“That doesn’t mean that someone else couldn’t,” Andrew says.
“Your great-grandmomma is correct, you can’t change the future,” Marcus says.
Sarah insists, “You cannot change the future.”
“I just agreed with you,” Marcus says.
“You did?” Sarah says. She hugs Marcus. “Your great-grandpapa is so clever.”
“Great-grandpapa is brilliant,” Andrew says. “That’s obvious. But we haven’t agreed that you can’t change the future.”
Marcus says, “Well as for seeing it, you’ve heard my proof. I can know the future, see it if you will, because I know how fast the baseball will travel, where it will land. Now for being able to change the future, once the baseball is hit—”
“What if there’s a sudden gust of wind, or a bird flies into the path of the baseball,” says Andrew.
“Excellent thinking,” Marcus says. “You do have a scientific mind. Of course the facts I gave you, that I know the mass of the baseball, the mass of the bat, and the acceleration of the bat at the time it hits the baseball, are just a few variables among many. I’d have to know, and could know, every source of mass, which is the same as energy, that affects the flight of the baseball, so I can see where it will land.”
“Even if you could know wind speeds, their directions, the humidity, the flight paths of birds and insects and their mass, you still couldn’t see the future – where the ball will travel to –because you don’t take into account human consciousness,” Andrew says.
Marcus considers this, and then says to Andrew, “Consciousness isn’t relevant to this problem because it lacks momentum that could alter the flight of the ball.”
“Suppose,” says Andrew, “that when you hit the baseball, you’re standing on home plate and I’m standing on the first base line holding a high-pressure water gun. If I aim well and pull the trigger at the right moment after you hit the ball, the blast of water will knock the baseball you’ve just hit off course. I could choose to do that or I could choose not to do that. So you wouldn’t be able to see where the ball would land because you can’t read my mind and because I wouldn’t make up my mind – whether or not to pull the trigger – until after you hit the baseball. Determinism isn’t relevant if consciousness is involved.”
“That’s right,” Sarah says. “Only The Creator or a shaman can see the future.”
Marcus says to Andrew, “You asked me what I meant when I said we can see the future. I offered proof. What you’ve done is confuse physical reality with consciousness, argued cogently, for which you are to be commended, that consciousness trumps determinism, if you will. But it doesn’t, you see, because—”
“I meant no disrespect, Great-grandpapa,” Andrew says. “I’m just saying that it wasn’t necessary to use differential equations to see what I saw on Europa.”
“Let’s use logic,” Marcus says. “You saw the future or you didn’t. If you didn’t see the future, we don’t have a problem—”
“But since we can’t know,” Andrew says, “we do have a problem. A huge problem.”
Marcus says, “We agree that the past can’t be changed. If you could change the past, you could negate your own existence. Because the past cannot be changed that the future can’t be changed. It’s because the past causes the future. You’ve heard of the butterfly effect?”
“I’ve heard of it,” Andrew says. “I’m not sure I understand it. It’s discussed in the book you gave me.”
“The classic example,” Marcus says, “is that of a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil, causing a tornado in Texas. It’s an ancient idea. Small changes can have enormous consequences.”
“I understand that,” Andrew says. “Because a nail was lost a horseshoe was lost, so the horse was lost, the rider was lost, the battle was lost, and eventually the kingdom was lost.”
“That’s good,” Sarah says.
Marcus says, “So suppose that when you were circling Jupiter you saw a tornado in Texas in the future. And you wanted to stop it. What would be the easiest way to do that?”
“Stop the butterfly from flapping its wings in Brazil, but I can’t do that because it happened in the past,” Andrew says.
“Exactly,” Marcus says. “If you saw the future, then something has already happened to this man, this van Keet, that will cause him to harm your momma. Changing that would be more complicated than stopping the butterfly from flapping its wings in Brazil, assuming you could even find the exact butterfly that caused the tornado. What happens to a person that would allow them to do what you believe this man is going to do to your momma? He was abused in his youth? Maybe he was raped. Whatever it is, it’s already happened. We can’t change that,” Marcus says.
Sarah and Andrew are silent. Eagle flaps his great wings and flies away.
Marcus says, “But don’t worry, you haven’t seen the future.”
“But suppose he has,” Sarah says. “We’ve agreed he can’t change it.”
“What should I do?” Andrew says. “If I kill van Keet now, he won’t rape momma. But I’d never know if he was going to do it. So I’d never know if I killed an innocent man. How could I live with that?”
“It’s not your fault that you’ve seen the future; it’s not your fault that you cannot change it,” Sarah says. “You will know this is about to happen when you see the bowl filled with diamonds. When that happens, come directly to me. We’ll be here for another week, then we’ll be at home.”
Andrew is silent, grief-stricken, afraid. “Then what?” Andrew says. “Then what do we do?”
Marcus says. “If you have seen the future, come to your great-grandmomma. She’ll know what to do.”
“The first thing we’ll do . . .,” Sarah says—
But Andrew, who has sunk into sorrowful contemplation, is no longer listening.
Perihelion
Georges pilots his silver Tesla – its cabin with concert hall acoustics; its motor as silent as a predator lying in wait; its motor emitting zero hydrocarbons; its seventeen-inch, high-definition, interactive display providing fingertip or voice-recognition access to the car’s controls and amenities; its eight-channel sound system, 3-D navigation, up-to-the-minute weather forecasts, and its web browser everything you’d expect to find in a twenty-first-century worthy successor to Colonel Gabriel Verus’s mid-twentieth century Cadillac with spaceship fins, a machine that would have made its namesake, Nicola Tesla proud – to the far end of the parking lot of the Sunshine Sanatorium, a psychiatric hospital in South Miami, a sprawling ranch-style structure tucked in to and encircled by vast curtilage of walkways, fountains and benches, tropical shrubs, and beds of flowering bushes: lavender azaleas and trumpet flowers; blood-orange flowering quince; single, double, and triple hibiscuses, red and white; magnolia stellar stars; and roses. Three yellow-clay walkways radiate at sixty-degree angles from the hospital entrance through the gardens to the parking lot. Red, pink, and white floribundas climb coved trellises that arch over the walkways. Hybrid T bushes with a show of ubiquitous blooms, the colors of the roses climbing the trellises, grow uniformly in manicured beds planted between the clay walkways. The landscaping of modern mental asylums: indistinguishable from the landscaping of multimillion-dollar mansions.
“Do you think you could park any farther?” Aurora says.
After a five-week stay, Hailey will be discharged today. It’s awkward: Georges hasn’t seen, hasn’t spoken to, hasn’t heard from Hailey for twenty-five years. Hailey knows that he’s coming, says she’s looking forward to seeing him, but that’s not why he’s here. He’s not here for her. He’s here for Aurora because she asked him to be here.
So what’s the cause of Aurora’s sour mood? Worry that it will be stressful for Hailey to see him? But he’s the bearer of good news, and Aurora wants him to deliver it in person. At Aurora’s behest, he persuaded a federal judge to reverse the asset-seizure order he signed the day Al was indicted. Everything that belonged to Hailey, her ho
me, her bed and all her other furniture, every bank account, securities account, everything except her clothing and her 2006 Buick LaÇrosse was seized by the government. Now everything she’d owned, she owns again.
He drops Aurora off at the entrance and drives back to the far end of the parking lot, finding a spot in the shade of a fig tree, parking as far as possible from the other cars. He worries that a careless driver or passenger will bang a door into his new car.
He has about a half mile walk from his parking spot back to the hospital entrance, but he doesn’t mind. Sunshine sparkles on every reflective surface, not a cloud to be seen. Soon, however, his clothes are damp; sweat drips freely from every pore as he trudges his way through eighty-nine degree, soupy South Florida air, swatting at mosquitos and sand flies without escaping their relentless dive bombs and bites. He covers his mouth and nose with his handkerchief.
Entering the building, his immediate sensation is brain freeze. It’s colder than a morgue in Antarctica, stainless-steel sterile with an odor of ether. What’s more, the décor evokes a sensation of immersion in white death, as if he were in a reception area waiting to be admitted to heaven. Every surface is painted white: doors, doorframes, window frames, walls, and cottage-cheese ceilings. The doctor, nurse, and orderly uniforms are all white. The receptionist is dressed in a white blouse, skirt, and cap. Even the carts used to deliver meals and medications are white. Everything is antiseptic white from which, like death, there can be no escape.
Dressing exquisitely at previously unthinkable expense is a new experience for Georges, who’s been inspired by the elegant attire of his partner, Hank Smythe-Russell. Georges extra income, really an obscene amount that came with his recent elevation to the uppermost echelon of his law firm’s partnership, generously contributes to his clothing allowance. His reward for moving to Miami to manage the firm’s South Florida office. It was an easy decision. Living on the east coast, he’s closer to Dante, a freshman at Duke. And now that Georges’s mother has passed, he needs to be closer to his father, who lives in an adult-care facility in Coral Gables.
Aurora, who exalts fashion over substance, teases him, telling him he’s upgraded his wardrobe to garner her attention and praise. And that it worked. But that’s not it. It’s just a phase. It’s fun. Though he doesn’t miss the Jeep or his Brooks Brothers suits.
Because he worked only a half day, did not have a client meeting or court appearance, he’s dressed south-Florida business casual: no tie, open collar, a tropical ensemble of white linen slacks and a white-and-sky-blue-striped linen sport coat over a white raw-silk shirt, an outfit, like most of his clothing, that was hand tailored for him. His shoes are deep-blue leather by Giorgio Armani with white thick-rubber soles.
Aurora is also dressed down, wearing a Saks Fifth Avenue off-the-rack white silk crepe de chine sleeveless dress that falls to four or five inches above her knees. Her Prada clutch is a metallic deep-blue that matches her two-toned Prada leather point-toe pumps, also metallic deep-blue and white.
During the drive to the sanatorium, Aurora was laconic while George chattered about Hailey. Over the past twenty-five years he hasn’t said much to Aurora or anyone else about Hailey, and now his curiosity is unbridled. Was she happy before she was told about Al’s crimes? Did she know about them? Did she have a good marriage? Was her high school English teaching career fulfilling? Had she ever asked about him? How had she handled her father’s death? Was she still a humanitarian, or did she become a political troglodyte like her father? And speaking of her father, how had he gotten along with Al?
As he walks with Aurora under the fluorescent-lit broad corridor toward Hailey’s room, he resumes asking about her. Was she involved in charity work? What will she do with her regained fortune?
“Is she fat?” he asks.
Suddenly, he realizes that he’s talking to himself and that Aurora is no longer walking beside him. Perplexed, he turns around and sees her stopped in the hallway several yards behind him, looking at him with irritation, ignoring the traffic of hospital workers passing her in both directions.
“What?” he says, walking back toward her. What was the last thing he said that she heard? “Did you leave something in the car? Want me to get it?”
She says softly but with menace, “Georges Bohem, how can someone as brilliant as you be so clueless about women?”
“After she moved out, Beatrice said in therapy that I was clueless. It hurts.”
“Did she give you an example?” Aurora says.
“Eventually, I figured it out. She was Molly Bloom, having an affair, openly. Everyone else saw it. Eventually, even Leopold Bloom saw it, but during our marriage, I never did. She might as well have cuckolded me in our own bed. Who knows? Maybe she did.”
Aurora’s expression softens. “You have a right to believe in your spouse’s fidelity. Trusting her, you weren’t clueless; she was cruel.”
“Why are you pissed off?” Georges says.
“You didn’t warn me that you were going to dress like a sailor,” Aurora says. “Look at us. Our outfits match. It’s embarrassing.”
“I’d take off my sports coat and shoes to mute the nautical look,” Georges says. “But then I’d be invisible, all white just like everything else in here.”
“Damn it, Georges,” she says, hitting him on the arm, somewhat playfully but somewhat not. “You said you were over Hailey!” And without waiting for a response, she takes quick strides back down the hall, her heels clacking on the white-tiled floor. When he catches up to her, she says, “And I believed you!”
He is one hundred percent over Hailey. Even though he hasn’t seen or spoken to her in twenty-five years, he’s kept in touch with most of his other boyhood friends – Phoebe, Ryan, Manny, Eric, his other pals on the baseball team, and yes, of course, Aurora. There were condolence cards when a parent or sibling died, congratulatory cards and emails when children were born, holiday cards, wall posts and other messages on Facebook. Occasionally he’d received a congratulatory call or e-mail when there were reports of one of his successful transactions in the business media or, more recently, after he was interviewed or gave a statement to the press about a high-profile criminal case. And not too long ago – how long ago was it? A year already? – Phoebe and Roger Knox had been his houseguests in Malibu.
He saw these friends when he came home to Coral Gables to visit his parents. And when he did come home after Beatrice left him, he always had a meal or at least a drink with Aurora.
A few weeks after the visit with Phoebe and Roger, he’d gone out to dinner with Aurora when she was in L.A. at a Justice Department conference. He’d met her at the five-star restaurant in the Shutters Hotel on the beach in Santa Monica. She wore an evening dress that was revealing without being risqué. They each had a cocktail before ordering dinner and were well into a bottle of Dom Pérignon before the entrée was served.
After dinner, they’d walked along the bike path – a winding concrete ribbon of silver meandering like a river from Pacific Palisades to Torrance, separating sand and the Pacific Ocean from multimillion-dollar beachfront homes squeezed together on postage-stamp lots, the Chevron El Segundo oil refinery constructed more than a hundred years earlier when John D. Rockefeller owned the company, and asphalt parking lots for beach goers. Their conversation, ranging from geopolitics to literature, was effortless. He hadn’t fully appreciated the extent of their shared interests in history, photography, and travel. They held hands, leaned against each other, and when he’d pulled her toward him for a kiss, she’d tasted of the chocolate mousse they’d each had a spoonful of for dessert. The aroma of her perfume was more intoxicating than the tiny bubbles of the fine champagne they’d sipped until the bottle was empty.
At the door to her room, she raised her slender, firm arms above her head, wrapped them over his shoulders, and their bodies pressed together felt as if they belonged together, enveloping them in a safe harbor of love in a time of cholera. He kissed her once and wan
ted to do it again and again, but instead he untangled himself. He was still seeing Bunny then, and—what had been the “and”? And he wasn’t about to have a bi-coastal relationship— again. As that was the truth, that was what he told her.
But through all these years there hadn’t been a word from Hailey or Al. No response to the announcement of Dante’s birth. No contact to let him know about the birth of their son, or even Melvin’s death. When he heard that Melvin had died, he sent a condolence card to Hailey and one to her mom. There’d been no response. There’d been no note, no e-mail, no word of condolence from Hailey or her folks when his mother died.
It was as if the world had swallowed a treasured part of his distant past. But the estrangement hadn’t been due to an act of nature. It was worse than that. He’d told Aurora – and he’d sincerely meant it – that it was just as well that Hailey and Al had extracted themselves from his life. Al was a boor, a dullard. And Hailey was spineless, not standing up to her father. He’d lost respect for her and had quickly fallen out of love with her when Al told him that he and Hailey were going to marry.
If he’d ever doubted his contempt for Al and for Hailey for marrying him – though he never had – those doubts would have been dispelled not once but twice, each time during a conversation with Ryan Hunter. The first discussion was about Ryan’s decision to elevate Al to the presidency of First Global Bank; the second occurred years later when Ryan called to tell him about Al’s indictment and its consequences to the bank, to Ryan personally, to the bank’s shareholders and employees.
Sixteen years earlier, when he was in Los Angeles before returning home to Miami from a business trip to Jakarta, Ryan had called him. At the time, Georges had been in the main conference room of a floor in the high-rise where his firm had its Los Angeles office, a thirty-foot-long room with an unobstructed view of the Pacific. At the center of the room, which twenty years later would be named for Jake Marley, was a twenty-foot oval birds-eye maple conference table inlaid with highly polished granite. Georges was chairing a meeting of his team, lawyers drawn from the firm’s oil and gas, tax, administrative law, securities, and mergers and acquisition departments.
The Speed of Life Page 28