LiGa

by Sanem Ozdural

  Peter kept his smile intact and moved aside to let her in. “Your luggage will be brought to your quarters, Mrs. Trahan,” he explained.

  “Yes, I gathered as much, dear.” Cat followed him through the door, scattering compliments on the general ambience and architecture.

  “You’d never know to look at the place that people were literally fighting for their lives in here, don’t you think?” she asked cheerfully.

  “You can’t tell a book by its cover, isn’t that right, Mrs. Trahan?” Peter replied gamely.

  “Touché, darling!” Cat said brightly. “You know when dear Frederick was telling me about you, I said to myself: ‘now that sounds like such an interesting young man, and one I know I am going to thoroughly enjoy meeting’.”

  “Really? How kind of the senator.”

  “Oh, he wasn’t kind in the least. He said he thought you were a bit of a snake,” Cat laughed happily.

  “I’m so glad you could join us, Mrs. Trahan,” Peter grinned.

  “Oh yes, so am I. This is absolutely thrilling. Where are we going now, dear?”

  Peter explained that while her luggage was being installed in her rooms, she could have her hand imprinted, “If you’re not too tired after your journey,” he added. “It can be done later if you’d like to rest. It will only take five minutes.”

  Cat looked at her wrinkled, bony hand, marked with lumpy veins and age spots. “This old thing?” she chuckled. “Any life that comes out of my hand will be a wheezy, sorry sort of thing. I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end.”

  “Curiously, it makes no difference,” Peter said seriously as though he too, had considered the same thing.

  “Oh well, let’s get it over with then,” Cat said with a brief shrug of her fragile shoulders.

  They had reached the imprinting room. Peter led her to the machine and explained the short procedure.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed, withdrawing her hand. “It does tingle.” Studying her hand, now threaded with cranberry-hued lines.

  “Now let me show you your quarters, Mrs. Trahan.”

  “Oh that would be lovely,” she sighed. On the way she inquired if anyone else was staying at LiGa during the tournament.

  “Storm Drake,” Peter replied.

  “The racecar driver?”

  Peter assented that this was so.

  “How lovely! He seems like a delightful young man. I hope our rooms are close together.”

  “Your rooms are on opposite sides of the dining room,” Peter explained. “I don’t believe he’s here now though. His motorbike isn’t in the parking lot. Mr. Tanner and I are also staying on premises throughout the tournament, but in the other building – perhaps you noticed it: on the other side of the glass cube. You won’t see us except during the actual games.”

  “Oh, what a shame.”

  Peter let her in to the suite, which was the mirror image of Storm’s, consisting of a medium-sized bedroom and a living room that felt more spacious than it was, letting in dappled light from its window-wall.

  “How delightful,” she said, noting the crisp white of the room, accented here and there with calming tones of the sea. Cat thanked Peter for his assistance, assuring him that she would not hesitate to call room service if she needed anything. After he left she sank into the foamy softness of the bed, gazing up into the ceiling. What an unusual… space, she thought, puzzled. She turned to look at the room more closely. It is all rather different, she decided. Beautiful, yes, relaxing, certainly, and… unexpectedly… uneven. There were no straight lines, it seemed. No true right angles. An absolute contrast to the glass cube, Cat thought, smiling up at the stencil of an enormous white crocodile with blue eyes curling around a chandelier full of small white glass birds. You look like our ’gators! Cat was thinking of the famous white alligators of Louisiana, stuck in the zoo in New Orleans. Rare, beautiful creatures, that belonged no more around a chandelier than they did in a bleak puddle of a pool in the city.

  Cat yawned. She would rest for a few minutes. Flying was so much more tiring than it used to be.

  *

  Ignore the fatigue. Run through it. Run. His legs felt heavy and labored. Run through the pain. Tired. Run. Come on! He thought of the cockpit. Come on. The heat: burning, blistering heat. Heavy? Gravity was heavy, weighing on your shoulders, your neck, through the corner you had to take at 100 miles an hour. Come ON!

  Storm slowed to a jog, breathing heavily. He checked his watch and shook his head with annoyance. A seven-minute mile! He had never been this slow. Maybe for the first few weeks after the hospital – after Monza.

  He walked the last half-mile back to LiGa. Peter was outside when he arrived.

  “Hey Peter,” Storm waved. “Haven’t seen you since the game. How’s it going?”

  “Fine, Mr. Drake,” Peter gave a distant smile. “Nice run?”

  Storm shrugged noncommittally, “What are you doing out here?” he asked.

  “I went for a walk,” Peter replied. “By the way, Governor Trahan arrived this afternoon.” Upon seeing Storm’s puzzled expression, he explained that he was referring to Cat Trahan, the replacement for the senator.

  “Oh right,” Storm nodded. “Is she staying here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Great. Maybe I’ll say hello. Where are her rooms?”

  Peter described the layout, as they entered the building together. “Well, goodbye, Mr. Drake,” Peter said, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, ok. See you then.” Storm watched Peter retreat along the corridor leading to the opposite wing of the building. Went for a walk? Not likely, Storm thought. He was probably just checking I’m behaving myself. Just like all those unobtrusive but ever-present gray men.

  It made sense to meet to the new player. Check her out. Ex-governor of Louisiana. Interesting character, according to her biography. Get to know her before the others. Before tomorrow’s game.

  He checked his watch: almost six. They could have dinner together. He would introduce himself, then go and take a shower before dinner at 6:30. Early dinner; early to bed before tomorrow’s game. That had always been his schedule during the races. In the morning he would review some of the hands from the last game, recalling his opponents’ moves.

  *

  He was an old man with a severe, pinched expression, wearing an ornate cardinal’s miter, and, incongruously, a simple black cassock. He was seated across from her at an ordinary wooden table, and looking at her expectantly with watery, faded blue eyes. What did he expect of her? She wondered, looking down at her hands. Young, strong hands. She was not surprised.

  “It’s your bid,” he said impatiently, in a reedy voice.

  She wondered what he meant. He was not young, she noticed with satisfaction, and that too, was not surprising.

  In her hands,

  She saw that she was holding all the honor cards. It was going to be fun.

  Why was he tapping his staff? It was breaking her concentration. She wanted him to stop.

  Cat opened her eyes.

  Where am I? She glanced around the room, disoriented. White walls dappled with sunlit shadows. A bed to sink into.

  Ah yes: LiGa. She rose from the bed, holding on to the image of the cone shaped golden hat on the head of an elderly man.

  Someone was knocking on the door.

  “Coming,” Cat said, padding slowly to the door.

  Outside the door was a man who banished all images of wizened old clerics.

  “You must be Storm Drake,” she said brightly.

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Storm replied with a charming, lopsided smile. “I saw Peter a minute ago. He told me you’d arrived,” he explained.

  Cat yawned daintily and confirmed that she had arrived that afternoon.

  “I hope I didn’t wake you up.” Storm sounded concerned.

  “Yes, you did, but I really shouldn’t be napping in the middle of the day like that. It was the flight, you know. I always get very tired after flying
these days.” She sighed. “Thank you for making sure I don’t stay up all night. Oh, I am being so rude!” Cat exclaimed, opening the door wider to let Storm in, “making you stand there. Please come in.”

  “No thank you, Ma’am. I really can’t. I just came back from a run and I need to take a shower before dinner – obviously!” he laughed, pulling at his sweaty t-shirt.

  “I hope you had a good run,” Cat smiled.

  “It was fine,” Storm shrugged. “Pretty country around here. Clears the head. Well, when I got back I saw Peter outside. He told me you had arrived so I thought I’d ask if you’d like to join me for dinner – seeing as we’re the only ones who are staying here. Would give us a chance to meet before the game–” he paused, waiting for her reaction.

  “It would be my pleasure,” she said with a broad smile.

  “Great. They serve pretty good food here. Or if you prefer, we could get a bite to eat in Princeton. It’s up to you,” he added.

  “I think I’d rather stay here.” She paused, “Yes, that would be lovely. What time is it now?”

  Storm replied that it was six. “They start serving at 6:30,” he explained. “It’s early but I like to have an early night before the game.”

  “6:30 isn’t too early,” Cat smiled, “I can be ready in half an hour.”

  “Good,” Storm nodded. “I’ll come back in half an hour.”

  “It’s a date,” she twinkled. Cat closed the door with a self-satisfied grin. Storm Drake. What a charming young man.

  It had been two weeks since the last game. Those crow’s feet when he smiled – adorable of course – but had there been quite as many lines two weeks ago, she wondered. He had grown up under the California sun, and had been racing more than half his life, and one could not rely on photographs – hers, for instance – but it did seem to her that perhaps he did look a little too old for 36.

  And absolutely adorable, of course.

  Storm strode to his rooms to change. She reminded him of Nana, with her sweet-old-lady looks, and hard blue eyes. Not a pushover, not like the senator. What had happened to the senator, he wondered. Was he getting older?

  Like me.

  Dispassionately, he looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. You didn’t need to look in the mirror to know you were aging. You were always aging, anyway, and mostly didn’t notice it for years, but this was different.

  The initial feeling of deflation had dissipated, but there remained a vague tiredness. No, not that exactly. More like not as much energy. That was it. He couldn’t run quite as far as he could two weeks ago, or rather, he could run the same distance, but not with the same ease.

  Time. He knew had less of it to live, now.

  For now.

  *

  Martha Other was examining – as was her daily custom – her roses for pests. She pulled a dying flower here and there, looking for telltale evidence of insects. She found none, to her satisfaction.

  She rose easily from her kneeling position, and stood straight and tall, surveying her roses. With a confident step, she walked to a small bush bearing an open flower and two small buds.

  In the light of the waning sun, the tips of the ivory-pink petals glittered like ice.

  Yes, as they said, it was beautiful. The lines around her mouth hardened as she looked away from the flower. It was still not just right.

  How long had it been? Several years ago… She could not even remember the date of the first cutting. Long before that, though, was a time when there were things that seemed impossible.

  An afternoon in June. A rose in someone else’s garden. A fragile pale yellow flower backlit by the sun. Not a rich, thick flower. A flower that looked like a golden shadow.

  An impression scalded into her imagination.

  Martha Other knew roses. She had grown red roses, pink, yellow roses; she had created purple roses and had raised many a sooty ‘black’ rose. Martha Other enjoyed a challenge, and, until that June afternoon so many years ago, had considered it her duty to create the first true blue rose – even though she did not particularly care for the color.

  But Martha Other had never – until that day in June – considered the possibility of a transparent rose.

  She had turned the idea sown by that yellow flower, fluttering gently in the breeze, with its thin petals that were almost translucent to … Silver Dawn.

  Certainly, for them – meaning everyone else – Silver Dawn was a major accomplishment, she thought dismissively. But for Martha Other, it was insufficient. What she wanted was to create the first and only truly transparent rose.

  Nothing less would do. She wondered if she had sufficient lifetime left to create such a flower. Growing roses required patience and a strong, supple back. Her back had been strong, but the years passed… one unassuming day at a time, and it was already getting harder to bend and kneel by her roses.

  And then, in early April, she had received the LiGa invitation.

  On April 3rd at 9:30am sharp, she entered her courtroom in the Supreme Court of New York State, Criminal Term, New York County. She strode to the bench in supple calfskin, two-inch Italian pumps, and a beige-gold suit under her robe. The twittering courtroom fell silent as she took her seat.

  “Seth–” she called out.

  “Yes Judge?” Seth Brown, the Judge’s law clerk, asked. The Judge motioned gracefully for him to approach.

  “Mother wants you,” whispered the court officer, grinning, loud enough for the judge to hear. She ignored him.

  “Seth – do you know who left this pamphlet on the bench?” Asked the judge, waving a thin document bound in matte black. Seth shook his head. “Nope. What is it?” he reached out to look at the offending item, but the Judge withdrew it. “It’s just a brochure. Never mind,” she said, putting the document aside.

  It was a day filled with crack possessors, with one distribution of methamphetamine to break the monotony. The judge oversaw motion practice, and a sprinkling of status hearings, but her mind was on the slim black volume at her elbow. Glancing at the gold lettering on the cover, she wondered…

  Immortality… She had never quite believed the LiGa hype. It was easy to claim someone was immortal, but how was one to know for sure? Had it not been a mere five or maybe ten years since LiGa had arrogantly claimed to bestow eternal life? Well, I would like to see the condition of those Immortals in twenty years, she thought… or thirty, or a hundred…

  The Judge shook her head. Immortality was impossible. Probably.

  Impossible as in not possible, or as the impossible beauty of a transparent rose? That was an interesting question – one worth investigating, quite possibly.

  And here she was on the eve of the second game, not needing her old reading glasses. Her burgeoning arthritis – so noticeable while gardening – also seemed to have loosened its hold on her joints. Perhaps it was just her imagination. A type of placebo effect, she surmised. Probably.

  *

  The dining room was on the first floor: a small but well-lit affair, with little in the nature of furnishings. The lighting was due largely to the glass doors overlooking – as with much of LiGa’s living and playing space – the pond in the back of the property.

  They were alone in the room, wrapped in a muffled silence broken occasionally by the clatter of cutlery.

  “How’s your chicken?” Storm asked.

  “Very nicely done, considering…” Cat replied.

  “Considering what?”

  “I rather like more flavor in my food,” Cat said. It was a good opening for a brief foray into the familiar refrain of the flavorfulness of New Orleans cuisine. The topic was exhausted with ease, as was the one in which Storm declared his love for “the Big Easy,” to which Cat politely replied that had she had more of a choice in where she lived, she would certainly have picked San Francisco.

  “Why did you retire from racing?” Cat asked with an inviting bluntness.

  Storm hesitated. “I think because I was bored,”
he said slowly, as though unsure. “There was nothing left to achieve. Maybe another driver’s cup…” Storm shrugged dismissively.

  “Of course,” Cat said with an expression of understanding.

  “When did you receive the invitation?” she asked.

  “In April,” he replied. “I guess we all received them around the same time. I was in Monaco,” he added in a faraway voice.

  “Storm has conquered Monaco for the fourth time in a row! This is truly the era of Storm Drake: the King of Formula One,” had proclaimed one of the leading motorsport publications.

  “Has there ever been a driver as fast, as cunning, as ruthless as Californian Lightning?” wondered another.

  “Yes, Lightning can strike twice, thrice, four times…” wrote Storm’s hometown paper, with great pride.

  That was the year before his retirement. He did not regret it. It had been twelve long, storied years on the grid, five of those with Ferrari. But it was hard not to feel … bored. Advising the new drivers could never be an adequate substitute.

  This past April – while he was on the wrong side of pit (instructing, not driving) – he was feeling restless. No longer a driver, but not quite suited for anything else either.

  After the race and after the parties he had gone back to the hotel.

  The morning after, he had awoken and reached for his watch on the bedside table …

  “Yes, Sir? Mr. Drake? How can I be of assistance?” inquired a young woman’s polite voice. Her British English held the slightest foreign inflection.

  “Uh yeah… Do you know who came to my room last night?”

  “Well, Sir–” She began hesitantly.

  “I mean anyone besides me and Helen Elliot-Robes?” Storm cleared his throat.

  “I don’t know, Sir. Is there something wrong?” she asked solicitously.

  “No, no. Everything’s fine. Thanks. Oh, I need coffee.”

  “Would you like anything else for breakfast?”

  “No, not now.”

  Leaning back in bed, Storm Drake picked up the slim, bound document in matte black embossed in gold with the word LiGa™ and started to re-read the contents. He had discovered it by his bedside table when he woke up. He was almost certain it had not been there yesterday morning, but on race day he may not have noticed.