“Eat an extra one for me.”
Jeffrey made his way to his small office and dropped the backpack into a corner before confronting the heaping mound of documents on his desk. It seemed to grow overnight, papers multiplying like paper bunnies, and he groaned before squaring his shoulders and turning, reluctant to start the day before grabbing a mug of coffee. Work could wait a few more minutes — he needed to rehydrate and get some caffeine in him so he could think clearly.
In the break room, Jeffrey made small talk with one of the paralegals, Samantha, as the coffee brewed. Jeffrey didn’t typically mingle with his coworkers — not due to any elitism on his part, but rather because his mind was always on other things, and he just couldn’t see the point of being chatty. Samantha prattled on about what a handful her eight-year-old was, and he felt himself tuning out, as if sucked into the depths of a long tunnel where the break room was a dot at the far end. He exhaled with a palpable sense of relief when the machine was done spewing forth its brew, and waited for Samantha to pour herself a cup and leave before attending to his own.
Back in his office he sat behind his generic desk and peered at his flat-screen monitor, checking his messages for anything urgent. The usual invitations to seminars and requests for clarification clogged his inbox, but his attention was drawn to one from Cindy Lower, his ex-girlfriend — another casualty of his long hours, demanding schedule, and the general apathy they created. He clicked it open and read the terse, one-sentence message advising him that she’d slipped his key beneath his apartment door half an hour ago, and wishing him a nice life.
Short and sweet, that was Cindy’s way. Another attorney he’d met at one of the neighborhood watering holes, they’d gotten along well enough, but she’d really wanted someone who didn’t have as many demands as he did. Attorney-attorney relationships rarely worked, and theirs had been no different. Things had gradually grown more distant over the past four months until it was obvious to them both that it was time to move on. Jeffrey had mixed feelings about that, but when all was said and done he wasn’t heartbroken — they’d shared some laughs, given it a try, and discovered that it wasn’t meant to be. Their parting last week had been civil — some might say passionless — as only the conclusion of discussions between two lawyers could be, and in his mind he’d already begun to move on. He was quite sure she had; Cindy wasn’t one to let time slip by without her agendas being met.
He typed a single word response — Thanks — and went through the rest of his mail, pausing to read a few attachments dealing with jurisdictional issues and IRS bulletins on the use of non-grantor trusts. That part of his morning ritual concluded, he was just digging into the pile of contracts in front of him when his intercom buzzed at him like an angry hornet. Jeffrey stabbed the line on and leaned forward.
“Mr. Rutherford, I have a woman on two who is asking to speak to you.”
“A woman? Who is it?”
“Rebecca Simms.”
Jeffrey racked his brain, the name vaguely familiar, but it elicited no immediate connection with a face. He eyed his three-quarters-empty coffee cup and debated whether he could leave whoever this was on hold for a few minutes while he replenished it, and then thought better of keeping a potential client waiting.
“Sure. Put her through.”
He pressed the blinking button for the held call. “Jeffrey Rutherford,” he said in his best professional adult voice, always feeling like a fraud when he used it.
“Jeffrey? It’s Becky.”
He blinked as the name registered. It was his brother’s girlfriend of now… was it three years? Could it have been that long? He’d spent a week with them on his last trip to D.C., where they both lived, and an image of a perky woman of diminutive stature with freckles drizzled across her cheeks sprang to mind.
“Becky! Sorry I didn’t put two and two together on the Rebecca Simms thing. To what do I owe the pleasure?” he asked with sheepish jocularity.
“I guess nobody got in touch with you…” she said, her voice tight.
“In touch with me? About what?”
“I… I wanted you to hear it from me first, and not see it on the news,” she started, and then trailed off.
A tickle of apprehension played in Jeffrey’s stomach. “What’s wrong, Becky? It’s Keith, isn’t it? Is he okay? Was he in an accident?” Jeffrey demanded.
“Yes. I mean… no, he’s not okay, and yes, he was in an accident…” Becky’s voice cracked on the last word, and Jeffrey’s anxiety went five-alarm, dreading what was to come.
“What?” he said, standing, suddenly uncomfortable sitting down. “What happened?”
“He… he was on a plane. You probably saw the news already. It was the one that disappeared yesterday. Out of JFK.”
His chest felt like someone was tightening a steel band around it, constricting his ability to breathe. “No, I didn’t see anything…”
“It blew up minutes after takeoff, Jeff. No survivors. They’re all dead, Jeff. Everyone’s… dead. Keith’s—”
The clatter of the handset against the glass protective desktop was as loud as a rifle shot in the small room.
THREE
The Italian
Antonio Carvelli read the paper as he sipped his postprandial espresso at the sidewalk café on the bustling viale Regina Margherita where he religiously retired after his exhausting lunch, taking in the young female students with an appreciative eye over the top of the day’s newspaper. Pigeons dodged the hurrying pedestrians with typical Italian fearlessness, much as jaywalkers made a sport of being narrowly missed by racing traffic on the boulevards.
Two stunning brunettes clad in pants as tight as second skins meandered by, their rapid-fire discussion lost to him as a delivery truck ground its gears, the diesel engine roaring as the hapless driver struggled to find third. One of the pair’s gaze darted at his position, catching his look, and smiled in a way that clearly indicated that he had not a chance in hell of ever seeing anything more of her.
Carvelli sighed and returned to his reading, his study of the local fauna concluded, at least for a time. He’d read the long article on the jet crash in the United States, noteworthy in Italy primarily because nineteen Italian tourists had been lost, and then moved to lighter fare, skimming over a long editorial parsing the finer points of some proposed immigration legislation as he digested his meal. The stance of the author was clearly anti-Muslim, voicing the popular opinion that immigrants should be free to do as they liked, as long as they conformed to the local norms and didn’t try to convert Saint Paul’s into a mosque or force everyone to wear veils.
Two more pages, and he was confronted with the bare upper torso of an aspiring starlet rumored to be the companion of a top government minister — not necessarily a scandal, even though he was married, because, well, look at her. It was freely understood that men were only human and could be ensnared every time if tempted with succulent flesh, especially if accompanied by alcohol. The minister had of course denied everything, which was obligatory, but nobody believed him, and the corners of Carvelli’s mouth tugged upward into a small smirk as he studied her profile. He knew the man in question, and if he could muster the energy to take that on, more power to him.
The waiter returned, seeing that Carvelli’s cup was empty, and placed the check on the table as he cleared it, as was his custom with the professor. Carvelli folded his paper, stood, and fished in the pocket of his immaculately tailored navy gabardine slacks to extract a wad of bills. After leafing through them, he left a generous tip. His time for introspection over, he proceeded down the sidewalk, back to his office on the campus of La Sapienza, Università di Roma, where he’d been a professor as well as a research scientist for the last three decades.