The globe-shaped logo of All Products United glowed brightly on the workers’ jumpsuits. Why APU had taken on the task of cleaning up after storms was a mystery to Claude, but maybe it was a responsibility they’d assumed after buying the naming rights to the school last year, changing it from James Buchanan to Vita-Lite High School with a wave of their corporate checkbook.
All afternoon, he’d thought about Jayesh, picturing different romantic scenarios: they were holding hands in front of school; they were at the lake, laughing and splashing in the cool water; they were outside Claude’s home, Jayesh giving him a long, lingering, good-night kiss.
He knew he was being ridiculous, and yet Jayesh had called him “cute,” hadn’t he? But maybe he always did things like that—flirted to mess with guys’ minds.
Claude considered himself fairly experienced in the dating arena, having had two steady boyfriends freshman year. But neither relationship had lasted more than two months, and he hadn’t thought he was interested in getting entangled again, at least not so early in the year. He had other things to focus on, like losing five pounds before auditioning for the school musical and improving his grade in German lit.
But Jayesh had stirred something up. Maybe it was because with Fenton and Dennis, Claude had been the pursuer and this time, assuming Jayesh was legitimately interested, Claude was being pursued. It was a thrilling idea, and made Claude’s skin prickle with excitement.
As he debated whether to wait outside the stables for Jayesh or whether that made him look too much like a stalker, he caught sight of his stepfather’s carriage in the distance. It was in the corral next to the principal’s, a spot reserved for VIPs. Even if they were the result of what Claude’s dad derided as SS—superficial science—there was no denying that his stepfather’s nags looked impressive, towering like statues above the other horses. Genetic manipulation made them look more like marble than muscle. They lacked even the casual tail swishes of ordinary mares, as if saving every calorie to carry out Ted Millstone’s commands.
It was odd that Millstone was there, but not inexplicable since his company’s cleanup crews were everywhere, and he was known to show up at work sites, conducting surprise inspections at factories, often with PR cameras in tow.
In the stable, Claude found Millstone at his stall, giving pieces of apple to Trax. He looked out of place in his black, high-gloss suit, and his saucer-sized cufflinks that rotated through the colors of the rainbow. Two saber wearing bodyguards stood at his side, and some of the kids, curious or amused, stopped to take cell-photos of the odd-looking group.
“Is something wrong?” Claude asked.
“Not with me. I was wondering about you. Are you OK?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”
Millstone motioned for the bodyguards to step back to give them privacy. “I was in the neighborhood and wanted to see how you had fared during the storm,” he said.
Claude squinted at him. “You were worried about me?” He sometimes felt silly for hating Millstone as much as he did. Stepfather-hating was such a boring cliché, after all, but he couldn’t help himself.
Millstone looked at the ceiling. “I suppose it’s hard to believe, but I had an insight about an hour ago. What’s that called? One of those sudden ideas that change your outlook? Offenbarung?”
“A revelation?” Claude said, who scorned Millstone’s habit of using a German word when an English one worked just as well. He suspected it was an affect acquired to please his boss, Bill Watson, whose foundation was the largest non-governmental funder of mandatory German studies.
“Yes,” Millstone said happily, snapping his fingers. “I had a revelation about you and me.”
“Really?”
Millstone nodded. “Indeed. It came to me just when I heard that the storm destroyed the Kenilworth train depot.”
“It did? That’s terrible. Was anyone hurt?”
“No, not seriously. I think the woman in the ticket booth was concussed. But my point…” He paused, trying to gather his thoughts. “My point is that just then, I realized that if you or Donna had been hurt in the storm, I’d be devastated.”
Claude could believe Millstone might be upset if his mother was hurt, but found it hard to believe that he gave a donkey’s hole about Claude.
“That’s nice,” Claude said drily.
“I’ve been hoping since even before this storm that we could start building a better relationship.”
Claude frowned. “What if I said I’m not interested in a better relationship? I mean, basically, I’m comfortable with the way things are.”
Millstone’s eyes sparkled. “I bought something months ago as a peace offering but could never find the right time to give it to you. Your mother seems to like gifts, so I thought you might, too.”
“A gift?” Claude looked around, half expecting to find a crew from Tricked ya! filming their encounter.
“I’d just like to be someone you respect, someone who can play a role in your life.” He pulled out a black, felt-covered box from his jacket pocket and offered it to Claude.
“What is it?” Claude asked, eyeing it suspiciously.
“Open it and see.” He balanced the box on his open palm.
“No thanks.”
Millstone shrugged. “You can always sell it and donate the proceeds to the Workers Revolutionary Coalition or some other group I hate.” He smiled at his joke.
Claude stared at the box. He felt like a hypocrite for being curious. If it came from Millstone, it had to be scheisse. Was it cufflinks? A tie clip? Although Millstone had been joking, it was true: he could sell it, especially if it was valuable. Or he could just toss it in the trash.
He took it and lifted the lid. Inside was a round, golden disc attached to a chain.
“A necklace?” Claude asked.
Millstone chuckled. “No. It’s a pocket watch,” he said. “There’s a clock under the cover. Look.” He reached over and pressed a tiny latch on the side. The lid popped open to reveal a roman numeralled timepiece with filigreed arms. “It’s an antique. Men used to carry them in their pockets with the chains attached to their belts. I thought you’d approve since it wasn’t made in an APU factory.”
Claude bounced the watch in his hand. He didn’t know what to think. “I guess it’s nice. I mean, thanks,” he said awkwardly.
Millstone looked delighted. “You’re very, very welcome.”
“You’re not going to believe what just happened!” They turned to see Carolien running up. She looked fantastic, as usual, decked out at the moment in all green, including a lime-colored, tight-fitting bodywrap. She’d even used a faux-derm bracelet to turn her brown skin chartreuse.
“What?” Claude asked, alarmed.
“Hi, Mr. Millstone,” she said. The sight of Claude’s stepfather seemed to have sapped some of her energy.
“Is that you Miss Adams?” Millstone said, squinting as if she was almost too bright to look at it, which, in a way, she was.
With a worried expression, she glanced at Claude, who shrugged to show he was as baffled by Millstone’s presence as she.
“Yes, Mr. Millstone. It’s just me under all this green.”
“What’s going on?” Claude pressed.
She dropped her rucksack, which clanked as it hit the ground. “The coach picked me for the starting round in Friday’s meet against Ferraro,” she said. He sensed her excitement, saw it flashing in her eyes, but knew she wasn’t going to bubble over—jump up and down or grab him around the waist and lift him in the air, like she usually did—because of Millstone’s deadening presence.
“That’s fantastic,” he said.
“Congratulations,” Millstone said.
“Carolien is one of the best blade-throwers the school has ever had,” Claude explained. “She can hit a bull’s eye at 50 paces.”
Millstone acted impressed. “That’s wonderful. Maybe Claude will bring Donna and me to one of your meets. We’d love to watch,” he sa
id.
“It’d be an honor to have you there,” Carolien said.
“That’s an unusual color you’ve chosen,” Millstone continued, pointing at the faux-derm bracelet. “I didn’t know our toy could produce that shade.”
“Hmmm,” she said. She poked the bracelet with her finger, turning it off. Instantly, her color returned to normal. “I was fiddling with its spectral programming. It wasn’t exactly the color I was hoping to achieve, but I haven’t given up.”
Millstone looked surprised. “You re-programmed it? I thought they were tamper-proof.”
Carolien shrugged and winked conspiratorially at Claude.
“Tamper-proof, maybe,” Claude said. “But nothing is Carolien-proof.”
Millstone looked at her thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t have bothered, but the standard colors don’t work well on brown people, Mr. Millstone,” Carolien said politely.
“That’s interesting. I hadn’t realized,” he said stiffly. Then he looked at his watch. “I best be off. Nice to see you Miss Adams. Claude, will we be seeing you Wednesday for dinner?”
“Sure. I guess,” Claude said.
“I’ll tell your mother you say hello.” Millstone sounded almost sad, as if he’d hoped the conversation would have ended on a more intimate note. He turned and strode off, the guards closely following.
As soon as he was out of sight, Carolien spun on Claude, her eyes wide. “OK, now what in the blazes of Hades was that all about?”
Chapter Three
Best Friends
Claude wondered aloud if his mother had put Millstone up to it. Maybe she’d issued an ultimatum: make friends with my son or I’m leaving.
Carolien shook her head. “No way. The world doesn’t work like that. Donna isn’t putting you ahead of her marriage.”
They had just left the school grounds and were riding side by side down Green Bay Road, sharing a double XCaff.
“So what’s your theory?” he asked
Carolien put a finger to her lips. She sat perfectly straight in her saddle, the thick coils of her black hair bouncing with each trot. “He wants something,” she said slowly.
“Duh,” Claude said.
“What I meant,” she said impatiently, “is that this dreck about wanting to be your bud is a ruse to hide his real motive.”
“OK. So what’s his real motive?”
Carolien looked thoughtful, as if considering a number of options. “Maybe he’s going to propose something to your mom and wants you in his corner. Like maybe he wants to move to the Peoples Incorporated China and is afraid she’ll say no, so wants you to back him up.”
“The P.I.C.? Why would he want to move to the P.I.C.?”
Carolien made a fist and waved it playfully in his direction. “Why are you so thick? I was just using that as an example. I don’t know if he wants to move. I just meant, that maybe, just maybe, he wants you in his corner because he’s anticipating a conflict with your mom.”
“That’s stupid,” Claude said.
“OK, fine,” she said. “So how about this: Maybe he wants you to infiltrate a student enviro-terror group.”
Claude laughed. “Are you serious?”
“That’s how those corporate verbrechers think. They’re always plotting and counterplotting.” She squinted as if at that very moment she was peering through a tiny hole into the brain of a corporate criminal.
“He’s not going to ask me to spy for him,” Claude said.
She leaned back in her saddle and sighed. “Yeah. You’re right. But it’d be kind of cosmic if he did, don’t you think? He’d think you’re spying for him, but you’d really be a double agent.”
“So I’d really be spying for the terrorists? Giving them APU’s deepest, darkest secrets?”
“Exactly,” she said excitedly, her eyes lighting up. “You’d get their blueprints and passwords and then Eco-Qaeda would blow up all their laminate factories and flood their silkworm farms. Oooo, wouldn’t that be great?”
He loved how excited she got, even about a completely cracked idea.
“Yeah, great—until Milly catches me and has me stuffed and put under glass in his den,” Claude said.
“Oooo, that’d be cool, too,” she said, slapping him on the shoulder and laughing.
“You’re sick,” he said.
“Takes a sicko to know a sicko.”
A crier in a red-and-white striped suit maneuvered among the riders on a tired municipal mare, warning against taking shortcuts. “A $100 fine for trampling lawns and flowerbeds,” she shouted.
They were passing the First Bank of Winnetka, which re-planted its garden every week so that flowers were always in bloom. Carolien had written to the bank’s president to complain about the waste but had yet to receive a reply.
“What if they deserve trampling?” Carolien asked. The crier indicated with a sour glare that fines in Carolien’s case would likely be doubled.
“She thinks you’re a hooligan,” Claude said.
Carolien grinned. “I am, aren’t I?”
“Ha. You just play one in the moving pictures. We all know you’re a goody-goody at heart,” Claude said.
“I’m no more a goody-goody than you,” she said.
“Not true.” Claude sighed and loosened his grip on the reins. “You write letters to banks about wasting flowers, and you know how to make your own clothes, and you can hit a bull’s eye at 50 paces. In other words, you’re basically a modern renaissance woman while I waste my time playing Parolles or Tiger Brown,” he said, referring to the parts he’d played in All’s Well That Ends Well and Threepenny Opera.
“Acting is not a waste. It’s an art, and you’re an amazing actor.”
“Yeah, well…” he said, embarrassed. He realized it must have sounded like he’d been fishing for a compliment.
To change the subject, he pointed to the rusted gates of the abandoned Daimler plant. The iron doors were layered with ivy, unopened since the ’52 OPEC embargo that had shuttered the motor carriage industry. “Let’s scale the wall. I’d like to see the other side,” he said.
She glanced at the gate with mild interest. “Doesn’t APU own it? Ask Milly for the key.”
“Ha. Even better, why don’t I tell him to turn it into something useful—an organic farm or animal shelter?”
Smiling, she ran her hands through Mattie’s mane and with a light tug on the reins, signaled her to knock heads with Trax.
“So show me the watch thingy,” she said, tossing the empty double XCaff expertly in a trash bin.
He pulled the watch from his trouser pocket. It had been pressed against his body, yet it felt cold, as if it had been sitting for hours in an air-conditioned room.
“Give it here,” Carolien said, placing her open hand under the watch. He let it drop, and she bounced it in her palm. “It’s heavy.” She popped it open, and examined the face from various angles, her eyes narrowing with curiosity.
“That’s an interesting design,” she said, handing it back.
The underside of the cover was engraved with what looked at first like a bull’s eye but was, on closer inspection, a series of concentric incomplete circles.
Claude, who hadn’t noticed the pattern before, ran his finger over the grooves. “It looks modern,” he said.
“Art deco maybe,” Carolien said.
“What should I do with it?”
“Pawn it.”
“Seriously?”
“No. But have it appraised. It’d be interesting to know if it’s valuable or junk.”
“I suppose,” Claude said, slipping it back in his pocket.
“I’m still thirsty,” she said abruptly. Without waiting for a response, she signaled a turn with her arm and guided Mattie to the hitch posts next to Hubbard Woods Park.
A handful of riders cursed Claude as he cut across a lane to follow her.
“Can you give a guy a warning?” he muttered.
Carolien dismounted. “I want
another XCaff,” she said, nodding toward the 24/7 White Rooster across the street.
Inside, Claude followed Carolien to the Café Corner, where they were greeted by a bird-faced guy wearing a parka and standing under what looked like a small, personal cloud from which snow was falling.
“Starting at only $799 a month you, too, can have snow at your command—inside or out,” the clerk said. “Imagine entertaining your friends with snowball fights in the middle of summer. Imagine swimming in your pool in the middle of a blizzard. Imagine…”
“Do you have any idea how much energy that thing wastes?” Carolien asked.
The clerk shook his head.
“Who makes it?” Claude asked.
“SunFun, a wholly owned subsidiary of…”
“APU,” Claude and Carolien said together.
The clerk nodded, his eyes shifting uneasily between them. Two small peaks of snow balanced on his shoulders.
“You know what APU is, don’t you?” Carolien asked, speaking slowly and succinctly, like a diplomat making a last call for surrender before a full-scale attack.
The clerk nodded, then shook his head and then, sweat beading on his forehead, shrugged uncertainly.
Carolien was about to tell him that APU was an evil, air-polluting, species-killing, union-busting, Third World-exploiting, life-shortening and immoral corporate monster when Claude put a hand on her shoulder. “Forget it. He’s just doing his job.”
“A job that will soon be done by one of those Personalized Autonomous Laborers,” she said.
“Programmable Automated Laborer,” Claude corrected.
Her mouth hung open for a moment. Then she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Right,” she said after a pause. When she opened her eyes, she smiled. “Double XCaff please. Make that a triple.”
The clerk looked at her uneasily before nodding and brushing the snow off his shoulders.
Claude wandered to the snack aisle, where flashing lights and mini-screens of celebrities extolling the virtues of Sugar Injectables, Pig Fat Suckers, Tongue Wrappers, and a dozen other wastefoods competed for his attention.
The Alternate Universe Page 2
