Expiration Date by Tim Powers

Author:Tim Powers [Powers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780575117785
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2011-09-29T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

“If it had grown up,” she said to herself, “it would have made a dreadfully ugly child: hut it makes rather a handsome pig, I think.”

—Lewis Carroll,

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

FRANCIS Strube’s black leather electric office chair was acting up. It was made by the McKie Company, which was supposed to manufacture the best race-car seats, and he had punched the button on the “comfort console” to pump up the lower-back region, but it had inflated out grossly, to the size of a watermelon, and in order to sit back with his shoulders against the top of the chair he had to push out his chest and belly like a pouter pigeon.

Ludicrous. He leaned forward instead, dividing his attention between the flimsy sheets of fax paper in his hand and the man in the seat across the desk. The Goudie Snuff people—after extorting a thousand dollars out of him!—had printed out their mailing list in some kind of minimalist dot-matrix, and Strube was afraid he’d have to get Charlotte to puzzle it out for him.

‘But,” said the client uncertainly, “would that be best for them?”

Strube looked up at him. What dreary aspect of the man’s divorce case had they been discussing? Damn the chair. He pushed the “deflate” button several times, but the leather-covered swelling behind his kidneys didn’t diminish; if anything, it swelled more. But he put patient concern in his voice as he asked, “Best for whom?”

“Whom we’re talking about, Mr. Strube! Heather and Krystle!”

These, Strube recalled, were the man’s daughters. He remembered now that custody of the children had been the topic at hand.

“Well, of course it would be best for them,” Strube said, indicating by his tone that he was way ahead of the man, and had not lost track of the conversation at all. “Our primary concern is the well-being of Heather and Krystle.” Strube had made a bad impression early on, when, having only read the girls’ names on the information form, he had pronounced the second one to rhyme with gristle rather than Bristol

“But,” went on the father of the girls, waving his hands bewilderedly, “you want me to demand alternating custody of the girls, a week with me and then a week with Debi, and then a week with me again? How would that work? They’d have to pack their clothes and…and toothbrushes and schoolbooks and…don’t even know what all. Every weekend! Would Debi be supposed to feed their goldfish, every other week? They wouldn’t even know what was in the refrigerator half the time. The girls I mean.”

Rather than the goldfish, thought Strube. I follow you. “It’s your right—and it’s to their benefit,” he said soothingly. “For two weeks out of every month they’d be living with you, in a normal, nurturing environment, away from that woman’s influences.” He let his gaze fall back to where the fax sheets lay in a patch of slanting sunlight on the desk. Most of the customers for Goudie snuff were shops, but there were a couple that seemed to be residential addresses.

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