The Child Eater by Rachel Pollack

Author:Rachel Pollack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / Fantasy / General
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-07-06T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

JACK

Later in his life, Jack Wisdom would think of March 2 as the day he doomed his son. It was a Saturday, a month after Simon’s birthday. Simon was on a play date at Jerry Lowe’s house, and Jack was in a bad mood. The fact is, he’d been in a bad mood a lot lately, which made him feel even worse because Simon was doing so great, and shouldn’t that be all that mattered? Sometimes Jack thought there was something wrong with him—worrying about work, because that’s all it was, really, when he should be showing his son how proud he was, and happy. Work. Pressure and meaningless crises.

Except—there was an aspect about this crisis that disturbed Jack, and not least because it involved Simon.

Charlie, Jack’s boss, had sent him home this weekend with a thick file that might as well have been marked “Danger! Massive Headache!” since that was what it had been for weeks, for anyone who had to deal with it. But the fact that Charlie had given it to Jack Wisdom to take home, well, that was more than just a headache. Now Jack just sat at the dining room table where Simon liked to do his homework and stared at the spread-out papers, occasionally writing some notes on a yellow legal pad, then angrily crossing them out. Charlie Perkins had asked Jack to work on the Kransky file for one reason only, and it wasn’t Jack’s ability to analyze. It wasn’t even Jack he wanted at all, it was Simon, though Charlie had no way to know that.

Jack stared out of the window. A few trees were just starting to sprout new leaves, the fragile early signs of spring. Just one good ice storm and all that fresh life would come crashing down, probably taking out the power lines at the same time. Jack felt cold suddenly, dressed in what Simon liked to call his play clothes, old jeans and a blue hoodie with torn elbows. He should get rid of it, he knew, but he’d torn it when he was teaching Simon to ride a bike and inadvertently demonstrated how to fall off. Simon’s laughter had been so infectious it hadn’t even hurt.

Jack wished Simon was home, with him, right now. He was thrilled that his boy was doing normal things again, like play dates, but he missed him. And it would be a good excuse to do something fun, play catch, go to a movie, anything besides stare at that damn file.

It had started some two months earlier, ironically right around the time Simon began to emerge from his “slump,” as Jack liked to think of that terrible period. Jack’s company, Joyride Automotive Supplies, had taken a daring turn, moving from relatively simple devices like windshield wipers that contoured more closely to the glass to a whole new kind of seat belt. Using sensor chips located up and down the padded straps, the “intelligent” belts would adjust to a person’s body, moving higher or lower, tightening or loosening as necessary.

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