Revenant Rising by M. M. Mayle Read Free Book Online Page A

the story was about other than for it offering the chance to shout out the tagline each of the many times it was repeated in a telling.
    “A wig and a wag and a long leather bag!” Hoop whoops, giving notice—fittingly enough—to a small band of crows.

SIX
    Morning, March 30, 1987
    In an examination room done up to resemble a posh lounge, Colin Elliot is alone for the first time in forty-eight hours. He’s relaxed in a leather wing chair, uncaring of how long it might be before someone comes to collect him. He scans the room for reading material, spots only a few technical journals, so it’s twiddle his thumbs or rely on his own resources.
    From an inside pocket of his suit coat he takes out a small photo wallet that’s a bit thicker than usual for containing an assortment of scribbled notes to himself. Some are on scrap paper, one is on a cocktail napkin, another is on a page torn from a flight magazine. The most significant of the lot is in the form of a newspaper cutting.
    He unfolds the cutting to read for the tenth or twentieth time that he’s the only nominee who was not invited to perform his musical entry at the annual awards ceremony of the American Institute of Performing and Creative Artists scheduled to take place in Los Angeles on Monday, March 30, 1987. Today.
    Retaining the cutting beyond today rather martyrs him to the insult, but he nevertheless folds it back inside the photo wallet along with the other notes and reminders. He’s pocketing the wallet when Nate Isaacs bursts into the room.
    “Well?” Nate says, surveying a half-circle of chairs recently occupied by top-tier medical staff of Denver’s Fortescu Clinic, “How’d it go?
    “We had a nice chat with them all pretending they weren’t scrutinizing me—weren’t fucking evaluating me. And that’s what I get for wantin’ to show a bit of direct gratitude to the blokes.”
    “Jesus, Colin, can you blame them for wanting to look you over? You’re considered one of their most notable successes.”
    “Must I remind you the credit’s not theirs alone—that the new wing I’m funding’s gonna be called the Isaacs Wing for the Study and Treatment of Noninvasive Brain Trauma?”
    “Must I remind you that I’m accepting the honor under protest because, first of all, the credit’s not mine alone either, and second of all, as benefactor your name should—”
    “Can you spare me the first and second-of-all shit I’ve already heard way more times than I deserve? I thought this argument was left in Portage St. Mary yesterday when we dedicated the trauma center there with your name on it.”
    “Speaking of—I thought yesterday went well, didn’t you?”
    “As well as it could, considering nothing there was faintly familiar to me and what happened there exists only in other people’s memories.”
    “That did occur to me when you finally agreed to attend the dedications . . . It did, in fact, cross my mind that everyone you’d meet would be a stranger despite their knowing full well who you are.”
    “As if that hasn’t been the case for most of my adult life.”
    “I came to the same conclusion.”
    “Bloody brilliant, you are. Now come to some conclusion about why we’re still sitting here nattering away.”
    “They’re sending someone from administration to give us a grand tour of the facility before the noon luncheon with the senior staff.”
    “That’s a treat I’ll have to miss.”
    “But you can’t, it’s in your honor!”
    “They won’t miss my luster when it’s found out the story they want to hear has to come from you.”
    “And where do you intend to be?”
    “I’ll be on my way to Las Vegas with Bemus, actually.”
    “ What ? You can’t do that.”
    “Yeh, I can. Denver’s not that far from Vegas, and when the time difference is factored in I can damn near arrive there before I leave here. And Bemus—you’re not gonna deny him a little break in the action after all the shit he puts up with day in