Charisma

by Steven Barnes

  2

  Renny Sand sat at his desk in the sprawling Columbia River DoubleTree Hotel, smoking too many cigarettes in a designated non-smoking room. Maybe he’d hoped that consideration for the next guest’s allergies or asthma might serve as sufficient leverage against a raging nicotine addiction. Wrong.

  Deep down inside he wanted to take another whack at it, try one more goddamn time to pry himself away from the weeds, just take it one day at a time. Yeah, right. And ten minutes after dragging his luggage into the non-smoking room, he poured an inch of water into the bottom of a plastic cup, and had himself a makeshift ashtray.

  Let’s hear it for American ingenuity.

  He stared at the wall mirror, the laptop just out of focus in his peripheral vision. The little Olympus micro-recorder was close to his lips, but so far its little red eye hadn’t blinked.

  The mirror reflected a middle-aged black man who stood about an inch and a half under six feet tall. Was thirty-five middle aged? His father died of liver cancer at sixty-nine, so maybe so. Light skin, the tone that used to be called high yellow. The man in the mirror could use more sleep. Still had his hair, still had the boyish smile, but it betrayed fatigue more and more often. Still hopeful, but tinged with anxiety. Gathering his energy to make one more (last?) leap for the golden ring. As fit as four weekly treadmill sessions could make a man, but the huffing and the puffing warred with each other. At this point, it was a toss-up whether sweat or Camel Filters would win.

  The last time Sand stayed at the DoubleTree, it had been called the Red Lion Inn. Six years before, when he met the boy, Patrick Emory, and his father, Otis, and …

  And his mother, Vivian.

  An invisible fist knotted in his chest.

  Oh, yes, Sand remembered the boy, who had testified right after scintillant little Tanesha. He’d been overwhelmed with the urge to speak with Patrick, and maybe his mother. Perhaps they would talk, give up a lead, a slant, an angle on a story already drilled to death.

  Pat Emory was small, even for his age, which at the time Sand estimated to be around seven or eight. His posture was almost military. Unlike a lot of kids who testify in court, stress hadn’t contorted him into knots. He wasn’t fidgety, eager, cocky or servile. Instead, and greatly to his credit, he just seemed to be there to do a job. The kid radiated class, and everyone in the courtroom could sense it. His cheeks were plump, like two halves of a black peach. His eyes seemed to shine brighter than the dim overheads. His teeth were brighter still. The kid had a fortune waiting for him in toothpaste commercials.

  “Patrick Emory,” the bailiff intoned. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do,” the boy replied.

  Then the questioning began, virtually identical to the series Tanesha Evans and the others had fielded. Renny’s attention drifted, gaze roaming across a sea of faces, finally zeroing in on a single, slender, very female form. Her skin was a perfect light caramel, her head exquisitely balanced on the long arc of her neck. Some men like breasts, some hips, and some legs. Renny saw that throat, the intelligent face and perceptive eyes, and a sensation that he could best describe as electric ice cream began melting down his spine.

  He’d felt sexual electricity before, certainly, but this wasn’t merely erotic, an urge to touch and taste, to see perspiration ruin the perfectly applied makeup, to reveal what the modest clothing concealed. This was a sudden, stabbing yearning, something that brought him into shocking awareness of his own empty bed. And life. He didn’t like this, but couldn’t turn off the clamor in his head once it had commenced.

  Just as Tanesha’s mother was recognizable on sight, he didn’t guess or suppose, but knew that woman was Patrick Emory’s mother. As Renny stared at her, an utterly alien thought tumbled into his head: Would our child be so beautiful?

  His face burned.

  Oh dear God. Sand, you’re in trouble.

  Mrs. Emory watched the boy intently. Mrs. Emory? Miss Emory? He was suddenly completely flustered, and excused himself from the courtroom before he found some new and imaginative way to make a complete ass of himself.

  Outside the door he slammed his back against the wall and took one hell of a deep breath. What had that been all about?

  “Who lit your britches, boy?” The voice was a Texas twang overlaid with maybe twenty years of Chicago. Renny looked up and saw a familiar face, a fifty-year-old AP stringer named Alfie Connors. Alfie had all the personality of a cucumber, resembled a hairy stork and could type 120 words a minute without a misstroke for hours at a time, a talent that had served him well in the dinosaur days before laptops and PDAs. The last Renny heard, Alfie was working out of Spokane.

  “Alfie, I need some information. This kid, Patrick Emory?”

  “Yeah.” Alfie was a family man. Six kids, last he heard. Renny guessed that the whole trial made Alfie want to puke. “Good kid.”

  “Is that his mom in there? Second row.”

  “Good looking woman? Name’s Vivian Emory. Big bruising husband next to her? That’s Otis. Yeah. Why?”

  Renny groaned. He hadn’t even noticed. Some reporter. “Well, husband, huh?”

  Alfie grinned, world-class radar homing in on the disappointment behind the inquiry. “Yeah. Purely dotes on her. Loves that kid. Good guy. Mill worker, I think.”

  Visions of romancing a single mother evaporated. All the good ones are gone. “Oh, all right. Listen. If I wanted to get a couple of words with that kid—” Alfie grimaced, and Renny raced on. “Strictly off the record, of course.”

  “And why should I help you?” Alfie said cheerily.

  “Oh, come on. I gave you a few pieces at the Montoya trial. One hand washes the other?”

  “Still have dirt under my nails. What else you got?”

  Renny paused, then plunged onward. “I’ve got SuperSonic tickets. Good ones, for the playoffs. They’re calling your name.”

  Alfie narrowed his eyes, but not before Renny caught the gleam therein. “Look, all I can tell you is that the kids go out the back of the courthouse, and that there’s a connecting door through the cafeteria.”

  Which was how, after an exchange of addresses, Renny found himself at an EMPLOYEES ONLY corridor at the back of the building. He purchased a latté from a coffee machine, and was sipping it through a molecule-wide plastic straw when the first people began to trickle from the courtroom. Third out was Patrick’s mother. She headed directly toward him.

  Vivian Emory was shorter than he thought, no more than five-foot-six, but carried herself so gracefully you’d guess her three inches taller. Her hair was pulled back from a high forehead and perfect unlined face. She had almond, almost feline eyes. He could imagine her in the robes of an Egyptian queen, an Abyssinian cat curled in her lap. Her dress was cut to resemble a man’s gray suit. Probably hand-sewn, one of a kind, Renny thought. She walked as if she had modeled. Her feet were sheathed in open-toed leather sandals that would have seemed excessively informal on another woman.

  Her face was very sober. Sand gave her his best smile, and she inclined her head fractionally. Something terrible lurked behind the almost porcelain exterior, and he felt a sudden, chilling flood of shame.

  She was married, probably happily, probably to a terrific guy. Renny Sand was only here to dip his quill in her pain, her embarrassment, and scrawl a message of implicit condemnation across the front page of a hundred papers. The big-town reporter had arrived to invade her home and privacy, to make accusations of the most inflammatory and embarrassing kind. It was his job to imply that Vivian Emory had entrusted her only child to monsters.

  He’d momentarily considered pretending to be a Child Welfare officer, maybe get her to say something in an unguarded moment. But all thoughts of duplicity vanished the instant he opened his mouth to speak. It was absurd, but his only thought was to give her something, some token, a touch that might, for however brief a time, brush away the shadows darkening her face.

/>   “Renny Sand, Marcus News Services.” She stiffened, and he went on quickly, before she could turn away. “There will be no mention of you or your child in my article, nor do I want to interview either of you.” There. It was out, and damned if he knew quite what to say next.

  Luckily, she was taken aback as well. “I don’t understand,” she said.

  “Neither do I.” Damned if he didn’t shuffle his feet. “I’m here to write a story, and I’ve just decided that you’re not a part of it. Latté?”

  She paused, and then nodded watchfully. He dropped coins into the slot, and watched her reflection in the polished steel strip at the top. Her complexion was flawless, except for a tiny heart-shaped mole just below her jaw on the left side of her neck. Her pores were so incredibly fine that her skin seemed almost plastic, a solid sheen any fashion model would have killed for. By firelight, it would have been the color of molten copper.

  Standing that close, her pain baked off her like waves of heat from a fever victim. It required a physical act of will not to touch her.

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  A raft of half-clever answers floated through his mind. For once, nothing would do but the truth. “I want to do my job,” he said. “I want to turn in a great story. I want a corner office on the twentieth floor, to slay social dragons and win a Pulitzer.”

  “And you don’t think talking to my son would help?”

  “Yes, it would. But I’d rather see you smile.”

  At that moment, it didn’t take a psychic to read her mind. I want to be anywhere but here, she said without speaking. I wouldn’t have thought anything could make me enjoy this place, this day. But you are a nice man.

  Then her eyes dropped away. They were brimming, but not a drop spilled. Her cheeks shone in the dim light. Shone.

  The machine finally dispensed her coffee. As she took it from his hand, their fingertips brushed.

  Small lightnings.

  Damn it, this is just getting worse and worse.

  From the slight widening of her eyes, he knew that she felt the tug as well, and her armor, momentarily thinned, grew thicker. She took a step back, and broke eye contact as she sipped. He cursed the impossibly bad timing. Sand opened his mouth, but before he could make an utter and complete fool of himself, they were interrupted by the approach of a bear in a striped Sears suit.

  Sand was just under six feet, and a fairly solid 210. But the bear’s shoulders came up to his chin.

  If not for the fierce protectiveness in his eyes, it might have been possible to dismiss the man as a mere brute. But the guy with one outfielder’s glove of a hand on little Patrick’s shoulder was so obviously kind and loving, so clearly devoted to boy and mother, that only a cretin wouldn’t have understood why she was with him. Hell, it was not only natural, it was right.

  That realization brought Renny back to earth, numbed the pain a bit. When he looked back at the lady, Mr. Emory had noticed his reaction. She had, too. For the first time, her eyes seemed to sparkle.

  Ah, well …

  Seen up close, Patrick was smaller than he’d thought, his chocolate skin so smooth and alive it seemed almost burnished. His eyes shone with the kind of love a child reserves for the parent of the opposite gender. Perfect, possessive, adoring.

  She bent and took him in her arms, handing the latté to her husband. The boy wrapped his arms around her and nestled his head against her chest as tightly as he could, as if seeking the safety of the womb.

  The courtroom ordeal had probably drained the boy’s last drop of maturity. Now that the inquisition was complete, he could be a child again.

  “Did I do good?” Kisses in reply. “Can we go now?”

  His father nodded, but his eyes were on the reporter. Renny bet that Otis Emory knew exactly how he had reacted to his wife, had seen it many times, in many other men. That he had weighed Renny, taken his measure in an instant, and in some odd way accepted his admiration as good and natural.

  Renny wanted to dislike the bastard, to see him smirk or taunt, but the moon face just seemed tired, and proud, and sad.

  This is my family, it said. I’m building it with my hands. There is pain here, but there is beauty. You’re all right, buddy. You see both, and you’re all right.

  Damn it, Renny liked the big lug. He smiled back, hoisting his latté an inch in silent toast. He knelt down to the boy’s level. Patrick’s gaze was deep and cool, chambers within bolted tight, closed to outsiders. Intelligence and confidence ran so deep that they struck Renny like a bomb. He’d never seen such eyes. He had an immediate, absurd sense that he’d take a bullet for the kid, and was startled by the thought. Jesus. What was it with this family?

  When you’ve worked as many beats as Renny had, and kept your eyes open, you’ve seen the faces of abused children in Chicago divorce courts, Miami immigration trials, the dark narrowed streets of inner cities or the spotlights of Hollywood’s Walk of Fame. In every case, there is something fearful, or brittle and challenging, or hopeful in their eyes. Something has been broken or bruised, burned out or prematurely awakened in them. Later in life they might seek abusive relationships, snarl themselves in a morass of hypersexuality or assume a monastic quasi-existence. Drug abuse, alcoholism, dysfunctional relationships, anorexia or morbid obesity lurked in their future. The weakest and sickest might become abusers themselves. He’d seen all these responses, and been horrified. What lived in Patrick Emory’s eyes was something unsettling, but different.

  In Patrick Emory’s eyes was control, stark and solid as two inches of Plexiglas, a barrier erected between the random cruelties of the world and this child’s emotions. He needed permission. Patrick’s father looked down at him with the relaxed confidence of a sleepy t-rex, and nodded almost imperceptibly. Renny extended his hand. “Hello, Patrick. My name is Renny Sand.”

  The boy’s small hand was as fragile as a sparrow’s wing, his clasp cool and polite. “You’re a reporter.”

  “Yeah. How did you know?”

  “The way you looked at me,” he said. “You broke me into little pieces, put me back together into different shapes. Reporters do that.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “‘Know the Ways of all Professions,’” Patrick Emory said.

  What?

  Vivian Emory just shrugged. “He talks like that sometimes.”

  The boy was quiet and watchful.

  “And when people do that,” Renny asked, “does it bother you?”

  “Wouldn’t it bother you?” he asked.

  Renny Sand found the kid utterly unnerving. “No,” he lied.

  And the boy knew it. The small warmth in Patrick’s eyes died. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  A deep breath. Renny was off-balance, and needed to get back to true. “I don’t blame you. If I were you, I wouldn’t talk to me, either.”

  For the first time, Patrick’s expression was uncalculated, unguarded. A bit confused, perhaps. Vivian and Otis Emory had watched the entire exchange. Renny had the sense it was something they’d seen before. “Take care of him. He’s a good kid.”

  The big man nodded. “Count on it.” And they moved on by, out the door. Otis Emory rested his enormous hand on his son’s back. From wrist to fingertip, it stretched damned near shoulder to shoulder. At the last second the boy looked back at the reporter, his face changed yet again. That innocent, guileless child was gone, and in its place was something far older, and fierce, as if for a moment that transparent shield had dropped.

  Then the three of them walked out of the corridor, the blaze of the midday sun transforming them into ghosts.

  Renny was shaken. There was that quality he had noted before, in other children; although here it assumed an unfamiliar aspect. Patrick had lost something essential, but even the boy himself might not realize what it was. Something was both right and terribly wrong about the kid, at the exact same time.

  He blinked, and they were gone. The sun-glare had bleached all detail
from the parking lot. There was an emptiness, a vacuum in the pit of Renny’s stomach. He’d never experienced anything quite like it, and had no idea how to fill it up again.

  * * *

  So there he was, lost in thought at the DoubleTree Hotel, the hotel that had been a Red Lion seven years before, when he had been another, better man. Feet up on a chair, CNN flickering soundlessly on the television, sipping halfheartedly at rotten in-room coffee. Thoughts of that previous encounter still rocked him. Christ. There was no logical reason for his reaction to the Emory clan.

  It had just been a story, like other stories. And nobody had said anything to him that had to be kept off the record. There were a hundred ways he could have used impressions, comments, and visual color to deep-background a story, or create a composite character without violating privacy, or portray a hypothetical child in a way that no one would recognize.…

  And in an instance like this, every one of those techniques was journalistic vampirism.

  And what would he call his present thoughts? Investigative necrophilia? That old case was dead and gone, and here thoughts of resurrection danced in his head. He was seriously pondering ways to sell it to his higher-ups at Marcus Communications, folks who, in all probability, didn’t care if, for a few weeks in ’94, the Claremont Daycare case had been the biggest story in the nation.

  Despite an acquittal due to lack of material evidence, the laundry lady had been correct: the owners’ lives had been trashed. Had the parents hoped to sue? Was that it? Was the whole thing some kind of national psychosis, the guilt of single and working mothers imploding? He bet that Dr. Laura would be happy to offer a quote on that.

  How about the possibility that there was abuse, but might it have been the … should he say homegrown variety? Women were often blind to the fact that step-daddies and boyfriends went a-creeping at night. Had Emory Senior’s grotesque hand rested on the boy’s shoulder a little too intimately? His own father never touched him like that. Certainly there was reason to suspect something wrong.…

  Another cup of Columbian river-muck was perked and consumed. His hands were trembling, and not just from the caffeine. Shit. It was only a story, like other stories. But seven years ago his whole life had lain before him like the yellow brick road, the goodies he’d dreamed of since childhood dangling like golden apples, ripe for the plucking.