by Trixie More
He smiled at her; they both knew she made a great photo. He texted something and then reached out his hand.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you. How was the drive?”
She had to swallow to clear her suddenly dry throat. What if there was nothing in the filter? This was the first time she’d driven the car long enough for there to be any evidence that the filters worked. What if she couldn’t get the scrubber to open? Sweat prickled under her arms. “Fantastic. This car is a dream to drive.”
“Not very green though,” he observed. “So let’s see what you’ve got.”
She reached in the passenger side window and pulled a manila envelope from the seat. “You are going to fax this to Tom at the Inquirer?” she asked.
“Absolutely. And Katie as well.” He held out his hand and she gave him the packet.
“OK,” she said. “First off, this combines photosynthesis and other processes to create both glucose for the algae and also sodium carbonate, while removing carbon from the car’s emissions.” She walked around behind the Mustang and said a prayer. “I just drove the car from New York to Washington, so it should have had plenty of work to do.” She squatted next to the car as gracefully as she could.
“Wait a second. I want to get some photos,” he said.
A young woman with an intimidating looking camera came rushing out of the building.
“Come on back up here and let’s start again.”
This time there was a sound check. Some still photos of her next to the car, then they started the video. She explained again about the technology, giving credit to the student that had originally come up with the premise in 2013. Walker and Birkeland had riffed on the idea and improved the longevity of the system she said. Then it was time. She returned to the car, squatted down and put a sheet of pale green paper, printed with the Walter and Birkeland logo, on the asphalt. She twisted the end cap. Then she turned the cylinder and had a moment of terror when nothing happened. She moved her fingers carefully to the slit Ed had showed her, uncertain what she would find. Gunnar and Eva had shown her on video, but she’d never actually done this. Her fingers touched something slightly damp and compact. Crap. It wasn’t dry and fluffy and going to just fall out. She felt her face heat.
“Um, sorry, does someone have a pencil or pen, preferably one you don’t want to use again?” Oh my God. She could not mess this up.
Brian was looking at her with an amused expression as he patted his pockets. A teenager in a hoodie who had been watching them, stepped closer, pulling a coffee stirrer out of the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt.
“Will this work?”
“Oh yes!” She sounded maniacally happy and gave herself a mental cringe. The kid handed it down to her and she worked the end of it into the damp substance inside the filter. She pushed on it once, twice, and then miracle of miracles, the white sodium carbonate spilled out onto the paper followed by a damp slide of a small amount of brown algae.
“And that’s it?”
“Yep. That’s all there is of it. All that CO2 gone. Changed into oxygen, baking soda and glucose.” She grinned. “If I had an emissions tester, we could also prove it that way.” Inside, she prayed again.
“Well, Miss Johansen. You’re in luck.”
Behind Brian, a man in a blue and white striped polo shirt and jeans held up an instrument. “I borrowed one from my local service station,” he said. “Thought we might want something more than baking soda, just to be sure.”
Dorothy’s knees felt weak. She was taking such a chance with this. Ed was setting up appointments with agencies on the west coast today. If this backfired, she might wreck any chance he had. How is it she’d thought this was a good idea? The ramifications of her actions hit her like a two-by-four to the head.
For certain, the camera had caught her sudden deer in the headlights expression. She could either try to hide it and look exactly like what she was really doing, faking being unafraid, or she could exaggerate it. In for a penny, she thought. She widened her eyes further and mugged fear for the camera and she closed the scrubber and put the end cap back on.
“Uh oh. I didn’t expect that …” She let her voice trail off dramatically. Then she walked to the driver side door of the car like she was walking the last mile to her doom. The Mustang door opened heavily and she slumped into the seat, shaking her head in wide swings, left to right and back.
Then she gave a big grin, thumbs up, and yanked the door shut with a thwack, as she turned the key. She stomped on the gas and the big engine roared to life. The kid in the hoodie cheered.
She let the car idle and got back out, shutting the door gently and rounding the bumper just as the man in stripes knelt behind the car.
She held her breath and prayed to Jesus. Finally, the man held up the instrument. “Nothing guys. No CO2. Amazing!”
She did a little happy jig that the camera also caught. “American muscle, meet Walker and Birkeland,” she crowed.
The rest of the day was a blur. Before she left Washington, she took the time to connect her phone to the hands free calling system. Once she got back onto Interstate 95, headed for Pennsylvania, she dialed her mom.
“Mom!”
“How’s it going, Dorothy? Where are you?”
“I’m on 95, heading back up.”
“And?”
“It worked!” Bouncing in her seat, gripping the steering wheel, Dorothy let the sheer joy of the moment rip through her. She squealed and shouted. “I freaking. KILLED. IT.”
“That’s my daughter.” Her mom laughed.
“That’s OUR daughter,” came her dad’s voice. “Put her on speaker, Helen.”
“Dad, you aren’t going to believe this,” she gushed. “What a nail biter I had! I can’t wait to get home and tell you everything, but I’m too excited right now and I have to get to two more appointments.”
“Before you drive that machine off the road, I have news of my own to tell you,” her dad said. “Handed those packets out this morning before the board meeting.”
Before she could thank him, his voice took on a conspiratorial tone “Then, you wouldn’t believe it, but I had an urgent issue to address. So the board had to wait a bit while I touched up the company quarterly release notice.”
Dorothy laughed. “You didn’t!”
“Oh, I did, little girl.”
She loved this man so much. This was her father, the man who taught her to ride a bike, who escorted her to her prom, holding his head high amid a throng of acne riddled teenagers. This man held her when she cried and ordered her back to her room when she was wrong. She sniffed loudly and heard her mom whisper something. “I love you so much, Dad.”
“Don’t get carried away there, you don’t even know if the quarterly release is going to be that good.”
She laughed, a breathy, messy sound.
“So they were already seated, the packets were there in front of them—”
“And they’re all type A, so they read them,” she cheered, smiling like mad.
“Oh yes. And, I think you caught a fish, little girl.”
“Who?” She held her breath, not sure if she should be glad or petrified. Ahead, the Baltimore tunnel was getting closer.
“Doug, little girl, as you well know. You wrote that thing for him.”
Full on seriousness overtook her but she kept her voice light. “You taught me how, Dad. The tunnel’s coming up, and I’m going to lose you. Can you have him call me this afternoon?”
“You betcha. Now thank your momma for that sweet ride.”
“I love you, Mom,” she called as the car descended below the harbor and the connection dropped.
On her way back up, she started looking for the turn off to Philadelphia. Racing the clock through the congestion of the historic city, she stopped at 801 Market Street and was met by a reporter, Tom, for the Philadelphia Inquirer. She repeated her performance for him, using the scrubber on the other tail pipe.
She cro
ssed the Delaware River into Trenton. Doug called as she flew up the Garden State parkway.
“Dot? It’s Doug Lloyd. How are you?”
Dorothy shivered a bit at his voice.
“Doug, how nice to hear from you. I’m fabulous. What’s happening with you?”
“Working with your dad, trying to make green development something he wants to sell.”
She managed to make herself laugh. Her dad would sell a house to a turtle if he could. “You know that if someone wants it, he’ll sell it. The trick is to make them want it.”
“Well, you’re getting pretty good at that. I’m calling about the packet you sent out on Walker and Birkeland. That’s some pretty interesting stuff. Tell me more about the company.”
She gave him the sixty-second rundown. “So that’s it. Despite the friction within the environmental community, I just happen to think we’re going to need everything we’ve got, large and small, if we are going to put the brakes on global warming.” She shifted gears and gunned the engine to get around a truck.
“From the sound of that car, I don’t think you’re doing your part, Dot.”
“Doug, you wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” This was it. In for a penny, in for a pound. “Why don’t you come and see the tailpipe extensions this thing has? You’re going to want to bring a quarter million with you, so you can buy in.” She shifted again and floored it.
Over the speakers, she heard him laugh. “Just don’t kill yourself. Your father won’t be kind to me if he finds out I was distracting you. Where do you want to meet?”
Her father wasn’t going to be kind to him if he turned out to have raped the man she loved. She knew that for sure, she just needed to get a picture of his tattoo.
They set a time to meet the next day while he was in the city. She hung up the phone and forced herself to focus on getting into Manhattan. She didn’t know for sure that Doug had anything to do with Ed’s rape. She had only seen the tattoo once. It was more likely that she was mistaken. And in that case, having him invest would be the logical move. By the time she got across New Jersey she’d almost convinced herself that she was going to be simply trying to talk him into buying into Ed’s business. He was a successful philanthropist. How could she even think he’d been the psychopath on that video?
The sun was sinking as she crossed into the city and she wanted to kick herself. She was an hour late. She cursed as the traffic crawled through midtown. At the next light, she dialed Katie, the reporter she was to meet. She’d already called her once, when she knew she was going to be late for their five o’clock appointment.
“Katie? I’m on Eighth Avenue. Almost there.”
“Don’t worry. Brian already called me. He told me it’s worth the wait.”
Katie’s kind voice allowed Dorothy to release the breath she’d been holding. The day had all her systems on override. She was exhausted, excited and nervous. “OK, I’ll be there in a few.”
“Don’t worry. I’m heading down now,” Katie said. “And Dorothy, you don’t mind if I play up the Baby Dot angle?”
Dorothy rolled her head in a half circle, releasing the tension in her neck. She was Baby Dot and being that toddler had brought a lot of good into her life. If this stunt worked, it would bring even more good into the world. She exhaled. “Absolutely not. If it will make a better story for you, go for it.
Thick lather ran down the back of Edward’s neck as he washed his hair. When had his life become so damn good? The water was hot, he had the best coffee ever waiting for him in the kitchen, he’d stuffed the company’s coffers full of cash for now, and he’d had hot sex with Dorothy yesterday afternoon. His best friend, his girlfriend and his lawyer all knew he was the pool boy and they couldn’t care less. He soaped up and rinsed off. Shutting down the water, he stepped out of the tub. He got most of his news through a daily audio digest so he pressed play on his bathroom speaker and the digest version of the New York Times came on.
The mint smell of his shave cream hit his nose as he applied it to his beard. He took the first stroke down his cheek. “Now, from the editors of the New York Times,” the narrator said in his familiar voice. “Here are the stories on today’s front page.”
Edward took his second stroke. Political gamesmanship, changes in the price of oil, and a new tech gadget destined to change the way we think about environmentally clean driving. Ed paused. Wonder what that was going to be? He hoped it wasn’t going to be a competitor for their exhaust filter. He finished shaving, as the first set of stories were read. He was brushing his teeth when the story on driving clean came on.
“Yesterday was a brilliant, sunny day on the East Coast of America. A young woman, known to the nation as Baby Dot, drove a fire red Mustang from Washington, DC to New York City. It was the same Ford Mustang you or I might buy, but when she drove the muscle car yesterday, not one carbon molecule escaped her exhaust pipe.”
Edward froze before his mirror, looking into his own wide eyes.
“No way. No way,” he chanted. Toothpaste sprayed the glass. “There’s no way. No way.” His hands shook as he filled his cup with water. He spat and ran to the bedroom, turned, ran back, grabbed the speaker, ran back. He was yanking on a pair of jeans, commando style, as the narrator continued. “Twenty-five years ago, Dorothy Sykes was a toddler sleeping by the side of her mother, when her entire family was gunned down. Photos of the toddler, reaching out for her home, over the shoulder of the female police officer who found her, dominated the twenty-four hour news cycle and for weeks, donations and offers of help poured into the tiny Appalachian town. The toddler, known as Baby Dot, was eventually adopted by Carl and Helen Johansen of Long Island, New York and as is normal, the attention of the nation moved on.
“Yesterday, the eyes of the nation were once again on Dorothy, as she drove a Ford Mustang up the most populated stretch of Interstate 95, stopping at the offices of the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer before arriving in the city she calls home and the offices of the New York Times. Her goal? To raise awareness of a new invention created by Walker and Birkeland, a sixty-dollar exhaust filter that can be bolted onto any car. This device will remove all the carbon dioxide from the car’s emission, turning it into oxygen, baking soda and … food for algae.”
“Holy Shit! Holy shit, holy shit!” Edward raced through the apartment, slapping on his sneakers and grabbing his wallet, keys and cell phone. “Holy shit, I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it, what did she do?”
He was chanting to himself as he raced down flight after flight of steps. He burst onto the street, looked right and left and then bolted flat out to the corner. He ducked into the first bodega on the corner and stopped dead in his tracks before the newspaper rack.
The New York Times had a picture of the president and the Russian leader on the cover. His chest heaved. He flipped the paper over. There on the bottom half of the page was a color photo of Dorothy, his Dorothy, in a skin tight black and silver dress, her legs as long as the Hudson River, perched on a pair of red heels. She was smiling like the sun and behind her was her mother’s red Mustang. She was holding a piece of paper with a lump of something in the middle of it. Behind her, the New York Times building rose like a Titan. On the paper in her hand, the words Walker and Birkeland stood out in bold type above their logo.
She had done this. For him. He squeezed his eyes shut and struggled to keep himself together. This woman was turning him into an emotional train wreck.
He opened his eyes and moved aside the Daily News, finding the Washington Post buried under a copy of the Wall Street Journal. She was on page two.
“Are you buying those, mister?”
Edward jumped and looked around. He was blocking the aisle. “Yeah, yes.” He grabbed up all the copies, to the stunned looks from the other customers, and dumped them on the counter.
“Do you want a bag for those?” the man behind the counter asked, after he swiped Edward’s card.
Edward thumped
his finger on the top paper. “See that woman?”
The clerk made a face at him, sort of a cross between yeah and so what.
“That … that, is my girlfriend,” Edward boasted. “And I’m going to ask her to marry me.”
The clerk just snorted as he stuffed the papers in the bag. “Just don’t do it in the aisle, OK?”
Edward carried his bag out of the store and texted Dorothy.
What, oh what, did you do, lady?
“Oh man, what a woman,” he said to anyone who was listening. “What a fucking wonderful, beautiful woman.” His phone vibrated.
What?
What. She wanted to know what. He let himself into the lobby and started climbing the steps back to his apartment. Was it possible she didn’t know? He plunked the Times down on the floor in front of his apartment door, positioned so her picture was up. He took a photo and texted it to her.
He had to hear her voice. She picked up on the first ring, shrieking into the phone. “I did it! I did it!”
Wild emotions pummeled him and he had to lean against the wall to support himself. He heard the triumph and joy in her beautiful voice. She’d done it for him, and she’d done it for herself. He could see that now. She’d needed to do this for her own sake as much as she’d wanted to help him. This woman he loved had willed them into an us, through the sheer force of her own resolve. This woman owned him, straight up.
“Yes you did, sweetheart. You sure as hell did,” he said when he could speak again, when he could get a word in.
“Ed! We have to call Eva!”
“You know Eva?”
“Of course! She helped me come up with this,” she cried. He heard thumping on the other end of the phone and Dorothy’s muffled voice saying something that sounded like, “Come on Jesus, get back up there.”
“Dorothy?”
“Yeah? Yeah, Ed, I’m here but I gotta go.”
“What? Wait. I want to see you, I want to bring you the paper,” he said. Where could she be going? “I want to celebrate with you, Dorothy.”