'I think she probably hasn't come down yet,' Rick said. 'You mind calling inside?'
When the guard hung up the phone, he shook his head. 'No, you got it wrong.'
'I was told she was being released here.'
'You got bad information.'
'Why, what's wrong with it?'
'She be at court today, State Supreme Court.'
'In Manhattan?'
'Think so.'
He realized that he couldn't see his truck from where he stood, couldn't see who was sitting in what car in the prison parking lot, waiting for him to return. 'I was told she'd be here, at 9:00 a.m.'
'That was wrong, too. She left before that.'
'I was told 9:00 a.m. on very good authority.'
'They telling everybody that, I guess.'
He didn't like this. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean'-the guard mustered a cruel little smile-'you already the second guy come looking for her this morning. She's gone, pal.'
817 Fifth Avenue, Manhattan September 9, 1999
He took a big red plane and a little blue pill, and woke up on the other side of the world, alert as coffee and hanging eight thousand feet above Manhattan's stony skyline, which, after the glass rocketry of Hong Kong and Shanghai, appeared worn and obsolete. As he bounced through customs and immigration and into the black company car waiting for him, he forgot the dream he'd had on the plane but remembered the eight million after-tax dollars vomited from Sir Henry Lai's mouth. A very pleasing sum of money, enough to procure an East Hampton mansion, a minor Picasso, or-better than these and not nearly as expensive-a secret child. A boy, a girl, who cared? Assuming that Martha Wainwright had followed his wishes, his advertisement would appear in the personals sections of the next issues of The Village Voice and New York magazine. Read each week by thousands of young, fertile, intelligent, and caring women who could recognize a good deal when they saw one. Who would be intrigued by an ad placed by a 'mature executive' willing to support mother and child for twenty-one years. Medical expenses paid. Education expenses paid. They'll write me, Charlie thought, how could they not? And while that might be good, here was something bad, handed to him by the driver in a sealed folder prepared by Karen: the weekly sales tracking report! Did he dare peek? The summary showed raw numbers only, but he knew what to look for, and what he saw was Manila Telecom coming after him in every market with every product, jinking around, stunting and harassing him, stealing his salespeople away, cutting prices to the bone, copying Teknetrix's products, even bribing clients' purchasing personnel. MT had two major factories in Indonesia. Give me a little labor riot there, Charlie thought, give me a currency fluctuation, something to slow MT down. He had to get the factory in Shanghai up and operational or MT was going to keep gnawing away at Teknetrix's market share, and with it, Charlie's breakfast. No, worse than that. After MT ate his breakfast, it would chew through his tongue and esophagus and right on down to his shoes. That was the telecom-component manufacturing business. Supply or die.
The car phone rang-it was Karen.
'You got the sales report?' she asked.
'Yes. What else?'
'Your daughter will meet you at the restaurant for a late lunch, and Martha Wainwright will be here at five.'
He glanced at a taxi speeding past. The driver was reading a newspaper. 'Any update on the factory?'
'No.'
'It's late.'
He knew the on-site generator had arrived, but there seemed to be a question about the scaffolding contractor. 'Call Conroy, tell him I'm pissed off.'
Then he dialed Ellie. 'This is your first husband reporting.'
'I'm leaving the retirement village brochure on the dining-room table,' she said, as if continuing a conversation they'd been having.
'Terrific. What could be better?'
'I'm just asking you to look at it, Charlie.'
'I'll do it to get on your good side.' He paused. 'If you know what I mean.'
'Which side is my good side, exactly?' Ellie asked.
'Both are very nice.'
'Flattery will only get you so far.'
'Far enough, I think.'
'You're horrible,' Ellie said, but he could hear she was pleased. 'Oh, and, Charlie, how was the sales report?'
'Manila Telecom is killing us.'
'Kill them back.'
The driver nosed them toward Manhattan, past outdoor billboard advertising already changed in the week Charlie had been away. New movies and TV shows and car models. The speed of everything! The quad-port transformer Ming was so curious about had been a faulty prototype three months ago, a plan six months ago, an idea a year ago, and an impossibility a year before that-merely theoretical, assuming advances in signal compression and polymer chemistry. And if they could get the Q4 into production in six months, it would be obsolete two years out. Terrifying, Charlie thought, if you think about it, which I do, which is why I shouldn't.
They popped out of the tunnel and into the dense bake of the city proper. Inside his moving air-conditioned cave, he could see down the blurred avenue, women pinching their blouses, the shimmering heaviness of the buildings, taxis piled against red lights like overheated beasts. Carbon monoxide layered beneath the oxygen, in and out, exhaust and exhalation. He thought of Ellie in this heat, five or ten years hence. Another reason she wanted to leave.
Inside the restaurant, waiting for Julia, he watched the businessmen and — women finishing their lunches. Soldiers of twenty-first-century capitalism. The shoes, the neckties, the smiles. So prosperous and young they looked! How fast they talked! I'm a dinosaur to them, thought Charlie. Gray hair and a nice suit. He remembered underestimating some of the old pilots in Thailand, guys who'd seen action in Korea, even one who'd flown at the end of World War II. All dead now. Dead as Sir Henry, the news of whom appeared in that morning's Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, but already seemed ancient. News cycles and jet lag. Phone calls and sleeping pills. Was he having trouble keeping up? Yes. No, not really. His dream would come back to him. He so rarely remembered them these days. That happened as you got older; your dreams dribbled away like the piss dribbled out of him now-no strong hosing, just a weak and intermittent stream.
Julia shouldered past the waiters-business hair, business walk-a woman, as always, in a hurry but never late. Except for motherhood. She'd waited too long, and now the frantic catch-up hadn't worked. She was tall like he was and always a little thin, he felt, thinner than she needed to be. Why the anxiety? She'd found a partner and made partner; she was set. Maybe if she weighed ten pounds more, he thought, she could get pregnant.
'Good trip?' She bent close for a kiss.
'Too much Chinese food,' he said.
'But it's good Chinese food.'
'Sure, best in the world. But you eat too much, you start dreaming Chinese dreams.'
She smiled fiercely at a waiter to bring menus. 'I'm sorry I got so upset on the phone. I'd just gotten the news.'
'How is Brian with all this?'
She sighed. 'He's coming around. We could have a surrogate pregnancy; that's the next thing.'
