The Handbook for Lightning Strike Survivors (31 page)

“Chemist.”

“Your employer?”

“Atkins and Thames.”

“And what do you do at Atkins and Thames?”

“I’m a chemist.”

“Specifically, what do you do at Atkins and Thames?”

“I develop cigarette additives.”

“Did you
develop
QR66?”

“Yes.”

“And what’s in QR66 exactly?”

“Hydrochloroloxinate.”

“What does hydrochloroloxinate do?”

“It’s an additive.”

“Yes, we understand. What does your additive do exactly?”

“It enhances the flavor of a cigarette.”

“Is that all that it does, because we’ve already heard testimony from Dr. Daniel Witzel that hydrochloroloxinate, QR66, the additive
you developed
, triples the addictive effects of nicotine in the bloodstream. Is that a fair statement?”

“I don’t know about triples.”

“What about quadruples?”

“I don’t think that’s been proven.” Why hadn’t his attorney spoken up? Wasn’t Betty Solznick out of order? Rowan pushed his graying hair back. One strand after another drooped its way onto his forehead. The woman at the salon had used too much gel. His head felt greasy. He smoothed his widow’s peak.

“Are you a shareholder?”

“Yes.”

“How much did you receive last quarter in dividend checks, Mr. Burke?”

“Objection.”

Finally
, Rowan thought.

One of the Atkins and Thames attorneys, a man Rowan’s age, but with a nasally voice that made him sound like he was whining, rose from his chair. “The witness’s dividend check is irrelevant.”

“Sustained,” said the judge, who appeared to Rowan to be at least eighty years old.

“Is QR66 addictive?”

“Yes.”

“Did your employers, specifically the executive officers at Atkins and Thames, know that QR66 was an addictive additive?”

“Objection, your honor. That’s hearsay. The witness has no way of knowing if the executives at Atkins and Thames were aware of the addictive nature of QR66.”

“I’ll rephrase the question. Were you ever present when your employers, specifically Roger Billingsworth, Franklin Thames, and Max Childress, were discussing the … I guess we should say addictive qualities of QR66, hydrochloroloxinate?”

“Yes.”

Betty Solznick smiled.

Rowan testified for more than an hour. He would not do this again.
Never again
, he thought. The gate to the witness box slammed shut as Rowan stepped down and started for the double doors.

The bailiff grabbed his elbow. “Wrong way,” she said, pointing to a side exit where another bailiff held the door open for him.

The subpoenas poured in. There were more trials, not just pre-trials, but grand-jury trials and state trials and then Rowan had to testify before the House Commerce Committee. He was always asked the same questions, and he always answered truthfully. The legal team of Atkins and Thames, thirty-six strong, ever vigilant, telling Rowan to be honest. Tell the truth. They wouldn’t be asking about QR66 if they didn’t already have the proof. Internal documents had been smuggled out of the company. Rowan thought,
That fink—whoever took those documents should be shot. Look what they’ve done to me
.

From his hotel room in San Francisco, Rowan phoned Becca in New York. It was six West Coast time. Nine o’clock in New York, but his daughter sounded drunk. Music blared. “How’s the apartment?”

“Good,” she said. “How’s Patty?”

“She’s good.” He clicked the TV off and sat up in bed. “I’m just calling to say I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Dad. Is everything okay?”

No
, thought Rowan.
Nothing’s okay
. “Are you having a party?”

“Sort of. My neighbors, Lucy and Jack—I told you about them. Lucy just got a bit part in this movie they’re filming in Murray Hill.”

“Tell her congratulations.” He’d never heard of Lucy or Jack.

“Will do.” Becca relayed, “My dad says congratulations.”

“We’ll see you at Christmas,” he said.

“Will do.”

Eight months later, walking down Sixth Avenue on her way to the train, Becca stared at her father’s picture on the April 15, 1990, front page of the
New York Times
. The headline read, “Atkins and Thames Contends Chemist Lied.” She turned to page A12. “Franklin Thames, CEO of Atkins and Thames, testified before the House Commerce Committee, ‘Rowan Burke did not make us
aware of QR66’s adverse effects. There is no documentation that myself or the Board of Trustees was ever informed of the addictive enhancement QR66 has on nicotine. In fact, documents show that QR66 was an additive meant to improve the cigarette’s flavor. Nothing more. Rowan Burke is a liar.’”

Becca read and reread, “Rowan Burke is a liar.” She tore page A12 into shreds and walked on, the scraps of newspaper trailing behind her.

Early on, Sue said, “I take fifty percent, but we’ll help with the installation.” Having first spoken with Sue in May, Becca already had her first gallery show. It wouldn’t have been so quick, but to use Sue’s words, “The artist we scheduled flaked and burned his canvases. I don’t know why every artist thinks he has to be fucking nuts to make art.” She paused. “I don’t mean you. It’s been a long week.” Becca had a long September, painting every night until well past midnight. And it just figured that the second Friday in October had to be Friday the thirteenth. She didn’t believe in bad omens or jinxed numbers, but just the same, her friend Lucy advised, “Try to postpone. It’s bad luck. This dude burns his paintings and you get his show, and the show’s on Friday the thirteenth!”

“I can’t postpone.” Becca couldn’t. This was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

On the phone, Sue told Becca to call Mark Kelly. “He prints the price list and the programs.”

Two days before her opening, Becca, Paulo, Jack, and Lucy met Sue at the back door to her gallery. The foursome unloaded Becca’s canvases from Paulo’s pickup. Becca was sweating. Sick with anticipation, not so much about the work itself but about the opening, about possibly having to talk about her paintings, she could barely speak. Jack and Lucy, who’d seen Becca’s paintings in the making, had said things like, “I think it’s good. I like
that color” or “That one’s neat.” Their opinions and their observations were in some way insulting. They didn’t understand that her soul was painted into each canvas. They couldn’t understand. Becca wondered if anyone could.

Becca pulled an old bedsheet off
Fish, Number Twelve
in the high-ceilinged gallery while Sue watched. Becca said to Sue, “We shouldn’t take long.” Becca wore a pair of cutoff Levis and a red T-shirt embossed with the logo
BUILT FORD TOUGH
. Down on her knees in front of
Fish, Number Twelve
, she smiled at Sue. “I really appreciate this opportunity.”

Sue handed Becca a copy of the
Lightning Fish
program and price list. Half of Becca’s paintings were reproduced on the thick paper in one- and two-inch squares, the titles underneath. Sue said, “Mark does a nice job.”

“He does.”

“I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” Sue was brunette, older, but well coiffed and made up in bright pink blush and blue eye shadow.

Paulo and Jack were still carrying Becca’s canvases into the gallery.

As Sue’s heels tapped the oak steps, Lucy said, “You look like you’re going to hurl.”

“Do I have to come to this thing?”

“You probably should.”

Sue’s intern, Johnny Bosworth—who was a few years older than Becca—was supposed to help with the installation, but Becca said no. She wished that she could hang each of the paintings herself, but there wasn’t time. For months, there hadn’t been time for anything but painting.

Panicked about the impending opening, Becca had telephoned her mother the night before. She’d said, “What if nothing sells? What if no one comes? What if they don’t like it or they don’t get it?”

“How old are you?” her mother asked.

“Twenty.”

“You have your own show. You’re twenty. That says something. That says a lot.” Becca knew that if she hadn’t threatened to tell Apple Pie’s wife about their affair, she wouldn’t have met Roderick Dweizer, and if she hadn’t met Roderick Dweizer, she wouldn’t have a gallery opening. She wondered if she deserved her own show.

Becca hung ten of her fourteen canvases. She said, “There’s a smudge here,” staring at the wall. “Do you think she painted in here?”

“Of course she painted,” Lucy said. “There’s a gray spot here. See it.”

“That’s a shadow, Becca. They’ll fix the lighting.”

“There’s a glare on
Fish, Number Twenty-two
.”

“They’ll fix the lighting before Friday. Calm. Remember calm? Take deep breaths.”

Lucy was a blond waif with doll-baby blue eyes and thick eyelashes. Jack, her effeminate steady boyfriend, was also blond and blue-eyed with thick eyelashes. As a couple, they were often mistaken for brother and sister. They were Becca’s closest friends. Lucy the wannabe actress and Jack the waiter. Jack was content as a waiter. Having grown up in Newark, New Jersey, his only aspiration was to leave Newark and live in Manhattan. He was twenty-five and he had achieved his lifelong dream. Lucy, on the other hand, was, as Paulo would say, “mad with the acting.” She had complex dreams and aspirations that included living in Hollywood and being interviewed on
Entertainment Tonight
. She was funny and bubbly and always smiling. Becca could never tell when Lucy was acting or being her real self, or if Lucy
had
a real self. It seemed to Becca that Lucy’s onstage persona was forever and permanently mixed in with her real self. Lucy and Jack were like all the friends Becca ever had—other than Carrie Drinkwater. They were acquaintances. Becca knew deep down that she
would never really know these two, but they were her closest friends, and as such, they would escort Becca to her first opening at Sue’s Gallery on Friday.

As she installed the last painting, she thought about Carrie. She wanted to telephone Carrie in Chapel Hill, but Carrie had a daughter (she knew this from her crazy poetry-writing mother), and people who have kids, people with husbands and jobs and mortgages, don’t much want to hear about other people’s paintings.

With each of her paintings mounted on the walls and the sun setting, casting shadows on the glossy gallery floors, Becca stared uncomfortably at what she had spent the last year creating. She cried. She didn’t mean to cry. Lucy said, “Let’s get a drink.”

Paulo, a thirty-year-old Columbia graduate, who at one time had fancied himself an artist (but gave it up, he explained, “because it was too much work for too little money”), offered to treat them to martinis at the Gypsy on Fifty-ninth. Paulo, clearly smitten with Jack, worked at Macy’s in the men’s department. That’s where he’d met Jack and thus met Lucy and thus Becca.

Sipping her martini at the Gypsy and making an ugly face (she loathed vermouth), Becca was hopeful. She was the antithesis of her dejected father, who sipped an airplane cup of chardonnay on his way to a deposition in St. Louis, Missouri.

The night of her first opening, Becca rubbed her hands down the front of her vintage cherry-printed dress. A tear escaped her left eye.
Shhh. Don’t cry. Not here
. With Indian summer making an appearance, the doors to the gallery were propped open.

Buckley blew his nose on the 6-train and shifted in the orange plastic seat. He leaned forward and held on to the silver pole for support as the train jerked on the tracks. Mia said, “This’ll be fun. You know Paulo. He’ll be there.”

The sky outside grew black and the wind picked up, whirling
trash on the sidewalk. Becca paced inside the gallery while Paulo ate grapes from the hors d’oeuvres table. He said, “You got those nails clean.”

“Don’t think it was easy. Sometimes I think my hands will be permanently stained.”

He popped a grape in his mouth.

She smacked at his hand. “Don’t do that. It’s not seven yet.”

Sue, her arms folded at her waist, whispered to her intern, Johnny Bosworth, “It figures it’d rain.” Johnny Bosworth, who fancied himself a much better artist than Becca, grimaced at
Fish, Number Fourteen
. He said, “So there’s a lightning storm that kills all the fish in the sea? How original.”

Sue said, “Be nice, Johnny.” She pointed to the front of the gallery. “Close the doors. It’s moist.”

“She hasn’t even graduated,” Johnny griped.

“Get the doors.”

Becca watched Johnny pull the doors shut. Nervous, she wondered if there was still a chance she might slip out the back. Thunder cracked and she took a deep breath.

Roderick Dweizer was the first to arrive, and Lucy, knowing to what extent the old man had helped Becca, met him at the front door. She said, “Did Becca tell you I’m an actress?” The rain had already begun, and he shook out his umbrella, the water sprinkling Lucy’s brown skirt. “So sorry,” he said.

“Don’t apologize.” Lucy’s lips shone pink in the gallery light.

Roderick Dweizer, Lucy jabbering at his side, made a beeline for his favorite artist, Rebecca Burke. “Don’t worry,” he said, patting Becca’s arm. “It’s going to be a great success. That worry of yours is in the paint.”

“I guess so.”

“Enjoy tonight.” Roderick fixed a plate of brie and crackers and said to Becca, with Lucy still hanging on, “I’ll tell you a secret, Becca Burke.” He leaned close, a smidgen of cheese on his lower lip. “Sue knows nothing about art. If it weren’t for her wealthy
husband and my taste, she would not be in business. She is not as smart as she thinks.” He tapped his temple with his pointer finger. “We will surprise her tonight when everything sells.”

Becca blushed. Roderick Dweizer had no motive to help her. She had done nothing for him but given him one painting because he appreciated it.

“You are magnificent.” He kissed her cheek.

The gallery filled with Sue’s regular Friday-night crowd, including Apple Pie and his preppy wife.