by J P Barnaby
“I wish she hadn’t died.”
“Me too. She’d make a much better princess than I do.”
“You make a great princess, Daddy.”
Thomas grimaced at that thought and thanked the Verizon gods when his cell phone rang. “Hold that thought, pumpkin. Let me see who’s on the phone.”
He pulled the phone out of his pocket and found a number he didn’t recognize. Since he’d started looking for a job, he answered every call.
“Hello?” He could hear the tentative, almost defeated quality of his voice and hoped the sound degraded with the latency in the line.
A pleasant young man asked for him by name, so he acknowledged that he was indeed Thomas Aberthol. By then, he knew it was a telemarketer. They never pronounced his name right, no matter what they were trying to sell. He’d just started to plan how to pack up the living room when something the man said caught his attention.
“I’m sorry, could you repeat that, you broke up a little.” Thomas switched the phone to his other ear.
“Oh, I said that our talent and acquisitions team found your resume on Indeed, and we’d like to invite you to come in for an interview.” His cheery disposition grated on Thomas’s nerves, but he answered in kind.
“What kind of position are you looking for?”
“Well, it seems your skills are a bit outdated for the interface team, but they’re looking for a solid coder for the business logic.”
“A programming job?”
“Yes, that is one of the keywords on your resume, is it not?”
“It is, but before I drive down there—”
“Our firm writes all different types of software, including financial, so we’ve already done a preliminary background check. We know about your history, Mr. Aberthol, and it isn’t going to be a problem. You can work on different suites of software, and your skills really are top-notch.”
“Then I’d love to come in for an interview.”
“Great. Let’s see, Thursday is solid, as is Friday morning. Can we shoot for Friday afternoon, say around two?” His chipper voice didn’t grate on Thomas’s nerves so hard with the prospect of a job in front of him.
“Two o’clock on Friday would be great. Thank you. Just one question?”
“Sure, Mr. Aberthol?”
“What’s the name of your company?”
“The company name is Polytech International.”
Thomas disconnected the call with a lighter feeling in his chest. Switching over to text, he sent a message to his mother, making sure to explain that his record might not be a problem this time. He warred with himself between getting her hopes up and giving her a little light at the end of their dark tunnel. In the end, he did what he always did and told his mother the truth. She agreed that Mrs. Mavers from up the road could watch Hannah for a couple of hours while he drove into the city.
Maybe things were starting to look up.
δ͵
“OKAY, I lied to him, now what?” Wes asked. He took off his headset and set it on the desk, and Aleks could see a hint of disgust in his expression.
“Look into their financial situation and assess what’s going on.”
Wes didn’t say anything; he just stood next to Aleks’s desk in awkward silence.
“I really do want to help them, Wes. But I never go into a situation uninformed. If ten grand isn’t going to help them, then I want to know what will.”
Aleks could see in the way Wes glanced around his office that he was weighing his next words carefully. They’d worked together as teammates and friends for years, but Aleks had only been his boss for six months.
“I read the article. That little girl needs a bone marrow transplant they can’t afford. She’s going to need a lifetime of care. It’s not a onetime fix. You can’t just swoop in, then cut and run,” he hedged.
“I know, I read it too.”
“You guys were close in college?” Wes leaned against the edge of Aleks’s desk.
“He was my best friend for nearly four years. During breaks, we’d email code back and forth. Mostly just screwing around, trying to… I don’t know, take over the world. We were young and idealistic then. Not so much now.” Aleks folded his arms over his chest and stared out over the Midtown skyline. He didn’t want to look at Wes because Wes didn’t understand that this wasn’t a game for him. He didn’t want to toy with Thomas. He’d been in love with Thomas for longer than he could remember. Ten years apart hadn’t changed anything. The guys he’d fucked since college didn’t mean anything. Aleks had one shot, and he needed it to be perfect.
“The company can’t hire him. You know that. Even on your authority. This is just the kind of thing they would use to pull you out of the CEO spot.”
“I know that too. I also know that Thomas won’t take something for nothing. I’m going to ask him to help me look into my father’s death.” Aleks turned to look at Wes.
“As what? Some kind of private detective?”
“He has skills.”
“Skills he’s not going to use because they would send him back to prison. Who is going to help his daughter then?” Wes’s voice rose on the last word, and he glanced at the door.
“This will work. It will bring Thomas back into my life and get the board off my ass.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“Find out everything you can about their situation,” Aleks said. Then he turned and walked into his private bathroom, ending their discussion.
He heard his office door close, and he stood in front of the sink and faced himself in the mirror. The plan had formed while he was on the phone with David that morning. David had said that he wished he could go back and talk to Aleks’s father, find out what he was up to. Aleks had already been through his father’s personal files and the files of some of the projects he’d been involved with. The killer had taken his father’s cell phone. A cell phone his father had turned off all backups for, so no residual data remained.
But Thomas knew data even better than Aleks did. He was much stronger at it, almost intuitive in a way. Gifted, is how Aleks had always thought of him. If anyone could find his father’s digital trail, it would be Thomas.
Unfortunately, Wes was right. The Thomas he remembered wouldn’t risk a little girl for money. Even the hacking he’d done at Jonesboro had been for the right reasons, he’d just screwed up on the execution. Somehow Aleks had to take prison, or at least the little girl’s future, out of the equation.
Aleks returned to his desk, turned his chair toward the window, and put his brilliant mind to use. There had to be a way.
ε͵
HIS MOTHER gave up trying to get the blood out of his dress shirt, so they splurged on a new one. The pants were also unrecoverable, so they picked up a pair of all-occasion black trousers. For the rest of the time, they packed. Even if Thomas did, by the grace of God, get the job, it would be too late to save the house. He continued to scour the online sites for an apartment they could afford in a neighborhood they could live with. Life always seemed to be a precarious balancing act between optimism and despair.
Friday morning dawned clear, bright, and with Hannah violently nauseated. Breakfast and lunch both lost the battle, with her teetering dangerously near dehydration. He lay in bed with her until it was nearly too late for him to prepare for the interview. Mrs. Mavers had raised five children of her own, but none of them had tasted the horrors of leukemia. He hated leaving Hannah with her—with anyone who didn’t understand that battle. But it was only for a few hours, and Hannah needed him to do this for her.
“She’ll be all right, Thomas,” Mrs. Mavers assured him quietly as she handed him the tie for which he’d been searching the kitchen for nearly ten minutes.
“I wouldn’t leave her at all, except… except we need this.”
“I know you do. Now put on your shoes and go get that job for her, Thomas. That little girl needs a little sunshine in her day today.”
Thomas slid into the leather
shoes he’d had since Bush was in office—the second, not the first. They cracked some at the seams, but he had no other options. He wasn’t going to get hired for his shoes anyway. He said a silent prayer asking God to let them hire him at all.
His heart throbbed in his throat as he looked at the time, but he raced upstairs to say bye to Hannah anyway. Mercifully, she was asleep, so he kissed her on the head, the downy soft stubble of regrowth tickling his face. Five minutes later, he was on the road and flying toward I-20.
The drive blew past, but every traffic light, every grandma in the left lane, convinced him he would be late. His hands slipped on the steering wheel with the sweat on his palms, and he brushed them against his pants for the hundredth time. Thomas just wanted it over with one way or the other. What was the worst that could happen? He didn’t get the job and they were no worse off, right?
It cost him ten dollars and fifteen minutes of frustration to find parking near a building that dominated the Midtown skyline. Coming back to the shackles of the city felt like having his parole revoked, but they needed the money. He would do whatever it took.
Thomas checked into the security station in a huge marbled lobby and could immediately see why the older guard didn’t need a gun. The man could talk you to death before you ever reached the elevators. In the span of two minutes, Thomas learned about everything from his grandson’s baseball stats to his wife’s hundred-dollar-a-month yarn habit. He considered shanking the guy with the end of his Bic pen but shook off the heavy shroud of annoyance and pressed the elevator Call button instead.
“Good luck. I hope you get the job,” the guard called between the closing doors.
“Yep, then you could make me want to shoot myself every day,” Thomas mumbled as the elevator started to rise. The babbling rent-a-cop had taken his mind off the interview for a few minutes, but the higher the elevator rose, the sweatier Thomas’s palms got. He rubbed them on his pants again, trying to stem the tide of panic flooding the back of his mind. He checked his watch and saw the time: five minutes to two. Thomas’s heart raced the elevator, trying to explode before the doors opened. The elevator won, and he stepped out into view of a slick, modern reception area behind a door frosted with a Polytech logo.
Three deep breaths later, he pulled the silver handle to open the door and stepped into the open architecture office. The receptionist’s desk sat in front of a semiopaque glass wall, behind which ghosts of employees passed in and out of existence. A small-statured woman in a crisp, impeccable polo sat at the desk, with a cordless headset atop a razor-sharp bob of hair. She smiled as Thomas approached, her warm expression providing him a bit of calm.
“May I help you?”
“My name is Thomas Aberthol. I have an interview at two o’clock,” he explained, unable to remember if the man on the phone had told him to ask for anyone. In fact, he felt sure that remembering his own name was a thing of miracles.
“Of course, Mr. Aberthol. Have a seat and I’ll let them know you’ve arrived.” The woman had a crisp manner of speaking with a refined accent he couldn’t quite place. It made him feel out of place in a way he hadn’t in some time.
He hadn’t quite reached the chairs before a man in a polo the same eggplant color as the receptionist’s came to escort him back. The man didn’t greet him, didn’t say anything more than “if you’ll follow me, please” before bringing him to a closed door. He knocked once, and an unseen voice bid him to enter.
The door opened to reveal an office of windows, Persian rugs, bookshelves, and a massive black utilitarian computer center with no less than seven flat-panel screens. Several desktop computers were ensconced in the lower part of the desk. Two laptops and a Surface Pro lay on a table nearby. The setup was a computer geek’s wet dream. A man sat at the helm, his back to them as they entered. He wore the company-issued polo, turquoise this time. His short black hair just touched the top of his collar. With a few seemingly well-practiced strokes of keys, all seven monitors went dark. The man stood, and when he turned to face them, Thomas’s breath froze in his lungs.
Aleks Sanna’s face showed no sign of recognition as he smiled and offered Thomas a seat.
“Thank you, Wes. I’ll call if I need anything.” He dismissed the tour guide with a wave of his hand and then turned to Thomas, who still stood before the desk.
“Can I offer you anything to drink, Thomas?”
“Aleks?” The words scratching out of his throat were barely audible even in the quiet office. He hadn’t seen or heard from Aleks since college. Well, since he’d moved out of their dorm anyway.
Aleks’s expression faltered at the sound of Thomas’s question. Instead of amusement, Thomas saw sadness and even a flicker of fear.
“I didn’t think this would be so… awkward.” Aleks tilted his head to the side. “Maybe we should go down to the coffee shop instead, someplace a little more relaxed. Would that work for you?”
“Would that work for me? I thought I was here for a job interview.” Thomas clenched both hands on the back of the chair Aleks had offered him. Aleks glanced down at his desk, giving Thomas a reprieve from those piercing blue eyes.
He watched his former college roommate flip through papers. Ten years hadn’t changed Aleks much. The curls were gone, cut in favor of corporate style. He looked older, stylish, put together in a way Thomas had never been able to manage. The lanky college boy had grown into a lean, handsome man, and Thomas envied him every bit of it.
“Let’s just go downstairs and talk. Please? After the way you disappeared from my life, don’t you think you owe me that much?” A bitter note crept into Aleks’s tone, like wine staining good linen.
Thomas couldn’t walk away from the possibility of a job, not with Hannah’s life at stake. His face flamed; the fiery humiliation of it blazed in his cheeks. Running away like a little girl after their make-out session embarrassed him. Being a felon embarrassed him. Being unable to get a job embarrassed him. Even though he felt like his face was glowing, he didn’t have any choice but to follow Aleks out of the spacious office and back to the elevator.
“Anna, can you let Wes know I’ve stepped out for a bit? I’ll be back before that three o’clock operations meeting.”
“Yes, Mr. Sanna.”
Thomas had thought that the receptionist’s smile for him had been warm, but the one she flashed to Aleks showed real affection.
Aleks held the door for Thomas, who hit the Call button for the elevator. He didn’t say anything, and Aleks remained painfully quiet. Questions about Aleks’s intentions chased each other in his head. He would get no answers on the ride back to the ground floor, or while they walked to a small coffee shop next to the towering building. In fact, Aleks didn’t try to broach a conversation until he tucked them into a tiny corner of the shop, in soft leather chairs. Thomas cradled a hot tea in his hands, too jittery for coffee. Aleks sat back, studying him over his caramel mocha something-or-other.
“Why did you leave that morning?”
“Why am I here?” Thomas asked at the same time Aleks fired the question at him. He sat back in the chair and took a slow sip of scalding tea as he tried to decide how to answer. Aleks remained patient, waiting for the answer without giving one of his own.
“I was… ashamed of my behavior, and since we both had to move out of the dorms that week anyway, I ran rather than facing you.”
“Ashamed of being attracted to a guy?”
“That too.”
“Ashamed of me?”
Thomas looked up then. Vulnerability edged around the corners of Aleks’s eyes. The answer mattered. Thomas could see it in the way Aleks straightened in his chair, waiting for it.
“No. You were my best friend. I wasn’t ashamed of you.”
“The foreign kid.” Aleks scoffed.
“No, it was never like that. You should have been ashamed of the hick more than I could have been ashamed of you for being Greek.”
“You weren’t a hick.”
; “Aleks, why am I here?”
“You didn’t answer my question. If you hadn’t kissed me, would you have left?”
“I don’t know. I regretted leaving by the time I got to 85, but there was no going back. I couldn’t face you.”
“Can you face me now?” Aleks searched his expression.
“I’m still here.”
“Did you know I was attracted to you?”
“Yes.”
“Were you attracted to me?”
“What does this have to do with a job, Aleks? Don’t dangle it in front of my face and then talk about what we did as kids a lifetime ago. My little girl is sick. I can’t get a job because I’m an ex-con. Tell me why I’m here or I’m leaving.”
“I’m sorry about your little girl. Hannah, isn’t it?”
“How did you know that?” Thomas set the hot cup onto a side table and pushed forward in the marshmallow chair.
“I’m in the information business, Thomas. That’s what I do, and I also know that you lost her mother during childbirth. You could do nothing about it as you sat in prison.”
“There is no job, is there? You just brought me down here to humiliate me, to find out why I walked away from a kiss ten years ago. You think you know me, about what I’ve been through? What the fuck do you know about loss, Mr. Daddy-Owns-the-World? What would you know about helplessness?” His voice rose dangerously. He could hear it ringing out over the din of the small crowd of patrons standing in line to get their caffeine fix. Two women at a table nearby looked over, cups poised in midair.
“Daddy doesn’t own the world. He was murdered. And if you remember, my mother died when I was a kid, so actually, I do know something of loss.”
The words shocked Thomas into silence and he fell back against the chair, watching Aleks, the heat of his argument lost to the coldness in the man’s eyes. “Your father was murdered? Aleks, I’m so sorry. When?”