“Troy? Who’s Troy?” he asked.
“Your son,” she said. “That’s the name I came up with, Troy. What do you think?”
A slow smile broke across Marty’s face.
“I think,” he said, “we should talk about our son in whatever home - and life - we’re going to build ourselves next.”
She brushed her fingers across his lips. “Promise?”
“Hope to die,” Marty said.
Five years earlier
Aboard the Deepwater Horizon
Gulf of Mexico
9:44 p.m.
April 10
The rig began trembling like caffeine withdrawal.
Kemper, panicked, spun to warn his crewmates but saw them stampeding for the lifeboats, having felt the deadly vibrations too. Relief washed his sunburned body, and he broke into a run. Then remembered his best friend was perched in the superstructure, fixing antennas.
“Blowout!” he screamed at the blue-black sky. “Blowout! Hit the line, Pie!”
Pieton jerked around, wild-eyed at the dooming word. He leapt for the “Geronimo line,” the emergency escape cable that would zip-line him to the sleek orange lifeboats squatting in their launchers, ready to spit desperate men into the sea.
Instead, he caught the leading edge of the shock wave as the first cloud of methane gas exploded, turning 100 million pounds of oil rig into a fiery chainsaw of shrapnel.
“Help me!” Pieton’s head bleated as his body detached from his neck.
Kemper froze as rivets, brains, and elbows rained down on the drilling deck, which the BP recruiter had bragged was bigger than an NFL football field. The superheated deck made his boot soles smoke, jerking him back into action. He picked up a wailing, blinded toolpusher and staggered toward the nearest lifeboat, the abandon-ship Klaxon driving needles through his ears.
“Thirty . . . feet . . . to go,” Kemper wheezed, coughing lung and burnt petroleum onto the blind man’s face. The man writhed frantically. Kemper gripped tighter, shoved one boot forward and then the next, slipping on flesh and seaweed. “Down to twenty . . . now ten . . . and guess what, man, there’s plenty of seats!” He cackled like a lifer set free. “We made it! We’re gonna sail off this hell-beast as soon as I pull the ripcord-”
He was knocked off his feet as methane and crude oil roared out of the well-hole in the bottom of the Gulf, past the ruined blowout preventers, up a vertical mile of pipe, and into the oceangoing behemoth, belching like too much Schlitz, catching a spark and going supernova, the fireball disemboweling riggers, roasting crane operators, gobbling wrenches and life rings and blueprints and overalls and cell phones and gimme-hats, Cat and Bud and Deere. The blind man exploded into pink confetti. I-beams flew like drinking-straw wrappers. Fuel barrels lit off, bashing the superstructure like cannonballs. “Oof!” Kemper blatted as Pie’s scorched torso pile-drove him into the deck. He faded to black.
Came back.
He blinked a dozen times at the stadium roar in his ears, then frantically patted himself tip to toe. Nothing broken, no parts missing. His survival was a miracle, plain and simple . . .
At once remembered where he was.
Kemper struggled to his feet, reeling like he’d mainlined a quart of Scotch. He watched Pie’s head skitter along the deck and drop off the edge. He cried out as a flying snake of drilling chain wrapped him like a straitjacket, fracturing his jaw with the slam of its hot, whippy tail.
He staggered to the edge of the quaking rig, spitting broken teeth, the night sky boiled yellow and sulfurous from oil- and gas-fed flames. He peered over the edge and considered the astronomic odds of surviving the seven-story leap to the foaming green seas. He shook his head and backed away, thinking maybe there was just enough time to find another lifeboat . . .
The curly black hairs on his neck ignited, and he knew he was out of options.
He whimpered, afraid, then snugged up his charred Levis and faced the water. He stared at the half-moon brightening the waves that pounded the Godzilla legs of the platform. He prayed he’d see his children again. He pinched his nose and closed his eyes.
And he jumped.
As the metal bones of the Horizon, the pride of British Petroleum, crashed noisily into the sea.
Present day
Chicago
The duct-taped Buick swam north on Rush Street, hunting whores like a lesser white shark.
Superstition Davis pushed out her chest and waved. The driver flashed high beams in response. He clicked on his turn signal and angled for the curb. She licked her lip and kicked out a hip, sealing the deal.
He immediately straightened out and shot past.
She pouted, stamped her feet, and made a motion, come back. When he didn’t, she hiked her skirt from micro to vanishing, tossing her chocolate tresses and widening her violet eyes.