TWO
Precipice
2005
David Goodman knew what day it was. Tom told him the story ten years ago and David had since learned how to treat his partner on this day: just like every other day. As David threw away the soggy cereal he never got around to eating, he thought about Tom and wondered how a man who had no hope for the future, could bear the burden this day represented.
Tom had thrown himself into his work since Megan’s death, but that was required of them both. David had never been married and probably never would be. He was fond of saying, “Fifteen hour days locked in a secret facility, six days a week aren’t exactly conducive to dating.”
Whatever the case, they were each all the other had. The only variation in the pair’s schedule was that David drove forty miles every Sunday morning to attend the nearest church. Tom did not. God was often a source of heated debate.
It was a topic David would attempt to avoid today. He quickly adjusted his paisley tie, slipped into his perfectly polished black shoes, attached his LightTech Industries ID card to his blazer and looked at himself in the mirror. He looked old. Older than he should. His blue eyes seemed to have faded nearly to gray. The crow’s feet stretching out from his eyes, which deepened when he smiled, looked good on Hollywood actors, but not on him. They made him feel old. He turned sideways and sucked in his gut. The old skinny David was in there somewhere, buried beneath a few inches of chub.
With a sigh, David left his bedroom and grabbed a 20oz. bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi from the fridge. With the recent addition of a breakfast soda, this had been his morning routine for the past fifteen years-as boring and stale a routine as the average person’s. But it never bothered David. Particle accelerators, nuclear reactors, black hole generators, heavily armed guards and secret tunnels kept the rest of David’s day a tad more interesting.
As soon as David left the front door of his smooth, adobe home, the morning heat struck his head. David grumbled under his breath as his armpits instantly began to perspire. It took David ten years of Arizona heat before he had found a deodorant that could keep him dry. Last year they stopped selling it. He had never been fond of heat and even lobbied to have the whole operation moved to New Hampshire’s White Mountains. The official LightTech response was a hearty laugh and pat on the shoulder.
It took David ten seconds to walk from his air conditioned home to his burgundy Land Rover, which was parked as close to the front door as possible without crushing his collection of cacti. In years past, he parked the vehicle in the attached garage, but it had become so full of old computers and spare parts that there was little room to walk. He had considered cleaning out the garage on several occasions, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. The computers in the garage were part of his past-LightTech’s past-and if he and Tom succeeded, all of it would be part of history.
David hopped into the Land Rover, slammed the door shut and glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His neatly bearded face looked as if he had just run a race through the Australian outback during the rainy season. David wiped the sweat from his pasty, white forehead and felt glad that those ten seconds represented his daily time spent in the sun. He started the engine with a surge of gas and cranked the air to full, so that it blew his graying hair back and dried his skin.
It took David five minutes to navigate through the LightTech owned and operated neighborhood. The neighborhood was the only visible group of buildings for twenty square miles and housed two thousand employees, from physicists to janitors. Tom was waiting by the sidewalk as usual.
Tom was dressed casually, as he tended to, in blue jeans, a white T-shirt and an open, plaid, button-down shirt. Of course, LightTech had a dress code, but Tom had never cared about codes, rules or outside guidance. Besides, he knew they couldn’t fire him. He was too important. His eyes had narrowed over the years, his face was more carved and his cheeks were rough with stubble. David was sure Tom was going for a Clint Eastwood look, minus the gray hair-Tom’s was still solid black and wavy. Tom had also managed to stay fit, which vexed David because he never saw the man exercise and they had similar diets.
Seconds after Tom entered the SUV, David cracked open his Wild Cherry Pepsi, signifying the start of their morning banter.
Tom looked at David with amused disgust. “You’re going to rot your teeth out,” he said.
“What do you know?” David retorted with his thick Hebrew accent, dodging any real response.
“I know that I’m going to keep my teeth longer than you,” added Tom, with a gleaming grin.
“We’ve been friends since we both came to this country, what, fifteen years ago? Don’t presume to come between me and my true love,” David replied, as he took another swig.
David and Tom were both born and raised in Israel. Their homes there were two miles apart, yet they had never met until LightTech hired them both. They came to America and both quickly adopted it as their home country. David had been sent to a prestigious private school from which he graduated top of his class, while Tom was home-schooled by his father, an ex-Rabbi, who no longer held the Jewish faith. David remembered their excitement in the early days, when freedom to do groundbreaking research in a privately owned facility was somewhat of a novelty.
Tom smiled and leaned back into the plush leather interior of the Land Rover, enjoying the conversation. “And what if I do, old man? Will you cane me?”
David fumed. “Cane you? I don’t use a-old man! I’m your senior by three years and you presume to call me ‘old man’?”
“I suppose I presume too much?” asked Tom.
David nodded as he sucked down some more cherry-flavored liquid sugar.
“About as much as you use that word,” added Tom.
“What word?”
“Presume.”
David shifted in his seat and said, “Don’t presume to tell me how to… Huh, I guess you’re right.”
Tom smiled, “Aren’t I usually?”
“Bah,” David blurted, “The only thing your brain is good for is quantum mechanics and attacking Chri-”
David managed to stop his sentence short, but Tom’s jagged facial expression revealed he already knew how it ended. The silence that ensued was nerve-wracking. How could David forget! Of all the days… It was Tom who finally spoke, “Better step on the gas; we have to meet the bitch in a half hour.”
David was immeasurably relieved that his transgression had done no permanent damage, and he gladly resumed his role in the conversation. “Language!” David shouted.
“C’mon, David. You have to admit she’s-”
“Just doing her job. I admit she’s forceful at times. I’m just saying, watch your tongue,” David said in his best patriarchal voice before taking another drag of soda. “You know, if you had all the responsibility she does, you might not be nice all the time either.”
Tom looked at David, waiting for the punch line. “You’re serious?”
David nodded and Tom laughed, relaxing and turning in his seat.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
The motor hummed and the crunching of soil beneath the tires rumbled for what felt like ten minutes, but was closer to ten seconds.
“You’d be grouchy too, if you worked for you,” David stated.
Tom raised an eyebrow and cracked a smile. David saw him. “You know what I mean!”
Silence resumed as dust blew over the windshield, kicked up by a warm gust of wind.
