FaceMate Read online

  It was Rajiv who reached out for Eddie’s hand and introduced him to Alex and Vi. Vi gave a cutesy little curtsy, millennial style; and as for Alexander, no curtsy, no smile, no acknowledgement, not so much as a sidewise glance. Keeping his eyes diverted all the while, he passed along four fingers, reluctantly, it seemed: Frigid, slimy fingers, too, like week-old salmon turning rancid in the cooler. Eddie grasped them, felt them, dropped them, then turned and squirted a dab of sanitizer in his palm.

  Rajiv took the seat right next to Eddie facing the cockpit, way up front, Vi sat in the seat facing rear immediately behind Rajiv, fingering a copy of People Magazine that someone had left on board. And Alex—Now there was bizarreness on the hoof, alright—Alex slunk back to the tail-ward pair of seats, set his lap-top on one, slumped his skinny backside on the other; the flight took roughly two hours from the time they climbed aboard until the limo picked them up from the tarmac in Red Bank. Alex uttered nary a syllable during all that time.

  But Rajiv—now that guy, bless his heart, Rajiv Patel could talk. The dynamo of the duo—no question there.

  “So—what can we expect?” asked Rajiv promptly, as the jets were firing up. He was turned to face Eddie, wide-eyed and candid as a little kid; Eddie Parker couldn’t help but like him right away.

  “With the meeting, you mean?” Eddie wasn’t sure just what the kid was asking.

  “Yeah, the meeting—and Mr. Atherton too—What’s he like?”

  “Ben? He’s gruff sometimes; but he’s honest and he’s fair. And if he agrees to do a project, you can be sure it’ll be done exactly right.”

  “I’ve seen him on TV lots of times. He’s on a bunch of business shows.”

  “Yeah, he makes a lot of contacts that way. Ben’s smart, and that shows through the gruffness, so getting out in public—that brings a lot of business to the firm. Free publicity; that’s always good.”

  “So—He must be worth a mint, I guess.”

  “Money, you’re asking? Hell, Ben was a billionaire before he turned thirty-five. I don’t think he cares about the money, though—not the way a lot of other rich men do. He loves the challenge of building things; building businesses; creating value in something that needs a little spark to set it off. He gets a kick out of making money for smart people who have a good idea but don’t quite understand how to turn that good idea into gold—you follow what I’m saying?”

  “Yeah, I follow you OK. He sounds like the kinda guy we want to have on board.”

  “He is, I promise you that, Rajiv. Just….”

  “What? Just what?”

  “I hate to bring it up, but … with your girlfriend?” Eddie said that very quietly, then turned around to look. But Vi was dozing, the magazine aflop across her knees—Not much substance in a People to keep a girl awake, he figured. All right, safe enough; but, anyway, he spoke in very guarded tones, just in case her eyes were shut but her ears still open wide.

  “Vi, you mean?” Rajiv inquired. “But … I thought it was OK to bring her with.”

  “It’s OK; sure it’s OK; glad to have her; only … leave her in the hotel when you guys go in to wrap things up.”

  “Yeah, I was planning to, but—is there a problem with her coming along?”

  “No, it’s a long story, kid. Ben—Mr. Atherton—he had a kind of personal tragedy when he was young—your age, actually; right around your age—What are you now, Rajiv? Twenty-two?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Ben was twenty-three at the time, and what happened almost did him in. There was a girl—a pretty blonde a little bit like Vi—quite a lot like Vi, truthfully. Anyway, she … there was a tragedy—I mean, I’m talking tragedy—major—and…. Whew!”

  Eddie slowly, gravely shook his head and wiped the corner of an eye. It took a while for him to begin to speak again, and when he did, he continued, pensively:

  “Anyway, afterward Benny went into a funk. He went away—part of the time he went to India, actually—and when he came back, he wasn’t the same ever again. He turned his sorrow into wealth; it made him focus I guess—Well, at least he made some minor something positive out of all the misery he went through. But he never really got over it completely and sometimes just an incident—or a girl like your girlfriend in the room—something like that brings it all back to him—And bad!—A thing like that gets him remembering again, and he’s not himself afterward for days on end. His blood pressure goes haywire, his heart beats funny—bad stuff like that. So better if….”

  “Yeah, I see. I get the picture, Mr. Parker—I think I do. So—is there somebody around that can take her to a mall or something? Vi kinda likes to shop.”

  “Sure; she can have one of the limos and go wherever she likes—the Monmouth Mall or wherever. We’ll give her a couple thousand bucks to spend—How’s that?”

  “No, no—Geez!—Don’t spoil her—God! She’s got a couple hundred in her pocket, that’s enough. So—that Mr. Atherton: He never got married afterward?”

  “Yeah, sure. He married her sister Carole. Closest he could get to Liz. Liz was the girl’s name—the one he lost. She was cute as a button. Your girlfriend’s kinda cute, but not quite button-cute, if you can follow what I’m telling you.”

  “You knew her? His girlfriend Liz?”

  “Yeah, sure I did; we all grew up together; went to school together; right in Red Bank, where your meeting’s gonna be. Benny and me—we’re pretty much like you and Alexander. You and me, Rajiv, we’re two lucky stiffs who latched on to money-making geniuses. I don’t know, kid; maybe you’re a genius too, like your friend back there; but I’m sure not. Benny made me rich, but even if we were poor as dirt, the both of us, I’d count myself lucky as hell to have him as a friend. He’s gonna make you rich the way he did for me, but don’t distract him from what he’d gotta do. Keep your girlfriend Vi out of his sight and poor dead Lizzie out of my buddy Benny’s mind.”

  5

  Alexander Daugherty was strange.

  Even his mother acknowledged the fact that her only child was strange. And mothers, considered as a group, are steadfastly impervious to the existence of strangeness in their kids.

  But Helen Daugherty realized her little boy was strange, alright; nearly from the nursery she did. After all, you can hardly argue with the obvious when it steps right up and smacks you in the face. And Alexander’s strangeness was, as only-offspring strangeness goes, well up in the ninety-ninth percentile of that singularly unamiable trait.

  For one example, one among the many, Alex didn’t start to talk at the normal talking age. Not a sound when he rounded one, not a word by two, not a ‘mama’ or a ‘papa’ or even so much as a gurgle or a goo-goo by the time he got to three. Helen and her worried husband Lester took him to a specialist to have his hearing checked. But his hearing was OK. His vocal apparatus came out normal too, as far as anyone could tell. He seemed alert enough to things that drew his interest—namely things that didn’t breathe or move—He seemed healthy enough, nourishment-wise; his growth proceeded at a normal pace. But talking? Forget it. Not a thing in that regard—until…

  Until one night, very late, after the baby sitter had left for home just down the block with her thirty-seven bucks in hand—Once nice pert blonde little Becky Bilsky had trotted off, and mom and dad were all alone at home and happened to be passing by their little Alexander’s room, they heard through the just-cracked door a regular one-part dialogue in an unfamiliar voice, a little infant’s unfamiliar voice, that is. They listened closely, stared incredulously back and forth at one another for quite a lengthy while. And it finally dawned on them that Alex was talking, all right, in clear and sonorous tones. He was talking just splendidly. He just wasn’t talking … to them.

  All right, way better than the alternative; at least their little Alex wasn’t deaf or mute or cerebrally deranged. He was normal enough, physically at least, and therefore gave some promise to amend. Good, thought Helen. Great, thought hubby Les. So they sent him off to a top-no
tch pre-school, best one in the town—this now just a little past the age of three. And when they did, and the school staff met him, the psychologist who got consulted ASAP by the conscientious teacher Mrs. Gould, diagnosed the boy as being, in his consultative print-out summary, ‘minimally autistic’. Lester didn’t find the modifier ‘minimally’ all that apt; but his instinctive optimistic bent provided hope. And—thank the Powers-That-Be—Lester’s hope was ultimately proven to be justified.

  For, as things turned out, the incommunicado Alex was tested by the school for intellect and discovered (to mom and dad’s unspeakable relief) to be bright—Very bright, in fact; off the charts in brightness, to be specific. Tested non-verbally, of course, Alex being scrupulously selective about which human beings he would verbally engage. But the non-verbal testing ranked his intellect way up there in the super-genius range. You just wouldn’t know it if you wanted him to talk.

  But that was a positive finding anyway, the IQ testing was. So far so good. And by the age of five, the boy was actually speaking right out loud—even to those of lesser intellect than his own—and doing so in compound, complex sentences filled to their very periods and semi-colons with participles past and present, dependent clauses, subjunctives even—the whole nine-yard ball of wax. He spoke these complex iterations primarily to the patient Mrs. Gould during those happy years of pre-school—she was pretty bright herself, thus worth the trouble of talking to. Unfortunately Helen and Lester heard nothing of his musings—their IQ’s sadly didn’t make the cut.

  Right around that time, and in that self-same pre-school room, as well, Alex, while engaged in conversation with the clever Mrs. Gould, looked up at her desk and rapturously beheld—the classroom computer. It was the very sort of thing that had drawn his interest as a toddler, but nowadays he had the use of arms and fingers to work the keyboard with, a newfound voice to ask the how and why as well, and Mrs. Gould’s permission to hop right up and have a go—Well sure: What would you have the poor gal do? Wasn’t she happy as anything to get the little weirdo off her back for once, at last!— And once she helped him up onto her seat, once he tapped those magic keys and watched the multicolored screen take life, and realized what the splendid newfound toy could do….

  Well, that was it—Bam! Pow!—Love at first sight. The boy took to that keypad and monitor like a remora to a shark, adherent, absorbent, inseparable. From the very instant of discovery, there on Mrs. Gould’s chair and at her pedagogic desk, it was as though the little fellow’s fingers had found their destined adjuncts in the lettered keys, as though his eyes had gotten set into his head solely to fix their focus on that screen and nothing else. The computer at home got expropriated in the same determined way: Helen and Lester didn’t dare interfere any more than kindly Mrs. Gould had done. Alex had found his raison d’etre; and no cosmic force, however powerful, could summon up the wherewithal to muscle him away.

  Fast forward, then, to high school and then to college and finally to grad school at OSU. Alex still didn’t talk very much to anyone other than himself; but he didn’t really need the boon of conversation; his vocal apparatus was vestigial, you might say, a little-used appendage to the respiratory lungs and mouth. Those eight un-thumb-like fingers did the talking for him, his eyes took care of whatever listening he had to do. The computer was his friend—and really it was his best friend, his only friend, ever…. Until he met Rajiv, that is. Rajiv was the single human being in Alex’s early life—well, after Mrs. Gould perhaps—who ever succeeded in truly breaking through.

  Now as to Rajiv: Poor Rajiv had gone through his own trials and tribulations in life and had felt the sting of unpleasantness at school no less than Alex must have done. The son of immigrant parents who spoke with the lilting liquidity of the Gujarati patois—well, let’s just say about the boys and girls who happened to wind up in his home for snacks of puri bhaji, say, or some other volcanically pungent dish—such kids, unthoughtful as such kids most often are, were prone to chuckle, sneer, and imitate. And Rajiv himself, swarthy, exotic-featured in a not unhandsome way: The native schoolboys of Columbus, Ohio, looked at the brown-skinned youngster as one not entirely of their kind, a sort of alien, a sort of weirdo. Dark complexion and an exotic-sounding name—the perfect combination for teasing and rejection. He got it early on—And Rajiv Patel really got it good.

  But one thing about Rajiv: Let’s give him credit where credit was his due—the kid was resourceful. And smart as well. And, more than even resource and intellect, Rajiv was a fellow with a strong and sanguine personality. He teased the mean kids back and fought them tooth and claw and often won. And when he lost, he licked his wounds and knew he’d given back ninety-plus percent of what his foe had given him. He might have lost a few mere skirmishes along the way—but he ultimately won the war. By ninth grade, he was accepted, respected—honored, even, for he was an honorable kind of guy. But he’d suffered an awful lot in getting where he’d finally made it to. And when he met poor Alex, his battle-hardened heart went out to that similarly tortured soul.

  Right off the bat, straight out of the gate, Rajiv felt viscerally for Alex. So, just as you might guess, he began to shelter him, to run his interference, to fight his battles as a proxy when battles turned out to be a must. Alex didn’t thank him, not really—not in spoken words. But those moist, brown, puppy-dog eyes that Alex wore! Alex looked at Rajiv, widely and fetchingly, like the grateful maiden from the tower once her feet were safely on the ground: A look not too awfully different from the look mute Alex had always given his computer screen. And Rajiv saw that grateful look and knew in his inmost heart, that a look like that was the greatest thank-you gift of all.

  From ninth grade right up through graduation, and on to OSU, and from there to OSU’s impressive grad school, the two of them were inseparable, Rajiv always in the van, Alex invariably coming up behind. Rajiv arranged to get him laid once or twice—not a pretty sight, and not much satisfaction to the girls on the receiving end. Sometimes Rajiv forked out a bit of cash behind his buddy’s back to lubricate the reluctant damsel’s will, but no matter. Alex seemed content with the experience—at least he looked content after the deed was done, that is; he never had a lot to say. When Alex got the idea for a facial recognition web site, an outgrowth of the project for his PhD—well, who but old Rajiv Patel to give the concept life?

  And so he did just that, and it had brought the two of them here at last, after last night’s unanticipated phone call, here to Red Bank, New Jersey, where they would get the seed money requisite to take their great idea to the finish line. Here, at last, at that long-awaited finish line, the two kids had finally arrived.

  6

  The room was packed. And as massive as Ben’s office was, getting a place like that packed required a veritable shitload-full of people packing it to get the packing done.

  Ben had arranged it all the night before; meaning that he’d made a few preliminary calls and let the folks who did the leg work arrange the rest. His first call was to the lawyers. Not that Ben put much stock in lawyers as a rule, but you had use their services to button up the details, to legalese the contracts, to make agreements safe and equitable for all concerned. Gerald Kellerman was the Main Man of the firm that represented Atherton, a guy not all that used to getting after-hours calls. And thus his voice was hoarse and his diction halting when he clicked on his phone after seven rings:

  “Hullo?” Lucky for him it wasn’t some evil-tempered justice on the line who liked to hold folks in contempt.

  “Gerry?”

  “Yes?—Uh, umm—Ben? Is this Ben?” Kellerman was doubtlessly in the middle of a dream. From his tone, it was a nice dream he wasn’t all that happy to be wakened from. “What is it, Ben? What’s wrong?—Uh, what time is it?”

  “I don’t know—midnight, I think, maybe a little after. Look, Gerry—I’m gonna need you guys tomorrow at the office—my office. And before that….”

  “Before? How before?”

  “Like now, like
right away. I’m gonna need some papers drawn up now—or before eight in the morning, anyway, so you guys are gonna have to saddle up your horses pretty quick. It’ll be the standard Atherton acquisition contract, so since we’re gonna need it early, best thing would be to call your team right now, if you don’t mind doing it, and get things started ASAP.”

  “Yeah, but…. You mean…. You don’t actually mean you want it started now, do you? Like right now? Tonight?” It was that comfortable dream, Ben thought, something Gerry wanted to slip back into in the worst of all possible ways.

  “Yep, that’s what I mean. That’s why I pay you guys the big bucks, isn’t it? The papers’ll need to be on my desk by eight in the morning at the latest so our house staff can go through them before everybody signs. If you don’t mind then, Gerry, call whoever you need to call and get it done. Which means now would seem to be the most auspicious time, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, but … but….”

  “I’ll email the details on the entity we’re buying into—Just use the standard Atherton agreement, same as always, 80-20—you know the drill. And listen to me, Gerry—be very careful to protect the interests of the kids involved. Treat them like family, you hear? I made this one nice Gujerati kid an oral promise, and I want the two of them—him and his majority-holding buddy—I want them treated like our own.”