3
HOME SWEET HOME
It was nearly nine o’clock when Portal finally said, “Okay, Art, okay. I’ll think about it.”
His bolo tie pulled loose, Thrasher tilted his padded chair back and planted his booted feet on his desk top. “Think of the tax break you can get out of this, Will. Think of the publicity and good will.”
“I said I’ll think about it,” Portal repeated, his thin voice rising slightly.
“Fine, wonderful.”
“Now can I go to dinner?” Portal’s face took on a sardonic little grin.
“Sure,” said Thrasher magnanimously. “Sorry to have kept you so long. I appreciate your time, Will, I really do.”
“Good night, Art.”
“’Night, Will.”
The wall screen went back to the displaying the Madonna. Thrasher sighed heavily, then took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. He was surprised to see Linda still sitting there, her chin on her fists.
“I thought you were going home.”
“I am,” she said, getting to her feet. “Goodness, look at the time.”
Replacing his glasses, Thrasher said, “Just because I work crazy hours doesn’t mean you have to.”
She smiled. “Have you made any plans for your own dinner?”
“I’ll grab something out of the freezer.”
Linda gave him a critical look. “You ought to take better care of yourself.”
Getting up from behind the desk, Thrasher said, “Yes, Mommy. Now go home.”
“Make sure you get some food into you.”
“And be back here at eight sharp.”
“Right, boss.” She turned and left the office.
Admiring her form, Thrasher recognized that Linda was really a very beautiful young woman. What is it the Catholics call it? he mused. Then he remembered, she’s a near occasion of sin. A very tempting morsel indeed. He shook his head and said to himself sternly, you do not come on to employees. It’s very unfair to them. And you could get sued up to your eyeballs.
The intercom buzzed.
“What?” he demanded.
Linda’s voice asked, “Should I tell Carlo to meet you in the lobby?”
“Naw. Tell him to go home. I’ll stay here tonight.”
“You’re sure?”
“Stop mothering me, kid. And go home yourself.”
A hesitation, then she said, “Goodnight, then.”
“Goodnight, already.”
Thrasher’s home was far out in the posh suburbs, a mansion he had built for his second wife, the sculptress. But he maintained a modest apartment on the other side of the corridor from his office suite. Nothing very fancy, just a couple of bedrooms, kitchen, sitting room, and a book-lined study. Plus a walk-in shower in the master bathroom. He had spent some very special hours, sharing that shower.
But tonight he was alone. He pulled a dinner package from the freezer, microwaved it, then sat at the kitchen counter and nibbled at it while he watched television, switching from CNN to Fox News to MSNBC and back again at every commercial break.
Pouring himself a ginger beer, he briefly thought about adding a dollop of brandy to it. Brandy and dry, the Aussies called it. He decided against the brandy and walked slowly to his study, then out onto the balcony that overlooked the garish lights of downtown Houston.
Can’t see the stars, they keep it so goddamned bright, he complained silently. Not like Arizona. Not at all.
His mother had died in childbirth and Thrasher was raised by his embittered father, a dry husk of an astronomy professor at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. Dad worked all his life and what did he get for it? Bubkiss. A lousy pension and his name on a couple of boxfuls of research papers.
His father had accomplished one other thing, though. He had instilled in young Arthur D. Thrasher a love of astronomy, a fascination with the grandeur and mystery of the stars.
Not that Art followed his father’s footsteps. The chalkdust classrooms and genteel poverty of academic life were not for Art. To his father’s despair, Arthur took the university’s business curriculum, then won a partial scholarship for an MBA at Wharton. He covered his expenses with the money he’d made from his first entrepreneurial venture: a bicycle repair shop on the edge of the UA campus.
His father died the year Art made his first million. Art married, divorced, married and divorced again. By the time he was worth a hundred million, he had given up on marriage—but not on women.
Leaning against the balcony railing, Art took off his glasses, folded them carefully into his shirt pocket, then peered at the sky. He was farsighted, he didn’t need the glasses to see the stars. Farsighted. He laughed to himself. At least that’s better than being myopic. His second wife had gotten him to try contact lenses, but Art hated to insert them, felt uncomfortable with them, always feared one of them would pop out at an embarrassing moment.
There was talk of new surgical techniques to alleviate hypermetropia, the medical term for farsightedness. Art shook his head at the thought of it. Maybe after I’m sixty-five and eligible for Medicare, he decided. Let the goddamned government pay for it.
Then he reminded himself that it wasn’t the goddamned government’s money, it was the taxpayers’. With a sigh, he realized that sixty-five wasn’t that far away: thirteen years. Lucky thirteen.
He ducked back into his study for a moment and pulled what looked like binoculars from his desk drawer. Actually, they were nothing more than a pair of toilet-paper rollers, duct taped together. Out on the balcony again, Art put the contraption to his eyes and searched the sky. The tubes blocked some of the glare from the city’s lights.
He saw a reddish dot through the glow and smog. Mars? Might be Antares. But no, the dot wasn’t twinkling, the way stars do. It was a steady beacon. The planet Mars. He remembered the first time his father had shown him Mars, rising bright and clear over the rugged mountains ringing Tucson. I couldn’t have been more than five years old. And the lurid adventure tales set on Mars that he’d read in his teen years; his father shook his head with disdain at his son’s choice of literature.
“Mars,” Thrasher breathed, staring at the red dot in the sky. Thirty-five million miles away at its closest. But we’ll get there. We’ll get there.
Why? he asked himself. Because it’s there? He laughed. Because we can make money from it? I doubt that. Because I want to show my father that I’m not just a money-grubbing Philistine?
None of the above.
Or maybe, he thought, it’s all of the above. And more.
And he remembered his father’s dying words, as he lay in the hospital, withering away before Thrasher’s tear-filled eyes:
“Make something of yourself, Arthur. There’s more to life than money. Do something you can be proud of, something worth doing.”
Something, Thrasher thought bitterly. Something you could never do, Dad.
We’ll get to Mars because it’s worth doing. Something I can be proud of. It’s that simple. It’s something I can be proud of. Something to make my father proud of me.