“Tell me this,” he said to Mac. “If I wanted to figure out how to get rid of you, how would I go about doing that?”
“Are you asking how to fire me again, sir?” Mac asked.
“No, I’m asking how to make it so I don’t need you to get stuff done anymore.”
Mac still sounded confused when he answered. “Well, a lot of blind people live on their own. Hell, my wife could probably do it without me if she really wanted to, but that would mean you’d actually have to go about learning all that stuff you said you didn’t want to learn.” Something finally seemed to click for Mac and he said, “Wait up, are you saying you want me to teach you how to get around by yourself? Like a real blind person?”
Beau rubbed the back of his neck, feeling more than sheepish that he’d refused to put himself in that category when they’d first met. But he manned up and answered, “Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”
CHAPTER 21
Six months later
“YOU SURE ABOUT THIS MAN?” Mac asked when they pulled up to the Birmingham Grand six months later.
“More sure than I’ve ever been of anything in my life?” Beau answered.
Mac shook his head. Beau knew this because he could hear the sound of the man’s beard rubbing against his shirt. “Just the last time you were in this place, I ended up having to peel you off the bar floor.”
Beau stroked his chin, which he’d shaved this morning all by himself. It wasn’t the first time he’d done so, but it was the first time he’d gotten the job done without nicking himself or Mac having to wipe up any blood afterwards, so he’d been humming the Rocky theme rather triumphantly in his head all morning.
“I’ll be all right,” he told Mac.
He put his hand on the door handle and prepared to exit the car, but Mac said, “I could come with you.” He sounded less like the man who had been brutally training him to navigate in the real world and more like a fretful parent.
“I promise, I won’t pass out this time.”
“Yeah, but…”
He carefully turned his face toward Mac’s voice. “Mac, you’ve been training me for this moment for months now. Either you think I can do it or you don’t.”
The sound of Mac’s beard rubbing against his shirt came again, but eventually he said. “Okay, but don’t punch anybody out this time.”
He couldn’t quite promise that, so instead he opened the car door and boldly stepped out into the Alabama sunshine. It was early on in the summer, not to hot, not to cold. A perfect day. Maybe that was a good sign.
“Can I help you?” he heard a doorman say in the distance.
But waved him off. “I’m fine,” he said. Then he made sure his Bluetooth earpiece was secure before pulling out a device about the size of a pocket flashlight and running his thumb over a few braille buttons until he came to the one marked “on.” Pushing the button activated a green laser beam that turned the device into the high-tech version of a traditional white cane. It delivered information about possible barriers and distances back to him through his Bluetooth device. He could also use the camera inside the main body of the device to do practical things, like scan barcodes, count money, and even “read” back words on packaging, books, or just about anything else.
According to the entrepreneur who’d met with him to pitch the “eye saber,” this device was at the cutting-edge of low-vision technology and it would revolutionize the way the blind got around.
But Mac, who’d accompanied him to the meeting, had been more concerned with how cool it looked. “It’s like a light saber!” he said with such awe in his voice that Beau could easily imagine the little Stars Wars fan boy lurking inside of the older man.
A memory of all the times he and Josie had watched the original Star Wars trilogy together when they were kids came back to him, and that was all it took for him to agree to make a sizeable investment in the entrepreneur’s start-up.
And now the “eye saber” was leading him back to Josie. The soft, computer voice spoke gently in his ear: “Check-in desk, approximately ten steps to your right.”
He followed the instructions, “checked in,” and eventually navigated himself inside an elevator with a penthouse key card in hand. His fingers found the braille “P” next to the button that would ferry him up to the floor where the penthouse suites were located. But it had taken a little more groping than usual to work out that he had to insert the key card the hotel had given him and keep it in there while pressing the “P” button, in order for the command to go through.
Sooner than expected, he heard the elevator doors swish open and the eye saber was telling him his real destination, the one he’d used his family connection with the hotel to finagle, was only twenty steps away.
A few seconds later, he was finally there, standing outside the door to Colin Fairgood’s room.
But when he knocked on the door, he found it propped open, as if the occupants had been awaiting his arrival.
“Come on in,” Colin’s voice called from further inside the room. “We’re back here.” They must have been expecting somebody.
He turned off the cane. Not because he couldn’t have used it to navigate his way into the room, but because he didn’t want its automated voice in his ear when he spoke to Josie for the first time in six months.
Luckily there weren’t any obstacles in his way, and he stopped when he felt the sunlight on his face from the windows he knew from experience sat just beyond the sunken den seating area. He also easily guessed when it was time to stop walking, because Colin said, “You have got some fucking nerve coming here.”
The faint smell of perfume hit him immediately. Expensive and sophisticated, very much the kind of scent a man would buy for his girlfriend.
Doing his best to resist the urge to punch Fairgood all over again, he turned toward the smell of perfume and said, “Josie, I know you don’t want to see me. But I had to see you.”
“And that’s who it’s all about, isn’t it? You!” Colin’s voice was full of venom. “All these years and it’s still about what you need from Josie.”
Beau tightened his hand into a fist, but then he said the last thing Josie probably expected to hear from him. “He’s right, Josie. I’ve been bullheaded and selfish and just about everything else. The truth is, you were right, I don’t deserve you. I’ve never been half the man Colin was when it comes to you, and that’s the reason I went crazy when he came looking for you. Because if it was a battle of who deserved you more, then I knew it was him no contest.”