moment I understand how Elaine, a nurse I go to lunch with whenever our shifts synchronize, felt when her ex-husband, father of her two boys, had come out as a woman mistakenly assigned to a man’s body. A woman with a deep affection for bustiers and mall-rat hair.
If Martin had dropped his jeans and revealed a garter belt and fundamentally rearranged plumbing, I could not be more surprised than I am at hearing him say that he made a mistake. Being right, being ultimately and forever correct, was the cornerstone he’d built his Next identity on.
“Not that I really had any other option, but the second, the instant, I sent in that codicil allowing Aubrey to claim the money on her own, I knew I’d made a huge mistake.”
“No kidding. You invalidated the trust. You know that, don’t you? You flushed not just the first year, but Aubrey’s entire college fund down the drain.”
“It was flushed anyway. It would have been flushed the second I left, and, Cam, I was leaving. That much was certain. I tried to stay in so Aubrey could get all four years of the tuition money. I mean, Jesus, I wanted to get at least that much out of the past sixteen years. But I could barely hang on long enough for her to claim that first year. I don’t know how much she’s told you about our communication—”
I shrug as if of course my daughter and I have such a close, loving relationship that we tell each other everything. Because I raised her right. Without Next.
“Well then, you know about us messaging on Facebook. It was the safest way to get in touch with her. We chatted for months. It was … I can’t describe how powerful it was. I lived for those little chat bubbles. Those little fragments, glimpses, of my daughter. Then, right after Thanksgiving, they stopped.”
And Tyler started.
“By that time,” Martin continues, “I felt like a spy, a POW, in Next. I had to force myself through every day, every moment. All I wanted was to make it until they paid out for her first year. But then time came for tuitions to be paid, and no withdrawals were made, so I started sending her messages every day telling her, ‘Get the money. Get the money.’ But she completely ignored me. I got no response whatsoever. Why are you smiling?”
“Oh, nothing. Then?”
“Then I was done. I couldn’t hang on a second longer. I sent her my cell number knowing that once she used it, you and Aubrey had a day, maybe two before Next ID’d the call, realized I’d had contact with my daughter, canceled the trust, and put their bloodhounds on my trail. So I sent the message, took the Bentley, and started running. I figured either she’d call and I’d get her to claim the money or I’d track her down and take her to the bank myself. I was on the road when she called, stopped at a Kinko’s, got the bank to fax the codicil to me there, signed it, and sent it in. After that, there was no going back to Hub HQ.”
Hub HQ is where Martin has lived for most of the past sixteen years, ever since he was promoted to their Celebrity Corps, the elite inner circle assigned to deal with Next’s highest-profile adherents. Located outside Los Angeles, Hub HQ had once been the palatial manse of a robber baron. Its last owner, some music mogul who attributed all of his success to Next, had bequeathed it to “the church.” Its 56 bedrooms and 61 bathrooms and 19 sitting rooms perched on 127 acres high above the Pacific seemed the kind of place that might have a dungeon or torture chamber.
“All I could take was the Bentley and this suit.” He plucks at the dirty shirt, glances down, catches a whiff of himself. “Whew. Sorry, don’t sit downwind of me. Anyway, since I don’t have a dime to my name, I had to move through this kind of underground railway for Next heretics. Made it kind of hard to do a lengthy consult with you. I’m sorry.”
I’m stunned: He really is out. And, from the almost normal, mostly non-Nextian way he’s talking and acting, he’s been separating for a while.
“But it’s fine, right?” he says, waving at the empties. “You’re having a farewell-leaving-for-college party? She got the money and used it to pay her first-year tuition?”