Ethan had two Twitter accounts, one for the industry at large, and a second private account that only a few people knew about. It was this second account—he had programmed it to send alerts—that was now trying to get his attention.
A private message from @spandau1965, Heloise Spandau, one of his lieutenants in the programming department at ATN, appeared on the screen. She was a no-nonsense, nose-to-the-grindstone employee who didn’t suffer fools gladly. Once, at a full department meeting, Spandau called a junior employee “stupid” and told him that the “air you’re breathing could be put to better use.” It’s not that she was wrong—the junior employee was stupid, he was wasting someone else’s valuable air—but Ethan still had to talk to Heloise after the incident, trying to impress upon her how you can catch more flies with honey. That was six months ago; the junior employee was no longer with the company, Spandau was still Ethan’s lieutenant.
“Catholic Cardinal Blasts Life and Death”
http://bit.ly/1OLEziq
Ethan clicked through the link and saw excerpted highlights from Cardinal Trippe’s press conference. He had to smile to himself. Don’t these people ever learn? The more they protest, the more viewers I get.
The second alert was a text message from Roger Stern.
“What the fuck is this?”
There was a link to YouTube and the first episode of The Real Family Stone of Portland, Oregon.
Ethan, who knew nothing of Jackie’s Russian accomplice, was quick to notice that he was only the twentieth person to click on the link. Roger, he knew, was overreacting. Plus, it was mostly harmless stuff.
Ethan added a reminder to his Evernote to speak with Jackie about the propriety and decorum with which she needed to approach any behind-the-scenes footage.
And then he promptly forgot about it.
***
Deirdre could see that Jared was slipping. After the encounter with Joanne from hospice, he retreated to his office and slept for four hours. The brief exchange was that taxing.
Deirdre was sitting in the kitchen when he woke up and came downstairs. She went to the counter and made him a latte without asking.
“Thanks, D,” Jared mumbled. She did her best to smile and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze as she passed. Her heart sank, feeling all bone and no muscle. “We need to talk about my will,” he blurted out. Deirdre nodded and sat down.
“Where do you want to start?” she asked.
“Well, first, um, do I already have a will?” Questions like this from Jared were becoming increasingly commonplace.
“No, sweetie. It’s something we keep meaning to do but haven’t gotten around to.”
“Well,” he said, “there’s no time like the present.” He paused a bit and then said, “Keep limits on net ether.”
“I’m sorry?”
“It’s an anagram for ‘no time like the present.’ Keep limits on net ether.” Alarm bells were going off in Deirdre’s head. “Is that something I do, make anagrams? Because I’ve been making a lot of them lately.”
Deirdre couldn’t find the words to answer, so she just shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. I half wonder if the brain tumor is trying to talk to me through the anagrams.”
“I don’t really know how to respond to that, Jare. How long has this been going on?”
“I don’t really know.”
“Have you told your doctors?”
Jared hung his head and mumbled at the table. “I don’t really know that, either.”
“Oh, sweetie.”
“O, thee wise.”
“Huh?”
“Another anagram.”
“That’s actually kind of amazing.”
Jared paused, then looked up at the television camera not so carefully hidden in the kitchen cabinets. “I guess it’ll make for good viewing tonight.” (Jared was right. The clip of him riffing anagrams with Deirdre had more views than any other clip on the official Life and Death website that day. ATN was able to sell a sponsorship to a dictionary publisher.)
“What were we talking about?” Jared asked.
“Your will.”
“Oh, I see.”
Deirdre wasn’t sure what that response meant and wondered if it was another anagram, but she figured it, like everything else in this conversation, wasn’t good. There was no doubt about it; they were entering some sort of end game. Deirdre started to imagine how it might play out. Would Jared simply just die? Would he wither like this for months, or longer? The one thing she knew for certain was that Jared had passed the point of no return. She had seen it with her mother.
Her mind kept jumping to the conversation with Joanne from hospice, and how Jared had introduced the topic of euthanasia. Deirdre hadn’t yet let her thoughts go down that road, but now she wondered if Jared had been thinking about it. She wanted to ask him, but she couldn’t do it with the cameras here. Maybe she could find a time on one of their visits to the doctor.
When she looked up from her reverie, Jared had nodded off.
She contained her emotion, got up, gently woke him, and helped him back to his office.
***