LITMIR.BIZ

       TWO

      Stone McLure wasn’t model handsome. Not one of those guys who looked pretty. Even though he was just seventeen, Stone wasn’t really for girls. He was for women.

      Women would look at him and let their eyes slide over his face and those shoulders, because, you know, women don’t stare the way men do. They just need a glance. And then, having memorized him with a glance, they would regret their marriage, regret their age, regret their sweatpants and faded Abercrombie T-shirts, regret that they were carrying a plastic bag of groceries in one hand and a twenty-four pack of Pampers in the other.

      Stone pulled his earbuds out.

      “Where are we stopping first?” he asked his father.

      “We’ll refuel in San Francisco and pick up a second pilot. Then I have a brief meeting in Hokkaido, and it’s on to Singapore.” He said it without looking up from his work.

      Earbuds back in.

      Stone had curly dark hair and eyes like polished green marble with golden threads woven through. He had a brow that seemed designed by God to mark him as honest, a strong nose, a complexion that had surely never been marred by so much as a freckle, let alone a pimple—what pimple would dare?

      He looked a bit like his father, Grey McLure—and most of the world knew Grey’s face—but Grey had the signs of weariness and wariness that came with being a billionaire of the better sort. A billionaire who had made his money with science and innovation and in all the ways you’d hope a billionaire would make his money.

      They were sitting just a couple of feet apart in the back of a Cessna Citation X, Grey facing aft, Stone facing forward. It was a private jet, yes, but no more ostentatious than was absolutely necessary in a private jet. There was no hot flight attendant in a teasing uniform. No flowing Champagne. None of that. Grey’s jet was about business. And his son was learning that business.

      Grey was drinking coffee from a mug that said fairly decent dad. See, a mug that said world’s best dad would have violated the Grey family’s style, which was self-deprecating, wry, and utterly devoted.

      Grey was tapping away at his pad and sipping and tapping and frowning a bit from time to time.

      Stone was reading a book on his own pad, not maybe paying as much attention as he should, because in his ears were the buds and through them came the raw, hoarse voice of Tony Kovacs.

       Being here with my surroundings, Seeing all I’m looking at, Evolution winking at me, My face forms a smile.

      Earbuds out.

      “So this would be a flight measured more in days than in mere hours,” Stone said, and stretched his legs.

      “Long flight,” his father acknowledged. “You could have spent the time with your grandmother in Maryland.”

      Stone held up mock-surrender hands. “Did I sound like I was complaining?”

      “Your grandmother loves you.”

      “My grandmother loves painting ceramic figurines of First Ladies.”

      “Historically accurate figurines,” Grey said and grinned. “You could have helped her decorate Abigail Fillmore’s bonnet.”

      Stone pretended to weigh the alternatives. “Abigail’s bonnet . . . Singapore girls in formfitting saris. Hmm. Tough one.”

      Earbuds back in.

       Here am I living in it, Here am I in everything.

      His sister, Sadie, had gotten him started on punk, probably thinking he needed something less, well, insipid than what he came up with by following his usual pattern: downloading whatever his friends were listening to. Sadie was like that, one of those people untouched by trend or fashion, comfortable building her own world out of what she liked, from tunes and styles and reads that could be so ancient they were cobwebbed, up through to things so new they barely existed yet. Sometimes it was like she imagined something and conjured it into reality.

      Sadie could be a prickly little witch, but at sixteen she was who she was in a way that Stone could not quite equal. Didn’t bother him, not really. Stone had a defined role to play. He was the heir, the scion, the eldest. There’d been lots of times he envied Sadie’s freedom—man, who wouldn’t?—but he was okay with his destiny. Someone had to do it. Might as well be him.

       Spent so much of my time thinking, Feeling like I’m under attack. Overlooking the reality in front of me, Wandering down so many paths.

      And for his mother, whose ashes had settled into the Atlantic at the midpoint between her native London and her adopted New York.

      He looked out of the window, veering his thoughts away from that last image. Not right now, not right now, not that memory.

      Stone and his father had taken off from Teterboro and now were flying over the Meadowlands. Down below, a game. Football, American style.

      Stone’s life had been split more or less evenly between New York and London, so he could appreciate both sets of sport obsession: football and baseball in the States, soccer and cricket in the UK. Still couldn’t imagine what anyone saw in hockey, because . . .

      Then he remembered.

      Earbuds out.

      “Hey, isn’t Sadie at that game?”

      Grey looked up and smiled, a conspiratorial look. “And I’m sure she’s loving every minute of it.”

      Stone laughed. “Yeah. Nothing Sadie likes better than being outside in the cold and part of some big, cheering crowd.” He shook his head. “I hope the dude is worth it. Is it that Tony guy I met?”

      Grey nodded.

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