The Turning (3 page)

The woman even talked white.

“I’ll just be in the kitchen if you need me.”

Tabatha stood there, studying her sister, like she’d never set eyes on the woman before. “Why are you here?” she asked again.

Alisha had not known what she was going to say until that very moment. But the words were there waiting. As she spoke, she wondered if that was what God had meant when he’d said that he would meet her at the turning.

Alisha said, “I’ve come to apologize.”

Tabatha cocked her head. “Why now? I mean, excuse me for asking, sister. But after all this time, don’t you think you owed me a phone call before turning up out of the blue?”

“Yes. You’re right. And I would have, if I’d thought of it.”

“You didn’t think to call me.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“Two apologies in the space of a minute. After four years of nothing.” Tabatha gave a reluctant wave at the sofa. “I suppose you might as well sit back down.”

She remained where she was. “I was in church this morning.”

“Of course you were. It’s Sunday. Where else would you be?” Tabatha walked to the narrow table by the window, opened a silver box, and pulled out a cigarette and lighter.

Alisha watched her sister light up. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

“Since I was fifteen. We all have our secrets.” The smoke deepened her voice, making it sound sultry. “So you were in church.”

Alisha nodded slowly. “God spoke to me. And said I needed to do this.”

Tabatha eyed her through the smoke. “God takes such a personal interest in your affairs that he tells you to come apologize?”

Normally the acidic cynicism would have been enough to set Alisha alight. In this case, however, she felt nothing. Not even regret. Just a calm so complete she might as well have been seated in her car out front, instead of inside this place where she most certainly did not belong. “That’s right. He does.”

“Any idea why he waited four years to send down that little note?”

“I suppose … Maybe he didn’t think I was ready.”

“But you’re ready now.”

Alisha nodded. “You’re looking good, Tabatha.”

“Money will do that to a person.” She stubbed out the cigarette. “I’m happy, Alisha.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m not going to stand here and have you use this apology as an excuse to tell me I’m living a godless life.”

“I didn’t come here to do anything more than apologize.”

“Not now, not ever. You hear me? I won’t have you sitting on your little church throne and spouting judgment over me or my man. I’m all grown up now, just like you said. I’m living my life. You hear me?
My
life.”

Alisha heard that, and she heard how her sister had waited four long years for the chance to say those words. And the knowledge was enough to send a tear hot as lava rolling down her face. “I’ve missed you. So much.”

Tabatha’s face went through a remarkable transformation. For a brief instant, the determined poise melted like soft wax, and the woman showed a heart that ached. The eyes liquefied, the lips trembled, the hands danced up and around and down. Then Tabatha took a hard breath, and rebuilt the tight facade that fit this room and this world. “In that case, why don’t you join us for lunch. We’re having a few people over.”

“Thank you, Tabatha. That is so sweet of you. I’m happy to accept.”

Alisha just knew it was going to be awful.

NEW YORK CITY

T
rent entered the boardroom behind his boss. The summons to meet with the CEO of their parent organization on a Sunday had caught his supervisor, Darren, completely by surprise. But not Trent. He had been dreaming of this moment for years.

The closest either he or Darren had ever come to Barry Mundrose was watching him on the stage at the annual corporate gathering. Trent knew it had been a huge risk to send their chairman a confidential copy of his recent report. Darren would have fired him outright the day he learned of what Trent had done, except the news arrived with this summons.

Trent’s boss shot him a look of equal parts fury and fear as they passed the lovely receptionist and entered through the double doors. Trent did not care what the man thought. One way or the other, either he got what he wanted inside here, or he was gone.

Trent’s boss survived by playing the turtle. At every sign of trouble, Darren retreated inside his corporate shell. Which was why Trent had not shared with him the news that he had gone around him, and three other layers, to the man himself: Barry Mundrose. CEO of Global Communications.

The second chamber held a trio of desks, two for secretaries and a third for temporary staffers brought in to manage a specific project that had captured Mundrose’s attention. He liked to be close to the action, and planting an executive here meant he could take the new project’s temperature on an hourly basis. Such hands-on direction was the Mundrose trademark. Young staffers who had once sat behind that now-empty desk held any number of senior executive positions, because Mundrose used this place as a training ground, a chance to take the measure of the men and women he intended to lift into the clouds. As Trent passed he shot the desk a hard look, and promised himself for the second time that day,
soon
.

The boardroom held the largest conference table Trent had ever seen, an oval at least thirty feet long. The room held eleven chairs, and nine were arrayed around the far end, occupied by six men and three women. Two empty chairs awaited Trent and his boss at the other end. Lonely. Isolated.

The nine people scrutinized them as the receptionist asked if they wanted anything. Darren responded with a shake of his head. Trent asked for a glass of water.

Barry Mundrose sat in the center position. “Let’s see. You’re in our advertising division—do I have that right?”

Trent’s boss stammered an affirmative.

“All right, gentlemen. You’ve got five minutes to impress us.”

Trent’s boss cleared his throat. “I think I’ll let my associate speak for us both.”

Ever since the summons’ arrival, Darren had raged and threatened and demanded that Trent tell him exactly what he had in mind. Trent’s reply had remained unchanged. “It’s all there in the report. The one you refused to read or even acknowledge.”

Trent rose to his feet—no papers, no pad, nothing. These people would have seen every visual image known to the human race. They were professionals at refusing to be wowed by special effects. His only hope was to give them the bare facts, bring them to the same conclusion he had reached.

“The stats I’ve gathered are all in the report in front of you. The two generations that form our most important audience are also the hardest to reach, and even harder to keep hold of. The attention of Generation Xers and the Millennials wanes so fast, some of our most popular efforts lose traction before the end of their first season.”

Trent spoke very carefully, at a pace that some people found irritating, including his boss. He had no choice in the matter. He’d been born with a cleft palate, and the residual effects meant if he tried to accelerate his speech, he slurred his words. And he intended to be as clear and precise as he possibly could.

Trent gave three minutes to a brief summary of the statistical evidence. He mentioned television shows from the Mundrose line-up that had started huge and faded fast. Films that had been megahits, yet whose spin-offs and sequels had flopped. Magazines that had garnered massive initial readerships, then gone bust in the space of two advertising cycles. Trent used two examples from each of the conglomerate’s main divisions—film, television, advertising and marketing, music, book publishing, magazines and print, electronic games. He listed the exact revenue figures from memory. He had to be right, because at the table’s far end sat the presidents of those seven divisions, along with Mundrose’s son and daughter, who served as his joint executive managing directors. Most people who had witnessed Trent’s ability to recall anything he had either read or seen assumed he had a photographic memory. They were wrong. At an early age, Trent had studied a book about enhancing memorability and applied the lessons. He was not particularly strong, he had few special talents. So he had done the absolute most with what he had. And that had been enough to get him here.

“
Time
magazine recently described these two generations, the X-ers and the Millennials, as the ‘Me-Me-Me generations.’ They are the most self-absorbed people ever known. Some have made a talent of superficiality. Others are very attuned to the disadvantaged and forgotten. With both generations, our standard methods of maintaining customer loyalty don’t work.”

Trent walked over to stand by the window looking out on Times Square. “For us to succeed with this audience, we have to change our entire way of thinking. The Mundrose divisions cannot continue to compete against each other and thrive or even survive. Our audience has become too fragmented. There are too many voices clamoring for their attention. They lose interest too quickly. They have an ingrained cynicism to all forms of commercial promotion.”

Trent moved back to the head of the table, drawing them away from the lights and the milling crowds outside, silenced by the triple-paned glass. To his satisfaction, every head turned with him. Even his boss’s. “The divisions must be united behind one single project. One concept large enough to demand a
joint
effort of
all
divisions, backed by an entire season’s marketing budget.”

The two Mundrose children could not have been more different. The son was narrow in every sense, a ferret-faced man with a greyhound’s lean body, a tight gaze behind grey titanium glasses, and an accountant’s constricted viewpoint. His voice pierced through the room. “You’re suggesting we risk an entire quarter’s revenue on one project. That’s insane. The danger is unacceptable.” The man’s reaction could not have been better if Trent had scripted it.

The daughter, a flame-haired vixen with a raspy tone, was the child who shared her father’s vision and his rapacious appetites. She said, “Not if the project is big enough. Not if the potential for profit balances the risk.”

He waited then, holding his breath. Hoping.

Finally Mundrose said, “So give us this trend.”

He could have leapt upon the table and raced down its length to hug the man. Would have, if there had been any chance of surviving. Instead, he made do with, “The advertising and marketing divisions conduct an annual survey of these two generations, trying to determine what their interests are, what trends are rising and which are falling.”

The Mundrose son snapped, “That is highly confidential information. No one outside the division or this room is supposed to even
know
about those surveys.”

The sister glanced across the father to smirk at her brother. Then she turned back to Trent and nodded.

“What I propose is to turn this on its head,” Trent said. “If all the Global Communications divisions were to unite, it would create the most powerful cultural force on earth.”

Trent’s own audacity struck him with such force, it caused his voice to falter. Barry Mundrose was known to take great pleasure in baiting his divisions, forcing them to fight among themselves. When confronted by the opposition, he did not deny, he did not defend. He bragged. He referred to the Global divisional chiefs as his partially trained pit bulls.

Mundrose said, “Go on.”

It was all the invitation he was likely to receive. “I suggest that we stop
following
and start creating.
We
decide what the next trend is going to be.
We
shape it.
We
sell it.
We
own it.”

His excitement would not allow him to remain still. He started pacing, three tight steps in one direction, three in the other. The acrid electric force was gathered about him, his body a human lightning rod. “Only two issues matter. Can we be first with it—and can we make money from it? The answer to both is an unequivocal yes. But only if we
invent
the concept.”

Mundrose’s daughter was nodding now, her hair reflecting the light from beyond the windows. “We stop following trends and start designing them.”

“Exactly!” Trent strode to the window and punched the thick glass with his fist. “If
all
the marketing forces of
all
our divisions are combined, we have the power to tell the people out there what they are going to believe.”

Barry Mundrose ended the meeting with customary abruptness, rising to his feet. “You. Come with me.”

Darren was caught in mid-rise. “That’s both of us, correct?”

Mundrose did not bother to turn around. “Somebody show that guy the door. Cooper, in here.”

Trent resisted the urge to wave his boss a cheery farewell.

ORLANDO

When Jenny Linn was small, her father had pronounced her Chinese name with pride. Jin-Ahn were the Mandarin characters for “golden peace,” and her father used to sing the words as he danced her on his knee. But her father had moved on to different names for his only child. These days his most common way of referring to Jenny was “troublemaker.”

She pulled up in front of her parents’ home in Isleworth, a prosperous and manicured subdivision south of Orlando’s downtown. She stared at the house for a time. The force that had resonated through her during the morning’s service was still there, but muted now. Which was not altogether a bad thing. Exquisite as it had felt at the time, it had also been equally frightening. As she reached for her purse, she caught sight of the small book her study group had been working through that month. As she rose from her car, she had the distinct impression that the entire month, from reading that first page four weeks earlier, had been leading her to this moment. When she walked up to her front door.

Jenny’s mother, petite and silent and very beautiful, stood on the front portico. Jenny’s great-grandmother had been the daughter of the emperor’s chief advisor, and the first girl child of her lineage whose feet had not been bound, the excruciating process resulting in feet less than four inches long. But the girl’s parents had come to faith in Jesus, and eventually pawned their jewelry to pay for passage to America. Jenny had inherited the fine porcelain skin and silky dark hair and sparkling opal eyes of her mother’s lineage. The tallest woman in her family, Jenny stood just under five feet three inches high.