Fountain of Youth

1

Dave stole his money. 

Imagine if I had caught him!

Matthew Varnier’s foot bounced so fast that the flesh along the sole throbbed. It was a distant sensation.

The money he got from the wallet in the coat that the man left draped over the back of his chair out in front of that cafe that smells like burned coffee. Draped and unguarded—went in for a refill or to stick his finger in a light socket.

Must be a gift for me, the voices said, cackling.

Dave stole it. Snatch him by the fingers. Twist a couple until they break…delightful little pops!

Matthew preferred the west side of town. But Smokey had some and some extra, in a sense. Matthew didn’t normally smoke, but Matthew wasn’t about to let any medication go to waste. Not with all the aches and pains, and the chance to quiet them down for a little sleep.

So sleep he did, out at the overpass, stretched out like a dog on the backseat of a van, left out next to the fire in the barrel. Only he slept too deeply. The others got into an argument that didn’t concern him, and they left him alone long enough to close his eyes. And dream the dream. 

When the lights flashed, Matthew bolted upright. He knew right away from the once-heavy pocket on his fancy newly gained coat. 

Dave begging for mercy. Turning out his pockets, begging for his freedom! Money, coke, some fucking Starbursts!

Only Matthew didn’t leave the wallet unguarded; he was just… distracted.

Dave was gone, and no one saw him take the money. No one saw where he went. 

Too many people at the overpass. They like the company, but Matthew didn’t trust it. 

His head twisted, vertebrae popped like knuckles. The muscles released, and he spun his head in the other direction to pop that side as well. His foot stilled. He rolled his ankle, lifted the leg from atop the other, placed the foot on the ground, and put his other leg over. The other foot assumed a rapid-fire cadence. Until he decided he liked it better the other way. 

Dave was back at the overpass.

Matthew felt the woman’s gaze. A specific thing. Most everyone saw him from afar, and they fit their blinders on, marching with their iron rods aimed straight ahead, jousting with the air.

She stopped though, after looking at him. The lady spun around, cut through the other pedestrians and stood in front of him. She fished in her wallet. 

“Oh, I hope you’ll get something to eat, sir.”

Green flapped from her fingers. Señor Jackson, who no doubt rolled in his grave at the thought of his craven image on a Federal Reserve note, averted his eyes away from Matthew as well.

Matthew snatched the bill from her, mumbled his thanks, which sounded a lot like an apology to the former president. Deceased. My condolences. 

Now he smiled a yearbook-photo smile, envisioning Dave’s fingers snapped and crackled in his clutches. While aqua vitae gurgled and slid down his deserving, vengeful, parched throat.

The woman disappeared back into the crowd after issuing a “God bless”—indeed He does, madam, indeed He does when He’s not snatching thoughts away and replacing them with screams and razor blades. Where was I? He thought, not for the first time that day, or even for the same circumstance.

Paper rustled between his fingers, and Matthew glanced at the not necessarily beloved but certainly currently appreciated president. Or, more accurately, his portrait, which adorned the slip of currency, oh so cynically.

Matthew flew to his feet, and his arms jutted out. His left stuck out to the right, and the right arm shoved the elbow into the air. Neither cooperated as he tried to clasp one, either, with the other.

The stares averted faster than they alighted.

Matthew scowled and followed the single most solid thought in his thinker: the liquor store on 23rd south of the fire station.

***

Matthew’s drinking age had reached its own drinking age. And went back for seconds. And then some extra time for good measure 

The meat sack behind the counter stared, but none of the smells that graced His Royal Majesty’s tender nasal cavities betrayed drunkenness. Maybe the lifelong consequences of said drunkenness, but H.R.M.’s got the morning shift at a place named Justin’s next to a cockroach infested taco place that doesn’t have the decency to open before ten. Not exactly high and mighty…

Regardless, the green permission slip paved the way for Matthew to get a handle on a handle of that fine vodá vodka. Mr. Sack had an astounding grand total of fourteen hairs on his chin, every one of them an inch long. He sneered as he received the money, deemed it necessary to smudge it with his fancy marker. A long diagonal smear across the venerable Andrew’s son of Jack face. 

Cactus juice captivated him for a moment, but with a little digging—especially if he could dig a boot into Dave’s ribs and/or head, Matthew wasn’t picky—he could scrounge up the other buckaroo to buy a second handle of the cheap stuff. One for each hand!

Like a premonition or a brain tumor, Matthew smelled alcohol even before he left the store. Though the source became apparent as Clerk Sackington rubbed the glistening glob of hand sanitizer over his paws. Claws. 

Matthew, the esteemed gentleman that his mother taught him to be, though he may have missed or forgotten the specific lesson on liquor store etiquette, waited until he was out of sight of both the street and Monsieur Sac of the Liquor Store before he beheaded the plastic lid from the plastic bottle and poured a generous amount down his John Hancock.

The effect was almost instantaneous. Not inebriation as Matthew expected, though to his relief that arrived a short while later, but heartburn. Oozy boozy on an empty—when did I last eat, he thought, though the voices only offered “sausage” as a plausible response—stomach.

Dusty white-painted brick, warm against his skin through his shirt. He took another swig. To his delight, mid-gulp the flotation devices activated around his head. The spiteful metallic liquid filled his mouth, while his head bobbed several inches higher.

Matthew slid to the ground. An alleyway. Water soaked through his pants, but he didn’t care yet. It wasn’t the first time.

He brought his knees up, and the change clinked in his pocket.

George and Abraham together at last. 

Dave.

The thought thundered in with near-audible force, so that it brought the voices out of their own silent alcoholic revery into full-throated beasts.

***

The sun set as Matthew crossed town. Only once did he ride a bus. His eyes rolled over the inscription above the windshield, and instinctively he slid aboard, change jingling. Matthew felt the driver’s icy stare on his back as he found a seat. He knew well enough to keep the bottle hidden in his bag.

Otherwise, he was on foot, on the hoof. Matthew felt like a feral animal, following the path of the sun, prowling for his target. It felt like a Western. The drunken sheriff, wronged, sought restitution. Though he was neither sheriff nor entirely innocent.

Brown and gray numbed his peripheral vision. Industrial bays and burning orange lamps high above empty parking lots, or fleets of sleeping four-, six-, eight—who do we appreciate? Matthew! Matthew! Go, Matthew!—eighteen? Twenty-three-wheeled beasts.

Can’t save Dave! Can’t save Dave!

The expressway met the interstate, roads weaving together, teriyaki stir-fry I-69—well hear now, mister! Don’t be such a prude.—climbed up into the air splitting off east and west. The migrant workers usually took up the East finding farmers heading out to their fields for harvest. The others, like and unlike Matthew, took up the West, shielded better from the hotter setting sun. 

Matthew could see the glow beneath the ramp a quarter of a mile away—fifty-five-gallon fires, flashlights. Even some fancy camp lights and work lights hard-wired into the circuitry. Matthew should have liked it here. Everyone else seemed to. But Matthew didn’t seem like everyone else. Or else, he didn’t seem to like everyone. Not even himself.

Oh, now you offer the truth!

Thoughts raced around his head, and he paused. Limbs jerked in protest at the sudden halt. He forgot why he was there. Was he going to try out the overpass again? Something Smokey said? His hand, like a viper, slid down the strap from where it hung over his shoulder. Fingers swam into the bedraggled backpack and clutched the hard smooth surface. 

He nearly gasped, nearly shed a tear as the hand, of its own accord, delivered the vodka to Matthew. He took a long, cool, burning swig. A nagging dull ache—the obese baby cherub heralding a savage hangover later—broke to the forefront for just a moment. It vanished in a tsunami of Russia’s gift to the world.

The words formed behind his closed lips, tongue curling to the roof of his mouth. Closed lips pursing. Even Matthew’s body sought vengeance, reminding him of his errand.

Dave stole my money.

The sidewalk hugged a low cement barrier. A quick glance backward on a one-way street. Matthew vaulted the wall. Mostly. His toe caught the top, and he crashed, nose first, into the freshly baked asphalt on the other side. Blinding pain burst through the fog as his face scraped across five inches of street. Without skin to cover them, the top of his nose and cheek burned in the night air. The gristly, unshaved hair burrowed into the flayed skin.

The bottle was intact–Praise be to Ivan the Terrible!—he scrambled for another drink to take the edge off. Headlights. Matthew offered a crude gesture to the oncoming vehicle and proceeded under the concrete structure.

A concourse of tents fell into neat lines beneath the interstate above, like a patchwork shadow. Dave staggered down the middle. No one gave him a look. Just another one of the unfortunate. Fortunate enough to have scored a drink.

Matthew’s eyes stopped working as a team at that point. Double images of men standing over fires, cooking hotdogs. A drug dealer—with infinitely fascinating golden dental work—stood against a gray column. Giggles and grunts escaped from a shaking tent or two. 

Dave.

Imagine the look on his face if I caught him! Some rope. Fingernails on eyeballs like white grapes for the vineyard!

Matthew saw him. No easy feat. Dave was shorter than average. Wiry. Flesh-wrapped bones. Gray hoodie over a shaved head—always the same gray, stained hoodie though. 

Matthew lunged as soon as he was close enough, grabbed the hood, and yanked. The jacket pulled down to Dave’s elbows, giving him a stupid penguin waddle, and the paranoid eyes went wider. 

Matthew had the oh-craps just then. Dave was mighty afraid, but Dave’s eyes worked as a team. The wide eyes locked with Matthew’s; one or the other, he couldn’t tell. Dave squirmed out of the hoodie. Pale, scrawny arms flew out. Bony fists clutched at the ends. Dave was in a panic. Matthew’s cold revenge turned a little sour in his stomach as he watched the smaller man duck and bob. 

Matthew stumbled while reaching for the prancing dancer. Hands landed on his shoulders and pushed him down with added force. Nose, meet earth. Stars flashed in Matthew’s eyes, and the noodle bumped around inside the breadbox a little more than before. Matthew’s breath exploded out of his mouth as a booted foot slammed into his ribs.

Spicy lava erupted out of Matthew’s mouth. Up his sinuses. The stars faded, but tears replaced them. Hot tears. 

Old man Matthew! 

He climbed back onto his feet. Dave was gone as far as Matthew’s impaired vision could assess. Searing pain kept him going. That and a double heaping dose of embarrassment. The scuffle drew a few wary glances, and at least one drug-induced stare.

Always hated the overpass! Call in the police, drugs, a terrorist! Clear the place out! Set it ablaze!

Matthew giggled. But the voices chided him. Still no closer to getting his money back. He felt for the liquor, but the bottle remained, hole-less and wholesome. He patted the backpack. Queasiness rose.

Spent, he wandered, street lights streaking 4th of July in his eyes. Thirty minutes? An hour? Long enough to put most of that behind him now. 

 Matthew leaned against a wall. Ahead of him, blue and red lights flashed. Coming or going, left or right, he couldn’t tell. An alleyway opened up next to him, and he eagerly stumbled in. 

Like a box canyon, the convenience store made up one side, and cinderblock walls the others. Enough space for a garbage truck to maneuver. A couple of good hiding places for the night. 

Matthew stumbled through a puddle, face first into a pile of busted cardboard boxes. Tears sprang up again at the fresh insult on his skinned and bruised face, and he lay there, frozen. Until he—the uncomfortable lump at his side reminded him—he pulled the bottle out one more blessed time. And pull a bit of the alley refuse over him.

2

Matthew awoke to the simultaneous agony of the screaming voices wishing for his and Dave’s deaths and the searing pain in the center of his skull. And a dash of morning sunburn as well. As consciousness crawled back behind his eyes, the other senses each crawled back into position, an orchestra of discomforts behind the screeching soloist of a hangover. Flattened cardboard under his cheek. A ragged dry throat. Bruised ribs that ached with each quiver of breath. Hot stink tickled his nose as the sun warmed everything it touched, including his vomit-stained clothing.

Water trickled nearby, the only comforting thing in Matthew’s current realm of existence. He inched toward the sound. His fingers found the edge of a puddle in the middle of the alley. Desperation pushed past revulsion. He pulled himself the last few inches to the edge of the water. His dry eyes cracked open. It rippled in the sunlight. A long tendril traced the cracks in the asphalt to a storm drain in the middle of the square.

After a wave of revulsion rippled through him, Matthew pressed his lips to the liquid and took slow sips through clenched teeth. He shut his eyes as he felt the grime swirling about his lips, some sneaking into his mouth and down the hatch.

Just as he braced himself to stand—hands pressed to the ground under his chest—a wave washed through him. It felt… different from the sticky numb-joy of those pain pills. He felt a contentment that he couldn’t define. Matthew reached out and scooped the murky puddle toward his waiting lips. He drank and drank, more ravenous with each swallow. A chill landed in his stomach and spread. Matthew crawled up onto all fours, lips locked onto the edge of the puddle. The pain subsided, replaced with something else. Gulp after gulp. His stomach swelled as he took in as much air as he did water. The voices quieted. It alarmed him. 

Stop drinking!

Too much!

He stopped, eyes open wide.

The water seeped up from a deep crack in the center of a pothole. A steady stream. It reminded him of a hiking trip he had taken decades ago as a boy. Climbing up a mountain out west, watching water trickle from the rocks, crowded with moss and grass. 

A spring?

He pulled back, gasping for air. Heedless of pollutants or shame, Matthew cupped the water and splashed his face and patted the water over his neck. Then, he dipped down to drink even more. A thirst he had never experienced such a thirst before. With each gulp, he felt satisfied in such a complete and impossible way. 

He glanced up and saw a wavy plastic pipe dangling from the convenience store roof, AC condensation dripping a little creek into the puddle at his knees. 

Stop! The voices assailed his mind.

With his stomach filled to the point of rebellion, he rolled back and crossed his legs in front of him. The sun no longer his enemy, he tilted his head back and greeted the warmth on his face. Most unnerving of all, the voices hummed. A pleasant tune, aimless and drifting, rose from his chest up to his ears. Not the threatening whispers or violent outbursts.

Ten minutes passed in silent reverie.

The memory of pain, some phantom of the past, grazed his cheek. He tugged up the hem of his shirt to inspect the damage Dave’s shoe had inflicted. To his surprise, the young bruise was fading. Purple receded to red, then nothing. Then he saw his hands. Crusty, cracked nails remained, but the skin below was tight and smooth. 

Matthew leaned forward to sweep a hand through the water. The ripples vanished at the edge of the puddle, and in the black mirror he saw a man staring back at him. No bags under his eyes. With no wrinkles around his eyes and brow, the fissures of frowns gone. He tucked his long white hair back behind his ears. The reflection did the same. 

Matthew’s mouth fell open, and the reflection—this young man in his thirties—stared back, mouth agape.

The fountain, said a voice.

Matthew jumped to his feet and sprinted out of the concrete box. Cars lined the street outside the alley. He dashed for the nearest. In the black tint of the windows, he saw the young man running toward him. He lunged at the side mirror and stared. 

Decades had fallen off of his appearance. Falling even now. The hollow eyes stared back, full of life and intensity. Seeing, really seeing for the first time in a long time. Even the yellowed whites of his eyes cleared. His irises lost their aged hue.

The voices harmonized, and the last of the old aches and pains melted away. He straightened and felt his vertebrae pop. Matthew stood tall, erect. Skin fitted like a sheath over lean muscle. A laugh erupted from his lips, and the sound startled him in the muted morning.

He turned to look back down the alley. He could just make out the water from afar, the gurgling movement that shimmered.

Mustn’t speak of it. Don’t name it. It’ll vanish, sang one voice, elderly and cautious. 

He laughed again. The Fountain of Youth? Here? Hands clapped over his mouth, fearful that even the thought would drive the thing away.

A memory entered his mind. The boy. In a wheelchair staring at him with hatred. So much hatred as to be inconceivable for a child so young. 

Alex.

***

Alex drummed his fingers on the armrest of his wheelchair. His eyes landed on the chair next to the wall. Henry Norman had graciously pushed it to the side to make room for him. Lines of sunlight, breaking through the gaps in the blinds, covered it in a hypnotic striation. 

Henry had fallen silent for the last two minutes as he stared at the screen. Rereading the emails from the accountant’s office. 

Possible misconduct.

Alex’s trip to Chicago had raised some red flags with the number crunchers. They didn’t consider room service and a couple of trips to the bar as legitimate business transactions.

“We’re going to deduct these from your paycheck,” Henry said without looking up. “Anyone else would’ve gotten fired.”

Hopefully, they don’t go digging any deeper, Alex thought. Setting up that biotech firm had incurred other expenses. Nothing obvious. A few layers deeper, maybe. But he knew questions were being asked. Nothing accountants love more than probing into the soft side of business. The little things that make the world go round, help the machine run a little smoother. Alex liked yesses. Especially when they benefited him as well. And Jan Thuesen had expensive tastes. Business Development.

“You’re a valuable asset, but we can’t afford any mistakes. Look…” Henry glanced up at Alex, black beetle eyes boring into him over the top of the tortoiseshell glasses. “If the accountants are going to find anything, I need you to tell me right now. I can get ahead of it. Larry can recategorise it or something. We just can’t afford to have a director playing loose. Not to mention all the grant money Vita keeps tapping into.”

The feeling crept over Alex. Or more accurately, the feeling crept out of him. It started in his cheeks. He looked down at his hands resting in his lap. The show. The performance. He furrowed his eyebrows in concentration, featuring Alex Varnier as the once-careless vice president, wracked by remorse, buoyed by gratitude, forever changed. A man on a fresh path.

Alex turned his palms up as he met Henry’s gaze. “There’s nothing. The usual. A bar tab—a reasonable bar tab. A couple of dinners in Chicago. Handshakes, really.”

Alex didn’t need Henry’s help. Alex could cover his own ass. The old man always considered himself to be Varnier’s mentor. Alex considered Henry to be a seat warmer. Another minor obstacle on the way up the ladder, boot on smiling face.

Henry nodded, and his eyes fell back on the screen.

“Why don’t you take the rest of the day off? Internal says they need some time to look over things.”

Alex’s heart clenched. “What do you mean?”

“Look, you’re going to be locked out for a few days while they check all the accounts and receipts. No point in making you sit at your desk all day playing solitaire.”

Henry’s lips pursed as his eyes fell to Alex’s wheel. “I’m sorry.”

Alex’s mind churned into high gear. A tendril of thought probed outward. Eyes flicked up to Henry. Alex put on an annoyed, cowed mask and nodded. He gave the joystick a crank, and his wheelchair whipped around in a tight circle. Henry jumped out of his chair to grab the door. In the awkward moment as the older man pulled the door inward, Alex’s chair nicked the frame. Glass and aluminum drummed in the office, but the younger man gave it no notice. He grunted something that could have passed for an apology. Or a curse.

Three o’clock. The penny pinchers wouldn’t bother to hire a contractor. Not when it would take two days for the sweaty neck-beard to get accustomed to the layout. Internal. They’d log out at five, half-past if some young and eager little shit had something to prove.

Marcy.

Alex had gotten his secretary, his financial coordinator, credentials two years ago. Exactly for a day like this, he admitted to himself. He was in Atlanta and needed someone to rubber-stamp some documents. Karen had been so sweet and understanding to the poor crippled Director of Strategic Venture’s plight. And Marcy had her own agenda that folded neatly into the circumstances.

Alex punched the elevator button. Cables whirred in the shaft. A chipper ping of a simulated brass bell. Alex suppressed a smirk as the four other occupants shuffled to accommodate his go-kart. The blonde in the professionally-too-short skirt raised her eyebrows questioning. 

“Four, please,” Alex said, as his muscles rippled through the routine of beseeching and placid gratitude. As the steel box descended, his eyes hardly broke from the long, shapely legs inches from his hand.

All too soon the elevator chimed again. The electric motor churned out of the cabin and down the reception hall as tires squeaked on the polished tile. Alex felt the eyes on him. In the last ten years, the attention had shifted into some sort of un-attention. They prided themselves on it. Blasé indifference, as if Alex’s existence was nothing. It was everything to Alex! He frowned at the backs of their heads. Twenty-somethings pawing and preening. Too enlightened. Too overt with their self-obsession ever to achieve the nonchalant persona they ascribed to themselves. They took their wholeness for so-much-granted. Alex had to inspect his feet for any obvious signs of infection or fungus or sores. A regiment of creams to combat flaking skin. A closet full of discarded tools and equipment to keep the blood flowing, to make sure the white blood cells did their fucking job.

He spent eight minutes parallel parking in the handicap stall just to take a piss while some young, pudgy, fucking intern, kissy-face emoji boxers bunched around his ankles, masturbated in the stall next to him.

They came and went, and Henry was all too eager to hire such promising talent. The old man sounded like a sorority sister fawning over some new fad diet. Alex sped through the walkway, past the humming cubicles. His dominion loomed ahead—a dark and moody hallway with actual honest-to-God sunlight shining beneath the closed doors.

3

Without slowing, he punched the blue button on the wall. Another motor ground as the glass door swung open. Acrylic nails stopped their cadence on a computer keyboard. As Alex sped past, Marcy gave him her full attention. Alex liked Marcy. Sharp as a fucking scalpel. Sexy as hell. Within a month she had figured him out. His eyes fell to the one button on her blouse that miraculously unfastened from the moment she sat at her desk to the moment she stood. It was intoxicating magic she had. If it weren’t for the chair—low, constantly sitting—he’d be able to sit on the corner of her desk and gaze down. She knew it. He dragged his eyes upward to her face. He was her ticket. This was their understanding. Her eyes crinkled into that knowing smile. She opened her mouth to speak and then, discerning his expression, stopped, shut her mouth and waited.

“Cancel my calls for the afternoon. Tomorrow too,” he muttered.

“Did you step in some shit?” 

She smiled at her jibe, uncrossed, and crossed her legs. The flash of porcelain flesh drew Alex’s eyes down beneath her desk. Too late to see anything but the tops of her thighs disappearing beneath gray fabric. He looked back up to see the smirk.

“Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.”

He paused. Their eyes met, and she sat back. The light from the window struck her form, turning the white blouse diaphanous, revealing curves and the edges of seams. 

Pity.

“Got us both locked out till things blow over. Take tomorrow off.”

“Perks of a salary,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Looking away took effort. On another button, he felt the raised plastic pictograph of a figure in a wheelchair, and his office door opened. He sat at his desk and tried, anyway. The moment he logged into his accounts, a window popped up warning of his limited access. A few taps confirmed the warning. Shackled.

Through the glass, he watched Marcy fish her purse from her desk drawer. She swiveled in her chair, her hand rising to her chest, no doubt pulling a button through a hole at the top of her sternum. She stood and cast a glance back at Alex. Not looking at him. But just enough of a turn of the head that he noticed. She stopped and raised a high-heeled foot to her hand and adjusted a strap, then bent to adjust the other foot, squaring her perfect figure for Alex to see.

He groaned. And she strode out the door, swinging the small leather bag over her shoulder.

No sooner had the door closed behind his secretary than he had typed in her login credentials into the company server. He stayed online just long enough to confirm that she did in fact still have access. None of the buttons or tabs were grayed out. Alex clicked on one, a clean, current, innocuous work order from earlier that week. The form unfurled on the screen. Satisfied, he shut it down. 

There would never be another woman like Marcy. God, that woman thrived under his gaze. But she played her part. And he would not go down easily. Or clean. With a few sharp clicks, and the clack of his own keyboard, Alex changed the primary email of her account to a discreet email he had set up years ago. Another flurry of commands, and he changed her password. Come Monday, he’d be in the clear, leaving Marcy holding the bag.

He thought he could still hear the sharp rap of her heels outside the office, hips swaying as she walked. Another blur of activity, and he erased his activity from the intranet log and then from the browser history. 

Alex pulled a bottle of Scotch from his drawer, poured two fingers into a snifter and downed the amber fluid in a single gulp. 

Time for a long weekend.

***

Lunch. The Phoenix Pub. Terrific lunch special. And a heavy-handed bartender.

Alex sat alone in the elevator as it hurtled down to the parking garage. Caution nagged at the back of his brain, yanking on the chord beneath a village bell tower. He’d operate smarter and faster if he went home. Right now. Just a sandwich. Fuel. 

But cortisol ravaged the edges of his attention. If life was going to knock him on his heels, then he needed to sit, energize, and recalibrate with single malt. 

I am not my father, he thought to himself. 

The elevator door opened. Even underground, the midday sun heated the subterranean parking lot. With one hand, Alex steered his chair out onto the concrete landing. The broad rectangle, delineated by the sharp curb, wreaked havoc on his wheelchair once. Since then, management made sure he had a designated spot. Not just handicapped parking. But a reserved spot ahead of the others. Alex smiled as he scanned the black, red, and white-pearl sports cars parked by the far wall beyond the handicap spots.

But then his eyes fell on the Thunderbird… a teal monstrosity sat on the loading area next to his van, heedless of the yellow diagonal lines painted on the ground, handicap permit dangling from the rearview mirror.. Alex dug the remote from the pocket of his slacks. He pressed two buttons in practiced sequence. A minivan roared to life, his own pearlescent chariot. The side door slid open, and a bright aluminum ramp extended out the side. It missed the Thunderbird by a foot.

He loved and hated his vehicle. No one aspired to achieve his status and drive a minivan. Even if it was a Mercedes. Even that pissed him off. Toyota’s controls were more intuitive, and his insurance would’ve been nearly half. But in his world—a cumbersome mechanical dependence—it was the pinnacle of luxury. A six-figure purchase marked his independence. 

In the time it took him to roll up the ramp, the air conditioner had worked its magic. The driver-support chair would have spun sideways so he could shift into the driver’s chair. Even as he waited, dark classical music spilled out into the concrete cavern.

Except for the damned Thunderbird. Alex frowned. The three-inch high stickers on his van noted the amount of space he needed.

With the push of a lever, Alex spun backward and lurched toward the ramp. His wheelchair was strong enough—a steel pipe frame. He smiled as metal groaned against metal. Bare metal shone in the fluorescent light where his chair scuffed the Thunderbird’s side. Broad wheels climbed the ramp easily, even coming at it from the side. 

With his wheelchair hugging the edge of the driver’s seat, he lowered the wheelchair’s armrest, grabbed the handles on the ceiling and shifted his bulbous body into the driver’s seat. With a glance, he checked the straps on the wheelchair. He tapped another button, and his seat swiveled around to face the front. As the ramp retracted back beneath the belly of his van, he felt a dark satisfaction at the damage he had inflicted on the other car. 

Alex fastened his seatbelt and punched the gear button into reverse. Warning chimes sounded. A figure filled the rearview screen, arms up and waving. Alex craned his neck back to see the man standing directly behind him. Staring straight through the back window.

Alex swore. Some vagrant. Baggy pants hitched up tight with a flap of a belt. Tented in a nasty yellow-stained shirt. Hard eyes glared back at him as the hairy arms fell to his sides. When their eyes met, the homeless man stalked to Alex’s window.

Alex wanted to pull away regardless of the other man, but he stood so close there was no room to maneuver. In a flash, the vagrant stood inches from his window. Alex felt his hackles rise. Something about the man. Familiar but not. Intense despite his efforts to remain composed. Alex didn’t care about rudeness. With the jab of a finger, the van’s locks clacked closed. 

“I don’t know how you got down here, but I don’t have anything. No cash,” he yelled at the closed window. He couldn’t bring himself to look at the beggar. He eased the van backward. The man jumped away, Alex punched the button, and the van jolted from the parking space with a chorus of screeching rubber. He yanked at the steering wheel and surged down the aisle. Just as Alex turned toward the exit ramp, he squinted out his window to see the man strolling into the lane and watching him leave. As he spun the van up toward the exit.

4

Matthew watched the van as it chirped over the concrete, descending out of sight.

His son.

Alex didn’t display any of the usual hatred, only an unsettling alarm. 

Matthew’s eyes wandered to the other car. The screech Alex’s wheelchair made as it scratched the paint had made Matthew’s skin crawl. The voices howled at the sound. It broke their complacent harmony—the first time since the fountain. He strode toward the teal vehicle and traced the scratches with a finger. 

He stopped and stared. The reflection in the black-tinted windows was both familiar and unfamiliar. Younger, not a face he truly recognized. Not in thirty years. A thirty-year-old hypothetical Matthew made manifest, successful and well-fed. He bent to examine himself closer.

Coarse stubble filled the top of his head now. Yesterday he was bald—with a large bare circle across his crown and long hair that draped down from the sides and back down his neck. Now, black fuzz covered the shiny skin, filling it in—short, youthful brown next to long, greasy gray. He drew a hand across his features. Crow’s feet gone. Firm, full flesh had replaced the deep fissures at the corners of his mouth. Even the constellations of scars from years on the streets marring his face had disappeared. His tongue flicked in the gaps between teeth and felt little nubs pushing up from the gums. He looked like a thirty-year-old who had never existed before. He felt amazing.

Matthew circa 1990 stared back—if he had a horrific haircut, simultaneously short on top and long in back. A really shitty mullet. No wonder Alex didn’t recognize him. Discomfort, not hatred. 

Matthew staggered back, mind buzzing with the implications. He was young again. Younger than Alex now. 

He had watched the entire ordeal, the laborious entrance into the van. Matthew glared at the sports cars that filled the garage like predatory birds converging on the best spots. Alex had done well in his own way. But the image of his son smiling as he scratched alongside the other car…

A thought came to mind, and another trailed in right behind it. Then he had a plan, something that hadn’t happened often during the hurricane in his head. 

But before he could go to his son, he needed Alex’s address, and he needed to clean up and fix his hair. And he could do both at Christ’s Church Shelter. 

The Phoenix. If he dared, Alex could trace a significant number of expenditures to the Phoenix. Nothing as big as his car payments, but definitely on par with groceries. Something akin to gas or home insurance. 

Twelve-foot ceilings, dark wood on every surface. Warm and inviting, yet conversations escaped the booths as nothing more than whispers or indecipherable murmurs, as if by magic. Everything sounded like a whisper compared to the perpetual jazz quartet in the corner.

The hostess held the door open for Alex as he wheeled across the threshold. As soon as he was through, she spun. In two graceful strides, she returned to her station to check the tables. Alex held his breath the entire time, watching the burgundy fabric pirouette and float about her tan thighs. The brunette looked up with a question written across her brow. Alex held up a single finger, one. She scanned the restaurant chart and held up her hand, three fingers extended. Table number three. Alex scanned the room and saw that James manned that corner. He nodded. The young woman pranced toward the table, had a noiseless conversation with a busboy, and he swooped down on the small table, taking one chair with him to the back.

Alex’s wheelchair glided across the polished floorboards. James met his eye with a nod even as he took an old couple’s order in his notepad. Alex unfurled a napkin and laid it across his lap. He glanced over at the bar, and Winnie, who had been drying glasses, caught his eye. Alex nodded. She set the tumbler with the others behind her, put a tall glass under the tap, a local amber, and pulled the handle. As it filled, Winnifred poured a double bourbon. James finished with the other table and fetched the two glasses and brought them to Alex. 

“What’ll it be today, Mr. Varnier?”

Alex hadn’t bothered with the menu. He didn’t know it by heart, but he knew it well enough.

“The au jus and a side Caesar.” 

James scrawled the order on his pad. Alex knew the man didn’t need to, but appreciated the meticulousness all the same. Consistent and careful. 

“Anything else?” James waved a hand toward the bar. “We have a new seasonal ale you might enjoy.”

Alex stuck to a routine at the Phoenix—almost as reliable as sunset. So if the waiter suggested it, Alex knew well enough to pay attention. 

“Sure. Bring a sample with the salad.”

James nodded, scribbled, and darted back toward the kitchen.

Alex took a sip of the whiskey. He held it in his mouth as his eyes roved over the other guests. The old couple a few tables away. Him in a polo with khakis and leather thong sandals. Her in a dress and blouse that made Alex think of a substitute teacher. In the corner, a pair of young businessmen hovered over a laptop, pointing and typing. Hungry ladder-climbing types. 

Alex finished his bourbon and pushed the glass away. Bubbles streamed up the tall glass of beer, and as he watched, the morning replayed in his mind. Lunch was a luxury. He should have gone home to clean up the records. Chicago was a big one. A few here at home—he’d need to get creative with the massage parlor. There’s no way the accountants would believe that Marcy spent that much. Way out of character for her.

But the contracts with those vague specialists… those needed special attention.

He snatched the glass and took two long drinks. The ale swirled over his tongue, sweet and bitter. The frothy carbonation sped up the effect of the liquor in his stomach. 

As Alex set the glass back on the coaster, the front door flew open. A crowd of young men entered. Six of them. Their boisterous conversation overwhelmed the musicians, earning them a glare from the bartender and the old couple. The two in the corner rose and mingled through the group, greeting them. The hostess, clearly outnumbered, motioned at the empty tables. As the men ambled to the center of the room, they pushed tables together, grating over the wooden floor. Within seconds, one long table dominated the center of the restaurant floor, pinning Alex in the corner. As the hyper-excitable brats filed in, Alex grimaced. Seated next to the low wall in the center, they blocked his way out. He buried his nose in his glass with another long drink, trying to block out the noise, but their enthusiasm carried farther than their tables.

“Pump and dump!” said one, wheezing out a laugh. “Gotta bunch of guys driving TuskCoin for a few more hours.” He scratched at the four-day scruff on his cheek before undoing the button at his collar.

They fell eerily silent as they sat, faces illuminated by the blue glow of their smartphones, thumbing and tapping, speaking but not looking at each other.

“Got an army of bots on Serpent,” said another. He paused as he tapped on his screen. “Got it up to 300%. Bought a half million at a penny!” 

Just then, he dropped his phone on the table, and rose, arms high above his head, face fixed in a triumphant O. He put his hands out for some high fives. “Just paid off the Tesla!”

Alex finished his beer. He set the empty glass down on the table, watching the light skin of foam slide down. 

James arrived again, eyeing the other men. He set a small dish on the table. Almonds. Alex could feel the warmth radiating from the nuts as a smoky scent wafted from the dish. 

“Something for while you wait. Can I get you another drink?” the server said. Alex waved him off, and James floated toward the loud group, pad in hand.

Smoked almonds. One of the Phoenix’s subtle specialties. Alex popped them into his mouth one at a time, glaring at the stupid twenty-year-olds. No manners. No decorum. His scowl deepened as he watched one of them, a lanky blonde, pull out an energy drink. The distinct hiss-pop drew James’s attention, but the server was smart enough to pick his battles, especially with a rowdy crowd like that. Even if they were jerks, the pub could stand to make a few thousand if they tolerated the patrons.

James circled the table. He didn’t bother reciting their drink requests. After one quick glance, seeing their faces locked in modern worship of their small black gods, he shut his eyes hard for a moment then rushed to the kitchen.

Another young, cherubic female appeared, smiling. She placed the meal with its small cup of broth in front of Alex. He plastered on a smile and nodded to her perfunctory inquiries. The table of eight stole most of his attention away from his food, even as he dipped the bread into the bowl and took a warm, right-kind-of-salty bite.

“Holy shit! Lila Vay’s all in on TuskCoin!” the tall blonde broker shouted, shattering the pub’s ambiance. The quartet missed a beat and glared at the table. Alex watched as the jazz band worked to sync up again. Blondy shoved his phone in the faces of the men nearest. A pop-synth tribal beat clashed with the jazz as a video played on his phone. “She says she’s doing it for the elephants, but we’ll bank millions when it moons!”

 Alex shoved another bite of sandwich into his mouth. Hot cheese threatened to scald his mouth. He exhaled through his mouth as he chewed, but his eyes never left the animated group.

“Hey, can you keep it down?” Alex said through a mouthful of roast beef. One man smiled darkly in acknowledgement. 

“325% and climbing!” 

Alex scanned the bar. James and the manager huddled in conversation over by the kitchen door. The way their eyes darted to the group betrayed their unease, but the manager shrugged. Alex got the gist of the conversation—turn the table quickly, enjoy your tips.

Alex wolfed down his sandwich. His head felt lighter as the yeasty bread and whiskey churned in his stomach. He paused once in sensory overload as one broker yelled over the gentle notes of the saxophone. He scooped up the last handful of almonds and threw them into his mouth. Cash is king, he thought as he dug his wallet out of his pocket, throwing down far too many bills. 

His other hand dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. Don’t say I didn’t do anything for you, he thought as he pulled up his contacts.

“Just learned TuskCoin’s getting pumped. Get in, get out. You’re welcome.” His eyes lingered on Marcy’s name blazing above the message. Alex tapped the send button and powered down his phone. He tugged at the knob of his wheelchair. The machine whirred as it pulled back from the table. He spun the contraption and drove it hard forward, directly at the group’s table. With no room to maneuver, his feet snagged on the legs of two of their chairs. They tried to stand yelling and cursing, but with Alex behind them, they couldn’t pull away.

One of the young men, seated at the end of the bunch of tables, rose. “What the fuck, old man?”

Alex smiled; he relished the dead glare he gave them over the plastic grin. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”

Their eyes fell to his wheelchair, feeding Alex’s vindictiveness. A petty act, but nothing was off the table with this societal scum. No tact. No class. He waited until his two victims tucked their chairs in closer to the table to make room for him. As soon as the path was clear, he veered past, sideswiping the legs of two other chairs as he went by. 

As Alex drove toward the door, James froze mid-stride, holding a tray of drinks, watching the scene with a face contorted by humor and horror. The manager lunged to intercept Alex, but Alex didn’t slow.

“I hope everything was to your liking, Mr. Varnier.”

“As always, Dan. My compliments. But the ambiance… It’s hard to enjoy a place with these… vulgar upstarts and their elephant coins and—and pop stars.”

Alex slowed enough to let the other man hold the door open for him. The least he could do—allow Alex to escape the crass noise that the manager had allowed in. 

Alex sped out into the small parking lot, squinting in the sunlight. He felt the alcohol working, smoothing out his irritation, like steam on fabric. Emotions. Anger. Indignation. The van yawned open ahead of him. He had allowed a little luxury before he got to work, and it bit him in the ass. As the door shut behind him, he cast a baneful look at the restaurant’s exterior.

5

Matthew stood outside Christ’s Church Homeless Shelter. They had kicked him out the last time he had tried to stay there.

***

He had sobered up for a day and a half to get the booze out of his system, and he even washed up in the fountain the night before. 

His hands shook—forty hours dry and nervous on the inside, still rather damp on the exterior. Matthew dropped his Social Security card twice while waiting in line. The bouncers turned a couple of guys away when they failed the breathalyzer. The big man muttered as he gave Matthew instructions, and the voices kept talking over him. Boy, they were watching him, though. Squinting eyes, suspicious. Churches are always full of watchers. But he got in. Got settled, took a shower. One of the watchers came by with a plastic smile and a bundle of clothes. Free of course, whatever that meant. When the watcher left, Matthew checked the clothes for nodes and listening devices. The voices helped him search.

Then the church service. A big, extensive building with a ceiling like an upside-down boat. It gave him vertigo as he walked, so he stared at his shoes with the right kind of solemn gaze, brow furrowed. They started singing. And that’s when the voices started ramping up. All the stained-glass windows. All the faces staring down. Jesus on the cross watching him. 

We didn’t do it, man! Go talk to Judas!

Someone hissed something behind him. When Matthew turned to see who, he saw a few older men silently mouthing the words of the hymns. When the songs were over, the preacher went up. The one from before with the clothes and the plastic fake face. 

The voices talked over the preacher. Matthew got into a yelling match with the voices, then the preacher, and before he knew it, they shoved his backpack back into his hands and kicked him out. Middle of the night. “Treat your neighbor as you treat the garbage!” He yelled at the muscular men who barred the door.

***

He could handle the watchers now. As long as they only watched.

He had tucked everything important away in his head. And the voices… He calmly listened to their hushed conversations. Get a shower. Use the computer lab to find Alex’s address. 

The sun turned the curve back to the horizon overhead, and no one was in line. He hitched his bag up onto his shoulder and strode toward the glass doors again, with social security card in hand. He recalled the reflection staring back from the mirror. Sunlight shone in his hair, brunette on top with straggly gray framing his youthful face. His appearance worried him, but he pushed his way inside.

Different men stood at the check-in station. Matthew handed over his card while a peanut-headed young man, glasses and smiling crooked teeth, wiped down the breathalyzer. 

“Have you been with us before?” Asked a frog of a man at a computer. He held Matthew’s ID as he studied the computer screen.

“Yeah, once, a few years ago. I’ve been doing a lot better. Want to get myself sorted out. Try to get in touch with some family.”

The words flowed out of Matthew’s mouth. He heard himself vomiting information but couldn’t stop.

“My son. I need to find my son. I haven’t seen him in years. Gotta try to make things right. Make amends.” 

He donned his own plastic smile, testing out the right words. Peanut put the breathalyzer in his face.

“Big breath, blow for as long as you can.”

Matthew took a breath filled with the antiseptic stink of the wipes and blew. The machine chimed, and the man looked at the small screen.

“Great.” He held out a small lidded jar. “Need a urine sample for drug testing.” 

“Oh, I don’t use any of that stuff.”

“I understand. We still need a sample just to be sure.” PB pointed to a small door behind him. A plastic sign read ‘Restrooms’. Matthew took the odd little piss receptacle and strolled into the bathroom.

A few minutes later, Matthew was inside, following a scruffy man past the lines of beds. Mostly vacant. A couple of men talking. Another sleeping. A third read his black Bible, but Matthew held his tongue.

Scruffy pointed to a bed, little more than a cot, and dropped a bulging ziplock next to the folded bedding.

“Soap, shampoo, razor, toothbrush and toothpaste. If you want to stay, then you’ve gotta go to the church service at seven,” said the man before he ambled back to the front.

Matthew took the bag and headed to the showers.

As he applied lather to his skin, he felt weeks of grime and stink lift and wash down the drain with the suds. He yelped when he found an inch’s worth of hair on his scalp, growing thick and strong.

His hairline receded in his late thirties. By his fifties, he had lost everything up top, leaving only the sides and back. Which had gotten long. And gray. And now, as he studied himself in the mirror, it came in with a vengeance!

He had to shave it all off.

Several of the other men stared as he took the razor to his scalp. Inch by inch, he worked his way over his scalp. Better to start fresh than to be patchy. Electively bald, not brunette and gray.

He looked even younger now. A long-lost relative stared back at him. He smiled, which turned into a grimace at the sight of his teeth. He squeezed a generous glob onto the toothbrush, working over the not-so-pearly-whites. Twice.

In the common area, a different young preacher wheeled around the cart carrying the assortment of donated clothing. The sound of conversations drifted up in the hall as more guests arrived. A line formed for the showers. He could have cleaned up at either of the other shelters, but Christ’s Church was the only one with a small computer lab. Faded posters about job searches or GED programs filled the walls. But the other two occupants ogled women in lingerie on clothing websites, pursuing their advanced degrees in female anatomy. The network blocked all the real porn sites—so, no, not advanced degrees. Associates. Certificates in physiology.

Matthew dropped into a worn-to-shreds desk chair. Notifications told him what was permitted, and he clicked through before pulling up the local white pages. In a matter of minutes, he had a dozen tabs open while searching for his son.

The voices hissed their agitation, the usual sense of someone watching. It’s the internet at a church, of course they’re watching, he replied in his mind. 

Matthew still had a couple of hours before the service. With any luck, he could find Alex’s information before they made him go to church. Maybe even sneak back out and search that very evening. He still had one more stop this evening before he tried to meet Alex.

***

Alex poured another two fingers of scotch. A third. The crowd at the Phoenix still rankled him. He had plans for The Phoenix’s Glenlivet after his meal, but then they showed up. The ice clinked as he picked up his glass and gulped. Warmth spread through his stomach and up his shoulders, dulling the frustration. And sharpened his focus.

 With practiced ease, he manipulated the stick on his wheelchair—rolling backward, turning left and then right, directly in front of his computer. 

The piercing glare of the double screens assaulted his eyes. Just beyond his home office, his television, left on and idling, beckoned. Drone footage of some misty taiga rolled by endlessly. In front of reclining couches with built-in massagers. He screwed up his eyes and rubbed them. As he blinked, he turned his attention back to the monitors.

One screen showed VitaNova’s SAP sheets—vendors, expenses, a maze his Scotch-fueled mind navigated with cold clarity. The other held his Cayman accounts. Using Marcy’s stolen authorization token, he accessed the system, forging invoices from BioVale, a shell company he’d set up years ago. After seeding the new account with $750,000 from his offshore stash, he tied it to Marcy’s approvals with a $500,000 lab payment, backdated to her digital signature. He hated to see his money go, but framing her was the cost of playing the game. After hiding everything—leaving just enough of a trail—he shifted the mouse over the confirmation button.

Alex startled as the doorbell chimed, echoing through the cavernous house. Eyes on the screen, he clicked on the security app icon. All the locks and windows were secured. Movement in the backyard—the stray cat again. But at the front door stood a man. His bald head shone in the overhead light on the porch—flecked with white spots—toilet paper on shaved nicks? He held his hands on the door’s glass panes trying to peer inside. His clothes looked… off. Mismatched and baggy. Alex stared. His mind scrolled through the knowns: He lived in a gated community, but security never alerted him to a guest. Especially this late at night. He clicked through several of the camera icons until the street in front of his house appeared. No car. Alex’s pulse quickened. He glanced at the red button that would summon the roving security patrol. Just then, the man at the door spotted the camera, the telltale red glow of infrared. He stepped back and brazenly faced the device, arms crossed over his chest.

Alex tapped the audio button.

“Hello?”

The man in the camera feed turned at the sound of the voice emanating from the smart doorbell. He stepped closer.

“Um, hi, I’m from Christ’s Church Homeless Shelter. Is this the Alex Varnier residence?”

Alex’s alertness elevated while his curiosity climbed. The face gazing at him through the screen looked familiar, but he couldn’t place it. A homeless shelter could mean only one thing.

“Yes, it is,” he said flatly.

“I see. Is Alex Varnier available? I have some news regarding his father, Matthew Varnier.”

“This is Alex speaking.”

At the pronouncement, the man turned sharply back toward the camera as though expecting to see Alex himself standing there. Again, familiarity struck Alex as he stared at the man’s face. The cast of the brows knitted over piercing bright eyes. The man’s lips pursed into a thin line.

“I’m sorry, this is something I’d really rather explain in person. He said an awful lot about you, and…”

Alex stared into the pale eyes staring back. Was the old bastard dead then? As he thought about this, his hand left the mouse and clasped the armrest of his chair—the byproduct of his father’s last gift.

6

He was four then. His first memory. He couldn’t understand the words, but the tone was just as clear as the stench of alcohol. His parents were fighting, and Dad was driving. The details came back with such forceful clarity. No wonder he shoved them down deep. Ms. Carly had finished reciting their letters. C didn’t say ‘ess’. It said ‘kuh’. The preschool secretary came in. Alex’s parents were here to pick him up early. When he heard the news, it filled him with dread—a word he didn’t learn till later in life. Dread. Dread of his father. The arguments he had with his mother. Her bewildered state and wide-eyed terror. Her hands clutching the cross that hung from her necklace. Dad said a lot of things that Alex couldn’t understand, but judging from the look on his mother’s face, neither could she. 

She prayed. Right then and there—out loud while staring Father in the face. Contagious fear.

Alex hated weekends. Home. His mother ran errands. Constant, hours-long errands—anything to get away. The cleaners. The grocery store. She was gone for half of the day. 

On good days he’d sit behind Alex in his lazy-boy, unseeing eyes filmed over while Alex watched Saturday morning cartoons. Detached, but constantly aware. Alex sat uneasily, on guard against the human time bomb sitting behind him.

On bad days he’d yell at the screen.Commercials especially. Alex couldn’t remember the details, but the words made no sense, disconnected from what ever had happened on screen. Cereal commercials. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle toys. Polly Pocket. Every time, Alex sat frozen while the rage exploded over his head, directed at the television.

On the worst days. Nothing. Matthew hid in their bedroom, whispering and banging—the only sign of his presence.

Alex grimaced as the memories flowed.

He recalled his father lurching out of his recliner. Hands fell like irons on the boy’s shoulders, and his father yanked him away from the screen. Matthew pulled the TV, a huge plastic and glass box, down from the its perch. Then nothing. Absence. Blackness. Matthew ran to his closet screaming.

But the most vivid memory. The only one that mattered. Leaving school with his hand turning purple as his mother clutched it, so tight it ached. Dad sat behind the wheel of the silver Crown Victoria. The eight-cylinder engine idled with a low rumble. They argued. The stench of alcohol. His father’s nonsense words. The crunch of metal, and the shower of glass. Pain followed by an alarming absence. The blackness that followed.

His father, Matthew Varnier, was schizophrenic. A drunk. And during one of his manic moments, he ran a red light. An eighteen-wheeler T-boned their car. Alex’s mother died, but not painlessly. The impact left Alex paralyzed from the waist down—a fact that Child Protective Services highlighted during their investigation. The brief tidal wave of emotions threatened to overwhelm him. But now, decades later, it only washed over Alex’s ankles.

“Is he dead?” Alex asked.

On the screen, the man’s face fell. The amendable smile disappeared.

“Do you have a moment? I’d rather–”

Alex shifted the mouse and stabbed one of its buttons. The application disappeared from the computer screen. He yanked the joystick and wheeled out from his desk, spun and threw himself out of the office, around the corner toward the front door.

Alex slowed as he approached. Through the lead-lined window he could see the man’s distorted figure. He paused. His cheeks burned. No doubt from the Scotch, but something churned in his gut. He took a deep breath and waved the emotions away.

His father was dead—a wave washed through him. Relief. 

He’d seen his father once a few years ago. The man was begging on the corner. No, not begging. He was yelling on the corner. Ranting about the police. Cardboard signs, filled with black marker—Matthew’s treatises that they were being assailed and assaulted. Watched.

He stank of alcohol then too, and body odor. His long oily hair sagged down his neck, a large bruise visible on his bald scalp, one black eye. Matthew Varnier took over two minutes to recognize him. He sat in his chair waiting for the crosswalk. Pleading and desperate, the words spewed out of his father’s mouth. He had recognized his son, if only for the briefest moment. Matthew wept and pursued him across the street, leaving the signs scattered over the sidewalk behind him on the other side.

His father raced ahead of him to block his path, trying to prevent his son’s escape. All while he issued a paranoid schizophrenic rant—because that’s all it was. Excuses. For the alcohol. Driving drunk and ignoring the red light. The car crash that killed Alex’s mother, and the broken back that chained him to that God-forsaken chair. 

Alex hated his father more than at any other moment before. Even as he watched, pinned in the metal cage, his mother spasm while dying, with a long shard of metal piercing her chest. Even when his foster parents abused him, the crippled boy, again and again.

Alex clutched the stick and sped at his father, knocking the old man to the sidewalk. He wanted to spin around and try again. But at the sight of his old tormentor, crumpled and weeping, Alex left.

***

He blinked. He rarely felt. Not when his guardians died of carbon monoxide poisoning the winter of his junior year. He felt nothing when his classmates paid him to do their papers. Only emptiness when the university expelled for plagiarism—but not him —too smart to get caught. For everything else in Alex’s life, he just didn’t care. His capacity for emotion, sentimentality, vanished a long time ago, burned-out, cold ashes, a pyre of loathing and hatred of his fucking father. 

Alex’s eyes fell back on the dappled figure of the man outside. He angled his wheelchair at the door, just so, unlocked the door, and pulled it open a crack.

“What do you want?”

The man’s face appeared at the slit in the door.

The heat vanished from Alex’s face, blood cascading down his body where he lost track of it. Despite the shaved head, he recognized him. Horror, if Alex had capacity for it. Echoes, mere ghosts of rage. His father, again in the prime of manhood. He remembered the man raving in the kitchen, throwing dishes at the television, screaming at his mother.

But the analytical side, the part that pried up rocks looking for opportunity, saw the wonder that peered back at him. 

“How?” he asked with an icy, indifferent tone. 

Matthew still had a wild gleam in his eyes. The constant agitation, excitable. Even as he stood there, hand on the knob, he glanced over his shoulder. 

“That’s what I came to talk to you about.” Matthew had recognized his son’s recognition. “I can make things right.”

The ghost inside Alex laughed. The feeling came out in a sneering scoff. 

“There’s no fixing the past.”

But Alex’s mind already flitted about. VitaNova. Jan Thuesen’s hunt for immortality. The seventy-year-old man stood at the door in a thirty-year-old body. He backed the chair away, and Matthew, leaning against the door, stumbled in. The heavy door swung on its hinges and thumped against the wall. Alex pulled away and steered himself back to the office. Behind him, he heard the door close, heavy steps following behind.

Alex stopped at the cache of liquor on the sideboard and scooped a generous heap of ice into his glass. He dropped only a few cubes into another. He poured from a decent bottle of whiskey—definitely not the Scotch—into both. As his father neared, he nudged the joystick around. Alex’s heart thundered in his chest at the sight of the man striding into the room. By the way his father carried himself, full and big, unhinged and self-confident, Alex expected—some part, a juvenile, four-year-old self—the man to launch into a one-sided shouting match. Or else grab him and throw him to the ground, accusing him of conspiring with the demon-possessed mailman.

“I’m sure something things don’t change.” Alex said as he thrust the undiluted drink forward. Matthew stopped in his tracks at the sight of the alcohol. He flinched. Disgust. Yet Matthew took the cup and tipped the glass back against his lips.

“So, what’s your million-dollar secret?”

7

One of the ice cubes leaned against the side of the glass just under Matthew’s index finger. Cold radiated out from the spot more than any other point of contact between his skin and cut-glass tumbler. In the time that the synapses left his brain and the cup came to his mouth, he had decided. Alcohol was poisonous to his goals. He tilted the glass back, but his lips never parted. The cold wave, the complex aroma, tempted him, but he tilted it away. He feigned the ritual, the grimace, the dramatic exhale. He needed to be levelheaded. And with the blessing of the voices and the fountain, he had just enough willpower. 

When Matthew looked back up at his son, he saw the man studying him, a flat, unreadable expression plastered across his face. 

Alex took a precise sip from his own glass. Matthew realized the boy was performing too when he saw the amount of ice in the cup—more ice, less whiskey. The younger Varnier cranked the control handle of his wheelchair and lurched into motion. Matthew jumped out of the way as Alex sped out of the office, leaving Matthew no choice but to follow.

Pain climbed up the father’s chest, tendrils tugging at his eyes. A quick glance around the house laid bare his son’s constant struggle. The house had an airiness, not borne out of aesthetics, but in response to the practical. Everything important and useful remained below the four-foot mark. Signs of a life shackled to a wheelchair. Beautiful paintings adorned the walls. A vast, long-exposure, black-and-white photograph of a busy harbor filled one side of the living room. But as he followed the whine of the wheelchair into the kitchen, the alterations were most apparent. 

Alex yanked open a stainless steel drawer. When the light blinked on, and Matthew saw the boxy white edges within and realized it was his son’s refrigerator. Low and accessible. The ceiling felt like it climbed up forever, free of any suspended cabinets or shelves. The island in the center of the kitchen hunkered low, covered in sleek white marble, with a slick glass-top stove—specifically designed for a man who could never stand over his food as he cut or stirred.

Matthew’s eyes fell on his son with pity and compassion. And then fear. He, Matthew, suddenly and sharply saw—truly felt—the impact he had on the entire trajectory of Alex’s life. Shame crept up, a slow-motion tsunami. The wind whipped the surface of the water into a thick foam, higher and higher, threatening to crush the father to death right there and then. 

His hands slipped into his pockets. His fingers wrapped around the crackling plastic bottle hidden there. 

After confirming Alex’s address with three different websites, Matthew slipped out of Christ’s Church through an emergency exit near the bathroom. No wires, no alarms. Just a few curious glances from the line of men waiting for the facilities. 

It took a couple of bus changes and a ten-minute walk to get back to the convenience store. A buck thirty to buy a small water bottle, which he dumped the moment he rounded the corner. Then carefully, with more reverence than he offered at any shrine or holy place, he kneeled. The loose gravel bit into his knees through the thin khaki fabric. Once more, Matthew put his face to the water and sipped. The voices responded in harmony with ecstasy. Assured, he tipped the empty bottle into the puddle, filling it as much as he could. 

Three more bus lines and a forty-minute walk brought him here. An emissary. Some sort of inverted pilgrim delivering redemption to the lost.

Alex fished out a long, white ceramic tray from the low refrigerator. It landed on the counter with a dull thunk, and Alex tore back the plastic wrap to reveal thinly sliced meats and cheeses. With another yank on the knob, the younger man pulled open a wooden drawer. He pulled out a box of crackers, dug a hand inside, and pulled out a fistful of wafers. 

Alex waved over the assortment of food in a welcoming gesture. Hunger raised its head in a pang in Matthew’s middle. He struggled to remember the last time he had eaten. Something he had dug out of a dumpster behind a restaurant before marching off to confront Dave. With as much restraint as he could muster, Matthew snatched at the charcuterie.

Salted meat and smoked cheese. He lost himself for a moment in the morsels he brought to his mouth. Eyes closed, he heard the tinkle of ice on glass, and remembered his own drink and the performance he had to maintain. Matthew brought the glass to his lips after swallowing the second pile of pancetta and gouda on cracker. 

He felt Alex’s eyes boring into him. That cold, unnatural glare. As his mind tilted toward the task at hand, the voices shifted from their benign chorus into a singsong guidance. 

He must believe, but doesn’t yet.

Ply the glass, the table set.

He nearly laughed. Suddenly, his tormentors were his coconspirators. In a flash, he saw his brokenness now mended in a fashion. The voices that urged him into unbounded paranoia now wanted what he wanted. The clarity struck him as he gazed back into the unmoved eyes of his son. They are me. They are mine. 

Matthew locked eyes with Alex. Long and hard. The psychopath was the first to break. He wheeled back toward the refrigerator. 

The voices whispered, listening, serving as a lookout, calling out Matthew’s movements. His senses extended beyond his sight and hearing. As Alex dug into the drawer, the harmony flooded Matthew’s mind, filling him with the urge to pull the water bottle from his pocket. Stealthily, he spun the lid and dribbled the contents into the other tumbler. Behind him, Alex rifled through the drawer. Cap back on. The drawer closed. Bottle in pocket. Alex slid past, dropping a plastic case of blackberries onto the island next to the tray. 

Matthew snatched a sliver of bresaola and shoved into his mouth. The herby flavor burst in his mouth. 

Alex rolled to a stop next to Matthew. The younger man’s expressionless eyes drilled into his father’s. Matthew shivered under the gaze. In the months after the wreck, he fought to keep custody of his boy. All in vain—the crash had paralyzed him from the waist down, and Matthew was a violent, drunk schizophrenic.

And to his own horror, Matthew let it go. He couldn’t fight CPS. And—he couldn’t admit it then, he didn’t want to. But it was more than his clear incapability as a parent—obvious even to him in moments of clarity. It was the boy.

As the weeks passed, in the few opportunities they had to meet together… Something changed. That cold glare. None of Alex’s old toys held his attention. So Matthew didn’t bother bringing any to the facility the third time he met with Alex.

Matthew held his son’s gaze, if only to avoid looking at the glass he had tainted.

He buckled, looked away, and reached for the berries. His eyes ricocheted off of Alex’s whiskey. From his seat he could see a thin rainbow. An oily film from the greasy puddle.

He hoped Alex wouldn’t notice.

Matthew scooped up a few berries. He rolled them in his hand.

“What happened to you?” Alex asked. He plucked at the fruit carton and extracted a single berry.

Matthew shoved the berries into his mouth. Delaying. The harmony resonated from deep beneath his sternum, up the flesh of his neck and into his ear canals from within. The sound was achingly beautiful, reverberating as though a choir chanted in a medieval chapel. Even as his thoughts probed for a response, the timbre of the voices changed. The harmony went sharp and trilled. Instantly, he heard their caution. 

Must not speak, must not show. 

A careful game, to make him know.

The waters listen, silent in their gift.

There they glisten, but at a word they shift.

“It’s kind of a miracle really.” The voices warbled, as he cut to the truth so cavalierly. Disguising the truth as idiomatic exaggeration.

Matthew felt the eyes on him again. The voices fell into a quiet undulating hum, and he turned and glanced back at Alex. The younger man picked at the tray, played with the foods until he settled on gouda with prosciutto on top. Alex rolled it tight and brought it to his lips. 

“A miracle?”

The voices cracked upon hearing the word again.

“I got into an accident. Had to go to the hospital.” Matthew felt the words leaking from his mouth. Uncoordinated lies. Alex tossed the last morsel into his mouth. His empty hand fell onto the glass. 

Matthew dropped the rest of the berries into his mouth. He pushed away every thought, willing himself not to look at Alex’s cup. He made a show of struggling to peel one slice of cheese off another.

“A hospital? Which one?”

Alex picked up the glass. Matthew grabbed his own cup and mirrored his son. And drank. The whisky was smoother than any other he could remember drinking. The liquor burned his throat, but his mind remained afloat.

 Just one sip.

Matthew put the glass back down on the counter. When he looked up again, Alex’s eyebrows drew together, forming a crooked line over his eyes. Alex sipped from the glass and met his father’s gaze.

Nothing

Alex glanced at his father’s glass, and Matthew realized his mistake.

Will power. Taking too long with a drink. Setting down the cup, its contents still at the same level.

“Tell me what happened,” Alex said with a tone of cold iron.

“I can’t.”

Alex’s eye flashed with rage, his cheeks burning bright red.

The voices quavered as Matthew lurched forward. Alex’s face contorted from anger to surprise to wrath. He lurched at his father.

Matthew squeezed the contents of the water bottle at his son’s face, into his screaming mouth. A last-ditch attempt to make Alex realize. Even as he did it, the tone that filled his head, the dozen shrieks and sputters, caused him to doubt.

Alex spluttered, arms outstretched ready for a blow to land. When none came, he raked the liquid out of his eyes and glared back at his father. 

Matthew’s heart thundered in his ears as he waited. Did it work? How long will it take? Would Alex even notice? 

Alex snatched the joystick and drove himself out the kitchen’s side door. Matthew surged after his son. He stepped into the dining room near the front of the house. Alex’s wheelchair flashed around the corner into the grand room. Matthew sprinted in pursuit, but as he rounded the corner, he found the grand room empty. He froze, already panting. Matthew strained his ears, listening for the telltale whine of the chair’s electric motor, but everything was silent.

Matthew crept toward. He guessed the bedrooms ahead of him. A tall entryway opened up to a dark hallway. As quietly as he could, he inched forward.

Suddenly, the front door chimed, and a whirring sound filled the air. The door, under the effort of a mechanical arm, swung inward. Matthew turned at the sound, and Alex took that same moment to burst from the coat closet right next to Matthew. The door, with the help of Alex’s chair, slammed into his father. Matthew went sprawling across the wooden floor of the grand room, but quickly recovered. He ran in pursuit. 

Alex ricocheted off the side table by the entrance and used the impact to angle past the moving door. Matthew lunged and snatched hold of the chair’s handles. As Matthew fell, he pulled the handle with him. Alex rolled backward, aided by the powerful wheels. 

It didn’t work, hissed the oldest voice. 

Matthew spotted the long cable extending out the bottom of a freestanding lamp. He grabbed it by the pole and yanked the power cord from the wall. With another tug, it separated from the bottom of the lamp.

“I’m sorry it had to be like this,” Matthew said as he wound the cords around his son’s arms.

“I’m sorry… I’m sorry…”

8

A cramp in his neck, the pain swiftly building, woke Alex up. His neck felt swollen, with every muscle bunching. When he opened his eyes, the light that streamed in through the windows blinded him. The jostling. The purr of a motor. He slit his eyes and saw his chair was strapped to the retractable ramp. 

To his left, his father, young and more coherent than ever, drove Alex’s van. Matthew’s head bobbed as his wide eyes went up and down from the hand controls to the street ahead, straining to operate the hand controls. Alex looked down at the wire bound around his wrists, hands resting in his lap. Fortunately, his father didn’t tie them up behind his back. He gave his father a second glance. The vehicle lurched to a halt at a red-light, and Matthew stuck his face mere inches from the steering wheel-mounted controls. 

Hadn’t gotten us killed yet, Alex thought.

Matthew grunted in frustration and jabbed at the touchscreen in the center of the dashboard. Alex never used the radio. Tejano blasted from the van. In a panic, tapped the different icons until he landed on the oldies station. The warbling guitar solo seemed to put the old man, now young, at ease.

Fighting the nausea that swelled with every movement, Alex dug both of his hands under his thigh. His nails clicked against the hard surface. The light flickered green. With another lunge and aided by the van’s rapid acceleration, he plucked out the cellphone from where he had stuck it, having grabbed it from the entry table during his attempt to get away from his father.

He peeked at Matthew again, who watched the road more intently, getting the hang of the controls. Alex tapped the device into life. He squeezed the two side buttons until the emergency screen appeared. He tapped the red button and bent down, shoving the speaker against his head. 

Before the second ring finished, “911, what’s your emergency?” a female voice said through the speaker.

“I’m being kidnapped,” he whispered. The image of his father, thirty years younger, flashed through his mind. “By some crazy homeless guy.”

“Right at this moment?” 

Despite the attempted professional tone, Alex could hear the dozen other questions sprouting behind the first.

“I’m a paraplegic. He’s got me tied to my chair in the back of my van.”

“Okay, I’m pulling up your GPS coordinates right now. What are the make and model of the vehicle?”

Alex opened his mouth to answer, but shut it as his mind continued to churn back to life after the concussion. Where was his father taking him? It’d be too hard to question him in jail, never mind how long it would take the police to identify the man with the way he looked. 

Facing the window, watching buildings as they blurred past his window, he thought it all looked uniformly urban. Indistinguishable from any other city block. He decided.

He pulled his head toward the phone again. “He’s looking back, I gotta—” Alex tapped the red circle.

In the front seat, Matthew began to hum, his voice trailing up and down like some wordless chant in a crude approximation of the verse straining out of the speakers. The van braked hard under his unsteady hand and tilted his head upward. Bright blue eyes bored into Alex through the rearview mirror.

“Awake?” He waited as if the answer weren’t obvious and glaring back at him. “The first way didn’t succeed, but you’ll see—” he stopped short and coughed. “There is a…” His brows met in a deep crease, “…way. You’ll get your answers.”

***

Too close! Said one of the voices.

You mustn’t!

He mustn’t!

No word!

Notionless!

So much as point, and life will go motionless!

Matthew swerved around cars as he ran a red light. Busy streets! So much activity! 

He eased his grip when he realized how hard he was pressing the accelerator. The van slowed. Two more blocks and a left. A right on the street next to the corner store. 

With another look back, Alex continued to stare into the mirror. For a fleeting moment, Matthew considered the look. Red lights drew his attention back to the road. He slammed on the brake before colliding with the SUV ahead of him.

In the mirror, Alex swung from side to side in his wheelchair. Then the eyes.

Matthew blinked, broke eye contact, and stared ahead. 

Get the boy… there. Get him to drink. Matthew shuddered at the thought. And when he’s… 

Hush!

Shush!

The streetlight blinked green, and one by one the vehicles lurched onward. Matthew slid under the light and turned. The sign loomed over the road, advertising gasoline. One voice shrieked in his head at the sight of the gas price. Matthew cringed in agreement. He hadn’t driven in so long that the thought hadnever occurred to him.

Another right and he passed the convenience store. He stopped the van next to the alley. Matthew unlatched the seatbelt and turned to face his son. The boy’s appearance struck him. Flabby face, tired lines, rage filled eyes.

“Are you thirsty?”

A voice swore in his ear.

With the press of a button, the side door rolled open, and the ramp extended out into the sun. 

Matthew climbed out and raced to the other side. Alex glared at him as the ramp carried him out of the vehicle, straining under his weight. Not what the engineers had intended. Matthew dove at the chair and disconnected the hooks that held the it in place. Before Alex could grab the controls, Matthew clamped a hand on the joystick and rolled the him forward. Alex clawed at the top of his knuckles trying to pry free, but Matthew held on, even as nails drew blood.

Matthew let go of the stick at the edge of the puddle. He dove to the back of the wheelchair, where he had opened the battery compartment. Before Alex grabbed the controls, the man yanked one terminal off the battery. The lights around the joystick faded to black. 

“Where have you taken me?” Alex asked over his shoulder. “Why are we here?” 

Matthew wondered at the bitter tone. So dead. His eyes fell on the body of water, shimmering in the sun. He scanned the alley. The van blocked the view of the area behind the store. Aluminum foil covered half of the windows in the apartment complex on the other side of one wall. He seized the wheelchair’s handles, braced himself, and tipped the wheelchair forward, grunting under the weight.

Alex spilled out of the chair with a shriek and a splash. Matthew dropped the chair onto all four wheels and pulled the beastly thing away from the water.

The voices guided his steps. 

Don’t speak.

Don’t define.

Don’t show.

Don’t name.

Just act!

The words cascaded in Matthew’s head. The air glimmered as he watched Alex flounder in the puddle. 

It was inches deep. The result of stagnant water from the AC runoff softening the substrate beneath the asphalt. Little by little, the minuscule body of water deepened. Until one day the spring broke the surface…

Matthew stepped into the water. He straddled his son. His boy floundered in the water. Without the use of his legs, Alex pushed himself up with his hands, arms shaking, wide-eyed panic. Grief struck the father as he watched. The young man struggled to hold himself out of the water. Just a few inches and would drown. Matthew lowered himself onto Alex’s thighs. Alex sensed the weight pinning his numb limbs to the ground. He twisted to glare at his father. Matthew met his gaze. The cold black eyes locked with his own. Hate meeting compassion. 

Matthew wrapped his arms around his son’s chest, enclosing Alex’s arms, causing the young man’s arms to buckle. Alex’s face dropped into the water. 

The concussion. The spinal injury. The mind. Matthew closed his eyes and bound every muscle around his son’s torso.

The things a father must do, said a sing-song voice.

The voices erupted in a sharp crescendo. The sound filled Matthew’s head. One of his hands clutched the back of Alex’s head, weaving through his hair, clutching and driving the face down into the water.

***

Once when Alex was young, Matthew was standing around the pool with some friends. Lucy entwined her arm with his. Lee was talking about his latest contract work with some design firm. Suddenly, behind Lee, Matthew saw Alex slip beneath the water. He’d unbuckled his floaty. His head dipped beneath the water. Matthew dropped his beer. It wasn’t a deep pool. Before the glass bottle shattered on the ground, he was in the water. Alex, submerged, locked eyes with him, wide and pleading. He pulled Alex up by the collar of his swim shirt and yanked him onto the edge of the pool.

Two hundred-dollar shoes. Three hundred-dollar BlackBerry phone. 

***

Suddenly he realized he’d do it again in a heartbeat. A hundred times over. He’d give his son his own legs if meant the boy could walk. Heal the hurt.

Alex roared beneath him, bubbles breaking the frothing surface, face pressed against the broken asphalt. Matthew held him down. Tears erupted from the father’s face. The image of his son beneath the water. Young and old. Matthew leaned down. Alex squirmed and thrashed. The father leaned down over his son. The lone exposed ear. 

“Drink.”

The voices hissed.

Alex fell still. Matthew put his head on his son’s back. Bubbles streamed from his son’s nose. Then the boy, the man, opened his mouth and swallowed. 

The voices rang out in chorus, Another!

No longer was Matthew alone with this burden.

Matthew rolled off of Alex. With a violent shove, Alex pushed himself out of the puddle with a gasp. Dark eyes fell on Matthew, but the father in him didn’t care. He watched his son flounder in the water, push himself up, and army-crawl out of the puddle toward his wheelchair. Just as he pulled his body up the metal frame, he flinched and dropped, gasping for air.

He lay like that, eyes rolled back. Matthew stared as his son spasmed. He curled into a ball and groaned. 

The sharp sound of sirens broke Matthew out of his reverie. The long sound was poignant and aimed at their direction. Matthew looked down at his son pushing himself out of the water, drawing his legs beneath him. A black rectangle, a dead phone, rested at the bottom of the puddle. 

“Dad.”

The word brought tears to Matthew’s eyes. The father pulled the son away from the water. With a heave, Matthew brought Alex to his feet. The newness stunned Alex, and his eyes fell down in wonder. One at a time, he lifted one foot and then the other. He broke free from Matthew’s grasp, turned and stared at the man. 

“What is this place?”

“Can’t you tell?

Alex opened his mouth to speak, but his father shushed him, eyes darkening.

“Don’t say it.”

9

“Dad?”

Alex sat. Pins and needles filled his legs.

He felt.

His mind wrapped around a notion, he mustn’t think about it. His father kneeled at the edge of the pool, eyes wide. 

Sensation. He drew his legs beneath him. His face prickled. As the wind swept through the alley, Alex felt his wet clothes cling to his frame. His legs felt stiff. His eyes fell on the black rectangle in the puddle. Some distant part of himself recognized the shape, knew it was his. Slowly, a new sense of awareness fell over his body. Sirens. Growing louder.

“We’ve gotta go.”

The strain in Matthew’s voice startled him. Alex snatched his phone from the puddle and climbed to his feet. A part of him was awestruck. He could feel. His legs, teetering beneath him. 

His father wrapped an arm around his shoulders and lifted him to his feet.

“What is this place?”

“Can’t you tell?”

Alex turned to his father, the words leaping from his mouth.

“Don’t say it.”

Childlike shame gripped Alex, and for a moment he was four again. Matthew dragged him back to the van, setting him on the passenger side. His father raced back to the wheelchair, reconnected the battery and steered it back onto the ramp.

State-of-the-art chair… serial numbers, he realized through the overwhelming fog.

Alex dropped a heavy hand on the button, pulling in the ramp, while Matthew raced around to the driver’s seat. Alex curled up in the seat. In a stupor as he flexed his toes, feeling water squish in his compression socks inside his burgundy oxfords. But he was lost in the moment, content to let his father take him. The shame had subsided, but he still felt like a child. Decades of venom that filled his mind—the vengeance—washed away. Left back there in the gurgling puddle. The one with the sweet-tasting water. Water that brought life.

Holy shit. The fountain of youth. Behind a fucking gas station.

His head swam. Sprawled on the floor of his custom-built van with a schizophrenic at the wheel. He sat up suddenly. Tentatively, he brought his hands to his legs. He pinched his thigh through the gray fabric, tugged at the leg hairs beneath the slacks. Alex giggled. His eyes fell on the man in the driver’s seat. A line of sweat trickled down his father’s temple. It caught the jawline and ran toward his chin. Alex’s hand drew into a fist. 

This man.

A memory filled his mind—an argument he watched unfold. His mother pleaded with his father. Her grabbing at his hand as he turned the ignition. 

Too many years. The water could never wash that away.

Alex sat up and scanned the street as it slid by the windows. He saw a stop sign. 23rd and Martin. He scratched his scalp. The nerves on top of his head glimmered at his touch. He felt—heard—the sound of his fingernails on stubble, hair reappearing on his bald spot.  

“Take me home,” he said with a rasp. 

His father had stolen far too much, but this was something.

***

Alex pushed the button bringing his seat upright, just as father jerked on the brakes, and the young man braced himself against the dash. The van jerked to a stop

“What was that?”

Matthew’s face pinched. He glanced at Alex out of the corner of his eye.

“You know what it was,” Matthew said. “But don’t say it aloud.”

The words came to Alex’s mind, but he couldn’t bring them to his lips. The image of his father, thirty years old. Himself walking, feeling. 

The Fountain of Youth.

He felt silly even thinking the phrase. His mind raced ahead.

“Take me home.”

Again, Alex felt his father peer at him sideways.

“Take a right at the light. Left on Bentsen.” 

Without a word, he changed lanes and turned right at the following intersection. 

VitaNova. Jan Thuesen. That bastard has spent more time hunting for the fountain of youth in a laboratory than Ponce de Leon. The image of that skinny fucking Dane’s face when he saw Alex walking in, with a fine full head of fucking hair! Alex broke the silence with a laugh. A real one. 

The sound startled Matthew. His father’s reaction triggered a sudden awareness of himself. Where things once felt dark and dampened, they were suddenly alive. He saw himself, his own mind, as a train in a dark tunnel. Only now, he wasn’t a passenger on the train. Instead, he felt like the operator, or someone bigger, the dispatcher, keeping watch over the train as it pierced the dark.

“How has it affected you?” The words fell out of Alex’s mouth before the question formed in his mind—another change, the absence of near constant analysis… measuring every word. He knew his father. Alex witnessed the man’s violent struggles with the demons that haunted him. 

Matthew frowned as he stared at the road. He cleared his throat. What few lines that marked his younger face deepened as he considered his words.

“I feel young. Lighter.”

Alex looked down at his legs. The sensation of clothing, leg hairs, every itch, the too-tight socks soggy inside his leather shoes. He shut his eyes and felt for the sun visor. When his fingers grazed the edge, he pulled it down and flipped up the cover on the mirror. The man looking back had never existed before. Alex in his early twenties, as if his body had been whole his entire life. He shut his eyes again and undid the laces on his shoes, kicking them to the floorboard. When he opened them again, he glared at the mirror. As if he had never experienced that car crash. Like those particular thirty years never happened. 

“Yeah, well, looks like we’ve both spun the clock back a bit.”

Matthew grunted in agreement.

“What about your… disorder?” Again the words fell out without the cautious weaving, waves breaking against a dam three decades in the making.

Again, Matthew furrowed his brow. 

“You mean the voices.” Not a question but a statement. His father didn’t wait for confirmation. “They are… quieter. Guiding. Not misleading and violent. They’ve warned me about not revealing the discovery to someone on the outside, or else it’ll vanish.” 

He paused for a moment, face pinched in contemplation. 

“We must not talk about it. It’s like in the old stories. The old magic. You can’t talk about something special, or else it’ll vanish. A reward for the humble. The blessing given to a faithful steward. I—” His voice hitched an octave. “I wanted to start fresh.”

Too late for that, Dad, Alex thought on instinct. Memories of thousands of nights in strange homes. Foster parents who took advantage of one more dependent. Alex’s mother, her entire chest stained with blood, gasping in the front seat. 

In all of this, he could only think of one thing that could make this okay. VitaNova.

***

Alex stumbled out of the van the moment his father shifted it into park. A wave of dizziness struck him. His head ached from racing in so many circles. So much stimulus to process. He blinked as he stumbled around the van inside the garage.

“Can we pause this for now? I need to get some work done, and it’s a lot to process. There’s a spare bedroom in the back of the house. I’m sure there’s some takeout in the refrigerator, and I’ll find some clothes for you. I’m sure I have something.”

The words tumbled out so naturally. He heard himself using that tone of voice. The motions that went with it, designed to draw sympathy. Unlike in the past, a mere hour ago, he chose the words and mannerisms. Manipulation as a tool, instead of his nature. Alex didn’t trust the man. The image of his father browsing through his fridge caused his stomach to tighten, but he needed to get in touch with Jan before he plugged into his anti-aging night routine. It would be impossible to break him out of that once he started. And then he’d be unreachable until eight the next morning. Alex’s watch flashed in front of his face. 8:47. Less than fifteen minutes.

He raced, as much as his wobbling legs allowed, to his bedroom and shut the door behind him. Alex panted from the exertion, his legs tingling, heart thudding. Standing by the door, he saw his reflection in the floor-length mirror. He was a mess. His jacket and shirt were wet and grimy from the puddle in that alley. His pants remained dry. Unfortunately, if his phone had been in his pocket, it would have stayed dry as well. Hidden under his thigh, it joined him in the puddle—the fountain—when his father dumped him out of the chair. Alex peeled off the jacket and shirt. He wondered whether they could be saved. Time couldn’t make anything worse, so he ripped them off and dumped them on the floor next to his hamper. He ripped off his pants, snaps unfastening in a chorus of pops.

He grabbed a pair of sweatpants and cursed the rows of buttons on the sides. Fucking handicapped clothing!  8:51. He stormed out of his bedroom and stalked to his office, slamming the door shut behind him. At his computer, Alex scrolled through his contacts. When he found Jan’s information, he snatched up the landline and jabbed in the phone number. As it rang, Alex could imagine the old man standing in front of his juicer or doing some meditation exercises before bed. On the third ring, a perky male voice, bearing a hint of the raspiness of age, greeted him.

“Hello, Alex! I was just thinking about you, and here you are calling. What can I do for you on such an evening as this?”

“I need you to get on a plane to New York first thing in the morning. I have something to show you. Something incredible.” He thought back to what his father had said about revealing the magic of the place. “A real miracle.”

“I’m intrigued. You’re not normally one for hyperbole, Alex, but I’ve got some good news and some bad. I can’t go to New York tomorrow.”

“Listen, Jan, you have to see this. I can’t talk about on the phone, but it’ll knock your socks off.”

“Hold your horses. Like I was saying, I can’t go to New York, because—the good news—I flew in this morning. Got half my team with me, supposed to meet you all in the morning.” He paused. “You will be at the meeting, right? Henry Norman was the one who set it up.”

Meeting? The ache grew pricklier where it sat lodged between the two sides of his brain.

“Oh yes, sorry, got my days mixed up—”

He caught sight of himself in the mirror once again. Standing. On his own legs. The idea left him dizzy and anxious. Alex turned his back to the mirror.

“I know you’re just about to turn in for the night, but can I ask you a big favor? Let me show you what I’m talking about—before the meeting.”

“Well, sure.” Alex could hear the mild reluctance in the man’s tone. “You’ve been an enormous help setting up VitaNova. I think I can swing by the office a little early.”

“It can’t wait. And it’s not at the office. Something in the field…”

10

Alex adjusted the cap. He never wore one. They made his lumpy features look even fatter. But in the hours since his father had attempted to drown him and force him to drink the nasty, miraculous water, his flesh had firmed up. As he rode the wheelchair up the van’s ramp, he felt the lack of the usual jiggling and jostling as he rolled over each bump.

Jan took another ten minutes of convincing, a stickler for his routines. Luckily for Alex, the jet lag benefited him—Jan’s internal clock was stuck on Central Time. The more they conversed, and with what little Thuesen revealed about the meeting, Alex grew increasingly concerned.  

Half his team. 

Half of Jan’s team were number crunchers and grant writers. The only reason Norman would have called them in without Strathmore Group’s Director of Strategic Ventures is if Alex were in deep shit. By the time they kicked open the doors at VitaNova, it had been as much his baby as Thuesen’s.

He felt the skin on his neck redden, the prickle of nervous sweat. Alex cranked up the fan on the air conditioning. 

The Fountain of Youth. His gambit. The blackest swan. Thuesen sat on a client list that would make a Californian senator jealous. Just a handful, and Alex could grease his way out of any trouble with Strathmore. Pay them back if he had to. And accept his golden parachute and jump with a big stupid grin. Maybe cut a deal with Jan too.

He returned to his surroundings. His mind clicked off autopilot as familiar street names appeared.  After another turn he slid into a parking spot at the convenience store.

Alex wiped his hands on his pants. The fountain brought a balance to his mind. Emotions, he realized. The effects of nervousness gripped him, and he breathed slowly, intentionally to try and slow his heart rate.

He arrived ten minutes before the agreed-upon time. For a moment, Alex toyed with the idea of getting a slushy. From his seat high in the van’s cab, he could see the whirling garish colors inside the machine by the back wall inside the convenience store. He’d have to be quick if his plan with Thuesen was going to work. Just as he reached for the door handle, a spotless black sedan pulled up next to him.

***

Matthew plucked at the pile of clothes Alex left on the bed. The room must have sat unused for some time. He left the door open to let in some fresh air. From beyond he heard the electric hum of Alex’s chair. The sound gave Matthew pause, but he didn’t pursue it. His son left for whatever business he had, and the garage door closed. 

Matthew selected a baggy pair of sweatpants and an even baggier t-shirt. 

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” he said to himself.

He went to the attached bathroom and turned on the light. The opulence stopped him in the doorframe. Even before he and Lucy had Alex, Matthew had never stepped into a nicer bathroom. White tile. A white rectangular porcelain sink set in a marble counter. Claw-footed tub. And a separate glass-lined shower in the corner. Also unused, judging by the fine layer of dust coating everything.

Matthew eyed the tub, but he was ready to get off his feet, sleep, and… be with Alex. He found a towel in a cabinet and a bar of soap next to the sink and turned the chrome handle of the shower all the way up. When the water turned hot, the old man in a young body eagerly stepped into the shower.

The moment the water washed over his skin, behind his closed eyes, his vision filled with his wife Lucy. Lucy the architect. Lucy the artist. 

He nearly felt her arms wrapped around him. The tips of her nails angled into the skin over his sternum as she clasped her hands. A pleasant discomfort.

He was too drunk and concussed to help her.

As she bled out…

The voices screamed to match the sirens as they approached…

Matthew fell to his knees. Vast heaving sobs wracked his chest as he wept, broken for the first time in forty years.

***

Matthew wandered back into Alex’s office. He felt stupid and obvious for wearing a terrycloth robe about his son’s house. But at the moment that was the point. His spirit felt light. Lighter than it ever had in his memory. He groped along the wall in the dark, until he found the light switch. As the cold while light singed his retinas, he shuffled momentarily blind to where he remembered the side bar was. When he at last blinked away the pain, he set his hands on the sideboard and scanned the array of bottles.

He flipped over a glass snifter, delicate and weightless in his hand. The first time he had laid eyes on Alex’s assortment of liquors, there one bottle stood out from the others. Pale amber liquid filled the glass shaped like a woman’s torso. Frozen arms wrapped around her breasts. Strands of hair carved and polished smooth, came up in a messy bun on the back of her head—the stopper—on a long sultry neck, the spout.

Matthew took the bottle, and wincing, he removed the awkward lid and poured. Once he replaced the top and the bottle, he brought the snifter to his nose. Behind the sting of alcohol was the meaty sent of oak wood. He straightened, flooded with the sense of a dark age passing, and raised the glass. 

He’ll ruin it! One of the voices shrieked.

The thought and sound stabbed Matthew through the chest. He doubled over, and the snifter tumbled from his hand and shattered on the wooden panels at his feet.

Matthew staggered. Glass caught under his heel and between his toes. He felt the splinters bite deep as he stumbled backward.

Stop him!

Matthew cupped his hands over his ears—a useless act when the cries came from within.

Wincing in pain, he spotted the cordless phone on Alex’s desk. As he launched himself at it, he felt sticky warmth leaking from both of his feet. Matthew grabbed the phone as he slipped in his own blood. The voices called out the digits of Alex’s number as Matthew stabbed the buttons. The call went straight to voicemail. He climbed to his feet. Just as he punched the redial button, his eyes fell on the white bowl next to his hand, filled with dry rice and a cell phone. 

***

Alex flicked the lever that sent the driver’s seat turning. He remembered the choreography, relying on his arms to pull and pivot his half-useless body back into his chair. The chair that served as a mechanical compensation for legs. He paid thousands for that level of autonomy. A rueful, angry fiber threaded itself through his core as he performed the familiar routine. 

With another slap of a button, the door opened, and the ramp extended outward with a hateful electric whine. After this last performance, Alex could forgive his father. Once the money rolled in, after the cosmic slot machine paid out, he could stand before his father on equal footing. In more ways than one.

“What the hell are we doing here, Alex,” Jan called into the open door as the ramp carried him outside.

Once the ramp scratched to a stop on the asphalt, Alex shot back, “I was a little thirsty. How about a slushy, Jan?”

Jan Thuesen glanced inside the gas station with a sharp look of disdain, lips turning down into disgust.

“Is this some sort of joke?”

Alex followed his gaze into the fluorescent glow of the convenience store.

“Actually, yes. Kinda. Follow me.”

Alex pulled his cap low over his face to shield it from the buzzing fluorescent lights. His own appearance, youthful and smooth, a part of the charade. He yanked the knob and spun the chair around the back of his van. His ears turned to make sure the other man followed him.

“Alex, I have to warn you, Norman warned me about any contact with you before the meeting. My friend, he said you were under some sort of investigation.”

“So I’ve heard,” Alex said over his shoulder as he rolled into the side street.

“Is it true?”

Alex let the question hang in the air. Unimportant. Chaff in the wind. Thuesen yearned for results. He’d burn through a billion dollars in a heartbeat if it meant results, another year of life.

“You need to see something.”

The footsteps behind Alex stopped, but he proceeded. Another fifty feet, a big reveal and then Van Thuesen would stand between him and Strathmore Group’s army of lawyers and accountants. 

Alex guided his wheelchair around the corner of the convenience store. He swerved around the water-filled potholes. Sure enough, Jan followed. 

Somewhere in the distance, sirens pierced the muted darkness. Alex lost the sound of the other man’s steps, but rolled on. He had set the hook. Just a little further. He didn’t dare look back to make sure the other man followed him.

When he reached the mouth of the alley behind the shop, he stopped, and with another swivel of the joystick, he turned to face Thuesen as he followed.

“Jan, I’ll be honest. I’ve swindled a lot of money out of Strathmore. And the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Jan stopped. He eyed Alex suddenly, studying the figure in the chair.

“But this is bigger than Strathmore. Bigger than VitaNova.”

Alex tilted the cap back from his head. Thuesen’s eyes widened. Alex set the brake on his wheelchair and kicked the footrests out of the way.

When he stood, Jan Thuesen gasped.

11

Matthew sat at the desk. He felt dizzy, flinching as the roar of the voices assailed his mind.

Ruin!

Lost!

How could you trust him with something so precious!

“Alex, you can’t reveal the location!”

He slammed the phone back onto its cradle and then pounded a fist on the polished wood. The computer screen blinked to life, mouse jostled by Matthew’s outburst. He stared at the cold blue glow, trying to interpret what he saw. Jan Thuesen, CEO VitaNova. A phone number. An address in Chicago. He deduced the chain of events. Dead cell. Phone call on the landline..

A shrill scream shattered his thoughts. Long and piercing. Eyes shut tight, he grabbed the phone. When the voice faded, Matthew keyed in the digits.

***

Alex strode toward Jan. The old man’s mouth hung open as he stared at Alex’s face.

“How?”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I think it’s time to reconsider VitaNova’s relationship with Strathmore.”

Jan’s eyes roved up from Alex’s feet to the top of his head, then back at the chair.

“Alex, you look...” 

“I feel amazing, Jan.”

“But how?”

“You wouldn’t believe me unless I showed you.”

Just then Thuesen’s brows wrinkled. He dug a hand deep into his coat pocket and pulled out his phone. He glanced at the screen, and the corners of his mouth drew down.

“You’re calling me, Alex.”

Jan held up the screen for him to see. Alex recognized his home phone number. His father.

“It must be my father. He’s staying with me for a few nights. My phone… took a swim this afternoon.”

“Should you talk to him?” The words came out one at a time. Thuesen held out the phone to Alex like it was a used tissue.

“He’ll be fine. Probably just worried.”

Thuesen’s frown deepened as he looked at the screen again, paused, then tapped the red button.

Alex felt the moment slipping away. His father had blunted the surprise.

“As I was saying. I have something to show you.”

The flash of curiosity returned to the old man’s face. Alex turned and strode around the corner into the alleyway. He stopped. His shoe touched the edge of the pool. Under the bright orange wash from the streetlights, Alex watched a ripple roll out across the large puddle. He heard Thuesen approach.

“You’ve spent your life looking for a way to extend the human lifespan.”

Jan studied him, squinting, obviously analyzing Alex’s face, jaw still hanging. The expression changed as a hand dove back into his pocket.

“He’s calling again, Alex,” Thuesen said, face illuminated by the screen’s blue glow.

Damn it, Dad!

“Forget him,” Alex said, reaching a hand to Jan’s shoulder.

The old man started at Alex’s tone. He needed Thuesen on his side before that meeting. Something like this would set him up for life. A long and wealthy life.

“It’s the fucking Fountain of Youth, for God’s sake!”

***

For a split second, Matthew felt his mind rip in half. Two distinct pieces, thinking, perceiving, reacting independently of one another. On one side, he realized Alex had revealed the fountain’s location. That mind spun through strategies and options. The other side of his mind howled and wrestled with the voices and their manic tirades. He sank to the floor and covered his eyes. Familiar aches blossomed in his knees and back. His left hand, below his ring and small finger where he broke the metacarpals against stupid smiling teeth, tensed and throbbed.

One voice peaked. His other mind saw the foreign room, the computer, the screens, even the damned smart thermostat, and realized the coming horror.

The thinking mind —the part restored to him by the fountain—slipped away.

Matthew crawled on all fours across Alex’s office. As the last thread of rationality snapped, he watched the flesh on his hands deflate and sag, going from the warm glow at the height of vitality to the splotchy gray of old age.

His world swam with tears.

Lost!

Death!

Sanity, he started, but couldn’t finish the thought.

Matthew fell to his side and added his cries to the voices in their old familiar choruses.

***

“What’s the matter, Alex?”

Alex felt his error faster than he could conceive of it. As soon as the words left his mouth, it felt as though his spirit stepped into a cold mist. The color faded. His happiness faded, replaced by a cold inability to understand the term. 

He locked eyes with Jan. He stepped backward, hands raising, as though warding off Alex. The young man glanced down at the puddle—the black mirror. The water rippled with the movement of his feet. Stars danced on the surface until it stilled. And then he saw it. The sallow skin. Eyes like scalpels.

A chill washed down his back. He shivered and retreated away from the water.

“What the hell is going on?” Thuesen yelled.

“I… I…”

Alex’s brain staggered under the mental and physical burden. A hollowness where the emotions dwelt, gone now.

Alex stumbled on the corroded asphalt. Suddenly, a pins and needles sensation filled his feet. It raced up to his knees, like insects filling his legs.

Until they didn’t. His right foot went numb. Then left. 

“Shit!”

He tripped again as he rushed back to his wheelchair. Gravel chewed against his palms, and he heard his knees impact the ground. But he felt nothing, just the impact rattling up his body. Thuesen called to him, but to Alex’s ears it only sounded like garbled vowels.

Alex’s legs still obeyed him, but the feeling was gone. He climbed upright like a drunk, then rushed back out of the alleyway, rounding the corner. Just as he spotted his wheelchair, he felt it. The rubbery weight below his navel. His feet tangled up, knocking him sideways. Both arms shot out. Bones snapped the moment his hands connected with the ground. Time slowed. His head descended to the street. His arm, hand planted firmly against the ground, arched and bent at an ever-increasingly alarming angle. As his eye drew level with the break, the skin bulged and one half of his radius burst into the night. He would have fainted at the sight. The pain would have caused him to black out. But gravity beat them both. His head crashed into the ground.

***

Matthew awoke but didn’t move. Every fiber of his body ached, dehydrated. He groaned as inch by inch he crawled into a sit. The voices yelped, oblivious to the pain the sounds inflicted.

Fat Mark had a radio in his tent, and as long as Bat-Shit-Crazy Matthew had one of those nice bottles of fancy fucking liquor, he could stay and listen to the news anchors discuss Alex’s trial.

Last night, the jury found him guilty. As an added bonus, the caster with the greasy-sounding voice discussed the likely outcomes of Alex’s sentencing. 

“He’s looking at a minimum of five years, Diane. Not to mention tarnishing the Strathmore Group’s image and potential fines being levied.”

Fat Mark’s thunderous snores reverberated in the tent. It was still dark outside.

“Why am I awake?” Matthew said to himself. The effort stung his raw throat. His brain floated in the purgatory of drunkenness and hungover.

A whisper hissed among the grumbling in his head. Matthew strained to listen. 

We feel it. It’s back. Somewhere new. 

The other voices shouted down the whisperer. Matthew winced against the cacophony. He waited for the noise inside his mind to subside.

So track to where it flew.

Matthew pulled a bottle from his backpack. His fingers found the familiar shape of the cognac bottle—one of several he stole from Alex’s stash before fleeing the house. He cracked open the seal and took three long gulps to stave off the coming pain. He took three more and then left the bottle in the crook of Mark’s arm for breakfast. Matthew left his backpack and unzipped the tent.

New York at night, staggering. He felt the eyes on him in the city that never sleeps. The whisperer tugged at him, and the others goaded him on.

The old man didn’t have years. It was a wonder that he was still alive, as it were. He’d lost Alex behind concrete and steel bars, and Matthew didn’t have five years.

The city rolled by in a shaky blur. He didn’t stop until he heard the soft shimmer of wind in the tree branches. And water splashing. Through a green arch surrounded by flowers. The moonlight hinted at their vibrant colors. Matthew descended the short steps one at a time. Jets of water shot into the air above an oval pond. A bronze statue of children dancing, nearly black in the darkness, rose from the center. 

The voices fell quiet, dead silent, as his gaze fell on the cascading water.

Matthew stepped to the ledge, then down into the pond. The dark water came up to his shins. He shuffled toward the nearest fountain but slipped on the green sludge that lined the bottom. Matthew pulled himself onto his hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way.

With the water spraying just inches from his face, the voices began their beautiful harmony again. He tilted his head into the water and parted his lips. 

Light flashed behind his closed eyelids. The pain vanished, replaced by a coolness that rushed through his body, extinguishing every ache. His sagging jowls tightened about his cheeks. Shaking hands stilled.

He drank again. Clarity came to his mind, but memories filled his vision. Lucy’s scream. Her sticky blood. Alex, as a boy with his icy glare, strapped to a wheelchair. The CPS agent with the too-tight bun pushing him around. Again, his son in his chair, rolling down the street years ago.

He drank again. And again. He filled his stomach, forcing more water in.

Until he gagged and retched. Water and bile mixed with stale liquor washed about his hands. He gulped down more and more.

His body transformed from feeble to hale. He drank himself full again after vomiting a second time. 

The thirty-year-old shrank into a young man, then a teen. 

Matthew stopped to catch his breath. He gasped at the sight of his hands. But he bent to the fountain again. His face drew closer to the jet as his arms shortened. The boy in the pond, baggy wet clothes sticking to his body. The child.

He didn’t stop.

Not a blessing. A curse.

His mind let go of the thoughts too big to comprehend. But the determination remained. So he drank.

Until his arms, too short and too weak to hold himself up, collapsed into the water. Too small to rise above the surface. The infant gazed up at the bubbles climbing to the stars above the surface of the water. And closed his eyes.

* * *