Pinatubo II

  Chapter 4

  Next morning found them looking over outdoor patio breakfast options in the swirling aroma rising from cups of Ténéré Dark. The aqua blue of the Gaweye pool glinted in the morning light from its oblique corners. Vince at first reacted to the hot morning sun, but sitting at a parasol shaded table he relaxed as a gentle breeze rustled cool through the palm fronds.

  “Just guessing from last night, Vince, don’t get me wrong,” Brad said. “But I would say you’ve got a reengineering design for your wife.”

  Vince threw his menu down on the table, squinting at Brad.

  “Man, we used to talk.” He shook his head. “But she can be so harsh.”

  “Maybe you’re too sensitive.”

  “You my mother?”

  “Nope.”

  Vince took a sip of coffee, and a deep breath.

  “Listen up on this Brad. Take a typical day when I’m at home. I get up in the morning real quiet like and start working on a project or two. That’s my most productive time of day, first thing in the morning. But as soon as my wife gets up, she’s on my case with her issues. Like she needs me to go get groceries or whatever. And when she wants something done, that means not some time that morning or what would work best for me that evening, not even in two minutes but right fucking now.”

  “I see.” Brad nodded. “But why doesn’t she get the groceries?”

  “She doesn’t feel like it! But I’ll get to more on that.”

  “So off I go with her grocery store list or whatever,” Vince said. “And that’s how it goes through the rest of the day. She gets what she wants and I get pissed off. Passive aggressive, that’s my psycho adjective. Being subconsciously passive, I fit what I need to do in when I can, and always last. There I flounder in the evening, my least productive time. By then I’m so pissed—my aggressive part has set in.”

  Brad pulled his chair in a little closer.

  “I think Haydon and Jackie have issues like that.”

  “The Mars pair bond,” Vince said. “You part of the voting audience?”

  “No. But you hear about them everywhere. They’re the latest romance story around, am I right?”

  “Classic case of people living in fantasy. Jackie’s the first woman of child bearing age in our grand extraterrestrial experiment. I wouldn’t call it romance. But everyone sure knows who they are and the details of their lives and their launch date. People love stories, and a love story in some faraway place or now a faraway planet catches everyone’s attention.”

  “Well, they get the Planet B option untainted by any climate crisis.”

  “Climate crisis?” Vince’s voice dropped to a hush. “No one back home talks about that. In the news its change isn’t it...not crisis.”

  “Really?” Brad’s look lost some gleam and he spoke softer. “Maybe not your guys’ end of the planet.” But he shrugged and nodded at Vince. “So give me more on your love story then.”

  “Love...yeah, maybe when we first got together.” Vince looked at Brad. “Look my wife just doesn’t like grocery shopping. She just doesn’t like a lot of things. When I hear that, my deep psyche kicks in…always try to please and appease those around me.” He paused. “You and my mother got it right. Extra sensitive, that’s another psycho analysis of my personality type. It exhausts my type to set required boundaries, to make it clear to others what I find fair. Or not fair!”

  Vince bounced his fist on the table, staring at a palm frond dangling from the roof of their sunshade.

  “The thing is, I can’t fucking change my personality type. Why doesn’t science devise psycho surgery, the more invasive the better? Instead of this Mars Mission technology. Anyway I go along with what she wants, and that stupid naïve part of me hopes she’ll realize she needs to do something in return for me later. Yeah, forget that.”

  “You ever talk about it? With her I mean.” Brad said. “I hear Jackie and Haydon have a relationship counsellor. Gonna be remote from Earth when they get to Mars though.”

  They handed their menus to the waiter as they selected breakfast orders.

  “To have effective results from a counsellor, you have to hear the counsel. My wife’s type, whatever that may be, has one distinct trait. She does not listen well. I mean that’s another issue. I detest repeating what I’ve just said. Or getting cut off in a conversation—which she does all the time.”

  Vince paused, jiggling at the arrangement of his knife and fork on their napkin.

  “The thing that comes out of her, once we get on talking terms for a while is ‘can you do this whatever-it-is for me?’. I feel like a servant boy with a task, or a dog on fetch duty. She always finds a chore for me to do, every time I’m in her presence. Okay if she were doing something in return, something meaningful to me …”

  “How do you feel in your relationship?” Brad cut in. “First thing in your mind.”

  Vince’s hand paused with the cutlery. “Manipulated, man, not just that but controlled and used. Yeah, that. You analyzing me? Thanks. I mean she couldn’t give the slightest shit about what’s important to me. She’s good at manipulating and controlling. I’m pathetic. I have no energy for the power struggle and in the end ninety percent of my life energy goes into playing out her script.”

  Brad took a sip of coffee, nodding.

  “I’d be long gone from this marriage.” Vince pushed his fork and knife apart off the napkin edges. “The thing is,” he choked, “sorry…I just want my little daughter to have a good life, and a stable safe home.”

  “Yeah, I hear you. Kids are everything.”

  “But look at the way things are now! My daughter’s back in Calgary, I’m here in Africa and I see her camera image in a Holo-Skype cube or I hear her voice or we text.” Vince half smiled through wet eyes. “She loves texting words, you know. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do for her. I mean I do appreciate what my wife does for our daughter, don’t get me too wrong, and maybe she’s growing at her own pace. My mom and dad are at least friends in their own way; it hasn’t come out that way for me yet, for us.”

  “Each relationship has issues. Could be there’s something else you can do for your daughter.”

  “Like?”

  ”Well, as my wife would say, check in with the universe,” Brad said. “She’s like that. I’m kinda more down to earth. I mean I fly, but rarely above cloud base.”

  “The worst of it is when I’m the target, not other people. When my wife talks and even her parents say she has a sharp tongue, it feels like hanging in a sack kicked with a sharp pointy shoe. When she has a project going—she’s the project manager and no one rests unless and until she says so. You’re exhausted it’s your regular day to do something else, well tough shit. You do it and you do it now.”

  “That’s one of Jackie and Haydon’s issues,” Brad said. “She is the commanding officer.” He looked at Vince. “My wife can be the boss, but only sometimes.”

  “Really?” Vince went on. “Yeah well, the thing going through my wife’s mind any given day is her house sized up against others nearby. Life is all about the neighbourhood and the neighbours. There’re some neighbourhoods you wanna move to, and others you keep far away. Her grand plan is we make a move out to Rocky View into an estate house like my father’s. We’ve moved what five times now, always to a larger house and not just for storage space. The money coming into her household has to show like a billboard to those around—it’s all about look at me. The house you occupy scores you points or takes points away. No use any of my social science talk in our household. I get firsthand experience on beliefs translated into behavior.”

  “You sound kinda like my wife,” Brad said. “She calls the consumer outlook pure hypnosis with a big boost by advertising. She talks about starting a business, like ‘The Party’s Over: The Gift of a Low Impact Lifestyle’ counselling service. With a program de-contaminating the mind from advertising.”

  “How do you get clients?” Vince brushed his eyes with
his napkin. “Can I send my wife your way?”

  “She says advertising doesn’t sell on usefulness. Instead the business model seeks to keep people dissatisfied. What we see in Holo cube adverts, show you in your dream-come-true role, right along with the advertiser’s product. She says self-restraint has potential.”

  “Self-restraint?” Vince scoffed. “Yeah, okay forget that.”

  “My wife also says you wanna change. The client’s motivated by some kinda trauma.” Brad said. “You know people. They gotta lose a job or go bankrupt or get a divorce.”

  Vince looked him straight in the eye for a second.

  “Life’s tough my friend,” Brad said. Then he grinned. “But you know, depends how you look at things. Like my cousin in Idaho always says ‘won’t matter in a hundred years.’”

  They sat back as the waiter set their meals before them.

  “I wish I could have half your way of looking at things,” Vince said.

  “Hey hey hey.” Brad dug into his eggs, “There’s nothing you can do about what other people do anyway. You might as well take it easy, do what you can and have fun with it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know, sounds like the best thing you’ve got is your daughter.” Brad shrugged. “Hey, you become her storybook hero.”

  “Hero? That’s bullshit—life’s not a fairy tale.”

  “Might be for her,” Brad said. His smile dimmed. “And there’s plenty of room for meaningful action in my version of the near future world.”

  Vince glanced at Brad.

  “You know what our project’s really about?” Brad’s voice changed.

  “Atmospheric tests. Reaction rates. Someone needs data for that Terraform Mars operation.”

  “Terraforming creates an atmosphere,” Brad said carefully. “Geoengineering adjusts an atmosphere. Like fine tuning the climate.”

  “Geoengineering.” Vince raised his eyebrows. “You think that’s what we’re doing?”

  “Someone wants data on adjusting our atmosphere.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “North American air regulations would totally prohibit any of this back home. So that’s why they want us here in Africa, unrestricted.”

  Vince stared, and his Jeenyus buzzed. He read the text from his daughter, now completely ignoring the pain of his fully emerging smile. “Hey check this out. My girl says they’re using the SMART board at school today but they encountered some problems, look here, read.” He showed the visiscreen to Brad. Teknologee issues daddy. You draw and the line goes in the rong plas.

  Brad scanned over the message more than once, glancing at Vince. They beamed at each other as parents who dream of their children’s tomorrow.

  “Hey, we gotta get over to that warehouse,” Brad said. “Check out the balloons.”

  Vince felt a rising excitement on the flying idea. And a sinking chill as he realized he’d have to listen more to Brad’s take on their project.