A white-knuckle cab ride later and Robin had made it to the office. He could go home, but that was about as unappealing as anything else, and the office had everything he needed, a couch and a shower and a fridge Fanny kept stocked with yoghurt. Not that his stomach was feeling up to having visitors, now or any time in the near future. He shut the door to the cab and vaguely wondered what had happened to yesterday's driverless car, if the AI had waited an appropriate amount of time before deciding to return to the basement docking bay on its own.
The office building was tinted glass, a mirror to the pinking sky of early morning, and the plaza was empty, except for a lone security guard in the distance, and Robin was rather happy there was only the automated voice to greet him, the door scanner triggering preemptively, "Robin Locke. Access granted."
The doors slid back in a rush of cool air to reveal the atrium, also empty, and there was nothing to stop him from going in expect for a muted noise coming from somewhere to his left, a raspy meow, and he turned to see Mr. Tubbs come wandering out from somewhere, the feline silhouette ruined by the fact that he was enormously fat. The old tabby hadn't come around in a while, but Robin needn't have worried: Mr. Tubbs was impossibly fatter than before, which wasn't surprising considering his steady diet of food cart falafel and quesadillas.
"Long time, no see, Tubbsy."
Mr. Tubbs came over to rub against his legs.
"You look good."
Mr. Tubbs meowed.
"Out of shape?" Robin squatted down to scratch him around the ears. "No, no, I think you're being too hard on yourself. Round is a shape." He cupped the little face in his hands, rubbing a thumb over the dirty nose. "You staying or just passing through?"
Mr. Tubbs meowed again, and having fulfilled the obligatory greeting, pulled away and sauntered past him through the open doors of the building, as if Robin was merely an appendage to working the scanner, a doorman whose usefulness could be measured in the reach of his opposable thumbs. Mr. Tubbs stopped about half-way through the atrium to give him one last conspiratorial slow-blink before wandering off, and Robin had to laugh, which was a mistake because it sent a spike of pain up his skull. He groaned. Aspirin. He needed aspirin. And water to scrub the dry rind of regret from the back of his tongue.
The usual suck of g-force in the elevator made him slightly ill, and Robin had never been so appreciative of the muted color scheme in his office. Duncan was always going on about 'making it your own, Robin' and 'it's already been a year, Robin' and apparently, that stack of paperwork in the middle of the floor didn't count, but today—on this blessed day in history—his office was safe harbor, and he a ship drifting gently into port, into the embrace of blues and greys, tastefully empty shelves as far as the eye could see, a space blissfully devoid of anything to break his line of vision. There was just that single copy of Tintin in Tibet on the shelf in the corner—a regretful attempt at heeding Duncan's advice—and it was categorically offensive, the red in the cover a needle to the eye.
Someone had left the windows tinted—Fanny?—and the morning light was filtering in at half-opacity, obscuring the view outside, and surely that woman deserved flowers. Robin headed for the bathroom, and it was all elegant chrome and cool, grey tiles, the rainfall showerhead beckoning with its silver gleam, but the thought of washing up seemed laborious—unbuttoning all those buttons on his shirt was completely unreasonable. He turned on the tap in the sink and drank straight from it, turned it up to hot and splashed water on his face.
Everything was groggy and awful, and that small creature in his head had built a nest by now and gotten married, opened a corner shop and had kids, gone on vacation and left the eldest in charge, the little genius who'd promptly thrown a rager and trashed the house, which was why Robin felt slow and stupid: because his brain was trash, an unwatered lawn of solo cups and broken dreams.
The mirror was unkind. Robin looked terrible, as if he hadn't slept at all, even though it was 6:17, which meant—he checked his watch, some unwilling part of his brain sluggishly doing the math—he'd had sixteen hours of sleep, the first decent night's rest in months, and he still felt like crap.
He sighed and turned off the bathroom light and went back to his desk, sinking into the comfort of his ergonomic chair. The usual mess of papers on his desk had been straightened, divided into neat piles of varying importance, paper copies because he couldn't stand staring at a screen all day. There was a fresh stack of files to go through, hot off the presses, with a note attached that he couldn't bring himself to read. Probably Fanny reminding him of some pressing business that needed his attention, a signature that couldn't wait. She might think it was a bit strange he'd never come back to work after the meeting. Flowers might remedy that too. A big bouquet on her desk to distract from the fact that her boss was possibly taking a nap on the couch.
The peace of his office was a fragile thing, like a still-poaching egg, and maybe it was too much to ask for a quiet day at work, because the lights turned on—or someone untinted the windows—and a horrible, solar brightness flooded the room. Robin winced, his eyeballs shriveling back into their sockets, and he heard his name, and Duncan had come through the door, brisk and bright and impeccably dressed. Robin wished suddenly he'd taken that shower after all, because having Duncan walk in on him in the office in a towel would seem so much more like Robin had been up at the crack of dawn to get started on those budget reports, and less like he'd crawled onto the premises out of some primordial need to pretend yesterday hadn't happened.
"Duncan!" said Robin, overly cheerful, and he had to clear his throat to work his voice down an octave before he tried again. "What are you doing here?" Duncan was immaculate in charcoal grey, the crease in his steam-pressed pants so sharp it could give a man a close shave. He looked nothing like a person should after they'd stepped off the red-eye from Paris, which just wasn't fair. "I thought you weren't supposed to be back until…uh, Wednesday?"
Robin made a half-hearted attempt at standing, but he needn't have bothered because Duncan had come straight for the desk.
"Tuesday," Duncan corrected, unusually brusque, and smacked a magazine down on the papers in front of Robin. "I'm gone for barely a week and you pull this?"
Robin sat back down, confused. "What?"
"You can't afford this kind of attention."
Robin picked up the magazine, a dim recognition stirring at the name. The Buzz. Why did that sound familiar? "Isn't this the…" he trailed off, distracted by the picture. "That's me."
"And the Tracys," said Duncan, the living embodiment of a pinched nerve. "You're surprised?"
Robin grimaced, the hazy recollection of yesterday coming back to him—a memory of hands on his shoulders, someone helping him out of his jacket. He felt his heart drop, sliding into some unfriendly pit of realization: Scott and John had walked him to his room. Which, quite frankly, didn't make sense because he'd said some things—couldn't remember what exactly, but if past experience was anything to go by, probably nothing good. Nothing that could've been mistaken for an open invitation to help. Okay, so he'd had a bit too much, but why couldn't they just have been assholes about it, like your average Tom, Dick, and Harry? Wasn't it enough to pay for the room? Leave it to a Tracy to pull the no-holds-barred good-samaritan routine: Ah, I see you are in need of some assistance there, hapless citizen. It is I, Scott Tracy—protector of innocents—conveniently appearing to escort you to your room. Pay me? Oh, no no. I have no need for such earthly trinkets. Your unending adoration is thanks enough.
"How could you let this happen?"
Robin cringed. "It wasn't supposed to." And that, at least, was true. "Things got a bit…out of hand."
"A bit?"
"It's only the one picture."
"On the front cover, Robin. And it's never just one. You know there are other pictures out there, more telling than this, and the press has never needed much reason to air them out. It's how they work. They don't do nuance. I don't want this company to be a bit of breakfast entertainment on Good Morning America."
"It's not that bad, is it?" Robin didn't look too closely at the captions. "I mean, sure, the Tracy wunderkind slummin' it with Robin Locke does have a certain appeal, but I can't possibly be that interesting, can I? I'm just a guy in a suit. Granted a really nice suit but…"
Duncan gave him a look that suggested he thought Robin might've taken abrupt leave of his senses. "It's been almost a year, Robin. Of course you're interesting. This anniversary is important to the company. The world is expecting a quiet commemoration—not you showing up in the tabloids, completely legless. What do you think that says about the state of things?"
Robin tried not to flinch at the question. "That people are forgiving and can overlook a slight misstep?"
Duncan wasn't the type to roll his eyes, but everything about him said he wanted to. "It implies you're not someone to be taken seriously. That you're not doing your job."
"But I am." All those meetings, those countless, interminable sit-downs with investors had to count for something, right?
Duncan passed a hand over his eyes, exasperated. "My personal knowledge of your office hours has very little bearing on media perception."
"So what do I do?"
"Nothing." Duncan took out a black notebook and pen from his inner breast pocket. "The least we can hope for is containment. You're going to keep your head down until this all blows over." He pointedly opened a page in his notebook and crossed something out. "There will be no interviews. And I'm going to have to ask you to stay away from the Tracys."
Ah, good ol' Duncan, thinking Robin wanted anything to do with the Gruesome Twosome after yesterday. Understandable, seeing as the man didn't have the play-by-play of yesterday's proceedings, and telling him now—depriving him of the sweet assumption that Robin had just been getting blitzed at some dumb party—just seemed cruel. "But, Duncan—we had plans. We were gonna go to Vegas together. This is really putting a dent in my weekend."
Duncan narrowed his eyes at him, transparently unamused at the levity. "I wasn't even aware you knew them."
"Oh, we go way back." All the way to Thursday. "We've recently reconnected."
"I'd rather you didn't."
"But I thought you'd like the idea of me hobnobbing with my betters."
"Not like this. Not when you risk losing the little ground you've gained this year. The Tracys have considerably more money to sink into saving their reputation. If it needed saving. Which it does not." Duncan meant, of course, the fact that these were the Tracy Brothers they were talking about—Scott Tracy, grandmaster of the skies, and his lord-of-the-poindexters brother—eldest scions of the great Jeff Tracy, Lord of LA. "Robin, you don't have the privilege of people giving you the benefit of the doubt. Any association with the Tracys would be tabloid fodder, at best. You can make other friends."
That felt strangely optimistic. "Right."
"And how did your meeting with Branson Davis go?"
The switch in topics was jarring, and Robin prickled, the vague malaise stealing back over him. One would think that with the week in Paris and Robin's unscheduled appearance in The Buzz, Duncan might've let it slip his mind. But of course, the man was the consummate professional: far be it from him to enjoy the city of lights with a fresh baguette under his arm on a stroll along the Seine.
"There was a meeting," said Robin. "And I did see Branson Davis there. In that meeting."
The inevitable rising disappointment. "And?"
"It's probably going to be one of those don't-call-us-we'll-call-you kind of deals." Robin had to hurry this along. "You see, the Tracys showed up and I got a bit, uh…flustered and—"
"Wait." Duncan was confused. "The Tracys were at the meeting? Why?"
"I don't know. Branson Davis seemed to think we'd have something in common." If they didn't before, they now had the shared memory of Robin spiffing his biscuits all over that heinous carpet. "But if you were hoping to toss the ol' pigskin around with Jeff Tracy at the next barbecue, I'd take that off the list." The image of Duncan trying to tempt Jeff Tracy to a game of football was ridiculous, and Robin let out a nervous laugh. "Could you imagine what that cookout would look like? Peacocks on the lawn. Champagne fountains. A sixty-foot ice swan. Scott probably parachutes in halfway through the hors d'oeuvres just because he can. And the great Jeff Tracy mannning the fire pit because—well, why have a steak when you can slow-roast the fattened calf?"
Duncan's brow furrowed into a small canyon of disbelief. "You think this is funny?
"No, not really," said Robin, dithering because he was drawing a blank, gazing into a vast deficit of excuses, "but you see, that's—that's why I went to talk to Scott and John afterwards."
"Really?"
Robin nodded stiffly. That's not what he'd meant to say, but it was too late to bail out now. "Yeah. I was thinking I could maybe change their mind, but I'm not sure I made any headway."
"Because you were drinking."
"To be fair," Robin hedged, perfectly aware of the fact that he was still digging his own grave, just in a slightly different shape than usual, "we were all drinking. And I've learned you do not want to get between John and his single highball glass of vodka cranberry." By now, Duncan was completely, wildly perplexed, because that story probably didn't make sense. Maybe if he shut one eye and didn't stand too close, it would resemble something that wasn't worth pursuing. "So, really, Duncan, you could say I was showing initiative," Robin finished.
"You expect me to appreciate the effort?"
"Isn't life about the small victories?"
Duncan took a deep breath and let it out slowly, the lungful of air doing nothing to dissipate his irritation. "I shouldn't have to explain to you why taking Jeff Tracy's sons out on a binge is a bad idea. And if you can't see that, then I don't even know where to start." He put a hand to the magazine. "This cannot happen again."
Robin nodded dumbly, and he felt awful, and not just because some nocturnal creature had scooped out his brains with a melon baller. "It won't. Trust me."
"I want to," said Duncan and his ire seemed to lessen incrementally, an easing so subtle Robin might have imagined it. Duncan swept up the magazine, folded it in half with a brittle snap and tucked it under his arm, heading for the door, strides measured and efficient. Robin knew from experience he was already far ahead of him, planning the week, rearranging the schedule to accommodate for the reality that Robin was a seasoned idiot.
The glass doors of the office didn't slam; the soft-close system made them a soundless arc in slow-motion, and the silence in Duncan's wake was worse than his bluster, a static still after the storm, the hush of a ruined landscape. Robin buried his head in his hands. This wasn't how today was supposed to go. Not that he'd had much of a plan for…well, anything really, not when every day was a slow-moving procession of unfolding balance sheets.
"Sir?"
Fanny's voice. But that couldn't be right because it was Saturday, and this time he knew for a fact that it was Saturday, and she shouldn't be here. But she was and that meant she'd been called in by someone In the Know. Probably Duncan. Robin hated to think how that conversation had gone. "I know it's Saturday, Fanny, and you were looking forward to a weekend free of handholding, but could you possibly check to make sure your boss hasn't completely lost his mind?"
He raised his head slowly. Fanny was standing by the desk, brown cardigan, frizzy red hair, a bottle of aspirin in one hand and an envelope in the other, because The Show Must Go On. "Fanny. You're here." He flushed. "I…I just…I was having a moment."
She nodded. "We all have them, sir."
Not like this.
She held out the envelope. "This came for you."
Robin sighed. It couldn't wait, he supposed. If she wasn't here he could have thrown himself on the couch and let himself be swallowed by the cushions, limboed into the place where spare change and TV remotes went to die; but he was at the office, fully-dressed, and that was usually enough to signal the start of a work day. He took the envelope. Honestly, it was probably better this way. It'd give him something else to think about. "Thanks," he said, not looking at her. "I guess Duncan told you that I—that yesterday…b-but you really didn't have to come in. I'm fine. As you can see."
"Yes, sir."
Robin worked the flap open on the envelope and pulled out the stiff card. "And I'm just going to get some work done, nothing strenuous, so you could just go home and…" he was sidetracked by the name on the card.
Lyria Hotel. It was one of those surveys that came with the room. They must really be hard up for reviews if they were tracking down their drunken guests to fill them out. He turned it over. The comments section at the bottom was filled in, a message so neatly printed it took him a moment to register that it was handwritten:
Sully's, 524 S Main St,
Wednesday, 20:00
I would like to have a conversation. – John
Robin stopped.
John? As in John Tracy? As in little brother of the guy voted most likely to have been assembled in a military lab? John wanted to have a conversation. About what? Yesterday? Was there anything left unsaid?
"Sir?"
Robin glanced up. He realized he was clutching the card hard enough for Fanny to be concerned, and he should probably play that off, assure her he was fine and never been better and can't you tell how perfectly all right I am, but instead he heard himself say, "What's Sully's?"
"It's a diner."
"Is it? How do you know that?"
"I've been there." Fanny tilted her head in mild curiosity. "They have good waffles."
John wanted to meet in a diner? Robin hadn't really pegged him for a late-night munchies kind of guy. This was John Tracy, after all—human sponge for knowledge, filter-feeding off the universal energies while the rest of his class had been making pedestrian attempts at baking soda volcanoes. Robin had a fleeting image of him strategically garrisoned in one of the back booths, fortified behind a Helm's Deep of short-orders in some kind of power play to establish rank. Not that he needed a power play. With a name like that, he just had to show up for the world to fall at his feet. Or fall over, more likely, because catching a glimpse of John in public was the Tracy equivalent of a blue moon.
Robin stared at the card.
Or maybe this was all a ruse, and John had no intention of meeting there at all, and Robin would be walking into an empty diner to wait for someone that wasn't going to show, with Scott and John somewhere else, high-fiving each other for their 'awesome prank, bro'.
But…that didn't make sense either.
They had paid for his room. They had helped. Even when no one had asked them to.
Fanny was giving him a look. Maybe she thought he'd cracked. Possibly he had. Possibly he'd wandered into and out of an alternate dimension where John Tracy wanted a moment of his time.
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I've recently done battle with a head cold, so if you would show me some pity and spare a comment, it would truly make my day. Would make all the effort seem worth it, knowing someone out there was enjoying something I'd written. And again, to those of you who've left a comment before, thank you kindly.
