The Tesla Legacy (6 page)

“Hello.” The taller of the two was Indian, with thick black hair, a good-looking face, and large brown eyes. “I’m Professor Patel, and this is Professor Egger.”

Vivian felt like she was back in school. “Vivian Torres.”

The bald man with the crazy beard held out his hand for a shake. He, too, wore a black suit, but had paired it with an egg-yolk-yellow bow tie that looked jarring at a funeral. He’d taken off his jacket earlier, but he’d put it back on for the service. “I’m Professor Egger, but you can call me Eggy. Everyone else does.”

Well, that explained the tie. An inside joke.

“Please tell us you are a mysterious beauty who helped to ease George’s last hours.” Patel smiled. “Give some old men hope.”

“I’m a colleague of his son’s,” she said. “I never met Professor Tesla, Senior.”

Egger looked as if he held back a smile. “Ah, Professor Tesla.”

He stressed the last name in a way that piqued her interest. “He didn’t like being a Tesla?”

“To the contrary, he loved being a Tesla very much.” Egger straightened his bow tie.

“He wasn’t, of course.” Patel had a slight Indian accent.

“Wasn’t what?” Vivian wished she’d turned the phone off. She had a feeling Joe wouldn’t want to hear whatever was coming.

“In America, you can change your name to whatever you want.” Egger fussed with his yellow tie again. “I could be George Washington if I wanted to.”

Chapter 6

People swirled around Joe, heading for the doors, the tracks, the shops. Everyone was in transit to somewhere else. He was as stuck here as the clock or the light fixtures.

He sighed. He’d get back outside again someday. For now, he was waiting to meet his mother for dinner. They’d set the time and place when he talked to her at the funeral, but he’d kept his phone out of its Faraday cage since in case she changed the plans.

His phone rang, and he glanced at the screen, expecting to see a picture of his mother, but it was Celeste. A picture of her from the days when they dated in college flashed across the screen. Her smile still gave him butterflies.

He couldn’t talk to her here. Her voice was hard to hear under the best conditions.

With Edison at his heels, he scooted across the concourse to the Biltmore Room, also known as the Kissing Room. Originally, passengers met in this room to travel to the luxurious Biltmore Hotel. Later, it became a meeting place for families waiting for incoming troops—a place to kiss them hello. These days the room was usually deserted, but the station had plans to restore it into a new hub. For now, it was the only quiet place in the concourse.

He sat down next to an abandoned shoeshine stand. He liked the Biltmore Room, not just because he cherished the quiet, but also because it was a time capsule—from its old-fashioned signs to the slate board with the arrival and departure times of long-forgotten trains printed in dusty chalk.

He called Celeste back and listened to the faraway ringing. Edison sat next to him, attentive and on duty.

“Hello!” said Celeste in her now-breathy voice. She had good days and bad days since she’d been diagnosed with ALS, but even the good days weren’t that good anymore. Still, she sounded stronger than yesterday.

“Greetings,” he answered.

“Are you home?” she asked. “Haunting the old boards?”

“I can’t go down right now. They’re inspecting the elevator, so I can plummet to my death with the proper inspection certificate in front of me.”

“That elevator is perfectly safe! It hasn’t killed anyone in over a hundred years.”

“Makes it due. Those ancient cables will snap. Game over.”

“I think that’s only happened one time. The Empire State Building, in 1945 when a B-25 bomber crashed into it and damaged the cables. How likely is that to happen
underground
?” A quick wheeze told him she’d spoken too long.

“Have to be prepared for every eventuality.” His sentences always got shorter when she was out of breath, as if he could make hers shorter, too.

“Including the final one. How was the funeral?”

“Lightly attended. And I found out my father, and by extension me, isn’t descended from the great Tesla at all.”

“All those years of ‘do better, you’re a Tesla’ have come to naught?” She didn’t sound as shocked as he felt.

“My father’s last name was Smith. I looked it up online, and I think I might be descended from Tesla’s pigeon keeper.”

Tinkles of laughter came down the phone line, followed by coughs.

Joe glanced over at a sign that read
eppie’s shoeshine & repair
. The little man on the sign was poised to drive a nail into a giant shoe to fix it. If only it would be so easy to fix Celeste.

“What the hell did you say to her?” That wasn’t Celeste. It was her brother, Leandro. Joe and Leandro had been friends for years, but he’d become distant since Joe moved into the family house underneath Grand Central, taking possession of the place Leandro used for annual parties.

“Is Celeste all right?” Joe asked. She gasped out something in the background. He felt guilty for making Celeste waste her breath on him. She had so little to spare. Doctors still had no idea if her ALS would kill her in a matter of months, or if she might linger for years, like Stephen Hawking. They did know that she would never get better.

“It’ll take her a minute to catch her breath,” Leandro said. “You shouldn’t make her laugh like that. It’s not good for her.”

Laughter, not the best medicine. “It wasn’t a laugh line.”

“Two laugh lines: not a Tesla and pigeon keeper,” Leandro chuckled. “Just when you think the mighty can’t fall any further.”

Joe wasn’t sure how to take that, but any way he looked at it, it counted as an insult.

Celeste came back on. “Sorry, darling, that was too funny.”

“Don’t go letting the tragedy of my life’s circumstances cause you to work yourself into a state.”

“Now you’re angry.” She cleared her throat. “But your ancestry is irrelevant. No less an august paper than
The New York Times
called you ‘the reclusive genius who revolutionized law enforcement.’ You are who you are and whether your great-great-whatever-uncle was a famous inventor or not, you’ve left your legacy.”

“That makes it sound like I’m already dead.”

“Aren’t we all?” She coughed again.

“I have a surprise for you,” Joe said.

“Tell me.”

“Can you look out your window?” He’d already written the code to hack the smart lighting fixtures installed in the office building across from her apartment. The security on them was practically nonexistent.

Leandro came on the line. “I’m moving her. It’s not easy, so this better be damn good.”

“I’m at the window,” Celeste said.

Joe pressed a button on his phone. It should run the code he’d set up a week ago.

“Oh.” Celeste sounded surprised. “A heart.”

He’d turned off every light on her side of the building, then turned on only the ones that would form a heart. He’d been saving it for some night, but Celeste often went to bed before the sun went down these days.

“That’s lovely.” He heard the smile in her voice. “A little sappy.”

“I thought you’d say that.” He pressed another button to change to a different set of lights.

Celeste laughed again and then went into another coughing fit.

Was it too much? He didn’t want her to hurt herself.

Leandro’s voice again, and he was laughing, too. “Damn fine work, Joe. You showed my sister a heart, then flipped her off.”

It had worked. Joe tapped another key to restore the building to its original lighting. “She knows what I mean.”

“Thanks, dude.” For the first time in a long time, it sounded like Leandro meant it, but before Joe could say anything else, he hung up.

Edison leaned against his leg and thumped his tail once (cyan). The dog knew he was upset, but how could he not be when he thought about Celeste? She was an incredible, vibrant woman—tough, reckless, and phenomenally talented. Although she’d never needed to work a day in her life, she’d struggled to become an admired artist. Painting was one of the first things the disease had taken from her.

Just as his condition took her from him. They’d dated years before, but he had not been exciting enough for her, and she’d moved on. Now that they both were crippled, they’d become closer than ever, at least emotionally. But physically they would never meet again—she couldn’t leave her penthouse apartment, and he couldn’t get to it. He’d checked all the city plans, and her building was too modern to have steam-tunnel or subway access.

Edison nudged him, and he stood. No point in dwelling on all that he couldn’t have. He should be grateful for what he did. Celeste on the phone was better than no Celeste at all.

“Good dog.” He palmed a treat for Edison.

They walked out through the concourse and down to the Oyster Bar. Joe admired the vaulted ceilings in the restaurant, so different from the rest of Grand Central’s architecture. They’d been state of the art when built, but they looked medieval. He liked that.

Giovanni hurried over. His wavy black hair was artfully disheveled, and his face was flushed. “Mr. Tesla! We have your corner table prepared. I will take you there!”

Joe followed him. He liked to sit in the corner so Edison could lie down next to the wall and be out of everyone’s way. He didn’t want anyone stepping on his dog.

Giovanni tapped a white dog dish on the floor, full of water. “It’s such a hot day! Maybe Edison would like a drink, too? Nice and cold for him.”

Joe thanked him, and Edison gave him a tail wag before ducking his head over the bowl.

Joe listened to the lapping sound of Edison drinking and the clinking of glass and silverware on plates. A low rumble of conversation drifted across the room, and Joe sipped the ice-cold water Giovanni brought him. He felt comfortable here, safe and easy.

He let his phone connect to the network, then answered a few emails from work. He’d had trouble concentrating after the funeral, and emails had piled up. His inbox was a giant conveyor belt. Stacks of messages just kept coming.

His mother was late, of course. He’d learned long ago that she was on time only for her performances. For everything else, the world could wait for her.

But he didn’t want to wait. He wanted to ask her about his father. He picked up his spoon and stared at his big-nosed reflection—a face he must have inherited from the Smiths. So what if he was a Smith instead of a Tesla?

Did it matter?

It mattered. All Joe’s life, his father had pressed and pushed him to be smarter, cleverer, quicker—to be a Tesla. His father’s Tesla obsession had driven his parents apart, and it turns out they were never Teslas to begin with.

Joe was ten years old and sitting in the tiny booth at the front of the trailer. At night, the table leg folded to the floor and the tabletop folded down until it was level with the seats. His mother would take the bedding from its storage bin under the right booth and put it on the tabletop and seats, and Joe would sleep there.

During the day his bed turned back into a table where the family ate dinner and where he sat to do his homework. He always had a lot of homework—his father made sure of it.

Today he was supposed to draw the periodic table from memory using a blue pencil. He had to put in each element name, its symbol, and its atomic number. He drew the grid—18 columns (cyan, purple) and 7 (slate) plus 2 (blue) rows below. He knew the edges—the alkali metals on the left and the noble gases on the right—but then he had to slow down to think of the others.

“You must know this, Joe,” his father admonished. “You are a Tesla. The world expects greatness from you: brilliance, wisdom, and courage.”

“None of the other kids in the show know any of this.” Joe set down the pencil and crossed his arms.

A muscle in his father’s jaw throbbed, and Joe flinched.

“Let me get you a glass of milk.” His father rose and went to the tiny refrigerator. “You’ll think better with some milk.”

Joe didn’t see how milk could help his thinking, but knew better than to say so after his father made that face. His mother was away rehearsing in the tent, and he and his father were alone in the trailer. His father was meaner when they were alone.

His father filled the milk glass, a jelly glass with Barney Rubble painted on the front, but instead of bringing it to the table, he turned his back and hunched his shoulders.

Joe looked out at the red-and-white striped tent pitched several yards away. He’d be safer there. Farnsworth would let him feed Binky the elephant if he shoveled out her cage. Farnsworth was the veterinarian who looked after the circus’s animals, and sometimes the people. Farnsworth drank like Joe’s dad, but it didn’t make him angry. It made Farnsworth funny.

His father set the glass next to Joe’s work. The white milk shone against the pink scar in his palm.

“How did you get that scar on your hand?” Joe asked, as he had often before.

“Hubris.” His father gave his usual answer. “Now drink up.”

Joe took a sip. The milk was so cold it made his lips numb.

“Drink it up,” his father ordered. “It’s good for you.”

Joe drank. His lips and tongue felt weird for a minute, but the feeling went away.

“Now, back to work,” his father said.

Joe ran over the elements, their numbers a blur of colors in his head. He ran his finger across the elements he had completed: Hydrogen, Helium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, and Fluorine. That was a good start.

His heart skipped a beat, then raced. He remembered all the elements at once. He had to get them down before they disappeared. His hand flew across the paper. He filled in square after square. He’d never felt so sure, so smart. His brain raced along like greyhounds he’d once seen at a track. They were nothing but gray streaks.

The door opened, and his mother came in. Her hair was up in a bun like it was when she performed, but she was wearing her old red leotard, the one she wore for practice. The tights had a hole in the left knee.

“What are you writing so fast over there?” she asked. “Secrets?”