The surfer got down off his stool and ambled over toward them. Kevin watched Richard turn slightly in his chair, to get his feet out from under their table.
The surfer’s buddies, neither as tall nor as wide as their friend, were sliding down from their stools to join him. “How old are you?” the blond demanded.
Richard was still smiling. “That’s not your business either, champ.”
The other diners around them were becoming aware of the situation. Kevin heard raised voices, back toward the kitchen.
“I think you old fucks should die when it’s your time, dude.”
Richard sat in his chair and didn’t move. Instead he started to whistle in a low pitch, somehow managing to whistle and look amused at the same time. Kevin recognized the tune, Mack the Knife, and he heard the lyrics in his head as Richard whistled so well: such teeth.
The big man kicked at Richard’s head without any windup. Richard brushed the flying foot aside, and Kevin leaned back as the foot passed inches from his face. Without even getting out of the chair Richard kicked the surfer in the side of the knee, and Kevin heard the crack as the joint broke. Richard got to his feet as the big surfer fell. Kevin pointed to the man’s friends: “Uh-uh.”
The surfer was on all fours and looked up and saw Richard coming for him and said, “Don’t,” meant to say “kick me,” but the kick took him in the face before he could finish. The kick flipped him over onto his back, spitting teeth and blood, and Richard knelt down and put a knee on his chest and started punching. The man’s nose vanished in a smear of blood, three straight right-handed punches to the mouth shattered what was left of the front row of his teeth, and then Richard leaned back and swung a long roundhouse left down to break his jaw.
It didn’t take thirty seconds end to end.
RICHARD WAITED PATIENTLY for the police to get done with them. There was no shortage of witnesses to testify that the surfer, one Maxwell “Mack” Schneider, had started the fight. The senior officer responding, a middle-aged man with a gut on him, looked at Richard’s driver license, reissued just last December, looked at the address and then, closely, at the holographic birth date, turning it side to side under the lights to make sure it was real. After that it was pro-forma; Schneider was arrested and taken off in an ambulance.
“Did you have to beat him so bad?” asked the cop.
Richard didn’t answer the cop, and Kevin knew why. Though he’d rarely seen it come out, there was murder in his father – Kevin thought it was lucky his father had never killed anyone, all the years he’d lived with that temper.
“He came at me while I was sitting there with my son,” said Richard. “What would you have done?”
The cop looked at Kevin. “He looks able to handle himself,” the cop said sourly.
“He’s my boy,” said Richard quietly. “While I’m in the room, he shouldn’t have to.”
THEY WALKED OUT to their cars together. Richard’s Jaguar was parked next to Kevin’s Mercedes. Blood was spattered on Richard’s gray sweater and there were a few dots on Kevin’s legs. They stopped at Richard’s car.
“We’re going to have to find another beach to surf, for a while,” Kevin said.
Richard looked amused, a little distant. “No, that won’t be a problem.”
“You think he’ll be afraid to come by?”
Richard shrugged. “Some men get whipped bad enough, they’re never the same after. Some you whip over and over, they’ll keep coming after you until one of you dies or leaves town. I don’t know what kind our friend Mack is.”
“Did you know his name?”
Richard looked puzzled. “No. Why?”
“You were whistling Mack the Knife right before you took him apart.”
“Was I?” Richard thought about it. “That’s funny. Just coincidence, I guess.” He looked off at the beach, at the sun setting across the water. He hummed a second under his breath ... “Yeah, that’s a good song.” Then he laughed. “Ah, hell. Kev, this has been a great day. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For talking me into ... you know. This. Into being young again.” Kevin looked him in the eye, standing there almost exactly the same height together, blue eyes looking into blue. Richard’s grin softened, became something gentler, a smile, a little wistful. “Ah, well. I love you, boy.”
“Yeah, I know that.” Kevin nodded. It was only the third or fourth time in his entire life his father had said so. “I do know that. Good night, Dad. I’ll see you in a day or two.”
HE CALLED RICHARD on Tuesday, but Richard didn’t answer and didn’t call back. The next day Kevin drove out to see him in the early evening, after rush hour had ceased.
The security service had been cancelled a couple months back. The press had long since moved on to the next four-day wonder, and even Richard’s email had died down to a manageable flood.
He knocked and then opened the front door using the combination pad. He was only a few steps inside the house when the first intimation touched him. The house was quiet – Kevin had been born in this house, and it had never been this quiet before, not with Richard in it.
Richard was lying peacefully in the bedroom, on his back in the bed he hadn’t slept in since Anna’s death. The little container of painkillers next to him was open and empty.
After a while Kevin wandered into the living room, sat down in front of the phone and called Doctor Tan.
“My father’s dead. He, uh, it looks like he took the painkillers.”
Doctor Tan didn’t respond for a second, then said, “I’m sorry to hear that, Kevin.”
“He wouldn’t talk about the goddamn cancer. How bad was it?”
Doctor Tan’s eyes dropped off-camera – for a second Kevin thought Tan was looking at Kevin’s image in the screen beneath his camera, but then he remembered seeing the holo setup in Tan’s office – Tan’s camera was on the other side of the one-way holo, behind Kevin’s eyes. Then he knew Tan was looking at records, something to do with his father.
It took a bit before Doctor Tan said, “Kevin, your father’s cancer was cured. The transform viruses knocked it out.”
“Oh.”
Doctor Tan looked back up again. “I’m sorry for your loss. Do you need any help?”
Kevin shook his head. He’d been a therapist most of his adult life; he knew what to do with a suicide. “No. I’ll be okay. I’ll call the coroner. I’ll, uh ... yeah. I’ll handle it.”
AFTER RICHARD’S BODY had been taken away, Kevin sat on the couch in the living room, watching the television set. It was tuned to the sports channel that was nearly the only thing his father had ever watched. Two men were playing tennis.
After a while he got up and started cleaning. His father was neat enough, but the old man left glasses everywhere, wherever he’d been when he finished drinking whatever was in them. Kevin walked through the bedrooms, picked up the glass at the side of the bathtub, picked up the two glasses in his father’s office and took them into the kitchen to wash them, along with the half-dozen dishes Richard had left in the sink.
The note was struck to the refrigerator with a magnet.
“Think of me sometime when you’re surfing. I’d like to stay, but I miss your mother bad.”
END
A Conversation
in the Kitchen
With Her Father
HE
R FATHER AND I went into the kitchen together, leaving Carrie in the dining room with her mother.
He was an electrical engineer, a quiet man with an inquisitive expression, a head shorter and a few years older than me, balding and shading toward softness.
“Cappuccino – non-fat foam?”
“If it’s no trouble.”
He smiled. “No trouble. I make it that way for my wife.” He had the tools, the coffee roaster, the burr grinder, the foamer, the stainless steel dual-drip espresso maker – he had thousands of dollars worth of equipment on the counter. He opened a container with beans he’d roasted and fed them into the grinder. Over the sound of the grinder he said, “How’d you meet?”
“I ran a workshop last year. I hadn’t taught in a while and friends called in a favor.” They thought they’d been doing me a favor, getting me out into the world again.
“Carrie took an acting class?” He sounded surprised.
“No” – the grinder went silent, and I lowered my voice. “Her boyfriend.”
“Mark.”
“I don’t remember his name. He quit early on.” I didn’t remember his name, but I remembered him. He was strikingly beautiful, a couple years younger and rather prettier than Carrie. Possibly he hadn’t known he was gay yet, and very likely he hadn’t known he was the worst actor I’d seen in thirty years. “Very good-looking boy.”
He tamped down the coffee and slid it into the dual-spout espresso machine. “That was Mark. When she told us they’d broken up,” he said carefully, “her mother and I were not terribly upset.”
“Until you heard why?”
He shook his head. “She didn’t tell us why.”
“When did she tell you?”
“After she invited you to meet us.”
We’d been living together for six months at that point. “Ah.”
“You’re not surprised.”
“And nor are you.”
“She keeps her own counsel, that girl.” He put the frothing wand into the milk and steam hissed up. “You don’t look your age. You look ten or fifteen years younger than me.”
Normally I pass it off as good genes. What is really is, is work. “You read trade journals and such?”
“It’s mostly moved to the web, but yeah, I stay on top of the publications.”
“Sunscreen, botox, laser resurfacing, chemical peel, diamond micro dermabrasion, tretinoin, collagen injections. That’s mostly for the face. I get a manicure and pedicure once a week. I don’t have a bald spot, that’s genetics, but I’ve had my hairline touched up twice. I dye my beard and hair. I had Lasik. I spend three hours a day working out – hot yoga every day for ninety minutes, aerobic interval training daily, weight work three times a week, longer-form aerobics four times a week.” I thought about discussing my diet and supplements, decided that was more than the point needed. “I’ve started with intermittent fasting recently – eat one day, don’t eat the next – supposed to help you live longer and improve your immune system and neural health.”
He smiled, a little tentatively. “Hard work.”
“It’s the job. Or it’s vanity, take your pick. It’s mostly vain people who get into my line of work.”
“I looked you up on IMDB.” He shook his head. “I recognized a couple of your roles.”
“And all of my movies.”
The espresso machine started hissing, pumping dark coffee into the small cups. “Most of them.”
Only people in the industry know my name. A couple years back an industry blogger figured out who the top dozen actors were by box office receipts – even he was surprised to find my name on the list. Harrison Ford and Samuel L. Jackson were first and second – I was sixth. I had speaking roles in two of the Star Wars sequels, one of the Lord of the Rings movies, Titanic, Aliens, True Lies, and Independence Day.
The only movie with my name above the title bombed so badly that the executive producer named an evil alien after me in his next project.
“You haven’t worked much the last few years.”
“No.”
“You wealthy?”
“I don’t need to work if I don’t want to.”
He scooped foam onto my cappuccino with a wide silver spoon and handed me the cup. “You don’t pour the foam, or you get wet cappuccino. People asking for wet cappuccino really want a latte.”
I sipped, and then sipped again. “This is very good.”
“People get good at the things that matter to them.” He stood there with the cup in his hand. “What are your intentions toward my daughter?”
“I don’t have any.”
“You’ve been together almost a year.”
“And living together for half of that. I keep expecting her to get tired of me and move out. So far she hasn’t.”
“You’re an unusual man.”
“As actors go, I’m not extraordinary.”
“Forgive me if I think that’s a highly qualified statement.”
I shrugged.
“She said you were married and don’t like to talk about it.”
“Yes.”
“Why not?”
I wanted to leave, take Carrie or leave her, and get out, and not talk anymore to this mild, inquisitive, friendly little man.
“I’ve never told Carrie. I don’t think she’d understand.”
“Ah. Well, there’s that. Twenty years difference between you two.”
“I’ve never told her my wife died. In a car accident. And –”
“How long were you married?”
“– and so did, so did the kids.”
“You had children.”
“Two. Two children.”
“When did this happen?”
“Four years ago. My son was eight. My daughter ... would have been a couple years younger than Carrie, today. In her first year at Berkeley, probably. She wanted to go to Berkeley. Her Mom went to Berkeley.”
“What were their names?”
I hadn’t spoken their names aloud since it happened. “My wife was Marie. My daughter was Jane. My son was Lu...Lu...Lucas.” Stuttering. Christ, I hadn’t stuttered since I was twelve.
“How long were you married?”
“Seventeen years.”
Marie and Jane had died at the scene; Luke had taken two days dying. The first time he woke up they hadn’t medicated him yet, and he screamed until his voice gave out, from the pain of the burns.
“Ah.” He sipped at the coffee, slowly, enjoying it, and looked up at me with those kind eyes. “I very much wish you weren’t involved with my daughter.”
“I can understand that.” I thought about it. “Yes. Yes. So do I.”
END
Hell, Next Five Exits
ALL CREATION IS ultimately an act of romanticism. This is true even for the cynics, perhaps especially so. To assert a world barren and brutal, a world of nothing but betrayal and bad faith, is to impose on what is.
Some people can be trusted.
THE FREEWAY NARANDA runs across the edge of the Canyon Loss. Where the Loss crosses Middle Earth it is, as most school children can tell you, two hundred miles long, forty miles across at its widest, and nearly four miles deep. The River Definite that cut the Canyon (so teach the stonebenders in those schools) runs down out of the mountains, twining together out of a myriad of small streams into the great River, and thunders down through the Loss on its way to the
Desert Infinite. In olden days – before the Sixth Republic, in any event – that water passed through a dozen small towns on its way to becoming nothing, out among the Infinite’s fractal mirages.
But no longer, and not in my lifetime nor that of my grandparents. My Sulhola ancestors killed those small towns, stole the Definite’s water and watched the towns dry up and die: and for three hundred years now the Definite has come to its end at City Arch, where fourteen million souls drink and wash and farm that river into oblivion.
THE WORLD IS one hundred and eighty thousand years old, so the earth witches and stonebenders say – some few historians agree with them. And they may be right, I don’t know. More historians agree that is has been one hundred and fifty-five thousand years since the Breaking, but there is disagreement there, too.
That the Republic of Potsdam is twenty-four thousand years old is a certainty: my family traces its lineage to the Republic’s founding and like most of good ancestry I can recite mine, root and branch, to the Dawn Republic.
In twenty-four thousand years, or one hundred and fifty-five, or one hundred and eighty, what was happening to me had most likely never happened before to anyone else.
The Naranda runs mostly through Middle Earth. But it starts in Heaven, and it ends in Hell.
A crush of vampires had chased me almost a thousand miles down that freeway, from the edge of Heaven to the edge of Hell. I was a five hundred and eighty miles out of Harleton, in the far south of Middle Earth, when I saw the sign that says, to any soul less desperate than I, turn back:
Hell Next Five Exits
THE CRUSH BURST in on us at our lodge in Tajan. The lodge was newish, having been in my family perhaps ten generations, and was nestled half a mile high in the Near Northern Mountains, with a one-lane partially paved road, unmarked and with certain discouragements for the casual traveler, winding its way up from the Naranda. Tajan is a small town on the lower slopes of Saternly Mount; it has some four hundred rope people, perhaps two hundred of our kind. The tree people pass through occasionally, and there are some number of dragons at Satlake – they come and go as dragons will, and I could not tell you within a dozen how many there were at a given time, despite my family’s hereditary rights of passage over Tajan. We had never pushed for an accurate count – would you?
Tales of the Continuing Time and Other Stories Page 26