Concord, Chapter 2
Quiet desperation
Saul raced the long shadows home as the sun rose behind him, red halo coruscating the treetops. Through the front window of his rooming house he saw Mrs. Dodge moving about, laying the breakfast things. Still clutching the black duffel he ducked down out of sight and crabwalked to the side of the house, sliding around the side to the back kitchen door. Thankfully, no doors were ever locked in Concord. He slipped inside, controlling his breathing, and climbed the back staircase as quietly as he could. Once in his bedroom he shut the door behind him and sat down on the floor, waiting for his hands to stop trembling. At least his incipient migraine was gone, he told himself. Maybe adrenaline was the cure.
He considered the duffel bag between his knees: a scarred, blunt object, smelling of rotten rubber and of seawater. No time to examine its contents now. After considering various hiding places, he settled for under the bed. It was Thursday, and Mrs. Dodge only vacuumed on Tuesdays and Sundays. He had time. Time to consider what to do and how to do it. One thing was clear to him after this morning’s horror: he could not remain in this place a week, a day, an hour longer than he had to. He pictured himself on the refugees’ boat, sailing away, leaving Concord behind, toward what ruin he could scarcely imagine.
Idiot, he told himself. You don’t even know how to sail. And then he tantalized himself: What if she’s still alive? He banished the thought. For now his task was to go through the motions, dissimulate, deflect any unwanted attention. To buy time.
His landlady was waiting for him in the sunlit dining room with a carafe in her hand. He entered briskly enough. “Good morning, Mrs. Dodge.”
“Good morning, Mr. Klein.” She poured a cup of ersatz coffee into his cup and looked at his face with motherly concern. “I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”
He touched the bandage on his forehead. “Scratched myself running.”
“Shall I’ll get an antiseptic?”
“I’m all right.” He forced a smile. “Please don’t bother.”
Carrie Dodge was a vigorous, broad-shouldered woman in her sixties with a tight cap of uncolored hair and sunburned arms. She’d tied a flowered apron over her gardening overalls to serve breakfast to Saul and the other roomers—single men who had not been allocated a cottage to themselves. An early riser, Saul rarely encountered his housemates. Hank Hardiman, his Lyceum colleague, flew out the door every morning at the very last moment in a state of spectacular dishevelment. The other man, whom Saul thought of simply as the Painter, was seldom seen. He was a tall, gaunt black man about ten years older than Saul with no institutional assignment. As far as Saul knew, the Painter devoted his days to painting portraits and still lifes, a few of which hung about the dining room. He’d painted Marco’s official portrait as well—the inescapable image of Marco in his prime, with the visionary gaze and outthrust chin proper to the First Founder. Saul wondered if Marco had actually sat for it, and what words might have passed between Painter and Founder. Sometimes Saul glimpsed the Painter on the Green with his easel, always in the same gray windbreaker and faded green fisherman’s cap with a long brim that cast his face in shadow. What was his name? Raymond something.
“Don’t let it get cold, now,” Mrs. Dodge admonished.
Saul picked up his fork and forced himself to attack his scrambled eggs, conscious of her gaze. She looked motherly now, but at one time she had once overseen Saul’s personal security detail with practiced efficiency. It was a job, he thought, that she had never truly left.
“I’m worried about that cut,” she said, pouring more coffee into his mug. “Why don’t you stop by the Clinic today and let Dr. Jee have a look?” It was an instruction disguised as a question.
“I’ll do that.” He took a sip of the fake coffee, trying not to frown at its woody taste. Then he noticed that one of the place settings was empty. “Did Hank beat me to breakfast? When was the last time that happened?”
“Mr. Hardiman has already left for work,” said Mrs. Dodge, in much the same tone she’d used when Saul had committed some minor violation of their security protocol. She tapped the heavy men’s wristwatch she wore commando-style on her inside wrist. “It’s later than you think.”
“Good God,” Saul said, frowning at his own watch. It was nearly nine. “How did that happen?”
It was a bad sign, one of several he’d been trying to ignore over the past several weeks. It wasn’t just the headaches or the dreams; sometimes he’d look up and discover that a span of time—twenty minutes, an hour, two hours—had simply vanished without his noticing it. He hadn’t yet missed or been late to work, but one afternoon last week after his last class he’d fallen into a reverie at his desk, only to be suddenly roused by the midnight whir of the hygiene bots. Where did the time go? He rose from the dining table hurriedly in his dismay and knocked over his half-full mug.
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Dodge, wielding a dishtowel. “You go and teach those kids something they’ll remember. And go see Dr. Jee afterward.” She frowned. “I have to say, Mr. Klein, you don’t look at all like yourself.”
He half-walked, half-jogged to work. Once in the village center he had to slow down to negotiate the clusters of people clogging the streets, which the projectors had cast in the role of a small New England town in the Bedford Falls mold—perhaps Concord’s most popular mask. The men wore suits and narrow ties as they strolled to their stations, while women in skinny jeans or pencil skirts paired with boxy jackets chatted with each other in the doorways of shops. Men disappeared into the base of the Conn, Town Hall, the Constabulary. Two deputies in regulation gray facemasks stood on their strollers at the intersection of Hawthorne and Melville, keeping an eye on things. Saul wondered if they’d been part of the incursion response that morning. He resisted the urge to salute them as he hurried past.
The Lyceum complex sprawled on what the villagers called, for form’s sake, the west side of town—starboard would have been more accurate, but the use of nautical terminology was frowned upon by all but the Commodore and his team. Saul passed through the swirl of uniformed students, under the stern gazes of the statues that marked the porticoes into the school, one for each of its four houses: Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Rand. On the steps he saw Hank Hardiman greeting students, a half-eaten bagel in his hand. Hank was a plump former VC who favored the sweater-vest-and-bowtie look. He waved the bagel at Saul as he approached.
“I didn’t realize you were on morning duty today,” Saul said. “I thought you had a deal with the Headmaster.”
“Who can sleep in anymore, at our age?” Hank said, shrugging. He lifted his eyebrows and pointed at Saul’s forehead. “Cut yourself shaving, I see.”
“That’s right.”
“It’s all that running you’ve been doing.” Hank patted his own large belly with affection. “Me, I don’t see the point. We all go to Sunrise House in the end, and it won’t much matter what condition our bodies are in, as long as everything is sound up here.” He tapped the side of his head. “You ought to take it easy and not go smacking your skull into trees.”
“Sound advice.”
The bell rang. “That’s our cue,” said Hank cheerfully. He dropped the bagel into his coat pocket, clapped Saul on the shoulder and the two of them passed between the great doors under the Lyceum motto: Cultivate the Future.
The future for shareholders lay in Sunrise House: the chamber deep in the understructure where their brains were cryogenically preserved after death for the sake of the life to come. Saul shuddered at the thought. His life on Concord, floating apart from everything that had once given it meaning, was purgatory enough. But Hank seemed to look upon the prospect cheerfully, aligning him more closely than Saul with the Concord Way.
The lecture hall at the top of Rand Tower had been designed with an eye toward timelessness: oak paneling, maple lectern, high ceilings, with the students’ desks in raised semicircular rows, amphitheater-style. They sat or sprawled or held themselves rigid in their seats, notebooks open, in identical uniforms, though many of the girls preferred long tartan skirts to the regulation navy slacks. They watched him stride up to the blackboard and write a sentence, then stand back for a moment contemplating it, as though they were words he’d never seen before. The sentence read: THE MASS OF MEN LEAD LIVES OF QUIET DESPERATION.
Someone coughed. Saul turned around. His eye passed over the students, young people he’d known all their lives. There were only a sprinkling of bodies in the seats, most of them female, for Saul’s course in civic rhetoric was of no obvious use for students training for posts in Vital Services as engineers, designers, and technicians. Only a few politically ambitious or misinformed young men, alongside the young women who’d have to live with them, signed up for it. They made an interesting group.
The cougher was his colleague Dr. Ojekwu’s son, David, star running back for the Rand House football team, training like the rest of the young men for a role in Vital Services, in his case as a mechanical engineer. Wiry, genial, with his father’s dark skin and his mother’s almond-shaped eyes, he was a heartbreaker to boys and girls alike. He stifled his cough as he caught Saul’s eye and smiled apologetically. A few seats away sat Mi-yeon Park, a gifted musician and mathematician, talented enough to choose Vital Services rather than reproduction as her path to shareholdership should she so choose. He could easily imagine her ascending to Navigation, or the Culture Office. Her straight black bangs fell over her face as she bent over her desk, intent on writing something: a musical score, perhaps. Near her sat Clementine, the pink-faced, heavyset daughter of Don Macklin, the Chief Agriculturalist, squinting at the words on the blackboard as if trying to decipher a foreign language. Chewing on his pencil next to her slouched Tommy Creel, the only other boy in the class, freckled and ginger-haired—his father, Oliver, a former news anchor, was the mayor, an honorary position in which he presided over the village’s festivals and occasional ceremonies. Below him hunched Siobhan Reilly, who despite her uniform had a punky look—it must have taken some effort to chop her dark brown hair into its distressed, flyaway appearance. She had tested infertile, as had a worrying number of the village’s young women. Lacking Mi-yeon’s obvious talents she would soon take orders with Mother Dorian, entering the Sisterhood of the Creche charged with raising Concord’s children. At that time her sullen face would be hidden behind the white mask of the Sisterhood. Some Sisters decorated their masks with cartoony smiles, cat whiskers, or anime eyes, the better to appeal to their young charges. But Siobhan’s face then, like her face now, was likely to be blank.
Nearest the window sat Lila Vespucci, chin in hand, gazing out over the football field to the treetops beyond, bending in the freshening breeze. The village was set into a declivity so that even from the Lyceum’s highest towers the sea would rarely be seen. Only the needle of the Conn thrust high enough into the sky so that Navigation could have visual contact with the element that carried them; the element most villagers elected to ignore.
With the events of the morning fresh in his mind, Lila’s pale skin and red, shoulder-length hair reminded Saul painfully of Suzanne, her mother. He recalled the bewildering moment when he’d awakened aboard the submarine, sitting up coughing in his bunk, trying to shake off whatever they’d sedated him with for the journey. Looking up he saw a grim-faced Marco standing over him, holding a squalling infant in his arms. For a moment he had thought Marco was going to hand baby Lila to him, but instead the First Founder shook his head, as though disappointed by something, and walked away, taking his daughter with him. Saul stared at the empty bunk across from him where Suzanne should have been opening her eyes, sitting up, awakening to their new life together. She was long gone. He shut his eyes against the throb of diesel engines, nearly loud enough to drown out baby Lila’s cries.
In the present, Concord was changing course. The sun swung through the window and outlined Lila in a white halo that made Saul squint. When she came into focus again she was scratching her forearm with ragged nails, eyes focused on some private vision. Her lips moved, but he heard no sound.
David coughed again, this time deliberately. Saul cleared his own throat. “The mass of men,” he said, gesturing at the board, “lead lives of quiet desperation. Who said it? Ms. Park?”
Mi-yeeon raised her head. “Thoreau, sir.”
“And why did he say it?”
Silence. David was craning his neck at Lila, trying to catch her eye, but she remained fixed on the window. Tommy raised his hand.
“Mr. Creel?”
Tommy held his head erect. “Because he didn’t want to live that way.”
“That’s correct.” Saul snapped his fingers. “Ms. Vespucci? Are we boring you?”
She turned her heartbreakingly familiar green eyes in his direction, but said nothing. The other students looked at him expectantly. The bandage on his forehead itched. He let one hand fall heavily onto the lectern.
“I went to the woods,” he quoted, “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” He swept them with his gaze. “Can you feel that? Can you understand it? That is why we are here, together, a community of nonconformists. Mine is the Concord Way.”
“Mine is the Concord Way,” the students chorused. Mine, not ours, for Concord, Marco had said, would be the last bastion of individual freedom on a planet of sheep. The irony of asking their children to say this in chorus had eluded him. Not a lot of irony in Marco, Saul thought. But that’s why he’s First Founder and I’m Second.
Lila said the words a beat late, the syllable way grating on his ear like a question. She pulled up the sleeve of her jacket to scratch harder and he saw a series of angry red welts like chevrons on her wrist. She caught his look, tilting her head with something like defiance in her eyes. She lifted her arm high in the air for a moment, as if raising a question, displaying her wounds.
The bell rang.
David jumped up from his seat and moved to Lila, bending down to say something into her ear. She listened without responding, other than to pull the sleeve of her jacket back down over her arm. He touched her on the shoulder and she pulled away. David’s face tightened, but when he saw Saul watching, he stood up, nodded formally to his teacher, and exited with the others. Lila remained seated, once again staring at the window.
“Ms. Vespucci?” Saul said. “Is there something wrong?”
She shook her had. He watched her get slowly to her feet, gathering her books in a clumsy pile that she clutched to her chest. Still moving slowly, she walked toward him, eyes never leaving his face. She was standing in front of him. “I have a question, Mr. Klein.”
“Yes?” She had Suzanne’s eyes, Suzanne’s cheekbones and chin. Only the nose was alien, hooked where Suzanne’s had been snub. There was something alarming about her, something dangerous. He had to force himself not to take a step back. “What is it?”
“Does desperation have to be quiet?”
The words hit him harder than he might have expected. He had known her all her life, has watched her grow up, tended her from afar as best he could, officially the daughter of another man. The man, Marco Vespucci, First Founder of Concord, his partner and his boss. He wanted to answer her honestly, but the words died in his throat.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. Her eyes, so brilliant a moment before, were hooded. She turned away. “Bye, Mr. Klein.”
He watched her leave. She would never know how similar she was to her mother, how very alike they were—unless perhaps she obtained permission to visit the Archive. Even if she did, the records there were sadly incomplete, as he knew only too well. Lila’s father had made certain of that. He pictured her walking home alone to her modest house, the house she shared with mad Marco, and felt a dizzy wave of pity for them both. He climbed up to Lila’s desk and sat down, trying to see what she’d been looking at through her window. Dusk was coming on. At first he saw only the line of trees; then he saw how they were pitching up and down against the clouds, ever so slightly. It was no use pretending with the others that they not at sea. He’d seen it for himself that morning: the sea, and the madness it could bring.
The dizziness passed, but he sat on. It was fall, the start of a new school year. The navigators were turning north in search of more seasonal airs, to color the maples and elms the right shades of red and gold. And if they somehow failed, well. That was what the projectors were for.
He walked through the antiseptic halls of the Lyceum, high-ceilinged and tiled like subway tunnels, nodding at the inspirational quotes on the walls: Strengthen me by sympathizing with my strength, not my weakness. The dizziness came back and he staggered, catching himself with one hand on the white wall. He rebalanced himself and offered the security camera overhead a jaunty salute. “Nothing to see here,” he said aloud. The events of the morning were painfully fresh in his mind. He wondered what the Constable’s men had done with the refugees’ bodies. Tossed them overboard, most likely. And the boat? What had they done with Ali’s boat?
He felt feverish. A cup of something hot was what he needed.
The staff room was a scuffed and carpeted chamber crowded with faded armchairs and couches, with the ubiquitous First Founder portrait glowering benignly from over the door. The room was almost empty. He poured himself a mug of ersatz and turned to contemplate once more the paunchy form of Hank, who stood by the microwave monitoring the revolutions of the burrito inside. Once upon a time Hank had counted himself among the fortunate of the earth, the founder of Hardiman Capital, with a portfolio in the mid nine figures. Now he filled his days teaching history, scraping the dregs of his knowledge of a lost world; a world that, as far as their students knew, was the pure invention of their dreaming elders.
Hank retrieved his lunch from the microwave and plumped down on the sofa with it, spreading a convincing simulacrum of an ancient Wall Street Journal across his knees to act as a napkin. Saul sat in an armchair across from him. “Think the Yankees can win the pennant this year?”
“Don’t they always?” Hank took a big bite of burrito. Red salsa oozed out and spattered the fake newspaper on his lap. “Just finishing the unit on the post-Cold War period. Things are about to get messy.”
“Messier, you mean. And what comes after that?”
Hank smiled thinly. “Current events. Not my department.” He fussed with the paper, and Saul glimpsed a headline that probably had something to do with the quadruple hurricane, the so-called Four Horsemen that had erased the Gulf Coast: THOUSANDS MISSING, MILLIONS DISPLACED.
“I guess current events are the Commodore’s department,” Saul said.
“Is that supposed to be a pun?”
“Pretty lousy,” Saul admitted.
“Stick to cultivating the future,” Hank advised. “And keep your head down.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Saul asked, surprised. But Hank only shook his head and turned his attention to his salsa-stained newspaper.
The bell rang. Shrugging, Saul picked up a replica of the last print edition of the New York Times and opened it as a defense against the stream colleagues entering the lounge. In a few moments the room was full of civic-minded shareholders, the cultivators of Concord’s future, busying themselves with chatter, fake coffee, and modest plans for the weekend. Saul hid behind his paper, the very latest of late editions, pretending to read a profile of the ambitious and wildly successful young tech trillionaire Marco Vespucci. The newsprint felt crisp in his hand, the ink blackly bright as though the paper had been printed that morning. It almost certainly had been; Vital Services could print nearly anything: newspapers, chairs, lawnmowers, weapons. Anything at all, as long as it was old news.
“Ow!” Something hhad poked him in the calf. He dropped the paper and looked up into the wry face of Jean Rodefer, who taught neuroscience and home economics. She had jabbed him with the point of her high-heeled shoe. “Earth to Saul,” she deadpanned.
“If you’re on Earth, where am I?”
“In orbit, I suppose.” She sat down on the arm of the chair and his nostrils flared as he inhaled her musky scent. She indicated his bandaged forehead. “Did you hurt yourself?”
Hank was staring openly at them, his mouth full of half-chewed burrito. Saul stared back until he blinked and returned his gaze to his paper. “Looks like it.”
“Poor Saul.” He felt her hand brush lightly against the back of his collar. “The headmaster wants to see you.”
“Now?”
“Oh no,” she drawled. “Take your time.”
She took the mug of fake coffee from his hand and took a sip. She grimaced. “It’s cold.”
“Sorry.”
She handed it back to him. “Some like it hot.” She stood up, smoothing her skirt, meeting the glances of the other teachers with her frank, ironic gaze. They turned hastily away. Without a last glance at Saul she strode out the door.
Saul counted to sixty before standing up and walking out of the room, paper folded under his arm, imagining his colleagues’ eyes burning a hole in his back.
There was a maintenance closet nearby that the two of them knew well; its vinegar smell was enough to start his hard-on. In the dimness he saw only the outlines of her face with its malicious grin and restless eyes. Her hand sought his crotch. Roughly he pushed her away, then turned her around and bent her over the low shelf as her hands scrabbled at her skirt. She wasn’t wearing any underwear, and he thrust into her with a crying gasp. She bit down on one hand to silence herself while worked on herself with the other. When he was sure she had come he pulled out and turned to finish into the sink, leaving her panting, fingers spread on the wall. Soon their breathing quieted and the two of them stood back to back, rearranging their clothes and their thoughts.
She said, “I wonder who else uses this closet for hygiene purposes. Hank and Sheila, maybe. I can just picture them slobbering all over each other’s faces and hosing each other off afterward.”
“Don’t be disgusting.” He ran the faucet, still not looking in her direction.
“You love it.”
The banter didn’t hide the edge of disappointment in her voice. He forced a grin to his face and turned to her, bending awkwardly for a kiss that she deflected. Eyeing him critically, she reached up to adjust his necktie.
“Does Frank really want to see me?”
She stepped back to examine her handiwork. “He does, actually.”
“Shit. Am I in trouble?”
“You tell me.” She took a vape out of her purse and hit it. “He doesn’t tell me anything,” she said, exhaling. “After all, I’m only his wife.”
The headmaster’s office was suitably imposing, with an oak desk, a brick fireplace, and walls festooned with degrees, photographs, and convincing replicas of paintings by Dutch masters. Perhaps, Saul reflected, they weren’t replicas at all. It was difficult to tell on Concord. Franklin Rodefer stood behind his desk, a big man with a thick spade-shaped wedge of brown beard that gave him a passing resemblance to John Brown. “Come in,” he boomed, waving Saul in. “Come in! Don’t let in any flies.”
“You wanted to see me, Frank?”
The headmaster gestured to the two high-backed chairs by the fireplace. “Sit down, please. Coffee?”
“I just had some, thanks.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Frank wistfully. “I’d kill for a cup of real Arabica, wouldn’t you?”
They seated themselves at angles to the fireplace, in which a flickered a heatless projected blaze. Frank looked Saul over, touching his own forehead in eerie imitation of Ali’s gesture. “What the hell happened to you?”
“I ran into a tree.”
“I see.”
Saul wondered if Frank’s nose was keen enough to detect his wife’s scent lingering on Saul’s clothing. He folded his hands in his lap and tried to look unconcerned.
Frank sniffed, raising Saul’s alarm further. But he was only looking for a way to begin. “Lila Vespucci,” he said.
“What about her?”
“She’s been… distracted. Perhaps you’ve noticed?” The headmaster stroked his beard, lifted the end of it and let it fall. “Her other teachers say her coursework’s been slipping. And she quit the cheerleading squad.”
“I’d call that last part good sense,” said Saul. “Frankly, Frank, I’ve never understood why we have cheerleaders in the first place. As for my course, she’s been doing just fine.”
The headmaster smiled indulgently. “Well, your course, yes. Civics. It’s not exactly rocket science, is it, Saul?”
Saul brushed this aside. “What do you mean by ‘slipping’?”
Frank counted off his fingers. “She’s failed exams in neuro, calculus, history. She’s cutting Home Ec altogether. Not turning in assignments. It’s verging on truancy. Some days she doesn’t come to school at all, and we don’t know where she goes.”
We again. “I find that hard to believe.”
“Which part?” The headmaster cocked his head for a moment like a listening dog. “There’s only one class she never misses. Yours.”
“She has good taste.”
“Does she actually come to it?”
Saul wondered where this could be going. “Of course she does. Are you accusing me of falsifying my attendance records?”
“No one’s accusing you of anything,” Frank said soothingly. “Just doing my due diligence. Don’t be offended. The situation is more serious than it appears. She hasn’t put in for an apprenticeship, she’s not Sister material, she isn’t engaged to anyone. It would be a bad look for us if she were to drop out. Bad for the Lyceum. Bad for Concord.” He cleared his throat. “Bad for the image of our Founders.”
Every Lyceum senior was apprenticed to a position in Vital Services. Upon graduation they were committed to an eight-year stint working in the island’s understructure, and living there too, hot-racking as necessary, maintaining the massive physical plant churning constantly beneath the shareholders’ feet. Only after this period would they start to earn their share in Concord, the share that would entitle them to make a home, start families, see daylight. The only other way to become a shareholder was to bear a living child. A person who reached the age of majority without doing either of these things would officially have sacrificed their right to residency. Of what would happen to such a person the Articles of Association maintained an ominous silence.
“I haven’t even told you the worst of it,” Frank said after a pause. “She’s overdue for her quarterly Clinic screening.”
“So?” Saul said, thinking uneasily of the marks on Lila’s arm. “She’s a teenager, not a middle-aged man like we are. She doesn’t need her prostate checked.”
Frank’s face was somber. “It’s been nearly six months. It puts her fertility in question.”
“Jesus, Frank. She’s just a kid.”
“The Articles of Association are explicit,” Frank said. “No freeloaders, not even from the families of Founders. If Lila doesn’t contribute in one way, she’ll have to contribute in another. Deliberately or not, she’s closing all the doors.”
“Don’t lecture me on the Articles.”
“I would never,” Frank said deprecatingly. “Didn’t you write them?” He leaned forward, steepling his fingers. “Come on, Saul. You don’t want Lila to wind up like poor Dawn Moody, do you?”
He’s baiting me. Saul forced himself to unclench, to breathe, to put the image of Dawn Moody aside. He leaned back in his chair and tried to smile. “Isn’t this a problem for her dad?”
“The First Founder’s problems are Concord’s problems. Don’t you agree?”
“Have you spoken to him about this?”
Frank looked at the fire. “Marco can be elusive.”
“So you haven’t. Does he even know?”
The headmaster frowned. “He’s First Founder. He knows everything that goes on here, bow to stern, keel to Conn.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“Of course he knows,” Frank said testily. “He’s been informed. But Marco is a big-picture person, as I’m sure you remember. He likes to leave the details to others.”
“He’s not leaving them to me,” Saul said. “He hasn’t for a long time.”
“Don’t be bitter, Saul. He did when it counted most, back on the mainland. First Founder, Second Founder. You were joined at the hip, remember? Too warm in here.” The headmaster picked up a remote control and clicked out the virtual fire. “Without you, he would never been able to implement his vision. I honor you for it, Saul. We all do. And you should be honored by the trust he’s put in you.”
“Too bad he doesn’t have a vision for his kid, then,” Saul said. “I guess she’s just another detail for other people to deal with.”
Frank raised his hands. “Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Who sent the message if it wasn’t Marco? Saul wondered. Aloud, he said, “So what do you want me to do?”
“Talk to her. That’s all. You’re her teacher, aren’t you?” He got to his feet to signal that the meeting was at an end. “What’s our motto here?”
“Cultivate the future,” Saul said, rising. They shook hands, awkwardly. “I’ll do my best.”
He turned to go and was nearly out the door before Frank called him back. “Saul!”
Frank’s face was stern, prophet-like. He raised a lordly arm and pointed at Saul’s waist. “Haven’t you forgotten something?”
He looked down. The headmaster was pointing at his crotch. With a sickly grin, he yanked up his undone fly. “Thanks.”
Frank smiled him out the door until it closed, then turned back to the dead fire, stroking his beard, no longer smiling at all.
