“Day-trading?” Donald leaned back in his chair.
“Yeah. What’s with the setup?” Mick walked around behind his desk and rested a hand on the back of his chair. An abandoned game of FreeCell sat embarrassingly on the smaller of the two screens.
“Oh, the extra monitor.” He minimized the card game and turned in his seat. “I like having a handful of programs up at the same time.”
“I can see that.” Mick gestured at the empty monitors, the wallpaper of cherry blossoms framing the Jefferson Memorial.
Donald laughed and rubbed his face. He could feel his own stubble, had forgotten to eat dinner. His stomach had moved right past the empty grumbles and into clenched-fist territory. Surprisingly, he could still hear Margaret in the next room talking on the phone. How much extra work was the distraction of this project costing his secretary? It had been only a week, and already he was a wreck.
“I’m heading out for a drink,” Mick told him. “You wanna come?”
“No, I’ve got a little more to do here.”
Mick clasped his shoulder and squeezed until it hurt. “I hate to break it to you, man, but you’re gonna have to start over. You bury an ace like that, there’s no coming back. C’mon, let’s get a drink.”
“I can’t.” Donald twisted out from his friend’s grasp and turned to face him. “I wasn’t sitting here playing solitaire, man, I was working on those plans for Atlanta. I’m not supposed to let anyone see them. It’s top secret.”
For emphasis, he reached out and closed the folder on his desk. The Senator had told him there would be a division of labor and that the walls of that divide would need to be a mile high.
“Ohhh.
“Yeah, right.”
“Oh, c’mon, Donny. You tell me your secrets, and I’ll tell you mine.”
Donald laughed. “No way. Look, even the people on my team aren’t going to see the entire plan. Neither will I.”
“That’s dumb.”
“No, it’s how shit like this gets done. You know how they built the ISS. Each country worked on its own module, and then they hooked them together afterward.”
Mick scoffed. “And then it came down in the Pacific.”
“Yeah, on
Mick waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. What you’re doing is boring, anyway. Now grab your coat. Let’s go.”
“Yeah, okay.” Donald patted his cheeks with his palms, trying to wake up. “I’ll work better in the morning.”
“Working on a Saturday. Now
“Yeah, actually, it’s not. Just let me save my work and shut this down.”
Mick laughed. “Go ahead. I’m not looking.” He made a loose web of fingers over his face, his eyes bugging through the gaps. Donald pointed across the room and waited until his friend had moved behind the monitors. He saved his work and shut his computer down.
When he stood, his desk phone rang with full blasts rather than the chirping bursts of having been patched through—someone with his direct line. Donald reached for it and held up a finger to Mick.
“Helen—?”
Someone cleared their throat on the other end. A deep and rough voice apologized. “Sorry, no.”
“Oh.” Donald glanced up at Mick, who was checking out the spines on his bookshelf. “Hello, sir.”
“You boys going out?” Senator Thurman asked.
Donald swallowed and turned toward the window. “Excuse me?”
“You and Mick. It’s a Friday night. Are you hitting the town?”
“Uh, just one drink, sir. Catch up with a college buddy, you know?”
What Donald wanted to know was how the hell the Senator knew Mick was there. He decided his receptionist must have taken the call and told Thurman to try him direct.
“Good. Tell Mick I need to see him first thing Monday morning. My office. You, too. We need to discuss your first trip down to the job site.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Donald waited, wondering if that was all.
“You boys will be working closely on this moving forward.”
“Good. Of course.”
Mick turned and jerked his head toward the door. Donald held up a finger again.
“As we discussed last week, there won’t be any need to share details about what you’re working on with other project members. The same goes for Mick.”
“Yessir. Absolutely. I remember our talk.”
“Excellent. You boys have a good time. Oh, and if Mick starts blabbing, you have my permission to kill him on the spot.”
There was a breath of silence, and then the hearty laugh of a man whose lungs were much younger than his years.
“Ah.” Donald watched Mick lift the plug from a decanter and take a sniff. “Okay, sir. Good one. I’ll be sure to do that.”
“Great. See you Monday.”
There was a click. The Senator had hung up before Donald could force himself to laugh. As he returned the phone to its cradle and grabbed his coat, his new monitor remained quietly perched on his desk, watching him blankly.
6
Troy’s beat-up plastic meal tray slid down the line behind the splattered sheet of glass. Once his badge was scanned, a measured portion of canned string beans fell out of a tube and formed a steaming pile on his plate. A perfectly round cut of turkey plopped from the next tube, the ridges still visible from the tin. Mashed potatoes spat out at the end of the line like a spit wad from a child’s straw. Gravy followed with a well-aimed squirt.
Behind the serving line, a man in white coveralls with a white beard stood emotionless, hands clasped behind his back. He didn’t seem interested in the food. He watched the workers as they lined up for their meals, apparently more keen on them.
When Troy’s tray reached the end of the line, a young man, also in white and probably not out of his twenties, arranged silverware and napkins by the plate. A glass of water was added from a nearby tray tightly arranged with them. The final step was like a ritualized handshake, one Troy remembered from the months of orientation: a small plastic shot glass was handed over, a pill rattling in the bottom, a blurry blue shape barely visible through the translucent cup.
The gentleman ahead of Troy accepted his tray and cup. Tilting his head back, he shook the plastic cup, and the blue blur skittered a short hop past his lips. The man took a quick sip of water before grabbing his tray and finding a place to eat.
Troy shuffled into place.
“Hello, sir.”
A young grin. Perfect teeth. Everyone called him sir, even those much older. It was discomfiting no matter who it came from.
The pill rattled in the plastic. Troy accepted the cup and tossed it down. He swallowed it dry, grabbed his
