Everything except Nanaine Adele’s rusty, peeling lilac-colored scale.
Even before UpLink, that scale had gone wherever he did. Thibodeau wasn’t sure why. In his opinion, rearview mirrors were supposed to help guide people forward on the highway of life, not inspect their balky hairs and crooked neckties at its rest stops. He hadn’t been back to Louisiana since breast cancer got Nanaine Adele in 1989, and wasn’t about to waste a minute longing for Acadia. The relics of the past that Thibodeau held close to him were the useful ones, which was probably the main reason he’d made the scale his constant traveling companion. It was a symbol more than anything else, he guessed. A reminder that the only memories worth carrying around were those that made riding out the present, and maybe the future, a little smoother.
Besides, the damn thing was just plain reliable.
Though never preoccupied with his weight, Thibodeau had kept an occasional eye on it, and always managed to stay in good shape despite the limitless pleasure he took from beer drinking and hearty eating. At six feet, four inches tall, he was the bearer of a wide-boned, chockablock physique, and had sustained a steady-as-she-goes 235 pounds for most of his adult life, packing virtually every last ounce of it in slabs of muscle hardened by regular and diligent workouts.
All that had changed about two years ago, when he’d been sucker punched by a submachine gun round while defending an UpLink facility in Brazil against a terrorist hit… a bullet that had gone deep into his stomach, hung a left through his large intestine, and then plowed into his spleen, turning it to mincemeat before finally butting up against the back of his rib cage. There was also plenty of hemorrhaging, and a partial lung collapse to stop the ER personnel who received him from getting too blasé about their task.
For several months after he was shot, Thibodeau’s weakened condition had precluded strenuous exercise. Resistance training wasn’t worth a thought — in fact, he’d had days when simply raising himself out of bed, or from a chair to a standing position, was a torment. And by the time Thibodeau was at last able to get back into the gym, he’d recognized that his body might never regain all of its lost trunkish strength. There was getting shot, and there was getting gut shot. And more often than not gut shot had a way of leaving you permanently damaged goods… special prov’d’nce strikes again.
While on the mend, Thibodeau had been coaxed into accepting what was intended to be seen as a major promotion at UpLink, and gotten a big pay hike consistent with its added responsibilities. He supposed he should have been grateful. That he was wrong to feel privately indignant about a legitimate career advancement. Still, Rollie Thibodeau was nobody’s fool, and understood that his physical deficits had factored into the offer. To what degree, he didn’t know. And maybe didn’t care to guess. Why bother? He had been convinced it was made partly because Megan and Pete Nimec had wanted to remove him from active field duties he could no longer handle with 100 percent effectiveness… and nothing would un-convince him.
Specifically, he would become the administrative overseer of a newly created two-man post dubbed Global Field Supervisor, Security Operations.
They could take the man out of the field, but they couldn’t take the field out of his job description, he had told himself.
That smidgeon of gallows humor had given him zero consolation.
Now Thibodeau stood on the platform of his Detecto and frowned — a deep, disgusted frown that pulled the corners of his mouth far down his bearded face. The beard was a couple of years old and neatly trimmed. Over the past six months he had let it fill out to hide his jowly cheeks and the heavy dewlaps under his chin. For a while after his shooting he’d held at his usual 235 pounds in spite of the changes he saw in the mirror — but that was a deceptive measure. Thibodeau’s muscles had lost weight as they shrank and deteriorated through disuse, even as the extra calories from his unmodified consumption of food and drink turned to fat. This had equalized things on the scale, and he had grown thicker, looser, and chunkier everywhere on his body without putting on so much as an ounce.
The problem was that it got harder to burn off fat as you lost muscle tone, and it would continue piling on unless you dieted, exercised, or got into a disciplined health routine that combined the two. Thibodeau hadn’t. And he’d gained from his 235. The weight had crept up on him slowly, seemed to wrap itself around him like a huge silent slug. The warning signs had been present, of course. His vanishing jaw line, his thickening waist. But as long as he’d hovered within range of that 235 mark, they also had been dismissible. Thibodeau had felt his slacks — and undershorts, to give frankness its due — start to pinch and grab in all the critically, uncomfortably wrong spots. Felt his shirt tighten at the belly, its sleeves constricting around his shoulders and arms. If gradual upward nudges of the scale’s lower indicator slide from 236 to 237, 240, and even 245 pounds balanced it, that seemed to fall well within his personal tolerance zone. Especially when he could lower his measured weight by 2, 3, sometimes a notch below 3½ of those apparent pounds by removing his shoes, his shirt, his shoes and shirt, and maybe some other articles of clothing if necessary — say after a few days of hearty banqueting, for instance.
Another trick Thibodeau had discovered was to step off the scale and recheck that the arrow on the beam and its frame met exactly. If they didn’t, it could throw off his weight reading by a quarter pound or more, and he’d have to fiddle with its balance knob to make an adjustment. And although it distressed him when he’d needed to bump the upper indicator to its 250-pound poise on the bar while standing almost naked on the platform, he’d extended his rather malleable tolerance zone by reassuring himself that he would soon do something to trim down — cut out the andouille sausages and cornbread, switch to a lighter brew, keep his hands from reaching for the refrigerator door late at night.
Soon being one of those dangerous words with a value that was impossible to calculate, and therefore notoriously wide open to interpretation.
According to the scale’s measurement beam, Thibodeau was now up to 299¼ pounds. Less than 1 pound shy of the boldly engraved and enameled number 300 on the beam. A tremendous increase of 54 pounds in eighteen months.
That was 299¼ pounds, with every last stitch of clothing except for his socks and boxers stripped off, flung in a large pile on the chair behind him.
“Gone an’ turned myself into un ouaouaron,” Thibodeau said in a low growl, using a Cajun word for bullfrog that reflected the cultural penchant for onomatopoeia, mimicking the sounds made by the creatures at dawn and dusk. “A fuckin’ ouaouaron,” he repeated, inserting a colorful modifier of his own fancy.
He did not know why he’d chosen this particular morning to take his weight. Having acknowledged the need to drop excess ballast, Thibodeau had gotten onto the scale infrequently over the past couple of months to avoid the comedown of reading premature and discouraging numbers. The truth was, he hadn’t yet gotten full-swing into his diet. Hadn’t really decided which foods would be the best to cut back on or investigated which kinds of beer would be light-bodied, palatable replacements for his favorite malt. He’d been too busy with work, and these decisions took careful forethought. Nobody who rushed into them was ever going to buy a winning ticket.
So why the scale? Thibodeau wondered. Why today? Why climb aboard now, when Tom Ricci, joint holder of the global field supervisor slot, its buck rapid deployment man — and one of Thibodeau’s least favorite people in the world — was due for his briefing on the security upgrades implemented here at SanJo HQ while he’d been away on his solo safari for le Chat Sauvage? Why the hell do it knowing he was in for certain disappointment… and for that matter embarrassment, unless he got off its platform and back into his uniform tout de suite?