Drop by Drop Read online

  “It was a morning like this one, nice and dry. But your clothes were soaked.”

  “You were kind to me.”

  “You were dizzy and covered with bruises.”

  “So you took me home with you.”

  “You were only a kid; I never laid a finger on you.”

  “No, you didn’t.” She bent to look in the window without touching the car. “You look older now, Edgar.”

  “I am older. So are you.”

  A faint smile ghosted across her lips. “A thousand years older.”

  He touched a metal button on the dashboard. The door on the passenger side clicked. “Get in if you want to, Lila.”

  “You still live in the same place?”

  “I do, but it’s been extended; kind of unusual if you like that sort of thing.”

  She opened the door. “I’d like to see it.”

  “Come to lunch now and I’ll give you some of my Blow-Your-Socks-Off Chili.”

  “That I remember.”

  Neither spoke for several miles until she asked, “What kind of car is this?”

  “A hybrid.”

  “I’ve been in a lot of hybrids and they’re nothing like this.”

  “Mine’s part pickup truck and part Jeep; I put it together myself. It’ll run on gasoline or used cooking oil or rubbish I find lying by the road.”

  “Are you still making reproduction carriages, Edgar?”

  “It’s a profitable hobby. Nostalgia sells. I just built a little trap that’s supposed to be a surprise birthday present, and I have a brougham about half finished that really is beautiful. It would suit you, I think.”

  “Is that what you put on your tax forms? Occupation, carriage maker?”

  “What makes you think I file tax forms? I keep my assets in a hole in the ground.”

  Tilbury’s hybrid turned off the main road, drove over a rusty iron cattle guard and jolted down a rutted laneway. The fields on either side were pastureland sparsely studded with boulders. “You called them ‘remnants of the Ice Age,’” Lila remarked.

  The lane curved to the right. The view ahead was blocked by a dense stand of cedars. Beyond them was a rambling white frame farmhouse with the upper part of a storm cellar protruding from one side. The building nestled in a haphazard mix of evergreen and deciduous shrubbery that had not been pruned in years.

  “Home sweet home,” Tilbury announced. “Come on in.”

  The living room was papered in a muted blue-and-white stripe; the brick fireplace smelled of ashes. Bookshelves were crammed with volumes on every imaginable subject, arranged according to topic. Two full sets of encyclopedias, one American and one British, took up a whole shelf by themselves. A well-worn recliner upholstered in coppery velour waited beside a large floor lamp.

  Lila recalled that Tilbury had been a widower, but in this room there was no visible hint of his personal life. No framed photographs, none of those flourishes described as “a woman’s touch.”

  “You still don’t have a dog, Edgar?”

  “Had two since you were here. One got run over on the road, the other got shot for a sheep killer.”

  “Was it a sheep killer?”

  “Nope. But the guy that shot him hasn’t shot anything since. Would you like a drink before we eat?”

  “Irish whiskey, right?”

  “You have a damned good memory,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re economical with words, aren’t you?”

  In response she quoted, “‘Listen to everything, learn a little, answer nothing.’”

  He gazed at her in astonishment. “Aristotle?”

  She smiled. “Euripides.”

  They sat with their drinks on either side of the fireplace. After a while Tilbury cleared his throat. “Under the circumstances I’d like to hear the rest of your story, Lila. If you think I’m entitled to that much.”

  She gave him a measuring look. Slowly, some of the hard knots loosened inside her. It was getting too painful to hold up the shields which had protected her since childhood.

  “Did I tell you about the party?”

  “Just that it got too rough and some bastard who wouldn’t take no for an answer hit you. Hurt you pretty bad.”

  “Knocked me out, I think, then threw me into the river. Maybe he thought I was dead; it’s lucky I didn’t drown. By the time I crawled out of the water he’d disappeared. Instead of going back to the party I just started walking.” As she talked the words came more easily. “I was like a moth coming out of a cocoon. Dazed, you know?”

  “I can imagine.”

  “I realized I’d been close to dying and I wasn’t ready for that. I never knew who my father was, but I knew what my mother was and I didn’t want to turn out like her.”

  “So you kept walking until I found you,” Tilbury finished for her. “Buddhists would call that karma. We’d both had some life-changers, Lila; I’d buried my wife and you needed a fresh start. You know what? Every life’s a hallway with a certain number of doors in it. When you go through one you can either leave it open or close it behind you. I tend to close ’em.”

  “So do I.”

  “Obviously. You stayed with me for three weeks and then left without saying good-bye. After you’d found the cash I kept hidden,” he added.

  The wary look returned. “I’m sorry about that. I just … I was still running, I guess.”

  “Survival instinct; that’s something I understand. Yet here you are after all these years. Why come back when you’d got away clean?”

  11

  “I had the best reason in the world to come back to Sycamore River,” Lila told Tilbury, “at least I thought I did. I was going to make a dream come true.” She hesitated, deciding how much to reveal. “After I dropped out of school…”

  “How old were you when you did that?”

  “Eleven.”

  “Was school too hard?”

  “No, it was too easy, Edgar; I was bored out of my skull.” Talking was getting easier for Lila by the minute. Perhaps it was the warmth of the whiskey in her veins; perhaps it was the need to let go after all this time. All the trouble, all the pain.

  “My mother didn’t care what I did, she had her, ah, men friends. Sometimes I crossed the bridge and wandered around on the south side. We always lived in cheap furnished rooms and those houses looked like palaces to me. Real homes with a mother and one father instead of a parade of dirty uncles. My favorite was one with a tile roof and blue shutters, and window boxes full of flowers that were changed with the seasons. There was a doghouse in the yard that was an exact replica of it, complete with the shutters and window boxes. I used to imagine living in that little doghouse.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?”

  “It was part of what I was running away from. When I had your money—it seemed like a fortune to me at the time—I decided to use it for the one thing I could change: myself. I hitched a ride to New York, checked into a small hotel under a different name and began studying.

  “In school I hadn’t bothered to learn much, but if you want to teach yourself the place to go is the New York Public Library. I read up on all the things that interested me. And I sought out people I could learn from. New York’s great for that too. I went to the best places and began rubbing shoulders with the best people. In Manhattan almost everyone’s from somewhere else; they’re not interested in your past, only in today and tomorrow.

  “I was pretty spectacular, you should have seen me at my best. I learned to dress like a fashion model and talk like a university graduate. And eventually I hooked up with a rogue in the IT industry who showed me how easy it was to get my hands on other people’s money.

  “I discovered I was magic on a computer. I could uncover personal secrets and private financial data and siphon money out of any bank that wasn’t adequately protected. There are still more of them than you’d think, Edgar, both foreign and American. That’s why it’s so hard to p
revent cyber crime.

  “In a cashless society with instant real-time money transfers wealth can be accessed across multiple platforms. There used to be a saying: ‘If you have a smartphone you have a bank.’ With the newest AllComs that’s more true than ever. In a single day I could transfer a fortune to an offshore account, exchange it for dollars if necessary, then transfer it again and again until it was untraceable. All the money I could ever want, right at my fingertips, accessed while I was wearing my pajamas and calling up room service.

  “I could even come back to Sycamore River and buy the house with blue shutters. People will forgive and forget anything if you have enough money. So I stored what I needed in the best AllCom on the market and caught the train, ready to begin a new life.

  “But nothing ever turns out the way you expect, does it?”

  Her expression hardened. The green eyes were as opaque as glass. “The day after I arrived I went on one of those southside walks again. The houses I remembered are still there, but now there’s bloody war in every one of them. When I looked through the windows I saw men and women—and children too—hypnotized by their wallscreens, watching people slaughter each other as if it were some kind of game show. And for what? No one wins. The junk people snort up their noses or inject into their veins is a minor poison; killing is a worldwide addiction.

  “And to make matters worse, the crowning insult, Edgar; my irreplaceable AllCom with all the information in it doesn’t work anymore. Now you know why I’m so upset.”

  “If the tools of modern technology are failing, a hell of a lot of people are going to be upset,” he replied, “because they’ve put their faith in it. But the more complicated something is the more can go wrong. That’s why I like to keep things simple.”

  He was wondering if the story she had just told him was as simple as it sounded.

  By her own admission the girl—woman now—was far from honest. But her tale was intriguing to a man who loved a good story. She might be telling the absolute truth, but she also might have shaped her narrative to extract the last drop of sympathy from him. Acting was an innate ability. It could be developed and honed, but the best actors believed every word they said—while they were saying them. Working out of a backstory that was temporarily their reality.

  “What are you going to do now, Lila?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  “You have a place to stay?”

  “I do for a while; I’m not going to ask you to put me up again.”

  Their eyes met. They understood one another completely. “I’m not offering,” he said bluntly. “But you can come back for a visit. I’ve got a real good workshop here; I’m not the techie you are, but maybe between us we could fix that AllCom of yours.

  “Now, let’s have a meal and then I’ll take you back to wherever you live.”

  * * *

  Jack Reece continued to monitor the progression of the Change. It was becoming more difficult as the vast network created for and sustained by the computer started a slide toward extinction. Electrical power in the national grid was undiminished, but the necessary portals, due to their vulnerable components, had begun to disintegrate.

  According to the news it was happening all around the globe. Governments were growing frantic as they realized the implications for civil society and military might.

  Yet it was the small details, not the big picture, that seemed to upset people the most.

  Bea Fontaine stood in her bedroom doorway almost in tears. “My nylons, Jack! They’ve turned into soggy tatters. I can’t possibly wear them to the bank in the morning and the Old … Mr. Staunton is very firm about—”

  “The bank’s going to be open tomorrow?”

  “And every working day, he’s firm about that too.”

  “Do you have any makeup? Fake tan, that sort of thing?”

  She was insulted. “I never wear fake tan.”

  “I’ll drive down to the drugstore and buy some. You can spread it on your legs in the morning and he’ll never know the difference.”

  “You’ve been my problem solver since you were a boy,” she said with a smile. “But I don’t understand about my nylons.”

  “Nylon is a synthetic material, Aunt Bea, made of polyamides that have a high molecular weight and can be turned into a fiber. It was developed in the 1930s, I think; before that women must have worn cotton or silk stockings.”

  “Silk?” Her eyes lit up.

  “If the Change is starting on nylon I’ll buy you silk,” Jack promised. “In the meantime I’m on my way to the drugstore.”

  As he backed his Mustang out of the two-car garage behind Bea’s house, she watched from the front porch. “One of your tires looks low,” she called to him.

  Jack stopped the car and got out. If the tire on the driver’s side was low it was only minimal. He gave it a hard kick.

  “Son of a damned bitch!”

  He drove to the drugstore very carefully, bought the fake tan and delivered it to his aunt, then drove with even greater care across the bridge to the north side.

  When Jack was away for any substantial period of time he left the Mustang with Bud Moriarty, a gentle giant of a man who owned an automotive garage on the north side. Like Jack, Bud was a classic car enthusiast; the two had met at a vintage car show. Bud kept Jack’s convertible in top condition until its owner returned.

  Bud shared a house with Lacey Strawbridge, a former runway model going to seed. She claimed to have been a cover girl on the top fashion magazines. When Jack’s car pulled up in front of their house Lacey came running out to meet him, shrugging into a white cotton cardigan to hide the slackness of her upper arms. “Jack Reece, you devil, are you leaving us so soon?”

  “Not for a while. But I need to have a talk with Bud; is he inside?”

  “He’s down at the garage. Wait and I’ll ring him.”

  “Is your AllCom okay?”

  “Why shouldn’t it be?”

  Jack followed her into the house and waited while she rang the garage. The case of her AllCom was dull from long use, but the call went through immediately. After a minute’s wait Bud Moriarty’s blunt features, smeared with grease, appeared on the screen. “Sorry about that, Jack, I was down in the pit. What can I do you for?”

  “There’s something I want to show you. Are you coming back this way?”

  “In half an … no, I can come back right now. It’s almost lunchtime.”

  “We’re having Chinese dumplings,” Lacey told Jack. “Do stay, they’re almost as good as sex.”

  Jack raised an eyebrow.

  “I said almost.”

  Jack grinned. “You should try it with a man.”

  She stuck out her tongue at him.

  Her relationship with Bud contained everything a marriage should—except sex. They were a fond pair but not a couple. Bud was interested in men. Lacey preferred women.

  Asexual intimacy baffled Jack. For him any relationship with a woman—except for his aunt Bea—contained at least an awareness of sexual tension. The only time he broached the subject with Bud the other man had laughed. “If you leave sex out of the equation a woman can be your best friend.”

  The three ate their meal on a wooden picnic table in the backyard, with paper napkins on their laps. Bud’s house was close enough to the river for a summer breeze to lessen the heat, but it was also convenient for mosquitoes. Although the air was thick with citronella, soon tiny dive bombers were attacking.

  Jack slapped at his neck and arms. “Why in hell do you live here, Bud?”

  “Cheaper property prices and lower taxes. I bought this place and the garage down the street for less than I would have paid for a house alone on the south side. There are a few inconveniences but nothing we can’t put up with.”

  Lacey added with a wink, “At least we have a wooden toilet seat.”

  When the meal was finished Jack led the way to the gleaming red Mustang waiting at the curb, looking almost as perfect as w
hen it left the dealer’s showroom many years before.

  “You put a set of brand-new tires on this for me,” Jack said to Bud.

  “Yeah, a couple of months ago.”

  “Pick one.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Pick any tire you like, and kick it hard.”

  Puzzled, Bud swung his foot and delivered the requested blow to a front tire.

  The rubber was mushy.

  Bewilderment was replaced by dismay. “Don’t tell me they’re all like that, Jack!”

  “They are.” There was a subtle change in Jack’s voice; an edge that had not been there before. “Did you put synthetic rubber on my car?”

  “It’s just as good; even better,” Bud said defensively. “Synthetic can wear longer.”

  “The invoice I paid specified premium high-performance rubber.”

  “Yeah, well … I mean…”

  “Natural rubber,” Jack continued in the tone Bea would have recognized as his lecturing voice, “is obtained by tapping rubber trees and using chemicals to coagulate the liquid into latex.”

  “But—”

  Jack was relentless. “Natural rubber is resistant to heat buildup, which makes it invaluable for high-performance tires on racing cars, not to mention trucks and buses and airplanes. On the other hand, synthetic rubber is derived from petroleum and alcohol and is a helluva lot cheaper, so it’s used on ordinary cars. But my Mustang’s special. Did I ever tell you I wanted to do things on the cheap for it, Bud?”

  “No, but—”

  “Stop right there. ‘No’ was the correct answer.”

  “I’ve always taken good care of your car, haven’t I? When that drunk ran into you and we had to replace the door I couldn’t find an original anywhere, but I had an exact duplicate made. You didn’t say anything at the time.”

  “You didn’t tell me it was a substitute. And don’t look so worried, we’re still friends. Except now I know I need to keep an eye on you.” Jack flashed his sudden dazzling grin—which did not totally reassure Bud Moriarty. “Unless I miss my guess, soon you’re going to see a lot of unhappy people complaining about their tires. Synthetic rubber contains petrocarbons.”

  “I’ll replace your tires immediately, Jack, I have some high-perf tires in the garage.”