The Crash of Hennington. Patrick Ness
wouldn’t do it without making her pay.
Max Latham was trying to become Mayor of Hennington, but he wasn’t trying very hard. He still wasn’t sure if his heart was in it, which he often thought should have been proof enough that his heart most definitely was not in it. There was the sticky question of destiny, though. He had worked for Cora nearly thirteen years, since he was fresh out of law school, first as an intern with a brilliant mind for policy – if a little less so for politics – then as an advisor, then as Chief of Parks, until his current position as Deputy Mayor, the youngest person ever to have held such a post. Now, with Cora retiring after twenty adored years in office, everything had crystalized, just at this moment, for him to fulfill an awaiting slot in history, to step forward and seize the waiting gold ring, to set so many records atumble.
If elected, and as there was no present credible competition and as he was riding on Cora’s enormous popularity, getting elected seemed almost foregone, he would be Hennington’s first Rumour Mayor, quite a coup when Rumours were still, if you believed the census takers, a minority in the city. He would also be the youngest Mayor ever in the Recent Histories, beating the record by the two years he was younger than the previous recordholder, Cora, on her first election. Max had yet to even breach forty. More esoterically, Max would also be Hennington’s first unmarried Mayor, the mother of his daughter having drowned before plans for their wedding could be finished. All these impressive footnotes that would be for ever attached to his name.
And yet.
He looked in his rearview mirror for a glimpse of Talon, piqued in the back seat.
—How’re you feeling, sweetheart?
—My head weighs a hundred pounds.
—We’re almost home. Let me know if you need to throw up again.
—Okay.
Talon at ten was the spitting image of her father, high cheekbones, dark wavy hair, skin on the lighter side of the usual Rumour tan. But she had her mother’s chin cleft, a mark that could still spark fresh pain in him when he saw it, even all these years later. Max slowed his car to watch The Crash, still so magnificent after uncountable sightings, wander across to a side street. He idled to a stop as the last animals lumbered through the intersection. The Rhinoherd shuffled along with them twenty paces behind.
—Look, honey. The Crash.
—I can’t sit up, Daddy.
—Of course, sweetie, I’m sorry. We’re almost home.
Was not being sure if you wanted to run for Mayor a good sign that you shouldn’t run for Mayor or a good sign that you had enough self-doubt and introspection that you were in fact a perfect candidate for Mayor?
—Daddy?
—Yes, sweetie?
The sounds of coughing. Max turned around and stroked the back of Talon’s head while she retched into the bag the doctor had given her.
—Just take your time, honey. It hurts less if you relax.
He felt sweat dampening her hair as he stroked it.
—Take all the time you need to, sweetheart. We’ve got all the time in the world.
Jacqueline Strell sat in her office and bathed in numbers. They flooded her desk in wave after wave, pages of numbers blocked in charts, scraps of numbers scribbled in pencil, computer analyses of numbers bracketed and cross-referenced to other rivers of numbers filed away in the cabinets behind her, numbers on cards, numbers on machine readouts, numbers on computer screens, numbers on the desk itself put there when, in a flurry of activity, Jacki chose not to flip over a page but continued onto the hard wood. Even her fingernails sported numbers, whimsically painted there this morning when she was in a whimsical mood. The time was rapidly approaching when she would need more whimsy. Oh, yes.
Her office nestled in the back half of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort Administration Building. She loved it. Spacious table tops flung out from her desk in wings towards her office door, room enough to keep the flood of numbers churning and churning in their never-ending whirlpool. Cabinets lined the three walls behind her and to her right and left, streams and cauldrons of bubbling, stirring, steaming numbers. She had fourteen different clocks decorating her walls, all set to the same time but all with different number fonts.
This was the reason Jacki was an accountant: she, alone among everyone else she had ever known, understood infinity. This understanding was innate. No epiphany, no trumpet blast of the everlasting had ever filled her brainpan. The eternal had always whiled away its time in her gray matter. She had been intimate with the infinite from the time she could even speak such words. The human mind was not supposed to be able to truly grasp the never-ending, but she could close her eyes and set her mind running off into forever, tripping lightly away on a line with no beginning and no end.
This was the reason Jacki understood infinity: she understood numbers. Infinity, aside from its unfathomable physical existence, could only and would only ever be expressed in numbers. Jacki looked scornfully on the small-minded ‘appreciation’ of the layman towards an infinite set. ‘Really, really big, then even bigger'. They didn’t see it. Jacki saw it. More, she felt it, smelled it, could almost touch it. Numbers adding and adding and adding and adding exponential upon exponential upon exponential and then all those numbers were still as nothing because infinity remained, brightly spilling itself infinitely forward.
Jacki leaned back in her chair and sighed. She was tall, generously boned, with loopy brown hair that matched the gawky, unconfined sprawl of her body. She rubbed her hand across her high forehead, inside which was an increasingly throbbing ache. Yes indeedy, it was time for whimsy again, most definitely. She opened the top drawer of her desk and pulled out a vial and syringe. With practiced movements, she filled the hypodermic, tapped it for bubbles, raised the hem of her skirt, and injected her thigh with 50ccs of the purest Forum you could get anywhere in Hennington.
Because there were three more things about Jacki:
1) Besides being an accountant with a comprehension of infinity, she was totally, utterly, wholly, paralytically and absolutely addicted to Forum.
2) Because of this, Jacki also worked as a prostitute for her boss, Thomas Banyon, biological son of Archie Banyon and general manager of the Hennington Hills Golf Course and Resort, lent out to clients to feed a specific need, thereby pleasing Thomas and causing him to provide her with more Forum, although of course never quite enough. These shifts were in addition to the full day’s work she put in as Thomas’ Head Accountant. Never let it be said that Thomas Banyon lacked a darkling sense of humor.
3) And all of this was true because, at age forty-one, with her youngest child fifteen years old, Jacki still produced, on a daily basis, nearly two pints of breast milk, and there were a surprising number of men who would pay a surprising amount of money for just such a delicacy. Thomas Banyon was not a man to let potential income go unexploited.
Her phone rang. Alone in her office, she mouthed an expletive.
—Hello?
—Jacks.
Jacki frowned, but the Forum was already dribbling its way through her veins and she began to feel her consternation melt away, butter in boiling water.
—Yes, Mr Banyon?
—I have a clip for you tonight. Are you up for it?
As if there was a choice involved.
—Of course, Mr Banyon. It would be my pleasure.
—It’s Councilman Wiggins. You remember the good Councilman, don’t you?
Remember?