CHAPTER ELEVEN
Jimmy Morehead might believe his demons to have been exorcised, but Ana knew better: They had merely been relocated. And what better home for them than her aunt's house, with monsters in the basement and empty rooms full of ghosts?
She sometimes thought she would have slept better at Freddy's. She'd had some bad dreams there too, but Freddy was always on watch. She'd felt safe there. She still did. Was that ironic or just stupid?
She could have gone back. She knew that. The padded stage in the party room was hers for the asking, for as many nights as she needed. She had only to knock and Freddy would bring her in and tell her she was home.
Whenever she was tempted, she just reminded herself that Freddy said a lot of things that weren't entirely true. And then she drove past Edge of Nowhere and on up Coldslip Mountain to the only place she had left.
There was plenty of work to do, so she did it. She kept the shop radio on and the volume cranked up until she could hear it even through her earplugs and over the noise of her power tools. Until she could feel it vibrating through the soles of her boots and see it rattling the loose nails and screws that collected on every surface. Until it drowned out even the sound of her thoughts. Between music and work, she was usually able to keep herself in a comfortably mindless state most nights until she fell asleep. If not, well, she could always drink.
She drank a lot that week. Every morning, she told herself she had to lay off the stuff, that it wasn't worth the headache and wasn't solving anything, but every night, she managed to pour a little more into her. And it wasn't worth it and it didn't solve anything, but it did put her to sleep, which in that haunted house was the worst state of being.
When she slept, she did not rest. She put herself to bed every night on the air mattress on the floor of her old room and every morning, when her phone's alarm woke her, she was someplace new. On Monday, she was curled up in the dry tub of Aunt Easter's bathroom. On Tuesday, in David's closet. Wednesday found her stretched out on the hearthstones before the fireplace in the grand parlor. On Thursday, she came around out in the front yard to the sensation of what was not, after all, the rotting hand of the mermaid closing around her wrist, but rather the dry scrape of scales as the snake that had passed a cool summer night sleeping against the warmth of her chest slithered over her arm and set off about its morning rounds. And on Friday, of course, she woke in the pirate ship-shaped bed down in the secret playroom, with Plushtrap snuggled up under her arm, his mouth pressed to hers, stealing her breath.
She had no memory of any of these nightly wanderings or if she did, their threads were hopelessly snarled with those of her dreams.
Her dreams. Her nightmares. Heavy drinking obscured most of them, leaving only fragments that were simultaneously blurred out of context and more vivid than her dreams had ever been before, even sober. For the first time in her life, she had begun to dream with all five senses—they were not just visions she saw, voices she heard, but a smell that seemed to linger even after she opened her eyes, a taste on her lips when the Purple Man kissed her, a bruise or scratch she could not remember acquiring. Worse were the times that she dreamed of waking up and seeing either the Puppet bending over her, long claws combing through her hair, or the uniformed apparition that was either Erik Metzger or David Blaylock, or both or neither or some other Fazbear security officer or perhaps all of them, brought together in her sleeping brain under the collective name of The Night Guard. These were the moments that haunted her, the ones she drank to forget and inevitably brought into being by drinking too much. She would have been useless at work if it wasn't for the fact that her work was mowing lawns and watering flowers.
Now it was Friday, scarcely two hours into her shift on the last day before the beginning of her weekend. She planned to spend it at Freddy's. She didn't really want to go, except that she did. She'd wanted to go all week long. Every single time she'd had to drive by the bluff where the restaurant perched, pretending to be abandoned, she'd looked up at it and felt her foot want to brake, her hands want to turn the wheel. She missed everything about that place, especially how easy it used to be to want to be there. She wanted it to be easy again, not by undoing the events of the past few weeks, but by magically skipping through the next few and just arriving at that part of the future where all this awkwardness was done and the nightmares ended, and the easiness came not from ignorance but acceptance. She just…didn't know how to make that happen.
Well, maybe she'd figure it out this weekend. For now, the only thing Ana had to figure out was how to prune the branches on this Japanese maple so it looked like all the others decorating the government services building's lawn.
Or at least it was, until she heard the drone of the mower start to break up, then cut off, followed by Jimmy's frustrated pseudo-cuss: "Sugar snap peas!" When she looked, he was already dismounting, waving in a futile effort to clear the air of billows of dark smoke that reeked of oil and gas.
Their eyes met as the noxious cloud dispersed in the wind. It was scarcely past nine in the morning. This was only the first of six mows they had slated for the day, all of them town-jobs. It had been too rainy last week to attend them; now the grass was noticeably shaggy and that just would not do, especially for a town as eager as Mammon to fine its residents for unkempt lawns.
"Could be the fuel filter," Ana said.
"Could be the carburetor," Jimmy replied heavily. "That's what it was before."
"Before?"
"Before Shelly told me he couldn't afford a new mower and we'd just have to limp it along another month or two."
"When was this?"
"About five months ago."
"Five—?! Why didn't he say something?" Ana groaned and headed over to have a look.
The smell got stronger with every step she took. By the time she was close enough to lift the hood, she knew what she was going to see.
To give Shelly some credit, it had been a good patch, but that carb was good and split now and the machine to which it was attached was not worth the cost of a new one.
"What do you think?" Jimmy asked hopefully.
"I think I'm going to punch Shelly square in the nuts the next time I see him," Ana replied. "Before he'd condescend to give me the key, he reamed me out until I could taste his boot leather making me understand he didn't have the liability coverage for an unlicensed nothing like me 'tinkering' with his equipment. Tinkering! He called me out in front of everyone and made me promise not to put hands under this hood and I did it, because he promised, he swore to my fucking face, that he was maintaining his gear to the highest fucking standard of personal fucking safety. Look at this shitshow! Three weeks, I been using this and it could have thrown a rod right through me at any fucking time! Incompetent belt-hitching son of a bitch!"
Jimmy looked worriedly toward the government building while she and the mower fumed together.
"We got a spare mower?" Ana asked finally, then nodded at Jimmy's wince and said with him, "This is the spare mower. Fine. Help me get it in the truck."
Together, they pushed the mower back over the lawn to the parking lot, aware that their activity had attracted the attention of Mammon's governing elite. Ana had no doubt Wendy Rutter was among the faces at the lobby window, enjoying the sight of her greatest enemy's closest kin having bad luck on a menial job under a hot sun. Nothing went with schadenfreude like air-conditioning.
Except maybe cupcakes, Ana reminded herself sourly. Not so funny when the schadenfreude was on the other foot.
"What now?" Jimmy asked after the mower was loaded and locked down. He took off his shirt to wipe his face while Ana watched enviously. God, sometimes she hated having tits. Or at least that it was against the law to expose them to a bunch of city commissioners, DMV clerks and the town sheriff.
"Now I guess we're done," said Ana, checking her watch.
"Done for the day, do you think? Or…done-done?"
A valid question. Without a mower, there was no landscaping sideline for Shelly. Without that, Ana might be back to holding down a desk until Big Paulie retired, but Jimmy could easily be out of a job.
"We'll see," Ana said, giving him a sympathetic shoulder-clap. "No point digging the hole until there's a body to bury. Just help me get everything back in the truck. Then you can knock off for an early lunch while I run back to the office and get a better look at it. I might be able to do something."
"Yeah, right. You do that. I'll be at Gallifrey's," he said morosely. "Maybe they're hiring."
It wasn't much of a joke and it was even less funny twenty minutes later, when Ana had dropped him at the diner and he pointed out the Help Wanted sign in the window. As she drove back to Shelton Contractors, she found herself trying to picture ordering from Jimmy Morehead. A Betty Burger, fries and an endless cup of coffee was still only six bucks after tax. Did she tip him her usual two bucks, knowing he was supporting a wife and two—no, three kids? How much more could she leave without embarrassing him? And how the hell did the Gallifreys make ends meet at those prices?
God, she could go for a burger right now. Ana checked her watch. Not even nine o'clock yet; Lucy wouldn't serve her a burger until eleven. She could wait, but now she was aware of how hungry she was. She'd skipped breakfast again. Amazing how often she did that when Freddy wasn't there to remind her to eat.
Shelly's Dodge was the only pickup in the lot when Ana pulled in, which made it easy to get a parking space in the shade, for a change. The garage was locked and the peek Ana stole through the filthy window suggested it was too full of equipment to get the mower in anyway, so she left it in front, set out a few safety cones and went in to tell Shelly the good news.
The reception desk was unmanned when Ana walked in, but Shelly's office door was slightly ajar and the bossman himself could be heard speaking on the other side. Ana couldn't make out his words, but his tone was…not angry, but maybe only because he didn't quite dare to be angry. Tense, certainly. On the phone with the city, she guessed, haggling over permits and fees and all the soul-eroding nonsense that went into keeping a business like this afloat in a dying town where even the garbage-men had to be bribed to do their job in a timely manner. Or maybe he was getting an earful about the 'outdoors maintenance' the city had paid for and was not receiving.
He was definitely going to want someone to yell at when he hung up.
Resigned, Ana came all the way in and shut the front door extra-firmly, letting him know she'd arrived. As she leaned herself up against the reception desk to wait, a thin, pale hand gripped the knob on the other side and opened it fully.
The sweat froze on her body as she found herself staring down the hallway at Fredrich Faust. It was a dreamlike moment, even by daylight. She saw Shelly's office—ugly high-traffic carpet and plain white walls decorated with assorted necessary legal notices, sign-out sheets for the company vehicles and equipment, and the weekly work schedule. Ana saw all that, but she also saw a much longer hall, with curtained windows all down one side and cold marble tiles beneath her bare feet…
Where had that come from?
"Miss Stark," said Mr. Faust. "Good morning."
"What are you doing here?" she blurted.
"Stark?" Shelly appeared, eyebrows bristling in confusion. "Never mind him, what are you doing here?"
"Mower…died," Ana said after a short pause spent censoring variations of 'shit the bed'. "We're going to need a new one."
Mr. Faust turned to Shelly and quietly said, "Mower?"
Shelly's mouth managed somehow to both thin and pucker. "Give Paulie a call and tell him to get out here soon as he can to fix it. Meantime, you and Morehead can take the chuck wagon out for a spin."
Driving the chuck wagon was Shelly's colorful code for scraping up road kill and moreover, there was no designated 'wagon'. He wanted her to throw a tarp down in her own truck and shovel rotting animal corpses into the back. Fuck that.
"Boss, could I have a quick word?" Ana asked politely.
"Not now, Stark." Shelly turned around and attempted to wave Mr. Faust back to whatever meeting Ana had interrupted, but Ana didn't move and neither did the old man. After a moment, Shelly turned back, flushed and scowling. "What is it?"
"Just a quick, quiet word," said Ana.
He stepped out of the office and came swiftly down the hall, the spots of color in his face getting bigger and darker with every stride. Ana stood her ground and when he reached her, she let him grab her by the arm and haul her around the corner into the morning meeting area out of Faust's sight. "This is not a good goddamn time," he hissed. "Just call Paulie and tell him to fix it!"
"Hey, if that thing could be fixed, I could fix it," Ana said. "Now I'm too classy to point out that I could have fixed it at any goddamn point up to now, so all I'm going to say is that window of opportunity has slammed the hell shut."
"I don't need to hear your lip, missy. Just…Just do what you got to do to limp it along until—"
"I can fit a finger through the crack in that carburetor and you're holding the rest of it together with paper clips and prayer," she interrupted. "There is no patching that mess and even if I was feeling suicidal enough to try, you'd still be paying what a new one would cost just to try to get it running for what? Another month or two? You want to save money? Get a new one!"
He dug into his pocket and pulled out his wallet. The leather creaked like a rusty hinge when he opened it. Muttering under his breath, he picked out a credit card with Shelton Contractors as the cardholder and aimed it at her like a straight razor. "You go to Lowes," he ordered, leaning in like it was threat he was delivering and not a new piece of equipment. "You spend one penny more than five…make that three hundred and I'll have it out of your hide."
"I couldn't get laid at Lowes for three hundred dollars!" Ana blurted, remembering Faust only when Shelly stepped back and shot him a hot, embarrassed glance. "What do you expect me to come back with?"
"I expect you to shut your mouth and do what I tell you!" Shelly's hand came down on her shoulder in a bruising pinch as he steered her further away from watching Faust and lowered his voice that much more. "I do not have two grand to drop right now, missy, so you just get whatever you can that will do the job and get back to it."
"Are you seriously telling me to come back with a push mower?" she asked incredulously. "You want me to mow all the grass in this entire town with a push mower?"
"Temporarily."
"Yeah, temporary like the patch on that carb? Look, boss, give me five hundred cash and a couple days to shop around and maybe I could find something used that I can tune up. I come back with a pusher today and tomorrow, you'll have eight cancelled accounts. This town is full of teenagers who'll mow a lawn for thirty bucks and a burger, and if that's your serious competition, you've already lost."
Shelly scowled, but couldn't argue. Snatching his card back, he returned it to his groaning wallet. "Monday morning," he grumbled. "You find me something by Monday, I'll come up with the money. Meantime…get out of here. Enjoy your day off."
And enjoy the accompanying cut to her paycheck. He had to come up with that five hundred somewhere.
"Yes, sir," said Ana and went to clock out at the station in the hall (still paper punch-cards, in this timeless part of the world). "What do I tell Morehead?"
"I'll give Paulie a call, see if he wants to use him for the day. Mr. Faust?" Shelly concluded, once more waving toward the interior of his office.
The old man ignored his cue, watching Ana work the old-fashioned time-stamp. "Are you leaving?"
"Looks like. Guess I'll go get something to eat." And blame the heat, blame her disappointment at having to settle for a Big Canyon Breakfast instead of the Betty Burger she really wanted, blame her own petty nature that had flared up at this reminder that Jimmy 'Jergens' was welcome on Big Paulie's crew but Ana was not. Blame any and all of it, but no matter what she might blame later, in the end it was only Ana and her deliberate, spiteful choice to look up and say, "Care to join me?"
"How very kind of you to offer."
"We're in a meeting, Stark," Shelly said, glaring.
"We were," Mr. Faust agreed and started walking. "But I believe we've come to the end of it. Mr. Shelton, good day. Miss Stark, I accept your gracious invitation and gladly."
Shelly followed, red-faced, only to back up, side-step, follow again. "Well now…Well now, sir, I think we still have a few things to talk over!"
"Is that what you think?" the old man said, opening the door for Ana and touching a bent knuckle to his brow as if to doff a hat he wasn't wearing as he turned a cold stare back at Shelly. "Mr. Shelton, I have invested a great deal in your business over the years, but in the end, it is your business, and not my obligation. Now I think we can both agree I have made every effort to direct the town's resources your way, yes?"
"Sir—"
"Yes?" Faust said again, harder.
Shelly's face darkened. "Yes," he said gruffly. "Yes, sir, and I do appreciate it."
"Do you? And yet of late I have made only one small personal request and I think you will not be surprised when I say I am not satisfied with the way you have seen fit to honor it."
"I have done the very best—"
"If that is true, then your best is sorely lacking and I see no reason our relationship should continue at all. However, it is just possible that my low blood sugar is influencing my mood, and my mood influencing my professional judgment. Therefore, consider our meeting in recess. I shall go to lunch and consider my options. I advise you, Mr. Shelton, to consider your own and be prepared to make a most compelling statement upon my return."
And what could Shelly do but nod and watch them shut the door on him?
"I apologize for that unfortunate scene," the old man said, offering Ana his bent arm for the short walk from the front door to the small parking lot.
"Am I supposed to pretend it had nothing to do with me?" Ana asked lightly.
"I won't pretend it didn't, peripherally at least," he said with convincing indifference. "But at its core, the issue is financial, as ever. All towns have a life-span, you see, and Mammon is nearing its end. Mr. Shelton, like many of those who have sunk their roots in a drying riverbank, now expects me to strike my staff upon the ground and open up the fiscal fountain of youth. I am ashamed to admit that I have done so in the past, but as I approach the end of my own life, I find that my concern for the future of this town has narrowed considerably. Not lessened, mind you, but narrowed. Are you disappointed?"
"What do I care how you spend your money?"
"That you were not the cause of our conflict, I meant."
"Oh, he'll find a way to put it off on me, if only so he can feel magnanimous when he forgives me," Ana replied with a shrug, looking around the sparsely populated parking lot. "I'll be fine. The kid got your car today?"
"Chad isn't staying with me at the moment. He tends not to, on weekends. He likes to entertain, so I keep a property out of town for him. I seriously doubt he's even awake yet. No, my regular driver, Mrs. Calaigh, dropped me off and took Cook to the market." He brought out his phone. "Fortunately, this town is never more than a few minutes' wait from point to point. She'll be here before we reach the sidewalk."
"I could drive us."
He looked at her, thumb hovering over the send button on his phone's screen.
Ana nodded toward her truck. "If you trust me."
He looked at the truck and, after a moment's faceless thought, put his phone away.
She led him to the truck, opened the passenger door and stood close by in case he needed help. He did not, finding a handhold on the frame and swinging himself up with admirable athleticism for a man of his age. He sat while Ana jogged around to the driver's side, perched with his cane firmly planted between his knees, looking around from this new vantage with birdlike interest. "The last time I was in a vehicle this high, it was a military transport," he remarked when Ana slid in behind the wheel.
"Not a float at the Founder's Day parade?"
He shook his head absently. "I suppose I do sit higher in those, but they hardly count as vehicles. They're too slow." He glanced at her. "Are you going to speed?"
"I wasn't planning on it. Why? Want me to?"
He considered while she found the keys in her pocket (and made damn sure she had the right ones before she pulled them out into view), and when she fit them to the ignition and turned the engine over, he said, firmly, "Yes."
Ana shrugged. "You're paying my tickets if I get nailed."
"Agreed."
Ana gunned the motor a few times, adjusting the rearview mirror so she could watch Shelly in the window of the office, then made the tires scream and fired herself out of the empty lot and onto the empty street like a bullet from a gun.
He did not flinch, not at the turn she took at forty miles an hour, not at the stop sign she ran through (she had a clear vantage of empty road in all directions), not even when she bumped up over the curb and out into the desert, leaving a plume of rising dust and tore-up sagebrush in their wake. The only thing he said as the truck roared across the hardpan was, "Music, please," and the only comment he made after that was to jack up the volume when Set It Off came on with I'll Sleep When I'm Dead.
Under most circumstances, Ana was a diligent and defensive driver, but she could tear it up with the best of them when called for. The driving she did that day in the desert and along the hundred-foot drop into Mammon Canyon would have put the piss in Rider's shorts if he'd been with her in the passenger seat, but all the old man did was point where he wanted her to take him next.
Somehow, they ended up on the remains of Military Drive out where it broke up and lay half-buried in the sand, going eighty miles an hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty up and down the runway where top-secret jets used to take off and land, then spinning doughnuts on the flat foundation where one of the hangars used to be, and finally parking in front of the ruins of some old buildings.
They sat for a while with the a/c running, Ana watching him and him staring at the broken windows. Without a word, but not entirely unexpectedly, he unbuckled his seat belt and opened his door.
"Watch out for snakes," Ana said, following his example. "We got some deadly ones out here."
"I have lived in this town for seventy years," he reminded her, walking away. "I know all the ways it can kill you. I invented a few right here, in fact."
True.
Ana fell into easy step beside him and they walked together across the compound, around some buildings and through others. Even at this early hour, the summer heat was oppressive and bound to get worse as the sun rose higher, but the old man showed no sign of discomfort, even in his heavy black suit. In fact, nothing seemed to touch him. He studied the ruins around them without acknowledging the layers of graffiti holding the sandblasted walls together. Neither the force of the wind blowing off the quarry nor the stink riding it affected him in any discernable way. His step was steady; his expression, serene. Once, he flipped his cane around with easy grace and hook a hitherto unnoticed rat-snake out of their path and sent it on its slithery way, all without breaking stride.
"Live and let live, huh?" Ana said, leaning back to watch the snake go as she continued strolling at his side.
Flip went the cane and came down with a startling crunch right in front of her. "Within reason," the old man said calmly, scooping up the mangled remains of a dust-brown scorpion on the head of his cane so he could flick it off into the desert. "One's ability to do harm is by no means an indicator of one's propensity. Some of the deadliest creatures on Earth have no venom at all."
"Hippos," agreed Ana with a nod. "Like, they look cute in a tutu and all that, but they will fuck up your day if they get even half a chance. I read somewhere that hippos kill more people in a year than all the other animals in Africa combined."
"Discounting death by disease-carrying insects and parasites, I suppose that's very likely true. And then we have us, of course. Humans are the least equipped of all beasts to kill others when in our natural state, and yet here we stand, firmly atop the predatory pyramid, gun in one hand and—" He waved without looking toward a spray-painted figure on the wall beside them: a cartoonish bear in a top hat wielding his grotesquely engorged cock like a club over a heap of slumped, dripping bodies. "—in the other," the old man concluded. "Sometimes I think the greatest argument against the idea of a benevolent and omniscient creator god is that no entity who knew what we were capable of and had any goodwill for either us or this planet would have appointed us its stewards."
"It's not all bad."
They walked.
"No," he said at last. "It isn't. But as I get older, it seems, fairly or not, that the sole purpose of all that was ever good in my life was to be torn away as messily and as painfully as it was possible for a man to bear. Which is only fair, I suppose. Considering."
So here it was at last. Ana braced herself and said, casually, "Considering what?"
"Hm? Oh nothing. Woolgathering."
"Seriously?" she said, amused. "You're going to pull that loopy old man act on me?"
He glanced at her, then stopped suddenly, executed a precise turn, and planted his cane firmly between the dusty toes of his otherwise immaculate shoes. "Look here," he said, staring at the sand-covered concrete slab of some long-gone structure. "Right here. Tell me what you see."
Ana looked at him curiously, but he only waited, his shuttered gaze fixed on the indicated point, so she went and had a look.
There was nothing to find. A few support bases bolted into the concrete and then cut off suggested there had been a structure of some kind once, although she couldn't figure out what. With the help of some branches broken off the nearest leafy-ish bushes, Ana cleared the sand and located several other signs of this mystery mounting hardware. They were arranged in a manner that suggested a semi-circular shape, not quite in the middle of the slab…where the concrete was stained and cracked.
Very stained. Very cracked. Weathered, sure. Nature's sander had been running on this spot for decades, but even it couldn't completely erase what had once been a massive black starburst pattern burnt into the floor. Fire damage. Explosive fire damage, she amended, following the radiating lines from their origin point outward. The cracks thinned and vanished at their own direction, but the staining stopped at an abrupt line between two mounting bases.
Well, that fit, didn't it? She'd been to the aviation museum here in Mammon and knew that, conspiracy theories aside, the main focus of the base had been on developing propulsion engines for aircraft and long-range missiles. Practically virgin territory, back then, with not a lot of success to show for their efforts. Mainly what Ana remembered of that trip to the museum was the fifteen-minute film on loop in the viewing room showing dozens of misfires, fizzles and crashes. All it needed was a Red Bull sponsor and some Yakkity Sax on the soundtrack.
The old man was waiting, watching her.
Ana straightened, gesturing at the concrete. "I see a testing pad," she called. "A blast shield here, some very important people there…and if there was anyone on this side pressing a button, he had a really bad day. Doesn't look like a crash," she added, scuffing her boot across the old burns. "Was it a rocket or something like that?"
"Something like that," he agreed. "It was a ballistics arm—a robotic device that could be attached to any array, and that could load and fire it more quickly and accurately than a man or even a team of men."
"One of your projects?"
"One of my father's. One of a very few of which he was still a part. The only one of which he was head. Which is why," the old man said calmly, "I sabotaged it."
Ana looked at him.
"Yes. Sabotage. Not misadventure, not miscalculation, but a deliberate and willful act. I should say that I have remorse," he added, throwing the words away with a dismissive wave. "I don't. I have guilt, which is not at all the same thing. I had no remorse when I did it, none at all while I waited, none until the consequences proved to be more devastating than I had intended. And even that is half a lie. I very much intended his ruin. That I did not intend his death is perhaps less a comment on my character than my lack of imagination. But it is true. I never intended to hurt him." His glasses flashed with reflected light as the clouds briefly parted over the sun and at once closed up again. "I never meant to hurt anyone. I suppose you think that's funny, given my work here."
"Not the word I would have used."
"I don't mean in a humorous sense. But after all, that was the very essence of my work, to design, construct and perfect instruments for the delivery of death on a scale that was, for its time, unimaginable. Until I imagined it. Without malice, without passion…without conscience. As a mathematical exercise, nothing more." He looked around, his eyes behind the dark lenses of his glasses moving restlessly through the ruins of the base. "How I would like to tell you I had an epiphany that day, some long overdue realization of the full consequences of my work. I wish I could tell you that I rejected the machines of war and dedicated my life to making children laugh. But I was unsure of the ramifications should I abandon the projects to which I was contracted. I was afraid of being arrested. I don't recall whether that was ever specifically threatened, but I was twelve. Easily intimidated." He glanced at the black spot on the concrete. "And newly orphaned. So. So I continued to work, and to profit by my work, until such time as it became convenient for me to rebel."
"Nothing wrong with that. You're a realist."
"I suppose I am, now, but I was an idealist once. Like you."
She laughed. "I'm not an idealist. I'm a relativist," she told him with a crooked smile. "And even at that, I'm not a hundred percent."
"Could one be a relativist at all times, without exception? It would seem to be a contradiction in terms." He gazed at the black spot in contemplative silence for a short time, then raised his head, as one does when ending a prayer. "Forgive me, I appear to be straying from the subject. I do more and more of that these days, I'm afraid. We were talking about my father, weren't we?"
"We don't have to."
"No, no. One should always finish what one starts. We were talking about my father."
"His death," Ana agreed and looked again at the damaged concrete. Over the course of her long night with Mike Schmidt, she'd been told of the senior Faust's public breakdown and subsequent death, but apparently, Mike's mad research skills were no match against military disinformation. Mike told her Otto Faust had drowned at home, in the family swimming pool. "He died here?"
"Yes," said Mr. Faust. "Would you like to hear my confession?"
"I'm not a priest."
"I'm not seeking absolution."
"I'm not a cop either."
"Nor am I seeking justice."
"What are you after then?" she asked, not defensively, but merely curious. "Sounds like you got away with it. Why risk it all by telling me now?"
He cracked a smile. "When I'm so close to taking it to the grave?"
Ana shrugged. "You don't know me well enough to be sure I'd keep your secrets, that's all. You're rich. I'm disreputable. I could be a blackmailer. Or worse, an upstanding citizen."
"Are you?"
"No, but I am a liar, so take that for what it's worth."
"Duly noted. Three days before my father's death," he continued without hesitation, "I killed him."
"Say that again?"
"I had what I believed to be good cause. He had tried to kill me. Far more directly, I might add. My father had many flaws, many, but a lack of conviction was never one. He cared nothing for witnesses. He cared nothing for consequences. He used a ten-pound wrench. If his aim had been better or my reflexes slower, he would have spilled my brains for certain. As it was, he made me bleed and knocked me briefly senseless, if not wholly unconscious. During this fugue state, I apparently…soiled myself, which in turn made me…emotional." His hands flexed slightly on the head of his cane. His expression showed only the smallest wrinkle of consternation behind his dark glasses. "My last memory of my father is how he stood over me, calling me a disgraceful, filthy little faggot in front of men I had feared throughout my childhood and whose respect I had desperately pursued throughout my awkward puberty."
"Okay, well, I'm starting to see why you don't have a lot of remorse, but go on."
"We had never been close. There had for some years been friction between us and…" He bent his head, hands flexing where they folded atop his cane, and finally shook his head. "I was going to say, 'a growing distance,' but I don't suppose that's strictly true. There had always been a distance and by that time, it had grown so great, I could no longer feel it grow. I always knew that should I ever be fortunate enough to escape him, I would never seek a reconciliation. Not out of hatred, you understand, but out of an utter absence of emotion." He paused then looked at her with an uncertain pinch of his eyebrows above his masking glasses. "Do you understand?"
"Oh yeah. I do."
"I thought you might." He continued to gaze at her from behind his dark lenses, his thoughts unreadable, before taking up his narrative once more. "I believed the feeling to be mutual. It was not. My father's feelings surpassed mere contempt or loathing. He, who had made me, now considered that such a mistake that only my death could rectify it. And he believed this so fervently that he did not care what happened to him as long as he succeeded. From that moment on, I understood I was an orphan. That the man whose genes I carried as yet still lived meant nothing. I had no father. My father had forsaken me."
Ana said nothing. Her mind was miles and years away, locked in the trunk of an old Honda Civic and fast sinking to the bottom of Caspegwian Lake.
"My father was swiftly restrained and I, removed. To Project Room 14." He gestured toward one of the buildings. "Where my father's untested prototype for a ballistics arm was kept. And I was left alone, where my hysterics could not embarrass anyone. When I realized where I was, I recognized the perfect opportunity for vengeance. If I was my father's biological legacy, then this machine before me was his mechanical legacy, and if he rejected the former, I would deny him the latter." He bent his head to an apologetic angle, saying, "I told you, I had a somewhat inflated idea of fair exchange in those days."
"You hit him where it hurts. I get it."
"And as I say, I did not intend him to die, merely to be humiliated by yet another failure, which I was well aware would spell the end of his career. It took less than a minute to ensure the device's permanent malfunction. And do you know what I did next?"
She did, but she shook her head.
"I went to Disneyland," said the old man. "With my best friend and his father. We stayed in the Disney Grand Californian Hotel, in a suite. We rode every ride. We ate prodigious amounts of sugar. We saw the fireworks every night. I'm reasonably certain my friend had sexual intercourse with at least three Minnie Mouses. Minnie Mice? Hm." He thought, shook his head, and continued, "At some point while I vacationed, my father was called upon to demonstrate his prototype. I don't know the exact events that followed. When I returned, I was told my father drowned in the pool at home. But I saw this. I saw it when it was fresh. And I saw what remained of the prototype. And I realized that I had greatly misjudged my father. Perhaps he recognized the signs of my sabotage, perhaps not, but he did not passively accept failure. The necessary repairs were far beyond his skill, but he made the attempt regardless. When he activated the device, those repairs held just long enough for the firing mechanism to explosively rip itself apart, killing him in the process. The hope that it did so instantly is as close as I ever came to mourning him."
Ana waited until it became obvious the story was over, then said bluntly, "I hate to sound like a cast-iron bitch here, but why should you? Your dad sounds like a prize shitstain on the underwear of the Earth. He didn't magically turn into a great guy just because he died. And just because you sheared a fly-bolt on his super-deathgun doesn't mean you killed him."
"My actions caused the death of another human being. That is indisputable."
"Yeah, okay, sure. In the same sense as if you'd tossed a diamond into a lake and someone who couldn't swim jumped in after it and drowned. No one made your father try to fix the gun. Especially no one made him try to fix it with super glue and a bent coat hanger or whatever he used. You took a working machine and broke it. He was the one who took a broken machine and made it dangerous, so if you ask me, whatever happened after that, he brought it on himself."
"Did he deserve to die?" he asked. His tone was an odd one for the question, not confrontational at all, but almost wary.
"Why, because he hit you? I'm sure he thought you deserved it. That's the thing about people: Everyone's the hero of their own story, so everyone's got their own ideas of what they deserve."
His frown deepened. "And you prefer not to judge."
"Of course I judge. I'm human. Everybody judges. But I don't decide what you deserve, I decide what you're going to fucking get."
The rigid set of his shoulders relaxed. "Ah."
"And speaking of fair exchange, let me just add that if you bring violence into a situation, I kind of think you forfeit the right to be surprised when violence bounces back on you. I don't know," she said, elaborately shrugging away her feelings and replacing them with a smile. "I suppose it's a fine line, but I just don't like that word, 'deserve.' I believe in consequences, that's what I believe in. Did he deserve to die for hitting a kid? As much as you deserved to get hit, I guess. But did he deserve to die for fucking with a machine he didn't know how to fix? Hell to the yes he did. We may not deserve what other people do to us, but we all absolutely deserve the consequences of our own actions."
He considered that, motionless as the wind rippled through his clothes. "That's oddly comforting," he said at last. He tipped his head back, the sun reflected off the dark lenses of the glasses he wore, giving the illusion of lights in the empty sockets of his eyes. "I believe I have reached if not exceeded my UV limit for the day. You've been quite patient with me, Miss Stark, indulging an old man's nostalgia. Are you ready to go?"
"Thought you'd never ask."
They walked together back across the compound to the sand-buried lot. Once there, Ana dipped into her pocket and whistled for the old man's attention. When she had it, she tossed the truck's keys to him.
He caught them, then looked at them, and finally looked at her. "I shouldn't. I never bothered myself to achieve a driver's license."
"If you get arrested, I'll stand your bail," said Ana, hopping up into the passenger seat. "It's an automatic transmission, so it's real easy to drive. Gas is on the right, brake's on the left. Just keep it between the lines and try not to hit anyone. Oh, and it should go without saying, but if you break it, you bought it."
"Fair enough." Mr. Faust walked around the front of the truck, opened the driver's door and handed her his cane. Ascending was something of a process, but once settled in the captain's chair with the mirrors adjusted and his seat belt securely fastened, he turned to her with a troubled frown. "I feel you may be laboring under a misapprehension and there are two things I should say, lest I allow you to continue."
"And what's that?" Ana asked, mentally adding the word 'lest' to the growing list of words she'd often read but never heard unironically used in conversation until she'd met this man.
He turned the key in the ignition and revved a few times, head cocked, assessing the sound of the engine. "Firstly, as a rule, lacking the permission to do a thing is by no means synonymous with lacking the ability."
"True," said Ana, stretching one leg slowly toward the invisible brake that did not exist on this side of the vehicle. "And the second?"
He turned the radio on, jacked it up, gripped the gear-shift and grimly said, "I intend to drive very fast."