Chapter 40
The third week in October, Colin ordered Mateo to cover his position in the market. The stock had not yet reached its zenith. But he knew it was time to clear the decks. There was no room for anything else now.
Later that same day, he took down the octopus.
It had become such a fixture in his home and life, the act carried an emotional impact, like he was wrenching at something deep.
Even so, the sheets and his myriad calculations needed to come down.
Now that he knew what was required, all he could see there on the walls were the absent elements.
The portions that had remained incomplete.
The calculations that were still just a bit off.
Misguided, because he had not been sure where he was going.
Now that he knew, it was easier to work from the flow behind his eyes.
The power was gathering and muscling into proper shape.
As a result, his cardboard designs belonged to a different era.
Even so, removing the hand drawn sheets, being careful not to let the tape scar the paint, left his chest feeling hollow.
When he was done, he called Tiana.
They spoke almost every day, one or the other calling, sometimes connecting for a video chat, but often preferring to focus exclusively on voices, on words.
Soon as Tiana spoke, she was there with him.
In the room, an amorphous bundle of energy and grace, surrounding him with the island’s spice.
As if he listened to her voice and became partly transported the five thousand miles west. Away from the lingering doubts, the work that lay ahead, the day.
He did not speak about what was happening.
He had not yet told her anything. Mostly he listened.
She was the one who needed a friend, an outlet, someone not chained to her room in Kailua, a neighborhood on Oahu that she both loved and loathed.
She talked about her tutorials and the assignments that shaped her semester away.
She talked about her parents and two older brothers, how their love and concern often threatened to stifle.
How she was taking longer walks each day, and had started swimming again.
Only by chance had he learned the family pool was a full twenty-five meters and framed by palms and blooming frangipani.
Her family owned land, developed real estate, was all she had told him.
Bored beyond reach by the mere mention. Or perhaps simply not wanting to allow that portion of her life to invade their space.
Something he certainly understood. As he sat on the sofa and listened to her talk, staring at the tattered stack of posters on the table in front of him. Fifty-one pages in all.
Tiana ended their conversation the same way as always. “You’re still coming? You haven’t forgotten?”
“December the sixteenth. My flight is booked.”
“That’s years away. Come sooner.” When he did not respond, she pressed, “Come now.”
“I have classes too, remember?”
“Oh, pooh. You’re their golden boy. You can get away with murder, much less a few lost days.”
“More than a few.”
“You don’t miss me even a little bit.”
“You’re right. It’s not a little bit. It’s so much the numbers don’t exist.” He was smiling now, glad for the chance to look beyond the coming days. “And you know what happens when I arrive.”
“You hold me and don’t let go.”
“I have been appointed your examiner—”
“Oh. That.”
“And December the eighteenth, you sit down at your desk and I monitor you—”
“I love it when you talk nasty.”
“And again on December the nineteenth.”
“And then I get to show you my world.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Then come now.”
“Good-bye, Tiana. Study hard. Stay well.”
“You are such a strict prefect.”
“I’m your prefect.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Colin needed another eight days to reach the point where he knew it was time to go public.
The work was not done. Not by a mile. But just the same, he needed to start putting things in motion.
He arranged to meet Roland and Aaron the next day.
Downtown Wilmington, City Club, lunch, his treat.
He wanted to discuss this out of their office, reduce their risk of being drawn away by some other pressing need.
He hoped they would give them a table by the window, from where they could hopefully catch a glimpse of what Colin intended.
That evening he went for a walk. The air was cooled by a strong northerly wind, a presage of the season to come.
The stars created a silver wash overhead.
The surrounding port city’s energy seemed incredibly intense, such that he only made it a hundred meters down the sidewalk before returning to the academy’s main quad.
He walked two circles, safe here, able to focus all his intent upon what was about to happen.
But when he returned inside, Roger Eames invaded his sheltered cove.
As Colin walked the central corridor, his father’s voice reached out from the television room.
Gripping Colin, hauling him into where he had no choice but to look.
There he was, Roger Eames, standing by a podium decorated with over a dozen microphones, the sleeves to his dress shirt rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms. He gripped the podium. And he raged.
The sound of rasping anger took Colin straight back.
Mentally he became the small child tucked away in the corner, waiting for the moment to flee upstairs, escaping the man’s barely controlled wrath.
Colin could not fully comprehend the words.
Just like his worst childhood moments, watching his father take down the half-gallon of Maker’s Mark and sit at the kitchen table and vent.
Because that was precisely what he did now.
He glared out over the crowd. And he vented.
Twice the camera pulled back, revealing the candidate his father was introducing, then sweeping over the audience. The crowd was massive. The arena stretched out in every direction, a dozen tiers of screaming people rising behind the stage. And so many of the faces shared his father’s rage.
Colin had done his best to avoid even glancing at the rising tide of election fervor.
He had refused to allow even a shred of his attention to be dragged away from the work at hand.
What he saw now assaulted him like a physical blow.
He could not fully take it all in. His father was not merely addressing this enormous crowd.
He gave voice to their own fury. Each time he stopped, they waved a sea of posters: DRAIN THE SWAMP.
LOCK HER UP. TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
The printed words and the shrill cries and the ecstatic rage implanted on the sea of faces, they assaulted him.
His father looked straight at the camera and said something about the man who was going to change the way Washington did business, the next president of the United States. …
Colin forced himself to turn and walk unsteadily from the room.