Nelson's shoulder grazed Tim's chest when he came into the office, and Tim nearly jumped out of his own skin. But how could he react to Nelson like that when he'd just sort-of proclaimed his love for Javier? Baffling. He realized they were two separate people, right? Except...tumbling into his life together like they had, all violence and adrenaline and confusion-maybe his brain saw them as a package deal. And those stirrings he felt when Javier was pressed up against him, talking to him in that low, authoritative voice...he felt that thrill when he looked at Nelson, too.
And now Nelson was making it a point to brush up against Tim whenever he was within range.
Once Tim shut the door, Nelson and Javier faced off, and Tim wondered if that explosion he'd been sensing was about to ignite. He backed against the wall and steeled himself. When he was sixteen and he'd figured out he was gay, he'd done a bunch of research, Kinsey reports and the New England Journal of Medicine, before he'd broken the news to his parents, who'd received it with stalwart resignation. So being attracted to men, Tim had decided long ago, was relatively normal.
This new thing-the one where he was turned on by Javier snarling at Nelson? Yeah, that couldn't be healthy.
"What have you told them?" Javier demanded.
Nelson perched on the edge of the desk and tossed his hair out of his eyes. "I didn't tell them anything, Sir."
"No, you're just marching around with a printout in your hand asking them what kind of manna they eat after you've been reading reports all day."
Nelson cracked a grin. "True. But they don't know the extent of Mr. Reason's technogeekery. C'mon, do you seriously think I'd blow Tim's cover?"
"I think we can trust them," Tim said.
Javier started to protest, but Nelson talked over him. "So do I." He indicated the drifting stacks of printouts with a wave of his hand. "You need help with those, right? Well, I can think of two perfectly intelligent people who are getting way bored with tic-tac-toe."
"Since you seem to have formed a working theory," Javier said, "perhaps you'll let me in on it so I know what I'm looking for help in finding."
It seemed like Nelson might keep his ideas to himself. He stared at Javier for such a long time that Tim had to clench his jaw from babbling something just to fill in the silence. But finally Nelson relented, and said, "C'mere, come closer, and I'll tell you." He glanced over at Tim and met his eyes, too. "Both of you."
Nelson slid a hand around Tim's waist and drew him close, so he was straddling Nelson's knee. He pulled Javier close, too, so they were all in a huddle. "You're both pretty trim. How often do you eat Canaan Products manna, Tim?"
"I dunno, once or twice a week?"
"If that. I'd say you've got ten kinds of manna in your cupboards."
"You looked through my cupboards?"
"What about you, Javier?"
"Not if I can help it-it's trash."
"That's what I thought," Nelson said. He pulled them closer still, smiling to himself-and it wasn't about sex. That's what Tim was feverishly repeating. They were talking manna, not flirting. Although everything Nelson said or did seemed like flirting.... "You guys were right. Canaan Products did move something off the shelves."
Nelson slid his hand into Tim's back pocket, and Tim struggled to make sense of what he was saying. "I made it through the whole top-secret folder. This big project that's so hush-hush," Nelson said, "this thing Canaan's hiring for-opening whole new plants, creating a brand new marketing team-they're rolling out a manna that's low-calorie, low-fat, and high fiber. Manna-Lean."
"Are you sure that data is recent?" Tim asked. "What if that document was something out of their archives?" Really old archives-back from the seventies, maybe, when obesity was a more than just a freak condition.
"Randy put on ten pounds over the past six months," Nelson explained. "A guy with his body type, his height? He'd need to be eating an extra couple hundred calories a day. And he says he even cut back on his drinking when he needed to punch a new hole in his belt. What does he eat? Canaan Products manna."
"Sorry," Tim said. "You lost me. I thought you said Manna-Lean was low-calorie and low-fat."
Nelson smiled a secret smile. "Right. But I didn't say Manna-Lean was the product they recalled. On the last page of the formula, there's some metadata. This little gem was called ML Phase 1. I don't think Manna-Lean is even in stores yet. It's too new. Canaan doesn't sell specialty products, and at this point, that's all Manna-Lean could possibly be. Unless...."
He looked from Tim to Javier and raised his eyebrows.
Javier said, "Unless there was a high enough demand for it."
Chapter 22.
There were so many ways in that office Nelson could think of to get high: a few stiff shots of that tasty scotch in the desk drawer. Another dose of Peritriptan. Or even better, a replay of Javier and Tim going to town on him 'til his toes curled. But as much as Nelson adored sex and drugs and ridiculously expensive booze, what tickled his fancy the most was the sheer, unadulterated joy of discovery.
In the past twenty-four hours, he'd discovered the following: the taste of a genuine Cuban cigar; the way a human iris might fragment if it had been sliced open and chemically burned; the way Tim's breath caught when he was on the brink of shooting his load; the fact that not only was Canaan Products preparing to roll out a whole new line called Manna-Lean, but that they'd been laying the groundwork for their new product for years by cornering the cheap manna market, and then secretly tweaking their existing formula to create the demand.
Nelson might not have pieced together the significance of the first reformulation (Phase 1) if he'd come across the fattening manna on its own, since it hadn't actually been engineered to simply be more caloric. Yes, a manna with a greater caloric load, something higher in carbs and fats, would certainly result in some of its consumers gaining weight, but others would find themselves getting fuller, faster-and those consumers would respond with a sort of self-regulation. Simply put, they'd eat less.
Evidently, that was not Canaan's goal.
Instead of making a richer manna to pave the way for Manna-Lean, Canaan tweaked something deep down in its existing product's structure. Something that didn't change the taste, texture or appearance. But something that they'd labored for years to develop and had recently test-marketed in Manhattan.
Something they'd then recalled as quietly as they'd distributed it, all in one fell swoop, rather than letting it rotate out naturally.
Why?
If Randy's new pants size was anything to go by, Phase 1 yielded results. So there must have been another reason to pull it from the market. But without an understanding of how the mechanism worked, it was anyone's guess as to how it might have failed badly enough to warrant a recall.
Nelson needed to know more. From where? An email? A marketing strategy? Sales projections? Something...anything. While he didn't know exactly what they were looking for, he was positive they would find it somewhere. Boy Genius Tim had not only hacked into the research and development databases where all the scandalicious formulas lived, he'd accessed every other bit and byte at Canaan Products, right down to the chain letters, fart jokes and shaved beaver jpgs lurking inside the inboxes of the sales division.
It was a fascinating haystack...which made finding the magic needle in it all the more challenging. Nelson had Tim and Javier straddling him, one on each knee, waiting for him to tell them what he suspected about the recall-and he was bursting with the urge to grab both of them by the hair and jam their faces together for a three-way kiss-with plenty of tongue. But there was no way either of them would read it as the exuberant high-five in which Nelson would have intended it. Sex was about something else, for each of them. Or for everybody, Nelson supposed, if he were to be philosophical about it. Nelson settled for nuzzling Javier's cheek and giving Tim's butt a squeeze. Disappointing, since he really wanted more...but he didn't want to start a whole big thing over what his every last action meant. Not now. Not with Canaan Products' data to plunder.
"Javier," he said, "This Phase 1, a 'gateway manna,' for lack of a better word...I don't really get how it works. Not yet. I have a few suspicions, but I need to know more. The mechanism they've altered...and the reason they suddenly yanked it all-because the stuff they're messing with? They're calling it a fortification-but it's more like a drug than an additive." He indicated the huge paper drifts with a tilt of his head. "We can't do it alone. Randy and Marianne aren't gonna sell Tim out. Someone put us in physical danger, not only us-them too. Not just with the riot, but by adding things to the food they've been eating. When your life is on the line like that, I don't think money matters."
Javier stared at Nelson. His uncovered eye was narrowed. Probably, his covered eye was too. "Money always matters."
He'd said it so gravely, Nelson felt goosebumps race down his arm.
Javier looked at Tim and said, "Estimate, how much more data is left to print?"
Tim looked at the stacks of printouts he'd already run. "That's probably only half of it."
"It's up to you," Javier told Tim-in a tone that made it perfectly clear he thought it was a gigantic mistake to trust either of them. "Those two might know my name, but they'd never be able to trace me. You? They know exactly where you live. Both of you."
Poor Tim looked so stricken, Nelson gave his butt another squeeze. Even that didn't seem to console him. Tim disengaged from the huddle and went to assess the stacks and stacks of printouts, as if he couldn't tell just by looking at the sheer volume of data it would take days for him and Javier to comb through it alone while Nelson tackled the science-geek stuff. He loaded in a fresh ream of paper, and the printer whirred through a warm-up sequence and began quietly filling its output tray again.
Before the data-explosion, the post-job-fair days and nights seemed long and fraught with the agony of watching and waiting to see which particular shit would hit the fan next. Now, though, with all this work to do, Nelson almost welcomed the reprieve from the world in which to do it. He swung his feet, eager for Tim to make the call so he could get back to the formulas. Tim was so torn between pleasing Javier, and recruiting his new friends like his gut told him to, that it seemed like he'd stare at the sliding piles of printouts for the rest of the night.
"Trust doesn't only go one way," Nelson said. Maybe it was merely a half-formed idea as he blurted it out, but why not? He just knew he was itching to get a better idea of what the ramifications of putting the Phase 1 modified manna on the market had been. "How about this? If they want in, they each give you something in return. Trust for trust."
"They will lie," Javier said. "Anyone with a brain in their head would."
No, actually. But now Nelson could extrapolate that Javier certainly would...not that it was any big surprise, given how grim and unflinching he was about everything. "Would they lie," Nelson suggested, "even if they knew that Tim can hack in anywhere and double-check anything? I don't think so."
"Not anywhere," Tim said. He seemed pleased, though, that Nelson thought so.
Nelson threw his arms in the air. "Hey, man, you do what you need to do. But me? I've got my work cut out for me if I'm going to get a handle on this whole thing with no samples, no lab, nothing but a printout of some formulas."
Javier crossed his arms and looked first at the rumpled, much-handled printouts Nelson had been worrying all afternoon and evening, and then at the rapidly filling output tray. "If we could locate the emails that belong to the research and development team," he said, "maybe there would be some indication in plain language of why the formula was altered-what they hoped to achieve, and by what method-rather than just this snapshot of the final product and our speculation about it."
Nelson slid off the desk and approached Tim, who stiffened nervously as Nelson slipped his arms around his waist and pulled him close enough to nuzzle his neck. "That's as close to a blessing as you're gonna get. I suggest you act on it."
It was a childish idea, this thing about trading secrets. Not surprising, considering the source. Javier sat at the conference table and took stock of everyone. Tim nervous, Marianne and Randy eager to know what was going on, and Nelson-while Javier wouldn't have called him self-satisfied, exactly, it was clear he was accustomed to being right. Not in a smug way either, but in the way of someone who'd mapped out all the possibilities while everyone else was just realizing there was even a situation brewing.
"We need your help," Tim said. "And I hate to have to do this, but if we let you in on this thing, we're going to need you to..." he blushed, and faltered.
Nelson chimed in. "You wanna play? It'll cost you a secret. A big one. A huge one. Something that'll prove you're serious, because I guarantee you, kiddies, we are absolutely, one hundred percent dedicated to this cause, and we need the assurance that you're totally in too, all the way."
"You really are serious," Randy said-like he thought Nelson was kidding around, except that he wasn't.
"We can't force you," Nelson said. "If you don't want in, keep yourself to yourself until it's safe to leave. But if you do...oh man, it's some wicked messed-up shit...."
"I'm in," Randy said. "What do you want to know?"
"That's the thing," Tim explained. "You tell us. Something we could..." again, he was ashamed to voice their plan.
"Use for leverage," Javier said. "Not that we'd want it to come to that."
Randy hesitated. His gaze flicked to Nelson-who, of everyone there, he'd bonded with the most. Nelson gave him a very small nod, as if to say, You won't regret it, bro. It's totally worth it.
He took a deep breath, and said, "Okay. So the first company I worked for, right when I was fresh out of school? Turned out the head of accounting was cooking his books, big time. I should've turned him in to the IRS, but I didn't."
That didn't sound so bad...however, judging by the set of his shoulders, and the way his eyes went shifty, Javier suspected that it must have been worse than he was making it out to be. Without realizing it, he channeled the tone of his father's voice, and said, "What else?"
Randy flinched. "I didn't report it...because I made him pay me off to keep quiet instead." He looked down at the tabletop. "Dude, my student loan payments were coming due, eight hundred bucks a month and I could barely cover rent."
Just as Javier had suspected-if money were involved it was useless to count on Randy's loyalty. He tried to capture Tim's gaze and convey as much, but Tim was dead-set on adding the others to his team. He looked at Marianne and said apologetically, "Okay...your turn. What's your big secret?"
Marianne went white.
I knew it. I knew there was something up with her. Javier watched her dash into the bathroom yet again. While part of him felt vindicated for pegging her as being a Canaan loyalist, mostly, he was disappointed. He'd wanted an ally for Tim who was as dedicated as she'd been pretending to be. As vehement. To know that the whole time she'd been merely acting in order to gain his trust...some actor, willing to go to such lengths to convince them. Especially considering the state of her swollen, blistered feet.
Her swollen feet.
And her frequent trips to the bathroom.
Dismay had Javier out of his chair before he'd even realized he was pursuing her. She'd locked the bathroom door behind her, of course, but a lock on a trailer door was hardly better than no lock at all. He pulled a prepaid debit card from his pocket, wiggled it past the strike plate, and popped the lock open.
Marianne was huddled on the floor in the corner. Her face was pressed against her crossed arms, which rested on her drawn-up knees. Maybe it was better, Javier thought, to not need to see the look on her face. He closed the door gently behind him and locked it again. "How far along are you?" he said-and now he didn't sound like Alejandro at all.
"Great. Even the gay guys can tell I'm knocked up."
Javier approached, and knelt down beside her. He ran his hand up her arm and squeezed her shoulder, then caressed her copper-colored hair. "No. I would never have let Nelson go on with that ridiculous game of his...."
She turned her head and regarded him analytically. "You mean that."
He lifted the hem of her pants and checked her ankle's swelling. "Four months?"
"Five. My feet have never done this before-but after we ran from Tim's house to Nelson's, they just blew up." As she spoke, the words tumbled out faster and faster, because now that she had someone to confide in, the flow of words simply couldn't be staunched. "I'm not showing yet, I know I'm not. I bought that suit specifically so you couldn't tell-and now that I'm wearing Nelson's cargo pants, I could be as big as a house and you'd never-" tears started again and interrupted her, but after a few moments, she snuffled them back and pulled herself together.
"The father didn't give the child his mark," Javier observed.
Marianne nodded miserably.
"I'm sorry."
"You would think that's the worst part. To destroy my life, to destroy my parents' life, to destroy the baby's life, all over his stupid mark. But it's not like I'm the first girl that this has ever happened to. Whenever things seem like they're too hard to do, I always tell myself, You can figure this out. Whatever it is. You'll figure it out. But this mess?" She ground her tears away with the heel of her hand. "What's sickening about it was everything I didn't figure out. With the sperm donor-I refuse to call him a father-everything he told me about himself was a lie. Where he worked. Where he grew up. I moved to New York for him and it turns out I didn't even know his real name."
She could terminate the pregnancy, of course. But she hadn't-and Javier would not have even dreamed of questioning that decision. She could buy a mark, too-but what would that cost in the United States? Probably as much as the cornea transplant that would restore much of his sight-the one Alejandro refused to pay for. Not because he disapproved of Javier's decision to stop living a lie...but because he was too much of a coward to disobey Felicidad-his wife, Javier's mother, and the queen of the de la Rosa household.
Gently, Javier slipped his fingers into Marianne's hand and coaxed it away from where it was clasping her knees. He took it between both of his hands. It was warm, maybe too warm. Then again, her hormones were surging. "I'm sorry," he repeated, which hardly seemed adequate.
"I'll bet he was married."
Nelson's friend at the morgue came to mind, among other things. "That's likely."
"I think about that, him being married...but then the idea creeps in...what if he wasn't? What if he still had a mark to give me, and he didn't, because...." Her chin started to quiver. "Because he didn't think I was good enough."
Javier pulled her against him and put both arms around her, holding her close while she wept, saying nothing. It's not like I'm the first girl...no, and not the last, either. Javier couldn't help but imagine Nelson in this very same situation-although Nelson had undoubtedly heard it from the child's father, and probably more in the form of, "Uh oh, what if my wife finds out?" Nonetheless, Javier felt a pang of envy. How good must it feel, in that one crucial moment, to be the hero rather than the villain? To be the one to fix everything-everything-by sacrificing something so valuable, so irreplaceable, as one's mark?
The wetness of Marianne's tears touched Javier's chest.
Holding this worn, battered, destitute stranger, Javier realized he would do it. He would dig deep, deep inside, and find that heroism inside himself. Generosity was not in his nature. Maybe he hadn't always been selfless enough, big enough, to give something so precious to someone in need-but now, after learning that Nelson had done it without even a second thought, Javier would have found it within himself to grow, to rise to the occasion, and to tell Marianne not to worry, that she could take his mark.
If only he still had a mark to give.
Chapter 23.
Nelson was jonesing to get back to cracking the code, but he reminded himself that it was a hell of a lot harder to put together a jigsaw puzzle when half the pieces were missing. Having four people hunting for pieces rather than two would make up for whatever time he was pissing away with the ridiculous hoops Javier was making them jump through.
Especially Marianne. They'd been in the bathroom for at least fifteen minutes.
"C'mon," Randy said. "I told you my big, awful secret-and believe me when I say, that little douchebag deserved it. I probably should've asked for more. But the tax man finally got him for not paying Social Security for his household help, and then all his secrets blew wide open once the numbers came out, so I can't dip into that well again."