chapter*Dad
textscGlacial calm.
Walking the balconies.
Looking over the lake.
Jacobi’s boat.
He really did take it.
Coming round: Stephen’s office: door open. Books, outside, on the walkway, software boxes. A couch cushion.
Liss picks it up and takes it inside. She steps over Stephen.
Winnie leans on the rail. She smokes a cigarette.
Stephen looks her over. “I didn’t know you smoked.” Winnie’s skirt is the same from yesterday. Her hair’s poofed. She’s not wearing pantyhose. “Guess he didn’t take the news too well,” Stephen says.
Winnie’s looking at the boats. “Guess not.”
I kneel down and pick up Stephen’s copy of emphThe C Programming Language (Second Edition). It’s been stepped on.
“I have a new key for you,” Stephen says.
“I got it.”
Winnie takes long drags off her cigarette.
Liss arranges Stephen’s couch.
Stephen looks up at me, still kneeling. “Have you heard from him?”
I hesitate.
“Because I’ve been getting all these strange texts.”
“My email is deleted,” I say.
Stephen says: “So’s mine. Winnie?”
But Winnie doesn’t answer.
“He wiped the Xen boxes.”
“Oh really. I couldn’t log in.”
“No, they’re gone,” Stephen says. “They’re gone. I’ve been getting calls from the TSA.”
“Production’s down?”
“No,” Stephen corrects: “Production is emphgone.”
We clean up the books. Me and Stephen. Liss watches TV. Winnie waits for me. She chain-smokes a box and a half of Kamel Reds. When she runs out she goes downstairs and gets the second box.
Stephen and I are crawling around the balcony, collecting broken things. I borrow a vacuum cleaner and go over the carpet once Stephen’s gotten most of the larger fragments of glass.
“Were you there when she told im?”
“Yeah.”
“Did Winnie tell you what happened?”
“With Jacobi?”
“I finally made a decision,” Stephen tells me. “Yesterday afternoon. He was trying to find you. Did he find you?”
“Eventually.”
“Did you invite him to a party?”
“He wasn’t invited,” I say.
Stephen says: “I don’t blame you.” He lowers his voice. He doesn’t want Liss to hear. “So he comes in here. He’s pissed. He starts asking me questions about the backup box.”
“The one at his house.”
“Yeah,” Stephen says, “and you know there’s TSA data on there, plus who knows what else.”
“Jacobi’s game development studio.”
“He’s using that box for game development?”
“Well,” I say, “Yes. And it’s not just one box.”
Stephen sees another piece of glass. He bends. He picks it up. He turns it in his hand. “How many boxes is it? Don’t tell me. He’s doing emphgame development over there?”
“Yeah,” I say.
And Winnie says: “It’s an RPG.”
“Do we at least have emphtimesheet information for Jacobi..that’s up to date?”
Winnie laughs. She lights another cigarette. She doesn’t look at Stephen or me while she does this.
“What about Methanex? What about,” Stephen asks, “new development? Is that in the office? When Kamesh does work, where is that being done? I hope not on the boxes at Jacobi’s house.”
Winnie walks away. She goes downstairs. She goes away.
I’m watching Liss. Liss doesn’t even see Winnie go.
“So is Kamesh doing development on the boxes at Jacobi’s house?”
I hear Winnie laugh as she’s going down the stairs.
She lets is all out.
She slaps the stair rail.
She coughs.
“Winnie, you okay?”
She doesn’t answer.
“Is she laughing at what I just said? About Kamesh doing development at Jacobi’s house? She knows we can SSH into those machines, right?”
“She’s laughing,” I say, “about Kamesh emphdoing development.”
We go on. Stephen and me go on for a while. We sit at his desk. Stephen shows me a bottle of vodka. “I found that in Jacobi’s desk.” “You went through his desk?” “Well,” Stephen says, “I figure emphI own it.” Stephen tries to log into our Methanex development box. It times out. “You’re telling me this box is at Jacobi’s house?” “Or was,” I say. “Have you been to his apartment?” Stephen asks. “Yes. Have you?” He says: “I never have.” He tries logging into emphss-tsa-2, our TSA production box. Nothing happens. “This is all backed up onsite, I assume.” I just look at him. I’ve been trying to get this asshole to do onsite backups of Jacobi’s house for years..like..literally seven or eight years. “And you’re saying Jacobi’s doing emphgame development when he’s not here?” I look at Stephen. He says: “I know. I know. I see it up on his screen when I come in. It’s one thing that he’s not fully committed to what we’re doing here. And this TSA stuff. This is bad. For him to use emphcompany resources to do this game development project..is.. We have to figure this out. I don’t know what your schedule is like, but..”
“Does DHS know?”
“I got a call from the Colonel at 6am.”
“What did he say?”
“I haven’t called him back. First I wanted to come up here and see what was going on.”
“Well,” I say, “I’ve got to take Liss to Pilates but after that I’ll look into it, see what I can figure out.”
“Great,” Stephen says, “The first thing I need you to do is go to Jacobi’s house and get whatever machines he has..out of there. Do you want me to come with you?”
“No,” I say, “I’ll do it.”
cfsection textscClimbing the hill.
“Is this where it is?”
“It’s up this way.”
I’m going first, I’m sweating, I can already feel the sun.
Liss is behind me. I check. She’s right there.
Down the hill there’s a tree looks like it came out of Sir Lancelot.
Up here there’s a fence, it evens out.
High rocks and a reservoir.
It’s fenced in. It’s drinking water. They want to keep it clean.
You can stand at the edge of the fence, though. You can look inside. You can see this place where no one ever goes, or you’ll get arrested. Warning signs on the fence. No houses in there, no paths, just woods, downward-sloping hills, this reservoir, and beyond that it goes down to the ocean. Down that way, that’s Malibu. Up here is just this lake, where no one ever goes, that we drink from. That’s where we’re headed.
That’s Winnie’s vista.
I’ve seen it before. I lived here as a kid.
I used to climb up here. I’d ride my bike. You can get all the way to that fence and then it stops. No more paths. No more trails. I’ve seen rock formations up there—they look prehistoric, arranged by ancestors. Before language. I sometimes think that—I would find rocks, stacked, or in a row. At first it looked like someone stacked them..someone hiking before..but then you realize it was one big rock, and what is left was left there by years of wind. It’s not a stack of rocks..it’s many rocks..from one rock..that was blasted by the wind. Over years the wind eroded weaker parts until what’s left looks like a bunch of rocks..a family.. They look like they go together. Their material is the same. They’re sitting on one another. They’re no longer connected. And all the soft parts have been blown away so instead of one big rock, it’s a whole bunch of little ones.
“Liss. Is this the way?”
“This is the emphgeneral direction. I don’t know exactly where it is. Why don’t we call Winnie and emphask her?”
“Are you tired?”
“I’m okay. Do you think we can get a signal up here?”
“Yeah, probably,” I say. “THERE IS NO NATURE LEFT!”
It echoes down the hill.
And down there: are houses, and busboys, and owners of companies picking up tiny pieces of glass from their carpets. And stepping on pieces so tiny that they get stuck in their shoes, or in their skin, without them ever knowing about it.
I hold Liss.
I hold her shoulders.
Behind us is that lake. We’re not gonna make it up that far.
Not today.
Someday I’m going to go camping up there, climb over that fence, go hiking by the reservoir. See what land is like when hardly anyone has been there in, say, fifty years.
You can see the parking lot from here. You can see the landing. I can see the corner of our building, where Stephen’s office is. We’re above all the giant houses. They’re tiny from here. There’s two roads that meet, in the corner of the lake, a spillway there. There’s that tennis club. You can see Judge Judy’s house.
And down there is our lake, where the boats are kept.
The one we look at while we’re working.
Where we’re not supposed to feed the ducks.
Where we have dinner at Sharks and into which I once threw my phone..nickel-metal hydride battery dissolving, killing fish. This is Winnie’s vista. This is where she comes to read. This place with rattlesnakes and wild dogs and where as far into nature as you can get..you still have cell phone service.
We never should have had kids here. My daughter grows up to this?
I’m holding her head; I’m brushing her hair.
She’s almost too old to do that to.
She’s got her foot hiked up on a rock like some explorer.
My little girl.
She was shorter than my arm, when she was born.
This head was in my palm.
Would she mind if I kiss that head..
one more time..
before she’s grown..
emphShe leans on my chest.
Would she mind if I apologize..
for having broken
those impressions..
emphShe lets me kiss her head.
That life is simple.
That life is always good.
That we’re strong.