by Itto & Mekiya Outini
There was no good reason, geological or otherwise, that those bodies couldn’t lie frozen forever on Emile’s thirty Appalachian acres, where his family had run a distillery for three generations, in cryo tanks fashioned from recycled ABTs. It was just that Emile had a vision. He wanted slopes where there were drop-offs, terraces where there were hills. He wanted his main office on a plateau. He wanted a new configuration of duck ponds. That Emile could only drive one backhoe at a time did not discourage him from renting every last machine that he could get his hands on; and because there was no other soul on earth who saw the landscape in his head like he did, he didn’t bother hiring anyone to operate them. He would do it himself. Never mind the impatience of the octogenarian angel investors who’d flooded Cryo de Coeur with startup capital and wanted those tanks up and running. Never mind that there were others who needed the backhoes for landscaping and construction projects of their own. Never mind the owners of the rental agencies, whose reputations stretched a little thinner every day they had to keep telling their regular customers that they had no inventory. On paper, there was nothing to be done as long as Emile kept making his payments on time.Then, one day in late spring, one of those payments got tied up, probably for technical reasons, and the agency lost no time sending the repo men. They accomplished their mission, but a lesson was learned. From that day on, driving in on the dirt road that tethered Emile’s ancestral farmhouse, Cryo de Coeur’s de facto base of operations, to Asheville and civilization, Jethro grew accustomed to pumping the brakes at the checkpoints and showing his ID to suits with dark glasses and semi-automatic guns. “You do realize there’s no ROI on these contractors,” he burst out one afternoon. “We’re paying them, we’re paying for the backhoes, and pretty soon we’re going to be paying the lawyers. Why won’t you just let them have their damn machines back?” The day was gorgeous, sunlight splashing through the farmhouse windows, but nothing about it felt gorgeous to Jethro. Numbers had been swarming in his brain all week like deathless bees, minus signs dangling beneath them like stingers. Overcaffeinated, pacing, he felt like a live wire, sparking and frayed. “Last night, you know, it finally dawned on me.” Gaunt and tall and somehow feline in his pool of sun, Emile had the look of a jowly sphynx, one that riddled with actions, not words. “Impatience,” he added, “is a quality that I neither share nor understand.”On sight, Emile could’ve passed for a workman with his skinny torso encased in a shirt like a billowing sail, his legs packed in jeans with big holes in bad places, his knotted knuckles, his calloused hands, his hide like coarse split-grain straight out of the tannery. Only the initiated knew of his millions, his eccentrically yeoman preoccupations, and his commitments to wildlife conservation, to adopting all the waifish orphans he could find, and to legalizing Schedule Ones. “There’s just no room for impatience,” he went on, his voice a swirling, smoky baritone, “as we cultivate our ten-thousand-year mentality. Are you familiar with the Clock of the Long Now?” “Yes, I’m familiar with the Clock of the Long Now.” Jethro’s sloshing coffee splattered on the floor. “You’ve told me all about the Long Now. But the people we’re doing business with, they only understand the short now. If you keep this up, there’s not going to be any more now for this company. There’s just going to be a whole lot of no mores and nadas and never-evers.” “You seem extremely agitated.” “This is my livelihood too, Emile.” “I’d like you to come with me this evening. To my meditation circle.” “You’re running this company into the ground,” hissed Jethro, “and my name is attached to it. My name. I’m trying to make your dreams come true here, but you’ve got to work with me.” Some days, driving home along the gravel roads, Jethro wondered whether maybe his ears and his tongue and his brain were all feeding him misinformation, telling him that he was speaking English when really he was babbling some other language, some foreign and meaningless tongue. Maybe all the redneck and meth-head and backwoods and stupid had seeped so deep into his bones that no matter how he huffed and puffed, he’d never squeeze it out again. Emile was the crazy one, but he was also the one with the money, and you couldn’t be crazy when you were the one with the money. You couldn’t run your own empire into the ground. There was no sensible reason that Jethro, who’d grown up playing the role of the rope in a long tug-of-war, itinerant squatter mother versus alcoholic father, and who’d steered clear of drugs and booze but fallen hard into the shame of nicotine, and who’d fought for his GED only to have to drop out of community college—who, in short, had seen enough of life to know he didn’t want to live forever—should’ve ended up as the general manager of a cryonics company, except that he was pretty good with numbers, good enough to know he needed money bad, that his part-time gig at the farmer’s market wasn’t going to cut it anymore, not with a baby on the way, and fate had dictated that Emile should enjoy patronizing that particular farmer’s market. In Emile’s orbit, things didn’t happen for sensible reasons. They happened because of his will. “I don’t get the obsession with living forever,” Clem had said the night he broke the news. “Seems like a rich man’s dream.” She’d been standing in their rented trailer’s tiny kitchen, licking a popsicle, stirring her pinto beans: a sunburnt and willowy woman of Romani extraction, waist-length hair and almond eyes. He’d married her less because he’d been in love with her, more because he’d been in love with the idea of loving, patient, selfless, earnest, and exclusive, as he’d never seen it done. She’d been the first who’d given him a chance to try. She was a lesbian, she’d told him that night at an equinox gala when they’d first crossed paths. One who made exceptions. For him, she’d made a big exception. Deep down, he knew that something in this wasn’t right, that she would leave him soon, but she wouldn’t let him know it on the surface, wouldn’t be the woman who would leave him just because he couldn’t buy a crib or pay the bills. She was taller, older, more authoritative, and when she said the world was a certain way, it was. “Oh yeah?” He hadn’t meant to lose his cool, but her shrugging it off like that, this news that had been boiling in his brain all afternoon, dug the knife into the part of him that couldn’t believe. “How about all those supplements you’re always popping? What’s the point of those?” She’d pinned him to the wall with an oh-no-you-didn’t gaze. “To improve the life I’ve got to live. Not hoard what isn’t mine.” “Whatever.” He’d cracked open a sparkling water, his way of having a beer without having a beer. “I’m just in it for the money anyway.” “You proud of that?” “It’s six figures, Clem. It’s to give our kid a better life. Why not be proud?” “You know what my mother always used to say,” she’d said. “‘You’re never poor as long as you’ve got your education.’ I do believe that she was wise.” That stung. In truth, it was about more than just those six figures—not that he could ever admit that to Clem. Her folks came from a different sort of poverty, a parallel universe where not having money didn’t have to mean not having dreams. How was he supposed to tell her he was proud of letting terms like ROI roll off his tongue, terms a kid like him should not have learned, whether or not there was anyone listening? How could he explain how much he liked the thought of being an eccentric bigshot’s trusted advisor, secret keeper, Fidus Achates, righthand man? Sure, his advice was never taken, but in his head, at least, he got to be the voice of reason, the one explaining money to the man who’d had it all his life and still didn’t know what to do with it. He liked to be the one who knew what to do with it. He just wished the rest of the world could see that he knew what to do with it. He had no degree, no five years in the field, no proof that he was anything at all except for whatever he pulled off with Cryo de Coeur, and things on that front were not looking so good. Still, he relished the feeling of passing those checkpoints, flashing his badge at those men with the guns, even if the whole thing was a farce, a passion play directed by a madman who used backhoes to relocate haybales while men with shovels buried fiberoptic line. He’d seen that once, with his own eyes, watched the scene unfolding from his office window, but the absurdity hadn’t diminished the fact that he’d had an office window to look out of, and all the coffee he could brew, and all the sun. “Have I ever told you,” he’d whispered to Clem once, “about my first memory?” Naked and mosquito-bitten, they’d been lying in a field. The lights from the trailers had washed out the stars, but their eyes had burned brighter with the thrill of knowing that they’d ventured, nude and unwelcome, onto a shotgun-wielding neighbor’s land. That they might die any minute, go to jail any minute. Jethro was pretty sure that was the night their kid had been conceived. “I must’ve been, like, two years old,” he’d said. “I was still just learning how to talk. First thing I remember saying to myself was, ‘I’m getting out of this shithole. I’m not going to follow my parents to hell.’” “Maybe you had that thought already,” she’d suggested. “From a past life.”“Maybe.” “Heaven and hell,” she’d said, “are states of mind.” “With all due respect,” he’d said, “hell is never knowing when your mom is coming home. Or if she’s coming home. Or if you’d better go ahead and open up those olives you found in the back of the cupboard so your little brother doesn’t starve, even if they did expire before you were born.” “I understand,” she’d said. “But those are just memories. This is now.”“The short now.” “The what?” “This here’s the short now.” The memories, he understood, were the Long Now. The Now that never seems to end. He admired Clem’s way of advancing from short now to short now, with the cool assurance of the well-evolved gazelle, picking here, sewing there, never owning, never despairing. She’d survived this way for years, sticking to the eastern seaboard where there weren’t so many migrants, making friends with all the farmers so that there would always be a meal, a bed, and work to do no matter which county she found herself in. Even so, her clock was ticking. She was growing old. Sometimes, Jethro wondered whether she was merely using him for fertilizer. He didn’t believe for a second that she had no intention of extending her life, stretching herself or her thoughts or her genes out into the distant, unknowable future. Everyone wanted to extend themselves, everyone except for those whose trips to hell and back had left them cursed with X-ray vision, seeing the price tags on each of their cells. Those who understood the fundamental kill-or-be-killed of things. That was why Emile hadn’t bothered to hire a marketing team. Then Emile hired a marketing team. It was August, going on September, and the heat was dazzling and fearsome, and the men who’d been digging the trenches and laying the cable all had lime disease, but the haybales had gotten where they needed to go. To his credit, Emile didn’t hire the marketers to sell Cryo de Coeur’s flagship product. He hired them to peddle his new brand of honey. He’d just bought three hives. Jethro found himself sharing the office with the marketing team, all of whom were young and blond and stunning, half of them fresh out of college, the other half fresh out of high school. Every few minutes, though they were sitting less than ten feet apart, they would whip out their phones and let loose with their thumbs. Their smirks, Jethro figured, were all about him. When the gossip was about Emile, they didn’t bother texting. They would surround the coffeemaker, an army in booty shorts blockading a strategically critical city, chattering, giggling, carrying on: “The way he looked at you the other day—” “Oh. My. God! So disgusting!” “Have you ever heard someone start a conversation like that? Like—” putting on a passable impression of Emile’s baritone—“‘Hey ladies. It’s so hot out here, I got sweat dripping off my balls.’” Stifled giggles. Hands clapped over mouths. “He’s a pedophile.”“A hundred percent he’s a pedophile.” “No, for real. You know he went to jail for it, right?”“No he didn’t.”“Yes, he did!”“Then how come he’s allowed to adopt all those kids?” “It wasn’t here. It was some other country.” Morocco, Jethro wanted to say. And it hadn’t been pedophilia. Not then. Just kissing a girl in public. That was all. The free love movement in America had left Emile profoundly unprepared for postcolonial indecent conduct laws. He would’ve spent years behind bars if his father hadn’t reached across the ocean, plucked him up by the scruff of the neck, and dropped him back in North Carolina. Jethro knew the story, could’ve told it well, but he kept his mouth shut, all too conscious that it didn’t matter what he knew: he wasn’t one of them. Whatever he’d learned from staying later, working longer, burning more of the midnight oil, he would carry with him to the grave. Whatever he’d come to understand from trying to keep the company afloat, camping out in the office that had once been a bedroom, across the hall from another bedroom, now occupied by one of those adopted girls, one of those with haunted eyes—whatever he knew was his to deal with, his alone. He’d never let his eyes leave the screen: not at the creak of the hinges, the shadows, the groan of the stairs. How was he supposed to make Clem understand? “Boy and girls?” Emile was standing in the doorway, looking like an astronaut in full regalia, decked out in a beekeeper’s suit. In his gloved hand, he carried a mug in the shape of a witch’s head, bulbous and green. He peered down at the coffee station, ravaged by siege: all the paper cups depleted, all the sweeteners gone. “Does anyone have any honey?” That night, Clem called the office phone. “I wanted to tell you in person,” she said, “but seems like you’re not coming home. I’ve decided on names.” “What names?” “For the baby.”Jethro watched his reflection leaning back in its chair in the window’s dark pane. “I figured I might get to be involved in that decision.”“You were involved,” said Clem. “You were there with me in spirit. You’re always with me, Jethro. If it’s a boy, Roland. If a girl, Jolene.” Her parents’ names. “I know how you feel about your folks,” she said. “I took you into consideration.” “All right, then. I don’t guess I mind.” “It’s ten thirty,” she said. “I made potatoes. I’m keeping yours warm, but I don’t want to go to bed and leave the oven on.” “It’s all right,” he said. “They’re good cold.” “I don’t think you’re hearing me.” “Listen,” he said. “You’ve got to understand something, Clem. This is not a forever job. I’m working overtime now while I can, but I feel like I’m running on quicksand.” “How many times have I got to tell you?” Clem said. “I don’t care.” “Roland does,” Jethro said. “Jolene does.” “I made an exception for you,” she said. “You’re making me regret that now.” There was no frost giant looming over him in the window, no ice-blue fist around his midriff, squeezing. That absence took him by surprise. “A few more weeks,” he mumbled, “and then you’ll be seeing a hell of a lot more of me than you care to. I swear.” “You better remember you said that now.” On his way out of the office, he ran into Emile in the hall, still with the beekeeper’s suit on, all but the headpiece, which was tucked beneath his arm. Sweat glistened on his furrowed brow. “You know,” he mused, “I was in the shower the other day when it occurred to me that the most important thing for any business is to have multiple income streams.” “I’ve got to get home, Emile.” “Have you ever noticed that there’s a certain smell that a woman gives off when she’s menstruating?” The light beneath the other door was off, but Jethro sensed the wakefulness behind it, the straining ears, the haunted eyes. If only there could be a third option: not a Roland, and not a Jolene. “If that scent were properly packaged, you know, I think it could be a real moneymaker.” Emile raised his hands, still gloved, and spread them before him as if framing an imaginary label. “Pure Moonlight. No. Blood Moon.” “I’m not up for having this conversation now.” “I think I’m onto something here, Jethro. I always do my best thinking naked. Just give it some thought, would you?” “Goodnight, Emile.” The following Thursday, news of lawsuit number three arrived, class-action this time, and the investors started dropping like flies. No one said Jethro’s name. No one had to. Only the hillbilly would’ve burned all that cash on bees and blondes and giant Tonka trucks to push around. Not that it mattered, Jethro told himself, or tried to. Such a reputation, in those rarefied circles, boiled down to pretty much the same as what he’d had before: no reputation at all. He hadn’t even made his whole six figures, for it hadn’t even been a year, but what he’d made would last them a while, still renting the trailer, still living on beans. His plan had been to save and save and buy a house in cash and move his family into it and start believing all at once, bypassing all those little dribs and drabs of hope that most men clung to, to survive. Now they had enough to rent a little nicer, but still not to buy a home. Jethro couldn’t stand the thought of raising them into a life from which he knew they’d have to tumble soon enough: one year, two years, maybe three. He might stretch that timeline out by working sixteen-hour days, but he’d never again be a general manager, someone to be looked to, consulted, believed. “I don’t care,” was Clem’s mantra. “I made an exception for you. Not your money.” How was he supposed to tell her that it wasn’t just about the money? How was he to keep his status as the man worth making an exception for when he was not that man? As long as it was just about the money, he knew all the arguments backward and forward and could hold his own, but what if it was something more? What if it was really just about the corner office? Or the badge-flash every morning? Why wasn’t it about the girl with the haunted eyes? Clem had already been planning to give birth in the bathtub. He’d already agreed to build the baby everything it needed out of scrap wood. They could do this. They could give the kid life without selling their souls. The afternoon that Cryo de Coeur shut its doors, Emile and Jethro stood out on the driveway, watching men carry out the computers and printers and shredders and copy machines. The suits were gone, the backhoes repossessed and disappearing one by one, but the beehives were still there, still buzzing. At the last minute, Jethro had managed to cleave off that side of the business and sequester it in a separate LLC. “Do me a favor,” Emile said, squinting at Jethro in the late autumn sun. “Buy my honey.” They shook hands. Jethro hadn’t mentioned that he might get home early. Now he had the afternoon. His despair rode shotgun with him, squinting in the hazy sun. He felt like crying, only crying was something he’d never quite learned. He felt like running over something small and helpless and a-dime-a-dozen: a fox or a raccoon. He drove without mind, without thoughts or intentions, west because west was the way that the sun went to die. He only knew Go Fish and Crazy Eights, which he used to play with his brother a long time ago, alone in those big, empty houses where they hadn’t belonged, and maybe theirs hadn’t even been the real rules, but he still pulled off the highway at the sight of the casino, a huge, imposing building, neon, glass, and steel. He’d heard the drinks were free, but they still charged him for his gin. He didn’t mind. He took his glass straight to the slot machines and promptly won fifteen dollars. That pissed him off. He abandoned the machines and ambled over to a table where a game was being played and asked if they would deal him in. It didn’t take the other players long to figure out that he had no idea what he was doing. Some of them were smirking. Some were on the fence about him, like maybe they’d better just ask him to leave so that they could feel good about winning, but technically speaking, he hadn’t done anything wrong. “You can’t do that,” one of them pointed out. And then, “Nope. Not that, either.” But that was just the cards. “Well, what can I do?” he demanded finally. That got everyone laughing, but it was rough, uneasy laughter, like any minute a fight might break out. That struck Jethro as funny. He lost a little more, then threw his chips in and went back to the bar for an old fashioned. It turned out too tart for him, so after that he stuck to gin. He wandered from table to table, losing a little here, a little there, making the losing last so that he could appreciate how much there was to lose. By now, he had the whole casino talking, strangers tracking him with their eyes. “Hey, now,” he mumbled to himself, aloud, “Buy my honey, would you? Does anyone have any honey here? I got sweat dripping off my balls.” In his mind was a literal bank vault, scraped clean, but he knew it didn’t really work that way. It was all imaginary numbers, all just sparks inside motherboards and squiggles on screens. His pocket was buzzing, but he wasn’t ready for her yet. If only all the bluffs that he’d seen called that night could pump him up for calling hers. If only his despair could be his designated driver. If only the casino’s lights were not so bright, he could’ve seen the stars.
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