“Mel Millstein hired me at ISIS. He gave me my chance….” Sorel leaned over as she spoke, and her white usher’s-flower weighed down her décolletage. “He always looked after me….”
Lou told Orion, “I’ll bet he did.”
At the lectern Dave recalled, “The first time I met Jonathan, I thought, ‘Is this guy for real?’ Let me rephrase that. I thought, ‘Is this kid for real?’ I said to him, ‘What are your goals for ISIS?’ and he said, ‘World domination.’ I said, ‘You’re joking, right?’ He said, ‘I’m not joking at all.’
“It’s one thing to have confidence when the going is great. It’s another thing to feel that way when the going gets tough. That’s the mark of a leader, a hero if you will.” Dave coughed. “I don’t use the word hero lightly, but I’m not … I’m not exaggerating when I say that this young man was a hero to me.
“The last time I saw Jonathan, we were in a meeting and I felt, as I sometimes did, that I had to rein him in. I said, ‘The climate is challenging right now.’ He said: ‘The climate’s history. The point is where we’re going.’ He was already thinking ahead. Six months ago, even nine months ago, he thought his way into a new space. He came to us with that gleam in his eye. He stood at the whiteboard and he wasn’t moaning, he wasn’t whining—he never whined about anything. He was like a kid in a candy store. ‘I have a new paradigm. I have a new plan….’ He had no idea then how important his new plan would be—a new system for data tracking.”
Dave’s words overflowed with feeling, and in the audience tears flowed freely. Even Lou almost forgot his own performance. Only Emily sat up, dry-eyed. Others heard a tribute to Jonathan’s indomitable spirit. Emily understood that he had stolen her information, appropriated and built a version of electronic fingerprinting.
“He would never let us down,” Dave said. “He would never say die. He led as he lived, fearless, imaginative, excited about the future. How could we lose someone who loved life so much?”
But Emily thought, Jonathan, how could you betray me? All those conversations where you accused me of putting Veritech first. All those times you said I was inflexible. Had you sold me out already? Six months ago. Nine months ago. Had you already betrayed me then?
She heard the other speakers in a dream. She heard them all from far away. Rabbi Zylberfenig spoke of angels. “Our sages teach that for each of us on Earth, there is an angel. This is very interesting to think about. We are each one of a matching pair. Therefore in the universe, we are not alone….”
A baby wailed.
Aldwin read from Kahlil Gibran. “When you part from your friend, you grieve not; / for that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence….”
Sorel sat on a stool and sang Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” accompanying herself on her guitar. “Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord …”
Until, like the main event he was, Lou Steiner took the stage. Shuffling his papers, clearing his throat, he seemed to have lost his place somehow. Emily stared at him, but she didn’t see him. Orion glared at Lou, and he thought, My God, he’s drunk. But he underestimated his father. Lou knew his poem by heart, and the poem he recited was not the one promised. Not “Where Are the Bees?” but something else entirely, one of his old sixties flower poems.
When truth dies
No one comes.
Truth passes without ceremony.
Her friends can’t afford a proper burial.
Truth’s enemies write her epitaph
And build her tomb.
As for truth’s relatives,
They’re estranged.
How? Emily asked Jonathan. How could you?
When peace dies
Everybody comes.
Peace plunges to her death
With fireworks and flags.
Full military honors.
Her friends hang their heads.
Her enemies say they’ll bring her back.
She was so beautiful
And much too young.
This was not the villanelle printed in the program, not at all the short sweet poem Dave and the memorial committee had expected. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, Dave leaned forward to look at Orion.
Orion shook his head and smiled. With a grim satisfaction, he thought, Fuck you. Even you can’t tell my father what to do. He didn’t see Emily’s face, so pale, or hear her panicked thoughts: How could you? How could you?
Visit truth and peace together.
They share a plot.
In lieu of flowers
Please send bodies
To the war.
In lieu of roses
Please send
Your Self-Addressed Stamped Sons….
The audience squirmed and whispered as Lou shifted into higher gear. What did this have to do with Mel and Jonathan? Wasn’t he talking about Vietnam? Even in Cambridge, this was almost embarrassing. The poem was almost—well, it was sort of on the nose for a memorial service, wasn’t it? And it went on and on. Such was the case with Lou’s antiwar poetry, predating his late, great pared-down lyrics, the new minimalism which charmed before it stung.
Even as Lou recited, Emily rose from her seat and hurried down the aisle. Whispers rustled under Lou’s clarion voice. Look. That’s the fiancée. It’s too much for her … too much for her. Softly they whispered as she exited the auditorium, and watched her as she closed the door.
Jess and Richard looked at each other past Heidi who sat between them, and their eyes said: Should I go after her? No, let me. I will.
In lieu of lilies
Please send
Lies.
In lieu of freesia
Please send
Funds.
Had Emily overheard Chaya Zylberfenig talking? What had Emily heard? Jess rushed to the lobby, where she found her sister standing still and pale.
“What happened?” Jess pleaded.
“Nothing.”
“Do you want to go? Was it something Lou said?”
“No.” Emily pushed open the glass lobby doors. “I just want to be alone, okay?”
“You were right, you shouldn’t have come,” Jess fretted.
“I’m glad I came,” Emily said grimly.
Then for the first time, Jess was afraid Emily would wander off and hurt herself. “Where are you going? Don’t go out there by yourself.”
Close-lipped, Emily smiled at the idea that Jess could come along, that anyone could travel with her to this new hell. The pain was entirely new, when she reconsidered all that went before. Where there had been no body, she’d held fast to Jonathan’s spirit. And now?
He had given her an enormously expensive ring, but she had given him information worth more than any diamond. She remembered his silence as they lay together in the dark and she told him about fingerprinting. He’d tried to stop her. He was overwhelmed, moved, shocked that she would say so much. Was that because he knew he could not resist making electronic fingerprinting his? Did he already know he would steal her idea?
But the idea had not been hers to tell. If she was accusing Jonathan, she should indict herself as well. Fingerprinting had belonged to Alex. Indeed, it belonged to Alex now. Even now, at Veritech, Alex continued to research fingerprinting for a project his team was developing to check for spyware: a project Emily herself had named Verify. What would Alex do when he heard what Jonathan had done? You were right, Jonathan, she told herself. You were right all along. You win. I’m just like you. You betrayed me, but I betrayed Alex first. She stood on the plaza in front of Kresge, and these ideas spread like poison through her body, numbing her fingers and toes, darkening her vision, blackening the sun.