He half told, half acted out the story, going so far as to lie on the floor and imitate the Creature’s backstroke in its fabulous water ballet with Julie Adams.
His audience’s consensus: Great performance, but the story was “just like Anaconda.”
Finally the parents started arriving and Jack explained that Gia wasn’t feeling well—“Something she ate.” When the townhouse was cleared, he ran upstairs and knocked on the bathroom door.
“You okay?”
The door opened. An ashen Gia leaned on the edge of the door, hunched over.
“Jack,” she gasped. A tear ran down her left cheek. “Call the EMTs. I’m bleeding. I think I’m losing the baby!”
“EMTs, hell,” he said, lifting her in his arms. “I’ll have you in the ER before they even start their engines.”
Terror and anguish were icy fingers around his throat, making it hard to draw a full breath, but he couldn’t let any of that show: Vicky stood at the bottom of the staircase, fist jammed against her mouth, eyes wide with fear.
“Mom’s not feeling good, Vicks,” he said. “Let’s get her to the hospital.”
“What’s wrong?” she said, her voice high-pitched, barely audible.
“I don’t know.”
And he didn’t, really, though he feared the worst.
11
Throughout the nail-biting two-hour wait outside the Mount Sinai ER, while interns, residents, ER docs, and Gia’s obstetrician did whatever it is they do in these situations, Jack tried to keep Vicky occupied. Not necessary. Before long she found another girl her age to talk to. Jack envied her ability to strike up a friendship anywhere.
He tried to take his mind off Gia and what might be happening in that treatment room by shuffling through some leftover section of the Times. He spotted a familiar name in the Sunday Styles section: “New York’s most eligible bachelor, Dormentalist Church guru Luther Brady, was observed in close conversation with Meryl Streep at the East Hampton Library Fund charity ball.”
Not exactly an abstemious lifestyle.
He looked up as a nurse approached. She started to speak, then broke into a laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’m sorry. When your wife said to look for a man dressed like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, I thought she was kidding.”
By now Jack had gotten used to the stares from the other people in the waiting room. He’d left the mask, gloves, and feet back at the house, but still wore the green, finned bodysuit.
“It is Halloween, you know. How is she?”
“Dr. Eagleton will tell you all about it.”
They followed her to a treatment room where they found Gia propped up on a gurney. Her color was better but she still looked drawn. Vicky darted to her side and they hugged.
As Jack hung back, letting them have their moment, a tall, slim woman with salt-and-pepper hair stepped in. She wore a long white coat.
“You’re the father?” she said, eyeing his costume. When Jack nodded, she held out her hand. “I’m Dr. Eagleton.”
“Jack,” he said. She had a firm grip. “How’s she doing?”
Dr. Eagleton didn’t look exactly comfortable discussing this with a man in a rubber monster suit, but she bore with it.
“She’s lost a lot of blood, but the contractions have stopped.”
“She’s going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
“And the baby?”
“Ultrasound shows no problem—good position, steady heart rate.”
Jack closed his eyes and let out a relieved breath. “Thanks. Thank you very much.”
“I want to keep her overnight, though.”
“Really? Is there still a danger?”
“She should be fine. The further along the pregnancy, the less likely a miscarriage. Gia’s in her twentieth week and it’s rare after that. So I think we’re in good shape. Just the same, I’d like to be sure.”
Jack glanced at Gia. “What caused this?”
Dr. Eagleton shrugged. “The most common causes are a dead or grossly defective fetus.” Jack’s stab of alarm must have shown on his face because she quickly added, “But that’s not the case here. Sometimes it’s trauma, and sometimes it just…happens.”
Jack didn’t like the sound of that. For a while now it seemed that things—bad things, at least—didn’t “just happen” in his life.
Jack stepped over to the gurney and took Gia’s hand. She squeezed his.
“You’ll take care of Vicky until I get home tomorrow, won’t you?”
Gia had no family in the city. Everyone was back in Iowa.
Jack smiled. “You don’t even have to ask.” He winked at Vicky. “Vicks and I are going straight home to do flaming shooters of Cuervo Gold.”
As Vicky giggled, Gia said, “Jack, that’s not funny.”
Jack slapped his forehead. “That’s right! She’s got school tomorrow. Okay, Vicks: only one.”
As Gia went on about Vicky’s schedule, Jack wondered at the awesome responsibility of caring for a nine-year-old girl, even for a day.
He’d stepped into Family Affair—without Mr. French.
Cordova and the Dormentalists weren’t half as scary.
Tuesday
1
Jack spent the night in the guest bedroom at the Sutton Square place. Lucky for him, Vicky turned out to be pretty self-sufficient.
More than self-sufficient.
Next morning, after showering and getting herself dressed, she insisted on making Jack bacon and eggs before it was time for the school bus. Bacon here meant strips of bacon-flavored soy.
She seemed in good spirits, not the least bit worried. Dr. Eagleton had told her that her mother was going to be fine and that was enough for Vicky. If Mom’s doctor said so, that’s how it was going to be.
Oh, to be nine again and have that kind of faith.
As he watched her bustle around the kitchen—she knew exactly what she needed and where everything was—and listened to her chatter, he felt his heart swell. Vicky was going to be a wonderful big sister to the new baby.
New baby…his appetite took a nose dive. He hadn’t heard any bad news, so he gathered Gia had had a quiet night. He hoped so.
During breakfast Jack called Gia to get a progress report—and give one.
She’d had a good night but wouldn’t be released until late afternoon, which meant Jack had to arrange to be home to meet Vicks when she returned from school.
No problemo.
Vicky talked to her mother for a few minutes, then it was time to run. He walked her to the bus and gave her his cell phone number, telling her to call if she needed anything—anything.
Then he showered, shaved, and headed across town to Tenth Avenue.
2
Pedestrians flowed around the sandwich board sign propped in the center of the sidewalk.
ERNIE’S ID
ALL KINDS
PASSPORT
TAXI
DRIVER’S LICENSE
No business at this hour, so Jack had Ernie all to himself.
“Hey, Jack,” Ernie said from the rear of the tiny store. He stood maybe five-five, weighed a hundred pounds after a five-pound meal, had a droopy, hangdog face with perpetually sad eyes, and spoke at a hundred-and-twenty miles an hour. “How y’doin’, how y’doin’. Do the thing with the door there, will ya?”
Jack locked it and flipped the OPEN sign to CLOSED. On the way to the rear, next to the bootleg videos, he passed a display pole festooned with high-end handbags—Kate Spade, Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada—none of them the real deal. Not with twenty-dollar price tags. Everything Ernie carried was a knockoff of one sort or another.
“Into women’s accessories now?” Jack said as he reached the display case that served as the rear counter.
“What? Oh, yeah. Outta towners come in and buy three, four at a time. Can’t hardly keep ’em in stock.” He pulled a manila envelope from behind the counter. “Wait’ll you see
this, Jacko. Wait’ll you see!”
He dumped the contents onto the scratched glass: a driver’s license with Jack’s photo and two credit cards—a Visa gold and a platinum AmEx.
“That’s it?”
Jack couldn’t see what all the excitement was about. Ernie furnished him with this sort of thing all the time.
“Checkitout, checkitout.” He was literally vibrating with excitement. “Check the license.”
Jack leaned over for a closer look, then picked it up. His picture, but the name was Jason Amurri, and the language was…
“French?”
“It’s Swiss,” Ernie said, “and it’s perfect. And the credit cards are both exact duplicates of his, right down to the expiration date and the verification number. Just don’t use ’em or you’ll blow everything.”
“And just who is Jason Amurri?”
Ernie grinned. “Lives in Vevey. That’s on the Swiss Riviera—you know, Montreux, Lake Geneva, those kinda places. Céline Dion and Phil Collins and people like that got homes around there.”
“Okay. He lives in a ritzy area in a foreign country. That’s a good start. Give me the details.”
“You’re gonna be impressed.”
Jack had set strict criteria for this set of ID. He hoped Ernie had come through.
“I’ll decide that after you tell me.”
Ernie told him.
And Jack was impressed.
“Nice work,” he said, forking over Ernie’s stiff fee. “You deserve every penny.”
“I do.” If he rubbed his hands together any faster his palms would catch fire. “I do, I do.”
“Looks like I’m going to have to get a room at the Plaza,” Jack said.
“Nah. Every nobody who thinks they’re somebody stays at the Plaza. I mean, they got rooms for a couple hundred and change. You need better than that. You want someplace where the money that knows goes. The Ritz Carlton…now there’s a hotel.”
“If you say so.”
Maybe Mrs. Rossi hadn’t been so overly generous with her advance. This was turning out to be one expensive fix.
3
Instead of the bubbly Christy, the equally bubbly Jeanie was on duty at the Dormentalist temple’s metal detector this morning. She checked her computer, made a call, then guided Jack through the detector.
“Your RT will be with you in a minute, Mr. Farrell.”
“RT?”
“Sorry. Reveille Tech. Oh, here she comes now.”
Jack saw a large frizzy blond woman waddling his way on legs like Doric pillars. Instead of the ubiquitous uniform, she wore a sleeveless yellow tunic that looked a size too small for her. Maybe two sizes. And of course she was grinning ear to ear.
In a high-pitched, lightly French-accented voice, she introduced herself as Aveline Lesueur and led him to the double elevator bank. When she called him “Jack” it sounded like “Jock.”
In the elevator on the way up he noticed a sweaty odor about her. He was glad it was a short trip.
On the fourth floor she pointed out the Male RC Changing Room, explaining that RC meant Reveille Candidate and he should go in, pick out a locker, and change into the RC uniform he’d find there.
“Like yours?”
She shook her head. “I am afraid not. This is only for RTs, and only while we are conducting sessions.”
“A gray one then?”
“Not until you qualify for FI—Fusion Initiate—status. Until then you must wear RC colors.”
Although her English was good, she still hadn’t mastered the “th” sound, resorting to a soft “z” instead.
In the Male RC Changing Room—he was surprised they didn’t call it the MRCCR—Jack found a dozen lockers. Ten stood open, each containing a dark green jumpsuit, each with a key in its lock. He shucked his street clothes and slipped into the jumpsuit. It was too big for him but he wasn’t going to bother searching for one that fit. He noticed it had no pockets—just a tiny pouch on the left breast big enough for the locker key and nothing else. He’d have to leave his wallet and effects in the locker.
Jack smiled. Perfect.
Back in the hall Aveline led him to a door labeled RF-3. When he asked, she explained that the RF stood for Reveille Facility.
Jamie Grant’s words from yesterday, when he’d asked her if the Reveille Sessions were just a series of questions, came back to him.
Oh, no. There’s so much more to it than that…
Her smile when she’d said it still bothered him.
RF-3 turned out to be a windowless cubicle furnished with a desk, two chairs, and a white mouse. The mouse’s wire cage sat on a pedestal to the right of the desk. Aveline indicated the chair before the desk for Jack. He sat and found himself facing a horizontal copper pipe fastened to the front panel of the desk by six-inch brackets at each end. A wire ran from the middle of the pipe to a black box the size of a loaf of bread on the desk; another wire ran from the box to the mouse cage.
He didn’t have to fake a baffled look. “You’re going to explain this to me, right?”
“But of course,” she replied as she seated herself on the other side of the desk. “As I am sure you know, if you have read The Book of Hokano, the purpose of the Reveille Sessions is to awaken your Personal Xelton, the hemi-xelton asleep within you.”
Jack kept glancing at the mouse.
“Right. But what—?”
She held up a hand. “To awaken it, you must explore your present life and your PX’s past lives.” She pulled a folder from the desk’s top drawer. “We do this by asking you a series of questions. Some of them will seem very personal, but you must trust that none of what you say will ever leave this room.”
Not according to Jamie Grant.
Jack leaned back and rubbed his temples, using the motion to cover a look at the grille over the ventilation duct. Between two of the slats he spotted something that looked like a tiny lens pointed his way. Somewhere in the building an AV feed of the goings-on here was being monitored and most likely recorded.
“I trust you,” Jack said.
“Good. This is your first step in a marvelous adventure of discovery. The memories from your PX’s multiple lives will sound a reveille and awaken it. After that you will begin the task of reconnecting your PX to its Hokano half, allowing them to fuse and become whole again. It is a long process, requiring many years of classes and sessions, but in the end you will be a superior being, unafraid to accept any challenge, able to overcome any obstacle, able to cure all ills and live forever after the GF.”
She threw her arms wide at the end of her recitation and Jack jumped at the sight of a sea urchin in each armpit. Then he realized it was hair.
“Wow,” he said, trying not to stare. “The GF is the Great Fusion, right?”
She lowered her arms and her accent thickened. “Yes. That is when the world as we know it will reunite with the Hokano world. It will be Paradise Regained, but only those who have fused their PX with its HX will survive.”
“I want to be in that number,” Jack said.
But what did the damn mouse have to do with it?
“Wonderful, Jack. Let us get started then. First you must grip that bar before you with both hands. Grip very tight.”
Jack did as he was told. “What does this do?”
“This makes certain that you are telling the truth.”
Jack looked offended. “I’m not a liar.”
“Of course you are not. But we all hide truths from ourselves, oui? Repress acts we are ashamed of. We all have ‘vital lies’ that get us through the day. We must pierce our self deceptions and thrust to the heart of truth. And do you know where that heart is? In your Personal Xelton. Your PX knows the truth.”
“I thought my PX was asleep.”
“It is, but that does not mean it is not aware. When it hears an untruth it will react.”
“How?”
“You will not notice it, and neither will I. Only FAs who have reached FL-8 can per
ceive it unassisted.”
“Then how will we know?”
She tapped the black box. “This is an XSA—a Xelton Signal Amplifier. It cannot amplify the signal enough for us to perceive it, but that mouse will know.”
“Okay.” Jack felt like he’d stepped through the Looking Glass and wound up chatting with the Mad Hatter. “But how will the mouse tell us?”
“Answer a question with an untruth and you will see.” She opened the folder. “Let us begin, shall we?”
“Okay. But I’ve got to tell you, I lead a very boring life—boring job, no family, no pets, never go anywhere.”
“And that is why you are here—to change all that, oui?”
“Oui. I mean, right.”
“Well then, hold on to the XS conductor bar in front of you there and we will begin.”
Jack tightened his grip. He felt unaccountably tense.
He kept his eyes on the little white mouse sniffing nervously around its wire mesh cage as Aveline asked a string of innocuous questions—about the weather, about how he arrived here today, and so on—all of which he answered truthfully.
Then she stared at him and said, “Very well, Jack. This is an important question: What is the worse thing you have ever done?”
The directness took him by surprise. “As I told you, my life’s not interesting enough for me to do anything wrong.”
The mouse squeaked and jumped as if it had received a shock. Jack jumped too.
“What happened?”
“You told an untruth. Perhaps an unconscious untruth,” she added quickly, “but your xelton heard it and reacted.”
The untruth hadn’t been unconscious. He’d done lots of wrong—at least by most people’s criteria.
Aveline cleared her throat. “Perhaps we are being too general here. Let us try this: Have you ever stolen anything?”
“Yes.”
The mouse didn’t react.
“What was the first thing you ever stole?”
Jack remembered the moment. “When I was in second grade I remember stealing an Almond Joy from a Rexall drugstore.”