The Waning Age

by S. E. Grove

  Joey had paused in his wandering monologue about Renaissance Italy. He had heard Philbrick’s words as well, and we looked at each other for a moment. “Wow,” Joey mouthed. Then he continued. “Even if I couldn’t actually talk to Michelangelo, maybe watch from a distance while he worked . . .”

  The waitress appeared at his elbow with the sweets and tea. She placed a plate with seven macarons of different colors directly in front of him. “The seventh is on me,” she said to him, with a little wink. “Red velvet.” The two pots of tea were purposely mismatched Wedgwood; the cups, too. There was a silver pitcher with milk and a silver pot with sugar cubes and a tiny pair of tongs. As she went to work converting her instructions for how to steep the tea into the next phase of Joey’s seduction, I saw Philbrick rise from his chair. He glanced at me as he did so, but his wife was staring at her hands and didn’t see it. Then he drifted into the restaurant.

  I pushed my chair back. “I’ll be right back, dulce,” I said to Joey, interrupting the waitress. She shot me a surprised look.

  I left my hat on my chair. I walked over to the Steakout, where the hostess was thankfully engaged seating a rowdy party of bankers who were roaring and high-fiving on the crest of some hedonistic synaff that would wear off quickly, leaving them somber and deadened by two in the morning. Heading into the restaurant like I knew where I was going, I walked along the bar and toward the rear. The bathrooms were off a wood-paneled corridor, dimly lit. There was a door with a high-heeled shoe and a door with a mustache.

  Me and the Philbrick men and bathrooms, I thought to myself. I opened the door with the mustache.

  The men’s room of the Steakout reminded me of the Landmark. Shiny tiles the color of onyx, two black bowls with silver faucets, heavy gilt mirrors on the cream-papered walls, and white orchids. There were no urinals, only two stalls of pale wood. Below one of the closed doors, Philbrick’s pricey shoes gleamed. I opened my bag and took out my lipstick and the nickel-sized decal I’d bought near Jack London Square on the morning I had brioche with Gao. It was light as a sticker. I peeled off the paper and tucked it carefully into my right palm, superglue side up. I walked to the mirror and held my lipstick up as if trying to decide where to use it.

  Philbrick flushed the toilet and a second later he opened the stall door. He stood in the doorway and looked at me, his face unsurprised and only mildly satisfied, as if the first course he’d been served was fortunately adequate.

  The next step would be easy. All I had to do was turn around, close the five feet of distance between us, and put my hand with the nickel-sized decal on the back of his neck. He wouldn’t stop my embrace, but even if he tried to, I had the lipstick in the other hand. Then Cal was as good as mine. The decal could detonate by remote at any distance. I would just inform Philbrick of the particulars and talk him through the steps like a toy robot. Toy gorilla robot.

  I watched Philbrick watching me. I thought about his easy brutality to his wife, his comfortable castle, his grotesque treatment of my brother. I thought about him refusing to follow my instructions. Stubborn. Arrogant. Immovable. Refusing to let Cal go, forcing me to open De rerum and trigger the little decal, the circuits inside the plastic working to rip all two hundred fifty pounds of him into tiny pieces, bits of red flesh all over the inside of the steak house bathroom.

  I could do this.

  I would do this if he refused to free Cal.

  Then, without wanting to, I thought about the Fish. I saw two hands severed in the road, and I heard long screams and groans of agony. Deliberate pain, intentional damage. Not for self-protection, but for gain. The calculated harm of a defenseless human being. I saw fog and rolling hills and Hoffman’s face, startled and bereaved. I saw again what Hoffman’s story had provoked, the memory of Mom talking to me about instinct and reason. Her face serious and beautiful and laced with the undercurrent of pain that always throbbed about her like an extra pulse. Though I can’t persuade you that they’re wrong, maybe I can try to persuade you to listen to your instincts. Do you think reason can solve everything? Do you think our instincts are so awful that they drive us to do terrible things?

  I hadn’t understood what she was getting at. Now I did. She meant that instincts are not five neatly labeled urges that course through us like electrical currents, switching on and off to get us through the day. Instincts are as varied and subtle as shades of color. They could make a scene from a window look gray, even if the sky was cloudless. They could make a person’s eyes look like dark, bottomless pits, regardless of their hue. They could make a room look like it had been splattered red, even if there wasn’t a drop of blood in sight. Instincts were too complex and too unrecognized.

  They were feelings. And I’d been ignoring them.

  Maybe Mom wasn’t an easygoing airhead after all. Maybe she was too smart, and the strictures of our world made her seem all futility and waywardness. I’d imagine brilliance would look that way in a world made of dead ends.

  Philbrick shifted, like he was trying to decide which fork to use. My eyes in the mirror drifted away from him to my own face. Slight nose, serious mouth. Good choice of lipstick. Ears slightly too large, but the wavy brown hair did its best to conceal them. The brown eyes were cold. Cold like a Fish’s eyes. But these were the same eyes that looked in on Cal to make sure he was sleeping. That watched him sing while he made a sandwich. They had watched him do these things and thousands of other things for more than a decade. I stared into them, trying to figure out if the two things could exist together.

  Staring. Being stared at. A spasm of something moved through my stomach, hot and violent. I felt sick. The sight of my own face made me sick. And suddenly I remembered someone else staring at me this hard, trying to figure out what lay behind my cold eyes. Cal, in the moments after we found Mom. At the time, I hadn’t understood what he was feeling, but now, as I looked at myself and the rational intention planned in my face, I understood, because I felt it. It was revulsion. After seeing our mother broken, strewn across the floor like a thing, the destruction obliterating any trace of familiarity, Cal had looked at me and seen this. These eyes.

  Apathy.

  Indifference, at the sight of a shattered face, at the prospect of an exploded body. What I had seen and what I would do were the same. A sensation moved across my skull, like a trickle of ice-cold water. I shuddered. I was still looking at my face in the mirror, and it was hideous. I wanted to break the glass to pieces.

  I gasped.

  Philbrick cocked his head, confused. I tore my eyes away from the monster in the mirror and turned to face him. He blinked, wondering and shifting to wariness, but the moment had passed: Philbrick was safe. I understood that I could no longer do it.

  Mom was right. I had not been listening to my instincts. Now I would.

  Four steps took me to the door, and then I was out again in the wood-paneled corridor, tapping the decal gently back onto its wrapper while I walked toward the dining area. I tossed the lipstick into my bag and wove past a waiter with a giant tray. Outside, I stopped briefly at Mrs. Philbrick’s table. “He’s a beast. You should leave him,” I said. She looked up at me, astonished, her eyes following me as I walked away.

  Joey was sitting very still, his fingers templed before him. I took my hat from the chair and sat down. He reached across and took my hand. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Nothing happened.” I waved for the check unsteadily. “I just stared at myself in the mirror.”

  30

  CALVINO

  October 14

  Dear Nat,

  Dr. Glout says that today was my last day of testing with him and that tomorrow I will be in a new lab. I am so glad because I am really sick of this room!! He said the tests in the other lab would not last very long, which is good. He didn’t know what the tests were like bec
ause other doctors are running the tests. It will probably be like Dr. Baylor again, which is not great, but as long as it is a real live person I don’t care. I would even be happy to see Dr. Baylor at this point. Can you believe it!

  I decided I would tell you my surprise plan for what to do when I am done with testing this week! It might be too expensive, which I understand if it is. But if it is not too expensive what I wanted to do was go on a boat. Any kind of boat! Even a ferry. Doesn’t it seem strange that we live right next to the water and have never been on a boat? I was reading about boats these last few days, especially houseboats. There are no canals here but I would love to live on a boat in a canal and just float along from one place to another! Maybe we could have cats! I think almost all our furniture would fit on the houseboat, except for your foldout bed—ha!

  Well that is my idea. See you soon after these last tests.

  Love,

  Cal

  31

  NATALIA

  OCTOBER 14—EVENING

  The trip home was mostly silent. Me because I was retooling Plan C. Joey because he was busy radiating approval. Somehow, he managed not to make it seem self-righteous. I didn’t bother pointing out to him that my brief flirtation with nonviolence would possibly cost Cal his life. I didn’t want to ruin his moment.

  We got home at nine and found that Cass and Tabby were still out with June. Joey called and talked to them for a while. He reported that they were coming up with emergency filings and would probably be with June for a few more hours. Then he made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while I explained Plan C. It was nothing fancy. Once at RealCorp, I would use the decal I’d been too spineless to use on Philbrick as a distraction. Hopefully it would buy me enough time to get Cal out of the building. I was about 78 percent certain that Glout could be persuaded to sit, tied to a chair, while Cal’s maniac sister executed a rescue. If his empathy didn’t stretch that far, or if he’d skipped his dose, I’d knock him over with an envelope and tie him up anyway. Then I had to hope that most of the security guards were still distracted. “It really has the potential to get very messy,” I said to Joey. “And I don’t expect you to come, but I won’t refuse your company, either.”

  “That’s terribly kind,” Joey said, taking the plates to the sink.

  “Come on, Joey,” I said. “This can end very badly. It would be good to know that you’re safe.”

  “I know,” he said, coming back to the table. “I’m sorry.” He slid the sheet of paper I was using to sketch Plan C toward him. “But I want to come. The point here is for Cal to be safe. Explain the details to me and tell me what I can do.”

  For the next half hour I told him the particulars and we added a few fixes. Joey surprised me with some good ideas and we drew them in. Then while he took a catnap on the sofa, I added as much as I could to the building plan. Most of RealCorp I hadn’t seen, but where there were exits and corridors that I remembered, I penciled them in.

  At 10:17 my doorbell rang. Joey sat up groggily on the sofa. “Who is that?”

  “I have no idea.” The front door wasn’t visible from the apartment windows. I walked down to the ground floor and peered out toward the glass door to the street. Troy Philbrick’s silhouette loomed darkly. A night angel, resting wearily on the stoop.

  I opened the door. The lightbulb on the doorstep was busted, and I saw the side of his face in the blue glow of the streetlight. It was damp with tears. He looked at me solemnly, not stepping forward. Then he lifted his right hand, showing me something black and metallic, only just larger than his outstretched fingers. “I shouldn’t have taken this,” he said hoarsely. “I’m sorry.”

  It was my mother’s handgun. It took me several seconds to figure out how it had gotten there. Lifted the night before from the dresser drawer, carried in a waistband or a jacket pocket across the bay, now carried back and balanced on a trembling palm.

  I finally took the handgun and stepped back. “You’d better come in,” I said.

  He followed me up the steps and into the apartment. I tried to give Joey a two-second warning of what lay ahead by showing him the weapon. I opened the drawer and placed it inside just as Troy paced woodenly into the living room. “Troy, this is my best friend, Joey. Joey, Troy.” Joey stood up and said nothing.

  Troy looked at him and then at me. He crumpled onto the floor slowly, like his bones had suddenly turned to sand. Then he wrapped his arms around his knees and started sobbing, hard and then harder, the spasms shaking his back. Joey and I exchanged a glance.

  I got down on my knees next to Troy and put my arm around his shoulder. His arms flung out and seized me and he held me like a drowning man, the sobs so violent I had to push against him to keep from falling. It lasted several minutes, and then the shuddering sobs started to slow. Finally he lay almost limp in my arms, his face buried against my shoulder.

  He sat back with effort and looked at us, dazed, like he wasn’t sure what had just happened. Joey handed him one of my old-school handkerchiefs, white with embroidered edges, taken from my dresser. “Thanks, man,” Troy choked out. His voice was scraped raw. He wiped his face and then folded the handkerchief and stared at it. We were both still sitting on the floor. I got up and offered him my hand. He took it, got to his feet with effort, and let me lead him over to the sofa.

  Joey brought a glass of water from the kitchen and put it in front of him on the table. Troy folded the handkerchief into the tiniest possible packet, and then he clasped it in his fist and squeezed. We waited.

  “My parents and stepmom,” Troy finally said. “Mom and Dad and Monica. They change my drops. They have since I faded. Usually they give me a normal regimen, but sometimes I get rewards . . . And sometimes I get punishments.” His face flushed. He pressed the handkerchief to his forehead. “Rewards are nice—short highs.” He paused. “The punishments are not so nice. Once I tried to leave. I stayed with a friend for a couple weeks. But my drops ran out and I was like a zombie.” He reached out with a shaking hand and took a long drink of water. He put the glass down and sighed. “When I went home the drops changed and made me depressed for a month. It was the worst month of my life. I couldn’t do anything, I didn’t want to get out of bed, I thought about killing myself. I felt constant pain, just from nothing. Just pain at existing. Pain with no escape because it came from inside me. That was the first time. Other times it’s been for longer.” He stared off into the distance.

  “So when I met you at the Landmark . . .” I started to ask.

  “Yeah.” He met my eyes briefly. “That was a punishment. I hadn’t done something Monica wanted. Mom didn’t know about it when we went out for lunch. I didn’t know either, so it caught us both by surprise.”

  I didn’t say anything. He opened his hand and stared down at the crumpled handkerchief for a full minute. “I talked to my dad this morning about Calvino. He told me straight out that Mom had mentioned your name and that he’d looked you both up. They could find nothing for leverage other than Calvino, his test results. So that’s what they used. I asked him to let Calvino go. Annul the adoption, whatever. He said that if it were up to him, every ten-year-old in the country would be in his lab. Can you believe it?” He squeezed the handkerchief again. “Of course he thinks that. Of course he does.” He shook his head. “Later on in the morning I found that him or Monica had swapped my regimen. No label. No doubt something nasty, probably like a month of self-recrimination. Or worse. A month of mindless obedience. I spent the rest of the day trying to get normal drops and I couldn’t.”

  He looked up at us, his expression suddenly cleared, as if he’d figured out something important. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I just couldn’t take it. I had no idea what was real. What I was feeling. Was it just something they’d changed in my dose? Was it normal? How long would it last? Was I afraid because they’d made me afraid, or was I just afraid?” He shook his head. “When they cam
e home from dinner today I confronted Dad and Monica.” He stared at his glass of water, and then he gave a little chuckle. “Can you believe they tried to say I was only angry because of the synaffs? That I didn’t actually have a reason to be angry?” He looked up at me. “That’s what they didn’t get. I wasn’t. I wasn’t angry. I was hurt. They’d been hurting me over and over and over for almost ten years.” He stared at me intently, willing me to understand.

  I held his gaze. “I can see that,” I said.

  He sat back against the sofa, relieved, his arms limp at his sides. The bundled handkerchief fell out of his hand and opened like a flower. He looked up at the bookcase and then back down at the floor. “I just left them there on the floor in the kitchen. I haven’t called the police. My mom is in Paris. Charlie is in Tahoe.” He glanced up at me. “I’m sorry; I didn’t know where else to go, Natalia.”

  I spoke carefully, as if uttering the words might make something break. “Troy. Did you use my mom’s gun?”

  He blinked. “Of course.”

  Of course. Of course he had. What else does one do with a gun? It did for Troy what it did for my mom. Shoot bullets. “Are they alive or dead?”

  “Totally dead.” Troy took a deep breath, letting the air push him back onto the couch. “No more drops. No more highs, no more lows. Probably. I haven’t thought about what will happen when my mom gets home. I don’t really care.” He looked up at me, his face abruptly childish and hopeful. “At least you get Calvino back now, don’t you?”

  I stared at him. His words made sense, but for some reason I couldn’t follow them. I was stuck on an image that wasn’t real, an image of two beautifully dressed people smeared on the beautiful floor of a beautiful castle. I knew enough about the house and the protagonists to wonder about the details. Had they seen what was coming? Had they felt some instinct of self-preservation? Had they run? Was their blood on the blond wood cabinets?