Welcome to Planet Lara

2. Cut the Ribbon Already

Two

Cut the Ribbon Already

The cacophony pouring from the hastily constructed, oversized gazebo is the opposite of music. Maybe no one explained to Grandfather what marching bands are best at: marching. Instead, forty-odd adolescents, sweating under the hot lights in their full blue-and-white regalia, must rush out their Born to Run and Uptown Funk before they’re pushed off the stage, to be replaced with the real reason all these people are crowded into this shoreline park in their finest attire, their Jimmy Choos sinking into the sand, in front of a modest structure that promises the future is just inside its double glass doors.

A giant pair of silver scissors, cast from recycled car parts, sits on an equally giant velvet, bamboo-stuffed pillow atop a 3D-printed, biodegradable table made of cornstarch and wildflower seeds that will be left out in the inevitable spring rain to melt and blossom once the ceremony ends. The bold red ribbon stretched across the structure facade trembles at its proximity to the sharpened blades.

A trumpet misfires. The audio system roars with feedback. The impressive crowd groans and flinches. Dainty, bejeweled hands not holding champagne flutes cover delicate ears against the assault.

Thankfully, the song ends. Lukewarm applause plays the marching band off the gazebo, their noise replaced by the ambient serenade of whale song and falling rain pumped through the surround-sound speakers. It makes me need to pee.

“Canapé? It’s fresh, smoked wild Pacific salmon on artisan rye and topped with dill, all ingredients grown in one of Dr. Clarke’s self-sustaining vertical farms.”

“He grew the fish in one of his skyscrapers?”

The redheaded server looks confused. This information wasn’t included in the script his boss fed him before sending him out with a tray.

“I think the salmon came from the ocean?” His Adam’s apple bobs nervously. I should feel bad. Probably just a college kid trying to make tuition for next semester. Some people have to do that. He has no idea who I am. Or maybe he does, and that’s why he’s sweating.

“Allergic to salmon,” I lie. “But I will take more bubbly.” He nods and hurries away, forgetting to hand out his canapés to the buffed-and-polished deep pockets around me.

“Do not treat the staff like they’re below you, Lara. You never know how quickly life can change. You might need the charity of others someday.”

Grandfather’s voice in my head worsens the martini headache that’s already trying to push my eyeballs out of their sockets. I wish Canapé Boy would hurry up with that champagne.

I’m supposed to be backstage with Grandfather’s entourage to wave at his adoring crowd and field the accolades that his years of scientific achievement and dedication to the environment and sustainability have birthed. Just waiting for Rupert’s hail, at which time I will slide in behind the crowd. I tried to decline—Dr. Archibald M. Clarke I is a big boy. He doesn’t need me standing up there with him faking a smile while his offering plate is passed around. But Grandfather did say he thinks this will be his last public shindig, so I will obey, like a good little cyclone is supposed to.

My phone buzzes in my black clutch. It could be Connor texting to find me in the throng, although he wasn’t sure if he’d be wrapped in time to make it. Too bad. The Pacific Ocean looks beautiful from this very expensive patch of real estate. We could sneak off and get sand in our undies and hope that someone records it.

It’s not Connor.

Please join us. Rupert, a.k.a. Number Two, Grandfather’s steward, valet, assistant, his right-hand man in all things. Tall, pinched, British, and annoying.

Yes, sir.

He doesn’t respond. Rupert tolerates me only because he is paid to do so. The feeling is mutual.

I weave through the crowd, eyes seeing through everyone so no one stops me to ask for anything. Someone is always asking the Clarkes for something. And as I’m here solo tonight—my assistant, Olivia, had some other engagement, and Connor, well, who knows—I have no one to run interference.

The sky purples as the sun dips a toe behind the horizon. While it’s unseasonably warm for April in Vancouver, the breeze coming off the water will soon see bare-shouldered partygoers pulling on wraps and accepting tuxedo jackets from their dates.

Canapé Boy passes with a tray of champagne, and I slow my momentum to lighten his load by two flutes. The pampered, overdone blond next to me tries, and fails, to furrow her brow. “Do you need both of those?” she asks. She looks like she French-kissed a beehive.

I drink the first glass in one long pull, and then the second, never taking my eyes off her.

“Aaaahhhhh, Moët. Refreshing,” I say, handing the emptied glasses back to the sweating server.

“b***h,” she growls.

I eye her augmented cleavage, one brow hiked dismissively. “Did you know the world’s oceans will have more plastic than fish by 2050?” I move on.

With the last body out of my way, I manage the four metal stairs, minding the hem of my dangerously short dress and hoping my calves look gorgeous in these Louboutin stilettos, to squeeze in behind the heavy green, rough-cotton drapery surrounding the stage. Grandfather stands in the center of his small crowd, like the nucleus of a comet, the source of all this light. I don’t like many people, but I adore my grandfather. And he knows it.

“Rupert,” I say, pushing in beside him.

“My Lara Jo is here,” Grandfather says, handing Rupert his custom, hand-carved cane so he can wrap his arms around me. The only hint that Archibald Clarke is ninety-four comes from his bent spine—and it’s only bent because he took a spill on his solar-powered bike in Toulouse on his eighty-eighth birthday, and the spine doc couldn’t do any better than the fusion that gave him the slight hunch. His brain is still sharp as a razor, his eyes as clear as a Caribbean lagoon.

Though there is the little issue of the dodgy pacemaker …

“Hey, old man, how are you tonight?”

He kisses the back of my hand and pinches my cheek. Same thing he’s done every day of my life. We remain with hands clasped—even though his is smaller and thinner than years past, I still feel safest when Archibald Clarke anchors me to shore—as Rupert and the stage manager whisper and nod about getting the next phase underway.

Number Two nods at us both, pats Grandfather’s shoulder, and steps out into the spotlight. The applause rolls over the audience, growing louder, punctuated with whoops and hollers.

“Showtime,” I mutter to Grandfather. He winks, winds my arm through his, and retakes his cane from one of the stage assistants. His face is a mask of friendly calm, and although I am used to eyes on me, this sort of occasion does make me nervous. I’m sure someone will find something to pick apart about my outfit or hair in time for WickedStepsister’s press deadline.

Rupert, center stage, unhooks and grasps the microphone like he’s going to bust into some Michael Bublé. I’m surprised Bublé isn’t here. He lives, like, a half hour away, the only person in the city who might be more famous and beloved than my grandfather.

With a raised, long-fingered hand most suited to piano scales and reprimands, Rupert calms the gathering. A few of his female admirers catcall from the area closest to the stage, followed by laughs. Joke’s on them. Rupert doesn’t have time for love and other nonsense, “and if I did, it wouldn’t involve vagina.”

His words, not mine, and only after an evening of Macallan “borrowed” from my teetotaler grandfather’s collection of gifts he’s never touched. It was one of three occasions in my life I remember Number Two behaving in a manner more akin to a real-live human than obedient robot.

“Welcome, everyone, to this glorious evening of celebration,” he starts. For approximately a million minutes, he extols the many virtues of my grandfather’s esteemed scientific career, his dedication to the people of Earth, his passion for sustainability, even when people have laughed him out of boardrooms for his crazy ideas, how he was Elon Musk before Elon was even a twinkle in his mother’s perfectly lined eye.

“But no one is laughing now, now that we stand on the brink of an unprecedented era, on the precipice of an irreversible tipping point. In answer, Dr. Clarke has gifted us with an invigorating new way to live sustainably and in harmony with Mother Nature and our fellow earthly cohabitants. Searching the stars for new homes is a fool’s errand, not when we have a beautiful home right here, crying for our help.”

I roll my eyes at Rupert’s melodrama and instantly regret it as a renewed surge of pain pings inside my dehydrated skull. I again promise myself I will never drink another martini as long as I live.

“You remember what I told you?” Grandfather leans over and asks under his minty breath.

“About what?”

“Everything.” He winks again. I kiss his cheek. I don’t know what he’s talking about, but I don’t have time to ask for clarification.

“And now, without further ado, I would be so very honored if you would join me in welcoming everyone’s favorite eco-warrior, the son of Gaia herself, Dr. Archibald Magnus Clarke!”

More applause, more whoops. As we walk to center stage, I spy a woman in the front row with tears streaming down her face.

Archibald M. Clarke is happy to take the tall stool Rupert slides behind him. I help him onto it, holding his cane. Under the lights, he looks tired—I know he’s been working around the clock to maintain his myriad projects and make sure they’re all ready to be managed by his crack crew of experts once he “abandons this mortal coil.” He’s tried to rope me into helping, but I won’t hear of him leaving me, so no, Grandfather, leave me out of it and get back to work.

His speech continues on where Rupert’s left off. I stand next to him, his hand still clasped in mine, my obedient, grateful Clarke smile in place as he introduces me to his “friends.” I nod at the appropriate times, even if I’m mostly just scanning for the nearest champagne fountain. The crowd slurps up Grandfather’s words like that fresh, wild Pacific salmon still making its rounds.

“Enough about me,” Grandfather finally says, the onlookers oohing and aahing and clapping again. “Let us cut this ribbon and welcome our generous visitors to the presentation center for the Nature Tower, Vancouver’s first eco-cooperative, self-sustaining, family-friendly, mixed-use high-rise community!”

The Nature Tower. One of many ongoing Archibald Clarke projects—I cannot possibly keep them all straight, despite long discussions over our last-Sunday-of-the-month family dinners. And by family, I mean Grandfather, me, and Number Two. That’s it. We’re all that’s left of the Clarke clan, a dynasty started in Europe via textile manufacturing and railways during the early days of the Industrial Revolution and moved to America in the late 1800s to finance inventors and thinkers. The Clarkes are excellent with business, not so excellent with reproduction to secure the family’s lineage. Too busy thinking to make babies.

And Rupert isn’t even a blood relative. He’s just been with Archibald for so long, he’s become a remora, suction-cupped to my grandfather’s flank as they navigate the tempestuous waters of science and discovery.

Either way, I’m usually three sheets to the wind by the time they get heated about the number of hipsters and free-range chickens their high-rises will house.

Rupert steps in with the giant, shiny shears as my grandfather finally releases my sweaty hand. Archibald takes the scissors; the red ribbon before us has stilled. It has accepted its fate.

We begin the count. “Three! Two! One—”

The scissors plunk noisily to the stage floor, followed immediately by my grandfather keeling face-first onto the red-carpet-covered plywood.

Everyone freezes, me included, the only sound the subtle recording of keening whales and steady rain floating from the speakers.

Followed in short order by shouts and yells that aren’t quite screams but probably could be. I drop to Grandfather’s side, turn him over, grab his hand, and pat his cheeks. “Open your eyes, Archie. Let me see you in there,” I demand.

He obliges, his blue eyes bright as the sunrise. “Take this,” he says, pointing to the sole piece of jewelry I’ve ever seen him wear. “My little cyclone.” He struggles to remove his thick white-gold-and-stone ring as the crowd crushes closer to the stage to see what the hell has just happened.

“Grandfather, keep your ring on. We’re going to get you some help.”

“I love you,” he says, and then his hands flop to his chest and his eyes fixate on something overhead, the light draining from them like an incandescent bulb whose filament has just flamed out.

“Grandfather … Archie!” I yell, patting his face harder, shaking his shoulders. “Wake up! Please wake up!”

Panicked assistants converge from offstage. Rupert pushes me aside to make way for the audience member who has rushed up the gazebo stairs and is initiating CPR …

I lean back on my haunches in my too-short evening dress and watch Rupert and this stranger bounce on my grandfather’s rib cage to attempt to restart the heart I know has finally given up. Memories of my mother’s wake flood into my head, what later became known as The Pickle Incident. Whatever happened to that kid … one of the few things I’ve done that I actually feel guilty about.

I wish I had something to throw right now.

“Lara, move!” Rupert barks as Grandfather is hoisted onto a stretcher. I hop back, numb, legs tingling from crouching, as my last remaining relative is carried behind that heavy green curtain, away from public view. He’s surrounded by so many people, I only catch a brief glimpse of his smiling but bluish face, glazed eyes staring into nothingness.

Another assistant appears next to me, her hand on my arm, her headset making her look like an alien or maybe an astronaut. “Ms. Clarke, Ms. Clarke, do you want to go in the ambulance?”

I look at her, see her mouth moving, but I’m underwater.

The red ribbon dances before us, happily untouched by those menacing, giant silver scissors now left forgotten on the stage.

Inches from the pointy toe of my shoe sits Grandfather’s ring. I bend to pick it up.

Slide it on my middle finger. The dark red stone stares up at me, confused.

It’s still warm.