F Paul Wilson - Sims 02 (6 page)

 
          
MANHATTAN

 
          
“Perrier?”
Judy said. “Are my ears playing tricks or did I just hear you order water?”

 
          
Ellis had been taking in Tavern
On The
Green’s sunny, glass-walled Terrace Room with its
hand-carved plaster ceiling and panoramic view of
Central Park
.
The park was more impressive when in bloom, but even here in the fall he found
a certain stark, Wyethesque beauty in the denuded trees. The Terrace Room’s
seating capacity was 150. Today it seated only four: Ellis, Judy, his daughter,
Julie, and son, Robbie, the birthday boy. He’d rented out the entire space for
a family luncheon.

 
          
Ellis turned to his ex-wife. Judy was
looking better than ever. With her perfectly coiffed blond hair, her diamond
bracelets, and her high-collared, long-sleeved, clinging pink dress made out of
some sort of jersey material—Versace, he guessed, because she’d always loved
Versace—she fit perfectly in this ornate setting. Judy was only two years his
junior, but Ellis thought he must look like her father. She was enjoying her
wealth from the divorce settlement. Far more than Ellis was enjoying his own.

 
          
“Yes,” Ellis told her. “I’ve decided
to take a vacation from alcohol.”

 
          
“That’s wonderful, Ellis.” He knew
she meant it. The divorce had been amicable: Ellis had told her she could have
anything she wanted. That said, she’d taken a lot less then she could have—more
than the GNP of a number of small nations, to be sure, but still, she could
have grabbed for so much more. “How long has this been going on?”

 
          
“Since the summer.”

 
          
“What made you…?”

 
          
“Lots of
developments, lots of things happening.
Things I want to keep an eye
on.”

 
          
“And Mercer?
How’s he?”

 
          
“The same.
Eats, sleeps, and drinks the business.
Still obsessed with
SimGen’s profits and its image.
Someday he’ll look around and wonder
where his life has gone.” He leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Did you hold
on to all that SimGen stock from the settlement?”

 
          
Her brows knitted. “Yes. Why?”

 
          
“Wait till after the earnings
report at the December stockholders’ meeting, take advantage of the
bounce, then dump
it.”

 
          
“Is something wrong?”

 
          
“Things might become…unsettled. I
want you and the kids protected. But mum’s the word. Just sell quietly and
stick it all in T-notes, okay?”

 
          
She set her lips and nodded.

 
          
“Good.” He straightened, put on a
happy face, and looked around the table.
“But enough about me
and Mercer and business.
This is a celebration.” He turned to Robbie.
“How’s the birthday going so far?”

 
          
His son shrugged, a typical
fifteen-year-old’s studied nonchalance mixing with embarrassment at being out
on the town with his folks and his younger sister on his birthday. He was
underdressed in denims for the occasion, but that was to be expected of a boy
his age; his buzz-cut hair revealed a bumpy skull. Hardly attractive, Ellis
thought, but it was the style. So was the turquoise stud in Robbie’s left
eyebrow. At least he showed no signs of a splice, and Ellis prayed he never
would. He realized it was a teenager’s duty to irk his parents, but he hoped
Robbie would find his own ways rather than galloping after the herd.

 
          
“Okay, I guess.”

 
          
Ellis smiled. He wasn’t making any
appreciable progress developing the new sim line he so desperately wanted, but
he was feeling good about himself nonetheless, better than he had in years, and
he wanted to share it. Only on rare state occasions did they get together as a
family, but he’d used Robbie’s fifteenth birthday as a reason, and it was as
good an excuse as any.

 
          
“Just okay?”
Ellis said. “This is your favorite restaurant, right?”

 
          
He had a big day planned. After lunch
they’d head for Broadway where he had four precious front-row seats for Wordplay!
, the hot new musical comedy everyone said was a must-see.
Then
dinner at Le Cirque, followed by a Knicks game in the SimGen skybox.

 
          
As Robbie shrugged, Julie chimed in.
“I can’t wait to see the play!”

 
          
She was thirteen and the light of
Ellis’s life. Judy had dressed her in a plaid wool skirt and a white blouse.
Julie’s pod backpack was suede, sporting the Dooney & Bourke logo. Robbie
was an intelligent kid, but Julie was brilliant. She had a wonderful future
ahead of her.

 
          
A memory surfaced…of the day SIRG had
threatened Julie to assure his silence, to keep him in line. And it had
worked…for a while…until he’d found another way to make things right. But God
help Julie and Robbie if SIRG ever found out.

 
          
He shoved the memory back into the
depths. Nothing was going to ruin today.

 
          
“You just want to see Joey Dozier,”
Robbie sneered.

 
          
“Who’s he?” Ellis said, fully aware
he was a teen heartthrob who’d moved from a hit TV sitcom to lead in a Broadway
play.
“Never heard of him.”

 
          
Julie got a dreamy look in her eyes.
“He’s gorgeous
! ”
she said, as if that explained it
all.

 
          
Ellis started to laugh but it died in
his throat as he saw the small crowd of sign-carrying protesters appear at the
Terrace Room windows.
Their chant of “Free the sims!
Free the sims!” began to echo through the glass.

 
          
The tuxedoed maitre d’ hurried to
Ellis’s side.

 
          
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Sinclair. I’ve
called the police. They will be here in a few minutes.”

 
          
Ellis looked around the table. Judy
was ignoring
them,
Julie was watching, fascinated, and
Robbie, the birthday boy, looked ready to crawl under the table.

 
          
“How did they know I’d be here?”
Ellis asked, furious. He’d booked the whole room just to avoid an incident,
even used a pseudonym.

 
          
“Someone must have recognized you.”

 
          
Pretty fast work, considering he left
all the public appearances to Mercer.
Probably someone on the
Tavern staff.
However it had happened, he wasn’t going to let them ruin
the day he had planned.

 
          
He pushed back his chair and rose.
“I’ll handle this.”

 
          
“Ellis, no!”
Judy said, placing a hand on his arm.

 
          
“Mr. Sinclair, the police—”

 
          
“Could take a while
to get here.
In the meantime I want to talk to these people.”

 
          
He crossed to a door leading out to
the lawn and stepped through. The shouting grew louder as the crowd—a
three-to-one ratio of women to men—recognized him. He stood impassively for a
moment or two,
then
raised his hands.

 
          
When they quieted enough for him to
be heard he said, “Please. I’m trying to have lunch with my family.”

 
          
Cries of “Aaaaaw!” and “Pity the poor
man!” rose, and one woman stepped forward to snarl, “Yeah! Eating lunch grown
and harvested by slave labor!”

 
          
Ellis stepped forward. He’d noticed
something interesting about a number of the protesters.

 
          
“If this is supposed to accomplish
something,” he told them, “I assure you it won’t. Perhaps a more sincere group
might make a point, but not a bunch of hypocrites.”

 
          
Ellis kept moving into the gasps of
“What!” and “You bastard!” and “What right?” and pointed to the snarling woman’s
handbag.

 
          
“Balducci, right?”

 
          
Her only reply was a stunned look.

 
          
“Sim made!” Ellis pivoted and jabbed
a finger at the insignia on a man’s windbreaker. “Tammy Montain—sim made!” As
he slipped deeper into the throng, pointing out all the popular labels that
used sim labor, crying “Sim made!” over and over, he knew he should be careful.
But these people angered him, and not simply because they’d interrupted his
lunch.

 
          
Finally he was back where he’d
started and could see by their expressions and averted eyes that he’d taken the
steam out of them.

 
          
“How can you be part of the solution
when you’re part the problem?” he said, knowing it was a cliché but knowing too
that it would hit home. “You really want to ‘free the sims’? The fastest way is
to boycott any company that uses them as labor. Companies understand one thing:
the bottom line. If that’s falling off because they use sim labor, then they’re
going to stop using sim labor. It’s as simple as that. But you can’t show up
here wearing sim-made clothes and shoes and accessories and expect anyone with
a brain to take you seriously. If you’re sincere about this you’re going to
have to make some sacrifices, you’re going to have to let the Joneses have the
more prestigious sim-made car, the more fashionable sim-made sweater.
Otherwise, you’re just blowing smoke.”

 
          
Ellis stepped back inside and closed
the door behind him. He had no idea what the protesters would do next, but the
question was made moot by the arrival of half a dozen cops who began herding
them off.

 
          
He returned to the table to find his
family staring at him.

 
          
“Dad,” Robbie said, wide-eyed. “You
were great!”

 
          
“Ellis?” Judy said. Ellis noticed a
tremor in her voice, and
were
those…?

 
          
Yes, she had tears in her eyes. “For
a moment there you were like…like you used to be.”

 
          
He looked into her moist blue eyes.
God, he wanted her back, more than anything in the world.

 
          
“I don’t know if I can ever be like I
used to be, Judy,” he said, knowing his soul was scarred beyond repair. “But if
things go right, if a few things happen the way I hope they will, I should be
able to present a reasonable facsimile.”

 
          
“But Dad,” Robbie was saying, “you
were, like, telling them how to, like, so screw your own company.”

 
          
Ellis put on a pensive expression.
“You know, Robbie, now that you mention it, I believe I was. I’ll have to be
more careful in the future.”

 
          
“Will sims ever evolve into humans?”
Julie said, looking up at him with her mother’s huge blue eyes.

 
          
Ellis stared at her, momentarily dumb.

 
          
“She’s studying evolution in school,”
Judy offered.

 
          
Ellis cleared his throat and
controlled the sudden urge to run from the room. He’d rather be off the subject
of
sims—
this was Robbie’s birthday after all—and
especially off their evolutionary genetics, but how could he not answer the
jewel of his life?

 
          
“Do you think they will?”

 
          
“Well,” she said slowly, “we humans
evolved from chimps, and
sims
are a mix of chimps and
humans, so won’t sims evolve into humans someday?”

 
          
“No,” Ellis said, choosing his words
carefully. “You see, humans didn’t evolve from chimps; chimps and humans are
primates and both evolved from a common primate ancestor, an ape that had
evolved from the monkeys.”

 
          
“A gorilla?”

 
          
“No. Gorillas branched off earlier.
Let’s just call our common ancestor the mystery primate.”