The Perfect Generation

by C. P. James

  They weren’t able to ditch the Secret Service tail, but they kept a respectful distance and Lars didn’t seem to mind their presence. They had nothing to protect her from here—especially not Lars. He was gentle and kind, with an almost tranquil way about him. Other than being first daughter, she didn’t consider herself very interesting, but he made her feel interesting, and vital, and relevant. She liked him a lot.

  After a while it seemed like she should be getting to the hotel. Plus, she was tired from the flight and getting a little drunk. She checked her phone, expecting it to be around 11, but it was nearly 2. When Lars found the door of a narrow bar called Squeezebox locked, she took it as a sign and asked if he wanted a ride to wherever he was going. Neither of them was in condition to drive, so they walked to where Scott and Other Agent were waiting in their sedan and got in the back seat.

  She hoped Lars might be staying at the same hotel, but it turned out GIG kept several apartments downtown for executives who had meetings in Denver. He guided the agents to a high-rise near the 16th Street Mall and cracked the door. The plan, he said, was for them to leave after breakfast in one motorcade to drive to GIG’s campus. In other words, he was going to be there in the morning. It wasn’t in the way she’d hoped, but it would have to do. He took her hand and leaned over to kiss it, but she pulled it away, grabbed his face and planted her own on his lips. It took him by surprise, and she thought she might have blown it, but he just smiled and slid out.

  “Well, Just Jayla, it’s been real,” he said. “See you tomorrow?”

  “I hope so.”

  “Good night.”

  38

  If anything, their ploy worked too well. Kyle and his friends had distributed all 30,000 tickets by 11 a.m., and as a result, the homeless PGs holding tickets started gathering outside the stadium around noon. By then, the secret was out about the show they’d added and some of the ticket holders were being offered exorbitant sums for their ticket. The temptation probably was too great for a few of them, even though all the tickets were really for was to help security know who they should check against the list of former residents. If someone got their hands on a ticket but weren’t on the list, the ticket was worthless.

  Marius was as good as his word and did, in fact, put Mayor McManus and a guest on the list. Since he would be wise to the band’s master plan by then, it was hard to know whether he would actually show up or not. In all likelihood, he would never know.

  By the time they left the hotel in discreet, hired cars, Marius wasn’t feeling well. He rarely felt fatigue, even after long stretches on the road or endless sound checks. Presently, all he wanted was to crash out until morning, but there was a show to do. When they got to the stadium he found Phil, one of their roadies, who was more than happy to provide him with a couple of the yellow pills he always took on breakdown nights. By the time the lights came up and the crowd exploded, Marius felt right as rain.

  The show was good, if not quite as special as the previous night. Of course, the crowd wouldn’t have noticed that they weren’t super tight, or that Marius’ voice broke a few times, or that Reynaldo was using his practice bass on account of a faulty plug—again—on his regular one. After they got back in the cars and headed out for the hotel, it was surreal to see that basically no one was leaving the show. They were home. Later, they found out several hundred appreciative residents helped break down the elaborate stage in half the time it would’ve taken otherwise. Marius ordered everyone to sleep in, so they didn’t leave for Denver until around 2.

  Red Rocks was the last show on the current run. They would do three nights there, then rest before hitting LA and working their way down to Austin and New Orleans. Then, another break. Billy drove the first shift, so Marius took the opportunity to write. Had albums still been a thing, the band easily would’ve had enough material for two solid releases per year on account of Marius’ prolific songwriting. He kept an ordinary Gretsch acoustic in the RV expressly for this purpose, and Kris a small Yamaha keyboard for the same reason. They didn’t always write together, but when they did, they might bang out a couple songs per hour—the hook and the chorus, at least.

  Marius didn’t marvel at his own creative output, but there was no doubt the doomsday clock inside his body lent a certain urgency to his work. He didn’t understand the science of what would happen to him, but he didn’t have to. He’d seen it happen numerous times, starting with Reynaldo’s older brother when they were kids.

  There had been many since, but the most recent one had stuck with him.

  It was less than a month ago in Indianapolis. They set up in the middle of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, once a venue for car racing. Both the infield and the stadium filled with fans, swelling attendance to nearly 350,000. Marius had never seen that many people in one place before, and playing to that many was surreal—almost in a bad way. Even so, they put on a great show until about halfway through the first set, when Marius saw a commotion in the stadium a good 200 yards away.

  Though he couldn’t see exactly what was happening, it was clear enough that someone was in the throes of death. Marius signaled the band to just stop. It took a while before the people in the infield understood what was happening, but once they did it was almost utterly silent. Suddenly Marius decided didn’t want this person to be one of 20 million like he and the rest of them—he wanted them to be known. And so he stepped up to the mic and said:

  “Ladies and gentlemen, we just lost someone here. They were enjoying this shared experience with us, and now they’re gone. I don’t know about you all, but I want to know who they were. Hey, the people around them, could you please bring them down here? We’re going to give them the biggest fucking sendoff in history. Can we get the house lights up?”

  There was a murmur of solemn approval. The ten or so people around the fallen PG hesitated for only a moment, then took the body up and started carrying it down on their shoulders. The sea of humanity around them parted, then slowly closed behind the procession like a zipper. As they drew closer, Marius could see it was a young woman wearing a Clockwatchers shirt and jean shorts. One of her flip flops had fallen off. Blood still dripped from one corner of her mouth and her nostrils. Finally they reached the buffer between the crowd and the stage, and Marius indicated to the security detail that they should take her and pass her up to the stage. When they did, Marius and the rest of the band carefully took her and laid her down in front of his monitor. Marius again took the mic and knelt by her.

  “Do any of you know this woman?”

  Two of the people in the little procession, a teenage boy and a woman, raised their hands, tears streaming down.

  “Would one or both of you please join me up here to say a few words about her?”

  They looked at each other, then clasped hands as they were helped over the barrier and onto the stage. Both were sobbing uncontrollably.

  “Thank you both so much,” Marius said. “What was her name?”

  “Emily Reser,” said the woman, who appeared to be about the same age, maybe older.

  “And you are?”

  “Kendall. I’m her big sister.”

  “Thank you, Kendall. And you, my friend?”

  “Greg. I’m her brother.”

  “Thank you, Greg. I’m so sorry for both of you. What can you tell us about Emily?”

  For the next 15 minutes, the crowd listened carefully as Kendall and Greg told stories about Emily’s life—where she’d been, what she’d done, what she still planned to do. Marius asked them questions, and comforted them, and did everything he could think of to celebrate Emily’s life. Some of it was funny, some tragic. Mostly it was heartbreakingly sad. He asked for a moment of silence, and got two full minutes of absolute stillness. Finally there was little left to say, and the band lined up, three on a side, to take her away. Greg cradled her head carefully in his hands so it wouldn’t loll to the side. After a time, the band returned to the stage, took up their instruments, and Marius leaned i
nto the microphone.

  “This one’s for Emily.”

  39

  After Geller dropped his bomb about the president’s visit, Ken and Jill went into hyperdrive. By lunch they had a full communications plan and every employee briefed about what was happening and when. They were in touch with Connie’s staff immediately. Her itinerary had to be included in her official travel record since it was likely the cat would be out of the bag by the time she arrived. The last thing the White House needed was rumors of a cover-up. Jill prepped and tested the press briefing area in case they needed it, while Ken honed talking points about Geller’s return to GIG and how that related to the president’s visit. It helped that the two of them were friends, having been photographed together dozens of times in years past, but the particulars were still a little dicey.

  For security reasons, the president’s motorcade was a group of SUVs of different makes and colors from the Denver field office of the CIA, which were bullet- and bomb-proof but had the advantage of being inauspicious. Somehow this fact was not communicated to the guards at GIG’s delivery entrance, who initially refused to let them through. Eventually it was cleared up and the five vehicles proceeded inside. No press had shown up yet. The president’s vehicles took a circuitous route over old fire roads on GIG property that had been smoothed out, the entrance for which looked like the overgrown entrance to someone’s cabin. They were used so seldom that natural flora had maintained the illusion quite well, and during the winter they weren’t used at all.

  Connie fished around on the floor for her shoes, the same ones that killed her at the previous evening’s fundraiser and she winced a little when she slipped them on her already swollen feet. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Jayla watch her bemusedly.

  “We can’t all get away with running shoes and yoga pants,” she said.

  Jayla put up her hands and smiled. “No judgment here.”

  Jayla pressed her nose to the window to see GIG’s famous double-helix structure, the giant steel tubes gleaming in the Colorado sun like some alien mothership. There was no good reason for her to be there; ostensibly she was spending time with her mother, yes, but now she cared only about seeing Lars again. Their night together in the city felt like the kind of romance she’d seen in old movies—two people from different worlds, thrust together by fate. She’d been in love before, once, with a Chilean college student named Valentino. It felt real, but Valentino knew his destiny was to grow old and have a career, and children, and loving a PG didn’t jive with those plans. She’d felt foolish to think it could’ve ended any other way, and didn’t understand why she was so taken with Lars, who acted as though they had all the time in the world.

  After their car snaked through GIG’s underground parking garage and through the blast door that led to the super secret entrance, the man who introduced himself as Geller’s head of media relations ushered Connie and four agents inside the elevator. Jayla paused, unsure whether she was supposed to follow, at which point someone tapped her on the shoulder.

  Lars.

  “You can go for the dime tour, or we can go for a hike and see it from the ridge,” he said. “Or you can sit in the car for about three hours. I guess that’s a third option.”

  Jayla tried to suppress her joy and turned toward her mother, who mouthed “Have fun,” as the cylindrical door of the elevator hissed shut.

  “Hiking it is,” Lars said, and handed Jayla a bottle of water. “GIG owns about 20,000 acres, and it’s full of trails. All the way to the top. It’s about 3,000 vertical feet over three miles. You up to it?”

  “You’ve got snacks?” she asked.

  “First-daughter caliber snacks, in fact.”

  Lars tightened the straps on the small backpack he was wearing and started toward an unmarked door near the far side of the vehicle loop. Jayla followed and lifted her head to the two agents obviously assigned to follow her.

  “Try and keep up,” she said.

  Two thousand eight hundred fifty-seven vertical feet later, atop a peak with no name, Lars removed his backpack and produced a bottle of cabernet, a bunch of red grapes and a pre-wrapped platter of sliced cheese. The two agents who had impressively matched their pace on the way up sat on a deadfall near a stand of trees at the edge of the rocky summit, jackets off and sleeves rolled, looking like they might die from thirst. Jayla would have left them to question the wisdom of following her, but Lars, upon noticing them, withdrew two bottles of water from his pack and trotted over to them. She expected them to wave him off, but after a brief look at each other they accepted the water with a grateful nod.

  She fished around his pack for a corkscrew and worked on the bottle as he made his way back. He’d even brought screw-together plastic wine glasses. She was just so-so on wine, preferring it cold and sweet if anything, but it sounded good just then. Lars was smiling broadly when he returned and appeared pleased that she’d proceeded without him.

  “They sure were happy to see that bottle,” he said. “I think they got more than they bargained for today.”

  She studied his face, trying to decide whether he’d taken the extra water for himself, her, or just anyone he encountered who needed a drink. Probably the latter.

  Lars handed her the assembled glasses as he poured the wine.

  “I didn’t think to ask if you liked this stuff.”

  “Hey, nothing’s better after a steep, hot hike, right?” she said, stammering a little.

  “You said it.” The second glass poured, he re-corked the bottle and raised his glass toward the sun. “What should we drink to?”

  She looked around, tried to think of a worthy toast. Nothing came to mind, so she nodded toward the two agents.

  “To Jeff and Scott,” she said.

  “Are those really their names?”

  “Let’s go with that.”

  He smiled and gestured in their direction.

  “To Jeff and Scott!” He said, loud enough for them to hear. Jayla giggled.

  For several minutes they ate and drank in beautiful silence. The wine was good—buttery, even. So was the cheese, and the grapes were just right. Everything about this was just right. She would’ve given anything for her entourage to get lost for half an hour. All around them were the Rockies, unspoiled forests, and natural splendor. It wasn’t any better or worse than the Andes, the Cascades, or the Pyrenees. It had all been painted with the same brush, and it affected her the same way. The only thing different about any of this was him. For a moment she imagined herself as a grown woman, coming to this place for the first time or maybe even coming back. It wouldn’t happen, nor could it, but she often pondered the adventures she’d had, and whether she’d have them again.

  “You’re headed back to Washington in the morning, huh?” he said, inspecting each grape before eating it.

  “Yeah, early. Mom has a cabinet meeting or something tomorrow afternoon, so …”

  “That sucks,” he said in such a way that he knew the answer to this question already.

  “Why?” she asked, curious to see where this was going.

  “Well, it’s sort of a big night around here,” he said, watching her face for some sort of realization. None washed over her.

  “Yeah?”

  “June third, 2063. Six three six three.”

  A very distant bell rang. The date was significant to her, but she couldn’t quite place why. She could tell he enjoyed watching her try to suss it out.

  “I know I know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I can’t think of it, though. Remember, I’ve been in Peru the last two years, so I may need a clue.”

  Suddenly, Lars started whistling. She instantly recognized it as the chorus to “Flipsides,” a song by the biggest band of their generation.

  “Clockwatchers at Red Rocks!” she exclaimed. “Holy shit, that’s tonight?!”

  The Watchers had an enormous following among PGs. All six members were PGs themselves, which was pretty rare. Bands didn’t tend to l
ast, let alone form, but the main thing was the occasion for thousands of PGs to come together. Lately, though, they’d been playing a lot of dates and this one had a feeling of culmination about it, as it fell on the band’s 10th anniversary. Six guys, three nights. 6/3/63.

  “Red Rocks is 57 miles that way,” he said, pointing to the southeast. “We’ll be there by 7, easy, and they won’t go on until almost 9.”

  He said this so matter-of-factly that it took her a few seconds to put it together.

  “We?”

  “Well I’ve got two tickets. Thought you might be interested.”

  Tickets for this show would’ve sold out in seconds. Lars may have had connections, but still.

  “Are you serious right now?”

  “As serious as Jeff and Scott over there.”

  “Well, shit, then what are we waiting for?! Last one to the bottom buys the first drink.”

  She sprang up from the grass, her butt numb from sitting, and quaffed the last of her wine. Lars looked up, smiling, and took the empty glass from her.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Breathlessly, he chased her down the mountain.

  40

  After showering in an employee locker room at GIG, Jayla put on fresh clothes and met Lars outside, where he was waiting at the wheel of an expensive sedan. She guessed it was the sort they loaned to important visitors. She looked around for Scott and Jeff and saw them waiting in a government car just across the parking level, then climbed in.

  “This is becoming a habit, me chauffeuring you around,” he said.

  “I can get chauffeured anytime I want.”

  “Not by me,” he said, and wheeled around toward the exit, making the tires squawk.

  About an hour later, they joined a parade of vehicles outside Red Rocks. People on foot were making far better progress, and after fifteen minutes of crawling along they came over a crest to see the line stretch another half a mile. PGs didn’t do well with lines and waiting. She felt herself getting antsy, even though it was still quite early. Lars seemed to be taking it all in, as though waiting in the car was as much a part of the experience as the moment they killed the house lights. He produced a perfectly rolled joint from his shirt pocket and they passed it back and forth for a while with the windows barely cracked. By the time they finally turned into their lot, her head was swimming. She wondered aloud if GIG had a secret cannabis lab, but he just laughed at her, which made her laugh, too.