The Bad Beat

13

College boys, Fiona thought, were the worst of their species. Aesthetically, there was very little wrong with a twenty-one-year-old male at the peak of his conditioning, his body healthy and able to withstand punishment. Fiona was happy to admit that. And she couldn’t resist staring at a few of the particularly lovely specimens as she walked with Brent across the campus of the University of Miami. In fact, if college boys could just learn to keep their mouths closed and their bodies toned, they’d be perfect chew toys for a woman like herself. Fun, disposable, not terribly annoying.

But when they opened their mouths…

It was as if they forgot they had mothers, or sisters, or even beloved pets, since surely they didn’t treat their dogs as poorly as they treated women. What base form of human, other than boys in college, thinks it’s appropriate to walk up to a woman and ask her if they could “get with that”? Or ask if she was “down for it” or if she’d be interested in “getting your drink on with me at the frat house” as if any of those invitations weren’t little more than veiled requests for sex?

It was just before noon and Fiona was escorting Brent to lunch before she’d be forced to sit through yet another class. She’d spent the previous two hours and thirty minutes in a lecture hall listening to some crusty professor in a tweed jacket telling complete and utter lies about history, to the point that she’d finally raised her hand to ask a question, but fortunately for the old cud behind the lectern, he didn’t bother to look up from the text he was reading. Fiona would have let him know, in exacting detail, how American education was apparently predicated on misperception.

It was more than she could take, really, listening to the professor butchering the past. He’d gone on some long-winded jag about how the British had attempted to oppress their colonists living in America and that’s what started the Revolutionary War, a war that was scantily discussed in the history books Fiona recalled, though her memory was very precise on the minimal material she was taught about the issues related to that particular war: the colonists were a wanton band of separatists, an issue she was well versed in, but unlike the Irish, they didn’t have the advantage of being right.

It was just madness, though it did help her to understand Michael a bit more (and, to a lesser extent, Sam), who wore their patriotism like both a badge and a shield. A false history can do that to you.

And if suffering through the indignity of that experience wasn’t bad enough, the boy sitting beside her for those one hundred and fifty minutes of revisionist drivel kept “accidentally” brushing his hand along her thigh. She’d intentionally sat in the back of the lecture hall, a few rows behind Brent, so that she could keep the entire room in her vision at all times. It was set up with stadium seating, but the two doors into the hall were at the bottom of the room, on either side of the lectern stage, so from her vantage point in the back Fiona would be able to take out anyone who might wish to do Brent harm long before he or she laid eyes on him.

So Fiona found a seat next to a boy in a light blue Oxford shirt, with combed and parted Republican hair and a fair complexion. The kind of boy she presumed called women “ma’am” and men “sir” and probably grew up in a city like Savannah, Georgia, and was filled with Southern courtesy and wouldn’t try to look into her purse and thus wouldn’t have questions about why she was on campus with a chrome-plated Glock.

She sat down beside him and he smiled at her wanly-the kind of smile she’d expected him to give her. A gentle declaration that she was, indeed, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen, but also that she was so far out of his league that he’d just let her know, by showing his perfectly white teeth, that he’d be no bother to her at all.

For the first ten or fifteen minutes of the dreadful lecture, the boy beside her bounced his left hand off his knee as if to a beat in his head. It was annoying, but far less annoying than listening to Sam chew, for instance. And then Fiona felt a slight… nudge… on the middle of her right thigh. She looked down and saw that the boy’s pinkie was touching her; she scooted over a bit.

“Pardon me,” the boy said quietly and without even turning to look at Fiona.

“No problem,” Fiona said.

Then, five minutes later, he did it again and Fiona scooted again.

“I’m sorry,” the boy said. This time he turned to look at Fiona and flashed a more active smile. He got his eyes involved. “Listening to him drone on makes me jumpy.”

“No problem,” Fiona said, because she truly empathized with the boy.

“I haven’t seen you in here before,” he said.

“I’m just sitting in,” she said.

“Cool,” he said.

Thirty minutes later, Fiona felt a bit more pressure on her leg and looked down to see that the boy was essentially resting his pinkie and his ring finger on her thigh.

“You have really soft legs,” he said. “I thought I was touching my chinos.”

Fiona leaned toward the boy and the boy leaned toward her, taking up most of the middle distance with what Fiona now discerned was far too much cologne. Polo or something else meant to make nineteen-year-old girls swoon in their Dress Barn rompers.

“If you touch my leg again,” Fiona said, “I’m going to dislocate your fingers.”

“Dislocate,” he said and gave her that smile again. “I like that word. I’m sorry. I’ll move them myself if you like. You don’t need to dislocat e them.”

Fiona got the sense the boy didn’t know what “dislocate” meant, since he was still trying to flirt with her. Another failure of American education. She’d be happy to show him the word’s precise meaning.

A few minutes later, Fiona felt a tapping on her knee-this time it was clear that it was intentional. Fiona decided to give the boy the benefit of the doubt that he wanted something from her and thus was tapping her with a purpose. Maybe he needed a pen? Some paper? A punch to the neck?

“Yes?” Fiona said.

“You smell really great,” he said.

“It’s called sweat.”

“Then your sweat smells like lavender and freshly cooked beignets.”

Some people, really, didn’t deserve the gift of speech.

“I am trying to concentrate, if you don’t mind,” Fiona said, because she just didn’t want to create a scene in the lecture hall. She might overreact and cause a compound fracture and no one wanted to see that. Plus, she didn’t want to be splashed with blood.

“Would you like to get a beer sometime?”

Did no one have common decency anymore?

The boy had left his index finger on her knee, so Fiona reached down and very casually sprained it by shoving her thumb in between the last joint and the fingertip. The boy let out a little yelp and then immediately shoved his finger into his mouth and scurried out of the classroom. The professor still never looked up.

The rest of the class went well enough, provided Fiona kept focused on any potential assassins and not anything having to do with whatever manifest destiny was, since the professor had managed to jump a hundred years to discuss some other trivial American policy and how it was originally tied to these violent separatists, though he didn’t use those words. The fool.

Now, as she and Brent went in search of what he deemed “the best rice bowls, like, ever” for lunch, Fiona kept being accosted by young men with flyers promoting different off-campus events, all of which boiled down to wonderful opportunities to get drugged and raped in the comfort of a beer-soaked fraternity house.

“Do you ever go to these parties?” Fiona asked. She handed Brent a flyer for a Sigma Upsilon party called the Pimp and Ho Ball. “No,” he said. “They don’t invite guys.”

Well, that made sense. Little else about the day had. While she’d sat in the classroom, Michael had texted her about Big Lumpy’s death and the potential for bugs in Brent’s room and possibly even in his computers-he and Sam were dismantling the ones left at Madeline’s-and informed her that she should avoid going to his dorm room at any cost, not that that was something high on her list of desires, anyway. And he also told her about the conditions of Brent’s inheritance, which could be both dangerous and ludicrous. Michael didn’t want her to tell Brent about Big Lumpy’s death or his conditions until they were away from the school, since they didn’t know who might be listening in. Any college kid could be one of Yuri’s people for all any of them knew and Fiona should treat any and all of the university’s thirty thousand students as suspects.

Great.

And then he’d texted her again just a few minutes ago to tell her that they had a black-tie event to attend that evening and to find Brent appropriate clothing for it, as if she was his accommodating yet exceptionally hot aunt or, well, whatever. It was just another piece of an increasingly odd puzzle. Her main goal now was to keep Brent safe, but unfortunately that didn’t extend to his food choices, apparently.

Brent finally found the haute cuisine he was looking for-it wasn’t much more than a trolley with a man cooking rice in a wok over a Bunsen burner-in front of the Otto G. Richter Library and now that he had his food, it was like the kid turned on for the first time all day. He was making observations about the people walking by, asking Fiona what she thought about the history class (“Egregious,” was Fiona’s reply).

“Can I ask you a question?” Brent said. They were sitting across from each other at a small cafe table that overlooked a fountain surrounded by grass.

“That depends,” Fiona said. “Is it going to be some sort of disgusting come-on?”

“No,” Brent said. “I don’t think of you that way.”

“Why not?” Fiona wasn’t aghast. At least not entirely.

“You’re more, like, I don’t know, motherly, I guess.”

The rules for what constituted justifiable homicide were nebulous, but Fiona surmised that any man telling a woman she was motherly counted. “Go ahead,” she said.

“So, like, what would you do? Big Lumpy wants me to, like, be his stepson or something. Wants to get me into MIT and to work with the government and all that stuff, but I’m, like, not even sure what I’m going to have for dinner.”

Fiona wasn’t exactly equipped to deliver life advice. Her mantra all these long years usually boiled down to a simple “Why don’t we just shoot them?” which, when truly examined, didn’t seem like sound advice to give to a young, impressionable boy like Brent.

So Fiona asked Brent the one question she thought was banal enough not to drive him toward a full-time life of crime. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

“I am grown-up,” Brent said.

“You’re nineteen. That’s like being grown-up without any of the side benefits, like money or class or a plan. No offense, of course.”

Brent didn’t seem offended. It actually seemed to make him rather contemplative. He shoveled his mouth full of teriyaki chicken and rice and chewed with real determination, as if obliterating his rice would somehow bring about a universal truth or two.

“I guess I want to do stuff with computers,” he said, “but also something where I can get girls. Most computer guys? They don’t get many girls and I don’t want to be like that. I mean, I like role-playing games and stuff, but I’d rather have a real girl than, like, a really intimate relationship with an elf or an orc or some fey creature or something.”

“I don’t blame you,” Fiona said.

“Like, you and Michael? You’re pretty much a couple, right?”

“Sometimes.”

“But, like, okay, I mean, not to be gross, but, like, you guys have hit it, right?”

Fiona couldn’t decide if she wanted to be offended, which made her realize that she probably shouldn’t be. Brent meant no actual harm. He just didn’t know how to speak like a human being. “Yes,” she said, “we have had sexual relations in the past.”

“And that’s not because, like, he can analyze stuff, right? It’s because, like, he can see stuff and then, like, beat ass and stuff, right?”

“Among other things, but yes, I suppose that’s part of the allure.”

“Well, I want that, then,” he said.

“If you take Big Lumpy’s offer-whatever it is-you understand that the life you have now will no longer be the life you have, right?”

Brent shrugged. “My dad? Michael said he’s somewhere safe, but, like, I’m not stupid. I know my dad is nuts. He’s, like, clinical probably. I want to help him, but I also don’t want him to ruin my life. Do you know what I mean?”

Fiona knew exactly what he meant. He might love his father, but there was going to be a divide between them now larger than the one that already existed. Distance is always best when dealing with family members of dubious mental standing, Fiona had found. The Atlantic worked well in that regard, at least for her. “I understand,” she said.

“I don’t really have any other family here. And I’m apparently, like, good at something I didn’t know I was good at. I’m like Batman, but without the car or the freaky little friend. I could be down with that.”

“I guess,” Fiona said, “you have to decide, then, what you use your intelligence for. If he is going to somehow provide you an opportunity to change your life, it will be your choice how to spend the time.”

“Or, like, he could cut off my eyelids.”

What was it with everyone being afraid of getting their eyelids cut off by Big Lumpy? Even if Fiona told Brent that Big Lumpy was dead, she was sure he’d still fear this fate.

“Have you ever seen anyone who’s had their eyelids cut off?” she asked.

“No.”

“That’s because it probably never happens. You’d remember seeing something like that. It’s a good threat, though, because it’s pretty hard to imagine it not being horrifying.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.

“You do also have to think about your father,” she said. “I know what Michael told you and I know what you just told me, but the fact is, Brent, that you’re going to need help to care for him. And this business with the Russians might go away soon or it might linger. So you have to consider how best to help your father live a safe life, too. Nothing is permanent but family.”

Tears began to well up in Brent’s eyes, which was about the last thing Fiona needed to see. She’d much rather a man leer at her than cry on her, which was a personality glitch that she wasn’t proud of, but, well, there you go. No one’s perfect.

Brent sniffled once and Fiona thought, Okay, he’s got control of himself now… and then he broke into full-fledged shuddering sobs, and it occurred to Fiona for the first time during all of this that no nineteen-year-old should be faced with these kinds of problems, that the weight of what Brent was going through would be enough to drive anyone to the brink, much less a boy. What the hell were they doing at school? Trying to keep his life as normal as possible, but it was time to admit that nothing would ever be normal again for Brent Grayson.

She reached across the table and took Brent’s hand in hers. “It’s going to be okay,” she said.

“How?” he asked.

“Michael is going to fix it-you’ll see,” she said and for one of the first times in her life, Fiona realized how much she hoped that was true. That he’d be able to just fix it all and make everything right.

Brent blew his nose and then looked at his watch. “I’m going to be late for class.”

“Let’s not go,” Fiona said.

“I have to,” he said. “I’ll fail.”

“Have you ever failed a class in your entire life?”

“I’ve never gotten anything lower than a B.”

“Then you’re due an F,” Fiona said. “It will add character to you and women love character.”

“They do?”

“What could be more attractive than a computer genius who failed a computer class? You’ll be the bad boy.”

“I will?”

“You will,” she said. “Trust me. I’ve been with a lot of bad boys and failing was like second nature to them. It suggests a certain unpredictability that women admire.”

“Like Sam?”

Boys. Always with the wrong role models. “Like Sam,” Fiona said.

“I suppose I could do the wrong thing for the first time. Do you think we could get ice cream?”

“It’s not the first time,” Fiona said. “Getting involved with Yuri Drubich was a pretty big mistake.”

“But it’s going to turn out okay and I’m going to be rich.”

“Is that what you want? To be rich?” Fiona couldn’t believe the words coming from her mouth. Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone tells you you’re motherly and next thing you know, you’re dispensing hard-won life advice. Fiona frankly wished she could get back to advocating bullets and bombs, but the situation wasn’t quite right, not with the kid crying into his rice bowl and all that.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, when you get the conditions from Big Lumpy, you’re going to meet them just so that you can have money?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He shrugged, because that’s what he did in the absence of anything else he could possibly do. “I guess I need to know where my father is going to be. I mean, like, really. I know Michael and you and everyone are trying to protect me, and that’s totally cool, but I’m a grown man and I need to know the truth.”

Fiona didn’t think Brent was actually a grown man, but she understood his need for transparency and his need to manifest his own destiny, such as it was, so she decided to break the news to him and deal with whatever ramifications might come from Michael down the line. She was a grown woman. She didn’t need to ask for permission, after all.

But then her phone rang. “Living still?” Michael asked.

“We’re just about to leave campus for an adventure,” Fiona said.

“What kind of adventure?”

“Brent has never failed a class. Today seemed like the day to teach him how much fun that is. He’s expressed an interest in getting ice cream.”

“How’s his mental state?”

“Michael,” she said, “you need to tell him everything.”

“I know,” Michael said. “Do you think you can get him to agree to Big Lumpy’s provisos?”

“I don’t know if he wants to,” Fiona said.

“He doesn’t have to,” I said. “But I’m going to need him tonight. If we’re going to bring down Yuri Drubich and we’re going to ensure that Brent and his father are safe, he’s going to have to grow up fast.”

Across the table from her, Brent sat and quietly picked at his food. What had she been like at nineteen? Different, of course, but she’d grown up in a world where there was always something larger at stake. Independence. Freedom. Even if she didn’t believe in what everyone was fighting for, it had been a part of her life then and thus at nineteen she’d felt like she was a woman, though if photos were any clue, some of her fashion choices were utterly deplorable. Madonna made every young woman dress like an idiot, she supposed, at one point or another over the course of the last twenty-five years and she, sadly, had been no different. But Brent had real issues. Concrete ones-the death of his mother, his father’s descent into guilt and eventual madness, and then all of this. He may have had the outward shine of someone holding on to whatever youthful things he could clench, but the truth, she imagined, was far different.

“I think he already has,” Fiona said. “You need to explain to him all of the conditions. And Michael? Tell him what you would do.”

“What I would do doesn’t matter.”

“It does to him,” she said.

“Okay,” Michael said. “Put him on the phone.”

Fiona watched as Brent listened to Michael. He asked a few questions, but mostly he was quiet, until he finally said, “MIT sounds cool. And working for the government could be cool, too. But I don’t want the money. All I want for sure is for my father to be cared for. Is there a way to do that?”

Fiona didn’t know what Michael said right then, but she was sure that he would say that there was no problem getting that taken care of, even if it would prove to be the biggest problem he’d ever faced.