Pears and Perils Page 2

  Golden Acres was a step somewhere between an apartment building and a nursing home. It offered individual suites complete with kitchens and bathrooms, as well as some central lounging areas for the tenants to spend time in. There were nurses on staff to assist with laundry and cleaning, plus a cafeteria where those who didn’t feel up to cooking were welcome to eat. The mood and tenor of Golden Acres was far happier than any dreary rest home, if only because the people in it still held some vigor in their bones. All the tenants here were in their twilight years but still capable of functioning by themselves, as long as they had an occasional helping hand. All the tenants except Clint.

  Clint had approached the owner nearly two years ago about renting a room, drawn by the atmosphere of peace and community that the members of this particular age bracket generated. At first the owner had been surprised, then skeptical, then suspicious. Clint met all the documented criteria, though: he had the income, he was capable of functioning without major assistance (this was the key rule that separated assisted living communities from nursing homes and was taken quite seriously), and he had no previous history of financial delinquency. The owner had initially scoured the books looking for a rule that placed an age limit on who could take a room; however, he backed down after a consultation with his lawyer made it clear that no rule existed because it was prohibited by law to discriminate against tenants based on age. So the check was cut, a few pieces of furniture were moved, and Golden Acres admitted its first resident that was paying into social security rather than collecting from it.

  Nowadays, Clint was a common sight walking the hallways. He greeted each fellow tenant respectfully, inquiring about their grandchildren or latest checkers tournament. There were thankfully few between the young man and his own suite tonight, the late hour having driven most from the lounges and into their beds. They’d be up again before daylight, some making coffee, some smoking their pipes outside, and a few making biscuits that would leave an angel weeping in envy. Clint had to be wary of those biscuits; they threatened to drag his “no desire” policy and his waistline into an inescapable wasteland.

  Despite his hunger, Clint did take the time to linger with one resident. Mrs. Adams sat alone in a corner of the lounge, watching a television playing some soap opera in Spanish. When Clint had first arrived she’d been a dynamo, a living tinderbox that engulfed the world around her in the fires of excitement. She had organized pranks on the nurses, once tricked an orderly into taking her knitting circle to a male strip club instead of the crafts show, habitually put together enormous shuffle board tournaments complete with sabotage and trash talking, and generally caused disarray wherever she’d tread. Mrs. Adams had built a pyre for Life instead of trying to get on decent terms with Death like most women her age. She’d welcomed Clint to Golden Acres with open arms and a stick of gum that stained the chewer’s mouth.

  Now she sat watching the images on the screen flicker by, an occasional nod of comprehension as a familiar character leapt across the screen. Clint reached into his paper bag, producing a fast-food apple pie and setting it on the table in front of her.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Adams,” Clint said softly.

  Mrs. Adams looked at him for a moment, her brows knitting in concentration, then gave a noncommittal nod and turned back to the screen.

  “You know it’s been a month since she talked.”

  The voice belonged to Rose, a plump mother of four in her mid-forties and the undisputed queen of the nurses. Rose was notorious for taking zero guff from her patients and keeping employees in line better than an OCD marching band leader. Once upon a time she and Mrs. Adams had been something of arch-nemeses, one an agent of order and the other an emissary of chaos. Those days had slipped away some time ago; all that remained was another patient in her charge, albeit one Rose went out of her way to take special care of. That’s the thing about having a nemesis: no matter how strangely the relation is shaped, it is almost always a great friendship at its core.

  “I know. She loves the Camelot Burger apple pies, though.”

  The pie sat untouched, a small trickle of steam wafting up from a corner of crust. If Mrs. Adams could smell or see the calorically-saturated culinary marvel she gave no indication. Her eyes never wavered from the screen.

  “You’re a nice boy. Tell you what: she’s probably just full from dinner. Put it in your refrigerator and try again in the morning.” Rose shouldn’t encourage him, but he wasn’t the only one hoping to see a spark fly out of the former wild woman’s eyes.

  “Good idea. She preferred… prefers them reheated anyway.” Clint put the pastry back in the bag and patted Mrs. Adams on the shoulder. “How long does she have?”

  “Until late next week. The man from the review board is coming by then to assess her condition. You know she barely passed last time,” Rose said sullenly. Golden Acres was a place for people who could still function. That rule was important, and no matter how much the staff might want to make an occasional exception, they knew it wasn’t right to do so. This community wasn’t equipped for someone too far gone; there were too many places for tragedy to strike. It wore heavy on Rose’s heart to think of this old battle-axe being boxed up and shipped off, but there was nothing to do for it. Age and Death were the inevitable prices of Life.

  “Late next week,” Clint repeated. He patted the woman again and then went to his suite. His appetite was waning; however, he unwrapped the burger and gulped it down in a few bites anyway. The fries went next, followed by now-flat soda. Clint never understood how soda from fast-food places could blaze with such fierce carbonation that the bubbles leapt from the cup when poured yet be flat as water within the span of mere minutes. He’d once wondered if there was a metaphor in that somewhere, if the moral was that living too intensely burned out one’s time faster. If that were true then Clint would likely live forever at this rate.

  Clint put the apple pie, carefully encased in a plastic baggie, in the refrigerator for safe keeping. He turned his attention to clean-up and only then noticed the giant blue announcement on the inside of his burger wrapper. He sighed, crumpled it up, and tossed it in the garbage. That taken care of, Clint grabbed a shower and went to bed.

  He slept dreamlessly, as usual, awaking some hours later to the scent of coffee that was strong enough to have sobered up Hemingway. Mr. Timmons, four doors down, was the brewer of said coffee, and swore that it was what kept him vibrant and healthy. While the healthy part was likely up for discussion, there was certainly no fighting him on the issue of vibrancy.

  Clint was less roused from bed and more yanked out of it by just the scent of those brewing beans. He’d tried a cup of Mr. Timmons’ coffee once, an experiment that resulted in three days without sleep. Usually this was the point where Clint would make his own pot of mud, sitting in solitude as the sounds of his community coming alive filled his living room. Today, though, the percolator went untouched. Clint wasn’t interested in the world around him just yet; instead he was absorbed in thought. Clint was thinking about how not having desires himself didn’t mean others didn’t deserve a decent standard of living. He was reflecting on all the kindness that Mrs. Adams had shown him in his first days here, and how much joy she brought into the world of Golden Acres. Mostly Clint was thinking about the difference between a nursing home insurance would pay for and the kind that could be afforded with independent sponsorship.

  Clint let out a heavy sigh as he reached into his trash can and pulled out the burger wrapper. It took some doing but he eventually got it flattened out on the table enough to make out all of the fine print. After a few minutes of double-checking, Clint pulled his ancient (read: three years old) cell phone off the counter and punched in a series of numbers.

  “Hello, Camelot Burger Contest Hotline? Yeah, my name is Clint Tucker and I wanted to claim a prize from a winning wrapper. Oh, sure, the confirmation number is six, six, five, seven, two, one, three, four, four, and nine. Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am, I’m twenty four. That
’s right, ma’am, it’s one of the fifty thousand dollar cash and adventure prizes, whatever the adventure part means. No, ma’am, I’m not married. No, ma’am, I’m not interested in changing that, though I appreciate the offer.”

  3.

  Edward Dillon’s black-polished shoes tread silently down the well-lit tile floors of the hallway leading to his office. He was a tall man in his early forties, wearing a suit that even Dr. Caruthers would have found impressive. His company, Camelot Burgers LLC, owned the entire building, but this floor was dedicated to the use of the President and CEO. There were few residents here besides him, only a handful of upper-management personnel and, of course, their secretaries. Most of the corporate employees worked on the floors below, toiling amidst a myriad of cubicles and subpar coffee. There were no three-sided felt walls on this floor, and all the coffees and teas were imported and expensive. Edward liked a bit of separation between himself and the cogs running the machine; he felt it kept his head clearer when hard choices had to be made. He reached his office and found a rarely seen employee, Lawrence Farran, waiting on him.

  Edward Dillon’s office would have left Mr. Henderson seething in envy. It had twice the square footage of a good downtown apartment and the back wall was made entirely of windows so that one could stand at the edge of the plush carpet and feel they were floating over the city below. The art on the walls was original and costly, the desk made from a rare tree that was illegal to harvest, and the marble in the attached bathroom was imported from various locations in Europe. Edward hadn’t come into this office by backstabbing or corporate treachery, either. No, he’d done it the old fashioned way: by being born into money.

  Camelot Burgers was turning a hundred years old and it was the most profitable and wide-spread chain of fast food restaurants in the entire world. His grandfather had started the company in the form of a small restaurant in Bedford, Texas, with a grill, a few patties, and a delicious recipe for sauce. Since then it had grown and been passed down through the family, from Edward’s grandfather to Edward’s father, then to Edward, and one day it would go to… well, Edward preferred not to dwell on that thought. The point was that Camelot Burgers had been around for a long time, and Edward intended to see it stay functioning for many years more. That was why he invested in promotions like the Island Adventure Giveaway.

  “I take it there’s news?” Edward asked. Lawrence wasn’t one to come around without reason. He’d been with the company since before Edward was born, and even as President, he wasn’t still entirely clear on what Lawrence did, though he did know Lawrence’s official title was “Executive Advisor.” So far as he could tell, Lawrence kept the wheels of the machine that was the company greased, smoothing out problems and making sure small troubles never evolved into big ones.

  “The last wrapper was found.” Lawrence didn’t bother elaborating; they’d been waiting nearly a week since the second one was called in from Phoenix, Arizona.

  “That’s fantastic; we can finally get the shoot moving along. I assume he’ll be here in short order?”

  “All three will be in conference room A at eight in the morning, sharp.”

  Edward didn’t know why Lawrence bothered saying the word “sharp”: his general manner conveyed such a sentiment far more efficiently. No one was entirely sure how old Lawrence Farran was, though to look at him you wouldn’t guess a day past sixty. His hair was grey, but it had been that color since Edward was a boy, so who knew what it signified? He wore a few wrinkles around the eyes that added more a sense of distinction than one of frailty. He was still trim and spry, moving with surprising speed when the moment called for it. He kept his clothing neat and pressed, his suits expensive enough to be respectable but not so extravagant as to draw ire. Lawrence was precise, like a surgeon’s scalpel, a feature that could be simultaneously desirable and offputting.

  “Sounds great; we’ve had all the logistics set up for weeks now.” Edward didn’t ask the implied question: he didn’t have too. Lawrence didn’t swing by to deliver good news; there were couriers and administrative assistants with less job security for that.

  “We do have a slight problem. It seems your son showed up last week, offering to help with the promotion.”

  “Oh dear.” Edward loved his child, but it was in the same way the sun loved the earth. There was a distant relationship, and the knowledge that the latter depended on the former; however, the two were so compositionally different that achieving any true sense of mutual understanding was mere fantasy.

  “The executives assured him everything was under control. He can be rather relentless, though,” Lawrence continued. Edward appreciated the attempt at diplomacy, regardless of how thinly veiled it might be.

  “Maybe we can just send him to a different resort in Kenowai and hope he gets confused.”

  “I doubt it. Despite his demeanor the boy can be rather resourceful at times. I do have thoughts on a possible solution.”

  Edward felt his shoulders relax a bit. This was why Lawrence had managed to stay with a single company despite economics dips and corporate restructurings. No matter the problem, he was always ready with a fix. “I’m all ears.”

  “We already have a professional team to film the event; however, it wouldn’t hurt to have some footage from a layman’s perspective. The ‘point of view’ style that conveys amateurish camera-working abilities has become a valid cinematographic strategy in recent years.”

  “I see. So we stick a camera in his hands, tell him to stay out of the shots, and maybe even end up with a few usable seconds of footage,” Edward put together. “He feels like he’s helping, and doesn’t cause too much trouble. Lawrence, you are a lifesaver, my good man.”

  “I aim to please, sir.” Lawrence smiled, which looked less like a friendly gesture and more like a baring of teeth.

  “Get everything worked out; we’ll deal with our contestants tomorrow. You said eight, right?”

  “Sharp.” Smile.

  “Right. Sharp. Of course.” Edward did his very best not look uncomfortable in his opulent office as his underling exited the room. It was akin to trying to hide water stains on the crotch of one’s pants; all the shuffling and hand movements only drew more attention to the embarrassment.

  * * *

  Kenowai was an island in the Atlantic a few hundred miles southeast of the Caribbean. It was renowned for its stifling heat, its breath-taking beaches, its lush vegetation, and for producing a particularly hardy yet delicious breed of pear indigenous to the island. Kenowai also held the distinction of having been conquered by no fewer than twenty countries since it had first been discovered. The longest of these conquests had lasted six days, and that record was held by a particularly stalwart group of Spaniards.

  The citizens of Kenowai never resisted their new ruling nation; in fact, it was quite the opposite. When a war party reached land, ready to battle tooth and nail for the right of owning this ultimately strategically-useless island, they were met with open arms and amiable sentiments. The Kenowai people would cheerfully greet these foreigners, insisting upon showing them all the natural wonders of the island. These tours involved a lot of hiking in the sun, a process much more tolerable for the scantily clad natives than for people wearing wool cloth and heavy armor. By the end of the day, everyone was famished, so the people of Kenowai prepared a welcome feast for their new overlords. Because these feasts were a special occasion, the food was heavily flavored using the zago berry, a local delicacy to the natives and an almost supernaturally-potent laxative to those whose stomachs were unaccustomed to it. By the time the foreigners would recover, usually around day three, they would declare that everything was in order and if Kenowai kept saluting the flag there wouldn’t be any trouble. Then they would promptly cast sail to get away from the tropical oven of torment as rapidly as possible. It was the privilege of the oldest citizen in Kenowai to take down the flag and place it with the others at a display in the local tavern.

  Industrializatio
n had come to Kenowai in bits and pieces as more foreigners showed up with intentions of relaxation rather than exploration. The natives found these new people didn’t know what a fish or a pear was really worth, and thus their tourism industry was born. Unlike most island nations, they hadn’t allowed corporations to take root in their land; instead, even the most posh resorts were owned by someone who lived on Kenowai. They had plenty of use for the tourists’ money, but not their cultures. Kenowai was a place where traditions were observed out of belief instead of habit, where sacred was a word that still held meaning, and where they nodded politely at the suggestions of alternative religions and philosophies while still insisting that this was the freshest fish on the island and it would be folly to pass up such a bargain. Kenowains walked a delicate balance, happy to sell their wares and views but stalwart in a refusal to trade away their gods.

  This was part of the reason Sprinkles loved his kingdom so. While the rest of the world’s countries were hurriedly casting away their roots and legends, Kenowai dipped theirs in bronze and placed them on the mantle. It was why one could still hear magic in the wind and feel the power of the earth when walking barefoot in the grass. Kenowai was a place with History.

  Of course, wherever such an oasis exists, be it cultural or literal, there will always be someone who looks at it and only sees the profit to be made from setting up shop and selling refreshments. In this instance it happened to be a man who wore polished black shoes and had an office that overlooked downtown Dallas.

  4.

  Clint made the call about the winning wrapper on a Tuesday morning. By Thursday he was sitting in a conference room stocked with sodas, fruit, and a congratulatory banner, waiting on the CEO of Camelot Burgers to grace them with his presence. In the room with Clint was a tall girl a few years younger than him with mocha skin and a set of horn-rimmed glasses. He was vaguely aware that the horn-rim was making a comeback among people who cared far too much about style yet wanted to appear that they didn’t. From the way she fidgeted constantly, Clint had a feeling she wasn’t one of those people. Usually that kind of Type-A twitching was reserved for people too involved in other things to be bothered with fashion, even ironic fashion. She was pretty, too: a lean face and large eyes emphasized all the more by the fact that her hair was pulled and bound so it could in no way obscure her view.