by Chris Gilson
“A bonus?” she picked up and nibbled another bit of Camembert to keep from giggling. “Kevin, I wouldn’t call my father miserly by any means, but he wouldn’t give Tucker a thirty-million-dollar bonus. And WASP families don’t believe in big dowries, even for crazy daughters.”
Kevin had a thought.
“What about the people behind this hostile takeover…”
“Han Koi and his son.”
“Yeah. Would they give Tucker thirty million dollars if he, uh, ‘delivered you’?”
She almost choked on her Camembert. He pounded lightly on her back while she coughed and her face turned red.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Who gave you that idea?”
“Your driver.”
“Mike?” She recovered, breathing hard.
“I saw him here.” She tensed. “But he won’t say anything to your father. He says Tucker was talking on the phone to ‘the Chinese guy.’ I think he was asking for thirty million, but I don’t have any proof.”
“Neither do I,” she said, coughing again. She sat stiffly. “Kevin, we have to tell my father, but he won’t believe me.”
“You’ll make him believe you.”
“How?”
“Well, I’ve been doing an electrical count.”
“A what?”
“I counted how many times you’ve mentioned electrical stuff to me the past three days,” he said, putting his cheese down. “Zero. You used to be two people. You and—”
“I called her the Electric Girl.”
Called. She spoke slowly and carefully, like the thought had to crawl up from somewhere. She wanted to be certain she heard no warnings, none of the Electric Girl’s signals to protect her.
“You’re okay, Corny. Call your father. Tell him to come up without Tucker.”
“Why would he listen?”
She watched him brush the breadcrumbs off his hands.
“Because,” he told her, “you’re all Cornelia now. He’ll see that. What are you grinning about?”
“Because I can’t see people’s coronas anymore,” she told him. “But I can still see yours.”
In a stroke of ego, Tucker Fisk had taken out a whopping mortgage for one of the apartments on the top floors of Koi Tower.
He bought it sight unseen, bragging that he was too busy to take the elevator upstairs and look at it himself. Now it mocked him, his little glass and steel one-bedroom squirrel hole that cost him $2 million and change. He had learned, too late, that it was the cheapest apartment in the building because it had been designed as a fancy servants quarters for the $15 million three-story palace next to it. Before the sheik who was supposed to buy it reneged.
Now he hated his dark quarters. He had expected to lord over the skyline of Midtown Manhattan from an eagle’s nest. Instead, his floor-to-ceiling windows commanded a total loser’s view of the office building right across the street. All he could see was its reflective mirrored glass. To prevent the workers across Madison Avenue from spying, he was forced to leave blackout shades down day and night. They gave his living room, crammed with his oversized leather and steel furniture, the feeling of a luxury coal mine.
He felt scalded by the indignity, and saw it as a sign to push even harder. He had plenty to do, keeping Lord & Company storming ahead at 25 percent annual growth, while having to shoulder all of Chester’s family burdens besides. He performed these marvels as a salary serf, not even a partner in the company he had led to greatness in spite of Chester Lord—the only CEO in America who refused to lead or follow or get out of the way.
But he wouldn’t waste time feeling sorry for himself. He practically had the Cornelia problem solved. Assuming that his butt boy Loblitz—of course, the arrogant young doctor wouldn’t like to think of himself that way—had done his job at the hospital staff conference.
Tucker tore open the manila envelope that had just arrived by messenger. Concealed in bubble wrap was the tie clip microphone he had given Loblitz—a marvel of Koi microengineering. Recorder and mike were both built into the little tie bar, a miniature of the 1939 World’s Fair Trylon and Perisphere. Now he would find out for sure how Loblitz performed under pressure, and how useful the young doctor would prove to be as offensive end during the last moments of Tucker’s game.
His muted lights reflected off the shiny tie bar. He took the little eavesdropper to the blinking sound system built into his wall and attached the recorder to its adaptor. The recording, made on an ultrathin wire, would now play through his twelve Bang & Olufsen speakers.
He kicked off his sleek black loafers, sprawled into his ergonomic egg-shaped listening chair, and flicked his remote.
The novelty of it tickled him, listening to what psychiatrists would say about Cornelia, now that Chester couldn’t hear them.
He first recognized Dr. Burns’s measured voice. “Next, Cornelia Lord… Dr. Loblitz? Where are we?”
“Stalled.” Loblitz’s voice sounded a decibel too high. “She came to us hearing voices and believing that a dead inventor named Tesla is some kind of romantic hero. If we accelerate to ECT now, we can get her back home in two weeks.”
Then a woman doctor’s voice. “What’s the rush?”
Tucker scowled at his sound system, blinking red and green in the near-dark.
“Not to put too fine a point on the family’s interest, ” Dr. Loblitz said, “but they want her out for a wedding date in February.”
“Are wedding planners writing our treatment procedures now, Doctor?” The woman doctor again. Tucker’s chest heated up with acid. Who was she to question his plans?
“That has nothing to do with it,” Loblitz sounded wobbly, obviously not expecting this counterattack. “She’s resistant to therapy, she had a hell of a tolerance for chlorpromazine, and her defense mechanisms are hardening.”
“Maybe they should just postpone her wedding date.” The stupid woman again.
Dr. Loblitz took a needling tone. “This isn’t some feminist thing, Joanne.”
Then Burns. “All right, start ECT next week, we’ll see what happens. Let’s move on. Joanne, what about Kevin Doyle?”
Tucker smiled broadly. His finger moved to switch off the button, but hesitated at the mention of that name, Kevin who?
“Doyle’s showing all the cues of a spontaneous recovery, ” the woman said. “He manages to control his Sebastian delusion around other patients. I’d say he’s even been a positive influence on Cornelia Lord.”
Tucker jumped out of his chair and stood facing his audio player.
“All right,” Burns told her, “but don’t be in too much of a hurry to rush him out…”
“… out the door.” The words bubbled from Tucker’s lips. He saw the doorman Kevin Doyle, the runty mutt with sullen eyes giving him backtalk. No. It was cunning that had lurked under the black visor.
So, Kevin Doyle, doorman of Slack City, had executed a clever end run around Tucker. How had he pulled it off? Absently, Tucker destroyed the little tie-pin recorder with his fingers, ripping it apart to calm himself down.
Well, it didn’t matter. He’d seen that kind of play before, and knew how to stop it.
In the Abraham Maslow room that night, the Designated Couple managed to slink out the locked door behind an aide.
They ran as fast as Cornelia could, and she yelped with the fun of it, holding hands as they raced into the wind with her hair flying.
“Five minutes,” he breathed in her ear. “I just have to show you something and we go straight back.”
They hugged the double line of trees along the circular driveway, checking for guards. Then they broke into a run again. They rushed toward the tall, barren clump of trees at the end of the property, scuttled around the spiky, leafless woodland, poking their way carefully until the outline of the electrical fence loomed ahead.
“You’ve got to watch closely,” he told her. “I can only do this once, or the guards might see.”
“Okay,” s
he promised, taking deep breaths.
“Ready? Watch the fence right there.”
Then he stepped back and threw a small object, as though skimming a stone across a pond.
The buzz of the fence made a hiss. She felt the electrical surge through the ground from fifteen feet away.
The curved lines and squiggles of tube were attached to the electrical wires. They lit up a brilliant red as light scampered through the shape of Kevin’s heart.
“Kevin, your Open Heart. You finished it. How did you do that?” she cried, happy and bewildered.
“In Artistic Expression class. I got the teacher to order some plastic for me, nothing sharp or breakable, you know? Then I snuck out and attached it.”
She bit her lip. “Weren’t you afraid of bringing the Electric Girl back?”
They held each other like close dancers.
“I don’t think we’re going to see that Electric Girl around here anymore.” He slipped both arms around her and pressed the small of her back.
They kissed almost violently until the glare of a flashlight found them.
“I’m fine, really,” Cornelia explained. “Kevin helped me tremendously. I’m ready to leave the hospital now, and so is Kevin.”
Dr. Burns and Dr. Loblitz had left her alone with Chester. Her father sat in a large chair, uncomfortably. He crossed his leg and played with a sock, pulling it up so it wouldn’t expose a white flash of his leg. She’d never seen Chester undone by his executive-length socks before.
“Dr. Loblitz doesn’t agree,” Chester finally said, not happy about it. “They’ll need to change treatment now to repair whatever damage this Kevin Doyle has done to you.”
“Damage?” Her eyes exploded. “If you’ll recall, Chester, what Kevin did involved pulling me from under the wheel of your car. I just want to get to know him better on the outside. I realize that he’s not exactly at your social level—”
Her father waved with his hand, frustrated.
“It’s not that he’s a doorman,” he told her. “If it made sense otherwise, I could learn to live with the social difference. I could even help him if he had the right material.”
“He has more material in his little finger than Tucker Fisk—”
“Cornelia,” he told her, “I didn’t just take Tucker’s word for it. I checked his background myself and made every effort to find some redeeming value. All Kevin Doyle has ever achieved is to talk his way into this hospital. Why would he do that?”
“To be with me where you couldn’t blow him off as a nobody. And Tucker couldn’t manipulate him.”
“I don’t think so, Cornelia,” her father said with a mulelike shake of his head. “In the worst case, he’s a fortune hunter. But even if he’s not, I couldn’t bear to see you marry a man whom you ultimately won’t respect.”
“Because he wants me? You think that someone would only be interested in me for my money?”
Her father put his chin in his hand and looked down at the floor.
“You don’t even know me, Chester, and it breaks my heart.”
Kevin found him in the visitors lounge, toying with a shiny computer the size of a thin-crust pizza slice on his lap.
“Have a seat, Kevin.” Tucker didn’t get up. “Or is it Sebastian today?”
“No, thanks,” Kevin told him, standing. “I sit all day.”
“Suit yourself.” Tucker shrugged. “I just wanted to show you something.”
He angled his laptop around so Kevin could see the screen clearly. It was a page from some encyclopedia. The title of the page read, “Saint Sebastian.” The dense type under it was illustrated by the lost Giotto painting of Sebastian in a corner of the screen.
“The funny thing is,” Tucker told him buddy-to-buddy, “Sebastian didn’t die from the arrows like everybody thinks. A woman nursed his wounds and he lived. But, you know what? It didn’t matter. The emperor found out and sent the soldiers back to beat him to death. The poor guy couldn’t win. Not after he took on the emperor.”
Tucker smiled sadly and waited for Kevin to speak. Kevin let him wait.
“I just wanted to share that with you,” Tucker went on. “The difference in your case, Kevin, is that I haven’t forgotten you saved my fiancée’s life.”
“And you’re thinking, quid pro quo.”
“I don’t speak Latin.” Tucker shrugged. “I’m just telling you, there’s an upside to this. I found out something that might interest you. There’s a program at the Benito College of Art in Rome for young artists.”
Kevin watched Tucker punch up a new screen with one line, “Scholarship: $100,000.”
“They don’t have dorms at this school,” Tucker continued, a little more slowly, polishing up every word. “So you get a furnished apartment near the Spanish Steps on a little street where they do art shows. I’ve been there. I don’t know much about art, but I can tell you about the women.”
Kevin said nothing.
“Just sharing that information,” Tucker said.
“Thanks,” Kevin said. “You know, you had Corny right there, no obstacles or anything. All you had to do was care about her. If you were a half-decent guy, I might let her go for her sake. Just sharing.”
He studied the mogul, whose jaw looked so pink he must carry an electric razor around and shave three times a day. Tucker said nothing to contradict him. He smiled like it was a joke on everybody else.
“So how’re you going to do it?” Kevin asked him.
“Do what?”
“Make thirty by thirty. Chester won’t give it to you.”
Tucker looked startled, a rat with a twitchy nose caught in a flashlight’s glare.
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m just thinking, thirty million’s a lot for Chester Lord to give you. So you’ve got to be getting it from somewhere else. The Kois, I think Corny said, trying to take over Lord & Company.”
Tucker closed his laptop with a sharp click like a cricket.
“You seem like a guy who looks out for number one, Tucker. I figure maybe they’ve got you covered.”
But now Tucker Fisk moved like a lion, all lazy power. He flung his blond head back and stood up.
“I remember when I played football, liking the pain a little,” Tucker told him man-to-man with a hint of pity. “But the game you just decided to play, Doyle, it’s going to hurt all the time.”
Part Four
White Doves Falling
Chapter Twenty-four
The small plaque on the door read only “ECT.”
She forgot more and more lately, but never the ice in her stomach whenever that plaque appeared. She tensed as her aide escort, a powerful woman, steered her inside.
“Hello, Cornelia.” Two unfamiliar nurses greeted her, one stout, the other with a knobby chin. They moved efficiently about the small room, bare except for a single hospital bed. The bed was surrounded by stacks of electronic equipment, piled up like hi-fi components, with lots of multicolored wires dangling down.
The stout nurse helped her to take off her clothes and helped her slip on a flimsy hospital gown. The other gave her pills and a paper cup of water.
“What are these for?” She obediently gulped them down. They left a bitter taste.
“To make you feel a little dreamy,” the nurse recited, as though she had to repeat it too often. “You’ll be more comfortable during the procedure.”
“Thank you. What procedure?”
“ECT, Cornelia.” They helped her onto the hospital bed.
A pretty black doctor entered the room.
“Good morning, Cornelia.”
“Hi. Who are you?”
“I’m your anesthesiologist, Dr. Love.” Like the nurses, the doctor sounded mechanically patient in her response. Was she the only one missing something here? The doctor rested her hand on Cornelia’s arm in a familiar way. “I’m going to give you a short-acting anesthetic after the nurses prepare you.”
“Prepare me for
what?” Now the nurses secured her to the bed, fastening some sort of restraints onto her limbs. “Is this a gynecological exam? I don’t see any stirrups.”
“No, dear,” the stout nurse explained again. “This is ECT.”
The confusion reigned, an awful feeling of living in an eternal present where she couldn’t recall events from even moments before.
“Haven’t I done this already?”
“Several times, Cornelia. Now we need to do it again.” The nurse with the chin touched her bare flesh with a sticky goo, and attached the ends of several red and white wires.
“Lie on your side, dear. Good. We’re going to monitor your blood pressure and heart.”
She felt her scalp being cleaned. Wires dangled in front of her eyes. She felt something attached to both sides of her skull.
“That’s not my heart up there.”
“No, the wires are for the procedure, dear.”
“Cornelia, I’m giving you something to relax you now,” said the pretty black woman in the white coat and blue nameplate. Hadn’t she just introduced herself?
“What is it?”
“It’s a combination. Part anesthesia and part muscle relaxant.”
The machine that looked like hi-fi components came to life now. She heard beeping and bleating, saw red and green numerals, a line that made sharp peaks and valleys on a monitor.
“ECG and pulse-oximeter leads are in,” she heard. “Methohexital… midazolam…”
Her body in the thin gown slipped away from her. She felt naked and out of control.
“Why?” Cornelia asked her, trying to blink back tears. “Why are you doing this?”
“Doctor will explain, dear,” the nurse told her.
A young man with curly hair entered the room. He looked quite familiar, but not at all comfortably so.
“Good morning, Cornelia. Do you know who I am?”
She saw the white coat. “Dr. somebody.”
“Dr. Loblitz. What’s your home address?”
“Eight-forty Fifth Avenue.” That remained clear to her. She had lived there all her life. More recent memories—the past days, months, even minutes—could not be summoned so easily.
“Cornelia,” the doctor asked her, “who invented electricity?”