Paolo Bacigalupi - The Doubt Factory

With Moses, Alix didn’t think about any of that. She just was. She walked beside him because she liked it, held his hand because she wanted to, kissed him how she liked, and liked what he did to her in turn.

Alix caught him looking at her. “What?”

“Beats me. You were the one smiling.”

Alix felt herself blush. She looked away. Okay. Maybe still a little self-conscious .

Out on the river, a man was sculling downstream. Strong strokes, silent and smooth. They stepped off the trail to watch.

“Watch out for the poison ivy,” Alix warned.

“Which one’s that?”

“Seriously? There’s something you don’t know?” Alix asked. “I thought you knew everything.” She pointed out the shiny leaves. “Those ones. Three-leaf clusters.”

Moses frowned, staring at the plant for a serious moment, seeming to lock it into his mind. “Never needed to learn about plants. I’m a city boy.”

“And what city was that?”

“Chicago. Then Vegas. After I started living with my uncle.”

“Chicago?” she prompted.

“You’re the inquisition today, aren’t you?”

Alix felt a little annoyed at the implication. “You know, you stalked me for like eight months and did background checks on all my friends and family. I’m still catching up here. Help me out, will you?”

Moses laughed. “All right. I hear you. I’m not used to talking about this stuff. My uncle always said it was smarter not to tell too much real stuff. It’s better to separate… different parts of your life.”

“Like targets and friends.”

Moses blew out his breath. “Yeah. So, with my family… I don’t know. It was a long time ago. My dad worked for the city. He was an engineer. Built overpasses and stuff. My mom was an actress before they got married. She was in plays, little parts, though. Nothing big. Later on, she was an office manager for a company. Middle-class life, all that.”

“Were they nice?”

“I know I liked being with them. I liked my dad when he came home from work, and we’d do these puzzles together when I was real little….” He shrugged. “I don’t know. They didn’t really get a chance to screw me up much. My uncle did all that.”

“They sound nice.” Alix tried to remember what she’d been like when she was that age. Wondering what her life would feel like if it were suddenly snapped into pieces the way Moses’s had been. She mostly remembered Zoe Van Nuys and Kala Whitmore starting a rumor that she stuffed her bra.

Alix cast her mind back, trying to pin down more details from that time. Birthday parties, sure. Her ninth she remembered because it had been a German chocolate cake with five layers, and Dad kept saying that the slice he was giving her was as big as her head…. She remembered Mom and Dad’s anniversary—their twentieth?—the two of them going out dressed in black while Alix and annoying baby Jonah were stuck at home with a sitter Alix nicknamed Milkface. That was before they’d moved to Connecticut and gotten the bigger house. Before Seitz. Right around the time Dad had started Banks Strategy Partners. Alix was disturbed to find that her memories were so fragmented.

The rower passed out of sight, and they started walking again, arm in arm. “My mom and dad took me to Disney World,” Moses said. “I remember that. My dad let me go on whatever ride I wanted. I went to SeaWorld, too. Saw Shamu. My dad got me a stuffed Shamu, even though Mom said it was expensive. He got me one that was so big….” Moses stretched out his arms.

Alix was struck by how soft Moses’s expression became when he let down his guard. “I remember carrying this big orca around, and it was about as long as I was. Shamu’s tail kept dragging on the ground.” He was smiling at the memory, and his words were coming faster. “And I remember there was a hot dog stand outside Dad’s office building. Sometimes, if I was off school, he’d take me to work. I had to stay in his cubicle and stay quiet and color or read, but at lunch, we’d go out and have hot dogs….” He trailed off. The softness left his face and his expression closed up again. “It’s all stupid stuff. I don’t know why I remember the things I remember.”

Alix swallowed and looked away, trying not to show him how much it affected her, but the sadness she felt was almost overwhelming. Listening to him hunt for memories of something good, and knowing how much he’d been robbed of.

“It sounds nice,” she said, and was glad her voice sounded almost unaffected. “They sound nice.”

Moses said, “I can’t remember their faces unless I look at a photo, you know? It’s weird. But I remember my dad had calluses on his hands because he’d lift weights in the basement. Sometimes I try to remember more, but mostly I remember finding Dad in the bathroom on the floor. Him trying to get up and not being able to. And then Mom—” He broke off.

“And you ended up in Las Vegas.”

“Yeah.” Moses’s voice hardened. “Uncle Ty. Tyrone Cruz. He always said Ty was short for Typhoon. Man was in the Army and got kicked out. That man…” He shook his head. “My Uncle Ty knew how to smile. That man could smile himself out of anything. Smile himself into anything, too.” Abruptly, Moses deepened his voice, mimicking, becoming someone else entirely. “‘We don’t do the nine-to-five, Mo. We too good for that ant work. We be grasshoppers. Smaaaart grasshoppers. Let the ants do all the work.’” He shrugged. “I didn’t figure out until a lot later that there was a name for his racket.”

“He was a con man, wasn’t he?”

“Taught me everything I know. Taught me the long con and short con. Taught me to pick the marks and rope them. Taught me how to talk just the way you knew the mark wanted to hear. Taught me body language. How to read people. How to keep my fingers fast. Taught me how to fool the eye. Taught me how to slip a watch off a man’s wrist and chase after him and get a reward. Simple shit like that. But he taught me to fool the person behind the eye, too. Taught me how wearing a uniform will make someone trust you. Put on hotel livery, you ain’t just some stranger anymore. Wear a suit with a conference badge on it, and people think they know you, even when they don’t. How to talk, how to look, how to be. He taught me all that. Hacking is what he called it. Just like Kook does on computers, but I hacked people. I hacked conversations. Mostly, though, I did a lot of roping people into rigged poker games.” He shook his head.

“Was that good money?”

“When Uncle Ty wanted to work, it was. We’d make a big score and live for weeks on it.” He glanced over at Alix. “I mean, this is small money in comparison with Seitz life, but plenty to pay rent and eat steaks and for Uncle Ty to go out with his ladies.”

“Sounds surreal.”

“Looking back, I think it was. But I was young. It was just different. At first I thought it was strange, but then I just got used to it. Uncle Ty taught me different scams, we’d make a score, and he’d go out and party. And I’d read books in his apartment until he came back. It was life.”

“Did you go to school?”

Moses smirked. “Homeschool.”

“I’m serious.”

“Sometimes. Mostly it just turned out that I could always do whatever they wanted me to do, but I could do it faster alone. Uncle Ty didn’t really care.” Moses deepened his voice again. “‘Long as you can read and do numbers, you’re good, son.’” Moses laughed. “Mostly by that he meant he wanted to make sure I could count cards and figure odds. The rest of it was all just grind and rules for sheep. Uncle Ty always thought my dad was a fool, the way he went to college and got a job with the city and all that. ‘Working for the man,’ he called it. My dad believed in rules: Play by the rules, work hard, get ahead, American dream, all that. Uncle Ty wanted to play only if he could rig the rules. If he couldn’t rig the game, he wouldn’t play. He said all that rules and obedience and college crap was for sheep.”