“I appreciate it, Tony. You’re an honorable man.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“A bit rough on every edge, corner, and surface, as they say, but honorable nevertheless.”
Tony snorted a laugh. “That a joke?”
“An attempt.”
After their palaver, Tony removed his VR goggles, and he was back in a dank motel room. The headsets were getting small, and this new one he’d just bought reminded him of the Geordi La Forge glasses from The Next Generation. It was uncanny how for a tingling twenty seconds or so, his motel room felt less real than the train crossing the Pyrenees.
Tony hated Florida so much. His cross to bear that he’d spent so much of his life visiting this place driven to lunacy by a swamp-fever addiction to its own bullshit. Every interaction in the Sunshine State was tinged with a mad-eyed fervor, every self-satisfied resident convincing themselves that this was the good life. He’d been there for a week to see Catherine at her municipality-sized rehab facility, but on the drive through West Palm Beach, where the steel-and-glass condo towers seemed to grow right out of the asphalt, he realized he couldn’t wait to catch his flight back to New England that night.
He told Hasan and all other inquirers that Cat was doing well, though it was hard not to be doing well in her current digs. Rehab for the moneyed included yoga, meditation, daily Shiatsu massages, gourmet organic cuisine, a pool, a sauna, tennis courts, a thousand-square-foot gym and spa, acupuncture, neurofeedback, VR immersion training, equine therapy, and an ocean view, all for a small monthly fee of $64,573 footed entirely by her uncle. Despite the ostentation, the staff was well credentialed, and the other inpatients were serious cases: crumbling, hollowed-out, desperate to survive. The question was what she would do with herself when she got out.
“Uncle Corey says I can come work for him,” she said. They walked the grounds, admiring the manicured hedgerows that separated the facility from the neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes. The day was blessedly cool. A crisp saltwater breeze drifted west from the ocean, and the sun hid behind a gray bank of clouds, spilling a bit of rouge across the sky as it set. “I can tell from that look that you’re not in love with the idea.” She didn’t say it with hostility. More like disappointment. She had a plan, she’d put initiative and thought into it, and when she told him, he was unable to hide his skepticism.
“It’s not that. I want you to do something productive, of course.” He was muttering and forced himself to raise his voice. “But I wonder if this is the best place for you right now. When you could come north and be near family.”
“I’m near family here.”
“I mean me and Holly.”
“Uncle Corey has been amazing, Dad. You need to give him credit.”
“I do, Cat.”
And yet he would never be over his deeply ingrained doubt of the man. As soon as Tony got off the plane, Corey had picked him up in a slick Mercedes convertible and launched into his plans for the company. The Florida real estate market was going through a “reorganization.” A coming wave of amphibious housing and sea-level-resistant architecture was the new gold rush—buildings that could elevate themselves, “real sci-fi shit,” as he put it. Cat had only lasted four months with Tony in New Haven before she moved to Florida and picked up all her old habits. She’d dropped out of yet another college, and things were going badly enough that Corey had offered to put up the money to get her clean once and for all.
“What I worry about,” he told Cat, “is that this place has all the same issues as Los Angeles. The lifestyle, the temptations, the problem people.”
“I’m finding my way back, Dad. Plus, I hate the cold. I don’t know how you live with seven months of dark and snow.” She did look so much better. She’d gained healthy weight. She’d grown out her hair, and the red tinge was starker in the sunlight. Her flip-flops clapped against her heels as she walked. She wore jean shorts and a sweatshirt with an image of Lizzo. He remembered when she would put on “Heaven Help Me” while singing and dancing through the entire house. Cat had a brightness in her voice that he hadn’t heard in a long time, and it reminded him of that young girl belting out her favorite song. “Uncle Corey said he could start me off in the office as a paid intern, and as long as I work, I’ll move up quickly. Then I can also take classes part-time and finish my degree. It would be perfect.”
They stopped at the edge of the facility’s property. The sun split a cloud and sent a beam of yellow-orange light skimming across the ocean. Suddenly, Tony couldn’t stand it, and he took his daughter by the arm and pulled her close, swallowing her small body in his arms. He tucked his chin onto her head against her wild crimson hair. He could recall the scent of her skull when she’d been a baby. Like he’d smelled it the day before.
“Are you crying?” she asked a bit unkindly.
“Yes. Sorry.” He pulled away and wiped his eyes.
“Dad, I promise. I’m so much better.”
“I know,” he said, though the words were more of a gasp. “I know. You seem so much better.”
And they stood in silence, listening to the waves lap the beach. Watching that strange ball of solar fire descend through the heavens.
When he got back home, the Northeast was sweltering through a heat wave. New Haven had a high of 105. The air had a dusty sheen reminiscent of driving through Los Angeles as it burned. They weren’t quite there yet, but the yellowed grass and thirsty trees brought anxious memories. One of the women who rescued them, Yolanda Quebrada, had been killed that summer fighting a brushfire in the Central Valley as California endured another vicious, if less apocalyptic, series of fires. Tony had donated a huge chunk of money to Quebrada’s family and sent flowers to the funeral, though this felt wildly insufficient in the face of what she’d done for him. He was thinking of Quebrada, whom he’d known only for one panicked ride in a fire rig, as the driverless dropped him off at his house. Searching for his keys, stowed somewhere in his overnight bag, he almost walked right by the destruction of his car.
He’d left it in the driveway as he always did. (The garage had too much work overflow; boxes of data from Monte Carlo simulations that he couldn’t bring himself to part with.) He pocketed his keys. Someone had shattered all the windows, and gummy bits of glass coated the driveway, glinting green crystals. The hood was pocked with dents from some heavy tool, a hammer most likely.
“What the fuck,” Tony hissed, touching the wing mirror, which now dangled from the side. When he leaned his head through the window to examine the interior, he saw that the seating had been slashed, yellow-white foam spilling out. On the other side of the car, the vandal had keyed TRAITOR into the driver’s door. He looked up and down his street. He swallowed. His mouth was cottony with thirst.
Maybe some student was trying to prove a point during their Scroll and Key initiation. There were now young Brownshirts of every stripe and political persuasion. They might have thought him a traitor for any number of his opinions on climate change, identity politics, nuclear energy—take your pick. Then there were his neighbors two doors down who still, almost nine months after the election, had their yard sign up: BELIEVE IN BRADEN 2032. His fear melted to anger in the blast-furnace heat of the day.