The Sovereign Era (Book 2): Pilgrimage

by Selznick, Matthew Wayne

  “My kid,” he said to her, “is not a Sovereign.”

  “I don’t give a shit, Marc,” she said. “You gotta let this man go, and get out of my place.”

  One of her workers, a big dyke, flanked her. She held a serving tray like it was a discus. Marc could see she’d love him to give her an excuse to do something.

  The little shit under his hand pushed against the bar with both hands. Marc increased his pressure. He might not be in the best shape of his life, but he was still stronger than this white-collar maggot. “C’mon, man!”

  The crowd behind Marc—no doubt all buddies of the sniveling little fuck—started shouting shit at him.

  The dyke looked at her boss. “Say the word, Christine.”

  She held up her hand, restraining her employee. “Make it easy, Marc,” she said.

  “Fuckin’ come outside with us, old man,” Shane said to him.

  “Nope,” Christine said. “You will not.” She said to Marc, “C’mon. Just today.”

  Marc felt the kid pushing hard against him. When Marc let go, all that force sent the kid backwards off the stool and onto his ass.

  “Fuck you,” Marc said to the kid. “Fuck you,” he said to Shane. He looked at the women behind the bar. “Fuck you, too.”

  He muscled his way through the crowd and burst out the door. The night air was jarringly cold compared to the crowded heat inside. Marc was chilled by his own sweat.

  He heard them laughing inside.

  He thought of the guy in the audience during The Azarrio Show. That fuck had been laughing at him, too. He wasn’t obvious about it, but it was clear enough.

  They thought he was a joke.

  The world thought he was a joke. An item of interest on the eleven o’clock news. An old man being disrespected by a little fucking monster and sitting there and taking it.

  Taking it.

  The Sovereign—starting with that smug fuck, William Donner—had spent the last year laughing at him.

  No wonder his friends wouldn’t talk to him. And Jesus, if his pop was still alive, grown man or not, Marc would have deserved the belt. He’d bend right over. Fuck it. No more.

  No more.

  From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Eight

  Lina didn’t take any of my five calls on Saturday. On the fifth, her dad told me to “Relax, Nate. Give it a day or two for her to get done being mad at you for whatever you’re in the doghouse for.” He paused, then said in the same bemused tone, “You didn’t do anything too stupid, did you…?”

  Debatable.

  “No sir. Thanks.”

  My mother took advantage of my apparently open schedule to hold me to our “celebratory” dinner. It wasn’t much fun for either of us. I was too distracted by the Lina stuff, and I think whatever rush my mother had felt from the television show had faded. We didn’t order dessert. At least she let me drive the car to the restaurant.

  We got home in one piece, and I retreated to my bedroom. It felt sort of poetically appropriate to put on the new Hüsker Dü record Car had loaned me, given how tangled up we all were. I put on my headphones, turned out the lights, lay on my bed, and let it spin, hoping I could turn my brain off for forty-five minutes.

  That didn’t work so well. Pretty much every song on the damn record might as well have been written for my life. I put myself through it anyway, even getting up to flip the record over after “Too Far Down.”

  Maybe I felt like I deserved it. By the time the mournful piano of “No Promise Have I Made” came around, I had tears on my face.

  One more song, and the record was done, and so was I. I pulled the headphones off my head and spaced out, staring at the maps on the wall over my desk for a few minutes.

  I’d had a thing for maps as soon as I’d been old enough to understand what they were. The idea that I could look at a piece of paper, a drawing, and see places far away from what I knew, far away from what I had to deal with day in and day out, was a powerful distraction.

  It didn’t do much for me that night. Maps represented all the people in all those places, too. In one of those places, somewhere in one of those little dots, was Eric Finn. Somewhere else, probably not far away, was Lina Porter. And too far away from her…was me.

  Eventually, I fell asleep on top of my bedspread.

  My head wasn’t in any better place Sunday morning. I tried to take Graham Porter’s advice and not bother his daughter. The whole thing was driving me buggy, though. I had to talk to somebody about it.

  So I called a conference with Mel and Jason, my closest and oldest friends. As usual, we convened in Mel’s bedroom, where they were already waiting for me when I arrived.

  Mel’s bedroom had all the same stuff on the walls—framed Disneyland prints, album jackets, and a giant foamcore Duran Duran display he’d managed to finagle from Pinnacle Records—but I felt a little out of place there. I realized it had been a month, at least, since the three of us had hung out.

  “Nathan!” Mel and I clasped hands. I noticed he’d shaved the wispy chin-hairs he’d been sporting, but seemed to be cultivating something on his upper lip. He smiled but seemed a little on edge to me. “We haven’t seen you in a while, good sir.” He glanced at my hair. “What’s with the leopard spots?”

  I ran my hand over the dye job on my short hair. “I dunno. Just something to do.”

  Jason and I shook. “It’s boss, dude.” I was relieved to see his own snaggle-toothed grin was as cheerfully unburdened as always. “You been pretty busy hanging out with the big kids, I guess, huh?” He punched me in the shoulder, a tap.

  I laughed. “I know, I know. It’s been weird since I got on independent study. Makes it harder to see you guys.”

  Mel nodded. “It’s a long walk between our houses, that’s for sure.”

  We lived two blocks apart.

  “Uh…yeah.” I didn’t need to be hassled, not now. Not today. I needed their help.

  Jason shrugged and ran his thumb and index finger across his own bushy blonde mustache. “Hey, everybody’s busy. Y’know, doing homework, ditching class…being on TV shows…”

  “Ugh.” I grinned. “Did you watch that horrible thing? I’m trying to forget it even happened.”

  “Dude. I watched it, then it was on the news that night, too.”

  “National news, that is.” Mel gave me a pointed look.

  “What?” This wasn’t good. “Why?” My profile was high enough as it was.

  Mel sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of the four milk crates holding his record collection. “Who knows? Slow news day?” He looked up at me. “Whose idea was that fiasco, anyway?” This time, his smile carried some genuine sympathy.

  “The lawyers,” I said. “My mother. The Sovereigns, I guess. I don’t think it did any of us any good—me or Byron’s folks.”

  “Is that why you called us?” Jason asked.

  I sighed and sat down on the edge of Mel’s bed. “No.”

  “Hold on.” Mel put the Golden Palominos on his record player to cover our conversation and keep his little sister from her occasional eavesdropping from the other side of the closed bedroom door. He held up an index finger until the dude from R.E.M. started singing. “Okay, boy. Go.”

  I mustered a small smile to acknowledge his pun on the first song. I sighed again and looked at my two best friends while Mel bounced down his bed.

  “I…found something out about Lina.”

  Jason’s jaw dropped. “No fuckin’ way. She’s cheating on you!”

  I frowned. “Way to go right to the worst possible thing, ever, Jase.”

  “Well, she’s always hanging out with that Sting wannabe…I dunno…”

  Carson. Jesus.

  “It’s not that,” I cut him off. “It’s something that happened a while ago. Before we knew her.”

  “What?” Mel’s dark eyes were steady on me.

  “Okay.” Another deep breath for me. “Okay, this is pretty shitty, and it’s…okay, look. She
was almost raped.”

  “Dude!” Jason barked.

  “Almost…?” Mel would have looked calm to Jason, but I could smell his skin pop with a burst of adrenaline and testosterone.

  “Yeah. I guess this guy came really close—she was all wasted or whatever—but Crystal Dubois pulled him off of her.”

  “Fuck.”

  “Fuck yeah, fuck,” Jason echoed.

  Mel scratched at his chin like he expected to find his old scraggly beard there. “So…what happened?”

  “Nothing.” I chewed on the insides of my cheeks and exhaled through my nose. “That’s the problem. That’s why I needed to see you guys. Get your opinion.”

  Mel shook his head. “What do you mean, ‘nothing’?”

  “I mean, nothing. The guy who did it didn’t get in any trouble,” I said. “He’s still out there. He got away with it.”

  “Lina didn’t, like, press charges?” Jason looked indignant.

  “Nope.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  I closed my eyes and struggled with what to tell these guys, how much to share. I shook my head, shrugged.

  “There’s…stuff. It happened pretty much right when Car’s parents were killed. The plane crash. That kinda overshadowed everything else.”

  Mel’s lips puckered, and he blew air. He never did learn to whistle. “Wow.”

  “Yeah.” Jason stared into space for a second before looking at me. “So—who is this asshole?”

  “Guy’s name is Eric Finn.” I looked at them both in turn. “Ring any bells?”

  “No,” said Mel.

  Jason shook his head. “So, you gonna turn him in, or what?”

  “Heh. Yeah. No.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “That, right there, is why I needed to talk to you guys,” I said. “Lina made me promise not to do anything about it.”

  Jason barked again. “What?”

  “It’s part of…” I realized these two didn’t know Lina was in therapy after the shit I’d dragged her through at the cabin last year. “It’s…personal. Stuff she’s trying to work through.”

  “Well,” Mel said, “okay, then.” He looked at me and crossed his arms across his chest.

  “It’s not right,” I said. “Fucker shouldn’t get away with it.”

  “Fuckin’ A,” Jason said.

  “But,” Mel said, “Lina wants you to let it go. Right?”

  “Yeah.” I looked at my hands. My fingers were curled and stiff. “But…it’s not fair. And it’s kinda driving me crazy.”

  “But,” Mel repeated, “Lina wants you to let it go, Nathan. Life sucks. What can you do?”

  “Fuck that,” Jason said. He looked at me. “Hey. What would you do, if you could?”

  His question broke down a door to a little room in my head I’d been keeping locked down. I stood up and paced a square of carpet. The words came spitting out.

  “Fuck with him. Scare the shit out of him. Make him know it wasn’t over. Make him know he wasn’t dealing with a teenaged girl. That he had…he had me watching him.”

  The frustrated anger built in me, moving fine-grained sandpaper over the surface of my brain and down the nerve endings in my skin. I imagined Eric Finn’s face—a face I had never seen, a face that was a vague amalgam of fear and cowardice—in tears in front of me while he cowered on the ground. “Make him sorry.” I blinked and looked at Jason. “That’s what I’d do.”

  Jason nodded. “Sounds like a good start.”

  “Sounds nothing at all like letting it go,” Mel said. “Fuck’s sake, Nathan. Lina’d kill you. Shit, your mother would kill you. And the cops. And what about the legal shit?”

  Jason gave Mel a look. “Screw that.” He looked at me. “M.Y.O.J., right, dude? Make that part of the deal.”

  “What deal?”

  “When you face him. Make that part of the deal: that if he talks about it to anyone—anyone—you’ll, I don’t know, fuck him up.”

  Mel threw his arms into the air. “Blackmail? Seriously, what is wrong with you two?” He stepped in front of me and stopped my pacing. “Nate. This is a bad idea. You know it.”

  Of the two of them, Mel had been my friend the longest, ever since he first moved into the neighborhood in the summer of sixth grade and struck up a conversation at the bus stop. He had always been the steady one, the comparatively calm one. I think he recognized that his role was to provide a foil to Jason’s flailing bravado, and he embraced that. He was sure playing it to the hilt right now.

  “Mel,” I said, “I can do something about this. I can make a difference. I can make that fucker feel something about what he did to Lina.

  “Maybe,” this thought had not occurred to me until just then, “even keep him from trying to rape someone else.”

  “Yep,” Jason chimed.

  “I can do something, Mel. For once.”

  Mel frowned. His lips twisted. “For once?”

  His body language broadcast “gotcha,” like he’d made some big psychological victory, like I’d see reason and let it go, let the world keep spinning, let Eric Finn keep going through life as a guy who thought he could get away with nearly raping my girlfriend.

  Fuck that.

  “Yes, Mel. For once.” I felt my upper lip tremble. For a lot of people, I know that’s a signal they’re about to cry. On me, it means I want to bare my teeth. It means I want to leap.

  I forced myself to look away from my best friend. My eyes found Jason.

  “Can’t let it stand, man,” he said.

  I took a breath and exhaled explosively. Right then, for a moment, that’s when I felt like crying. I didn’t.

  “Yeah.” I looked at Mel. I wanted to see understanding in his face. “I don’t think I can.”

  All I got was disappointment.

  “Guess you’ll tell me all about it when it’s over.”

  He turned away and made a fuss over picking another record to play.

  Marc Teslowski – Three

  Marc stowed his carry-on bag and sat down in his window seat. The curving wall of the airliner cabin was cool where he leaned against it, raising gooseflesh on his bare arm. The sensation made Marc’s lips split in a steely grin.

  He was going to Missoula.

  When he got there, he’d pound on the doors of the Donner Institute for Sovereign Studies until they let him in and let him see his son.

  Nobody liked it. Baldwin threatened to no longer represent Marc and Jeri, which was an empty threat, since far as Marc could see, the lawyer had so far done for them exactly jack shit.

  Jeri was as close to pissed off as he’d seen in years. He would have thought she would have gone along with whatever Marc wanted, especially if that meant even a tiny chance it might get Byron to come home. Faced with the possibility, it was almost like she didn’t want Byron to be back under Marc’s roof.

  Maybe she didn’t. She’d never approved of Marc’s parenting philosophy; he knew that. Tough. He was the father. He was the husband. His authority had to be final, and besides, if she’d had her way, Byron would never have been challenged, never have been pushed to accomplish everything he’d done.

  Her unspoken, suspected betrayal only served to strengthen Marc’s resolve. He would go to Missoula, and he would come back with his son if he had to drag Byron out by his ear and punch William Donner in the throat on the way out.

  Yeah.

  Marc straightened in his seat and watched people file onto the airliner. A few people back was the second strangest-looking guy Marc had ever laid eyes on. He was probably six and a half feet tall, but gawky and skinny as all hell. He had tiny little ears, like they’d stopped growing when he was a kid or something, underneath a sloppy, spiky shock of feathery black hair.

  The guy’s nose was enormous, narrow and hooked at the end like a beak. His lips were thin and pale. His eyes were black and wide, and he kept them pointed at the ground as much as possible.

  The first-most strangest-loo
king guy Marc had ever seen was Nathan Charters.

  Marc’s eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.

  Right.

  The Sovereign freak sat down next to him.

  Marc didn’t bother to hide his revulsion. He recoiled and shoved himself as close as he could to the inner wall of the cabin. He stared out the little window.

  Mother fuck. It was like the whole world was trying to get his goat. Put a fucking Sovereign on the same plane. Put him in the seat next to Marc.

  It couldn’t get any worse.

  “Oh my god.” The guy’s voice was a grating, piping screech. “You’re Marc Teslowski.”

  All right, then. It could get worse.

  Marc kept his eyes on the tarmac below and said nothing.

  “You are. You’re Marc Teslowski.”

  This could go on for hours. Marc had to put an end to it.

  “I’m not interested in talking to you,” he growled.

  The gawky freak squawked a laugh. “Well, we’re traveling companions, Marc Teslowski.” Marc felt him shifting in the next seat. “Might as well be companionable, right?”

  Marc kept his tongue. How many hours was this flight?

  “My name’s Eddie. Eddie Schwippe.” Some of his vowels came out choked, like his tongue was hitting the roof of his mouth at the wrong time as he talked. Maybe his fucking tongue was deformed thanks to whatever kind of freak he was.

  “And you are the infamous father who wants the Sovereigns to give back one of their own.” His chirping wasn’t so strange Marc couldn’t hear the subtle teasing in his tone. “Well. One of our own, I guess I should say.”

  The plane started to move into position on the runway. Marc watched the pavement flow past, the swift flash of lines and letters coming and going in the small square of the world he could see.

  Eddie Schwippe clucked. “I bet you’re not too happy right now, eh, Marc? Mister Teslowski? Right?”

  Marc gave up and turned to face him. Eddie blinked and smiled. His eyes, Marc realized, were entirely black, all pupil. It was disturbing.

  “I told you. I’m not interested in talking. All right?”