Flight by Neil Hetzner Read Free Book Online Page A

the
Institute’s doors and beginning the rejuve he should have had so
long ago.
    Joshua Fflowers ruefully thought of how he
might have delayed too long, irrevocably ruined his health, for the
sheer joy of what he was doing at the moment. The old man toyed
with the wheelchair toggle. He turned his head to stare at the
sleek stomach, an abdomen looking almost as stiff as its starched
shirt covering, of Binny Dowdahl. Well-met hale fellow headmaster.
Spinner of dreams. Pocket picker of the rich. Fflowers considered
whether he should request, or demand of Dowdahl, that his duties be
over, but Binny was regaling an Oriental couple looking de la mode
Chinois in their long flame-hued phoenix wings.
    As Fflowers waited for the ineffably charming
Dowdahl to finish his story, he recalled how even Ives Cheredon,
his beloved headmaster from ninety years before, despite being as
brilliant a raconteur as he was essayist and poet, occasionally had
self-loved his words and thoughts to where a tale well told, with
more fillips and flourishes than a Souza march, had made an
assembly seem to last an eternity.
    Feeling his hand move, the old man turned
away from the past to look up, past a short fat body, into a large
eager face, hacked in half by a bad-toothed smile. Except for the
monstrous teeth, the man looked and smelled like a boiled egg.
While he pawed Fflowers hand, the little man sputtered, “Thank you.
Thank you. Yes, as always, I believe our future, our nation’s
future, is now walking, now, this very day, in the hallowed halls
of Bissell. Those hands deserve the best, and you have certainly
given them that. I thank you. Bissell thanks you. Noramica thanks
you. Yes. Yes.”
    “Yes.”
    As Fflowers sent the man on his way, he
wondered when the little enthusiast last had sent a eurollar to the
school. His gaze drifted back to Dowdahl’s starched stomach. The
excursus continued.
    Another hand took Fflowers. He shook and
smiled and shifted his thoughts to something much more
pleasant…Smarkzy. Being back with his oldest friend had been the
high point of the day. He and Vartan had come to Bissell the same
year, 2001. Smarkzy, the sophisticated only son of a New York
investment banker—a banker famous for taking outrageous risks on
untried technologies and earning even more outrageous rewards— had
befriended the poor scholarship student escaping from the skeletal
remains of a Massachusetts mill-town. They met in a Latin class
and, despite their differences in background, found they had much
in common. Both hated sports, abhorred the sweating, swearing
camaraderie. Both loved science—tearing back the veil to reveal
Nature’s close-kept secrets. Both thought the Greeks and Romans,
their art, literature, and history to be far more engaging than the
current product. Vartan was smart, well-bred, well-read, quick with
a quip, slow with a judgment. Smarkzy was…suddenly, the ruminations
stopped. At the edge of Fflowers’ peripheral vision, but no more
than a dozen handshakes away, was his grandson, Jack.
    A small hand, a small distraction.
    “Thank you for your kind act.”
    “Thank you for your kind words.”
    As the next well-wisher approached, Fflowers
looked at Jack, but thought about Jack’s father and his uncle.
Joshua Fflowers despised both his sons, the younger one, Illiya,
for being an indecisive moralist, the older one, Adaman, one for
being immoral. He cared little for his grandson, Illiya’s son, Joe,
but Fflowers truly enjoyed his time with his grandson Jack. Jack
reminded the centenarian of how he was when he was young. Brash,
devious, charming, bright, but not afraid of those who were
brighter.
    The next few guests, whatever they might have
given or pledged to the school, got their money’s worth from Joshua
Fflowers—a firm though twisted grip, funny words, a twinkle in the
eye. Fflowers charmed like he had eighty years before when,
penniless, he had sought to loosen any number of purse-strings to
pursue his mad