Their eyes met, hers sparkling with invitation, his submerged by apprehension.
“I should probably call Troy,” he said.
She took his hand and placed it on her thigh. “I think that can wait.”
He kissed her mildly.
“Kevin Tolbert,” Angie said while leaning away. “That’s not what I had in mind.”
She pressed her lips severely to her husband’s while guiding his hand higher.
Chapter Forty-One
Julia traded her empty glass for a tiny pillow and neatly folded blanket. She had never been more grateful for an upgrade in her life, which must have shown in her eyes as she thanked the flight attendant.
“Rough day?” he asked.
“Long day,” she responded. “Actually, long week.”
He smiled politely and offered a refill. She declined, hoping to use the three-hour flight home to drift into blissful unconsciousness. As soon as Julia had found and occupied her first-class seat she felt the physical and emotional toll of the past few days. Much of the adrenaline masking her tension ebbed, her body finally granting itself permission to enjoy a brief reprieve from the stress of tiptoeing around a strained friendship, fighting desire for a charming gentleman, and maneuvering into a confidential meeting of Washington insiders. A nap was just the thing she needed before tackling her next high-adrenaline task: beating Monica Garcia to the editorial punch.
She recalled the sting of her rival’s presence at the austerity coalition meeting, wondering whether Monica had made the same deal with Senator Franklin that Julia had made with Kevin, preemptive access in exchange for fair representation. Or had Monica simply seduced her way into the good graces of a Franklin staffer, posing as an eager intern who would make a nice addition to the growing harem? Either way, the game had changed.
As the alcohol began inviting her body to relax, Julia reminded herself of her opponent’s limited journalistic experience. Monica could report the basic facts of a story well enough. But Paul wanted an article carefully nuanced yet unflinchingly damning. Pulling that off would require more than naked ambition. It would take a Pulitzer-winning intellect.
She wanted to compile a mental list of story elements but her brain refused to help. Julia found the audio symphony channel on the screen embedded in the seat in front of hers and closed her eyes while the London Philharmonic washed gentle waves of beauty over her restless mind.
Five minutes or an hour later Julia felt herself gasp desperately for air, her limbs flailing frantically to counter the pull of a waterless undercurrent. As before, it drew her downward. As before, the shadowy figure of a man stood unable or unwilling to rescue her from a vortex she didn’t understand but knew to be evil.
Joyless laughter invaded her sleeping ears. At first she assumed it came from the figure fading in the distance, the man toward whom she pleaded. But then she realized the sound rose from beneath. It was a vile and indulgent laughter, the kind that might accompany the foul breath of a gluttonous man raping an innocent child or devouring a cannibal’s feast.
“Don’t leave,” she screamed toward the barely visible man in the distance, her heart pounding in her throat. “Please help me!”
He made no move beyond extending a hand she could not possibly reach.
The texture of leather chafing the fingertips of her right hand woke Julia from the nightmare. Opening her eyes, she saw her arm reaching toward Seat 2B eighteen inches ahead, the face of its occupant swiveled toward her in apparent irritation over her disruptive thrashing.
“I’m sorry,” Julia said dimly while locating herself. “A bad dream.”
She turned left, grateful to see a vacant seat. Turning right, she spotted a blinking wing light cutting through an oppressive external darkness. She found and tapped a faint blue icon on her armrest to kindle the overhead lamp. It took a moment to notice Mozart’s Serenade No. 12 rising in her ears, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe attempting to calm Julia’s palpitating heart.
She picked up the tablet resting beside her and quickly retrieved the document she had begun after visiting Maria’s therapist.
DREAMS: MAN, SHADOW, FEAR, ANGER, ABANDONED
DR. MORELAND: “I think your subconscious may be urging you toward something important…something to do with your dad…Talk to someone who can help fill in your father’s face.”
She had captured and ignored the notes like an unpromising lead on a story she didn’t want to write.
The dreams reflect self-doubt and a declining career, she told herself. They have nothing to do with deeper conflicts or mysterious messages from my subconscious psyche.
Or did they?
Julia added three words.
DESCENDING INTO HELL
While she stared at the phrase a slight shiver provoked her to squeeze the pillow tightly. Tapping a TO DO icon on the screen Julia reluctantly added “See Dr. Moreland again” to her list, a small action that gave her the sensation of retaking control.
Julia searched for something to occupy her mind for the remaining ninety minutes of the flight home. Three taps later she weighed two options, the final journal entries of Sylvia Santos or the first of her son. She chose the file titled ANTONIO’S MUSINGS.
August 14, 2035: Today I begin my journal titled Antonio’s Musings. Yesterday was my twelfth birthday. Mom and Jeremy got me this really cool tablet that connects to my chair. It lets me type using only my good finger. I’m slow, but I’ll get faster. What else do I have to do? I have a zillion thoughts cooped up inside my head. I can hardly wait to start writing them down. Thank you for reading this, whoever you are. Brace yourself for the most amazing story ever. Mine!
August 15, 2035: You probably want to know about my early life. It began pretty normal. Mom said I was a perfect gentleman as a baby. I hardly ever cried. That’s good since she needed to rest up for the hard days to come. I still don’t cry much. Mom handles that for the both of us. She tries not to let me see, but I know more than she thinks. I know Dad left because of me. I know she can’t work overtime because of me. And I know she never remarried because of me. But she likes me anyway. I know that because I see it in her eyes, not because she tells me. She would tell me either way.
For as long as I can remember we’ve enjoyed a word game Mom invented. She tries to stump me by reading a dictionary definition. I get a point when I guess correctly and she gets a point when I’m wrong. I was winning 1236 to 843 before I lost the ability to speak ten months back. We restarted the game yesterday to test-drive a voice replacement software Jeremy downloaded to my tablet. She read “No longer in use or out of date.” I knew even before asking which half of the dictionary she was in. I tapped out OBSOLETE and a computer voice spoke the word. Mom cried, I guess because she missed our game. I just glared at Jeremy who was laughing hysterically because he chose a little girl’s voice. Mom made him fix it. Now I sound like a British intellectual. Much better.
You may already know that I have a rare disease. Did you know several famous people had a similar condition in the past? Look up a guy named Stephen Hawking. He won the Albert Einstein Award for physics about fifty years before I was born. Hardly anyone has the disease now. Parents deselect kids like me while still zygotes or embryos. I’ve often wondered what kind of child Mom might have had if she had prescreened. Would Jeremy have a cute sister rather than an invalid brother? Would Dad have stuck around? Would they live in a big house instead of this cramped apartment? One thing is sure. Mom probably wouldn’t have invented our word game.
Antonio wrote two dozen entries that first month, some longer than others. Each provided a brief window into the mind of an adolescent boy trapped in a mostly inept body. Julia learned that he loved an outdated robotics program he had received from his mom’s friend, which sat idle after he lost his ability to steer a mouse. There were several comments she found surprising but would have considered typical for any other adolescent boy. Inappropriate sexual daydreams about the few girls his brother brought by t
he house. He shared how it felt when they recoiled at his appearance, politely shaking his twisted hand while looking away to avoid eye contact. A few entries described life’s small pleasures, such as the taste of a banana-fudge milk shake and the thrill of launching into the next book in his favorite fantasy series. His vocabulary and breadth of knowledge suggested a keen intellect, perhaps someone who would have been a terrific copy editor or research assistant. They were abilities, she discovered, he would put to use in short order.
May 10, 2036: This morning Mom brought me with her to a meeting at the headquarters of Lance Lowman’s presidential campaign. It was so cool! An important-looking woman explained different opportunities for volunteer participation. Get this—I’m now an official online campaign specialist for the man we hope will become the next president of the United States. I send messages from my tablet to a list of prospective donors. I ask them to make a $100 gift toward a major media effort the campaign hopes to launch just before the election. I managed to send out ten this afternoon and then checked the system. Two of the ten already gave! I’m going to try sending out a hundred messages per day over the next few months. I bet I can generate a hundred thousand dollars all by myself! Mom says we need a person like Lowman in the White House to expand the boom and keep her in a decent job. I asked Jeremy to help me get to bed early tonight. I can’t wait to get started tomorrow!
Julia remembered the national excitement over Lance Lowman’s campaign. He had managed to corral the enthusiasm of a nation giddy over what turned out to be a short-lived economic boom. Even those living near the poverty line joined his bandwagon, eager to accelerate the upward momentum. Lowman promised a decade of growth if his party took power. He would remove cumbersome regulations to help the market capitalize on burgeoning gen-tech innovations, which, in turn, would lift all boats by raising the water level of every segment of the economy. He also promised to reduce taxes that had mushroomed thanks to rapidly expanding entitlement spending. Clearly, the Santos family believed every word.
Julia scanned several pages reflecting Antonio’s weekly tally of messages sent and donations generated. Then she camped on an entry the now thirteen-year-old considered the most important of that year.
November 8, 2036: We stayed up most of the night watching election results. Governor Lowman is now the forty-ninth president of the United States. We celebrated by eating Mom’s famous chocolate chip pancakes before she went to work and Jeremy went to school. Nancy (my day nurse) must have stayed up late too. She looks as groggy as the rest of us. But it feels great knowing I helped make history.
That post-election euphoria set up the downward tipping point of Antonio’s short life. Within twelve months circumstances began to undermine whatever sense of significance he had gleaned from Lowman’s victory. The gen-tech market crashed, throwing his mom out of work and forcing the family to live with his aunt and uncle for six months. Jeremy hated the place. Got into fights at school. Resented any input or guidance from Uncle Marcos who was “Not my father!” Antonio wished he could talk to his brother about what both of them were feeling. But one sentence in an English accent every two minutes could not keep up with Jeremy’s rapid-fire venom that was poisoning the household and breaking their mother’s heart.
Julia found only four quick journal entries from 2038, each suggesting Antonio had become increasingly pessimistic about life.
March: I’m starting to doubt Mom will ever get another decent job.
June: Mom said she had to take another pay cut. We’ll need to move.
July: The new apartment has a funky smell.
September: Poor Jeremy. He hates his new school even more than his last.
Julia filled in details with recollections from Sylvia’s journal. The family had moved into a low-rent apartment in a rough school district where Jeremy continued to be mired in resentment. Things improved slightly when Sylvia began dating a man from church who helped out financially from time to time. But the relationship went nowhere after the man spent time at their apartment observing life with a severely disabled boy and an older brother angry with God and the rest of the world.
“Who could blame him?” Antonio wrote with resignation in November.
Antonio seemed to rediscover his Musings journal along with a new fixation in the early part of 2039.
February 7, 2039: The president’s plan to save the economy seems to be gaining traction. He’s getting surprisingly little resistance in Congress despite condemnation by the Vatican and a few Southern preachers. Mom says his proposal will never fly. But she’s been critical out of spite ever since losing her gen-tech job. I read the details online last night. That took me about an hour. I think I like it, a commonsense strategy for tackling the deficit and spurring new economic investment while allowing those brave enough to do so to become part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
She continued reading, several entries providing progress reports on what would come to be called the Youth Initiative.
March 2, 2039: The president’s plan passed an important subcommittee vote in the House of Representatives yesterday. It will go to the full House in a few weeks.
April 10, 2039: A senator from Texas proposed an amendment to the president’s plan, suggesting they should add two restrictions. Adults must state they have volunteered free of coercion. Minors can only volunteer with the approval of all living parents. Both were accepted as reasonable changes.
May 17, 2039: Someone labeled the Senate version of the president’s plan the Youth Initiative because, in theory, it should lower the average age of the US population. The media keeps using the label, so I think it will stick.
June 21, 2039: A historic week. The Youth Initiative passed both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority. Economists are already projecting significant savings and growth.
August 30, 2039: The first month of the Youth Initiative brought an unprecedented transfer of wealth. A high percentage of recipients say they plan to use the money to pay off debt. But some recipients are entrepreneurs who, it’s assumed, will invest in new businesses to grow the economy.
September 30, 2039: NEXT Inc. announced that it plans to purchase and renovate vacant office buildings in major markets over the coming months in order to open clinics specifically designed to serve the growing demand for transition services. The program has proven more popular than expected and the supply of doctors willing to facilitate the process simply can’t keep up. NEXT said they plan to hire attending physicians supported by a team of transition specialists rather than continue directing people into existing doctors’ offices and hospitals.
Antonio went on to trace the growth of the NEXT infrastructure from the first few clinics in New York, Los Angeles, and Phoenix into progressively smaller communities. The company achieved its stated goal of opening three hundred clinics within twelve months. Thousands of high-paying jobs were created as contractors bid for renovation projects and elder-care workers moved up the food chain to become transition specialists. And all of it was funded by a deluge of cash previously trickling from retirement and medical savings accounts.
A faint ping interrupted Julia’s reading. The cabin lights gradually rose and the other first-class passengers woke to the captain’s voice inviting the flight attendants to prepare for landing. Julia glanced at the clock on her tablet. An early arrival.
Anticipating the next voice on the intercom, Julia closed the MUSINGS file to store the tablet in the carry-on bag lying at her feet. With the touch of a button her seat gently eased itself toward an upright position as she pondered Antonio’s final years. He seemed genuinely excited each time the Youth Initiative cleared another hurdle toward passage. He tracked the progress of the transition industry like a teenager anticipating opening day of a summer action flick. What would he have thought of Jeremy’s lawsuit? What would he have said to men like Kevin Tolbert who, Julia assumed, would have restricted his right to volunteer?
She closed her eyes as the wh
eels met the awaiting runway. An image flashed, echoing her dream of hellish descent. Forcing her eyes open again, she thought of a teenage boy eager for death and wondered what kind of images had greeted the closing eyes of Antonio Santos.
Chapter Forty-Two
It was nearly ten o’clock in the morning before Julia forced herself out of bed and into the shower. Arriving home somewhere between midnight and morning, she had instinctively turned off her alarm clock before falling into a welcome slumber. She had hoped to get an early start writing, possibly completing a first draft before dinner. That wasn’t going to happen. A late start teamed up with writer’s block. By four o’clock Julia was staring lethargically at a paragraph containing forced, clunky prose.
I bet words are flying effortlessly onto Monica’s page.
She heard a rap on her closed door followed by Maria’s perky voice. “Hey, Sis. Are you about ready?”
Ready?
“They’ll be here in half an hour,” Maria continued.
“Who?”
“What do you mean who?” Maria opened the door, her face forming into a reprimand after noticing Julia’s jeans and baggy sweatshirt. “You aren’t even close to ready. Didn’t you read my note?”
Note?
Maria crossed her arms. “I knew you got in late so I didn’t want to wake you before I left for work. I put a note right next to your toothbrush so you would be sure to see it.”
Julia ran her tongue across her teeth and blushed at the exhaustion-induced oversight.
“Sorry, Sis. What’s in the note?”
That’s when she noticed Maria’s outfit, an obvious clue to the mystery.
“Fin has a really cute roommate named Craig Gilman. They want to go dancing at the club tonight.”
Julia rolled her eyes in disbelief. “And you said I’d go?”
Fatherless: A Novel Page 24
