Flash Point (14 page)

Fourteen

S
UNDAY

AMY WOKE ON
Sunday morning to knocking at the front door. She sat up on the sofa bed as Gran rose from the little table.

“Good morning, Amy.” Gran, dressed in slacks and a sweater that both hung too loosely on her, hobbled painfully toward the door. “I’ll get it.”

“No, let me! Sit down again, Gran. Where’s Kaylie?”

“Gone out. It’s nearly noon.”

Noon! Amy had slept as if she were part of the bed. Gran peered through the peephole. “It’s a boy on crutches.”

Paul. How had he managed two flights of stairs? Amy said, “That’s my chess partner!” Gran unlocked the door and Amy, heedless of her pajamas, leaped from bed and flew over.

Paul leaned against the wall, panting and scowling. At the sight of Amy, he scowled harder. “Well, at least you’re alive.”

“Why wouldn’t I be alive? How did you get upstairs?”

“I managed.” His face had gone so pale that Amy darted forward to put an arm under his, and was even more alarmed when he didn’t protest. She got him inside and seated at the table.

Gran said quietly, “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yes,” Paul gasped.

The hot coffee seemed to revive him. He said coldly to Amy, “You didn’t come over. You don’t have a phone. We were supposed to play chess yesterday afternoon. I thought maybe you were sick, or moved away, or dead.”

Chess. Now Amy remembered the tentative date, lost in Violet’s reshuffling of the shopping schedule and in everything that had happened since. She said, “I’m sorry, Paul. Stuff happened. Did you . . . did you happen to watch TV last night?”

“I never watch TV,” he said scornfully. His gaze fell on Amy’s cell, recharging by the sofa bed. “So you do have a phone. Could have saved me the trip over. But since I’m—”

Amy said, exasperated, “Why didn’t you just send your mother?”

“She’s gone on Sundays.” He didn’t explain where, or why. “But as I was saying, since I’m here, let’s play some chess.”

It didn’t seem to register with Paul that Amy was still in her pajamas, that Gran sat with her eyes closed in the easy chair, or that Amy might have other things to do. On the other hand, chess suddenly sounded soothing. Normal. Paul, too, sounded soothing, in that he had no idea of yesterday’s events, and wouldn’t have cared anyway.

OK, Kaylie was right—Amy was nerdy. So what? She got out the chess set.

“Here, set this up while I get Gran to bed and I get dressed.”

They played two games and Amy won both. She felt curiously sharp and focused. Paul kept looking at his watch, but he was a good loser; after the second game he looked at her with admiration. “Nice play. I’m going home now. Will you help me down the stairs? Going down is trickier than coming up. Just go first to stop me if I slip.”

“Sure.” Gran was still asleep. Kaylie had called to say, with suspicious sweetness, that she was practicing with the band but would be home to fix dinner. If she really did it, that would make twice in the same century.

Amy and Paul left the apartment. He seemed to move even more slowly than usual, but when she asked him if anything hurt, he scowled and waved away her question. Well, some people were prickly about anything that looked like pity. Slowly they made their way downstairs. There were two flights, each with a turn halfway down, at a cramped landing no more than a yard square.

At the first landing Paul gasped, “Wait here a minute. Let me . . . just wait.”

“OK,” Amy said. The wait seemed long. Amy began to feel very strange.

All her sharp focus drained away, as if someone had turned on a vacuum cleaner and gently, silently, sucked it all out of her. A dreamy lassitude took her. Paul, a step above her, had turned his face to the wall and seemed to be breathing into his shirt collar. Amy had to fight a powerful urge to sink bonelessly to her knees.

“Let’s go,” Paul said after a timeless pause, and she forced herself to move.

Another step, then another. Seven steps to the tiny landing next to the Chans’ second-floor apartment. Paul’s face was still turned away from her.

Amy felt so disoriented, so strange. . . . The feeling was even stronger here than on the landing above.

Mist began to form before her eyes.

“Amy?” Paul’s voice said, as if from a great distance. “Are you all right?”

No words would form.
How odd
, thought the last part of her brain that still seemed to work,
I always have words
. But not now. Language slipped away. Amy didn’t miss it. It was pleasant, so pleasant, to stand there dreamily in the mist, her mind empty, the mist so pretty as it swirled and then took on pale colors and then came together somehow . . . why, it
was
coming together, into something, into a form, a person . . .

“Hello, Amy,” whispered the shifting, pale form.

“Mama,” Amy said, and smiled, reaching out her hand. Her mother was back, come to visit just as Amy had always secretly hoped, back from the dead—

Back from the dead
.

Amy’s eyes widened. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think, but there was her mother, or her mother’s ghost. . . . The universe tilted and spun.

Then Paul was running down the stairs, leaving his crutches behind, and somehow this didn’t seem at all odd. It didn’t even matter. Nothing mattered but Amy’s mother, back again. And that meant there really was life after . . . no, that wasn’t it . . . she couldn’t think. But here was her mother, smiling at her, dressed in something white and floaty, and . . .
her mother
 . . .

“Mama!” Amy burst into tears. She put out her hand to touch her mother, to embrace her one more time, just as she had longed to do for more than a decade. Amy’s hand went right through her. Just as if . . . as if she were . . .

“No!”

But her mother was fading, the mist swirling apart, going away. Another second, two, three, a lifetime of seconds spent in longing and fear of yet another loss, and her mother disappeared. Amy, crying, fell to the floor.

But only for a moment. Her head began to clear.

Not really her mother. And not an illusion in Amy’s mind, either, despite the drug that Amy could still smell dissipating on the air.

Mrs. Raduski came out of her apartment below and called up the stairs, “What was that thumping? What’s going on up there? I’ll set my dog on you, I will!”

Amy’s head cleared. Not an illusion, a
hologram
. Like the dog in the tree, the rats in the parking lot—

“You here, where are you running to?” Mrs. Raduski called. “You, boy, stop!”

Amy’s head cleared.
Paul, clattering down the stairs, not crippled at all
—

Barking, snarling, a cry of pain. Paul.

Amy’s head cleared completely and she staggered to her feet, raced down the stairs, and caught up to Paul. He lay on the sidewalk, screaming, Buddy’s teeth fastened on his leg. Mrs. Raduski was yelling into her phone, “Come quick! Come quick, I caught a thief! My dog got him, come quick!”

“He’s not a thief!” Amy cried. She was so furious she could barely see straight. The second that Mrs. Raduski reluctantly called off Buddy, Amy was on Paul, kneeling beside him and beating him with her fists.

“You were in on it! You’re a plant from the show! You bastard, you fucker, I trusted you!”

Paul looked at her coldly. His leg bled freely. He snarled at her, “Hey, you signed up for this! I didn’t sign up for dog bites! Get a fucking ambulance here!”

“You’re not even crippled, are you? And you . . . drugs in the air on the stairs . . . my mother!”

Mrs. Raduski demanded, “What’s she babbling about? Where are them cops?”

Amy stalked off. Let Paul bleed to death. Let Mrs. Raduski’s cops arrest him. A plant, just like Lynn had been a plant. . . .

The full extent of what Myra Townsend had done hit Amy. Myra had hired Paul and his mother, moved them into an apartment across the street, made sure she got an actor who played very good chess, rigged the hallway with breathable mind-altering drugs and unseen cameras and Mark Meyer’s tech equipment to create a hologram that Amy had believed in . . .

Hatred of them all swept through her, along with a renewed sense of loss and bereavement. Her
mother
 . . . How dare they—

She raced back upstairs, grabbed her cell, punched in Myra’s number. Straight to voice mail.

“This is Myra Townsend. I—”

Amy screamed into the phone, “I quit! Do you hear me, Myra? I quit!”

“—cannot receive messages on this phone until Tuesday. Please call my other number. Thank you.”

Amy didn’t have Myra’s other number. She threw the cell phone across the room. Just as she was about to pound with her fists on the wall, she stopped herself; it would wake Gran.

Gran. She mustn’t know that Amy thought she’d seen her dead mother. Amy could at least spare Gran, if not herself. Even if that meant pretending that nothing had happened, that Paul and she had just played chess like normal human beings.

The people at TLN were not normal. Not Myra, not Alex, not Lynn, not Mark. Normal people did not do things like this, did not reach into your chest and tear out your heart just so they could film you bleeding. Myra was a monster, and first thing tomorrow morning Amy was going to march into Myra’s office, curse her out, and quit.

“Amy?” Gran called from the bedroom. “I hear sirens!”

“Yes,” Amy called back, fiercely mastering her voice. “I’m looking out the window now. I think Buddy bit somebody down on the sidewalk.”

Fifteen

M
ONDAY

“I QUIT!” AMY SAID.
“What you did was manipulative and despicable and just plain sick, and I quit!”

Myra Townsend gazed at her calmly. “Are you sure, Amy?”

“Yes, I’m sure! What did you make the others see—their dead parents too? Or grandparents? Or friends? Violet lost a dancer friend to cancer—did you make her see him? Talk to him? And you swore to me that there would be no filming in my apartment!”

“You weren’t in your apartment,” Myra said. “You were in the stairwell.”

“Same thing!”

“It is not. Now, I know you’re upset, Amy dear, but—”

“Don’t call me dear!”

“Then I’ll call you hasty, to say the least. You need to think this through. Were you harmed in any way? Has your contract been violated in the smallest clause?”

“I’m not talking about my contract, I’m—”

“You should be talking about your contract. It’s legally binding. And yes, it says you may quit. But if you do, you lose your salary, all medical benefits for your family, and a chance at real money beyond that. The pilot was a success, and soon you’ll be a TV star.”

“I don’t care!”

“Maybe not, but possibly you care about treatment for your grandmother. You told Paul’s ‘mother’ that she is very ill, possibly terminal. Is it worth a little emotional upset on your part to let your grandmother live her last days in pain-free comfort, someplace better than your—forgive me—seedy apartment? We can make that happen, and we will. But not if you quit.”

Amy stared at her, at Myra’s perfect makeup, belted Tom Ford suit, artfully tousled hair. In the opulent office that on Friday night had been full of fake trees and real fear. Myra’s face was serene, and utterly cold.

Amy said softly, “I despise you.”

“I know, dear. But that’s a producer’s lot. Now, I’ll promise you this, just so you can calm down: Today there will be no scenarios. You have my word.”

“I don’t think your word is worth much.”

“Oh, but it is. Think, Amy—have I ever actually lied to you? Withheld information, maybe, but not lied. If I say there is no scenario today, then there is not. You look very nice, by the way. You’ve been shopping.”

Amy wore the jeans and Marc Jacobs sweater that Violet had helped her find. Myra’s flattery was contemptible. Amy glared at her—as if a glare would affect Myra Townsend!—turned, and left the office before tears of anger could start. Sometime this week Gran would receive her test results from the doctor.

Amy was assigned to more children’s-game review in the deep basement, and so worked alone all morning. This game was supposed to teach small children about big-bigger- biggest, small-smaller-smallest, hot-hotter-hottest. Amy moved a nose-twitching rabbit around the screen. Several times the rabbit would not move into the right position; this was an early version of the program and it had bugs. She made notes of these on forms stamped
PROPERTY OF TAUNTON LIFE NETWORK.

At lunchtime she nearly ran to the cafeteria. What had Violet been made to endure? Rafe? Poor Tommy? How low had Myra gone?

Slimy, slimier, slimiest
.

* * *

“It was no big deal,” Waverly said, picking up a forkful of salad. “I never liked my cousin all that much anyway.”

“Such sweet family loyalty,” Violet said. “It’s downright touching.” Violet seemed unusually subdued, but there was a dangerous look in her eyes that made Amy hold back her questions.

She, Waverly, Violet, and Rafe were the first to reach the lunch table with their trays. Around them sat tables of adults, many of whom glanced frequently in their direction. Either they had seen the show on Saturday or they had already heard that it was a success. Amy didn’t care. She said, “Rafe? Did you see a fake ghost too?”

“Yes, but I knew it was fake right from the beginning.”

“How? The drug in the air—”

“I recognized that drug. I’ve smelled it before.” His face was stony. Amy shut up, but not Waverly.

She said distastefully, “You use?”

“No. But my brother did.”

Overdose
, Amy guessed.

Rafe said, “You should see your face, Amy. No, you weren’t in any danger from that particular drug, not from one exposure. I only meant that I’d smelled it when my older brother was using everything under the sun. At the first whiff I held my breath, and when I couldn’t hold it anymore, I ran.”

Violet said, with more gentleness than Amy had ever seen from her, “But you didn’t run right away.”

Rafe shrugged. “I wanted to see what the gig was.”

Waverly said, “And what was it?”

Rafe shot her a contemptuous look.
His dead brother
, Amy guessed. She said quickly, “Myra promised me no new scenario today. Let’s see if she keeps her word.”

Rafe snorted. Tommy rushed over to their table, his soup sloshing over the bowl onto the tray. His broad face glowed.

“Guess what, guys! I saw a ghost yesterday! And it spoke to me!”

Silence around the table.

Was it possible, Amy thought wildly, that Tommy
believed
in Myra’s illusion? She’d known his IQ was low—but how low?

“It said my name,” Tommy said proudly. “‘Tommy.’”

Very low. Oh, you
bitch
, Myra, putting him on the show to be laughed at.

Violet said cautiously, “Was the ghost anyone you knew?”

Tommy looked puzzled. “I never met any ghosts before.”

Waverly smothered a laugh. Amy glared at her and said to Tommy, “Well, then, that was quite an experience. What . . . what did you do?”

“I tried to talk to it, but it went away too soon.”

Rafe said, “Tom, we all saw ghosts. We think they were illusions created by the show. You know, like the trees in Myra’s office.”

Tommy’s face clouded. “Not real?”

“No.”

Tommy shook his head. “No, mine was real. It said my name.”

Amy said, “You should talk to Cai about it.”

He nodded vigorously. “Yes. Cai knows.”

But when Cai approached the table, it was clear he didn’t want to talk to anyone. Amy knew he would make an exception for Tommy, but right now his dark brows pinched together and his mouth was a thin straight line. It didn’t matter; Amy’s palms still grew moist when she was around him, and she felt every nerve in her body spring to high alert
. Stupid, stupid
. He wasn’t interested. Evolution really screwed up on this one, she thought—one-way attraction benefited nobody.

Rafe said cynically, “So I see that nobody actually quit the show.”

Amy looked down at her bowl of clam chowder. She didn’t want it.

Waverly said, “Really, Rafe—anybody who gives up that easily doesn’t deserve a career in television. Have you seen how everyone is looking at us for the— Here comes one now.”

A girl, not much older than them, approached their table.
Intern
, Amy guessed, or possibly a newish secretary. She smiled at Cai. “I saw the show last night. Can I have your autograph?”

Cai looked startled, then scrawled his name. The girl thanked him, blushed, and bounded off. She didn’t ask for anyone else’s autograph. Waverly looked deeply annoyed, and Amy grinned at Violet. Mean of her, but Waverly’s annoyance was the first thing to make her smile in nearly twenty-four hours.

Violet grinned back.

* * *

Myra Townsend kept her word. There was no new scenario on Monday. But when Amy arrived home after work, a brightly painted van stood in front of her building: WKZZ TV. A woman jumped out, a man behind her with a camcorder up to his eye.

“Amy! I think we’re the first to track down one of TLN’s newest stars! How do you think you did in the first scenario on
Who Knows People?
” The woman smiled hugely; she seemed to have too many teeth. “Amy?”

“I—how did you find out where I live?” The TV show had included no last names.

The teeth, astonishingly, multiplied. “Oh, we have our methods. But tell your fans, Amy—are you pleased with whatever you did in that alley? Give our viewers just a hint!”

“I can’t talk about it.”

“Sure you can—the voting period ended. Just a hint! Did you escape the rapist that grabbed you?”

Amy walked past the van toward her door. Both the reporter and the cameraman followed.

“What about the others, Amy? Who do you think did the best?”

Say nothing. If she said nothing they would go away. Wouldn’t they?

“How did Cai perform? He’s gorgeous, isn’t he? Are you two dating, hmmmm?”

Amy darted inside and slammed the door.

Mrs. Raduski stood in the vestibule, Buddy snarling on his leash. “Well,” she said.

You could never tell about Mrs. Raduski. She might decide Amy’s new celebrity was a thing to be fawned over because it was
television
. Or she might decide that Amy was “getting above herself,” which really meant getting above Mrs. Raduski. Or she might, because she intermittently liked Amy, decide something else entirely.

Mrs. Raduski said, “Aren’t we getting pretty big for our britches.”

Option number two. Amy said, “Hi, Mrs. Raduski,” and escaped up the stairs.

Gran sat in the chair by the window, looking down at the TV van. “Good day at work, honey?”

“Quiet day,” Amy said. “That van will go away soon, won’t it?”

“We can only hope. With all the real news in the world, most of it reaching a critical point, you think those people would find better things to do than harass you. Especially today.”

“They weren’t exactly harassing me,” Amy said. “Why ‘especially today’?”

Gran looked surprised. “You didn’t hear at your job?”

“Hear what?”

“About the merger?”

Amy shook her head. She moved to Gran’s chair; her grandmother looked tired and very pale. “Are you all right?”

“Taunton Life Network was acquired this morning by Pylon Global, the mega-conglomerate based in Dubai. They also own Cameron Enterprises, the nuclear-power-plant builders, and a major chemical-and-fertilizer company that’s transnational. TLN is their first venture into communications, but it won’t be their last. Amy, Pylon attracts major protest demonstrations everywhere, from all sorts of groups. Environmental, human rights—that’s because of that mess they created in Africa—as well as wage protesters. The TLN building could be besieged.”

Amy didn’t know what mess Pylon had created in Africa, and she didn’t ask. She was more concerned with Gran. A phantom leaped into her mind:
a rain of pellets, each one a piece of paper rolled into such a tight little ball that the pellets were hard as stones
.

She said slowly, “Your medical tests came back.”

Gran didn’t ask how Amy knew. She just put out one thin, blue-veined hand to grasp Amy’s. “Amy, you’re going to have to be very strong.”

“Tell me. Don’t sugarcoat, Gran—just tell me.”

For a long moment Gran said nothing. Amy knelt by her chair, face upturned, waiting. Time seemed to stop.

Finally Gran said, “No need to tell you to be strong; you always are. My tumor is inoperable, Amy, and very aggressive. I have only a few months left, at best.”

Amy choked out, “With better medical . . . with money . . .”

“It wouldn’t make any difference, except in comfort level. But I’m not frightened. I’ve had a long run and a good one, and to tell the truth, I’ve always been curious about what comes next. I’m desperately sorry to leave you and Kayla, but you mustn’t grieve too hard.”

“I—”

“Ah, don’t cry, honey. It’s providential that you have this good job. You’ll not only survive, you’ll flourish, I
know
it. And you can take care of Kaylie. Now, would you mind bringing me a cup of that herbal tea? It’s so soothing.”

Amy stumbled into the little galley kitchen. She knew Gran wanted the tea mostly to give Amy something to do with her hands, and with her stunned grief. As the water boiled on the stove, Amy warmed her suddenly cold fingers over the steam and willed herself not to cry. Gran, never given to displays of emotion even when her feelings ran strong, was meeting this thing with stoic courage. Amy would do the same. For Gran’s sake.

But her hands shook as she opened the tin box where they kept tea bags. Peppermint? Lemon? It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

No, that wasn’t right. That kind of easy cynicism wasn’t
right
. Things mattered. So much mattered to Gran, not just Amy and Kaylie but the country, the world, the science she had practiced until the Collapse cut off nearly all research funding. Things mattered to Gran, and that was why she wasn’t afraid now. She could look beyond herself.

As Amy poured the hot water over the tea, she thought:
But Gran must be a little bit afraid
. Wasn’t everyone, of dying? If so, Gran would never let it show.

Carefully she carried the two cups out of the kitchen. “Here’s your tea. I made myself some too.” They sipped in silence until Amy said, “What can be done for you in the . . . the meantime?”