“You certainly did.”
She paused.
Finally, he asked her, “Do you have a new problem?”
“I do. But it’s a little more complicated than the one I had with my car.”
Twenty-Two
Providence, RI
An hour had gone by and Todd had not responded to Chloe’s texts or emails. Finally, she had just phoned him, which, Miles mused, always seemed to be the last option among younger people.
Todd did not pick up. Chloe had left a voice maiclass="underline" “Hey, dipshit half brother, call me the second you get this because I have got news that will blow your mind.”
And still, no call back.
“So maybe he’s busy,” Miles had said.
Chloe admitted that was possible, but was unconvinced. “It’s not like him.”
“How long have you actually known him?”
“Okay, not that long. But the guy lives with a phone in his hand.” She thought a moment. “I say we go.”
Miles was less sure. “Could be a long way to go to find him not there.”
“What else you got to do?” She cocked her head. “What do you actually do, anyway?”
“I run a tech company.”
“So what’s that mean?”
“Hand me your phone.”
“What?”
“Just... give it to me.”
With some reluctance, she passed it across the table to him. He glanced at all the apps she had on it. The usual ones were there. Facebook, Twitter, iTunes, Instagram, Waze, some games. He thumbed over to the second page of apps, smiled.
“See this one?” he said, tapping on it.
The screen filled with the word SHOPSAW.
“Yeah?” she said.
“This is the one, you take a picture of something you saw somebody wearing, it tells you where you can buy it.”
“I know how it works.”
“That’s one of ours.”
“You’re shittin’ me. Your company invented that app?”
Miles nodded.
“Fuck me,” she said, taking back the phone. “I’m impressed. I use this all the time. Sneak shots of people wearing shit I wish I could buy. It’s always from some place I could never afford to shop. Hang on.”
She aimed the phone at Miles, tapped the screen, looked at it. “You got your jacket from Nordstrom?”
“Yup.”
Chloe shook her head admiringly. “And that’s how come you’re rich.”
“Yup.”
“Anything pressing back at the office, or you want to take a run up to Todd’s place?”
He shrugged. “Why the hell not. Charise can take us.”
“You call your car Charise? Like, Christine?”
“Charise is my driver.”
“Of course she is,” Chloe said. “Look, no offense, but I still don’t know for sure that you’re the real deal, that you’re who you say you are. So the last thing I’m doing is getting in some strange car with you. It’s probably got doors you can’t open from the inside and a glass partition thing and the driver hits a button and sleeping gas fills up the back seat.”
Miles said, “That’s my other car.”
“I’ll tell Vivian I gotta go, gonna lose the apron, and I’ll pull around up front.”
“Okay if I have Charise follow us? Then, later, she can take me straight home.”
“You can’t just call up your private chopper or something?”
“I think if she followed, it’d be easier.”
She gave that a moment, said, “Okay,” then slipped out of the booth.
Miles was briefing Charise about the change in plans when Chloe’s Pacer appeared from around the back of the diner. They heard the car before they saw it. It was a a minisymphony of rattles and groans and squeaks, as well as a deep-throated rumbling from a busted muffler.
“You’re going in that, sir?” Charise asked.
“Evidently.”
“Would you like me to drive — what is that, Mr. Cookson? It looks like a goldfish bowl.”
“A Pacer.”
“Would you like me to drive that, and the young lady could drive this car? You’d be more comfortable.”
Miles smiled. “No, but thank you.”
Chloe brought her car to a stop, brakes squealing, next to the limo. “Hop in,” she said, her window rolled down. Charise gave the car a visual appraisal and did not appear pleased.
“This thing pass a safety test?” Miles asked.
“I make up for its deficiencies by being a great driver,” Chloe said. “Been driving since I was fourteen, legally since sixteen. I even drove a delivery truck when I was seventeen. It was a FedEx van, and I kind of took it for a joyride without permission, but once I got behind the wheel it was a piece of cake. When I was nineteen my mom rented a motor home thing and we did a trip to D.C.”
Miles went around to the passenger side, where he encountered the biggest car door he had ever seen. And then he remembered that the Pacer had been designed with a longer right-side door to allow easier access to the rear seat. The door sagged when he opened it, as if too heavy for the hinges.
“When you get in,” Chloe said, “you have to pull really hard to get it back in place.”
“Noted,” Miles said, getting both hands on the armrest and pulling with everything he had.
“Okay, let’s hit the road. But first...” She took out her phone. “You got some sort of ID?”
“Huh?”
“Driver’s license or something?”
Miles blinked, took out his wallet, and dug out his license. Chloe took it in one hand and took a picture of it with the other.
“What are you—”
“Hang on,” she said. She handed back the license and did some swift tapping, followed by a whoosh. “Emailed it to Viv, at the diner. In case you’re actually a strangler-rapist-serial-killer guy.”
“Understood.”
Still holding the phone, she said, “I’ve been documenting all these encounters, you know, relating to my family history, my background. I’ve been doing video of my grandfather, and Todd, and I should have recorded our whole meeting just now.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, no, it’s not. I really want this stuff. It’s important. You hold this and shoot while I’m driving, okay? ’Cause I can’t exactly film and drive at the same time. If I’m talking, shoot me, and if you’re talking, do the selfie thing. Can you do that?”
“I suppose. So we’ll use the time to tell each other a little more about ourselves?”
“Exactly,” she said, cranking the wheel and hitting the gas. The back wheels kicked up gravel. She glanced in the rearview mirror, saw the black limo falling in behind. “Hope I didn’t chip her paint.”
Miles asked her to tell her story first. She said she didn’t need him to record much of that, since she already knew it. But she told him about her upbringing, about having two mothers, the teasing and the abuse she got from other kids growing up, and how that wasn’t entirely a bad thing because it had toughened her up, taught her not to give a shit about what other people think.
She told him about the video interviews she had done with her grandfather. “You never know how much time he’s got left, so you want to find out as much as you can, while you can.”
“I understand.”
She glanced over at him, grimaced. “Sorry. That came out sounding a little insensitive.”
“That’s okay.”
“My mom’s going to be pissed,” she said.
“Why?”
“She thinks this is a bad idea.”
“You told her we were driving up to see your half brother?”
“Not that. This whole thing about finding out who you are. I don’t mean you. I mean, like me. She didn’t want me sending my DNA to WhatsMyStory. She was furious about it. And now, out of the blue, you getting in touch, me finding out who you are, that just might push her over the edge.”