The Mirror Man, стр. 73

They ate in relative silence. There was little left to say. The only thing they had to do was wait.

Sometime after 1:00 a.m. they each took a single shot of whiskey and sat down on the couch, waiting for it to take effect. They had to force an argument, and if it was going to be enough for Jeremiah to take a knife to Brent, it had to be real.

“So,” Jeremiah began tentatively. “You’re an asshole.”

Brent rolled his eyes. “Sticks and stones,” he said, and leaned back on the couch. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Too much pressure,” Jeremiah told him. “I can’t argue on command.”

“Let’s just talk, then. You know, you never really told me how you got involved in any of this. What made you agree to have yourself cloned?”

“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said thoughtfully. “A lot of things, I guess. I needed a change. Something different. I think I was stuck, you know? Nothing was exciting to me anymore. I wasn’t going anywhere. Too many problems. Too many headaches. Then there was the $10 million, of course. That didn’t hurt.”

“So, they bought you right out of your life?”

“Yeah. For $10 million, they did.”

“And look where it’s got you,” Brent said with a smile that looked more like a sneer. “Your job is on the line, your kid is a punk and your wife is gone. Your life is in ruins. You’re worse off now than you ever were. And now, after all this, now you won’t even get the money. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it? Everything was for nothing.”

“None of that was my fault,” he said, real defensiveness creeping into his voice. “I didn’t do any of that. It just happened.”

“It just happened? That’s a lame excuse. Of course it’s your fault. You’re the one who walked out on your life, left it in the hands of some copy, a facsimile. This is all on you.” Brent reached for the bottle, poured himself another shot and threw it back.

“That’s not fair. The other day you were all, It’s not your fault. Besides, what happened to changing the future, all your spouting off about bettering mankind, saving the world? What happened to the power of your precious science? That’s why you signed on, isn’t it? Isn’t that what you’re doing here?”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t walk out on my life and my family. Nobody bought me. And I actually am a scientist, remember? This is actually my job.”

“Fuck you, Brent.”

“You ever wonder why they picked you for this?” he asked, unrelenting. Jeremiah felt the back of his neck grow hot. “You ever ask yourself that?”

“Because they knew I could handle myself, I suppose. Because I’m levelheaded. Careful. Probably not a concept you would understand.”

“Because you’re easy,” Brent said, moving forward on the couch to make his point. “Because you’re a pushover and you let the whole world just walk all over you. Because you don’t have a backbone. You have no balls. You’re a wimp.”

Jeremiah stood up and glared down at him.

“Look at yourself!” Brent said, not threatened in the slightest bit. “Look at your life. I’ve seen it. I’ve watched that clone day in and day out for six months. And that’s you up there. You know that, right? You just do what you’re told, what’s expected. You just go along with it. The people you work with don’t give a crap about you. Your son basically ignores you. Your wife could barely look you in the eyes. And you just pretend it’s all hunky-dory. You’re weak. You’re hollow.”

“Shut the fuck up! You don’t know me. You don’t know me at all!”

“I guess that’s what comes of having no father,” Brent pressed on, not missing a beat. “Then again, that’s probably why he left in the first place. Maybe he saw the same thing in you all those years ago. Maybe that’s what drove him away. He figured it was hopeless and just took off.”

Jeremiah’s whole body clenched, and he grabbed Brent by the shirt collar and pulled him off the couch to his feet. Brent laughed. From this distance, Jeremiah could see his eyes were glassy and smelled the whiskey on his breath.

“And then you did the same exact thing,” Brent pushed. “You just took off. Walked out on your family the first chance you got. Don’t you see that? Don’t you get it? You can’t escape your own destiny. You were doomed from the start to repeat the same mistakes of your father. It’s a never-ending cycle and you can’t stop it. Your son will end up the same way: Weak. Pathetic. Hollow.”

Jeremiah couldn’t contain himself another minute. Before he even had time to think about his own actions, he pulled back his right arm, holding Brent’s shirt with his left, and punched him hard and square in the face. Brent’s head reeled to the left and he fell backward, hitting the back of his head on the arm of the couch, blood already coming out his nose, his mouth. And before he could get his balance back, Jeremiah hit him again, pulled him forward away from the couch and then pushed him back hard. He fell on the floor.

Brent shook his head and slowly got on his feet. He took two or three unsteady steps toward Jeremiah, looked him right in the eye, almost nose to nose with him now, and showed bloodstained teeth behind a deliberate, joyless smile.

“Diana probably crashed her car on purpose,” he snarled. “Just to be rid of you.”

Jeremiah stood still for another instant, his breath coming out in slow, shallow spurts. He pushed Brent back hard against the wall and burst past him into the kitchen. He grabbed a knife from the counter—only half recollecting in that moment that this had all been carefully planned—and then he went back and jabbed the thing three inches in and out of Brent’s left shoulder. Somewhere in the back of his mind he wondered how he’d remembered to put the knife into