4 Rainy Days and Monday (12 page)

She felt herself smile.

“That’s it, Giselle. Step up, now,” Gary urged.

She stepped up on a cold metal platform.

Her feet were bare.

“Here,” the woman offered.

What was her name?

A flower. She knew this flower. Not a delicate one. Daisy? Too wild. Orchid? Too exotic.

No, a plain flower. Also, a color. Rose? No. So many names for girls were flowers. Why not something strong? Her mind drifted along names for a moment longer.

Violet. Yes.

She realized she was standing with one arm out and Gary was putting a cuff on her wrist.

“She will not get out. Do not worry,” Gary claimed.

“She better not for your sake,” Violet warned.

Then, he was dabbing her lips gently with a cloth dipped in cold water.

Her lips screamed with little pricks of pain and drank up the water like a sponge.

She felt a drop of water drip down her chin. It tickled. Gary dabbed at it before it could drop.

Giselle opened her eyes then and stared at Gary.

He stopped, mesmerized.

“It’s ok,” She mouthed.

His eyes widened.

“Shh,” she urged.

He glanced back at Violet nervously.

“Get her prepped for surgery. Two incisions. Iodine’s on the counter over there.”

“Got it,” he claimed.

Violet left and the door slammed. Giselle heard a latch rattle. They were locked in. Good.

Giselle reached down inside of herself and lifted her consciousness out of the compartment where she had hidden it. She felt herself grow, expand, and become.

She blinked. She could smell the chemicals in the room. Colors became brighter. Her mind exhaled as if it had been in a deep slumber. Her memory returned like a hammer slamming a solid wall.

She looked up out of habit, her eyes moving along the ceiling. Two cameras. Neither aimed at the table where the iodine lay.

“Take me over to the table by the iodine,” she whispered, her lips barely moving. She kept her expression blank but never let her eyes leave Gary’s.

“I don’t understand—”

“Don’t talk to me, just move,” she ordered.

He nodded. He undid the leash at her wrist.

He led her over to the table.

“Let’s get that iodine on you,” he said.

When they were at the table, she grabbed his elbow.

“They want the chip. Let them have it,” she said.

His eyes grew larger.

“What? No. That chip is our only way out of this mess! It is—”

“I know, Gary. Trust me. We don’t have time for me to explain.”

He looked at her, incredulous. He appeared to be prepared to argue with her.

She pulled him close by his lapel, and brought her lips to his. She could feel their dry lips touch and smell his sour sweat. Neither of them had bathed on the long, arduous trip. She did not care. This was the quickest way to shut the man up.

She needed him not to interfere. She had this under control.

She had been used all her life. Now it was her turn.

Lars had provided her an opportunity. She was prepared to use him, too. He did not suspect her duplicity. He had seen through her attempts to deceive them in pretending still to be in a mental funk. She had maintained her innocence of her memories.

She knew her true power.

They did not want her to know. She did not want them to suspect. The word brought it all back in a rush. The truth of her mother’s legacy was in her blood. She was ViVeri’s fulfillment. In their hands, she could bring back the rule that they sought. Or, in the wrong hands, she could destroy them and all they had become.

Gary pulled back from her, his breathing ragged.

“We can’t, I just, I didn’t know that, I never—”

“Shh,” she cautioned, a smile at her lips. She placed her fingers gently across his lips.

“It is all part of the plan,” she said.

“Giving ViVeri the chip is part of a plan? I thought the plan was to have surgery on your brain! Dr. Spreckles is a leading brain surgeon and geneticist. Take the chip? Whose plan, Giselle? Why?”

Gary was practically spinning. Sychol worked differently in some subjects. With Gary, evidently it made him hyperactive.

“I will tell you as soon as we get out of here,” she explained. “Now, put that iodine on me.”

“Over the chip?”

She nodded.

“If you don’t I might die of an infection,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

Whiskey Memories

T
he porch swing creaked under his weight. Cicadas sung at a high pitch to the background music of clinking glasses and crashing surf.

Jake was drunk.

Not fall-down drunk, but less sober than he felt comfortable. He hated that detached feeling that came with the numbness.

All in the name of research.

Senator Swane had been rather loose of tongue once the Jack Daniels began to flow. The bottle of Blanton had been tested and set reverently back on the shelf. It had been deemed that tonight’s conversation would be better served with a visit from their mutual friend, JD.

It was interesting how whiskey seemed to pull stories long buried from men. It would reach down inside and pull the past right of them, bringing their insides back to the light of day. The light of the moon and a dim yellow porch light in their case.

Senator Swane sat on the porch bannister, his back leaning heavily on the wooden post that supported the roof. He held the glass of whiskey perilously aloft, the moon reflecting from the caramel concoction. Jake blinked slowly, trying to listen. He had lost track of the story Robert had been telling.

“Then I see this guy in the front row. I thought I
knew
him. He had been there on the day I graduated high school. In a class of fifty, you know everyone, you know?”

Jake nodded.

“Yeah. Small class. Small town. Everyone knows everyone,” Jake offered.

“Exactly. So no one knew this guy. Big guy. Big head. He was wearing a fedora like one of those G-men, you know? Like he was from Pinkerton.”

“G-man. That’s funny,” Jake said. His words were slurred and he could not control his laughing. He chuckled at the oddity of a whole nation of people calling service agents such a derogatory term.

“I know, right? At the time it sounded clever. Everyone repeated it. But this guy, he looked odd and there I see him in my class at Duke. I see him at the ball game, a Blue Devil’s pin on his suit. It was weird. Like time stood still. Like there was a neon sign pointing at him telling me he was my future; that I needed to stop and talk to him.”

“Did you?” Jake asked.

“Yeah. I asked him something. I don’t remember what. My friends kept walking. I just couldn’t let it pass. He was too old for class so I said, ‘Aren’t you too old to be a student?’ That was before adults started attending classes and finishing degrees. It was odd that he just sat there, chewing on a toothpick.”

Swane’s speech was slurred only a little. He was adept at telling a story and the drink only dulled that ability a fraction.

“What did he say back?”

“He just sat there with blank eyes. He looked at me and I knew he knew me. I knew for sure that he was there for me, you know? Not a pervert. Just an interest in who I was and where I was headed.”

“Like you were looking at your destiny?”

“Something like that,” Swane said, throwing back the whiskey in one gulp. He set the glass down on the wooden baluster. “You know, when you can see what you want to do in your dreams, it never feels like it will be just like that?”

Jake smirked. He touched his finger to his head.

“My mind’s a little fuzzy on childhood memories, senator.”

“I suppose so,” Robert replied. “This felt real. I did not know why he was there but it scared the hell out of me. I honestly thought he was from Uncle Sam. Draft dodger expert. Something like that. The war was going on. I wasn’t one of the protesters, I just wanted an education. I had plans. I didn’t see him the rest of my freshman year.”

He poured another two fingers of whiskey.

“Did he ever confront you?”

The senator’s eyes took on a faraway glaze.

“Yeah. It was my senior year at Duke. He came at me with a proposal. I had been planning to go to grad school. I had met this really swell girl and the war was almost over. This was ’71. He claimed that he could ensure that I would be successful. He needed me to take a job in a firm. I told him I didn’t have my law degree. He said he would take care of that. Next thing I know, I am at a firm studying under a guy that I knew was a communist, but was too scared to prove it.”

“This was the firm that backed Lightner for mayor?”

Swane blinked.

“Yeah. How did you know?”

Jake shrugged.

“Trivial pursuit, I guess. One of the first popularly elected African American mayors gets top billing in this messed up nugget of a brain I have here,” he explained.

“Well, we put a lot of money in a lot of white folk’s pockets that summer. Nothing illegal, at least at the time. We just greased the skids, as they said. And the G-man shows up. He was happy. I had never seen him smile before.”

“Did he have a name?”

“What? Oh. Yeah. He said his name was George Oliver. I knew it was false. He insisted that I call him George. He had another proposal for me. He wanted me to run for attorney general.”

“But you didn’t have a law degree. You had never practiced law.”

Swane pointed at him with the glass of whiskey. Some spilled quietly to the porch.

“Exactly. I got slaughtered, of course. I was young and I had seen what these people could do. I saw the power they held. I thought it would work for me too.”

“So what did you do?”

He shrugged.

“I found out that I was
supposed
to lose. They had both sides of the ticket. He promised me that it was just a place to start. The next thing I know, I was State Representative, then running for State Senate.” He spread his arms out wide, “And then here I am today. Senator Robert F-ing Swane.”

Jake did not fail to notice the jump in history. A lot happened since 1979.

“So ViVeri was instrumental in your campaigns?”

Swane scoffed, drank his whiskey, and set the glass down with a finality that Jake interpreted as the end of the looseness of their conversation.

“That would be an understatement, son.”

“Was George always your handler?”

He waved the question away.

“There was always a George. They were all Georges for all I knew. Someone in a suit, someone who just as easily could have been an insurance agent or a reporter. They would come and they would go. And everywhere I went, everything I touched, nothing but gold.”

“Did Nancy know?”

The senator winced at the mention of the name. His wounds were still raw. Jake knew the feeling. He shook his head.

“Not truly. She knew, but she didn’t
know
. She suspected it because I could not live with the guilt.”

“When did you turn?”

The senator’s eyes burned through the haze of the alcohol and the thick North Carolina air.

“You sure are blunt, young man.”

Jake shrugged.

“Figured it was pretty obvious this was all going somewhere. You already confessed to us when we visited you.”

“You didn’t have to ruin a good story, though. You really do need Hallie around to smooth your rough edges, don’t you?”

“Some say that rough edges tend to rub people the wrong way. I tend to think it brings things to a head.”

Swane nodded. Scratched his head. Rubbed his face.

“I don’t know where to start or when it started. At some point I realized two organizations existed.”

“Two?”

“ViVeri, of course. I had no idea they were global, really. Everyone spoke English perfectly. We would sometimes meet overseas, but I figured it was just to throw people off, give some secrecy. It was also an opportunity to blow off some steam.”

“You cheated on Nancy.”

Swane nodded, his lips firm.

“Nothing I am proud of, but being brutally honest, yes. Young and dumb and all that. Anyway, on one of these trips, I was met in the terminal on my way back by a prominent Chicago judge. He asked me for a light. This was when I still smoked. Everyone smoked. He was careful, but he was direct in asking me about my allegiances. At first, I didn’t know what he was talking about. I was never a good cloak-and-dagger sort. I just did what was expected of me.”

“Who was he with?”

A gentle breeze blew in from the ocean, bringing with it the strong scents of sand and salt, and a cool moisture. In other parts of the country, it was freezing right now. Here it was mild and relaxing.

“Good question. All I knew at first was that this man was concerned about my ‘patriotism.’ Having just lived through the great Red scare and still intimidated by the prospects of nuclear war, I was concerned where this conversation was going.”

“Did you ever see him again?”

“Not directly. I heard him speak once at a conference on women’s rights. We just shared a smoke and a brief conversation. It was two years later that I met his boss. He was also my boss at the time.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. That is the kind of pull we are talking about. I was told in no uncertain terms that I was on the wrong side. I was sure my contacts in ViVeri had no idea they had competition at the time and so I did not say anything. These guys were offering me an opportunity to save myself. I didn’t take it at first and I think I was wise.”

“What happened?”

Swane shrugged.

“A battle for the top spot. Messy business. A close run-in with our government. That was Nixon. It was after that fiasco that I came on board.”

“Let me get this straight. You are saying Nixon was the head of this other outfit, this organization that is opposed to ViVeri?” Jake leaned forward. He was no history buff, but this made no sense to him.

“Yes and no. I mean, he was leader of the free world, as we like to say. And he was right about one thing, he
was
no crook. But those tapes record his under the table dealings with this group, yes.”