Radicalized by Cory Doctorow

Author:Cory Doctorow [Doctorow, Cory]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2019-02-04T16:00:00+00:00

radicalized

ON JOE GORMAN’S thirty-sixth birthday, his wife Lacey called him three times in a row on his cell phone. He was in a meeting with his manager, a vice-president who had rescheduled twice. It had taken ten days and a latte to the VP’s PA to get face time with this guy, so Joe bumped his wife to voicemail three times. She was probably calling to wish him a happy birthday or confirm something about the big dinner they were having at his favorite steak house that night.

“Do you need to get that?” The VP didn’t really bother to hide his irritation.

“Sorry,” Joe said and made a show of switching his phone off and pocketing it. He went back to his proposal: he’d found a logistics outsourcer who could manage all their returns, which was the most stubbornly expensive line on his division’s balance sheet. He’d worked really hard on the proposal and this VP could make or break it. Within a couple minutes, though, the VP’s PA knocked on the door and Joe’s heart sank. Someone more important than him must have clobbered his long-sought time slot. But the PA—Gloria, a stylish middle-aged Black woman who had been with the company for longer than either Joe or the VP—spoke to Joe, not her boss.

“It’s your wife, Joe.”

His guts roiled. He had never been more angry at Lacey in their eight years of marriage. She knew that he had this meeting. It was all he’d talked about, when he’d talked at all, when he wasn’t sitting at the kitchen table with his laptop working on his proposal. Jesus fucking Christ, couldn’t she handle the stupid restaurant reservation or guest list or whatever on her own? She was a grown woman. It was his birthday. Some birthday present.

“Sounds like you need to get that,” the VP said. He sounded jocular but there was also a sardonic eye roll in there that Joe couldn’t miss. “Have Gloria set up another time, OK?”

Gloria gave him a sympathetic look as he hustled out of the office, out into the parking lot, where it was blazing hot and blindingly sunny. He took out his cell phone and unlocked it and called Lacey.

“Lacey, honey—” He only called her honey when he was furious with her.

“Joe—” was all she got out, and then she was sobbing.

His emotions whipsawed. Lacey was not a crier. His mother had been a crier, and he’d dated some girls who felt everything so keenly that tears were never far beneath the surface, but Lacey wasn’t like that at all. He was suddenly scared, the anger roiling around, too, but unattached.

“What is it?”

More sobbing. Then a deep breath. “I saw the doctor.” A long pause. Joe wanted to hang up. More than anything. Because he knew that he was about to go through a door that led out of his life as it was and into a new, worse life. It was a door that only swung one way and once you went through it, you could never go back.

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