“What is his issue?” Fiona asked. We were in the kitchen, which is only a few feet from my bed, but with the amount of moaning and woe-is-me-ing Brent was doing, we both felt fairly comfortable speaking in our normal voices.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Fi,” I said, “he’s curled up on my bed like a five-year-old. You know I have a hard time talking to kids.”
“What about in the car ride over?”
“It was enough for me to keep Sugar from speaking,” I said. “I might have killed them both.”
“So, what, you want me to coo him into telling you why the big mean bad guys blew up his daddy’s office?”
“Yes.”
“And then what? We both read him a story and put him to bed?”
“Fi,” I said, “he just needs a sweet voice in his ear right now. I’m afraid I might shake him to death if he continues to whine.”
“Fine,” she said. She walked over and sat down on the foot of the bed. “Brent, honey,” she said, “turn over. Let’s talk.”
“Oh,” he said, but didn’t move.
Fiona leaned over and rested her hand gently on the back of his neck. “Sweetheart,” she said, “we’re here to help you. Do you want our help?” She stroked his neck lightly. I know it was wise to bring her over.
“I guess,” he said.
“Then either turn over and stop babbling,” she said-and then I saw her squeeze his neck with a bit more force than a cougar does its young-“or I will break your neck. Okay, sweetie?”
Brent flipped over and stopped making noise.
“There,” Fiona said to me. “He’s all yours.”
“Thanks, Fiona,” I said. Sometimes I forget that Fiona isn’t really like other women, particularly as it relates to the care and concern of wounded animals and such.
I pulled a chair next to the bed and looked at Brent. He had brown hair that hung loosely over his eyes, a complexion that could use a bit of exfoliation but was otherwise fine and teeth that had benefited from what was probably very expensive orthodonture. His clothes were brand name and he didn’t have any obvious track marks on his arms and wasn’t constantly wiping the cocaine from his nose. So how was it he was mixed up with such bad people?
“Can I get you something to eat?” I asked.
“No, I’m fine. I ate, like, last night.”
“Can I get you something to drink?”
“I wouldn’t mind a Yoo-hoo. Do you have any Yoo-hoo?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” I said. “How about water?”
“Water would be fine.”
“Fiona,” I said, “would you kindly get our young guest a glass of water?”
“I’d be happy to,” she said and got up.
“Is she going to hurt me anymore?” Brent asked.
“Probably not,” I said.
Fiona came back with a bottle of water, which Brent drank down quickly. He looked back and forth at me and Fi as if trying to determine who was in charge. He settled on me. “I guess things got bad today.”
“That would be correct,” I said. “Your father’s office was blown up.”
“Like with dynamite?”
“More likely with C-4,” I said. “But the result was the same.”
“What if Sugar had still been there?” he said.
“That’s a good question, Brent,” I said. “It’s why you’re now in my loft and not in your cozy bed on campus. Would you care to explain why you’ve got the Russian Mafia blowing up your father’s place of business?”
“How do I know I can trust you?” he asked.
“You don’t,” Fiona said.
This didn’t seem to reassure Brent much. “But you’re not, like, criminals, right?”
“I’m not, no,” I said.
He looked at Fiona, who said nothing.
“Why do you want to help me?” he asked.
“Because you’re in over your head,” I said. “If you didn’t know that before, you should now. And Sugar can’t help you. Trust me on that. He’s a good friend, but you don’t need friends right now. You need tactical support.” I let Brent process that bit of information for a moment. “Sugar told me that your father has a gambling problem and has disappeared. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” Brent said.
“But those guys today-” I said. “That wasn’t about that, was it?”
“No,” he said. “No, that’s my problem.” Brent flopped back onto the bed and covered his face with a pillow. “I’m, like, so stupid.”
“No argument from me,” Fiona said.
“Not helping,” I said to her. I pulled the pillow off of Brent’s face. “Listen to me, Brent. You need to start at the beginning, don’t skip any details and try not to say the word ‘like’ in the process. And you need to do all of this while sitting upright or I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop Fiona from squeezing your neck again.”
Brent rubbed his forearm across his eyes, sniffled once and then ran his hands through his hair. My entire life I’ve tried to avoid crying in all its forms-crying women, crying children, crying animals-and now I had a teenage boy in my loft who couldn’t complete a sentence without spilling tears onto my comforter.
“So, okay,” Brent began. “I had this class project, okay? We were supposed to design realistic Web sites to go along with our game projects-like fully integrated sites that look like actual companies, you know?”
I told him I did. It was something the U.S. government had been doing for years. If you’re a covert operative working under a second identity in a foreign land as, say, the president of a tissue paper company, you need to have the same online corporate presence as any other tissue company might. The CIA was also especially fond of selecting people just like Brent Grayson to design them.
“My game, it’s pretty cool; it’s this world-building game where you’re basically trying to become the ultimate capitalist, but, like, do good things, too, so, you know, there’s like evil companies and stuff that want to exploit you. It’s pretty cool.”
Brent was excited, even if he wasn’t saying much of anything and even though the world was crumbling around him and he was now in a spy’s loft telling him his life story… or at least the story of his last few weeks.
“What is this game called?” Fiona asked.
“ Lifescape. ”
“Sounds like a birth control pill,” Fiona said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I never liked it, either. No one did. In workshop? They said it was too much like a self-improvement seminar or whatever.”
“Fascinating,” I said. “How do the Russians come into play?” Brent looked like he wanted to do that whole pillow-on-the-face thing again, so I took hold of his shoulder to let him know he had our support and that, if need be, I could grab him, too. “You need to keep it together.”
He bit into his bottom lip and soldiered forward. “I make this killer Web site for InterMacron, this super badass tech company that has developed new ways for delivering bandwidth, because like that’s the growth industry of the next twenty years, right? I mean, I do it up, because it was going to be thirty-three percent of my grade for the quarter and I’d really slacked off because of this girl who totally got into my head. It was crazy.”
Brent got a wistful look on his face and I couldn’t tell if he was feeling that way about the girl, the easier time or if that’s just how he looked because he hadn’t yet learned the joys of paying taxes and other adult activities.
“So InterMacron, the reason it’s so badass is that it’s come up with this way to increase bandwidth loads at a really low cost-fiber-optics, all that stuff? It’s like really expensive, so InterMacron has this device they are developing called the WieldXron, which will allow wireless use to expand using Kineoptic Transference.”
I looked at Fiona to see if she understood a single thing Brent said. Her mouth was agape and her eyes were a bit on the heavy-lidded side, which made me think she was about to curl up next to Brent to take a nap. I felt about the same way.