Grey

by Jon Armstrong

  The prompters now read: Hiro—Xavid is a man of many talents, who we have brought into our family to help us . . .

  "What are you?" I asked Joelene.

  "Corporate assassin."

  Her answer should have shocked me. Maybe I was beyond shock. "You destroyed RiverGroup," I said, glancing at Xavid's body.

  "Come on, lady," yelled Father, who had obviously forgotten her name, "let him go and take me!" In his right hand, he held a clear fashion gun. A neon green bullet glowed in the chamber.

  It wasn't until I opened my mouth that I knew what I was going to say. "You had me shot."

  "Not shot," she corrected, as she maneuvered us toward the front of the stage. "Precise medical explosives." Glancing about, she said, "Once the fire subsides, we'll slip into the audience, and exit through the east wing."

  "Why did you hurt me?"

  "'Best way to ruin the company," she began. Then she smiled a bloody smile and I could see bits of muscle and skin between her teeth. "But I promised you, and we're going to mkg."

  For an instant everything froze. The curtains were mostly burned away. A layer of acidic smoke hung in the air. In it violet, yellow, and red beams swirled from above. Through it I couldn't make out the channel cameras but knew they were there. On the other side Nora sat in her dressing room. She was watching. I could feel her obsidian eyes on me.

  Joelene had done it. In the middle of all of this, my advisor had done exactly what I had wanted. I was going to join mkg and be with Nora.

  A huge, black electronic gizmo fell from above and crashed into the stage like a fallen satellite. Joelene yanked me back, as a blast of sparks shot from it. A burnt-plastic smell filled the air. The audience was howling for more blood.

  " . . . Uh . . . yes," I said, barely able to speak. "Let's go to Nora."

  The prompters said: Xavid—and part of my job will be destruction . . . in order to revive this mighty company . . .

  In the audience, tables and chairs were being overturned. Ültra freaks ran in all directions. Two goo-covered hospitality women were smashing a man over his head with hearing helmets. A couple in polka dots fucked like dogs. A woman cried for them to go faster.

  "Forget the dead man." I heard the director yell. "Read your lines!"

  "Give us room!" shouted Joelene. She waved at Father with her bloody hand. "Give us a path out or Michael dies!"

  Father fired his gun. A man fell on his back a foot from Joelene and me. He wore a green jacket with holes for his black-painted nipples. Only his right nipple was spurting blood like a water fountain.

  "Keep the fucking audience back!" Father yelled at the security people. "Knock 'em off the stage."

  Another audience escapee in a glowing violet suit, a blinking shirt, and a marshmallow wig like Father's ran at me. "Business fame!" he hollered. One of the security men threw himself onto Fame, and the two of them tumbled down the steps at the front of the stage.

  Father said, "Give my son back!"

  "We just want out!" said Joelene as she scouted the audience, as if looking for a safe route out.

  "Let up," I told her. I was not going to make it alive in my nitrocellulose suit. She raised her elbow, and I began frantically unbuttoning the jacket and tugging off the sleeves.

  "You can go, lady, but give us Michael!"

  "What are you doing," Joelene asked me.

  "I have to take this off."

  "And now," said the house voice, as a distorted drum began pounding, "it is my super-amazing and spectacular honor to welcome you to the thirty-third annual RiverGroup product show and Ültra extravaganza. As you—" The voice and drum turned into screeching feedback and stopped.

  "Take it off!" barked someone. Others laughed and applauded.

  I lay the jacket on the stage and as I began undoing my pants, looked toward the channel cameras. "Don't drink the poison!" I told her. "I'll see you soon!"

  The prompter said: Michael—I am happy to let Xavid take my place as . . . The screen was smashed with what looked like a pair of aluminum pants thrown through the air. Shards of glass showered down on the audience.

  "Strip it off, golden boy!"

  "Make me beg your balls!" wailed someone close.

  "You can go free!" said Father again. "Just release Michael! We won't hurt you if you do."

  Joelene stooped for the orange jacket.

  "Leave it," I told her. "Let's go!"

  She picked it up and sniffed it.

  "Put it down!" I said. "Come on!"

  Her eyes met mine. Next she was balling up the jacket into a wad the size of a cantaloupe. "You were going to kill him," she said, with a grin as though she thought we were the same evil, commercial assassins.

  "No!" I told her. "Let's just go. Let's go to mkg!"

  Father fired another shot.

  The bullet hit Joelene's abdomen right in the middle of a smooth green bruise. Her body wobbled. For an instant there was a small, dark hole three-inches northwest of her bellybutton. Blood, as thick and dark as cola syrup, welled out and ran down her front. It spread into her green underwear and down her thigh. From there, it turned around her kneecap, and continued toward her bare foot.

  "Get away from my boy!" said Father, taking a step toward us.

  She tightened the balled jacket and muttered, "Fucker." Her eyes were ecstatic and furious like someone who wanted to kill. She was insane.

  I had slipped off my pants and held them before me. "You did it," I told her, afraid of what she was going to do. "You ruined RiverGroup. You got me Nora. Let's go!"

  She reared back like an old-fashioned baseball player. The clear gun in Father's right hand fell two inches as his eyebrows tightened over his nose.

  "No!" I screamed. "Joelene, don't do it!"

  Her weight shifted forward. She launched the wadded-up jacket. It spun backward, and one sleeve came unfurled as it flew. With a backhanded swing, I whipped the pants at her. An instant before the jacket hit Father, the Adjoining Tissue pants struck Joelene's back. The white explosions flung me twenty feet.

  Epilog

  Sitting up, I adjusted my company tie, glanced around the table, tried to refocus on the names, numbers, timelines, and locations that were being discussed, but my concentration was as settled as a droplet of quicksilver. Soon, I picked up the moon-wool tweed samples and began to flip through them. When I came to the 2x2 twill that I had picked out for the product show tomorrow, my eyes defocused on the smooth, dark charcoal. In the last year, I had learned a lot about grey. Maybe more than I cared to.

  Originally, of course, I had been attracted to grey because I assumed it was the opposite of Father's garish colors, the reverse of his style and manner, but it was much more complicated than that. In fact, because its parents were black and white, no color in the spectrum was the offspring of such complete opposites, and as such no other tone could ever represent and compass the vast distances between those extremes, that of light and dark, life and death, and good and evil.

  More important, grey was not the escape from the world I had wanted, nor was it the negation I had desired. All I had to do was close my left eye and see the grey spine of the world. Everything was grey. Color was nothing but a thin veil of deceit on top.

  Setting down the cloth samples, I focused on my half brother again.

  "I have been in contact with one of the members of the Ültra band, Stinkin' Dead Ünicorns, who feels strongly, as many of us do, that Hiro's death should be avenged." Rex, my armless half brother from Tanoshi No Wah, wore a sleeveless maroon frock, vest, and a black tie. The screen beside him now showed the diagram of a theater with a red circle around a front seat. "This man, whose name I am not going to reveal, is one of the drummers who plays the new Nalor 450mm munitions tom. As you may know, that specific drum has caused dozen of fatalities at recent concerts." Returning to his chart, he drew a line from the stage to the circled seat. "Despite the dangers of this new drum, in an interview yesterday, Mr. Gonzalez-Matsu insisted he will s
it in the front. So, what we are proposing . . . "

  As Rex continued, my eyes gravitated toward the distant gleam of Ros Begas, the geometric high-rise towers silhouetted against aquamarine, the gaudy flickering signs, blinking spires, all connected with flowing arteries of red and white light. Then the dots began to coalesce, the shapes turned hazy, and the city became one amorphous glow.

  I thought of her.

  Like I had many times, I recalled the moment when the door of her Loop car slid back and she stood inside in her gown. Since we were off the system and the cameras in her car were disabled, no footage existed. But that made it more special, more rare, if unfortunately more vulnerable to the corrosion of memory.

  I could still conjure the color of her skin in contrast to the iridescent grey of the bodice and the hazy white edge of her skirt that deepened to a glistening black in the center, the calm of her muted irises, and the smooth, moist watermelon of her lips. Sometimes though, without the help of video or images, it was difficult to exactly recall the shape of her hairline, how her eyebrows curved, or the precise timbre of her voice.

  And although it had been a year, almost every morning, while I lay in that semi-dream state at dawn, I would often feel her chenille-covered fingertips on my back or gently squeezing my throat. Sitting up, hoping to see her beside me, I would only find the wrinkled landscape of the empty sheets.

  After the product show, I sent a hundred messages to Nora, but they were all returned unanswered. The channels were filled with wild speculation and the foursome on Intellectuals and Soup debated whether she was even still alive. Every few weeks someone thought they spotted Nora at Slate Gardens, SpecificMotor 505, or the SunEcho, but after careful study, they were all fakes—no doubt some of the same young women from the auxiliary room that day. In Pure H, a new advertisement for plutonium buttons appeared. Instead of the beautiful dead couple, now a man lies alone. And although his palm is bloody, as though he had held her hand, she is no longer near.

  Even as I worked twelve- and fifteen-hour days to try to rebuild RiverGroup, my heart was dismal and motionless. And I began to worry that if she were alive—which I desperately believed—she had rejected me. It was bad enough I had once worn gold and danced to killer beats, now the world also knew that I was the stitched-together collage of a Pharmaceutical War freak.

  Then, the day before, Nora made an appearance on Celebrity Research Yacht. She wore a simple bias-cut charcoal one-piece, with wide flat-fell princess seams, a v-neck, and a slender gold scarf. Her hair was shorter and the ends were tinged with black. And while she answered Milo's silly questions with her usual succinctness—giving out no information other than that she was alive, I could tell that she had changed in a million ways, that her eyes were a darker shade, her face a little rounder, and her cheeks a deeper blush. And yet, despite all the differences, she was Nora—my Nora. At the end of the show, her dark eyes met the camera's stare, and she touched the cloth of her dress where she had once touched the button of her jacket.

  Immediately, I got a team of analysts together to decipher her message, but the hunt for clues was unnecessary, as later that day it was announced she would attend the Intel-Sunbeam Ironing and Renovation Invitational. I redirected the team to set up a covert rendezvous.

  "So, Mr. ceo," concluded Rex, obviously irritated that I had been daydreaming, "that's the scenario."

  "Sorry," I said. "I got the strategy if not all the details."

  He asked, "Shall we go ahead?"

  Two days ago, I would have immediately said yes, but now that I knew she was alive I didn't know. To delay, I asked the others, "What do you think?"

  Around the hammered-silver and sugar maple table sat Mom, Mason, Ari, the girl whose skin looked like scrambled eggs, my tailor, and Walter Noole. We were in what had become our conference room on the fifteenth floor of the PartyHaus. The black toilets had been removed, and so had the ornate and pastel couches and easy chairs, but cobalt tiles still covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. Mom complained it was gloomy and cold, but I liked it.

  "The risks," said Mason, nodding thoughtfully. "Are they worth it?" He wore a tuxedo-like black suit and glasses. Out of his ratskins, he had become a distinguished gentleman and presided over a popular game show on channel 43,001 at dawn each morning.

  "No," said Mother, shaking her head. "Rex, I'm sorry, but you know I don't like it. We've been about positives. This is purely negative." Mother now wore her hair short. It was frosted a light strawberry, and although I wasn't sure it worked with her tanned complexion, it was better than before. Her tailored charcoal suit was beautiful and made her look both strong and yet delicate in a way she never had before. "I think we should forget it and go to the ironing show. I'm sure no one wants to miss Maricell's singing."

  "Have you really thought it through?" asked Mason, eyeing Mom.

  "I have!" she replied. "It's destructive. That's why I hate it."

  "The question is," began Ari, leaning forward, "will it win us customers?" She was always the pragmatist.

  "Definitely," said Rex. "Most of our customers are still Ültra and they want blood." Shrugging, he added, "We've been weak for a year."

  "The plan is very mean," said Walter, who sat beyond Mr. Cedar on my side. "But what they did was very mean, too." Frowning he added, "I'm not sure what to do." It turned out that Walter had an amazing gift for coding, and while he was still learning his way, I had given him the job of chief code officer.

  Mr. Cedar, who often spoke last, sat back and twisted his single beard hair. "Does it jeopardize your future with Nora?"

  "That can't be part of a business decision," I said.

  "It has to be," he countered.

  "It does not! It cannot. She has nothing to do with the business." Even I could hear the overtones of denial in my voice.

  "That's maybe the best reason not to," said Mom, her voice softer, as if she was hoping the notion would just fade away. "Let's table it and go. We're going to be late."

  "I need a decision," said Rex.

  "We're not interested," said Mom.

  "Wait!" I said, pushing back my chair. "If we can't increase our percentages, our creditors aren't going to keep us going. We've got to be courageous."

  Rex spoke toward Mom. "If all goes well, his death alone will make the product show a success. I get questions about retaliation from our clients all the time." Softer, he added, "A lot of them still love Hiro."

  Sitting back, Mom said, "It shouldn't be like this! I hate how the families do business like savages. When we toured the slubs, we never were like this."

  "It was worse!" said Mason. "It was much worse out there."

  "It was," agreed Ari.

  Standing, I stepped toward the windows. An hour from now, I was to see Nora off the system during the ironing invitational. What would I tell her? What could I possibly say?

  When Mom came to my side, I looked up as though I had been staring at the lights of the city. Actually, I had been gazing down toward the far end of the oxygen gardens at Father's headstone. It might not have been visible except the ground lights were on and, a couple of months ago, I had spread a handful of mutant carrot seeds, and their tops formed a thick black patch.

  After the product show last year, I retreated from the world. I lived in my dressing room and while I did nothing but burn a lot of gen-cotton shirts with a Schiaparelli-Firemaster Jr. that I had sent out for, I told myself I hated all of them, especially Joelene. When a family commission found she was born a freeboot it was clear that she had deceived, betrayed, and used me. Worse, she had killed Father at just the moment when I had started to see him for what he really was—a flawed, frantic man who had let the company disfigure his heart. Maybe in the future, in a few years from now, I would be able to forgive Joelene since she had done so much for me, but clemency wasn't yet in me.

  A month after the show, one morning, after I scorched the collar of another shirt, I started to cry. I fell to the floor and wept so hard
I could barely pull air in my lungs. Once I had picked myself up, I headed to the technology building and walked into the code lab, where I knew there was still activity. The thirty workers stood and began to clap, but I told them to stop.

  "I know almost nothing about the business," I told them. "But in my Father's name, I'm going to try."

  I became ceo of RiverGroup and began working the long hours that he had. Five months later, after weeks of negotiations, the Om Om president of iip-2 agreed to return thirty percent of her business and that felt like a new beginning. But it was only that. RiverGroup wasn't first anymore. We weren't even second. We were fifth behind mkg, KodeKing, XL8, and Budget-Crypt. And currently, the only moneymaking part of the company was the Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday night rages at the PartyHaus where Maricell sang, and many of Tanoshi No Wah performed.