CELERITY E-Book

Scott Falcon

• Herausgeber: Scott Falcon
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

Speed Kills
Celerity usually comes in second at UCLA track—the first loser, her coach would say. But she is encouraged by her father, a botanist, her only parent, and her biggest fan. Then he dies unexpectedly. Now she is alone.
While wrapping up his affairs, she learns about his expeditions of discovery to the Darién jungle and a plant that transforms indigenous tribesmen into prolific hunters ... and extraordinarily fast runners.
She takes a sabbatical from college and follows his work. After weeks enduring the tropics, she finds the plant—it's fifty feet tall and carnivorous. She returns with its extract.
Training at her local high school, her speed is increasing, and people notice. A student times her in the 100 meters—she breaks the women's world record—videos go viral—and life will never be the same. 
Approached by a flamboyant sports agent, he has a plan; there's no money in track … try out for the Chicago Bears as a wide receiver. Nobody can touch the world's most famous female athlete.
Then the side effects kick in.

 

Leseprobe

CELERITY

Scott Falcon

Also by Scott Falcon

THRESHOLD

AMERICAN MUTT

Coming in 2021 - TIDEFALL

CELERITY, a Novel

Copyright © 2020 Scott Falcon

ScottFalcon.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, email the publisher using the contact page on RandWilde.com, and include “Attention: Permissions Coordinator.” In the subject line.

ISBN: 978-1-7341473-6-0 (Ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-7341473-7-7 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-7341473-8-4 (Hardcover)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020908096

FIC031080 FICTION/Thrillers/Psychological

FIC015000 FICTION/Horror

FIC031010 FICTION/Thrillers/Crime

FIC031000 FICTION/Thrillers/General

FIC030000 FICTION/Thrillers/Suspense

FIC025000 FICTION/Psychological

Printed by Rand Wilde Media in the United States of America.

FIRST EDITION v2.0

RandWilde.com

Contents

The Aftermath

Celerity Audio Recording Pregame

Celerity File 1

Celerity File 2

Celerity File 3

Celerity File 4

Celerity File 5

The Agent

Celerity File 6

Celerity File 7

Celerity File 8

Celerity File 9

Celerity File 10

Celerity File 11

The Agent

Celerity File 12

Celerity File 13

Celerity File 14

Celerity File 15

Celerity File 16

Celerity File 17

Celerity File 18

Celerity File 19

Celerity File 20

Celerity File 21

Celerity File 22

Celerity File 23

Celerity File 24

Celerity File 25

Celerity File 26

The Agent

Celerity File 27

Celerity File 28

Celerity File 29

The Agent

The Island

Break It

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Scott Falcon

The Aftermath

You discover the harsh truth of it, in your last moment of crisis, that you are alone. And always have been.

—Celerity

The ghost plane streaked across the cobalt-blue Pacific sky, its white contrails twirling into vortices. The streaks extended for thousands of feet in the humid air, an early indicator of a coming storm. The private jet circled in a slow bank for over an hour, the cockpit windows frosted over, evidence of rapid decompression of the cabin and loss of oxygen for the crew. An American military jet flew above and behind, its pilot keeping watch over the crippled plane.

In an NTSB office at night, two men sat in front of several banks of video and audio equipment. They watched the video of the plane descending, the video taken from the trailing F-22A. The video paused.

The talent agent handed a thick manila envelope to the NTSB official, who flipped through the hundred-dollar bills, slipped the envelope into the front pocket of his khakis, then handed the agent a flash drive.

“So, you promise not to use this until it goes public, right?”

“Yeah. No problem. Play the last recoding from the black box again,” the agent said. The official pressed a button on the audio panel.

“It’s a cockpit voice recorder, not a black box, technically.”

“Whatever. Play it.”

“I can’t breathe… I can’t…” the voice said on the recording. Then static, open-air transmission, no more voices.

“Was that her voice?” the official asked.

“Sounds like it.”

“It goes on like this for more than an hour, just static. We think she went unconscious. After the pilot had already passed out.” The NTSB official stopped the recording.

“Okay, go back to the video,” the agent said.

The video played, the plane continued its slow bank.

“Fast-forward to when it flamed out.”

The official fast-forwarded.

The contrails ended, and the plane went into a spiral.

“She’s out of fuel now. No more flying the friendly skies.”

The plane plummeted in free fall, then nosedived into the Pacific at high speed.

The agent pushed back into his chair with a big exhale, running his hands through his hair. “Like a knife. Jesus.”

“Yeah.”

“Wreckage?”

“Just pieces at three thousand feet, where they found the cockpit voice recorder.”

THE IVY RESTAURANT - BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA

The paparazzi cameras flashed and popped. The agent watched self-help guru Tony Tango move through the restaurant with his entourage. Tony noticed the agent, shook his hand, and slithered out the entrance and into his limo. The car drove away.

The agent walked back into the restaurant, spotted a man and a woman at a table. They waved him over, and the agent sat down.

“Hey,” the agent said.

“Tony Tango, in the flesh?” the woman said.

“Yeah, and his crew. I just sold the movie rights. We’re pushing for Gosling,” the agent said.

“Gosling’s not Hispanic,” the woman said.

“Makeup. Or a tan.”

“What about Benicio?”

“Too old.”

The woman slid a martini in front of the agent. “You heard the black box?” the woman said.

The agent sucked half a mouthful, then another. “Yeah, her last words.”

“What’d she say?” the woman said.

“I can’t breathe.”

“Jesus.”

“What about the other recordings—her memoirs or notes or whatever they are? When can we hear them?” the man, a publisher, said.

“You mean the recordings that don’t exist,” the agent said.

“Yeah, the recordings that don’t exist, that you have no legal access to,” the woman said.

“Where’d you find them?” the man said.

A few seconds passed.

“So where are we on her estate?” the woman asked.

The agent scanned the clientele. He took another drink.

“I’m working on that with legal. This will be an instant bestseller, right?”

The woman placed her drink on the table and leaned in. “You kidding? Biggest book in a decade. Where are you going with these movie rights? We can help with that.”

The agent smirked. “Thanks, but I got it.”

“Haven’t heard if there’s a will,” the man said.

“The agency is still representing the estate. Per legal, all proceeds go in escrow until probate. Let’s get back to the advance on US publishing rights.”

The woman slid a folded piece of paper over to the agent. He opened it.

Poker face.

“We good?” the woman said.

“No, but I’m here, aren’t I?”

The man and the woman looked at each other.

The agent finished his martini, swallows, not sips.

“I heard the lobster’s good here. On us, of course,” the man said.

“I like the hot seafood platter,” the agent said, “mesquite-grilled Eastern lobster, scallops, shrimp, crab cakes, and calamari. We need champagne. French. Old. I’ll choose.”

HOLLYWOOD HILLS

It was magic hour, the sun just over the horizon. The gate opened, and the agent drove his Bentley convertible into the driveway of the restored midsixties modern.

The kitchen had a panoramic view of the city lights of Los Angeles. A laptop was on the kitchen table. The agent removed the flash drive from his pocket and inserted it into the computer. The audio file played.

My pilot… my pilot seems to have passed out. We have lost cabin pressure, and I can’t breathe. The cabin is freezing over at this altitude… I… Mayday, mayday, can anyone hear me? This is Celerity. We have an emergency. I can’t breathe… I can’t…

A thump, then the ambient sound of the plane’s cabin. The whine of the jet engines.

The agent stopped the audio file.

He walked into his living room, picked up a remote control from the coffee table, and turned on the seventy-inch flat screen. Frozen on the screen were three women, two of them playing guitars. He clicked play.

The song blasted from the home theater system, “Waiting All Day for Sunday Night.” Carly Yellowhair was flanked by Joan Jett and Celerity, playing an old blond Fender Telecaster. The three women were dressed in all black leather, Celerity with spiky black hair and blue makeup.

“So fucking hot,” the agent said.

Celerity’s voice was gritty, Joe Cockerish.

The agent cranked the volume, the threesome rocked it, and he danced around the room.

“Fuckin’ A. Such a killer song.”

The song ended. Color commentator Kyle Eversworth and play-by-play announcer Michael Allanwood appeared on the screen.

“So here we are, Kyle,” Allanwood said. “This is predicted to be the most-watched NFL game in history, surpassing the highest-rated Super Bowl. Tonight we have the lowly Chicago Bears against their nemesis, the Green Bay Packers. Even after the Halas family finally sold the team to a hedge-fund billionaire, and he pumped in a boatload of money, the Bears’ offense has been struggling with one quarterback controversy after the next. Nothing new there.”

“But all everyone is talking about is something else, huh?” Eversworth said. “They signed Celerity to a contract, usurping all the other teams. She spent two weeks with their practice squad and was added to the roster for tonight’s Sunday night game.”

“We knew someday there would be a woman in the league,” Allanwood said, “but I thought it would be a soccer star, a field goal kicker, not a wide receiver. This is a historic moment in sports. A mega moment, if you will. I just hope she doesn’t get killed out there.”

“We all hope Celerity, the supposed fastest woman in history,” Eversworth said, “who some people refer to as CLT, does not get injured, of course, but we have had many guys on the small side in the league. I mean, DeSean Jackson, for example, is like five ten but only a hundred and seventy-five pounds. But CLT? We have her at five nine and a buck thirty-five, so let’s just hope.”

“Let’s hope is right. On the other hand, what a ratings boost for the NFL. This game is predicted to be the most-watched in history, right here tonight in Chicago. So what do you think about the Packers’ coverage? Cover two, zone, double team to not get embarrassed? I mean, the Bears have to play her, right? There would be a riot, not only in Soldier Field but in the streets of Chicago, if she didn’t get into the game.”

“No doubt the Bears will play her. We don’t know when, but she’s going in, and what a moment it will be. I think the Packers will cheat a safety over to her side.”

“Let’s talk about how she got here. So from what we know, what our media sources tell us, is that her super agent got word of her workouts at her old high school track after she left UCLA as a freshman. So, he approached her. Then timed her in the forty. Nothing official, but our sources tell us she ran a four-three-flat forty. That’s eight tenths off the men’s world record. If true, just remarkable.”

Eversworth shifted in his seat. “Her workouts with the Bears were held inside Halas Hall with no media allowed, but from what I’m told, Mike, it’s not only her lightning-fast breakaway downhill speed, but we are told her routes, her cuts, were off the charts. Later in the week, the Bears put their Pro Bowl defensive back Kalan Foster on her, and I’m told she got open, like wide open. So this is gonna either be amazing or a disaster—one or the other.”

The agent fast-forwarded the telecast to Chicago’s first possession. Celerity was on the sideline. The crowd booed.

Run play up the middle. Two-yard gain. Second and eight.

Huddle broke, no Celerity. The crowd’s booing continued.

Run play. No gain. Third and eight on Chicago’s twenty-seven.

Chicago’s coach turned to Celerity and nodded. She ran on the field and into the huddle.

The crowd erupted, chants echoing through Soldier Field. “CLT! CLT! You go, girl! Make six for me.”

The huddle broke.

“So, this is it, Mike. The big moment. One of the biggest in the history of this league,” Eversworth said.

“And it seems, Kyle, the crowd had their chant ready even before she ran her first play.”

“She’s already a social media phenomenon, Mike. Like the most searched name.”

Celerity was lined up as the slot receiver.

The camera zoomed in on her face. She had black stripes painted below her eyes.

The agent hit pause on the remote and sat back on the couch, staring at Celerity’s face.

The doorbell rang.

The agent picked up his cell phone, saw a young man standing at his front gate, and buzzed him in.

The agent opened the front door. The young man was twentyish, scruffy.

The young man followed the agent to the kitchen table, sat down, and removed a Corsair Survivor USB 3.0 flash drive from his pocket. He set the round silver tube with rubber bumpers on the table.

“It’s all here. Everything I could scrape from her MacBook until it was powered off a couple of days ago. The audio from the game starts on file fifteen, in case you want to skip ahead.”

“You didn’t hear a thing on these recordings, and you were never here. Clear?”

“Dude, we be clear.”

The agent picked up the flash drive, unscrewed it, examined it, and set it on the table. He left the room, then returned with a briefcase. The young man opened the case and examined its contents. He smiled, closed the briefcase, and stood.

“Should be enough for a month at Passages Malibu and six months’ rent. Good luck.”

“Copy, dude.”

“And dude? I know where you fucking live.”

“Uh, yeah. Well…I move around a lot.”

The agent slowly turned. Scruffy left.

The agent removed the black box flash drive from the laptop and inserted the Corsair. A list of audio files displayed on the screen. He clicked the play icon of the fifteenth file.

Celerity Audio Recording Pregame

CELERITY’S VOICE

The locker room thing. They thought it out, kinda. I mean, I really didn’t care. I kinda wanted it to be a no-change deal, where there wouldn’t be any changes from before. I get dressed and undressed in the locker room like all the other players.

Then there was the shower thing. I liked the idea of being stark naked in a shower at the same time with thirty twenty-something NFL studs. I wanted to see how many of them started waving flags in the shower. Just do it, right? It would be like a weekly scorecard: How many Bears got a perk up, how many went full flag? Me, the quicker picker-upper.

How many of them would touch themselves, then I’d catch them doing it, and they’d see me catching them, and it’d be a fucking crack-up. I was looking forward to that. That is bad, huh? Come on, what woman wouldn’t find the whole deal entertaining? In the shower, I have the power. Then I soap up, and they lose it—or gain it, if you will.

But the truth is that in the new Halas Hall, the showers are nice and private, big-city indulgent, personal trainer, rain shower-heads on terrazzo floors. It’s not like school where sweaty fat chicks are jammed in the prison shower galley. This is luxury professional athletics with wooden locker doors and free hair conditioner and towels that aren’t fraying at the ends.

There was still the dressing and undressing thing, so the organization set up a room adjacent to the main locker room and had some towel kid shuffle back and forth, telling me when all the players were “decent.”

They had special shoulder pads made for me that extended down over my breasts, cups with flexible frames. That was the only change to the equipment—tit guards. Oh, and one more thing: They had to send my pants to their seamstress to remove the extra space for a cup. Obviously, I didn’t need that. Sans package.

Once I was dressed, I spent a few minutes in my little dressing room alone before joining the team. I thought of my father, what he would think. He would be amazingly proud and excited and nervous and pacing around in his patterns of thought deliberation, thinking of the natural order of things and how this is not one of them. A chaos crash is inevitable, he would say, the female and male species of the higher life-forms demonstrating a continuity of physical and mental attributes, a sexual selection process of peacock’s plumage, and the only plumage I would be displaying tonight, with a record reach-rating-Nielsen-clickthrough-user-sessions/visits, is a target on my back. A bull’s-eye on a ball field full of bulls.

The guys I used to date were all losers, and three of them have been trying to reach me lately. Two of those cheated on me. They all cheat sooner or later. I don’t really care because I’m no longer wired that way. To care. To care about trivial things like love and loyalty and bonding and intimacy. Wiring changed. What’s in the wires changed too.

After my father’s death, after the Darién, I started to understand all this—the mating thing. More like the conquest thing. Always hunting, like an animal. Because they are animals. As am I. Now more than ever. Sensing. Always alert. Defenses up. Threats all around. Predator or prey. No planning. Pheromones. Instinct. Conquest and move on. Biological not emotional. I get that now.

Now they want to cling, now that I’m about to be more famous than Tiger or LeBron. Celerity, the flavor of the manic month.

I need to rework the laces on my new football shoes so they won’t slip.

There’s a knock on the door.

It was my new entourage: my agent, my business manager, my attorney, and my publicist.

Quick updates on a book deal, two book deals, a movie rights deal, interview schedule, endorsement deals, Nike, Adidas. Through sport, we have the power to change lives. I had to choose one.

Tie the knots with a second wraparound so they don’t slip.

Red Bull. Used to be Gives you wings. Did you know some guy sued them for false advertising because he drank Red Bull for ten years and he grew no wings or achieved any enhanced performance? No kidding.

Almond Milk? Silky Smooth. Yeah, I’m a vegan, remember, team? Or at least I was. Make those deals. Send me the contracts. I will counter them all. Then counter some more. They want their last best deal, right before they break.

Tie the other shoe. Have two pair of socks on.

Rolex. A Crown for Every Achievement. Okay, good. Porsche Racing, Full spectrum – full synergy. Contract to include products that I want. Products I don’t need. Several. Lots. I have pain and suffering to make up for, goddammit.

Two pairs, just enough extra padding with a firm fit so I can cut—double move. Skinny posts.

What about The Ultimate Driving Machine or The Best or Nothing?

Working on it, they said.

Curl route, slant. Jet route. Jet routes.

Stand up. Feel the fit. Adjust the pants. Settle in. Feel loose, quick, agile. I wish I could play with no pads.

And Limitless Freedom?

Who’s that? they asked.

Learjet. Need that. Come on, guys, I said.

Adjust the tit guards.

The rest of the companies I can’t remember right now. They were rattling them off, asking me. Enough. White noise. No. No photos in here. Too close. Too personal. Send them my media kit. Have I approved the media kit?

I said thanks for the updates, now get the fuck out of here.

They did.

Except for the publicist. Quick view of media kit.

Not now, I say.

Real quick, she says. Just approve the Instagram photos.

Okay, I say. I look at them.

You look like a movie star, she says. You’re the one, the chosen one.

Annie Leibovitz can take some kick-ass photos, huh?

She’s the best, she says. Now take a look at a couple more. The cover photo, the press kit photo, Facebook header banner image photo upload, Twitter cover photo…

I’m gonna slice your jugular with a hangnail, I say.

Okay, she says.

And lick the blood out of the air, the arterial spray.

You’re nervous. Now’s not the time, sorry, she says.

You’ll do great, she says. We’re all proud you.

Who’s we? I think. I think it, not say it out loud.

She leaves, thank fucking god.

I heard my breathing. My heart pounding slow and steady. She said I was nervous. She was nervous. I was slowing the world down around me while they are all speeding up. I had hundreds of thoughts to their one. I could slip in between their shadows. Stalk like a specter between their spaces.

Another goddamn knock. Locker room time, the towel boy said.

Dick alert off.

I headed toward the locker room.

My cleats click on the ceramic and the cement. Click-click. Click-click.

My hunger for turf. Real Kentucky perennial, 6.2 pH bluegrass, dense, durable, luxuriant green with firm terra for holding the hooves.

The smell. Its moisture rising, sucked into my nostrils. Where the gazelles graze. No, where they run. Where the lioness lies in wait in the tall grass. Then stalks. Sees. Smells. Sensing the gazelle. Stalking. They are the water buffaloes, flanked by gazelles, surrounded by zebras and hyenas. I am the lioness.

My cleats click. The halls are crowded. Nikons and Canons click and flash. Click and flash. I smile, major teeth.

I’m holding my helmet. The mane of the lioness.

I enter the locker room. All these water buffaloes clap and cheer and holler. They all are hippos in their suits of armor. These triple XL humanoids, coids, and zoids. The anabolic, catabolic metabolic glycobolic infants, breastfed with sterone protein powder laced with animal-part enzyme treatments and creatine fish-oil salads. Main-lined branched-chain amino acids. First grade at Fukushima. Mutation Middle School, Chernobyl College.

I entered the locker room. An extra-large helping of bespoke. “Sophisticated” spaces that keep the mind, balanced, sharp and inspired. Full-grain pull-up vegetable tanned leather from Horween, not the genuine leather crap at Green Bay. It’s a country club for water buffaloes with bling. Buffalo bling.

I have zero bling. What I have is zing.

I see the path right now, from here to there, then that way then the other, jukes all the way.

I see my escape route on the other side.

They are high-fiving me and yapping and hollering and grunting, and growling real guttural, slapping down on my shoulder pads with blunt-force trauma, and I don’t hear a thing.

It’s the real thing. I’m the real thing.

I hear ringing. The ringing in my ears.

I am the lioness.

The agent stopped the audio.

“The lioness?”

He carried the laptop and flash drives to his living room, set them on the coffee table, went to his bar, made himself a drink, returned to the living room, and clicked on the first file.

Celerity File 1

Whenever you conduct an experiment, keep good notes, log your work. Keep a diary. You are a scientist, my father would say.

So, this is my first entry, and I will make up for some of the recent past in this diary, or log, or journal, or lab notes. Whatever this is.

He said you must keep good notes so your colleagues can follow your work.

Except on his deathbed. Then he said to not follow his work. To destroy it all.

My father was a noble man. A brilliant man. A kind man. He was a great father to me, when he was around, that is. We had Hannah to help with me. Hannah, old reliable Hannah. She worked for my dad. Spoke broken English and taught me Swedish. She was there because of my father’s excursions. Excursions to the jungle. Excursions to the Darién.

My father spent weeks at a time in a place called the Darién Gap. He would come home with one tropical affliction or another—infestations, infections, cutaneous larva migrans, things moving on his skin. These were protozoa, arthropods, bacteria, fungi. I think he even had scabies, so when he died, the coroner recommended quick cremation. The big fire. Did you know that cremation leaves behind an average of about two and a half kilograms of stuff. The remains, the ashes, they call it cremains. This is not actual ash, though. It is a pile of unburnt fragments of bone mineral. The coroner told me exotic viruses, or any virus, for that matter, could not survive a fifteen-hundred-degree retort.

We only had one bathroom in our house in midtown Ventura, and it was filled with benzyl benzoate and malathion. That’s zero five percent in an aqueous base. Also, crotamiton cream and sulfur ointments.

I would get up before sunrise for my Cougars track workouts at Ventura High School. One time, half awake, I brushed my teeth with gamma benzene hexachloride—radiant minty fresh. I wonder if hexachloride whitens teeth while it kills tapeworms?

After graduating from Cabrillo Middle School, a school where you can see the Pacific Ocean—pretty amazing to a kid—I entered Ventura High School and started to run track for the first time. My long legs were an advantage. I ran the 100 meters, the 220, and the 440 relay. Ventura High had produced some Olympic champions and world record holders, so the place had good vibes, winner vibes. They even had some guys who went to the NFL. Guys, that is, of course. When I was a sophomore, I made the women’s varsity track team.

I loved to run. I loved the high from the body’s own internal opiates, the endorphins. Did you know that German researchers used brain scans to identify the prefrontal and limbic regions that are the factory for endorphins? I’m an endorphin junkie. The more the endorphin fix, the better the high. Although I run sprints, I trained with two-hour stints to get the full endorphin release.

During my junior and senior years in high school, when I went to state meets, I saw my real competition. I never won a state meet, but I took a few first losers. One of my coaches, forever nameless, introduced me to that term. The first loser is what he used to say, then would rattle off half a dozen other sports clichés, every one reinforcing my mediocrity. At least, that’s how I took it. He was talking about coming in second. The athlete that comes in second is the first loser. Not “great effort, you tried your best, go get ’em next time” or shit like that. No. Congratulations, you’re the first loser. Go take a shower. Like, wash off the loser layer. Loser layer down the drain.

After being the first or second loser time and time again, my times plateaued. I was eating right, training hard, more than any other girl, but I hit a roadblock. I concluded that my mindset needed to change. That was when I came across the peak performance work of a guy named Tony Tango. Tony was from Ventura, a few years older. When I was a junior in high school, he had become internationally famous, the self-help guru to the celebs. His Fly to Fate rallies filled football stadiums even though they cost big bucks to get in. His weekly retreat deals cost several thousand.

We had no real money to speak of, so I couldn’t go, but two of his books were in the school library. Plus, a real bonus, I convinced my track coach to let me borrow his DVD series. I think Tony spent a few weeks creating a reel of the most popular shaman slogans, psuedoscienceology highlights, Sunday TV gospel money-raiser preacher’s greatest hits, wrapped in persuasion-training Tom Hopkins metaphors, Dale Carnegies’s course on public speaking, topped with two a.m. infomercial one-liners, all with a risk-free, money-back guarantees laced with juicy testimonials from over-the-hill Vegas singers wearing too much makeup and quasi-effective nips and tucks.

But what did I know? I needed a self-help fix, and I got free skag from school—what the hell?

So I started to take control of the communication with myself, self-talk, to control the state I was in, learned how to direct my brain to generate any state of behavior that supports my goalsor needs. I had a serious need to not be a first loser. Tony also talked about how to discover successful models and duplicate them. I figured this stuff might help me shed my loser layer.

The model I wanted to duplicate was Florence Griffith-Joyner, Flo-Jo, who held the world record in the 100- and 200-meter set at the Olympic Games in Seoul. Florence, who was also from the Los Angeles area and went to UCLA, met an untimely tragic death at the age of thirty-eight with a severe epileptic seizure. I had to compartmentalize my modeling so as to not include cavernous hemangiomas, vascular brain abnormalities, or tonic-clonic seizures.

This is because Tony taught me to learn someone’s strategy by observing their visual, auditory, and kinesthetics, but I didn’t want to court death at thirty-eight. Or twenty-eight. Tony said in the Director’s Cut DVD to be very careful what you send to your powerful subconscious, because it does not judge. You could send images of seizure by mistake, and one day you will be walking down Main Street to get an Acai Energy with double wheatgrass at Blenders, and seize up, drooling foam, shaking and vibrating like a Magic Fingers bed in the no-tell motel. That’s what Tony said. I added the last part. So, Tony said this was the way to get anything I wanted, achieve my mental mastery, or master my mind, or mind what I find. I was not clear on the last part, but I figured that was one of those “when the disciple—strike that—the student is ready, the master will appear” type of things. Or worst case, it was in the premium package, limited-time offer.

Tony helped me. Not personally, of course, but in the DVDs, with the modeling strategy, and Flo-Jo went to UCLA, so that’s where I went. I had the grades to get in, and the track coach said maybe in my second year I might get some tuition help (bait and switch) depending on how I did. I created my dream board and my goals sheets. SMART goals. That’s specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and timely. Another Tangoism, but he didn’t create that, just put his own spin on it. I had to return the DVDs to Coach, so I recorded them onto my phone. I listened to Tony every morning and during my workouts so my journey would align with my dream-vision goal-outcome. Tony said it is easy to get off track.

He was right.

About a year before my father’s death, Bolt and I came back to Ventura for a visit. Bolty, a Shepherd-border collie mix, was my best friend—other than my father, that is. I had not seen my father for a while. So we went over to the house. My key no longer worked, which had never happened before, so I knocked.

His truck was in the driveway, but he didn’t answer the door. I hadn’t called ahead—wanted to surprise him. I walked around the back of our house, and the gate was locked, so I climbed over the fence. I could see into the greenhouse, and he was in the very back with Estaphan, and they were tying up a large pitcher plant, like ten feet tall, with ropes, throwing ropes at it like lassoing a calf. This was about two months before Estaphan disappeared.

My father said Estaphan went back to Mexico to take care of his mother. He told people in town that, I think.

Except Estaphan was from Panama.

Hannah called me when I was living off-campus at UCLA.

That’s really when everything started.

Before the call, my life was mid-sized beach-town storybook, except for the one dead parent and being raised by an overworked part-time father. When I was fourteen, I was pretty much self-actualized. I knew how to cook, clean, use Quicken to pay house bills online, do my father’s taxes. I could even drive his old pickup.

I was tall for my age.

Fast-forward to when Hannah called. I was living off-campus in Westwood, taking a shower after a track workout, Tony Tango in my earbuds, before my green kale concoction I’d made in the old Vitamix my father gave me. It smelled like some kind of weird chloroform super wheatgrass blend, aged and half rotten. I got some low-grade acid from the UCLA science lab to clean the canister.

I had all the greens out on the kitchen counter, then decided to shower first since I was reeking of sweat. So I left the kale and the beets and the ginger and the rest out on the counter and took a shower. That’s when Hannah called.

My phone was on my dresser, adjacent to the bathroom, so I heard it.

She said my father had a coughing spell and collapsed in his number three greenhouse in the back. That was the largest greenhouse. The one with the oversized big-gulp tropical plants that he hybridized from seed from who knows where, probably the Darién.

He was in the Ventura Hospital ER. She called and told me all this. That’s when I knew something bad happened with my father. That’s when this all started. My dream-vision on-track life took a turn. Tony said when this type of thing happens, to work on changing my state. I have the power to change my state at any moment. Or fake it. I’m figuring it’s kinda like that Strasberg acting thing in New York where Brando went and you blend all the mental shit together, real powerful. I tried for about two seconds, but it didn’t work. My state was panic, and there was no faking it. The panic had the power.

When Hannah called, my earth stood still, air suspended in my lungs, my eyes fixed on nothing, unable to blink, every muscle rock. That was my state.

When Hannah called.

I call it Ventura Hospital, but they changed the name some time, I don’t know when, to the New Community Memorial Hospital. That’s where I had to go after Hannah called. I had a very used Ford pickup, a hand-me-down from my dad after he got a new used fifteen-year-old pre-owned one. Mine was a twenty-five-year-old pre-owned. Painted three times. Rebuilt, refurbished, renewed, no ninety-day guarantee like my Anaconda new old renewed cell phone. It was a beat-up old truck, but it got me from Westwood to Ventura. I dropped Bolt off at my father’s house and sped to the New Community Memorial Hospital that was not really new. To the refurbished hospital.

The ER was overflowing with people who could not speak English. What happened? I say.

What do you mean? the woman at the sign-in window said.

Was there an accident somewhere, like a factory? I say.

She laughed. Oh, no, young lady, she says. It’s like this every day. What’s wrong with you?

My father, I said.

They handed me a mask, and I snaked my way back to his bed. The curtain was open, he was sitting up in bed. He frowned at me.

I told Hannah not to bother you. I’m getting out of here, he said.

What happened?

Slipped on leaf cuttings, he said.

Yeah, right. The skin on his arms looked worse than the last time. I tell him. Lesion city. Jungle rot.

Dry skin eczema, he said.

Uh-huh, I say.

I have lotion for it at home

Lotion? Looks like you need Roundup, I say.

Got him laughing. That was good.

They wheel him away for tests.

I say I’ll wait in the lobby. I lied. He says okay. I fake like I’m walking out.

I look at his chart. I look at the computer monitor.

I knew from my previous research that leukemia was the most common cancer type among indigenous men of the Amazon basin. Cancer of the cervix uteri was common among indigenous women. Indigenous men were at lower risk of stomach, skin, and prostate cancers. Indigenous women, I learned, were prone to stomach cancer, and also breast, cervix, and lymph node diseases. More than American women.

Good to know, he would say.

You are not indigenous, I would say. How much time in the bush qualifies you for some level of indigenous rating? I say.

None of this is relevant.

My father doesn’t have leukemia.

I see SCC on the chart. Squamos cell carcinoma.

Intense tropical sun meets careless Caucasian scientist—decades of exposure.

I studied chemistry and biology in high school. I mean, I liked those subjects. I was a biology major at UCLA when Hannah called. When I got my father home, he said we’ll talk in the morning. Can you stay?

I said of course. I spoke to Hannah before she went home. My father had been sick for a while. While he slept, I found his medical files in his office.

My mother died when I was young. I never allowed myself to have conscious thoughts, a sense of reality of my father dying. He was strong and outdoorsy and a survivalist and had been through small plane crashes and jeep accidents. The rapid river overturns and near-drownings and a bull shark bite and broken bones and falls down waterfalls and jungle poisonings. Too many to count, and he looked like an old Laird Hamilton with wrinkles and skin problems. He would never die. He would outlive me. I never really thought that or thought about it, but if I had, that’s what I would have thought.

I read his medical files that night. While he slept.

I still have a small grant from the university. There’s not any real money to speak of, and don’t follow my work, is what he said to me at breakfast the next morning.

I cried.

He did not.