Undo by Joe Hutsko (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

old friend calling just to say hello, to ask for a few notes, all along up to his old playful tricks.

Could it be possible? Were they really onto something? Something that William could perhaps enlist to save ICP from the switch Matthew Locke had just thrown?

Jones. That was the mistake he had allowed Matthew to make. A mistake that would now work in his favor.

Perhaps you were right, Matthew, William mused, sliding his fingertip to an appended e-mail file. He opened it and searched for Matthew’s very first message to him after the board meeting in which Jones had been voted out of Wallaby. There it was. Though Matthew had tried to persuade Jones to stay on at Wallaby, his exact words in the message were, “We’ll succeed regardless.”

You may be right, Matthew, William thought silently. He slid his fingertip over to a tiny card-file icon on the screen, typed “Holmes” on the keyboard and tapped the find icon.

He tapped the phone icon and the Joey’s modem dialed Byron Holmes’s telephone number. As he waited for his old friend to answer, he stared at his fingertip resting comfortably on the trackpad. A sudden awareness hit him as if somehow he had just solved a puzzle that had been silently challenging him for a long time, that Wallaby without Peter Jones was as unsound as a the Joey without its sleek intuitive trackpad.

Grace answered, and they exchanged a few moments of courteous conversation then William asked for Byron.

“He’s in his play room. I’ll tell him to pick up.”

A moment later, Byron came on the line. “Hi, Billy.”

“Byron, how are things coming along?” William asked.

“Oh, not bad. You know, too cold to fish, mostly sitting around the house, stoking a fire.”

“Right,” William said, knowing he couldn’t just pop Byron’s cap open without a little playing. “And in your spare time, how’s your hobby coming along?”

“Well, now, Billy, is there something you’re curious about?”

“Yes, there is.” He decided to come right to the point with his old friend, to simply ask for his help. “I’m very interested in what you and Peter Jones are working on.”

“It’s good stuff, Billy, though we’ve had a little bit of a pause.”

“What kind of pause?”

“Petey had to go back to California. Had some business to deal with.”

California: Wallaby. Was there more to Matthew Locke’s scheming? Had he persuaded Jones to come back to Wallaby, to rejoin him in leading the company? That would explain Matthew’s newfound resolution to go it alone, without ICP. After all, wasn’t Jones the one who had been so resistant to ICP all these years?

“Back to Wallaby?”

“Hell, no. Quite the contrary. Petey started selling off his Wallaby stock yesterday to fund our project.”

William knew that Jones’s stock sale would yield millions of dollars, many digits, the sort of lengthy figures required for serious development. Things were coming along, then. Which meant that they were probably well on their way to a real product design after all.

“He’s selling the stock because he was disgusted that you and Wallaby are in a deal together,” Byron said. “He predicts that you’re going to buy them in less than a year, and he doesn’t want any of his money going to that. Nothing personal, Billy. It’s Locke he’s angry with.”

Touche, William thought, ironically pleased that Jones’s speculation was right on target. He dabbed his forehead with a fresh tissue. “Byron, I’d like to make a proposition.”

“Shoot.”

“I’d like to have a look at what you are working on. When you are ready, of course.”

“Hmm. I like that idea, Billy, but I don’t know if Petey would feel the same way.”

“Byron, listen to me,” William plunged on, pulling out all stops. “The Wallaby announcement is meant as a temporary solution. We want to come out with our own system that will do everything the Joey can, but more.”

“Billy, you don’t sound so good. Are you all right?”

“No, Byron. I’m not. I’m asking you for a favor, from one old friend to another. Let me have a look at what you’re working on.”

“Well, since you put it that way, let me see what I can do. I think I can get Petey to agree to let you have a peek.”

“When?”

“That I don’t know. A little while. He needs some time to himself to take care of some personal business.”

“Fair enough,” William said, and said good-bye.

He glanced out the window at the World Trade Center. This may be the best way, he reasoned. After all, the portable system stationed before him had been invented by Jones. And even if his plan to acquire Wallaby had worked, wouldn’t he have been plagued with worry over Jones’s next step?

Perhaps this time, he pondered as he gazed out the window, he would get the strategic ally he had been after all along. Peter Jones.

 

*

 

Peter stared absently at the clock mounted high on the yellow cinderblock wall. Following the second hand’s ride around the dial, he mused at how as a boy he used to watch the clock in school, the thin red line sliding silently past the bold black numerals, inching painfully closer with each agonizing second toward the end of the school day. Would this baby ever have the opportunity to watch the second hand sweep the dial in a schoolroom?

He had been sitting at Stanford Hospital for hours. His neck and back were sore from sleeping on the hard plastic furniture, and now, staring at the clock once more, he willed the thin red line to go slower, for each precious second offered more hope, life, for this unborn baby.

His baby.

At first Peter had not wanted to believe the doctor, insisting that there had been a mistake, a mix-up, that he was just a friend of Ivy’s, and it couldn’t possibly be his baby. But the doctor relayed to Peter, from Ivy, that she had been with no one else in more than a year before Peter, and no one after. The doctor offered to conduct a simple blood test that would settle the matter, but Peter decided against it.

He knew Ivy was telling the truth. It was his baby, and he prayed that it not be delivered. Not just yet. It needed more time.

Dr. Chen, the resident physician caring for Ivy, said the chances of survival for the twenty-eight-week infant were roughly ninety to ninety-five percent.

Peter could not believe this was happening to him. It was not something he asked for or wanted. Not like this, anyway. He had assumed (hadn’t he?) that she had used some sort of protection. In the past, he and Kate had never worried about birth-control. With Kate it was neither an issue or a possibility.

He thought back to their night together, her desperation. He also recalled the indications of her drug usage. The doctor warned him that she was very weak, and had admitted to taking drugs during the pregnancy. The birth would be difficult and extremely dangerous for her, considering her overall poor health. Presently the physician was attempting to prevent the premature birth by administering medication that could retard labor, to allow the baby its final eight weeks of development in the womb.

Now, waiting to find out if the drugs would take effect, Peter sat alone, wondering what he would do if the baby was born today, or next week…or whenever, for that matter. Even if they successfully postponed the birth, there was no running away from the fact that it was his child. And what about Ivy? Would she ask him to marry her? Who was the faulty party? Hadn’t he known that he had done the wrong thing? Hadn’t he known afterwards that things would never be the same again with Kate?

Kate. Their talk, before they had gone to dinner at the Holmeses’ for the first time, about wanting a baby. About wanting to settle down, to marry. What would happen to him and Kate?

“Good morning, Mr. Jones,” Dr. Chen said, snapping Peter’s gaze from the clock.

“How is she?”

“There’s been a change. After her first round of medication the contractions were less frequent, indicating that the pregnancy would not proceed,” the doctor explained.

“That’s good news, right?”

“It was good. But Ivy has passed fluid. The amniotic sac is leaking. Her labor has resumed. We have no choice but to see it through.”

“But the baby?”

“We don’t know how much damage Ivy’s drug abuse may have caused the baby, or herself. Any baby coming into the world early runs the risk of respiratory distress syndrome.”

Peter shook his head impatiently to indicate that he didn’t understand, and Dr. Chen explained.

“A vital substance that coats the lining of the baby’s lungs and its small interior cavities, called alveoli, is not fully advanced at this stage of development. The air sacs in the lungs tend to stay collapsed. We’ll have the baby on a respirator, of course, but there may be other complications.”

Peter closed his eyes, images of tiny pink, deflated balloons streaking across his mind. So fragile. So vulnerable and helpless.

The doctor placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder. “This isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “We’ll do our best.”

And then the doctor was gone, leaving Peter to stare once more at the clock and wait, all by himself.