under the starboard wing. It kind of bounced a little more than normal when we came in to land.”

  29

  Andi looked puzzled, and she ought to have looked puzzled, since Rajiv hadn’t made the least attempt to fill the poor girl in. Instead of doing which, he simply asked her:

  “You find an open cubicle for her t
o sit?”

  “Uh-huh, I did. There was an empty place back near the window.” She pointed with a thumb. “She’s not that fond of widows, sir, but the desk she’s sitting at faces the other way. And it’s kinda dark there too when you close the shade. Linda’s always been more comfortable in the dark.”

  “Great. Terrific, Andi. Good job. So, tell me: how did you get her to come in with you in the first place? I thought it was going to be a hassle to get her here.”

  “Yeah, well, it was a hassle, Mr. Patel—It started out to be, I mean—But what we did—my mom and dad and me—what we did, we told her that some guys were coming in to do a lot of wiring and stuff, and that they’d be in the house all day, like, even in her room, which totally freaked her out. So when I told her she could come with me to work, and that it’d be real quiet here and nobody would bother her—Oh, and then I also told her we were having problems with the computer system and that maybe she could help—One thing about my sister, sir, she loves fixing computer problems, so…. Anyway, I managed to drag her in with me the way you asked me to—So what now, Mr. Patel? Why did you say you wanted me to bring her here?”

  Aha! The zillion dollar question at last. Rajiv hadn’t really said. And the reason that he hadn’t really said, was he’d concluded that you couldn’t just divulge that sort of thing straight out, not flat-out tell her everything you’d planned. ‘Cause if he’d told her what he’d planned, if he’d just opened up and spilled the beans, the sister would have bolted like a hare, and Andi would have probably bolted too, and the whole best laid plans of a sneaky Gujerati plotter would have flushed—glurp!— straight down the drain. So rather than explaining even now, even after the fact, when that quirky sister of hers was right here in the building, sitting back there in the dark, what he did instead was tell her:

  “Yeah, well, what I’d like her to do for us is—Remember when I told you that I knew a guy who sounded a whole lot like you said your sister was? The same kind of shy personality and all?”

  “Yeah, I remember that, kind of. Like a couple weeks ago, right?”

  “Right. so—OK, well the guy I was referring to is—OK, remember when you asked me why you never saw the other man who runs the business with me, my partner Alex in the shut-up room over there?”

  Rajiv indicated the site of ‘over there’ with a finger, although that really wasn’t required: Everybody in the place had been mumbling and whispering about Alex and his castellated cubicle for weeks. The rumors and innuendos had probably grown a whole lot creepier than the truth.

  “Uh-huh,” Andi confirmed. “That’s the computer genius, right?”

  “Right. Well, he’s the one who’s a lot like your sister, and what I thought was, maybe the two of them can communicate—electronically, I mean; only electronically—I was thinking, maybe they can communicate with each other better than with anybody else. How does that sound for a working theory? Is it worth a try?”

  “Uh-huh, I guess. I guess it sounds OK.”

  “Great—So what I’m going to do is this. I’m going to tell my buddy Alex over there that I’ll be going out of the building for a while, and that I got somebody to fill in for me while I’m gone—You understand the plan now?”

  “Yeah, I guess so. I kinda do.”

  “OK, great. Fantastic. So what I need you to do on your end, is handle all this stuff we’ve got to get your sister to do—coordinate it, kind of. Explain to … what’s her name again? Linda?”

  “Uh-huh, Linda, right.”

  “OK, so then explain to Linda that there’s this guy—an important guy, you’d better say—who only communicates by way of the computer, and that the guy he usually communicates with has to take off for a while—that’s me, of course—and that we need her to take his place, at least temporarily—You get it? She doesn’t need to talk to anybody directly, so it’s in her comfort zone. All she needs to do is get the messages from Alex, answer back when there’s a need to answer back, and if she doesn’t need to answer back, then just forward the messages to the appropriate place—the place where I would send them. And since you’ve been working with me all these weeks and handling the messages I need to forward from Alex to wherever they need to go, you can help her do just that—OK? You game?”

  “Yeah, sure—I guess I am. I kinda am.”

  “Terrific. You’re going to get a great big raise for this if everything goes just right. So go ahead, run on back to your sister, explain things to her, and while you’re explaining things, I’ll go and have my little one-on-one with Alex. And keep your fingers crossed, Andi, maybe all our plans will work out better than anybody could ever have expected them to work, OK?”

  “OK … I guess.”

  So off they went their separate ways, Andi toward the back of the room, over to her sister near the windows, and Rajiv to the right, through the maze of white partitions and up to Alex’s walled-in space, where he found—Hooray!—the green light glowing welcomingly. And when he tapped and announced himself: Click! The door latch sprung, and into the musty, stifling atmosphere he went.

  Alex liked it warm, and the darn room was sweltering—Eighty, maybe eighty-five degrees—and with the two-day-old half-eaten pizza sitting on the corner of the desk, and various remnants of lunches and dinners residing in the trash—whew!—there was truly something of a stench. Alex was sitting at the monitor as always, his back toward Rajiv, wearing an old, ratty undershirt, threadbare at the neck, torn open at one armpit—standard for Alex—and dirty khaki pants—the obligatory costume he’d be found in every single day. His hair was greasy and plastered to his head on top, as usual, not by any kind of gel or goop, buy solely by his sweat and the natural lubricants of his scalp; the collared shirt he came in with that morning was lying on the floor in a crumpled heap. His hands were busy at the keyboard; and prominently featured on the screen was—what was that exactly? Hmm: symbols in a code that Rajiv wasn’t able to recognize—heck, maybe it was Thai or Hindi: All in all, a pretty normal day.

  Rajiv cleared his throat: “Listen, Alex, my man; hey, I’ve got to run out for a while—like maybe two or three hours, OK? But I got someone to fill in while I’m gone. Anything you need, any directives or whatever, the other person can handle just as well as me, so we won’t have any down-time. So everything OK, my man? You cool with that?”

  The cryptic figures on the monitor disappeared, and in their place, a single word came up:

  WHERE?

  “Me, you’re asking? Oh, nowhere special. Look, it’s personal. I don’t ask you everything you do and everyplace you go, do I?”—Hah! thought Rajiv. Not that Alex ever went anywhere but here and his little flat a couple of blocks away. But Rajiv ignored that somewhat salient factor and went on: “So—I’m just telling you I’ve got to take a few hours off. And while I’m gone, everything is covered. Just trust me on this, OK? Hey, have I ever let you down?”

  Nice. On the screen appeared a smiley face and underneath, the single, large print word:

  NEVER.

  “OK, great, you’re a pal. And remember, the person covering for me knows exactly what to do—I mean, more or less. Whatever you want handled is gonna get handled just the same as I would do it, and the person you’re dealing with will try to respond just like me. You may have to…. OK, well have a little patience when you first start off, OK? It’s a learning process, and you may have to communicate in a little more detail than you communicate with me the first few times you need something done. But this person’s very nice and very smart as well, and once we get you two connecting, it gives us some insurance—I mean, there’ll be a replacement for me available if I get sick or need to go somewhere, or….”

  GO WHERE? DNT WANT U 2 GO

  “No, I’m not—I’m not going anywhere. I just want you to be covered in case … well, in case I get sick or whatever. That’s all. Don’t worry, I wouldn’t leave you for anything. We’re pals, remember? Remember all those times I stuck up for you in school?”

  I RMEMBR.
R U OK?

  “Yeah, I’m fine, really. I promise. It’s just that I want to cover all the possible contingencies. Just be nice to the person who’s filling in for me, OK? Will you do that? Please?”

  R U OK? ANSWER NOW!

  “I am, I swear to you. I’m fine. I’ll be back in a couple of hours—three at the most. But just be nice to the person filling in, please? Will you?”

  And then the weirdest thing happened, the weirdest thing by far in the ten long years Rajiv and Alex had been friends. Alex pushed his chair back, stood up, turned around, stepped over to Rajiv, put his skinny arms out, and gave Rajiv a hug. A HUG!—For the first time—Ever! And then he spoke—He actually spoke. Aloud! And what he said right out loud was a sniffling three-word question, namely:

  “Are you OK?”

  Alex didn’t smell so great—Nothing out of the ordinary for him; he always smelled that way, but generally from a greater distance and in a room where air was moving a bit more freely and under eighty-five degrees. But now, up close and personal, his body smelled of sweat and two-day-old pizza and God only knew what else. But Alex was a friend, and a damn good one, at that; so Rajiv had no qualms whatever about putting his own arms out to hug that skinny, sweaty body in return, and saying to the back of his pal’s averted head—for Alex never actually faced you; he always looked away. Rajiv replied:

  “I’m fine, Alex. I swear. I’m in perfect health, and….

  Alex didn’t wait for him to finish. He disengaged, turned around toward his computer once again, stepped over to his desk, sat down, put his fingers on the keypad, and the moment that he did, the words flashed on the screen:

  OK GDBYE

  Then the latch popped open, the overhead lights blinked off, then on, and Rajiv took the non-too-subtle hint thus given, and left. Walking down the aisle back toward his desk, he turned his head around and noticed that the signal light over Alex’s entry door was glowing a blatantly inhibitory red. Alex, as was his general tendency, wanted to be alone.