FaceMate

by Steven M. Greenberg

  “OK, Ben, fine—but … kids, did you say?”

  “Yeah, it’s all in the email; I’ll send it right away. Make sure you spell the names the way I write them. See you tomorrow, Gerry. And make sure everything gets to my office by eight on the nose and the contract reads just the way I want it to—you got that all down?”

  Sure, he mumbled. And Ben thought: Hell, old Gerry should be sure, considering what his law firm raked in each and every year from Atherton for the minimum of legal work their team turned in. The forms, the agreements, the duplicates and triplicates that needed to be signed—they’d be there on time, all right, ready and waiting—

  And they were, of course. Everything meticulously stacked on Ben’s big desk waiting for completion when the two boy-geniuses arrived. Carole was sitting there too. Every day, just like clockwork, Ben’s hyper-protective wife would show up at the Red Bank office to bring him lunch or snacks or just to say hello; then, having left, she’d phone him two or three times more before he made it home—just to make sure he was OK. Wherever he was, whatever he was doing, he’d take the call, and take the time to answer her at length.

  “How are things going, sweetie?” she’d ask, or something equivalent to that.

  “Great, hon, and how about you?” was what he’d habitually answer.

  “OK. Just out with the girls, you know. At the club. Charlotte’s here too. She says to say hello to Ed.”

  She’d bring him in a piece of cheesecake, then pester him next morning to get his sugar checked. Always pestering like that, but in a caring way. If he got a headache, she’d make him an appointment with the premier neurosurgeon in the state. He wouldn’t go, of course. Secretary Cindy would call and cancel: Cancel a date with the cardiologist, once, when he got an episode of heartburn after dinner at the Thai place out on Highway 36; cancel with a leading pulmonologist, another time, when he caught a little cold.

  It was Carole’s way, but it was understandable, considering what she’d been through in her developmental years. Dramatic loss does that to a sweet young kid in her teens, and she was just a college freshman when Lizzie’s death occurred. Just eighteen, never touched by loss, when she went downstairs that awful night for milk and cookies, and found her darling older sister lying in her life’s blood on the kitchen floor, crumpled double like a broken doll. And then to see that kid, that sad, demented sicko with a dagger in his hand, to watch him walk out through the door as calm as some delivery boy who’d pocketed a nice big tip, leaving a handprint of Lizzie’s blood smeared on the knob, blank-faced, emotionless, as casual and matter-of-fact as if he’d done this unoffending family an act of good—What does that do to a girl as gentle and naïve as Carole was back then? She’d lost her dearly beloved sister and best-of-friends—and in so horrible a way. So Carole’s being overly protective was understandable, alright. And who in the world needed overprotecting more than poor despondent Ben?

  Maybe not now anymore so much, but back then, he sure needed all the help he could get from everyone around. And Carole had given it in spades. As horrid as that hellish scene had been, as much as she’d been traumatized, poor Carole had been the steady one that night. She’d summoned the strength—from God knows where—to call the medics and the cops, to hold her dying sister’s head while the last few drops of blood were draining out, to drag her folks from bed, soothe their hysteria—And then, the hardest thing of all, she later said, to make that dreadful call to Ben.

  She was sobbing on the line, so much so that it was hard for him to understand: “Ben—Bennie, we need you here. It’s Carole, Bennie. Please come. Please come right away.”

  So he’d thrown on whatever clothes were lying near at hand and run. He ran out to the car, ran it full throttle the sixteen blocks between his house and Lizzie’s, not knowing what he was running toward, not thinking, just moving fast; fast. There were police cars there—two, maybe three; he couldn’t remember anything but the lights flashing blue and red. So he’d left the car in the middle of the street still running and run breathless into the house. First thing he saw was Carole, drenched in blood, and he thought—he feared—that it was Carole who’d been hurt, because he liked Carole—liked her quite a lot, in fact … until he saw the ash-gray face lying in her lap. He couldn’t remember much of anything after that.

  So he’d kept on running till he’d run clear away. He couldn’t help but run away, bumming his way around the world on a couple thousand bucks in cash, doing his best to die, what with the case of typhoid in Turkey, the bouts of malaria in Burma and Nepal, the hepatitis in Kenya that nearly did his liver in. After six months, he came around a little bit; the fevers went away. Death wouldn’t take him yet, however hard he tried. So once his head was clear, he made a call, collect, for he was freshly out of funds. He called his parents first to say he was OK, that he’d survived every mortal ailment a person could contract. And then he called Carole. Sure she would accept the charge. Turned out, she was the only one he really had to talk to in the end.

  When he got back home they bonded. Who knows why? Maybe the things he’d loved in Lizzie were genetically similar to the things he found in her little sister’s kindly soul. Maybe it was just their mutual loss, their mutual grief, their mutual commiseration that linked them so firmly—Who can say? And as for her, as for Carole, maybe what she came to love in Ben was what her precious sister Liz had loved. Maybe shared genetics give rise to shared attractions. Whatever, however, the marriage had worked out well enough for both. Ben had suffered a grievous wound that couldn’t ever heal, but Carole had made herself into a bandage. And the bandage, so far, thank God, had held.

  “You want something special for dinner?” she asked from the chair facing his desk, as he sat fingering the contracts the lawyers had obediently brought in.

  “No, it doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve got in the house is fine.”

  “OK, I’ve got some fresh fish in the fridge; I’ll have Betty make something good with that—So how about lunch? You want me to bring you something in?”

  “No, no, Cindy can order me something if I’m hungry later on, or maybe Eddie and I might run out for a bite—maybe take our two computer geniuses across the street for some Italian if they’re so inclined. Don’t worry, Carole. Jesus—you worry too much about me, you know? Relax, OK? Chill, my darling girl—Hey, once we button up this deal, maybe you and I and Charlotte and Eddie can take a couple days and fly over to Bermuda for a little fun—How does that sound?”

  OK, she said, and shrugged, and left, giving her much beloved husband a parting kiss on the cheek, and getting to the elevator just as Eddie and the wonder-kids were stepping out. The first one to pass her was a slender, pleasant-looking youth with olive skin and exotic features—this must be the Indian kid Ben said he talked to on the phone last night. He smiled at her, and she reflexively smiled back. And once he moved on toward the door to Ben’s office, nattily dressed and personable toward the three or four people in the corridor standing there to greet him—she turned her head and got a gander at the other one. And when she got that one transitory look, that quick, fleeting first impression of this eerie, awkward ‘other one’, well that was it: Whatever remnant of a smile persisted on her face evaporated instantly, and her habitually sanguine heart just dropped.

  Memories poured forth that she had for ages managed to suppress—that blank face, those hollow eyes, the stumbling gate. That boy! That night! That blood! Intolerable enough memories—God! Such things as made your stomach turn.

  But it wasn’t her memories that gave her pause there, standing at the elevator on her way down to the limo. No, it wasn’t hers, but rather Ben’s memories that got her worries up. He’d see that face too, just as she had, and have those same dark recollections she was having, and they’d stay with him for weeks.

  He’d be a wreck when he got home that night, no less than she would. They wouldn’t talk about it—It was too painful to talk about. But one look in each other’s eyes, and they would both
understand what they had witnessed that day.

  It would take a month or more for both of them to get back to their old blissfully forgetful selves.

  7

  Ben was excited, enthusiastic, as he sat there at his desk waiting for the FaceMate duo to arrive.

  After all, this was likely to be an enormous deal, potentially the biggest the firm had signed in years, and he was eager for everything to go just right. He’d done his best to grease the gears, calling everybody in that the duties of the day might possibly require—Meaning everybody; the lawyers, accountants, the ad folks, the marketing team—the works. And having made all the preliminary arrangements with Rajiv last night on the phone, the rest should be a snap; nothing but smiles and politeness and a couple of signatures on the requisite dotted lines. Then just sit back, relax, and watch the millions come a-pouring in. Within a year, these two Whiz Kid geniuses would have their twenty billion in the bank.

  Ben leaned back in his swivel chair and watched. His line of sight to the door was a good forty feet diagonally across the room—his massive office took up most of the Seventh Floor, after all—And with the vast number of people packed in there, he would normally have seen nothing whatever of the two kids coming in. But when Eddie popped his head in the doorway and announced that the boys were coming up, the crowd just somehow arranged itself into a sort of split reception line, spread lengthwise to either side, that left a nice, straight approach path from the entry door to the desk. It hadn’t been planned that way, as far as Ben was aware; but planning or not, it couldn’t have gone more smoothly or conveniently than it did: To the ultimate effect that, when the moment arrived, and the door finally opened, he had a decent straight-on view of Rajiv Patel stepping in.

  That had to be Rajiv of course. He looked just as Ben had pictured him from their interaction on the phone the night before: A pleasant-looking kid with coal-black hair, olive skin, and a slightly aquiline nose—forty feet away, but that much was eminently visible from where Ben sat. The boy was of medium height—five-eight or so—wiry build, good posture, confident mien, thin lips that opened in a big, wide, toothy smile on full display for all the people waiting there to greet him. A terrific sign, thought Ben: Just the kind of guy you could do business with: outgoing, sociable—effusive even—a constitutional schmoozer if there ever was one. Good karma there: Ben couldn’t help but crack a smile.

  Now since Rajiv was in front, as for the second member of the young dynamic duo, Ben’s view was impeded both by Rajiv and by the crowd; and impeded even more by the way the second kid slumped in. This second kid, of course, was Alex—by the process of exclusion, who else?—And what he did by way of walking was really pretty weird. What he did was: He placed his feet precisely where Rajiv had placed his own feet just a second or two before. Then he halted precisely when Rajiv came to a stop, precisely one pace behind. Which stepping and halting took place constantly, jerkily, for Rajiv was about as sociable a fellow as you’d ever care to meet. He flashed his toothy smile, he paused continuously to chat, he shook everybody’s proffered hand, grabbing forearms and patting shoulders with practically every single person along the line. Now he’d turn to the left, now to the right, in a zigzag processional, the width of which was limited only by the narrowness of the pathway that the crowd had opened up. And right behind him, this kid Alex moved along in tandem—But with a difference—a big one: Alex would move along well enough in sync: But he wouldn’t turn.

  Wouldn’t turn his head, wouldn’t turn his body—not a single, solitary degree. He wouldn’t show the slightest awareness that there was anyone but him and Rajiv in the whole damn crowded room. The two of them couldn’t help but do their walking slowly, what with all the friendly greetings and handshakes and pleasantries being exchanged. But they did gradually get closer, if at a snail’s pace. And as they did, Ben gradually got a better and better look at Alex as he neared. And finally there came an unimpeded straight-on view when the boy was maybe ten or fifteen feet from the desk….

  And Ben was horrified!

  First off, he was horrified as a businessman: The deal of the century—right? The deal of the whole damn millennium maybe—And this was the alleged genius who was supposed to be in charge? This? For the kid was hardly what you’d call the prepossessing type. One quick glance and you could tell right from the get-go that there was something drastically wrong: The anorexic build, the slumping posture, the arms pressed tight against his chest that were holding—What were they holding?—Ben moved his head to see—Was that … a teddy bear? A baby blanket? No, it was … a laptop—You could barely make it out, so closely and protectively were Alex’s skinny arms shielding it from view.

  All those striking superficialities were weird, alright; all that visible lunacy was miles away from any acceptable business norm. But they paled in comparison to the most peculiar thing of all about this fellow Alex Daugherty:

  Which had to be his eyes! Or not his eyes, per se, because you couldn’t actually see his eyes. What you saw, instead, was the absence of his eyes; the diversion of his eyes, so that no matter where you stood in relation to him, no matter what direction he faced, or you faced, or how his head was angled or positioned, or from what location of vantage you looked on, it was impossible to meet his gaze. Ben watched incredulous as several people made the vain attempt to view him face-to-face—and got skunked.

  All that set alarm bells going bonkers in Ben’s business-savvy brain…. But then he paused and thought a bit: OK, so maybe the kid was weird, maybe a bit neurotic—Well, for sure he was neurotic—But he was brilliant; there was no disputing that: No ordinary intellect could have designed a website and a program as intricate as the FaceMate system was, and be a total fool. Maybe nuts, but at least functionally nuts—Which concept quieted the alarm bells well enough. But once they were quiet, and he could think again, Ben discovered that there was … well, m-a-y-b-e something else.

  There was m-a-y-b-e some other teensy little factor in the visceral reaction he had had—and was still having, by the way: For he felt vaguely ill-at-ease whenever he even looked at the oddball kid. And when he did look at him—pretty closely now, for the boys were on their final approach to the place he was sitting—he got a feeling of, not just unease as an investor, not just discomfort at any personal interaction he might have to have with this creepy guy, but something else, almost a consciousness of feeling majorly unwell, of anxiety, nausea, a vague, persistent pressure right underneath his breastbone.

  And suddenly it struck him, and a long-suppressed image popped into his brain: Eugene Everhardt—that’s what the awful image was!—Gawd!

  For the two strange kids were eerily similar: That was it: Now he knew. Eugene, Alex, two peas in a very twisted pod: The painful thinness—Check. The slumping posture—Check. The protective arms folded tightly to the chest—Another check for that as well. And then the sloppy dress, the disheveled hair, the awkward gait—and, most of all, those creepily averted eyes. That did it: he couldn’t bear to look at the weirdo kid anymore. Seeing Alex, you were seeing Eugene too. He couldn’t look, just couldn’t. He had to turn away.

  And once he did turn away, well there you had it: That was standard, classic Ben for you, for sure. His elastic mind snapped back to rationality once again, and he calmly thought: OK, the kid was creepy, sure. But if every creepy, painfully reclusive oddball in the world turned out to be a psychopathic killer, then, hell, half the world’s population would have gotten murdered in their beds by now. Hadn’t it been unjust of him to prejudge the fellow based solely on his looks? To smear him with a brush he hadn’t tarred? It was. Indefensible, to tell the truth—and Ben fully realized that fact. And having realized it, and intellectualized it, and felt guilty of it, he glanced back over at Alex once more as the boy stood uncomfortably in his colleague’s shadow while they passed the last two people in the line. And as Ben beheld the awkwardness, the discomfort, the perceptible mental pain this suffering boy was enduring every moment of his life, h
e couldn’t help it that—empathetic nature that was instinctive in Ben since he himself had known that kind of pain—his heart went out to the poor, pathetic kid.

  Rajiv made it over to Ben’s desk a good three minutes after the whiz-kids had stepped into the room, what with all the welcoming and smiling and Alex’s stop-and-start-up dance. This Rajiv—Good lord! he was the absolute antithesis of Alex. He was dapper, charming; quite a lot like Eddie, in fact, a life-of-every-party kind of kid. He stuck out a hand in greeting toward Ben, and as he did, that silent, blank-faced partner of his sidled crabwise past his back, looking, for all the world, completely unaware.

  And as Ben stood to shake Rajiv’s hand, and the smiling youngster settled into the chair immediately facing the center of Ben’s big desk, Alex dropped into a second chair to Rajiv’s left, Ben’s right, cater-corner to the angle of the desk. Not a word from him, not a sound. Not the slightest sign of awareness of all the dozens of other people in the room. Instead, the kid stared mutely at the floor, at an utterly empty spot on the carpeting, hugging that laptop to his chest like a deep receiver in the end-zone who’d just caught the winning touchdown pass, and slumping tenuously forward in his seat.

  It was Rajiv, thankfully, who broke the awkward silence, telling Ben, with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm:

  “Wow! it’s great to actually get to meet you, Mr. Atherton. I’ve read about you in the papers and seen you lots of times on TV. It’s an unbelievable dream for the both of us to really be here.”

  “And nice to meet you in the flesh, as well, Rajiv, and….” Ben glanced to his right, but any hopes of meeting Alex Daugherty’s downcast eyes were sadly doomed to fail. Still, it seemed only considerate for him to add: “And this is Alex, I assume?”

  Rajiv nodded yes, but didn’t offer a formal introduction. Alex, Ben figured out pretty quickly, wouldn’t much have wanted that.