But once he was awake, even minutes after jerking from his nightly trauma, the quiet pace set in again. His breathingeased, his chest rose and fell more steadily, he lay there staring at the ceiling …
Content was too strong a word. Languid was how he described it to himself. Certainly not lazy. Just moving at a slower tempo.
For the moment, for the weeks that followed, it was enough.
That same lack of visible movement remained true for both of his new investments.
May passed with scarcely a shift. At Mira’s graduation party, he feared his investors would gang up on him, pressing for a word he could not offer. Everyone was present except Celeste, even Aaron Weisfeld. But no one appeared willing to inject business or doubt into the day. Ethan and Alexi had hired a tent, one sized to cover virtually every inch of their rear yard. Which was good, because the crowd was large and the day blisteringly hot. Colin knew almost no one except the two families and Aaron. Nor did he much care. The first party he had ever attended was a delight on a multitude of levels. The band was loud and played music he had never heard before. When they took their first break, Colin walked over and asked if they played any jazz. The lead singer laughed and said, “What planet are you from?” Even this was of little importance. Colin drifted around the edges of the crowd, returning time and again to the food laid out on the trestle tables. He refused to dance, even when Mira begged. He watched the way she returned to Lucas and pouted in his direction. He offered to hold Gracie, who had grown comfortable with his presence. He watched Mira and her friends shriek their laughter, shout their happiness to the tapestry of light and shadow overhead. It was enough.
There were numerous visible changes to his world. He began to grow more comfortable leaving the academy’s confines. Once or twice each week, he took an Uber back to Mayfaire’s outdoor mall. Sometimes he went to the cinema.Other times he just bought a Starbucks cocoa and sat at one of the mall tables. Studying people. Enjoying his first taste of free time.
Another significant shift came via his morning sessions at the pool. He did not go every day. He had discovered the simple pleasure of staying up late, surrounded by the slumbering and rule-bound house, and doing whatever he wanted. Sometimes he checked his calculations and the news feeds. Or he inspected his two current investments and hunted for new signs of interest. After such sessions he lay in his bed and imagined himself as an invisible predator moving stealthily through the electronic jungle. He often slept late after those midnight sessions, sometimes until noon. Those days he did not bother going to the pool. Once the public summer session began at nine, the water was too crowded, the children were too dense and active and noisy.
He never missed a weekend lesson. His progress was noted by the instructors, and in late May he was shifted to the intermediate class. It was wonderful swimming with kids his own age, sometimes older. But he missed Mira in those hours. She stayed with the youngest and the most frightened, singing her special speech, calming their hearts, introducing them to the liquid realm she loved.
The last weekend in May and twice again in June, Alexi and Ethan and their children picked him up at a quarter to six. They raced the sunrise east, then north along Highway 17 to the Hampstead Marina, which was owned and operated by a friend of Ethan’s. They always arrived before the marina officially opened. Ethan unlocked the combination padlock, then they carried their piles of gear past the marina buildings and loaded them onto a boat tied up dockside. They motored into the sunrise, crossing the Cape Fear before cruising down the channel and entering the wide, open waters marking the tip end of Topsail Island. They anchored at the wonderfully named Serenity Point, and claimed whatMira always declared was the finest spot along the Carolina coast. When Lucas pointed out their location was different every time they came, Mira threatened to cut him off. Of what, she never said. They carried over umbrella and open-sided awning and towels and coolers, anchoring the space that would remain theirs until the sun and the heat and the crowds finally drove them home. Mira and Lucas often walked north along the empty shoreline, the two of them holding hands and shooing the others away whenever they stopped for stolen kisses.
Colin spent a great deal of time seated in the water’s edge, imagining his mother there beside him. He could not remember how she looked. The absence often defined the midnight void. When Lucas and Mira returned from their solitary strolls, he studied the way they moved and smiled and shared their intimate light. He was happy for them, yet ached over what he might never know.
At day’s end everyone was crispy and pink despite multiple layers of sun cream, their skin tight with Atlantic salt. Mira spent the drive leaning against Lucas and humming songs he pretended not to recognize. Gracie often whimpered as she slept in her father’s arms. Noah liked to travel crammed into the rear hold by himself, climbing his truck over piles of gear.
Those were the best days of all.
Colin spent an increasing amount of time with Lenny Satterly. The youth constantly surprised Colin with how little interest he took in anything beyond his languages. Lenny showed a willful blindness to the big and the small of life, the world, even himself. Only after half a dozen sessions did Colin uncover the reason. The youth was not so much in pain as living with a constant state of discomfort. Lenny’s body was a burden, a trial, a poorly functioning vehicle that threatened to break down at any time.
They spent an hour or so every other evening, usually starting at the dinner table and then moving into the computer room. Lenny gave no sign he even heard the faint war sounds emanating from other computers and the constant rattle of keyboards fighting online battles, or the television in the next room. When studying, Lenny’s diction became more precise, his speech so tightly concentrated each word emerged etched with a verbal laser.
Colin was often unable to follow the verbal discourses joining or distancing one language from another. But the metalinguistic calculations were clear enough, at least to him. As soon as their work shifted from words to mathematical symbols, Lenny struggled. Which only caused the youth to fight all the harder. The first time Lenny broke through his confusion and understood the meaning of an algebraic construct, how they predicted the development of certain linguistic patterns, his entire body seemed to shine with excitement. Colin recalled his own early moment, standing beside Arnold in the Child Services conference room, seeing the man trace a linear pattern that he had been unable to identify until that moment. The indescribable joy, the thrill, the illumination, it was all there again as he sat and observed Lenny almost dancing in his chair with excitement.
Two other students remained at Sojourn House through that sweltering June, a Latina girl of eleven and an Asian boy of nine. Both of them disappeared toward the end of that month, and then it was just Lenny and Colin. The home’s prehistoric air-conditioning was often defeated by those hot afternoons. When he could stand it no more, Colin walked toward the highway and entered the nearest coffee shop, often bringing Lenny with him. He became fascinated by the youth, his inexhaustible hunger to learn, the longing so fierce it seemed like a barely controlled fury.
Even Mrs. Fitzgerald’s rigid scheduling melted in the summer heat. She emerged from her ground-floor apartmentat odd hours, usually twice each day, just to walk around the place, inspect things with her disapproving eye, and disappear. In those moments the woman seemed distracted, scarcely present.
He continued to speak with Roland every week. There was little progress with either investment, virtually none in fact. In watching the stocks, studying the news feeds, and trolling the online sites, Colin felt as though the entire entertainment industry had become trapped in the oppressive heat of that early summer. Roland showed no concern whatsoever. “So long as you’re worried, we don’t need to be.”
“There are a couple of other opportunities,” Colin fretted. “If we don’t see some action soon, maybe I should shift.”
“Are you being drawn by a feeling that these are stronger opportunities?”
“More like, maybe they’ll move where these aren’t.”
“I know what Aaron would say, because I hear him telling this to his other clients,” Roland replied. “Patience is a lesson you never fully acquire. You just learn to practice it with patience.”
Colin was not altogether certain what the man meant, but liked hearing it just the same. “I need money for a new computer. And I’d like to get some other things. But the computer can’t wait. I have some money left over from my school funds, but—”
“No, no. Don’t touch the school’s money. How much do you need?”
No one was taking money from the investment fund. It had not been discussed so much as become established as the norm. He knew how much he was worth, but that was just a number on the screen. Colin had tried out the words in front of the mirror that morning, and still found it coming out as a question. “Five thousand dollars?”
“Let me check. I think your file contains bank details. … Your account at Wells Fargo is still active?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take the funds from our petty cash, have Lucretia transfer the money now, and charge it to your account.”
He did not need anything like that amount. But having the money on hand, being able to reach for it any time he wanted, had suddenly become very important. “Thank you. So much.”
That afternoon, as soon as the bank’s online system showed the funds were in place, Colin set up his own Uber account. Together with Lenny he went down to the Mayfaire mall, parked the youth at the Starbucks, entered Circuit City, and bought the most expensive Dell they had in stock. The new full HD screen took his breath away. The processor was almost double the speed and capacity of his current computer. Four times the memory. There was no way he needed all those specs. Which made the purchase even more joyous. Colin walked back to the Starbucks, shifted over Lenny’s empty cup, and set his old computer down on the table. “I want you to have this.”
