Walter Williams - The Rift

“Well, yeah,” Jason said. “But there's, like, no point to it. Because the second I'm eighteen, I'm checking out of this burg.”

“You've got a few years till then,” his father pointed out.

“But I'm going to be spending as much time in L.A. as I can between now and then.”

“Jason.” His father's voice was weary. “Where are you going to be spending most of your time between now and your graduation?”

Jason glared out the window and realized he was trapped. “Here,” he said. “In Missouri.”

“So isn't it, therefore, a good idea to get to know some people where you live? Maybe date a few girls, even?”

Jason never liked it when his father started using words like therefore. It meant he was doing his whole lawyer thing, like he was talking to a witness or something. It was as bad as when his mother talked about negative thoughtforms.

“I don't mind making new friends,” he said. “But I want to keep the ones I've got, too, and I can't do that unless I stay in touch with them.”

“I will speak to your mother about your Internet privileges, then. But I won't do it for another week or ten days, because I want you to soften her up between now and then, okay? Try to make an effort? Take someone home? Play a game of baseball? Something?”

Jason glared at his reflection in the blank computer screen. “I'll see what I can do,” he said.

“Good.”

Jason made a grotesque face into the computer screen. Snarled, bared his canines, made his eyes wide. His distorted reflection grimaced back at him like a creature out of a horror film. “I was wondering,” Jason began, “if I could come and stay with you after you and Una get back from China.”

Jason heard a page turn over the phone, and then heard his father's pen scratching again. “I don't think that's such a good idea,” Frank said. “I'm going to be working sixteen-hour days to catch up on the work I've missed. I wouldn't really have a chance to spend time with you. It wouldn't be fair to Una to have to spend all her time looking after you.”

“I wouldn't bother her. I can just hang with my friends.”

“You'll still be able to visit in August, like we planned.”

“I could house-sit for you, while you're gone.”

Frank's pen went scratch, scratch. “I don't think so,” he said. “I don't want to leave you alone in the city all that time. What if you got into trouble?”

What if I didn't? Jason wanted to respond. “Or I could fly to China and join you there,” he said instead.

His father gave a sigh. Jason could hear the pen clatter on the desktop. “This is my first vacation in almost ten years,“ Frank said. “I'm a partner now. It used to be that partners took it easy and waited for retirement, but that's not how it works anymore. Partners work harder than anyone else.”

“I know,” Jason said. He remembered the last vacation, ten years ago in Yosemite. He didn't remember much about the park, he could only remember being sick to his stomach and throwing up a lot.

“Una and I have never had much time alone together,” Frank said. “We're going to be meeting her family, and that's important.”

And a step-kid, Jason thought, would just get in the way. Una, whom Frank had finally married a few months ago, was half Chinese. The Chinese part of the family was scattered all through Asia, and Frank and his new bride were going to travel to Shanghai, Guangzhong, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, and Kuala Lumpur, seeing the sights and meeting the relatives.

Jason made another grotesque face into the computer screen.

He did not dislike Una, who had made a determined effort to become his friend. But she troubled him. For one thing, she was young enough, and pretty enough, for him to view as desirable. That she sometimes figured in his fantasies made him uncomfortable. For another, her moving in with his dad made it that much less likely that Jason would himself be able to move in with Frank.

And thirdly, she was monopolizing Frank's first real vacation in a decade, and going to places Jason very much wanted to see.

“I wouldn't get in your way,” Jason said. “I'd just go off and, like, see stuff.”

Frank's pen kept scratching on. “You don't do that in Asia,” he said. “You don’t just go off. Besides, we're going to be spending most of our time with a lot of old people who don't speak English, and you'd be bored.”

“No way.”

Frank sighed again. “Look,” he said. “We need this trip, okay? But we'll go to Asia another time, and maybe you can come along then.”

In another ten years maybe, Jason thought. He made a screaming face into the video monitor, mouth open in a hideous mask of anguish.

“Okay,” he said. “But you'll talk to Mom about the Internet, okay? Because if I can't visit China, I want at least to visit their homepage.”

“I'll do that,” Frank said. His tone lightened. “By the way, I bought your birthday present today. It's sitting right here in the office. I think you're going to like it.”

“I'll look forward to seeing it,” Jason said. Perhaps the only benefit of the divorce had been that, in the years since, the size and expense of Jason's presents had increased. “I don't suppose you're going to tell me what it is.”

“That would spoil the surprise.”

Jason could hear his father's pen scratching again, so he figured he might as well bring the conversation to an end. After he hung up, he sat in his chair and stared across the sodden cotton field to the line of trees on the distant northern horizon.

No Shanghai, no Hong Kong, no Internet. No California till August.

The Cabells Mound water tower stood beyond the line of trees, the setting sun gleaming red from its metal skin.

Jason looked at the tower for a moment, then at the Edge Living poster on the wall, the extreme skater, armored like a medieval knight, poised on the edge of a gleaming brushed aluminum rail. He turned his eyes back to the water tower.

Yes, he thought.

If he couldn't escape his fate, he could at least make a name for himself here.

The ringing signal purred in Nick Ruford’s ear. He felt adrenaline shimmer through his body, kick his heart into a higher gear. He felt like a teenager calling a girl for the first time.

It was Manon who answered. His nerves gave a little leap at the sound of her voice.

Stupid, he thought. The divorce was two years ago. But he couldn’t help it. She still did that to him.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s me.”

“Hey, yourself,” she said. There was always that sly smile in her contralto voice, and he could tell from her intonation, the warmth in her tone, exactly the expression on her face, the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes, the broad smile that exposed her white teeth and a little bit of pink upper gum. With the gum exposed like that it should not be an attractive smile, but somehow it was.

“You finished with the move?” Manon asked.

Nick looked around the room with its neatly stacked boxes under the eye of Nick’s father, who gazed in steely splendor from his portrait on the wall, and for whose spirit no stack of boxes would ever be neat enough. “Oh yeah,” he said. “I’m moved in. I just don’t have a place for everything yet.”