He stares into the green eye of the security camera until something goes click and the gate squeaks open.
He heads up the drive toward dimly lit windows, careful not to slip on black ice.
She leans in the doorway wearing a pink bathrobe cut high above the knee. It’s been years since he’s seen those brown legs. She holds a wine glass in one hand. The other is cocked on her hip. She sneers. “He’s not here.”
“Nice seeing you too.”
“I’ll say it again. Kip is not here.” She shifts her shoulder and slips off the doorframe and stumbles onto the porch, righting herself and spilling wine on her toes and the snow. “Fuck.” She backs inside and wipes her feet on the hallway carpet.
“Where is he?”
“Where everybody else is, Jack Kind.” His name sounds like a curse when she says it. “Up their own asses. Taking your lead.”
She’s not usually this bad. Most visits, she shows only her best self. A trophy wife at the company mixer, all quips and materialism, trying to impress him. Look at all you lost.
This is sad drunken Anijira, depressed millionaire. She’s no better off than before she left him. It shouldn’t bother him, but it does.
“Ani, are you alright?”
There are right and wrong things to say at times like this. This is the wrong thing.
“Like you care.”
“Is Kip inside? Let me talk to him.”
She swallows hard, stares into the sky and juts her jaw. “I told you. He’s not here.”
“Okay. So. Where?”
“This is just like you. Drop by expecting people to be waiting.”
“Will you please just tell me.”
“He’s at a fucking friend’s house for the week. Christ fucking hell.”
“What friend?”
“How should I know?”
“How should—What do you mean how should you know? You’re his mother. He’s a nine-year-old boy.”
“And where the fuck are you? Oh, right. You’re getting STDs and shipping HOP.”
“Keep your voice down. I don’t ship HOP.”
“No comment on the STDs?”
“It’s a school week.”
“Is it? I thought it was summer.”
“Ani.”
“The kid’s parents drive them to school, okay? He asked to stay and I said yes.”
A wind rips through Jack. His only coat is a busted leather jacket. A rage rises in him. He just wanted to see Kip one last goddamn time. And here’s his drunken ex-wife standing in his way, toying with him, no idea where the kid is. He should keep his mouth closed. She’s miserable enough. And she could do a hell of a lot better, but has chosen not to. She is alone and knows it. Always has been. But he is mad like a little boy and he says it anyway.
“You know why a family would take in someone else’s kid for a week, Ani? They do it because they feel bad. Because they can’t stand the thought of what he must come home to. For example, just off the top of my head, a scumbag lawyer and a drunken bitch who can’t keep track of her own son.”
The glass wizzes past his head. Red wine splashes like blood over snow.
She slams the door.
He stands with his shoulders hunched, chin tucked against the cold.
Idiot.
He could have turned the conversation around, been patient, even kind. He might have slipped inside, checked Kip’s room for a friend’s name or number.
He knocks and waits, knocks and waits. Calls out apologies. A light in the front of the house goes out. He walks around the front and finds a window, taps on the glass. He could break in, but what then? Ani’s already on the verge of calling the cops. That could seriously disrupt the timeline, not to mention alert the buyer that Jack has been planetside for several hours. He waddles back down the drive.
He has the car drive him around town in aimless circles. He glares into the bitter darkness. All these houses and their anonymous residents, dusky in the moonlight reflecting off the snow. This may be the closest he ever gets to his son again. And there is nothing left to do but leave.
Chapter 4
Dandy calls again.
Jack ignores it.
He books a pricey hotel in NYC, sure to confirm that it has a fully stocked bar. It’s the last place he wants to go, but he needs a medical technician and he knows who to ask. Whether or not she’ll hear his offer is another matter. He’ll need more finesse than he had with Ani.
It takes fifty minutes to the reach the nearest hypertram.
Plenty of time for his failures to sink in.
How much will Kip remember of him? A vague presence, appearing and disappearing. Some tall guy buying him things. The voice that made his mother shout, turned her bitter. He always felt, foolishly, that being a parent was something that happened to you, like puberty. One day, he would wake up and find himself looking forward to time with his wife and child, and it would all be very comfortable, and the thought of leaving would turn his stomach. That day never came, and it’s clear now that it never will. He was never going to be a worthy father, yet it sometimes feels that he could have been. That’s the worst part.
He boards the hypertram in Syracuse, sits next to a pregnant woman with a cough. A handful of bum children move down the aisle asking for change. Angular faces smeared with snot and grime. He feels like crying. When the kids reach him, he transfers twenty bucks from his device. Three seats ahead of him a man looks back and smiles, and Jack is sure it is Barton Claiborne who died at Camp Gertrude when the guards found his homemade portable. They took turns jumping on his chest until it was flat except for the shards of rib. These are the memories Jack carries with him. The man in the seat turns away. It is not Barton Claiborne. Just one more ghost Jack sees now and then, especially in times of stress. The doctors say it’s his mind trying to process traumatic events, but shouldn’t the processing be done by now? The bum kids nod and thank him and tell him God will reward his generosity.
At the NYC station, he stumbles into the cold. The map on his portable steers him down the sidewalk. The streets are filthy with salt and brown snowbanks. They’re old buildings in this part of town, made of brick and concrete and steel. Many with windows boarded up or busted. If small towns had it bad, the Space Boom turned big cities into wastelands. Corporations took their money and resources into the sky, resulting in a worldwide depression. As work in the rural areas dried up, the poor flocked to the cities and wandered the streets starving and calling out for water or dying on the pavement while onlookers snapped photos. This was all more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Not much has changed since. There were attempts to improve things, but the most substantial efforts got caught up in the nets of bureaucracy.
He comes to a wooden door wedged between two apartment buildings. The handle has fallen off, leaving a hole he sees the floor through. He pushes inside.
He finds himself in an entryway no larger than a portable toilet. The next door is solid steel with a camera lens in the frame. The eye goes green. A voice says from a hidden speaker, “You have a reservation?”
He gives his name.
“One moment.”
There’s a clank and thud, and the voice tells him to come in.
The lobby is a swanky affair with plush sofas in the corners and holograms replaying the day’s best and worst sports moments. He checks in at the counter and makes for the bar and restaurant through a stone archway. He seats himself in a booth against the far wall beside what was once a window, now stuccoed over and poorly disguised with a tacky painting.