Page 33 of Code 6

Chapter 13

September ended.Good riddance, thought Kate.

Morning classes had kept her on the law school campus until nearly lunchtime, so it would be just a half-day at the office. She exited the train at the Tysons Corner Metro station, buttoned her coat, and started her ten-minute walk to Buck Technologies.

It was starting to feel like late January. Not the weather, but metaphorically speaking—specifically, the way friends and colleagues greeted Kate upon seeing her for the first time since her mother’s death. During the immediate aftermath, without fail their first words had been “So sorry about your mother.” By week three, the expressions of sympathy had dropped by about fifty percent. By week five, it was only occasional, like the oddball who wished you “Happy New Year” in the last week of January. Life went on. But Kate still had her dark moments of grief, especially late at night, when she was alone and trying to write—rewrite—the script she’d promised Irving Bass. The words weren’t coming, or at least they weren’t finding their way onto the page. In a way, Kate had been witnessing her mother’s suicide for years, powerless to stop her from drinking herself to death. Even that, however, hadn’t prepared her for the choice her mother had finally made.

Kate was a block away from the Buck Technologies campus when her cellphone rang. It was Sean O’Hara, the young man who’d assisted Irving Bass at Ford’s Theatre.

“First of all, let me say how sorry I am about your mother,” said Sean.

Happy New Year to you, too,thought Kate. “Thank you, Sean. How’s Irv doing?”

“Crankier than ever. He can’t work while in rehab, so he asked me to make sure the play is moving forward on schedule. Can I see what you’ve written so far?”

Kate stopped at the red light, her pulse quickening. She had nothing shareable.

“Just the first ten pages is all I need,” Sean added.

Thewalklight flashed green, but Kate didn’t move. “By when?”

“How about tomorrow?”

Panic set in. She needed a few days. Actually, she needed the full ninety days that Bass had given her. “How about Friday? They might still be a little rough.”

“No worries,” he said. “I promise I won’t show them to anyone until they meet the ‘Irv test’ for the first ten pages.”

“What’s the ‘Irv test’?”

“Do you want to get to page eleven?”

“Irv’s a smart man.”

Sean agreed, and the call ended.

Kate crossed the street, checked in with Buck security at the gated entrance to the company campus, and then caught a ride on the golf cart with the security guard to the athletic facility. In ten minutes she was dressed and on the squash court for a challenge match against the CEO.

“How long has it been since you’ve played?” her father asked.

“Since the last time I beat you.”

“You mean the time I let you win.”

Kate laughed. Her father had picked up the English-invented game as a philosophy student at Oxford. There, one by one, his classmates had discovered that this brilliant young American’s philosophy was “win at any cost.” He never letanyonewinanything, going all the way back to Tic-Tac-Toe with his five-year-old daughter.

Kate served first, and her father answered with the crack of a killshot. More followed. Game one was their most lopsided ever: Dad, eleven; Kate, one. Kate called for a water break. It was obvious to her father that she was not herself.

“You seem distracted,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”

“You don’t really want to know.”

After several volleys of “Yes-I-do”/“No-you-don’t,” Kate came clean and told him about the rewrite she was doing for Irving Bass.

Her father drank from his water bottle. “You’re still working with that guy, huh?”

“What do you mean by ‘that guy’?”

He laid his racquet aside and took a seat. “I thought you were done with him after the contest, so I kept my opinions to myself.”

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