Before I can press her to answer, Dr. Anderson strides purposefully into the room. He always strides purposefully, although he doesn’t seem to have much purpose, what with me being his sole patient.
“How’s the leg?” he asks.
“The Leg is bored,” I answer. “The Leg wants to know why it can’t go home and recover.”
“You’ve been here three days, Evening! Are you insane?” my mother cries.
“I should leave,” Luna says meekly, half-question, half-hope.
“Stay,” my mother commands. “Calm her down.”
“I don’t need to be calmed down. I need Aislin. I need something to do.”
“You have to take this slowly, Evening,” Dr. Anderson intones. He has perfect teeth and the graying temples of a Just For Men model. “This kind of recovery is measured in months, not days.”
“I’m missing the end of the school year.” I am starting to feel quite sorry for myself. “I have homework, tests. Oh crap, my bio exam is Tuesday! And my Life Drawing project is half my semester grade.”
“You can’t draw,” my mother says. “Your fingers are crushed. Your arm’s a mess.” She pauses, mentally thumbing through her What Mothers Are Supposed To Know file. “She is right-handed, isn’t she?” she asks Dr. Anderson.
He nods discreetly.
“At least can I have my laptop? I can type with my left hand.”
My mother glances at her own laptop.
She is having an inspiration. You can practically see the giant lightbulb throbbing over her head.
“Evening, I have just the project for you! Something to keep you thoroughly occupied.”
“I don’t want a project. I want to spend a couple of hours with Aislin. I want you to send a car for her and bring her here.”
Luna has moved to my lower back, and seriously, my desire to fight with my mother—even if it is a respite from boredom—is diminishing with each deep, healing stroke.
“It involves genetics.” My mother sets aside her computer and comes to my bedside. “You love genetics. I would even pay you to do it.”
“Pay me?”
“Why not? I’d have to pay someone else to test it. What do you want? A hundred dollars? A thousand?”
My mother, ladies and gentlemen: one of America’s preeminent businesswomen. Not a clue as to what a dollar is.
“I want ten thousand dollars,” I say.
Dr. Anderson nods his approval.
“Is that a good number?” my mother asks. She turns the question over to Luna. “Is that a good number?”
“Ma’am, I don’t—”
“Whatever,” my mother snaps. She makes a brusque gesture with her hand. “The point is, I have something that will keep you busy.”
“Aislin will keep me busy. That’s my price: Aislin. You can keep the money.”
She taps her freshly tended nails. French manicures, twice a week. Five tiny crescent moons dance on my bed rail.
She sighs.
Dr. Anderson examines a smudge on his stethoscope.
“One visit,” my mother says at last. “I’ll have security search her. If she has any drugs or booze on her, I’ll confiscate them and have security rough her up.”
I assume that’s bluster.
Then I look at her again, at my mother, and I’m not so sure it is. This is a woman with a billion-dollar company. This building is big enough to house what amounts to a small hospital among many, many other things.
Can my mother actually have people beaten up?
Maybe. Maybe she can.
She smiles to show she doesn’t mean it. The smile convinces me that she can.
“So what’s the project? You want me to wash some test tubes?”
“No, that’s why we have people like Solo,” she says. “You’re a Spiker.”
I feel a slight twinge of sympathy for Solo. I’d been assuming he’s some kind of wunderkind, and here she’s talking about him as if he were her servant.
People like …
Quite a bit of condescension locked up in those two words.
“This will be a wonderful introduction to the kind of thinking and creativity we require at Spiker,” my mother says. “It’ll challenge you, sweetheart. Bring out the talent I know you have hidden deep, deep down inside you.” She’s getting excited now. The lines in her forehead seem to smooth; her eyes gaze with a certain wild excitement at the horizon.
She pauses, waiting to be sure she has my undivided attention.
“I want you, Evening, to design the perfect boy.”
Luna stops rubbing.
“Am I doing this with crayons? Or will I be working with Play-Doh?”
My mother smiles tolerantly. “Oh, I think we can do a little better than that. You can start tomorrow morning. If you do it, I’ll have your little friend here tomorrow afternoon.”
“I think Aislin has her dance class on—”
“Evening. When I send for people, they come.”
– 10 –
“This is where you’ll be working. Playing.”
My mother hesitates, frowns, realizes she’s frowning and that frowning causes lines, and unfrowns. “Play, work, call it whatever you like.”
“So long as I do it.”
“Exactly.”
Solo is pushing my wheelchair while my mother leads the way. At the last minute, the orderly who was supposed to be assisting us this morning had an attack of stomach pains. His backup couldn’t be located.