Red Meat Cures Cancer by Starbuck O'Dwyer Page A

the cube farm. We’ve had a bit of scope creep, but that’s all right.”
    “What’s scope creep?”
    “The project’s scope. It’s just expanded a bit.”
    “Okay, I get it. Still living with Skull?” I asked, referring to Ethan’s best friend.
    “Oh, yeah. It’s working out well. He programs code for us. He’s a real propeller head.”
    Skull may have been a propeller head now, but in a prior life he was known as the guy at Ethan’s high school who liked to drink bong water. It’s important to know your kid’s friends.
    “Good. I just wanted to make sure you were alive. I hadn’t heard from you in a few weeks.”
    “Sorry, Pop. I’m turning into a real bithead. Sometimes the world moves too fast for family contact.”
    “Well, slow it down once in a while and give me a call.”
    “I will. Look, I gotta go. Stay on the bleeding edge, all right?”
    My son’s vocabulary made him sound like the trailer for a movie nobody went to see.
    “I’ll try. Take care of yourself, okay? I’ll talk to you soon.”
    “Bye, Dad.”
    “Good-bye, Ethan.”
    Like most things these days, my conversation with Ethan left me feeling vaguely unsatisfied. Maybe it was because I’d spent half the time on hold while he urinated, but I suspected there was more to it. It had taken me a long time, but I’d finally reached the point in my life where I was more concerned about my kids’ dreams than my own. Perhaps it was because they stood a better chance of coming true, but whatever the reason, I was convinced that the inner happiness I so desperately sought was tied to their happiness. This had not always been the case. Having neglected Ethan’s and my daughter Sophia’s needs for too many years as I toiled for Tailburger, I was trying to make it up to them with more attentiveness. Problem was, they didn’t have much time for me now.
    Sophia was a junior at Cornell and seemed to be doing well, but I worried about her brother. I still felt guilty about the job I’d done helping to raise Ethan. He was a good kid, but a bit misdirected. When I divorced his mother, Ethan metamorphosed overnight from a happy young boy into a dour presence. Only now was he starting to flourish a bit. Without a college degree or any training, Ethan brought few skills to the table at Macrocock, but I didn’t care. As long as he was excited, I would support him, even if that mostly meant sending money.
    Raising a child who could support himself financially was important, but raising one who could support himself emotionally and spiritually was more important. I wasn’t sure I’d succeeded on any of those fronts. I wanted Ethan to be independent and venture out on his own. On the other hand, I selfishly still wanted him to need me and to come to me with any big decisions he was facing. Mostly I wanted to prevent him from joining a cult. Somehow we had struck upon a hybrid of all this in our relationship. He came to me with most of his difficult dilemmas and a few I felt he could have wrestled with on his own. I wanted to be a good father, but a three-hour conference call about whether or not to sign up for basic cable
and
the movie channels seemed a bit much. I felt certain Ethan would find his way eventually. It just might take a little longer than I expected.
    My reverie was interrupted by the Link, who came barreling into my office.
    “Thorne, we’ve got a goddamn hydrogen bomb exploding in our faces. One of our asshole seniors working the window in Amarillo hit a ’Nam vet in the face with his pepper spray. Last thing I want to do is go to war with a bunch of psycho Agent Orange types. Get on it.”
    To solve the Amarillo uprising, I began the process of calling across the country, first to our regional vice president in Dallas, then to the franchise owner of the affected store and finally to Zeb Nettles, our public relations guru, who would do whatever was required to keep our name out of the papers for pepper-spraying a war hero. In