The darts were little more than plastic soda straws tipped with Velcro. O’Donnell threw three of them at the dart board, retrieved them, and returned to the foot loops at the far end of the ex/rec area. Over and over again. He never tired of throwing bull’s-eyes.
Directly below the darts’ flight path, Chakra Ramsanjawi and Hisashi Oyamo huddled over their chessboard. They played silently, although each one would chuckle when he removed one of the other’s pieces from the board. Occasionally, Ramsanjawi cast a baleful glance in O’Donnell’s direction, as if the incessant flight of the darts disturbed his concentration. O’Donnell ignored him.
“Care for a game?”
Dan Tighe hovered in the entryway.
“Why not?” said O’Donnell. He removed his three darts from the board while Dan rummaged through one of the recreation compartments for three more.
As they played, Dan scrutinized O’Donnell’s every movement. The scientist threw darts as silently and as intensely as Ramsanjawi and Oyamo concentrated on their chess. He would close one eye, tense his body, and move his throwing hand back and forth repeatedly as if it were on an invisible track before he exhaled deeply and launched the dart on its dead-straight path. There was a rigidity about O’Donnell’s movements that was completely at odds with his lanky, loose-jointed frame. Dan sensed an inability, or an unwillingness, to relax. He couldn’t decide which.
“I see you’re still shaving,” Dan said between rounds. “I thought after a few days you’d grow a beard like everyone else.”
“You haven’t,” said O’Donnell. He started to aim.
“I’ve mastered the long, slow strokes.”
“Really?” said O’Donnell, taking his eye off the target. “I suppose your face is red from windburn.”
“Yeah, well—I guess I really don’t like beards.”
O’Donnell said nothing. He fired one dart and settled into his aiming ritual with a second.
“I’m divorced,” said Dan.
“And your ex-wife had a beard.”
“Funny.” Dan forced a laugh. “That isn’t it. The lawyer who raked me over the coals had a beard. I can still see him running this tiny little comb through it like it was a mink stole. That was after my ex-wife won the custody battle for my kid. I wanted to talk to the guy, tell him what a lousy job he had done taking my son away from me. But he was too interested in preening his goddamned beard.”
“I guess that would make me shave every day,” said O’Donnell.
“You know, I hate those guys,” Dan said with sudden intensity. His sky-blue eyes were focused on a point in his own past. “They come into your life, wreck it, and then go back to their offices to count their money. And what the hell are you left with? A mess. A big goddamn mess they made for you because they were charging by the hour.”
“They don’t always go back to their offices,” said O’Donnell. “Sometimes they stay around and finish you off.”
O’Donnell threw his last dart and slipped his feet from the loops. Dan took his place and fired three quick shots. None hit their marks.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
O’Donnell floated slowly toward the board to retrieve his darts. He realized he shouldn’t talk about his past, but sometimes he just couldn’t keep it bottled up. Dr. Renoir was a woman. He could put his brain in neutral, disengage his mouth, and rap with her as he had rapped with chicks in bars. Dan Tighe was different. He might actually understand.
“My lawyer sold me out,” said O’Donnell. “He charged me fifty grand for a settlement that I could have gotten myself when the case began. I had only twenty grand left, so he took my lady.”
Dan grimaced.
“I guess she was worth thirty grand. I don’t know anymore.”
“Doesn’t sound like the normal divorce case to me.”
“It wasn’t,” said O’Donnell. A smile creased his face. Telling this story would be fun, as long as he avoided specifics. “You are looking at the first man to be completely and utterly rifkin-ized.”
“Now what the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“It means that a bunch of know-nothings brought me and my company into court and obtained an injunction removing EPA approval of several genetically engineered microbes I designed for agricultural use. Of course, it happened just before my company was about to go public. The investors evaporated, the company tanked, and my lawyer waltzed off with my last dollar and my girlfriend.”