“Okay, you are hitting the ball way too hard, but that can be worked on.”
Gabe noticed the mother of the family ahead of them on the course giving them a hairy eye. Dylan followed Gabe’s look, then draped his arm around Gabe’s shoulder and cocked a hip out.
Gabe buried his face in his hand. “Dylan, you are seventeen. Please don’t get me arrested. Or in the tabloids.”
Dylan laughed again. “Let’s just work on your ability to get your ball in the hole.”
Gabe ground his teeth. “You are a very dangerous young man.”
“I try. Now come on. Let’s do it again.”
Gabe sighed. He had no reasonable way of getting out of this particular golf lesson, but at least no one from the country club was watching this one and placing bets on how long it’d take his instructor to break. They moved on to the next hole, with Dylan making an easy hole in one. He ran his foot along the Astroturf around the hole. “Okay. See how the turf is worn down here? That means there’s less friction on the ball. It’ll go faster, so you don’t have to hit it as hard. They’ve recently returfed the back nine, so you’ll have to hit it a little harder. Now give it a try.”
Gabe spread his legs, adjusted his grip, and barely tapped the ball. It went about a foot. “Okay. That at least was going in the right direction. Just a smidge more force. And remember, pendulums.”
Pendulums, Gabe thought. The subtle instruction carried on for a few more holes until Dylan took a step over a piece of plastic driftwood and let out a tiny hiss.
“Are you okay?” he asked quickly, aware of Dylan’s bad ankle.
“I’m good.” Dylan replied instantly with far too much cheer. Gabe could make out a hair of a limp as they progressed toward the next hole.
“Your ankle. How bad is it? Really?”
Dylan flicked his eyes over for a second before setting his ball in place. “I’m never taking a major league team to a World Series with a bat in my hand.” Dylan’s voice was flat but sure.
“You’re sure of that?”
Dylan bounced his putt around a treasure chest and within six inches of the hole. “Summer after I busted my ankle, Coach Frasier got me a scholarship to a very fancy baseball camp in Arizona. While I was there, he also arranged for a very, very fancy orthopedic surgeon attached to the camp to look at it. Turns out there are a lot of things that show up on an MRI scan and not a basic X-ray.”
“How bad?”
“I’ll be on a cane by the time I’m thirty and need surgery by thirty-five.” Dylan’s voice betrayed no emotion. It was just a simple statement of fact, but he didn’t look at Gabe as he said it.
“Your father doesn’t know, does he? How bad it really is.”
“Nope. It would break his heart. And he’d find some way to blame it on himself.”
“I’m sorry.”
Dylan waved dismissively. “Don’t be. I cried my eyes out at fourteen. I’m over it. It’ll hold me through college. Possibly even into the minors. If I’m amazingly, unbelievably lucky and at no point reinjure myself, and improve my batting average a couple of points, I might even get a season as a small club utility player, but it won’t be much beyond that.”
“So what’s plan B?” Gabe asked, absolutely sure a kid like Dylan would have worked out a plan B by now.
“Plan B is taking a Major League team to the World Series.”
Gabe mentally froze for a second as he tried to replay the previous couple of minutes. “I think I missed a bit of conversation.”
“Few years back the Cougars lost their shortstop. It’s a viciously difficult specialist position, and we were getting hammered without one. I remembered this kid from Little League a year behind me. Brilliant at shortstop. Practically a savant at it. I looked him up, ‘randomly’ ran into him, we had a little chat, and by the end of the day, I’d talked his parents into applying for a district transfer so he could play shortstop for us.”
“What did you offer him? I mean, you couldn’t offer him money.”
“Nope.”
“Playing for a better team?”
“Nope, his team was better in the ranks that season.”
“Better scholarship options?”
“Nope.”
“Then what?”
“I offered him a chance to play shortstop.”
“But he was already playing shortstop?”
“Yes, he was.”
“So… you talked him into changing schools so he could do something he was already doing for absolutely nothing extra?” A Cheshire-cat grin slowly spread across Dylan’s face. Gabe grinned back. Negotiating something in exchange for something else was a basic human skill. However, talking someone into going out of their way for nothing required a whole different level of talent. “Oh, you are good.”
“I’m okay. You’ll know when I hit good.”
“I bet.” If for even one second Gabe had doubted that Dylan was James’ son, that doubt was gone. So many people never got over those childhood disappointments or were unable to cope with sudden turns in their lives. The Maron men, on the other hand, seemed perfectly capable of taking a deep breath and carrying on. “So, business and math classes are really plan A?”
“I’m going to the Show. I’m going to the World Series.” Dylan didn’t say those words as if they were some vague, wistful hope. It was as sure a plan as getting up in the morning or washing the dishes. “I’m just going to be behind the manager’s desk. Maybe not as much fun, but it’ll get me there.”
“Okay, then.”
“I’d offer to score you tickets, but I don’t think you’d have a problem getting them on your own.”
“No. Probably not.”
Gabe noticed a couple on a date quickly working their way up the course behind them. He wondered who was winning. He placed his ball onto the Astroturf and took a swing. The ball rolled down the green, bypassing a plastic skull, slowed, and dropped neatly into the cup.
Gabe’s jaw dropped. “Holy crap.”
Dylan gave him a pat on the back. “Good.” He pointed to the rest of the course. “Now do that nine more times.”
To Gabe’s surprise, with the exception of a trick shot that involved jumping a small Astroturf hill, he was actually making par on most holes. Almost fifteen years of country club pros sighing over his putting, and from ninety minutes on a minigolf course, he’d figured out how not to twist his wrists, shepherd the ball, overcorrect, or knock it right off the green. His level of personal shock was profound.
Dylan made the final shot into a treasure chest, then started adding up the scores.
“How’d I do?”
“Well, if you were a girl, you probably wouldn’t be returning my phone calls.”
“Let me see.” Dylan handed over the card. “You know, I’ve done worse. I’ve done lots worse.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Hell, if you were older, I’d offer to buy you a drink for the lessons.”
“I think my father might object.”
“Yeah. How about dinner? We can get your father some takeout as well if it looks like he’s going to be late.” Gabe’s phone beeped. “Speaking of.” He looked at the text. “Yes, the mail server actually did start smoking, but someone shoved a plastic bag over the smoke detector before the fire suppressors went off, which would have destroyed the entire server room. He’s not going to be home for a while.”
“Takeout it is.”
A late fog had rolled in, giving a shimmer to the lights dotted around the campus and deepening the shadows of the columns decorating the grander buildings. Gabe followed the little map Dylan had drawn for him. The occasional student scurried by, either laden down with books or weaving badly. He expected the small gray building that housed the support department to be locked, but the door opened and the elevator took him down a story. From there it was a matter of following his nose. Even with the smell of Thai chilies coming from the bag he held, he could make out the odor of fried electronics.
It was a smell that had permeated his dorm room for one memorable six-month stretch. He found a door labeled “Server Room” propped open with a battered copy of DOS for Dummies and followed his nose through.
Inside, LED lights blinked from row after row of server racks. Lengths of wires were draped across the floor in ways that certainly violated OSHA regulations. A few missing floor panels revealed even more wiring, and there was an incessant hum created by hundreds of cooling fans and industrial air-conditioning. There were two pieces of paper taped to the first rack. The first was a large black-and-white photocopied picture of James glaring daggers at whoever was taking the picture. The other one read:
* * *
DO NOT
TOUCH ANYTHING!
Yes, this means you.
No, you don’t know
what you’re doing.
You think you do, but you don’t.
NO TOUCHING!!
(and no food or drink)
* * *
Gabe heard some voices and made his way down the rows until he found James and a few other staffers kneeling beside a large server box with a very old TechPrim logo on the side. He recognized most of them from attending Dave’s (James’ least effective team member) Indian shotgun wedding. The box was cracked open, and on the floor next to it was what might have been a circuit board in a past life. Now the plastic was blackened and bubbled in places. There was also a power supply and some other bits and pieces that Gabe couldn’t name, though after all these years he should be able to.
“You know, I could make some calls and try to get someone down here?”
James and his staff snapped their heads up from their work. “No!” they answered, pretty much in unison. “Don’t you dare,” James continued. “We have needed a new server here for years now, but as long as we were keeping this one limping along, they weren’t going to get us a new one.”
“Got it.”
“The magic smoke has now very literally escaped.” James’ team nodded in agreement. “We just need to get the backups stable.”
“But not too stable,” Zippy said quickly, and there were more nods of agreement.
“Understood.” Gabe looked down at the bag in his hand. “I dropped Dylan off but figured you’d be late, so I brought dinner here.”
Chris made an “awww” noise as James got up, brushing off his dusty hands on his pants.
He took the bag, their fingers touching for a second.
“Hey there,” a voice called down the rows. Gabe turned around as Dave approached, carrying a black plastic bag.
“Dave.”
Dave gave him a nod. “Here we go.” He handed the bag to James, who opened it up and pulled out a few plastic cups and a bottle of bright pink, cheap-looking strawberry daiquiri mix, blatantly disregarding on-campus alcohol rules as well as server-room food and beverage consumption policies.
James passed around the cups, including one for Gabe. “Now, no one in this room ever speaks of this. It did not happen. No tweeting it, no Facebooking it, no writing it in your little pink diary. Nothing. Got it?”
There were nods as James twisted open the bottle. A cloying sweet smell was undercut by harsh alcohol mixed with the smell of chilies and burned electronics. James poured some into every cup, then raised his.
“To Mister McFeely, an old war horse of a mail server. He served us well through thick and thin. He processed a million offers of cheap Viagra; Reply to Alls that should have been Reply to None; he fought off viruses that crippled lesser machines. But for everything there is a season, and his winter has come and passed, and it is now time to salvage as much of his memory as we can and commit the rest of him to the sands of time.”
Everyone raised their cups and drank to the pile of metal and plastic that had received a more poetic sendoff then any server could possibly hope for.
The daiquiri mix tasted surprisingly like strawberry cough syrup, and Gabe fought not to make a face. Everyone else tipped it back. Gabe was no longer willing to believe he was ever that young.
“Okay.” James rubbed his eyes and collected the cups. “Let’s violate the last of the expired warranty on this thing, then start pulling up cables.”
“I’ll head out and leave you to it.”
“Thanks for dinner. I guess we’ll rain check the rest?”
“It’s not a problem. Are you sure there’s nothing I can do about… that?” Gabe waved his hand over the mess.
“I suppose if TechPrim sales wants to coincidentally stop by on Monday morning sporting a good deal on a new server or two with a reasonable extended warranty and support plan, I’m pretty sure they’d make a sale.”
Gabe smiled. “I’ll send a memo.” Nearly everyone else had their noses up to a monitor or in a piece of hardware. He leaned in and gave James a quick peck and a squeeze of the hand before heading out, the taste of alcohol and artificial strawberry flavor still thick in his mouth.
Gabe was never 100 percent certain why he hung around the country club. No one really liked him all that much, and he didn’t particularly like anyone there. At the start it was a place to network and make connections, at least that was what he’d been told, but now he had more of those than he should ever need. He guessed that in the end, it provided a decent hiding place. He could have a cup of coffee, sit in the sun, and listen to birds chirp even while drafting out proposals and goal strategies on a Saturday morning.
A shadow suddenly fell across his notebook and into his light. He looked up at Simon Fredell’s artificially white teeth that were a natural match for his artificially thick hair. Gabe felt low-grade irritation and revulsion at Simon’s existence roll around his stomach. The man was the biggest tool that Gabe had to associate with and was sitting, unknowingly, on the two most important technology patents of the last twenty years.
“Gabe, how are you?” Simon’s grin crawled its way across his face, unnaturally wide.
There was not a single drop of honesty in that smile that Gabe could detect. “I’m fine, thanks for asking.”
“Hey, I don’t suppose you’d be up for a round on the course?”
“Are you serious?” Simon had never asked him to golf. On the few occasions they had golfed together, it had always been someone else extending the invitation.
“Burt dropped out. We need another person for the foursome.”
“And your portfolio is doing so badly this month that the only way you can make yourself feel better is by kicking my ass around the golf course?”
Simon laughed a laugh as fake as the rest of him. “Come on, Juarez, put the work aside for a couple of hours before you give yourself a stroke.”
Gabe stared at Simon and briefly pictured throttling him with a mouse cable, but as Tamyra liked to remind him, he still needed to occasionally play nice with the other kids.
He smiled. “Sure.”
“Great. We tee off in an hour.”
A hint of a breeze rustled the leaves of the oaks lining the fairway. Gabe adjusted his grip and aimed for the little red flag marking the green. This was the easy bit. He’d been called a driving savant. He could hit the green in a gale without a second thought. At least on the shorter courses. He swung and watched the ball arch into the air, fade slightly in the breeze, and come down neatly on the green.
Simon looked through his binoculars. “Jesus, Gabe, if you could putt half as well as you drive you could have gone pro.” Simon had landed in the rough while Luke and Mark had both made it to the edge of the green.
As they strolled along to the green, Gabe listened to the three other men chat away about business, their wives, portfolios. Luke had bought a new boat to retire on. Mark was thinking about another divorce. The gossip was pretty much the only reason Gabe even tried to golf. It was a stupid game, whacking a little lumpy ball around a big park with a bendy stick.
Luke tapped his ball neatly in once they got to the green. Mark got close but would need another putt, and Simon managed to whack his out of the rough and
onto the green. Gabe pulled out his putter.
“We might as well put our feet up, guys,” Simon said, and the other two laughed.
Gabe walked up to his ball that sat only a couple feet from the hole. He went to take his putt, then stopped. He took a deep breath. He pictured Astroturf and a plastic pirate staring at him. He reset his grip, squared his shoulders, and squared his legs.
Smooth, he thought. Not too strong. Simple machines.
He swung, there was a quiet tap, and the ball rolled forward at a nice even speed and plunked into the cup.
He looked over at the guys. There were three open jaws. “If you all keep standing there with your mouths hanging open, I’m going to start getting ideas.”
Three sets of teeth clacked shut. “That was a fluke,” Simon stated.
Gabe gave a casual shrug. Internally he was doing one hell of a victory dance.
Simon and Mark both putted out, and the four of them moved on. Once again Gabe had no trouble hitting the green, but the ball bounced to the far edge. “Okay, Gabe, let’s see if you can do that again.”
Gabe looked at the space between his ball and the cup. “Nope. Too far.” Gabe took his swing. Not too hard, he reminded himself. Just get close, don’t overshoot.
Gabe made it within a foot. On his next turn, he dropped it in neatly. Simon stared at him. “Are you working with a new coach or something?”
Gabe tried to look innocent. “Just feeling lucky today.”
“Luck? You have never once shot better than, what was it, fifteen over par? And that was years ago.”
Gabe looked at the putter in his hand and for a half second visualized cracking Simon’s skull open with it. “You know what, I am feeling so lucky, I bet you I can par in. Or even under.” Mark and Luke both laughed, but Simon stared at him quietly. Simon still owed him almost forty grand from a poorly-thought-out bet the year before. If he thought he could win that money back, it gave Gabe some leverage. Gabe knew he was taking a big chance on his new skills, but it was the best opportunity he’d gotten to get his hands on Simon’s company, Solar Flare, and he did not want to let it slip by.
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