was and – God! Long before he learned to control it.
All his life since then has been circumscribed, meticulously calibrated and configured to be uneventful. His high-tech career lets him interface, but from a safe distance. He teleconferences from his tight, orderly little house in a place where no people come. In his black and stainless-steel office, he designs sophisticated applications for high level clients, and he works alone. He never sees colleagues, he won’t meet clients offline, although he is famous on the Web. Only Walker knows how many patents he owns. All his conversations take place on the screen. He is comfortable at long distance, and he has options. He can always quit the application before the other party pisses him off.
Walker loves the predictability of computers. They stay where they’re put and do what they’re told and for every problem, there is a logical solution. All he has to do is work it out. Unlike people, computers present problems that can be solved.
He keeps the world at a distance. Walker buys most things he needs on the Web and finds the rest in all-night supermarkets that he knows will be empty at certain hours. He keeps his anger tightly controlled. And the. Ah. Incident? That was an anomaly! A freak accident that overturned him.
It scared him shit.
He doesn’t know who did what to who, really. He isn’t even sure what happened to her that night. Still, he lives with the risk. The weight of responsibility, which is why he avoids any circumstance that could possibly devolve into a confrontation, the unexpected friction of souls that might lead to . . .
Walker doesn’t know how it would come down. The path he’s set is lonely, but it’s safe.
It’s not his fault he fell in love with Lucy Carteret. And the rest? The rest is a source of constant pain to him.
Bad then, that Fort Jude’s quintessential drunk driver plowed into the back of Walker’s vintage Beemer outside the 7/11 tonight, just when he was feeling safe in life as he has defined it.
Rage kindled even before he found out who hit him.
Instead of lunging out of his car to confront the fool, Walker sat behind the wheel with his teeth locked, intent on defusing the encounter. Count down. Decompress. Get out and look at the damages. Don’t say any of the things you are thinking and whatever you do, make your face do something that looks like a smile. Take this dude’s license number, his insurance card and his contact numbers, and go. Stick to the particulars and if he’s at all belligerent, write off the damages and split before it gets any worse. Don’t argue, and whatever you do, don’t . . .
Before he could get his door open a mass thudded against the car like a side of meat, followed by a greasy face that slid down to his side window, mouthing apologies.
Careful Walker, don’t . . .
Don’t!
A drunk, he thinks, suppressing anger. Over time, he’s taught himself to keep his rage contained. It’s one of the conditions of his life.
A fucking drunk. It figured. What Walker hadn’t figured on was the rest. The drunk was wearing a face that he knew, even though time had morphed it into a red, bloated version of itself like a C.G. projection of the soul within: Brad Kalen. Oh God, he thought, even though he’s not sure he believes there is God.
Oh, God.
The gross, hulking drunk he remembered as a slick, arrogant kid looked right at him – Was he that drunk? Have I changed that much? – and did not see. Decaying Brad Kalen blinked as though Walker was just some guy, and they had no history. Rage flared but Walker locked his teeth and held his breath for as long as it took to damp the furnace. He still could have come away clean if Brad hadn’t pulled a mess of bills out of his pocket with his free hand. Grinning like a clown hired for a kids’ birthday party, he mimed Walker rolling down the window so he could shove money at him and buy his way out of whatever followed.
With a grunt he smashed the door open, hitting Kalen so hard that he fell on his back, flailing. That was his first mistake, if it was a mistake. Walker still isn’t sure where he is with this.
He could have cut his losses right then. He could have slammed the door on Kalen and scratched off,