Part 53
Rosa came in with a bag. "See, these are your four birthday presents. Seventeenth birthday," she took a gift wrapped box out of the bag on put it on his bed, "Eighteen," she took out another, "Nineteen, twenty," She folded up her bag and put it down.
"I didn't get you anything for your – your 29th birthday."
She laughed and patted his arm. "You remember! You had too much else to worry about, though. I don't expect you to get me a present for that 29th birthday, or the next 29th birthday, or the next one. My next 29th birthday is already taken care of; I have you back."
He smiled.
"Well," she said, poking one of the presents.
He looked reluctant, but he took it and started to open it up. "A tie," he said. "Green, too. You thought I was already an executive by then?"
"Of course," she laughed. Eighteen was a pair of socks, nineteen was a T-shirt declaring Miami to be heaven, and Twenty was a framed photo of Rosa and Pete at what looked like a backyard barbecue.
"You're the best," he said, and hugged her.
"Well, I'll let you get some rest now," she said, getting up.
"Rosa –"
She turned for a minute.
"I'm sorry I let you worry about me."
She came back and hugged him again.
"I didn't think," he said.
"Forget it - it is all bygones now," she said.
When Zander was released, Alexis wanted him to go back to her penthouse apartment. She explained that Rosa was staying in his room at Jake's.
They went back to the room to get his clothes and other stuff. He resisted awhile, saying Rosa should go stay with Alexis, but Rosa wanted him to go to Alexis' and, as Alexis observed, Rosa had more influence with Zander than anyone else.
Zander went to Alexis' office with her the next day. He didn't want to take any more days off, saying he'd be jumpy just staying at her place. She took him to the office and said he could stay half a day.
She showed him how to do a couple of things, and how to write notes to her about specific files in the computer.
He saw a lot of Emily's entries in these files. He felt a little sad, because in a lot of ways those days had been carefree. They were gone, though. They couldn't even have gone on. Nurse Question had a point. He couldn't have gone on, year after year as Zander Smith who had no prior existence.
It felt as if those days occurred to someone else; a rather one-dimensional and shadowy individual who had tried to stick with just the present and the immediate future, as though he had been born yesterday.
In the later afternoon, Alexis called someone on the phone and invited them over. About a half hour later, Joe Quinn came into Alexis office with Peter and Tim in his wake and inviting him to go to the racetrack with them.
It was a strange place to be. He'd only been there before a few times. Then he had been making drug deals.
They watched people doing time trials; Joe got them hot dogs. They just sat in the bleachers. Zander felt like a child again.
Later they went down to the pits to show Zander Joe's car. They hoisted it up and looked under the engine and discussed its good and bad points. It had been such a long time since Zander had worked on a car like that. There were some things that had changed. He remember some of the guys who worked in the pits at Daytona, and asked Peter if he could remember them, but Peter had just been too young and couldn't. Zander could recall working on cars – he wondered how much help he had really been. Sergei and the others used to have him convinced that he contributed something useful.
"If we replace all those plugs," Tim opined, "then it'll be ready for Quinn to drive."
"I thought you retired," Zander smiled as he said this to Joe.
"Oh, I did," Joe said. "She carries it on for me."
"Like your name, too," Peter grinned.
Zander looked at Joe, confused. Joe said, looking sheepishly modest: "It's my goddaughter. Danny insisted he would name her after me, because, he said, for all he knew he'd only have girls. She was Josephine for half a day, then they realized I was "Joe" and they would end up calling her "Jo" and he wouldn't be getting rid of me for awhile, and since I would be around, our having the same name would be confusing. So Danny came up with the brainstorm to use my last name."
"See, he's not driving, Sander, Quinn is," Peter said. "Q., Zander. Nurse Question."
Zander looked off, smiling a little. "Quinn," he repeated, "that fits perfectly."
