28

The sister—whew!— she was a mousy little thing. Oh, maybe she’d blossom out a trifle when she filled out some, grew some grown-up tits, got some big-girl clothing on that beanpole frame, and finally tossed the metal braces in the trash. She was the kind of teeny-bopper who looked like she’d never been to the ocean before. Hell, looked like she’d never been anyplace really, outside the schoolroom and the local shopping mall on weekends to get ogled by the other pimply kids. An innocent, a girl of the sticks. If they had time, it would be a kick, after the ocean view she was flying way cross-country to see, to take her on a copter flight over Manhattan, just to catch the awed expression on her face.

Yep, she was nothing to write home about, thought Eddie, as he looked on smiling wanly, waiting for her brother to climb out of the limo’s big back seat. Cindy had arranged the car, along with everything else, and you could bet the kids were loving it totally, limousine, private jet, the works. The boy, this Tommie Mulroy kid, was sitting in the car still, talking to the driver, thanking him, maybe; or maybe telling him that his brake pads were too worn, or his mufflers needed to be replaced—Mechanics do that sort of thing, you know—But soon enough a leg emerged, and then a shoulder, and then….

Eddie’s mouth dropped open wide. Literally it did: The kid was…. That picture on the print-out was…. Well it hadn’t done him justice, that was for goddam sure! He was a handsome, kid, no denying that—beautiful in a sort of young-man’s definition of the term—But it wasn’t just his physical beauty that struck Eddie with such a mega-voltage jolt. It was his shocking, unbelievable, unearthly resemblance … to Ben.

Not the Ben of currently, not the mildly weathered Ben he’d worked and played with these past thirty-some-odd years, no, but the Ben of Eddie’s youth, the Ben of Eddie’s memories. This kid emerging from the limousine with the overnight case in his hand, was Lizzie’s Ben—exactly—the jarring spitting image. Eddie had no language to describe what he felt, looking on, no words to express it, not even silent words sufficient to put his feelings into thought. This boy, this youth, this Tommie Mulroy fellow, was a vision from the past, a memory half-forgotten, half-remembered, but now brought back to stunning actuality in an absolutely mind blowing way.

The boy came up to him and extended the hand that was available—the one unencumbered by the bag. It was all Eddie could do to put his own hand out and shake it. Up went Eddie’s hand and forward, but his voice, his train of thought, the presence of his mind—all that failed him utterly. All he could get his discombobulated tongue to mumble out was, hi, hello, welcome, something rote like that. But they were words of the unconscious, for his consciousness was focused on the past. This handsome kid in front of him had returned him to his youth, and for the moment he was living in the ‘80’s again, looking at Ben the way Ben used to be, leaving Eddie Parker, for the moment, hopelessly disoriented as to time and place. The boy and his sister must have thought he was a mute.

But he snapped out of it soon enough; Eddie was resilient. And after a bit of stumbling and stammering and acting like a goddamn fool, he finally blurted out:

“My God, kid!—Uh, Thomas—I … I’m speechless. I don’t even know what to say. You’re Ben as I remember him thirty years ago—You’re a perfect carbon copy of my closest childhood friend.”

“That’s the guy in the picture, right? That’s the friend you’re referring to? You know, sir? when I saw the photo that the matching web site sent out, I kind of thought the same. But your friend’s a whole lot older now, you said?”

“Yeah, like thirty years. So…. So, this must be your sister, then, I guess. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Rachel.”

“Great. A lovely name. Thomas and Rachel, I’ll remember both. And I’m Ed, Edward Parker; though everybody calls me Eddie, which is the name I like the best—So call me Eddie, OK?”

“We’ll do that, sir,” said the boy; the girl just nodded; then Brandon helped them up the steps, and the three of them climbed aboard.

They’d opted for the Gulfstream—more room on a five-hour flight to spread out, get comfortable, and maybe even lie down a bit if the two kids felt inclined to take a nap. But they weren’t tired. If anything, both of them seemed a little hyper, or maybe excited about this transcontinental journey in a private jet. Lots of room, but the three of them sat together in the front, just behind the open cabin door, Eddie on the starboard bank of seats, the kids across from him on the port. He had lots to talk to them about, but there was lots of time as well—the plane did Mach-point-eight, meaning six hours flight time, more or less, and he could finish all his prepping work in two. Still, it was better to start sooner than later, so once the wheels were up and the plane starting to smooth out over the valley, Eddie began:

A capsule history to start with: Ben’s incredible success in business—which was easy enough to summarize, since both the kids had seen him on the talk shows and were familiar with his name. If Ben’s wealth impressed them, neither one showed it on their faces or in their words. What did kind of get to them, as the narrative unfolded, was the tragic story of Ben’s early life: The tale of Lizzie and her death and Ben’s misery and collapse—Hell, that was a story that’d bring tears to anybody’s eyes.

At any rate, they got the picture quick enough, especially the boy, young Thomas, who reminded Eddie more and more of Ben as the minutes passed. The penetrating look in those azure eyes, the penetrating questions—Just like Ben at that age, sitting in the classroom at school pointing out subtle little points his teachers—even the best ones—had previously overlooked, putting facts into perspective, then collating and re-organizing those facts into a meaningful whole. Ben could get to the heart of any issue almost instantaneously and come to a conclusion that would resolve the issue just as fast. That’s what made him rich. That’s what made him awesome.

And this kid—It was incredible!—The way his mind worked—you could see it in his eyes, you could hear it in his words, you could feel it in his calm, deliberate manner: The questions, the inferences when he got the answers to what he’d asked—Damn if this Tommy fellow wasn’t just exactly—amazingly!—like the old familiar Ben!

An hour into the flight, Eddie had to suppress a powerful urge to move across the aisle between their juxtaposed knees, plop down beside the kid, and hug him, hold him, open his heart to this living, breathing relic of his youth. Why so strong a feeling? Because this was his childhood buddy in the veritable flesh, brought to life again unwittingly, like an amnesiac beamed forward in time through a wormhole in the fabric of space and time—Maybe Tommie didn’t remember being Ben thirty years ago, but that’s just who and what he was.

Yep, Ben exactly, but with a somewhat different background and skill set. Hey, when you’re smart, you’re smart all over, however you use those brain cells doing what your inmost nature makes you do. Ben picked business—or maybe it picked him, who knows? But with this brilliant kid it was mechanics, science, engineering: Cars, for practical purposes, while for Ben his practical purposes at that age wound up being making lots of cash. And the fundamental understanding that Ben had of generating cash when he was twenty-two, this kid had in spades with regard to engines, mechanics, anything metal that made you move. But he had Ben’s kind of intellect; that was obvious from the instant you looked at that steely bluish gaze and from the moment you heard him speak. Example? It took him all of twenty minutes to get Ben’s story assimilated, analyzed, and an appropriate response to it figured out. At which point he looked a little bored. At which point he got up, walked over, stuck his head into the cockpit, and started talking—what? Well, what else but aeronautical physics, with the fellow piloting the plane.

Brandon, of course, couldn’t hope to keep up with the spate of questions the kid was pouring out. Eddie couldn’t either. And what Eddie heard, sitting outside the open cockpit door, he couldn’t hope to understand. The kid asked: Are these the new Pratt and Whitney’s or the standard Model so-and-so Rolls Royce? What’s the thrust at maximum altitude? The fanjets are a lot quieter than the turbos, aren’t they, but at speed, they don’t really have the punch. Did Brandon ever fly military? Tommie asked—Sure he did, he told the kid; that’s where he learned his trade. You ever fly a Phantom with the GE J-79? No, he hadn’t—Shit, Eddie could have answered that: Of course he hadn’t. You think Ben would have hired a fuckin’ fighter pilot, for God’s sake? You want him doing loop-the-loops and barrel rolls with your thirty-million-dollar plane while you’re sitting back there going over stocks? Hey, Brandon flew cargo in the Air Force and spent twenty years and a couple of zillion hours in the air handling freight. That’s why he always got you where you had to go without a hitch.

A terrific pilot, but no aeronautical physicist, so with regard to all those questions he was being asked, he turned out something of a dud. Five minutes after the questioning began, it was finished, and Young Mr. Mulroy was back in the seat beside his sister, smiling across the aisle at Eddie in his slightly bored and thoroughly penetrating way—And ‘penetrating’—that was the key word, alright. Watching him, listening to him, was like watching and listening to Ben. Thirty years of sitting at the side of a genius, you get to recognize his traits—And watching and listening to this kid’s questions, after thirty years watching Ben, some striking similarities emerged.

There are two types of people who ask very detailed questions—like fanjets, for example, and thrusters, and all that kind of arcane shit. First of all, there’s the windbag, the know-it-all, who asks questions that he knows the answers to before he even asks. He’s the expert, see? So he wants the guy he’s asking to know how smart he is, how much of the arcane stuff he already knows. He wants everybody to know how well-informed he is, so the questions he asks tend to be loud, broadcast to the rafters, letting the whole world hear how bright he is in comparison to the dumber guy who can’t answer what he asks. That’s your standard type of questioner. They’re a dime a dozen, and Benny never did have a lot of use for them.

But then there’s the other kind of questioner—the genuinely smart one. He asks his questions more reservedly, more delicately, and all he’s really interested in is learning what he needs to know. While the first guy keeps asking even when the answers don’t help him much, the smart guy—the brilliant guy—breaks off his questioning the instant he ceases to learn. If the answers aren’t teaching him anything, he’ll excuse himself politely, thank the other fellow for his help, and get on to something else. And this Tommy Mulroy kid? What he was doing at the moment, now that Brendan had run out of answers, was sitting across from Eddie, getting on to something else.

The something else being: Well having done with aeronautics for the present, let’s get more info about Ben. What was the girl like? Lizzie, he meant, and Eddie described her to the best of his humble abilities. Did Ben have kids? No. Why? Well—and this was a supposition on Eddie’s part—he’d had a disastrous loss in his formative years, right? Sure—the kid got the concept right away. You didn’t have to lay it out for him, didn’t need to paint a picture. He intuited, he extrapolated, he reasoned stuff out just the way Ben did—exactly the way Ben did. Damn! It would be fascinating to see two of them together, playing off one another, one-in-a-million meeting another one-in-a-million. Gears would mesh and sparks would fly! Benny was gonna be thrilled!

Halfway across the continent, Eddie got to thinking: The sister—Rachel—she wanted to see the beach, didn’t she? And by the time they landed and debarked and loaded in the limo and hauled it all the way to Asbury, it was gonna be—well, nearly eight, pretty close to dark. Why not fly direct to Asbury, show the kid the boardwalk, have the limo meet them there and drive them back to Red Bank? Oh hell, why not?

So Brandon made some calls and worked it out. Hardly any traffic coming in, so they didn’t have to wait in line to land. And Luther had the limo waiting on the tarmac as the Gulfstream taxied in.

Then something else very interesting happened that impressed Eddie to no end. As Brandon opened the door to lower the steps so his passengers could clamber out, Tommie took him by the elbow and told him quietly:

“Sorry, Brandon, I didn’t want to bother you while you were busy with the flight, but—Did you hear a little whistling noise from the engine on the left? You call it port side, right?”

“Yes, sir. Port side engine is correct.”

“So did you hear the whistling? It’s faint but noticeable.”

“I think I did, matter of fact” said Brandon. “I think there’s been a noise like that for a while—a couple of weeks or so, I’d guess. Why? What do you think it is?”

“Not ‘think’. I know. That’s a fan bearing. It’s not a problem for a while, but if you’ve got to fly any significant distance, I wouldn’t do it till you get the bearing fixed. Oh, and one more thing: This isn’t major, but when they do the bearing, have your mechanics replace the shock on the wheel under the starboard wing. It kind of bounced a little more than normal when we came in to land.”