“Glory is subjective.”
“Fine. Then subject them to it.”
Cam looks out of the window to see their limousine has arrived. Roberta grabs her purse, and Cam, always the gentleman, holds the door for her as they leave Proactive Citizenry’s lavish Washington town house and head into a steamy July night. Cam suspects that the powerful organization owns residences in every major city throughout the nation—maybe throughout the world.
Why has Proactive Citizenry put so much of their money and influence behind me? Cam often wonders. The more they give him, the more he resents it, because it makes his captivity increasingly apparent. They have elevated him on a pedestal, but Cam has come to understand that a pedestal is nothing more than an elegant cage. No walls, no locks, but unless one has wings to fly away, one is trapped. A pedestal is the most insidious prison ever devised.
“A penny for your thoughts,” Roberta asks coyly as they pull onto the beltway.
Cam grins, but doesn’t look at her. “I think Proactive Citizenry can afford more than a penny.” And he shares none of his thoughts with her, regardless of the cost.
It’s dusk as the limo rides along the Potomac. Across the river, bright lights already illuminate the monuments of DC. Scaffolding surrounds much of the Washington Monument, while the Army Corp of Engineers struggles to correct the pronounced tilt it’s taken on over the past few decades. Bedrock erosion and seismic shift has given the city its own leaning tower. “From Lincoln’s chair, it leans to the right,” political pundits have been known to say, “but from the Capitol steps, it leans to the left.”
This is Cam’s first time in DC—but he has memories of being here nonetheless. A memory of riding a bike down the paths of the National Mall with a sister who was clearly umber. Another memory of a vacation with parents of Japanese descent, who are livid that they can’t contain the irascible behavior of their little boy. He has a color-blind memory of a huge Vermeer canvas hanging in the Smithsonian—and a parallel memory of the same work of art, but in full color.
Cam has come to enjoy comparing and contrasting his various recollections. Memories of the same places or objects should be identical, but they never are, because the various Unwinds represented in his brain each saw the world around them in very different ways. At first Cam had found this confusing and disconcerting—a cause for panic and alarm—but now he finds it curiously illuminating. The varied textures of his memories give him mental parallax on the world. A sort of depth perception beyond the limited point of view of a single individual. He can tell himself that and it would be true—yet beneath it, there is a primal anger brewing at each point of conversion. Each time merging memories contradict, the dissonance reverberates to the very core of his being, as a reminder that not even his memories are his own.
The limo turns up the semicircular driveway of a plantation-style mansion that is either very old or very new but made to look old, like so many things are. Town cars and limos line the driveway. Valets scramble to park the cars of the nonchauffeured guests.
“You know you’re in the highest echelon of society,” Roberta remarks, “when having to valet park a car is an embarrassment.”
Their limo stops, and the door is opened for them.
“Shine, Cam,” Roberta tells him. “Shine like the star you are.”
She gives him a gentle kiss on the cheek. Only after they step out and her attention is on the path ahead of them, does he wipe off the remnants of the kiss with the back of his hand.
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“Is it true what they say about you?” the pretty girl asks.
She wears a dress that’s a little too short for an event filled with gowns and tuxedos. She’s one of the only people Cam’s age at the gala.
“That depends,” he tells her. “What do they say?”
They are in a den in the mansion, away from the hustle and bustle of the crowded party. There’s a wall of leather-bound legal books, a comfortable chair, and a desk too large to be of any practical use. Cam wandered in here to escape from “shining” for the various rich and powerful guests. The girl had followed him in.
“They say that everything you do, you do like no other.” She moves toward him from the door. “They say that every part of you was handpicked to be perfect in every way.”
“That’s not me,” he says slyly. “I believe it’s Mary Poppins who claims to be practically perfect in every way.”
She chuckles as she gets closer to him. “You’re funny, too.”
She is beautiful. Clearly she is also starstruck. She wants to bask in his light, and he wonders if he should let her.
“What’s your name?”
“Miranda,” she says gently. “Can I . . . touch your hair?”
“Only if I can touch yours . . .”
She reaches for him tentatively at first, patting his hair, then running her fingers through the varied textures and colors.
“You’re so . . . exotic. I thought I’d be frightened to see you in person, but I’m not.”
She smells of vanilla and wildflowers—a scent that pings his memories in several nonspecific places. It’s a popular perfume among popular girls.
“Risa Ward is a bitch,” she tells him. “The way she dumped you on national TV. The way she played you, then tossed you away. You deserve someone better. Someone who can appreciate you.”
“Lockdown!” Cam blurts.
She smiles and saunters to the door. “There’s no lock,” she says, “but I can certainly close it.”
She shuts the door and is back in his airspace in an instant. He can’t even remember her moving there; it’s like she dissolved from the door into his embrace. He’s not thinking clearly. There’s too much input to handle, but for once that’s a good feeling.
She undoes his bow tie. He knows he can’t tie it again, but he doesn’t really care. He holds her in his arms, and she leans forward, kissing him. When she pulls away from the kiss, it’s only for a moment to catch her breath. She looks at him with intense mischief in her gaze. She leans in for another kiss that is far more explorative than the first. Cam finds he’s no slouch when it comes to this. Muscle memory, he supposes, for the tongue is most definitely a muscle.
She pulls away again, even more breathless than before. Then she presses her cheek against his, with her lips by his ear, and she whispers so quietly he can barely hear her.
“I want to be your first,” she says. She presses closer to him, the fabric of her dress hissing on the fine weave of his tuxedo.
“You seem like a girl who gets what she wants.”
“Always,” she tells him.
Cam didn’t come here looking for this. He could turn her away, but why? Why refuse this when it’s offered to him so freely? Besides, he finds that the mention of Risa has made him defiant. It’s made him want even more to be here in the moment with this girl whose name he’s already forgotten.