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He didn’t get a chance to say more before Vince charged ahead.
“Precisely. Because. Simply because,” Vince said. “Because you have accepted the central, implicit thesis of existence – you exist as real because you know, as of yet, no other way of being. But that’s the rub, aye. There are so many ways of being, of being real, of living, right now. And the true prize, the jewel at the end of the journey, is the discovery of the self. The selves, whether they be wrought or revealed, recognized at long last.” Vince’s voice quieted. “Tell me, Dex Howard. Who are you? How were you made, and how much of your making was by your own hand?”
Dex grinned at him. He could not help it. “I am a human,” Dex said. “I was made by Harry and Phyllis Howard in western Mass. in 1978, probably during a snowstorm. I made myself—” Dex swallowed. “Do you want a real answer?”
Vince and Lila both nodded.
Dex considered. There were many answers. All of them were more or less real. Had his making and unmaking taken place on his high school’s stage, when he was in the habit, yearly, of becoming fictional people? Or had his making been one great decisive action, when his father told him he could waste his own money on school and he agreed? Or—
He remembered his armor.
“On the day I went for an interview at a temp agency, I wore a suit, because a suit fit the part I was auditioning for,” he said. “And they looked at me like I had three well-groomed heads and immediately sent me to temp in finance. So I guess that’s when I made me, when I made this me that you see here before you.”
“A fine distinction, this you.” Vince nodded gravely. “We are many. All of us.”
“Yes,” said Lila under her breath. “I am aware I married a fortune cookie.”
“In a cape,” said Dex. “Well done.”
No one in Tuesday’s section of the ballroom was bidding. She’d expected as much – she was staked out way in the back, surrounded by corporate-sponsored tables filled with midlevel executives who had already made their own, more modest contributions to the night’s total. She pressed her clipboard to her stomach. She was still hungry. The illicit satay she’d snuck from Dex had only made her hungrier. She wasn’t allowed to hit the buffet until after the auction, technically, but if she didn’t get more to eat soon, she was at risk of passing out. Tuesday was a fainter. “Your blood has a long way to go,” her doctor had said after Tuesday passed out in tenth-grade band and hit her head on the xylophone, “to get from your heart all the way down to your feet and back up to that big brain of yours. Your blood cells have to be marathoners. Marathoners have to take care of themselves.”
“So you’re saying I’m a giant with a big head.”
“You know you’re a giant with a big head,” said her doctor. “Eat more salt.”
The cream and gilt walls of the ballroom were broken up by enormous gold-draped windows. Tuesday nestled herself against one of the drapes, slipped out of her shoes, and closed her eyes. She always saw more with her eyes closed. Like the suit sitting at the table four feet to her right; he was angry about something. She could hear the fabric of his suit jacket sliding, pulling as he hunched his arms. He set his glass down hard. His voice – he was talking about nothing, really; work stuff – Dopplered in and out, which meant he was moving his head as he spoke, side to side, trying to catch an ear. He couldn’t sit still. The other people at the table weren’t listening to him. He was angry because to them, he was invisible. I see you, thought Tuesday, and opened her eyes.
Nathaniel Arches was standing in front of her.
He looked down at her bare feet, gripping the crimson carpet.
“That the secret to surviving this thing?” he asked. “Making fists with your toes?”
“Better than a shower and a hot cup of coffee,” she replied, and balled up her feet.
A wave of noise crashed from the other side of the ballroom. Two bidders were going head-to-head for the New Kids tickets. The auctioneer pattered, Do I hear seventy-five hundred, seventy-five hundred – do I hear EIGHT, eight thousand, eight thousand for the meet-and-greet of a lifetime, the New Kids in their home city, in the great city of Boston – do I hear – I hear EIGHT—
“You should try it,” she said.
“Take off my shoes? But then I won’t be able to make a quick getaway.”
“You’re telling me the Batmobile doesn’t have an extra pair of shoes in the trunk?”
“It doesn’t have a trunk,” he said. “Or cup holders.” He looked down at the tumbler in his hand, half full, brown and neat. “I’ve been meaning to do something about the cup holder situation.”
“But not the trunk.”
“It’s not like I take it to Costco.”
Tuesday laughed. She’d been trying not to, and it came out like a snort.
—do I hear eighty-five – EIGHTY-FIVE, do I hear nine? Nine thousand? To hang tough with the Kids?—
“You’re fun,” he said.
“And you’re very pretty,” she said back, and that made him laugh.
“Fun and a fundraiser.” He leaned against the wall beside her. “How’s that working out for you?”
“I’m not a fundraiser,” she said. “I’m a researcher.”
“What do you research?”
“Prospects. I’m a prospect researcher.”
“Ah, so you research people like me.” He tapped his HELLO MY NAME IS sticker.
“I’ve researched you,” she said. “Actually, you.”
He brightened. “And what can you tell me?” he said. “About myself, I mean.”
—TEN! I have ten from this gentleman here in the red tie. Yes – oh I can tell, I can tell you’re a fan! But I have to ask, it’s my job: do I hear ten thousand five hundred?—
“That you don’t already know?” Tuesday said.
“Impress me.”
She opened her mental file on Nathaniel Arches. Looked over his tweets. His investments. His vague pronouncements. The rumors. This was her favorite part of the job, a holdover from being the kid whose hand always shot up first with the answer. She loved to prove how much she knew.
She was about to say You don’t know you’re rich – because he clearly didn’t; if her research had a common theme, it was incurious hunger, a dumb desire for more, as though he had no idea he’d already been born with more than most humans will see in six lifetimes—
But Nathaniel Arches turned and opened his eyes at her, wide. She had never seen his eyes before. In all those press photos, his eyes were slitted, protected, too cool. Now they were open, dark, steady. He was looking at her like he was capable of curiosity. Like he was searching for something.
Or someone.
She slid this information, full value yet to be determined, up her sleeve like an ace.
“You don’t know you’re rich,” she said.
“You think I’m rich?”
“You’re a few notches above rich,” she said, turning to stare straight ahead.
“What’s a higher notch than rich?”
“Stupid rich,” she said. “Then filthy rich. It gets fuzzy once you’re over a billion.”
—do I hear eleven! ELEVEN! – Hey – hey, man, you’ve got some competition for biggest New Kid fan over here. You’ve got some competition!—
“What does a billion even mean?” Nathaniel said.
He grinned at her with all his teeth and raised his hand high.
“Fifty thousand!” he shouted.
Every face swung around and pushed them against the wall.
The auctioneer was a cheerfully sweaty guy named Tim. He had gray hair and a red nose and Tuesday had seen him call auctions before, but she had never seen him look like he did now: surprised.
The room held its breath.
“Well!” Tim shouted into his microphone, and the room let go – it exhaled, it hooted, it whistled and shouted. “Sir! Sir! Out of the back corner and into our hearts! You don’t mess around! Do I hear fifty thousand five hundred?” Tim laughed. He turned back to the first competing bidders. “Guys? What do you think?”
Tuesday smiled – cheerfully, professionally – at the room. She saw Dex up front, kneeling on his chair and cackling, open-mouthed.
“You’re nuts,” she said to Nathaniel around her teeth.
“Takes one to know.” Nathaniel smiled back.
“Fifty thousand going once!” said Tim.
“Do you even like the New Kids?” she asked.
“Not really. Do you?”
“Fifty thousand going twice!”
“Not – particularly—”
It happened then: the beginning of everything that would come after.
A dark figure on the edge of Tuesday’s vision stood up at the front of the room not far from where Dex was sitting – in fact, exactly where Dex was sitting, at Dex’s table.
“Sir!” Tim the auctioneer cried. He turned away from Archie and flung his arm toward the figure like he was hurling a Frisbee. The room roared. “I hear fifty thousand five hundred!”
The figure was a tall man with silver hair, wearing a cape – a cape? – a cape! Tuesday peered across the ballroom. The man turned.
“Do I hear fifty-one thousand?”
The man wobbled.
Crowds feel things before they know things. This crowd of investors and developers and venture capitalists, of vice presidents and senior vice presidents, of fundraisers and gift processors and admins and researchers, mostly white, mostly men, mostly straight, rich and not rich and not much in between, but humans, all of them humans, felt it. Felt something. It stilled on nothing more than premonition. It waited for the man in the cape to turn around and face it. It held its tongue.
The man in the cape wobbled again. He blinked. He didn’t act as though he knew where he was. His arms were raised, tense and defensive. A woman in a striking teal gown began to rise beside him, to pull him back to her, to help him. But it was too late.
He screamed. He threw his head back like hell was raining down from the ceiling and covered his head with his arms and screamed and screamed in the otherwise silent ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel.
His final scream died in an echo. The old man in the cape straightened. He held his hands out, fingers splayed like a magician.
“Gotcha,” he said.
Still nobody moved. Nobody knew what was happening.
The old man’s eyes opened as large as his lids would allow and glittered in shock, as if he’d recognized a friend long lost across the chasm of time.
Then he took two steps and fell down dead.
2 (#u1598defc-37a3-5b06-87cc-7e406b6ecbbd)
THE OBITUARY (#u1598defc-37a3-5b06-87cc-7e406b6ecbbd)
Two days later, Tuesday’s desk phone rang.
The only reason anyone called instead of emailing was because they wanted something they knew they had no business asking for.
She looked at the gray caller-ID square. KURTZ, TRICIA blinked back at her in blocky blue digit-letters. Trish worked on the events team. If Tuesday was remembering correctly, the Auction for Hope – or the Auction to Abandon All Hope, as Dex was calling it – was her baby. She was the organizer, the decider. She was the person who’d had to explain to June, head VP of the development office, that yes, a donor to the hospital, a billionaire and all-around beloved kooky Bostonian, had died, gone tits-up smack in the middle of a BGH fundraising event. And no, there was nothing anyone could have done.
People tried. Dex had tried, and was genuinely upset about the whole thing, which is why Tuesday let him get away with making morbid jokes at the event’s expense. Pryce’s wife – the woman in teal – had tried. They both whaled on his chest. She puffed air into his lungs. Nothing worked. Vincent A. Pryce was toast, and the next morning the Herald upheld its long tradition as the city’s classiest rag with the headline PRYCE BIDS FAREWELL.
Tuesday picked up the phone.
“Hey Trish,” she said. “Are you drunk-dialing me at two in the afternoon? Because I wouldn’t blame you if you were.”
“Ha ha ha,” said Trish. Tuesday hadn’t worked with her often, but enough to know Trish was sarcastic as hell. Everyone on the events team was. It seemed a necessary disposition for a job that was five percent emailing, five percent decision-making, ten percent constant overtime, and eighty percent shitstorm crisis management. Tuesday had nothing but respect for the events team. “I wish I were. You have no idea how badly I wish I were,” said Trish.
“What’s up?” Tuesday spun her chair away from her computer and propped her bare feet on a pile of binders.
“Okay, so. This morning we finally processed the auction bids, at least on the items we were able to get to before, you know.” She laughed. “I still can’t believe it. I mean, a dude fucking died. He died.”
“Worst. Event. Ever,” Tuesday said.
“I can hear my performance review now: ‘So Trish, you’ve had a great year, except for how you ran literally the worst event in development history.’”
“You’re looking at this wrong,” Tuesday said. “What if the dead guy left us money in his will?”
“You’re terrible,” Trish said. “Anyway, so – you were standing next to that guy when he threw fifty K on the New Kids?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was Nathaniel Arches. I think I filled out the paperwork right. It was crazy right after, because he bid and then the guy – died – but I asked him. I remember, Archie—”
“Nickname basis already?”
“We had a moment. Or two or three.” Tuesday picked at her fingernail. “I asked him if he meant it, did he honestly want to bid fifty thousand dollars for the chance to chest-bump Donnie Wahlberg, and he said yes.” He’d actually said – absently, stunned as everyone else in the room – Sure, who wouldn’t. “I told him we’d bill him.”
“That’s interesting. Because we just called his office, and they wouldn’t pay.”
Tuesday stilled. “What?” she said.
“I spoke to his secretary and she said he wasn’t even there. At the event, I mean. I got the feeling he was there in the office and just didn’t want to talk to me.”
