Page 3 of The Elevator Trilogy

  Part 3. Your floor or mine?

  It would be early evening when they saw or talked to each other again, on the Thursday after the Saturday when Jane went out with Mark. Bob and Jane had managed to avoid each other on the elevator until then. Traffic on the elevator was light. Theirs was a mostly nine to five building.

  “Hi.” Bob was the first to say hello.

  “Hey.”

  “So, uh, how was the concert?” He didn’t want to call it a date.

  “Good. It was good.”

  “Oh, hi guys.”

  “Mrs. Caruthers. Working late this evening?”

  “Obviously,” she answered, shaking her head, rolling her eyes. “No wonder you’re not having sex yet.”

  “How do you know?” Jane was curious.

  “Body language, or the lack of it. You better make your move, buster, or someone else will beat you to it.”

  “She called you ‘buster,’” Jane turned to Bob. “How cute was that?”

  “I was talking to you, Jane. …Heck," she smiled, looking up into Bob's eyes, "if there's anything cute in this elevator, it's him.”

  “You know, Mrs. Caruthers,” Bob wanted to thank her for the comment, “if things don’t work out here, between the two of us...,” he wiggled his finger, pointing to Jane and himself, “is there a Mr. Caruthers?”

  The older woman smiled back at him, “I wish.” Then the elevator chimed at the lobby floor. On her way out, she held door for them, the only two left. “Aren’t you getting off?”

  Jane looked at Bob, then answered for the both of them. “No. We need to talk. We, the two us. We need to have intercourse.”

  “’Discourse.’ She means ‘discourse.’ ...You know, verbally.”

  “Right, but just incase, I work in 815. Eighth floor. Room 815.”

  “Got it, Mrs. Caruthers,” and he waved her goodbye, the door still closing while Bob pressed the “28” button.

  They were quiet for a moment, but then Bob spoke up.

  “So, what did you do after the concert? I’m just curious.”

  “If you’re asking whether or not we had sex, the answer is no. We didn’t have to because we had sex during the concert.” Bob looked over at her, not entirely sure she was kidding. “In one of the disgusting stalls in the theater men’s room. Personally, I would have had more sex after the concert, but ‘Rolfs, Mark Rolfs’ said he needed time to recharge, you know, to reload as it were.”

  Bob just stood there. “Thank you.”

  “I, on the other hand, still have a very, very substantial level of pent-up sexual energy begging, I said ‘begging’ for release. For satisfaction.”

  Bob was looking at her, but not speaking.

  “That I’ve been saving for this one guy, ‘Elevator Guy’ my friends call him. Saving myself fo...”

  And that’s when Bob, somewhere between the twelfth and fourteen floors, took two steps toward the door and pulled the stop button, setting off the alarm.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I don’t want to be disturbed.”

  “You’re kidding?”

  Bob walked back to her, dropped his backpack which “thunked” to the floor without caring about the consequences for his laptop inside, and was clearly going for “it” when he stopped, just short of her face for some reason.

  “Oh, come on! You can’t be...”

  And then he kissed her. By kiss, I mean the kind that made the raucous alarm go quiet, the kind when two people occupy the same space. Legs between legs. Body parts melting against each other. Less of a kiss, per se, than a merger. Blouse and shirt becoming untucked. The kind of kiss after which a person can’t help but look disheveled, and everyone can tell what you’ve been doing. On the fine line between foreplay and play. Well, you get the point. It was a big kiss alright, which turned out to be followed by the big you-know-what later that evening.

  Done, but still slightly out of breath, Jane was the first to speak. “Wow. …Whew. That was a real waste of time. I don’t know what I was expecting, but...”

  She was joking of course, but Bob wasn’t taking any chances and laid into her again. A few moments later, they parted, just their faces at first, with Jane lightly tapping the fingers of her right hand on Bob’s lips. Otherwise, their bodies were still pretty much glued to each other, their clothes looking even more out and about. “Thanks,” Jane was sincere, “but I was just kidding.”

  “I know,” Bob acknowledged bashfully. “I just wanted some more.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Tell the fire department we didn’t mean to set off the alarm?” Bob was concerned that he could hear sirens, but wasn’t sure they were coming to their building.

  “I mean I think we should go out.”

  Bob thought about it for a nanosecond, nodded his head slightly and suggested, “Tonight would be good.”

  And it was, good that is.

  So, exactly how do I know all this? Well, because I’m Bob. That’s my girlfriend, Jane, passed out on the couch. And that fur ball sitting on her chest, tush down, front legs fully extended, like he’s paying attention? That’s our cat, Otis.

  2. Last Picked

  “Hey.”

  “Hey. …I’m just finishing up. What can I...”

  “Some of us are going out for burgers, the little Happy Hour kind. Why don’t you join us?”

  “Well, for one thing, I don’t eat beef and I have absolutely no social graces.”

  “Why don’t you eat beef? Is it a religious thing?”

  “No. It’s a saturated fat thing.”

  “What about forks? Do you eat with your fingers, or do you use forks?”

  “Only when I order soup.”

  “Great. What more can a girl ask? You’ll fit in perfectly.”

  “I tend not to relate well to people.”

  “How do you know if you never go out with them?”

  “Twenty four years of experience.”

  “I thought you were twenty three?”

  “It started the moment I was conceived. I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, but I have a prenatal memory of my parents giggling through intercourse. I think they may have been drinking, at a minimum.”

  “Intercourse?”

  “When two people…”

  “I know what you meant. It just seemed like an overly technical description of what they were doing. Maybe they just had funny sex. Maybe they actually liked each other. Sometimes people who like each other giggle during sex, you know, because they’re having a good time.”

  “Are you saying that it’s normal for the girl to laugh?”

  “It all depends?”

  “On what?”

  “On whether she’s laughing with you or… Come on. What’s the worse thing that can happen?”

  “I’ll say something embarrassing. People I work with and who respect me will know for sure how socially awkward I am rather than just assuming it.”

  “Don’t worry. No one you work with respects you.”

  “Good point.”

  “Okay, how ‘bout if I be your wingman, figuratively speaking? ‘Wing-woman,’ to be precise.”

  “You’d cover for me?”

  “Absolutely. I’ll them we’re going out for the evening, so we can’t stay long. We’ll leave before you make a fool out of yourself and you can take me out for a real dinner. How ‘bout that?”

  “You’re beautiful and impeccably dressed in a casually fashionable way. I, on the other hand, am not. Shouldn’t I be the boy version of you for ‘us’ to be believable?”

  “I don’t know. You have potential.”

  “A diamond in the rough?”

  “More like a cubic zirconium.”

  “I’m not sure what that is, but I get the point. ...I don’t think they’ll buy that we’re dating, particularly since no one has ever seen us together at work.”

  “You’re
right but, if we play it right, we can make the shock value work for you. They’ll start imagining positive things about you that clearly aren’t true.”

  “So your aura will be rubbing off on me?”

  “Figuratively speaking. There won’t be any actual rubbing involved.”

  “I get it. …What will we talk about?”

  “It’s a sports bar. How about sports? What sport did you play in college?”

  “Chess?”

  “That’s not a sport.”

  “You’ve never seen me play.”

  “What about high school? Did you play any team sports?”

  “Does the debate team count?”

  “What about phys ed?”

  “Are you asking what sports I played on the days when no one stuffed me in my locker?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was good at running.”

  “Sprints? Hurdles? Cross-country?”

  “It depended upon where I was when they started chasing me?”

  “Were you beaten up often?”

  “Not really. It never occurred to our high school thugs that I could pick the lock to the janitors’ supply closet. I had a flashlight, and used the time to read my History assignments on a desk I made out of rolls of single-ply toilet paper.”

  “How creative.”

  “In retrospect, it was good preparation. My apartment is only slightly larger.”

  “Word around the office is that you have a Murphy Bed.”

  “Not exactly. I have a bed that folds into a couch. ‘Murphy’ is my cat.”

  “You have a cat?”

  “Not really.”

  “But, let me guess, telling people you have one makes you seem more normal?”

  “I left Murphy with my parents because my apartment is too small.”

  “Sorry. Being normal is over-rated. ...Do you miss him?

  “Who?”

  “Murphy?”

  “Not so much. We FaceTime on the weekends. He has his own iPad.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “It could be worse. At least I have a place of my own.”

  “I live with my parents.”

  “And I would too, if they were my parents.”

  “I’m kidding. I just wanted to see how you’d react under pressure.”

  “How did I do?”

  “If pathetic was what you were after, you nailed it.”

  “…And you were what? A cheerleader? Homecoming Princess, maybe even the Queen? Student government President?”

  “I liked softball, but didn’t get to play much, but I was on the school paper and the debate team.”

  “You too? Hm. Hard to believe we have something in common. …Brainy intellectual sex kitten, my favorite.”

  “You’re not going to drool, are you?”

  “No. ...It’s a chronic, weather-driven saliva disorder for which there’s no known cure. They really need to turn the air conditioning dow...”

  “Brainy intellectual, maybe, but these... These didn’t show up until my freshman year at college.”

  “You didn’t date much in high school?”

  “You could say that. No one asked me out to the prom, if that’s what you’re wondering. Well, that’s not strictly true. No one asked me that I wanted to go with.”

  “I would have asked you?”

  “My point exactly.”

  “…So why me?”

  “Wow. You really don’t get it, do you?”

  “I’m just being realistic.”

  “Okay, let’s see. You leer at me less than the other guys I know.”

  “I avoid looking at you on purpose and it’s not easy. Even Morgan stares at you and he’s legally blind.”

  “You write well. I’ve been reading your blog.”

  “What blog?”

  “’ImNotJustinTimerberlake.com’”

  “Oh. That one.”

  “You have sense of humor.”

  “True, I’m good at sensing humor when I hear it. ...Is that it?”

  “No. …You have no pretense. I’ve lived in a world of pretense ever since I went to college.”

  “Ever since you grew boobs?”

  “You know, I think you may be onto something?”

  “Can I write about your boobs on my blog? ...in the context of a strictly academic discussion of the impact of late developing body parts on self-image and personal relat..”

  “No. ...But maybe we can talk about them later if you buy me a really, really nice dinner?”

  “Okay, let’s go, but I still won’t eat any beef.”

  “You just knocked the pencil cup off your desk. ...I can’t believe you use a blotter.”

  “That happens sometimes when I stand up suddenly without pushing back my chair all the way.”

  “How often do you do that?”

  “I don't know. Should I be keeping track?”

  “Can you dance?”

  “I vibrate. Is that okay?”

  “By the way, I heard you’re being promoted to Project Manager. Congratulations.”

  “Thank you. I’ll be hiring and would consider allowing you to sleep your way to the top.”

  “Wouldn’t that be harassment?”

  “You’re right. How about if you sleep with me, but I don’t hire you?”

  “That might be okay. We’ll see how dinner goes.”

  “Uh, for the record...”

  “What?”

  “I’ve been working on getting up enough nerve to ask you out.”

  “I know.”

  “Really?”

  “A girl can tell.”

  “Well, thanks for taking the initiative and asking me out first.”

  “I got tired of waiting.”

  “…I mean it.”

  “You’re welcome but, in case anybody asks, it was the other way around.”

  “Of course. …Maybe they’ll have veggie sliders.”

  “Will you stop talking if we hold hands?”

  3. Birmingham Airport

  “Excuse me,” I said apologetically to the young man standing behind me. “I try not to run people over with my briefcase, but sometimes…”

  “It’s okay,” he said, glancing down at a similar model he had next to him and back up again. “I hope you have insurance?” He was kidding of course, and went back to checking his phone. In his early 30s, tie still tight around his collar, the sleeves of his stylish, mostly blue striped shirt rolled down to his wrists, his suit jacket neatly folded over one of his arms, he had to be new at this.

  I was second, he was third in the crowded line at the miscellaneous foods stand that served the cul de sac of gates at the end of the “C” terminal. Pizza on one end, plastic wrapped sandwiches and bottled drinks in the middle, frozen yogurt behind the cash register on the right. Across the way, there was a bar for “suits” who had given up on doing any more business for the rest of the day. I couldn’t blame them.

  My flight was running a few minutes late. I figured a frozen yogurt would be my only shot at something to eat before I’d get home, late that evening, after 10. How bad could it be? I took out five ones which should have been enough. I was ready, not wanting to waste any time when it was my turn.

  “Hi. I’d like a cup of…” which is all I said before looking down from the menu to the face of the clerk behind the counter. If there was a smile that could arrest speech, and make really bad food taste good, it was hers.

  “Hey,” she answered my interrupted order without the least evidence she understood the power of that face. She was black, late 20s maybe, with the perfect color skin and electric eyes I couldn’t escape.

  I tried again. “I’d like a small cup of vanilla. Do you have anything to put on it?” It’d been a rough day. I thought I splurge. Do myself a favor.

  “Sure. We have, uh, chocolate sauce and M&Ms,” she said tentatively.

  “I’ll have the chocolate.” I heard my
self talking, but wasn’t sure I’d said it out loud.

  She smiled back at me, this time almost giggling. “Sorry, but we’re out of chocolate.”

  “Hey,” I thought to myself. “She had a fifty-fifty shot at my never knowing, and went for it.”

  “Wait,” seeing the feigned disappointment on my face, the not so subtle roll of my eyes. “Let me see what I can do,” at which she turned, actually spun is more like it, squished out my yogurt from the vanilla side of the machine, and attacked the hot fudge dispenser, pumping furiously. “Here. How’s that?” she asked me, holding out the cup, her arm fully extended with pride.

  “That’s…” There were a few unsightly globs of thick brown something on top of the yogurt that, incidentally, I just noticed was an odd color gold. “…perfect.”

  “$3.78.”

  I gave her the first four bills, which she accepted and counted by spreading them with her left hand while her right moved to the register, but then stopped, pulling out the third bill and waving it at me.

  It was a ten I had stuck in my wallet out of place. “Ooo,” a not so clever response, but all I could come up with at the time. So I took back the ten and handed her the other one, and she gave me some change, which I was purposely slow to take. “Thanks,” I told her, “for everything,” which is what I wanted to say, but didn’t.

  Not so as to hold up the line, I just rolled and stuffed the money in my pocket with the receipt, figuring I would get organized on the plane when the guy sitting in front of me leaned his seat so far back that I couldn’t open my computer. My office can’t stand it when I give them wrinkled receipts, but what do they know? “Excuse me,” I said again to the man in line behind me, who had started to move forward just a second before I left. Yogurt in one hand, the handle to my briefcase in the other, I walked and rolled it away to the counter where they had napkins and the plastic spoons used only at the finest airport snack bars.

  Unfortunately, it would be an hour and a half later, at 37,000 feet that I would realize I’d lost my wallet, and taste for frozen yogurt.

  About the same time, in a cheap hotel room near the airport, the cashier with the killer smile tossed the light jacket she’d been wearing onto the first of the two double beds even before the door had closed behind her. “Hey. Sorry I’m late.” She bent over to kiss the man who had been in line behind me before waiting for him to answer.

  “Pretty good,” he told her, grabbing her cotton shirt to pull her toward him, rolling back onto the other bed where he had been sitting, the two of them just missing the wallets he had dumped from his briefcase, mine included.

  “Hey,” she said, pushing herself off his chest, flashing that winning smile. “Let’s get out of here and buy stuff before all these guys start landing. We can do this later.”

  4. IM

  “Hey.” Robert Brent, EVP for Media Operations, looked up from his desk at the man standing in the doorway to his office. Gesturing quickly with the pen in his right hand, “Come on in. …Just give me a second to finish this,” he went back to writing unintelligible notes on the single sheet of white paper in the only clear space he had left on his desk.

  Finished, for now, he looked up. Sitting on the edge of one of the two guest chairs was the rumpled Management Associate he used for everything. Not yet 30, Will would never make the pages of GQ. Other than not looking good in a suit, there wasn’t much he couldn’t do. He was a natural, a person who executives like Brent used, but also respected, a rare combination given the intense in-company competition that was the world of their business. More to the point, Will was good, really good, but without the experience to be a threat to his mentor. Some day, probably, but not yet.

  “Here’s the transcript I told you about.” Will sat up slightly, leaning forward to hand a copy across the desk. “It’s less than 20 minutes old.”

  Charles: “I thought you weren’t working late tonight.”

  Will sat there, already familiar with the text, while Robert read it for himself, out loud. Charles was brash, sometimes hard to take, but the most effective media buyer they had.

  Adriana: “I’m working on tomorrow’s presentation. Leave me alone.”

  Charles: “You could always block my e-mail address.”

  Adriana: “I didn’t think I had any choice.”

  Charles: “You don’t, not if you want to keep your precious reputation intact.”

  Adriana: “Stop it. I don’t want to have this conversation on-line.”

  Charles: “They watch our e-mail, but IM is live. We’re okay.”

  Robert looked up. “I thought he was right. How’d you get this?”

  “It’s the new kid in IT. The one we picked up on work-release from ’juvi.’ There’s nothing he can’t do.”

  “Hm. That’s scary. Can we trust him?”

  “Are you kidding? We don’t even understand him. Our only hope is that he likes us.”

  “Great,” and Robert looked down again at the transcript, mumbling almost to himself, “Find out what he wants and make sure he gets some.”

  Adriana: (No response.)

  She’d been there almost a year. Just three years since her MBA. Very competitive. Attractive, but not so much as to be distracting. Hard working and obviously smart, there was something Robert didn’t trust about her, an insincerity he felt, but couldn’t confirm. She’d have to get past Charles to make any real progress, but didn’t have the contacts in the media, and was relegated to handling buys in the smaller markets.

  Charles: “I’ve got another friend I’d like you to meet.”

  Adriana: “Screw you, and I hope they are listening.”

  Charles: “You did great. We’d never have gotten that pricing without you.”

  Adriana: “That just happened, you jerk. I actually liked the guy. So it helped the company. It’s not something I’m doing on a regular basis.”

  Charles: “You’ll do whatever I tell you to do.”

  Adriana: (Pause.) “What makes you think I won’t print and drop this on Brent’s desk in the morning?”

  Charles: “Because we’ll both be fired. Because by the time Will gets done spreading the word, you’ll be lucky to find work waiting tables in Sioux Falls.”

  Adriana: “Up yours. I’m going home. Stay away from me, or I’m calling a lawyer, whatever it costs me.”

  “Is that all there was?” Robert was hoping for more.

  “That was it.”

  “Are we sure it’s real?”

  “They were both in their offices, on their computers when I walked by a few minutes ago. Besides, neither of them would know how to fake their IP addresses, or have a reason to write this if they knew we were listening.”

  Robert wasn’t so sure. You could tell the way he looked away from Will, turning and then tilting his head slightly from side to side, and did that small thing with his lips.

  “ …So what do you want to do? We could lose clients, not to mention Board support for your expansion strategy if we’re slapped with an harassment suit and it makes the paper.”

  “I’ll call San Francisco. There’s an opening there. It’ll be a promotion for her, and Hastings owes me one. As for Charles, I don’t want him to know we have this. Let’s see what he does next.”

  “Good night, guys.” It was Adriana, coat over her arm, stopping in the hallway to say goodnight, the weight of her heavy leather briefcase forcing the one shoulder lower than the other. “See you tomorrow.”

  Will, turning in his chair, raised his eyebrows, his way of saying, “Hey.”

  Brent went out of his way to be pleasant. “Thanks for staying. Good luck with the presentation.” And that was that.

  Fourteen minutes and a short taxi ride later, she kicked the door to her apartment closed with the heel of her shoe. “Hey, how’d it go?” Dropping her coat and briefcase onto the hardwood, she wasted no time unbuttoning her blouse, kicking off th
e comfortable business heels she’d been wearing that day without breaking her stride.

  The kid on work-release, his red floppy hair in disarray, looked up from the copy of Maxim he’d picked up from the newsstand on the corner. “I’m guessing they’ll be recommending you for that job in San Francisco as soon as they open in the morning.”

  “And Charles?”

  “He hasn’t a clue.”

  “Okay, a deal’s a deal,” she said in a perfunctory tone, reaching around her back to unhook her bra. “Let’s get this over with.”

  5. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

  In retrospect, had there been anyone to tell the story, it seemed to take forever for the glass to tumble from the edge of the desk to the floor which was no longer where it used to be, losing its few leftover drops of last night’s wine along the way to oblivion.

  The sound was deafening and deep, everywhere, but from nowhere in particular, building to a crescendo no one would ever fully appreciate, announcing the birth of a legend – fodder for endless future speculation among both our ordinary and most sophisticated minds.

  Twenty minutes earlier…

  It was a postcard morning, as it had been every day since they arrived in Nassau to celebrate their fifth anniversary. The view out their eighth floor ocean suite might as well have been painted on the air outside, it was that hard to believe. The door to the balcony had been open all night, the breezes that were everywhere on Paradise Island pulling the sheer curtain outward, like the flowing white dress of some unseen spirit that had come to watch over them. Below, on the beach by the cove for which the hotel was named, the morning sun reflected off the water and colored the white under-feathers of the sea birds an iridescent turquoise that seemed unreal.

  Well-rested, they were up early, anxious to get their cabana chairs in the perfect position for a long day of reading, writing, talking about everything and nothing in particular. Now and then, when it was too hot, they cooled themselves with walks in the warm ocean water, and frozen banana daiquiris artfully prepared by one of the always-friendly locals at the nearest beach bar. Their first five years had blown by. This week at the Atlantis complex was just the long overdue break they needed.

  Atlantis was on Paradise Island, separated by Nassau Harbor from New Providence Island in the Bahamas, a billion dollar resort with hotels, beaches, elaborate pools and water activities, all built around the theme of its namesake, the legend of Atlantis. It was Hollywood’s best recreation of the ancient, mythical city that once disappeared beneath the sea. Andy and Carolyn were staying in the more exclusive, more adult, less theme-park section of the resort – the hotel with the two story lobby with no walls, the Mesa Grill and cushioned islands in the middle of the pool through which waiters waded out to bring you drinks made from rum and fresh fruit. They planned to eat at the Grill tonight, either that or go out for conch fritters and shrimp at “Bad News Jack” in the city. They figured they were young, and their colons could take it.

  “Honey,” Carolyn was too busy packing her beach bag to see what it was all about, “you’re getting an e-mail from Amanda,” his younger sister.

  “I was wondering why we hadn’t heard from her.” Missing a birthday or anniversary wasn’t like Amanda. She was a professor of ancient history at Columbia, and had taken the summer off to do research in Athens on the work of some ancient scientists. Andy sat down, double clicked, and began reading to himself.

  “What’s she have to say?” Carolyn shouted past the open double doors to the bathroom, squeezing herself into the bathing suit she had optimistically purchased one size too small just for their vacation.

  “I don’t know. She seems anxious. Doesn’t even mention our anniv… Wait a minute. What’s she talking about?” He was quiet for moment while he read the next few paragraphs. “Apparently, she was doing research on this one guy who was writing about another writer who he – the first one – claimed had originated the ancient legend of Atlantis.”

  “That’s nice,” Carolyn was standing behind him now, her hands on his shoulders, his arms folded in front of their laptop along the edge of the desk near their bed. “Let’s get out of here. I know exactly where I want to sit.” There was this one lone palm tree right at the beach, maybe 20 feet from where the water and dry sand broke even. Sitting under it was like having your own, personal oasis.

  “Hold on for a second. She says the originator wasn’t claiming to be writing about something that had happened, but was making a prediction, a prophesy about something that would happen centuries in the future. Hm. Today, in fact. The guy was some kind of genius psychic who actually offered what she thinks might be a pretty good reason for when and why it was going to occur. She’s asked a friend of hers – some Greek geologist she’s been dating…”

  “Give me a break.”

  “…to help with the translation. She wants us to…”

  “Hey, come on,” she told him, leaning forward to kiss him on the back of his neck, just below his right ear, causing the usual instinctive crunch of his neck toward his shoulder. “You can finish reading and get back to her later.”

  “I don’t know, she seems pretty worked up. I mean, look at this writing, not even taking the time to proof what she’s written. It’s not her…”

  Carolyn moved her hands from his shoulders to around his neck, faking strangulation.

  Andy didn’t need convincing. “Yeah, yeah,” he started to say as he rose up from his seat. “Head for the door. I’ll get my hat.”

  Turning to her right to look out and over the balcony, she had an idea. “If you ask me, every room should have its own waterslide directly to the beach.”

  Carolyn left for the door, pressing the button to ask housekeeping to make up their room while they were out. Andy, right behind her, just barely slipped into the hallway before the door chunked shut behind him, and they were off, pretending to race each other on their way to the elevators.

  Minutes later, in their room, the sound of the ocean wafting through the open glass doors was interrupted by the “boop, boop” of the breaking news ticker across the bottom of their computer’s screen. “USGS scientists are reporting widespread, significant seismic activity in the British West Indies,” the message began. Turns out, they were pre-shocks for something much bigger.

  A wine glass next to the computer, still showing the last few ruby drops left over from the night before, began to vibrate, the bottom of the stem taping, first slowly, and now more rapidly, as it drifted across the glass surface of their desk. The screen on their laptop went dark, and all of Nassau sank beneath the warm, suddenly tumultuous waters of the Atlantic.

  6. Finding Dana

  October 4, 1966.

  “Jeff?”

  For a moment, lying there in the twilight of their bedroom, he thought he heard someone calling his name from whatever was playing on the TV that Dana insisted had to be on all night. He turned to look, thinking how surreal the flat screen seemed on the wall across from the bed, like a painting come to life. Slowly, he turned back to stare at her face, barely illuminated by the soft light coming from their lamppost through the blinds. It was the middle of the night, 3:48 AM to be precise, according to the glowing numbers on the radio across the bed, on the nightstand next to the side where he’d been sleeping.

  He was up, but tired. He never did need much sleep, but lately, now in his early sixties, getting up in the middle of the night had become routine. Sometimes, he’d go downstairs to do the dishes leftover from a late dinner the night before, or write pieces, articles that no one would ever read. Writing was the passion that practical choices and the circumstances of life had denied him, but it wasn’t that big of a deal. Finding Dana made whatever material things he hadn’t accomplished seem unimportant.

  He would stay downstairs until he was tired, so his restlessness wouldn’t disturb her, and then go back to lay beside her, tucking his hand under her side to help him fall back to s
leep.

  Tonight, he got up, but stayed in the room to sit down on the edge of her side of the bed where he could watch her sleep. Her face, despite the years, seemed ever so slightly older, but then even more beautiful than the evening he’d first seen it. What he saw was as new as it was familiar, if anything could be both at the same time. It was Dana. She was the girl, now woman he’d love to meet, and yet somehow had always known. Forty years together and still he couldn’t take his eyes off her, but instead of love, what he felt was sadness and fear. The night seemed like such a waste, given how relatively little time they had left. What, maybe 20 more years if they were lucky, if he could live that long? A long time when you’re twenty, when there’s so much more after that, but no time at all when there isn’t.

  It was a ridiculous…

  “Hey, Jeff?” He heard it again, now with the sound of other voices and music in the background.

  Whatever it was, he’d ignore it.

  …a ridiculous question, the kind only an over-active mind would consider. On one hand, he wanted to go first, to never have to live without her. On the other… On the other, he loved her too much not to be there for her until the end.

  “Hey, buddy,” his friend, Howie, was standing next to the booth Jeff had been holding for them, seeming unusually short. Behind him, an anxious waiter was holding a tray over her head while his friends blocked the narrow aisle. Pushing on Jeff’s shoulder, Howie tried again, a little louder this time. “Jeffrey?! I really need you to…”

  “Yeah? Hi. Hi! ..Sorry, I was just… Actually, I’m not sure what I was thinking about. More like,” he voice started to fade, “I was dreaming... actually.” Looking up, his eyes blew past his chubby friend, past “Bunny,” the girl Howie had been dating, to her friend with the green eyes, short blond hair and instantly familiar smile.

  He stood up carefully, worried he’d forget that the booths were one step up. He’d made a mental note not to make a fool of himself when he first got there and asked the girl at the door if he could hold the table for his friends. “The Pub,” which was all the simple sign over the door said, was one of those places every college town has, right off campus, where bad cheeseburgers on Kaiser rolls and fat steak fries couldn’t have tasted better.

  “Hi,” he smiled back at her, extending his hand to shake hers. It was too proper, close to weird. He knew that, but did it anyway. “I’m Jeff,” he told her, as if she didn’t already know.

  “Jeff,” Howie decided he needed to make a formal introduction. “This is Dana. Dana, this is Jeff.” For some reason, the exchange of names made her giggle.

  He was still holding her hand, but finally let go on the way to inviting her to sit next to him on his side of the booth. Howie and Bunny squeezed in across from them. The table, he thought, was too wide, too far across for them to talk.

  Turning to his left to face her, while Howie passed out The Pub’s badly typed menus in plastic folders, Jeff said it again. “Hi.”

  “You already said that,” she answered, leaving him to wonder if she punctuated every sentence with that same smile.

  “Yeah, uhhh… We need to go out.”

  “We are out.”

  “I mean on a date?”

  “This isn’t a date?”

  “I meant, without Howie, Bunny or any other animals.”

  “Don’t you want to see how tonight goes?” she asked, knowing already how it was going to turn out.

  “No, no. I mean, I already know we’re going out again.”

  “You do?”

  “ I just wanted to dispense with the usual, awkward chit chat after I walk you back to the dorm… so I can spend more time kissing you goodnight.”

  Suddenly, Howie and “The Rabbit,” as he sometimes referred to her in private, stopped over-talking each other and were staring across the table, their eyes moving from one of their friends to the other.

  Pausing for a moment, Dana leaned forward, planting a gentle, perfectly long-lasting kiss on Jeff’s lips, a little bubble of saliva popping as she broke away. It felt like a week before he opened his eyes, but she waited before saying anything. “There. Now that that’s out of the way, maybe you can buy me something to eat.”

  7. Precocious

  “My name…” he stopped for a moment to think about it, “...is Jake. Just Jake. I’m an agricultural microbiologist for a consulting firm. The name of the company isn’t important. They had nothing to do with what I’m about to describe. Besides, by now whatever personal records I kept at the office have been removed or altered to fool any investigation. These people don’t erase any evidence of your existence. That’s way too hard, too suspicious. Better to leave you out there, stripped of your credibility. By now, my life has been tweaked, altered with finesse just enough to make anything I say here seem unbelievable, at best the ramblings of an over-active imagination.

  They have taken from me the fraction of my life that made me special. It was hardly anything, but everything that made me unique. The technique was the proverbial telltale partial fingerprint proving their involvement. I have now become extraordinarily ordinary, of no particular interest to anyone. The records I have, but they don’t know about, are quite probably the last surviving evidence that what I am about to tell you is true. I fear for my life. Even more, I fear that what I have done, however innocent and well meaning, will be left to prove, in horrible retrospect, that my story was authentic, and the danger all too real.”

  “It’s late. If you care, I’m working in the dark, except for the glow of my screen, in the upstairs bedroom of one the kids of an acquaintance who’s on vacation. I overheard him leaving his house key with his secretary for her to take care of his plants, and made a copy while she went out for lunch. He doesn’t know I’m here, and I borrowed a friend’s car in case they were tracking mine. No one followed me. I should be okay for the next few hours – time enough to write this, get some sleep, and be up and out of here early, before any of the neighbors notice. I’m afraid to use my cell phone. In fact, I've turned it off and taken out the battery. And these people don’t have a land-line. It sounds corny, I know, but I’ll give you instructions later for how you can reach me by running a personals add on-line. …I’m talking too much. I’m so tired, but I’ve got to get this out.”

  “My particular specialty is protecting agricultural products from exposure to environmental and biological elements which, when those agricultural products are consumed, would cause harm to the public.”

  “I’m not much of a writer, but I’ll do my best to explain what’s happened, and then I’ve got to go. This will be an e-mail addressed to the Editors-in-Chief of the major television news networks and most prominent newspapers. Hopefully, one of you will take me seriously, investigate on the odd chance that I’m not a crackpot, and do something about it. I can’t, and don’t think I’ll live long enough to do it myself, even if I could. At best, you’ll staff it out, if it even makes it to your desk. At most, you might do your duty and forward it to the local office of the FBI who will give it casual study until it’s too late. At worst, these notes will be one more inconspicuous item for the nice Hispanic lady who empties your trash after you’ve gone home for the day. With luck, you’ll never realize and feel guilty about how many lives you could have saved had you only paid attention.”

  “Some months ago, I was approached by someone who identified herself – verbally and with written credentials which I verified with her agency – as Rebecca Kloonz, a senior analyst with Homeland Security. Ms. Kloonz was an almost too attractive blonde, as stunning as she was friendly, the consummate professional you couldn’t get out of your head no matter how hard you tried. What I did, to be honest, I did for my country, so I thought at the time, but pleasing her was certainly part of it.”

  “When I first met her, she was accompanied by a suit claiming to be a lawyer with the same agency. I’ll attach scans of the business car
ds they gave me. Although I now know they are imposters, both of them checked out when we first met. I called Homeland Security, and there used to be a handful of citations on Google, and a Facebook page, but they’re gone now. Kloonz, the analyst, was to be my contact. The lawyer was supposedly there to explain the handful of forms and agreements I had to sign related to federal secrecy statutes.”

  “The gist of what they wanted was to hire me, outside of our company, to participate in what amounted to a game in the war against terrorism. My job was to devise and precisely document three to five means by which terrorists could infect the food supply so as to produce the most widespread, most frightening harm to our people, with devastating effects on the economy. One simple example that she gave me, far less sophisticated and effective than what she knew I could propose, was to introduce Mad Cow’s Disease in multiple herds around the country, destroying the American beef industry and all the various related companies whose products derive from that core ingredient. But MCD was too obvious. What they wanted from me were techniques that would kill as many people as possible, quickly, before the root cause could be determined, and for which there would be no obvious or convenient solution.”

  “Other experts, as unknown to me as I would be to them, would then be tasked to devise means of protecting against these threats that I had proposed, and recovering from such an attack. In later games, our roles would be reversed. It was the patriotic thing for me to do. It’s unbelievable, but I even met with Ms. Kloonz at her offices in the Homeland Security building in Washington. Why wouldn’t I believe her? While I was there, some senior gentlemen stopped by to thank me for agreeing to work with them on behalf of the American people who, he explained, would never appreciate the value of my clandestine efforts and that of other scientists like me. Who knows what he thought I was there to do? Was he in on it, or not? God forgive me, but who wouldn’t have thought this was real?”

  “Attached to this e-mail are copies of the three suggestions I made, including detailed formulas, instructions for manufacturing and plans for distribution. Their insidious effectiveness never disgusted me. Their cleverness made me proud of what I could do for my country, but then they counted on that, didn’t they, that I would be so highly motivated to do the right thing.”

  Of the three proposals I made to Ms. Kloonz, the one in which she seemed to be most interested wa… Hold on. I think there’s a car pulling up in the driveway. Jesus, it’s after 1 AM and Jack isn’t due home until next week. Hold on… It’s just one man. F**k, he’s working the front door! He’s coming in. I’m going to e-mail this now and send you the attachments later, as soon as I…”

  “Hi, honey.” His mother gave her smiling husband a quick kiss on the lips, and turned to shout upstairs to her favorite (and only) son. “Nelson! Come on. Daddy’s home. I’ve got dinner ready to go. Get your sister and come on down. We’ve still got to pack so we can get an early start tomorrow morning.” They’d put off going to the beach until almost the end of the summer.

  “Nuts,” Nelson thought to himself, interrupting his typing to press on the center of his frames, pushing his glasses up his nose that, sadly, would eventually be more than large enough to no longer need his assistance.

  “He’s not packed yet?” his father asked, putting down his briefcase on top of their cat he hadn’t noticed was sitting in his favorite family room chair. You’d have thought Jack, the cat, would have screamed, but then he was used to it, and looked forward to them leaving him home for a week of peace and quiet. “What’s he been doing all day?”

  “Writing. I don’t know. I haven’t packed either.” And then she laughed, not wanting to make fun of their son, but unable to help herself. “He’s been grumbling that he has less than three weeks before school starts to come up with a really cool nickname.”

  “It’s summertime. Why isn’t he busy with his dorky friends inventing something?”

  “Hey, they’re not that dorky,” his older sister, Samantha, always protective of her younger brother, had just come around the corner into the kitchen. “He’s just a kid – a really, really smart kid with an overly active imagination. He’ll be okay as soon as he starts Middle School after we get back.”

  “Nelson!!!” His mother couldn’t stand not serving dinner when it was ready.

  The cringe was a reflex he couldn’t suppress. Still upstairs, standing up from his desk, Nelson moved the mouse arrow to “Send/Receive” and pressed the left key below his synapse pad. “Maybe it’ll make the news,” he said out loud. “That would be cool.”

  “NELSON.” This time it was his father calling him. “Sam, please go get your brother.”

  “Nelson Metcalf Goldstein. Jesus, what were they thinking?” he muttered under his breath, closing the lid of his laptop on his way to the door. “I’m never going to get a girl to go out with me. Never, ever.”

  8. Dialogue

  “God, I love Sunday mornings. …Richard?”

  “What?”

  “Could you at least not read the paper until we get there? You can’t walk and unfold the paper at the same time. You’re just smooshing it all up. You know I like it crisp, the way it was when we bought it.”

  “Fine, fine. I’ll wait.”

  “Come on. What’s not to enjoy? …Watch it, that guy’s turning. Let’s wait for the light.”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “For the light. You just asked me to wait for the light, didn’t you?”

  “Could you get back on the curb?”

  “But I like the idea of being married to a taller woman. …Come on. We have 24 seconds to cross the street.”

  “It’s perfect. We sleep late, throw on some clothes, pick up the paper and take as much time as we want reading it cover to cover over some fresh coffee and a toasted bagel with extra-saturated fat, mmmm, mmm delicious walnut honey cream cheese. …Life is good.”

  “Hm.”

  “Richard, you promised.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll put it away, but you’re getting breakfast.”

  “Deal. Now hold my hand and pretend like we actually enjoy hanging out together. It’s the one day we both have off. …There, isn’t that better?”

  “You just want to remind your friends that we’re the only marriage they know that isn’t on the rocks, and that’s just because, in four years, we’ve only spent one day a week together. What’s that, 108 days, roughly three months? No wonder we’re still happy.”

  "208 days. Four times 52 is 208. Seven months."

  "Whatever. Technically, we're still newlyweds. At this rate our marriage could last forever."

  “But we have great sex, don’t we?”

  “Confirming my theory that it’s best if only one of us is awake at a time. …I need to write a paper on that.”

  “Hey, any time you want to move to the suburbs, we can both stop working 12 hour days.”

  “What, and not eat out every meal?”

  “We could save some money. That would be… Brenda!”

  “Jesus, stop waiving. She’ll want to join us.”

  “Try smiling. She’s got a morning session with her trainer, and please don’t say anything. I already know what you’re thinking.”

  “I am trying to smile. This is the best I can do.”

  “Alright, kill the smile. You’re beginning to scare people.”

  “There, the table on the end. The one by the Ficus with the squirrel pooping in the pot.”

  “How do you know it’s a Ficus?”

  “I don’t. It’s the only potted tree name I know. Besides, I like the way it sounds. ‘Ficus.’ If we ever have a kid, I want to name it ‘Ficus.’”

  “It? …Would you mind if we took this chair? …Thanks.”

  “Boy. Girl. Who cares? Ficus is one of those names, like ‘Dana,” that works either way. Have you got money?”

  “I
do. It’s in my sock. …Don’t ask.”

  “I won’t.”

  “I’m too young for a fanny pack.”

  “Did you notice, I didn’t ask. Just make sure my croissant is perfect. And make sure, actually tell him not to slice it. I like tearing my croissants apart.”

  “I’m going.”

  “I mean it! Don’t take it if he... slices it. She can’t hear me. I’m just talking to myself.”

  “Hey, Richard.”

  “Oh, hey, Brenda. You don’t mind if I don’t get up, do you? Lisa insisted that we walk and I’m exhausted.”

  “Richard, you only live eight minutes from here.”

  “Well, it seemed like ten. Besides, if I stop reading, I’ll forget where I was and have to start over again.”

  “Aren’t those the comics?”

  “This one has more words than usual.”

  “Your chair’s wobbling.”

  “True, but it’s wobbling less than the other chairs. …Lisa’s inside getting food.”

  “No, I’m right here. There was no one in line. Serge actually seemed glad to see me. Hi, honey.”

  “I thought I was ‘honey.’”

  “No, you’re ‘sweet cheeks.’ I’ll make you name tag when I get back. Brenda and I need to chat for a second. I’ll be right back.”

  “You really think my cheeks are sweet?”

  “ Read the paper.”

  “I thought we were going to read the paper together. Apparently not.”

  “You were right.”

  “That was quick. Right about what?”

  “About Jeffrey. Hand me the ‘Arts & Leisure’ section.”

  “Who’s ‘Jeffrey’? ...Here.”

  “Her trainer. I think he’s 12, but Brenda says he has the maturity of a 15 year old. …Oh my God! I can’t believe you dog-eared one of the pages. Have you learned nothing living with me??”

  “Just read the review of Bob’s play. You can thank me later.”

  “Richard, there’s a pigeon on the table.”

  “None of my friends are pigeons. It must be one of yours.”

  “Do I have poppy seeds in my teeth?”

  “No.”

  “Richard, put the paper down and tell me if I have poppy seeds in my teeth.”

  “No poppy seeds, but your teeth seem unusually large today.”

  “By the way, I meant to tell you…”

  “Tell me what?”

  “Hey, will you try not to dip the corner of the paper in my cream cheese the next time you turn the page. It has the perfect number of walnuts.”

  “That’s what you wanted to tell me?”

  “No. …I’m expecting.”

  “Hm.”

  “I said, ‘I’m expecting...”

  “Expecting what?”

  “…a Ficus.”

  “We’ll put it on the balcony. It’ll be fine. …Did you take the ‘Finance' section?”

  “Richard?”

  “Hm.”

  “Richard?!!”

  “What?!”

  “We don’t have a balcony.”

  9. Creative Running

  “Heh, heh, whooo. Heh, heh, whooo.” It was the cadence of his breathing, more prominent, in his head at least, than even the sound of his Nike’s hitting the pavement. As for the pattern, it was the letter “U” in Morse Code. He’d looked it up once. Beyond that, he didn’t know why he breathed like that when he ran and didn’t care – just one more idiosyncrasy among many he’d long ago given up trying to understand.

  “It was unseasonably cold that morning, not yet 5 AM, running in the dark slowly up the hill to Grey Rock. He’d remembered to take his baseball cap, but not his gloves, and now the occasional rubbing of his hands together was breaking his stri...”

  “Heh, heh, whooo.”

  “Jesus, I’ve even started thinking like I’m writing. That’s got to be an early, maybe not so early sign of mental illness,” he thought to himself, which turned out to be the point of it all. He was a good twenty pounds overweight, but the shape he was in or out of had nothing to do with why he ran.

  “It’s my time to think. Just me, daydreaming to the rhythm of my breathing and the sound of the street, enjoying the contrast between running by the occasional street light and then through the pitch black tunnels under the leaves of the trees between them. I like it. I can’t sleep more than four or five hours at a time, anyway. Why not run? I get some of my best ideas when I’m running, especially in the early morning. It’s the nice thing about living in the suburbs. No cars, no pedestrians, not this early. Just me and the noise of some insects I don’t ever want to see, doing whatever they do in the bushes and trees between the houses.”

  “Speaking of running, there goes my nose. There,” he paused for a moment to breathe in through it, “I’ll just suck it up. …Gross. Thank goodness there’s no one else…”

  “Good morning.”

  “Hi. Hi, uh,” he stammered his response, surprised by the really attractive thirty-something blond who ran past him, not a foot away to his side, coming in the other direction out of the darkness ahead of him. “Crap. The one really good-looking jogger in the entire neighborhood and she passes me when I’m snorting. Perfect. That’s what she’ll remember about me for the rest of her life. Every time anyone around her so much as sniffs, she’ll think about me, the guy with the runny nose and no Kleenex. Precisely the impression I’ve always wanted to make on hot women I meet. Who knows? Maybe she finds vulgar personal behavior strangely compelling. Not a bad trait for one of my characters, maybe a stunning, drop dead beautiful woman with no apparent interest in personal hygiene.”

 

  “Heh, heh, whooo. Heh, heh, whooo.”

  “Hey!” A car turning off one of the side streets just missed him, cutting its turn too fast and too close to the curb as he approached the corner, somehow failing to see the lighted band he wore on his right wrist.

  “Paperboy, my ass. Whatever happened to kids delivering the paper rolled up in the baskets on slow moving Schwinns, meandering down the streets, trying their best to lead their customers’ paths and front porches just perfectly, too cute for anyone to complain when they didn’t. …There, I’m doing it again. ‘Doctor, doctor, give me the news. I’ve got a bad case of…’”

  “Bacon?! Wow, smell that bacon. Someone’s up early making breakfast,” he wondered, looking around for the source, as if he’d stop by for directions and maybe invite himself in. “God, I love the smell of bacon. I don’t see any lights. Must be a kitchen in the back of one of these houses with a vent running over the stove. Two eggs over easy. Four, maybe five hundred milligrams of cholesterol. Some chopped potatoes grilled in a fry pan. Just what I need.”

  “Actually, what I need is to get back to work. Let’s see… Hey, what’s that? Hey! It’s uh... Yeah, it’s a naked woman running, running badly, more like flailing down the middle of the street! There!! Just ahead under the street lamps at the corner. She’s crying so much I can’t make out what she’s screaming. I’ve got to help her. I’ll speed up. Oh, man, she’s fallen down…”

  “No, no. Too sexual. Gratuitous nudity. Exciting, but no substitute for quality writing. On the other hand,” never wanting to forget a good gimmick, “the idea could come in handy one day.”

  “Heh, heh, whooo. Heh, heh, whooo.” Unexpectedly, our runner looked up toward the sound of deep-throated exhaust coming fast down the middle of the street, the throbbing of its speakers confirming an SUV from somewhere else.

  “Asshole!!” one of the young men from the SUV shouted out the window at him when it drove by, uncomfortably close to where he was running, just a couple of feet from the curb.”

  Turning quickly for what he was certain would be an unheard act of defiance, “That’s ‘Mr. Asshole,’ you jerk!”

  “Who gave them,” he muttered between breaths, feeling like they’d picked on him an
d gotten away with it, “the right to interrupt my personal time? …Heh, heh, whooo. Heh, heh, whooo. Can’t they see I’m working?”

  “Unfortunately, the next thing he heard was the squealing of tires doing a fast one-eighty behind him. They were coming back, this time with two of them hanging out the driver’s side windows closest to where he was running, driving on the wrong side, his side of the street.”

  “Looking over his shoulder, he had a choice: Show them he wasn’t afraid, which would have been faking it, or run off the street between the houses, maybe look for some people who might be up to pound on their door. Figuring this was no time to pretend to be cool, and without anyone around to impress, he picked up speed and headed for the curb, thinking he should turn off his wrist band. In case they stopped and chased after him, he'd be harder to find.”

  “Probably just some teenagers who’ve had a few too many beers,” he said to himself, doing his best to rationalize away the fear he wasn’t accustomed to feeling. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Hey!” he heard someone shout from the car, “Eat this, ‘Mr. Asshole.’!! ..POP. POP, POP!”

  “It was the sound of something he’d never even written about, the sound of something he’d only heard in the movies and on TV, and not at all what he expected. For a second, he didn’t even understand why he was falling to the sidewalk, ricocheting off a tree that was near the curb, thinking he had tripped, not feeling any pain or other sensation that would have told him the awful truth, that that popping sound might be the last he’d ever… hear.”

  “Nahhh. Way too dramatic. ...Heh, heh, whooo. Heh, heh, whooo.”

  10. Mind Over Maury

  How I learned to stop complaining and love ESPN.

  “Hey, Sue.” It was Saturday morning, around 11. Maury was just coming back from Lowe’s with a half a dozen or so plastic bags filled with what he needed for the weekend’s projects around the house.

  Sue had been friends with his wife, Doris, since college, a bridesmaid at their wedding 22 years ago. She had walked the few blocks from her house in their suburb to visit. The weather was perfect this early fall morning, cool, but not so much that they couldn’t have their coffee around the small table on the porch that wrapped around the front of Maury’s house. He was a little overweight, but still the same pleasantly good looking guy Doris has married, quick to smile, slow to get angry, devoted and attentive to his wife and children, especially lately.

  “Hi, Maury,” Sue smiled back at him, sitting sideways, one leg tucked under the other on the cushion on one of their wicker chairs, warming her hands around the fresh cup of coffee Doris had been pouring for her when Maury walked up the path from their driveway.

  “Hi, honey,” Doris put the coffee pot back on the table, and was slouching back into her chair, crossing her feet on their way back to the ottoman in front of her. “What have you got there?”

  “Everything I need to clear up the last few items on your list,” he responded without the slightest trace of sarcasm. “Am I the perfect husband or what?” The truth is, he was, at least recently, including in the bed department to Doris’ pleasant surprise, and in every other respect.

  “…or what,” she responded warmly, kidding him with her smile. “You need help?” Doris started to get up, watching Maury struggle to hold the screen door open with his left foot while opening the front door with his right hand, the bags he was holding now dangling from his wrist.

  “No, no. I’m fine.” And so she stayed where she was, waiting until she heard their door chunk shut before resuming her conversation with Sue.

  “Wow,” Sue couldn’t help but notice, “what’s happened to him? I didn’t think Maury did stuff around the house, or anywhere for that matter…”

  “…particularly,” Doris finished Sue’s sentence for her, “since he got that widescreen and added all those ESPN hi-def channels to our cable service.”

  “So what did you do,” Sue asked her, pretending to suggest with her twice-raised eyebrows that it might have been something sexual, “to get his ass off the couch in your family room? …Something maybe I can do for Bob?”

  Laughing as she sipped on her favorite, oversized cup, Doris couldn’t wait to share her secret. “No, nothing like that, sad to say. It was, uh… Well, actually, I was going to the bathroom a few weeks ago, hiding out from the kids, fuming at Maury for ignoring them and me to watch some college game he couldn’t care less about.” Doris stopped for a moment, sat up and leaned forward toward Sue to talk to her more quietly, face to face. “So I’m sitting there fumbling through the stack of magazines in the basket, and I come across one of Maury’s Popular Sciences from a few months ago. I figure, what the hell, I’m tired of reading catalogs anyway…”

  “I know, there’s nothing in any of them worth buying, and the models are beginning to look like children. Just pisses me off.”

  “My point exactly, so I pick it up and start thumbing through the pages. It’s sort of interesting, but I was just killing time until I get to the back where they have all these little classified ads, everything from Viagra to kits for making personal helicopters, stuff like that, and then this one little ad catches my eye.” She paused for dramatic effect, playing with her friend, taking a moment’s break for a gulp of coffee.

  “Come on, already,” Sue demanded, having fun being excited, “What was it?”

  “It was this little ad for something called ‘Mindset,’ you know like a TV set gadget for your head. ‘Changing the way people think.’ was all it said, and a website. …I don’t know. It stuck in my head for the rest of the afternoon so, what the hell, I went there.”

  “So what’s it do?”

  “It’s what they call a ‘smart card,’ like a credit card, but it’s programmable, that goes into a slot on the back of your cable box. Take a look. I didn’t even know there was one.”

  “One what?”

  “A slot, for the card, in the back of your cable box.”

  “And what’s any of this have to do with Maury?”

  “Listen, it’s simple.” Doris paused as if to give Sue time to write down what she was about to say. “…You put the smart card in your laptop, and run the software that lets you program one or more messages, just a few words, that the card will play every once and a while, every so many frames. It happens so fast, the person watching doesn’t have a conscious memory of having read it – and you can program it to run on only certain channels…”

  “Like ESPN!” they sat back and said simultaneously, nodding their heads slightly up and down.

  “It’s what they call,” Sue recognized the process from some book on marketing and psychology she’d read once, “subliminal advertising, isn’t it?”

  Doris smiled back at her in agreement.

  “… ‘subliminal’ because it affects the subconscious without the person watching knowing it. They tried an experiment once in movie theaters to see if they could get people to buy more Coke and popcorn. Apparently it worked so well, they made it illegal. …Isn’t it illegal?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Doris was hedging. “The manual that came with it said it was illegal to use on other people without their knowing it, but…”

  “Honey…” It was Maury, surprising them at the front door to ask a quick question. “Where did you put the shade you bought for our bathroom window?”

  “It’s around the corner, in the bag leaning up against the coat stand.”

  “Great. Sorry to interrupt.” And he was gone, the front door chunking behind him again.

  “…According to the manual, it’s meant for personal use, you know, for people who want to stop smoking or suppress their appetite for snacking while they watch TV. …But I figured, why not give it shot.”

  “And you programmed it to tell Maury what?”

  “A couple of things. That I was amazing, and that he should do whatever I asked him to do, and love doing it.” She stopped to chug
the last few drops in her cup. “…It took a week or so, but then it started to work, and just keeps getting better.”

  “Unbelievable,” and then Sue laughed, almost squealing with excitement, “and I want one!!”

  “Come on. Let’s get out of here,” Doris checked her watch and stood up. I’ll get my pocketbook and keys. They’re right inside on the hook.” Pushing open the front door, she reached to her right to get what she needed, “Maury!” she shouted to him. “Sue and I are going to get some lunch and catch the 2 o’clock show. See you later.”

  “Have a good time,” he shouted back to her. “I’ll be done with all this before you get back.” And she turned, pulling the heavy wooden door behind her, leaving it for the screen door to take care of itself.

  An hour or so later, Maury’s buddy, George, rapped on the sliding glass door to their walkout basement. Peering over his shoulder from where he was sitting on the couch in front of the widescreen TV, he waved to his friend to come inside. On the wall, huge, almost life-size football players were running across the screen. “Grab a beer, this is getting good,” which George did, plopping himself down in the overstuffed chair where he always sat, reaching over the arm of the couch to grab a handful of popcorn, dropping only a few kernels on the way to his mouth.

  “Where’s Doris?” George asked without looking at his friend, his eyes fixed on the action in front of him.

  “Out for the afternoon with Sue.”

  “Does she know?”

  “No. Never should have asked me to clean up the basement. Wouldn’t have found it if I hadn’t been vacuuming behind the cable box.”

  “Can’t blame her.” George understood from his own wife’s constant complaining.

  “Nah.”

  “So you’ve reprogrammed it?”

  Smiling, Maury took a rare moment to turn away from the screen. “Let just say I wouldn’t watch Oprah down here if I were you, …and the sex has never been better.”

  11. “Dream a little dream of me.”

  The title is from the lyrics by Gus Kahn.

  “Bobby?” As tiny as their apartment was, there were times when they couldn’t see each other. “Bobby, where are you?!” She shouted, struggling with one hand to dump their bedroom trashcan into the big garbage bag she was holding in her other, and do it in the less than 18” they had between that one side of their bed and the wall with the window to the fire escape.

  “Hi, Dorothy.” It was the shrill, instant headache, unforgivingly cheerful voice of her neighbor, the older lady that lived on her same floor, but in the building that backed up against theirs.

  “Hi, Mrs. Donnelly,” she answered reluctantly, pausing a second to look over rather than feeling bad the rest of the night for having ignored her. “How,” she thought to herself, “could someone that nice be so annoying?” “It’s cold out,” she said out loud this time, “shouldn’t you close your window?”

  “You’ve got yours open.” She was annoying, but not stupid.

  “You’re right, Mrs. Donnelly. What was I thinking? ...Good night now,” and she reached up to pull the lower half of the window down, turning the lock and waving goodbye with a quick back and forth motion of her hand. “ … Bobby!”

  “What?!” came the muffled, frustrated voice of her husband from behind the pocket door at the end of their kitchen, “I’m in the bathroom. Give me a break.”

  “I’m taking the trash out.”

  “Fine, fine, fine,” he responded with almost, but not quite complete disinterest, followed by the sounds of his turning the page and then refolding the front section of that morning’s Times he was just getting around to reading.

  “Ummmh.” She was strong for being only five foot three, but the old metal door to their apartment, made heavier by more than a hundred years of sloppy paint, always took her best effort. Somehow the grunt seemed to help. “I’ll be right back,” she mumbled, not caring to make herself heard over the banging shut of the door behind her. Instinctively, she patted the right front pocket of her jeans to make sure she had her key, the garbage bag she was carrying brushing up against the plaster wall of their narrow hallway.

  Five flights down and around the marble steps of the converted tenement where they lived, past the building mailbox, and she was almost at the door to the side alley. Outside there was a platform and two steps down to where the trash cans and, yes, an occasional rat would be waiting. But these were good, West Village rats, bohemian and more friendly than most in the city, so she liked to think, that fortunately she had never had the pleasure of meeting.

  She took out the garbage every night after dinner, but tonight would be different. Tonight, coming around the corner past the mailboxes, in the dim light from the high ceiling above her, on the small dirty white tiles just ahead of where she was walking, there was something dark on the floor. Letting the bag she was holding in her left hand down slowly, she bent over, not wanting to kneel down. Leaning forward, it was… it was.. “Blood?” she whispered calmly, at first, until the almost academic nature of her investigation was interrupted by the “chunk” of the door a few feet in front of her.

  “Oh, my God!” she whispered nervously. “There must have been someone there,” she thought to herself. And then something else caught her attention. To her right, she extended her own hand to touch the red print, smeared as if someone had pressed his, maybe her hand against the wall on the way down to the floor. Turning her hand slowly to see her palm, a wave of fear unlike anything she had ever imagined finally hit her.

  “BOBBEEE!!!!” Dorothy turned to run up the five flights back to her apartment. “BOBBEEEE!!” she kept shouting, running as fast as she could, holding her stained hand away from her and off the railing.

  “What?! What’s wrong,” he rolled and sat up on his side of their bed. “What is it?” But then he knew, seeing her sitting up, staring at the palm of her right hand, her face contorted with fear, her chest heaving as it fought to catch the breath she didn’t really need to take. “Come on,” he said, reaching around and pulling her toward him. “It’s just a dream, the same dream you keep having. …It’s not real. It’s not real, honey.”

  It took what seemed to be forever, but she finally calmed down and fell back to sleep, lying there, her head against his chest, his arms still around her.

  “Mr. Cooper? …Mr. Cooper?”

  “Yes, Doctor. Sorry, I…”

  “It’s okay. You’ve been here with her for two days now. I’m sorry I had wake you, but I’m getting out of here for the night and didn’t want to leave without giving you an update.”

  “So how’s she doing, Doctor?” Bobby asked, getting up from the chair by the window where he had finally fallen asleep, exhausted to the point of shaking when he talked. “Why isn’t she conscious yet? Shouldn’t she…”

  “Hold on. I think she’s going to be okay. Actually, physically, she appears to be recovering well from the surgery.”

  “Then why isn’t she…”

  “Listen to me,” he responded, doing his best to calm Bobby down. “Think about it… She goes down to take out the trash, like she does every night, but this time she interrupts some spaced out druggy who’d apparently come in through the side door, the police aren’t sure why. He panics and shoots her. That kind of trauma does things to your head. If one of your neighbors hadn’t stopped by for his mail, she could have died, could have bled to death, but she didn’t. ...Listen to me. She’s going to be okay. This tossing you see, this squinting and anxiety you see in her face… She’s fighting on one hand to wake up, but on the other to stay under, to make it a dream, to fight the reality of what’s happened to her.”

  “When do you…”

  “I don’t know, Bobby. You sit by the bed like you’ve been doing. Hold her hand. Talk to her. Most of all, let her hear your voice. …You’ll both be okay.”

  12. Memo to Carolyn

  Metamorphosis. In
Biology, a profound change in form from one stage

  to the next in the life history of an organism.

  The doorbell rang unexpectedly that unseasonably cool, gray Sunday morning. “I’ll get it,” she said to Jack who was busy looking through the Best Buy flier in the morning paper he’d brought back from the store down at the corner. Walking from the kitchen to answer it, past the boxes she and her husband had yet to unpack, Carolyn looked though their bay window, wishing it would start raining already and get it over with. She was numb, having been unable to sleep the night before.

  “Yes,” was all she could manage to say as she opened their front door to see a woman in her thirties and a curly haired boy, maybe seven or eight, whose hand she was holding. In the boy’s other hand were one or two sheets of paper, neatly folded in half with something printed in pencil Carolyn couldn’t make out. He lifted them up, extending his arm, his eyes asking Carolyn to take them as his mother began to speak.

  “Are you ‘Carolyn’?” the mother asked nervously.

  “Yes,” Carolyn responded tentatively, turning her eyes downward to the boy smiling up at her. “What can I do…”

  “I… You don’t know us. I live in Collier, about half an hour from here. My son, Jeff,” the mother started to explain, squeezing her son’s hand as she did, “is very bright. Good computer skills. This morning he was up early on his computer, typing. His hands are a little small, but he types real well anyway. Doesn’t have to look at the keys.” A sense of pride came through her anxiousness as she continued. “This here is what he gave my husband and me when he came in for breakfast. It’s typed, as you’ll see. That’s Jeff’s printing with your name and address there on the outside.”

  Kneeling down in the open doorway, Carolyn extended her hand to take the pages from the little boy, his big brown eyes giving momentary relief from the sadness she had been fighting. “Hi, Jeff. Is that for me?”

  “Yep,” he said, handing it over.

  Unfolding it, she saw a page and a half of very neatly typed paragraphs. “Did you type this for me?”

  “Yep,” he said again, nodding his head up and down this time. “I’m in the third grade.”

  “How did you know my name and address? My husband and I,” Carolyn looked up at the mother to make this point,” haven’t even finished moving in yet.”

  “Don’t know,” he smiled back at her, and her back at him. “It was just there.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “In my head, with the words I typed.”

  “How ‘bout that.” Carolyn didn’t know whether or not to believe him, but, “What the heck,” she thought to herself, standing back up. “Well, thank you. Thank you both. I’ll read it while I’m finishing my bagel.” She didn’t know what else to say, forgetting even to ask how to contact them if she had any questions.

  And the mother turned, walked down the stoop, her son in tow, when Jeff stopped, turned and said, “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry about what?” Carolyn asked him, still standing in the doorway.

  “About your dad,” and then he turned and the two of them walked back to their car.

  She was stunned. The almost surreal experience of these two strangers coming to the door, now replaced in her heart with the memory of being at the hospital the night before, realizing that her father had passed away just before she could get there.

  Sitting down again, she read the note out loud to herself and Jack, who looked up at the expression on his wife’s face and listened quietly to the slight trembling in her usually steady voice.

  Hi, Honey.

  I don’t believe in God. You know that. We’ve talked about it from time to time. Just because there’s something, many things we don’t understand, doesn’t mean a deity had anything to do with them. It just means we haven’t figured them out yet. I believe in science. Still do, even now. And I most certainly don’t believe in ghosts. “Dead is dead,” I used to think to myself. Sad, but true. We are nothing more than complex biological machines, the imperfect product of eons of evolution, born to die.

  These last few months, sitting on the deck, watching the birds and squirrels, I’ve been thinking about what makes us different from them. Many things, of course, but the one that struck me as most important is imagination. They know we exist, that we’re some kind of living thing, but they can’t imagine, can’t conceive of what we are.

  And so it occurred me, albeit a self-serving realization in light of my current “predicament,” that perhaps we, too, suffer from the same shortcoming, overwhelmed as we are by the conceit and over-confidence that come naturally to any highly intelligent species.

  Unlike my birds and furry friends on the deck and in the woods behind our house, we can pretty much imagine anything. It’s the stuff of science fiction, proof positive that we can conceive of things well beyond our ability to comprehend how they might be possible. Imagination is the leading edge of discovery. More and more, as our technology and knowledge advance, it becomes clear that imagining something is the precursor to figuring it out, to finding it, to making it happen. It’s not something the bird and the squirrel can do – although I wonder about the squirrels sometimes, the way they pause to figure out how to breach the “squirrel-proof” fence around the birdfeeder. They’re thinking, and there is great promise in that.

  What if our recent success over the past few thousand years has made us arrogant? What if we’re not the most sophisticated, most intelligent life form on the planet? In the universe, of course we’ll concede that there must be other, superior life, but that’s a purely academic observation we lose nothing by making. Here, on earth, it’s all about us. We are the superior beings. Even more demeaning, what if we’re only a stage in a process so surprising, so different from our experience, that it is, to us, a thousand times more profound than the difference between the bird and squirrel and you and me?

  Is it possible – and the fact that I can imagine it may make it so – that exobiological intelligent life – intelligent life without discernable form, the ultimate wireless entity – exists here, and that all we are, physically, is a cocoon, larva, an interim step in the development of something else, the existence of which is nothing like being human, the presence of which we cannot sense? How presumptuous of us to believe that life must have form, or that that form must be something we can see. There was, after all, a time not long ago, before microscopes, when we believed the only life was what we could see with the naked eye. Just because you can’t see or touch something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist, but only that, whatever it is, you can’t see or touch it.

  I’ve always scoffed at stories about ghosts, about communicating with the dead, out-of-body near-death experiences and reincarnation, about whether or not there’s any substance to the notion of a “soul.” No doubt, they’re mostly bunk, the product of confused minds and charlatans who would profit from the need many of us feel for something more. On the other hand, maybe, just maybe there’s a simpler, explanation. Maybe it’s just that there’s another life form right here on Planet Earth, the distant relative we never knew we had to whom science will someday introduce us. What I propose, it’s just occurred to me, is nothing less than a unified theory, a single explanation for all the spiritual mumbo jumbo. ...“Boo!” …Sorry, I couldn’t help myself. That used to scare you when I would read to you when you were a little kid. Scare you, and then you’d laugh – but don’t think from that poor excuse for comic relief that I’m not serious or that the circumstances of your receiving these notes should be easily dismissed. Sorry I missed you last night, but don’t feel bad. I know you came as soon as you heard.

  Could it be that death is not the end, period, but only a milestone? That the next stage needs time to develop the intellectual power and experience to be self-sustaining in its final form? Is it possible that we fight so hard to live, not because we believe there’s nothing more to it, nothing beyond our c
urrent existence, but as an instinctive mechanism to protect the life form we are nurturing? …a life form our science will one day be able to confirm and explain? What today is unbelievable, becomes tomorrow’s common knowledge in the science textbooks of high school and college.

  Honey, I’m not talking God here. Heaven forbid. Nor am I waxing philosophical about souls or spirits. I’m just wondering if there might be a form of life, from us, but not like us, into which we might, each of us individually, be evolving.

  Well, it’s all so much crap, isn’t it? After all, no one ever dies to tell about it. One thing’s for sure, if you’re reading this, the words, “I will always be here for you,” will now mean more than you would have otherwise imagined. As for the voice you’ll hear in your head every now and then, the one you think sounds like me, maybe it will be.

  I love you.

  Daddy

  There was a moment of silence around the table, Carolyn staring at the word “Daddy” while Jack’s eyes moved around the table, his head fixed and face emotionless, settling on the open and now empty plastic tub from Trader Joe’s.

  “We’re out of cream cheese.”

  Not bothering to look up at him, she drew a shallow breath and set the neatly typed pages she was holding down to her right, on top of the folded style section she’d been reading before the doorbell rang. Her left elbow on the edge of the table, she massaged her forehead with the thumb and fingers of that hand. And then, pulling her lips apart slowly, closing them, swallowing and trying again, “Put it on the list,” she said instinctively, “…I’ll, uh,” forgetting for a moment what she was supposed to say, “I’ll be going shopping later today.”

  13. Business Management 213

  The Fly And The Blonde

  “Mis-ter Conner?” It was the always skeptical, deliberate voice of Professor Weinberg, looking up from the class chart – with pictures, no less – that he kept as the blotter on his lectern. If you were late for his Tuesday 8 AM class or, heaven forbid, missing, he knew it. If you were the least bit unprepared, he would sense it and pounce. Unlike many of the other faculty in the Business Management program, Jacob Weinberg was no career academic, having built and made a fortune in his own business before retiring to write and teach. His students both respected and feared him, wanting to be in his class just slightly more than they didn’t. It was always a gut-wrenching, but nonetheless intellectually stimulating experience.

  Eighteen rows up, just left of center from Weinberg’s point of view, Bobby Conner rolled his pen repeatedly through and over the fingers of his right hand. It was something he did automatically when he was fighting the prospect of a losing battle with the attention and focus a Socratic method lecturer like Weinberg demanded. It wasn’t a lack of interest, but a lack of sleep that was the problem.

  Sitting next to him, on his right, was Shelly, the girl from Bobby’s dorm he seldom noticed, or so it seemed to her. No makeup, because she didn’t need any and wouldn’t have troubled to put it on if she did. Two different color t-shirts – one short- and the under-one long-sleeve – and jeans so comfortable she may have slept in them. Her light blonde shoulder length hair going this way and that, held recklessly behind her with an oversized hair clip she grabbed on the way out the door, rushing to get to class on time. Glancing at the door next to her on her way out of the dorm, she considered knocking, which would have been the friendly thing to do, but shied away, deciding instead to look forward to seeing him in class.

  She was gorgeous, in a completely unpretentious way, if only Bobby were paying attention. His mind, more often than not, was somewhere else.

  Dressed in a perfectly cut business suit and just the right tie – so he was thinking at daydream speed that moment – a small, soft leather portfolio under his arm, Bobby’s alter ego of the future careened around the floor-to-ceiling marble to the bank of elevators just off the lobby of the building where he worked. Mr. Conner was on his way up, physically and otherwise, to the senior executive conference room where he was about to make a company- and career-making presentation.

  It was crowded, but not so much that he missed seeing the knockout blonde from “Acquisitions” in the navy blue silk blouse that wouldn’t quit. She was the company babe that every male, and some of the women, in the office wanted, but who was somehow saving herself for him. A couple of polite “Excuse me"s and he was standing in front of her, she with her back to the corner of the polished mahogany-paneled elevator, he facing her, his back to the door and everyone else. They had flirted around the idea of going out, but had never actually done it.

  “Big meeting?” she asked him, so close he could feel her breath on his face.

  “Huge,” he responded without the least hint of nervousness.

  “Yeah,” she said softly, taking a step, if that was possible, even closer toward him to whisper in his ear, “well your fly’s down.”

  “No it’s not.” He was surprised, but didn’t look down, unwilling and unable to stop staring at her face for even a moment, not the least bit shaken by what she said. “How was it possible,” he thought to himself, “that every luminescent hair landed just right no matter how quickly or slowly she turned her head? Could lipstick be any more red? A mouth any more inviting?”

  “Wanna bet?” Smiling, her eyes glued to his, she reached down, one hand on and around his belt, the other reaching for the metal tag which was now at the bottom of his zipper, pulling it up way too slowly for any normal, soon-to-be-promoted Vice President to handle.

  Her business done, it took all the concentration he had to say, “Thanks. …Maybe I can return the favor,” when his daydream was abruptly interrupted.

  “Bobby!” It was Shelly.

  Turning his head slowly toward her, he was struck by how familiar she looked. “A little makeup, different clothes maybe…,” he thought to himself. “She’d have to do something with her hair…”

  “Bobby!!,” she rubbed his arm gently, whispering his name again, this time as loud as she could get away with.

  “Mis-ter Conner?!”

  “What? ..Yes, Sir.” Bobby was startled, but quickly got himself under control, the drowsiness in his eyes and demeanor pushed instantly aside by the intensity of his mind bringing itself on-line.

  “Mr. Conner, do you or do you not have an opinion about the case study we’re currently discussing?”

  Instinctively, Bobby began to rise to his feet. It wasn’t the college rule, but Professor Weinberg insisted on it, very “old school” and proud of it, even while Shelly was pulling on his shirt as if to hold him down.

  Still whispering, she did her best to warn him, “Your fly’sssss down.” Too late. He was up, and it was obvious.

  Unfazed, Bobby, his voice confident and unshaken, said, “Pardon me,” reaching down, casually, to pull up his zipper as if it were absolutely no big deal. “Sorry. I was up late last night reviewing this study and two others that were similar, and obviously dressed a bit too quickly rather than risk being late.”

  “Ahhh, bullshit!” one of his friends fake sneezed from the back of the lecture hall.

  Bobby then spent the next two minutes going right to the heart of the case study with impressive detail and insight.

  “Sur-pris-ing-ly astute, Mr. Conner,” Professor Weinberg congratulated him reluctantly. “Try to get dressed more carefully next time, before you get to class.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bobby responded almost inaudibly as he sat back down.

  Shelly looked up at him, mostly with her eyes, with wonder at what he’d just managed to pull off. Moving her left hand in front of her mouth, she waited a few seconds to talk until another student was busy raising some obscure and irrelevant point. “Nice save.” She couldn’t help but smile. “You guys didn’t finish playing poker last night until after midnight. …You do know I live next door, don’t you?”

  “Right next door?” he whispered back, playing with her. There are, he was just beg
inning to realize, some people you get to meet for the first time more than once. And then to explain how he'd managed to be so well-prepared, “I checked out some stuff over the weekend.” Turning her way, about to follow up with some smart, maybe snide remark, he changed his mind – something about her eyes he hadn’t noticed before, feeling the touch of her breath on his face.

  14. Jones

  “Jones,” the older man at the first desk nodded without looking up.

  “Good evening, Mr. Colby. How are you?”

  “Jones,” as almost everyone called him, was just arriving for the night shift, midnight to 9 AM, as an Assistant Producer – one of those titles that sounded more important than it really was, that they gave you instead of money – for a local TV station’s news department.

  “Hmm,” was Mr. Colby’s only response. Jones had no real idea what Mr. Colby did there, and wasn’t sure Mr. Colby did either. It was some administrative task that didn’t require supervision, or contact with other humans. Whatever it was, he’d been doing it for years.

  “Jones,” the next person he saw mumbled, rushing past him, her attention focused on some papers she was desperately trying to read before she got to wherever she was going.

  “Good evening, Ms. Collier.”

  “Jones.” Up ahead, it was the thin man with the unusually large Adam’s apple holding his tie out of the way while he bent over the water fountain.

  “Hey, Mr. Stedman,” Jones returned the greeting, continuing on his way. “How’s your daughter feeling?”

  “Much better, thank you,” Mr. Stedman, on his way back up, wiping a few late arriving drops away from his mouth, seemed surprised that Jones knew to ask. “And how, uh…” He wanted to reciprocate, but was in the process of confusing Jones with someone else he didn’t really know.

  Sensing the awkwardness, Jones thought he’d help Stedman out. “I don’t have any children,” he smiled politely in passing, “but thank you for asking.”

  “Of course not,” Stedman said going away.

  “Of course not?” Jones thought to himself, a look of concern rippling across his eyes and forehead. “I could have children,” he attempted in vain to reassure himself.

  “Hi, Robert.” Robert was the sports AP, in the first carrel around the corner, in the row of carrels where Jones would spend the night, getting up occasionally to go to editing, the bathroom or to throw something from the refrigerator into the microwave. Tonight was special. He’d brought a fresh French baguette, some shaved turkey and Swiss, enough for a couple of sandwiches – and a small, two person bottle of cheap Sangria that he’d left in the bag so no one looking in the refrigerator would see it.

  “Yo,” was apparently all Robert had time to say, his eyes glued to some game on his screen – Brazilian women’s volleyball – that had nothing to do with his job. The shift before him had already collected all the local high school and college scores. His job was to redo the major league scripts they’d used at 11, update the clips they had for the sports-head to review when he came in, adding anything interesting that was still happening in the western time zones, plus any feature material worth airing that he could cop from newspapers and other sources out of the area.

  Robert was to sports what Jones was to city life. Together with the other APs, they’d produce hours of material that would be edited into 22 minutes to air between 5 and 6 AM, and then again between 6 and 7 until the national feed took over. The other 22 minutes would be weather and traffic – two ex-cheerleaders pointing to graphics.

  On most nights, it was a two to three hour job they’d manage to stretch into nine. On the other hand, it was the middle of the night, which is how they all got hired while the normal people spent their nights, and days, doing what normal people do. For Robert, it was because he needed the money. For Jones, it was about breaking into television news, his first real job out of college.

  “Is that you, Elijah?” Dawn was the only one who called him by his first name, and his whole first name at that. Without bothering to turn around, she looked up from her screen in the carrel just past his, and he could feel her smiling as if she’d been waiting for him to get in.

  “Hey, Dawn,” Jones responded, plopping his worn leather saddlebag of papers down on his desk, taking off the light jacket he threw on top of the metal bookcase behind him, in the space next to the dead plant he kept for unexplained reasons. Just hearing her voice was reason enough to be there. “How’s politics in the big city?”

  “Boring,” she sighed back at him. “Any delicious, salacious, blood dripping sexually charged crime you want to talk to me about? …Pleeeeease?” she fake-begged him.

  “Maybe later, sweet-cakes,” he said in his best Philip Marlowe voice. “Let me see what’s up first, and then we’ll…” he started to say, only to be interrupted by the loud “Pfffuuuuuuu” sound his chair made when he sat down. The pneumatic poll that supported the seat hadn’t worked for weeks. He was instantly short, the front edge of his desk just about at his armpits.

  “Honestly, Jones,” Jack Rawlings, the stick-up-his-ass night editor, was just walking past, on his rounds to make sure everyone was in place. “It’s not like you’re the only one here. Next time, take that to the men’s room.”

  “Hysterical,” Jones thought to himself sarcastically while Mr. Rawlings continued into his office down the hall, his door – He had a door. – closing hard behind him.

  “Don’t worry, Eli,” Dawn pretended to console him. “Farting is a perfectly normal bodily function,” she continued, unable to suppress her giggling, “that, uh, you needn’t be embarrassed about.” Dawn had a face that couldn’t lie, a mouth and eyes that spoke more than words could ever accomplish, a radiant confidence and intelligence that cried out for airtime, some day – not to mention a smile that instantly became the only thing anyone could see, its reflection lingering on your eyes well after she’d left the room.

  “You just like to say the word ‘fart,’ he snapped back, lifting his body up while pulling the lever under the seat of his chair. “God,” he said to himself a few seconds later, waiting until the moment had dissipated in his head, “I love to hear the sound of her laughing.” Rubbing his whole face with his hand to start the blood flowing, it was time to get to work.

  For the next few hours, he’d be on his computer and phone until the 5 AM news team crew came in to get ready – to read stories he and the others there would write. His job was to look for breaking local news, mostly crimes and fires, locally, but around the country too, get the details and write 30 to 60 second stories he’d produce, with tape if he thought the visuals would be that interesting and the story was worth the expense – maybe even bring in one of the reporters and cameramen/women on call if it was a really big deal.

  More of a writer than a television journalist, Jones liked to write what he called “News Noir,” adding this or that detail in the text and the tape he would edit for airing – whatever he could to give the viewer some texture, some sense of reality from a medium (television) that had become brief to the point of meaningless. It was a style everyone seemed to like, except his editor.

  “Jones!” It was Mr. Rawlings voice on the intercom built into their desk phones. “Jones! Are you paying attention?!”

  “Yes, Mr. Rawlings,” Jones pressed the button to answer him, even though he could hear him over the top and through the glass walls of Rawling’s office. “What do you need?”

  “Get in here.”

  Ten seconds later, he was standing in front of his editor’s desk, the door to his office closing automatically behind him.

  “Jones,” he was exasperated, real or pretending, Jones couldn’t tell, pointing with both hands, palms up, thumbs out, to the printed scripts lying this way and that on his desk. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” (Rawlings was one of those people who overuse profanity to the point of rendering it useless.)

  It was a rhetorical question tha
t Jones knew better than to answer, although it was getting harder and harder to hold back.

  “You’ve got at most 30 seconds to tell the story. Thirty seconds at most. With tape, maybe 60. I don’t need to see a rat running past garbage piled up near the crime scene. I don’t care about some little kid cowering behind his mother’s skirt, or how many children she has, or that she’s working two jobs and doesn’t know where they’re going to stay or buy new stuff. Who gives a crap?! Talking head, crime scene shot, more talking head and we’re out. Got it?!”

  And there was quiet. Rawlings, the editor may have been shouting, and Dawn and the other carrel people listening, but Jones… Jones had been busy thinking.

  “No, Mr. Rawlings, I don’t.”

  For the first time since Jones had come into the room, Rawlings sat back in his chair, his mouth atypically motionless. “What?”

  “I don’t ‘got it.’ Forget about journalism. Forget the art of telling a good story. Just… just for a moment, think about the business, about ratings, about what sells, about the fucking – to use an adjective you can understand – monetary value of connecting with our audience. You want to know why our 5 AM news is third in this market? Because it’s boring, mind numbingly boring. You’ve crammed so many stories into so little time, no one’s paying attention. And then you have the temerity to conclude that they’re the ones with the problem. You justify your abbreviated style of broadcast journalism by arguing that our viewers haven’t the attention spans to appreciate any more than the superficial, minimalist, bulletized drivel you’re throwing at them.”

  “Jones, Jones.” Rawlings was pissed and mocking him. “The kid with plain vanilla name is desperate to highlight the distinguishing features of his life…”

  “Sure,” Eli agreed. “Who isn’t, including the people whose stories we write and the viewers who identify with them.”

  “Jones!”

  “Don’t interrupt.” Eli cut him off, taking a step forward to the edge of his editor’s oversized desk. His response was startling, the smile and excitement on Dawn’s and the other APs’ faces unmistakable. “Do you even know my first name? I’ve been here a year. What’s my first name? Come on. What my first name?”

  It was rhetorical, but Rawling’s eyes began to dart, and then look down at his desk for the answer.

  “It’s Elijah, Eli for short. You can call me Eli. Elijah Conover Jones. Conover was my great great grandmother’s maiden name when she came over here, a single mother, barely 20, with two little kids, and built a business and a life out of nothing. Nothing. And now suddenly, you know more about me than about any headliner on this morning’s news. How long did that take?”

  “Have you ever actually read the sports stories you told Robert not to send you? Do you have any idea what cool stuff he comes up with? And Dawn. What about Dawn? Hands down, she’s the best writer here…”

  “Dawn?”

  “Jesus,” Eli’s rage was gone now, his tone returning to normal. “Her last name is ‘Henderson.’ …Your political news AP? You know, there’s a lot more to politics than the occasional election or vote in the City Council or Legislature. No one understands politics the way she does. You want ratings? You understand ratings don’t you? The third floor sure does. Maybe we should take this conversation upstairs? Put her on the air. The wheelchair’s her problem. Not yours, and certainly not…” The look of surprise on Rawling’s face stopped him cold.

  “What? You don’t think we know why you won’t put her on the air? …Unbelievable. You’re such a putz. It’s not only discrimination, it’s bad business. Who would you rather watch? Some over-made-up newsreader, or a professional who actually knows what she’s talking about and who’s had the brains and courage to get the under-stories that count?”

  “You don’t like what I write, the pieces I produce? You’re the editor. Edit. Do your job. Just keep in mind that the ratings we get are your problem, your fault as much as they are ours.” Silence. “…I’m getting back to work.” And then he left the office.

  Walking back down the hallway, he saw Robert standing outside the entrance to his carrel. “I’d be crying,” he joked, “if it were the manly thing to do.”

  Eli smiled back at him, mouthing the word “Thanks” in his direction, and then noticed Dawn rolling out of her carrel in front of him.

  “Hey,” she smiled up at him.

  “Hey,” he smiled back.

  “Bend down here so I can give you a kiss.”

  And he did, her outstretched arms pulling his face toward her. It was a simple kiss, the short kind that would last forever. “Let’s go,” he said to her, face-to-face, kneeling in front of her, “I’ve got a sandwich with your name on it and some Sangria we can share in the lunchroom.” And then, looking straight into her eyes, “Who knows? With any luck, I may finally get up the nerve to ask you out.”

  “Yes!” she blurted. “Whenever you ask me,” and then she paused to catch her breath and regain her composure. “Yes,” she said, this time with determination. It was 2 AM. “Now that we got that out of the way, I’m hungry. Let’s eat.”

  15. Double Fake

  “Come on, come on.” Eleanor was the last of Jane’s friends to leave for the elevator, the others having given up more easily. “We’ll share some wings, the mild kind that won’t make your head sweat, pretend to be laughing at each other while we scope out guys pretending to be laughing at each other, watch American Idol on the big screen, and walk…” She stopped, Jane’s negatively shaking head having finally made its point.

  “Thanks,” Jane smiled back at her, not wanting to rule out a rain check, “but I’ve got stuff to do. Lots of stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Eleanor nodded, her eyes twinkling in the process, “I know all about ‘stuff.’ See you tomorrow,” and she ran off to the “bong” of the elevator doors opening.

  True, Jane really didn’t like getting home late without enough time to do things around her small apartment before she went to bed. But this wasn’t about the droll evening routine of an entry-level program analyst on the twenty-third floor in carrel #2308. No. Tonight was all about Steve.

  Meanwhile, back at the elevators, and the one, in particular, into which all five of Jane’s friends were squeezing themselves, their over-sized purse-bags and briefcases…

  “Hey," Eleanor said in a perfunctory tone, turning as she got on to avoid making eye contact with either of the two loose-tied young men in the back. Of the two, John was the cuter and more friendly one.

  “Ladies,” John greeted them politely enough, his eyes focused on Eleanor as she looked up and then away before any of her friends noticed, the doors closing behind her.

  Back to Steve... Steve worked in carrel #3116 and, as it turns out, resided in the same, small apartment building where Jane lived. More importantly, he was 6’ 1”, had dark brown hair that fell wherever it pleased and blue-green eyes, but his friendly good looks and melt-in-your-mouth smile weren’t the point. It was the way the sound of his voice made her feel that gave Jane the resolve she needed.

  Despite her best efforts, she’d never been able to get his attention. Not really. Sure, there was the occasional lunch in the company cafeteria, with others at the table. And they would take the subway and walk together on their way home now and then, window-shopping for pastries along the way. They would talk, taking longer than they would have going home alone, but never long enough. “Tonight would be different,” so said the determination on her face as she packed quickly, leaving behind the work she would normally take home with her. Tonight she had a plan.

  Steve, who had been working late every day for the past two weeks on a special project, was a closet American Idol fan according to an unidentified source. He’d get home late this evening, order takeout to eat while he watched American Idol, and then do his laundry, which he always did on Wednesdays, later that evening. Bummer: Tonight, Steve would
arrive at his apartment, turn on the evening news as usual, only to find that his TV and Internet wouldn’t be working. (She’d have to do something very nice – maybe some concert tickets? – for her cousin, Randy, twice removed, who worked for the local cable company.)

  Quick to adapt, Steve would go down to the laundry room at 7:40 PM, enough time to stuff his darks in one machine, his underwear and towels in another, and call “#1 Son” to order carry-out before 8. The laundry room would be empty, all the usuals being in their apartments, glued to their sets, watching the show from the comfort of pillowed sofas and over-stuffed chairs. Steve would just have to settle for the small screen that hung off the wall above the change machine.

  The layout in this particular laundry room is important. First of all, it was small. “Cozy” is more like it. There were four washing machines, top loaders, two backing up to the other two, up against the wall on the right when you came into the room. Exposed pipes overhead, but who cares about that? Two dryers were side by side up against the back wall. And there was a folding table along the wall on the left. Two chairs were in the corner, between the folding table and dryers, facing the TV which, as you know, hung above the change machine, diagonally across the room, in the corner next to the door. It was a metal door, mostly frosted glass, that took forever to close by itself, picking up just barely enough speed toward the end to “thunk” shut all the way.

  Jane arrived at 7:50, carrying a large plastic laundry basket, and a smaller round one on top with delicate items she’d wash separately – including two she’d bought specially for the evening just in case he were to see her putting them ever so slowly in the wash.

  “Hey, Steve,” she pretended to be surprised to see him, which she wasn’t of course. But then what she really wasn't expecting was his awkward bobbing and weaving on his side of the washing machines, most of which she couldn't see. Steve was bending over and hopping a bit, and so it seemed that she had interrupted something.

  “Hi.” He seemed flush, blushing in fact. “I… I was just…”

  “Wait,” Jane decided to play down any awkwardness. “Let me guess,” she said, doing nothing to hold back her giggling. “Thinking you’d be alone down here, you decided to wash the jeans you were wearing with your other clothes. …How’m I doin’ so far’?”

  “Pretty much right on the money,” Steve smiled, trying to maintain his composure while he pushed his jeans into the suds in front of him. …“One more thing.” Pausing a moment, he crossed his arms, “What the heck,” and pulled off the mostly dark red t-shirt he was wearing and put that in too, carefully lowering the lid of one of the two machines he was hiding behind, but then it slipped, “Blamm!” and fell the last six inches or so on its own. “Maybe, I’ll just stay here for a while.”

  “And are you washing your shorts too?” she had to ask, feeling herself beginning to perspire. “Briefs or boxers, by the way?” Jane asked quickly. “Not that it makes any real difference. Just curious, academically speaking. You know. Taking a survey.”

  “Uh, no. ...I'm,” he pointed down, “still wearing my ...briefs. They're clean enough. And they're Hanes. For your survey,” he smiled. “In case you're tracking men's underwear by brand.”

  As it turns out, Jane had actually seen Steve shirtless once when he’d been out running on a very hot summer day, but this was different. Shirtless and pantsless.

  Putting her regular laundry in the one washer closest to her, Jane dumped the smaller basket of delicates in the other machine, one item of lingerie at a time, pretending to inspect them, while looking up at Steve every chance she got, her lips unable to keep her nervous smiling – It was more of a twitch, actually. – under control. Taking one obviously deep breath, Jane put the small basket down on the black and white checked vinyl tile floor. Standing up, she reached with both hands behind and under her white “I know, I’m hard to believe.” t-shirt, her eyes looking right at Steve’s. Neither of them was smiling just now. Unhooking it in the back, in one smooth, carefully rehearsed move, she took off her bra under her t-shirt and put it in the machine, leaving her more ample than average breasts to hang out on their own, under her t-shirt of course. Closing the lid, she did her best to hold the moment for as long as she could – and then took off her jeans too, tossing them into the other washing machine.

  “Boxers or briefs?” he asked her.

  “Survey research?”

  “No. I just want to know,” he blurted back to her.

  “Jockey boyshorts.”

  “Hm,” Steve nodded ever so slightly to acknowledge her choice.

  Neither of them noticed that American Idol was well underway on the TV in the corner.

  “Soap?” Steve asked.

  “What about it?”

  “Don’t you use any?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Jane responded without the least inflection in her voice, but then didn’t do anything about it for a good 30 seconds and, even then, as if she’d planned it that way. “I like to give them some time to soak, on their own, without ...soap.”

  One full awkward minute later, Steve reached for his iPhone that he’d laid next to his wallet and keys on the short wall that separated the two pair of washing machines, held it up and then looked up before scrolling to the number he needed. “You like Chinese?” he asked Jane. And the rest of the night was, as they say, “history.”

  Early the next morning, a few minutes before they had to be at their desks, in the last stairwell before the roof of their office building, Eleanor was just lowering herself off her toes, pulling her mouth down and away from John’s who still hadn’t opened his eyes. “So,” he asked a moment later, trying to regain his composure,” how was last night for Jane?”

  “Pretty spectacular. She was almost incoherent when she called after he left this morning. …And my $20?” she reminded him as if he’d forgotten.

  “No sweat.” He pulled the folded bill out of his shirt pocket where he’d had it waiting for her. “Steve said getting her to take off her bra like that was worth every penny. Good work.”

  “Yeah.” Eleanor smiled, rolling her eyes upward toward John’s. “…Thanks,” she said, followed by a air-kiss while she snapped the $20 from between his fingers and finally stepped back a few inches. “And to think I ever doubted I could talk her into it. …Let’s go,” she said, poking him in the stomach right through his tie. “We need to get to work.”

  16. Bob

  This is a story about Bob, a “Type A” person

  who is married to his work.

  Two male coworkers at the high tech company where they were mid-level executives were on their way down the hallway – the one giving the other, newly hired, a tour of their offices, on their way to the nicest of them, the one in the corner just ahead. “Corner” wasn’t exactly true, given that the perimeter of the building was irregular and, at that point, traced an ark, like the cross section of a wing, more dramatically curved on one side (the leading edge), smoother on the other. It was empty, this nicest of all the offices, the large table that served as a desk perfectly clear as if no one had been using it.

  “So who are they saving this for?” the new one asked his mentor, both of them standing just outside the one of the double doors that was open. Somehow going in, even though it was vacant, seemed out of the question. It was the only office on the floor that didn’t have glass interior walls and doors – where, if the doors were shut, you couldn’t tell from the outside what was happening on the inside.

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s already taken. Belongs to ‘Bob,’ the creative genius behind all this. Ever have a conversation with one of the new generation corporate voice mail systems, the ones that make you think you’re talking to a real person?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, thank you very much, all the way to the bank.”

  “So what’s he like?” They were talking to each other, but with their eyes focused on the interio
r of the office, at its perfectly finished uneven plank floors, and at the almost too many plants and flowers, some inside, some on the deep balcony all around. The entire exterior wall was made of seamless glass panels that folded upon each other, to the left and right, to open the entire office to the outdoors. A gentle breeze just made it to their faces, feeding the wonder of what it would be like to work there.

  This entire floor was the senior executive suite, the top floor of their terraced building that all but disappeared in the topography of the countryside. From the air, it looked like a lush mound of light and dark green foliage, with random red, white, yellow and violet flowers that covered the edges of the irregularly shaped balconies that were everywhere. A large center atrium in the middle of the floor, going all the way down to the basement of the building, added to a sense of openness, of almost being outdoors. Stairs led up to the rooftop garden where they held indoor and outdoor meetings, and sometimes parties, when it was nice out and they could retract the roof. It cost a fortune to build, but was well worth it for the effect it had upon its residents during the long hours they often spent there.

  “I have no idea. Never met him, and I’ve been here three years. He works from home. Communicates over the telephone or on-line with e-mail and video calls.”

  “Excuse me.” Sounding highly rushed, Marty, a young woman with brown shoulder-length hair with a green accent on her right side, just before the bangs, pushed past them holding two bunches of fresh flowers that they grow in the complex.

  “Jackie!” Another young woman was almost running down the wide hallway behind her, her pony tail flopping from side to side. She was pushing one of the carts they give you in the company cafeteria when you’re picking up food and drinks for a meeting. The two men, not wanting to get in their way, split up and stepped back while Jackie opened the other door to Bob’s office to make room for the cart. They were there, the two men, but neither of the women noticed them. “I’ve got everything but the frozen pineapple yogurt he likes!”

  “Come on. It’ll be okay,” Jackie reassured her coworker. “He’s going straight to the Board meeting. We’ve got time.”

  “What about the yogurt?” Marty was more than a bit frantic.

  “First of all, it’s sorbet, pineapple sorbet. He has it flown in from Maui. Call down and tell the Cafeteria Manager on duty that it’s in the Executive Pantry.”

  “Hi, guys.” Jackie’s and Marty’s gender aside, he called everybody “guys.” It was Bob who, in all their excitement, they hadn’t seen coming, standing between the two men, just outside his own office. A worn, soft leather briefcase in one hand, his other hand tried, unsuccessfully, to comb back the hair that flopped over his forehead.

  He was tall, and thin too, taller than any of them had expected, his boyish good looks and warm smile leaving the two young women speechless, and the two junior executives invisible. Bob was the poster boy for purposely unassuming technology sector billionaires at their creative peak: jeans and a plain gray t-shirt, untucked of course, with a blue and green plaid flannel shirt on top of it, open in the front, sleeves rolled up in a hurry. Well-worn Nikes. Hair unkempt, but it could have been cut to look that way. If it was, the cut was so good, no one could tell. Money will do that for you. One of the girls would speculate later that he only shaved every third day, this being the second judging from the stubble, as if she had any idea what she was talking about.

  “I just need to use my computer to print something before the meeting.” His tone was apologetic, almost as if he was asking their permission.

  No introductions. No shaking of hands. Nothing more than a polite “Hey” to the two men as he walked into his office and they headed back down the hallway, one whispering to the other, “So that’s what a billionaire genius looks like.” They, as if anyone cared, were wearing “business casual” to be safe and to remind the t-shirted staff under them that they were in charge. Bob, on the other hand, had nothing to prove and couldn’t have cared less that they were clearly in violation of the de facto company dress code.

  “Do you want us to leave,” Jackie wasn’t sure, “…Bob?” she added reluctantly, having been told to call him by his first name.

  “No, no. Sorry to get in your way. …Wait,” he said to Marty who was stocking his refrigerator, “Let me have one those boxes of cran-grape juice.” Holding up the palm of his hand, he clearly wanted her to toss it to where he was standing, maybe 15 feet from her, behind his desk, his other hand busy on the synapse pad of his notebook computer.

  Glancing over at her friend for reassurance, Marty stood up from where she had been kneeling and prepared herself for the toss of her corporate life. Over-handed? No, too short a distance. She’d go for a soft, underhanded lob – but it had to be right on target to make a favorable impression. “Casual precision” was the effect she was after.

  “Hey,” he said looking up, knowing that he tended, for reasons he really didn’t get, to sometimes make people who worked for him nervous. “The worse thing that’ll happen is that I’ll miss, it’ll explode all over my desk and you’ll be fired.” Noticing that his attempt to set her at ease seemed to have backfired, he decided to encourage her. (By this time, she could have walked over and handed it to him, but it was too late now.) “Come on,” he smiled at Marty, mostly with his eyes. “Go for it.” And she smiled back and did. He caught it, unwrapped the straw, pushed it through the cross-slit in the lid and took a long sip on the way past the printer next to his desk and out the door. “See you later.” Not likely, but it was the nice thing to say.

  “Right,” Marty responded, while Jackie just managed to nod. But then when he was gone… “God damn, I had no idea he’d be so cute in person. He’s not gay, is he? I didn’t get any gay vibes.”

  “Gay, no.” Jackie seemed to know somehow. “Married yes.”

  “Was there a ring?”

  “Yeah. You need to pay more attention to things like that.”

  “Okay, you’ve met him before. So I was a little nervous. …Maybe his marriage will tank and he’ll remember the moment we shared over a box of Juicy Juice.”

  “Savor it. The Board only meets once a quarter, and the word is he doesn’t like hanging around people, particularly when he’s crashing on something. Myra, the girl in bookkeeping who processes his receipts, says the only person he’s really comfortable around is his wife. They’re newlyweds. Myra (a friend of Jackie’s in purchasing) says they eloped.”

  Leaning back against one of the office doors while she watched Bob going up the stairs to his meeting, Myra wondered out loud. “I’m surprised. He doesn’t seem the least bit weird,” she thought to herself out loud, almost sighing.

  “Hey. Back to earth. He’s just a guy, a really cute rich, married guy. If we’re still here when he gets back, and we’ll both be looking for work.”

  “I don’t think so. He seemed way too nice.”

  “He is nice. It’s our ass-kissing supervisor I’m worried about.”

  “What’s his wife like?” Marty had to ask as they walked together back to the elevator.

  “Damn near perfect, from what I hear.”

  As it turned out, the meeting took longer than expected, a good deal of it spent convincing the Board that the time and money Bob was spending, had been spending for more than year now on his current project would be worth every dollar of it. Refusing to give them details or more than the most general status report didn’t help. They’d believed in him before and he made them rich, but they wanted him paying attention to the development of their existing product lines, securing their market share before he ran off in a new direction. Whatever it was, it had better be worth the wait.

  When it was over, Bob stopped by his office for a hour, enough time to meet with a couple of administrative department heads. Two perfect deviled eggs and some pineapple sorbet later, he was out of there. Down the highway to the high-rise luxury condo wh
ere he and his wife lived in relative seclusion, seldom leaving their penthouse apartment.

  “Hey, Howard,” he smiled at the well-dressed receptionist at the front desk, stopping by the mailroom on his way to the elevator from the garage door.

  “Good evening, Bob.” Even off campus, he insisted everyone call him by his first name. Building management had actually issued a bulletin to that effect to all building staff. “My regards to… to Sarah?” Too late. He’d already made it sound like a question. That was awkward. Maybe he should have used her last name, “My regards to Mrs. …”? The fact is, he was just being polite, having never met Bob’s wife in the several months he’d been working there, except to talk to her on the building intercom and receive a package for her now and then that he would take upstairs and leave outside their door. Bob and Sarah were known to be big tippers, and he was right to expect a substantial holiday bonus if only he could manage not to annoy them.

  “She’s fine. Thanks for asking,” Bob nodded, clearly too busy sorting through his mail to be paying attention. “We’ll be ordering some take-out, probably Italian. Just let the delivery guy bring it up,” Bob told him, just as the elevator doors were closing, flipping the pages of one of the technical journals he was holding.

  “Sure thing,” the attendant responded, smirking and rolling his eyes in an expression of “What the hell,” knowing it was too late for Bob to hear him.

  Coming off the elevator, Bob’s condo was one of only four on his floor. It was large, with the kind of high ceilings and glass only rich people can afford, but surprisingly modest for a person of his wealth. The door to his place was the only one with a 10 key security panel. It looked normal enough, until you realized that each button on the keypad was fingerprint sensitive – different finger prints for different buttons depending upon how he programmed it – which isn’t something you or an intruder would have been able to tell. It was one of Bob’s designs for their new security products division.

  “Hi, honey. Sorry I’m late,” he said, dropping his keys on the table next to their front door.

  “Hey, I’m used to it,” she shouted back sarcastically from around the corner from the kitchen in their great room where the glass walls looked out over the entire valley. It was dark out, and the lights he could see seemed like the view from the cockpit of a jet on its final approach. “Are we going to order something?” She sounded hungry.

  “Yeah. Take a look at the menu for that new Italian place and order something for both of us” he said, asking for her help while pulling off his flannel shirt and tossing it over one of their two brown leather couches. “I’ve got to play” on my computer “for a few minutes.” His voice trailed off as he entered his password and clicked to open the file on which he had been working before leaving for the office earlier that day.

  Forty-five minutes later, the doorbell rang, a picture of the delivery boy popping up on Bob’s screen. “Can you get that honey?” It was Sarah asking for his help this time.

  “Sure,” Bob responded, wondering humorously to himself what she could be doing that was that important.

  Getting up, he walked to the door, opening it while he reached for his wallet.

  “Hi,” the kid said, “Are you,” he paused, looking down at the delivery tag, “Sarah?”

  “Really?” (No reaction from the kid.) “…No, I’m Bob. Sarah is much better looking.”

  Holding up the bag, paper inside of plastic, the kid read from the attached receipt: “Caesar salad, Speedo di Mare with broccoli and garlic mashed potatoes, fresh bread,” and then added, having thought about it for a moment, “…Didn’t she order anything for you?” as if that were any of his business.

  “We’re going to share. And it’s ‘Spiedino’ di Mare. ‘Speedo’ is a bathing suit.”

  “It’s already paid for,” the kid volunteered, seeing Bob opening his wallet. Your wife gave us a credit card.”

  “I’m sure she did. Don’t you want a tip?” Bob asked the kid rhetorically, pulling out a $5 bill, but then, looking up at him, taking out another.

  “Hey,” the kid said, trying not to gush. “Thanks.”

  Walking back toward the great room, the front door closed silently behind him, followed by a soft “boop” to confirm that it was locked. Bob turned left this time toward the kitchen area. “Sarah, would you join me for dinner, on the couch please?” And the woman of his dreams materialized from a barely visible light above the couch across from the table where he was putting out a plate, silverware and napkins.”

  “Hi, honey,” he said with real appreciation to her exceptionally real holographic image.

  “So did you give the kid a decent tip?”

  “He seemed pleased enough.”

  “Are we working tonight?”

  “Don’t we work every night, Sarah?”

  “I was thinking,” she laughed at the impossibility of it, “that maybe we could take a break and catch a movie, in a real theater.”

  “Soon,” he encouraged her. “Sooner than you think. I’ve got our robotics people working overtime but, to be honest, I’ve seen their prototypes and they have a way to go. …Tonight we’re testing your sensitivity programming. …Have you been studying the books and tapes I picked out for you?”

  “Don’t I do everything you tell me, Bob?”

  No response.

  “Bob?”

  “What?”

  “Is it too soon for us to be talking about having children?” She did her best to pretend it was a serious question, but wasn’t that good an actor – not yet, anyway.

  “Funny,” Bob looked up from where he was dishing out his dinner, smiled back at her, complimenting the quality of his programming. “Well done,” he said, and then added, “Are you sure you don’t want some?”

  And they laughed and talked about how their days had gone while Bob savored his dinner and the moment with a fresh glass of homemade Sangria.

  17. Guardian

  Between every parent and child there is a certain magic

  that the fear of an innocent can call upon

  to prevail in the darkest of situations.

  Lieutenant Roberts, in his late 30s, a senior Detective with the same police department where he started work after college and the police academy, was all too used to getting calls in the middle of the night. It had been one of his earliest realizations that he would grow up and live his life in the state of his parents and grandparents. This place was his home and these people, all of them, were family, whatever time of day or night they needed his help.

  Having been asleep when they called him, by the time he arrived just before dawn that early summer morning, he had to pull up a few houses down from the crime scene and walk towards the police cars and ambulances that were in front of the Colby’s two-story colonial. It was a nice neighborhood, one of the newer subdivisions in this county that couldn’t resist the lure of growth.

  Rushing up to where two staffers from the Medical Examiner's office were rolling a body bag down the driveway, he saw Detective Sclorowsky look up from the notes she was making. Recognizing the look of concern on Roberts’ face, she didn’t waste any time bringing him up to date.

  “That’s one of the two who broke in,” she started, gesturing over her shoulder toward the open rear doors of the ambulance nearest to where they were standing. “The other one, also dead, will be out in a minute.”

  “And the…”

  “No one in the family was badly hurt. Just the mother, Leah Colby, and her 5 year old daughter, Emma, were at home. The father’s out of state on business, but on his way back now. He should be here in a few hours.”

  “Just the mother and a 5 year old took out both of them?”

  “Not exactly. …Let’s go inside. You’ll need to hear this for yourself.”

  The house, still busy with police officers and forensic specialists, was good-sized, but not huge, comfortably furnished with the clutter
and stuff of life here and there where you’d expect it to be. Waiting for them inside, the mother sat nervously on a love seat in their family room, her daughter next to her, her feet stopping a few inches short of the rug that covered the center of their hardwood floor.

  Detective Sclorowsky pulled up the leather chair from the other side of the room, but Roberts wanted to be closer and sat on the sturdy, refinished wooden trunk they used as their coffee table. Both the mother and young daughter seemed remarkably calm, the events of the night not having fully affected them yet. That would occur soon enough which is why he had to talk to them now before they became any more distracted by the reality of what had happened. With some people, you have to wait a day or two. Others were best when you talked to them right away. Over the years, he’d learned to tell the difference.

  “Hi, Mrs. Colby. My name is Jacob Roberts. ...and you,” he smiled ever so slightly, turning a bit to his right, “must be Emma.”

  The little girl nodded her head up and down, but said nothing.

  “Mrs. Colby, I know you’ve been through all this before with Detective Sclorowsky but, if you could, tell me the basics of what happened.”

  An attractive, slender brunette with wavy shoulder length hair, she looked remarkable given what she’d just been through. Even so, her lack of any response made Detective Roberts wonder, for a moment, whether or not she might be in shock and unable to speak. A large bruise was coming to the surface of the left side of her face where an EMT had clamped and bandaged a cut. “Mrs. Colby?”

  “Emma and I have trouble getting to bed sometimes when Michael’s out of town, so we stayed up late, watched a movie together and fell asleep on the couch,” she told him, looking up and over at the overstuffed three cushion sofa against the wall behind him. “I don’t know when exactly, but I heard noises coming from the basement. It’s a walkout and I was worried it might be someone trying to break in. Sometimes I hear sounds from the woods, deer that come up to eat the bushes around the deck, a fox sometimes or raccoon, but this was different.”

  Her voice was steady and deliberate as if she had to concentrate to get the words out. “Did Emma wake up, too?” Roberts asked, thinking it best to interrupt her now and then, for her to hear the sound of his voice.

  “No. ..No. I…”

  “Mommy woke me up.”

  Impressed that the little girl was taking the initiative while her mother was clearly struggling, he turned to encourage her. “What did she say, Emma?”

  “She told me the truth. That’s what we’re supposed to do in an e-merg-en-cy.” It was a longer word she had trouble pronouncing.”

  “What exactly did she tell you?”

  “Mommy said it was the middle of the night, and that there was noise in the basement she was worried about.” Her confidence building, the little girl was relaxed now and anxious to help. “She told me to sneak upstairs, very very quietly, and hide in my bedroom closet while she called 911.”

  “Is that what you did?”

  “Of course,” Emma responded, almost as if she was wondering if he’d been paying attention.

  “And, Mrs. Colby,” Sclorowsky wanted her to include a detail Roberts wouldn’t have known to ask about, “you didn’t call 911, at least not right away, did you?”

  “No. I keep my phone on a...,” she paused to catch her breath, “on a charging stand on the counter there,” she explained, pointing toward the kitchen at the other end of the room, past the table where they ate most of their meals. “I came around there, past the refrigerator, but never made it.”

  “ …The first one of them came up the basement stairs,” through the doorway just outside the kitchen, “and grabbed me from behind, bringing his arm diagonally across my chest, like this.” She used her right arm to demonstrate. “I could hardly breathe. ...The second man was right behind him, but went off somewhere, while the first one pulled me down the stairs, back into the basement. I tried holding onto the molding around the door and then the banister, but I couldn’t get on my feet – and then I thought, maybe when I got downstairs, maybe I’d be able to fight him off. It’s my house. There’re tools in the shop, if I could just…” She was starting to have trouble.

  “Keep going, Mrs. Colby. You’re doing great.”

  “And then he threw me over… It’s open. The stairs are open at the bottom. He threw me onto the floor. I must have hit my head on something. I’m not sure. It was dark.”

  “And you called 911 when you regained consciousness?”

  “Yes. When I woke up, it couldn’t have been too long that I was out, I remember hearing screaming and crashing sounds on my way up the basement stairs."

  "Emma, was that you screaming?" Roberts asked, turning to look at her, but it was Mrs. Colby who answered for her.

  "No. It was one, maybe both of the men that I heard. ...And that’s when I picked up my cell phone and called the police.”

  “Emma?”

  “Yes, Detective?” Her formality would have been cute under different circumstances.

  “What was happening upstairs, Emma, while your mother was in the basement? What happened in your room?”

  She paused for a moment, as if wondering if she should tell him.

  “Go ahead honey,” her mother prompted her, reaching out to touch Emma’s hand that was pressing on the cushion between them. “Tell Detective Roberts what you told me.”

  Looking up at the Detective, she answered his question with certainty. “Guardian protected me. The two men came into my room, and Guardian protected me just like Daddy said he would.”

  “Just Guardian and the two men?”

  “Uh huh. ..It hardly seems fair, does it? To the men, I mean.”

  Leaning back to distance himself from the little girl, Detective Roberts needed to see her room. “Let’s take a break for a couple minutes. I just want to run upstairs and take a look at your room. Will you wait here for me?”

  Once again, Emma nodded her agreement.

  “Detective,” he said turning toward Sclorowsky, and the two of them stood up and left the room, on their way down the short hallway toward the stairs and to Emma’s room. “What’s Guardian?” he asked his colleague with quiet impatience when they were out of the room, “some sort of religious thing? Patron saint of little girls? Maybe a dog? That would be interesting,” he thought out loud as they paused for a moment in front of the door to Emma's room. “Might make for a good breaking news headline for the 6 PM ne...”

  “No.” Sclorowsky interrupted her partner's recurring fantasy about one day making the national news, maybe People magazine. “It’s, uh, not a dog.”

  “So what’s she talking about?”

  “Come on,” Sclorowsky reached out to push the bedroom door all the way open, “It’s the kind of thing you need to see to believe. The ME’s pulled the bodies, but you’ll get the point.”

  Taking the lead, she moved to the corner of the bed, turning back to Roberts whose eyes began moving slowly from point to point in the mayhem he saw. The room was trashed. There was blood all over the place.

  “The preliminary conclusion of the lead tech was that both men were ‘torn to shreds,’ his words, by… by something with very sharp teeth and claws, something powerful, strong enough to bounce a adult male off a wall,” she pointed to a large section of crushed sheetrock next to the dresser, “ and to snap major bones. All the wounds were rough. No precision cuts or holes that he could see. As far as he could tell, there were no manmade weapons involved. Ralph told me, if we’d found the bodies in the woods, he’d be sure it was a wild animal attack.”

  Roberts walked into the room, but not far, being careful where he stepped. The walk-in closet was to his right. “Are you absolutely sure there’s no way the kid and her mother did this?”

  “No way. The mother was clearly beaten. There’s some blood on the wall across from the bottom of the basement stairs. I think she’s telling
the truth. Besides, she’s what, 5’ 4”, maybe 120 pounds?”

  “And the father? What about the father?”

  “Asleep in a different time zone when all this happened.” Seeing her colleague wasn’t buying it, Sclorowsky turned back a few pages in the spiral notepad she was carrying to go over what Emma had told her when the two of them had talked earlier. “The kid is hiding in her closet, under a high bottom shelf, behind some plastic storage boxes. It’s not a great hiding place, but she feels good about it and can see the door. The closet light was off and the door shut. Smart girl, she purposely left her bedroom door open so it wouldn’t seem so much like someone might be hiding there. ...There’s no lock on it anyway.”

  That got Roberts’ attention, turning his head toward Sclorowsky, away from the gore of the bedroom and its stark contradiction to the walk-in-the-park kids’ wallpaper and phosphorescent plastic stars hanging from the ceiling. “She was thinking?” it seemed hard to believe. “With all hell breaking lose around her,” there was no missing the skepticism in the tone of his voice. “She was thinking that clearly? She wasn’t scared out of her mind? Paralyzed with fear?”

  Sclorowsky ignored him and continued going through her notes… “So the two men come into the room, one checking under the bed, rummaging through the dresser, who knows, while the other one opens the closet door, looks down and stares right at her. The kid, knowing he sees her, shouts “Daaaaddddyyy!!!” at the top of her lungs, loud enough for her mother to hear her all the way down in the basement. It could have been what woke the mother up, even though she can't remember. It’s so loud, both men stop whatever they’re doing. Nothing happens. Zip. Emma says it was quiet for a couple of seconds and then the one looking in the closet door smiles at her, ‘eyes bulging,’ she told me. Looks left, looks right and says to her ‘in a really creepy voice,’ ‘So you were expecting what to happen?’ laughs and then starts to open the door the rest of the way to come and get her. …At which time she says it again, but this time not so loud and with a lot less confidence, ‘Daddy?’”

  “All of a sudden, something dark ‘whooshes,’ according to Emma, around from behind the door, from inside the room, ripping into the intruder’s neck – which pretty much wiped the smile off his face. The man reaches up with both hands toward the arm that’s got him just as he’s yanked back, right off his feet, the closet door slamming behind him. There’s tremendous ruckus, noise of furniture crashing and adult men screaming – that even a neighbor heard. Then it’s suddenly quiet, so the kid gets up, pokes her face out the closet door, steps over the bodies and runs downstairs only to meet her mother on the way up. From what I can tell, the whole struggle couldn’t have taken more than a couple of minutes while the mother was calling 911.”

  “And the Medical Examiner?”

  “I’m telling you, the mother and the girl couldn’t have done this.”

  “So what, they have a pet bear?” Robert’s asked facetiously, searching for a reasonable explanation. “A large housecat,” he tried joking, but the room wouldn’t allow it.

  “No. They don’t have any pets. The daughter insists that Guardian did it. He was a gift from her father before he went out of town, to protect her. They just moved here this summer in time to get settled and ready for the school year. The kid didn’t want to move…”

  “They never do.”

  “…and has been withdrawn, so the father bought her the bear to make her feel safe.”

  “I thought you said they didn’t have any pets? Besides, what kind of father buys his kid a wild animal?”

  “No pets. Guardian,” she explained, moving away from the end of the bed from where she had been blocking Roberts’ view of the headboard, is the kid’s stuffed California brown bear.”

  And there he sat, as true-to-life as stuffed bears get, about the size of a new bear cub, his faux fur perfect for hugging. Sitting up between two pillows, his plastic eyes appeared to be staring right at them, the expression on his face so innocent and friendly – except, of course, for the blood soaked torn piece of one of the intruder’s t-shirt hanging out the corner of his mouth.

  “The piece of cloth there? This is, what, some kind of elaborate prank? The ME tech thinks this is funny?!” Roberts was hoping it was.

  Sclorowsky looked back at him, pursing her lips, shaking her head slowly left to right. “No. I was the first here and it was there when I opened the door. The mother and daughter were way too traumatized to have staged this. And we’ve got two bodies to prove it. …So tell me,” she asked, walking behind him going down the stairs, “just how do you want me to write this up?”

  “Home Invasion Stifled,” so the local paper ran the story, “Intruders Killed By Unidentified Party.” There was even speculation that the killer was a third intruder upset that the other two we’re planning to harm the family. They could speculate all they wanted, Emma would always know what really happened. And the bear would follow her to college and to her apartment after graduation years later – fair warning to petty thieves and worse who might be so foolish as to pay her a visit.

  18. Corporate Culture

  It was a case of “unauthorized schtupping” which was what it said, in more professional terms, on the papers when Jeremy’s wife of just three years sued him for divorce. As for the more common description, those were the words of the division’s President, Howie Rackman, who thought he was funny, but wasn’t. Only three years from retirement, Rackman’s sensitivities and terminology were those of a very different time.

  “Schtupping,” from the Yiddish “schtupn” meaning to push (in) or press. Rackman, who wasn’t Jewish, but who had secretly always wanted to be, thought it was funny to mock Jeremy’s ethnicity, laughing out loud when he did, shaking his head from side to side as he marveled at the wit only he appreciated. (He also wanted to be Italian, but only if he could have the accent he was certain women found irresistible.) At least he was an equal opportunity jerk, having no qualms about offending anyone regardless of their origins or type – especially women whom he considered inferior, little more than interesting toys for the men in their lives and his company to play with. “Somebody has to do all this clerical shit,” he often remarked around the conference table after one of the young female assistants who worked with senior management would leave to get coffee, make copies or do “God knows what.” It was no accident that they were all young and attractive. That was, after all, the primary reason they were hired.

  Jeremy Levitz, the senior Assistant Manager in the division, just three years out of Wharton with his MBA, never fit in and couldn’t get the promotions his work deserved. The market was soft, so he couldn’t leave. What he wanted was to manage one of the new offices they were opening – get the hell out of corporate, spend the next three years building that office his way and then move back to headquarters after Rackman retired.

  Jeremy was good enough for management to take credit for his work, but not good enough to be one of them. Their nominal excuse was his lack of experience. The real reason was that they didn’t want the competition and couldn’t overwork and otherwise exploit one of their own, and that meant denying Jeremy membership in their exclusive club of over-paid, under-performing senior division executives.

  And then there was Ruth. 30. Unquestionably the hottest “shiksa” in the office. (Rackman liked to use these terms like they were his own. “Ever wonder to yourself,” Jeremy once asked his wife, “where politically incorrect expressions go to die? Now you know.”) As close to being “one of the boys” as a woman could be, she’d earned every dollar she’d made putting up with their crap, never letting them get to her, keeping her distance – never once having had so much as dinner with one of them. Rackman and his posse didn’t respect her, not really, so much as they feared having to deal with her. She made them nervous for the wrong and inappropriate reasons.

  Ruth and Jeremy were the ones who made the division happen.
Everyone in their division knew it. More to the point, so did corporate management two floors up. They tolerated Rackman as a legacy, for his work with the founder who built the company decades ago, but planned to clean house as soon he left. In the meantime, although neither Ruth nor Jeremy knew it, the two of them were bullet proof. Picking on them, dumping on them was as far as corporate would allow Rackman to go, although being fired might have been a godsend. For the two of them, the next three years under his supervision would seem like ten.

  “I need the re-analysis of our southeastern region on my desk Monday morning.” Rackman’s tone was matter-of-fact, barely breaking his stride on his way past Jeremy’s office. Leaving early for the weekend, he wouldn’t be missed. “I’ll need 10 binders, and write me a presentation, big type, you know how I like it, including notes indicating when I point to what. That always impresses them. …Use Ruth for whatever you need,” he added, raising his eyebrows as if those instructions had sexual implications. (Ruth had wondered out loud to Jeremy once, after a particularly slimy exchange with Rackman, whether or not he had a clue how truly unattractive he was? It was a rhetorical observation.) “See you,” and he was off without bothering to ask if there might be any questions, utter a “Thanks” or wait for Jeremy to nod his acceptance. Just a “Whoa. Hold the elevator,” in which everyone was begging the doors to shut more quickly, and he was gone.

  “Asshole,” Jeremy mumbled under his breath, rolling his chair to look out at the cityscape and ponder his frustration. He’d been hoping to spend some quality time with Evelyn this weekend, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. He’d be lucky to get out of his office. Maybe, he thought to himself, eyeing a young woman moving wistfully through her office in the building across the street, maybe Evelyn would bring over some carryout that evening and they could get to know the leather on the couch in his office together. Just then, the woman across the street stopped, and turned to face him. Smiling, she waved and let him lip read the word, “Hey.” He smiled and waived back at her the way they often did, both of them slightly embarrassed by their long-distance, never-gonna-happen relationship as she walked away and out of her office. Seeing her like that, the girl with short blonde hair he’d never met, was often the highlight of his day.

  Turning back to his desk, Jeremy reached for his phone, thinking he’d better call Evelyn, just before it “buzzzz”d at him. Pressing the intercom button, he said the usual, “This is Jeremy. What do you need?”

  “Hey. It’s Irene,” the receptionist on that floor. “There’s a messenger here with some papers he says he has to give to you, personally. Can you come out, or should I walk him back.”

  “Thanks. Here I come.”

  It was to the right, just down the open hallway formed by the offices along the perimeter and waist-high carrels in the middle of the floor. Turning the corner past the upholstered furniture in the small lobby, instead of the usual bicycle messenger smelling like he had just been on fire, there was a young man, in his early twenties, wearing a suit. Hearing someone coming, he was quick to break off his vain attempt to score points with Irene. It wasn’t that she was so pretty, as it was the effect of her strawberry blonde hair that seemed to have a life of its own.

  “Mr. Stein? Jeremy Stein?”

  “Yes?”

  “This is for you,” he said, taking a 9 x 12 white envelope out of the zippered portfolio he’d been holding against his chest. “And, if you would,” he paused for a moment, looking down to fill in the time on his clipboard form, “Please sign here, in the blank next to your name.” Jeremy scribbled his usual “JStein,” no period after the “J,” looking apprehensively at the return address for one of their city’s boutique law firms, well known for representing women in divorce, workplace and other litigation. “Thank you, Mr. Stein.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremy mumbled, putting off opening the envelope until he was back in his office, knowing that Irene would be staring after him wanting to ask what was going on, but being nice enough to understand that it was none of her business.

  It was a Friday afternoon, after a long week during which Jeremy had been noticeably upset by some rough calls with his wife, Evelyn, his end of the arguments having been overheard through his office walls even though he’d been trying to keep it down. Apparently she’d had it with the endless late night sessions at the office working with Ruth, often going until 1 or 2 AM, not to mention the weekends.

  He was surprised, having been more or less oblivious to his marriage during the past year, but then he wasn’t. They were divorce papers alright, accusing him of adultery, naming Ruth Smythe the subject of his indiscretions. Ruth would deny the accusations vehemently, but no one would believe her – not even her friends among the other women in the office who had seen the two of them working together, heard the occasional laughter, seen them touch or brush up against each other when no one was supposed to be looking. It might have appeared innocent enough at the time, but now it made perfectly good sense.

  By Monday afternoon, everyone knew. At first, and to everyone’s surprise, management wasn’t annoyed at their intra-office affair. Far from it, they were impressed that Jeremy had nailed, repeatedly, the hottest girl in the office – and at the office, no less. For Rackman and his yes-men, it was enough to make them tear-up. “Way to go, Jeremy. Good work.” They didn’t say it out loud, but you could read it on their faces and in the way they had started treating Jeremy. Make him one the boys, his sexual conquests rub off on them. The fact was, they still didn’t like him. All this new-found camaraderie was more about minimizing Ruth. Respecting Jeremy had nothing to do with it.

  And so they were feeling pretty good about themselves, living vicariously through Jeremy, until Ruth showed up with her attorney – a striking, if severe looking woman – who sat down in Rackman’s office, door shut, and explained, in no uncertain terms, how her client was going to sue his company’s ass off for sexual harassment and discrimination. Proof? What proof did she have? Sexual harassment and discrimination are always so hard to prove.

  Ruth’s attorney wasn’t about to concede any ground. “Mr. Rackman, you don’t honestly think a jury is going believe anything you have to say? You don’t have a single woman in any management position, not here or in any of your offices. With a couple of exceptions in the mailroom, the entire clerical staff is female, young and attractive. No one over 40, no one overweight – and every one of them underpaid according to agency and government industry surveys.”

  “This is extortion. This sex stuff was between Stein and your client. Strictly personal business. What’s the company got to do with it?”

  “You’re not really paying attention, are you Mr. Rackman? In the past 4 years, different men on your management team – including you – have asked my client out to dinner – a dinner “date” mind you, with no business purpose – on seven documented occasions, all of which invitations she declined. During the same period, she’s received nothing more than routine, minimal increases in salary, despite very substantial expansion of her responsibilities and three “Superior Performance Memoranda” for work which came to the attention of senior corporate management.”

  You’d think Rackman wouldn’t have talked to them without his own counsel in the room, but that would have included corporate in the conversation. Turns out that a significant portion of his retirement income is subject to Board approval. The kind of mess Ruth’s attorney was threatening wouldn’t be good for him.

  “And now,” Ruth's attorney continued, “when she’s required to work under an Assistant Manager with less experience than she has, but who she has to please and, by inference, please you to keep her job, this happens!” The attorney held up her copy of the divorce papers. “‘Use Ruth for whatever you want’? Are you kidding? That’s the way you talk about a female professional, raised eyebrows and a condescending smirk on your face, in earshot of the staff she supervises? Do you really want to t
ake us on?”

  “What do want?”

  “Surprisingly little. You’ve got two new regional offices opening up in Savannah and Phoenix for which you’re advertising for managers. Stein gets Savannah. My client wants Phoenix. Three year, no cut contracts, with standard executive level benefits, increases and bonuses. Promotions effective the first of next month.”

  Rackman was quiet, doing his best to avoid the stare of the women sitting on the other side of his desk. And then he looked up, leaning back in his chair. “What the fuck. Your client can have Phoenix. Too damn hot, if you ask me, but why do you care what happens to Stein?”

  “My client feels that he’s basically an okay guy, who shouldn’t lose his job over something that’s really your fault. His marriage is over. It’ll be enough to have him reassigned to a startup office. You’ll just have to learn to live without the two of them.”

  No reaction. (Unbelievably, Rackman was too busy staring at the attorney’s legs, her skirt being a full three inches above her knee.)

  “Besides, what do you care? Just agree and all this goes away.”

  “You’re right,” he said, getting back to the issue at hand, “I don’t care. Consider it done.”

  “We’ll expect both contracts in my inbox by COB Friday. My e-mail address is on my card. “

  His pursed lips and inability to look them in the face were the only response they were going to get. Picking up the card the lawyer had given him when they first came into his office, he tapped the edge of it on his desk and waited for the sound of them pushing back their chairs to get up and leave.

  Two weeks later…

  “Hey, Ruth!” Jeremy realized it was her before he answered, calling from her new Phoenix area code cell phone number. “Are you having as much fun as I am?”

  “More! How’s Evelyn? Are you settled in yet?”

  “Yeah, we’re fine. What’s not to like? The city’s great. We virtually live on the ocean, and her parents and sister are less than an hour away.”

  “Not to mention the money!!” He could have almost heard her laughing without the cell phones. “Absolutely the best idea Evelyn ever had!”

  “Hi, honey. It’s Ruth.” Evelyn, holding the carryout they ordered, had just poked her head, to be funny, around the corner of the open door to his office. Jeremy would be working late tonight and they thought they’d unwrap his new chairs and leather couch together.”

  “Here,” she reached for his phone, “give it to me.” “Hey, Ruthie! Thanks for your help with all this.”

  “Are you kidding? I just wish I’d thought of it – or had a cousin who’s a women’s rights attorney.”

  “Consider it a team effort. Rackman’s been screwing you and Jeremy all this time. The least we could do is return the favor.”

  19. Jimmy Loves Melissa

  Once upon a time…

  “I’ll tell you the story of Jimmy Jet –

  And you know what I tell you is true.

  He loved to watch his TV set

  Almost as much as you.”

  The quote in the header is from Shel Silverstein's “Jimmy Jet and His TV Set,” one of the children’s poems in Where the Sidewalk Ends, published in 1974.

  Tuesday at 6:47 PM…

  “Hey.” Jimmy was beat. He was beginning to think this internship, in the summer before he would graduate college, was revenge for something really bad he’d done to someone, but couldn’t remember. Just two excruciatingly stressful days into the week, and he’d already had it. Monday’s trip out of town on business hadn’t gone well, but he was back. Tired, disheveled, he plopped his computer case and small duffel bag onto the hallway floor in front of his apartment, and started fumbling for his keys just as Melissa got off the elevator and turned toward her apartment, the one directly across the hallway from his.

  “Hey,” she responded, her raincoat folded over her left arm above the briefcase and handbag she was carrying, an overstuffed bag of groceries in the other.

  “Here, let me help you with that.” He was crazy about Melissa, and pretty sure she liked him, but getting their deal underway was taking forever.

  “Sure,” she smiled back at him, the sparkle in her eyes coming back on-line as she did. “Hold this while I get my key.” He did, and she opened the door to her place. Walking inside past the kitchen, with Jimmy right behind her, Melissa dumped her stuff on the table, large enough for just two chairs, and turned back to Jimmy to take the groceries.

  “Spaghetti and turkey meatballs?” she asked him, hoping he’d come over.

  Jimmy’s eyes looked away from hers, for just a second, at the French bread sticking out of the bag.

  “On-the-couch-picnic, in time for ‘Bones’ at 8?” she asked, giving it a second shot. “It’s an episode I haven’t seen.”

  He almost forgot to say anything, but remembered just before it became weird. “Deal.”

  Jimmy just stood there, reaching out for the doorknob a full five feet behind him. Seeing his dilemma, Melissa put her hand against his chest and started walking, slowly pushing him back a couple of steps until he made contact.

  “See you later,” he said a tad nervously, to which she nodded slowly back at him – no smile this time, but more of an expression resolute with anticipation that made him nervous.

  Across the hall, he fumbled again for his keys, pushed his door open just crack, holding it open while he picked up the bags he’d left on the floor. Looking down, he saw the telltale whiskers of his cat who thought he was hiding from him, hoping he would open to door too wide and give him the shot he needed to escape. “Hey, Dubie.” (His name had nothing to do with recreational drugs, although it sounded that way. It was, instead, short for “Dubious,” which described his gray and white cat perfectly.) Shuffling in, Jimmy did his best to prevent Dubie from getting out. “Miss me?”

  “Meeeh,” which, according to Jimmy when Melissa asked him once, was Dubie-speak for, “You bet your bald ass I did!” Dubie was small, but then so was Jimmy’s apartment, the mirror image of Melissa’s.

  Throwing both switches on the wall, the hall and kitchen lights went on. The flat screen in the living room was already on, having been set to bring up the NBC Nightly News at 6:30, and then switchover to the CBS Evening News “with Kay-tee Cur-ick” who was the anchor that year. Jimmy loved saying her name with the announcer and, to disclose something he’d never admitted to anyone, he thought she was hot. The TV in the corner of his bedroom did the same.

  Pushing his door shut, he slid his computer case on the table by the kitchen, unzipped it and plugged in his laptop using the extra cord he kept at home, opened the lid, and pressed the on button, hardly missing a step on his way toward the balcony to see if Dubie was out of food and water.

  The two TVs made it possible for him to move from room to room without having to wait for a commercial. Both sets were always on, even when he slept, an unfortunate habit he’d picked up when he was a kid. At work, his computer was on-line all the time, his phone keeping him connected whenever he was out.

  Changing out of his suit, Jimmy put on jeans and a t-shirt, and then had a thought that required a video call to Melissa.

  “Hey.” He was in front of his webcam, she was in front of hers which was on a desk she had in her bedroom.

  “Hey.”

  “What are you doing?” as if he didn’t know.

  “Changing into my jammies,” by which she meant the sweat pants and t-shirt she wore to bed. “But then that’s why you called,” she chided him, moving her face right up to the screen, “isn’t it?”

  “Actually, I called to ask if I should make some Sangria.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well,” she thought for a moment, tying up her shoulder length hair into a haphazard bun, “sure. …No peeking,” she advised him, waving her finger back and forth in front of the camera as if she was scolding him.

  “Of course not,” he agreed, covering his face
with is hand, but spreading his fingers to let his right eye keep watching.

  Turning around, but moving only slightly away from being directly in front of the camera – Melissa unbuttoned and took off the business blouse she’d worn to work that day, and the bra under it. “How was your trip?”

  “Okay. ..I’ll tell you about it over dinner.” Talking now would only break his concentration. Melissa had told him that she’d read in one of her Anthropology textbooks that men were programmed to do only one thing at a time.

  Her back facing the camera, she looked over her shoulder to see if he was watching, careful not to turn too far around as she did. He was still there alright, and quickly closed up his fingers while she stretched her t-shirt over her hair and pulled it down. “I’ve got to fix dinner. See you later,” and she left the room, knowing full well, and liking every second of it, that he was still standing there, staring at the screen.

  She had just the one TV in her living room on which “Access Hollywood” was bringing her up to date on the world of entertainment. If she’d been paying attention, she’d have learned that Michael Jackson was still dead, but hadn’t been buried yet. Why this particular show? Because it was so much better than “Entertainment Tonight.” Just in case, she’d straighten up her room, but not so much to make it look as if no one really lived there. Her blouse and bra were left purposely tossed over the back of her chair. (She’d had to do it twice to get it to look just right.) And the sheet and light blanket she slept under were pulled up, but not all the way. One of her two pillows was propped up vertically and pushed in lightly on top of the other as if she’d been sitting up in bed reading.

  At 7:45 exactly, she was in the kitchen now, stirring a pot of store-bought tomato sauce and some turkey meatballs she’d made a few days before. A big bowl of salad, napkins, silverware and plates were on the table for them to pick up, buffet-style, when her phone on the counter made its familiar “boob boop” to indicate an incoming text. “Knock, knock,” the screen said.

  Going to the door, she looked through her peep hole, knowing who it was of course, but wanting to make it official. And there was Jimmy, checking his office e-mail, his arm under Dubie who insisted on coming, a pitcher of red wine and fruit in his other hand.

  8:57 PM. Dinner had been delicious. The entire bread was gone, together with an entire stick of cold, real butter, and they were down to sucking on the orange slices left soaking in the pitcher of Sangria. Dubie was somewhere, but neither of them cared. Melissa had given him a couple pieces of meatball that he ate off the coffee table, and were the highlight of his day. Odds were he was taking a nap.

  It was a good episode of “Bones” through which they talked and laughed incessantly about every detail, speculating about the precise circumstances when Dr. Brennan and Agent Booth would finally make it official. It was their way, Jimmy’s and Melissa’s, of asking the same question about themselves.

  As fate would have it, Melissa had sliced up the half a watermelon she’d bought over the weekend, just in case. It was Jimmy’s favorite dessert. The two of them sat there, some Lifetime movie starting up on the wide, HDTV a few feet across from them. Kitchen towels spread out on the coffee table, they leaned over, burying their faces into juicy, sweet slices, spitting their seeds, as best they could, into the glass bowl between them, only half of which made it. (It was funny, if not good housekeeping.) Three minutes later, they were making out like teenagers, which they barely weren’t, in a frenzied explosion of pent up passion, watermelon juice dribbling recklessly down the sides of their mouths and on their hands, grabbing at each other’s faces and t-shirts. …until the cable went out, and they stopped.

  “What was that?” Jimmy asked, almost in whisper.

  “Why are you whispering?”

  “It’s so quiet.” Their mouths were less than an inch apart.

  “So? “

  Jimmy’s eyes began darting between Melissa’s and the TV, now nothing more than a black window on the wall. His blinking became erratic, his breathing labored.

  “Jimmy?” And just as quickly, the cable came back, the glowing lights and sounds of dialog and soundtrack filling the darkened room.

  Turning back toward her, she felt the strength returning to his hands, moving again under her t-shirt – and they got back to finishing what they had started. Right there on the couch, because there was no TV in the bedroom, and Melissa wasn’t about to risk it.

  20. Organic Gardening

  The rapping on the front door to Stephanie’s suburban house was unusually hard. Whoever it was, he – “It has to be a man,” she thought to herself, apprehensively. – had decided to ignore the bell in favor of a less demure announcement of his arrival. There were people coming over at 3 PM, but that was, what…? She checked her watch as she grabbed a towel to wipe her hands on her way out of the kitchen, throwing it over her shoulder. …22 minutes from now.

  Whoever it was knocked again, well less than a minute after the first time. In the hallway now, she was relieved to see the face of “Al” (Alison) Jacobs, her face peering in the glass panel beside the door. Dr. Jacobs had been her physician for more than a decade since her husband had died and she’d moved here to take the only college-level teaching job she could find at the time. Turns out, it was a good choice, a place to make good money and even better friends. “Hey,” Al waved to her. Relieved to see it was someone she trusted, Stephanie picked up her pace and closed the last few feet quickly and opened her front door.

  “Hi. You’re early.” She was talking to Al, but studying the faces of the man and woman, the two standing behind Al that she didn’t recognize, the man first, then the woman and back to the man standing directly in front of her, but not all the way.

  “Mrs. Abrams,” the man began to announce himself, extending a business card that Stephanie took from him. “I’m Special Agent Collier. This is my associate, Agent Macy,” he moved his head toward the woman standing to his left, “who called you this morning. We're early. May we come in?”

  “Of course.” Stephanie opened the door all the way, stepped back and gestured to the great room where she had freshly made cookies, a few small bottles of water and a pitcher of ice tea nicely arranged on the coffee table around an open space in the middle she’d saved for something. “This way. We can talk in here. It was fall, but still comfortably warm and no coats to worry about.

  Agent Macy handed her card to Stephanie on the way in, accompanied by a perfunctory smile while being certain to make the requisite eye contact her recently completed training demanded. She would forgive the young agent’s inexperience, but looking someone in the eyes standing that close to her made Stephanie want to squint.

  “Thank you,” Doctor Jacobs was the last one through the door, and the only one of the three who seemed comfortable being there.

  “Please, make yourselves at home. I’ll be right with you.” That courtesy out of the way, Stephanie went to her refrigerator and took out a tray of a dozen turkey, goat cheese and arugula sandwiches she had prepared on small homemade croissants.

  “As you can see,” she commented in an attempt to lighten the mood, as she placed the tray in the center of the table, “I watch entirely too much Food TV. …Please help yourselves.”

  Agent Macy, seeing the sprouts protruding artistically from under the perfectly baked crust above them, paused in mid-reach. “Maybe later,” she announced tentatively. “They look delicious,” which they did, she said politely with another attempt at a friendly expression. Stephanie wondered to herself what Macy would be like if she weren’t on duty, if Special Agent Collier weren’t there – and what made him so “Special.”

  Making herself comfortable in her favorite corner of the couch where she’d thrown her sweater to make sure no one sat there, Stephanie decided to take the lead. Dr. Jacobs was also on the couch to Stephanie’s left, the two agents having sat in the chairs across from them. “So, uh, what??
?s this all about? …When Al, ‘Dr. Jacobs’ called yesterday, she said it was important that we meet as soon as possible. That wasn’t 24 hours ago. What exactly is..”

  “Mrs. Abrams,” Agent Macy didn’t wait for her to finish, “you had an appointment yesterday with Dr. Jacobs for a routine physical, is that right?”

  “Yes. Nothing special, jus..”

  “And while you were there, Dr. Jacobs observed a small scar on your abdomen?”

  “Yes.” It was obvious that the FBI agent preferred short answers. Studious to a fault, she was following a list of questions she’d typed up and clipped on the left of her open portfolio, opposite a yellow legal pad on the right.

  “And you indicated that it was the scar from a voluntary operation in which you gave up one of your kidneys to a non-profit, living-donor program?”

  “That’s correct. I’m only 37, in good health. Why not help someone else who might not make it without me?

  There was quiet.

  “Mrs. Abrams,” it was Special Agent Collier talking now, “when did you first think about donating your kidney?”

  “Uh, I don’t know exactly. I’m an organ donor, you know, in case of an accident or something and I don’t make it. …More recently, my friend Joan… She and I have been taking evening classes, part of the Chef’s program offered to adults at the college where we’re on the faculty. We were joking about growing our own fresh herbs and vegetables, and she dared me to plant some arugula on my deck. I just love the stuff, so I did.”

  “How exactly did you do that, Mrs. Abrams?” Agent Macy was asking this time, determined to go through her list of questions.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, how exactly did you plant the arugula? Did you buy small starter plants? Seeds? Did you buy them locally? On-line? Through the mail? What, precisely, did you do?”

  “Well, uh, …Joan gave me a website, ‘AuntMinniesFreeSeeds.org.” It’s a non-profit that sends you free seeds for vegetables to encourage people to grow their own healthy foods.”

  “Is that what you did, you went there, on-line, and ordered some of their seeds?”

  “Sure. For arugula. The stuff grows almost overnight. I didn’t know things grew that fast, and the arugula you get is… Well, it just tastes great, so much better than the mostly non-organic produce you buy at the store. Really delicious. It’s on the sandwiches.” Stephanie reached to lift the tray of croissant sandwiches no one had sampled yet. “Here, try one,” but then realized there were no takers. It was quiet again as she put the tray down while she half-heartedly delivered the Aunt Minnie’s slogan, “You know, ‘Home grown vegetables with the flavor that's out of this world.’”

  “What do the seeds,” Agent Macy continued down her list, “have to do with your donating a kidney, Mrs. Abrams?”

  “Well, on the website and on the DVD they send with the seeds – Loved it, by the way. Must have watched it a dozen times. I’m doing carrots next, I think, and then the herbs. Anyway, they make a pitch for you to donate a kidney, to be a live donor, to appreciate what you’ve done for someone else while you can. …It was… compelling and I decided not to wait and contacted them.”

  “You called Aunt Minnie’s?”

  “No, they give you a toll-free number to call to make arrangements with a local hospital. A nurse came over and took a medical history, gave me a simple exam, took a blood sample, gave me diet advice, you know, to make sure I was eating well – lot’s of arugula!” She laughed, but was the only one who thought it was funny. “The darker the vegetable’s color, the better it is for you,” she said tentatively, wondering if either of the agents could have cared less. “Aunt Minnie’s arugula is unusually dark… dark green.” They were just letting her talk.

  “Was that the last time you saw the nurse before the operation?”

  “No, there was another blood sample a month later, and then she called a few days after that to set up an appointment. They picked me up, took me to the hospital for outpatient surgery, and I was home that evening.” The blank stares on their faces were beginning to trouble her. “...Everything went great.”

  “Stephanie.”

  “Yes, Dr. Jacobs.”

  “Would you mind lifting your t-shirt and pulling down your sweats just a bit to show us the scar? I’m sorry to…”

  “No. It’s okay,” Stephanie got up from the couch, turning slightly toward the two agents. “It’s almost gone.” And so it was, with only the faintest of lines still showing, almost unnoticeable.

  Taking an 8 x 11 photo out of the file folder she brought with her, Dr. Jacobs showed it to the agents. “This was taken yesterday afternoon, around 4:20 when Stephanie and I were finishing up. As you can see, the scar was minimal then, but still much more prominent than it is now.”

  “Today’s Saturday, Mrs. Abrams. You had the kidney removed on Monday? Last Monday?”

  “So?” The answer was “Yes,” but she didn’t get the point of the question.

  “Stephanie, this incision should still have the stitches, shouldn’t be close to healing. In fact, there’s no indication there ever were stitches or staples. As best I can tell, it must have been glued shut, but I’ve never seen anything this neat. Surgical scars usually take years to disappear, if ever. …More to the point, the CT scan we did…”

  “Are you saying they didn’t actually remove my kidney.”

  “No, they took it out, it’s just that the scan shows that it’s growing back, and fast. A couple of weeks from now at the rate it’s growing, we’re not going to know you ever gave one up in the first place.”

  “ So,” Stephanie was beginning to get the point, “how rare is this, Al?”

  “This is never, Stephanie. I honestly don’t know what’s…”

  “Mrs. Abrams,” Special Agent Collier interrupted, not wanting the Doctor to speculate or tell her too much. “You say they picked you up to take you to the hospital?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well,” hearing the inflection in Stephanie’s voice, “did they or didn’t they?”

  “Look, what are you getting at? I told you, they picked me up.”

  “Mrs. Abrams,” Agent Macy seemed concerned that her superior was being too severe. “One of your neighbors, the retired couple in the house with the blue siding across the street…”

  “Yes, I know who you mean. The Franks.”

  “That’s right. Apparently they were working in their yard Monday morning, mulching, planting some new bushes to replace the ones the deer have been eating.”

  “What’s your point, Agent Macy?” Stephanie was getting impatient and more than a bit anxious.

  “They told us that an ambulance picked you up around 10 AM. That someone knocked on your door…”

  “The nurse I told you about.”

  “…and that you got in the back of the ambulance and left with them.”

  “That’s right. I told you...”

  “And that you were back before 11. They know, because Mr. Stevens, your mailman, dropped off the mail and he never comes after 11. Never. They’re retired. Apparently getting the mail is a big deal for them. Letters from their grandchildren, occasional orders for some costume jewelry Mrs. Franks makes and sells on-line.”

  “That’s pretty much true, I mean that the mail comes in the morning, but so what?”

  “Mrs. Abrams, the ‘So what?’ is that you were gone for less than an hour. You told us you didn’t get back from outpatient surgery until late the in afternoon. An hour isn’t enough time for you to get to the hospital, do the surgery, recover and get back. Our specialist...”

  “And I agree, Stephanie,” Dr. Jacobs wanted Stephanie to understand that what Agent Macy was saying made sense.

  “…the surgeon who’s working with us says you should have been kept overnight.”

  “More to the point,” Agent Collier’s voice commanded a whole higher level of attention,” th
ere’s no hospital or clinic within 100 miles of here that has any record of your checking in or any surgery that could have anything to do with removing your kidney – or transplanting it or sending it to any recipient at another hospital.”

  “But I remember going to the hospital. I got home. Turned on the evening news in my bedroom and slept for about an hour.” And then Stephanie decided to stop talking. Feeling herself breathing faster, she remembered not to hyperventilate like she did twice when she was in college.

  “Stephanie,” Doctor Jacobs saw the change in her patient’s face, “are you okay.”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Her voice was resolute now, Stephanie’s mind pushing its way through the reality she was just beginning to fully appreciate.

  “There’s more, Stephanie.” This morning, after I called Agent Macy – The FBI had sent a bulletin to doctors in the area to look out for situations like this. – I called the lab and had them pull a blood sample you gave us a year ago. They’ve started saving small samples in case we need a baseline for some reason. With your permission, I’d like take a fresh sample today. I’ve got my bag in the car.”

  “Why? What are you looking for? Am I sick?”

  “We don’t think so,” Agent Collier tried to reassure her. “At least none of the other cases have had…”

  “What other cases?”

  “There have been others, 74 that we know about, in three states. All of them bought seeds – genetically altered seeds – from the same website, watched the same DVD and ate what they grew. Exceptionally rapid healing, and the kidneys they had removed grew back. Three of the 74, as far as we know, actually donated their kidneys a second time before we found out about it.”

  “If I’m okay, why do you need another blood sample, Al?”

  “Because the others have experienced changes to their DNA.”

  “What?!”

  “I know, I know, Stephanie, it sounds… Well, I know how it must sound. The FBI has some of the best geneticists in the country working on it. …Stephanie?”

  “What do I do now?”

  “We’re going to have an FBI psychologist work with you. Here’s her card. She’ll call you tomorrow. She’s heading up the team that has been studying the DVD and any hypnotic suggestion it may have given you and the others.”

  “By the way,” Agent Macy added, “the same thing’s happened to your friend Joan, except that we caught her before they picked her up. …And now she can’t reach the nurse, and the website’s gone.”

  Two hundred eighty-seven miles away, at the small grocery store that served the rural town too far from the nearest city of any size…

  “What are these, Bobby?” Jake, the Manager, asked one of his part-time stock clerks who worked there weekdays after school.

  “They’re free samples of herbs from a new organic supplier. …Here. This is the sign that goes with it. There’s a website people can visit for more free samples if they’re interested. …Should I put them out?”

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Here’s the packing slip that the driver gave me.”

  “Let’s see,” Jake began reading out loud, “‘For more samples and information about our seeds and other ready-to-eat produce, e-mail [email protected], Delicious locally grown organic herbs and vegetables, with flavor that’s out of this world.’ Yeah, sure. …Okay, let’s get them out there.”

  21. The Bully

  Jack knew that Oliver would be coming through the office kitchen door at 3 PM, plus or minus a couple of minutes. Oliver was trying really hard to lose weight, maybe 20, 25 pounds, and had promised himself he wouldn’t eat lunch before 12, or have an afternoon snack before 3. It wasn’t easy, but the routine was working for him, and Allison – second in command of his five-person future projects analysis team, and the woman of his dreams – was beginning to notice.

  Oliver would be coming through the door, turning right, going directly to the refrigerator, opening the freezer and removing the last of the box of 4 Nestlé Drumsticks which he would proceed to eat right down to the tip, slowly enough to enjoy every bite, fast enough to avoid dripping any of it on the perfect ties he wore every day.

  Oliver preferred the “Classic Vanilla” Drumstick, delicious chocolate and peanut topped vanilla ice cream in a chocolate-lined sugar cone, believing that the newer models with the fudge or caramel core or chocolate ice cream were examples of major corporations tampering with perfection. By far and away, the worst example in this category, as Oliver had pointed out on occasion, was when Coca Cola tried unsuccessfully in 1985 to change the formula of what subsequently became known as “Classic” Coke. Oliver knew his snack foods. FYI, the Drumstick is the modern version of a discontinued product called the “Nutty Buddy,” invented years ago by its namesake, Buddy Seymourian – not to be confused with the men’s athletic cup of the same name (“Nutty Buddy,” www.NuttyBuddy.com ) whose slogan, “Protecting the boys,” pretty much tells you everything you need to know about that product.

  Oliver would be focused on the refrigerator, thinking about the analysis he was doing on a property his company was considering developing, and wouldn’t notice Jack leaning against the counter to his left behind the open door. Jack would wait, wait for Oliver to close the door to the freezer compartment, drop the empty box in the trash can, peel off the top of the Drumstick wrapper and turn to leave while contemplating his first bite. The first bite had to be carefully considered, like a diamond cutter making sure his first strike wouldn’t ruin what could be the perfect stone, or the way a Mohel thinks twice, even three times before he circumcises a baby boy. There was no room for error.

  “Thanks!” Jack pulled off the surprise precisely as planned and snatched the Drumstick from Oliver’s hand. “That was way too easy,” he gloated.

  Oliver said nothing, just staring at his last Drumstick, wondering what Jack and he would do next, and then raised his eyes to look up, from under his eyebrows, directly into Jack’s.

  It was the moment Jack had been waiting for. Shoving the Drumstick toward his mouth, he took a huge bite that crumbled the peanut studded chocolate shell, a large piece of it falling to the tile floor. Jack laughed a bit while his free hand salvaged a bit of ice cream that was lingering precariously at the corner of his mouth. “Hey,” he said mockingly, “these are good.”

  Oliver thought for a moment, watching yet another piece of chocolate and nuts fall to the floor. Was it worth it for him, he thought, to shove what was left of his Drumstick into the face of the asshole in front of him? Technically, Jack was senior to him, having graduated and joined the firm two years ahead of Oliver. Intellectually, and in every other respect, he was a poor excuse for everything he pretended to be, a coworker whose principal job seemed to be taking credit for everyone else’s work and, in doing so, make himself the darling of the mid-level management to whom they all reported. Picking on Oliver, the only analyst in their division Jack worried about, had become a regular part of Jack’s daily routine.

  “Here,” Jack extended the ruined cone as if it was a microphone, pretending to offer Oliver a chance to share.

  Oliver thought for a moment, deciding instead to be as polite as he could, actually managing a slight, if insincere smile. “No thanks. ...You seem to be enjoying it even more than I would have.” And then, looking down at the floor and back up at Jack. “Be sure to clean up before you leave. Company policy.” Walking around his nemesis, Oliver headed out of the kitchen at a measured pace, not fast enough to avoid hearing the sound of his Drumstick hitting the inside of the trash can. The image of his wasted delight melting at the bottom with coffee cups and a banana peel would be stuck in his head for a good hour or so. In all relationships, business and personal, pleasant and adversarial, there are tipping points. However petty – it was, after all, nothing more than a snack – this was one of them. Oliver knew it, and the anticipation of his getting back at Jack once and
for all made him feel strangely good about himself.

  Unfortunately, while Oliver was a good guy and laser focused on his work as the deadline for their report approached, Jack’s shenanigans continued unabated – including hitting on Allison, the only woman on Oliver's five-person team, about whom he cared zero, preferring less intelligent, less driven, more overtly flirtatious, slutty types more interested in silk sheets than spreadsheets – if you get my point. Oliver and his team would do the research in painstaking detail. Oliver would write the report with Allison’s help. (Next to Oliver himself, Allison with the clearest thinker and best writer of the five of them.) Jack would read it and preview its findings with management. He was a quick study, and there was usually no stopping him from demanding and getting access to their work. Depending upon their reaction, he’d either take credit or suggest that there were still elements of the study that, well, “needed work.” Not to worry. He’d handle it. When the time came, he’d insist on making the formal presentation, or let Oliver do it. Sometime later, Jack would submit a supplementary report based on middle management’s concerns – the ones Oliver knew nothing about.

  This time, Jack was beginning to sense, would be different. This particular project had an especially high profile and had attracted senior management’s attention with an intensity none of them had seen before. Middle management was being tentative, hedging its bets. There was “no-nonsense” in the air and it was making Jack uneasy.

  Early the following afternoon, Oliver’s team was in the conference room engaged in what Jack figured had to be their last meeting before Oliver would put the final touches on the report and write up his recommendations. “Oliver.” Jack walked in, not caring that he was interrupting a highly animated discussion, professional, but nonetheless noisy, between two of Oliver’s team who were arguing about the pricing they’d recommend. “E-mail me the draft.” He was talking to Oliver, but looking at Allison, her auburn hair pulled back with a scrunchie the way she did when she’d been there overnight. “Hey, Allison.” Just two simple words, but there was no way he could say them that didn’t sound creepy.

  “Jack,” she answered without looking up from the notes she was making.

  “How about dinner tomorrow night, after the presentation?”

  “No thanks,” she looked up showing the minimum courtesy she could, short of telling him where to get off.

  “Don’t tell me you have plans?”

  “She has plans with me.” It wasn’t true, but Oliver had had it with Jack’s crap.

  “You’re kidding?” Jack turned to Allison, waiting for confirmation.

  “I said she has plans with me. And you’ll get your copy of the report when it’s done, at the presentation with everyone else.” Oliver remained seated, working on draft text and tables he had spread out on the table in front of him.

  “You’ll give it to me now.”

  Oliver looked up, paused for only a second, before he asked the question he could no longer resist, “Or what?”

  No response.

  “Or what?” he repeated, more deliberately this time. “…Maybe you didn’t hear me? Just what are you going to do if I don’t give it to you?”

  No response, but then, turning back to Allison, his voice uncharacteristically subdued, Jack decided to pursue a different subject. “You’re not really going out to dinner with Chubby?”

  “Out?” Allison looked up, taking off her reading glasses. Reaching back to remove her scrunchie, her chest pushing forward while she shook her head just enough to let her hair down. “‘In’ is more like it. The fact is, I’m going to be fucking his brains out at my place over some sangria and cartons of carry out.” And then turning to Oliver, “Crab Rangoon and black bean shrimp, babe, same as last time?”

  “Maybe…” He had to stop to swallow. “…maybe some pineapple chicken?” Oliver couldn’t take his eyes off her, while the heads of the other three on the team went back and forth, between Oliver and Allison, as if they had table-side seats at a ping pong game.

  “Yeah?” Jack was determined to have the last word. “You two deserve each other,” and he left, heading down the hall toward the elevator and the middle management executive offices two floors up.

  Oliver and Allison would have probably stared at each other for the rest of the afternoon if one of their three colleagues hadn’t interrupted the silence for selfish reasons. “Hey, guys. Can he get us fired?”

  “Them maybe,” one of the others answered, obviously kidding, “but not us.”

  “You’ll be fine,” Oliver reassured them. “By now, he’s finding out that senior management had us hand in the final draft early, yesterday morning. I’ll e-mail these revisions they requested later this afternoon.”

  “What about the presentation?”

  “They didn’t need one. I’ve been keeping them up to date for weeks, on a daily basis. …I’ll be running the project, with Allison taking over here as of Monday.” Turning to Allison, “You’ll have to hire a newbie to keep the team at five.” She was pleased that he had recommended her for the promotion. Sure, Oliver liked her, but she was good, really good. He knew it, and so did she but in a practical, not conceited way.

  “What about Jack,” Allison was wondering if he’d still be getting in their way.

  “Not up to me, although I suspect a transfer might be an option.” Checking his watch, “Okay, enough. Good job everybody. It’s only 2:50. Plenty of day to get some work done. ...I'll be right back.” And he pushed back, got up and left the conference room.

  At 3 PM sharp, Oliver pushed open the door to the company kitchen, heading right toward the refrigerator, his head already busy wrapping itself around the first few project management problems he’d be facing. Opening the freezer compartment, the frosty mist hitting him in the face, it took both his hands to open the new box of Drumsticks his team had bought him, with the big red bow on top, and pull one out. Pushing the freezer door shut, he carefully removed the top of the wrapper, turning without realizing there was anyone standing behind him.

  “Thanks!” Allison pulled off the surprise, snatching the Drumstick from Oliver’s hand. “You know, that was way too easy,” she smiled with the corners of her mouth as he watched the freshly applied red gloss on her lips wrap around the peanut covered coating, taking the perfect bite without so much as cracking any of the other chocolate.

  Wiping some ice cream from her lips, she told him to, “Get your own,” turned and headed for the door. Pausing just as she got there, Allison looked back, took a second bite, licking her lips clean, rolled her eyes up to look at him and asked Oliver the question that would make his year. “So,” her tone was matter-of-fact, but her eyes… her eyes were unusually blue, “are we still on for dinner at my place?” A quick air kiss and she left before Oliver regained consciousness and began running down the hall after her.

  22. The Eulogy

  Herbert never did like his first name and had labored his entire life, from elementary school until today, his twenty-fourth birthday, to have people, especially his closest friends if he’d had any, call him anything but. To be precise, he detested “Herb” and especially “Herbie.” “Bert” reminded him of “Ernie.” …“Jake.” That’s what he wanted people to call him, thinking it was cool, manly and cool, a name that the ladies would find compelling. …”Jake,” because he needed all the help he could get.

  Lying there in his hospital bed, the expression on his face was somber. His eyes closed, arms by his side, he was surrounded by a handful of his coworkers from The Acme Inventions Company wondering what took the life of their colleague. Herbert was dead. It was official now that the nurse had turned off the equipment that had been monitoring his condition just a few minutes ago. The flat-line tone they had heard in the hallway still lingered in their heads. Don, the group’s Manager, was standing at the end of the bed, as far from Herbert as he could be without seeming as if he didn
’t really care, even though he didn’t. Lisa was to the left about even with Herbert’s shoulders. Denise was at her side, between Lisa and Don. Joanne was to Don’s right, and Robert was on her right, across from Lisa. They were just standing there, still wearing their coats.

  “So, uh, what did the doctor say,” Robert, who had the carrel next to Herbert’s, had been the last to arrive, “..killed him? Was it… Did he…”

  “Kill himself?” Denise always said what she was thinking, however irreverent or impolite. They’d all been thinking the same thing, but only Denise had the balls to put the idea out there.

  “Of course ...not.” Joanne was the only one in the room who was really upset, her eyes glistening with the anticipation of tears she couldn’t rationalize, not yet. Joanne was the unrequited love of Herbert’s life. Everyone knew it. The way he looked at her. His inability to speak in whole sentences when they were at a meeting together. The way he waited for her to go the lunchroom refrigerator so he could happen to be there at the same time. The supposed-to-be-casual invitations to join him for dinner when they were working late that she never, ever accepted. Well, you get the picture. He was crazy about her, but he wasn’t exactly what she had in mind.

  “If anything,” Lisa looked up at Joanne, blaming her for Herbert’s current situation, “I’d say he died of a broken heart. …Maybe if you’d...” she thought a dramatic pause might help make her point. “Well, it’s too late now, isn’t it?”

  Herbert was bright. Very, very bright, and exceptionally creative. In fact, he was the only one of their new products specialists who actually developed his own products, working evenings and weekends in the unfinished loft where he had his laboratory and shop, and where he slept on the futon that was the only piece of real furniture he had. None of them had much money. Inventions were a labor a love, and a lot like prospecting. Some would search their entire careers and never make any real money, addicted to the dream of striking it rich.

  “Well, you know,” Don, their group leader was emotionless, “he’d been struggling lately.”

  “Maybe we should have asked him to go out with us after work,” Joanne wondered out loud. “Once or twice. How bad could it have been?”

  “They’re not sure,” Lisa had spoken to the nurse. “His cleaning lady found him passed out when she came in this morning. By the time the paramedics got there, he was already in a coma until a few minutes ago, until his heart stopped. Short of opening up his chest, they tried the usual to bring him back. ...Nothing.”

  “And then we got here.” Don gave them all off to go the hospital. It was the right thing to do, and they weren’t that busy anyway.

  “Didn’t they open him up, you know,” Joanne, for reasons she didn’t understand, was having trouble holding it together, “massage his heart? Hook him up to machines to keep him alive the way they do on TV?”

  Robert offered her an open pack of Kleenex he’d had in his back pocket for who knows how long. Robert had chronic nasal drip, and there was lint on the top one she would have taken. Joanne faked a polite smile and waved him away, preferring to suck it up, literally.

  “He had one of those ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ cards in his wallet. ‘No Extraordinary Measures.’” Lisa always had the tone of instant authority that made her less likeable than she thought. “And he’s not an organ donor.”

  There was a spontaneous moment of silence while the five of them just stood there, contemplating their own mortality.

  Denise was first to talk after the break. “Here today,” was as far as she got.

  “Do you really think he died of a broken heart?” Joanne seemed to be blaming herself. The other four looked at her, and then at each other.

  “I don’t know,” Robert thought it was time to say something nice about the recently departed. “I thought his ‘Bagel Cheese’ – disk shaped cheese slices with holes in the middle – had potential.”

  Denise had had lunch with him once. “He was such a perfectionist.”

  “That’s one way of putting it,” Don butted-in sarcastically.

  “I remember,” Denise continued ignoring Don, the way they did at the office, “how he would cut off the corners of the cheese squares they gave him, and make a hole in the middle to keep the ratio of bagel to mild cheddar constant over his entire sandwich. He just overestimated the market.”

  “‘Soap Pits.’” Lisa had her personal favorite.

  The other four nodded their concurrence in unison.

  “Who among us,” Denise took the lead, but they had all helped Herbert with the story boards for the presentation, “doesn’t find the find the little pieces of soap that are left over when the bar is nearly done annoying?”

  Joanne kept it going without losing a beat. “You can try to smoosh them into a new bar, but that’s unsightly, and they don’t stay attached.  And, in the meantime, they turn yellow in your soap dish.”

  “Or you can try squeezing several of them together to make a bigger piece.” That line had been Robert’s contribution, and he was proud of it.

  “Mostly,” Joanne would never forget the ending, “I just try to put several of them in my hand and use them all at once to make enough suds – and then one or two slip out and get stuck around the drain in my sink.  And then,” she continued, the lump in her throat making it hard for her to swallow, “and then I have to ask myself, do I pick it up and save it, or try to push it in all the way, raising and lowering the drain cover to make it go down?”

  Even Don was impressed, although he wasted no time distancing himself from the idea as soon as Lever Bros. turned it down. “Our solution is to make the bar of soap with a cheap, disposable, but recyclable hollow plastic center – a bar customers could use right to the core, which would still be a convenient size, and there wouldn’t be any remnant pieces.”

  “We call these cores ‘Soap Pits,’” Joanne finished up, the pride rising in her voice as she did, “like the pits in a peach, while your brand name materializes in raised letters and contrasting color.”

  “Herbert even thought producers could put prizes in the pit that would encourage customers to use the soap more quickly.” It was an important detail Robert thought he needed to add.

  “Brilliant,” Joanne and Denise said, lowering their heads.

  “On the other hand,” Don couldn’t suppress his need to remain superior, at Herbert’s expense, of course, “there was the ‘I Stink!’ line of bad breath mints and ‘odorants’ for people who wanted their significant others to break up with them, rather than having to do it themselves. …What was he thinking?”

  “Everyone,” Robert turned toward Don, coming to Herbert’s defense, “has an off day.”

  “Had he lived,” Joanne mused, “it would have been remembered as his seminal work with alternative fragrances. Who knows where that research would have taken him?”

  “I’m just saying, you can’t…” Don was too insecure to leave even mild criticism unchallenged.

  “Don,” Lisa looked at him, and then over at Joanne who was sniffling and fumbling through her pocketbook that she’d set on the side of Herbert’s bed. “Give it a rest.”

  “Well,” Joanne lifted her head, giving it one final sniff, having found what she was looking for, “I think we will all miss Herbert. …Certainly, I will,” she added, punctuating that thought with a deep breath. Opening a plain, unmarked tube of lipstick, “Robert,” she demanded while looking carefully at the glistening red surface of what rolled out of the tube, “give me one of those Kleenex.”

  He paused, and then reached into his back pocket to comply. “Here.”

  She took it, wiping off the lipstick she was wearing, and began applying the lipstick from the unmarked tube.

  “What is that?” Denise wanted to know.

  Joanne quickly finished applying the new, electric red gloss, and returned the tube to its case. “It, uh… Well, as it turns out, it was Herbert’s last project.
He’d been working on it for weeks and gave me a sample on Monday. It’s a new product he called ‘The Lovestick.’ He… He told me it had special recuperative powers. This is the least I can do.”

  “Is she serious?” Don thought he must have missed something.

  Rolling her lips together, Joanne was determined to do this. “He joked and… and told me that only on the lips of the perfect woman would his formula realize its full potential. I want him to know… Well, excuse me.” And she pushed Robert aside, taking two steps toward the head of the bed. Bending over slowly, she gave Herbert in death what she denied him in life, a firm kiss on his lips, the classic lip stain of his latest and last invention evident on his mouth, it’s aroma rising up his face and into the room.

  “Wow,” was all Denise could say.

  “Fragrant, isn’t it?” was Lisa’s comment, having watched the kiss from the other side of the bed.

  One sigh to punctuate the moment, and Joanne was done. “Let’s go,” and she turned, herding Robert in front of her, and Don in front of him toward the door.

  “Hey,” Lisa was still bedside. “He wasn’t smiling before, was he?”

  They stopped and looked back for a moment. “…Nah,” Robert and Denise agreed, and the four turned and resumed their exit, Lisa hustling up to join them.

  Three weeks later…

  What? You were expecting Joanne’s kiss was going to bring Herbert back from the dead? As if that were even possible.

  Well, doctor-patient privilege prevents me from telling, but you should know that Joanne, after an unexpected knock on her apartment door two Saturday mornings later, resigned from the Acme Invention Company that afternoon via an e-mail to Don – and then canceled her email and cell phone accounts and left keys to her condo with an agent on her way to the airport for a week of unwinding at one of the $10,000 a day cottages at Nassau’s Ocean Club – where more than one member of the luxury hotel staff complimented her on the extraordinary fragrance of her luscious red lip gloss, to the pleasure of her friend, “Jake,” who had made the reservation for the two of them – after closing the sale of a lifetime to a major cosmetics company.

  23. Relationship Saving Time

  2:10 AM, Sunday, November 1, 2009

  Ralph had fallen asleep on his living room couch, some late night movie playing on the TV across from him, his right arm lying in a pile of popcorn from the bowl he’d knocked over when he passed out. In retrospect, he should have never put his feet up on the coffee table. At the end of a long, stressful day, nothing put him to sleep faster. The sound of a gentle rain falling on the fire escape outside his apartment window hadn’t made staying awake any easier.

  “Buddy,” Ralph’s cat and only real friend, so Buddy would have him believe, was awake and playing with the pieces of popcorn that had rolled onto his cushion, batting them from one paw to another as if he were playing catch with himself.

  Ralph hadn’t been sleeping well since Monica moved out. Well, to be honest, she’d never really moved in. In their relationship, which would have been a year old today, Monica was the one with the commitment issues, not even wanting to acknowledge they were a couple. “Couple of what?” she would say jokingly when anyone would ask. It was cute at first, but not lately, particularly since she started telling him she couldn’t see him anymore. He’d lost count of how many times she had broken up with him, only to fall back into his life the next time they ran into each other. It was a big city, but a small town when it came to personal relationships.

  He was tired of it, and had told her so two weeks ago on the Saturday morning after the last Friday she’d spent the night. It was the perfect morning, with fresh squeezed orange juice, warm bagels and honey walnut cream cheese he’d run out for while she was still asleep – until she broke up with him, and him with her, for the last time. It wasn’t like the other times that were hard, but still civil. This last time, there was no holding anything back. Things were said, hurtful things that wouldn’t be easily forgotten. Two weeks was the longest time they hadn’t talked or seen each other since the day they met.

  “Rap, rap, rap.” It was the sound of the knocker on the metal face of his apartment door. “Ralph? Rap, rap, rap. Come on, Ralph. Get up. …Please. ..Rap, rap, rap. ..Come on, Ralph,” she pleaded, “I can hear the TV.”

  “What?!” Ralph sat up, slapping his mouth with his left had to catch a drop of drool he thought he felt there, and then turning to look at the popcorn that was stuck to the palm of his right hand. “What is it, Buddy?”

  Sitting up as tall as he could, Buddy looked at Ralph and then at the front door.

  “Rap, rap, rap. Please, Ralph. Open up.”

  Getting up, Ralph used the few steps he took to imagine what would happen next, like the moment he had rehearsed for when they saw each other on the street or at a restaurant, but then said nothing when he opened the door to a rain-soaked Monica.

  “Can I come in?” was what she asked, but Ralph just stood there.

  “What do you want, Monica?” He was tired, and had no intention of being pleasant. “Did you forget something? Wait, that’s my jacket. ...Thanks for bringing it back.”

  “Ralph, I love you. Can I please come in?”

  “Actually, no,” but she pushed her way past him anyway. Shivering slightly, she stood there, her arms folded, dripping on the small Oriental rug that covered his uneven hardwood floor.

  Walking around her, he picked up the remote from the coffee table and muted, but didn’t turn off the television…

  “Hey, Buddy.” At least he seemed glad to see her.

  …and then began shoveling the spilled popcorn back into the bowl, as good an excuse as any not to look at her. “You’re wet.”

  “I couldn’t get a taxi.”

  “I mean, you’re wet. Stay on the rug. ...And next time you want to talk, try calling.”

  “I did, but you haven’t been picking up.”

  “And what does that tell you?”

  “That your cell phone is broken?” She was trying, but he wasn’t buying it.

  “Ralph, I love you. I know I said some things, but.. I’ve been.. I don’t know… Ralph, I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  The final piece in the bowl, Ralph stood up and confronted her from across the room, nibbling on the popcorn to keep himself busy. “Monica,” he used call her “Honey,” “what are you doing here?”

  “I want us back the way we were.”

  “And where was that? In a perpetual state of being together when you felt like it? We’ve been through this. I was crazy about you, it just wasn’t the other way around – which his okay. It’s okay, Monica. What isn’t okay is this, the talking about it.”

  At first, he thought it was just the rain on her face, but her breathing wasn’t right. It was the first time he’d seen her cry, fighting to hold it in.

  “…You don’t want to get back together,” Ralph reminded her, “It’s not ‘us’ you miss. According to you, there isn’t any ‘us’ to miss. It’s you, it’s me, biding our time until something better turns up. …It’s oh-kay, Monica. I’m exhausted. I just don’t want to do this anymore.”

  “Ralph,” she started to walk toward him, but he put up his hand to hold her off. “Ralph, listen to me.” She looked pathetic standing there, but still beautiful even with her hair wet and no makeup. For the first time in their relationship, she was the one that was upset. It was a change, a reversal of fortunes that caught Ralph by surprise. This was more than he could have hoped for, but not at all what he wanted to see. And so he stood there, and became what Monica used to be.

  “Stop. Just stop it. We’re done. Done. There’s no credibility here. Whatever you say, I’ve heard it before and I don’t believe it anymore.” Putting the popcorn down, he reached in his pocket for his cell phone. “I’ll call you a cab.”

  “I don’t want a cab.”

  “It’s still raining.?
??

  “I don’t want to leave.”

  “It’s not up to you.” It sounded more mean than he meant it. There was just too much pride to back down here, to even be nice, whatever he was feeling. So he called, and gave the dispatcher his address. “Yeah, she’ll meet you out front. ..Now.”

  Wiping under her eyes, she turned toward the grandfather clock near the door. “I’ve always liked this,” she reached out to stroke the varnish. “Did your Great Great Grandfather really make it?”

  “That’s what I’m told. He was some sort of ‘carny’ magician, pretty good according to my Grandmother who knew him when she was a kid.” Telling the story calmed him down, and her too. Buddy, who had heard it before, decided to nap, tired of turning his head from one of them to the other when they were talking.

  “That’s the original finish. He was good with his hands and used to make his own gadgets and props for his shows. ...It was a gift for my Great Great Grandmother when they couldn’t afford to buy one, sort of a reward for putting up with his weirdness all those years.”

  “Oh yeah,” Monica interrupted him, “so what do I get?” She smiled at him with just the corners of her mouth, hoping for any reaction she could leverage, but all she could feel was the moment slipping away.

  He stood there, wondering how anyone’s eyes could be that blue, but determined not to respond. “I’ll walk you down.”

  “If ever you wish for one more moment with the love of your life,” she remembered the inscription on the plaque beneath the face of the old clock, “…remember I will always love you.”

  “Monica..”

  “Don’t bother. I’ll walk myself out.” Looking at him, she realized he’d stayed half the room away the few minutes she’d been there. Looking for anything in his face, all she saw was resolve and knew there was no point in staying any longer. “Sorry I bothered you.” She turned, opened the door, but then paused and turned back, even though she had nothing to say.

  “Forget about the jacket,” Ralph pretended that was why she had stopped. “It always looked better on you anyway. ...I’ll get another one.”

  “Sure,” she answered as if the jacket was really what they were talking about, and let the door close quietly behind her.

  Ralph stood there. She was gone, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the door. “You know, Buddy,” he asked, not caring whether or not the fur ball was paying attention, “I’ve always wondered what people mean when they talk about feeling empty inside.” Buddy was awake, but barely, his head flat down on the cushion. “…Come on. Time to hit the sack.”

  Walking toward the kitchen to turn the lights out for the evening and pick up a bunch of grapes he would nibble until he dozed off, he stopped in front of his Great Great Grandfather’s clock. 2:28 AM. “Hey,” Ralph perked up, remembering what day it was. “We get an extra hour’s sleep tonight. How ‘bout that?”

  He reached out to touch the inscription Monica had recited. “According to my Grandmother…” One of the things he liked about Buddy was the excuse his friend gave him to think out loud when they were alone together. “…my Great Great Grandfather told his wife that, when he died, she could turn the hands back, and he’d still be with her. …If only,” he reflected on what he had lost, on what his pride had cost him, “it were that easy.” He should have pulled her toward him, right there in the doorway, kissing her before she said anything – except for the “I love you” part, of course – push his soaked jacket off her shoulders onto the hallway floor, pressing her against the frame of the door…

  Reaching up, he opened the glass in front of the face of the clock, and touched the big hand that usually moved so easily when he would adjust the time now and then, but wasn’t budging. Pushing harder, it still didn’t move. “What the…,” he said, dropping his shoulders. Determined, he reached up again, pushing so hard this time his forearm began to shake, and then, ever so slowly, the hand began to move.

  “Wow.” Keeping up the pressure, he pushed it counter-clockwise. Buddy was the first to notice. Popping up in his corner on the couch, he lowered his head and looked around as the sound of vibrating plates and glasses came louder from the kitchen. Ralph was still oblivious to the rumbling, all his energies focused on moving the big hand of the clock. The harder he pushed, the greater the vibration. The bowl of popcorn shaking its way toward the edge of the coffee table. A book falling from the shelves between the windows, and the baseball bat he kept in the corner falling hard, the softball he kept in his glove rolling across the floor.

  “There,” he stopped and so did the shaking in his apartment a second or two later. Checking the time on his cell phone, and then the clock, it was 1:30.

  Forty minutes later, Ralph was in his bed, in the sweat pants and t-shirt that were his version of pajamas. Buddy was on top of the blanket, on the side of bed where Ralph’s tossing wouldn’t bother him. Both were sound asleep, some Lifetime movie playing on the small flat screen on his dresser. In the living room, it was dark, the lights from the street flickering through the windows.

  “Rap, rap, rap.” It was the sound of the knocker on the metal face of his apartment door. “Ralph? Rap, rap, rap. Come on, Ralph. Get up. …Please. ..Rap, rap, rap. ..Come on, Ralph,” she pleaded, “I can hear the TV.”

  24. The Babysitter

  7:38 PM. In an urban neighborhood of multi-million dollar townhomes, Mrs. Cheung, the family’s live-in housekeeper, pushed the left door to the first floor study all the way open. The woman of the house was sitting very properly behind the antique kitchen table she uses as a desk, her laptop open, papers strewn about with little semblance of order. (Her husband, on the other hand, was slumped in the corner of their leather sofa, his tie and shirt loose about his neck, his hair, what was left of it, flopping as if it hadn’t been combed since he’d showered that morning, because it hadn’t, his feet up on the ottoman he’d rolled over from the matching chair a few feet away…

  “Can I get either of you anything before we close the kitchen for the evening?”

  Rubbing her face with the whole of her right hand, she thought for only a moment before responding. “No thank you, Delores. I’ll get a yogurt or something before I go up. ..Long day for all of us. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Good night then,” Delores said, smiling politely.

  The man on the couch waved at her, but was too tired or preoccupied to say anything.

  “What are we going to do, Jack. …I’m worried.” She leaned forward, her head down, reaching up to rub the back of her neck.

  “Yeah, yeah.” He sounded exhausted. “Me, too.”

  “Not all that many years ago, all we had to do was hire a babysitter. What do we do now?”

  Silence, and then he sat up slowly. “I may know somebody. One of our people hired someone a while ago when his daughter was having problems. I’ll talk to him.”

  “I’m getting some wine,” she said, rolling back and standing up.

  “I thought you were having yogurt?”

  “Delores made some Sangria.”

  “Don’t tell me, another one of her Korean family recipes?”

  “Give her a break. She’s our housekeeper, not the cook. I thought it was nice of her to fill-in while Marie’s on vacation. Want some, or don’t you?”

  Saturday afternoon, 8 months later. Marlowe’s head was over the edge of the third floor balcony, his left and right arms wrapped around the railing bars on either side, his eyes scanning the people around the pool. Sound uncomfortable? Not if you’re a cat. You’d think he’d have been too warm with all that fur, but he wasn’t or else he wouldn’t have been hanging around outside because Marlowe was nobody’s dummy.

  Phillip was sitting behind him, on the edge of the folding lounge chair he’d laid out flat, using binoculars to take a closer look at the situation. He had three of his “Bikini Girls” working the pool that weekend. They didn’t live in the ne
w, sprawling, high-end apartment complex. They were bait, there to attract the young men in their twenties and thirties who picked up guest passes at the some of the local clubs, and who would rent apartments lured by the prospects of hanging out with beautiful young women willing to share the local brew that management was giving away that afternoon – a promotion Phillip had arranged. Phillip’s company was well paid for its services by a grateful development company that had been renting its over-priced units at a record pace. The studio apartment was a loner they were using as a temporary operations center for “Conroy Marketing and Security.”

  His Bikini Girls were not only hot, they we’re smart, savvy college students and recent graduates who could take care of themselves. Minimum GPA, 3.6. Athletic. Ongoing enrollment in self-defense courses, at Phillip’s expense, but he liked to stay close, just in case. He kept them rotating so none of the guys who tried to pick them up would get too attached. And if they did, a well-timed call from a fake boy friend would usually be all it took to bring a budding romance to an abrupt halt.

  “Hey, Bobbie,” he used his cell phone to call the brunette in the orange two-piece. “Yeah. It’s 5. Time to wrap it up with these two and call it a day.”

  “Sure, honey. I’ll be right up.” She made her excuses and left the two men who had corralled her poolside to suck up their drool and move on with their lives. He still had two more girls on the job until 6, but he needed Bobbie for a special job that evening, and she’d have to be there early.

  There was a rapping at the door. The little knockers that came with the apartment were unusually loud for their size. “Hey.” (Phillip always treated him like one of the team.) Marlowe lifted his head slightly and turned to look up over his shoulder. “Hey! We’re working. Go see who that is.” A gesture of Phillip’s head toward the door, and Marlowe got the point, got up, moved spritely through the open sliding glass door across the room, past the compact kitchen to smell the seam along the latch side of the door. Sniffing once, then again before he ran back to where Phillip was still sitting, Marlowe put his tush on the rope mat that covered the balcony floor, arms at his side, looked up and “Grrrrr”d his approval.

  “Is it Bobbie?”

  Marlowe sat perfectly still, except for his head which Phillip had taught him to move left to right if the answer was “No.” Impressive, even though it took him 6 months to learn.

  “What, Alice?”

  “Mrrrp.” (That was a “Yes.”)

  “Marlowe, tell Philip it’s me,” came the familiar and impatient voice from behind the door.

  “Okay, I’ll let her in.” Phillip got up and walked to the door.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey.” And she walked in, as close as she could without actually brushing up against Phillip, on her way to the chair next to the table on the balcony, across from where Phillip had been sitting. Loose fitting jeans covering legs too perfect to be real. T-shirt. One of those no-bra bras. Short, light brown hair that had a mind of its own. Electric blue-green eyes. “Miss me?” It was a drive-by question she asked without bothering to look or wait for a response.

  “Can’t live without you.” He watched her walking away, and then let go of the door and did his best to catch up. “What’s it been, 4 hours?” They’d run into each other that morning at the upscale grocery store where she shopped on a regular basis, and where he went to pick up something he could microwave when he was working nearby. A few months earlier, he’d picked her up, or she’d picked him up. It wasn’t clear who’d done what to whom. Let’s say it was a mutual thing at a beach-front grill where they both hung out on the weekends. Whatever her grandfather did for a living, it meant that she didn’t have to, work that is, so Alice, who had ulterior motives, became an unofficial, unpaid “operative,” as she liked to call herself, for Phillip’s odd little business. Not expecting an answer, he resumed his position, behind Marlowe, Phillip’s eyes looking at the pool again through the small pair of binoculars he always had with him,

  “Five.”

  “Five what?” Whatever was happening around the pool, it was clearly more interesting.

  “Five hours sinc… Who cares? How’s the job going?”

  “Fine.”

  There was another knock on the door.

  “One of your girls?” Alice asked, pretending to be perturbed, but when Phillip didn’t react, “Don’t bother. I’ll get it.”

  Checking the peephole to be sure, Alice opened the door, eyeball to eyeball with Bobbie, bikini, bare feet, a towel over her shoulder, sunglasses up in her bleached blonde hair, a large soft straw beach bag over her shoulder. “Hey, Alice.” None of the girls knew exactly what to make of Alice. For someone who wasn’t exactly Phillip’s girlfriend, she sure seemed to be around a lot, but there was no competition. Phillip had a strict policy against dating anyone who worked with him. As beautiful as they all were, he treated them with respect, and they returned the favor. Besides, the pay was really good, and the hours and venues even better.

  “Hey. Come on in. ...He’s on the balcony.”

  “Hey, Phillip. I need to change and get out of here.” Without waiting for him to answer – He’d put down his glasses and was typing something on his laptop. – Bobbie walked over to the couch and unzipped the backpack that she’d left there that morning. Her back to the room, she pulled the string bow and let her top fall off. Without rushing or being the least bit shy, she took off the top of her bikini, took out a bra, put it on and a t-shirt after that. The bottom of her bikini was next to go.

  Alice couldn’t watch, and went back to the balcony. “She couldn’t get dressed in the bathroom?”

  “What’s the point? I’m not watching.”

  Meanwhile, Marlowe trotted over and hopped on the couch for a better view.

  “You know,” Alice watched him go, “Sometimes I think Marlowe is more of a guy than you are. You never had him neutered, did you?

  Phillip looked over at her, pretending to be annoyed, and then resumed typing. “Just thinking about it made my balls feel weird. Besides, I need him at the top of his game.”

  “Hi, Marlowe,” Bobbie reached over to stroke the top of his head which he scrunched down a bit, and then lifted to let her scratch under his chin. “How you been?” Back to changing, she dropped and stepped out of her bikini bottom, put on low cut Jockeys and jeans on top of them, and then sat next to Marlowe to slip on a pair of Nikes that were already tied.

  “There are checks for you and Jennifer next to the sink,” Phillip called out to her without turning around.

  “I’ll get ‘em.”

  “…with a package for tonight’s job.”

  “We’ll see you there, Phillip.” Zipping up her backpack, Bobbie threw it over one shoulder, picking up her bag by its handles with the other hand… “See you ‘round, Marlowe.”

  “Mrrrr!…”

  “Yeah. I feel the same about you, too,” she said, looking him in the eyes for a few seconds before she walked to the balcony and around Phillip’s chair, sitting down next to him. “See the pasty character with the plaid shorts and cross around his neck?” she asked, pointing over the balcony.

  Phillip picked up his binoculars again, and took a look. “Yeah, I’ve been watching him.”

  “He calls himself Ronnie. Wanted to know if I needed anything. When I blew him off, he gave me his card. Just a phone number.”

  Phillip put down his glasses and turned toward her. “Thanks, Bobbie. Good work. We’ll talk to the police and get him out of here. ...See you tonight.”

  Putting her hand on his shoulder, Bobbie pushed herself up, knocked twice on the table to say goodbye to Alice without looking at her, and left.

  “You don’t happen to know anyone in Narcotics, do you?” Phillip was hoping Alice did. Working with the police wasn’t his favorite thing to do.

  “I dated a guy once when he was in the Police Academy. He’ll know who to call.
”

  “Thanks. I’ll make sure the developer knows. Could mean more business for us.”

  Alice waited until she heard the front door close. “Is that why we never go out? ...because we work together?”

  “We do go out.”

  “I mean on a date. You know, dinner followed by hot sex.”

  “Would we have to be naked? Because I don’t like going out to dinner naked.”

  “Yes, but we could turn out the lights. …Besides, we’ve already seen each other naked.”

  “My point exactly. ...Besides,” Phillip loved talking to Alice like this, “that was a skunk emergency.”

  “Hey, we were watching that woman be unfaithful to her husband in the woods, and you made me go for sandwiches!”

  “I get paid to watch that stuff. You get paid to go for food.”

  “I get paid?”

  “I paid for the sandwiches, didn’t I?”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “You know, even the skunk thought you were annoying.”

  “Those Cub Scouts sure took their time helping me out of the creek. They didn’t seem all that annoyed.”

  “You were probably the first naked woman they ever saw.” Phillip shut down his laptop and stood up, picking up his yellow pad from the table and the cheap ballpoint pen that was his favorite. “In the meantime, I could have drowned for all they cared.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re still standing there.” Alice stood, her chair getting stuck for a moment on the rope beneath it.

  “I gave you a ride home.”

  “We were both naked in the woods, no clothes we could wear and only one car. I didn’t realize calling a cab was an option.”

  “So if we run into another skunk, I promise to take you out to dinner.” Mumbling under his breath, “I smelled so bad it took a week of showering before Marlowe would hang out with me again.” Marlowe had rolled over on his back, waiting hopelessly for someone to rub him. Hearing his name, he looked over his stomach at Phillip. “Let’s go, Marlowe.”

  Enough chitchat. Phillip needed to call Rachel, one of the two Bikini Girls still at the pool. “Hey. We’re leaving to get ready for tonight. Use the key I gave you, and be sure to lock up when you’re done. …Yeah. Good work. Email me your notes, while they’re still fresh, later tonight if you have time. There are checks for you and Beth on the kitchen counter,” and then he chuckled to whatever she said. “One of the guys you were talking to works for me. …Sure. ‘Danny.’ That’s the one. He’s all yours. Consider him a bonus. …Bye.”

  “Let’s get out of here. I don’t want to be late.” Phillip zipped his briefcase and threw the strap over his shoulder. “Marlowe, get in your case.”

  On the floor, against the wall next to the kitchen, there was a special case Phillip had a friend make for him. Not much larger than Marlowe, but with enough room for him to turn around, it had plastic screening that allowed him to see all around, with handles and a strap in case Phillip needed his hands free. Marlowe got in, turned around and reached out with his claws to close the door behind him. (It had a spring latch so he could push the door open in an emergency.) Alice held the door for the two of them, jiggling the handle to make sure the door was locked, and then followed the two men in her life on their way down the hall to the garage.

  “What do you think I should wear tonight?”

  “Something slutty.”

  “I thought you wouldn’t want me to attract attention.”

  “I don’t, but I like it when you dress slutty.”

  “You think I dress slutty?”

  Phillip knew a trick question when he heard one, and decided to change the subject.

  8:30 PM that evening. The noise in the converted factory wasn’t as loud as it would be later that night when the live bands would be there and the beer and cheap wine had started having their effect. Alice and Phillip had arrived separately, but were talking together, their backs to the bar so they could watch the floor. Bobbie was waiting tables, and had walked up to the two of them on her way to place an order with the bar.

  “The girl and her girlfriend are at table 12, behind me to your right. The fake IDs they used were perfect, the best big money can buy. ...Take a look, at the girls. Are you sure they’re only 16?”

  “Geez, are those real?” Alice asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. “You know, I’ve heard about teens getting implan…”

  Phillip didn’t care. “Has anybody been a problem?”

  “The three guys drinking along the rail, two white, one maybe Hispanic, have been watching our girl and her friend since they got here, but haven’t made a move yet. As far as I can tell, they’re the only ones we need to worry about. One of them’s married. I don’t know about the other two.”

  “Hey, boss. Can I get you a refill?”

  “Oh, hey, Jennifer,” Alice was surprised to see her working the bar.

  Phillip was all business. “What do you see?”

  “Well, despite this kid-size t-shirt they gave me, I’ve only been hit on twice,” she flashed a killer smile, “but bar business is up 20%. I should get a commission. Other than that, nothing. Even your girl and her friend look bored.”

  “Okay, let them sit there for a few minutes, then go over and give them a reason to leave without embarrassing them if you can. I don’t want them here when this place goes live.”

  “Yeah, you know ‘Hot Nuts’ is performing at midnight. Some friends of mine are stopping by. Do you mind if I hang around after we’re done?”

  “Of course not, but thanks for asking. Tell the lead guitar he’s a lucky guy.”

  “How do you know about that?” Even in the low light around the bar you could tell she was blushing.

  “I know all sorts of stuff. Actually, I know his brother. He told me you were dating. …Look, my cousin Danny’s having a bunch of his high school friends over for a beach party. Here’s his address.” Phillip wrote it on the back of a napkin. “Send them over there. They’ll have a good time and Danny’ll take good care of them.”

  “Hey,” Alice, who was watching the floor, smacked Phillip with the back of her hand. “The Creepy Brothers are making their move.”

  Phillip turned to see the three men, maybe in their mid-twenties, now surrounding the girls. One sat down, the other two were standing on opposite sides of the small table where the girls were nervously nursing their drinks. The guy who sat down kept touching the other girl’s hand, while the other two men were busy looking down at them from above, brushing up against the back of their chairs and the shoulder of the one girl Phillip was there to protect.

  “Even better,” Phillip thought to himself out loud. “If these guys don’t creep them out, nothing… ..Hey!” One of the ones standing had just reached under his girl’s arm, trying to lift her up to join him on the dance floor – a perfect opportunity for his friends to juice their drinks. The girl pulled away, but her move was more upset than angry. She and her friend looked trapped, and that was that.

  Phillip pushed off the bar and walked quickly to the table, while Alice circled around to come up from behind the two men who were standing. Putting his hands suddenly and hard on both shoulders of the one who was sitting, preventing him from even turning around, Phillip spoke directly to the girl he’d been hired to watch. “Hey,” he sounded as friendly as he could under the circumstances. He could have used her name, but didn’t want her to know he knew it. “We're bar security. You ladies okay?”

  The man in the chair started to get up again, but didn’t have the leverage, and then tried prying Phillip’s right hand off his shoulder. When he did, Phillip pressed hard with his fingers into the side of the man’s neck, whispering into his ear on that side, “You keep your hands on the table or I’ll put you to sleep. ...Do it now.” He did, and Phillip relaxed his grip, but not that much. Not yet.

  Phillip looked at the girl again for an answer to
his question. To her credit, his girl didn’t mince words or try to fake it. “Not really.”

  “Actually,” the other girl was quick to volunteer, “we were just leaving.” That’s what she said, but the men were still standing behind them, and neither of the girls were going anywhere without Phillip’s help.

  Feeling he had to show some balls, the jerk standing nearest Phillip got up the nerve to stutter, “What the fuck, asshole?” and moved his arm to shove Phillip out of the way. Long on profanity, short on intelligence.

  Reaching out from behind – fast, the way someone quick and coordinated grabs a pen that rolls off her desk before it comes close to hitting the floor – Alice’s right hand grabbed the jerk’s wrist before it made contact with Phillip. Pulling his arm toward her and then twisting it behind his back, with the collar of his shirt in her other hand, in a second Alice had him face down in the beer-soaked sawdust that covered the concrete floor. Leaning over him, she gave the jerk some advice. Calmly, with an almost romantic tone to her voice, “If you don’t want me to break your arm, you’ll just lie there like the idiot you’ve got know you are.” Enough said, but she still didn’t let go, pressing hard on the back of the jerk’s neck and up on his arm, while she looked up at Phillip, ready to take his lead.

  Rachel, who had been in the back watching the cameras, Jennifer and Bobbie were at the table now, along with more than a few customers and staff. Phillip knew he had to move quickly to get the club’s crowd back to enjoying themselves and spending their money. He and his people were, after all, only there with the owner’s permission – who liked the extra security Phillip was providing, but expected them to leave with his club’s business more or less intact. Actually, Phillip was counting on all the attention to make sure none of these guys tried anything.

  “Ladies,” he said to the two girls at the table, “my friends,” he motioned to Rachel and Jennifer, but didn’t want to use their names in front of the men, “will see that you get to your car safely. As for the rest of you, your next drinks are on the house.” This next part he said a bit louder for everyone to hear, “No one bothers any of our guests. We’ll take care of these gentlemen and make sure they don’t come here again.” Phillip flashed his best “not to worry” smile as if, notwithstanding the guy who was still face down in the sawdust, it was just part of the evening’s entertainment, something to talk and text their friends about, but not that big a deal.

  “You,” Phillip was pointing at the one man who was still standing, “back up, but don’t go anywhere.” The two big guys in the dark blue club security shirts that had come over for moral support would make sure of that. (Phillip had stopped by to introduce himself the night before, and Rachel had called their earpieces when she saw things happening on one of their security screens. This wasn’t the kind of thing you wanted to do without the right people knowing.)

  “Thanks,” the one girl they were there to watch smiled her relief as she and her friend got up quickly to leave, Rachel and Jennifer at their sides.

  “Okay you, on the floor,” Phillip looked down, nodding his permission to Alice , “get up and sit down.” (Alice had to help him up and put the arm she’d twisted on the table, enjoying seeing him wince when she did it.) “...You, too, he said to the one that was still standing and who hadn’t said a word. “You,” he said to the man he’d been holding down,” you stay put.” Pulling up a chair from another table, Phillip decided to have a chat with the three of them. The club’s security guys stood by, just in case.

  “Take their wallets, and pat them down when you do, just in case.” Alice and Jennifer manhandled the three of them as they did. “First of all, I estimate the total tab at, what?” Raising his eyebrows, he looked to Bobbie for her advice.

  Checking their wallets, Bobbie suggested, “$254, exactly”

  “Thank you. That should cover the drinks and gratuities.”

  Bobbie took out the money, all the cash they had on them.

  “Pull their drivers licenses. ...John,” Phillip was talking to the Assistant Manager who had come over to the table when the ruckus started. He was wearing a nametag so customers would recognize his authority. “…would you please make three copies of these, one for you, one for me and one for the police, if we need to call them? And maybe a copy of tonight’s security tapes when you have time? (The ceiling was high and painted black, with floods that made it all but impossible to see the several cameras that were watching the crowd.) I can send someone over Monday to pick them up.”

  “Sure thing,” and John left to make the copies.

  Alice had already used her cell phone and taken separate headshots of each of the men.

  “Okay, here’s the thing. Those girls had perfect ID, but someone recognized them and tells us they were barely 16. I know, I know, they seemed so mature. You’re probably thinking, racks like those on under-age girls should be illegal. The thing is, I just saved your collective asses. I think we all know what the three of you had in mind. And if I call the police, they’re going to search you and your car.” One of the men flashed his eyes at the other two, confirming they had something to worry about. “I’m not calling, at least not yet, which is the second time I’ve saved your asses tonight.” Phillip slowed down, his speech becoming more deliberate. “…However, if we see you near this place again, or those two girls, or any of our people, your faces and driver’s licenses…”

  “And the security tapes,” Jennifer didn’t want them to forget. “Let’s not forget the tapes.”

  “Whoa,” Bobbie couldn’t help herself. “Is that a wedding ring on your finger?” she asked, pointing to the quiet one. They all looked, and it was.

  “Hmm. How ‘bout that?” Phillip tilted his head slightly and looked at the guy, as if to say, “Really?” “...Anyway, it’s all going to the police, guys. So do we have a deal?” No reaction. “...Gentlemen, do ..we ..have ..a deal?”

  All of them shook their heads in the affirmative. The one who hadn’t said anything before managed an easy, “Yeah,” and seemed the least intimidated of the three. The other two were clearly shaken. This guy was the only one who seemed pissed, and Phillip made a mental note to run background checks on the three of them.

  “Good. Very good, gentlemen. I’m pleased.”

  Rachel and Jennifer were back, and so was John with Phillip’s copies of the licenses, “Your wallets gentlemen. My associates,” including the two club security men, “will walk you to your cars.” Looking at Alice, “Would you please get a picture of the plates and whatever they’re driving. And they left, Rachel and Jennifer at their sides, Alice and the two blue t-shirts walking behind them.

  Bobbie gave the $254 to John. “Thanks for your help,” she smiled at him. A waiter came and cleaned up the table where new people were sitting a moment later. The music was loud and people stop caring, re-absorbed in their own lives in record time.

  Late Sunday morning, on the balcony of the studio apartment, Alice and Phillip have just finished the plates of freshly made omelets and fruit they brought up from the tables set up around the crowded pool.

  “Thanks for the brunch. Was that your idea, too?”

  “Absolutely. Events like this rent apartments and keep the current tenants happy – even with the higher rents they’re paying.”

  “You graduated with Ivy League honors in finance. Are you sure this is what you want to do?”

  “Look, I know detective work for twenty-somethings isn’t exactly booming. In the meantime, there’s rent to pay. Some missing persons work here, divorce work there, special security for one or two colleges…”

  “And you keep day-trading to pay the bills.”

  “Hey, give me break. I never thought Conroy Marketing and Security was something I’d build overnight. In the meantime, I’ve got a plan, a nice RV on a piece of property that’ll be worth something someday, and loaner apartments in five developments around the city. …Besid
es, I thought you had too much money to care about it. At least,” Phillip realized it sounded harsh even while he was saying it, “I work for a living.” But then he thought about what he'd said. “…Sorry about that. I didn’t..”

  “Forget it.” She knew what he meant and didn’t want him to think he’d offended her. It was a rare awkward moment in an otherwise perfect relationship, one of those defining moments when you realize you have something important to lose. “...Got to go.” Alice pushed back her chair and started to get up.

  “Was it something I said?” Phillip looked up at her, only half-kidding.

  “More like something you didn’t say. …Oh, I almost forgot.” Reaching into the canvas bag she was carrying, “I got you something. …Here.” It was a small gift bag, bright orange, to which she had attached a puffy white bow, the kind that reflects other colors depending upon how the light hits it.

  Phillip was genuinely surprised. He didn’t get presents often, and this was his first from Alice. Standing up, he looked at her, at the little bag, and then back at her, smiling more every time – and she back at him. Spreading the handles, he peeked inside where he saw black and white fake fur. “Hmmm,” he said, reaching to take whatever it was out.

  “It’s a skunk atomizer, filled with cologne I thought you’d like. …Well, that I like. You squeeze its body like this.” Phillip closed his eyes, waiving off the mist as quickly as he could. “...and it sprays out it’s tush.”

  “Cute,” Phillip coughed slightly, and then tried to hold back his smile, but couldn’t.

  “Leaning over to the side of Phillip’s face, Alice sniffed in the fragrance, her left hand touching his arm and staying with it as she moved slowly toward the open glass doors where she stopped and turned. “It’s in case you need another excuse to see me naked.” No smile this time. She just looked at him, and then turned and walked away.

  A few minutes later, Alice was in her car pulling out of the apartment garage, her Bluetooth headset in her ear, having already given her cell phone a verbal number to call.

  “Hello, Conroy residence.”

  And then a few seconds later, in the first floor study, “Thank you, Delores. ...Jack! It’s Alice.”

  “I’ll be right there,” but his wife knew that from the sound of his shoes coming quickly down the front staircase. “Put her on the speaker.”

  “Hi, Alice. Hold on, Mr. …”

  “I’m here, I’m here. ..How’s Phillip doing?”

  “He’s doing fine, Mr. and Mrs. Conroy.”

  “That’s a relief to hear,” Ellen Conroy responded in the middle of a heartfelt sigh. “He hardly talks to us. I know he’s an adult. I know, but he’s still our son.”

  “I understand,” Alice reassured her, “I really do. I’ve got some stuff to do, but I’ll e-mail you an update to the diary I’ve been keeping later this evening. And don’t worry. I’ll take good care of him.”