The Book of Masks (Abridged)

The Life of a Dad

WILL STARTS TO MOVE into the kitchen, but you halt him with a word. "What's your friend Caleb doing these days? After school, I mean."

With his mouth, Will says, "Nothing. Hanging out after school. I dunno, I'm at work." With his eyes, which glare up dully at you from under lowered brows, he says, You totally know what he does after school.

"Well, bring him in with you today. I want to talk to him. You can tell him it's about this 'experiment' you guys have been running."

You notice your ... wife ... turning very quiet.

"Is that all?" Will mumbles.

"Don't lip me."

He runs into the kitchen. More male teenage voices, surly and biting, and you're pretty sure you hear someone drop the f-bomb under his breath.

"Harris," says your wife. "Caleb is not your responsibility."

"Then whose responsibility is he? If he wants to kill himself, that's fine. I just want to tell him that he's not going to take your son with him." You finish your coffee and return your wife's steady stare with one of your own.

* * * * *

It's a goddamn mess at the office. You never understood what your dad did, and now you understand it's because he does a little bit of everything. "Vice President of Shit Shoveling" is the title he's threatened to put on his business cards—so he's told Gavin Wagner, his immediate boss, when the man's brought him yet another screwball problem to fix. Technical, contractual, legal, personnel—whatever the type of problem, one way or another it almost always crosses your dad's desk, for advice if nothing else, for he seems to know everything, and typically he's the only with enough stick to go after problems with a baseball bat.

Take the crisis that Griffiths brings you at ten-thirty. You're on the phone to Atlanta, explaining to your counterpart at Murray-Huemler that if they do not come across with certain proprietary information about the construction of their jet engines then Salopek will not be able to guarantee proper engineering for the turbine blades they have ordered, and that it would be very bad for everyone if one of Murray-Huemler's next-generation engines subsequently died over the south Atlantic and took two-hundred-fifty passengers and crew with it because it dreaded the loneliness of the cold ocean below. You're tapping your pencil and listening to a lot of hemming when Jerry Griffiths puts his head into your office.

"Call me back at five," you growl into the phone, "if you've got an affirmative. If you don't, your great-great-grandchildren will still be awaiting delivery of those turbine blades." You drop the phone into its cradle. "Yeah?" you snap at Jerry.

He hustles in. He has big, wet eyes set in a hound dog face. "Legal asked me to show you this, when you have a minute," he says as he sets a fat file folder in front of you.

"I have minutes. I just don't have time. What is it?"

"Well, it's these darn contracts we're drawing up for the city—"

"I'm not a lawyer, Jerry."

"Well, who the heck says you are?" He laughs nervously, and flips through the file. "But Bill, he's asking if we can—"

"Bill who?"

"Stutzman, in Facilities? He's asking if we can change this number here"—Jerry points to a four-digit figure underlined in red—"to, uh ... " He fumbles a slip of paper from his shirt pocket and sets it before you.

You peer through the contract, then look back at the number on the scrap of paper. Your eyes pop, and you grab up the phone.

"I want Bill Stutzman," you tell your floor's receptionist. "Did you talk to him about this?" you ask Griffiths. "Why didn't he call me with—? Bill, it's Harris. How much shit are you actually planning to flush into the municipal waste system? Or is this number that legal is showing me— Sit. Down," you mouth at Jerry, who has begun edging toward the door. "Is that just a negotiating ploy?" You allow Bill ten words of explanation before cutting him off. "Not that big, we're not going to get, not if we're flushing—" You eyeball that number again. "Christ! Because even if the city lets us flush away that much heavy metal contaminant, we'll wind up with the EPA hanging a Superfund site designation on us, and they'll bust us back until we're in nothing but the organic, hand-crafted thumbtack business!"

You listen a bit more, then say, "No, I'll call Roberts. You just write, Sometimes I have to tell the boss 'No' one hundred times on your office wall with a permanent marker." You punch a button on the phone, and Jerry quails as you stab him with a short, hot glare. "Linda, I need to talk to Mr. Roberts," you tell the woman who answers. "Tell him it's about the upcoming CNN expose that's going to bankrupt us." As she relays your message, you scribble three names on a scrap of paper and push it at Jerry. "Call these guys," you say, "and tell them to clear their afternoon schedules in case there's a meeting. Yes sir," you say into the phone. "No, not yet there isn't, but there will be if the city accepts this number that Bill Stutzman wants to slip past them."

Over the next three hours you conduct a running battle with the president of the company, sometimes abetted and sometimes opposed by three vice presidents and two facilities engineers, along with pop-up support by the head of the legal affairs office, in which you argue against both the ethics and the practicalities of dumping excessive amounts of toxic waste into a municipal system that Salopek—but not the city's own engineers—know can't handle them. The president doesn't back down until you threaten to resign over the issue, and even then you buttonhole Gupta in legal and tell him that you'll be visiting the city's own lawyers on your own time to look over the contracts that Salopek gives them to make sure that the company keeps its promise to you.

And in the middle of that, while jogging on a treadmill in the exercise facility, you have to field a call from the accounting department wanting to know how to itemize a certain disassembled drill press for depreciation purposes.

"Harris, is there anything that goes on around here you don't know about?" asks Larry Haygood, who is puffing along on the machine next to yours.

"I lay awake nights dreading that there is," you reply, and wipe the streaming sweat from your brow as you slow the treadmill to a walking pace.

* * * * *

So consumed are you by your father's work that you forget all about your afternoon meeting with Caleb until four o'clock, when there's a sharp knock on your door and a skinny kid in a sloppy hat and cargo shorts looks in at you. "Hey Dad," he grins.

You're on the phone, so you growl a "What?" at your son before things click into place. "Oh. Right." You listen impatiently to Pete Ritter for another minute while glaring at Will, who has plopped his butt and his shit-eating grin into a chair. He wags his legs back and forth and lets his arms dangle to the floor.

"I told you to bring Caleb along," you snap at him after hanging up.

"I did." Will's grin widens.

"Then where the—?" A penny drops. "Oh. God. No."

Will—Caleb—rubs his nose. "Hey, I been coming in like this for the last week anyway, and this way it doesn't look funny if—"

"Did you tell Andy Keyes you were coming up to see me?"

His smile vanishes. "Uh. No. I just—"

"Close the door." As you dial Andy to tell him that your son is up in your office, and that he'll be down to work in fifteen minutes, and to deduct his pay accordingly, Will, his butt still wedged in the chair, stretches his lanky arm waaaaaaaaayyyy over at the door. He still can't reach it, though, and has to tip himself over, raising both clodhopper feet into the air to counterbalance himself, until he can weakly brush the door closed with his fingertips. "So, whaddaya wanna see me about?" he asks with cheerful insolence once he's restored himself to something vaguely like a dignified sitting position.

You drum the desk, weighing the decision, before replying, "Get used to being inside that mask. You're not taking it off until we get things fixed."

That smile, which had crept back onto his face, vanishes. "The fuck?"

"Watch your language," you snap before you can stop yourself, and he smirks sourly back. "I want you at home, in character as me—" A patch of sweat breaks out between your shoulder blades as you contemplate what that is going to be like. "Tonight and going forward. It's an all-hands project to get my dad back to normal and I want you around until then."

"Your dad seems pretty normal now," your friend grumbles.

"Oh, am I freaking you out? You think I'm not freaking myself out?" You knead your forehead, which is warm. "Yeah, I want your help. Will you help me?"

"Well, sure!" He actually looks insulted by the implication that he wouldn't. "I just don't see why I have to stop being me in order to."

"It'll give you an incentive. The sooner my dad's back, the sooner I'll be back, which means the sooner you'll be back. Besides," you add as Caleb shrugs. "He's got a job here and you don't. You want the money Will Prescott's earning? You play Will Prescott."

Caleb shrugs again. "Okay, it's a deal. But will you at least stop barking at your son all the time?"

You open your mouth to bark at him, then catch yourself. You sag, and your eyes drop.

"I'll try," you say. You look up again. "Maybe that's another reason I want you there, playing me." Caleb's eyebrows goes up. "I'll have an easier time dealing with my—" You swallow thickly. "My goofball son if he's better than the goofball he usually is."

Your heart rises, just a little, at Caleb's wince and his reply: "You're not a goofball, Will."