The picnic was almost ready.
Above every picnic table the gossamer wings of radio controlled aircraft, about the weight of a small piece of paper flew, shimmered as they flew in figure eights, keeping away the flies.
The last the four lawn mowing robots was slowing down from the burden of a full mulch bag as it made its final swath, while the rest had already made their way back through the open lower half door into the lawn shed.
Not far from the lawn shed, a roast pig was turning on a spit, under the watchful eye of a chef who split his attention between the spit and a long row of turkey drumsticks keeping warm dangling on strings over dim coals.
Hundreds of fireflies were waiting in their jars, out of sight, ready to be released over the patio, just after sunset, when the releases are triggered by light sensors.
With a press of a button, the remote ignition in all six of the chimineas set strategically amidst gathering places of benches and chairs across the patio ignited, starting to warm those spots on a chilly late summer evening.
Another button released a subtle miasma of flowery perfume, matched to the mix of flowers in the garden, but more intense. It mixed with ozone blown in from the dry thunder in the distant foothills.
Every four minutes a gentle mist sprayed out from the tree tops, taking the edge of the dry summer air. Prisms hanging at the end of wind chimes sent rainbows twirling all over the garden, every time the sun peeped out of the overcast sky, and each little gust of breeze filled the air with tinkling.
The fountains were bubbling and their basins were alive with carp jostling about their confines. Ice buckets, strategically placed in pools in the cool artificial stream connecting the fountains from one end of the garden to the other, waited full of bottles of chardonnay and pinot noir, until the wine stewards arrived to open them.
Six valets were lounging in the entryway, ready to deliver guests cars to a reserved section of the homeowner’s association’s underground parking lot in a few minutes.
The trellises full of ripe grapes with broad green leaves spreading out in their full glory obscured the city streets five stories below, while remaining low enough for a good view of the crests of the Rocky Mountains in the distance and the sharp peaks of the Denver Art Museum between the condominium complex and the mountains, its titanium sheath gleaming dully in the evening sun. Noise cancellation speakers positioned along the perimeter muted the low rumble of traffic that would otherwise fill the space.
The freight elevator was held at the garden level, ready to carry discards down to the garage basement, where catering trucks waited ready to take the discards and refill the picnic tables with hor d’oeuvres waiting in the industrial sized refrigerators in the catering trucks there. Also waiting in one of the refrigerator trucks was a giant ice sculpture on a cart so large that it just barely fit on the freight elevator, another of Lily’s masterpieces.
The public elevator was at the ground floor, waiting for guests to arrive. Balloons festooned the entry doors. A red carpet led guests to the elevator door. A lipstick arrow on the metallic elevator controls pointed to the button for the garden level. A low profile security guard sat at his station where a computer was ready to compare photos of the incoming guests to photos of the individuals on the guest list, and divert elevators containing suspicious individuals to a lounge three floors below the garden level, or to the basement level in the garage if it appeared they were armed, to be interrogated before joining the party.
Lily waited just outside the cooler, plopping whipped cream onto Jell-O cups enhanced with a new olfactory enhancer compound that hijacked your brain’s ability to see in color and converted it into an enhanced sense of smell particularly attuned to human pheromones. Her main reason to be at the picnic was to escort her ice sculpture and say a word or two about it, if the opportunity presented itself, but while she was around, she had to make herself useful. Right now, plopping whipped cream onto Jell-O cups was what had to be done.
She was, however, on call for the Metropolitan Denver Volunteer Dive Team again. She’d been on call two shifts a week for a month and a half now, and had been called in only once – to recover a radio controlled boat which had been carrying a pricey anniversary ring across Smith Lake in Washington Park before it succumbed to an attack by a pair a geese who were not pleased to have their mating dance interrupted. Not exactly the emergency that she had trained for, but it was good practice.
Her motorcycle, siren and all, was waiting in the pedestrian mall between the art museum and the condominium complex. Her swimsuit was invisible beneath her thigh length floral dress with ruffle filled half sleeves. But, by now, the anticipation had faded.
Lily joined the Jell-O Cups en route to the garden level, and had started transferring them to picnic tables where the earliest guests were starting to survey the spread when she heard the Jaws Theme music in her right ear. Shit! The snorkel earring pager was giving her the alert. She scanned the scene until she saw Fiona carrying wreath hung with pineapple chunks to the head table.
“I’ve been called in. Gotta go. Tell people what’s up,” she told Fiona in a loud whisper as she walked very quickly to the emergency stairwell.
Fortunately, health activists had insisted that stairwells not be fitted with alarms. Before the door had fully closed on her, Lily was pulling her dress over her head, trying her best not to snag it on her pager earring. She’d worn sensible shoes, so that wasn’t a problem. Once she was freed of the dress, which she left on the landing, she roared down the steps three at a time.
As she burst out of the building, it turned out she was on the opposite side from her motorcycle. She raced around the building in her navy and red striped swim suit and flats, past tuxedo and evening dress garbed party guests. As she mounted her motorcycle and put her finger on the ignition pad, the navigation screen identified the location, and a crawl at the bottom explained the situation – a six year old kidnap victim tossed from Platte Bridge while the kidnapper made their escape; she was struggling and starting to go under when the 9-1-1 call came in. The call was now almost two minutes old.
Lily turned on the sirens, racing across the plaza, stopping traffic on 13th Avenue, dodging the sculptures on display between the library and the old part of the Art Museum, and cut across Civic Center Park on a pedestrian walkway, nearly knocking over a drunk with a bottle in a brown paper bag. She dodged traffic on Colfax and rushed down 15th Street swerving in between cars, trucks and buses pulling aside or stopping upon seeing motorcycle’s flashing lights, except for one small car that fled as fast as it could down Stout Street nearly hitting a young couple in the 16th Street Mall in the process.
As she came to Commons Park, she jumped the curb, sending turf up behind her as she crossed the field to the bridge. Bystanders were pointing. An older man with a long stick was trying to reach out from the shore and cautiously wading out into the deeper water. Following their focus, Lily caught a glimpse of the little girl, blue in the face, three feet or so under the water in the center of the South Platte River, snagged on a jutting piece of old concrete. The river was running fast and high with rain from the foothills and the storm was starting to break in Denver. There was no time. By now, it was almost five minutes since the call came in, and the girl had probably spent most of that time under water. This girl’s life was worth her motorcycle.
It was oddly peaceful as the motorcycle careened off the sidewalk at the foot of the bridge and into the air.
“Look out”, the bystanders screamed at the old man, who turned in time to duck out of the way.
The sirens wailed, distorted somehow by the movement as the machine fell away from her as she dismounted in midair, aiming to land feet first as close to the girl as she could manage.
Lily could feel the goose bumps on her bare legs.
Splash. The river was cold. Lily collapsed her legs as she made impact, just as she’d trained to do, but the impact still stung. She was underwater. She flexed her legs. Her head and shoulders cleared the foamy water. She scanned back and forth frantically to get her bearings.
So many people were shouting at once that she couldn’t make out what they were saying. She saw her motorcycle sinking into the water, flashing lights not yet giving out, sirens muted and garbled. She stopped listening and watched and saw the place where she’d caught a glimpse of the girl before. She was still there, a few yards away.
Lily half-swum, half-walked to the girl, reached down and grabbed her. She was blue in the face and wasn’t breathing. Lily hauled her upside down as best she could to drain the water from her, and then started rescue breathing, the girl in her arms, as she made her way to shore. Air in, release, air in, release. The mouth was cold. Lily was feeling for a pulse as she administered breaths. Nothing. She stopped the breathing and ran as fast as she could for shore, stumbling, regaining control, stumbling again. The old man and two younger men reached her and steadied her.
“CPR”, Lily said. She needs “CPR.”
The older man frowned.
Child still in her arms, steadied and in shallower water, Lily made for a sandbank, placed the child on the ground as gently as she could manage in case the girl had a back injury, and started rapid compressions.
“Get a blanket or a towel,” Lily said, “We need a back board. She needs an ambulance now!”
Someone draped a blanket over both Lily and the girl.
Lily focused on nothing but compressions. It seemed like an eternity, when a fire-rescue team managed to bring a stretcher from the road to the bridge, and then a backboard down to the sand bar. The firemen transferred the girl to the backboard, strapped her down, and another fireman motioned to her that he would take over the compressions. They made their way up the hill, where the fireman doing compressions got on the stretcher and continued as it rolled to the waiting ambulance.
Lily collapsed back onto the sandbank as the stretcher moved out of sight.
The screams returned.
Lily looked up.
A wave of water was coming at her. The storm had produced a flash flood.
She scrambled for the bank, getting hold of some grass.
The water hit, ripping her downstream with a handful of grass.
Lily fought to stay afloat and managed to grab a tree root. It held fast. She hung on tightly, too exhausted to do more right away.
She heard a dog bark. A huge white sheep dog peered over the bank. The man who owned her followed a moment later. He released the dog’s leash and offered it to her to pull her up. She held on and tried to help climb out. Soon she was collapsed on the bank as the lightening continued to flash over the city and the rain built up even stronger.
Lily’s instincts told her that she shouldn’t be under a lone tree in a thunderstorm, but she was too tired to protest or leave what little protection it provided from the rain.
“Probably not the best time for swimming,” the man said.
* * * * *
The coffee at the fire station was weak, and the cream in it was almost spoiled, but it was hot and that made up for its deficiencies. It took some cheek to have a Cubs mug in a Denver fire house, Lily thought.
The search crew had arrived moments after the man and his dog had helped pull her out of the river. They, at least, had the benefit of knowing which direction the river was going to take her, and a good guess about how fast the river was flowing.
Her pager earring was lost. Her hair was bundled up in a towel. She was wearing one of the smallest fire fighting suits at the station, still several sizes too large for her, and had a blanket wrapped around that. A fire house mutt was curled up at her feet.
Several of the firemen were sitting on the bumper of their ladder truck, watching the rain come down. They seemed to agree that pre-teens wanted to wear entirely inappropriate clothes to start the school year with this year.
Her first call on the station house phone was to the dive team coordinator. She explained that she was all right, if a bit in shock, and that she’d done all she could.
Her next was to her boss at the DeVeaux catering. She explained that she’d had to go in, that she wouldn’t be coming back to the picnic, and that she’d probably be in late the next day.
“Take tomorrow off, on me, as an extra vacation day. Consider it my civic duty,” Mr. DeVeaux said.
Her third call was to Cass.
“Please come get me. I’m at the downtown fire station,” she said.
“I’m coming,” he replied, and that was the end of the conversation.
* * * * *
The next morning, Lily called Denver Health and inquired, explaining how she was involved. The girl hadn’t died. She had no memory of what had happened. It was clear that she had suffered permanent and serious brain damage. But, she hadn’t died, and she wasn’t a vegetable.
Lily cried for a long time.
Cass watched, and, after a while, held her hand while she cried. A little later she fell asleep again.
Saturday, August 19, 2006
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Chapter 18: July 16, 2031 Annual Meeting
The co-operative‘s motto, “DON’T TRY TO FIX ME I’M NOT BROKEN”, was scrawled in lurid dripping red over velvet black on the glossy cover of its annual report to the foundation. Only twenty or so were produced each year, and no expense was spared.
Inside, the paper was hand made from rags, with texture. The front page was a charcoal portrait of the co-operative’s director, Ben Lee. The wrinkles in his face showed his age, not a day short of sixty. His wispy goatee, shoulder length hair, and hoop earrings revealed why the co-operative loved him. The penetrating eyes and ironic half smile showed how much he loved them.
The next two page spread recapped the twenty-four covers that had graced the other annual reports since the co-operative’s inception. Each shared the same words and an extreme artistic sensibility that fit its time.
The text, tables and fill art that filled the rest of the interior could easily have been mistaken for a college recruiting brochure, or thin high school yearbook. The rear cover featured a haunting black and white photograph of the huge Victorian house at 301 S. Emerson Street, which housed them all, framed by lightning, with a half-visible moon reflected in the picture window beneath the soaring angle statute that rested atop the gable over the front door.
Ben had chosen a dark corner of the Wellshire Inn to make his presentation. Murky cocktails rested on the thick oak table that sat between Ben and the three committee members who stood across the table from him.
Ashley Athanapolis, daughter of the foundation’s founder and a borderline manic depressive, who’d lost her own daughter, Ruth, to suicide while her daughter was in college, had always been Ben’s surest supporter. Without Ashley, there would be no co-operative, although few co-operative members even knew she existed in anything but the most abstract sense. Ashley was frail now. An oxygen tank next to her chair fed the thin tube that ran under her nose. Her skin was mottled with age spots. Her thin wrists looked like they were made of balsa wood and spider’s silk. Her cocktail shook, ever so slightly, and her hands trembled, as she brought it to her mouth. Five tiny black ribbons, one for each husband she’d led to the grave, accented her silver hair. Her ankle length dress shrouded how thin she’d become everywhere else.
The chairmanship of the committee had fallen to a portly man in his 50s, who was dressed in a business suit and wore a conventional red necktie. Seth Waxman had been an associate attorney fresh out of law school when the foundation had been established, who had known the founder shortly before he died. Now, he made monthly payments to the widow of the attorney who was once his boss, and he occupied the corner office. This year, as he did every year their Lloyd’s of London policy came up for renewal, he reminded Ben that half of the co-operative’s endowment income each year was sucked up by liability insurance for this extremely risky venture. As always, Ben reminded Mr. Waxman that giving up the insurance was impossible -- several suits had been settled since the co-operative began, but the steps necessary to reduce the costs of insurance would be directly contrary to the cooperative’s mission. In a house full of unmedicated, mentally ill young adults, disaster will inevitably strike from time to time. Ben also pointed out that the cooperative’s creative properties, while not sufficient on their own to keep the cooperative afloat, did pay for two-thirds of the cooperative’s operating expenses.
Dr. Martin Wilson, a thirty something psychiatrist wundkind who spent his days running the psychiatric research center at the Fitzsimmons medical campus in Aurora was a new and unwelcome addition, imposed by the Foundation’s full board. Today, he’d managed a golf shirt and linen slacks, instead of his usual hospital scrubs. His stylish pager ring, with a large cubic zirconia ruby that glowed when he was needed, matched the red on the front of the annual report. He was a minority on the committee, so he couldn’t shut the cooperative down, but his distrust of the venture, which was against everything he’d been trained for, and his through knowledge of psychiatric ethics, which he could twist to his liking if he wished, made him a threat. Ben parried that threat with Dr. Wilson’s curiosity. The cooperative was an experiment that mainstream psychiatry would never dare to try, and the idealistic core in Dr. Wilson, that had lead him to his specialty in the first place, left him with a suppressed but palpable desire to know what results the study had produced.
“I didn’t set out to do this.”, Ben told the committee, reviving the cooperative’s history. “I started out as a school psychologist at the Denver School of the Arts. I figured I’d spend most of my time dealing with hypocondriac drama queens with attitude. I’d read the studies that had described manic depression as the poet’s disease, but hadn’t taken it to heart. I hadn’t expected some of the schools most talented students to be the most afflicted. I hadn’t expected to see sixteen year olds struggling between their muse and the drugs that could make them live ordinary, stable, productive lives. These kids had a much better sense for human passion than I ever will.”
“And then there was Ruth.”, Ashley chipped in.
“Yes, Ruth. I’d worked with her for two years. She was on the right drugs. She’d come to the school to develop her creative writing and acting. She’d stopped hurting herself. She’d stopped writing. She flunked poetry. The only dramatic part she got that last year was in the chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan show. But, she was clean, and neat, and well behaved, and had even found a clean cut boyfriend from the George Washington High School football team who lived down the block. She’d talked about transferring back to GW. The day her still life had come back with the note from her art teacher, ‘Technically perfect, but uninspired.’, she snapped. She threw away the drugs, grabbed an old friend, drank the better part of a fifth of vodka, and disappeared. She was found three days later in a thin black night gown, dead of hypothermia, beneath a stunning chalk mural under a bridge. She was posthumously awarded the art prize that year for her mural, and an oversized color photograph of it still hangs in the trophy hall. You spent many long days talking to me about what happened in the Spring after it happened, and soon, the cooperative was born. Her mural, with its motto, “Don‘t Try To Fix Me I‘m Not Broken.” was the cover of our first annual report, it’s on page two of your report.”
When the drinks were emptied, the committee signed the paperwork Mr. Waxman distributed unanimously. Another year’s funding was secure, and they’d even approved a budget for an increased retirement stipend for Ben, and a part-time staff member to help him locate a successor for himself so he could actually retire and get that stipend. Ben paid the tab for everyone. It had been a worthwhile investment.
Inside, the paper was hand made from rags, with texture. The front page was a charcoal portrait of the co-operative’s director, Ben Lee. The wrinkles in his face showed his age, not a day short of sixty. His wispy goatee, shoulder length hair, and hoop earrings revealed why the co-operative loved him. The penetrating eyes and ironic half smile showed how much he loved them.
The next two page spread recapped the twenty-four covers that had graced the other annual reports since the co-operative’s inception. Each shared the same words and an extreme artistic sensibility that fit its time.
The text, tables and fill art that filled the rest of the interior could easily have been mistaken for a college recruiting brochure, or thin high school yearbook. The rear cover featured a haunting black and white photograph of the huge Victorian house at 301 S. Emerson Street, which housed them all, framed by lightning, with a half-visible moon reflected in the picture window beneath the soaring angle statute that rested atop the gable over the front door.
Ben had chosen a dark corner of the Wellshire Inn to make his presentation. Murky cocktails rested on the thick oak table that sat between Ben and the three committee members who stood across the table from him.
Ashley Athanapolis, daughter of the foundation’s founder and a borderline manic depressive, who’d lost her own daughter, Ruth, to suicide while her daughter was in college, had always been Ben’s surest supporter. Without Ashley, there would be no co-operative, although few co-operative members even knew she existed in anything but the most abstract sense. Ashley was frail now. An oxygen tank next to her chair fed the thin tube that ran under her nose. Her skin was mottled with age spots. Her thin wrists looked like they were made of balsa wood and spider’s silk. Her cocktail shook, ever so slightly, and her hands trembled, as she brought it to her mouth. Five tiny black ribbons, one for each husband she’d led to the grave, accented her silver hair. Her ankle length dress shrouded how thin she’d become everywhere else.
The chairmanship of the committee had fallen to a portly man in his 50s, who was dressed in a business suit and wore a conventional red necktie. Seth Waxman had been an associate attorney fresh out of law school when the foundation had been established, who had known the founder shortly before he died. Now, he made monthly payments to the widow of the attorney who was once his boss, and he occupied the corner office. This year, as he did every year their Lloyd’s of London policy came up for renewal, he reminded Ben that half of the co-operative’s endowment income each year was sucked up by liability insurance for this extremely risky venture. As always, Ben reminded Mr. Waxman that giving up the insurance was impossible -- several suits had been settled since the co-operative began, but the steps necessary to reduce the costs of insurance would be directly contrary to the cooperative’s mission. In a house full of unmedicated, mentally ill young adults, disaster will inevitably strike from time to time. Ben also pointed out that the cooperative’s creative properties, while not sufficient on their own to keep the cooperative afloat, did pay for two-thirds of the cooperative’s operating expenses.
Dr. Martin Wilson, a thirty something psychiatrist wundkind who spent his days running the psychiatric research center at the Fitzsimmons medical campus in Aurora was a new and unwelcome addition, imposed by the Foundation’s full board. Today, he’d managed a golf shirt and linen slacks, instead of his usual hospital scrubs. His stylish pager ring, with a large cubic zirconia ruby that glowed when he was needed, matched the red on the front of the annual report. He was a minority on the committee, so he couldn’t shut the cooperative down, but his distrust of the venture, which was against everything he’d been trained for, and his through knowledge of psychiatric ethics, which he could twist to his liking if he wished, made him a threat. Ben parried that threat with Dr. Wilson’s curiosity. The cooperative was an experiment that mainstream psychiatry would never dare to try, and the idealistic core in Dr. Wilson, that had lead him to his specialty in the first place, left him with a suppressed but palpable desire to know what results the study had produced.
“I didn’t set out to do this.”, Ben told the committee, reviving the cooperative’s history. “I started out as a school psychologist at the Denver School of the Arts. I figured I’d spend most of my time dealing with hypocondriac drama queens with attitude. I’d read the studies that had described manic depression as the poet’s disease, but hadn’t taken it to heart. I hadn’t expected some of the schools most talented students to be the most afflicted. I hadn’t expected to see sixteen year olds struggling between their muse and the drugs that could make them live ordinary, stable, productive lives. These kids had a much better sense for human passion than I ever will.”
“And then there was Ruth.”, Ashley chipped in.
“Yes, Ruth. I’d worked with her for two years. She was on the right drugs. She’d come to the school to develop her creative writing and acting. She’d stopped hurting herself. She’d stopped writing. She flunked poetry. The only dramatic part she got that last year was in the chorus of a Gilbert and Sullivan show. But, she was clean, and neat, and well behaved, and had even found a clean cut boyfriend from the George Washington High School football team who lived down the block. She’d talked about transferring back to GW. The day her still life had come back with the note from her art teacher, ‘Technically perfect, but uninspired.’, she snapped. She threw away the drugs, grabbed an old friend, drank the better part of a fifth of vodka, and disappeared. She was found three days later in a thin black night gown, dead of hypothermia, beneath a stunning chalk mural under a bridge. She was posthumously awarded the art prize that year for her mural, and an oversized color photograph of it still hangs in the trophy hall. You spent many long days talking to me about what happened in the Spring after it happened, and soon, the cooperative was born. Her mural, with its motto, “Don‘t Try To Fix Me I‘m Not Broken.” was the cover of our first annual report, it’s on page two of your report.”
When the drinks were emptied, the committee signed the paperwork Mr. Waxman distributed unanimously. Another year’s funding was secure, and they’d even approved a budget for an increased retirement stipend for Ben, and a part-time staff member to help him locate a successor for himself so he could actually retire and get that stipend. Ben paid the tab for everyone. It had been a worthwhile investment.
Chapter 17: June 7, 2031
Giant miller moth shadows rushed across the nearly bare stage at the Fillmore. The stage was a judge’s eye view of a courtroom. Seven microphones and three instruments, for the chorus and the trio that would accompany them, sat on a rail in front of a church pew that symbolized the jury box. Two tables with chair flanked a lectern. A raised dais, the witness stand, took center stage. Each seat in the house had a card one side white, the other black. On the “white” side of the stick was the evening’s program “The People’s Case”, “Intermission“, and “The Defense Case and Verdict.”, followed by the names of the leading cast members. On the reverse side of the stick were the chorus, orchestra, and back stage credits.
A banner over the proscenium proclaimed the show, “The Little Opera: Bowers v. Hardwick.” Liner notes on copies sheets of paper on each sheet, in pink, proclaimed that the opera was based on a true story that led to an early, anti-gay U.S. Supreme Court case originating in Georgia, which was overruled seventeen years later.
The Fillmore’s cooling system start up hadn’t been scheduled for another week, but summer had not decided to wait. The half filled seats contained a crowd older than a concert, but younger than for a typical play, fanning themselves with their guilty-innocent cards. Many glanced nervously at pagers custom designed to like their children. The baby sitters, nannies and grandparents had the number for the devices, and every one of them dreaded the prospect of a red glow from within their unit. The rest of the crowd was busy ordering cocktails and h’orderves. Most of the cocktail orders included the addendum “on the rocks.”
Cass and Lily, of course, didn't need pagers. Cass, with his usual knack, had managed to have a server deliver the gourmet mini-hotdogs (allegedly with an authentic Southern hot sauce) and martinis on the rocks the moment they walked in the door. Cass had learned better than to wear his dress uniform by now, but his white linen suit and bow tie was probably more out of place than his uniform would have been. Lily wore a sleveless, backless gown out of a new synthetic material which felt like silk but looked like clouded ice crystals, with the diamond earings and pearl necklace that Cass had bought her. It was suitably cool. She had just a touch of a perfume designed to make those who smelled it come to attention and feel alert. She'd tucked her ID under her dress, but didn't bring a purse. Why bother? Cass always paid and she wasn't the type to adjust her makeup at the intermission.
The lights flickered. They took their seats, guilt cards in hand.
* * * * *
When the final applause came down, and the last encore had been sung, Lily was dumbstruck. Once again, on a date with Cass, she'd experienced a performance she'd never imagined was possible.
When they finally got outside the theater and breathed in the evening air, the slowly walked to his car. Despite the fact that they'd been dating for almost half a year, every few weeks, she'd never been to his house, she'd never spent the night with him.
He asked: "Would you like to spend the evening in my abode?"
Lily just smiled and got into the car.
A banner over the proscenium proclaimed the show, “The Little Opera: Bowers v. Hardwick.” Liner notes on copies sheets of paper on each sheet, in pink, proclaimed that the opera was based on a true story that led to an early, anti-gay U.S. Supreme Court case originating in Georgia, which was overruled seventeen years later.
The Fillmore’s cooling system start up hadn’t been scheduled for another week, but summer had not decided to wait. The half filled seats contained a crowd older than a concert, but younger than for a typical play, fanning themselves with their guilty-innocent cards. Many glanced nervously at pagers custom designed to like their children. The baby sitters, nannies and grandparents had the number for the devices, and every one of them dreaded the prospect of a red glow from within their unit. The rest of the crowd was busy ordering cocktails and h’orderves. Most of the cocktail orders included the addendum “on the rocks.”
Cass and Lily, of course, didn't need pagers. Cass, with his usual knack, had managed to have a server deliver the gourmet mini-hotdogs (allegedly with an authentic Southern hot sauce) and martinis on the rocks the moment they walked in the door. Cass had learned better than to wear his dress uniform by now, but his white linen suit and bow tie was probably more out of place than his uniform would have been. Lily wore a sleveless, backless gown out of a new synthetic material which felt like silk but looked like clouded ice crystals, with the diamond earings and pearl necklace that Cass had bought her. It was suitably cool. She had just a touch of a perfume designed to make those who smelled it come to attention and feel alert. She'd tucked her ID under her dress, but didn't bring a purse. Why bother? Cass always paid and she wasn't the type to adjust her makeup at the intermission.
The lights flickered. They took their seats, guilt cards in hand.
* * * * *
When the final applause came down, and the last encore had been sung, Lily was dumbstruck. Once again, on a date with Cass, she'd experienced a performance she'd never imagined was possible.
When they finally got outside the theater and breathed in the evening air, the slowly walked to his car. Despite the fact that they'd been dating for almost half a year, every few weeks, she'd never been to his house, she'd never spent the night with him.
He asked: "Would you like to spend the evening in my abode?"
Lily just smiled and got into the car.
Chapter 16: May 26, 2031
Fiona and a couple of the other employees of DeVeaux catering were in quarantine. None of them were sick. But, a tourist from Arkansas at the U.S. Virgin Islands resort they’d spent their vacation at last weekend had died of flea borne hemerrogic fever. The authorities traced the FHF case to a dog that a U.S. serviceman had brought to the resort while he was on leave from his African posting. So, all hands were on deck for the Denver Car Art, Detailers and Enamellers Society convention while the company was short handed. This included Lily Matsunaka, who had planned on taking at least one day off this weekend.
The Denver Coliseum parking lot was full of cars, trucks and motorcycles covered with the flower patterns, fairy scenes, dragons, patriotic displays, every manner of crosses, Memorial Day weekend flags, and abstract patterns. Crowds with tattoos to match their vehicles waited at the front gate. Lily had no doubt, as she maneuvered her motorcycle to the staff entrance, that this was the DECADES convention.
On the way in, she saw the small ice sculpture she’d made yesterday of a Centennial Edition Model A Ford, which had been redesigned to be street legal in the 21st century. It was delivered from the shop freezer to the collector’s vehicles pavilion without any mishaps. A crowd of staffers gathered in to admire it.
Soon, Lily had donned her white apron over her biker’s leather. She was distributing unicycles with orange slice wheels, street car shaped buns and cocktails that looked like motor oil, in the motorcycle and street car area. She surveyed the booths before the show officially opened.
A graceful man emerged from a motorcycle repair shop’s booth that was pitching laser designs to display inside your wheels. He abandoned his booth to cross the hall and embrace a teenage girl who looked glad to see him. They kissed so long, Lily was starting to wonder if they were stuck, although their hands gripping each other tightly in strategic places belied that notion. Someone in another booth whistled at the sight.
A Nigerian man sat at a body shop booth advertising its ability to match secondary market colors. He was immersed in an Arabic language newspaper with a picture of a woman being stoned to death on the front page.
The woman at the Biker’s For Jesus booth was wearing an outfit that made it look like she’d been run over by a flower truck. She was selling religious decals and design sheets. She asked every passer by “Have you been saved?” even though fifteen minutes before the shoe opened this consisted mostly of staff working the show.
Lily herself was hoping she’d get a chance to make a sudden exit. Joe and Lily had completed their dive rescue training over the summer. Today was her first shift on call. She had her swimsuit on under her clothes. A newly fitted siren, used only in practice so far, was mounted on her motorcycle. The snorkel earring she was wearing for the first time today was ready to page her at any moment.
The Denver Coliseum parking lot was full of cars, trucks and motorcycles covered with the flower patterns, fairy scenes, dragons, patriotic displays, every manner of crosses, Memorial Day weekend flags, and abstract patterns. Crowds with tattoos to match their vehicles waited at the front gate. Lily had no doubt, as she maneuvered her motorcycle to the staff entrance, that this was the DECADES convention.
On the way in, she saw the small ice sculpture she’d made yesterday of a Centennial Edition Model A Ford, which had been redesigned to be street legal in the 21st century. It was delivered from the shop freezer to the collector’s vehicles pavilion without any mishaps. A crowd of staffers gathered in to admire it.
Soon, Lily had donned her white apron over her biker’s leather. She was distributing unicycles with orange slice wheels, street car shaped buns and cocktails that looked like motor oil, in the motorcycle and street car area. She surveyed the booths before the show officially opened.
A graceful man emerged from a motorcycle repair shop’s booth that was pitching laser designs to display inside your wheels. He abandoned his booth to cross the hall and embrace a teenage girl who looked glad to see him. They kissed so long, Lily was starting to wonder if they were stuck, although their hands gripping each other tightly in strategic places belied that notion. Someone in another booth whistled at the sight.
A Nigerian man sat at a body shop booth advertising its ability to match secondary market colors. He was immersed in an Arabic language newspaper with a picture of a woman being stoned to death on the front page.
The woman at the Biker’s For Jesus booth was wearing an outfit that made it look like she’d been run over by a flower truck. She was selling religious decals and design sheets. She asked every passer by “Have you been saved?” even though fifteen minutes before the shoe opened this consisted mostly of staff working the show.
Lily herself was hoping she’d get a chance to make a sudden exit. Joe and Lily had completed their dive rescue training over the summer. Today was her first shift on call. She had her swimsuit on under her clothes. A newly fitted siren, used only in practice so far, was mounted on her motorcycle. The snorkel earring she was wearing for the first time today was ready to page her at any moment.
Chapter 15: April 19, 2031 Airship
Major Jon Guzworth watched his latest load depart from the window of his Ft. Carson, Colorado office next to the airship tethers. The jungle green airship extended half a city block and stood four stories high. A spring rain the night before was rising from the field around the airship in a low mist, and the airship’s synthetic fabric skin was damp. Laden with a full load of cargo it looked like a giant watermelon with saddle bags. Its belly proclaimed it the U.S.A. Sargasso, the U.S.A. stood for United States Airship, in ten foot high white block letters. A cabin full of windows, not much bigger than a large Army tent, hanging from the front part of the airship’s belly, held the airship’s crew. Army Captain Wendy Two Feather, the pilot and chief weather officer, Sergeant 1st Class Gordon Snipes, the chief mechanic and reserve pilot, Corporal Simon Beaupres, the assistant mechanic who was also responsible for monitoring weather alerts when Captain Two Feather was off duty, and Private First Class Jesus Gallegos, a cargo handler and airship janitor, ran the ship.
The airship lurched in the direction of the slight breeze from the Southwest when its final tether line was released. The Sargasso’s cargo, several armored vehicles fitted with multiple rocket launchers, and several huge nylon sacks of fuel, spare parts, ammunition and rations, sagged straight down as the airship slowly rose at a rate of a several feet per minute.
It was the moment of truth. About seventy-five percent of airship accidents happened on takeoff, and half of the rest happened upon landing (most of the rest of the accidents were due to bad weather). If the cargo had been mispacked or misweighed by the ground crew, the Sargasso either wouldn’t fly at all, or would upend itself. Or worse, a cargo line could have tangled in a propeller and caused a crash that could have ignited the hydrogen bladders that gave the Sargasso lift, caused a rapid loss in altitude or sent debris into the cabin. Sometimes it couldn’t get altitude quickly enough to clear buildings and trees if it was overloaded and the wind made it hard for the pilot to maintain position. Accidents weren’t common, but it was standard operating procedure to keep an ambulance on hand for all takeoffs.
There could never be a Hindenberg type accident again. Most of the fire in that famous case was caused by a skin treated with a compound closely related to jet fuel; hydrogen fueled fires, in contrast, burn quickly and send flames straight up with a pop. The Sargasso’s hydrogen is encased in dozens of flame resistant, super thin bladders treated with a puncture sealing goo that rest loose in a main compartment full of helium. It was designed so that small arms fire from below, or a minor spark from a mechanical failure could not set off a chain reaction igniting the entire hydrogen supply on board in a massive explosion, while maximizing the airship’s lift by using hydrogen instead of helium. But, a fall from several hundred feet could still do serious injury and flying debris from a damaged propeller system could be just as dangerous as a grenade.
The takeoff this time was perfect. The lines dropped away properly. The Sargasso, laden with its cargo, was well balanced and the cargo lines ran straight. In twenty minutes, at about one hundred feet of altitude (comfortably above trees and most buildings in the vicinity of Fort Carson), the airship’s rotors shifted and the airship began to turn. Ten minutes later, it was on almost a straight course from Fort Carson to the U.S. Virgin Islands, its last stop before Nigeria. There it would fly at its maximum altitude (higher in the low altitude forests of Nigeria than in the Rocky Mountains near Colorado Springs), and pick a course away from major roads, rivers, and population centers to minimize the risk of sniper attacks. The propellers shifted again and the airship began to pick up speed. It was approaching its cruising speed of seventy knots of airspeed as it vanished over the horizon fifteen minutes later.
Weather permitting, the Sargasso would end its four day trip to central Nigeria in an open field with a tether pole erected by Navy Seabees a year ago, called Port Cowpat, a hundred miles from the nearest fighting. The cargo would take at least a day to unload, and loading up the Sargasso again with its scheduled cargo of several joint strike fighter carcasses that were being returned home for classified salvage operations would take another two days. The Sargasso’s usual round trip was two weeks, with the crew taking a three day leave when they returned stateside. In Nigeria, the crew let the local ground crew unload the Sargasso with only Captain Two Feather supervising, but the entire crew participated in the reloading operations personally.
It wasn’t high speed transportation, but airship lifts were a lot cheaper and carried a lot more cargo than a fixed wing plane airlift. The week it took to pack up, ship the cargo and drop it off, was at least five times faster than the combination of sealift, rail transportation, and travel by convey to a base near the front lines that could have been used instead, probably even longer given the lack of good roads in Nigeria. And, the savings in time and money that came from not having to build airstrips at every supply base was not insignificant. Training airship pilots was cheaper than training fighter pilots, and the airships themselves were cheaper to build than either cargo planes or sealift ships.
An airship lift also kept the cargo away from the Air Force and the Navy, something Major Guzworth appreciated at great deal. Every time Major Guzworth tried to arrange a sealift with the Navy, or an airlift with the Air Force, they treated him like he was a private just out of basic training, instead of an experienced ranking officer. Fortunately, although, the Air Force had initially objected to giving the Army jurisdiction over airships, it backed down when its pilots explained that they didn’t want to fly them because an airship pilot was a glorified truck driver. The Air Force had a need for speed and an airship was not fast. The Navy had also raised concerns, but had never seen sea lift as its most important mission, and also appreciated the fact that airships shifted the discussions over the “sitting ducks” in the military from the Navy’s surface fleet to the Army’s airships.
Wendy, Simon and Jesus watched the scenery now, because Colorado’s mountains were more interesting to watch than the Great Plains and vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean which lie ahead for them. Simon had spent the night before drinking hard on the last day of his leave and made his way to his bunk and slept off his hangover once they were underway. He would be sober long before they landed, and was a competent enough mechanic when his head was clear.
The airship lurched in the direction of the slight breeze from the Southwest when its final tether line was released. The Sargasso’s cargo, several armored vehicles fitted with multiple rocket launchers, and several huge nylon sacks of fuel, spare parts, ammunition and rations, sagged straight down as the airship slowly rose at a rate of a several feet per minute.
It was the moment of truth. About seventy-five percent of airship accidents happened on takeoff, and half of the rest happened upon landing (most of the rest of the accidents were due to bad weather). If the cargo had been mispacked or misweighed by the ground crew, the Sargasso either wouldn’t fly at all, or would upend itself. Or worse, a cargo line could have tangled in a propeller and caused a crash that could have ignited the hydrogen bladders that gave the Sargasso lift, caused a rapid loss in altitude or sent debris into the cabin. Sometimes it couldn’t get altitude quickly enough to clear buildings and trees if it was overloaded and the wind made it hard for the pilot to maintain position. Accidents weren’t common, but it was standard operating procedure to keep an ambulance on hand for all takeoffs.
There could never be a Hindenberg type accident again. Most of the fire in that famous case was caused by a skin treated with a compound closely related to jet fuel; hydrogen fueled fires, in contrast, burn quickly and send flames straight up with a pop. The Sargasso’s hydrogen is encased in dozens of flame resistant, super thin bladders treated with a puncture sealing goo that rest loose in a main compartment full of helium. It was designed so that small arms fire from below, or a minor spark from a mechanical failure could not set off a chain reaction igniting the entire hydrogen supply on board in a massive explosion, while maximizing the airship’s lift by using hydrogen instead of helium. But, a fall from several hundred feet could still do serious injury and flying debris from a damaged propeller system could be just as dangerous as a grenade.
The takeoff this time was perfect. The lines dropped away properly. The Sargasso, laden with its cargo, was well balanced and the cargo lines ran straight. In twenty minutes, at about one hundred feet of altitude (comfortably above trees and most buildings in the vicinity of Fort Carson), the airship’s rotors shifted and the airship began to turn. Ten minutes later, it was on almost a straight course from Fort Carson to the U.S. Virgin Islands, its last stop before Nigeria. There it would fly at its maximum altitude (higher in the low altitude forests of Nigeria than in the Rocky Mountains near Colorado Springs), and pick a course away from major roads, rivers, and population centers to minimize the risk of sniper attacks. The propellers shifted again and the airship began to pick up speed. It was approaching its cruising speed of seventy knots of airspeed as it vanished over the horizon fifteen minutes later.
Weather permitting, the Sargasso would end its four day trip to central Nigeria in an open field with a tether pole erected by Navy Seabees a year ago, called Port Cowpat, a hundred miles from the nearest fighting. The cargo would take at least a day to unload, and loading up the Sargasso again with its scheduled cargo of several joint strike fighter carcasses that were being returned home for classified salvage operations would take another two days. The Sargasso’s usual round trip was two weeks, with the crew taking a three day leave when they returned stateside. In Nigeria, the crew let the local ground crew unload the Sargasso with only Captain Two Feather supervising, but the entire crew participated in the reloading operations personally.
It wasn’t high speed transportation, but airship lifts were a lot cheaper and carried a lot more cargo than a fixed wing plane airlift. The week it took to pack up, ship the cargo and drop it off, was at least five times faster than the combination of sealift, rail transportation, and travel by convey to a base near the front lines that could have been used instead, probably even longer given the lack of good roads in Nigeria. And, the savings in time and money that came from not having to build airstrips at every supply base was not insignificant. Training airship pilots was cheaper than training fighter pilots, and the airships themselves were cheaper to build than either cargo planes or sealift ships.
An airship lift also kept the cargo away from the Air Force and the Navy, something Major Guzworth appreciated at great deal. Every time Major Guzworth tried to arrange a sealift with the Navy, or an airlift with the Air Force, they treated him like he was a private just out of basic training, instead of an experienced ranking officer. Fortunately, although, the Air Force had initially objected to giving the Army jurisdiction over airships, it backed down when its pilots explained that they didn’t want to fly them because an airship pilot was a glorified truck driver. The Air Force had a need for speed and an airship was not fast. The Navy had also raised concerns, but had never seen sea lift as its most important mission, and also appreciated the fact that airships shifted the discussions over the “sitting ducks” in the military from the Navy’s surface fleet to the Army’s airships.
Wendy, Simon and Jesus watched the scenery now, because Colorado’s mountains were more interesting to watch than the Great Plains and vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean which lie ahead for them. Simon had spent the night before drinking hard on the last day of his leave and made his way to his bunk and slept off his hangover once they were underway. He would be sober long before they landed, and was a competent enough mechanic when his head was clear.
Chapter 14: March 24, 2031 Blizzard
“Fourteen hundred soldiers at Camp Mudhole were quaranteed after twenty suspected black pox cases were discovered in their encampment in central Nigeria. Initial indicators point to a prisoner of war who may have been intentionally infected before surrendering as the alpha case. About ninety percent of those infected with this bioengineer hybrid of highly contagious small pox and deadly Ebola virus die. The quarantine will continue until two weeks pass with no new cases. Ultimate casualties are expected to reach the hundreds, but initial indications are that the outbreak will be contained to this camp, which was on an extended counterinsurgency mission. A biohazard containment team has been deployed to the area. Troops have been confined to their tents and are subsisting on combat rations.”
“Meanwhile, in local news, spring snowstorms have extended construction road closures in the C-470 corridor, in addition to causing minor accidents throughout the city. The death of a ninety-nine year old man who slipped and fractured several bones while shoveling snow has been attributed to the storm.”
“Scandal has put the future of Purity Beef Corporation in danger after a Wild Foods official discovered an elaborate system of bribes and deception used to pass ordinary genetically modified beef off as organic, natural bred beef, causing Wild Foods to cancel its contract. Purity Beef’s attorney claims that the alleged bribes were in fact legitimate travel reimbursements for drivers and has promised to bring suit for a breach of its supply contract.”
“In sports, the Colorado Rapids have, for the first time, surpassed the Denver Boncos on a per game sales basis boosted in part by its nine and two record, something the winless Denver Broncos after their third coach this season would have welcomed in reverse.”
Lily turned off the news and stared out at the snow falling. Several people who’d had appointments to plan proms and weddings had already cancelled their appointments. Joe’s delivery for the afternoon had been postponed, so he was reading one of his textbooks. Their boss, Mark DeVeaux, was in Morocco for a trade show. Their Spring Break party event was still on, but the trays were already neatly stocked in their carts, ready to roll out of the freezer and into the truck.
“What in your studies today?”, Lily asked Joe.
“Psychiatric emergencies.”, Joe responded. “My professor opened his lecture yesterday with a projection of an old tree on Park Avenue with a knot as big as its trunk. He said the knot formed when the tree tried to work around the growing grubs of an invasive insect species. It lived, but it was grossly deformed by the experience of trying to control the invasion. He said that minds are like that too. If a traumatic idea embeds itself deeply enough in just the right place, it can warp the entire mind. The mind may live, but it will be grossly distorted in the process of trying to protect itself, as ordinary growth processes are distorted by the trauma. Most of those distorted minds end up going through emergency rooms and getting treated by EMTs like I’m training to be, before they see a psychiatrist, if the ever do.”
“What do you think?”, Lily asked.
“I’ve seen some pretty crazy people, even just volunteering in the E.R. few a few months. There was one guy, he was brought in from hypothermia after the cops had picked him up drunk in an alley. He was convinced that he had assassinated John Lennon, even though he was 50 years old and Lennon was dead before he was born. He’d sobered up by then, and I was helping him fill out his discharge papers, so we wasn’t shivering any more, but I’d swear that he believed it even though it was impossible. I don’t know what makes people turn out like that.”
An e-mail message came in, and the computer chirped in acknowledgment. Lily looked at the screen. The roof had collapsed at the old church where the Spring Break party had been scheduled, so the event had to be cancelled. She motioned to Joe who looked for himself.
“Want to join me on the trip to the shelter?”, Joe asked.
“Sure.”, Lily said.
The thirty homeless men at the church at 6th Avenue and Inca had some of the finest fajitas, fish tacos, guacamole vegetable dips, and pineapple-escarole salads available in Denver that night. And, even the man who thought he’d killed John Lennon, who happened to be staying there that night, didn’t complain that the Purity Beef Company steak in the fajitas was not actually organic.
“Meanwhile, in local news, spring snowstorms have extended construction road closures in the C-470 corridor, in addition to causing minor accidents throughout the city. The death of a ninety-nine year old man who slipped and fractured several bones while shoveling snow has been attributed to the storm.”
“Scandal has put the future of Purity Beef Corporation in danger after a Wild Foods official discovered an elaborate system of bribes and deception used to pass ordinary genetically modified beef off as organic, natural bred beef, causing Wild Foods to cancel its contract. Purity Beef’s attorney claims that the alleged bribes were in fact legitimate travel reimbursements for drivers and has promised to bring suit for a breach of its supply contract.”
“In sports, the Colorado Rapids have, for the first time, surpassed the Denver Boncos on a per game sales basis boosted in part by its nine and two record, something the winless Denver Broncos after their third coach this season would have welcomed in reverse.”
Lily turned off the news and stared out at the snow falling. Several people who’d had appointments to plan proms and weddings had already cancelled their appointments. Joe’s delivery for the afternoon had been postponed, so he was reading one of his textbooks. Their boss, Mark DeVeaux, was in Morocco for a trade show. Their Spring Break party event was still on, but the trays were already neatly stocked in their carts, ready to roll out of the freezer and into the truck.
“What in your studies today?”, Lily asked Joe.
“Psychiatric emergencies.”, Joe responded. “My professor opened his lecture yesterday with a projection of an old tree on Park Avenue with a knot as big as its trunk. He said the knot formed when the tree tried to work around the growing grubs of an invasive insect species. It lived, but it was grossly deformed by the experience of trying to control the invasion. He said that minds are like that too. If a traumatic idea embeds itself deeply enough in just the right place, it can warp the entire mind. The mind may live, but it will be grossly distorted in the process of trying to protect itself, as ordinary growth processes are distorted by the trauma. Most of those distorted minds end up going through emergency rooms and getting treated by EMTs like I’m training to be, before they see a psychiatrist, if the ever do.”
“What do you think?”, Lily asked.
“I’ve seen some pretty crazy people, even just volunteering in the E.R. few a few months. There was one guy, he was brought in from hypothermia after the cops had picked him up drunk in an alley. He was convinced that he had assassinated John Lennon, even though he was 50 years old and Lennon was dead before he was born. He’d sobered up by then, and I was helping him fill out his discharge papers, so we wasn’t shivering any more, but I’d swear that he believed it even though it was impossible. I don’t know what makes people turn out like that.”
An e-mail message came in, and the computer chirped in acknowledgment. Lily looked at the screen. The roof had collapsed at the old church where the Spring Break party had been scheduled, so the event had to be cancelled. She motioned to Joe who looked for himself.
“Want to join me on the trip to the shelter?”, Joe asked.
“Sure.”, Lily said.
The thirty homeless men at the church at 6th Avenue and Inca had some of the finest fajitas, fish tacos, guacamole vegetable dips, and pineapple-escarole salads available in Denver that night. And, even the man who thought he’d killed John Lennon, who happened to be staying there that night, didn’t complain that the Purity Beef Company steak in the fajitas was not actually organic.
The Go Between
The doorbell rang at about half past seven, after dinner. Fatima’s little brother, Abdullah, put down his crayons and ran to the door to answer it. He pulled the door open without even looking first.
An African man in a business suit, with an Arabic style white head covering and a box wrapped in decorative paper under his arm was standing there.
“Is your dear mother home little man?”, the visitor said in polite Ibo.
“Mom! The wedding mail man is here.”, Abdullah yelled out in English.
“I’m coming down, my son, please have Fatima make some tea for us.”, Fatima’s mother said in English.
Mother escorted the man into the otherwise never used parlor. Her other arm carried a bundle of Fatima’s vellum packets, with a two page list of destinations on top written in a fine script on handmade paper. The bundle was wrapped in raffia. As usual, mother was dressed in the rational house robe that she wore after she got home from work. But, she had thrown on about a pound a necklaces, bracelets, anklets, nose rings and earings on the way to the door. The man put his bundle down on the coffee table and introduced himself.
“I am Saddam Ugawe. I’ve been asked by certain acquaintances of yours to bring the news of their families to you personally.”, he continued in Ibo in the scripted formal traditional phrase.
“I welcome you into my home, Saddam Ugawe, my husband who is here with me and I, appreciate your thoughtfulness.”, mother said in Ibo, respecting tradition again, even though Fatima’s father was in fact away late at a business meeting and would not be home for another hour.
They were still while they waited for Fatima to come. Pouring tea for three into the cups that were always waiting from the thermo pot that was always full only took a moment. But, Fatima had to take a few minutes to decide how to dress for this very important meeting. She kept the loose black slacks she wore to school, more conservatively than her American classmates, and added a loose sweater with an African pattern and her most colorful headscarf. She wore no jewelry and took off her watch-phone before leaving her room. She entered the parlor gracefully and served the guest and her mother before she took her own seat. She smiled broadly the entire time.
Mr. Ugawe opened his bundle and give a brief speech as he delicately laid out each portfolio, breaking from time to time to sip his tea. This was by far the largest bundle yet to arrive at the Kwam house.
Mother pushed her bundle towards Mr. Ugawe and give her own little speech about Fatima. The glowing description was all true, although Fatima was not terribly pleased that descriptions of her chin, eyes and cooking aptitudes were discussed at length, while her remarkable academic talents were reduced to “she is a good student at South High School in Denver from which she is expected to graduate this spring.” Her top five class rank in a class of two thousand, scholarship offers, admissions to the science honors program at the University of Colorado and Space Club Presidency apparently did not warrant any mention with this audience.
Mr. Ugawe looked carefully at Fatima to confirm the veracity of everything being said which he could see, and quizzed Fatima on several intangible points, to confirm that everything was bona fide.
“I’m sure you will incur some expenses in our journey, so I’ve left an envelope under the first pages of the first portfolio for you.”, mother said, concluding the traditional script.
Formal goodbyes were said, and the man left to hand deliver his packages, sometimes with the help other go betweens across the world.
An African man in a business suit, with an Arabic style white head covering and a box wrapped in decorative paper under his arm was standing there.
“Is your dear mother home little man?”, the visitor said in polite Ibo.
“Mom! The wedding mail man is here.”, Abdullah yelled out in English.
“I’m coming down, my son, please have Fatima make some tea for us.”, Fatima’s mother said in English.
Mother escorted the man into the otherwise never used parlor. Her other arm carried a bundle of Fatima’s vellum packets, with a two page list of destinations on top written in a fine script on handmade paper. The bundle was wrapped in raffia. As usual, mother was dressed in the rational house robe that she wore after she got home from work. But, she had thrown on about a pound a necklaces, bracelets, anklets, nose rings and earings on the way to the door. The man put his bundle down on the coffee table and introduced himself.
“I am Saddam Ugawe. I’ve been asked by certain acquaintances of yours to bring the news of their families to you personally.”, he continued in Ibo in the scripted formal traditional phrase.
“I welcome you into my home, Saddam Ugawe, my husband who is here with me and I, appreciate your thoughtfulness.”, mother said in Ibo, respecting tradition again, even though Fatima’s father was in fact away late at a business meeting and would not be home for another hour.
They were still while they waited for Fatima to come. Pouring tea for three into the cups that were always waiting from the thermo pot that was always full only took a moment. But, Fatima had to take a few minutes to decide how to dress for this very important meeting. She kept the loose black slacks she wore to school, more conservatively than her American classmates, and added a loose sweater with an African pattern and her most colorful headscarf. She wore no jewelry and took off her watch-phone before leaving her room. She entered the parlor gracefully and served the guest and her mother before she took her own seat. She smiled broadly the entire time.
Mr. Ugawe opened his bundle and give a brief speech as he delicately laid out each portfolio, breaking from time to time to sip his tea. This was by far the largest bundle yet to arrive at the Kwam house.
Mother pushed her bundle towards Mr. Ugawe and give her own little speech about Fatima. The glowing description was all true, although Fatima was not terribly pleased that descriptions of her chin, eyes and cooking aptitudes were discussed at length, while her remarkable academic talents were reduced to “she is a good student at South High School in Denver from which she is expected to graduate this spring.” Her top five class rank in a class of two thousand, scholarship offers, admissions to the science honors program at the University of Colorado and Space Club Presidency apparently did not warrant any mention with this audience.
Mr. Ugawe looked carefully at Fatima to confirm the veracity of everything being said which he could see, and quizzed Fatima on several intangible points, to confirm that everything was bona fide.
“I’m sure you will incur some expenses in our journey, so I’ve left an envelope under the first pages of the first portfolio for you.”, mother said, concluding the traditional script.
Formal goodbyes were said, and the man left to hand deliver his packages, sometimes with the help other go betweens across the world.
Ecology
Colorado State University had one of the world’s premier ecology departments, rooted in its earlier history as an agricultural college. Majors could specialize in restorative ecology, closed systems ecology, paleo-ecology, microecology, evolutionary ecology, ecological policy, or inorganic ecological interfaces. The philosophy department offered a concentration in ecological philosophies.
In addition to ordinary faculty, each program had a corporate endowed chair, a post-doc or two, a few PhD students, a dozen Master‘s degree students, and dozens of ecology majors specializing in the program. A Wyoming coal company sponsored the chair of the restorative ecology program. Boeing sponsored the chair of the closed systems ecology program. The paleo-ecology chair was sponsored by Dreamworks, one of the major Hollywood studios. Microecology was sponsored by Eli Lilly, the drug company. Xcel Energy sponsored the evolutionary ecology chair. Wild Foods sponsored the ecological policy chair. And Honda sponsored the inorganic ecological interfaces chair.
Every major was required to take an introductory biology and ecology core, math and computer science courses in statistics, dynamic systems and systems simulation, an intermediate class from a majority of the programs, a core of senior level classes in a program, and a year long field work project in our program. The student assistance center was always full of upper class students working as tutors to explain food webs, ecological niches, boom-bust predator population models, the carbon and nitrogen cycles, the ecology of the human digestive system, and invasive species to freshman and sophomores completing their core requirements.
Espirt de corps was high. Clothing with messages like “Ecologists love complex women.” and “Restore the Great Plains!”, filled the campus. Alpha Omega Alpha, the honorary society for the department, was the sponsor of the annual fox hunt, in which the ceremonial fox was hunted, in full British regalia on horseback, by students and faculty alike, armed with tranquilizer guns and specially bred fox hunting pigs that tracked but did not kill their quarry. The spring equinox hunt brought national press coverage every year. Micoecology graduates routinely were admitted to John Hopkins University and found internships at the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Center. A long forgotten Congresswoman had managed to locate the United States Ecological Warning System of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Fort Collins where scientists set priorities under the Endangered, Threatened and Invasive Species Act of 2013.
Fort Collins was also believed by the Homeland Security domestic counter terrorism office to be the headquarters for at least three ecoterrorist groups, among them the Earth Liberation Front, one of the oldest and most destructive of the leading ecoterrorist organizations. It was widely assumed on campus that there were several undercover agents on campus trying to infiltrate these groups, and every few years an unstart group or cell of an established organization was shut down. Several professors were suspected of sponsoring ecoterrorist groups, but the federal government had never managed to find any proof that would hold up in court, despite several wiretaps, library searches, and sneak and peak searches.
On the afternoon of December 2, 2030 the ecology department's admission committee met. Up for consideration was an application from a certain Garth Woods, with a criminal record, but also clear evidence of being completely reformed. He wanted to enter as a junior transfer student starting with the Spring Semester. The discussion took about five minutes. The vote to admit him was unanimous.
In addition to ordinary faculty, each program had a corporate endowed chair, a post-doc or two, a few PhD students, a dozen Master‘s degree students, and dozens of ecology majors specializing in the program. A Wyoming coal company sponsored the chair of the restorative ecology program. Boeing sponsored the chair of the closed systems ecology program. The paleo-ecology chair was sponsored by Dreamworks, one of the major Hollywood studios. Microecology was sponsored by Eli Lilly, the drug company. Xcel Energy sponsored the evolutionary ecology chair. Wild Foods sponsored the ecological policy chair. And Honda sponsored the inorganic ecological interfaces chair.
Every major was required to take an introductory biology and ecology core, math and computer science courses in statistics, dynamic systems and systems simulation, an intermediate class from a majority of the programs, a core of senior level classes in a program, and a year long field work project in our program. The student assistance center was always full of upper class students working as tutors to explain food webs, ecological niches, boom-bust predator population models, the carbon and nitrogen cycles, the ecology of the human digestive system, and invasive species to freshman and sophomores completing their core requirements.
Espirt de corps was high. Clothing with messages like “Ecologists love complex women.” and “Restore the Great Plains!”, filled the campus. Alpha Omega Alpha, the honorary society for the department, was the sponsor of the annual fox hunt, in which the ceremonial fox was hunted, in full British regalia on horseback, by students and faculty alike, armed with tranquilizer guns and specially bred fox hunting pigs that tracked but did not kill their quarry. The spring equinox hunt brought national press coverage every year. Micoecology graduates routinely were admitted to John Hopkins University and found internships at the Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Center. A long forgotten Congresswoman had managed to locate the United States Ecological Warning System of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters in Fort Collins where scientists set priorities under the Endangered, Threatened and Invasive Species Act of 2013.
Fort Collins was also believed by the Homeland Security domestic counter terrorism office to be the headquarters for at least three ecoterrorist groups, among them the Earth Liberation Front, one of the oldest and most destructive of the leading ecoterrorist organizations. It was widely assumed on campus that there were several undercover agents on campus trying to infiltrate these groups, and every few years an unstart group or cell of an established organization was shut down. Several professors were suspected of sponsoring ecoterrorist groups, but the federal government had never managed to find any proof that would hold up in court, despite several wiretaps, library searches, and sneak and peak searches.
On the afternoon of December 2, 2030 the ecology department's admission committee met. Up for consideration was an application from a certain Garth Woods, with a criminal record, but also clear evidence of being completely reformed. He wanted to enter as a junior transfer student starting with the Spring Semester. The discussion took about five minutes. The vote to admit him was unanimous.
Chapter 13: December 2, 2030 Dive Team
The next day, Joe came into work in the afternoon, as he always did on Tuesdays, so he could take classes at Auraria.
“How as class?”, Lily asked.
“Two hours of emergency tracheometries on dummies, could be worse.”, Joe replied. “Then, on the way back I stopped by the department offices to get next semester’s course list. I was this flyer and I saved it for you.”
Joe handed her a flier for the Denver Metro Dive Rescue Team.
“It’s all volunteer and after yesterday afternoon, I’m sure you have the right stuff for the team. Didn’t you say you used to do some scuba with relatives in Louisiana?”
Lily smiled a small pouty smile, “It’s nice to know that somebody listens when I blather on. I still have all the gear.”
“Will you give it a try?”, Joe asked.
“I don’t know. I won’t know anyone. I don’t know if I’m confident enough to presume to go on call to save people.”, Lily said.
“O.K., let’s go in together. Their next orientation meeting is Monday night.”
“O.K.”, Lily said, not sure what she’d just committed herself to.
“Bring your gear.”, Joe said.
The Denver Metro Dive Team Rescue Orientation Meeting was at a pool at D.U. A wirey man in his thirties in a Speedo presided from the diving board.
“Since you’re here, I’m going to assume you’re interested in joining the Dive Rescue Team. We’re all going to start with a brief warm up, then a swimming skills test, then a scuba skills test, and then we’ll regroup after the practical tests and talk about what the team does, what responsibilities members have, training requirements, and a few other questions. O.K. Let’s start with stretches.”
A woman on the deck in a dive rescue team t-shirt and suit led the stretching. Volunteers were lined up at each of the six lanes in the pool for the swim test. About a third of the applicants had washed out on the first swim test, a 1000 meter swim. A few more didn’t make the underwater swimming requirement. One more person couldn’t handle the object retrieval, and another failed the blind swim. There were still a dozen people left, however, when everyone started putting on their dive gear. Lily and Joe, however, were both still in the running.
The first dive test was a surprise. After a one minute explanation, everyone had to carry a CPR dummy, while in their dive suit, across the natatorium, up the ladder to the high dive, back down again, and then underwater all the way back across the pool with a clock running. Lily and Joe again passed the test, but four of the remaining twelve orientees didn’t finish in the requisite six minutes. They headed off to a debriefing volunteer who offered the rejected applicants free t-shirts and a videotape for trying.
Lily nudged Joe as she saw the scene.
“Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.”
“No way Lily. You are here with a purpose and nothing is going to get in your way.”, Joe said.
There were a couple of deep water exercises, an equipment check which disqualified an applicant, and a high dive requirement, which disqualified another applicant. The six remaining applicants of the original twenty proceeded to a lifeguards’ room off the pool area, matched one on one with the volunteers.
Each volunteer sat down across from an applicant with a questionnaire. The woman who had led the opening stretches was interviewing Lily.
“Name?”
“Lily Matsunaka.”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
Lily proceeded to give her address, phone number, place of employment, work phone number, veteran status, and state that she had a driver’s license and working vehicle.
“Criminal record?”
“A couple of traffic tickets, but nothing else as an adult. My license is still good.”
“Highest level of education reached?”
“10th grade.”
“Are you still in school?”
“I dropped out when my dad died and got a job as a florist in Sterling.”
A medium length medical history followed, with Lily able to answer no to almost all of the questions. Her only known allergy was to certain ear drying agents.
“Emergency contact?”
She gave her grandmother’s phone name and phone number.
“Any prior rescue experience?”
“I pulled a guy out of a semi that crashed into the South Platte last week with Joe Rodriguez’s help.”
“You’re shitting me. The police never identified the rescuers, and the guy was rescued before we got there. The hospital says if it had been any longer he would have died.”
“I say it was just luck that we could help. But, Joe convinced me to sign up.”
“Great! That’s all the questions. We’ll be back in a few minutes after we’ve gone over the questionnaires. Help yourself to some hot coffee or cocoa.
The volunteers huddled and the applicants waited. Everyone was tired after the skills tests and questions, so it was not a talkative bunch. A couple of people furtively pointed at Lily and Joe.
“Any hard questions? It seems a lot like the EMT apprentice qualifications I did last year.”
“Not really. Are you sure they take high school dropouts? I was a bit surprised that they asked about it.”
“Only one way to find out.”, Joe replied.
Before long, the volunteers came out and talked individually with a couple of the applicants again. They were escorted out. Presumably, the answers to the questions they’d given were not satisfactory. Joe and Lily were still there.
The leader stepped to the front of the room again when the volunteers had returned.
“Congratulations. Welcome to the applicant class of 2030. Each of you has passed the preliminary skills tests and screening. If you’d like, the City will pay to put each of you through a six weekend Colorado Dive Rescue Training with other applicants from across the state, if you agree to stay on the team and be on call several days every month for the next year. We going to assign you buddies for the training process, Joe and Lily, you’ll be one pair. Steve and Robert, you’ll be the other pair.”
Joe looked at Lily and gleamed with pride. Lily looked back at Joe with a half smile.
“Thank you.”, she said. “I guess I just needed a nudge.”
“How as class?”, Lily asked.
“Two hours of emergency tracheometries on dummies, could be worse.”, Joe replied. “Then, on the way back I stopped by the department offices to get next semester’s course list. I was this flyer and I saved it for you.”
Joe handed her a flier for the Denver Metro Dive Rescue Team.
“It’s all volunteer and after yesterday afternoon, I’m sure you have the right stuff for the team. Didn’t you say you used to do some scuba with relatives in Louisiana?”
Lily smiled a small pouty smile, “It’s nice to know that somebody listens when I blather on. I still have all the gear.”
“Will you give it a try?”, Joe asked.
“I don’t know. I won’t know anyone. I don’t know if I’m confident enough to presume to go on call to save people.”, Lily said.
“O.K., let’s go in together. Their next orientation meeting is Monday night.”
“O.K.”, Lily said, not sure what she’d just committed herself to.
“Bring your gear.”, Joe said.
The Denver Metro Dive Team Rescue Orientation Meeting was at a pool at D.U. A wirey man in his thirties in a Speedo presided from the diving board.
“Since you’re here, I’m going to assume you’re interested in joining the Dive Rescue Team. We’re all going to start with a brief warm up, then a swimming skills test, then a scuba skills test, and then we’ll regroup after the practical tests and talk about what the team does, what responsibilities members have, training requirements, and a few other questions. O.K. Let’s start with stretches.”
A woman on the deck in a dive rescue team t-shirt and suit led the stretching. Volunteers were lined up at each of the six lanes in the pool for the swim test. About a third of the applicants had washed out on the first swim test, a 1000 meter swim. A few more didn’t make the underwater swimming requirement. One more person couldn’t handle the object retrieval, and another failed the blind swim. There were still a dozen people left, however, when everyone started putting on their dive gear. Lily and Joe, however, were both still in the running.
The first dive test was a surprise. After a one minute explanation, everyone had to carry a CPR dummy, while in their dive suit, across the natatorium, up the ladder to the high dive, back down again, and then underwater all the way back across the pool with a clock running. Lily and Joe again passed the test, but four of the remaining twelve orientees didn’t finish in the requisite six minutes. They headed off to a debriefing volunteer who offered the rejected applicants free t-shirts and a videotape for trying.
Lily nudged Joe as she saw the scene.
“Maybe we should quit while we’re ahead.”
“No way Lily. You are here with a purpose and nothing is going to get in your way.”, Joe said.
There were a couple of deep water exercises, an equipment check which disqualified an applicant, and a high dive requirement, which disqualified another applicant. The six remaining applicants of the original twenty proceeded to a lifeguards’ room off the pool area, matched one on one with the volunteers.
Each volunteer sat down across from an applicant with a questionnaire. The woman who had led the opening stretches was interviewing Lily.
“Name?”
“Lily Matsunaka.”
“Age?”
“Nineteen.”
Lily proceeded to give her address, phone number, place of employment, work phone number, veteran status, and state that she had a driver’s license and working vehicle.
“Criminal record?”
“A couple of traffic tickets, but nothing else as an adult. My license is still good.”
“Highest level of education reached?”
“10th grade.”
“Are you still in school?”
“I dropped out when my dad died and got a job as a florist in Sterling.”
A medium length medical history followed, with Lily able to answer no to almost all of the questions. Her only known allergy was to certain ear drying agents.
“Emergency contact?”
She gave her grandmother’s phone name and phone number.
“Any prior rescue experience?”
“I pulled a guy out of a semi that crashed into the South Platte last week with Joe Rodriguez’s help.”
“You’re shitting me. The police never identified the rescuers, and the guy was rescued before we got there. The hospital says if it had been any longer he would have died.”
“I say it was just luck that we could help. But, Joe convinced me to sign up.”
“Great! That’s all the questions. We’ll be back in a few minutes after we’ve gone over the questionnaires. Help yourself to some hot coffee or cocoa.
The volunteers huddled and the applicants waited. Everyone was tired after the skills tests and questions, so it was not a talkative bunch. A couple of people furtively pointed at Lily and Joe.
“Any hard questions? It seems a lot like the EMT apprentice qualifications I did last year.”
“Not really. Are you sure they take high school dropouts? I was a bit surprised that they asked about it.”
“Only one way to find out.”, Joe replied.
Before long, the volunteers came out and talked individually with a couple of the applicants again. They were escorted out. Presumably, the answers to the questions they’d given were not satisfactory. Joe and Lily were still there.
The leader stepped to the front of the room again when the volunteers had returned.
“Congratulations. Welcome to the applicant class of 2030. Each of you has passed the preliminary skills tests and screening. If you’d like, the City will pay to put each of you through a six weekend Colorado Dive Rescue Training with other applicants from across the state, if you agree to stay on the team and be on call several days every month for the next year. We going to assign you buddies for the training process, Joe and Lily, you’ll be one pair. Steve and Robert, you’ll be the other pair.”
Joe looked at Lily and gleamed with pride. Lily looked back at Joe with a half smile.
“Thank you.”, she said. “I guess I just needed a nudge.”
Supervised Person
A year ago, he’d been a minor celebrity. He’d been interviewed by four different TV stations for the nightly news. Three newspapers had interviewed him. He gone to lunch with the State Director of Social Services. The Governor and the CEO of Wild Foods had shaken his hand at a press conference later that afternoon. The City of Lakewood issued a proclamation in his honor. He was a rare success story and everyone wanted a piece of him.
It had all started twelve years ago. When he’d turned sixteen, he’d started acting a little different. Sometimes his school essays would have a truly mean spirited sentence or two in them. He slapped a girlfriend for looking at another boy. He started going to church every morning before school and told the pastor he was developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Sometimes he’d go out after dinner and not come back until morning, without an explanation.
A few days after his seventeenth birthday, the zoning inspector had contacted his parents and asked for permission to inspect his family’s garden shed. Neighbors had complained about the smell. He parents, suspecting nothing, consented. What the inspector found changed everything. Local naturalists had been concerned that a lynx might have moved into the area, even though there had been no sighting and no observed tracks, because a number of cats and dogs had disappeared in the past three weeks. One park ranger had even gone on the evening news with a set of tips on what to do if you encountered one. This theory proved not to be correct.
The walls of the shed were lined with seventeen mutilated pet bodies. Each pet’s name was written in its own blood the peg where its body hung from the wall. Female pets had objects inserted into their genitals. Male pets had weights hanging from theirs. Each pet had its vocal cords crushed. Most had holes drilled into their heads marked with acid that had eaten into their brains. They had burn marks on their limbs and razor blade cuts on their chests in lazy, intricate doodles. Some had eyes injected with motor oil. His initials were shaved into the fur on the back of each one.
He was arrested at school that day on seventeen felony counts of animal cruelty. His parents, themselves terrified, retained a high profile criminal defense attorney from Boulder, and sold his dad’s pickup to pay a retainer. His dad got on the phone that night to call a man he’d had beers with after hours when he’d been in the military as a prison guard at Levenworth. That man was now an endowed professor in the John Hopkins Psychiatry Department, and had been a young forensic psychiatrist at Levenworth.
As fate would have it, the Deputy District Attorney assigned to the case had been an undergraduate psychology and neuro-biology major who’d done a senior thesis on the criminally insane, but decided to go into law instead because his chemistry and math grades were lackluster. The family, the East Coast Psychiatrist, the seasoned defense attorney and the deputy district attorney held a case discussion conference in front of a seasoned mediator with a background as a social worker.
It was Garth’s first offense, and the Deputy District Attorney was eager to make a name for himself by being the first to invoke the new state “supervised person” law. The psychiatrist’s expert opinion made that easy. Garth’s maternal great-uncle had killed a family in Rifle after eighteen visits in twenty years to mental health institutions and that case had been a driving force behind a first, failed attempt to enact a supervised person law in Colorado. Garth‘s much older maternal cousin had finally been caught a few years before this incident, after a decade of unsolved pet mutilations in Denver. A blood test had shown that Garth had the suspect gene. The defense attorney’s private investigator had identified twenty-seven different witnesses to Garth’s increasingly unusual behavior in the past year. An innocent by reason of insanity plea involving a man with the same condition had been upheld in Arizona a few years earlier in a murder case. The psychiatrist’s opinion stated that taking a Proloffone pill twice a day for the rest of his life would cure Garth’s condition, but that failure to take the pill could result in repeated, more severe episodes.
His parents feared for his health if he went to prison. If he was convicted, he would turn eighteen just as he went to the penitentiary. He was a slight boy at the time, and preternaturally pretty for a boy. While he’d dated some girls, he’d also made overtures to one or two boys on an experimental basis. There was no doubt in the minds of either of his parents, or his defense counsel, that he would be a sex slave for a prison gang in a matter of months, if not days, if he went to the penitentiary. There was also little doubt that without proper treatment, he would get out, victimize someone or something, and come back over and over again.
At the disposition hearing, full of cameras after the pictures of the mutilated animals had reached national audiences through a leak in the police department, the Deputy Prosecutor announced that he was dropping all charges but a lesser included charge of disorderly conduct, in exchange for restitution, community service at an animal shelter, and an adjudication of Garth as a “supervised person” under the new supervised person’s statute. The prosecutor gave a little speech about how modern medical science and new Colorado law made it possible to prevent this case from being yet another litany of failures and repeat offenses. The defense counsel, the East Coast psychiatrist, the state’s expert psychiatrist, his family, and one or two of the victim pet owner’s families all came forward to support the decision. One or two pet owner families protested. The judge accepted the plea bargain.
Later that day, Garth was set up as supervised person number 0001. His finger prints, retina scan, DNA sample, blood type, and other identifying information was put in a registry. He was issued an new ID with an orange background that informed gun sellers, bars and liquor stores that they could not sell to him. He was assigned a case worker from the State Department of Social Services. Within a week he had reported to a halfway house in Denver. Every morning and every afternoon, he physically appeared in front of a male nurse and took a Proloffone pill. They found him a job sweeping floors at a local Wild Foods store under a work reentry program they’d signed up for as part of their social awarness regime, which also provided handsome tax credits. At the end of the first year, he’d gotten his own apartment in the same neighborhood, and only had to stop by in the morning and evening taking his pill. In the third year, he simply had to report for random weekly drug tests, at his place of work and interviews with his employer, to confirm that his behavior was normal and that he had Proloffone in his system. In the fourth year, the tests were made monthly, and in the fifth year quarterly. He boss always had an emergency number to call his caseworker to report any unusual behavior, but almost never used it. For the second five years before he was put on “inactive supervision” status, follow up had declined to annual visits with his employer, annual random drug tests, a computerized record review, quarterly phone calls, and an annual home and family interview.
The compliance after the first year actually wasn’t much of a surprise. Proloffone had an “inert” component, that was specifically designed to be addictive, even though it had no other beneficial effect. If Garth missed a day or two of the pill, painful withdrawal symptoms kicked in. Intense headaches, cravings, flu-like lethargy, a low grade fever, nausea, and more set in. The designer knew that this was a drug designed to be used for life, and that the consequences of missing a dose or two could be severe, and so planned accordingly. Only a few pharmacies in the state were authorized to dispense it, so overuse was also not considered a serious concern.
Proloffone, muted moods without making the patient sleepy, suppressed testosterone levels to female levels (leaving Garth with the same nearly hairless baby face he’d had at seventeen), and suppressed all intense mammalian brain activity. Situation induced fear, anger, panic, and lust were all suppressed. When he was on Proloffone, horror films, porn and action movies lost all their primal appeal. He’d kept in touch with family, and was technically fertile, but the drug had stripped him of any desire to enter into romantic relationships of his own. Some of his co-workers assumed that he was gay, and he might have been had he been allowed to develop regularly, but as it was, he simply wasn’t interested.
Garth got his GED, and then went to night school and successfully earned an associate’s degree in retail management, impressive for a young man who had never been a strong student even before his condition had hit. He was promoted from sweep up duties, to produce stocking, and then to produce manager. Three years ago, he’d been given a spot on the company’s organic standards review committee.
While in college he had gravitated towards environmental groups. He’d known better than to openly join a militant organization like Earth First or Greenpeace or PETA, given his supervised status, but had joined the organic foods co-operative and the Sierra Club. He liked taking hike, and he made connections with like minded people. One of the people he met in the organic foods cooperative, impressed by his devotion to animal and plant rights, apparently as atonement for the animals he’d mutilated and growing out of his service at the animal shelter, invited him to meet some ELF members. The Earth Liberation Front was one of the oldest and most secretive of the environmental terror groups. He had no desire to personally participate in the arsons and other actions the group was known for, but the cloak and dagger element and feeling of intense community in pursuit of an ideal that the group provided, filled a missing need in him. While the drug suppressed his personal desire to destroy, it didn’t affect higher level brain function and the seeds of destructiveness at that level were as much a part of his particular psychological flaw, as the more obvious violent outbursts. He started handling menial organizational tasks, and within two years, he had a cell of his own, one of the most violent in the entire network. His total lack of hands on involvement, and the care with which he hid his identity from his cell members, however, left him totally hidden from law enforcement, even when one of his cell members was caught in the act and interrogated.
It had all started twelve years ago. When he’d turned sixteen, he’d started acting a little different. Sometimes his school essays would have a truly mean spirited sentence or two in them. He slapped a girlfriend for looking at another boy. He started going to church every morning before school and told the pastor he was developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Sometimes he’d go out after dinner and not come back until morning, without an explanation.
A few days after his seventeenth birthday, the zoning inspector had contacted his parents and asked for permission to inspect his family’s garden shed. Neighbors had complained about the smell. He parents, suspecting nothing, consented. What the inspector found changed everything. Local naturalists had been concerned that a lynx might have moved into the area, even though there had been no sighting and no observed tracks, because a number of cats and dogs had disappeared in the past three weeks. One park ranger had even gone on the evening news with a set of tips on what to do if you encountered one. This theory proved not to be correct.
The walls of the shed were lined with seventeen mutilated pet bodies. Each pet’s name was written in its own blood the peg where its body hung from the wall. Female pets had objects inserted into their genitals. Male pets had weights hanging from theirs. Each pet had its vocal cords crushed. Most had holes drilled into their heads marked with acid that had eaten into their brains. They had burn marks on their limbs and razor blade cuts on their chests in lazy, intricate doodles. Some had eyes injected with motor oil. His initials were shaved into the fur on the back of each one.
He was arrested at school that day on seventeen felony counts of animal cruelty. His parents, themselves terrified, retained a high profile criminal defense attorney from Boulder, and sold his dad’s pickup to pay a retainer. His dad got on the phone that night to call a man he’d had beers with after hours when he’d been in the military as a prison guard at Levenworth. That man was now an endowed professor in the John Hopkins Psychiatry Department, and had been a young forensic psychiatrist at Levenworth.
As fate would have it, the Deputy District Attorney assigned to the case had been an undergraduate psychology and neuro-biology major who’d done a senior thesis on the criminally insane, but decided to go into law instead because his chemistry and math grades were lackluster. The family, the East Coast Psychiatrist, the seasoned defense attorney and the deputy district attorney held a case discussion conference in front of a seasoned mediator with a background as a social worker.
It was Garth’s first offense, and the Deputy District Attorney was eager to make a name for himself by being the first to invoke the new state “supervised person” law. The psychiatrist’s expert opinion made that easy. Garth’s maternal great-uncle had killed a family in Rifle after eighteen visits in twenty years to mental health institutions and that case had been a driving force behind a first, failed attempt to enact a supervised person law in Colorado. Garth‘s much older maternal cousin had finally been caught a few years before this incident, after a decade of unsolved pet mutilations in Denver. A blood test had shown that Garth had the suspect gene. The defense attorney’s private investigator had identified twenty-seven different witnesses to Garth’s increasingly unusual behavior in the past year. An innocent by reason of insanity plea involving a man with the same condition had been upheld in Arizona a few years earlier in a murder case. The psychiatrist’s opinion stated that taking a Proloffone pill twice a day for the rest of his life would cure Garth’s condition, but that failure to take the pill could result in repeated, more severe episodes.
His parents feared for his health if he went to prison. If he was convicted, he would turn eighteen just as he went to the penitentiary. He was a slight boy at the time, and preternaturally pretty for a boy. While he’d dated some girls, he’d also made overtures to one or two boys on an experimental basis. There was no doubt in the minds of either of his parents, or his defense counsel, that he would be a sex slave for a prison gang in a matter of months, if not days, if he went to the penitentiary. There was also little doubt that without proper treatment, he would get out, victimize someone or something, and come back over and over again.
At the disposition hearing, full of cameras after the pictures of the mutilated animals had reached national audiences through a leak in the police department, the Deputy Prosecutor announced that he was dropping all charges but a lesser included charge of disorderly conduct, in exchange for restitution, community service at an animal shelter, and an adjudication of Garth as a “supervised person” under the new supervised person’s statute. The prosecutor gave a little speech about how modern medical science and new Colorado law made it possible to prevent this case from being yet another litany of failures and repeat offenses. The defense counsel, the East Coast psychiatrist, the state’s expert psychiatrist, his family, and one or two of the victim pet owner’s families all came forward to support the decision. One or two pet owner families protested. The judge accepted the plea bargain.
Later that day, Garth was set up as supervised person number 0001. His finger prints, retina scan, DNA sample, blood type, and other identifying information was put in a registry. He was issued an new ID with an orange background that informed gun sellers, bars and liquor stores that they could not sell to him. He was assigned a case worker from the State Department of Social Services. Within a week he had reported to a halfway house in Denver. Every morning and every afternoon, he physically appeared in front of a male nurse and took a Proloffone pill. They found him a job sweeping floors at a local Wild Foods store under a work reentry program they’d signed up for as part of their social awarness regime, which also provided handsome tax credits. At the end of the first year, he’d gotten his own apartment in the same neighborhood, and only had to stop by in the morning and evening taking his pill. In the third year, he simply had to report for random weekly drug tests, at his place of work and interviews with his employer, to confirm that his behavior was normal and that he had Proloffone in his system. In the fourth year, the tests were made monthly, and in the fifth year quarterly. He boss always had an emergency number to call his caseworker to report any unusual behavior, but almost never used it. For the second five years before he was put on “inactive supervision” status, follow up had declined to annual visits with his employer, annual random drug tests, a computerized record review, quarterly phone calls, and an annual home and family interview.
The compliance after the first year actually wasn’t much of a surprise. Proloffone had an “inert” component, that was specifically designed to be addictive, even though it had no other beneficial effect. If Garth missed a day or two of the pill, painful withdrawal symptoms kicked in. Intense headaches, cravings, flu-like lethargy, a low grade fever, nausea, and more set in. The designer knew that this was a drug designed to be used for life, and that the consequences of missing a dose or two could be severe, and so planned accordingly. Only a few pharmacies in the state were authorized to dispense it, so overuse was also not considered a serious concern.
Proloffone, muted moods without making the patient sleepy, suppressed testosterone levels to female levels (leaving Garth with the same nearly hairless baby face he’d had at seventeen), and suppressed all intense mammalian brain activity. Situation induced fear, anger, panic, and lust were all suppressed. When he was on Proloffone, horror films, porn and action movies lost all their primal appeal. He’d kept in touch with family, and was technically fertile, but the drug had stripped him of any desire to enter into romantic relationships of his own. Some of his co-workers assumed that he was gay, and he might have been had he been allowed to develop regularly, but as it was, he simply wasn’t interested.
Garth got his GED, and then went to night school and successfully earned an associate’s degree in retail management, impressive for a young man who had never been a strong student even before his condition had hit. He was promoted from sweep up duties, to produce stocking, and then to produce manager. Three years ago, he’d been given a spot on the company’s organic standards review committee.
While in college he had gravitated towards environmental groups. He’d known better than to openly join a militant organization like Earth First or Greenpeace or PETA, given his supervised status, but had joined the organic foods co-operative and the Sierra Club. He liked taking hike, and he made connections with like minded people. One of the people he met in the organic foods cooperative, impressed by his devotion to animal and plant rights, apparently as atonement for the animals he’d mutilated and growing out of his service at the animal shelter, invited him to meet some ELF members. The Earth Liberation Front was one of the oldest and most secretive of the environmental terror groups. He had no desire to personally participate in the arsons and other actions the group was known for, but the cloak and dagger element and feeling of intense community in pursuit of an ideal that the group provided, filled a missing need in him. While the drug suppressed his personal desire to destroy, it didn’t affect higher level brain function and the seeds of destructiveness at that level were as much a part of his particular psychological flaw, as the more obvious violent outbursts. He started handling menial organizational tasks, and within two years, he had a cell of his own, one of the most violent in the entire network. His total lack of hands on involvement, and the care with which he hid his identity from his cell members, however, left him totally hidden from law enforcement, even when one of his cell members was caught in the act and interrogated.
Chapter 12: November 30, 2030
The November wind blew cold. The wind chimes in the window rang. The falling sun glittered in the glass and steel of Denver’s skyline. Looking East from the fifteenth story of Lily’s grandmother’s Sakura Square apartment, surprisingly little had changed since the day Lily was born. City lights peaked out through trees in residential neighborhoods. Red, yellow and white lights shone in little clusters as tiny car maneuvered city streets. If you looked just right, you could catch the image of the Remembrance Towers in some of the skyscrapers, but if you vision blurred a little, all you would see was the glow of the sun setting beneath the Rocky Mountains. Coors Field was silent, the regular baseball season was over, and the post-season was being contested in warmer climes.
Inside grandmother’s house, the only light came from candles and the odd indicator light attesting to the fact that some electric device was ready to obey any command directed its way. Grandmother had electric lights of course, but she always complained that they lacked the spirituality of flames. The candles were in blatant violation of the apartment fire control rules, but on a floor where everyone’s front door is triple locked and you are fifteen stories who would ever find out.
A bowl of steamed rice, drenched with hot water and adorned with long rectangular strips of boiled seaweed, accompanied by a small cup of hot, green tea sat, ignored, before Lily.
“It looks like you have something other than food on your mind, Lily.”, her grandmother observed.
“Yes.”, Lily admitted.
“Is it a man?”, her grandmother asked.
“Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know.”, Lily answered. “Yes, there is a man. No, strike that. There is more than one man I’m trying to make sense of. But, I’m also trying to figure out who I am. How can anyone want me when I don’t even felt like a grown up myself?”
“Hmmm.”, grandmother murmured. “Tell me about the men.”
“Well, there’s one man. He’s dashing and proud and he’s been dazzled by me since the first day he saw me do a sculpture at the governor’s mansion. He’s a military man. I think he’s an officer in the Navy. He’s trying to root out terrorists or something. He’s sent flowers to me at work, even before he knew my name.”
“Then, there’s this guy at the shop. He’s no Navy officer. He drives our delivery van to make money for college. He wants to be a firefighter. He fixes cars in his spare time. He’s always so sweet. And, he’s sure of himself too. Oh, the military man has purpose all right. But this man who drives our delivery van. He cares about everyone. He’s always helping a mother with a couple of kids lift her stroller over the curb, or helping neighborhood kids get their kites out of a tree, or whatever.”
“And, did a mention my boss? The way he looks at me sometimes, I just see bliss in his eyes. And, he is sweet. He never does anything blatant. He doesn’t want to abuse his authority, I guess. His only cares in life are to keep his business going and to make his patrons as satisfied with his catering as he possibly can, but everyone who knows him can see how desperately lonely he is. Every time a couple comes in to plan a wedding he starts to choke up a little. He has plenty of casual friends. But, every night he slinks off to his place in the Golden Triangle alone.”
“Hmmm.”, grandmother murmured. “Well, you will appreciate later in life how lucky you are to have choices in life. Eat up. Your food isn’t getting any warmer and you need some warmth in your belly on a day like today.”
Lily did as she was told. Afterwards she sat on the couch with her grandmother, where they took in the view and shared the silence. The next thing Lily knew, she was wrapped in a blanket on the couch, and the morning sun was in her eyes.
Inside grandmother’s house, the only light came from candles and the odd indicator light attesting to the fact that some electric device was ready to obey any command directed its way. Grandmother had electric lights of course, but she always complained that they lacked the spirituality of flames. The candles were in blatant violation of the apartment fire control rules, but on a floor where everyone’s front door is triple locked and you are fifteen stories who would ever find out.
A bowl of steamed rice, drenched with hot water and adorned with long rectangular strips of boiled seaweed, accompanied by a small cup of hot, green tea sat, ignored, before Lily.
“It looks like you have something other than food on your mind, Lily.”, her grandmother observed.
“Yes.”, Lily admitted.
“Is it a man?”, her grandmother asked.
“Yes . . . no . . . I don’t know.”, Lily answered. “Yes, there is a man. No, strike that. There is more than one man I’m trying to make sense of. But, I’m also trying to figure out who I am. How can anyone want me when I don’t even felt like a grown up myself?”
“Hmmm.”, grandmother murmured. “Tell me about the men.”
“Well, there’s one man. He’s dashing and proud and he’s been dazzled by me since the first day he saw me do a sculpture at the governor’s mansion. He’s a military man. I think he’s an officer in the Navy. He’s trying to root out terrorists or something. He’s sent flowers to me at work, even before he knew my name.”
“Then, there’s this guy at the shop. He’s no Navy officer. He drives our delivery van to make money for college. He wants to be a firefighter. He fixes cars in his spare time. He’s always so sweet. And, he’s sure of himself too. Oh, the military man has purpose all right. But this man who drives our delivery van. He cares about everyone. He’s always helping a mother with a couple of kids lift her stroller over the curb, or helping neighborhood kids get their kites out of a tree, or whatever.”
“And, did a mention my boss? The way he looks at me sometimes, I just see bliss in his eyes. And, he is sweet. He never does anything blatant. He doesn’t want to abuse his authority, I guess. His only cares in life are to keep his business going and to make his patrons as satisfied with his catering as he possibly can, but everyone who knows him can see how desperately lonely he is. Every time a couple comes in to plan a wedding he starts to choke up a little. He has plenty of casual friends. But, every night he slinks off to his place in the Golden Triangle alone.”
“Hmmm.”, grandmother murmured. “Well, you will appreciate later in life how lucky you are to have choices in life. Eat up. Your food isn’t getting any warmer and you need some warmth in your belly on a day like today.”
Lily did as she was told. Afterwards she sat on the couch with her grandmother, where they took in the view and shared the silence. The next thing Lily knew, she was wrapped in a blanket on the couch, and the morning sun was in her eyes.
Sick With The Flu
Fatima Kwam was home with the flu. Medical science could cure spinal cord damage, transplant hearts, eradicate polio and make you immune to HIV, but it still hadn’t cured the flu. Fatima doubted that her scientific endeavors would make any progress on that front either. She was President of the South High School Space club and her eyes were firmly pointed towards the night sky. When the fever woke her at 2 a.m., she went to her telescope and watched China’s orbiter lazily making its way around Mars.
Here parents didn’t live in the 7th century, the way some of her cousins in Northern Nigeria did. The equipment her father’s worker’s used was pure twenty-first century. Everyone in the family had a computer. Fatima was permitted to have a telescope and was also permitted to interact with Americans wearing only a head scarf. Her mother actually got angry when she heard reports of women being unfairly stoned.
But, old habits die hard. The thermopot next to her bed kept six cups of tea made from some medicinal root from Nigeria at exactly 80.0 degree Celsius day and night. If she didn’t finish this better medicinal wonder by tomorrow, her mother would chide her all day. And it did help, although Fatima suspected that hot water alone would have been equally effective.
Despite Fatima’s hard science bent, she also wasn’t naive enough to think that getting the flu was simply a matter of having the bad luck to be exposed to a virus. At a big school like South High, where janitorial services were not always the top budgetary priority, Fatima knew she was exposed every day to viruses every bit as unpleasant as the one currently afflicting her. She’d even cultured them for AP Microbiology, last spring. But, just as a man’s sperm won’t get a woman pregnant unless her body is at the right part of the month to receive it, a virus only takes if your immune system is too weak to stop it. Fatima’s immune system was weak and she knew why. It boiled down to stress.
Stress is not an absolute thing. A full academic course load heavy with math and science was normal for Fatima, not a stress. Living in a family with more than the average one point six children was also not a stress. Fatima had never known anything other than a house full of brothers and sisters. The loneliness of being stuck at home with the flu while everyone else was out at work or school was more stressful.
But, not everything was normal. Homeland Security investigators asking endless questions of her parents over the kitchen table, about friends, cousins, co-workers and business associates was not normal. The basket full of vellum envelopes describing older Muslim men in her mother’s paperwork nook at the end of the hallway, balanced by a neat stack of portfolios containing glossy oversized photos of her, was not normal. Going to school and the library until late into the night to prepare her Mars landing presentation was not normal. Her father’s phone calls to business associates to find good Muslim homes where his daughter could stay at college were not normal. The way she felt about a Catholic boy who showed up to science club meetings, just to pad his resume, but who had a flair for poetry, was not normal. Neither were the anonymous cards with his writing on them that kept turning up in her locker, under her purse, and once even in her gym locker in the ladies shower room. And then, there were the anonymous letters in Arabic that she found when she picked up the mail when she came home from school that gently reminded the family, in script written in blood, that the punishment for traitors to the faith is death.
Yes, stress was definitely a factor in this most recent bout of flu.
Fatima had tried an appeal to Islam to control the madness.
“Mother, how can you send my pictures far and wide like that. It’s a human image. Isn’t that idolatry?”, she asked, knowing that mother was prone to strict readings of the Quaran.
“I’ll consult your father.”, her mother said, not wanting to misstep. Later that evening, she and her mother were summoned to father’s den.
“There are some people who say that all representational images are forbidden by the Quaran as idolatry. When Allah spoke through Muhammed about the matter, the only representational images in existence were Orthodox Christian icons, which are clearly disobedient to Allah, the one and the only God. But, Muhammed did not command his men to tear their maps to shreds, and the Califfs in Baghdad did not condemn doctors for illustrating their medical texts, or geometers from illustrating their proofs. Worshipping an icon is wrong, but pictures with practical purposes are permitted. Getting you married, Fatima, is a practical purpose, and so it is permitted to use your photograph to allow their mother’s to see what kind of woman your mother has raised.”, father almost recited, having clearly practiced his response.
“But any man who saw me would worship me, wouldn’t he?”, she said.
Her father and mother both smiled, hoping she was right. But, her father’s reply was a mild rebuke.
“Worshipping yourself above God is also against God’s will to which you must submit.”
“Yes, father.”, Fatima replied, dejected. “But isn’t it immodest as well?”, Fatima continued without really having thought it through.
“That is why we send the pictures to the men’s mothers, and not to the men themselves.”, her mother said, more comfortable in the field of modesty than idolatry. Silence followed.
The fact that Fatima’s father had not yet sent the enrollment deposit to C.U., because the deadline was in another month and he wanted to hold off “just in case”, also did not ease Fatima’s nerves.
Here parents didn’t live in the 7th century, the way some of her cousins in Northern Nigeria did. The equipment her father’s worker’s used was pure twenty-first century. Everyone in the family had a computer. Fatima was permitted to have a telescope and was also permitted to interact with Americans wearing only a head scarf. Her mother actually got angry when she heard reports of women being unfairly stoned.
But, old habits die hard. The thermopot next to her bed kept six cups of tea made from some medicinal root from Nigeria at exactly 80.0 degree Celsius day and night. If she didn’t finish this better medicinal wonder by tomorrow, her mother would chide her all day. And it did help, although Fatima suspected that hot water alone would have been equally effective.
Despite Fatima’s hard science bent, she also wasn’t naive enough to think that getting the flu was simply a matter of having the bad luck to be exposed to a virus. At a big school like South High, where janitorial services were not always the top budgetary priority, Fatima knew she was exposed every day to viruses every bit as unpleasant as the one currently afflicting her. She’d even cultured them for AP Microbiology, last spring. But, just as a man’s sperm won’t get a woman pregnant unless her body is at the right part of the month to receive it, a virus only takes if your immune system is too weak to stop it. Fatima’s immune system was weak and she knew why. It boiled down to stress.
Stress is not an absolute thing. A full academic course load heavy with math and science was normal for Fatima, not a stress. Living in a family with more than the average one point six children was also not a stress. Fatima had never known anything other than a house full of brothers and sisters. The loneliness of being stuck at home with the flu while everyone else was out at work or school was more stressful.
But, not everything was normal. Homeland Security investigators asking endless questions of her parents over the kitchen table, about friends, cousins, co-workers and business associates was not normal. The basket full of vellum envelopes describing older Muslim men in her mother’s paperwork nook at the end of the hallway, balanced by a neat stack of portfolios containing glossy oversized photos of her, was not normal. Going to school and the library until late into the night to prepare her Mars landing presentation was not normal. Her father’s phone calls to business associates to find good Muslim homes where his daughter could stay at college were not normal. The way she felt about a Catholic boy who showed up to science club meetings, just to pad his resume, but who had a flair for poetry, was not normal. Neither were the anonymous cards with his writing on them that kept turning up in her locker, under her purse, and once even in her gym locker in the ladies shower room. And then, there were the anonymous letters in Arabic that she found when she picked up the mail when she came home from school that gently reminded the family, in script written in blood, that the punishment for traitors to the faith is death.
Yes, stress was definitely a factor in this most recent bout of flu.
Fatima had tried an appeal to Islam to control the madness.
“Mother, how can you send my pictures far and wide like that. It’s a human image. Isn’t that idolatry?”, she asked, knowing that mother was prone to strict readings of the Quaran.
“I’ll consult your father.”, her mother said, not wanting to misstep. Later that evening, she and her mother were summoned to father’s den.
“There are some people who say that all representational images are forbidden by the Quaran as idolatry. When Allah spoke through Muhammed about the matter, the only representational images in existence were Orthodox Christian icons, which are clearly disobedient to Allah, the one and the only God. But, Muhammed did not command his men to tear their maps to shreds, and the Califfs in Baghdad did not condemn doctors for illustrating their medical texts, or geometers from illustrating their proofs. Worshipping an icon is wrong, but pictures with practical purposes are permitted. Getting you married, Fatima, is a practical purpose, and so it is permitted to use your photograph to allow their mother’s to see what kind of woman your mother has raised.”, father almost recited, having clearly practiced his response.
“But any man who saw me would worship me, wouldn’t he?”, she said.
Her father and mother both smiled, hoping she was right. But, her father’s reply was a mild rebuke.
“Worshipping yourself above God is also against God’s will to which you must submit.”
“Yes, father.”, Fatima replied, dejected. “But isn’t it immodest as well?”, Fatima continued without really having thought it through.
“That is why we send the pictures to the men’s mothers, and not to the men themselves.”, her mother said, more comfortable in the field of modesty than idolatry. Silence followed.
The fact that Fatima’s father had not yet sent the enrollment deposit to C.U., because the deadline was in another month and he wanted to hold off “just in case”, also did not ease Fatima’s nerves.
Chapter 11: November 18, 2030
Cass and Lily took the metro to the Pentagon. Cass was in uniform and had a military ID. Lily wore a business-like light blue blouse and loose navy pants that she sometimes wore when she had interviews with customers at the shop about new commissions. Over it, she wore a seaweed green felt coat, which she needed in the face of the chilling autumn wind. On her shoulder hung a small, brand new, alligator purse that Cass had bought her that morning when he realized that she didn’t really having anything more formal than her tool satchel to bring with her.
Walking through the hallways, everyone seems so stiff. Even the walking was like marching. Cass responded to the environment unconsciously, falling into the silent rhythm of people’s steps, and a punctuated tone of voice. He didn’t even attempt to explain where they were going as he lead her through the long wide halls arrayed at odd angles. For all the importance this building had, the décor had not advanced much from the stark original 1940s office building aesthetic.
“No wonder soldiers aren’t creative, if they have to work in places like this.”, Lily told Cass. Cass had secretly felt the same thing more than once, but had never dared to express it.
Half an hour of maneuvering through the building later, Cass deposited her in a white, windowless room, with a table at which a man in a sailor’s uniform, right down to the sailor’s cap, sat. Cass promised to come back when she was done.
Lily sat. The man touched a control that darkened the room. I’d like you to look at the wall to your left. A picture of a man was displayed there for a few seconds, then it went blank and he turned on the lights.
“Could you paint that man the way you did before.”, he asked. He pressed a button, and a tray with coffee and cream, swizzle sticks, napkins and a placemat were brought in.
Lily paused for a few minutes, closing her eyes, and then looked at the blank placemat. She didn’t say a word. She started by dipping the napkin in the coffee. Then, she sipped a little. Bit, by bit, she drew a face in black and white. About forty minutes later, she looked at her work one more time and then stopped.
Then, the man asked Lily a few questions.
“Had you ever seen this man before?”
“How dark was it?”
“How much warning did you have? . . . A minute? Half a minute? Ten seconds? Two seconds? None?”
“Do you have any background in law enforcement?”
“Where were you born?”
“Were your parents born in the United States?”
“Are you a member of any political party?”
“Have you gone to art school?”
“What is your profession?”
Soon, he ran out of questions.
“Could I see that picture again?”, Lily asked.
“Sure.”, said the man.
Lily looked at the picture again and was satisfied with her work.
A couple of minutes later, the door opened, and Cass took her on the winding path out of the Pentagon and back to the nation’s capital.
Walking through the hallways, everyone seems so stiff. Even the walking was like marching. Cass responded to the environment unconsciously, falling into the silent rhythm of people’s steps, and a punctuated tone of voice. He didn’t even attempt to explain where they were going as he lead her through the long wide halls arrayed at odd angles. For all the importance this building had, the décor had not advanced much from the stark original 1940s office building aesthetic.
“No wonder soldiers aren’t creative, if they have to work in places like this.”, Lily told Cass. Cass had secretly felt the same thing more than once, but had never dared to express it.
Half an hour of maneuvering through the building later, Cass deposited her in a white, windowless room, with a table at which a man in a sailor’s uniform, right down to the sailor’s cap, sat. Cass promised to come back when she was done.
Lily sat. The man touched a control that darkened the room. I’d like you to look at the wall to your left. A picture of a man was displayed there for a few seconds, then it went blank and he turned on the lights.
“Could you paint that man the way you did before.”, he asked. He pressed a button, and a tray with coffee and cream, swizzle sticks, napkins and a placemat were brought in.
Lily paused for a few minutes, closing her eyes, and then looked at the blank placemat. She didn’t say a word. She started by dipping the napkin in the coffee. Then, she sipped a little. Bit, by bit, she drew a face in black and white. About forty minutes later, she looked at her work one more time and then stopped.
Then, the man asked Lily a few questions.
“Had you ever seen this man before?”
“How dark was it?”
“How much warning did you have? . . . A minute? Half a minute? Ten seconds? Two seconds? None?”
“Do you have any background in law enforcement?”
“Where were you born?”
“Were your parents born in the United States?”
“Are you a member of any political party?”
“Have you gone to art school?”
“What is your profession?”
Soon, he ran out of questions.
“Could I see that picture again?”, Lily asked.
“Sure.”, said the man.
Lily looked at the picture again and was satisfied with her work.
A couple of minutes later, the door opened, and Cass took her on the winding path out of the Pentagon and back to the nation’s capital.
Chapter 10: November 17, 2030 Air Taxi
Monday night, Cass called to make sue that she was still coming. Lily had assured him that she would be there in time for the 10:00 a.m. flight. He said he’d taken a later flight so that he could make his eight o’clock class in Boulder before he left.
Lily felt like a stupid little kid. She’d never flown anywhere except once or twice to visit family in New Orleans. Who could on a farmer’s income? Family vacations had meant trips to national parks or to see the stock show and shop at the malls in Denver. She’d certainly never been on a two day get away alone with a boyfriend in the middle of the week.
Her knowledge of the nation’s capital extended mostly to backdrops of evening news broadcasts and half remembered figments from junior high civics. She’d dropped out before she got to government in high school. She didn’t read the paper. She preferred dance music to news and talk shows. She’d passed on her first chance to vote last year.
The day after Cass asked her to go, Lily had bought a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine and a tourists guide to D.C. Travel light, both sources recommended. But, what did that mean? Should she bring boots, in case it snowed, walking shoes to see sights in, or heels for dinner? Or, all three? Would the loft where they were staying have a hair dryer, soap and shampoo, or towels? Somehow, she kept herself to a probably too heavy backpack, that looked like she was bound for the Yukon, and a little blue purse in place of her usual satchel of tools. She decided to wear a bright blue silk blouse and jewelry under her leather biker’s jacket, in case the biker look scared him off.
The post-rush hour traffic was light as she rode her motorcycle up I-25 and turned onto the Northwest Parkway, on her way to the Jefferson County airport. Most commercial flights ran out of the Denver International Airport, but MMAT’s air taxis shared runways with private jets owned by doctors, lawyers and business chiefs with too much money. Flying MMAT was nothing like the trips to DIA she remembered from growing up. Instead of a full fledged terminal, a neat little one story brick building with a sign that looked like it belonged to a fast food restaurant or a gas station sat in front of a hanger, one of several at the airport. Parking in a lot the size of a small park and ride, in front of the building, was free. It was full of luxury cars and government issue vehicles. Several of the cars were attended by mobile maintenance crews, tuning them up while the owners were away. Lily parked her motorcycle a few steps from the front door under a small shelter that also housed several high end touring bicycles. When she walked in the front door it was nine o’clock.
The one official at the desk greeted her.
“Are you here for the nine-fifteen flight to New York? Or, for the nine-thirty flight to Chicago?”
“Actually, I’m here for the ten o’clock flight to Washington D.C.”
“Oh, you’re early. What is your name?”
“Lily Matsunaka.”
“And could I see your I.D.?”
Lily showed it to her.
“Could I take your backpack?”
“I could carry it on.”
“You don’t need to worry about any delays, we’ll have it right back to you as soon as you get off at Reagan National Airport. We could put your jacket with the luggage as well, if you’d like.”
“O.K.”, Lily said, and the gate person took her bag and her leather jacket, and put it into what looked like a motel laundry cart.
“Would you like a coffee, or juice, or a morning paper? Our table at the other side of the waiting room is well stocked.”
Lily looked, and it was indeed well stocked. She grabbed a donut and juice, but decided against the paper. It would be embarrassing to be caught by Cass reading the comics.
Lily had made several trips to the bathroom to adjust her makeup and jewelry by the time Cass arrived at ten minutes to ten. The waiting room bulged to six or eight people every few minutes, and then nearly emptied on the quarter hour.
“Hello, Mr. Jackson. You’re companion, Ms. Matsunaka is already here.”, the attendant said. The attendant didn’t ask for his I.D. He tossed his neat black flight bag into the cart bound for Washington, and then came up to Lily and gave her a peck on the cheek and a small hug.
“I’m glad you made it.”, he said.
Lily felt like a stupid little kid. She’d never flown anywhere except once or twice to visit family in New Orleans. Who could on a farmer’s income? Family vacations had meant trips to national parks or to see the stock show and shop at the malls in Denver. She’d certainly never been on a two day get away alone with a boyfriend in the middle of the week.
Her knowledge of the nation’s capital extended mostly to backdrops of evening news broadcasts and half remembered figments from junior high civics. She’d dropped out before she got to government in high school. She didn’t read the paper. She preferred dance music to news and talk shows. She’d passed on her first chance to vote last year.
The day after Cass asked her to go, Lily had bought a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine and a tourists guide to D.C. Travel light, both sources recommended. But, what did that mean? Should she bring boots, in case it snowed, walking shoes to see sights in, or heels for dinner? Or, all three? Would the loft where they were staying have a hair dryer, soap and shampoo, or towels? Somehow, she kept herself to a probably too heavy backpack, that looked like she was bound for the Yukon, and a little blue purse in place of her usual satchel of tools. She decided to wear a bright blue silk blouse and jewelry under her leather biker’s jacket, in case the biker look scared him off.
The post-rush hour traffic was light as she rode her motorcycle up I-25 and turned onto the Northwest Parkway, on her way to the Jefferson County airport. Most commercial flights ran out of the Denver International Airport, but MMAT’s air taxis shared runways with private jets owned by doctors, lawyers and business chiefs with too much money. Flying MMAT was nothing like the trips to DIA she remembered from growing up. Instead of a full fledged terminal, a neat little one story brick building with a sign that looked like it belonged to a fast food restaurant or a gas station sat in front of a hanger, one of several at the airport. Parking in a lot the size of a small park and ride, in front of the building, was free. It was full of luxury cars and government issue vehicles. Several of the cars were attended by mobile maintenance crews, tuning them up while the owners were away. Lily parked her motorcycle a few steps from the front door under a small shelter that also housed several high end touring bicycles. When she walked in the front door it was nine o’clock.
The one official at the desk greeted her.
“Are you here for the nine-fifteen flight to New York? Or, for the nine-thirty flight to Chicago?”
“Actually, I’m here for the ten o’clock flight to Washington D.C.”
“Oh, you’re early. What is your name?”
“Lily Matsunaka.”
“And could I see your I.D.?”
Lily showed it to her.
“Could I take your backpack?”
“I could carry it on.”
“You don’t need to worry about any delays, we’ll have it right back to you as soon as you get off at Reagan National Airport. We could put your jacket with the luggage as well, if you’d like.”
“O.K.”, Lily said, and the gate person took her bag and her leather jacket, and put it into what looked like a motel laundry cart.
“Would you like a coffee, or juice, or a morning paper? Our table at the other side of the waiting room is well stocked.”
Lily looked, and it was indeed well stocked. She grabbed a donut and juice, but decided against the paper. It would be embarrassing to be caught by Cass reading the comics.
Lily had made several trips to the bathroom to adjust her makeup and jewelry by the time Cass arrived at ten minutes to ten. The waiting room bulged to six or eight people every few minutes, and then nearly emptied on the quarter hour.
“Hello, Mr. Jackson. You’re companion, Ms. Matsunaka is already here.”, the attendant said. The attendant didn’t ask for his I.D. He tossed his neat black flight bag into the cart bound for Washington, and then came up to Lily and gave her a peck on the cheek and a small hug.
“I’m glad you made it.”, he said.
Chapter 9: November 15, 2030 Fog
The meatballs and pasta for the retirement part at the envelope plant wafted into the front of the van. As usual, Joe was driving. Lily sat in the passenger’s seat. Her satchel of ice sculpting tools filled the footwell. Today’s assignment was easy. A head and shoulders portrait of the guest of honor. He’d gotten a job at the plant out of high school at eighteen and was now retiring fifty years later.
“In weather like this, we could just let him stop outside for a couple of minutes and save you a day’s work.”, Joe told Lily.
Joe and Lily agreed that freezing drizzle was the worst form of weather known to mankind. The freezing drizzle started to compound with fog as they descended down 15th Street into the South Platte Valley from Lodo. The sun was setting too and it was hard to see the stripes for their lane. Just as they came to Commons Park, they heard it.
Horns, crunching metal, breaking glass, and a splash. Joe hit the breaks and the horn. Lily braced herself. The van started to spin just as it hit the bridge. Car lights shot out through the fog at odd angles. A siren started to sound in the distance. Amazingly, the van stopped without hitting anything. The final stop was the last straw for the meatballs, however. The meatballs toppled over. Lily could see the guardrale for the wrong side of the road out her window. She started to unbuckle and get out, but Joe stopped her, putting his hand on hers.
“Hold on. Pileups like these are usually chain reactions. Stay in the van for a little while.”, Joe said as he hit the blinkers.
Joe hit the talk button the van phone and said, “Begin dial. Nine. One. One.”
“Emergency response. Please hold.” The moments took forever.
“Emergency response. How can I help you?”, a new voice said.
“I’m on the 15th Street bridge over the South Platte. I’m in a multiple car pileup in fog. I see at least five cars.”, another horn and a crunch interrupted Joe in that phrase, “make that six cars and an overturned semi that’s hanging over the bridge.” Lily hadn’t seen the semi, which was out Joe’s window, until he mentioned it. “I don’t know about injuries. My passenger and I are fine.”
A low metallic moan started to emanate from the semi.
“The semi cab’s going over.”, Joe continued to call the dispatcher, “it’s falling into the South Platte. I think there’s someone inside. I heard a horn as it went down.”
“Please stay in you’re vehicle. Fog accidents often lead to multiple pile ups. You’re safest in your car.”, the dispatcher responded.
Joe turned back to look for Lily. The door was open and her satchel was gone.
“Damn.”, he said.
Joe worked his way back to the cargo area of the van, grabbed the cord that he’d tied down the food with, opened the back door and warily got out.
“Lily!”, he called.
“Down here.”, Lily answered from a steep hill next to the bridge.
“Figures.”, Joe said under his breath.
Joe hopped the rail and followed her, half controlled, half slipping.
The cab of the semi was in the water, driver’s side down, in the middle of the South Platte. One of its lights was still on. The smell of gasoline was in the air. The water wasn’t all that deep, three or four meet maybe, but it was bitter cold.
“I’m going in after him.”, Lily said. “Tie the rope around me, in case I slip.” Her voice was steely.
“Lily, you’re nuts. You’ll get hypothermia.”
“He’ll die if someone doesn’t get him, and I can’t pull you in on a rope out of a current.”
Lily and Joe’s hair was already soaked.
“O.K. But, don’t be afraid to give up. I’ll pull you back in.”
Joe made a loop with the rope that wouldn’t tighten and put it over her shoulder. She said a silent prayer, jumped in, satchel and all. She leaned back and let the current drag her quickly to the fallen truck cab. She went so quickly she had to yell at Joe to give her more slack a couple of times.
The cab was off center. The bottom of the driver’s side door was on the river bed. The middle was on a small boulder. The driver’s side window was still under water, however, and the front window was facing downstream. Lily took a breath and went under the water to look through the drive’s side window.
The water was frigid. The quiet of being underwater was a change. The driver was tall and skinny. He was unconscious, bruised and starting to get blue in the face. His mouth and nose were underwater. No bones were obviously broken or out of place.
Lily came up. Joe yelled at her in the distance, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She reached into her satchel and took out her ice pick. She let the water swirl into the space behind the front windshield and struck it while the momentum of the current was still carrying her. The glass broke. Lily swung the satchel with all her might to clear the broken glass. She struck the window and dragged, struck and dragged.
As soon as the space was clear enough for her she went in head first, stuck her head underwater and gave the man a kiss full of air. She clicked open his seat belt as she came up for another gasp. He sagged deeper. She took a breath, starting to shiver, and went down and gave him more air, mouth to mouth. As soon as she did, she grabbed him under the armpits and got his head above water. Gross brown liquid came out. She gave him another breath, it bubbled, and then she hit his back.
Her shivering was starting to get out of control and Lily was feeling weaker. She tried another breath. She could feel the cab slide a little on the rock and Joe’s call in the distance, an urgent yell.
“Get out! It’s moving!”, he yelled.
Lily kicked open the rest of the front window and dragged the man out. She gave the rope three short jerks and held the driver with both arms under his arm pits, trying to breath for him when she could.
“I’m freezing and I’m not sure he’s going to make it.”, Lily cried, her voice trembling.
Joe hauled them in as fast as he could. A siren blared in the distance. As they hit shore, Joe grabbed the truck driver, got water out of him with a Heimlich maneuver, checked the man’s pulse and started mouth to mouth and CPR. Another bystander put his jacket around Lily as his dog snuggled up to her. Lily felt faint and vaguely nauseous.
A woman at the top of the hill motioned to the EMTs getting out of the ambulance. A stretcher and the EMTS with equipment followed. Joe said a word or two, and then fell back onto the slope exhausted. Lily, Joe and another bystander were left alone under the bridge. Well, not quiet alone. A homeless man slept like a dead man under the bridge on the other side, oblivious.
A few minutes later Lily got up to return the coat she’d been given, but the benefactor was gone. Joe and Lily returned to the van. A TV crew had a camera pointed at the semi-cab, now a few feet further along in the river and crushed under a truck load of cement blocks that had spilled out of a the broken trailer that the semi had been carrying. The catering van, miraculously, hadn’t been hit by anyone else. Bright fog lights from a fire truck cleared the scene.
“. . . An unidentified man and woman dragged the driver from his cab, minutes before it was crushed by the driver’s cargo of cement blocks. EMTs rushed the man, whose breathing and pulse had been maintained with CPR, to Denver Health Center, calling his wounds critical and life threatening.”, a TV news reporter said into a camera set up at the edge of the collision.
Joe hit the button to turn on the van phone.
“Begin dial. Headquarters.”
“Hello Joe? What’s up? The factory said you didn’t come?”, Mark DeVeux said.
“Lily and I were in a little accident.”
“Are you guy’s O.K.”, Mark interjected before Joe could finish.
“Just fine. But, meatballs don’t make very good floor mats. . . .”
Joe and Lily decided to detour by his place in Lincoln Park on the way home. It was almost eight o’clock when they got in, and it was almost nine by the time they’d had hot tortilla soup and gone back to the van to mop up the meatballs on the floor filling several large trash bags. They’d collapsed on the loveseat in his living room, filled with his dad, him mom and several cousins and siblings as the ten o’clock news came on.
“A man pulled from the freezing South Platte by an anonymous man and woman is in stable and fair condition this evening at Denver Health. His pregnant wife spoke to us.”
“I don’t know who you are, but I don’t know how I can thank you for saving my husband. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d died. I love you.”
Joe took Lily’s face in his hands and gave her a long kiss on the lips in front of everyone.
“I love you too.”, Joe said.
A little later, Lily squeezed Joe’s hand, got up, and walked the couple of blocks home to the Parkway wearing the jacket she had acquired at the scene. When she got home she fell into a long deep sleep.
“In weather like this, we could just let him stop outside for a couple of minutes and save you a day’s work.”, Joe told Lily.
Joe and Lily agreed that freezing drizzle was the worst form of weather known to mankind. The freezing drizzle started to compound with fog as they descended down 15th Street into the South Platte Valley from Lodo. The sun was setting too and it was hard to see the stripes for their lane. Just as they came to Commons Park, they heard it.
Horns, crunching metal, breaking glass, and a splash. Joe hit the breaks and the horn. Lily braced herself. The van started to spin just as it hit the bridge. Car lights shot out through the fog at odd angles. A siren started to sound in the distance. Amazingly, the van stopped without hitting anything. The final stop was the last straw for the meatballs, however. The meatballs toppled over. Lily could see the guardrale for the wrong side of the road out her window. She started to unbuckle and get out, but Joe stopped her, putting his hand on hers.
“Hold on. Pileups like these are usually chain reactions. Stay in the van for a little while.”, Joe said as he hit the blinkers.
Joe hit the talk button the van phone and said, “Begin dial. Nine. One. One.”
“Emergency response. Please hold.” The moments took forever.
“Emergency response. How can I help you?”, a new voice said.
“I’m on the 15th Street bridge over the South Platte. I’m in a multiple car pileup in fog. I see at least five cars.”, another horn and a crunch interrupted Joe in that phrase, “make that six cars and an overturned semi that’s hanging over the bridge.” Lily hadn’t seen the semi, which was out Joe’s window, until he mentioned it. “I don’t know about injuries. My passenger and I are fine.”
A low metallic moan started to emanate from the semi.
“The semi cab’s going over.”, Joe continued to call the dispatcher, “it’s falling into the South Platte. I think there’s someone inside. I heard a horn as it went down.”
“Please stay in you’re vehicle. Fog accidents often lead to multiple pile ups. You’re safest in your car.”, the dispatcher responded.
Joe turned back to look for Lily. The door was open and her satchel was gone.
“Damn.”, he said.
Joe worked his way back to the cargo area of the van, grabbed the cord that he’d tied down the food with, opened the back door and warily got out.
“Lily!”, he called.
“Down here.”, Lily answered from a steep hill next to the bridge.
“Figures.”, Joe said under his breath.
Joe hopped the rail and followed her, half controlled, half slipping.
The cab of the semi was in the water, driver’s side down, in the middle of the South Platte. One of its lights was still on. The smell of gasoline was in the air. The water wasn’t all that deep, three or four meet maybe, but it was bitter cold.
“I’m going in after him.”, Lily said. “Tie the rope around me, in case I slip.” Her voice was steely.
“Lily, you’re nuts. You’ll get hypothermia.”
“He’ll die if someone doesn’t get him, and I can’t pull you in on a rope out of a current.”
Lily and Joe’s hair was already soaked.
“O.K. But, don’t be afraid to give up. I’ll pull you back in.”
Joe made a loop with the rope that wouldn’t tighten and put it over her shoulder. She said a silent prayer, jumped in, satchel and all. She leaned back and let the current drag her quickly to the fallen truck cab. She went so quickly she had to yell at Joe to give her more slack a couple of times.
The cab was off center. The bottom of the driver’s side door was on the river bed. The middle was on a small boulder. The driver’s side window was still under water, however, and the front window was facing downstream. Lily took a breath and went under the water to look through the drive’s side window.
The water was frigid. The quiet of being underwater was a change. The driver was tall and skinny. He was unconscious, bruised and starting to get blue in the face. His mouth and nose were underwater. No bones were obviously broken or out of place.
Lily came up. Joe yelled at her in the distance, but she couldn’t make out what he was saying. She reached into her satchel and took out her ice pick. She let the water swirl into the space behind the front windshield and struck it while the momentum of the current was still carrying her. The glass broke. Lily swung the satchel with all her might to clear the broken glass. She struck the window and dragged, struck and dragged.
As soon as the space was clear enough for her she went in head first, stuck her head underwater and gave the man a kiss full of air. She clicked open his seat belt as she came up for another gasp. He sagged deeper. She took a breath, starting to shiver, and went down and gave him more air, mouth to mouth. As soon as she did, she grabbed him under the armpits and got his head above water. Gross brown liquid came out. She gave him another breath, it bubbled, and then she hit his back.
Her shivering was starting to get out of control and Lily was feeling weaker. She tried another breath. She could feel the cab slide a little on the rock and Joe’s call in the distance, an urgent yell.
“Get out! It’s moving!”, he yelled.
Lily kicked open the rest of the front window and dragged the man out. She gave the rope three short jerks and held the driver with both arms under his arm pits, trying to breath for him when she could.
“I’m freezing and I’m not sure he’s going to make it.”, Lily cried, her voice trembling.
Joe hauled them in as fast as he could. A siren blared in the distance. As they hit shore, Joe grabbed the truck driver, got water out of him with a Heimlich maneuver, checked the man’s pulse and started mouth to mouth and CPR. Another bystander put his jacket around Lily as his dog snuggled up to her. Lily felt faint and vaguely nauseous.
A woman at the top of the hill motioned to the EMTs getting out of the ambulance. A stretcher and the EMTS with equipment followed. Joe said a word or two, and then fell back onto the slope exhausted. Lily, Joe and another bystander were left alone under the bridge. Well, not quiet alone. A homeless man slept like a dead man under the bridge on the other side, oblivious.
A few minutes later Lily got up to return the coat she’d been given, but the benefactor was gone. Joe and Lily returned to the van. A TV crew had a camera pointed at the semi-cab, now a few feet further along in the river and crushed under a truck load of cement blocks that had spilled out of a the broken trailer that the semi had been carrying. The catering van, miraculously, hadn’t been hit by anyone else. Bright fog lights from a fire truck cleared the scene.
“. . . An unidentified man and woman dragged the driver from his cab, minutes before it was crushed by the driver’s cargo of cement blocks. EMTs rushed the man, whose breathing and pulse had been maintained with CPR, to Denver Health Center, calling his wounds critical and life threatening.”, a TV news reporter said into a camera set up at the edge of the collision.
Joe hit the button to turn on the van phone.
“Begin dial. Headquarters.”
“Hello Joe? What’s up? The factory said you didn’t come?”, Mark DeVeux said.
“Lily and I were in a little accident.”
“Are you guy’s O.K.”, Mark interjected before Joe could finish.
“Just fine. But, meatballs don’t make very good floor mats. . . .”
Joe and Lily decided to detour by his place in Lincoln Park on the way home. It was almost eight o’clock when they got in, and it was almost nine by the time they’d had hot tortilla soup and gone back to the van to mop up the meatballs on the floor filling several large trash bags. They’d collapsed on the loveseat in his living room, filled with his dad, him mom and several cousins and siblings as the ten o’clock news came on.
“A man pulled from the freezing South Platte by an anonymous man and woman is in stable and fair condition this evening at Denver Health. His pregnant wife spoke to us.”
“I don’t know who you are, but I don’t know how I can thank you for saving my husband. I don’t know what I would have done if he’d died. I love you.”
Joe took Lily’s face in his hands and gave her a long kiss on the lips in front of everyone.
“I love you too.”, Joe said.
A little later, Lily squeezed Joe’s hand, got up, and walked the couple of blocks home to the Parkway wearing the jacket she had acquired at the scene. When she got home she fell into a long deep sleep.
Chapter 8: November 4, 2030
Maybe it was a coincidence that the Chinese had decided to have the first man land on Mars the day before the United States election day, in prime time for the Eastern Time zone. Then again, maybe the fact that HBO had the exclusive rights to non-Chinese coverage of the landing, for which it had paid handsomely, had something to do with it.
Whatever the reason, space buffs had had almost five years to plan ahead for this landmark event in human history and there were parties all over town as people gathered to see it happen. Just about everyone on Earth knew the names of most of the members of the twenty person mission. Most journalists coercing the story could even rattle off the names of the leaders with credible Mandarin accents. All of the crew members were Chinese, and while the crew was from diverse backgrounds within China, all of the leaders were from Beijing.
DeVeux Events hadn’t landed the biggest party, at the Museum of Natural History, but, the Denver Country Club Party which they did get was as much as they could handle anyway. Normally, Lily did only ice sculptures, for which she received a 50% commission, but for this job, Mark needed everyone he could get, so Lily was helping to set up tables, carrying trays of appetizers and clearing empty glasses. When the moment came, campaign bottles would pop and everyone on staff would dispatch glasses full of it to the guests as if it was a New Year’s Eve Party.
In the main hall, the HBO coverage played on a huge screen at the front of the room. In a side room, a six foot diameter hologram of Mars spun slowly, surrounded by charts, timelines and diagrams on preprinted poster boards. It wasn’t quite museum quality, but was good enough to win a top prize at a high school science fair. This particular display, hologram and all, won the top prize at the South High School Science Fair.
Fatima Kwam, the young woman who’d prepared the project was hovering over it and piercing her natural tendency towards social awkwardness with her earnest desire to explain the mission. Fatima Kwam looked out of place in the country club. Three-quarters of a century after the civil rights movement began, the country club was mostly full of white faces, with just a smattering of Asian and black members. Most of the guests were in evening gowns, but Fatima wore a plain, loose gray wool sweater, a long plain skirt that went down to her ankles where it met sensible dull leather loafers, and a transparent silk veil that didn’t really obscure her face, but made a statement about her faith. She wore no jewelry, except a cheap watch buried under her sweater. Her hair was short without being boyish. In a corner of the room near the main hall, her father, a severe looking man in his early 40s wearing a simple navy blue suit instead of the tuxedo sported by most of the older male guests, watched her silently from a distance.
When one of the regular serving crew had been asked questions about the foot by Fatima’s father, Mark had dispatched Lily to handle it after briefly explaining which foods in the menu had pork or alcohol in them.
As Lily came in, Fatima was immersed in her pitch.
“So, I understand that you’re the President of the South High School Space Club. Do I have that right?”, an older man with a curled mustache asked.
“That’s right. I helped found the Club at South three and a half years ago as a Freshman. Everyone was doing it. I doubt there’s a high school in the country without one now. The Administration may have felt that it was no big deal because unmanned missions are more cost effective than manned missions, but NASA just didn’t get it. This trip captured the world’s imagination. When more than a year had passed and no one had really don’t anything to acknowledge what all of us were interested in, we started a club. Ms. Frisk, the physics teacher, was great. She really encouraged us. When my senior year came, I became the President.”
Lily turned away and spoke to Fatima’s father.
“Mr. Kwam.”, Lily said, getting his attention. “Mr. DeVeux, said you had some questions about the menu. I usually work with clients to co-plan events, so he asked me to discuss the menu with you.”
Mr. Kwam averted his eyes from Lily, who was considerably less modest in her attire, with cleveage pressing against her servant’s black and whites, but he did answer her.
“Yes, I did. As you probably know, Fatima and I are Muslims, and its important to us that we not have any food or drink prohibited by our religion - such as pork or alcohol. Could you tell me what has gone into the various appetizers?”
“Certainly.”, Lily responded. And, she quickly launched into a rundown of the menu from pork sausage rolls, to wine sauce soaked pastries, to acceptable vegetable trays, to permissible lamb-matzo ball dumplings, to permissible chicken soup, to forbidden pork lard cake slices. She also explained that while most of the drinks were alcoholic, that any glass with blue ring dangling around the stem was non-alcoholic. As one of her co-workers went by, she grabbed several lamb-matzo ball dumplings, and a glass of apple cider and presented it to him.
“Thank you.”, Mr. Kwam responded, after hearing the presentation from Lily, and he brought the plate and glass to his daughter.
“These foods are safe to eat. I spoke with Mr. DeVeux’s assistant to confirm it.”, he told his daughter.
Fatima smiled and took a deep drink of cider, her throat getting sore from so much talking.
Soon a bell rang, and the guests gathered in the main hall. The first man set foot on Mars. The man doing so made a statement about the power of the People working together, quickly translated from Mandarin to English by an HBO translator, corks popped, campaign was distributed, and on a third or fourth round, Lily personally brought two glasses of sparkling grape juice (accompanied with an explanation of what it was) to Fatima and her father.
Dinner was served half an hour later, and it was all Lily could do to keep up. By the time the desert was served and the sun had set her usual smile had faded to a painted on facsimile of a smile and Lily was regretting her decision to wear even low heels for this function.
Once the closing speech from the Country Club Night Owls Chairman was over and the scientifically minded people in the crowd had gravitated to the telescopes set up on the greens to watch Mars what was now early evening, Lily took a break in the front room with the Mars display. Fatima had retreated there as well and was sitting next to Lily. Comfortable that the guests were no longer interested in his daughter, Fatima’s father had drifted into the front drive to enjoy a glass of tea by himself.
“I’m really impressed.”, Lily told Fatima, to make conversation. “I was never very good at school. I didn’t even graduate from high school.”
Fatima wrinkled her nose, not quite sure what to make of that. “My father would kill me if I didn’t make good grades. He was a professor of Islamic law back in Nigeria, even though now he just rents old cement trucks to contractors. He isn’t thrilled by the fact that I spend all my time at meetings of a club full of boys, either. If it weren’t for the fact that my brother is in the club too, he wouldn’t let me participate at all.” Fatima glanced over to make sure her father was still safely outside as she said it.
Lily thought a bit about how to respond to that.
“Is it nice having a brother?”, Lily asked. “I never had any siblings.”
“Oh, a brother can be O.K. My older brother, happy to chaperone me at my meetings at all hours, as long as I don’t tell my dad that he drinks beer with his friends. But, brothers can be awfully bossy. And, of course, I have to do all the housework with my mom, even though my older brother and my two younger brothers are all perfectly capable of it.”
“Do you have plans for college?”, Lily asked, knowing that most science fair kids did.
“Yes. I was just accepted to C.U. a couple of weeks ago, and the guidance counselor at school said I’ve got a good chance of getting a scholarship. Good think too. Otherwise, my father would probably never be willing to spend the money on me. Sending the boys abroad to study Islam is much higher on his financial priority scale. He’s a leader in the community and so he feels like he has to send them to keep up appearances.”
Fatima glanced over to see her father heading back in and spoke quickly.
“Could I get your number. I’ve been here all night and you’re the only person who seems to really care about me as a person. Father won’t let me spend time with men, and I have to study so much I don’t get much time to meet other women either. Father told me you make the most beautiful ice sculptures. He’s seen them in the paper. Maybe we could talk again?”, Fatima was almost pleading. Clearly, she was one lonely girl.
“Sure.”, Lily said, writing her number on a napkin. The irony of her, who’d never had family, being a big sister to a woman who had a huge family did not escape her, but she heard the tone of Fatima’s voice and couldn’t help but to want to help her any way she could.
A few moments later, Fatima’s father came in and they started moving the project out to their dirt covered pickup truck. Lily helped carry poster boards and the hologram projector. Her father politely said thank you and asked for her name. In a moment they had vanished into the 1st Avenue traffic in front of the country club.
Whatever the reason, space buffs had had almost five years to plan ahead for this landmark event in human history and there were parties all over town as people gathered to see it happen. Just about everyone on Earth knew the names of most of the members of the twenty person mission. Most journalists coercing the story could even rattle off the names of the leaders with credible Mandarin accents. All of the crew members were Chinese, and while the crew was from diverse backgrounds within China, all of the leaders were from Beijing.
DeVeux Events hadn’t landed the biggest party, at the Museum of Natural History, but, the Denver Country Club Party which they did get was as much as they could handle anyway. Normally, Lily did only ice sculptures, for which she received a 50% commission, but for this job, Mark needed everyone he could get, so Lily was helping to set up tables, carrying trays of appetizers and clearing empty glasses. When the moment came, campaign bottles would pop and everyone on staff would dispatch glasses full of it to the guests as if it was a New Year’s Eve Party.
In the main hall, the HBO coverage played on a huge screen at the front of the room. In a side room, a six foot diameter hologram of Mars spun slowly, surrounded by charts, timelines and diagrams on preprinted poster boards. It wasn’t quite museum quality, but was good enough to win a top prize at a high school science fair. This particular display, hologram and all, won the top prize at the South High School Science Fair.
Fatima Kwam, the young woman who’d prepared the project was hovering over it and piercing her natural tendency towards social awkwardness with her earnest desire to explain the mission. Fatima Kwam looked out of place in the country club. Three-quarters of a century after the civil rights movement began, the country club was mostly full of white faces, with just a smattering of Asian and black members. Most of the guests were in evening gowns, but Fatima wore a plain, loose gray wool sweater, a long plain skirt that went down to her ankles where it met sensible dull leather loafers, and a transparent silk veil that didn’t really obscure her face, but made a statement about her faith. She wore no jewelry, except a cheap watch buried under her sweater. Her hair was short without being boyish. In a corner of the room near the main hall, her father, a severe looking man in his early 40s wearing a simple navy blue suit instead of the tuxedo sported by most of the older male guests, watched her silently from a distance.
When one of the regular serving crew had been asked questions about the foot by Fatima’s father, Mark had dispatched Lily to handle it after briefly explaining which foods in the menu had pork or alcohol in them.
As Lily came in, Fatima was immersed in her pitch.
“So, I understand that you’re the President of the South High School Space Club. Do I have that right?”, an older man with a curled mustache asked.
“That’s right. I helped found the Club at South three and a half years ago as a Freshman. Everyone was doing it. I doubt there’s a high school in the country without one now. The Administration may have felt that it was no big deal because unmanned missions are more cost effective than manned missions, but NASA just didn’t get it. This trip captured the world’s imagination. When more than a year had passed and no one had really don’t anything to acknowledge what all of us were interested in, we started a club. Ms. Frisk, the physics teacher, was great. She really encouraged us. When my senior year came, I became the President.”
Lily turned away and spoke to Fatima’s father.
“Mr. Kwam.”, Lily said, getting his attention. “Mr. DeVeux, said you had some questions about the menu. I usually work with clients to co-plan events, so he asked me to discuss the menu with you.”
Mr. Kwam averted his eyes from Lily, who was considerably less modest in her attire, with cleveage pressing against her servant’s black and whites, but he did answer her.
“Yes, I did. As you probably know, Fatima and I are Muslims, and its important to us that we not have any food or drink prohibited by our religion - such as pork or alcohol. Could you tell me what has gone into the various appetizers?”
“Certainly.”, Lily responded. And, she quickly launched into a rundown of the menu from pork sausage rolls, to wine sauce soaked pastries, to acceptable vegetable trays, to permissible lamb-matzo ball dumplings, to permissible chicken soup, to forbidden pork lard cake slices. She also explained that while most of the drinks were alcoholic, that any glass with blue ring dangling around the stem was non-alcoholic. As one of her co-workers went by, she grabbed several lamb-matzo ball dumplings, and a glass of apple cider and presented it to him.
“Thank you.”, Mr. Kwam responded, after hearing the presentation from Lily, and he brought the plate and glass to his daughter.
“These foods are safe to eat. I spoke with Mr. DeVeux’s assistant to confirm it.”, he told his daughter.
Fatima smiled and took a deep drink of cider, her throat getting sore from so much talking.
Soon a bell rang, and the guests gathered in the main hall. The first man set foot on Mars. The man doing so made a statement about the power of the People working together, quickly translated from Mandarin to English by an HBO translator, corks popped, campaign was distributed, and on a third or fourth round, Lily personally brought two glasses of sparkling grape juice (accompanied with an explanation of what it was) to Fatima and her father.
Dinner was served half an hour later, and it was all Lily could do to keep up. By the time the desert was served and the sun had set her usual smile had faded to a painted on facsimile of a smile and Lily was regretting her decision to wear even low heels for this function.
Once the closing speech from the Country Club Night Owls Chairman was over and the scientifically minded people in the crowd had gravitated to the telescopes set up on the greens to watch Mars what was now early evening, Lily took a break in the front room with the Mars display. Fatima had retreated there as well and was sitting next to Lily. Comfortable that the guests were no longer interested in his daughter, Fatima’s father had drifted into the front drive to enjoy a glass of tea by himself.
“I’m really impressed.”, Lily told Fatima, to make conversation. “I was never very good at school. I didn’t even graduate from high school.”
Fatima wrinkled her nose, not quite sure what to make of that. “My father would kill me if I didn’t make good grades. He was a professor of Islamic law back in Nigeria, even though now he just rents old cement trucks to contractors. He isn’t thrilled by the fact that I spend all my time at meetings of a club full of boys, either. If it weren’t for the fact that my brother is in the club too, he wouldn’t let me participate at all.” Fatima glanced over to make sure her father was still safely outside as she said it.
Lily thought a bit about how to respond to that.
“Is it nice having a brother?”, Lily asked. “I never had any siblings.”
“Oh, a brother can be O.K. My older brother, happy to chaperone me at my meetings at all hours, as long as I don’t tell my dad that he drinks beer with his friends. But, brothers can be awfully bossy. And, of course, I have to do all the housework with my mom, even though my older brother and my two younger brothers are all perfectly capable of it.”
“Do you have plans for college?”, Lily asked, knowing that most science fair kids did.
“Yes. I was just accepted to C.U. a couple of weeks ago, and the guidance counselor at school said I’ve got a good chance of getting a scholarship. Good think too. Otherwise, my father would probably never be willing to spend the money on me. Sending the boys abroad to study Islam is much higher on his financial priority scale. He’s a leader in the community and so he feels like he has to send them to keep up appearances.”
Fatima glanced over to see her father heading back in and spoke quickly.
“Could I get your number. I’ve been here all night and you’re the only person who seems to really care about me as a person. Father won’t let me spend time with men, and I have to study so much I don’t get much time to meet other women either. Father told me you make the most beautiful ice sculptures. He’s seen them in the paper. Maybe we could talk again?”, Fatima was almost pleading. Clearly, she was one lonely girl.
“Sure.”, Lily said, writing her number on a napkin. The irony of her, who’d never had family, being a big sister to a woman who had a huge family did not escape her, but she heard the tone of Fatima’s voice and couldn’t help but to want to help her any way she could.
A few moments later, Fatima’s father came in and they started moving the project out to their dirt covered pickup truck. Lily helped carry poster boards and the hologram projector. Her father politely said thank you and asked for her name. In a moment they had vanished into the 1st Avenue traffic in front of the country club.
17th Street
Winston paid the outrageous amount it took to park the company van in a downtown parking garage and walked down the 16th Street mall for his 9 o’clock appointment with James Phan, the criminal defense lawyer that his accountant had recommended. Mr. Phan was reputed to be one of the better white collar crime specialists in Denver. Usually, his conversations with lawyers were by videophone, but Mr. Phan had written him in a letter written on thick bond paper in a fountain pen, insisting that they meet in person, saying that an in person conversation was the only way to assure complete confidentiality, especially in business cases where insider participation was common.
Winston turned the corner, crossed 17th Street, and entered Mr. Phan’s building, one of the many anonymous high rises filled with lawyers downtown. He checked in with the front desk attendant to say he had an appointment with Mr. Phan, who then confirmed the appointment on his computer and authorized an elevator which Winston entered. It went directly to the 17th floor.
A short hallway led to Mr. Phan’s office. The waiting room featured a large fresh floral bouquet, a fountain, several mirrors and some traditional Vietnamese prints. A steaming tea pot with empty cups arrayed around it sat on an ebony table next to the small silk couch. The only reading materials in the waiting room were two thin, books of captioned pictures, one of mountain scenes, and the other of office scenes with ominous collections of bureaucrats posed in them. An elderly woman of Vietnamese descent sat behind the reception desk, actually just a table, apparently hand calculating some accounts on an abacus. A voice only phone was on the table, but it had no computer, video screen. It didn’t even have the obligatory in and out baskets.
“Are you ready to pay the retainer?”, the elderly woman asked.
Winston handed her a plastic holographic card, which the woman took, walking into another room, and then returned with a small paper receipt. The amount matched the very large number that had appeared in the handwritten letter to him.
“Mr. Phan will be with you shortly Winston.”, the elderly lady said.
“Thank you grandmother.”, Mr. Phan said as came out of one of the two doors that lead into the waiting room. He was about six feet tall, thin, and clearly of Vietnamese descent. He wore tiny round wire rimmed glasses, despite the fact that he could clearly afford eye surgery or permanent contacts, and looked to be about 40 years old. His long black hair was drawn back in a ponytail wrapped around a brilliantly purple iris. The deep scent of the flower reached Winston almost immediately. Mr. Phan was dressed in a deep blue silk shirt, with sapphire cufflinks, a fine light gray sports coat, and tailored black silk pants. His feet were bare in his black loafers, despite the fact that summer was swiftly passing. His watch was elegant, and looked like something out of a jewelry store.
“Come into my office, call me James.”, he said.
The wall to wall windows were obscured by ethereal white curtains that allowed light in, eliminating any need for artificial light, while obscuring any view in or out. The interior walls were lined with double doored, closed, white cabinets. This room also lacked the usual videophone, although there was a portable computer on one a wicker credenza against one wall next to Mr. Phan’s Colorado bar admission certificate in a small black wooden picture frame sitting on the credenza as well. A large circular table made of a single oversized slab a light gray granite streaked with long veins of black granite was surrounded by five large comfortable leather chairs dominated the room. In the outside corner, opposite the entry door, a large brass fat Buddha smiled at them. A thin paper file, a note pad, and a fountain pen rested in front of one of the seats at the table which James sat in. Winston pulled up another chair.
“I understand that you are being investigated for some accounting irregularities.”, James said.
“I think someone is using my construction business to launder money for terrorists or criminals or who knows who.”, Winston said.
“Do you have access to those accounts?”
“Yes, I’m a small business person and a keep my own books. I don’t recall having given the passwords to access them to anyone. I’ve never written them down.”
“Surely, you have some help.”
“I have staff that processes accounts payable, but no payments can be authorized without my say so, and I handle the deposits personally . . . my company works on large paving contracts, so its rare for me to get more than two or three deposits a month.”
“Have there been any irregularities in your personal accounts?”
“No. But, there have been some strange things going on in my personal life. Just when this broke, you know, I just moved to a new condo, someone mailed me my cat, who had gone missing when I moved, in pieces.”
“Do you suspect anyone?”
“I have no idea whose behind this. I’ve been in business for years, its competitive. I’m sure I have more enemies than I can count. But, I really have no idea.”
“Do you have any idea how much money was run through your accounts?”
“Multi-millions, I’m not sure of the exact amount.”
“Do you have the copy of your accounting records I requested?”
Winston handed him a black silicon chip about the size of his thumb.
“Here’s my card. Carry it with you at all times and present it to the police immediately and say nothing more about this case, if you are arrested. Your best defense appears to be that you have been very elegantly framed. Your problem is that you don’t seem know enough about what’s happened to be useful in defending yourself. This will be a difficult case, but I will take ever step possible under the law to protect you. My investigator will visit you at your home next week. Hopefully, we can uncover some leads before the authorities discover that a crime has been committed using your company.”
“You don’t think I’m guilty, do you?”, Winston asked.
“I’m not in the business of determining guilt or innocent. I am in the business of protecting you.”
“Thanks James.”, Winston said with a biting tone that Mr. Phan chose not to acknowledge.
The two men shook hands, and Winston returned, down the elevator, and through the downtown streets to his van, not particularly reassured.
Winston turned the corner, crossed 17th Street, and entered Mr. Phan’s building, one of the many anonymous high rises filled with lawyers downtown. He checked in with the front desk attendant to say he had an appointment with Mr. Phan, who then confirmed the appointment on his computer and authorized an elevator which Winston entered. It went directly to the 17th floor.
A short hallway led to Mr. Phan’s office. The waiting room featured a large fresh floral bouquet, a fountain, several mirrors and some traditional Vietnamese prints. A steaming tea pot with empty cups arrayed around it sat on an ebony table next to the small silk couch. The only reading materials in the waiting room were two thin, books of captioned pictures, one of mountain scenes, and the other of office scenes with ominous collections of bureaucrats posed in them. An elderly woman of Vietnamese descent sat behind the reception desk, actually just a table, apparently hand calculating some accounts on an abacus. A voice only phone was on the table, but it had no computer, video screen. It didn’t even have the obligatory in and out baskets.
“Are you ready to pay the retainer?”, the elderly woman asked.
Winston handed her a plastic holographic card, which the woman took, walking into another room, and then returned with a small paper receipt. The amount matched the very large number that had appeared in the handwritten letter to him.
“Mr. Phan will be with you shortly Winston.”, the elderly lady said.
“Thank you grandmother.”, Mr. Phan said as came out of one of the two doors that lead into the waiting room. He was about six feet tall, thin, and clearly of Vietnamese descent. He wore tiny round wire rimmed glasses, despite the fact that he could clearly afford eye surgery or permanent contacts, and looked to be about 40 years old. His long black hair was drawn back in a ponytail wrapped around a brilliantly purple iris. The deep scent of the flower reached Winston almost immediately. Mr. Phan was dressed in a deep blue silk shirt, with sapphire cufflinks, a fine light gray sports coat, and tailored black silk pants. His feet were bare in his black loafers, despite the fact that summer was swiftly passing. His watch was elegant, and looked like something out of a jewelry store.
“Come into my office, call me James.”, he said.
The wall to wall windows were obscured by ethereal white curtains that allowed light in, eliminating any need for artificial light, while obscuring any view in or out. The interior walls were lined with double doored, closed, white cabinets. This room also lacked the usual videophone, although there was a portable computer on one a wicker credenza against one wall next to Mr. Phan’s Colorado bar admission certificate in a small black wooden picture frame sitting on the credenza as well. A large circular table made of a single oversized slab a light gray granite streaked with long veins of black granite was surrounded by five large comfortable leather chairs dominated the room. In the outside corner, opposite the entry door, a large brass fat Buddha smiled at them. A thin paper file, a note pad, and a fountain pen rested in front of one of the seats at the table which James sat in. Winston pulled up another chair.
“I understand that you are being investigated for some accounting irregularities.”, James said.
“I think someone is using my construction business to launder money for terrorists or criminals or who knows who.”, Winston said.
“Do you have access to those accounts?”
“Yes, I’m a small business person and a keep my own books. I don’t recall having given the passwords to access them to anyone. I’ve never written them down.”
“Surely, you have some help.”
“I have staff that processes accounts payable, but no payments can be authorized without my say so, and I handle the deposits personally . . . my company works on large paving contracts, so its rare for me to get more than two or three deposits a month.”
“Have there been any irregularities in your personal accounts?”
“No. But, there have been some strange things going on in my personal life. Just when this broke, you know, I just moved to a new condo, someone mailed me my cat, who had gone missing when I moved, in pieces.”
“Do you suspect anyone?”
“I have no idea whose behind this. I’ve been in business for years, its competitive. I’m sure I have more enemies than I can count. But, I really have no idea.”
“Do you have any idea how much money was run through your accounts?”
“Multi-millions, I’m not sure of the exact amount.”
“Do you have the copy of your accounting records I requested?”
Winston handed him a black silicon chip about the size of his thumb.
“Here’s my card. Carry it with you at all times and present it to the police immediately and say nothing more about this case, if you are arrested. Your best defense appears to be that you have been very elegantly framed. Your problem is that you don’t seem know enough about what’s happened to be useful in defending yourself. This will be a difficult case, but I will take ever step possible under the law to protect you. My investigator will visit you at your home next week. Hopefully, we can uncover some leads before the authorities discover that a crime has been committed using your company.”
“You don’t think I’m guilty, do you?”, Winston asked.
“I’m not in the business of determining guilt or innocent. I am in the business of protecting you.”
“Thanks James.”, Winston said with a biting tone that Mr. Phan chose not to acknowledge.
The two men shook hands, and Winston returned, down the elevator, and through the downtown streets to his van, not particularly reassured.
Chapter 7: October 15, 2030
The album arrived the next day, while Lily was in the back room sharpening her tools. It was in a white box, wrapped in pink and black tissue paper. The opening picture was a blown up news photo of a car bombing near shops and government offices in Johannesburg, South Africa. The next few photos showed a teenaged Chloe and her father, in mourning clothes at a funeral for Chloe’s mother. The obituary explained that it was a contaminated blood transfusion, rather than the blast itself, that had killed her. This, Lily had expected, having heard the whole story from Mark after her meeting with Chloe. But, after these first few pages, were “before” pictures, obituaries, and “after” family pictures, not posed but at homes and shops and schools, for each of the other fourteen victims of the blast, some dead, others, horribly wounded. Black and white; brown and Asian. Muslim, Christian and neither.
Chloe had commissioned the biggest ice sculpture Lily had ever attempted. That afternoon she prepared a sketch, with the bombing in center stage, surrounded by a scene related to each of the fifteen victims circling the blast, each scene obviously related to a particular person, despite the absence of lines or circles to directly connect them. Lily even, as the picture album had, included a picture of the family of the bomber himself, a human, caring picture that showed why he might have done it. The finished scene had several projections on two foot by three foot bond paper in gray watercolor. She gave Chloe only one option, to give a thumbs up or down. Mark reviewed the sketches before they went out, as he always did. He’d given her considerable input when she started at first, often sending her back to the drawing board. He still did. Lily had been working for Mark less than a year. This time, however, Mark simply intoned, “Yes.”, and Lily called the bike messenger and gave him the address of Chloe’s advertising agency.
Lily was surprised to find the bike messenger return an hour later. Chloe had told him to stay for her reply. A sweet smelling piece of folded hand made paper in an envelope made of the same paper and sealed in wax came back. Lily broke the seal. In flowing deep black fountain pen ink, was a single word in Chloe’s hand. “Yes.”
Lily cried, and after a decent interval, the bike messenger gave her his receipt pad for her to put her thumbprint on. Lily did. A soft ding rang from the plastic slate, and the man was on his bicycle and off to his next job.
Chloe had commissioned the biggest ice sculpture Lily had ever attempted. That afternoon she prepared a sketch, with the bombing in center stage, surrounded by a scene related to each of the fifteen victims circling the blast, each scene obviously related to a particular person, despite the absence of lines or circles to directly connect them. Lily even, as the picture album had, included a picture of the family of the bomber himself, a human, caring picture that showed why he might have done it. The finished scene had several projections on two foot by three foot bond paper in gray watercolor. She gave Chloe only one option, to give a thumbs up or down. Mark reviewed the sketches before they went out, as he always did. He’d given her considerable input when she started at first, often sending her back to the drawing board. He still did. Lily had been working for Mark less than a year. This time, however, Mark simply intoned, “Yes.”, and Lily called the bike messenger and gave him the address of Chloe’s advertising agency.
Lily was surprised to find the bike messenger return an hour later. Chloe had told him to stay for her reply. A sweet smelling piece of folded hand made paper in an envelope made of the same paper and sealed in wax came back. Lily broke the seal. In flowing deep black fountain pen ink, was a single word in Chloe’s hand. “Yes.”
Lily cried, and after a decent interval, the bike messenger gave her his receipt pad for her to put her thumbprint on. Lily did. A soft ding rang from the plastic slate, and the man was on his bicycle and off to his next job.
Chapter 6: October 14, 2030 A Halloween Party
The phone had been making off the hook noises for hours when Lily opened her eyes. She’d left it that way after trying over and over again to try to call Cass and see if he was all right. The alarm had progressed from waterfall noises, to a morning show on the radio, to a disturbing wail. The sun was streaming in through the window.
“Damn.”, Lily thought. “I’m going to be late.”
The shop wasn’t far, just across Cherry Creek and down the street at 8th and Speer. But, Lily had been warned in no uncertain terms by her boss, Mark DeVeux, that this morning’s meeting was a make or break event for the little catering shop, DeVeux Events, where she worked. Usually, Lily managed to fit in a little stroll along the bike path on her way in, but that was not going to happen today. Lily quickly washed her face in the kitchen sink, skipped her usual makeup, and threw on the ankle length plain black dress that she’d worn the night before -- despite the fact that it smelled of cheap cigarettes. She looked for shoes to put on as she headed out her front door, but the short and narrow heels she’d worn the previous night was the only thing she could see that matched.
Lily tripped once or twice racing down three flights of stairs after just missing the elevator, only to be saved by the hand rail. She lurched out her apartment building into the bracing early October morning, and set her eyes on her motorcycle, parked near the front entrance to be building. The building door snicked shut behind her. It suddenly occurred to Lily that the keycards to her apartment and the building were in her purse on the couch in her apartment, behind two locked doors. She hated the snotty little kid who handled lockouts -- for a $100 fee, but Lily would deal with that later. The clock tower across the road said 8:27, too late for the bus (even if she had any money) or to walk. This day was not looking like a good one.
Fortunately, the motorcycle was started with a fingerprint key. But, as Lily approached it, it occurred to her that an ankle length black dress posed certain difficulties. “You idiot!”, Lily informed herself, speaking to no one in particular. Mark DeVeux would kill her if she was late. This was a big client and she couldn’t afford to be the one that lost her. Lily needed this job to pay the rent. But, it wouldn’t do to have her boss and the shop’s big new client see her going down Speer Boulevard with her lacey panties from last night showing underneath a dress rolled up to her waist. With Lily’s luck today, she’d end up on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News.
Resigned to necessity, and not really trusting herself, Lily kicked her motorcycle into gear and daintily sat sidesaddle on the seat. The sight of Lily Matsunaka gracefully leaning back as the motorcycle slowly rolled back and forth, out of her apartment complex, East along 11th Avenue to Speer, in front Sunken Gardens Park, and over Cherry Creek into the front parking lot of the shop inspired a wolf whistle or two from some construction workers and kids on their way to West High School. It would have made a good shot for the paper even so, but no photographers were in evidence, and she’d already contributed to today’s front page, although she didn’t know it yet.
Lily rolled into the lot just as the shop’s grandfather clock chimed the half hour, in tandem with a huge boxy black Cadillac that could have housed an entire soccer team. Lily managed to land gracefully, and reached the front door just in time to hold it open for the surprisingly young woman who had disembarked from the monster next to her motorcycle in the parking lot. Mark DeVeux was all smiles to the client, but the moment the client looked away at a display of tarts, he shot Lily a lance that said “we’ve got to talk.” Meanwhile, stifled cheers and moans erupted from the back room, where bets had apparently been placed on whether Lily would make it in this morning.
“Ms. Tabor, I presume.”, Lily said, as the woman returned her gaze to Lily and Mark DeVeux from the elaborate tarts that were a DeVeux trademark confection. Ms. Tabor, was tall, blond, pale and thin, with big generous brown eyes, dressed in sharp tweedy designer clothes. Mark had told Lily that Ms. Tabor, who was a few years ahead of him at the Denver Academy, was an advertising executive, and she looked the part.
“Indeed! I’m here to talk to Lily Matsunaka and Mark DeVeux about the Halloween Fundraiser for the Terror Victims Fund. Hi! Mark, how’s it going? And, where’s this Lily Matsunaka I’ve heard so much about?”
“I’m her.”, Lily peeped, with a blend of indignation and pride.
“Oh my, you’re so young.”, Ms. Tabor exclaimed.
“Don’t worry Chloe. When it comes to ice sculpture, Lily is Denver’s rising star. She won’t be disappointed, will she Lily?”, Mark replied.
“Mr. DeVeux is generous.”, Lily answered, “but, I assure you I do take my work seriously and you’re welcome to look at my portfolio and let it speak for itself.” Lily wasn’t always so socially graceful, but she and Mark had worked out of standard banter for clients in the several months she’d worked for him.
“I think I will.”, Chloe said as Mark guided the two women to the parlor where he planned events with his clients, sitting Chloe in front of an pedestal with a reduced sized hologram of the sculpture Lily had done for the event for the Naval officers at the Governor’s mansion. Chloe Tabor gasped at what she saw, and walked around it to see it from all sides. After indicating thumbnails of few more of Lily‘s works that activated different holograms, Chloe stopped and simply said, “I’m impressed. You’d told me how incredible Lily’s work was before, but I had no idea.”
Mark adjusted the bud he liked to wear behind his right ear, gave Chloe a huge smile, and said, “Of course, work like this doesn’t come cheap, and is in addition to the ordinary catering costs.”
“Of course.”, Chloe said, “where would you like to start?”
“Why don’t you give me the notes on the location, number of guests, and menu needs we talked about before, and meet with Lily, while I go over them.”
Chloe nodded and turned her gaze straight into the surreal pastel green of Lily’s eyes set against Lily’s dusky skin and they began. Lily took Chloe’s hands in her own and asked her, almost trace like, “What do you want your guests to come away from the event thinking?”
Chloe spoke slowly, haltingly, torn away from the light chatter she’d been immersed in just moments before with Mark. “I want them to remember the horror of the killings that never seem to stop. . . And the people who are left behind to hurt. . . How human they are . . .how they could be anyone. . . I want them to remember how urgently they need love, support and money to rebuild their lives. . . . If they really get that message just once, I know they’ll keep giving for the rest of their lives. . . The Terror Victim’s Fund is a good cause.”
Lily spoke very softly, treading carefully. She had no idea whether Chloe had suffered personally. “Do you have any photographs? Of a terror scene? Of some of the people the fund helps? Pictures can capture feelings better than words do.”
A tear or two fell from a silent Chloe’s eye. Lily could see that this was personal.
“I’ll get you a little photo album tomorrow.”, Chloe said in a hush. “I don’t know why, but I don’t think I need to say any more. I know you’ll do the right thing.” Lily handed Chloe a tissue, gently acknowledging Chloe’s pain. “Thank you.”, Chloe said.
Lily went to the back room and collapsed into a chair in the break room.
Joe Romero stood across from her, leaning against the sink.
“You saw death face to face and survived yesterday. How did it feel?”, he asked.
“What?”, Lily asked, feigning ignorance.
Joe threw the front page of the Rocky Mountain News down in front of her. There was Lily’s portrait of the shooter, filling the entire page, larger than the original.
“I know your work, Lily. Police profilers don‘t use water colors.”, Joe said, “And, even if I didn’t, how many other Naval officers in Denver do you suppose took their dates to coffee shops at ten thirty, right next to the ballet you were going to see with Cass Jackson last night, not long after the show was over. I may not be a genius, but even if I hadn’t read the paper I would have guessed that there was some reason you came into work, terribly late, in an evening dress, with bags under your eyes.”
Lily involuntarily reached up to touch those dark spots.
“It was actually creamer and coffee.”, Lily said, “I used a swizzle stick as a brush.”
“You’re lucky to be alive Lily. You were right there when the shooting started, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”, Lily said, and she cried for the first time since it happened, shaking all over. “I just got a commission for the Terrorism Victims Fund. I didn’t plan on being one. But, I guess I am now.”
Joe gently held her shoulder. Then, he put on hand on the cross around his neck and the other on her hand and said a silent prayer. Then, Joe handed her a tissue, turned, and walked towards the back door.
“I’ve got to pick up the beef for tonight‘s function at the Stockyards. You know how to call me if you need to talk.”
And then, Joe left.
Lily used the shop phone to call the number Cass has left her.
“Corporal Wallace here.”, a voice answered.
“This is the “ice lady” calling. I’m sure Cass is too busy to talk, but is he O.K.?”
“I don’t think he’s too busy to talk to you. One moment please.”
“Lily, my darling, are you all right? I know I left in a rush and that you must have been terrified. It’s my job. I should have never put you in danger like that. I’ll make it up to you some how, if you still want to have anything to do with me.”
“Are you O.K.?”
“I’m fine. The sniper got away. I didn’t get much sleep, and I imagine you didn’t either, but I don’t have a scratch on me. A good night’s rest and she’ll be right.”, Cass said.
“Can we meet again? I need to see you. I hear you, but I don’t believe it.”
“Sure. Everything has been nuts since this happened, but I’ll make time. Someplace safe and discrete. Can you do dinner tonight at the Remembrance Towers, at the cafeteria on the 100th floor of the South Tower? My office is in the building, and I can’t think of any place safer. How about seven o’clock? That way I can take a nap and freshen up a little first. I’ll leave your name with the guards at the front gate, so you shouldn’t have any problem.”
“I’ll be there.”, Lily said, and terminated the connection.
Lily then laid her head on the break room table and took her own midmorning nap. Mark DeVeux saw her, but he’d read the paper by then and deduced what had happened, just as Joe had, despite the fact that her name wasn’t mentioned. He decided to let her sleep.
* * * * * * *
Just over a month after her last visit to the Remembrance Tower for Remembrance Day, Lily again got off the shuttle in the plaza in front of the Towers. At night a reflection of the city lights gleamed in their glass facade. This time, however, she went in the main door, rather than the tourist entrance.
The door opened easily enough, but only into a large cage of thick tinted glass. She crossed it to a door at the other side.
“Please place you right hand on the scanner and identify yourself and your business.”, a pleasant, but canned voice repeated from hidden speakers. A hand size panel near the door glowed and a camera behind the glass focused on her.
Lily put her hand on the panel and said, “I’m Lily Matsunaka, here to have dinner with Cass Jackson at the cafeteria on the 100th Floor.”
The door opened, and she walked through into a tinted glass tunnel. Once she was through the door it closed behind her, leaving her in an air lock. A small printer dropped a paper ticket in a glass bowl at the other end of the hallway. It had her name, and stated that she was authorized to ride to the 100th floor until midnight, to be present in the building accompanied by a host with permanent ID, and to exit the building. As she took the ticket, there was a hiss and the door at the other end of the tunnel opened out onto a bank of elevators. A man with a rifle over his shoulder sat at a lonely front desk in front of a screen, looking bored, and waved her on with his eyes. She went to an elevator labeled “Floors 50-100”, pressed a button, and got on when it opened.
“Please place your hand on the panel and select a floor.”, another canned voice said calmly.
Lily put her hand on the panel and pressed the button marked 100. The elevator rushed up so fast her made her stomach lurch a little. When the doors opened at the 100th floor, she got off.
Unlike the ground floor of the building, which had been dark and still at seven o‘clock at night, at least when she was there, the 100th floor, which appeared to be entirely a cafeteria, was perhaps a third full as mostly federal employees took their dinners in small groups or alone. Cass had positioned himself facing the elevator exit, and got up to meet her as she stepped into the cafeteria.
Lily ran up to him and grab both of his hands so tightly as she pulled herself up against him that he started and a several people in the cafeteria looked up to see what was happening before they decided to avert their eyes. She planted a long, fervent kiss on his lips. They paused and he too took a moment to be captivated by her pastel green eyes.
He took her by one hand towards the serving area. It was a step up from a mall food court. He suggested Cajun chicken, seafood gumbo, and cornbread, and offered her a glass of peach nectar. She accepted each of his suggestions, which looked better to her than other choices she’d seen. He took a prime rib and mashed potatoes incongruously matched with some Indian flat bread, and a small dish of Korean kimchi. He took an Arnold Palmer, half lemonade and half iced tea, to drink.
“Something tells me that you’ve discovered my Creole roots.”, Lily said, suspiciously as they made their way to the cashier.
“I actually had to pull a favor to get them to make the chicken, so I’m glad you wanted it. And what can I say, my dear. I’m in Naval Intelligence, it’s what I do.”
They set down their trays on a table for two near a window turned away from downtown where the snow covered Rockies gave off a pale reflected gleam in the background from the lights of the Western suburbs that filled the foreground. The streets pulsed with light, although the residential streets were surprisingly dark. A silk flower in a faded white plastic vase graced the table. The décor is no match for the food, Lily thought, as Cass placed their dishes on the table and took away the trays.
“If you were something other than a personal friend, my dear, I might be less than forthcoming with you right now. It comes with my job. But, as far as I know, nothing in your life has anything to do with my job, so I’m going to be honest with you. The table we’re sitting at is no accident.” Lily started, looking around. “No, not that way, the department has very strict rules governing interactions with outsiders, especially here in headquarters, to prevent espionage. That ugly silk flower you see is a audio-recorder, and your every move is recorded on videotape, just like in every other public place in the world these days. I don’t like it, but I see why they need it.”
“Oh.”, Lily said.
“I want to apologize to you for what happened last night.”, Cass said.
“You don’t have to . . . “, Lily started.
“I have a dangerous job. I’m not allowed to talk about the details, national security and all.”
“I understand.”
“But, that doesn’t mean that I can’t have a life. And, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make it up to you.”
“Really, you don’t have to, it wasn’t your fault.”
“In a way, it was my fault. I should have been more careful. I didn’t have to be out in dress uniform. I should have, at least, warned you. I would have never forgiven myself if you’d been hit last night.”
“What matters is that you and I are both alive.”, Lily said, squeezing both his hands again, not quite believing that this was all real.
“Have you ever been to Washington D.C.?”, he asked.
Lily sputtered at the sudden change of subject.
“No. To be honest, I’ve never been more than a few miles East of New Orleans.”, she wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but figured that with him, honesty was the best policy.
“Would you like to?”, he asked.
“Well, sure, but, you can’t just go on a vacation like that. You have work to do and so do I. This is only the third time we’ve met.”
“The fourth. The Governor’s ball, the bagel shop, the ballet, and now.”
“Whatever. No one’s ever asked me to go on a vacation before.”
“The truth be told, it wouldn’t be a complete vacation for me, I have to fly to the Pentagon every month to do work at headquarters anyway. But, that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t enjoy the city after hours, and there are plenty of things for a first time tourist to see.”
“But, how could I get away. I work almost every weekend and holiday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days off. And November and December are especially busy.”
“Well, that’s perfect. Minnesota Mutual Air Taxi doesn’t fly to Denver on weekends anyway, and I can adjust my schedule so that my November trip is a Tuesday-Wednesday. Half the people I need to talk to are away for Thanksgiving anyway, so it won’t be a conflict.”
“An air taxi? Aren’t those wildly expensive? How can you afford it?”
“They aren’t quite as expensive as a private jet. And, the government, like everyone else, gets a refund if there’s a profit for the year, but, yeah it’s not cheap. But, I think I could get the department to pay for it, if you could spend about fifteen or twenty minutes talking to the people at headquarters about your contribution to this morning’s front page.”
“How do you know. . .”
“I talked to the investigating officer, and convinced him to keep any mention of you out of the story. That’s my job.”
“Is it a deal?”
“Where will we stay?”
“There’s no commitment. The office keeps a loft downtown for overnight trips like this. There’s more than one bed, if that would make you comfortable.”
“O.K.”, Lily said.
They held hands and watched the world pass by for a long time. Cass excused himself after a while, saying he had to go back to work. They exchanged a light good night kiss. And he went out, notably not offering her a tour of his office. A few minutes later she took the elevator down, left the building, and took the shuttle to downtown, and then another shuttle to her apartment. She went to the management office, mournfully agreed to pay the lockout fee, got into her apartment, and went to bed.
“Damn.”, Lily thought. “I’m going to be late.”
The shop wasn’t far, just across Cherry Creek and down the street at 8th and Speer. But, Lily had been warned in no uncertain terms by her boss, Mark DeVeux, that this morning’s meeting was a make or break event for the little catering shop, DeVeux Events, where she worked. Usually, Lily managed to fit in a little stroll along the bike path on her way in, but that was not going to happen today. Lily quickly washed her face in the kitchen sink, skipped her usual makeup, and threw on the ankle length plain black dress that she’d worn the night before -- despite the fact that it smelled of cheap cigarettes. She looked for shoes to put on as she headed out her front door, but the short and narrow heels she’d worn the previous night was the only thing she could see that matched.
Lily tripped once or twice racing down three flights of stairs after just missing the elevator, only to be saved by the hand rail. She lurched out her apartment building into the bracing early October morning, and set her eyes on her motorcycle, parked near the front entrance to be building. The building door snicked shut behind her. It suddenly occurred to Lily that the keycards to her apartment and the building were in her purse on the couch in her apartment, behind two locked doors. She hated the snotty little kid who handled lockouts -- for a $100 fee, but Lily would deal with that later. The clock tower across the road said 8:27, too late for the bus (even if she had any money) or to walk. This day was not looking like a good one.
Fortunately, the motorcycle was started with a fingerprint key. But, as Lily approached it, it occurred to her that an ankle length black dress posed certain difficulties. “You idiot!”, Lily informed herself, speaking to no one in particular. Mark DeVeux would kill her if she was late. This was a big client and she couldn’t afford to be the one that lost her. Lily needed this job to pay the rent. But, it wouldn’t do to have her boss and the shop’s big new client see her going down Speer Boulevard with her lacey panties from last night showing underneath a dress rolled up to her waist. With Lily’s luck today, she’d end up on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News.
Resigned to necessity, and not really trusting herself, Lily kicked her motorcycle into gear and daintily sat sidesaddle on the seat. The sight of Lily Matsunaka gracefully leaning back as the motorcycle slowly rolled back and forth, out of her apartment complex, East along 11th Avenue to Speer, in front Sunken Gardens Park, and over Cherry Creek into the front parking lot of the shop inspired a wolf whistle or two from some construction workers and kids on their way to West High School. It would have made a good shot for the paper even so, but no photographers were in evidence, and she’d already contributed to today’s front page, although she didn’t know it yet.
Lily rolled into the lot just as the shop’s grandfather clock chimed the half hour, in tandem with a huge boxy black Cadillac that could have housed an entire soccer team. Lily managed to land gracefully, and reached the front door just in time to hold it open for the surprisingly young woman who had disembarked from the monster next to her motorcycle in the parking lot. Mark DeVeux was all smiles to the client, but the moment the client looked away at a display of tarts, he shot Lily a lance that said “we’ve got to talk.” Meanwhile, stifled cheers and moans erupted from the back room, where bets had apparently been placed on whether Lily would make it in this morning.
“Ms. Tabor, I presume.”, Lily said, as the woman returned her gaze to Lily and Mark DeVeux from the elaborate tarts that were a DeVeux trademark confection. Ms. Tabor, was tall, blond, pale and thin, with big generous brown eyes, dressed in sharp tweedy designer clothes. Mark had told Lily that Ms. Tabor, who was a few years ahead of him at the Denver Academy, was an advertising executive, and she looked the part.
“Indeed! I’m here to talk to Lily Matsunaka and Mark DeVeux about the Halloween Fundraiser for the Terror Victims Fund. Hi! Mark, how’s it going? And, where’s this Lily Matsunaka I’ve heard so much about?”
“I’m her.”, Lily peeped, with a blend of indignation and pride.
“Oh my, you’re so young.”, Ms. Tabor exclaimed.
“Don’t worry Chloe. When it comes to ice sculpture, Lily is Denver’s rising star. She won’t be disappointed, will she Lily?”, Mark replied.
“Mr. DeVeux is generous.”, Lily answered, “but, I assure you I do take my work seriously and you’re welcome to look at my portfolio and let it speak for itself.” Lily wasn’t always so socially graceful, but she and Mark had worked out of standard banter for clients in the several months she’d worked for him.
“I think I will.”, Chloe said as Mark guided the two women to the parlor where he planned events with his clients, sitting Chloe in front of an pedestal with a reduced sized hologram of the sculpture Lily had done for the event for the Naval officers at the Governor’s mansion. Chloe Tabor gasped at what she saw, and walked around it to see it from all sides. After indicating thumbnails of few more of Lily‘s works that activated different holograms, Chloe stopped and simply said, “I’m impressed. You’d told me how incredible Lily’s work was before, but I had no idea.”
Mark adjusted the bud he liked to wear behind his right ear, gave Chloe a huge smile, and said, “Of course, work like this doesn’t come cheap, and is in addition to the ordinary catering costs.”
“Of course.”, Chloe said, “where would you like to start?”
“Why don’t you give me the notes on the location, number of guests, and menu needs we talked about before, and meet with Lily, while I go over them.”
Chloe nodded and turned her gaze straight into the surreal pastel green of Lily’s eyes set against Lily’s dusky skin and they began. Lily took Chloe’s hands in her own and asked her, almost trace like, “What do you want your guests to come away from the event thinking?”
Chloe spoke slowly, haltingly, torn away from the light chatter she’d been immersed in just moments before with Mark. “I want them to remember the horror of the killings that never seem to stop. . . And the people who are left behind to hurt. . . How human they are . . .how they could be anyone. . . I want them to remember how urgently they need love, support and money to rebuild their lives. . . . If they really get that message just once, I know they’ll keep giving for the rest of their lives. . . The Terror Victim’s Fund is a good cause.”
Lily spoke very softly, treading carefully. She had no idea whether Chloe had suffered personally. “Do you have any photographs? Of a terror scene? Of some of the people the fund helps? Pictures can capture feelings better than words do.”
A tear or two fell from a silent Chloe’s eye. Lily could see that this was personal.
“I’ll get you a little photo album tomorrow.”, Chloe said in a hush. “I don’t know why, but I don’t think I need to say any more. I know you’ll do the right thing.” Lily handed Chloe a tissue, gently acknowledging Chloe’s pain. “Thank you.”, Chloe said.
Lily went to the back room and collapsed into a chair in the break room.
Joe Romero stood across from her, leaning against the sink.
“You saw death face to face and survived yesterday. How did it feel?”, he asked.
“What?”, Lily asked, feigning ignorance.
Joe threw the front page of the Rocky Mountain News down in front of her. There was Lily’s portrait of the shooter, filling the entire page, larger than the original.
“I know your work, Lily. Police profilers don‘t use water colors.”, Joe said, “And, even if I didn’t, how many other Naval officers in Denver do you suppose took their dates to coffee shops at ten thirty, right next to the ballet you were going to see with Cass Jackson last night, not long after the show was over. I may not be a genius, but even if I hadn’t read the paper I would have guessed that there was some reason you came into work, terribly late, in an evening dress, with bags under your eyes.”
Lily involuntarily reached up to touch those dark spots.
“It was actually creamer and coffee.”, Lily said, “I used a swizzle stick as a brush.”
“You’re lucky to be alive Lily. You were right there when the shooting started, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”, Lily said, and she cried for the first time since it happened, shaking all over. “I just got a commission for the Terrorism Victims Fund. I didn’t plan on being one. But, I guess I am now.”
Joe gently held her shoulder. Then, he put on hand on the cross around his neck and the other on her hand and said a silent prayer. Then, Joe handed her a tissue, turned, and walked towards the back door.
“I’ve got to pick up the beef for tonight‘s function at the Stockyards. You know how to call me if you need to talk.”
And then, Joe left.
Lily used the shop phone to call the number Cass has left her.
“Corporal Wallace here.”, a voice answered.
“This is the “ice lady” calling. I’m sure Cass is too busy to talk, but is he O.K.?”
“I don’t think he’s too busy to talk to you. One moment please.”
“Lily, my darling, are you all right? I know I left in a rush and that you must have been terrified. It’s my job. I should have never put you in danger like that. I’ll make it up to you some how, if you still want to have anything to do with me.”
“Are you O.K.?”
“I’m fine. The sniper got away. I didn’t get much sleep, and I imagine you didn’t either, but I don’t have a scratch on me. A good night’s rest and she’ll be right.”, Cass said.
“Can we meet again? I need to see you. I hear you, but I don’t believe it.”
“Sure. Everything has been nuts since this happened, but I’ll make time. Someplace safe and discrete. Can you do dinner tonight at the Remembrance Towers, at the cafeteria on the 100th floor of the South Tower? My office is in the building, and I can’t think of any place safer. How about seven o’clock? That way I can take a nap and freshen up a little first. I’ll leave your name with the guards at the front gate, so you shouldn’t have any problem.”
“I’ll be there.”, Lily said, and terminated the connection.
Lily then laid her head on the break room table and took her own midmorning nap. Mark DeVeux saw her, but he’d read the paper by then and deduced what had happened, just as Joe had, despite the fact that her name wasn’t mentioned. He decided to let her sleep.
* * * * * * *
Just over a month after her last visit to the Remembrance Tower for Remembrance Day, Lily again got off the shuttle in the plaza in front of the Towers. At night a reflection of the city lights gleamed in their glass facade. This time, however, she went in the main door, rather than the tourist entrance.
The door opened easily enough, but only into a large cage of thick tinted glass. She crossed it to a door at the other side.
“Please place you right hand on the scanner and identify yourself and your business.”, a pleasant, but canned voice repeated from hidden speakers. A hand size panel near the door glowed and a camera behind the glass focused on her.
Lily put her hand on the panel and said, “I’m Lily Matsunaka, here to have dinner with Cass Jackson at the cafeteria on the 100th Floor.”
The door opened, and she walked through into a tinted glass tunnel. Once she was through the door it closed behind her, leaving her in an air lock. A small printer dropped a paper ticket in a glass bowl at the other end of the hallway. It had her name, and stated that she was authorized to ride to the 100th floor until midnight, to be present in the building accompanied by a host with permanent ID, and to exit the building. As she took the ticket, there was a hiss and the door at the other end of the tunnel opened out onto a bank of elevators. A man with a rifle over his shoulder sat at a lonely front desk in front of a screen, looking bored, and waved her on with his eyes. She went to an elevator labeled “Floors 50-100”, pressed a button, and got on when it opened.
“Please place your hand on the panel and select a floor.”, another canned voice said calmly.
Lily put her hand on the panel and pressed the button marked 100. The elevator rushed up so fast her made her stomach lurch a little. When the doors opened at the 100th floor, she got off.
Unlike the ground floor of the building, which had been dark and still at seven o‘clock at night, at least when she was there, the 100th floor, which appeared to be entirely a cafeteria, was perhaps a third full as mostly federal employees took their dinners in small groups or alone. Cass had positioned himself facing the elevator exit, and got up to meet her as she stepped into the cafeteria.
Lily ran up to him and grab both of his hands so tightly as she pulled herself up against him that he started and a several people in the cafeteria looked up to see what was happening before they decided to avert their eyes. She planted a long, fervent kiss on his lips. They paused and he too took a moment to be captivated by her pastel green eyes.
He took her by one hand towards the serving area. It was a step up from a mall food court. He suggested Cajun chicken, seafood gumbo, and cornbread, and offered her a glass of peach nectar. She accepted each of his suggestions, which looked better to her than other choices she’d seen. He took a prime rib and mashed potatoes incongruously matched with some Indian flat bread, and a small dish of Korean kimchi. He took an Arnold Palmer, half lemonade and half iced tea, to drink.
“Something tells me that you’ve discovered my Creole roots.”, Lily said, suspiciously as they made their way to the cashier.
“I actually had to pull a favor to get them to make the chicken, so I’m glad you wanted it. And what can I say, my dear. I’m in Naval Intelligence, it’s what I do.”
They set down their trays on a table for two near a window turned away from downtown where the snow covered Rockies gave off a pale reflected gleam in the background from the lights of the Western suburbs that filled the foreground. The streets pulsed with light, although the residential streets were surprisingly dark. A silk flower in a faded white plastic vase graced the table. The décor is no match for the food, Lily thought, as Cass placed their dishes on the table and took away the trays.
“If you were something other than a personal friend, my dear, I might be less than forthcoming with you right now. It comes with my job. But, as far as I know, nothing in your life has anything to do with my job, so I’m going to be honest with you. The table we’re sitting at is no accident.” Lily started, looking around. “No, not that way, the department has very strict rules governing interactions with outsiders, especially here in headquarters, to prevent espionage. That ugly silk flower you see is a audio-recorder, and your every move is recorded on videotape, just like in every other public place in the world these days. I don’t like it, but I see why they need it.”
“Oh.”, Lily said.
“I want to apologize to you for what happened last night.”, Cass said.
“You don’t have to . . . “, Lily started.
“I have a dangerous job. I’m not allowed to talk about the details, national security and all.”
“I understand.”
“But, that doesn’t mean that I can’t have a life. And, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t make it up to you.”
“Really, you don’t have to, it wasn’t your fault.”
“In a way, it was my fault. I should have been more careful. I didn’t have to be out in dress uniform. I should have, at least, warned you. I would have never forgiven myself if you’d been hit last night.”
“What matters is that you and I are both alive.”, Lily said, squeezing both his hands again, not quite believing that this was all real.
“Have you ever been to Washington D.C.?”, he asked.
Lily sputtered at the sudden change of subject.
“No. To be honest, I’ve never been more than a few miles East of New Orleans.”, she wasn’t sure where he was going with this, but figured that with him, honesty was the best policy.
“Would you like to?”, he asked.
“Well, sure, but, you can’t just go on a vacation like that. You have work to do and so do I. This is only the third time we’ve met.”
“The fourth. The Governor’s ball, the bagel shop, the ballet, and now.”
“Whatever. No one’s ever asked me to go on a vacation before.”
“The truth be told, it wouldn’t be a complete vacation for me, I have to fly to the Pentagon every month to do work at headquarters anyway. But, that doesn’t mean that we couldn’t enjoy the city after hours, and there are plenty of things for a first time tourist to see.”
“But, how could I get away. I work almost every weekend and holiday. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days off. And November and December are especially busy.”
“Well, that’s perfect. Minnesota Mutual Air Taxi doesn’t fly to Denver on weekends anyway, and I can adjust my schedule so that my November trip is a Tuesday-Wednesday. Half the people I need to talk to are away for Thanksgiving anyway, so it won’t be a conflict.”
“An air taxi? Aren’t those wildly expensive? How can you afford it?”
“They aren’t quite as expensive as a private jet. And, the government, like everyone else, gets a refund if there’s a profit for the year, but, yeah it’s not cheap. But, I think I could get the department to pay for it, if you could spend about fifteen or twenty minutes talking to the people at headquarters about your contribution to this morning’s front page.”
“How do you know. . .”
“I talked to the investigating officer, and convinced him to keep any mention of you out of the story. That’s my job.”
“Is it a deal?”
“Where will we stay?”
“There’s no commitment. The office keeps a loft downtown for overnight trips like this. There’s more than one bed, if that would make you comfortable.”
“O.K.”, Lily said.
They held hands and watched the world pass by for a long time. Cass excused himself after a while, saying he had to go back to work. They exchanged a light good night kiss. And he went out, notably not offering her a tour of his office. A few minutes later she took the elevator down, left the building, and took the shuttle to downtown, and then another shuttle to her apartment. She went to the management office, mournfully agreed to pay the lockout fee, got into her apartment, and went to bed.
Getaway
The pickup raced out of downtown, onto Speer, and then turned right onto Kalamath. It then careened left and crossed Santa Fe Boulevard against the light forcing a passing taxi to slow down. Once into the shadows, the driver killed the lights and slowed to a stop. In perfect synch, another man in a similar pickup turned on his lights continuing towards Speer Boulevard going fast. The taxi driver who had slowed down saw that pickup race away, assuming it was the same one.
Ten minutes earlier, the departing driver had withdrawn money at an ATM in a nearby grocery store and bought a lottery ticket at the customer service desk, which he had visited regularly over the past two months for this purpose, where he told the clerk a particularly crude joke. Two minutes ago, he’d received, as he expected, a call on his wireless phone informing him that a break in was in progress at his University Hills liquor store. The bullets in the .45 caliber handgun, for which he had a valid concealed weapons permit and a receipt from his shooting practice session earlier that afternoon, would not match the 22mm ammunition used in the incident downtown. The police responding to the alarm system call would find a broken window and a broken an empty cash box when they arrived. Early the following morning, the departing driver, whose face would not quite match the description being circulated by police, would leave a long interrogation at police headquarters with a ticket for driving 80 miles an hour in a 45 mile per hour zone and a form to make a police report about the break in to his shop.
Back at the handoff point, the pickup rolled quietly into a body shop, the garage door with white washed windows closing behind them. The shooter in the back of the pickup jumped out and deposited his rifle inside a large shop vacuum. The passenger took a license plate from a shelf and used it to replace a license plate on the pickup, which itself belonged to an unknown par patron’s BMW convertible. The passenger dumped the stolen license plate into a large barrel of paint remover and replaced the lid on the barrel.
The driver was already in the body shop bathroom, having and flushing the hair down the toilet. The man from the back of the pickup joined him. Then, they both cut each other’s hair in near silence. The man who had been in the passenger seat had worn a paper bag over his head during the shooting and getaway and didn’t try to vary his appearance.
The driver took off his shirt, removed the football pads he had under them, stashing them in a gym bag in an employee locker in the shop, and changed into white, paint covered overalls that were in the same locker. The driver then removed the pickup hatch, tossing it into a scrap metal heap in the back, taped over the bullet holes in the side of the pickup, sprayed a first coat of blue paint over the existing white paint, and covered it all with thick plastic tarp. He, then left in his late model Ford sedan, heading straight for the mountain cabin that was his destination. No one would notice him missing during the next two weeks during his planned bow hunting vacation on the Western Slope.
The shooter replaced his clothes with a security guard’s uniform, complete with helmet that hid his hair length from his fellow employees, and headed to the alleyway where his jeep waited.
The passenger, who had slipped into the office to write a note, left last, dropping the letter in a mailbox on his walk home mixed in with a stack of bills he was paying. When the police knocked on his door the next morning, he would admit seeing a white pickup race by his shop, while he was working late on paper work and one of his employees was finishing up a job before leaving on vacation. He would motion with his hands that no vehicle matching the description of the car they wanted to know if he had seen was in his shop.
The shooter would have a time card from his employer’s machine showing that he had arrived on time to his solitary night shift job as a parking lot security guard, a half an hour before the shooting took place. The mechanical time clock would shown no trace that its mechanism had been tampered with and the videotapes of the parking lot would have been reused several times by the time the investigators asked for them, a week later.
Ten minutes earlier, the departing driver had withdrawn money at an ATM in a nearby grocery store and bought a lottery ticket at the customer service desk, which he had visited regularly over the past two months for this purpose, where he told the clerk a particularly crude joke. Two minutes ago, he’d received, as he expected, a call on his wireless phone informing him that a break in was in progress at his University Hills liquor store. The bullets in the .45 caliber handgun, for which he had a valid concealed weapons permit and a receipt from his shooting practice session earlier that afternoon, would not match the 22mm ammunition used in the incident downtown. The police responding to the alarm system call would find a broken window and a broken an empty cash box when they arrived. Early the following morning, the departing driver, whose face would not quite match the description being circulated by police, would leave a long interrogation at police headquarters with a ticket for driving 80 miles an hour in a 45 mile per hour zone and a form to make a police report about the break in to his shop.
Back at the handoff point, the pickup rolled quietly into a body shop, the garage door with white washed windows closing behind them. The shooter in the back of the pickup jumped out and deposited his rifle inside a large shop vacuum. The passenger took a license plate from a shelf and used it to replace a license plate on the pickup, which itself belonged to an unknown par patron’s BMW convertible. The passenger dumped the stolen license plate into a large barrel of paint remover and replaced the lid on the barrel.
The driver was already in the body shop bathroom, having and flushing the hair down the toilet. The man from the back of the pickup joined him. Then, they both cut each other’s hair in near silence. The man who had been in the passenger seat had worn a paper bag over his head during the shooting and getaway and didn’t try to vary his appearance.
The driver took off his shirt, removed the football pads he had under them, stashing them in a gym bag in an employee locker in the shop, and changed into white, paint covered overalls that were in the same locker. The driver then removed the pickup hatch, tossing it into a scrap metal heap in the back, taped over the bullet holes in the side of the pickup, sprayed a first coat of blue paint over the existing white paint, and covered it all with thick plastic tarp. He, then left in his late model Ford sedan, heading straight for the mountain cabin that was his destination. No one would notice him missing during the next two weeks during his planned bow hunting vacation on the Western Slope.
The shooter replaced his clothes with a security guard’s uniform, complete with helmet that hid his hair length from his fellow employees, and headed to the alleyway where his jeep waited.
The passenger, who had slipped into the office to write a note, left last, dropping the letter in a mailbox on his walk home mixed in with a stack of bills he was paying. When the police knocked on his door the next morning, he would admit seeing a white pickup race by his shop, while he was working late on paper work and one of his employees was finishing up a job before leaving on vacation. He would motion with his hands that no vehicle matching the description of the car they wanted to know if he had seen was in his shop.
The shooter would have a time card from his employer’s machine showing that he had arrived on time to his solitary night shift job as a parking lot security guard, a half an hour before the shooting took place. The mechanical time clock would shown no trace that its mechanism had been tampered with and the videotapes of the parking lot would have been reused several times by the time the investigators asked for them, a week later.
Chapter 5: October 13, 2030
The ballet had been delightful. Lily had seen Swan Lake at Christmas once growing up, but Dracula was something entirely different. She’d never imagined that something could be so beautiful and so grotesque at the same time. According to Cass Jackson, who’d gone to Colorado at CU before becoming a Navy officer, it was a Denver tradition. Lily had lived all her life in Colorado, but her experience did not extend to the traditions of the local ballet companies.
Lily had never felt so admired in her life. Her ankle length sleeveless black dress wasn’t warm (especially at ten o‘clock at night in late October), but it was the only nice dress she owned. Her black and white pearl necklace she inherited from her mother, that her mother had inherited from her mother before her, caught a few glances, even in the glamour of the performing arts center. Her heels were starting to make her feet ache just a little, but she enjoyed the one inch height boost they gave her and the being slightly off balance did make her feel a little sexy. So did the lacey panties she’d worn just in case, even though this was only their second date. Next to Cass Jackson in his dress uniform (the most formal clothes he owned), she felt important.
Arm in arm, they walked out of the Performing Arts Center and into Downtown. Cass led Lily around the corner to a coffee shop and wine bar called Pablos. They ordered Irish Coffees and stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. More sizing each other up, than entranced.
In fact, Lily knew very little about Cass, and Cass knew very little about Lily. Lily had struggled with herself for almost a month before calling the number Cass had left for her. Part of her shared Mark’s concern that a man who would send two dozen roses out of the blue was probably a stalker creep who was best avoided. But, eventually, the part of her that said that she was young, all alone in a big city, and the object of someone’s desire won out. That, and Fiona’s effusive descriptions of Cass, anyway.
When she called, from a pay phone at the court house, just to be safe, she’d thought at first that she’d reached Cass himself. The fellow quickly corrected her and identified himself as a Northern Command Army Corporal Wallace, who was acting as Cass’s personal secretary and assistant. When she identified herself as the “Ice Lady”, the corporal said, “Yes, Ma’am”, in a tone that clearly conveyed knowledge and importance and asked her to stay on the line and that he’d have Mr. Jackson for her right away.
When Cass picked up, she heard construction in the background, but Cass was all sugar and honey. “Thank you for calling Ma’am. I thought for sure I was a fool. . .”
“Maybe you were.”, Lily, answered, provoking a poignant silence at the other end of the line. But, Lily started again, before he had a chance to respond. “But, I’m willing to give you a chance to prove it. Would you like to do lunch?”
“Yes, Ma’am!”, Cass responded. After a few more seconds of conversation they agreed to have lunch at a Bagel Shop on the Sixteenth Street Mall the following day. Lily didn’t want to take on chance on meeting this man anywhere other than a public place, or anywhere that alcohol was served, for the first time. She wasn’t actually a bagel fan, but, she’d thought it through, and discussed it at length with Fiona at the flower shop, and declared it safe and someplace that he probably wouldn’t be familiar with as a Southerner. She had decided that she didn’t want to meet him anyplace that was his turf.
The connection had been terminated before Cass was cursing himself for failing to get Lily’s name.
Fiona and Lily had also, of course, done some research on Cass Jackson before this call took place, because they did have his name. Her really was a naval officer and was apparently attached to some senior officer on loan to the Colorado National Guard to fight terrorism under a program set up by the Department of Defense Northern Command and the Department of Homeland Security. He got an undergraduate degree in International Relations from C.U. and was a master’s degree student in the school of Islamic Studies at C.U. as well. A couple of yearbook searches showed that he was on the Equestrian Team and Philosophy Club at C.U., and graduated from High School in Tallahassee, Florida, where he was declared “Most Likely To Fight Terrorism.” He was twenty-four years old. A criminal record search and a credit record search showed that he had no particular blemishes on his record, didn’t own a car (presumably he used the military motorcade), and didn’t have a mortgage. Fiona and Lily agreed that he passed the basic background check.
Lunch went well and finally broke the ice. He didn’t tell any obvious lies, compared and contrasted every great religion’s definition of infidel, and did great caricatures of working with his Nigerian counterpart, John Franklin, scion of a Liberian based shipping family. She gave him her name, let him know that she had roots in the South without being too specific, and explained to him what life as a real farm girl was like. He was impressed that she’d been to the Denver Stock Show every year since the year she was born. She didn’t leave him her number, but informed him that she knew how to find him, and asked to remain the “Ice Lady” to his staff.
“It has an ironic ring to it.”, she said.
He asked her if she’d like to get together again sometime, just before they left. And, she said yes.
A week later, an invitation to the Ballet addressed to “The Ice Lady”, arrived at the shop along with a delightfully complicated African orchid hand delivered by Clark Crist. She bought her dress, because she thought she should own one. They met in the lobby, where they shared appetizers and wine before the show while discussing amusing costumes that some of the audience had chosen to wear. They watched Dracula together, and wound up back here at Pablos. The first time she’d kissed him was in the lobby on the way out.
Lily ventured a serious question.
“So, how did you end up in the Navy?”, she asked.
“My grandfather was in the World Trade Center, closing a business deal, on September 11, 2001. He died that day. It was before I was born, but I heard the stories growing up. It crushed my father. My grandfather’s business was bought out by his partners. My father’s family had enough money, but grandma never really recovered. Grandpa was everything to her. Dad grew up to be a man full of hate. He put his hand on his gun any time a woman with veil or an Arab looking man got near the dealership where he was a car salesman. He thought all Muslims were evil. I didn’t want grandpa’s death to go unpunished either, but I didn’t have the same hate and anger. I studied religion and international affairs in college and signed up for Naval Intelligence. I want to get the people who are really the problem, so people like my dad can stop being mad at the whole rest of the world.”
“That’s quite a story.”, Lily responded.
Cass was about to ask Lily a question about her. Lily looked out the window while he collected his thoughts and saw the face of a man leaning over the back of a pickup truck holding a rifle. A small red light appeared on the white vase with silk flowers sitting between them at their table.
“Get down!”, Cass yelled with a steely voice only the military can give a man.
Cass instantly fell to the ground in a crouch, knocking the table over between them, and upending Lily’s chair in a single motion. At the same moment glass shattered everywhere and the rapid fire bang, bang, bang, bang, that sounded like fireworks, rang through the air. People screamed. The mirror right behind their table was shattered. The pickup truck across the street screeched away. Cass had pulled a handgun Lily hadn’t even known he had and was panning it, shooting rapidly at the departing pickup through the window pane. He glanced at Lily.
“Are you all right?”, he asked.
“Yes.”, she whimpered.
And he was gone. He leapt over the fallen table and out the front door, chasing after the pickup, firing as he went. Cass dodged a few more spurts of gunfire. He screamed into his phone. He showed his badge and gun and commandeered a taxi, leaving the driver standing dumb founded on the sidewalk. Screeching into the darkness, he was gone. Suddenly, Lily was all alone again.
The proprietor went from table to table, asking if everyone was all right. After he’d made his first round and called the police, Lily asked for some paper, some creamer, and some coffee. Having done everything else he could, the proprietor complied with her requests.
Lily went to a corner table that had escaped the gunfire as the police sirens wailed moving in her direction, and others sounded in the distance. She tried not to think about where Cass was by focusing on her self appointed task. In ten or fifteen minutes she was done, and looked up, and the policeman who’d interviewed everyone else came over to her. He looked over her shoulder.
The man’s face, and arms, as he leaned over the edge of the pickup holding a gun, were almost as clear as a photograph, painted in coffee and creamer with a swizzle stick.
“It was him.”, Lily said, pointing at her drawing.
The police man asked if she’d mind coming a few blocks to the police station so he could ask her some questions. She agreed. Three hours later, at almost three a.m., the interviewing police officer drove her home, not leaving until she was safely in her complex and the building door had locked behind her.
The front pages of the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, and U.S.A. Today had her drawing, captioned “police reconstruction” staring out at her. The Rocky Mountain News, which goes to press latest, also informed its readers that police had tentatively attached a name to the suspect’s description. The suspect was purportedly armed and dangerous and had escaped apprehension. The reports mentioned that an undisclosed Naval officer in dress uniform was the target, but didn’t mention that he had a date with him.
Lily had never felt so admired in her life. Her ankle length sleeveless black dress wasn’t warm (especially at ten o‘clock at night in late October), but it was the only nice dress she owned. Her black and white pearl necklace she inherited from her mother, that her mother had inherited from her mother before her, caught a few glances, even in the glamour of the performing arts center. Her heels were starting to make her feet ache just a little, but she enjoyed the one inch height boost they gave her and the being slightly off balance did make her feel a little sexy. So did the lacey panties she’d worn just in case, even though this was only their second date. Next to Cass Jackson in his dress uniform (the most formal clothes he owned), she felt important.
Arm in arm, they walked out of the Performing Arts Center and into Downtown. Cass led Lily around the corner to a coffee shop and wine bar called Pablos. They ordered Irish Coffees and stared into each other’s eyes for a moment. More sizing each other up, than entranced.
In fact, Lily knew very little about Cass, and Cass knew very little about Lily. Lily had struggled with herself for almost a month before calling the number Cass had left for her. Part of her shared Mark’s concern that a man who would send two dozen roses out of the blue was probably a stalker creep who was best avoided. But, eventually, the part of her that said that she was young, all alone in a big city, and the object of someone’s desire won out. That, and Fiona’s effusive descriptions of Cass, anyway.
When she called, from a pay phone at the court house, just to be safe, she’d thought at first that she’d reached Cass himself. The fellow quickly corrected her and identified himself as a Northern Command Army Corporal Wallace, who was acting as Cass’s personal secretary and assistant. When she identified herself as the “Ice Lady”, the corporal said, “Yes, Ma’am”, in a tone that clearly conveyed knowledge and importance and asked her to stay on the line and that he’d have Mr. Jackson for her right away.
When Cass picked up, she heard construction in the background, but Cass was all sugar and honey. “Thank you for calling Ma’am. I thought for sure I was a fool. . .”
“Maybe you were.”, Lily, answered, provoking a poignant silence at the other end of the line. But, Lily started again, before he had a chance to respond. “But, I’m willing to give you a chance to prove it. Would you like to do lunch?”
“Yes, Ma’am!”, Cass responded. After a few more seconds of conversation they agreed to have lunch at a Bagel Shop on the Sixteenth Street Mall the following day. Lily didn’t want to take on chance on meeting this man anywhere other than a public place, or anywhere that alcohol was served, for the first time. She wasn’t actually a bagel fan, but, she’d thought it through, and discussed it at length with Fiona at the flower shop, and declared it safe and someplace that he probably wouldn’t be familiar with as a Southerner. She had decided that she didn’t want to meet him anyplace that was his turf.
The connection had been terminated before Cass was cursing himself for failing to get Lily’s name.
Fiona and Lily had also, of course, done some research on Cass Jackson before this call took place, because they did have his name. Her really was a naval officer and was apparently attached to some senior officer on loan to the Colorado National Guard to fight terrorism under a program set up by the Department of Defense Northern Command and the Department of Homeland Security. He got an undergraduate degree in International Relations from C.U. and was a master’s degree student in the school of Islamic Studies at C.U. as well. A couple of yearbook searches showed that he was on the Equestrian Team and Philosophy Club at C.U., and graduated from High School in Tallahassee, Florida, where he was declared “Most Likely To Fight Terrorism.” He was twenty-four years old. A criminal record search and a credit record search showed that he had no particular blemishes on his record, didn’t own a car (presumably he used the military motorcade), and didn’t have a mortgage. Fiona and Lily agreed that he passed the basic background check.
Lunch went well and finally broke the ice. He didn’t tell any obvious lies, compared and contrasted every great religion’s definition of infidel, and did great caricatures of working with his Nigerian counterpart, John Franklin, scion of a Liberian based shipping family. She gave him her name, let him know that she had roots in the South without being too specific, and explained to him what life as a real farm girl was like. He was impressed that she’d been to the Denver Stock Show every year since the year she was born. She didn’t leave him her number, but informed him that she knew how to find him, and asked to remain the “Ice Lady” to his staff.
“It has an ironic ring to it.”, she said.
He asked her if she’d like to get together again sometime, just before they left. And, she said yes.
A week later, an invitation to the Ballet addressed to “The Ice Lady”, arrived at the shop along with a delightfully complicated African orchid hand delivered by Clark Crist. She bought her dress, because she thought she should own one. They met in the lobby, where they shared appetizers and wine before the show while discussing amusing costumes that some of the audience had chosen to wear. They watched Dracula together, and wound up back here at Pablos. The first time she’d kissed him was in the lobby on the way out.
Lily ventured a serious question.
“So, how did you end up in the Navy?”, she asked.
“My grandfather was in the World Trade Center, closing a business deal, on September 11, 2001. He died that day. It was before I was born, but I heard the stories growing up. It crushed my father. My grandfather’s business was bought out by his partners. My father’s family had enough money, but grandma never really recovered. Grandpa was everything to her. Dad grew up to be a man full of hate. He put his hand on his gun any time a woman with veil or an Arab looking man got near the dealership where he was a car salesman. He thought all Muslims were evil. I didn’t want grandpa’s death to go unpunished either, but I didn’t have the same hate and anger. I studied religion and international affairs in college and signed up for Naval Intelligence. I want to get the people who are really the problem, so people like my dad can stop being mad at the whole rest of the world.”
“That’s quite a story.”, Lily responded.
Cass was about to ask Lily a question about her. Lily looked out the window while he collected his thoughts and saw the face of a man leaning over the back of a pickup truck holding a rifle. A small red light appeared on the white vase with silk flowers sitting between them at their table.
“Get down!”, Cass yelled with a steely voice only the military can give a man.
Cass instantly fell to the ground in a crouch, knocking the table over between them, and upending Lily’s chair in a single motion. At the same moment glass shattered everywhere and the rapid fire bang, bang, bang, bang, that sounded like fireworks, rang through the air. People screamed. The mirror right behind their table was shattered. The pickup truck across the street screeched away. Cass had pulled a handgun Lily hadn’t even known he had and was panning it, shooting rapidly at the departing pickup through the window pane. He glanced at Lily.
“Are you all right?”, he asked.
“Yes.”, she whimpered.
And he was gone. He leapt over the fallen table and out the front door, chasing after the pickup, firing as he went. Cass dodged a few more spurts of gunfire. He screamed into his phone. He showed his badge and gun and commandeered a taxi, leaving the driver standing dumb founded on the sidewalk. Screeching into the darkness, he was gone. Suddenly, Lily was all alone again.
The proprietor went from table to table, asking if everyone was all right. After he’d made his first round and called the police, Lily asked for some paper, some creamer, and some coffee. Having done everything else he could, the proprietor complied with her requests.
Lily went to a corner table that had escaped the gunfire as the police sirens wailed moving in her direction, and others sounded in the distance. She tried not to think about where Cass was by focusing on her self appointed task. In ten or fifteen minutes she was done, and looked up, and the policeman who’d interviewed everyone else came over to her. He looked over her shoulder.
The man’s face, and arms, as he leaned over the edge of the pickup holding a gun, were almost as clear as a photograph, painted in coffee and creamer with a swizzle stick.
“It was him.”, Lily said, pointing at her drawing.
The police man asked if she’d mind coming a few blocks to the police station so he could ask her some questions. She agreed. Three hours later, at almost three a.m., the interviewing police officer drove her home, not leaving until she was safely in her complex and the building door had locked behind her.
The front pages of the Denver Post, the Rocky Mountain News, and U.S.A. Today had her drawing, captioned “police reconstruction” staring out at her. The Rocky Mountain News, which goes to press latest, also informed its readers that police had tentatively attached a name to the suspect’s description. The suspect was purportedly armed and dangerous and had escaped apprehension. The reports mentioned that an undisclosed Naval officer in dress uniform was the target, but didn’t mention that he had a date with him.
Informant
A kid with a blue slip of paper pinned to his t-shirt that said “student aid” walked into Eunice’s science class and handed a piece of pink paper to the Ms. Stint. Ms. Stint interrupted her lecture on the different phyla of algae and examined it. The class tittered.
“Eunice.”, Ms. Stint said., “Could you please take this with you to Assistant Principal Brown’s office?”
“Right now?”, Eunice asked.
“Yes, right now.”, Ms. Stint responded, as a chorus of “ooh, you’re in trouble” arose from the rest of the class.
“Eunice read the note as she made her way down the hall, see through backpack on her shoulder filled with her books and papers. Science was the last class of the day, so she probably wouldn’t make it back. The note simply said that Eunice was wanted, without any explanation. For once, Eunice had no idea why she was summoned. She couldn’t recall any fights, hadn’t skipped school, had good grades so far for the term, and didn’t even have any overdue library books. She guessed they would call her if her mother or father or sister had been killed in some accident. She hoped it wasn’t that. One teacher stopped her in the hall, but when he saw the pink slip, he let her go on.
Mr. Brown’s office was in the main administrative suite for Ranch View Middle School. The walls were faded pastels adorned with posters urging kids not to take drugs and student artwork. A student aid was entering classroom attendance slips into a computer. Two older women were talking together next to the coffee machine. Three kids, two Nigerian and one Anglo, all covered with mud and scratches were sitting on a bench next to the Principal’s office.
“Can I help you?”, one of the older women asked.
“Eunice Anderson, here to see Assistant Principal Brown please.”
The boys on the bench and student aid looked up.
“I’ll let him know you’re here. You can wait on the bench next to his office.”, she pointed, “Over there.”
Eunice sat on the bench and looked at the floor, waiting. A few minutes later, a think Nigerian boy with glasses left the office, empty handed, without a word.
“Eunice, could you come in?”, Mr. Brown said, sticking his head out of his door. Mr. Brown was a light skinned black man in his late 30s. His usual responsibility was discipline and Eunice had seem him holding a struggling eighth grader in each arm to break up a fight.
“Please take a seat.”, Mr. Brown said. A clean cut man in a military uniform was also in the room in a chair that looked like it was usually reserved for parents of misbehaving students.
“Do you know why you’re here Eunice?”, Mr. Brown asked.
“No.”, Eunice replied.
“Do you remember filling out this survey at the start of the term?”
Eunice looked. The school always had everyone fill out endless forms at the start of each term. It looked like her writing, so she said yes.
Mr. Brown handed her the survey.
“Do you know why this survey was given, Eunice?”, Mr. Brown asked.
“Something tell me,”, Eunice said as she directed her eyes towards the man in uniform sitting in Mr. Brown’s office, “that I’d be wrong if I guessed that it was to help set the Cultural Sensitivity curriculum for the year.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong if you said that, Eunice, but no, that wasn’t the only purpose for the survey.”
Eunice’s mind raced. Was she under suspicion of terrorist activity, or what?
“Eunice, we did a special data analysis on that survey, and the other information that all new surveys provided on the first day of school. We looked at your residential address, your attitudes towards the country, and your knowledge of the Nigerian Muslim community. Do you know that out of twelve hundred students in this school that you are one of only four students who aren’t Nigerian Muslims who correctly answer three questions regarding the words of the daily calls to prayer? And, two of those students are here on a magnet program from central Denver, and the other one admitted to guessing.”
“So, I live in a Highlands Ranch ghetto and I’ve picked up a few words of the language’s my dad’s tenants speak. So what? That doesn’t make me a criminal.”
The man in the military uniform finally spoke up.
“No, it doesn’t. And, I’m not here to investigate you. I’m Cass Jackson, Naval Intelligence.”, he also had a Southern drawl. He stood up and extended his hand to Eunice. “My job is to identify terrorist cells that may be operating in Colorado within the Nigerian immigrant community. You’ve been identified as one of a handful of people in your area who would be well qualified to serve as an informant for the Colorado National Guard.”
“Whoa. You want me to be a spy and rat on my neighbors?”, Eunice responded.
“I’d prefer to say that we’re asking you if you’d be willing to serve your country, for suitable compensation, of course. You wouldn’t even have to leave your neighborhood.”, Cass Jackson replied.
“What kind of money are we talking here?”
“Let’s just say that we don’t pay minors anything less than we pay adults doing the same work.”, Mr. Jackson replied.
Eunice thought about that for just a second.
“Parental consent is, of course, required for you to do any kind of work at age fourteen, but it was more convenient for Mr. Jackson to meet with you and a few other possible recruits during the school day, all at once, so I scheduled the initial meeting here.”, Mr. Brown said.
“So what would I have to do?”, Eunice asked. “Would I have to carry a gun.”
“Oh no.”, Mr. Jackson replied. “All you’d have to do is file regular reports and to try to find out information. I’d meet with you from time to time to let you know what we’re looking for and to give you some tips, and then I’d give you a password and user identification for a certain network site that you’d submit your reports at from time to time.”
“O.K., I’ll do it. Well, I mean, I’ll talk to my parents about it. Do you have the forms?”
“Sure.” Mr. Jackson had apparently expected this response and handed her an envelope. You can drop the forms off with Mr. Brown any time through the end of next week.
“Thank you.”, Eunice said. “Are we done now?”
Mr. Brown and Mr. Jackson exchanged a glance.
“Yes, you’re done now. School is over in half an hour, so you don’t have to back to class. You can go to the library if you want. Mr. Brown took another pink slip off a pad on his desk and marked a box. And, Eunice. I’d appreciate it if you were discrete about this matter. If your classmates ask for an explanation, you can tell them that your enrollment paperwork wasn’t complete and that you had to get some more forms to fill out. That should suffice.”
“O.K.”, Eunice said and left. No one was on either of the benches when she left.
Eunice went to the library, pulled out the forms and read them. The disclosure form noted that she was at serious risk of death or serious injury, that this was a volunteer position, and that any violation of protocol could result in her being killed by American forces in order to protect national security. The pay schedule was $2,000 per monthly report and additional bonuses for useful information, all tax free under a special provision of the Internal Revenue Code adopted for the war on terrorism. All told, it was more than her mother made, if she could come up with even a few bits of useful information. She signed her name, and then her parents’ names in different handwriting, as she always did when the school asked for permission slips. She checked the box for payment monthly in cash to be picked up at the general delivery desk of the downtown Denver post office. Then, she lifted the protective plastic shield from a corner of the form and pressed her thumb into it so that the post office could compare the two before releasing the cash. Then, Eunice put the forms back in the envelope in her backpack and headed out to catch the bus home.
The next morning, Eunice left the envelope for Mr. Brown.
“Eunice.”, Ms. Stint said., “Could you please take this with you to Assistant Principal Brown’s office?”
“Right now?”, Eunice asked.
“Yes, right now.”, Ms. Stint responded, as a chorus of “ooh, you’re in trouble” arose from the rest of the class.
“Eunice read the note as she made her way down the hall, see through backpack on her shoulder filled with her books and papers. Science was the last class of the day, so she probably wouldn’t make it back. The note simply said that Eunice was wanted, without any explanation. For once, Eunice had no idea why she was summoned. She couldn’t recall any fights, hadn’t skipped school, had good grades so far for the term, and didn’t even have any overdue library books. She guessed they would call her if her mother or father or sister had been killed in some accident. She hoped it wasn’t that. One teacher stopped her in the hall, but when he saw the pink slip, he let her go on.
Mr. Brown’s office was in the main administrative suite for Ranch View Middle School. The walls were faded pastels adorned with posters urging kids not to take drugs and student artwork. A student aid was entering classroom attendance slips into a computer. Two older women were talking together next to the coffee machine. Three kids, two Nigerian and one Anglo, all covered with mud and scratches were sitting on a bench next to the Principal’s office.
“Can I help you?”, one of the older women asked.
“Eunice Anderson, here to see Assistant Principal Brown please.”
The boys on the bench and student aid looked up.
“I’ll let him know you’re here. You can wait on the bench next to his office.”, she pointed, “Over there.”
Eunice sat on the bench and looked at the floor, waiting. A few minutes later, a think Nigerian boy with glasses left the office, empty handed, without a word.
“Eunice, could you come in?”, Mr. Brown said, sticking his head out of his door. Mr. Brown was a light skinned black man in his late 30s. His usual responsibility was discipline and Eunice had seem him holding a struggling eighth grader in each arm to break up a fight.
“Please take a seat.”, Mr. Brown said. A clean cut man in a military uniform was also in the room in a chair that looked like it was usually reserved for parents of misbehaving students.
“Do you know why you’re here Eunice?”, Mr. Brown asked.
“No.”, Eunice replied.
“Do you remember filling out this survey at the start of the term?”
Eunice looked. The school always had everyone fill out endless forms at the start of each term. It looked like her writing, so she said yes.
Mr. Brown handed her the survey.
“Do you know why this survey was given, Eunice?”, Mr. Brown asked.
“Something tell me,”, Eunice said as she directed her eyes towards the man in uniform sitting in Mr. Brown’s office, “that I’d be wrong if I guessed that it was to help set the Cultural Sensitivity curriculum for the year.”
“You wouldn’t be wrong if you said that, Eunice, but no, that wasn’t the only purpose for the survey.”
Eunice’s mind raced. Was she under suspicion of terrorist activity, or what?
“Eunice, we did a special data analysis on that survey, and the other information that all new surveys provided on the first day of school. We looked at your residential address, your attitudes towards the country, and your knowledge of the Nigerian Muslim community. Do you know that out of twelve hundred students in this school that you are one of only four students who aren’t Nigerian Muslims who correctly answer three questions regarding the words of the daily calls to prayer? And, two of those students are here on a magnet program from central Denver, and the other one admitted to guessing.”
“So, I live in a Highlands Ranch ghetto and I’ve picked up a few words of the language’s my dad’s tenants speak. So what? That doesn’t make me a criminal.”
The man in the military uniform finally spoke up.
“No, it doesn’t. And, I’m not here to investigate you. I’m Cass Jackson, Naval Intelligence.”, he also had a Southern drawl. He stood up and extended his hand to Eunice. “My job is to identify terrorist cells that may be operating in Colorado within the Nigerian immigrant community. You’ve been identified as one of a handful of people in your area who would be well qualified to serve as an informant for the Colorado National Guard.”
“Whoa. You want me to be a spy and rat on my neighbors?”, Eunice responded.
“I’d prefer to say that we’re asking you if you’d be willing to serve your country, for suitable compensation, of course. You wouldn’t even have to leave your neighborhood.”, Cass Jackson replied.
“What kind of money are we talking here?”
“Let’s just say that we don’t pay minors anything less than we pay adults doing the same work.”, Mr. Jackson replied.
Eunice thought about that for just a second.
“Parental consent is, of course, required for you to do any kind of work at age fourteen, but it was more convenient for Mr. Jackson to meet with you and a few other possible recruits during the school day, all at once, so I scheduled the initial meeting here.”, Mr. Brown said.
“So what would I have to do?”, Eunice asked. “Would I have to carry a gun.”
“Oh no.”, Mr. Jackson replied. “All you’d have to do is file regular reports and to try to find out information. I’d meet with you from time to time to let you know what we’re looking for and to give you some tips, and then I’d give you a password and user identification for a certain network site that you’d submit your reports at from time to time.”
“O.K., I’ll do it. Well, I mean, I’ll talk to my parents about it. Do you have the forms?”
“Sure.” Mr. Jackson had apparently expected this response and handed her an envelope. You can drop the forms off with Mr. Brown any time through the end of next week.
“Thank you.”, Eunice said. “Are we done now?”
Mr. Brown and Mr. Jackson exchanged a glance.
“Yes, you’re done now. School is over in half an hour, so you don’t have to back to class. You can go to the library if you want. Mr. Brown took another pink slip off a pad on his desk and marked a box. And, Eunice. I’d appreciate it if you were discrete about this matter. If your classmates ask for an explanation, you can tell them that your enrollment paperwork wasn’t complete and that you had to get some more forms to fill out. That should suffice.”
“O.K.”, Eunice said and left. No one was on either of the benches when she left.
Eunice went to the library, pulled out the forms and read them. The disclosure form noted that she was at serious risk of death or serious injury, that this was a volunteer position, and that any violation of protocol could result in her being killed by American forces in order to protect national security. The pay schedule was $2,000 per monthly report and additional bonuses for useful information, all tax free under a special provision of the Internal Revenue Code adopted for the war on terrorism. All told, it was more than her mother made, if she could come up with even a few bits of useful information. She signed her name, and then her parents’ names in different handwriting, as she always did when the school asked for permission slips. She checked the box for payment monthly in cash to be picked up at the general delivery desk of the downtown Denver post office. Then, she lifted the protective plastic shield from a corner of the form and pressed her thumb into it so that the post office could compare the two before releasing the cash. Then, Eunice put the forms back in the envelope in her backpack and headed out to catch the bus home.
The next morning, Eunice left the envelope for Mr. Brown.
Chapter 4: September 11, 2030 The Remembrance Towers
Lily took a shuttle bus from her apartment complex to Market Street station and caught the 5:45 a.m. bus to Remembrance Towers. Most people took the elevator, but on Remembrance Day, September 11, for her first visit during her first year in Denver, she decided to take the pilgrim’s route. She was not the only one starting up the tower stairs at sunrise. A line of about two hundred people, mostly young, like her, but some who were old enough to remember September 11, 2001, waited to pass through security and make the climb on this free day for the observation deck. There were actually two lines, for the North and South towers respectively. She chose the South Tower, because it was usually a little less crowded. They her ticket read 6:32 a.m. when she started.
In addition to being physically demanding, climbing the 3703 stairs up 2,640 feet to the 160th story was haunting. Every step had three names inscribed on bricks near eye level, one for each person killed in the Invesco Field Massacre of 2009 when a crop duster pulling a sign had flown over the packed stands to drop its deadly cargo. The names of the tens of thousands were sickened by not killed filled the bricks of the plaza at the base of the towers. Most pilgrims took time to pause every once and a while to mediate at one or another brick. Many had little slips of paper printed out from a directory at the base with names of loved ones and a brick location on them. Lily was no exception. One of her father’s cousins, a coworker’s father, and the late wife of her high school science teacher, who had been a mentor for her before she dropped out of high school, had all died in the massacre. She had slips for each of them.
The long walk up the stairs was interrupted by windows providing an increasingly good view of the surrounding city, water fountains, an occasional bathroom, an informational signs every four or five stories. The first sign reminded Lily that the Remembrance Towers were the tallest buildings on Earth, far taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago, which was the tallest building in the United States after the Remembrance Towers, the Petronis Towers in Malaysia, or the Mao Building in Beijing, which, at 500 meters, was the tallest building in the world until the Remembrance Towers were built. Another sign informed pilgrims that the Towers were home to the digital signal broadcast towers for every television station in the metropolitan area and most of the radio and wireless communications towers.
Lines on the wall informed the climbers as they reached first 6000 feet above sea level, and then 7000 feet above sea level. The top was just over 8000 feet above sea level. Lily cried just a little to think that she was about as far from the sea as it was possible to be in the world, at least in the country where she was born, as each new line appeared.
Other signs traced the ownership of the Towers. Originally, Mile High Tower Corporation had set out, with lease commitments and investments from many of the largest businesses in Colorado, to build a single tower a mile high. The engineering didn’t work out and the plan was revised to build two half mile high towers. First United Bank and Trust Company provided the financing. Ground was broken two years to the day after the Massacre, and six years later, the first tenant moved in. Since then it had become one of the must see tourist destinations in Denver.
Sign after sign explained the engineering marvels involved. The titanium girder construction, the foundations dovetailed hundreds of feet into bedrock, aerodynamic features designed to minimize sway, features that made the building bend rather than break in the face of stress like flexible window mountings and composite cross beams, precision engineering necessary to prevent cumulative deviations from specifications from accumulating as the building rose ever higher, an evacuation plan involving aircraft from three neighboring airports instead of ladder trucks for the higher stories, miles of wire, tons of materials, unprecedented elevator designs and window cleaning robots designed specifically for the Towers.
The Towers had never made business sense, the signs reported. Skyscrapers were a product of high population density, poor transportation, and a need for businessmen to deal with each other face to face on short notice. In an age where everyone carried a phone, every business had videoconference capabilities, and documents where exchanged electronically it didn’t make sense. Denver also lacked the population density, and a system of one way streets and dedicated bus lanes in its inner city that made office to office travel faster that most major U.S. cities. The initial lease commitments kept Mile High Tower Corporation solvent for seven years, but when the time came to renew leases, fifteen years after the fervor for the project born in the Massacre had died down, economics won out. First United Bank and Trust foreclosed in the world’s largest every foreclosure action, and the Towers were put on the market.
President Powell, Colorado Governor Veiga, and City and County of Denver Mayor Romanoff formed the Remembrance Towers Authority and made a joint offer to buy the Towers at a fraction of the outstanding debt, partially in cash and partially in exchange for federal, state and city office buildings in the metropolitan area, which First United Bank and Trust accepted. For the past five years, the Towers had become the world’s largest government office building. Including the broad lower levels of the two towers, which were linked so that the two towers were actually a single building, it had more office space than the Pentagon.
But, Lily was nineteen years old and impatient. While she stopped at two bricks (the third was in the North tower), and read a few signs, she didn’t read every word and was quicker up the stairs than many of her companions. She was one of the first of the group that had been waiting in line to make the climb to arrive at the top observation deck at about nine o’clock. The record set in the Memorial Day stair race was just under 26 minutes to the top, but today, Lily was in no mood to race. She only had two bricks to stop at, neither from anyone particularly close, but that was enough to make the meaning sink in.
By then, the sun had risen. It was a clear day. The South and East sides of the South Tower gleamed in an almost blinding reflection. The wind rushed by making the flags at the corners of the Towers flutter in the wind. She could smell the thunderstorm that would arrive late that afternoon, although none of the other viewer would have known that without a weather map. Pikes Peak was visible far to the South. A few dozen yards to the North was the North Tower. To the West, the Rocky Mountains stood bare, with the last of the previous year’s snow melted away, and the new snow not yet fallen. She could see patches of black in the mountains where various wildfires had burned, some as recently as this summer. A computerized map named the fires, but Lily didn’t care to look. To the East, the City spread out in all its glory. The cluster of tall buildings in downtown Denver that housed the elite private corporations and law firms of the mountain states seemed small by comparison. The airplanes at Denver International Airport looked like tiny toys. The farm that had once been her father’s was too far away to see, even at eight thousand feet, but Lily could see the Front Range roll out before her past E-470, past the City of Aurora, past the urban growth boundary the state imposed around the time Lily was born.
The North Tower was dominated by communications antennas. But, the scene at the center of the South Tower was a chilling reminder of why the Towers were built, which she hadn’t considered when she decided which tower to climb. The turret in the middle of the South Tower, wrapped around another set of communications antennas, with its radar dish, huge telescope-like sights and anti-aircraft missile battery, was all business. The Army sergeant on duty clearly took his job very seriously. His eyes were glued to his monitors and sights, and he didn’t have a word to spare for the visitors. A couple of corporals, with automatic weapons shouldered, kept a wary eye on the visitors from behind their gated territory atop the building, while their superior kept his eyes on the sky. No neat little signs explained precisely what the capabilities of that turret were, but Lily didn’t doubt that they were capable of taking down even an errant jet fighter.
By nine-thirty, the heat of the summer sun on the black granite of the observation deck was getting uncomfortable. Lily set out across Faith Bridge, connecting the North and South observation decks, which was itself a marvel. From a distance, the transparent bridge made of glass fiber and plastics was invisible, although it could be lit like a neon sign if desired as it was on the 4th of July when The Towers were the launch site for the City’s fireworks. The surface texture and prism effects in the design minimized its reflectivity. The flooring and walls of the bridge were made of flexible and sheer glass fabric instead of a rigid material so that it could flex with the tower tops in the wind. The guard rails were curved outwards, so that they would stop you from falling, but weren’t convenient to hold. Many visitors simply couldn’t stomach the crossing, and either didn’t start, or retreated after a few steps. The 140 yards between the buildings was chosen to match the size of the football field that had once stood directly beneath this bridge. Lily took a deep breath and strode confidently across, breathing the fresh air, looking in all directions including down, and arriving at the other side. She took in the view of Boulder from the North side of the North Tower, found the stairs down, skipped the overpriced coffee shop and snack bar on the 158th floor, and walked down the North Tower. The signs were identical, so Lily ignored them, and the going was quicker on the way down than it was on the way up.
Lily walked down the steps, stopped by the brick for her teacher’s late wife for about ten minutes, sobbing and then contemplating it, and then continued to the bottom of the stairs and waited for the bus back to Market Street. The fountain was spraying from two directions in arches into the center of the fountain’s pool. Across the fountain from her, she saw a woman in a worn black dress and hat, crying, looking at the pool. She looked like she was praying or talking silently to herself, or maybe to the person she mourned for. She had probably lost her husband twenty-one years ago in the Massacre and never recovered emotionally. Lily felt a tear of her own just watching this woman.
In addition to being physically demanding, climbing the 3703 stairs up 2,640 feet to the 160th story was haunting. Every step had three names inscribed on bricks near eye level, one for each person killed in the Invesco Field Massacre of 2009 when a crop duster pulling a sign had flown over the packed stands to drop its deadly cargo. The names of the tens of thousands were sickened by not killed filled the bricks of the plaza at the base of the towers. Most pilgrims took time to pause every once and a while to mediate at one or another brick. Many had little slips of paper printed out from a directory at the base with names of loved ones and a brick location on them. Lily was no exception. One of her father’s cousins, a coworker’s father, and the late wife of her high school science teacher, who had been a mentor for her before she dropped out of high school, had all died in the massacre. She had slips for each of them.
The long walk up the stairs was interrupted by windows providing an increasingly good view of the surrounding city, water fountains, an occasional bathroom, an informational signs every four or five stories. The first sign reminded Lily that the Remembrance Towers were the tallest buildings on Earth, far taller than the Sears Tower in Chicago, which was the tallest building in the United States after the Remembrance Towers, the Petronis Towers in Malaysia, or the Mao Building in Beijing, which, at 500 meters, was the tallest building in the world until the Remembrance Towers were built. Another sign informed pilgrims that the Towers were home to the digital signal broadcast towers for every television station in the metropolitan area and most of the radio and wireless communications towers.
Lines on the wall informed the climbers as they reached first 6000 feet above sea level, and then 7000 feet above sea level. The top was just over 8000 feet above sea level. Lily cried just a little to think that she was about as far from the sea as it was possible to be in the world, at least in the country where she was born, as each new line appeared.
Other signs traced the ownership of the Towers. Originally, Mile High Tower Corporation had set out, with lease commitments and investments from many of the largest businesses in Colorado, to build a single tower a mile high. The engineering didn’t work out and the plan was revised to build two half mile high towers. First United Bank and Trust Company provided the financing. Ground was broken two years to the day after the Massacre, and six years later, the first tenant moved in. Since then it had become one of the must see tourist destinations in Denver.
Sign after sign explained the engineering marvels involved. The titanium girder construction, the foundations dovetailed hundreds of feet into bedrock, aerodynamic features designed to minimize sway, features that made the building bend rather than break in the face of stress like flexible window mountings and composite cross beams, precision engineering necessary to prevent cumulative deviations from specifications from accumulating as the building rose ever higher, an evacuation plan involving aircraft from three neighboring airports instead of ladder trucks for the higher stories, miles of wire, tons of materials, unprecedented elevator designs and window cleaning robots designed specifically for the Towers.
The Towers had never made business sense, the signs reported. Skyscrapers were a product of high population density, poor transportation, and a need for businessmen to deal with each other face to face on short notice. In an age where everyone carried a phone, every business had videoconference capabilities, and documents where exchanged electronically it didn’t make sense. Denver also lacked the population density, and a system of one way streets and dedicated bus lanes in its inner city that made office to office travel faster that most major U.S. cities. The initial lease commitments kept Mile High Tower Corporation solvent for seven years, but when the time came to renew leases, fifteen years after the fervor for the project born in the Massacre had died down, economics won out. First United Bank and Trust foreclosed in the world’s largest every foreclosure action, and the Towers were put on the market.
President Powell, Colorado Governor Veiga, and City and County of Denver Mayor Romanoff formed the Remembrance Towers Authority and made a joint offer to buy the Towers at a fraction of the outstanding debt, partially in cash and partially in exchange for federal, state and city office buildings in the metropolitan area, which First United Bank and Trust accepted. For the past five years, the Towers had become the world’s largest government office building. Including the broad lower levels of the two towers, which were linked so that the two towers were actually a single building, it had more office space than the Pentagon.
But, Lily was nineteen years old and impatient. While she stopped at two bricks (the third was in the North tower), and read a few signs, she didn’t read every word and was quicker up the stairs than many of her companions. She was one of the first of the group that had been waiting in line to make the climb to arrive at the top observation deck at about nine o’clock. The record set in the Memorial Day stair race was just under 26 minutes to the top, but today, Lily was in no mood to race. She only had two bricks to stop at, neither from anyone particularly close, but that was enough to make the meaning sink in.
By then, the sun had risen. It was a clear day. The South and East sides of the South Tower gleamed in an almost blinding reflection. The wind rushed by making the flags at the corners of the Towers flutter in the wind. She could smell the thunderstorm that would arrive late that afternoon, although none of the other viewer would have known that without a weather map. Pikes Peak was visible far to the South. A few dozen yards to the North was the North Tower. To the West, the Rocky Mountains stood bare, with the last of the previous year’s snow melted away, and the new snow not yet fallen. She could see patches of black in the mountains where various wildfires had burned, some as recently as this summer. A computerized map named the fires, but Lily didn’t care to look. To the East, the City spread out in all its glory. The cluster of tall buildings in downtown Denver that housed the elite private corporations and law firms of the mountain states seemed small by comparison. The airplanes at Denver International Airport looked like tiny toys. The farm that had once been her father’s was too far away to see, even at eight thousand feet, but Lily could see the Front Range roll out before her past E-470, past the City of Aurora, past the urban growth boundary the state imposed around the time Lily was born.
The North Tower was dominated by communications antennas. But, the scene at the center of the South Tower was a chilling reminder of why the Towers were built, which she hadn’t considered when she decided which tower to climb. The turret in the middle of the South Tower, wrapped around another set of communications antennas, with its radar dish, huge telescope-like sights and anti-aircraft missile battery, was all business. The Army sergeant on duty clearly took his job very seriously. His eyes were glued to his monitors and sights, and he didn’t have a word to spare for the visitors. A couple of corporals, with automatic weapons shouldered, kept a wary eye on the visitors from behind their gated territory atop the building, while their superior kept his eyes on the sky. No neat little signs explained precisely what the capabilities of that turret were, but Lily didn’t doubt that they were capable of taking down even an errant jet fighter.
By nine-thirty, the heat of the summer sun on the black granite of the observation deck was getting uncomfortable. Lily set out across Faith Bridge, connecting the North and South observation decks, which was itself a marvel. From a distance, the transparent bridge made of glass fiber and plastics was invisible, although it could be lit like a neon sign if desired as it was on the 4th of July when The Towers were the launch site for the City’s fireworks. The surface texture and prism effects in the design minimized its reflectivity. The flooring and walls of the bridge were made of flexible and sheer glass fabric instead of a rigid material so that it could flex with the tower tops in the wind. The guard rails were curved outwards, so that they would stop you from falling, but weren’t convenient to hold. Many visitors simply couldn’t stomach the crossing, and either didn’t start, or retreated after a few steps. The 140 yards between the buildings was chosen to match the size of the football field that had once stood directly beneath this bridge. Lily took a deep breath and strode confidently across, breathing the fresh air, looking in all directions including down, and arriving at the other side. She took in the view of Boulder from the North side of the North Tower, found the stairs down, skipped the overpriced coffee shop and snack bar on the 158th floor, and walked down the North Tower. The signs were identical, so Lily ignored them, and the going was quicker on the way down than it was on the way up.
Lily walked down the steps, stopped by the brick for her teacher’s late wife for about ten minutes, sobbing and then contemplating it, and then continued to the bottom of the stairs and waited for the bus back to Market Street. The fountain was spraying from two directions in arches into the center of the fountain’s pool. Across the fountain from her, she saw a woman in a worn black dress and hat, crying, looking at the pool. She looked like she was praying or talking silently to herself, or maybe to the person she mourned for. She had probably lost her husband twenty-one years ago in the Massacre and never recovered emotionally. Lily felt a tear of her own just watching this woman.
Coming Home
Duncan’s motorcycle rolled into Jerrica’s driveway at about nine o’clock at night. She got off, they kissed deeply, and she walked, backpack on her arm to the front door, awaiting the inevitable.
Her hair hung loose. She was wearing her camisole, with jeans, under a new brown leather jacket he’d bought her. New pearl earrings and a gold rope necklace with a pearl locket hanging from it (with a picture of Duncan and her in it) adorned her face. She had lipstick on and had painted her nails bright red that morning. Her jeans were only half zipped, revealing more of her stained white camisole.
Her father, drunk, was pulling the door open as she put her old fashioned metal key in the lock. Downtown, keys had been replaced with finger and eye scans, but this was unfashionable Highlands Ranch.
“You fucking whore!”, he roared.
“Must be true,” she said, “look at all the jewelry Duncan gave me.” She smiled with an artificially huge smile.
He slapped her, leaving a red mark on her cheek.
“You are grounded for the rest of the term, Miss. And, if you ever do this again, you are not welcome in my house.”
Before she could say another word, Eunice had both hands on Jerrica’s hips and was forcibly moving Jerrica up the stairs to her room.
“Are you drunk?”, Eunice ventured when the sisters had reached the top of the stairs, while continuing to push Jerrica into her room.
“Drunk with love.”, Jerrica replied.
“Or lust, more likely.”, Eunice answered.
Once in Jerrica’s room, Eunice closed the door behind them. Jerrica tossed her backpack on the bed and took off her boots and jeans. The jeans smelled musty, with discharge from Jerrica’s sexual encounter with Duncan that morning now dried in the crotch. Nothing but the camisole was under the jeans. The camisole smelled of the blend of Jerrica’s perspiration and his.
“He’s the one. I know it.”, Jerrica said.
“That will look good on cardboard when you’re begging on the corner after dad’s thrown you out and he’s dumped you.”
“Sex with him is so pure. It’s like dancing when all the barriers come down.”
“Not that you have any comparisons. . . Besides, what about diseases and stuff? You scarcely know this man.”
“Haven’t they updated your health books since last century? I’ve had all my teen shots: AIDS, syphilis, HPV, warts. And, I won’t get pregnant either. I got my c-plant at fifteen like most high school girls, and it’s good until I’m eighteen, unless I go to a doc to have it taken out.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I want to have Duncan’s children. O.K., not next month or anything, but I’m serious about him.”
“Just like everybody is with their first boyfriend? Love makes you stupid.”
“We’ve been going out most of the summer.”
“And now its fall and school’s back and things change.”
There was a gentle knock on the door. Eunice could see in the crack at the bottom of the door that it was mom. Eunice opened the door letting herself out as mom came in. A drunken howl wafted up from the living room.
“Jerrica, Jerrica, Jerrica, what are you doing? Throwing your life away, the way I did?”
“Mother, I’m in love. I though that you, of all people, would understand.”
“I understand what a hard life you have when you get too involved with an older man too young. And honestly, Jerrica; you know better than to bait your father the way you did. Show your father some respect, at least. Who is this man you ran away with really? It’s obvious what you did. Here you are standing in your own room in front of your own mother in a camisole that smells of him, and no underwear. You have to listen to your father. You are grounded, and if he catches you again with that man, he will kick you out of our house. Maybe we can save at least one of our girls. They always said girls were more difficult.”
Mom collapsed weeping in Jerrica’s bed. Ashamed, Jerrica held her.
“Mother, I don’t want to hurt you.” Jerrica pointedly didn’t extend this concession to her father. “Duncan is the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. We’re made for each other. We’re in tune. When I’m with him I feel so alive. If I have to move out of here and in with Duncan, I will. But, how many chances in your life do you have for real love? I don’t want to pass up the only chance I may ever get and end up living the rest of my life with a runner up.”
“You’re just barely sixteen.”, mom moaned, “Just the other day you were just my little girl.” Then mom sobbed some more and mother and daughter fell asleep holding each other in Jerrica’s bed.
* * * * * * *
“I’m home.”, Duncan said.
He took off his motorcycle boots in the hallway and tossed his things on the couch.
He heard a moan. He raced up the steps.
“Auntie? Are you O.K.?”, he asked loudly. He walked into her room.
Duncan’s aunt was sitting on the side of the bed. Her thin, white hair was flying everywhere. The room had that musty, old person’s smell. Some depressing music his aunt called grunge was playing on an ancient player, skipping over and over again, with the volume turned down low, but the player not actually turned off.
His aunt was trying to stand on the carpet, so faded that the original color could not be determined. Her ankle was trembling so violently that it made the unicorn tattoo on her ankle look almost alive. It had faded and wrinkled, giving it an otherworldly effect. Most people her age had tattoos removed, but she always said that she couldn’t afford it while she was raising Duncan. In any case, she defended this attachment to her youth.
“How long have you been in bed?”, Duncan asked.
“Not long, only since last night,” she said as the sun started to set in the window. He thought that one of the old person smells might be urine, no doubt trapped in an adult diaper which hadn’t been changed in a long time.
Her hair hung loose. She was wearing her camisole, with jeans, under a new brown leather jacket he’d bought her. New pearl earrings and a gold rope necklace with a pearl locket hanging from it (with a picture of Duncan and her in it) adorned her face. She had lipstick on and had painted her nails bright red that morning. Her jeans were only half zipped, revealing more of her stained white camisole.
Her father, drunk, was pulling the door open as she put her old fashioned metal key in the lock. Downtown, keys had been replaced with finger and eye scans, but this was unfashionable Highlands Ranch.
“You fucking whore!”, he roared.
“Must be true,” she said, “look at all the jewelry Duncan gave me.” She smiled with an artificially huge smile.
He slapped her, leaving a red mark on her cheek.
“You are grounded for the rest of the term, Miss. And, if you ever do this again, you are not welcome in my house.”
Before she could say another word, Eunice had both hands on Jerrica’s hips and was forcibly moving Jerrica up the stairs to her room.
“Are you drunk?”, Eunice ventured when the sisters had reached the top of the stairs, while continuing to push Jerrica into her room.
“Drunk with love.”, Jerrica replied.
“Or lust, more likely.”, Eunice answered.
Once in Jerrica’s room, Eunice closed the door behind them. Jerrica tossed her backpack on the bed and took off her boots and jeans. The jeans smelled musty, with discharge from Jerrica’s sexual encounter with Duncan that morning now dried in the crotch. Nothing but the camisole was under the jeans. The camisole smelled of the blend of Jerrica’s perspiration and his.
“He’s the one. I know it.”, Jerrica said.
“That will look good on cardboard when you’re begging on the corner after dad’s thrown you out and he’s dumped you.”
“Sex with him is so pure. It’s like dancing when all the barriers come down.”
“Not that you have any comparisons. . . Besides, what about diseases and stuff? You scarcely know this man.”
“Haven’t they updated your health books since last century? I’ve had all my teen shots: AIDS, syphilis, HPV, warts. And, I won’t get pregnant either. I got my c-plant at fifteen like most high school girls, and it’s good until I’m eighteen, unless I go to a doc to have it taken out.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I want to have Duncan’s children. O.K., not next month or anything, but I’m serious about him.”
“Just like everybody is with their first boyfriend? Love makes you stupid.”
“We’ve been going out most of the summer.”
“And now its fall and school’s back and things change.”
There was a gentle knock on the door. Eunice could see in the crack at the bottom of the door that it was mom. Eunice opened the door letting herself out as mom came in. A drunken howl wafted up from the living room.
“Jerrica, Jerrica, Jerrica, what are you doing? Throwing your life away, the way I did?”
“Mother, I’m in love. I though that you, of all people, would understand.”
“I understand what a hard life you have when you get too involved with an older man too young. And honestly, Jerrica; you know better than to bait your father the way you did. Show your father some respect, at least. Who is this man you ran away with really? It’s obvious what you did. Here you are standing in your own room in front of your own mother in a camisole that smells of him, and no underwear. You have to listen to your father. You are grounded, and if he catches you again with that man, he will kick you out of our house. Maybe we can save at least one of our girls. They always said girls were more difficult.”
Mom collapsed weeping in Jerrica’s bed. Ashamed, Jerrica held her.
“Mother, I don’t want to hurt you.” Jerrica pointedly didn’t extend this concession to her father. “Duncan is the best thing that’s ever happened to me in my entire life. We’re made for each other. We’re in tune. When I’m with him I feel so alive. If I have to move out of here and in with Duncan, I will. But, how many chances in your life do you have for real love? I don’t want to pass up the only chance I may ever get and end up living the rest of my life with a runner up.”
“You’re just barely sixteen.”, mom moaned, “Just the other day you were just my little girl.” Then mom sobbed some more and mother and daughter fell asleep holding each other in Jerrica’s bed.
* * * * * * *
“I’m home.”, Duncan said.
He took off his motorcycle boots in the hallway and tossed his things on the couch.
He heard a moan. He raced up the steps.
“Auntie? Are you O.K.?”, he asked loudly. He walked into her room.
Duncan’s aunt was sitting on the side of the bed. Her thin, white hair was flying everywhere. The room had that musty, old person’s smell. Some depressing music his aunt called grunge was playing on an ancient player, skipping over and over again, with the volume turned down low, but the player not actually turned off.
His aunt was trying to stand on the carpet, so faded that the original color could not be determined. Her ankle was trembling so violently that it made the unicorn tattoo on her ankle look almost alive. It had faded and wrinkled, giving it an otherworldly effect. Most people her age had tattoos removed, but she always said that she couldn’t afford it while she was raising Duncan. In any case, she defended this attachment to her youth.
“How long have you been in bed?”, Duncan asked.
“Not long, only since last night,” she said as the sun started to set in the window. He thought that one of the old person smells might be urine, no doubt trapped in an adult diaper which hadn’t been changed in a long time.
Chapter 3: September 3, 2030
A tall, bald man, with tattoos up and down his heavily muscled arm, a biker’s leather jacket, and a switch blade dangling from a chain on his belt appeared at the front desk of DeVeux Events. Instead of ringing the bell at the empty front counter, he called out:
“Hey, Mark! Get your sexy butt up here to the front. I’ve got a delivery.”
Mark DeVeux, signature bud behind his right ear, purchased that very morning at Clark Christ’s flower shop, accenting his undeniably Gallic face, in a frilled white shirt underneath his tailored waist coat emerges from the back room.
“Clark. What do we have there? All those roses? For me?”, Mark smiles, coy and dismissive, knowing better than to expect that from Clark.
“No, my love, this is for one of your girls. Seems the fella didn’t even know her name. I reckon its for your Lily though.”
“Lily! There’s a delivery for you.”, Mark calls out.
Clark Crist has already set about cutting the stems and arranging the two dozen roses in a vase.
Lily emerged from the back room still in her painting smock covered with gray watercolor. She was wearing overalls and a dirty old t-shirt. Joe Romero, a twenty-one year old Hispanic man who drove the shop’s truck and was the only other person in the shop at the time peeked out himself after her to see what the commotion was about.
“A military man by the name of Cass Jackson came into my shop this morning. My girl Fiona, who always did take after those clean cut types with Southern accents, was about to swoon over him. He said he spent all weekend trying to track down who did the gig at the Gubn’ers mansion last Friday ‘till he’d worked out it was DeVeux’s (pronouncing it dee vux instead of duh voh) outfit that done it. Said he saw this woman from there sculptin’ ice and it was love at first sight. He described her, and it was a dead on for your Lily, but I didn’t let on like I knew nothing. I just took his order and brought it over here. But, I reckon these are for you, my lady Lily.”
Clark handed Lily the overflowing vase and closed envelope.
“I can’t recall that I’ve ever had an admirer before.”, Lily intoned feigning an unimpressed tone.
“Open it!”, cried Mark, like a little kid at a birthday party.
Mark, Clark and Joe all looked on. Lily recalled the military man from the previous Friday who’d helped her lift her sculpture when Joe had gotten stuck in traffic. For a moment she held the letter to her breast as if the shame them for prying, then with a flourish, she said, “I never was one to keep secrets!”, opened the letter and read it aloud.
“My lady,” Lily read the letter in a manly and earnest voice with a bit of a drawl, having noted Clark’s description of the writer and her own memory of him. “Since I saw you last Friday, I have thought of nothing else but you. Your voice is music. Your form exquisite. Your hands, the very model of perfection. Call me a romantic, but I would curse myself for the rest of my life if I did not try to see you again. If you would be so kind as to see me again, you may contact me with the information on my card enclosed. Tell my secretary that you are the “Ice Lady”, and he will put you through directly to me immediately. I don’t even know your name. Your sincere admirer, Lieutenant Cass Jackson.”
Joe Romero had vanished from the room by the time Lily had finished.
Clark Crist ventured the remark, “I wish I had a man who would talk to me so sweet.”
Mark DeVeux showed more levity, and pronounced, “If I were you, I’d watch out for a man like that, he might end up a stalker. Well, enough fun. Back to work.”
Lily took the flowers to her work space in the back and set them next to her easel in the light of a window from the alleyway. She read the letter one more time, and then tucked it in her middle overall pocket under her smock and got back to work. Joe Romero wasn’t in the back either. But she did notice that the trash can by the back door was tipped over and had a dent in it. Lily had the distinct feeling that she had more than one admirer.
“Hey, Mark! Get your sexy butt up here to the front. I’ve got a delivery.”
Mark DeVeux, signature bud behind his right ear, purchased that very morning at Clark Christ’s flower shop, accenting his undeniably Gallic face, in a frilled white shirt underneath his tailored waist coat emerges from the back room.
“Clark. What do we have there? All those roses? For me?”, Mark smiles, coy and dismissive, knowing better than to expect that from Clark.
“No, my love, this is for one of your girls. Seems the fella didn’t even know her name. I reckon its for your Lily though.”
“Lily! There’s a delivery for you.”, Mark calls out.
Clark Crist has already set about cutting the stems and arranging the two dozen roses in a vase.
Lily emerged from the back room still in her painting smock covered with gray watercolor. She was wearing overalls and a dirty old t-shirt. Joe Romero, a twenty-one year old Hispanic man who drove the shop’s truck and was the only other person in the shop at the time peeked out himself after her to see what the commotion was about.
“A military man by the name of Cass Jackson came into my shop this morning. My girl Fiona, who always did take after those clean cut types with Southern accents, was about to swoon over him. He said he spent all weekend trying to track down who did the gig at the Gubn’ers mansion last Friday ‘till he’d worked out it was DeVeux’s (pronouncing it dee vux instead of duh voh) outfit that done it. Said he saw this woman from there sculptin’ ice and it was love at first sight. He described her, and it was a dead on for your Lily, but I didn’t let on like I knew nothing. I just took his order and brought it over here. But, I reckon these are for you, my lady Lily.”
Clark handed Lily the overflowing vase and closed envelope.
“I can’t recall that I’ve ever had an admirer before.”, Lily intoned feigning an unimpressed tone.
“Open it!”, cried Mark, like a little kid at a birthday party.
Mark, Clark and Joe all looked on. Lily recalled the military man from the previous Friday who’d helped her lift her sculpture when Joe had gotten stuck in traffic. For a moment she held the letter to her breast as if the shame them for prying, then with a flourish, she said, “I never was one to keep secrets!”, opened the letter and read it aloud.
“My lady,” Lily read the letter in a manly and earnest voice with a bit of a drawl, having noted Clark’s description of the writer and her own memory of him. “Since I saw you last Friday, I have thought of nothing else but you. Your voice is music. Your form exquisite. Your hands, the very model of perfection. Call me a romantic, but I would curse myself for the rest of my life if I did not try to see you again. If you would be so kind as to see me again, you may contact me with the information on my card enclosed. Tell my secretary that you are the “Ice Lady”, and he will put you through directly to me immediately. I don’t even know your name. Your sincere admirer, Lieutenant Cass Jackson.”
Joe Romero had vanished from the room by the time Lily had finished.
Clark Crist ventured the remark, “I wish I had a man who would talk to me so sweet.”
Mark DeVeux showed more levity, and pronounced, “If I were you, I’d watch out for a man like that, he might end up a stalker. Well, enough fun. Back to work.”
Lily took the flowers to her work space in the back and set them next to her easel in the light of a window from the alleyway. She read the letter one more time, and then tucked it in her middle overall pocket under her smock and got back to work. Joe Romero wasn’t in the back either. But she did notice that the trash can by the back door was tipped over and had a dent in it. Lily had the distinct feeling that she had more than one admirer.
Chapter 2: September 1, 2030
It started life as an ice cream truck. Now it was painted with red crescents and served a higher purpose. The call to prayer filled the cul de sacs on this Saturday morning. Young men playing soccer in a backyard let the ball lie and turned to face East on their knees. Finding the direction of Mecca was easy in Denver. You just turned away from the mountains. Women with dark black faces in long white dresses with colorful head scarves stopped drinking their iced tea at patio tables. They knelt in the front yard, toddlers in hand. Here and there an American or a Chinese immigrant would take a deep breath and quietly watch the spectacle. Younger outsiders who’d lived in the subdivision a while, like Eunice, who was sitting in the bay window, could distinguish which of the five daily prayers it was by now, although the actual words remained undecipherable. The old people who couldn’t afford to move out remained befuddled by the phenomena. It caught them unexpected every time. Here and there a dog barked. In the pauses, the highway over the hill hummed with morning traffic on this perfect crisp morning that was just starting to heat up. The hum harmonized with the rhythmic chant emanating from the van‘s speakers. In a few minutes the van fell silent and it was over. The young men resumed their game, a bit more studiously, while the women restarted their conversation by fits and starts. The bystanders went about their business. The sound of the highway and the dogs faded into the background.
Eunice went back to her book. Her mother’s Harry Potter books might be getting a little yellow, but anything that helped her keep her mind off the argument her parents had had last night when father had learned about Jerrica’s little holiday, was welcome.
A little later, the mail woman came. She was a veteran of one of the wars President Bush had fought in the Middle East. She wasn’t missing any arms or legs or fingers, but her face had the grim set of someone who’d braced against snipers and bombs and mortar launches one time too many. Eunice went to meet her. Their family always had the largest stack of mail in the neighborhood. Her father was a property manager, and with the start of a new month came new utility bills for each unit, rent checks from tenants were reliable enough not to require weekly visits in person, bills from maintenance subcontractors, and the usual run of business and personal junk mail. Eunice silently cursed the judge who had decided that unlike junk faxes, e-mails and phone calls, that there was a free speech right to send junk mail. The decision was the bane of everyone with a mailbox, but it was also credited with saving the postal system from extinction.
Three doors down, the mail woman dropped a fragile, single aerogramme and a supermarket flier into a box labeled, “George Muhammad”, one of five boxes near the front door. The central drop box was abandoned when more and more families started moving into each house. The aerogramme had an address neatly printed on the front in child like block letters, overwritten with a red Nigerian postmark. Inside, deep black expressive Arabic script written with fountain pen flowed across the page.
14 July 2030
God Is Great.
May the blessing of Allah protect you from all harm. The remittances you are sending are greatly appreciated. Your sister now has her own hut and a new washing machine. I have been able to bribe the local state dentist into approving a new pair of dentures for me. Your nephew is doing well at the American school in the city. His English sounds almost like the American soldiers who occupy our fair land. He has also memorized the part of the Koran known as “The Heifer” and won an award from his teacher for the best recitation in his class. It must be hard to make payments from your bankruptcy and still send money home as well. But, I don’t know how we would survive without you. It looks like this year may be another drought.
Your brother has been conscripted by the government. He is going along quietly so that he learn the enemy’s ways from the inside. The risks are terrible, however. Conscripts are being put on oil well duty without proper training. Seven conscripts from Kumo were killed in a refinery blast last week. One had visited our mosque as part of a music group after coming back from his Haj, just before he was conscripted.
Conah will tell you when it is time to take the next move.
Sleep well in God’s Hands.
Your father.
George touched his cigarette to the thin paper and lowered it into the ashtray next to his plastic seat on the front walk. The space did not deserve the name porch. He watched as the message from far, far away vanished into ashes. Security really did matter in cases like this. If a Naval intelligence officer found it, he might use it to figure out who Conah was, and to break all of the cells under Conah’s command. George wouldn’t live to see the next month if that happened.
George made his way to a coffee shop built in a garage a few doors down and plunked down a few dollars for small cup of thick coffee. He felt in the waist band of his trousers under his loose blue work shirt. The pistol was there, loaded, just in case. Then he reached down to the pocket of his muddy, cement spattered chinos. Inside was a scrap of paper with a phone number belonging to a man he knew only as Conah.
George picked up the copy of the Highland's Ranch Free Daily from the next table. He flipped through a few pages until he came to the headline: "Yucca Mountain Shipments To Continue Weekly Through 2032." He took a deep breath and then began to read the article carefully.
Eunice went back to her book. Her mother’s Harry Potter books might be getting a little yellow, but anything that helped her keep her mind off the argument her parents had had last night when father had learned about Jerrica’s little holiday, was welcome.
A little later, the mail woman came. She was a veteran of one of the wars President Bush had fought in the Middle East. She wasn’t missing any arms or legs or fingers, but her face had the grim set of someone who’d braced against snipers and bombs and mortar launches one time too many. Eunice went to meet her. Their family always had the largest stack of mail in the neighborhood. Her father was a property manager, and with the start of a new month came new utility bills for each unit, rent checks from tenants were reliable enough not to require weekly visits in person, bills from maintenance subcontractors, and the usual run of business and personal junk mail. Eunice silently cursed the judge who had decided that unlike junk faxes, e-mails and phone calls, that there was a free speech right to send junk mail. The decision was the bane of everyone with a mailbox, but it was also credited with saving the postal system from extinction.
Three doors down, the mail woman dropped a fragile, single aerogramme and a supermarket flier into a box labeled, “George Muhammad”, one of five boxes near the front door. The central drop box was abandoned when more and more families started moving into each house. The aerogramme had an address neatly printed on the front in child like block letters, overwritten with a red Nigerian postmark. Inside, deep black expressive Arabic script written with fountain pen flowed across the page.
14 July 2030
God Is Great.
May the blessing of Allah protect you from all harm. The remittances you are sending are greatly appreciated. Your sister now has her own hut and a new washing machine. I have been able to bribe the local state dentist into approving a new pair of dentures for me. Your nephew is doing well at the American school in the city. His English sounds almost like the American soldiers who occupy our fair land. He has also memorized the part of the Koran known as “The Heifer” and won an award from his teacher for the best recitation in his class. It must be hard to make payments from your bankruptcy and still send money home as well. But, I don’t know how we would survive without you. It looks like this year may be another drought.
Your brother has been conscripted by the government. He is going along quietly so that he learn the enemy’s ways from the inside. The risks are terrible, however. Conscripts are being put on oil well duty without proper training. Seven conscripts from Kumo were killed in a refinery blast last week. One had visited our mosque as part of a music group after coming back from his Haj, just before he was conscripted.
Conah will tell you when it is time to take the next move.
Sleep well in God’s Hands.
Your father.
George touched his cigarette to the thin paper and lowered it into the ashtray next to his plastic seat on the front walk. The space did not deserve the name porch. He watched as the message from far, far away vanished into ashes. Security really did matter in cases like this. If a Naval intelligence officer found it, he might use it to figure out who Conah was, and to break all of the cells under Conah’s command. George wouldn’t live to see the next month if that happened.
George made his way to a coffee shop built in a garage a few doors down and plunked down a few dollars for small cup of thick coffee. He felt in the waist band of his trousers under his loose blue work shirt. The pistol was there, loaded, just in case. Then he reached down to the pocket of his muddy, cement spattered chinos. Inside was a scrap of paper with a phone number belonging to a man he knew only as Conah.
George picked up the copy of the Highland's Ranch Free Daily from the next table. He flipped through a few pages until he came to the headline: "Yucca Mountain Shipments To Continue Weekly Through 2032." He took a deep breath and then began to read the article carefully.
Club Seam
Jerrica stumbled a little as she climbed down the steep steps into Leadville’s Club Seam in the dark. It looked like it was once the basement of Victorian house. Duncan caught her shoulders and steadied her. The beat coming from below made it clear that they’d come to the right place.
The Labor Day weekend crowd wasn’t large. It was the off season. Half the patrons looked to be ski bums, some in electric colored ski wear, others in jeans and shirts or blouses from retail day jobs. A few more were frumpy older women in stunning clothes designed to hide the fact that the women themselves were getting to old to go clubbing as they verged on turning forty. The rest looked like college students, having a last fling at the parent’s condos before returning to the grind. They looked more like the crowds Jerrica and Duncan were used to from Denver clubs. One man wore a romantic flowing black shirt that wouldn’t have looked out of place in 15th century Venice with ruby rings, and real silver accent threads to complement a neatly trimmed beat and moustashe, with loose, natural deer leather slacks and finely polished black shoes. A tall woman with long blond hair wore a nearly transparent blouse and skirt over a shimmer white satin bra and a taffeta slip. The diamonds and pearls resting on her shoulders around her neck piled all the way to her chin. Her huge platinum drop earings clinked against the pearls when she moved. Her silvery bracelets piled from her wrists almost to her elbows. Her diamond anklets glittered as the soft silver bells that hung from them tinkled. Her titanium cable belt glowed with a surreal whiteness, and the fat blue sapphire on her white gold belly button ring seized your attention from anything else about her because it was the only part of her that wasn’t white or silver.
Jerrica decided that this woman’s belly button had seized a bit too much of Duncan’s attention and stepped on his foot. His eyes shot back to her.
Despite the thin crowd, the music was alive with urban sophistication and verve. After a long day processing repair complaints in her dad’s office, followed by hours on a motorcycle driving from Highlands Ranch to the cabin Duncan had arranged for them in the mountains, followed by another hour and a half sitting as they shared a really gourmet dinner and enough fine wine to leave her without inhibitions, Jerrica was ready to move. She caught Duncan’s eyes, drew her view to the dance floor where two or three people were dancing. She stepped out onto it, leaving the rest of the world behind her.
Jerrica might be only a sixteen year old kid, but she had already been going to clubs with a fake ID since she was thirteen, and knew no fear. With a grace polished in long hours on an old carpet in their unfinished basement in front to music from her clock radio, Jerrica made the dance floor her own. She was oblivious to anyone and anything but the music, the lights, and Duncan. She danced for the joy of being free, away from her parents, away from her nosy younger sister, not confined in a chair or seat, free to move, free to express herself. The music propelled her to move and her body responded. Every move was defined, just as she wanted it to be, in perfect synch with the rhythm of the drum machines and the mood of the cords playing above it. Her face was absorbed and alive. Even the bar tender had a tough time keeping his eyes off of her, despite the fact that her clothes were nothing special and she wore no jewelry.
To his credit, Duncan kept up with her, not a rival to her hypnotic motion, but a worthy satellite in orbit about her. It was his dancing that had attracted Jerrica to him in the first place. He sensed where Jerrica was heading and went with it. His moves complimented her, although they were not quite as precise and were less dramatic. When the music turned slow, rather than resorting to the high school entwined shuffle that most couples favored, their slow, sensuous, intimate dancing was elaborate, revealing, and breathtakingly sexual without any touching that was visibly crude.
They had danced for more than an hour when they stopped for the first time, kissing and making their way to a table at the edge of the dance floor. Their skin now shimmered with sweat. Jerrica told him what she wanted to drink, just lemon water, and made her way to the ladies room. Duncan breathed deeply.
The Labor Day weekend crowd wasn’t large. It was the off season. Half the patrons looked to be ski bums, some in electric colored ski wear, others in jeans and shirts or blouses from retail day jobs. A few more were frumpy older women in stunning clothes designed to hide the fact that the women themselves were getting to old to go clubbing as they verged on turning forty. The rest looked like college students, having a last fling at the parent’s condos before returning to the grind. They looked more like the crowds Jerrica and Duncan were used to from Denver clubs. One man wore a romantic flowing black shirt that wouldn’t have looked out of place in 15th century Venice with ruby rings, and real silver accent threads to complement a neatly trimmed beat and moustashe, with loose, natural deer leather slacks and finely polished black shoes. A tall woman with long blond hair wore a nearly transparent blouse and skirt over a shimmer white satin bra and a taffeta slip. The diamonds and pearls resting on her shoulders around her neck piled all the way to her chin. Her huge platinum drop earings clinked against the pearls when she moved. Her silvery bracelets piled from her wrists almost to her elbows. Her diamond anklets glittered as the soft silver bells that hung from them tinkled. Her titanium cable belt glowed with a surreal whiteness, and the fat blue sapphire on her white gold belly button ring seized your attention from anything else about her because it was the only part of her that wasn’t white or silver.
Jerrica decided that this woman’s belly button had seized a bit too much of Duncan’s attention and stepped on his foot. His eyes shot back to her.
Despite the thin crowd, the music was alive with urban sophistication and verve. After a long day processing repair complaints in her dad’s office, followed by hours on a motorcycle driving from Highlands Ranch to the cabin Duncan had arranged for them in the mountains, followed by another hour and a half sitting as they shared a really gourmet dinner and enough fine wine to leave her without inhibitions, Jerrica was ready to move. She caught Duncan’s eyes, drew her view to the dance floor where two or three people were dancing. She stepped out onto it, leaving the rest of the world behind her.
Jerrica might be only a sixteen year old kid, but she had already been going to clubs with a fake ID since she was thirteen, and knew no fear. With a grace polished in long hours on an old carpet in their unfinished basement in front to music from her clock radio, Jerrica made the dance floor her own. She was oblivious to anyone and anything but the music, the lights, and Duncan. She danced for the joy of being free, away from her parents, away from her nosy younger sister, not confined in a chair or seat, free to move, free to express herself. The music propelled her to move and her body responded. Every move was defined, just as she wanted it to be, in perfect synch with the rhythm of the drum machines and the mood of the cords playing above it. Her face was absorbed and alive. Even the bar tender had a tough time keeping his eyes off of her, despite the fact that her clothes were nothing special and she wore no jewelry.
To his credit, Duncan kept up with her, not a rival to her hypnotic motion, but a worthy satellite in orbit about her. It was his dancing that had attracted Jerrica to him in the first place. He sensed where Jerrica was heading and went with it. His moves complimented her, although they were not quite as precise and were less dramatic. When the music turned slow, rather than resorting to the high school entwined shuffle that most couples favored, their slow, sensuous, intimate dancing was elaborate, revealing, and breathtakingly sexual without any touching that was visibly crude.
They had danced for more than an hour when they stopped for the first time, kissing and making their way to a table at the edge of the dance floor. Their skin now shimmered with sweat. Jerrica told him what she wanted to drink, just lemon water, and made her way to the ladies room. Duncan breathed deeply.
In the Mountains.
With the delay occasioned by taking the scenic route, Duncan and Jerrica reached the cabin in the woods at about eight. They dropped their bags, relieved themselves. Jerrica washed her face and took off her scarf, since the smoke had subsided a little her in the mountains. Duncan drove the last half hour into Leadville, driving more carefully than he had on the way to the cabin.
The waiter frowned, just a little, when they asked for a table for two. Jerrica’s makeup was too heavy, but didn’t hide the fact that she had just turned sixteen this summer. Duncan didn’t seem to notice. He ordered two vodka martinis, and then ordered dinner for her as well as for him. The fettuccini with crab sauce had been one of her top two choices anyway, so Jerrica decided to consider it empathy, instead of bossiness. He ordered a twelve ounce steak. They were too tired to say much after the long ride, and the martinis went surprisingly fast. Duncan ordered another round when the waiter finally came with water glasses. The second round went quickly as well. Jerrica was beginning to feel just a little drunk. Duncan started to relax. He casually stroked her calf under the table with his hand. They had done little but stare into each other’s eyes when dinner arrived.
It wasn’t as if either of them was a virgin, or, even that this was their first time. But, the sexual tension still filled the space between them. They’d been on several dates now, but each for an evening or for lunch, or once for a hike and breakfast. Their first time, her only time, had been a frenzied affair with Duncan in a bedroom at Duncan’s friend’s house, at 2 a.m. on the night they‘d first met, after a long night of intimate dancing at a Denver club.. But, they’d never had an entire long weekend, and had never met planning in advance to have sex (although neither of them had said so out loud even this time). Like most high school girls in the 2030s, she had an implant to prevent pregnancy and has been warned to use condoms. But, she didn’t use a condom the first time, and she didn’t bring any this time either. She was only here at all now because she’d chosen to leave without asking her father’s permission., knowing no one would be home when she left.
Duncan started talking when dinner arrived, loosened up by a couple of drinks. “You look great tonight. How’d you like to go dancing after we eat?”
“I’d love it.”, Jerrica said. “It’ll probably just be us and a bunch of old farts, but I’m not afraid to make a little bit of a show, are you?”
“No. When I’m dancing with you, the rest of the world goes away.”
Unlike so many men, Duncan actually could dance, and well. His sense of rhythm was impeccable and he paid attention to his partner, so that he was in synch with her. Jerrica, despite the fact that she was just sixteen, was electrifying. On the dance floor she was totally uninhabited and yet moved with so much definition that your eyes were drawn to her when you walked in the room. She lead and the rest of the dance floor followed. She moved with purpose and emotion. Despite her lack of experience, Duncan had discovered that Jerrica’s incredible abilities as a dancer translated well to the bedroom. She had a natural grace and a sense of her own body.
“One of these days,” he said, “I want to open my own motorcycle shop. Just motorcycles. Repairs, new bikes, used ones, the whole thing. Maybe even tours.”
“Do you think you could pull it off?”, Jerrica asked.
“Sure, why not? Mr. Salazar and Mr. Carrey did it, and they’re no smarter than I am. Hell, given half a chance Mr. Carrey would tell off every Nigerian who comes into the shop with a clunker that needs repairs and we’d lose half our business. I’d know better than the bite the hand that feeds me.”
Jerrica didn’t know. She’d been introduced once in passing to Mr. Salazar and had never even met Mr. Carrey. “Doesn’t it take a lot of money to open up a shop?”
“Not really.”, Duncan said, “Your employees rent their own tools, there are plenty of places in the suburbs where you can rent an old garage cheap, and I really know plenty of people who could send business my way, so I wouldn’t need to spend a lot on ads. Sure, I‘d need more money than I have now, to buy motorcycles and parts to sell, but it wouldn‘t be so much. I‘ll bet I could even get a loan for some of the cost.”
“That would be great.”, Jerrica said.
The waiter frowned, just a little, when they asked for a table for two. Jerrica’s makeup was too heavy, but didn’t hide the fact that she had just turned sixteen this summer. Duncan didn’t seem to notice. He ordered two vodka martinis, and then ordered dinner for her as well as for him. The fettuccini with crab sauce had been one of her top two choices anyway, so Jerrica decided to consider it empathy, instead of bossiness. He ordered a twelve ounce steak. They were too tired to say much after the long ride, and the martinis went surprisingly fast. Duncan ordered another round when the waiter finally came with water glasses. The second round went quickly as well. Jerrica was beginning to feel just a little drunk. Duncan started to relax. He casually stroked her calf under the table with his hand. They had done little but stare into each other’s eyes when dinner arrived.
It wasn’t as if either of them was a virgin, or, even that this was their first time. But, the sexual tension still filled the space between them. They’d been on several dates now, but each for an evening or for lunch, or once for a hike and breakfast. Their first time, her only time, had been a frenzied affair with Duncan in a bedroom at Duncan’s friend’s house, at 2 a.m. on the night they‘d first met, after a long night of intimate dancing at a Denver club.. But, they’d never had an entire long weekend, and had never met planning in advance to have sex (although neither of them had said so out loud even this time). Like most high school girls in the 2030s, she had an implant to prevent pregnancy and has been warned to use condoms. But, she didn’t use a condom the first time, and she didn’t bring any this time either. She was only here at all now because she’d chosen to leave without asking her father’s permission., knowing no one would be home when she left.
Duncan started talking when dinner arrived, loosened up by a couple of drinks. “You look great tonight. How’d you like to go dancing after we eat?”
“I’d love it.”, Jerrica said. “It’ll probably just be us and a bunch of old farts, but I’m not afraid to make a little bit of a show, are you?”
“No. When I’m dancing with you, the rest of the world goes away.”
Unlike so many men, Duncan actually could dance, and well. His sense of rhythm was impeccable and he paid attention to his partner, so that he was in synch with her. Jerrica, despite the fact that she was just sixteen, was electrifying. On the dance floor she was totally uninhabited and yet moved with so much definition that your eyes were drawn to her when you walked in the room. She lead and the rest of the dance floor followed. She moved with purpose and emotion. Despite her lack of experience, Duncan had discovered that Jerrica’s incredible abilities as a dancer translated well to the bedroom. She had a natural grace and a sense of her own body.
“One of these days,” he said, “I want to open my own motorcycle shop. Just motorcycles. Repairs, new bikes, used ones, the whole thing. Maybe even tours.”
“Do you think you could pull it off?”, Jerrica asked.
“Sure, why not? Mr. Salazar and Mr. Carrey did it, and they’re no smarter than I am. Hell, given half a chance Mr. Carrey would tell off every Nigerian who comes into the shop with a clunker that needs repairs and we’d lose half our business. I’d know better than the bite the hand that feeds me.”
Jerrica didn’t know. She’d been introduced once in passing to Mr. Salazar and had never even met Mr. Carrey. “Doesn’t it take a lot of money to open up a shop?”
“Not really.”, Duncan said, “Your employees rent their own tools, there are plenty of places in the suburbs where you can rent an old garage cheap, and I really know plenty of people who could send business my way, so I wouldn’t need to spend a lot on ads. Sure, I‘d need more money than I have now, to buy motorcycles and parts to sell, but it wouldn‘t be so much. I‘ll bet I could even get a loan for some of the cost.”
“That would be great.”, Jerrica said.
Home Front
At eight o’clock, Mom’s old hybrid drive Daewoo Hola sedan rolled into the driveway. It’s once fashionable puce exterior was thankfully hidden by the now fallen night. Normally, she worked four ten hour shifts a week and did chores on Friday. This week, she’d done a fifth shift, because a co-worker had had to go to a funeral, and the family needed the money. Dutifully, Eunice helped bring in the groceries from the car. The shadows beneath mom’s eyes were visible. The figure she’d had when she married had long since vanished. She looked like she was in her mid-forties, even though she was only thirty-three.
Eunice had already opened a couple of boxes and popped them in the quick heat before mom could start doing anything else. At fourteen, Eunice felt like an adult making dinner the for family, or at any rate the two of them. Dad reserved Fridays for beer and baseball with his old buddies, some from before he’d met mom, from the old neighborhood. The truth was that mom was probably better off with him drunk at someone else’s house. Dad was not a docile drunk. Jerrica, of course, was absent without leave. Eunice set the nook table for two, since it wasn’t worth using the dining room table for just the two of them. The quiche, as always, smelled wonderful. As an extra touch, Eunice took two crystal wine glasses from the one glass cabinet in the kitchen and poured her and her mother glasses of peach-strawberry nectar. She used the good stainless silver tableware as well.
Mom slumped into the seat in the nook facing in towards the kitchen. Mom smelled of strong antiseptic soap. She starred at the place where Jerrica would usually have brought up a chair and eaten herself and simply said “Where?”.
“She went out with a friend about five. She took a bag.”, Eunice said, as opaquely as she could manage.
“Who?”
“I didn’t see.”
“But, you know.”
“Duncan.”
Mom winced.
“Damn it. He’s twice her age.”
Eunice decided that silence was the best policy at the moment. Mentioning that mom had married dad when she was a pregnant seventeen year old and dad was thirty-seven was not the right thing to say right now.
“School starts Tuesday.”, mom said.
“Jerrica knows. She bought her books last week.” Eunice elected not to mention the lingerie her big sister purchased on the same trip without being asked.
Mom went to the liquor cabinet, took out the vodka, and filled her half empty cup of nectar with it. Euncie rolled her eyes. Mom responded by pouring about a shot’s worth into her glass too. Eunice hadn’t expected mom to do that, but didn’t complain.
Mom nursed her drink with one hand, and squeezed Eunice’s hand gently with the other. “Your growing up so fast yourself.”, mom said. Eunice smiled a little. She was fourteen, after all. Before Eunice could do anything more, mom said, “Go read. I know you want to, your books sitting in bay window.”, and took the dishes to the dishwasher. Eunice obeyed, adjourning to the window.
Half way up the stairs mom kneeled in from of the shrine she’d created with stained glass and trinkets and pictures on the landing. She prayed.
“Lord, I give you thanks that my daughter Eunice is well. Please lord, keep Jerrica and Jerry safe this night, and grant me the privilege to see tomorrow. In your name I pray. Amen.”
Mom went to sleep without brushing her teeth or going to the bathroom. Eunice didn’t know what to think. So she read her book until she fell asleep in the bay window.
Eunice had already opened a couple of boxes and popped them in the quick heat before mom could start doing anything else. At fourteen, Eunice felt like an adult making dinner the for family, or at any rate the two of them. Dad reserved Fridays for beer and baseball with his old buddies, some from before he’d met mom, from the old neighborhood. The truth was that mom was probably better off with him drunk at someone else’s house. Dad was not a docile drunk. Jerrica, of course, was absent without leave. Eunice set the nook table for two, since it wasn’t worth using the dining room table for just the two of them. The quiche, as always, smelled wonderful. As an extra touch, Eunice took two crystal wine glasses from the one glass cabinet in the kitchen and poured her and her mother glasses of peach-strawberry nectar. She used the good stainless silver tableware as well.
Mom slumped into the seat in the nook facing in towards the kitchen. Mom smelled of strong antiseptic soap. She starred at the place where Jerrica would usually have brought up a chair and eaten herself and simply said “Where?”.
“She went out with a friend about five. She took a bag.”, Eunice said, as opaquely as she could manage.
“Who?”
“I didn’t see.”
“But, you know.”
“Duncan.”
Mom winced.
“Damn it. He’s twice her age.”
Eunice decided that silence was the best policy at the moment. Mentioning that mom had married dad when she was a pregnant seventeen year old and dad was thirty-seven was not the right thing to say right now.
“School starts Tuesday.”, mom said.
“Jerrica knows. She bought her books last week.” Eunice elected not to mention the lingerie her big sister purchased on the same trip without being asked.
Mom went to the liquor cabinet, took out the vodka, and filled her half empty cup of nectar with it. Euncie rolled her eyes. Mom responded by pouring about a shot’s worth into her glass too. Eunice hadn’t expected mom to do that, but didn’t complain.
Mom nursed her drink with one hand, and squeezed Eunice’s hand gently with the other. “Your growing up so fast yourself.”, mom said. Eunice smiled a little. She was fourteen, after all. Before Eunice could do anything more, mom said, “Go read. I know you want to, your books sitting in bay window.”, and took the dishes to the dishwasher. Eunice obeyed, adjourning to the window.
Half way up the stairs mom kneeled in from of the shrine she’d created with stained glass and trinkets and pictures on the landing. She prayed.
“Lord, I give you thanks that my daughter Eunice is well. Please lord, keep Jerrica and Jerry safe this night, and grant me the privilege to see tomorrow. In your name I pray. Amen.”
Mom went to sleep without brushing her teeth or going to the bathroom. Eunice didn’t know what to think. So she read her book until she fell asleep in the bay window.
Foothill Aerie
Winston winced ever so slightly from the salt on his Margarita as his Buffalo steak seared itself to perfection on his 7th floor balcony barbeque. To his right, the city lights of Denver shown like a surreal light show. To his left, the sunset over the mountains as a moon tinged orange by the smoke from the forest fires hung overhead. Winston preferred not to look straight ahead into the string of dozens of condo towers along C-470 in the foothills, so he had put a fireproof tarp in a batique design over that view instead. He smiled at the woman two floors down making her own dinner and then took another sip from his drink.
When the 470 light rail loop initiative passed last fall, he’d been optimistic. When the general contractor he worked for asked for his bid in December, he’d worked twenty hour days until he was done. When his company won the subcontract to ship every single rail from the factory to the construction site came through this spring, he’d bought this place. Now, with the summer nearly over, the contract payments were coming in, the work was getting done on schedule, and the only item on the agenda was to find a partner and settle down. This job was scheduled to take twelve years, and there was enough profit in this deal for him to downsize in an orderly manner and retire when it was done.
Anyway, that was what Winston had thought this morning. Now, the picture had changed a little. First there was the call from his accountant, informing him that something didn’t seem quite right in the company books. By the afternoon, he was in his lawyer’s office. Before the day was over, he’d received a call from a specialist lawyer referred by his regular lawyer. Winston had made dinner anyway, but he was quivering with so much anger and fear he didn’t know if he’d be able to keep it down. Somebody was laundering money through his corporate accounts. And, superficially, it looked like him. Whatever was going on had international dimensions. But, Winston had no idea who it was. Most of the people at his main office had been there for at least four or five years. His last involvement with the drug trade had been a pot buy back in high school before it was legalized. His wasn’t part of any religious extremist group. Hell, he didn’t even go to church. He was patriotic. All of his trucks had American flags painted on them. He didn’t cheat on his taxes (well, not seriously anyway) or his bids. He wasn’t involved in gambling; he didn’t even know how to play anything but blackjack or the slots in a casino.
Coming home to a parcel in the mailroom downstairs looked like it would be his boost for the day. Opening the package on his kitchen table a few minutes later and finding a freshly severed cat paw, wrapped in plastic, in a U.S. Postal Service parcel box, postmarked from West Palm Beach, blew that theory. The picture of his cat, who had disappeared when he moved to his condo, sitting on Tuesdays Wall Street Journal, with a missing paw, sent a shiver down his spine.
The last time he was in Florida was for his commencement at Florida State University. He’d gone West and never looked back. The was years ago. His mom and dad were dead now, after they’d refused to evacuate their place on the Keys during Hurricane Herbert, and his sister lived in Boston.
After opening the parcel, he’d left everything where it was, had a long talk with his new specialist lawyer, locked the door, and shook it off in total hopelessness. He and the lawyer had agreed that going to the cops before he could find some evidence to clear himself of the money laundering that had been going on in his business accounts was walking into a trap. They’d agreed to hire a private investigator instead. He’d videotaped the evidence, called several trusted people to corroborate his story, and left everything in place without touching it until the P.I. arrived the next morning. Then, he’d made dinner as planned.
By the time Winston looked up from his reverie, he could smell something distinct from the haze. Damn, the Buffalo steak had burnt to a crisp. He turned off the gas to the BBQ, lifted the charred remains into a stainless steel waste bin placed there for the purpose, and went to grab a yogurt pack out of his fridge. Ten minutes late he’d collapsed on his bed, deep in sleep before nine o’clock.
When the 470 light rail loop initiative passed last fall, he’d been optimistic. When the general contractor he worked for asked for his bid in December, he’d worked twenty hour days until he was done. When his company won the subcontract to ship every single rail from the factory to the construction site came through this spring, he’d bought this place. Now, with the summer nearly over, the contract payments were coming in, the work was getting done on schedule, and the only item on the agenda was to find a partner and settle down. This job was scheduled to take twelve years, and there was enough profit in this deal for him to downsize in an orderly manner and retire when it was done.
Anyway, that was what Winston had thought this morning. Now, the picture had changed a little. First there was the call from his accountant, informing him that something didn’t seem quite right in the company books. By the afternoon, he was in his lawyer’s office. Before the day was over, he’d received a call from a specialist lawyer referred by his regular lawyer. Winston had made dinner anyway, but he was quivering with so much anger and fear he didn’t know if he’d be able to keep it down. Somebody was laundering money through his corporate accounts. And, superficially, it looked like him. Whatever was going on had international dimensions. But, Winston had no idea who it was. Most of the people at his main office had been there for at least four or five years. His last involvement with the drug trade had been a pot buy back in high school before it was legalized. His wasn’t part of any religious extremist group. Hell, he didn’t even go to church. He was patriotic. All of his trucks had American flags painted on them. He didn’t cheat on his taxes (well, not seriously anyway) or his bids. He wasn’t involved in gambling; he didn’t even know how to play anything but blackjack or the slots in a casino.
Coming home to a parcel in the mailroom downstairs looked like it would be his boost for the day. Opening the package on his kitchen table a few minutes later and finding a freshly severed cat paw, wrapped in plastic, in a U.S. Postal Service parcel box, postmarked from West Palm Beach, blew that theory. The picture of his cat, who had disappeared when he moved to his condo, sitting on Tuesdays Wall Street Journal, with a missing paw, sent a shiver down his spine.
The last time he was in Florida was for his commencement at Florida State University. He’d gone West and never looked back. The was years ago. His mom and dad were dead now, after they’d refused to evacuate their place on the Keys during Hurricane Herbert, and his sister lived in Boston.
After opening the parcel, he’d left everything where it was, had a long talk with his new specialist lawyer, locked the door, and shook it off in total hopelessness. He and the lawyer had agreed that going to the cops before he could find some evidence to clear himself of the money laundering that had been going on in his business accounts was walking into a trap. They’d agreed to hire a private investigator instead. He’d videotaped the evidence, called several trusted people to corroborate his story, and left everything in place without touching it until the P.I. arrived the next morning. Then, he’d made dinner as planned.
By the time Winston looked up from his reverie, he could smell something distinct from the haze. Damn, the Buffalo steak had burnt to a crisp. He turned off the gas to the BBQ, lifted the charred remains into a stainless steel waste bin placed there for the purpose, and went to grab a yogurt pack out of his fridge. Ten minutes late he’d collapsed on his bed, deep in sleep before nine o’clock.
Into the Fire
The haze from the forest fires burning in the mountains burned in Jerrica’s nose as she walked out the door. She wanted to pull a neck scarf to filter it from the bulging knapsack on her back, but she didn’t. She didn’t want to risk having everything she’d brought for the weekend, including a little teddy bear and some slinky lingerie, fall out in front of the neighbors. Not that getting on the back of his motorcycle on a Friday at five o’clock didn’t tell the whole story anyway. Duncan hit the electric horn again, as he saw Jerrica pause on the front step half looking over her shoulder for no apparent reason. Great, now anyone who hadn’t been looking knew what she was up to. They would gossip.
Her sister had told her a hundred times how stupid she was to ride on it with Duncan without a helmet. If Eunice called her an organ donor one more time, she’d send her to the hospital. But, Duncan had a point. There was nothing else that made you feel so alive, so close to nature. Duncan’s green machine was nothing like the “Hog” her father had ridden when he was her age. You couldn’t hear the electric motor over the wind. The fuel cell that powered it left no smoke belching in its wake (not that anyone would notice today). Once the magnetic levitation suspension kicked in on the road, the seat actually hovered over the frame and wheels, so it was a smooth ride.
Jerrica hurried across the dirt patch that was generously called her lawn and got on. She wrapped her arms around Duncan and leaned forward. He took off without a word. The green machine raced out of her cul de sac and down the twisting suburban lanes of Highlands Ranch towards highway C-470. Jerrica’s dyed black, shoulder blade length hair flew out behind her. She could smell the cigarette smoke and oil on Duncan’s jacket from the repair shop.
Dried up swimming pools, abandoned play houses, wide streets, and brick subdivision fences attested to the middle class residents Jerrica’s neighborhood had once held. Now, Highlands Ranch was a ghetto. There wasn’t a block without at least one boarded up house. Every subdivision had houses converted into bars, peep shows, pawn shops, and improvised African restaurants. Half the houses that were left were jammed with three, four or five African families. In her neighborhood they were mostly Nigerian Yorubas renting from Mexican-American slumlords. The other half of the people left were there because they were too old and too poor to move. They owned their homes free and clear, but their pensions had dried in up in market crash that hit ten years ago when the baby boomers retired. Everyone’s grass had died when drought restrictions became permanent when she was a little kid. Duncan, who was eight years her senior and now had moved in with his grandmother in Denver, told her he could remember when the last green lawns, which had been the only redeeming feature of the neighborhood, had died.
Jerrica’s family was an exception. Her family had moved her five years ago and had an entire house to themselves. They didn’t own it, but it came with her father’s job as property manager for about eighty houses in the neighborhood. She sometimes accompanied him as he went out to fix a broken toilet, replace a melamine closet door, or collect rent from some of the 342 families that lived in those eighty houses. This summer, she was on the payroll answering phones in their home office with calls from tenants, contractors, and the landlord. It wasn’t a great job, but it put a roof over their heads, and combined with mom’s job as a CNA at a nursing home, it paid the bills.
Duncan weaved through the rush hour traffic on C-470. Once they cleared Highlands Ranch and started passing the towering condominiums of the foothills, she relaxed at little. She was free for the weekend.
Their progress didn’t last long. Duncan stopped the motorcycle with the rest of the frozen traffic and hit a couple of buttons. A green image hovering in the air above the handle bars showed why traffic was stopped. Three miles ahead, security had closed the road for the latest trainload of radioactive waste bound for Yucca Mountain to pass. It would be blocked for at least an hour.
“Do you mind if we take the scenic route?“, Duncan asked, as he pointed at the next exit on the projection map hanging in the air.
“O.K.”, Jerrica said, having no options of her own to offer.
Duncan put on his sunglasses and started weaving again. In five minutes, they were off C-470 and on a back road to the mountains. A few cars followed, but now there was no real traffic. Duncan flipped on the headlights so they could see through the forest fire haze that still hung in the air, even though the late summer evening had an hour or two before night fell. An orange moon already hung in the air above the receding sun.
Her sister had told her a hundred times how stupid she was to ride on it with Duncan without a helmet. If Eunice called her an organ donor one more time, she’d send her to the hospital. But, Duncan had a point. There was nothing else that made you feel so alive, so close to nature. Duncan’s green machine was nothing like the “Hog” her father had ridden when he was her age. You couldn’t hear the electric motor over the wind. The fuel cell that powered it left no smoke belching in its wake (not that anyone would notice today). Once the magnetic levitation suspension kicked in on the road, the seat actually hovered over the frame and wheels, so it was a smooth ride.
Jerrica hurried across the dirt patch that was generously called her lawn and got on. She wrapped her arms around Duncan and leaned forward. He took off without a word. The green machine raced out of her cul de sac and down the twisting suburban lanes of Highlands Ranch towards highway C-470. Jerrica’s dyed black, shoulder blade length hair flew out behind her. She could smell the cigarette smoke and oil on Duncan’s jacket from the repair shop.
Dried up swimming pools, abandoned play houses, wide streets, and brick subdivision fences attested to the middle class residents Jerrica’s neighborhood had once held. Now, Highlands Ranch was a ghetto. There wasn’t a block without at least one boarded up house. Every subdivision had houses converted into bars, peep shows, pawn shops, and improvised African restaurants. Half the houses that were left were jammed with three, four or five African families. In her neighborhood they were mostly Nigerian Yorubas renting from Mexican-American slumlords. The other half of the people left were there because they were too old and too poor to move. They owned their homes free and clear, but their pensions had dried in up in market crash that hit ten years ago when the baby boomers retired. Everyone’s grass had died when drought restrictions became permanent when she was a little kid. Duncan, who was eight years her senior and now had moved in with his grandmother in Denver, told her he could remember when the last green lawns, which had been the only redeeming feature of the neighborhood, had died.
Jerrica’s family was an exception. Her family had moved her five years ago and had an entire house to themselves. They didn’t own it, but it came with her father’s job as property manager for about eighty houses in the neighborhood. She sometimes accompanied him as he went out to fix a broken toilet, replace a melamine closet door, or collect rent from some of the 342 families that lived in those eighty houses. This summer, she was on the payroll answering phones in their home office with calls from tenants, contractors, and the landlord. It wasn’t a great job, but it put a roof over their heads, and combined with mom’s job as a CNA at a nursing home, it paid the bills.
Duncan weaved through the rush hour traffic on C-470. Once they cleared Highlands Ranch and started passing the towering condominiums of the foothills, she relaxed at little. She was free for the weekend.
Their progress didn’t last long. Duncan stopped the motorcycle with the rest of the frozen traffic and hit a couple of buttons. A green image hovering in the air above the handle bars showed why traffic was stopped. Three miles ahead, security had closed the road for the latest trainload of radioactive waste bound for Yucca Mountain to pass. It would be blocked for at least an hour.
“Do you mind if we take the scenic route?“, Duncan asked, as he pointed at the next exit on the projection map hanging in the air.
“O.K.”, Jerrica said, having no options of her own to offer.
Duncan put on his sunglasses and started weaving again. In five minutes, they were off C-470 and on a back road to the mountains. A few cars followed, but now there was no real traffic. Duncan flipped on the headlights so they could see through the forest fire haze that still hung in the air, even though the late summer evening had an hour or two before night fell. An orange moon already hung in the air above the receding sun.
Chapter 1: August 31, 2030. A Military Ball.
Lily’s job was almost the final step in the preparations. The shrimp, the vegetable trays, meatballs, dumplings and gouda were all in their places on the banquet table at the Governor’s mansion. Pots of chocolate sat at the corners of the room surrounded by strawberries and toothpicks, waiting for the burners underneath them to be ignited. Every windowsill was adorned with a small cup of Columbines and African violets. Streamers festooned with flags dangled from the ceiling like a spider’s web. A cello case, two violin cases, and a viola case were opened next to their respective chairs with music already spread across each stand.
It was only three o’clock, but the sun looked ready to set in the haze from the fires in the mountains. The orange glow, reflected through the crystal waiting to accept fine wines at the bar cast an odd gleam through the ball room. All the windows were closed and taped to keep out the smell. Peach incense smoldered from the center piece of every coffee table in the room to disguise any haze that had made its way in. Drought notwithstanding, the gardens from the wrought iron fence to the grand entrance were absolutely dazzling. In half an hour, the Governor, the Adjunct General of the Colorado National Guard, the Ambassador to the United States from Nigeria, military attaches, senior advisors, and a few dozen notables, most from Colorado, but a few of national stature, would fill the room. Lily wasn’t sure exactly why these people were having a ball, but the seating charts her boss, Mark DeVeux, had stayed up all night working out with the Adjunct General’s wife made it clear that this was an important occasion. The jogger with an ear phone in just one ear who had been circling around the block for the past half hour, and the pure white car parked on her side of Eighth Avenue were a testament to the fact that security was not being taken for granted here either.
Lily’s work awaited her on a folding table sitting atop an eight by eight foot velour towel. Now, it was just a block of ice encased in Styrofoam cooler. In forty-five minutes, it would be her master piece. Lily pulled her sketch out of her portfolio and starred at it one more time for about five minutes. Then, she took her chisel and her hammer in her hands, lifted the cooler off the ice block and starred at the ice, circling it, sizing it up, looking deep into its swirls and crevases. She took a damp white cloth out of a bowl of cool water and gently swabbed all the frost away so her view was not obscured. She struck a tuning fork on the side of the table and then gently applied it to the surface, listening intently, at several places. By now, Lily’s mind was racing, totally absorbed. She hummed a voiceless tune. She breathed on the block a particular points as she again circled the block, first one way and then the next. She raised her chisel, lifted her hammer, blew one more breath, breathed in, winked and struck the block of ice.
From that moment forward Lily’s actions were deliberate and trancelike. She was not frenzied. She looked, raised her chisel, and struck it. Look and strike and pause. Look and strike and pause. It had a rhythm. As she worked, she whistled her otherworldly melody, not in any scale familiar to the Western ear. Occasionally, she stopped, damped her white cloth in the cool water, lifted the cloth delicately out of the bowl, and lovingly applied it to the sculpture that was forming, wiping away debris and looking carefully at the inner makeup of the ice. Lily didn’t even glance at her sketch once she began. Sand in an hour glass she’d set up on the corner of the table continued to flow, her only link, it seemed, to the real world. The faces of each of the guests of honor, with their escorts in the background, slowly emerged. She didn’t even notice that the door had been opened, or the tall, wirey man in uniform utterly transfixed as he watched her work. Her form as he viewed her from just inside the doorway was tiny, and her face looked so pure and young she could be a child, but her mastery was undisputable. Every strike of the chisel decisively, indeed almost miraculously, advanced the sculpture as a whole, rendering it all in simple, sketch-like lines. In a distant corner, with only a few minutes left in the hour glass, she carved a perfect rendition of her own face in just a handful of strikes and as the last sand fell through the gap she kissed this image of herself, raised the cloth one last time to clear away her lipstick, took a deep breath, and stepped back. The man in uniform applauded with a sound that filled the empty ball room.
“What are you doing here?”, Lily asked crossly, “The doors aren’t supposed to open for ten more minutes?”
“My apologizies, ma’am, I’m the military attache for the Adjunct General. One of my jobs is to make a final security check before he attends public functions. You can’t be too careful these days, especially at an event like this one. In any case, I’ve never seen mastery like your in my life. To watch you work is to watch magic unfold.”
Lily sucked in a quick breath, felt a look of consternation and annoyance come over her face, and then forced herself to blush, although it was hard to see on her olive skin.
“Well, my assistant seems to be running late, so maybe you can help me.”, Lily said.
“How can I be of service ma’am?”, the attache asked, his eyes a little glazed.
“Do you see the empty pedestal front of the hearth? I want you to help me lift this there. But, you must only touch it in exactly where tell you. You need tp match my speed and level exactly. It may look solid, but it is really more fragile than glass.”
The man came forward towards the sculpture. Lily took one of his hands and then the other in her own, gently, but firmly placing his fingers exactly where she wanted them and indicating in exactly which direction he would lift when the time came. She, then placed her hands on the sculpture, as casually as if she was lifting a sack of potatoes, counted to three, and they brought the sculpture to its resting place. Together, they lowered it.
“Don’t move your hands again until I move them for you. I know you’re almost numb by now, but this is a very delicate moment.”, Lily said, and then finger by finger removed his hands with her own. “Please stand back.”, she said. He did.
Lily strode back towards her table, picked up a spray bottle, opened the cap, sprayed it once or twice on her hand, and then directed four or five delicate mists from the bottle at the sculpture. “Good enough.”, she said. “Thank you for your help.”
“Cass Jackson, United States Navy, at your service, ma’am.”, he said. The insignia on his uniform identified him as a junior officer, but he had no idea if this woman could read that code.
She extended her hand to shake his firmly.
“I imagine you have some work left to do now that I’ve distracted you.”, she said with a wink in her voice.
“Yes, ma’am.”, Cass said, and headed towards the hallway. It wasn’t until he was walking out the back door that he realized he’d taken a wrong turn.
By the time Mr. Jackson returned to the hall, three minutes before the doors where scheduled to open at five minutes before the hour, there wasn’t a trace of Lily, her table, or her tools. But, Cass Jackson spent at least another half a minute starring deeply into the glimmer in the eyes of the tiny, but perfect face of Lily Matsunaka tucked away just behind his own image, standing back far enough that his breath couldn’t reach the surreally perfect sculpture hewn of ice. As he turned away from the sculpture to open the door, Mr. Jackson gently rubbed the back of his hands, where her hand had touched his. They almost tingled.
It was only three o’clock, but the sun looked ready to set in the haze from the fires in the mountains. The orange glow, reflected through the crystal waiting to accept fine wines at the bar cast an odd gleam through the ball room. All the windows were closed and taped to keep out the smell. Peach incense smoldered from the center piece of every coffee table in the room to disguise any haze that had made its way in. Drought notwithstanding, the gardens from the wrought iron fence to the grand entrance were absolutely dazzling. In half an hour, the Governor, the Adjunct General of the Colorado National Guard, the Ambassador to the United States from Nigeria, military attaches, senior advisors, and a few dozen notables, most from Colorado, but a few of national stature, would fill the room. Lily wasn’t sure exactly why these people were having a ball, but the seating charts her boss, Mark DeVeux, had stayed up all night working out with the Adjunct General’s wife made it clear that this was an important occasion. The jogger with an ear phone in just one ear who had been circling around the block for the past half hour, and the pure white car parked on her side of Eighth Avenue were a testament to the fact that security was not being taken for granted here either.
Lily’s work awaited her on a folding table sitting atop an eight by eight foot velour towel. Now, it was just a block of ice encased in Styrofoam cooler. In forty-five minutes, it would be her master piece. Lily pulled her sketch out of her portfolio and starred at it one more time for about five minutes. Then, she took her chisel and her hammer in her hands, lifted the cooler off the ice block and starred at the ice, circling it, sizing it up, looking deep into its swirls and crevases. She took a damp white cloth out of a bowl of cool water and gently swabbed all the frost away so her view was not obscured. She struck a tuning fork on the side of the table and then gently applied it to the surface, listening intently, at several places. By now, Lily’s mind was racing, totally absorbed. She hummed a voiceless tune. She breathed on the block a particular points as she again circled the block, first one way and then the next. She raised her chisel, lifted her hammer, blew one more breath, breathed in, winked and struck the block of ice.
From that moment forward Lily’s actions were deliberate and trancelike. She was not frenzied. She looked, raised her chisel, and struck it. Look and strike and pause. Look and strike and pause. It had a rhythm. As she worked, she whistled her otherworldly melody, not in any scale familiar to the Western ear. Occasionally, she stopped, damped her white cloth in the cool water, lifted the cloth delicately out of the bowl, and lovingly applied it to the sculpture that was forming, wiping away debris and looking carefully at the inner makeup of the ice. Lily didn’t even glance at her sketch once she began. Sand in an hour glass she’d set up on the corner of the table continued to flow, her only link, it seemed, to the real world. The faces of each of the guests of honor, with their escorts in the background, slowly emerged. She didn’t even notice that the door had been opened, or the tall, wirey man in uniform utterly transfixed as he watched her work. Her form as he viewed her from just inside the doorway was tiny, and her face looked so pure and young she could be a child, but her mastery was undisputable. Every strike of the chisel decisively, indeed almost miraculously, advanced the sculpture as a whole, rendering it all in simple, sketch-like lines. In a distant corner, with only a few minutes left in the hour glass, she carved a perfect rendition of her own face in just a handful of strikes and as the last sand fell through the gap she kissed this image of herself, raised the cloth one last time to clear away her lipstick, took a deep breath, and stepped back. The man in uniform applauded with a sound that filled the empty ball room.
“What are you doing here?”, Lily asked crossly, “The doors aren’t supposed to open for ten more minutes?”
“My apologizies, ma’am, I’m the military attache for the Adjunct General. One of my jobs is to make a final security check before he attends public functions. You can’t be too careful these days, especially at an event like this one. In any case, I’ve never seen mastery like your in my life. To watch you work is to watch magic unfold.”
Lily sucked in a quick breath, felt a look of consternation and annoyance come over her face, and then forced herself to blush, although it was hard to see on her olive skin.
“Well, my assistant seems to be running late, so maybe you can help me.”, Lily said.
“How can I be of service ma’am?”, the attache asked, his eyes a little glazed.
“Do you see the empty pedestal front of the hearth? I want you to help me lift this there. But, you must only touch it in exactly where tell you. You need tp match my speed and level exactly. It may look solid, but it is really more fragile than glass.”
The man came forward towards the sculpture. Lily took one of his hands and then the other in her own, gently, but firmly placing his fingers exactly where she wanted them and indicating in exactly which direction he would lift when the time came. She, then placed her hands on the sculpture, as casually as if she was lifting a sack of potatoes, counted to three, and they brought the sculpture to its resting place. Together, they lowered it.
“Don’t move your hands again until I move them for you. I know you’re almost numb by now, but this is a very delicate moment.”, Lily said, and then finger by finger removed his hands with her own. “Please stand back.”, she said. He did.
Lily strode back towards her table, picked up a spray bottle, opened the cap, sprayed it once or twice on her hand, and then directed four or five delicate mists from the bottle at the sculpture. “Good enough.”, she said. “Thank you for your help.”
“Cass Jackson, United States Navy, at your service, ma’am.”, he said. The insignia on his uniform identified him as a junior officer, but he had no idea if this woman could read that code.
She extended her hand to shake his firmly.
“I imagine you have some work left to do now that I’ve distracted you.”, she said with a wink in her voice.
“Yes, ma’am.”, Cass said, and headed towards the hallway. It wasn’t until he was walking out the back door that he realized he’d taken a wrong turn.
By the time Mr. Jackson returned to the hall, three minutes before the doors where scheduled to open at five minutes before the hour, there wasn’t a trace of Lily, her table, or her tools. But, Cass Jackson spent at least another half a minute starring deeply into the glimmer in the eyes of the tiny, but perfect face of Lily Matsunaka tucked away just behind his own image, standing back far enough that his breath couldn’t reach the surreally perfect sculpture hewn of ice. As he turned away from the sculpture to open the door, Mr. Jackson gently rubbed the back of his hands, where her hand had touched his. They almost tingled.
May 8, 2025
“Nuture does matter.”, Ashley West said. “Look at my next appointment, Lily Matsunaka. She’s more trouble than any other 6th grade girl in the entire district. She’s not proficient on most of her achievement tests. She’s always in fights. She steals. Is it a coincidence that she doesn’t come from a Christian family with a mother and father at home with her? I don’t think so.”
“You have a point,” said Mr. Jones, the assistant principal. He was also the football coach. He had had his eyes on Ashley West for some time.
Mr. Jones then walked out of Ms. West’s office through the waiting room for the guidance counselor’s suite, not even noting that Lily Matsunaka was quietly sitting right there. Mr. Jones has also long ago forgotten that it was he who had referred Lily to this appointment after Lily’s most recent fight. A sheltered boy who still believed in Santa Claus had turned to fists when Lily had insisted that there was no such thing.
Almost ten minutes later, several phone calls to parents and the county department of social services later, the time for Lily’s appointment came and Ms. West stuck her head out the door and asked Lily to come in.
“Lily, do you know why you’re here?”, Ms. West asked.
“No. Denny hit me and they sent me to the shrink. What’s up with that?”, Lily said.
“Do I need to remind you that this is not the first time you’ve gotten into a fight at this school?”, Ms. West asked.
“So?”
“Is there anyone else in your class who gets into fights several times a month?”
“So, it’s my fault that I get picked on?”
“Maybe you need to take some personal responsibility for what’s been happening and look at ways to deal with situations more constructively.”
“Why can’t the kids who get into fights with me take more responsibility instead?”
“Did it ever occur to you, Lily, that some people don’t appreciate being taunted?”
“Some kids deserve it.”
“You need to learn to say something nice or say nothing at all.”
“That’s what the Germans did when they started carting off the Jews. That’s what Americans did when they carted off my great-grandfather Matsunaka to Colorado. Silence is death and I won’t do it.”, Lily said, letting anger slip into her voice.
“It isn’t as simple as that Lily.”, Ms. West answered.
“No it’s not, is it. The Jews and the Japanese, they weren’t from good Christian families, just like I’m not from a good Christian family. In your book it’s all about nurture. They were rotten and so they deserved it. Thanks a lot Ms. West. I don’t want your help. I hate people like you.”, Lily said, and stormed out of Ms. West’s office.
Ms. West started to reach to call the principal’s office, but she stopped herself.
“I’m a counselor, not a cop.”, she thought to herself. “My job is to turn kids around, not to drag them down when no real harm was done.” Ms. West took her hand away from the activation button.
Lily spent the rest of the 6th grade working at her farm, and roaming the fields and canals of Washington County, Colorado. Ms. West and Mr. Jones discussed it, and decided not to make a truancy report. The daily attendance reports came into the office of Mr. Jones, and he simply “didn’t find the time” to follow up on them. Lily’s grades for the year were miserable, of course. But next year she was someone else’s problem.
Neither Ms. West, nor Mr. Jones knew what to think when their cars each overheated for want of coolant, the week after school was over.
“You have a point,” said Mr. Jones, the assistant principal. He was also the football coach. He had had his eyes on Ashley West for some time.
Mr. Jones then walked out of Ms. West’s office through the waiting room for the guidance counselor’s suite, not even noting that Lily Matsunaka was quietly sitting right there. Mr. Jones has also long ago forgotten that it was he who had referred Lily to this appointment after Lily’s most recent fight. A sheltered boy who still believed in Santa Claus had turned to fists when Lily had insisted that there was no such thing.
Almost ten minutes later, several phone calls to parents and the county department of social services later, the time for Lily’s appointment came and Ms. West stuck her head out the door and asked Lily to come in.
“Lily, do you know why you’re here?”, Ms. West asked.
“No. Denny hit me and they sent me to the shrink. What’s up with that?”, Lily said.
“Do I need to remind you that this is not the first time you’ve gotten into a fight at this school?”, Ms. West asked.
“So?”
“Is there anyone else in your class who gets into fights several times a month?”
“So, it’s my fault that I get picked on?”
“Maybe you need to take some personal responsibility for what’s been happening and look at ways to deal with situations more constructively.”
“Why can’t the kids who get into fights with me take more responsibility instead?”
“Did it ever occur to you, Lily, that some people don’t appreciate being taunted?”
“Some kids deserve it.”
“You need to learn to say something nice or say nothing at all.”
“That’s what the Germans did when they started carting off the Jews. That’s what Americans did when they carted off my great-grandfather Matsunaka to Colorado. Silence is death and I won’t do it.”, Lily said, letting anger slip into her voice.
“It isn’t as simple as that Lily.”, Ms. West answered.
“No it’s not, is it. The Jews and the Japanese, they weren’t from good Christian families, just like I’m not from a good Christian family. In your book it’s all about nurture. They were rotten and so they deserved it. Thanks a lot Ms. West. I don’t want your help. I hate people like you.”, Lily said, and stormed out of Ms. West’s office.
Ms. West started to reach to call the principal’s office, but she stopped herself.
“I’m a counselor, not a cop.”, she thought to herself. “My job is to turn kids around, not to drag them down when no real harm was done.” Ms. West took her hand away from the activation button.
Lily spent the rest of the 6th grade working at her farm, and roaming the fields and canals of Washington County, Colorado. Ms. West and Mr. Jones discussed it, and decided not to make a truancy report. The daily attendance reports came into the office of Mr. Jones, and he simply “didn’t find the time” to follow up on them. Lily’s grades for the year were miserable, of course. But next year she was someone else’s problem.
Neither Ms. West, nor Mr. Jones knew what to think when their cars each overheated for want of coolant, the week after school was over.
Preface
Lily Matsunaka’s mother had made their home was a place of fountains, pools, chimes and hanging beads and gauze. Her fashions were as flamboyant as her profession, listed proudly each year on the family tax forms and in a yellow pages ad as “Water Witch.” Her words were so deeply poetic that it took years to understand the full measure of what she was really saying when she spoke. She had gone West from the Bajou and married a man her own parents never really understood.
Death at the hands of a drunk driver, on a lonely country road, on the way home from a day’s work, however, is as mundane as any death. But, that is how it happened to her mother, when Lily was only eleven. Lily’s father was devastated. The fact that the driver had no insurance and was driving a stolen car only added insult to injury. As Lily grew up, her father was blinded by grief, and overwhelmed by trying to keep the farm going in the face of continuing drought and dwindling credit and subsidies, while taking on full responsibility for his daughter. He never really noticed the way Lily was growing into her mother’s shoes and becoming a woman. Lily hadn’t been old enough to receive any formal training from her mother. But, she shared her mother’s affinity for carefully observing nature. Sometimes as she’d walk across a lonely field, and follow a dried stream bed until it broke out into an uncharted spring miles later, singing to the birds as she walked.
Lily didn’t fit in well in her small rural high school. She got into fights. Her grades floundered as she found herself incapable of concentrating on homework. She would stay up all night and sleep through class. The principal called her father more than once. Her father didn’t know what to say. That last year, the tractor broke down and there was no money to fix it, so the crop that it would have helped harvest didn’t come. Lily’s father cancelled their health insurance and the insurance on the house, so that they could afford groceries. One of the teachers at the school, who’d been a friend for Lily through it all, left to care for an aging parent in California. Her father had sworn off alcohol after the drunk driver struck, but he took up heavy smoking. The dog her father had had since before Lily was born, who had been his constant companion since Lily’s mother’s death, was diagnosed with leukemia. He attended three funerals that year with Lily, one for each of Lily’s maternal grandparents, and one for his father. All of Lily’s grandparents had already been in poor health and died of natural causes, but together it was too much. A windstorm damaged the roof to the house and there was no insurance money to fix it with this time. Her father swallowed his dignity and applied for food stamps, just to make ends meet. Their pickup was burning through oil and showed every sign that it was ready to die any day. Her father took Lily in the pickup, drove her to Denver and dropped her off with his mother, then drove away. That night on the news, Lily and her grandmother saw his pickup hurling over a cliff in the mountains, caught live by a nature videographer. For a long time, Lily was just frozen. The private funeral, held at the Buddhist Temple across the street from her grandmother’s apartment in Sakura Square, seemed so other worldly that Lily didn’t really believe it had happened at all.
Lily’s grandmother was too frail to drive to the farm on dirt roads, so a couple months later, Lily got a ride with a neighbor to Akron to settle up her father’s affairs. She talked with her father’s accountant, and a lawyer from Sterling. The numbers spoke for themselves. She may have been only sixteen, but it didn’t take someone who’d been raised on the farm all her life long to see that her father’s debts were many times what the farm and all the equipment on it was worth. Almost everything was mortgaged. She took the things she could fit in the back of the neighbor’s pickup, drove back to Denver with him, where he kindly helped her unload it into a storage facility down the road from her grandmother’s apartment, and left her father’s affairs to his creditors. The lawyer had explained that she wasn’t liable for anything, and that she had a right to “exempt property” worth more than everything her father hadn’t mortgaged, so she just took what should could and left the rest behind. Lily’s grandmother tried to persuade her to go back to school, but after what Lily had been through, at home and at school, she flatly refused. She took a job with a florist in Sterling for a few years, living in a rented room in someone’s basement and spending her weekends getting to know the water witches who had known her mother. Every one of them said her mother had a talent that none of them could dream of matching. Not one extended herself to Lily.
When everyone she cared about had left Akron for cities across the nation after graduating from high school, Lily got restless. She bought a bus ticket to Denver. She looked for work in Denver for several days, saw a help wanted sign in a catering shop in the Golden Triangle, and walked in. The proprietor was busy teaching an ice sculpting class, so she watched. When the time came for her interview, she said she wanted to be an ice sculptor. He was reluctant, as she was clearly young and couldn’t claim any experience, but she begged him. He let her make one attempt as an audition for the part so that she could see why he couldn‘t hire her. It wasn’t perfect, but when she admitted that it was her first time, he could see that she had a natural talent. He hired her on the spot and even gave her an advance so she could find an apartment. The next day she moved into an apartment across Cherry Creek from her job. A month later, she bought herself a motorcycle.
Death at the hands of a drunk driver, on a lonely country road, on the way home from a day’s work, however, is as mundane as any death. But, that is how it happened to her mother, when Lily was only eleven. Lily’s father was devastated. The fact that the driver had no insurance and was driving a stolen car only added insult to injury. As Lily grew up, her father was blinded by grief, and overwhelmed by trying to keep the farm going in the face of continuing drought and dwindling credit and subsidies, while taking on full responsibility for his daughter. He never really noticed the way Lily was growing into her mother’s shoes and becoming a woman. Lily hadn’t been old enough to receive any formal training from her mother. But, she shared her mother’s affinity for carefully observing nature. Sometimes as she’d walk across a lonely field, and follow a dried stream bed until it broke out into an uncharted spring miles later, singing to the birds as she walked.
Lily didn’t fit in well in her small rural high school. She got into fights. Her grades floundered as she found herself incapable of concentrating on homework. She would stay up all night and sleep through class. The principal called her father more than once. Her father didn’t know what to say. That last year, the tractor broke down and there was no money to fix it, so the crop that it would have helped harvest didn’t come. Lily’s father cancelled their health insurance and the insurance on the house, so that they could afford groceries. One of the teachers at the school, who’d been a friend for Lily through it all, left to care for an aging parent in California. Her father had sworn off alcohol after the drunk driver struck, but he took up heavy smoking. The dog her father had had since before Lily was born, who had been his constant companion since Lily’s mother’s death, was diagnosed with leukemia. He attended three funerals that year with Lily, one for each of Lily’s maternal grandparents, and one for his father. All of Lily’s grandparents had already been in poor health and died of natural causes, but together it was too much. A windstorm damaged the roof to the house and there was no insurance money to fix it with this time. Her father swallowed his dignity and applied for food stamps, just to make ends meet. Their pickup was burning through oil and showed every sign that it was ready to die any day. Her father took Lily in the pickup, drove her to Denver and dropped her off with his mother, then drove away. That night on the news, Lily and her grandmother saw his pickup hurling over a cliff in the mountains, caught live by a nature videographer. For a long time, Lily was just frozen. The private funeral, held at the Buddhist Temple across the street from her grandmother’s apartment in Sakura Square, seemed so other worldly that Lily didn’t really believe it had happened at all.
Lily’s grandmother was too frail to drive to the farm on dirt roads, so a couple months later, Lily got a ride with a neighbor to Akron to settle up her father’s affairs. She talked with her father’s accountant, and a lawyer from Sterling. The numbers spoke for themselves. She may have been only sixteen, but it didn’t take someone who’d been raised on the farm all her life long to see that her father’s debts were many times what the farm and all the equipment on it was worth. Almost everything was mortgaged. She took the things she could fit in the back of the neighbor’s pickup, drove back to Denver with him, where he kindly helped her unload it into a storage facility down the road from her grandmother’s apartment, and left her father’s affairs to his creditors. The lawyer had explained that she wasn’t liable for anything, and that she had a right to “exempt property” worth more than everything her father hadn’t mortgaged, so she just took what should could and left the rest behind. Lily’s grandmother tried to persuade her to go back to school, but after what Lily had been through, at home and at school, she flatly refused. She took a job with a florist in Sterling for a few years, living in a rented room in someone’s basement and spending her weekends getting to know the water witches who had known her mother. Every one of them said her mother had a talent that none of them could dream of matching. Not one extended herself to Lily.
When everyone she cared about had left Akron for cities across the nation after graduating from high school, Lily got restless. She bought a bus ticket to Denver. She looked for work in Denver for several days, saw a help wanted sign in a catering shop in the Golden Triangle, and walked in. The proprietor was busy teaching an ice sculpting class, so she watched. When the time came for her interview, she said she wanted to be an ice sculptor. He was reluctant, as she was clearly young and couldn’t claim any experience, but she begged him. He let her make one attempt as an audition for the part so that she could see why he couldn‘t hire her. It wasn’t perfect, but when she admitted that it was her first time, he could see that she had a natural talent. He hired her on the spot and even gave her an advance so she could find an apartment. The next day she moved into an apartment across Cherry Creek from her job. A month later, she bought herself a motorcycle.
Tuesday, August 09, 2005
Welcome to Wash Park Poet
This blog is a companion blog to Wash Park Prophet with the same author. It will not actually be primarily devoted to poetry. Instead, this is the future home of a serial novel in the science fiction genre. The author claims full copyright protection for each post as of the date shown. Please contact the author to obtain permission to use this material in any other place.
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