Sitting up, I adjusted my company tie, glanced around the table, tried to refocus on the names, numbers, timelines, and locations that were being discussed, but my concentration was as settled as a droplet of quicksilver. Soon, I picked up the moon-wool tweed samples and began to flip through them. When I came to the 2x2 twill that I had picked out for the product show tomorrow, my eyes defocused on the smooth, dark charcoal. In the last year, I had learned a lot about grey. Maybe more than I cared to.
Originally, of course, I had been attracted to grey because I assumed it was the opposite of Father’s garish colors, the reverse of his style and manner, but it was much more complicated than that. In fact, because its parents were black and white, no color in the spectrum was the offspring of such complete opposites, and as such no other tone could ever represent and compass the vast distances between those extremes, that of light and dark, life and death, and good and evil.
More important, grey was not the escape from the world I had wanted, nor was it the negation I had desired. All I had to do was close my left eye and see the grey spine of the world. Everything was grey. Color was nothing but a thin veil of deceit on top.
Setting down the cloth samples, I focused on my half brother again.
“I have been in contact with one of the members of the Ültra band, Stinkin’ Dead Ünicorns, who feels strongly, as many of us do, that Hiro’s death should be avenged.” Rex, my armless half brother from Tanoshi No Wah, wore a sleeveless maroon frock, vest, and a black tie. The screen beside him now showed the diagram of a theater with a red circle around a front seat. “This man, whose name I am not going to reveal, is one of the drummers who plays the new Nalor 450mm munitions tom. As you may know, that specific drum has caused dozen of fatalities at recent concerts.” Returning to his chart, he drew a line from the stage to the circled seat. “Despite the dangers of this new drum, in an interview yesterday, Mr. Gonzalez-Matsu insisted he will sit in the front. So, what we are proposing…”
As Rex continued, my eyes gravitated toward the distant gleam of Ros Begas, the geometric high-rise towers silhouetted against aquamarine, the gaudy flickering signs, blinking spires, all connected with flowing arteries of red and white light. Then the dots began to coalesce, the shapes turned hazy, and the city became one amorphous glow.
I thought of her.
Like I had many times, I recalled the moment when the door of her Loop car slid back and she stood inside in her gown. Since we were off the system and the cameras in her car were disabled, no footage existed. But that made it more special, more rare, if unfortunately more vulnerable to the corrosion of memory.
I could still conjure the color of her skin in contrast to the iridescent grey of the bodice and the hazy white edge of her skirt that deepened to a glistening black in the center, the calm of her muted irises, and the smooth, moist watermelon of her lips. Sometimes though, without the help of video or images, it was difficult to exactly recall the shape of her hairline, how her eyebrows curved, or the precise timbre of her voice.
And although it had been a year, almost every morning, while I lay in that semi-dream state at dawn, I would often feel her chenille-covered fingertips on my back or gently squeezing my throat. Sitting up, hoping to see her beside me, I would only find the wrinkled landscape of the empty sheets.
After the product show, I sent a hundred messages to Nora, but they were all returned unanswered. The channels were filled with wild speculation and the foursome on Intellectuals and Soup debated whether she was even still alive. Every few weeks someone thought they spotted Nora at Slate Gardens, SpecificMotor 505, or the SunEcho, but after careful study, they were all fakes—no doubt some of the same young women from the auxiliary room that day. In Pure H, a new advertisement for plutonium buttons appeared. Instead of the beautiful dead couple, now a man lies alone. And although his palm is bloody, as though he had held her hand, she is no longer near.
Even as I worked twelve- and fifteen-hour days to try to rebuild RiverGroup, my heart was dismal and motionless. And I began to worry that if she were alive—which I desperately believed—she had rejected me. It was bad enough I had once worn gold and danced to killer beats, now the world also knew that I was the stitched-together collage of a Pharmaceutical War freak.
Then, the day before, Nora made an appearance on Celebrity Research Yacht. She wore a simple bias-cut charcoal one-piece, with wide flat-fell princess seams, a v-neck, and a slender gold scarf. Her hair was shorter and the ends were tinged with black. And while she answered Milo’s silly questions with her usual succinctness—giving out no information other than that she was alive, I could tell that she had changed in a million ways, that her eyes were a darker shade, her face a little rounder, and her cheeks a deeper blush. And yet, despite all the differences, she was Nora—my Nora. At the end of the show, her dark eyes met the camera’s stare, and she touched the cloth of her dress where she had once touched the button of her jacket.
Immediately, I got a team of analysts together to decipher her message, but the hunt for clues was unnecessary, as later that day it was announced she would attend the Intel-Sunbeam Ironing and Renovation Invitational. I redirected the team to set up a covert rendezvous.
“So, Mr. CEO,” concluded Rex, obviously irritated that I had been daydreaming, “that’s the scenario.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I got the strategy if not all the details.”
He asked, “Shall we go ahead?”
Two days ago, I would have immediately said yes, but now that I knew she was alive I didn’t know. To delay, I asked the others, “What do you think?”
Around the hammered-silver and sugar maple table sat Mom, Mason, Ari, the girl whose skin looked like scrambled eggs, my tailor, and Walter Noole. We were in what had become our conference room on the fifteenth floor of the PartyHaus. The black toilets had been removed, and so had the ornate and pastel couches and easy chairs, but cobalt tiles still covered the floor, walls, and ceiling. Mom complained it was gloomy and cold, but I liked it.
“The risks,” said Mason, nodding thoughtfully. “Are they worth it?” He wore a tuxedo-like black suit and glasses. Out of his ratskins, he had become a distinguished gentleman and presided over a popular game show on channel 43,001 at dawn each morning.
“No,” said Mother, shaking her head. “Rex, I’m sorry, but you know I don’t like it. We’ve been about positives. This is purely negative.” Mother now wore her hair short. It was frosted a light strawberry, and although I wasn’t sure it worked with her tanned complexion, it was better than before. Her tailored charcoal suit was beautiful and made her look both strong and yet delicate in a way she never had before. “I think we should forget it and go to the ironing show. I’m sure no one wants to miss Maricell’s singing.”
“Have you really thought it through?” asked Mason, eyeing Mom.
“I have!” she replied. “It’s destructive. That’s why I hate it.”
“The question is,” began Ari, leaning forward, “will it win us customers?” She was always the pragmatist.
“Definitely,” said Rex. “Most of our customers are still Ültra and they want blood.” Shrugging, he added, “We’ve been weak for a year.”
“The plan is very mean,” said Walter, who sat beyond Mr. Cedar on my side. “But what they did was very mean, too.” Frowning he added, “I’m not sure what to do.” It turned out that Walter had an amazing gift for coding, and while he was still learning his way, I had given him the job of chief code officer.
Mr. Cedar, who often spoke last, sat back and twisted his single beard hair. “Does it jeopardize your future with Nora?”
“That can’t be part of a business decision,” I said.
“It has to be,” he countered.
“It does not! It cannot. She has nothing to do with the business.” Even I could hear the overtones of denial in my voice.
“That’s maybe the best reason not to,” said Mom, her voice softer, as if she was hoping the notion would just fade away. “Let’s table it and go. We’re going to be late.”
“I need a decision,” said Rex.
“We’re not interested,” said Mom.
“Wait!” I said, pushing back my chair. “If we can’t increase our percentages, our creditors aren’t going to keep us going. We’ve got to be courageous.”
Rex spoke toward Mom. “If all goes well, his death alone will make the product show a success. I get questions about retaliation from our clients all the time.” Softer, he added, “A lot of them still love Hiro.”
Sitting back, Mom said, “It shouldn’t be like this! I hate how the families do business like savages. When we toured the slubs, we never were like this.”
“It was worse!” said Mason. “It was much worse out there.”
“It was,” agreed Ari.
Standing, I stepped toward the windows. An hour from now, I was to see Nora off the system during the ironing invitational. What would I tell her? What could I possibly say?
When Mom came to my side, I looked up as though I had been staring at the lights of the city. Actually, I had been gazing down toward the far end of the oxygen gardens at Father’s headstone. It might not have been visible except the ground lights were on and, a couple of months ago, I had spread a handful of mutant carrot seeds, and their tops formed a thick black patch.
After the product show last year, I retreated from the world. I lived in my dressing room and while I did nothing but burn a lot of gen-cotton shirts with a Schiaparelli-Firemaster Jr. that I had sent out for, I told myself I hated all of them, especially Joelene. When a family commission found she was born a freeboot it was clear that she had deceived, betrayed, and used me. Worse, she had killed Father at just the moment when I had started to see him for what he really was—a flawed, frantic man who had let the company disfigure his heart. Maybe in the future, in a few years from now, I would be able to forgive Joelene since she had done so much for me, but clemency wasn’t yet in me.
A month after the show, one morning, after I scorched the collar of another shirt, I started to cry. I fell to the floor and wept so hard I could barely pull air in my lungs. Once I had picked myself up, I headed to the technology building and walked into the code lab, where I knew there was still activity. The thirty workers stood and began to clap, but I told them to stop.
“I know almost nothing about the business,” I told them. “But in my Father’s name, I’m going to try.”
I became CEO of RiverGroup and began working the long hours that he had. Five months later, after weeks of negotiations, the Om Om president of iip-2 agreed to return thirty percent of her business and that felt like a new beginning. But it was only that. RiverGroup wasn’t first anymore. We weren’t even second. We were fifth behind MKG, KodeKing, XL8, and Budget-Crypt. And currently, the only moneymaking part of the company was the Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday night rages at the PartyHaus where Maricell sang, and many of Tanoshi No Wah performed.
Even after all the hard work we had put in, we were struggling, and without something daring and dramatic, I doubted we would make it another year.
“It’s just not good,” said Mom, quietly. “It really isn’t. You know how you felt… how you still feel.”
I thought of Father’s last moment, the confusion and bewilderment he must have felt as the jacket flew toward him. Sometimes I thought I was being sentimental to imagine that things would have changed between us. But documents that Xavid had left indicated that he had issued the order for the freeboot to cut off Nora’s toe. I don’t know if that truly exonerated Father, but maybe it had in my heart.
“RiverGroup will be fine without retaliation,” she continued. “I know Mr. Gonzalez-Matsu is not a good man. Everyone knows that, but where will it end?”
As I had before, I wished that the morning I’d heard Joelene’s cursing I’d told Father, and that somehow together we discovered that she was working for MKG. What we would have done, I wasn’t sure, but anything that changed the past seemed preferable. “Gonzalez-Matsu planned it for years,” I said, as if that made it doubly bad.
Mom whispered, “Think about her.”
“That’s all I used to do,” I said, trying not to raise my voice. “That was exactly the problem. I only thought of her. If I had done something else, just once, then Father would still be here.”
“Don’t blame yourself!”
Whipping around, I told Rex, “Go ahead! Kill him.”
Rex nodded once and turned to go.
“Wait,” I said, as I pictured Nora alone in her dressing room after she had gotten the news of her Father’s death. “Hold on… I don’t know…”
“I’ll go ahead,” said Rex. “If you want to stop, let me know within two hours.”
The Intel-Sunbeam Ironing and Renovation Invitational was being held in the new massive single-crystal ConEmFuKo building in Ros Begas. Ninety-five thousand fans had gathered. Most sat below in theaters seats; the balconies were filled with corporate boxes. The RiverGroup boot was on the far right, MKG’s, was in the center. Through the black glass, I could see nothing, but this was the closest I had been to her in a year. I thought I could feel her presence, her warmth, her being, her heart, but the truth was, I wasn’t sure.
Mother sat on my left, Mr. Cedar, right. In the seats in front of us were Mason, Ari, Walter, and another of my half brothers.
We had arrived just in time for the opening ceremonies, and now, far below, Maricell sang. She wore a long, creamy yellow dress, which highlighted the black speaker in the middle of her chest. Her hair was arranged elegantly, her eyes, glowing. She looked gorgeous and happy. When I invited all of Tanoshi No Wah to the compound, I offered to pay for corrective surgery. Later, Mom explained that that was an insult. What worked out, after I apologized, was my proposal to let them stay in the compound if they worked for RiverGroup.
Maricell was singing the Intel-Sunbeam corporate anthem, and while it wasn’t a favorite—corporate songs all sounded the same to me—her interpretation was warm and emotional. We, and many below, stood and cheered at the end.
“She looks so good,” Ari said to Mom, tearfully. “And she’s so happy now!”
“She is,” she replied as she massaged Ari’s shoulders, tenderly. “It’s wonderful how someone can grow in a positive and healthy atmosphere.”
I suspected her remark was pointed at me.
“I don’t like it either,” I told her, again. “But I think it must be done.”
Mom ignored me. Now her tactic was silence.
As the stage was prepared for the ironing, Walter and Ari headed off to get snacks. The rest of us sat quietly for several minutes. On the stage, I saw the silver-hair director. Tomorrow, he was going to produce our product show.
“I just hate it,” said Mom, as if she couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Yes,” I said, wishing we didn’t have to keep discussing it. “I hate it, too.”
My tailor twisted his beard hair, sadly. “What do you think her reaction will be?”
I hadn’t yet even tried to fathom it. “I don’t know.”
“She could use it against RiverGroup.”
“She’ll hate you,” she said. “Who wants their father killed? Even the fathers you two had. She’s got to be loyal to him, even if she detests everything else.”
“All right!” I said, louder than I meant. Closing my eyes, I said, “I’m sorry, Mom, but please, this isn’t easy. I am wrestling with it.”
“Obviously, you’re not.”
Rubbing my face, I just wished everything would go away.
“Who’s who?” asked Mason, turning toward us.
He asked because the two ironers had come out on the stage. They were, of course, Fanjor and Isé–B. Only a point separated them, but unlike all previous times, Isé–B was ahead. All he had to do was tie Fanjor in the final race, and he would be crowned the new champion.
While Mr. Cedar explained the ironing to Mason, I gazed down at Isé–B in my powerglasses. Before, I had completely identified with him. I was still a fan, still wished for the clarity for competitive ironing—in fact working my own iron was one of the few relaxing things I did anymore—but the complexities of business had taken me from attending many competitions.
Putting down the powerglasses, I told myself I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t have Nora’s father killed. It was awful, especially for her. As soon as I’d thought that, though, I felt livid that he had been the cause of so much pain and wrong, and I felt like I wanted to strangle him myself.
“We miss anything?” Walter wanted to know, when he and Ari returned.
Eyeing his snacks, Mother asked, “Should you be eating those?”
After popping several redheads in his mouth, Walter said, “These are the new Frix mini sluts.” Quoting their slogan, he added, “Forty percent less tar and saturated fat, but all the original debauchery!”
“You’re so weird!” said Ari with a giggle, as she sat beside him. Her voice was filled with that sort of faked disgust that hides affection.
A horn blew. The ironing was about to begin. And seconds from now, I would be meeting her. My fingertips began pulsing my heart beat so hard.
“Who’s who?” asked Mason again.
“The black one is Isé–B. The other in yellow is Fanjor,” said Maricell, as she came into the booth. She sat beside my tailor as we all congratulated her on her singing.
The starting gun fired. The ironers grabbed their shirts and headed to their boards.
Mr. Cedar tugged on his beard hair twice. That was the signal. I stood.
Maricell asked me, “Where are you going?”
“Uh… er… restroom,” I stuttered.
Exiting our booth, I turned left, rushed past the concession stands and souvenir shops, and headed through a door labeled equipment. Inside was a series of control panels and several workers watching various screens. On one I could see the two ironers working. Black smoke chugged from Isé–B’s Schiaparelli-Firemaster, but Fanjor’s short jabbing motions made it look like he was already ahead.
Through an unmarked door at the other end of the equipment room, I started climbing metal stairs. After ten sets, I came to a roof exit. Outside, in the blazing heat and light, stood Pheff in a near-white suit. He held up his hand.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“Wait,” he said, peering into a small screen. “Hold on… be patient…”
“Pheff!” I said, frantic, “tell me. What’s going on? She on her way? She not coming? There something wrong?”
“Wait for the system to be shut down.” Lowering a hand, as if timing it, he said, Aaaand… go!”
Running as fast as I could, I sprinted for another rooftop doorway one hundred yards away. There, I tore open the door and flew down the stairs. Finally, I came to a platform before metal elevator doors.
As I tried to catch my breath, I wondered what would happen. A year stood between us. I knew I had changed. Maybe she wasn’t the same either. And then there were my terrible plans for her father. Should I tell her? What would she think? What would she feel? Would she slap my face or try to choke me to death right here?
The doors weren’t opening. Why was this taking so long? This wasn’t good. They were supposed to open immediately. I began to panic that I had been double-crossed or that her father had discovered the plan.
From below, deep in the building, I heard a roar. It was the audience. Someone had just won the coveted Intel-Sunbeam. Maybe it was Isé–B.
The doors opened. Jumping back, ready to hit the floor and try and roll away from fashion gun fire, I saw that it was just her.
Inside the scratched utility elevator she stood in a beautifully simple near-black dress. The fabric looked like a plutonium glazed 2x2 alloy twill, and a bias carbon ribbon finished the scooped neck where, from a rhodium chain, hung two black satellite pearls. Her hair was like it had been on Celebrity Research—shorter and with tinges of black as though she too had escaped fire. On her feet she wore matt-black, handmade hifi pumps. It pained me that the right was obviously thinner than the left.
Tears ran from her dark eyes down her cheeks, and at first I thought she was hurt or sick, distraught, or that something was terribly wrong. But as I parted my dry lips to speak, to tell her how much I missed her, how I loved her exactly as before, she smiled, and I understood that the tears were for joy.
Bending, slowly, she picked up a charcoal bassinet. Beneath a soft, nano-wool blanket, she had brought our baby.