Flash Point

  The doctor Myra had sent had said that Gran could take as many pain pills as she needed, and Gran was balancing the desire to stay comfortable with the desire to stay lucid. The doctor had refused to say when the end might come, but he had visited every day—and what did that cost? Without Myra, Gran’s end-of-life might have been intolerable. Amy should be grateful to Myra. Especially since Amy sensed that Myra was sincere when she’d told Amy, “I lost my own mother a few years ago. I know how hard this is.” And yet Myra had the cruelty to somehow force Tommy onto the show, where he was frightened and bewildered and humiliated. How could one woman be so complicated?

  When Amy emerged from Gran’s room, Rafe stood in the living room. She said, “Is the show over?”

  “Not quite. Come on, Amy, let’s take a walk.”

  “Where?” She was tired of the hotel, tired of everything.

  “You’ll see.”

  They took an elevator to the basement. At the end of a dim corridor Rafe produced a key and unlocked a door marked AUTHORIZED EMPLOYEES ONLY. Amy said, “Where did you get the key?”

  He didn’t answer until they were on the other side of the door. “Bribery. It took a big part of last week’s salary. But maintenance staff always has at least one person who feels victimized, and you never know when you might need an escape hatch.”

  It didn’t look like an escape hatch; the dim, cavernous room was filled with unopened crates, broken furniture, stained mattresses, and a wall of equipment on metal shelves bolted to the wall. But Rafe led her through an unlocked door on the other side of the room, through a long, low tunnel with pipes overhead, and up a rickety flight of wooden steps. A door at the top said DOOR WILL LOCK AUTOMATICALLY BEHIND YOU. Then they were outside, standing in a clean alley with a bustling street at the far end.

  Amy peered down the alley. “That’s Fenton Street!”

  “With all its classy shops and all its armed guards to keep the peace for rich folk. Come on, you can pass. You look the part.”

  Amy wore her jeans, bronze-colored Vince sweater, and new calfskin sandals. For the first time she noticed that Rafe had shed his usual grubbies for jeans, a shirt, and boots that presumably Serena had picked out. Had he planned this even before the TV show came on?

  Fenton Street stood out in the economically desperate city like a diamond on a mangy dog. Luxurious shops, expensive restaurants, well-dressed people carrying shopping bags with bright logos. The April night was warm and sweet. Amy and Rafe peered into store windows, mock-arguing over the merits of antique desks, emerald necklaces, handbags of Komodo dragon hide. Nang’s Electronics had state-of-the-art electronics that did everything but take out the trash. Gradually Amy’s mood improved. Rafe bought them lattes at a little sidewalk café where the coffee was priced like fine wine, and Amy knew that, too, was a sacrifice.

  “So,” Rafe said, sipping his coffee as they watched people stroll by, “what’s your story, Amy? Are your parents gone?”

  “Yes. My father disappeared right after Kaylie was born, and my mother died in a car crash when I was four.”

  “My father abandoned us, too.”

  “That isn’t what I meant by ‘disappeared.’ I mean, literally. He was a war correspondent and he disappeared somewhere in Afghanistan. Nobody ever learned what had happened to him. Or if the government did, they didn’t tell my mother. Eventually he was declared legally dead, but no one really knows.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rafe said.

  Amy shrugged. “I don’t remember him at all. I remember my mother, but not very well. Gran raised us.”

  “And you had a happy, middle-class childhood.”

  She smiled. “How do you know that?”

  “All I have to do is look at you.”

  Amy wasn’t sure what he meant, or if she liked it. Was she really that transparent? Did he consider “middle-class” the same as “boring”? She said, “I did have a happy childhood, pre-Collapse. Gran was a scientist, working in a biotech lab. We had a nanny who took care of us while she was at work, Rosa Cortez. She was wonderful, too.”

  He stiffened slightly at the Latino name. “An illegal alien?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She went back to the Dominican Republic when I was twelve. When the Collapse came, she lost all hope of getting the rest of her family here, so she went home.”

  “And your grandmother lost her job?”

  “And her investments, which had mostly been in the biotech company she worked for. Gran believed in green. What about you? Same story?”

  But Rafe didn’t answer her. Instead he pointed discreetly to a girl passing on the sidewalk, dressed in miniskirt, combat boots, and poncho. “That’s something Waverly would wear.”

  “No, it’s not. The miniskirt is from Walmart and the poncho is ethnic from someplace in South America. Waverly doesn’t do ethnic.”

  He stared at her. “How do you know the skirt is from Walmart?”

  “Well, maybe not literally, but it’s rayon and badly made.”

  “You can tell that?”

  She grinned. “Rafe, anybody could tell that.”

  “Anyone female, you mean. If her clothes are so cheap, why wasn’t she being hassled for being on Fenton Street?”

  “Because that thick gold necklace she had on was genuine. A gift from a boyfriend, maybe.”

  “OK, Miss Fashionista, what about that woman? Her clothes, I mean?”

  “Vintage Chanel—1950s.”

  They fell into a game, with Rafe making up preposterous stories about passersby based on what Amy said about their clothes. That one was Marie Antoinette reincarnated; this one had escaped from Russian pirates; an innocuous-looking man was a robot designed not to be noticed. Amy giggled and egged him on. It was the best time she’d had since the shopping expedition with Violet.

  Rafe turned serious. “What’s your ambition, Amy? If the Collapse hadn’t happened, what would you do?”

  “Go to college and study neurology.” Should she tell Rafe about her phantoms? No. She’d never told anyone but Gran. Instead she said, “How the brain processes information—that fascinates me. Do you know about the new experiments on time perception?”

  “No. Tell me about it.”

  She did, explaining the research she’d read about in Gran’s flimsies. When the waiter came by for the second time to ask if they wanted anything else, Amy realized how long she’d been talking, and she blushed. “I’m sorry. I’ve been blathering.”

  “It was interesting,” Rafe said, and actually seemed to mean it. “You’re smart as well as pretty.”

  He said it awkwardly, like a person not used to paying compliments, and he didn’t seem to realize it was a cliché. Before Amy could answer, a man plopped down on the chair next to her. Amy could smell him: unwashed, unshaven, thin and ragged, he slumped in the elegant little wrought-iron chair for all of five seconds before security was on him. “Sir? You need to leave.”

  “I can pay!” he said, and began pulling dirty one-dollar bills from his pockets. People turned to look.

  Without any discussion, the security man had the guy on his feet, his arm behind him, escorted toward a waiting closed car. Amy looked at the greasy bills on the table.

  “But he has enough for coffee!”

  Rafe said, “Spoiling the ambience.”

  Amy darted forward, grabbed the money, and ran to the car just as the man was being shoved in. The inside of the car was nothing but an empty space, seats removed, with a steel grill behind the driver. Three other ragged people already huddled on the floor. Amy pushed the bills at the ousted man and stared defiantly at the security officer. She saw him take in her clothes, her shining hair, her makeup, and make his decision.

  “Thank you, miss. Appreciate it.” The car door slammed, the vehicle pulled away, and the security officer strolled off.

  Rafe was by her side. “You shouldn’t have done that, Amy.”

  “It’
s not fair!”

  “None of it is fair. But don’t endanger yourself.”

  “Like you did joining that protest against Pylon outside the TLN Building? I saw you with a TIMES BE TOUGH MAN sign!”

  “You did? I didn’t see you.”

  She didn’t want to tell him about being nearly trampled, if it hadn’t been for Cai and Tommy. Instead she said, “Gran says the depression is starting to lift.”

  “I think she’s right. But a lot of people have slipped too far down the economic scale to ever recover.”

  “‘Ever’ is a long time.”

  “You’re right. I stand corrected. Amy, I’ve wanted to tell you that—”

  A car screeched to the curb, even more shocking in that cultured, cheerful, well-mannered place than the homeless man had been. Alex Everett opened the door. “Get in, please. Now.”

  Rafe didn’t look surprised, and after a moment neither was Amy. They’d been tracked through their cells, of course. She gave Alex her sweetest smile. “I think we’re not ready to go back yet.”

  “I think you are,” Alex said, and a certain quality of weariness about him caught Amy’s attention. A phantom leaped into her mind: a squirrel clinging desperately to a branch, trying to not fall. But . . . Alex Everett? A squirrel?

  Rafe said slowly, “Something has happened.”

  “Yes. Get in. No, Amy, it’s not your grandmother. . . . I’m sorry, I should have said that right away. No one is hurt. But you must come back now.”

  They got into the car and it sped back to the hotel.

  * * *

  “I thought the contractual rules were very clear,” Myra said. Only a throbbing of the skin at her temple belied her calm, set face. “Clear enough that half of the cast would not betray them. Plus one hanger-on.”

  Amy and Rafe had not been the only ones who had left the hotel. Across the table from Myra and Alex, in what was evidently the TLN suite, sat Rafe, Amy, Cai, and Kaylie. How had Cai and Kaylie got out? Amy didn’t know, but what mattered was not so much their escape as their destination.

  “A dance club!” Myra said, and her tone might as well have said “a circle of hell!” “Cai, how could you be so stupid? You must have known you’d be recognized instantly.”

  No one had recognized Rafe and Amy. But the people on Fenton Street hadn’t been in the show’s demographic; Fenton Street was mostly older, richer, more sedate people who probably found Taunton Life Network vulgar and sleazy. Well, it was. Besides, Rafe and Amy didn’t look like Cai. At least half of the Internet furor was over him, mostly from girls.

  Kaylie said meekly, “It was my idea, Ms. Townsend, not Cai’s. Blame me.”

  Amy looked sharply at her sister. Meekness was not part of Kaylie’s character. But neither was stupidity. If Kaylie had talked a reluctant, infatuated Cai into a dance club, it was because Kaylie had wanted to be seen there with him.

  Amy said, “But what actually happened, Myra? Isn’t this just more PR for the show?”

  “What ‘actually happened’ was a riot. Cai was mobbed, the cops were called, the club ended up trashed, to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars. But you’re right, Amy, all of that might just have been PR except for the fact that the mayor’s daughter was there, she got injured in the fight, and the mayor called Mr. Taunton.”

  Aha, thought Amy, just as the phantom leapt into her mind: the squirrel hanging from a tree branch. But she never got two phantoms so close together, and never the same one repeated. And Myra, helplessly hanging without a net? Myra Townsend? Myra didn’t care that the mayor’s daughter had been injured. She cared that Mr. Taunton was unhappy with her.

  Kaylie repeated, “I’m sorry.” Her big green eyes filled with tears. Amy could have told her that was a futile tactic with Myra.

  “I think, Miss Kent, that you should not visit Cai again until the season’s filming has ended.”

  Rafe said easily, “And when might that be, Myra? Three more episodes, right?”

  “Yes,” Myra said, evidently too angry to remember that she had refused to give out this information earlier. “Surely even young love can wait another few weeks.”

  “Cai won’t wait,” Kaylie said confidently, dropping her meekness and meeting Myra glare for glare. “He wants me here. Besides, I live here. My grandmother and sister are here.”

  “If I say you cannot be here, then you will not be here. We’ll locate you in another hotel, at our expense, of course. With a chaperone. I’m sure your grandmother will agree.”

  “She won’t!”

  “Then we will have to relocate her, too. Which may not be good for her precarious health.”

  “You wouldn’t dare!”

  “I will do what is best for the show, for you, and for your grandmother. After discussing it fully with her, of course, including the need for your safety.”

  Kaylie glared at Myra. “OK, I’ll move. But Cai and I will just see each other outside the hotel!”

  Myra smiled and said nothing. After a moment of uncertainty, Kaylie smiled, too. Neither smile conveyed pleasure. Amy looked at Cai. She had no phantom in her mind, but he sure looked like a hanging squirrel to her.

  Twenty-one

  SUNDAY

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON Waverly said to Amy, “So you and Rafe are a couple now?”

  Amy stepped up the speed on her treadmill. She and Waverly were the only ones in the hotel gym, Waverly dressed in a lululemon workout outfit that Amy had priced online at several hundred dollars. Waverly’s blonde hair was pulled into a ponytail and she wore no makeup. She looked beautiful even while sweaty. Amy wore her old yoga pants with a hole in one knee and a tank top that could have been a lot cleaner. For ten minutes the girls had worked out in silence, with Waverly impressive on the Stairmaster and Amy trying to not notice.

  “Rafe and I are just friends,” she said over the sound of the treadmill, which was louder than it should be. You’d think that a classy hotel like this would have quieter equipment.

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  Amy turned off the treadmill. It slowed and stopped with a malfunctional whine. She wiped sweat off her face. “What did you hear, Waverly?”

  “That you and Rafe escaped last night for a little couple time while everyone else was watching your sister’s riot on the Internet.”

  “It was not ‘couple time,’” Amy said, irritated, “and it was not ‘my sister’s riot.’ How did you hear that Rafe and I left the Fairwood anyway?”

  “There are precious few secrets in this place,” Waverly said, and that at least was true. “OK, so you and Rafe are ‘just friends.’ Despite the way he looks at you. So tell me something else: What’s eating Violet?”

  “What do you mean? Violet’s fine.”

  “Have you seen her this morning?”

  “No.” Myra had given Amy the day off. Amy had woken when Gran did at four a.m. Gran had been in so much pain that Amy, after frantic calls to the doctor and to Myra, had increased her pain medication. That helped, but Amy had found it hard to go back to sleep. When she did, she slept until noon. She left Gran, who was feeling much better, with the nursing aide and came down to the gym, hoping a workout would restore some energy. So far this had not happened.

  Waverly said, “Well, I saw Violet at breakfast. She alternated between gloomy and nasty. I thought you might know what happened with her.”

  “Like you care,” Amy said.

  “You’re right, I don’t.” Waverly lay down on a mat and began push-ups. “I don’t like weaklings.”

  “Violet is not a weakling!”

  “Yes, she is, and you’re just too trusting to see it. But I’ll tell you something I’ve learned: You’re not.”

  Amy grimaced. She was not going to be taken in by flattery from Waverly.

  “I misjudged you,” Waverly said, not even breathing hard. Five, six, seven push-ups—she was strong. “You’re actually a formidable opponent.”

  “We’re not each other’s opponents.” r />
  “The hell we’re not. But let me tell you—no, not here.”

  Waverly stood up—still not breathing hard—and took Amy’s arm. Amy followed her out of the gym and into the locker room, where it would have been suicide to record anything; other hotel guests stripped here. Nonetheless, Waverly breathed her words into Amy’s ear.

  “My father has a lot of money—I’m sure you know that. He also has considerable resources of other kinds. I had his security people run deep backgrounds on all of you. Violet is not what she seems. For one thing, she’s not eighteen.”

  “So she turned nineteen recently? Big deal!”

  “She’s twenty-six. With a criminal record. And ‘Violet Sanderson’ is not her real name.”

  “You’re lying!” Amy pulled away from Waverly. But despite herself, small things that had nagged at her mind before now sprang into it. Violet’s seemingly long dance history, filled with so many stories—would an eighteen-year-old have had time for all that? Violet’s saying she’d planned on watching the show’s debut on a TV in a bar, when the drinking age in this state was twenty-one. Violet’s one, offhand reference to trying out for the chorus of the musical Great Day in the Morning, which Amy vaguely remembered as having opened and closed, a failure, while Amy was in the sixth grade. At the time she’d thought she must have been wrong about the date—but what if she wasn’t?

  Waverly said, “No, I’m not lying. You’re too trusting.”

  Like Amy hadn’t heard that before. She scowled at Waverly. “I don’t trust you. Why are you even telling me all this?”

  “I can be trustworthy, but I’m out for myself first. So is everybody else, but most people don’t admit it. I do. That makes me honest. And I’m telling you ‘all this’ because I think that you and Rafe are my best potential allies here. Tommy is ludicrous, Violet deceptive without my knowing what she’s really after, and Cai is being led around by the nose by your little sister, who nobody in their right mind would trust. I’d like to form a mutual-help pact with you and Rafe.”

  “No.” Amy already had a pact with Rafe and Violet—not that it had yet done any of them much good.