by Tom Abrahams
“VC?”
“Venture capital,” Derek said, speaking as if he were on the clock and running out of time. “I invest some of the money I’ve made into other start-ups, other companies that I think show promise. Some win, some lose. But that’s beside the point. The point is, there is this one company I’ve been spending a lot of time advising the team. They’ve got some incredibly unique and forward-thinking applications that transcend anything else that’s happening in Silicon Valley right now.”
“Uh-huh,” Danny said, resisting the urge to scream at Derek for ruining his life, for sending him into a spiral that had him out of data on his phone and trading Shotokan karate classes for janitorial duties.
“The company is called Interllayar,” said Derek. “They’ve hit upon some things that haven’t done quite what we expected. That is to say, the underlying application is solid. The execution needs work.”
“Interlayer?” asked Danny.
“Yes. But it’s spelled i-n-t-e-r-l-l-a-y-a-r.”
“So what does this have to do with me?” asked Danny. He lowered the phone without awaiting the answer and shrugged his shoulder onto his sweaty ear to dry it.
“—of it,” Derek was saying when he put the phone back to his ear. “Really, I just need to ask you some questions. But they’re critical.”
“Derek, I’m not interested,” he said. “And let’s be honest. I don’t owe you anything. Good luck with your venture capitalizing, or whatever it is you do.”
Danny disconnected the call and then turned off the phone. Of all the people on the face of the planet, Derek was one of two he’d gladly watch die a painful death.
That wasn’t entirely true. As much as he’d like to think of himself as heartlessly vengeful, Danny wasn’t the kind of person to let anyone else suffer.
As he aggressively showered and then angrily dressed himself, he couldn’t shake Derek from his head. The jerk had ruined what had been, up until his desperate plea for help, a decent day. Danny didn’t have a lot of those. The wounds were raw. His sleep was sporadic, his bank account was near empty, and his ex had had the audacity to give his cell phone number to Derek.
Unpleasant, X-rated memories flashed like a taunting slideshow as he forcefully tugged on clean socks. Derek. In his bed. With his woman.
His stomach lurched and he swallowed the urge to vomit. He squeezed his eyes closed as he sat on the varnished bench, alone now, merely trying to push the images from his mind. Those images were burned there on the backs of his eyelids.
The more he thought about Derek’s phone call, the more his jaw tightened. He stuffed his soiled gi into his duffel bag, zipped it up, and stomped from the locker room, entering the dojo. His instructor was standing in the center of the room, performing a gracefully effortless kata.
Danny stood and watched him, admiring the sweeping movements that glided from one to the next. It calmed him. His pulse slowed. His shoulders slacked.
When the instructor was finished, Danny moved toward the far end of the large space with a storage closet. Inside it, he found his mop and bucket. He dropped his belongings to the floor and picked up then carried the empty bucket to a wall-mounted tub.
He cranked on the hot water and began filling the bucket, which he’d placed inside the tub and filled with a thin layer of liquid soap. Danny didn’t hear the instructor until the man rapped his thick knuckles on the open door.
Danny swung around, knocking over the mop he’d rested against the corner of the tub. His face flushed. He bowed his head. “Sensei,” he said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
“No apology needed,” answered the blocky instructor. As fluid as his movements were, his physique was made of stone. He stepped into the closet and reached down to pick up the mop by its handle.
“I won’t be long,” said Danny. “I’m happy to lock up if you need to leave. I got delayed in the locker room.”
The instructor handed him the mop. “Phone call?”
Danny bowed his head, eyeing his feet. He nodded. “You heard me?”
“No,” said the instructor. “I did see the expression on your face when you checked your phone after class. Is everything okay? I know you don’t have much money. Is it—?”
“No,” said Danny, shaking his head vigorously. “It’s not that. You’re right. My cash flow is poor, and that’s on a good day. But no, the phone call wasn’t about money.”
“Still,” said the instructor, “I sense trouble.”
Danny turned off the running water. The suds bloomed and popped, crackling in the silence between him and his instructor.
The instructor took a step into the closet. “May I offer some advice?”
Danny nodded. “Of course.”
“Whatever it is,” said the instructor. “Whatever the source of your trouble, you should confront it. Don’t avoid it, Danny. I assure you that the source loses no sleep while you lie awake restless.”
“Thank you,” said Danny, considering what amounted to a Ruism. The instructor was right. He was positive that his ex and Derek lost absolutely no sleep over what they’d done to him. Though he did wonder if, because of the urgency and desperation in Derek’s voice, the bane of his existence was struggling in some way.
The instructor left Danny to his work, crossing the dojo to an office and reception area at the front of the building. The dojo held a corner spot in a strip mall off South Hewitt. It was in an area of the city called Little Tokyo, northeast of downtown. He could have spent as much time cleaning the outside of the building as its interior, but thankfully the chores were limited to mopping and disinfecting the dojo floor and the locker rooms. That alone took him more than an hour and a half. But it was worth it for the free lessons.
At least he kept telling himself that.
***
Danny stepped onto the Gold Line Metro Bus and slid his card through the payment kiosk next to the driver. The driver didn’t look up from her phone, sliding her fingers across the data-rich device, trolling a social media site he didn’t recognize. It might have been a dating app; she was swiping past a parade of smiling faces. She must have sensed Danny watching her while he awaited the green light from the payment kiosk.
“You need something?” she asked with one eyebrow arched higher than the other.
Danny shook his head, spotted the green light, and shuffled toward a window seat at the back of the bus. He had a ten-minute ride to Union Station, where he’d switch to the Purple Line then take that to Santa Monica. His job there was a two-minute walk from the bus stop.
Despite having the Volkswagen, Danny rarely used it. He might take it to the beach to play with his dog, Maggie, or a road trip up the coast. Otherwise he took the bus. It saved on the extravagance of gasoline and prevented him from having to pay for regular maintenance more frequently than he did.
He plopped into his seat and leaned his head against the window. The exhaustion hit him instantly. He wanted to close his eyes and sleep, but he had a six-hour shift he’d picked up as an extra at the diner, so he’d muddle through. What else did he have to do anyhow? He had nowhere else to be.
The bus rumbled while pulling into traffic. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, turned it on, and waited while the display cycled to the home screen. He had another series of messages, a combination of voicemails and texts. Again, they were all from Derek.
Whatever the source of your trouble, confront it.
Danny ignored the messages but returned Derek’s call. It rang once before Derek answered.
“You hung up on me,” he said. “Why would you—”
“Look, Derek,” Danny interrupted, keeping his voice low so as not to include the half-dozen other bus riders in his conversation, “I’m not interested in anything you have to tell me. You stole my wife. You pretty much ruined my life. So you could tell me a huge asteroid is about to slam into the Earth and I’m not sure I’d care, given that you’re the one telling me.”
D
anny felt at once invigorated and nervous as he spoke. He was short of breath, his pulse beating faster and faster. He was light-headed. But it was good.
“I really want you to stop calling me,” he said. “I don’t care what you’re doing. I don’t care what she’s doing. Have a great life, but leave me out of it.”
“I get that,” said Derek quickly, as if he’d been waiting for his moment to counter, his sentences running together as if his speech were rolling downhill and gathering momentum. “I’m not proud of it. She’s not proud of it. It is what it is. I can’t go back. Not where that’s concerned. I can’t fix that. And trust me, it’s not as though I’m particularly interested in relying on you, of all people, for help.”
“Of all people?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Derek. “You know what I meant.”
The bus lurched to a stop with a squeal and a hiss of its brakes. A couple of people got up from their seats and exited; a few more climbed aboard. One of the arrivals, a heavyset man wearing a bright yellow Lakers jersey and denim jeans, sat in the aisle seat next to Danny despite the countless other empty seats on the bus.
Danny leaned into the window as the bus accelerated from the curb, merging into slow-moving traffic. “What did you mean?” he asked, lowering his voice.
“I meant,” said Derek, pacing himself now, seeming to consider his words before they accumulated speed, “I know how you feel about me. If I could avoid coming to you with this, I would. This isn’t any more pleasant for me than it is for you.”
Danny sighed. “So what is it, then?”
“Have you been paying attention to the news today?”
“No. I’ve been…working.”
“There was a plane crash off the coast of Florida,” said Derek. “It was an LA-bound flight.”
Danny squeezed himself into the corner between the window and his narrow seat, trying to avoid contact with the Lakers fan taking up more than his share of space. “I know about that,” he said. “It was yesterday.”
“Yes. And did you know there’s a storm circulating in the Gulf? It’s one wave of intense rain after another? There are flash flood warnings from east Texas to the Florida panhandle.”
“Okay,” said Danny. He didn’t know about that. It was obvious in the way the word trailed into a partial question.
“What if I told you the two are related?”
“They are,” said Danny. “I saw on the news last night that they think the weather was a factor in the—”
“No,” said Derek sharply. “That’s not what I mean.”
The bus slowed again. It was Danny’s stop. He gathered himself into as compact a package as he could and motioned for Kobe to get up from his seat. The man complied, barely, and Danny headed to the exit. He stepped onto the curb, managing to keep the phone cradled between his ear and shoulder. There were a few minutes to kill before he’d need to board the Purple Line bus to Santa Monica.
“What do you mean, then?”
“So here’s the thing,” said Derek. “I can’t talk about this on the phone. Can we talk in person?”
Danny adjusted the duffel on his arm. A waft of sweaty funk filtered from the bag. He wrinkled his nose and looked for the signage that would lead him to Route 805. “What does any of this have to do with me?”
“I don’t know yet if it does,” said Derek. Then he huffed. “Look, I’ve said enough already. I’m in LA. Can we meet?”
“I’m on my way to work.”
“I thought you’ve been at work.”
“I have,” said Danny. “I picked up an extra shift.”
“I can meet you there.”
Danny found the sign and started toward his bus. “I’ll be working,” he protested.
“You get breaks, right?” Derek pressed. “I can wait for you.”
Danny knew there was no winning this one. The more he tried to avoid Derek, the pushier he’d become. He was certain of it.
Whatever the source of your trouble, confront it.
“Okay,” said Danny. “Meet me in three hours. I’ll get a fifteen-minute break. You can talk to me then. Fifteen minutes.”
“What’s the address?”
“I’ll text it to you.”
“Will you? Or will I have to keep calling you?”
“I’ll send it as soon as we hang up.”
True to his word, and truer than his ex, Danny sent the address to Derek. He really didn’t want to talk to the guy. He especially didn’t want the tech gazillionaire seeing he worked in a diner as a fry cook. But what did it matter? If he were honest with himself, in the grand scheme of things, not much.
He boarded the empty bus and swiped his card again. The driver was talking on his phone and didn’t pay him any attention. Danny found a seat against a window toward the back of the bus and settled in for the longer part of his commute.
Nestled in the corner of his seat against the glass, with cool, damp air blowing onto the side of his face, Danny closed his eyes and thought about the bizarre conversation. Why would the weather and a plane crash thousands of miles away have anything to do with him? And whatever the connection might be, however tenuous, how did it involve Derek?
Before he dozed off, considering the unanswerable questions, he set an alarm on his phone. He didn’t want to sleep past his stop. That would be a disaster.
CHAPTER 6
April 4, 2026
New Orleans, Louisiana
Bob Monk pinched the bridge of his nose and leaked the grunt of a man who didn’t have the energy for much more than a weak attempt at attention-seeking. He was sitting in a cheap leather chair that faced the wall-mounted flat-screen television on the living room wall of his eldest daughters’ rented home. The father of three women—Kiki, Katie, and Keri—he’d adapted the use of hyperbole to be heard amongst his loving but dismissive flock.
“What is it, Bob?” asked his wife, Kristin, in a tone of voice that expressed to him she didn’t really care but was playing along for the sake of civility. She was sitting opposite him on a comfortable chenille sofa, rubbing her palms on and across the soft fabric.
“I don’t like the look of it,” he said. “Too much rain, too fast.”
“We’ll be fine,” said Kristin. “Nothing real to worry about, Bob. Some street flooding maybe.”
He shook his head. “I don’t like being away from the house. We’re close to water. Keri is there alone. I don’t like the look of it.”
“Keri isn’t alone,” said his wife. She folded her arms across her chest and looked at him over a pair of cheap readers she’d bought at Costco the week before. “She has Dub with her and another boy. Barker, I think.”
“What kind of name is Dub?” asked Bob. “That’s not a name, it’s a verb. And I don’t like that she’d be getting so serious with the boy.”
“Is there anything you do like, Dad?” asked Kiki, emerging from the tightly quartered but functional kitchen. “You don’t like the forecast. You don’t like Dub.” She handed him a drink, a whiskey and ginger ale.
“I like this,” he said, taking the glass from his daughter and toasting it toward her. “Three cubes and two fingers of whiskey. Perfect, thank you.”
He took a long sip of the drink, and Kiki slinked across the room to sit next to her mother. Rain was now falling with more intensity; it was slapping the roof and pelting the windows. Its rhythm might have been hypnotic had it not been for the concern about how much of it would fall over the next two days.
“Speaking of Keri,” Kiki said to nobody in particular, “she still at the game?”
“She texted a few minutes ago,” said Kristin. “The game’s over, and they’re on their way to get something to eat, and then they’ll head back to the house.”
“She’ll text you when she gets there?” asked Kiki. “I know she’s in college and all, but she’s still little Keri. I worry about her.”
Bob took a pull of his drink and smacked his lips. “I got her on a tracker
. One of those apps. I know where she is all the time.”
Kristin put her hand on her daughter’s leg. “Your father is a worrywart. Always has been with all of you girls.”
“Yeah,” said Kiki, “but we never abandoned you and went to California.”
The three of them chuckled.
“This storm is going to put New Orleans underwater,” said Katie, Bob’s middle daughter, bounding into the room from her bedroom on the opposite side of the one-story house. She’d been sequestered there for much of the afternoon, sulking over something unspoken, as she frequently did. She’d learned from somebody that hyperbole was effective.
“She joins the living,” her mother announced. “To what do we owe the pleasure of your company?”
Though Katie was in her mid-twenties, she frequently behaved as a seven-year-old who hadn’t comprehended the idea of how reason might sound. Everyone in the family blamed this on her being the baby for several years, until an unexpected third child slid her unceremoniously into the middle slot. Alfred Adler would have loved her. She proved his theories correct every time she feigned aggrievement for the sake of attention.
“I’ve been watching the news,” she said, waving her hands dramatically. “I had plans tomorrow. Big plans. It’s the last day off before a long work week. But this rain is going to kill everything.”
Kiki rolled her eyes. “I forgot,” she said, aiming her veiled sarcasm directly at her younger sister.
Katie crossed the room to the sofa. “Forgot what?”
“This is your world and we’re all just living in it,” Kiki cracked.
Katie plopped onto the sofa on the other side of their mother. “At least you remember now.”
Had they been in their tweens or teens, Bob or Kristin might have felt compelled to play peacemaker, to gently chastise one or both of their children and caution them against their behavior. But the girls were adults now. They were free to be asses to each other, especially in their own house. Bob wondered sometimes how the two of them managed to coexist under the same roof without clawing each other’s eyes out. Deep down though, he knew the two were thick as thieves, and if push came to shove, which sometimes it did, they’d have each other’s backs.