by English, Ben
Jack looked over at Mercedes. The faint town lights cast her features in a pale glow. She reached back and removed the tie holding her ponytail in place, and her hair slid back in an unbroken, argentine wave past her shoulders. She flexed her fingers inside the elastic tie, still gazing down, absorbing the vast panorama. “Isn’t this view incredible?”
“Yes,” he blurted without turning away, and grinned. She started at the speed of his answer, then returned his grin shyly. Jack wished he could tell if she was blushing. He ran his tongue over his lower lip. Now would be the time to say something romantic, if he could just decide what that might be.
Mercedes snapped the hair tie around her wrist, and said, “Did I hear you right at the library when you said you used to be fat?”
He blinked. This was an interesting turn in the conversation. “Yup. You wouldn’t believe it–and we’re not just talking chunky, Mercedes. I had dreams I was the round kid from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I’ve been wearing the same size jeans since I was ten.”
She laughed. “That’s nothing. Just be glad you didn’t grow up with my grandmother feeding you. Everybody used to call me the Pillsbury Doughgirl.”
“You? No way!” Jack tried to imagine a younger, mega-chinned Mercedes and failed. “What did you eat?”
“What didn’t I eat? My cousins were the worst. They got this weird kick off of seeing how much I could hold. Ack!” She held her side, remembering. “They even made me put peanut butter on pizza.”
Jack thumbed his chest. “Slathered butter on saltine crackers.” This was fun. “Sometimes I would sneak slices of bread to bed by hiding them in my pajamas.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Hah! Poptarts instead of bread. In my underwear.”
“Yuck! All those empty nutrients? How about this: three big bowls of cereal as an afternoon snack? Can you top that?”
“Sure. Butterscotch-flavored toothpaste.”
“So?”
“I used to eat it.”
Jack started to laugh, then caught himself. “But can’t that kill you?”
She leaned toward him. “Depends on how much chocolate milk you need to wash it down.” Mercedes started to laugh.
“Drank maple syrup straight from the bottle,” he shot back.
“No!” She squirmed with laughter, and Jack chuckled at her hysterics. She nearly fell off the log. Heh. Mercedes one, Jack one.
“You have an odd way of saying things,” she said at last.
“I watch a lot of old movies.” He looked pointedly at her grin. “When you smile, you look a little bit like Stanley Laurel.”
“Stan Laurel? Black-and-white movie Stan? Thin guy, crazy hair, wiggly ears?”
“Can you wiggle your ears?” he asked.
“That would make you Oliver Hardy.”
“The fat man’s fat man,” he agreed.
They sat on the log for a while then without speaking, and found the lull in the conversation had become a companionable hush. Slowly the sounds of night stirred up from the trees and long grass around them. Crickets began to sing. A bat breathed by above, flapping twice around the two bull pines before heading off to hunt field mice. Jack rarely came here at night; he was struck by how vivid and crisp the stars were, despite the upwash of Forge’s streetlights and candy-neon signs.
A shooting star sliced by overhead, and Mercedes pointed to it before it vanished over the horizon. Jack rubbed his eyes. She sure was quick. They grinned at each other with childlike excitement, then turned skyward again.
Jack took a deep breath, hesitant to break the cricket’s music. “So, how come you learned to speak Italian so well?” he whispered.
Mercedes smiled faintly. “My mom’s family, back in San Francisco, is pretty much all Italian. Do you know much about the Bay Area?”
He shook his head.
“Well, if you go into North Beach, be careful. You can hardly turn around without falling over one of my cousins. North Beach is full of my relatives from Florence; they’ve been coming over a few at a time since, well, since the city got started. Have you ever heard of A.P. Giannini?”
Again Jack shook his head. “Nope.” He remembered the name from one high school textbook or another on American history, but he didn’t want to interrupt. Jack didn’t think he could stand it if Mercedes got the impression he was a bookworm. Besides, he didn’t want to say or do anything that might stop her from talking; if her face was beautiful in repose, it was alive with expression when she spoke.
This time she smiled at him. “You’re so cute, Jack. So this guy owned a bank--he just loaned money out to Italians and other poor people, even the Irish immigrants, and everybody made fun of him and his ‘little dago bank in North Beach.’ So when the big ‘quake of 1906 hit and flattened almost everything, nobody had any money. Giannini stole all the gold and cash out of his own bank and hid it underneath his fireplace. Then, when his customers needed money, he loaned it out to ‘em, but never had anybody sign any paperwork, because he knew them all personally. Cool guy. My grandfather says North Beach was rebuilt because of A.P. Giannini, his godfather.”
Jack shifted slightly. The log seemed to be getting harder under him. “So what happened to your godfather’s grandfather? Did he go broke after he gave all his money away?” It sounded a bit like something out of a Frank Capra movie.
“It’s the other way around. Grandfather’s godfather.” She laughed. “He did all right in the end. Everybody who borrowed money gave it back, with interest. Ever heard of the Bank of America? Biggest bank in the world?” When he nodded, she continued. “That’s what happened to the ‘little dago bank in North Beach.’
“Anyway, our family’s really close back home. My parents worked at the same place since I was a baby, and they’d have to leave me for a couple of months at a time when they had a special project. So my mom’s family took care of me. They didn’t mind at all–heck, they’re still convinced my dad’s going to win the Nobel Prize and prove himself worthy at last to marry my mother. They spoke nothing but Italian at home all the time I was growing up. Boy, do they know how to talk!”
“Not like you at all, though, right?”
She smiled, suddenly shy again. “Right!” She ran her hand along the steam-colored surface of the old tree. “Actually, I don’t usually talk this much.”
Jack patted her arm. “Sorry if I’m sarcastic. I like hearing about stuff like this. How come your parents left you for so long when you were little? What do they do?” Jack didn’t want to pry, but he had an idea where the conversation was beginning to go, and he wanted to let her do the talking.
“They’re–they were high-energy physicists. Most of the stuff they did was for the government, really hush-hush; they could never talk about it. They’d been doing it since before I was born. I think they were at some base in Nevada for a while, because they took me to Vegas for vacation and showed me some cool stuff, you know, out-of-the-way kinds of things. And they would teach a little at Stanford. Dad’s a good teacher. They made a great team.” She looked out over the town. “That’s what everybody says. My dad always says how Mom is the smart one–you know, the old joke about how the girl’s got great legs but she’s no rocket scientist? In this case, she was.” Jack barely caught the catch in her throat, but by the time she turned back to him, Mercedes was expressionless, ice-smooth, distant as the moon. Her tone was dead even as she spoke. “My mother died a little over a year ago.”
Jack’s mind went suddenly numb and fiery, as if he’d brushed up against an electric current. The back of his neck iced over, and he winced, scorched by the coldness of the sweat between the middle of his shoulders. She must have heard him gasp or something, because the next thing he knew, she’d slid across the log and placed her hand along his arm.
Before she could say anything, he gulped quietly and asked, “Did you get to know them? With your mom and dad being gone a lot? Did you get to know them very well?”
Concern for him etched her fa
ce, and she answered hesitatingly at first. “They were . . . great. Never spoke to me like I was a dumb kid, or too little to understand. They hated it when people spoke to me in baby-talk. I was a part of their lives. Parties, birthdays, promotions, whatever, I always got to come along.”
He smiled so she would know he was fine, a-okay, nothing amiss, just some bad escargot.
Mercedes continued. “They went out of their way to show me neat things and places, and they’d play with me. All the special occasions you’d think they would have celebrated on their own, even their wedding anniversary, they included me.” She paused. “What about your mom and dad? What are they like?”
He stiffened. They were barely more than a foot apart, but the silence that descended was more palpable than it should have been; more like a pane of glass miles thick, distorting and destroying his view of her, waiting to be shattered.
Jack bent and picked up a rock.
“My very first memory is seeing the stars through the front windshield of my parents’ car as we slid backwards down the hill or cliff or whatever towards the river. My dad was driving, and I heard him yell something to my mother, probably “get out,” as he twisted the wheel and tried to brake, but the gravel under the car was too loose, and sounded like scrabbling hands.
“The car stopped sliding once, and Mom pulled me out of my carseat in the back. When she pulled me around into her lap, I saw headlights up at the top and the silhouettes of people looking down, then they just went away. The car moved again, and it felt like we were floating up out of our seats, then we hit and I landed on my mom. She made me look at her, and I did, even though she’d gotten a little scratched when the glass from her window exploded. She was really calm and she said, “Jack, we love you. Remember us. Remember, remember.” She said it a couple of times, and then the water was all around her, and it was really cold. They couldn’t get out because the roof was really low, but my dad grabbed me and held me up above the water. He had a big jaw, like mine is now. I can still see him, sticking his arm straight up with me on the end, this sort of grim, determined look on his face. He wasn’t scared, I’m sure. The water was past his elbow by the time the paramedics ripped the windshield off the car and dragged me out.”
Jack looked over at Mercedes, whose lips were parted as if in a long, silent cry. “My parents were killed when we were run off the road by three drunk guys out hunting. They sent me around for a few years, and I ended up here with my uncle Bill.”
Her hand was warm where it touched his face. Mercedes brushed at his cheek, then seemed surprised to find she was the one weeping. She quickly wiped her eyes and rearranged herself next to him, smiling shyly again. Jack noticed a single vagabond tear, a spot of silver-gold against the city lights, track down her smooth face. It dropped, and he caught it against his fingers as Mercedes turned away on the log, as if to leave. Then she settled back slowly against his arm and side, laying her head against his shoulder. She shook softly.
At length she cleared her throat. “How much longer ‘til the sun comes up, Jack?”
“Maybe an hour.”
“Can you just, ah—hold onto me for another hour?”
He brushed aside a bit of her hair. “I should think so. Unless my arm falls asleep and I have to have it surgically removed.”
Mercedes laughed, a sad-happy sound heavy with unshed tears, and pointed. Jack looked up in time to see another shooting star silently race by.
*
The northwestern edge of France
8PM
Alonzo slapped his knee. “Whoa! I can’t believe you told her about your parents.” He tipped his water bottle back. He thought about getting a beer, but that was just reflex; he’d stay sharp and frosty until the mission was over.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. We’d known each other for, what, a day?” Jack shrugged. “I just—felt different around her. Mercedes had a way of bringing out the weird in me.” Alonzo laughed, and his friend continued. “I mean it, Al; it was good to be around her; I was good. Smarter or something, I don’t know. I actually told jokes that made sense when she was around.”
Alonzo shook his head. Jack had always been funny, he just never realized it until Mercedes. “You were seventeen. A girl like that fills up your world.”
“She made me want to howl at the moon is what she did.”
Alonzo cut Jack short with a guffaw. Recovering, he said, “Yeah, I bet. Hah! So then what happened?”
“The next few weeks—before you got home—were amazing. I was getting ready for the State meet; you know, swimming about 10,000 yards a day, trying to get more sleep. The teachers kept on me pretty hard about that chemistry assignment; the liquid-to-solid polymer thing--”
“–your Jell-o experiment for Mrs. Riley.”
“Right. We still saw each other every day. Mercedes . . . was still really angry inside after her mother passed away. We talked about that a lot.
“She was so fun to be around. She helped me with my dives and we tried to learn tennis together.” Jack smiled.
Alonzo chuffed out a long breath. He was getting the Cliff Notes version. “Come on, Jack! Details, buddy, details. What about the first time you kissed her? Taste?”
His friend stretched his neck, grin widening. “Orange-pineapple frozen yogurt.”
Alonzo whistled. “Your memory always amazes me, amigo.” He finished the water. “And that was the summer it all came together. Funny to think, if it hadn’t been for her we might not be sitting here. You and me, on a train in France. Riding with this crew, into—who knows what.” He picked up the bottle of water and shook it. Empty.
“The thing of it is, she changed me. She changed who I was.”
Alonzo shook his head firmly. “No, Jack; Mercedes just uncovered what was already there. You’ve romanticized her all these years because she was drop-dead gorgeous, maybe a little mysterious, a little eccentric, and, well, ‘cause all the dead spooky stuff that happened later that summer. Mercedes opened the door, sure; but everything that came through from the other side was you, man.” Alonzo pushed his hair out of his eyes. There had to be a more elegant way to express this.
Jack leaned forward and ran his hands through his own hair. “And what is that? What do you mean? After all these years–the people we’ve helped, so much of my time playing the actor,” His expression soured. “Playing at being a D’artagnan, a knight errant--whatever, after all this life and these damn crystal-clear memories, who am I supposed to be now?”
Alonzo considered a moment, then picked up the copy of Entertainment Weekly he’d been flipping through earlier. “You are ‘the great Jack Flynn, hyperbole in the vocabulary of Hollywood,’” he quoted grandiosely.
“That’s not what I mean.”
Alonzo paused, dropped the magazine. Against the quiet in their end of the cabin, he spoke. “You’re Jack Flynn, my friend, the smartest, strongest man or boy I ever knew. In the end—for me, at least—it comes to that.”
Major Griffin, who’d listened to the entire exchange, was suddenly startled by the appearance of Steve Fisbeck, seemingly at her elbow. She hadn’t realized Jack’s story had captivated her so fully, and she smoothed her clothes as the chubby man handed over a tablet computer. “This just came for you on the secure email address. Forwarded by your service in Paris.”
Flynn set the computer down next to his equipment. The major watched his eyes flit back and forth over the message as he filled the pockets of his new jacket. “Something the matter, Mr. Flynn?”
“Please, call me Jack,” he said absently. In a moment, the mercurial man had grown distant, quiet. He paused, staring blankly at the blur of lights as the Calais station flew past in the night.
“This is from my sister-in-law. She wants me to come for dinner Sunday, in Geneva.” The man across from her was actually surprised, thought Griffin. “I never expected to hear from her again,” he went on, half to himself. The banks of earth outside began to rise.
“You�
�re married then?” the major asked.
Jack’s eyes snapped up to meet hers. They were soft but direct. “My wife died on a trip very much like this one, nearly a year ago,” he said. “And it looks like,” he held up the computer, “her family’s beginning to forgive me.” He shook his head. “They’ll forgive, but never forget, that’s for sure.”
“And yourself?”
He laughed quietly, mirthlessly, and began to arrange his equipment. “I suppose I’m the opposite, Major Griffin. At least, sometimes I can almost forget.” He worked the action on his pistol, then released it with a metallic snap.
“Almost.”
Jack looked sharply around at the other members of his team. “Listen up, boys, here’s how we go in. You’re going to love this.”
The train sped on, leaping headlong into the gaping vault of the tunnel, and the fields of liquid green rolled back over in the wind like breakers on an empty sea.
Up the Beanstalk
9PM
London
His feet were almost soundless as he brushed across the roof of the Illuminatus Tower. The instant Jack found firmness under his feet he released his parachute’s harness and jerked it, billowing, out of the sky. Above and behind him, Major Allison Griffin snarled, pulling hard on her parachute rudders as she spiraled about the steel tower. Steve landed in much the same way, grunting as he hit the roof.
“I love the BBC,” he growled at the transmitter. Its red airplane warning signal glowered down at him from another hundred feet above the craggy tower.
The three moved across the roof, staying well away from the slowly pulsing aircraft warning lights. “You never said anything about a low altitude jump, Flynn,” hissed the major for the third time in fifteen minutes.
Jack was almost smiling as he looked around the roof. “Unless you want to make another right now we’d better get out of this wind.”
They looked down on an unfinished section of the new building, a maze of pipe and aluminum two-by-four skeletoning at least three partially-constructed floors. Jack was the first one to the ladder. The adrenaline rush he’d used to talk himself into the drop was fading, and the wind bit into him with teeth and claws of ice. Darkness awaited them below, but at least it was solid. “‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends,’” he said.