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Chapter 7 - Hermes vs. Vuitton

Posted on 2011-08-15

August 2012
Frederick

Loyalty. That's what Anne Elliot has always been about, all along. It's loyalty that's driving her to devote herself so fully to the welfare of Charlie and Wally, and I'll bet she probably devoted herself to her grandma with the same kind of loyalty before that as well.

I was the subject of her loyalty once before, too. She was so committed to supporting me that she not only taught herself how to cook from scratch to help me save time and money on meals; she even researched into the kinds of nutrition that'd help me optimize my sporting performance. Still, some of her early concoctions were positively awful, like the dried-out vegetables, the lumpy soups, the over-seasoned casseroles, and the steak she somehow managed to blacken on the outside while it was still raw in the center. Yet no matter how terrible it looked or tasted, I'd still faithfully eat whatever she cooked as long as it was technically fit to be eaten; that kind of loyalty she gave me deserved my loyalty in return. And it helped that I never, ever laughed at her cooking or discouraged her from continuing to try, because she'd never have improved without that opportunity for trial and error. The end result was win-win for both of us - by the time we graduated, she was a fabulous cook; and I was happily well-fed throughout my years of college.

Nobody except my own brother and sister has ever given me loyalty like that since then; and that's how I learned to compartmentalize my life - family is there for support, and lady friends are there for fun. As long as I stick to that set of expectations, I'm never disappointed; it's a pragmatic outlook that can be fulfilled by the reality around me. From my experience with Anne, I've learned that it's not reasonable to expect any of my girlfriends to step in and play the role of family to me, because their topmost priority will always be saved for family of their own. In any case, I've never met any other woman since who's got the same capacity for kindness, generosity and diplomacy that Anne has; but then again, I've also never allowed myself to depend as fully on any other woman as I had on Anne.

I'm using the present tense - "has" - because I realize now that at the core, Anne hasn't changed at all from the days when we were in college. She's still willing to put herself right on the line for the people she loves, and one clear example of that is the way she's functioning as the ultimate childcare back-up for the Musgrove family even though her work commitments are equal to, if not heavier than, everyone else's. I mean, I love Tiffany to bits, but I'm not sure if I could give up flying to look after her; and it's all a moot point anyway because Sophia, as the parent, is rightfully my back-up. So when I'm flying, it's very clear what comes first, and nobody can make any other claims on my time. But for Anne, it's a totally different story. Charlie and Wally may not be her kids; but all too often, she's got to step in even if she's running herself ragged, simply because she knows there won't be any back-up if she doesn't.

"Why do you do it?" I asked her recently, because I thought it was just too much for the entire family to up and go on holiday like that, ditching her with the kids, and I couldn't figure out any good reason for her to put up with it. "Charles and Mary are their parents, and they should be acting as your back-up, instead of the other way around. Just like the way it is with Sophia and me."

And yet, surprisingly, she did come up with a reason I couldn't refute. "Because Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove are already looking after Charlie and Wally in the day, every weekday," she said. "So in a way, they're the real back-up, actually. I know there's no point asking Mary to lift a finger, because she just won't, and Charles is trying his best to do what he can. It wouldn't be fair to ask Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove to fill in all the time on top of what they're already doing either, so all I'm doing is to plug the gaps. It just can't be helped."

They might not deserve it, but Anne has made her choice crystal clear - she's devoting every inch of her loyalty to them anyway. And even though it's a let-down - a huge one - that she's transferred her loyalty away from me, it doesn't change the fact that I can still appreciate who she is as a person. And she's a good person; the best I've ever known, with the exception of my own family of course. So I decide to get past my pettiness and give her some loyalty anyway, even if it's a different kind of loyalty; the loyalty of a friend. And through that, I learn how good it feels, when you give of yourself for real. Because you're only really giving when you resolve to do something for somebody, even though you know you're not going to get anything back in return.

When the Mayans predicted that the end of the world is coming this year, they might actually turn out to be correct after all. Because of all the unexpected things to happen - Anne Elliot, the perfect paragon of female rationality, throws a hissy fit at me for the first time ever; and to top that, it's all because of something that's completely, ridiculously, and childishly trivial.

I never liked being called "Freddie"; everybody knows that. I wouldn't even have let Henrietta and Louisa Musgrove call me by that name if it wasn't that at the time, I somehow thought it was marginally less painful than having them call me "Captain Wentworth". But now that I've started flying as a First Officer and can see myself becoming "Captain" again someday, the title "Captain" isn't the universal irritant it used to be anymore. Instead, every time someone addresses me as "Freddie" or any of its variants, it reminds me of the Musgrove twins, who've taken over the honor of being the greatest irritant in my life at present. Thank goodness that isn't going to last for long, because I'll be seeing less of them when they start college in a matter of weeks. In the meantime I can streamline things a little, and the Musgrove boys are the easiest to wean off from the list of people who are currently calling me "Freddie". With kindergarten starting in the fall, Charlie does have some growing up to do and that's a good excuse to start; while I'm at it, I might as well start Wally young as well. That's how I end up getting them to call me "Coach"; it sounds much better, because it's so much more manly. And things are going along more swimmingly than I first expected, because the new man-to-man lingo is bringing out the little man in Charlie too.

Except one day, Anne pulls me aside saying, "Fred, I need to talk to you." If the vibes had been different, I'd actually enjoy the way she's pulling me by the arm without realizing it, but not when she's got that look on her face; she seems like she's going to have kittens any minute.

"Sure. What's up?" I have no idea what cardinal sin I've committed to deserve this, but it won't help to blow up while trying to find out, so I try to be as neutral as possible.

"Why are you telling Charlie and Wally to call you 'Coach'?"

"Why not? You know I can't stand it when people call me sissy nicknames. Besides, Charlie's growing up, so I thought it's more appropriate - more man to man - if he calls me 'Coach'. It's no big deal, really. What's wrong?"

"I just - oh, forget it. Just forget I ever said anything." She stalks off and busies herself wiping imaginary drool from Wally's mouth, and he whimpers and squirms at having his game interrupted like that.

The only conclusion I can draw from all this is that whatever Mary and the Musgrove twins have got has turned catching all of a sudden, because Anne's been living in an estrogen-laced - no, make that estrogen-turbocharged - household all her life, and yet she's managed to keep her immunity to these random mood swings all the way until now. But if I warn Sophia, who's the last sensible woman left standing in my life, not to fall victim to the estrogen epidemic that's going around, she'll probably tell me I've gone completely nuts. Well, if I am a nut case, it's all because of women anyway - give them something simple and they'll twist and turn it around until you can't make head or tail of it anymore. I'm dead sure the world would be a much easier place to live in if there were only men in it; just that in our heart of hearts, we don't actually want it that way. Life would be a lot less interesting if it were.

Anne

Normally, the only times I ever sit in a hairdresser's chair are when I'm in Florida - the number of times Liz drags me around to get my hair and face done are more than enough to last me the whole year round. But when I'm supposed to go to an ELMSCO board meeting in the place of Father, I've got to do something to look the part if I want any sliver of a chance of being taken seriously.

Of course, I'm under no illusions as to why Father asked me to represent him this time around - it's the meeting where the ELMSCO board will be voting on selling our flagship plant in Saginaw to a Chinese investor, and neither he nor Liz has the stomach to be at the scene when the actual decision is made, so I've got to be there to take the blow on their behalf. Father's already given me specific instructions to convey that he will support the sale; as Father's proxy, I have about as much autonomy as a puppet, and there's no real room for me to have any alternative views of my own, even if I wanted to. But much as I don't wish to acknowledge it either, I have enough understanding of the business to know the writing's on the wall, and there's no way to stop it.

The simple truth is, ELMSCO is the oldest, worst-decaying bit of rust in the Rust Belt; and it doesn't help that generations of Elliots have gotten soft, complacent and ignorant about it. Being an Elliot has always been about tradition, and by tradition, ELMSCO has produced good, trusty mechanical components; it's a formula that hasn't changed since the days of the Model T Ford. Except now, running a good old-fashioned auto parts business just isn't enough to keep us afloat anymore; in the past decade or more as automobiles have been going into drive-by-wire and brake-by-wire, if you don't integrate the mechanical structures with the electronics to form a holistic system, you'll be left scrapping the bottom of the barrel and that's exactly what's happened to ELMSCO. Even though I've been a semi-outsider to the industry, I knew enough to guess that this would happen sooner or later; but it's no use for me to get involved when I simply don't have the weight to fight Father and all the other ELMSCO bigwigs. I know my own strengths too well - I'm a technical person, not a business person; and I haven't got half the leadership heft required to be the change agent that ELMSCO needs.

So you reap what you sow, and in our case, it's this - the plant is seriously outdated, but ELMSCO's already deeply in debt and doesn't have the cash to carry out the upgrades we need to keep up with the times. These days, it's the Chinese who have the money, and it makes sense for us to sell out to them in every way, except for the fact that it's the worst ever insult to the Elliot pride. That's the hardest part for Father and Liz to swallow.

Much as they want to escape from all of this, there's one task that Father and Liz just can't run away from in their capacity as the owners of ELMSCO - and that's to host the Chinese delegation when they come to tour the plant. And this is something I can't duck out of either, since I'm the only member of the immediate Elliot family with an engineering background; never mind that this is just an easy excuse for them as to why I'm the only Elliot who's got even a rudimentary understanding of the nuts and bolts, even though I've never spent a single day of my life in the company's actual operations.

Even with the temperature pushing 90, they're all in suits and ties; Mr. Liu, the big boss, has a huge entourage of 20 or more people with him. He's probably the same age as Father if not older, but he's got an impossibly young lady by his side who's definitely not his daughter. This lady - her name's Rose, we learn soon enough - is even more expensively dressed than Liz, and there's enough jewelry hanging from her to add a pound to her body weight, I'd guess.

Though Rose speaks impeccable English and I'm half convinced Mr. Liu has to understand, if not speak, at least a little English too, Mr. Liu never utters a single word to us directly throughout the entire visit. Everything he says is channeled through his interpreter Mr. Ye, who's a good-looking Chinese guy somewhere around Liz's and my age. At first, I'm a bit unnerved by his perfectly preppy Ivy-League accent which doesn't sound very natural coming from him; but after a while, it turns out he's actually quite friendly.

By default, Liz ends up being the obligatory buddy to Rose, while Father and Cousin William lead the delegation around the plant, tapping on me to give various explanations every now and then. That doesn't stop me from catching little snippets of Rose's conversation with Liz, though.

"Oh, I've got a car like that at home too," sniffs Rose when Liz tells her about the BMW M3 she's currently driving. "I call it my 'little piggy' in Guangzhou. And then there's my 'little dragon' in Beijing, and my 'little stallion', that's what I drive when I'm in Shanghai." It turns out the "little dragon" and "little stallion" are just her Maserati Quattroporte and her Ferrari 599 GTO respectively; and they're just a token add-on to the Liu family's collection of flagship models from every conceivable luxury make, scattered around their various residences in different cities of China.

"And you absolutely must go to Paris for your shopping," Rose continues. "I go there twice a year to get the latest fashions, because there's no place like Paris to get the best prices for everything - Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes ..." Even though I'm walking up front, I can just about imagine what Liz's face must look like when she hears this, because the oversize Kate Spade handbag she's carrying, in a last-ditch effort to show some American pride and patriotism, still pales very much in comparison to the Hermes Birkin that Rose is flaunting around right in her face.

At the end of our tour, Mr. Liu mutters something in Chinese to Mr. Ye as I call his and Father's chauffeurs to bring the cars over. Out of curiosity, I go up to Mr. Ye after I've hung off my cell phone.

"What was Mr. Liu saying?" I ask in a surreptitious whisper between my clenched teeth. I know full well that I'm not supposed to hear this, and I don't want Father to see that I'm asking.

"Well, I'm not supposed to tell you, so just keep this to yourself. He's quoting an old Chinese saying, actually. 'Rags to riches to rags in three generations.'"

Frederick

We meet the Elliots on Friday evening at the lobby of the MGM Grand Detroit; this place has exactly the kind of decadence that would appeal to the likes of Walter and Elizabeth Elliot, and I wonder idly if they've been hitting the casino while they're at it. It's completely ironic, actually, that they're extending me their hospitality with absolutely no idea that I'm the very same guy whom they'd deemed unworthy for even a fling with Anne back when we were in college.

It was Mary who came by, practically bursting with pride, to invite the three of us to dinner with the Elliot family. "Father is the best host ever, and you just absolutely have to come," she said. "If you miss this, you might not get a chance to dine with Father again, because he hardly ever comes back to Detroit these days. And it'll be no trouble having you at all - he'll be so happy to meet our dear friends who've been taking such good care of Charlie and Wally."

I'm a little skeptical about whether Walter's really that happy to meet with us, but when Mary persists in her enthusiasm, it's impossible to turn her down without seeming rude; and that's how we end up here tonight. Anne greets us at the lobby, apologizing for her father and sister who are running late; presumably, they're still taking their own sweet time with preening themselves in front of the mirror before making their grand entrance in front of all their assembled guests. The Anne I see tonight looks different - she's cut her hair into a short, layered style that looks sleek and professional, and she's wearing a black skirt suit that's presumably new, because it actually fits, unlike all her other clothes these days.

Dinner is actually at the Coach Insignia at RenCen - the perfect setting to represent the Elliots' supposed fortune in big auto - but the Elliots have insisted we meet here, probably for all of us to be treated to the sight of Walter and Elizabeth getting into the chauffeured Bentley they've rented for this trip. The Musgroves' Range Rover is packed to the gills, so it looks like Anne's default position will be to sit up front in the Bentley next to the chauffeur, as if she's their peon. This is undoubtedly still a much more luxurious ride still than my RAV4; but nonetheless, I offer to take her because I figure she'll be happier to travel amongst friends. Still, she surprises me with her courage when she actually agrees to jump ship, claiming to her father and sister that we'll need her help to give us directions to get there.

Soon enough, it becomes clear that the Elliots aren't really interested in anything about us, except what they need to know to determine our position in the food chain of society. The dinner conversation quickly degenerates into a sleep-inducing lecture, all delivered in the condescending voice of Walter Elliot, on the topic of The Elliots: their flashy Florida lifestyle; the magnificent city view from the corner suite they've gotten at the MGM Grand; how generous they are to all their friends; and how privileged we are to be the recipients of their unique brand of unrivalled hospitality. Especially since we've barely met the threshold of admissibility into their social circle, as Elizabeth Elliot doesn't hesitate to point out.

"An airline pilot? Oh, puh-leeze - it's a total waste for you to be a glorified bus driver like that. After all, who's going to look at you when you're in the cockpit?" she says when I tell her I'm flying with Delta.

Louisa's quick - too quick, in my opinion - in jumping to my defense. "Liz, let's get real, OK? Airline pilots are responsible for hundreds of lives, and Freddie's no more a bus driver than you're driving a dump truck. Besides, Freddie isn't just any ordinary pilot, you know. Dig this - he used to be the lead stunt pilot for the Thunderbirds in the Air Force."

"A stunt pilot, huh?" From the way Elizabeth is giving me the creeps, I can pretty well guess why she's still single despite being infamous for relentless flirting. Judging from the way she's giving me the once-over with her eyes, I'm not surprised if she's been scaring men off left and right. "That's a better use of your talents, for sure."

Charlie expresses all our true sentiments when he lets out a gigantic yawn; while stretching his arms, he accidentally knocks over his glass of water which spills onto Wally, setting him off bawling at the top of his voice. This is all too much for Tiffany, who's been trying to sit quietly with only the swinging of her legs under the table to betray how bored and restless she's getting; in a second, she's slipped out of her chair to become a goggle-eyed close-up spectator to Wally's little tantrum, standing on tip-toe and hanging on to the arm of his highchair.

"Excuse me," says Anne, picking up Wally and patting him on the back to calm him down. "I think the kids could use a little break, so I'm taking them downstairs." She puts Wally into his stroller and holds out a hand to Charlie.

I offer to go along, ostensibly to lend a hand with the kids, but mostly because I could use a break myself, too. After stopping by the bathroom, where I try to dry off Wally as much as I can, we head down to the Wintergarden for the kids to work off some of their pent-up energy.

"You look better like this," I tell Anne. "Fresher. More youthful."

"Really?" Anne laughs ruefully. "I'm not sure if looking youthful is a good thing, when what I really want is to be taken more seriously. Like last night - we've been entertaining some, um, associates from China these two days, and you can't imagine how out of place I felt when we took them drinking. I wasn't the only lady in the party, Liz and a Chinese lady were there too - but I was the only one dressed like this, which makes me like a complete fish out of water in those kinds of places." It doesn't take much imagination to picture the kind of place they were in, or why Elizabeth would fit right in where Anne wouldn't; just based on what Elizabeth is wearing tonight, I know she's definitely capable of looking like a call girl, albeit a very expensively dressed one.

Anne continues, "They were all having a lark trying to get me drunk - the 'little sister', they called me - but I got out by pretending I was sick after two drinks, so they left me alone for the rest of the night. Someone's got to stay sober anyway, because you can't count on Father and Liz for that."

This is no surprise to me either, when it looks like it won't be just the food bill that'll kill them tonight; the wine alone is probably going to cost them a pretty penny. They'd insisted on pouring me a glass of the restaurant's most expensive Merlot even after I declined to drink on the pretext of driving, and Louisa, who was sitting next to me at the table, helped herself to my glass and happily sipped away until her parents noticed and gave her the look. It also explains why Anne hasn't gone near the wine at all tonight - she's never been much of a drinker all along, so after a night like that I'd imagine the very thought of alcohol would be even more distasteful to her.

Anne glances at her watch. "I guess we've been down here long enough," she says, rounding up the kids. "Time for dessert, everybody! We've gotta go back upstairs if you want your ice cream."

When we get back to the restaurant, we're greeted by Elizabeth's voice right away.

"Anne! We've got to go shopping tomorrow, so I can get that Hermes bag, you know, the one Rose Liu was talking about. And you've got to come along, to show us all the new places coming up, since I haven't been shopping in Detroit for years. I hope the shopping scene here is better these days - back in Palm Beach, we've got all the best stores and labels right at our fingertips, and I totally can't imagine how we ever managed to survive when we were growing up here and there was absolutely nothing to see."

"Liz, there aren't any Hermes stores in Detroit. Can't you get it when you go back to Palm Beach?"

"Let's go to the Somerset Mall tomorrow, then. We'll still need something to do, before I die of boredom in this awful city. Mary, you're more than welcome to come along, and Charlie can bring his little friend along with us."

Sophia and I offer Anne a ride home with us at the end of the evening; while the Elliots swagger out the door, I see her discreetly slipping off to talk to the maitre d', cradling her cell phone on her shoulder at the same time. A few minutes later, she joins the rest of us waiting for the elevator, and she gets off at the ground floor together with Walter and Elizabeth. I surmise that she's probably got to see them to their chauffeured car before she can leave, so we offer to wait for her a little ways away. But even after the Elliots are safely ensconced in their vehicle, Anne's job still isn't done yet; she asks us to wait a few more minutes for her while she goes off to settle something for her father. And then she gets back into that elevator, and I know she's going upstairs again.

She doesn't have to say so for me to be absolutely clear as to what this little errand is all about - Walter won't pay for his "hospitality" to us, and she's gone up there to pick up the tab for the evening. It's no wonder that when she comes back down again, she's too embarrassed to look me in the eye. With Anne being as insightful as she is, I'm dead sure she knows I've guessed the situation, and I'll never say a single word about it to her.

Tiffany needs a watchdog for the Saturday shopping excursion; even though Charles and Mary offer to watch over her for us, I don't trust her not to wheedle candy or toys out of the Musgroves - or Anne - if she's left to her own devices. Since it's one of the rare times when my off days actually coincide with the weekend, the duty naturally falls to me to accompany Tiffany to Troy.

Elizabeth dictates our itinerary for the day, and the first item on her agenda is to make a grand stop at Louis Vuitton with the assembled entourage. She struts in and points to the handbags she wants to try out, posing in front of the mirror with each bag. After about half an hour minutes of this to-and-fro-ing, by which time she's tried out most of the bags in the store, she thrusts one of them into Anne's arms.

"Don't you want to get the classic style in brown instead?" says Anne. "That won't ever go out of style, and you'll get more mileage out of it."

"Oh Anne, haven't you picked up any concept of fashion, after so many years?" comes Elizabeth's retort. "That's the idea, don't you see? I want everyone to know I've got this season's style, in this season's color."

Anne sighs resignedly as she pulls her wallet out of her jeans pocket to foot the bill. "Here," she says, handing the fancy paper bag back to her sister afterward with a less-than-ceremonial air. "Carry it yourself."

Atta girl, Anne; she deserves that through and through. In fact, they both deserve much worse, and I wish I could be the one to dish it out to them; only I know that can never happen, not when Anne has already given every drop of loyalty she's got to every single member of that family of hers, and there isn't even the tiniest scrap left for me.

Chapter 8 - Messi vs. Rooney

Posted on 2011-09-08

September 2012
Anne

Sophie has hit the nail right on the head - there's something not quite right about Fred. Now that we've reached our tenuous truce, I don't think he hates me anymore; but for some reason, he's still constantly got ants in his pants. Much as I don't want to think about that possibility, I wonder if it's got something to do with Lulu having gone off to college; he's spending a lot of time hanging around at our house, but whenever he's here he's always at a loose end. Like this time, when he's dribbling around in our front yard with Charlie's mini-soccer ball. As far as I know, he's never played a proper soccer game before; yet the concept of ball control comes naturally to him, what with the way he uses his instep to toy with the ball, creating quick power, only to reign it in with his heel a split second later. But despite all the energy he's putting into this activity, he's got no sense of purpose at all; there's no goal to aim at, and he's just going round and round in circles. And this irks me to no end; I'm simply not used to seeing such aimlessness in Frederick. I've also noticed some disturbing things about him at work too, and that's why everything erupts and I just have to open my big mouth.

"Tell me something, Frederick. Are you really satisfied with being Wayne Rooney, or do you ever think about being Lionel Messi again?" It's the soccer ball that triggers this idea, and once I spew out this analogy, I realize it encapsulates the entire message I want to get through to him in a neat little nutshell.

"Huh?" He looks up with a blank expression that's getting all too familiar these days; I can't tell if he's pretending, or if he's really that clueless. Either way, I'm rapidly losing patience.

"I was asking you to think about who you want to be. Do you just want to be Wayne Rooney, or could you see yourself being Lionel Messi?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he says. "Who are they, anyway?" Seriously, is he kidding me? But I give him the benefit of the doubt, and just take it as a fact that American football and soccer are really culturally exclusive after all. Yeah, so he was a football kind of person back in college. I guess that means he might really not know, but that doesn't mean he can't put in some effort to figure it out.

"If you really don't know, go and find out. I don't know which sports you watch on TV these days, but surely you still read the sports section of the newspaper from cover to cover. Because I'm serious about this. One of these days, I'm going to ask you again, and you'd better think about your answer." I glance pointedly at the soccer ball, and then at him. This is the only clue I'm giving him, and after that he'll have to be all on his own.

Frederick

Random, that's what it is. Anne's thrown two hissy fits at me within less than two months, and from the way it can spew anytime, on any topic, I'd rather put my life savings on a roulette wheel than try to predict when the next one will come, or what it'll be about. If anybody comes up with an algorithm to predict women's mood swings, please keep me posted - I'd want it right away. Just don't expect me to do the research of finding out the pattern in all of this, because I've been thinking about it for the longest time and I can't see any. Hey, man, I'm just a dumb pilot, you know.

Messi and Rooney - from the hint she's given me, this has something to do about soccer, and why would I know anything about that? Soccer's for Europeans. This means, I've got to start looking across the Atlantic if I want to have any hope of finding the answers.

The first thing I do is to Skype Ed; he's lived in the UK long enough to become an honorary Brit as it is. And being Ed, his response is typically intellectual and academic.

"Oh man, how could you not know anything about Messi and Rooney?" says Ed; he really can't resist poking a little fun at me about this one. "But aren't you a little late for the Champions League final? Where were you all summer, Fred?"

"I'm not asking you about any Champions League final, or whatever you call it. I just want to know what Messi and Rooney mean, or rather, what they mean to you. Because somebody asked me about them, and I need to have an answer."

Ed whistles. "Wow. That somebody's got to be real special to get my all-American brother suddenly interested in football. Care to let me know who she is?"

"Just a friend. We were just talking is all, and then this happened to come up."

"Well, I respect Messi very much as a player. He's phenomenal at the club level, and he's got some moments which are truly sublime. But his achievements are strongly tied to his team, and at the national level he still has yet to achieve the kind of results to really do justice to his potential.

"As for Rooney, what can you say? He's brilliant, and he's got a magic foot. Messi's playing style is prettier, I'll grant you that; but you can't ignore how Rooney has been delivering consistently, especially when he's in form. Both could be deemed the best player in the world, and there are many different opinions on that, depending on which factors you consider. In my opinion, it's too close a call to make, on pure merit at least; they're that closely tied."

"But who do you like better personally? If you had to choose to be either one of them, which one would you pick?"

"If you have to ask me, it shows you really don't know the Brit side of me very well after all, even though you're my brother. I only have one thing to say about it, and that's 'Glory, Glory Man United.'"

Anne

"Anne, are you coming out with us to lunch today? Or are you going to spend all of lunch hour ogling at pilots again?" asks Sara, who's in the cubicle next to mine in the office.

"I'll take a rain check on lunch today, thanks. And I don't ogle at pilots, by the way," I say defensively.

"Oh, really? Then what did I see you doing at airside during lunch break yesterday? Don't look so shocked, Anne. It just goes to show you're human after all. But of course, you've been the picture of prim and proper celibacy all along, which makes it all the more exciting for us to see you chasing after pilots now. So you've got to take it the right way, yeah, if we joke about it from time to time. No offense?"

"Sorry to disappoint you, but that was for work. I'm still boring little old me."

It is related to work, never mind what my colleagues are thinking. Because I think I've got an idea that can give Fred a little bit of a kick, never mind that it isn't quite as perfect as I'd have liked. See, we're getting the 787¹ in about a year from now, and I'm leading the operational team that's getting our Detroit hub ready for the Dreamliner. In my position, I'm not responsible for choosing the pilots who'll be flying the Dreamliner, but I know some people I could talk to if I wanted to put a word in for Fred. Ideally, I'd wish Delta was the launch customer for the 787, so we'd be involved in the route-proving exercise, but unfortunately that honor goes to All Nippon Airways. Well, if I have to settle for a second-best situation, at least I'm in a position to give a little push for Fred to be one of our first batch of pilots to fly the 787 when it comes in. Hopefully, that'll help relieve his boredom a little bit; it's still nothing compared to flying a fighter jet, but it's the best I can do to give him something new to do and to think about.

I've been building up the case for Fred in my mind, because they'd probably pass him right over if I don't say anything; he's new, after all. But when I put whatever I know together, it all looks pretty good: his technical background, his standing at MIT, his experience as a military pilot, everything's working pretty well in his favor. The only thing that's missing from this picture is how he's being perceived in the organization so far, and that's where I've been sniffing around to get a better idea. This is the pilot-chasing everyone in the office has been ribbing me about: I've been talking to pilots whenever I can get introductions from anyone I know, and observing the pilots every time I've got a pocket of free time at the airport. All of it's for the sake of one pilot, of course, but so far, everybody's guess as to who it is has been way off the mark. And it's a very useful exercise, because I learn a lot from all the things I see and hear.

"Fred Wentworth? That one, he's a smart cookie. But he's a bit too party hearty for his own good, if you ask me. There's never a night he doesn't go clubbing when we're overseas."

"Man, that guy's a riot. The Frat Boy, that's what he is. He's got a wicked sense of humor, and he's the best pal you could ever have. He's a great dude to hang out with, and he'll do just about anything for his buddies. What else can you ask for?"

"Mark my words, he'll go far, that chap. In terms of technical ability, he's as good as you can get, especially for someone who's new. But he's got to watch out about something - he's getting to be a bit too much of a Casanova, and that'll get somebody's back up sooner or later. I mean, all of us like to have our little bit of fun with the girls every now and then, but the way he's hitting on all the flight attendants, it's going to spell trouble for him one of these days. Discretion's the better part of valor, I say. But that guy's a magnet for women, and he's making sure everybody knows it through and through."

This last bit of info I take with a pinch of salt, because I'm familiar with the way Fred used to manage his appearance back in college so everybody'd think he was much more of a party animal than he really was, and for this reason I'm pretty sure there's actually less going on than meets the eye. To confirm my hunch about the whole thing, I snoop about the airport when Fred's flights come in; true enough, I see him chatting with a different flight attendant each time, but based on the rumors and whatever I see, he doesn't spend enough time with any one of them to be properly linked romantically to anybody. And from what I'm seeing of his comings and goings at home, it doesn't seem as though he's got all that much social activity going on either. Well, even if there was, I don't really have a right to comment, do I? Except that it's all for his own good - I'm old enough not to entertain any more illusions about men and their indiscretions, but most men I know of have the sense to be discreet about them, especially in the workplace. I don't have to know what game Fred's playing or what he's trying to prove, for me to know he'll be burned by it sooner or later - it'll just take one flight attendant thinking she's been slighted by his attention to the others, or maybe he'll happen to hang out with someone who happens to be another guy's girlfriend, and a trigger like that could create no end of problems for his professional and personal reputation. This is why I've got to the point where I can't keep quiet any more - even if I make a total fool of myself and die of the mortification as a result, I've got to say something to give Fred a wake-up call where he needs it. He's been behaving like a teenager for long enough, and somebody needs to unleash the adult in him before it becomes too late to save him from himself.

Frederick

Well, I've asked an American dude living in Britain and I'm still none the wiser about the riddle that Anne has posed to me, so I guess the next step is to ask a British bloke living in America. This means the next person I Skype is James Benwick; he's the only one in our little group of friends who has defected from technical work in the aerospace industry, but I must say it's served him well; all this while, he's been making a pretty penny working on the East Coast in consulting.

"James, what do the names Lionel Messi and Wayne Rooney mean to you? And I'm not talking about their technical ability, but about what they represent to you as icons."

"Duuuude," James chuckles. "Since when did you ever care about European soccer? I never thought I'd be having a philosophical discussion with you about soccer, of all people. But since you're here asking me this question, I'd be more than ready to wax lyrical about it, as you probably know already. Ready? Don't fall asleep, mind you. I've been waiting so long for the day my American buds would ever want to talk to me about this, and it'd be too much of an anti-climax if you doze off on me once I get started."

"I'm all ears, so shoot. Believe me - I want to listen to your answer even more than you want to tell me, if that's possible."

"Wow, wow. To whom do I owe this transformation in you? Not to say it's not welcome, though. It's always great to have one more buddy to talk about football - oh, sorry, I meant soccer, I guess I've got to use your lingo, but you do know 'football' in England can only mean soccer, don't you - with."

"A friend asked me whether I wanted to be Messi or Rooney. I don't have the least idea who these people are, or why I'd want to be either of them, but I've got to come up with an answer. So that's why I'm asking you."

"A friend, huh? Would it be someone we both know?" James suddenly stops short and I can see him on the video screen, staring at me. "She won't be Anne Elliot by any chance, would she?"

"Anne Elliot? Why on earth would you think that?" Even though I have a reply, it's not quite quick enough; my momentary silence has probably betrayed the true answer already.

"Oh my God, it's true, isn't it? I was just saying it, just a wild guess, but it looks like I've struck jackpot after all. But why not? Among our 'friends', she's the only one who could ever get that kind of rise out of you. No, no, don't say it; you've been telling us you're over Anne Elliot for what, ten years now, and yet you're still pestering us about her every year without fail. So you've found her before we did, eh? Well, well. And she's become a soccer fan girl too? That's just great; you've got to send her to me. Then the three of us could talk, that'd be some party."

Thankfully, he barrels on without waiting for any kind of answer from me. "If she's a soccer fan, she'll be a Messi fan for sure, because he's one of the few legends left in sport and she's the kind of person who'll appreciate the kind of poetry that Messi makes out of football. You know how the quarterback's the main guy in American football? Well, Messi is like a quarterback, only he's also much, much more. He's got the creativity to set up great goals, but at the same time, his footwork in front of goal itself is the most beautiful thing you'll ever see, and it's effective, too. And he isn't a big guy, mind you; he's tiny. Small and deadly. Legends don't come any better than that. Plus, there aren't many sportsmen around today, where everyone agrees they're gentlemen both on and off the field. But Messi is one of these guys. Pure as a lily, his reputation is, even though he's one of the most successful footballers on the pitch these days."

"And what about Wayne Rooney? What do you think of him?"

"Rooney? He's talented, I'll give you that, and maybe you can also say he's a prodigy of sorts too. But at times, he can be - let's just say he's painfully human, and leave it at that. And Messi? Well, if I wasn't concerned about committing blasphemy, I'd say he's divine."

The way Benwick breathes reverence into that word leaves me completely incredulous; I've never known how a simple game of soccer could inspire worship like that. Sure, I've always liked football and baseball, but this kind of fanhood is a totally different level altogether.

"Did you see the World Cup, Argentina vs. Serbia and Montenegro, 2006? Messi was just 19 years old at the time…"

Benwick goes on and on for an entire hour, giving me a blow-by-blow account of all the amazing moments in Messi's career practically starting from babyhood. But at the end of it, I still have no idea of how any of this is supposed to hold any significance to me, or to Anne, or to both of us together. I've learned something from my conversation with Edward, though: whenever someone talks about soccer, you've got to find out about their team loyalties in order to make any sense out of what they say. And so I ask Benwick what is his favorite team is.

"Why, Barca of course. I might be from England, but that doesn't mean all football stops with the EPL. But if it's got to be the Premiership, well, you'll never walk alone…"

I've just used up both of my possible helplines, but still, I'm officially lost. See, this is just another reason why women are so complicated; not only do they give you riddles you can't solve, but you also end up realizing you have no idea why you want or need to solve the riddle in the first place.

Anne

"Why don't you use an analogy that he actually understands?" says Sophie when I tell her about my findings and my miserable attempt at getting through to Fred. "If it were me, I'd tell him to snap out of the Slim Shady act, and get back to being the real Fred."

"Slim Shady? Surely it isn't that bad?"

"From what you're telling me, it sounds like it is. There are so many girls in Shady's world, including Louisa, and the minute any of them fancies herself to be played out, things won't be pretty, just as you've pointed out. And poor Louisa's probably still thinking he's going to be her 'Superman'. Whether he is, or he isn't, he's still got to make it clear to her at some point."

"That's a good one," I say. Perfect, in fact. Fred's always been so hung up on appearances, he'll sometimes go to great lengths just to avoid losing face, until it's almost as though he's got another alter ego; a sometimes obnoxious one. "So why don't you talk to him about it?"

"I could, I guess, but he'll probably take it better from someone else. After all, I've been nagging him like a mom for over 20 years, and he's learned how to tune me out long ago."

"Well, I'll try. And I'll see where he takes it with my analogy first. But you're right - it's Fred's nasty alter ego that's out there now, and that's what's getting him into this rut. Someone's got to wake him up, and I've waited long enough already."

Sophia gives me a knowing look. "You must know Fred much better than the two of you are letting on, if you can understand what I'm saying about the whole Slim Shady analogy. And that's why you're the best person to shake him out of this. Go for it."

Frederick

I'm just having a little bit of fun after mini-soccer practice, is all; I'm kicking a ball about in front of the goal, pretending I'm gonna score in the World Cup final. This is when Anne throws her third hissy fit at me, and it's only a week after the second one. I wonder how many more of these there'll be before the end of the world comes in December.

"So, have you thought about it? Are you Lionel Messi, or Wayne Rooney? Or Tiger Woods? When will you be done with dancing Mambo No. 5?" She's got me blindsided with this one, and it's not just about her words; it's also how angry she is. In my whole life, she's never, ever been this angry with me before.

"Wh-what do you mean?" This makes absolutely no sense to me at all. Believe me, I've been trying my very best to be a good friend to her, and God knows how hard that is already when I never wanted to settle for being just friends. So why, or perhaps I should be asking, why now?

"Don't give me that look. I asked you to think about it last week, didn't I? So have you figured out who you want to be? Will the real Fred Wentworth please stand up?"

"Anne, for Pete's sake, you're talking in riddles. Believe me, I've been trying to find out what you mean for a whole week already, but I still have no idea at all what you're driving at about this whole Messi and Rooney thing. If you have something to say to me, why don't you just give it to me straight once and for all?"

"Well, um -when I first knew you, way back at MIT - you were like Lionel Messi." She pauses and looks away, and she seems absolutely uncomfortable about what she's going to say next. "You were young, brilliant, and absolutely driven, a born leader. You were magical."

"And I need you," she continues, still not looking at me. "I need you to be the Frederick Wentworth I used to know -" For a moment, I wonder if I'm hearing it right, until I'm brought down to earth with a jolt with the next words she says.

"As you know, we're looking for the first batch of pilots to fly the Dreamliner next year, and it'd be a great opportunity for you to try out something new. With your skill as a military pilot and your engineering expertise, I think I could talk to my boss and try to put in a word for you somewhere, if you want it. But you've got to clean up your act and your reputation first, and that's why I'm asking you this. You have to ditch this Mambo No. 5 game, before it catches up with you."

Tiger Woods. Mambo No. 5. That's the real mystery about all of this, why she keeps going on and on about that, and why it bothers her so much in the first place. She's gotten over me long ago, hasn't she? So my so-called extracurricular activities shouldn't be any business of hers, not to mention that whatever I'm doing can hardly be considered as extracurricular when I've got no main curriculum to speak of. That's the rub, you see - I'm single, and it just has to happen that Anne Elliot gets thrown back into my life, at the point when that's the last thing I need to happen to me. Because after I've been forced to really get to know her all over again, I've learned that I'm far from being over her, even as it becomes clearer than ever that there's no way I could ever get back together with her again, because she's made her choice and she's sticking with it. Even if she's having a miserable life with her family and we're both hanging around each other all the time and both of us are still single, she's still choosing not to be with me. Which makes me the most pathetic dolt in the whole wide world, except nobody, especially nobody at work, needs to know anything about that. And so I just want to show everyone at work that Fred Wentworth's not one to be pitied; if there's any fun to be had, I'm more than up for it, and I've got a wonderful social life, thank you. Whatever frustration I feel inside can remain locked up and buried in a place where nobody can see.

"So, about the Dreamliner. Are you on, or not?"

Are you on, or not? Those were the words she used when everything started so long ago; on that first run we had by the Charles River. And if one thing hasn't changed, even though it's been more than 15 years since then, it's that I just can't resist those words, not when they're coming from her.

"I'm on," I say. There's never been any other answer, not where Anne Elliot is concerned. I'm simply not capable of answering any other way.

¹ Delta's procurement timeline for the Boeing 787 is an area where I've taken deliberate license with facts - the actual timeframe for Delta taking delivery of the 787s is delayed to 2020-2022. For purposes of the plot timeline, though, I'm imagining that if Delta had stuck with the original Northwest order, they would receive the first batch of 787s in 2013, and would have been the first customer in North America for the aircraft (worldwide, the launch customer for the 787 is All Nippon Airways). But now that the Northwest order has been pushed back, United Airlines will be the first US carrier to get the Dreamliner, with the first unit currently in production at Everett as I write this.

Disclaimer: The "Slim Shady" segment of this chapter makes references to Eminem's songs "Superman" and "The Real Slim Shady".

Chapter 9 - 14 Shots

Posted on 2011-09-15

Frederick

"Or Tiger Woods? When will you be done with dancing Mambo No. 5?" Anne's angry words still keep playing over and over in my mind, even after I've put Tiffany to bed for the night. Who exactly does she expect me to be faithful to, anyway? And it's not as if whatever I'm doing is that big a deal, actually; I've been very careful to spread my attention evenly so nobody can ever speculate that I'm serious about any one of them, and I'm also very careful not to raise anybody's expectations. Chatting and clubbing together is fine, but anything more - or anything after - is strictly out of bounds. In other words, I've done just the bare minimum to keep up appearances. But even if nobody expects me to be faithful to Anne, I never thought everybody'd end up expecting me to be faithful to Louisa.

My cell phone beeps for the first time at 10 p.m.; it's a multimedia message from Louisa Musgrove, and when I open it up, I find a picture of her posing provocatively, a deliberately cutesy smile on her face, with two fingers of her left hand extended in a "V" sign and a frosted bottle of vodka in her right. She's obviously at some kind of party; she's wearing a tiny, shimmery, strapless black dress, with her hair curled and swept up on top of her head, and her face is a mask of heavy eyeliner and glittery makeup. If I want to look at this kind of girl, I only need to open up any one of my brother-in-law's collection of Japanese manga books that Sophia has brought back from Okinawa, and that'd be easier on the ears than entertaining Louisa.

"19 today, and this is 1 9 to celebrate… break my record tonite… way to go for 14 shots!" the accompanying text message reads. I'm no stranger to these kinds of drinking challenges; I couldn't possibly avoid seeing them when I lived in a frat house for the whole of freshman year. But in my own younger years, I'd never indulged in that way, not when I was already aiming for a profession where being sober and alert is absolutely essential. So this message doesn't do anything for me except to stoke my resentment at Louisa; I don't see why she's got any reason to loop me into her little drinking exploit. She's going to college at Ann Arbor, living her life, and I'm here doing my job and minding my own business, so what do I have to do with all of this?

What's worse is that apparently, Louisa is far from being done with just that one message; she keeps sending me photos of herself over the course of the night, one for each shot she drinks. The story these pictures tell is a sad one that I'm all too familiar with, unfortunately. At the beginning, she thinks she's being cute but to a neutral third party like me, she comes across as just being silly in a way that people can only be when they're tipsy. By around five or six shots, she's already getting visibly wobbly, and there's a picture of her and Henrietta clinging on to each other, still trying to pose with that supposedly-cute "V" sign, at around shot nine or so; by now, it looks like Henrietta's the one who's holding her up and probably the one who's taking the photo. All the photos from that point onwards are definitely Henrietta's work, because Louisa is already slumping around and her texts are barely intelligible. It's around midnight when Louisa sends her last text to me: "brk rckd." I've got exactly 15 photos with 15 texts in my inbox to show me how Louisa's level of lucidity has been declining steadily from shot zero to shot 14, and I feel sorry for her because she's so out of it that she's probably beyond feeling any sense of triumph after getting to her stated goal, and the only thing she'll have achieved come morning is to wake up with a gigantic hangover.

I've seen kids doing stuff like this, and experimenting with other, worse stuff besides; and for me, staying out of it was a gritty dance with curiosity and temptation all the way through high school and college. Through most of my teenage years, I developed the skill of when to show up and when to duck out into a fine art, so I could put in enough face time at parties to be recognized as being "cool" and "with it", yet pull the Houdini act at the right moments to engineer my absence when any stuff I didn't want was being passed around. During my year at the frat house, things became much easier after I got to know Anne; nobody there would question what anyone's doing when they disappear off with their girlfriends, and if I wanted to study, I could just hole up in her dorm and none of the frat guys would be any the wiser. Giving me a place to remove myself to was the best favor Anne did for me when we first got to know each other in freshman year, because I'm human after all, and I had just as much curiosity and desire to fit in as any other teen. At times when it seemed as if almost everyone else around me was experimenting, it'd be easy to think that just one try, just to see what it was like, couldn't possibly hurt; and most of the time, the only thing that kept me clean throughout my teen years was the knowledge that I'd never be able to become a fighter pilot if I got addicted to anything, even accidentally.

So in a lot of ways, Anne was my lifeline back then; she's the person who made me who I am today, and that's what's made her so irreplaceable in my life. Even now, she's still trying to be a kind of lifeline to me with that whole thing about the Dreamliner. Before today, I'd never imagined that I could possibly be a figure she'd still look up to. Yet, impossibly, it seems that she has indeed kept on looking up to me all through the years, even during the times when we weren't seeing or talking to each other.

"You were like Lionel Messi… you were magical… I need you… I need you to be the Frederick Wentworth I used to know…" those words are telling me way, way more than any of the other verbal or visual cues I've gotten from her over an entire year. Because after I got home, I went online to read everything about Lionel Messi that I could get my hands on, and I finally realized how powerful that comparison was. I'd thought Benwick's raving was as over-the-top as anyone could get, but as it turns out, Messi is indeed viewed as such a legend by fans all over the world. And most tellingly, Messi didn't become famous until around 2006 or so, which was about five years after Anne and I broke off. I'm not sure exactly when Anne started following soccer, but one thing is clear - no matter when she decided to become a Messi fan, it only shows that Anne has actually been thinking that highly of me all this while.

When my cell phone wakes me up at 2 a.m., I'm a hair's breadth away from shouting out every single swear word in my vocabulary. It doesn't help that the call is, apparently, from Louisa's cell phone; I wonder if she's going to get all mischievous on me, and of all nights, tonight I'm definitely not in the mood to handle pick-up calls from a tipsy teenager.

"Freddie?" The voice on the other end of the line is tearful and frightened, and definitely not the voice of a teenager who wants to pick me up. So, it seems I'm even more of a lowlife than I thought I was; I've obviously overestimated my popularity, even with Louisa Musgrove.

"Louisa?"

"No, it's Hetty here. I'm calling you because Lulu… she's passed out… and I can't wake her up. Can you come help us, please?"

"Shouldn't you be telling your parents or Charles about this? I mean, I used to see kids drinking till they pass out all the time when I was in college, and like them, she'll probably be all right when she wakes up tomorrow. Hung over, definitely, but she'll be fine. But if you're worried, then your family should be the first to know."

"Please don't tell Charles," the tearful voice on the line says. "He'll tell Mom and Dad, and then we'll be in deep trouble. Mom made us promise not to drink while we're at college, and Dad'll kill us when he finds out."

"I'm sorry, Henrietta, but I really have to. It's the right thing for me to do, because ultimately, it's your family whom you'll have to answer to. I'm sure they'll understand. OK?"

For a long while, Henrietta's sobs are all I hear on the line, but finally, she manages to choke out a tentative "OK".

"OK, then. I'm calling Charles right away, and I'll ask him to call you back before he says anything to your parents. Don't worry. I'm sure he knows what to do."

Anne

… I've taken over the Argentina national team from Maradona, and it's a World Cup final match, a chance for us to avenge our 2010 loss to Germany, where we're at the climax of a penalty shoot-out, 4-5 down with just one more penalty kick to go - ours. At this point, we've got everything to lose, because if this last kick's a miss, we're out of the game, and this is the kind of situation I'm counting on Messi for. The Messi who steps up to the penalty spot, though, is taller than he should be, and to my horror, I realize that the person wearing the No. 10 jersey is not Messi, but Fred. From how he approaches the ball, I already know he's going to miss, because rather than trapping the ball before the shot and assessing the goalie, he just shoots blindly. To avoid that moment, I bury my face in my hands, but I still can't resist peeping between my fingers anyway. Fred leads with the toe of his boot instead of the instep, and this causes him to shoot high; the ball slams against the cross bar and rebounds right back onto the pitch. In unison with Fred's spectacular miss, I slap my forehead while the rest of the team flop prostrate on the ground in grief. But Fred isn't repentant at all; I hear rapping and find that Fred's the one who's doing it; he's turned peroxide blond like Slim Shady and he's taunting me with "Won't the real Anne Elliot please stand up, please stand up, please stand up…"

Then, a horde of flight attendants floods the pitch like a herd of elephants; they sweep the rest of the players aside and carry off Fred lying on his side over their shoulders, and he's still rapping, moving his hands and shoulders, as they spirit him away. Meanwhile, the lead flight attendant comes right up to me and strikes a pose.

"Fred-die doesn't want to see you streaking around the Obelisk, not when he's got us," she says, pursing her blood-red lips. "That's why he won't win the World Cup for you."

Instead of fading off as Fred disappears farther and farther away, the rapping actually gets louder and louder, until I open my eyes and find that at least one part of this scenario's actually real; the rap music is coming from Charles' cell phone. But nobody's picking up, and much as I dislike barging in on Charles and Mary in the middle of the night, somebody's got to shut that thing up before it wakes the whole house.

"Charles, darling… you get it, OK?" I hear Mary saying as I creep up to their doorway.

"Mmpf… Naw… no need… Just leave it alone and it'll stop after awhile…"

Obviously the cell phone's been trained to obey its master, because the rapping does stop short at that point, but the silence is short-lived; after about a minute or so, our home telephone starts to ring and I make a mad dash to pick it up.

"Hello?"

"Hello - Anne, is that you?" It sounds like Fred, but why would he be calling us at 2 a.m.?

"Yeah, I'm Anne," I say. "Who is this?" I don't trust myself to address the caller as Fred, in case I'm hearing Fred's voice only because a part of me is still stuck in that dream.

"I'm Fred, don't you know? I was looking for Charles actually, but since I've got you, maybe you could help talk to him for me. Henrietta called me a couple minutes ago to say Louisa's passed out after drinking fifteen shots of vodka at a party. She sounded pretty worried, and she was asking for help. You might want to tell Charles to call her back, and another thing - I've also promised her that I'd ask Charles to call her first to assess the situation before saying anything to Mr. and Mrs. Musgrove. Will you pass the message on to him?"

"OK," I say. "I'll do that. Don't worry - we'll take care of it from here."

"Great, thanks. Good night. Bye."

By the time I pad back to Charles and Mary's room, the kids have woken up from all the ringing, and they're sticking their heads in the doorway already.

"Mommy, what time is it?" Charlie asks.

Mary yawns. "Time for you to be in bed," she says drowsily.

"But we can't sleep! The phone's ringing. Why is the phone ringing?"

"I've picked up the call, so the phone won't ring anymore," I tell him. "You guys go back to bed, OK? I've got something really important to say to Daddy."

Instead of heading back to their room, Charlie and Wally run into their parents' bedroom and crawl into the big bed with Charles and Mary. Reluctantly, Charles gets up and comes over to me.

"What's up, Anne? What was that call about?"

"It was Fred," I explain. "Apparently Lulu has passed out after drinking fifteen shots of vodka, and instead of calling us, Hetty called him, asking for help. He's promised her that you'll call her back. Would you mind?"

"Yeah, well, OK," says Charles. "But I'm not sure if we could be of much help beyond just comforting Hetty. After all, it's just a matter of sleeping it off, isn't it? But, I must say, Fred's making a really big deal out of this. I never knew he cared about Lulu that much, though. She's so much younger, and I'd thought it was just a teenage crush on her part. Looks like things are more two-sided than we'd imagined, huh?"

"Did you just say Lulu's going out with Fred Wentworth?" Mary perks up in interest. "He's a great catch for her, to be sure. But it'd be even better if he'd chosen Hetty instead, then she wouldn't be hanging around that grungy Hayter boy all the time. I can't imagine for the life of me what she sees in him, with those piercings and all. Anne, what do you think?"

"I think we ought to get back to the point," I say, "which is that one of us should be calling Hetty to find out what's happening with Lulu."

Mary gasps. "Oh yes - I just remembered, I read this article about Shelby's Rules in Good Housekeeping, and it talks about how teens could actually die from drinking too much. You're supposed to test their condition by calling their name, and it's not a good sign if they're too out of it to answer you; you're supposed to take them to a hospital right away if that happens. Do you think that means Lulu could be dying, for all we know?"

I put my hand out and touch the wooden bedroom door; it won't hurt to knock on wood a little, even if I normally don't believe in superstitions like that. Really, Mary can be such a drama queen sometimes, and it'd be terrible if that became a self-fulfilling prophecy just because she said it out loud.

"Mary, dear," Charles is using the same voice he reserves for Charlie whenever he's throwing a tantrum. "Do you really have to make things so dramatic? It's just a simple hangover. I should know - I've had my share of them back in college myself."

"I'm not kidding," protests Mary. "Why won't anyone ever take what I say seriously? I really read that!"

"OK, I guess I'll call them then and figure out what's happening," says Charles, and I take the cue to go about hustling the kids back to their room.

"No," Wally protests. "We want Mommy and Daddy."

"We're scared," says Charlie. "Is Aunty Lulu really going to die?"

"No, she isn't," I say, while Mary raises her voice and screeches, "How do you know? She might very well die if you don't hurry! You see, nobody ever listens to me in this house."

"Charles? The kids are asking for you, would you want to talk to them? I can help call Hetty in the meantime if you need me to," I offer. "I'm up anyway, so it's really no problem for me to make the trip to Ann Arbor if it's needed. And I'll keep you posted about the situation."

As Charles settles the kids, struggling to come up with euphemisms to answer the barrage of questions from Charlie, I call Hetty's cell phone.

"Hetty? It's Anne here. Fred told us about Lulu, and I can come around to help if you need it. Can you tell me what happened?"

"Lulu, she - please, please don't tell Mom and Dad, OK? The sorority sisters threw us a 19th birthday party tonight, and Lulu said she wanted to drink vodka, so they challenged her to drink 19 shots, one for each year of her life. She tried to knock the number down a little, 'cause we know people could die from drinking too many shots, but she wanted to push herself to the limit of whatever is humanly possible. Challenge the boundaries, you know? So, she told them she'd do 14 shots and that'd be a personal record for her already.

"I knew she'd be sick after drinking this much, so I wasn't worried when she went off to the bathroom. But when she didn't come out after almost an hour, we decided to break in to go check on her, and she'd fallen asleep on the bathroom floor. But she won't wake up when we call her, and that's when I asked Freddie to help us."

"You did the right thing to call somebody," I say, now armed with the knowledge of what to do because of Mary's information on Shelby's Rules. If there's any time her extensive medical reading has come in useful, this is it. "And I'm coming over right now. Can you call 911, and after they come, text me to confirm if they're sending you to University Hospital. I'll be driving over to meet you, and I'll be looking for you at the ER entrance."

It's 4 a.m. by the time everything settles down; Hetty has given in to tiredness long ago, and she's fallen asleep sprawled across a row of chairs in the hallway, but I don't have that kind of luxury for myself. They say Lulu will be fine, but they're still keeping her overnight for observation; with hardly any of the night left by now, I guess there's no difference whether they send her home now or tomorrow, anyway. So I text Charles and Fred to tell them how to reach us, and then I pull up a chair next to Lulu's bed to keep watch over her till they come in the morning. Poor Lulu; we were just Skyping her and Hetty to tell them "Happy Birthday" in the afternoon before they went out partying with their friends, and none of us could've guessed that this is how the day would end for them.

With nothing left to do but watch and wait, the whole issue about Fred starts circling around in my mind all over again. Like Charles, I'd thought Lulu's obsession with Fred was just a passing teenage crush, and though I'd cringed inwardly at how Fred seemed more than happy to let Lulu's crush stoke his ego rather than setting her straight in a brotherly way like he should, I figured things would pass sooner or later, especially with the twins going off to college. But it doesn't look as if things have passed, not when Fred's the first person they call when this happens - not their parents, not Charles, not me, but Fred. And Fred's worried enough to call Charles right in the middle of the night, which puzzles me - if Mary hadn't said what she did about Shelby's Rules, I wouldn't have considered the situation to be that urgent. But if Fred does indeed care for Lulu in that way, even a little bit, then why is he still chatting up all the flight attendants? The Fred I used to know would have too much integrity to two-time like that.

There's no sane explanation for all the contradictions I find in this situation, and through it all, I can't escape that I, with my big mouth, have officially, spectacularly put my foot in it. Because I didn't stop short at the Messi and Rooney analogy, but I just had to continue with the whole business about Tiger Woods and Mambo No. 5. Now Fred will know how much I mind him flirting around with the flight attendants, and to what purpose? If he's really going out with Lulu, maybe it'll serve as a reminder to him to be faithful to her, and had I been a disinterested party, I could perhaps hide behind that moral high ground. But Fred can probably see that I wasn't at all disinterested when I said it, and I'd only be betraying myself further if I ever bring up the matter to him again. But even if I could, any talking I do with Fred will have to wait until Lulu's recovered; for now, the only thing I can do is to watch over Lulu until he or Charles comes, and even though there are only a few more hours left till the sunrise, I feel as if the longest night of my life has only just begun.

Frederick

6 a.m., Monday morning. When my cell phone alarm goes off, I see there's a new text message already; and this time, it's from Anne. It reads:

"Charles, Fred - Lulu treated for alcohol poisoning, but recovering well. Dont worry she will be fine. We are at University Hospital, Ann Arbor, Rm 332. See u tmrw. Love, Anne."

Love, Anne. From the way it's written, that could've been meant for Charles, for me, or for both of us. Since the message was written at 4 a.m., I'm willing to bet she probably wasn't even clear herself about who she was actually addressing it to when she wrote it. But Anne doesn't love Charles; at least, she doesn't love him the way she used to love me. He's her brother-in-law, and for the most part of her life, he's been like her brother, in fact. Is this supposed to mean I'm like her brother too?

Brother or not, I have one piece of evidence now that Anne has saved a bit of her loyalty for me after all, over the years. That's from what she said about "Lionel Messi". And I also have proof that she cares enough about me to be unhappy about my hanging out with the flight attendants. That's the bit about "Tiger Woods" and "Mambo No. 5". Besides, if she knows about the flight attendants, it means she's got to be snooping on me secretly at the airport; there's no other way she could possibly find out. If I put two and two together like that, then "Love, Anne" aren't the words of someone who loves me as a brother at all, and the whole business of her hanging onto my Pontiac suddenly makes perfect sense.

It still doesn't gel with the fact that she has chosen not to get back together with me after her grandma passed away, but this time around, I'm willing to hazard a guess as to why that might be the case. She's been paying for all those stupid things her dad and sister were splurging on for the week they came to Detroit, hasn't she? So who's to say she isn't paying for everything else as well? I have no idea how she can possibly afford it on her engineer's pay, but then again, isn't that the point? She can't afford it, and that's why she refuses to get involved with me, or with anyone else; she won't tie anybody to that kind of financial servitude, except herself. And I know ELMSCO, at least, is in debt, and that the Elliots can't afford to live in Grosse Pointe anymore.

So this is the form her loyalty to me takes in the end - effectively, she's not only sacrificing me for her family, but also sacrificing herself for me, in a way. She knows, better than anyone else, about how much it means to me to be able to come back to my childhood home and show my parents, if they can see from heaven or wherever they are, how I've become as successful as they would've wanted me to be if not for all the other burdens we were facing as a family back then. If I'd been tied to a mountain of Elliot debt, it would've pulled me right back down again, and she's stayed away from me on purpose to avoid just that. The timing certainly fits my theory, because according to Charles, the Elliots moved off to Florida in fall 2001, which was quite soon after Anne broke off with me. This kind of loyalty has caused me more than ten years of unnecessary misery, just as, I'm sure, it has caused her; and now it's time for me to bring all of that to a close once and for all.

Anne's got to be dog tired, after sitting around in the hospital for so many hours on end. I suppose she'll appreciate it if someone drove her home, and anyway, it's Charles' responsibility to stick around with Louisa; she's his sister, after all. So I call Charles, telling him I'll pick him up in about half an hour to drive to Ann Arbor together, so that he can use Anne's car to bring Louisa back when she's discharged, while I give Anne an earlier ride home.

Then I make some oatmeal for breakfast and leave the pot covered on the stove, and pen down a note asking Sophia to tell the school bus driver to bring Tiffany here instead of to the Musgroves' after school today, because I figure they'll have their hands full enough with Louisa, and so we shouldn't have to make them take care of Tiffany on top of that. The last thing I do before leaving the house is to wake up Sophia, so she can help get Tiffany ready for kindergarten and send her off when the school bus comes. And then I'm out the door, going off to get Charles and to bring Anne back.

Disclaimer: The rap lyrics in this chapter are still derived from Eminem's "The Real Slim Shady".

Frederick

It's Charles who first brings it up, as we're coasting along the freeway to Ann Arbor.

"Fred, are you dating Lulu?"

"No, why? I - " I'm on the verge of saying I think of Louisa as a little sister, but knowing that her behavior to me has hardly been sisterly and I'd done nothing at all to stop it, I check myself. "I think of her as a friend, is all."

"Because I never knew they were that close to you, to be calling you instead of us when this happened. And I bet you've got to be real concerned about Lulu, to be calling us last night and bringing me out first thing in the morning like this. But hey, Anne said she'll be OK, didn't she? So don't worry too much. I'm sure things will be fine."

"I'm concerned for her in the way I'd be for any of my friends," I say; I'm not at all comfortable with the direction in which this conversation is heading. "And I called last night because I felt that as her family, you guys had a right to know. That's all."

I can't be more emphatic than that without sounding callous, but what I've said still isn't enough, because Charles just doesn't seem to get it.

"Spoken like a true gentleman," he says. "To be honest, I'd thought Lulu would be a little too young for you. But if you both really like each other, well, you're a good guy and a great pal, so why shouldn't I be happy for you? There's no need to be shy about it, really. Treat my little sister well, willya?"

When it's put this way, I'd be inhuman to say no. Keeping my eyes straight ahead on the road, I give Charles the slightest of nods. "Of course I will. As a good friend. And a big brother." There are actually three more words I want to say so badly, but can't: "And nothing more."

Anne

Keeping vigil means you never sleep; you're supposed to be watching, waiting; though for the most part nothing happens and you hope nothing will happen, because any kind of drama can't possibly be a good thing where hospitals are concerned. The last time I sat in a hospital like this was when Grandma passed away, and over the last 24 hours, Rosa and I were each holding one of Grandma's hands while stroking her legs to keep the circulation going, hanging on doggedly while we awaited, yet dreading the moment when we'd feel the life seep out of her. I was terrified that I'd fall apart when that happened, yet I knew I had no choice but to stay, because I'd never forgive myself if I walked away and left Grandma alone at the end. So I sat there talking, telling her how thankful I was for all she'd done for me in my life, hoping she would hear because they say hearing is the last sense to go, and trying to keep the tears out of my voice so that if she could indeed hear me in the recesses of her sleep, at least she wouldn't suspect how dire the situation was. She was hooked up to all these monitors beeping out her vital signs, and I insisted all of them had to be put to silent mode, trying to avert the final horror when they would all go crazy; it wasn't just that I couldn't take it, but most of all I wanted her to go without fear, without having to hear all that, if hearing was really the last sense to go.

This vigil might not be the same as that last one, but I still hate waiting in hospitals, counting the minutes and hours as they pass. But this time, unlike with Grandma, my wishes for myself and my wishes for the patient are actually in accord; both ways, I want the time to pass faster, so that morning will come, Lulu will wake up, and Fred or Charles can take over. Now that the whole adrenaline rush from the ER has passed, I feel like everything's swimming around me, and I could nod off just any minute. On principle, though, I have to stay awake if I'm keeping vigil over Lulu, and so I prop my head in my hands and physically pry my eyelids open every time they threaten to droop. Maybe if I remind myself of last night's bizarre dream, that'd help keep me from falling asleep - I certainly don't want a replay or a continuation, especially if the new, improved next edition features Lulu co-starring with Fred, in addition to the entire supporting cast.

It's not yet 7.30 a.m. when Fred, followed by Charles, walks through the door; clearly, they've made it a point to come here first thing in the morning, and that tells me just how anxious they both are about Lulu. I stand tentatively, grabbing the back of the chair to steady myself, and launch mechanically into my report on Lulu's condition; in all this, I amaze myself at the level of detachment I'm able to convey.

"We've got past the worst of it, and they say she ought to be fine from here; if all's well, we should be able to bring her home pretty soon, after she wakes up and they have a chance to check her out. Fred, thanks for calling us last night - you saved her life, basically. They said it might've been too late if we'd waited till morning to bring her in, so it was all in the nick of time. But she's out of danger now, so really, it's OK now, don't worry."

I'm looking at the floor while I'm talking to them, so I don't see Fred when he responds with a "Thank God," though I do hear the palpable relief in his voice. Everything that follows, though, is completely mumbo-jumbo to me. It's Charles who steps up to Lulu's bedside, while Fred claps him on the shoulder and says, "Hey, bro, I'm gonna make a move now and try to get some sleep before my flight tonight. Let me know how she's doing, yeah?"

"Anne." Somebody's touching my arm now, and it's Fred's voice that's speaking to me, only he hasn't been that gentle with me for many, many years. "Would you like a ride home? You look like you could use some sleep."

Even though it's a workday, I know it'd be a wasted day if I tried to go into the office; I've already texted my boss to tell him I'd be taking an urgent day off, as early in the morning as I could pull it off without being skinned alive. Going home to crash sounds like a very tempting idea, though it completely rips me apart that, of all times, Fred's caring self has got to surface at this juncture, just as I'm struggling with how and whether to take him to task on his amorphous situation with Lulu and the flight attendants. But I really have no energy to think about Fred's moral dilemma or to consider what my residual feelings for Fred might be when I'm as tired as this, so I say yes mechanically, putting all thought and feelings aside. I'm barely moving my head with the nod I give him; by this time, I'm so far gone that speech, or even seeing straight, is completely beyond me.

The walk through the hallways and across the parking lot passes in such a blur that I might as well have been sleepwalking; it's a good thing Fred offered me a ride because there's no way I could've possibly driven home myself. I've barely gotten into the car when I mumble an apology to Fred, and then I just let go, allowing myself to cave to the impulse that's been consuming me for the most part of the past few hours. And I don't care anymore about having a rerun of that awful dream or even something worse; anyway, I'm already so exhausted that dreams are beyond me at this point.

Frederick

"Frederick, I'm sorry I'm too tired to be good company at the moment," Anne mumbles as she settles into the front passenger seat. "I hope you don't mind if I just want to sleep on the way home. Thank you so much for the ride."

All the way from the hospital room to the car, she's barely said two words to me; and now, she probably thinks she's defusing the situation by sleeping, or pretending to sleep so we won't have to talk to each other. It's just as well, because I haven't fully sorted out what I'm going to say to her; it seems like everything's a total mess right now.

If I really search my conscience, I know Charles' assumption that I'm going out with Louisa isn't completely unfounded; even if it was all in fun, I should've gently rebuffed Louisa instead of letting her go on like that if I really wanted to be just a big brother to her. And Anne sent that middle-of-the-night text about Louisa's condition to me as well as Charles; I'd just thought it was her way of following through since I was the one who'd called, but after that little conversation with Charles in the car, I can't help wondering if she might be thinking along the same lines too. Whichever way it is, I can't escape that I was a complete dolt with zero situational awareness, and I've totally blown it as far as my recent dealings with Anne are concerned. Sure, it doesn't change my end goal at all, which is to repair my relationship with Anne if it's at all possible; but knowing the destination doesn't necessarily translate into being able to map out the journey. It's been a long road for me to finally come to this point of realization, and there's still a discouragingly long way to go before I can get to where I want to be.

Anne

It's practically lunchtime when I wake up, and it doesn't take long for me to figure out whose room I'm in when the telltale sign is a pilot's uniform, standing out sharply against the whitewashed wall that it's been hung against. The last thing I remember is Fred driving me home from the hospital, which means that instead of dropping me off at home, he's somehow decided to smuggle me into his home instead.

Even if it makes me a really small person after all, I'm not above snooping a little around Fred's room, now that I've been planted there. This room is neatly, clinically masculine with no extraneous clutter lying around, and most of the fittings are in minimalist glass and chrome, with the exception of two pieces of simple traditional dark wooden furniture - the bed and the desk. The wooden pieces don't look out of place, though, because they've been neatly integrated into the overall style by carrying through the room's black and gray color scheme in the upholstery on the desk chair and the linens on the bed.

The focal point of the room is an array of nine aircraft lithographs, set in slim silver frames, mounted on the wall above the bed; each of these features a different type of fighter jet, and they've been arranged to form a perfect square. None of these prints is familiar to me, save for one; it's the one right in the center, which was my 21st birthday present to Fred. Against the wall next to the bed, there's a glass-fronted floor-to-ceiling display cabinet containing an extensive collection of model aircraft, military and civilian, old and new: whimsical children's toy fighter planes made of wood; a replica of the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier complete with exquisitely detailed US Navy aircraft the size of my fingertip; and various commercial jetliners, spanning all five decades of the jet age, each bearing a different airline livery, all arranged meticulously with a deliberate eye to the aesthetics of the entire ensemble. Amidst this array of model aircraft, which would put many a hobby shop to shame, I manage to locate the scale model of an F-16 I gave to Fred as a congratulatory present when he got his Air Force pilot slot; it's sitting in a surprisingly central position within the military aircraft display.

Moving from the highlights to the details, I notice that Fred's kept every single piece of aviation literature he's come in touch with in his entire career, ranging from all our old college textbooks, to technical manuals, to Jane's All the World's Aircraft yearbooks starting from 2001-2002, the year after we graduated, until the latest one. He's also expanded his collection of books about the aviation industry beyond the ones we were assigned in college; some of the out-of-print titles are only available second hand nowadays, and seeing them makes me drool with envy.

This room definitely belongs to Frederick Wentworth the man, and the only indication, if any, of Fred the teenager is hidden from plain view. Stashed away in a corner of the bookshelf, there's an innocuous-looking little box covered in black faux leather; it's the one Fred started his collection of Eminem CDs in, and I can guess he's probably got every album and every single that's been released from Infinite to Recovery in that box by now. Fred's fascination with Eminem hit full force back when The Slim Shady LP was released in the spring of '99, while we were finishing our junior year; and you can imagine how that threw up all the little incongruities of our childhood backgrounds into the forefront. Do you know what The Slim Shady LP is? That album actually has a parental advisory warning on it, and the rap lyrics cover all kinds of shocking topics, ranging from murder to domestic abuse to drugs, all with graphic detail, peppered with profanities and set to burlesque musical accompaniments to top it all off.

"Fred, that stuff is only fit for teenage boys who'd do anything to shock their mo-… the adults speechless," I'd told him in exasperation when he'd played the CD one time too many for my liking. "Can't we just do our thermodynamics homework in peace without Role Model playing in the background? We're 21, aren't we way past that by now?"

"But maybe that's exactly my objective. Hey, I'm having way more fun shocking you than most guys would have shocking their mommas," he'd replied cheekily, deliberately putting emphasis on the word I'd been trying so delicately to avoid, all the while wearing a devilish grin.

Our college years were at the time when Eminem grew from being an underground rap sensation into international stardom, and Fred was so swept up with it that if there were two things he'd blow his entire summer earnings on, watching Eminem perform live would rank right up there, second only to flying. In fact, Fred's tendency to blow off all his summer earnings, minus the percentage he'd remit over to Sophia right away on pay day, was a key element of fodder for Grandma's disapproving comments about Fred during the summer of '97, the time when I told my family about my relationship with him.

"I don't see why that young man of yours has to fritter away all his money on flying lessons," Grandma had said. "Flying is an unnecessary luxury when you can't afford it, and he should be putting away some savings for his future instead of chasing after frivolous things like that."

"It isn't frivolous, and it isn't unnecessary," I'd protested. "There's so much competition for pilot slots these days, and doing some actual flying is the only way he can differentiate himself from all those guys who sit on their butts all day playing war games on their Playstations and watching Top Gun. It's even more critical for him, in fact, because he's pursuing an engineering degree. With his grades and standing, he could easily be assigned to work in an engineering role, unless he shows them just how interested he is in being a pilot. In fact, he's the one who thought out all this, and he explained it all to me."

With Fred's expenditure on flying already sparking off a stream of nagging that had no end, I wonder how Grandma would have taken it if she'd known about his fan-worship of Eminem. In the summer of '99, Fred probably spent as much time and money chasing after Eminem's performances for The Slim Shady LP on the Vans Warped Tour as he did clocking actual flying hours, and he'd stayed in backpacker's hostels as he hopped from city to city. It went to the extent that he actually asked me to delay my summer visit home after my Boeing internship in order to catch one of the concerts with him, but I flatly refused in anticipation of the inevitable slew of disapproval coming from my family.

We'd have enough to contend with whenever they found out that Fred and I had actually continued our relationship; to me, there was no need to complicate things even more by risking further jeopardy to my goodwill with Father and Grandma over Slim Shady in the meantime. Sure, I didn't have to tell them exactly where I was going, but what if they found out anyway? I'd get into trouble first for lying, and then for listening to that kind of music on top of that. Besides, it wasn't rocket science that Father and Grandma would be the last people to understand why listening to someone spouting shockingly cavalier lyrics about violence, crime, drugs and promiscuity doesn't necessarily mean that the listener himself is evil; and it'd be completely not worth it to give them an excuse to dismiss Fred as a criminal-in-the-making just because of a bunch of rap songs. There were already enough things about Fred they could never understand - Father thought it was a huge disgrace to the Elliot family for me to be dating someone who was doing a menial job like pumping gas, MIT student or not; and Grandma felt it was highly reckless of Fred to spend off his summer earnings instead of dutifully squirreling them away like any good boy should, not to mention that in her eyes, flying, especially with the Air Force, was a very dangerous career.

Neither of them could ever see that Fred was always the perfect gentleman; never mind that it's such a funny thing to say about someone when I knew all his silly habits and he needled me with jokes and behavior worthy of South Park every once in a while. And I don't have to look any farther than the Warped Tour of '99 to give the best example of why I say so. After that horrible summer of '97, when Father and Grandma kept on giving me what-for about my relationship with Fred, I gave him a frank account of how they felt, and let him know I would be sticking with him regardless of their opinion, but that we'd have to band together to strategize whenever there was a need to navigate around them. This was how I felt we should deal with the issue, as equals; and so when I said no about the concert and explained why it wasn't good for our strategy, he gracefully dropped the whole issue without a word about how extremely (and unfairly) insulting the whole situation was to himself.

All those years, no matter what Father or Grandma said, I understood Fred; oh yes, I did, in the way only young people determined to make the most out of every little bit of life could. I could see how Fred scrimped and saved all year from his scholarship money, denying himself every little luxury of college student life that wouldn't prove fatal to his status of coolness, in order to put together a percentage to send over to Sophia; and I knew that he still sent the same percentage of his summer earnings over to her no matter what else he blew off after that. So the rest of the summer wages were disposable income to Fred, and he'd explained his reasoning about the Warped Tour so convincingly.

"It'll be senior year, and then I'll be busy flying an F-16, right? So this has got to be the first and last time I can spend a whole summer catching Eminem on tour. And it's his watershed album, the one that'll be the making of him, so there's no way I could ever miss this because no other album will ever be the same again. Besides, I'll earn back all the money in an instant after I join the Air Force."

"An F-16, huh? Tell me that again, after you finish UPT and actually get allocated to an aircraft for real," I'd said, but there was a smile on my face when I said it. Because I was familiar with Fred's over-confident pronouncements by then, and no matter how presumptuous they seemed at first, somehow all his prophecies had an uncanny way of fulfilling themselves. People thought he was brash, but I knew he wouldn't say something unless he somehow knew he'd be able to pull it off.

Well, I had to rest my case, because I also knew it simply wouldn't be possible for Fred not to be a rabid fan of Eminem with the obvious parallels in their situations; after all, Eminem is also a child of Detroit who grew up seeing the life on the wrong side of 8 Mile Road, and he rose to meteoric success despite that background, or maybe even because of it. The story's so compelling that even the little PC schmuck that I was eventually saw beyond the lyrics and the outrageous exterior to become a fan of Eminem myself, even though I'm still not a fan of some of his more over-the-top lyrics. Being Fred's biggest fan and being Eminem's fan became synonymous in my mind, to the extent that in those years we were apart, I got myself a secret little black box like that in my own room too.

Frederick

Sheesh. If everyone thinks I'm going out with Louisa, it just means one thing - when I finally have to tell them the truth, they'll probably think I'm the worst kind of womanizing playboy in the world. Anne gave me the hint already when she talked about Mambo No. 5, and yet I was too blind to see it until those multimedia messages from Louisa actually started hitting my inbox. And now, I'm going to have to tell Louisa I can't be her "Superman". If I were Slim Shady, I suppose I could just say, "What you Louisa? Fly through twice." But I'm not Shady; I'm Wentworth, and I always try my very best to be an honorable man.

I could defend myself, I guess - after all, she couldn't have seriously thought anything was possible between us when she was just a high school kid getting ready to go to college, and I'm old enough to plausibly be a dad; and besides, I never asked her out on any actual dates, and I was never the one to initiate any physical contact with her except just dancing, and anybody can dance with anybody else, right? But it seems like the more I say, the more I sound like a cad for saying it, even if the technicalities are all covered. The dumbest part of it all is that I never had the intention of leading Louisa on in the first place; I was only escaping from Anne. I just didn't want anyone to know how bitter I was feeling about her, so I hid behind a mask of having fun with anyone who happened to be available at that moment, be it the kids, the twins, or whoever. Although I've heard the cliché "the tears of a clown" many times before, I never really appreciated the meaning of it until I started living it these past months; I knew I was acting silly, but all of that was just an attempt to put a happy face to all the sadness and resentment inside me. Now that I know for sure that Anne never disdained me and in fact she looked up to me, or at least she did until now, it all makes things even worse because all of it was so unnecessary, not to mention that running away like that was the most cowardly thing I've ever done in my entire life.

In the meantime, I've got Anne sleeping in my bed, and I'm hanging around in my own house without being able to park my butt in any single spot for more than ten minutes at a go. That just happened on its own - when I stopped in front of the Musgroves', Anne was out like a light, and I didn't have the heart to wake her up so I brought her here instead, thinking she'd have a better rest without the disturbances from Mary and the others, given that Louisa could come back in maybe a couple hours or so.

I drift around the living room trying to read the papers and surf the Internet on my laptop, but it's hard to keep my interest on any particular topic when the only thing I can think about is how much I'm dreading the fallout with Louisa and possibly the Musgroves when this whole thing plays to its conclusion. In fact, I'm not even sure whether I'm just fooling myself about Anne still loving me; going after her might just turn out to be kamikaze for all I know. I'd expect her, of all people, to recognize my voice when I called last night, so I don't know what's up with her having to ask who I am. Maybe I might've been reading too much into the "Love, Anne" thing after all.

At around mid-morning, I decide to take a nap; I didn't end up sleeping all that many hours last night, and I'll have to force myself to catch some rest before heading to the airport in order to be properly alert for the long flight tonight. So I dislodge Walter the inflatable rabbit from his usual resting place and put him into Tiffany's bottom bunk, then climb up into my old bunk bed to crash. This act is like a rite of passage for me, to be claiming back my top bunk from Walter at a time when I'm psyching myself up to claim Anne back from the clutches of Walter Elliot as well. As usual, I've got Eminem playing on my iPod; and eventually, the last thing I hear before dozing off is the sound of Not Afraid:

I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid
To take a stand, to take a stand
Everybody, everybody
Come take my hand, come take my hand

I'm standing up, I'ma face my demons
I'm manning up, I'ma hold my ground
I've had enough, now I'm so fed up
Tryin' to put my life back together right now, now

Anne

My tour of Fred's room is interrupted by the sound of knocking and yelling; Tiffany's just been dropped off at the doorstep, and Fred's still nowhere to be found. I rush down to open the door and let her in.

"Aunty Annie, where's Uncle Freddy?" she asks, looking around in panic. "And what are you doing here?"

"It's a long story," I tell her. "Come, give me your backpack. Let's get you something to drink, shall we?"

This is the reason why I volunteered so readily to take care of Hetty and Lulu while Charles handled the kids last night; when it's 2 a.m. and I'm functioning on less than two hours of sleep, I just don't have the brain juice to figure out how to explain binge drinking to a kindergartner and his three-year-old brother. It was much easier to bump off that task to their daddy instead; going to Ann Arbor might have been physically and emotionally more taxing, but at least there were clear, well-defined steps that I could simply follow without having to think too much.

But now, it looks like I can't escape from thinking after all; with Fred in hiding, I'm the one who has to devise some appropriate euphemisms to tell Tiffany about last night and demystify his decision to bring me to his house, even if I'm not entirely clear about his reasons myself. I dump Tiffany's water bottle and lunch box in the sink, open the refrigerator to pour her a glass of juice, and plop down with her on the living room sofa before I go about breaking down this long and complicated story into kindergarten terms.

"Charlie's Aunty Lulu got sick," I start. "Did Charlie tell you that yet? So, I had to stay with her in the hospital all night. But it's OK, everything's fine and she'll be coming home today… "

Frederick

Of all the stupid things to do, I forgot to switch off my iPod before falling asleep. So when I wake up, Eminem is the first thing I hear and I glance at my watch - it's 1.30 p.m., which means the school bus would've dropped Tiffany off long ago already. I scramble off the top bunk and make a rush down the stairs, thinking of how scared Tiffany must be, dumped out there on the doorstep alone with nobody to answer the door. I just hope she hasn't run off somewhere else in her panic.

Halfway down the stairs, I stop when I hear Anne's voice; she's apparently beaten me to the door to get Tiffany, and they're now sitting together in the living room.

"This morning, your Uncle Freddy came to the hospital, and when he saw I'd been sitting there all night, he brought me back so I could sleep some," she's saying. "I guess he thought it was what a gentleman should do."

"Aunty Annie, what's a gentleman?" Tiffany asks.

"A gentleman? A gentleman is somebody who never hurts anyone on purpose, in fact, he always thinks about how his actions will affect other people before doing anything. A gentleman keeps all his promises, and he'll do whatever it takes to help his family and friends; he'll even save his enemies if they're really in need. Gentlemen have manners, but you don't measure a gentleman by how handsome he looks or how smoothly he talks - it's about how somebody treats the people around them, not the external appearance that counts. And a gentleman could be rich or poor, it doesn't matter at all. One day, when you're old enough to read the works of Jane Austen, you'll fully understand what a gentleman is."

"Who's Jane Austen?" I'm not surprised that Tiffany seems thoroughly confused; Anne's definition of a gentleman has gone way above kindergarten level.

"She's a lady who wrote some wonderful stories," says Anne. "I'll read them to you sometime, maybe in a few years when you're a little bit older. She lived two hundred years ago, but we can still learn a lot of things about life from her stories today."

"Is Uncle Freddy a gentleman?"

Anne pauses for a long while before answering. "He used to be one, when I used to know him many years ago," she finally says, slowly and hesitantly. And then, after another long pause, "And I suppose he still is one. At least, I hope so."

I've been inching down the stairs while Anne was talking, and she stands up and turns around to face me, somehow having sensed my presence.

"Fred, where were you?" She's calm, ominously so, when she says this, but I can see the glint of accusation in her eyes. "Tiffany was waiting, so I got the door for her."

"Sorry." I can feel myself withering under her steady, reproachful gaze. "I was sleeping, and I forgot the time. I have a flight tonight, so I wanted to catch a quick nap before Tiffany got home."

Anne

Fred winces sheepishly, shifting his weight from one foot to the other as he tries to justify himself. As he should - if I hadn't been there, God knows how long Tiffany would've been stuck outside before he'd finally get to the door.

"I'm really sorry," he finally mumbles again. "And, well, I couldn't thank you enough for letting Tiffany in on my behalf. It was irresponsible of me. You have every right to be angry, and I guess I deserve it."

"I'm not angry," I say, feeling like a deflated balloon. "Just disappointed."

"Anne, I - " Fred continues shifting around, looking at me and then back down at the floor again. "There's a lot of stuff I want to say to you about… about - everything. Do you think - can we have a chance to talk?"

I'd nearly resigned myself to giving up; after all, much as I'd like to find out Fred's explanation for the whole business with Lulu, I can't possibly initiate a discussion about this without betraying my interest. But when Fred himself offers the opportunity, unexpectedly, I'm not about to say no. Definitely not today, though; I've got to think and rehearse before I can possibly address the matter with any level of composure.

"Yeah," I finally manage to squeeze the words out. "I guess we should … sometime."

Fred seems to perk up a little as he asks, "How about now?"

"Not today." I steel myself and look back at him. "There's something important I want to say to you too, but I just don't have the energy to do it justice, not now. So can we meet some other day to talk instead?"

"OK, if that's what you wish." He's disappointed, I can tell. "My flight's going to be to Amsterdam, and I get back Wednesday evening. I could text you, I guess, after I've landed. We could meet in the airport or something."

"Yeah, I guess that'll work. And I guess I really should be heading home now." Fred follows me as I make my way to the door; I can imagine the hospital would've released Lulu by now, and she and Charles ought to be back at home, which means I should be there too.

Just before I head out the door, I face Fred one last time. "Have a safe flight, OK?"

Frederick

Tiffany's gone up to her room while I was seeing Anne out the door; I can hear her voice carrying all the way down the stairs when I step back into the living room.

"Uncle Freddy! Why is Walter in my bed?" she demands.

"Easy, now. Don't yell, I'm coming." I take the stairs two at a time.

When I get there, Tiffany's waiting for me, hands on hips, demanding an answer. And, surprisingly, I do have one on hand. Because I've made up my mind to stand up for myself, and take initiative at the times when I want to defend my ground.

"Walter's there because you're a big girl now," I say. "And you're old enough to start learning how to sleep in the top bunk. It used to be mine, you know, and I don't give my bunk bed to just anybody. Only to people I like, and you're definitely one of them, aren't you?"

Disclaimer: "Superman" and "Not Afraid" belong to Eminem.