Supervolcano :Eruption Page 3

  Rob said, “You help us make videos for the band, you’ll get your fair cut.” The way Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles were doing then, that would have been a fair cut of nothing. He didn’t need calculus to understand how much a fair cut of nothing was.

  Dad was the one who worried Marshall, though. For one thing, he was hard to snow. For another, he wrote the checks. He eyed Marshall the way he would have looked at someone he’d busted for running a Ponzi scheme. “I told you I’d support you till you got your bachelor’s,” he said.

  “Uh-huh.” Marshall had just nodded. Sometimes the less you said, the better off you ended uWith Dad, anything that came out of your mouth could be used against you.

  “I didn’t figure the sheepskin would take twelve or fifteen years,” Dad went on, an ominous mumble in his voice.

  “Yeah, well-” Marshall spread his hands. But that wasn’t good enough. Dad kept staring at him, willing words out of him. He had to be a hell of an interrogator. Marshall found himself saying, “I didn’t exactly expect it would work out like this, either.” That held… some truth, anyway.

  Dad grunted. “I don’t like to go back on my word. I’ll keep footing the bills-for a while. But I don’t like getting taken for a ride, either. I’m getting tired of these new majors. You hear me?”

  “Sure, Dad,” Marshall said. Arguing with his father was a losing proposition, and not just because Dad wrote the checks. Colin Ferguson had never smoked, but owned a deep, raspy voice that suggested two packs a day for thirty years. Marshall had a tenor-nothing even close to a baritone. His mom’s voice was high and thin, and so was his. Hard to sound serious about stuff when you squeaked.

  It wasn’t that Marshall didn’t or wouldn’t work. He’d glommed on to the usual part-time jobs at groceries and fast-food places and retail outlets. Those were great for pocket money and gas money and the like. They didn’t come within miles of making him self-supporting, not in Santa Barbara. It had some of the highest real-estate prices in the country, which made apartments similarly scream-worthy.

  He had no idea how he would make his living once he did get that sheepskin. Did anybody hire people with film degrees? Or would he still be going Do you want to supersize that, ma’am? when he hit fifty? That wasn’t what he thought of as the American dream.

  And so he tried to finish as slowly as he could. UCSB was a good school for that, and Goleta an even better town. If it wasn’t the party capital of the USA, he didn’t know what would be. The student newspaper listed a cocktail of the week-for people over twenty-one only, the pious disclaimer always said. One of the spring rituals was couch burning: getting publicly rid of furniture too beat up for even students to stand. The Goleta Fire Department did not approve, which probably worried nobody who didn’t work for the Goleta FD.

  Another ritual was going home for summer, or at least part of summer. Going home, for Marshall, meant the house where he’d grown up, the house where Dad still lived. He’d see Mom, sure, but he couldn’t stay with her. The condo she shared with Teo Acosta didn’t have room for guests, and they’d made it plain they wouldn’t have wanted any anyhow.

  Marshall didn’t know what to make of his folks’ breakup. What kid ever does? His father said as little about it as he possibly could. When he had to say something, his jaw clenched even tighter than usual. Mom would talk at the drop of a hat, or without one. But Marshall had seen long before she left Dad that you couldn’t count on everything she said.

  When he came home after finals this summer, he found his father reading a book about the geology of Yellowstone Park. In a way, that wasn’t too surprising. Dad had gone there on vacation, after all. The card he’d sent Marshall featured something called the Fishing Cone, and was postmarked at Old Faithful Station. That was kind of cool. Even so…

  “Geology?” Marshall pointed to the book, which had an aerial photo of some colorfully steaming pool on the cover.

  “It’s interesting-a hell of alot more interesting than I thought before I went there,” Dad said. “And besides, I’ve read everything there is to read about the South Bay Strangler. None of it does any good, or we’d’ve caught the son of a bitch by now. And-” He stopped short.

  “And?” Marshall prompted.

  “Nothing.” By the way his father said it, it was definitely something. Marshall didn’t have Dad’s experience at questioning suspects, but he didn’t need it to know that.

  “C’mon. Give,” he said. “Who am I gonna tell? The tabloids? Entertainment Tonight? The Huffington Post?”

  Dad despised the Huffington Post-and, to be fair, its rivals on the right. He chuckled: uneasily, if Marshall was any judge. “I hope not,” he said.

  “Well, then? C’mon!”

  “I, uh, met somebody.” Yeah, Dad was uneasy, all right. What did he think Marshall would do? Tar him and feather him and ride him out of town on a rail? Tell the Huffington Post for real? Worse, tell Mom? Mom had always said she wanted Dad to be happy, but no, she wasn’t always a reliable narrator.

  “Cool! How’d you meet her? What are you doing about it? Does she live around here?”

  If not for the Cool! in front of them, all those questions asked at once would have made Dad clam up for sure. “We met during an earthquake at Yellowstone,” he answered after a pause to decide if it was okay. “She goes back and forth between there and Berkeley. We’ve talked on the phone a few times, and sent e-mails and texts back and forth. That’s about it.” He shrugged, as if in apology it wasn’t more.

  It was more than Marshall had expected, even as things were. “Cool!” he said again. “But what’s up with the geology?”

  “She studies it,” Dad said, which took him by surprise. “She was checking a seismograph when the quake hit.” Another chuckle. “Got more than she was looking for then.”

  “I guess,” Marshall said. “So you’re getting into it because she is?”

  “Maybe some.” His father was relentlessly honest-even about himself, as much as anyone could be. “But it turns out to be pretty interesting stuff.”

  “All the geysers and hot springs and whatever.” Marshall knew he sounded vague. He’d never been to Yellowstone, and what he knew about the place came from some half-remembered National Geographic documentary. Or was it Ken Burns? One or the other.

  “Yeah. All that,” Dad agreed dryly.

  “Would you still care about it if you didn’t find out about it from-?” Marshall stopped. “You didn’t tell me her name.”

  “Kelly,” Dad said. “You know what? I would. I really would. I don’t see how you could not be interested once you knew what was-what is-going on there.” He sounded convinced. Just because he sounded that way, of course, didn’t mean he was. And even if he was, that didn’t mean he was right.

  “Idiot!” Vanessa Ferguson said, her voce not nearly sotto enough. The idiot in question was her boss. Mr. Gorczany had written between you and I in a letter soliciting a bid on the widgets his firm produced. Vanessa wondered if she was the last person alive who could actually use English grammar these days. She changed the boner to between you and me, fixed a couple of other clumsy phrases, and printed the letter for his signature.

  Even if he wrote like a baboon, he owned the company. He lived on an acre and a half in Palos Verdes, and he bought himself a new BMW every year. Vanessa’s job title was technical writer, which translated into hired keyboard. She had a cramped one-bedroom apartment and an eight-year-old Toyota Corolla with bad brakes. Where was the justice in that?

  “Thanks, Vanessa.” Nick Gorczany looked over the letter before inscribing his John Hancock. He was very blond, about thirty-five, and putting on weight. Because he knew all about widgets, he thought he knew all about everything. He pointed to between you and me. “Are you sure that’s right?”

  “Yes, Mr. Gorczany,” Vanessa said. Braining him with the softball trophy on his desk would only get her talked about. Besides, who said any brains lurked inside that skull?

  “I d
unno. It looks funny,” he said, frowning.

  “The object of a preposition takes the accusative-the objective, if you like that better.” All she had to do was reach out, grab the ugly trophy, and… “If you don’t believe me, see what the Word grammar checker says.” She never bothered with the Word grammar checker, but it wasn’t-quite-dumb enough to make the moronic mistakes Mr. Gorczany did.

  “Maybe you know that, but I bet Don Walsh over at Consolidated doesn’t,” he said. “Change it back to you and I. I don’t want him thinking we’re a bunch of yahoos.”

  “But it’s wrong that way,” Vanessa said helplessly.

  “If he doesn’t know it’s wrong, then it’s not wrong for him,” Nick Gorczany told her.

  She rolled her eyes. “Good God in the foothills! Why do I bother?”

  “That will be enough of that, Miss Ferguson.” Now Mr. Gorczany spoke with some snap: the snap of a boss putting a third-tier employee in her place. He sometimes looked at her in a way she found mildly annoying-not enough to call him on, even for her, but annoying even so. The way he eyed her now scared her, as it was meant to do. “I begin to see why you’ve worked at so many different places the past few years. If you can’t get along with people, you’re going to have problems. Now fix that letter, please.”

  By get along with people, he meant do as you’re told. She almost choked on the injustice of it. She also almost told him to fold the letter till it was all corners and shove it up his wazoo. But the economy, not to put too fine a point on things, sucked. If she punted this job, how long till she snagged another one? Longer than her savings lasted? It might be close.

  And so she contented herself with stalking out of his office, head high, back stiff. The look on her face made a software engineer who was coming in to show him some printouts flinch. It also made a couple of people talking by the coffee machine stare. That didn’t bother her; it wasn’t as if either one of them knew anything.

  Changing between you and me back to between you and I took only a few seconds, printing out the letter only a few more. They would have gone even faster if she hadn’t done them through a red mist of fury. This was what the world was like? Too right it was! You got along better if you were one more smiling moron than if you gave a rat’s ass about doing things right.

  The phone rang. As Vanessa reached for it, she thought how tempting it would be to scream Fuck you! and slam down the receiver. Or to imitate Marshall and answer with Yankee Stadium-second base, and let the jackass on the other end go from there.

  Tempting? God, how tempting! But no. She’d just reminded herself she needed the paycheck. “Gorczany Industries, Vanessa Ferguson speaking.” If she sounded like a slightly constipated robot, well, Mr. Gorczany couldn’t can her for that.

  “Hello, sweetheart.” Hagop Nersessyan had a voice like a lion’s rumbling purr. It was the first thing that attracted her to him. She’d rapidly found out there were others. He knew things in bed poor lame Bryce didn’t even suspect. She wondered how she’d got tangled up with a loser like Bryce to begin with. The same way she’d ended up working here, she supposed. It had looked like a good idea at the time.

  “Hello,” she said, but even Hagop’s voice didn’t cheer her up as much as she thought it should have.

  “I will see you tonight,” he said confidently. “I will close up shop early, and I will see you tonight.” He bought and sold fine Oriental carpets.

  “I don’t know,” Vanessa said. “Work’s pretty crazy right now”-which was putting it mildly-“and I may not be fit company for anybody.”

  “I will see you tonight,” Hagop repeated. She knew what that meant: he was horny. He had definite rhythms. Well he might-he was a year older than her father. Bryce seemed to be turned on all the damn time, and he’d expected Vanessa to feel the same way. She didn’t just want to screw; she wanted to be wanted, to be seduced. No wonder they hadn’t lasted, even though she’d thought about marrying him.

  “Well… okay.” She wasn’t happy with herself for giving in. She never was. She’d find some way or another to get even. Now she hurried on: “Listen, I can’t talk. I’ve got to get this document to Mr. Gorczany.”

  “Tonight, then,” Hagop said. He meant after dinner, of course. He wasn’t offering to take her out. He had a good deal of cash, but he was slow about parting with it. She’d wondered if he was married. That would explain why he didn’t want to be seen in public with her. She didn’t necessarily mind being a mistress, but she wanted to know if she was one. Some Internet work convinced her that wasn’t the issue. Hagop just didn’t like to spend money.

  She waited outside Mr. Gorczany’s office till he stopped speaking in tongues with the software engineer. Then she brought in the letter and set it on his desk. “Here it is-the way you wanted it.” Her words might have been carved from ice.

  He scanned it to make sure she wasn’t saying one thing and doing the other. She’d thought about that, but hadn’t figured she could get away with it-a good thing, too. Nodding, he scrawled his signature at the bottom. “Take it to the post office. I want to make sure it gets today’s postmark. We could have taken care of this sooner if you hadn’t gotten foolish about it.”

  She got off at half past four. It was 4:27 now, by the digital clock on his desk. The trip and the wait in line would cost her anywhere between ten minutes and half an hour, depending on how retarded the Post Awful clerks were. And he was waiting for her to complain about it-she could see that. So she just said “Right” between clenched teeth and carried the letter out with her fingertips, as if it stank of manure. As far as she was concerned, it smelled worse than that.

  The line at the post office was long, and moved slowly. As soon as Vanessa saw the plump blond woman at one of the two open stations, she knew it would be bad. That gal couldn’t count the fingers on one hand and get the same answer twice running. They talked about employees going postal-how about customers who gathered dust waiting their turn?

  She collected a receipt when she handed off the letter. She wasn’t about to pay postage for Gorczany Industries. Then back to her car and back to her apartment. She picked up her mail-junk and a cable bill. The cat gave her a big hello when she came in. Pickles always did. A day in there with nothing but two fish tanks to watch wasn’t very exciting. Vanessa petted the fat-bottomed marmalade tabby and fluffed its fur. Then she fed it some kitty treats. After that, it stopped caring about her. She’d performed her functions, which made her superfluous till the next time the beast wanted something.

  Cats were more honest than people.

  Vanessa nuked a Jenny Craig frozen dinner. It was… better than going hungry, anyway. She ate a yogurt for dessert. Hagop would have liked her plumper than she was. Had she thought she’d stay with him… She wondered why she didn’t. Whatever the reason, she stuck with Jenny Craig.

  She tossed her silverware into the sink. The apartment had no dishwasher. She did dishes when they started getting stinky or when she ran out of clean ones. That appalled her old man, not that it was any of his business.

  The buzzer sounded. There was Hagop, waiting for her to pass him through the building’s security system. She did. A few seconds later, she heard his shoes on the stairway up to the second floor. She had to remind herself she was supposed to be glad to see him.

  Spokane wasn’t a big city. With Washington State there, though, it had plenty of little clubs. This one had been around a long time. The joint’s name-Harvey Wallbanger-proved as much. Lots of things had come back into style over the years, but not drinks with Galliano in them. As far as Rob Ferguson was concerned, a Wallbanger was a nasty thing to do to a perfectly good screwdriver.

  But Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles had played here the year before. Rob and his bandmates were glad to be back. The sound and light guys-the guy on lights was a girl, actually-knew what they were doing. The management didn’t try to stiff acts as a matter of principle, the way so many clowns who ran clubs did. And the crowd was lively and
enjoyed the show. They had last year, anyhow.

  Which meant… they were the same kind of weirdos as the ones who played in the band. And if that wasn’t a judgment on them, then it was a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Or something.

  Rob turned to Justin Nachman, who would have been Squirt Frog if the band were set up like that. Justin played lead guitar, did most of the singing, and had as much fame as anyone in a resolutely unfamous band could claim. “What would you call the kind of stuff we play?” Rob asked.

  “Beats me,” Justin answered cheerfully. “I don’t put labels on it. I just play it. Long as you don’t call me late for supper, you can call it anything you want.” He meant it, or near enough. Nobody in the band was on the wrong side of thirty, but Justin had a good set of love handles.

  They’d gone round that barn before, of course. They’d been going round it since the band formed- congealed was the word Justin used-in Santa Barbara. Rob and Charlie Storer, the drummer, were the analytical ones. Justin and Biff Thorvald, who played rhythm guitar, didn’t sweat it. They did what they didand hoped they did it well enough to keep them from needing to look for honest work.

  Charlie said, “We’re probably somewhere between Frank Zappa and Al Stewart.”

  He’d said that before. Arguments came and went like tides, and almost as regularly. Rob sighed. “What’s wrong with this picture?” he asked, a rhetorical question if ever there was one. He answered it, too: “For one thing, most of the people who listen to us have never heard of Zappa or Al Stewart.”

  “I think you’d be surprised,” Charlie said. “Al Stewart still gigs at places like this. Zappa would, I bet, only being dead makes it harder.”

  “Maybe a little,” Rob agreed in tones he’d picked up from his father. In some ways, they were like water and sodium, and caught fire whenever they touched. In others-most of them ways Rob never thought about-they were very much alike.

  “That’s what I said.” Charlie’s brown hair frizzed out in a perm that looked as if he’d stuck his finger in an electric socket. It bounced when he nodded, which he did now.