CyberStorm Part 2

"Really?"

She sighed and looked down into her coffee. "A partner-track position at Ropes and Gray."

"I didn't know you applied."

"I didn't-"

"I'm not moving to Boston, Lauren. I thought the whole idea of us coming here was for you to start your own life."

"It was."

"I thought we were trying for another one, a little brother or sister for Luke? Isn't that what you wanted?"

"More what you wanted."

I looked at her in disbelief, my vision of our future together unraveling in just one sentence. But there had been more than one uncomfortable sentence lately. My stomach knotted.

"I'm going to be thirty this year," she added. "Opportunities like this don't come often. It could be my last chance to have a career."

Silence while we stared at each other.

"I'm going to the interview."

"That's all the discussion?" My heart began to race. "Why? What's going on?"

"I just told you why."

We stared at each other in a mutually accusatory silence. Luke began to fuss in his chair.

Lauren sighed, her shoulders sagging. "I don't know, okay? I feel lost. I don't want to talk about it right now."

I relaxed, and my pulse began to slow a little.

Lauren looked at me. "I'm going for brunch with Richard to talk about some ideas he had for me."

My pulse raced again, my cheeks flushing.

"I think he beats Sarah."

Her eyes flashed angrily. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Did you see her arms at the barbecue? She was covering up. I saw bruises."

Shaking her head, she snorted, "You're being jealous. Don't be ridiculous."

"What should I be jealous of?" I shot back angrily.

Luke began to cry.

"I'm going to get dressed," she said dismissively, shaking her head. "Don't ask stupid questions. You know what I mean."

Ignoring me, she leaned down and kissed Luke, whispering that she was sorry, she didn't mean to yell, and that she loved him. Once she'd calmed Luke down, she gave me an evil look and stalked off into the bedroom, closing the door heavily behind her.

Sighing, I turned toward Luke and picked him up. I eased his head onto my shoulder and began to pat his back softly.

"Why did she marry me, huh, Luke?" I whispered under my breath.

I answered my own question.

"Ah, yes, well, we've got you, don't we, big bruiser?"

With two or three sniffling sighs, I felt his little body relax into me.

"Come on. Let's take you over to see Ellarose and Auntie Susie."

December 8.

"HOW MANY OF these are there?"

"Fifty. And that's just the water."

"You're kidding. I've only got half an hour before I need to be upstairs for the sitter."

Chuck shrugged. "I'll ring Susie. She can watch Luke."

"Great," I replied sarcastically as I struggled down the stairs holding four-gallon containers of water in each hand. "So two hundred gallons of water you're paying five hundred dollars a month to store?"

Chuck owned several Cajun-fusion restaurants in Manhattan, and you'd have thought he could store stuff at one of them, but he said he needed to have it close. A card-carrying member of the Virginia Preppers couldn't be too careful, he liked to say. He had some decidedly non-New Yorker sensibilities.

His family was from just south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He was an only child, and his mother and father had died in a car accident just after he finished college, so when he met Susie, they'd decided on a new start and had come to New York. My own mother had pa.s.sed away when I was in college, and I'd barely known my father. He'd left when I was a kid, so my brothers had pretty much raised me.

Our similar family situations had bonded us when we met.

"That's about the size of it," laughed Chuck, "and I'm lucky I got this extra locker."

He snickered watching my efforts.

"You need to hit the gym a little more, my friend."

I trudged down the last few steps to the bas.e.m.e.nt. Where the rest of our complex was beautifully decorated and maintained-manicured j.a.panese gardens next to the gym and spa, an indoor waterfall at the entrance, twenty-four-seven security guards-the bas.e.m.e.nt was decidedly utilitarian. The polished oak steps leading down from the back entrance gave way to a rough concrete floor with exposed overhead lighting. I guess it was because n.o.body really ever went down there.

n.o.body, that was, except Chuck.

I halfheartedly laughed at his jab, not really listening to him. My mind was turning over and over, thinking about Lauren. When she and I had met at Harvard, anything had seemed possible, but it seemed to be slipping away.

Today she'd gone for the interviews in Boston and was spending the evening with her family there. Luke had been at preschool this morning, but I hadn't been able to find a sitter for the afternoon, so I'd returned home from work. Lauren and I had some heated exchanges over her going to the interviews, but there was more to it than that.

There's something she's not telling me.

Down the end of the hallway, I stopped and elbowed open the door to Chuck's storage locker. With a grunt I lifted my two water jugs and stacked them on top of the pile he'd started.

"Pack 'em tight," said Chuck, waddling up behind me with his own load. He stacked his in, and we turned to go back and get more.

"Did you see that stuff online today?" asked Chuck. "Wikileaks publishing Pentagon plans for bombing Beijing?"

I shrugged, still thinking about Lauren. I remembered the first time I saw her walking between the red-brick campus buildings of Harvard, laughing with her friends. I'd just gotten into the MBA program, using money I'd earned from selling my stake in a media start-up, and she'd just started the law program. We'd both been filled with dreams of making the world a better place.

"They're making a lot of noise about it in the media," continued Chuck, still talking about the Pentagon leak, "but I don't think it's a big deal. Just role-playing exercises."

"Uh-huh," I replied, my mind not able to move away from Lauren.

Soon after we met, heated discussions in Harvard Square beer halls had led to pa.s.sionate nights. I'd been the first of my family to attend university, never mind Harvard, and I'd known she was from some old-money family, but at the time it hadn't seemed relevant. This was America, after all, and my star was rising. She'd wanted to escape from the confines of her family, and I'd wanted everything she represented.

We'd married quickly after graduation, eloped, and moved to New York. Her father hadn't been impressed. Almost as soon as we married, Luke had been conceived-an accident. A happy accident, but one that had dramatically changed the new world we'd barely settled ourselves into.

"You haven't heard a word I've said, have you?"

By then Chuck and I were standing on the sidewalk of Twenty-Fourth Street after exiting the back entrance to our building. It was raining, and the icy gray skies matched my mood. Just a week ago it had been warm, but the temperature had sharply dropped.

This section of Twenty-Fourth, less than two blocks from Chelsea Piers and the Hudson River, was more of a back alley. Parked cars lined both sides of the narrow street below windows covered in mesh grills, and the sound of cars honking floated down from Ninth Avenue in the distance.

To one side of our building there was some kind of a taxi repair shop, and a small gang of men stood outside under the grimy awning, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Chuck had arranged for his delivery of water to be shipped to the garage.

"Are you okay?" asked Chuck, gently clapping me on the back.

We wound our way through the taxi drivers and mechanics to his pallet, off to one side of the garage, and picked up some more containers of water.

"Sorry," I replied after a pause, grunting as I picked up my load. "Lauren and I-"

"Yeah, I heard from Susie. So she's off for an interview in Boston?"

I nodded. "We live in a million-dollar condo, but it's not good enough. When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, I couldn't even imagine living in a million-dollar home." I worked as a junior partner in a venture capital fund specializing in social media, and affording the condo was a stretch on my salary, but at the same time I didn't feel like I could afford anything less.

"Neither could she, and by that I mean only a million-dollar home," he laughed. "Hey, you knew what you were getting into."

"And she's always off with Richard when I'm working."

Chuck stopped and put down his water containers.

"Cut that short. I agree he's a creep, but Lauren is totally not like that."

He swiped his badge past the security device on the back entrance. When it didn't work after two tries, he rummaged around in his pockets for a key.

"Stupid thing doesn't work half the time," he muttered under his breath. He opened the door and turned to me. "Just give her some time and s.p.a.ce to figure it out. Turning thirty is a big deal for women."

I walked in ahead of him while he held the door open.

"I guess you're right. Now what were you talking about?"

"The news today. Things are getting totally out of hand in China. Have you been watching? More burning flags outside emba.s.sies, ransacking American stores. FedEx said they had to stop operations in China, even delivery of vaccines for the bird flu outbreak, and now Anonymous is threatening to attack them in retaliation."

Anonymous was the citizen hacktivist group we'd been reading about more and more in the news. We'd reached the storage locker again, and we stacked the water containers.

"That why you're stocking up?"

"Just a coincidence, but I also read that cyberattacks on the Department of Defense have stepped up an order of magnitude."

"DoD's getting attacked?" I asked, concerned. He'd obviously been researching the cyber world ever since I brought it up at the barbecue. "Is it serious?"

"Not really. It gets attacked millions of times a day, but it's getting more targeted. Makes me nervous someone is planning something in meats.p.a.ce."

"Meats.p.a.ce?"

He smiled.

"The internet is in cybers.p.a.ce, but we," he said slowly, pausing for effect, "are in meats.p.a.ce, get it?"

We opened the back door and walked out into the rain again.

"G.o.d help us, now you have something new to be paranoid about."

Chuck laughed. "Only yourself to blame."

We walked back to the garage and found Rory, our neighbor, talking to one of the men.

"Thirsty?" laughed Rory. He must have seen us lugging the containers. "What's all the water for?"

"Just like to be prepared," replied Chuck. He nodded at the man Rory was talking to.

"Mike, this is Stan. He runs the garage here."

I reached out to shake Stan's hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Not sure how much longer I'll be running this joint," said Stan as I shook his hand. "The way things are going."

"Used to be we had Bob Hope and Johnny Cash," sympathized Chuck. "Now we have no hope and no cash."

"Ain't that the truth," laughed Stan, and all the cabbies around the entrance laughed too.

"You need any help?" asked Rory.

"Naw, thanks, man," replied Chuck. "Not too much left."