Union Atlantic Page 0,11
bird face was gaunt with sympathy. Knowing how to time his calls, he would arrive just before supper, when Doug's mother had drunk only a glass or two and was still sociable. He'd share parish news - of the sick and the dead and the newly born - and stand up to leave as soon as Doug took supper out of the microwave.
What the navy recruiter had to offer was a way out of that apartment and the sight of his mother drowning. Doug had signed the papers the day after his eighteenth birthday. For a week he tried coming up with the words to tell his mother he was leaving but they never came and so he decided he'd call her instead, once he reached the base. He took a bus to the Naval Station Great Lakes, and after three days there ended up phoning his cousin Michael instead to let the family know where he'd gone.
Most of the other recruits struck him as innocents without a plan: patriotic boys itching to stick it to the Evil Empire, kids with eyes set wide apart who looked as if they'd arrived through some damp, half-witted dream into a bunk and a bench in the galley, washed off the prairie like shallow soil. Right away he knew he'd do the minimum and get out. He kept figuring he would write his mother a letter or a postcard, but then again she knew where he was and she hadn't written or called.
He met sailors who no longer knew where their folks lived and didn't seem much to care. At first, he thought he'd begin to forget like that, that his memory would wipe itself clean. But it didn't. It wasn't at the low times that he thought of his mother but when things were going well, when accomplishment and momentum felt real, at the end of a well-executed maneuver or when he got his first promotion. Then, just as he grabbed on to a bit of excitement, to the sense that things might work out, he'd picture her spending the night on the couch, waking with a headache at dawn, shuffling to her bed for a few more hours of sleep, and like a kill switch, the image would cut dead the power surging within him. Noticing how the memory of her held him back, he decided he would no longer permit himself guilt. It was a priestly game, after all, a game of sin and forgiveness, one that could eat a life whole.
AS HE ROUNDED the exit for South Station, Doug could see the eastern face of the Union Atlantic tower shimmering in the morning sun. It was taller than 60 State Street and framed in crisp white lines, its glass much brighter than the dark reflective obelisk of the John Hancock. Jeffrey Holland had built it against all kinds of opposition, striking the deal when prices were low because no one wanted to put up with the Big Dig on their front doorstep, despite the fact that it would eventually be a park leading to the water. The tallest building in the city, it now dominated the financial district and had become the centerpiece of skyline night shots during Red Sox broadcasts and the network legal procedurals set in town, the Union Atlantic logo - the outline of a cresting wave - lit in bright blue along the south-facing superstructure, the whole gleaming edifice a bold announcement of intent, its scale impressing clients and competitors alike. Holland understood well the logic of images creating impressions which became facts. Insider chatter about overreaching had been no match for the persuasion of size and ambition. The foreigners in particular loved it, the Koreans and the Chinese, whose business they were getting hand over fist now. At Doug's encouragement they'd entered into talks with the Four Seasons about a hotel next door. Union Atlantic alone could fill two-thirds of it with clients.
"Good morning, Mr. Fanning," the new receptionist on the senior management floor said as Doug stepped off the elevator. He was a twenty-something metrosexual in Banana Republic gear whose smiling deference was so total it almost begged a crude response. "I've sent a few packages down to Sabrina for you."
Doug had gone through three secretaries before he found Sabrina Svetz. She was an aspiring writer looking for a day job. A brunette with the angular features of her Slavic ancestors, her looks were peaking now in her late twenties, the severity of