Exit Strategy

by Charlton Pettus

  “Well, I thought we’d keep it simple. Spaghetti, grilled chicken paillards, a little Broccolini with garlic, maybe. How does that sound?”

  Haden wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know if I like garlic. But spaghetti sounds good.”

  “Okay, great. How about you, Soph, are you in?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Sophie said.

  “What’s a chicken pie yard?” Haden asked.

  * * *

  The shopping was quick and efficient. Alex knew what he wanted and where to find it. For the kids it was completely unlike their occasional Stop & Shop outings with Jordan, who would inevitably become distracted poring over nutritional information labels and buying new cereals and exotic sauces that would languish for months in a cupboard until Stephanie threw them out.

  Back at the house Alex turned on the old KLH radio in the kitchen and tuned it to WBUR. As meandering piano snaked through the kitchen he put Haden to work washing Broccolini while Sophie peeled and sliced garlic. He put a large pot of water on to boil, started a quick tomato sauce of canned San Marzanos with sautéed garlic and olive oil and pounded out the chicken breasts.

  “So, how has school been?” he said.

  “Okay, I guess,” Haden said.

  “What are they teaching you?”

  “Nothing. I don’t know.” After a pause, “Were you and my dad really best friends in school?”

  The question caught Alex by surprise. He put down the pepper mill. “Yeah, I guess we were.”

  “Then why are you trying to steal his family?” Sophie asked without looking up from her slicing. Haden’s wide eyes jumped from his sister to Alex and back to his sister. The only sound in the room was the steady click of Sophie’s knife on the cutting board and Satie’s gentle piano arpeggios rolling on unperturbed.

  The question hit Alex like an openhanded slap. He felt his face flush and his ears started ringing. He breathed slowly to hold down the surge of temper he felt stirring in his chest.

  “Why do you say that, Soph? What do you mean?” He tried to keep his voice steady; it felt like he was about to strike a match in a gas-filled room.

  “You know what I mean,” she said. She stopped slicing garlic and looked up at him. She held the knife tilted up in her hand and tears had started to spill over. Her lip shook as she spoke.

  “I know you like my mom and now you think you can come in here and take my dad’s place but you can’t. You think we’re going to forget him and like you but we won’t.” Her voice had risen to a near shriek as she threw the knife in the sink, shattering a glass, and ran from the room crying. She pounded up the stairs and her bedroom door slammed a couple of seconds later.

  Alex let out his breath and turned to Haden. “Do you feel like that’s what I’m trying to do?” he said.

  “I don’t know. I mean, no, I guess,” Haden said.

  Alex squatted down and looked him in the eye. “It’s not. I’m trying to help.”

  Haden nodded and looked down.

  Alex took a moment and looked around the kitchen. “This has been a horrible, horrible year. Right?”

  Haden nodded.

  “You lost your dad. I lost my best friend. It’s about the worst thing that could ever happen. But we’re still here. We have to wake up and go to school and go to work. Life doesn’t stop. Do you understand?” Haden nodded again. His eyes were still big. Alex put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “You’re a great kid, Haden. I know you’ve been really strong for your mom, she’s told me. If you’re okay, I’m going to go try to talk to your sister. You can come if you want.”

  Alex knocked on the door, noticing the fresh chips of paint on the floor. “Sophie, can I come in?”

  “Go away!” from inside, through a pillow it sounded like.

  Alex sat down next to the door, his back against one wall, his feet angled against the other, knees bent in the narrow hallway. Haden sat a few feet away, watching.

  There was a spot on the wall where a nail hole had been filled with spackle and painted over, and from where he sat Alex could see a difference in the finish. It looked like the walls had been done in an eggshell and the repair in a flat, but the brown of the walls looked like a custom color so that didn’t seem likely. Why would they even have flat if the walls were all eggshell?

  Maybe it was something about the unsanded patch that dulled the finish on the touch-up. Alex pulled himself back into the moment. “Can I tell you a story about your mom and dad?” he asked the door. When it didn’t answer he went on. “I actually met your mom before your dad did. She was really cool. I know that’s probably hard to imagine for you, but she was. She was so confident she just walked up to me and started talking. She was like you that way, Sophie. She wasn’t afraid of anybody.

  “Anyway, I introduced them and you know what? It was crazy, I swear I knew the second they met they were going to get married and have kids, the whole thing. I just knew it. And it’s not like they were a couple you’d expect to be together—they were pretty different. Your dad was really shy and your mom was the kind of girl who would scare him usually, but somehow it worked. They just fit.”

  Alex thought a moment, then said, “You don’t mind me talking about this, do you?” The door remained silent and Haden shook his head.

  “When your parents moved in together they lived in this little apartment on Queensberry Street over on the other side of the Fens. It was a strange little place. The kitchen looked out over Fenway Park and whenever there was a night game the lights from the stadium blasted into the apartment and you had to close all the windows if you wanted to talk because the crowd was so loud. This was right when Genometry was starting up. Your dad was working in a lab at MIT and he was there pretty much all the time. He would even sleep there sometimes on the couch in the lounge. It was rough. Anyway, your mom came to see me one day. She was crying, really upset. They had just gotten Darwin. He was a puppy, six weeks old. He was cute. He used to trip over his own ears and then look around to see if anyone saw.” Haden laughed.

  “Anyway, apparently your mom had gone home for Thanksgiving and when she got back Darwin was all alone in the apartment with no food or water. He was frantic. He’d pooped and peed all over the apartment and had turned over the garbage, probably looking for food. Your dad had stayed at the lab and obviously just forgot about him. He was pretty forgetful when he was working. Your mom was really pissed. She was going to take Darwin and go back to her old place and never talk to your dad again. I told her that he was under a lot of pressure, all my fault. It took some pretty smooth talking but eventually I calmed her down. Then I moved us out of the school lab and got the place on Dunster Street so your mom could always come by if she wanted. And a year later you were born, Sophie. And really, that’s why I’m your godfather. You wouldn’t have happened without my help.”

  “Gross,” Haden said, wrinkling his nose.

  “I’m not telling you this so you’ll think I’m so great or anything, I just want you to know how important your family is to me. I would do anything for you guys. Anything. I need you to know that.” Alex struggled to his feet. The door opened slowly. Sophie stood, shoulders hunched. Her face was red and her eyes glistened.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, sniffling.

  “It’s okay,” he said, holding out his hand. “Friends?”

  “Friends.” She took his hand and they shook formally as though agreeing to terms after a long negotiation. They heard the front door close downstairs and Haden jumped up.

  “Mom!” he yelled and ran down the stairs two at a time, his hand squeaking on the banister.

  “Hey, guys. How are we all?” she asked as Alex and Sophie came down the stairs.

  “We’re good,” Alex replied, “but you’re early. Dinner’s not done.”

  “Dinner? What’s going on here?” Stephanie laughed, following them into the kitche
n. “Oh my God, look at all this. You guys did this?”

  The children nodded. “I helped a little,” Alex said as he casually picked the bits of broken glass out of the sink and dropped them in the trash.

  “Really,” Stephanie said, regarding her children, her eyes lingering a moment on her daughter’s puffy eyes. “It all looks amazing.” She turned off the flame under the pot of water. “Let’s finish and eat. I’m starved. Alex, are you joining us?”

  Before he could answer Sophie cut in, “He can’t, Mom. He said he has to go out tonight. He was just waiting for you to get home.”

  Alex caught her eye over Stephanie’s shoulder.

  “Oh,” Stephanie said, “I’m sorry. That would have been fun. Maybe next time.”

  “I’d love that, I really would,” he said, giving her a quick hug. “I wish I could have gotten out of my thing tonight, but you know how it is.” He winked at Sophie and tousled Haden’s hair. “Good night, Parrish people.”

  Outside Alex released his breath with a sigh. He texted Vanessa. is the russian available?

  She replied immediately. Da. A quelle heure?

  now

  20

  KNOW YOURSELF

  The phone was in the coffee cup on Jordan’s desk to make it louder and help the bass. Old Drake song. Moody synth, stuttering syncopated kick drum, Auto-Tuned vocal.

  Jordan paused the track and looked around the room at the fifteen expectant faces. They ranged from early twenties to one grandmother who must have been eighty.

  He let out a breath with puffed cheeks and shook his head.

  “No idea,” he said. “I mean, woes are sorrows.” Blank looks all round. “You know, sadness, ah, things you feel sad about.” Better, some nods, murmured consultations in Japanese.

  “But what is ‘the six’?” Kimiko, the owner of the phone asked.

  He shook his head again. “No idea but let’s let it play, gather some context clues...” He emphasized the last two words. It was a running theme in the class, a couple of appreciative groans and mock eye rolls.

  He played a bit more of the song.

  “Ok,” he said, pausing the phone. “A little background, so, you all get that there’s an element of braggadocio, of boasting or bragging, in rap culture, right? Like gangs, or cowboys...” He was floundering. “So Drake is counting his money, in other words, he’s hugely successful and he’s praying ‘the real,’ in other words him and his crew, live forever and ‘the fakes,’ i.e. other competing rappers, get exposed, shown to be the impostors that they are. Does that make any sense?”

  The younger students, particularly the girls, hung on to his every word but he was losing the forty and ups. It had seemed like a great idea to have them bring in American music to open up the idiomatic English discussion, he had pictured himself like Robin Williams in Good Morning, Vietnam, winning hearts and minds with good old American rock and roll. He hadn’t counted on how completely out of touch with contemporary pop music he was. Or how completely dependent it was on a shared common culture.

  “I think I found it,” a girl named Ayumi piped up, holding out her phone. “‘The six’ is Toronto in Canada, where Drake grew up. The phone code. It means home.”

  21

  IT HAPPENED

  “Sophie hates me.” Alex’s voice echoed from the kitchen.

  “No, she doesn’t. She’s just having a hard time.” Stephanie sighed and looked out the window at the city below. “She’s angry. Half the time I feel like she hates me, too.”

  “No, it’s different. She thinks I’m trying to take Jordan’s place. She said so.” Stephanie shook her head. “Do you think that?” Alex said as he stepped down into the living room, a sweat-beaded glass of straw-colored Chablis in each hand.

  “Of course not. Jesus.” She looked at him and started pacing, her stockinged feet etching a lazy lemniscate in the thick carpet. Their dirty plates from lunch were on the coffee table.

  “What do you think?” he said, setting down the glasses. She was aware of his eyes on her. He came around the table. Her loops became smaller as he cut the room down. She smiled to herself and stopped with her back to the window.

  “I think,” she said, eyes dancing, “that you are herding me, Mr. Prenn.”

  He laughed. A warm, genuine laugh. She liked it. She placed her hands on his chest. It felt hard under the crisp blue shirtfront. “And I think I don’t entirely mind.”

  He leaned in slowly and kissed her, tentatively at first. He studied her face, his own betraying nothing, then kissed her again, harder this time. Her back was pressed against the glass and she felt as though she were tipping backward. Then her eyes fluttered closed and she heard a low sound that seemed to come from deep in her chest.

  After a while he pulled back to look at her again, gently brushing a wisp of hair from her face. Then he began to undress her. His hands were immaculately groomed. She tried to picture him at the manicurist and the idea seemed sweet and vulnerable somehow. He didn’t say a word as he unbuttoned, unhooked and deftly peeled away, only watched her face with the same solemn concentration. When he was finished he let his eyes freely wander over her body with an expression of subdued wonder. Stephanie’s skin tightened in little goose bumps and her breathing quickened. As his fingers began to delicately explore she grabbed him by a handful of shirtfront and began to fumble with the buttons.

  * * *

  Matthew Chun couldn’t believe his eyes, so he ran the numbers again. Same result. Matthew was the lead researcher on the PEREGRINE team. He and his staff at Litton Labs were tasked with verifying and trying to duplicate the protein folding predictions from ROBIN. It was a double blind, so neither team had any interaction with the other. Genometry, with a pile of Pfizer cash, was funding both groups along with competing teams QUAIL, SWALLOW and THRUSH. Supposedly the bird theme was chosen because all the teams were pursuing strategies based on FINCH, Genometry’s first big breakthrough in the neural network approach.

  According to these numbers, ROBIN was averaging over eighty percent on secondary structure prediction. That was huge, new territory. He sent a quick email. Please confirm newest ROBIN data.

  Didn’t want to break out the champagne too soon.

  * * *

  Alex was asleep; his head gently rose and fell on her belly. His features had softened, lost some of the tightness of his waking expression. He looked like a little boy, Stephanie thought.

  * * *

  Chun stared at his screen and refreshed the mail again. The suspense was killing him. Three months to the next CASP. Jesus.

  The Critical Assessment of Protein Structure Prediction was held every two years and was basically the Super Bowl of the field. All the big players would take a shot at a mystery amino acid sequence. It would be a protein that was about to be mapped by X-ray crystallography so all the predictions could be compared to the real thing. If ROBIN was as good as it was looking, Genometry was going to blow away the field and Pfizer shares were going to go through the roof. They’d all be rich.

  * * *

  “Of course, being a woman, I do have questions,” Stephanie said. She was on one elbow, looking down at him.

  He smiled but didn’t open his eyes. “How did you know I was awake?”

  “You can tell. The grown-ups were back.”

  “Mmm,” he said with a tiny nod. “Okay, shoot.”

  “The usual. What now?”

  “Ah, now,” he said. “Well, the wine’s probably gone warm but I could pour those out and grab more from the fridge.”

  She punched him lightly on the chest. “Don’t be an idiot.”

  He opened his eyes, blinked a couple of times and looked up at her. “It’s true. It really is you. I was afraid it couldn’t be,” he said.

  “Answers,” she said with a smile.

  He stretched and tu
rned his neck with a crack and his voice took on a more serious tone. “What happens? Nothing. Anything. Whatever you want, whenever you want. No pressure, no expectations.” Her fingers traced the vein down his neck as he talked and trailed over his chest. “I get it. The last thing I want is to make your life more complicated. Mine is simple. Really simple. It’s just me. So whatever you need, whatever you want, or don’t want, I’m good.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  She swung her leg over and sat up, straddling him. Her hair cascaded forward as she leaned her face toward his and they didn’t talk anymore.

  22

  M’BUTE

  Abdi Samuels sat erect in the uncomfortable metal chair. The Belgravia police station was relatively quiet in that lull between the last of the night’s drunken punch-ups and the commencement of the next day’s parade of petty thieves and indigents. His feet were square on the floor and his meaty hands rested on his knees. Strong, thick hands. The skin was a deep ebony except for the knuckles, which were scraped an ashy gray and spotted with the occasional surprisingly vivid blots of red blood. Abdi couldn’t tell if it was his own or the girl’s. The solicitor was still talking but Abdi paid no attention. His body felt heavy. He had put on weight here. He was still strong but carried an extra stone of soft flesh. His face conveyed, he knew, the right sort of imperious indifference to whatever trifling details were being sorted out between his solicitor and the policeman. Then the conversation stopped and they were both looking expectantly at him.

  “Mr. Samuels?” Abdi looked up. The policeman had a sour expression and the solicitor was smiling, a tight, nasty smile. “You’re free to go, sir. There’s a car waiting.” He leaned in with a deferential inclination that almost hinted at a bow and swept an uncalloused hand toward the exit. Abdi nodded and pushed himself to his feet. The flimsy chair grated loudly in the quiet of the station.

  The solicitor held the door as Abdi eased his bulk into the back of the gray Bentley Mulsanne. He sighed as he sank into the tan calfskin seat.