Chapter 14
Ron thought about how he had walked into Bank of the West for an appointment one morning a few months before and found Margaret settled in the waiting area with a briefcase on her lap. There was no mistaking her. She was every bit as captivating as she'd been decades before.
It turned out they had both come to see the same loan officer. They joked uneasily about the coincidence and avoided mentioning the last time they'd seen one another.
To Ron's delight, they ended up at lunch together. Margaret stabbed at her salad and ranted about common courtesy and how her time was valuable. Ron nodded a lot. He couldn't stop grinning, couldn't stop looking at her.
"Have you been to visit Joe?" she asked, out of the blue.
"No," he said, chagrinned. "I know I should. It's just...hard to see him that way." It was also hard to be reminded of the choices Ron had made, of his failings, of the time in his life when he'd had everything and let it slip through his fingers.
"He goes to a day program for adults. They do crafts and things." She said it so matter-of-factly, as though it could never have been otherwise. Then she told him about her business, The Online Metaphysical Superstore.
Ron nodded some more. He wanted her to talk forever. She was rain to his desert.
As Ron watched her chatter on, he wondered: Did Margaret feel the same? Over the years, had she thought about him as much as he thought about her? Did she wish that things had been different?
"I have missed you, Ron," she said, as though he had spoken aloud.
And the fire that had burned underground all these years flared back up. He knew that she consumed him. But it felt so right. Painful, excruciating, but right. As though there was a bond between them that neither of them could sever.
Just like that, he was back under her spell. They met for lunch, for drinks. They talked about interest rates, tax strategies, employee benefits. All very sexy stuff.
Between their meetings, Ron found excuses to drive past her house, to shop at the hardware store in her neighborhood. And every few weeks he called.
There was nothing wrong with a couple of old friends getting together, he told his wife, Nancy. Besides, Margaret always had other men. At parties, he noticed them handing her drinks and laughing at her jokes and taking her coat. Clowns.
Secretly, he was desperate to see Margaret more often. Around her, he could imagine he was young and free, could ignore the warning signs that Long Shot, Inc. was slipping into bankruptcy. Loans that had seemed like a godsend years ago were crippling him.
Out of the blue one day as they parted in the Mataam Fez parking lot, she said, "I'm looking for an investment, if you hear of anything interesting."
Back in the office at Long Shot, Inc., Janie's smile seemed a little forced. Ron's eyes watered sometimes at the most awkward moments. He cleared his throat, stood. "I'll give you a tour."
Janie followed him down the hall, past Crystal, who was murmuring into the phone at the reception desk.
As Ron Essing inserted a key into the elevator panel, he explained: "I think that anyone can see what a treasure this building is. You just can't get this kind of craftsmanship these days, the attention to detail and the quality of the materials. But the impetus behind the construction of the Long Shot Hotel and the town itself is the cave, so I'd like to bring you down there, let you get a taste of the thing that drives us all, in one way or another.
Long Shot, Inc. is a special company, you see, but more than that, it's a way of life."
The old elevator clanked downward. The brass doors juttered open. A red and white placard bolted to the opposite wall said: "NO SMOKING." A cloying scent belched into the elevator and forced its way down Janie's throat.
Mr. Essing murmured, "It's best not to try to fight it."
Janie put her sleeve to her nose to filter the air and followed Mr. Essing down a tunnel illuminated by dim yellow bulbs. One wall was built of stone and mortar. The other wall was shattered rock. A wooden boardwalk rose a few inches above the dirt floor. Unlit rooms and corridors branched off to the side. Stacks of furniture and boxes loomed in the shadows.
Essing stopped. Janie stepped on the heel of his shoe, caught a slight whiff of his B.O. and looked up. Mounted in an arch of rock, an antique black vault door barred the way. And escaping from around its edges were ghostly painted figures, squeezing out between limestone and steel, with huge, vacant eyes and horns, arms waving above their heads. "Run away!" they signaled.
Janie gasped, then bent double, coughing and retching.
"Are you okay?" asked Essing.
"Yep," she croaked, cleared her throat, pulled at the front of her shirt as if that would give her more room to breathe.
A sweat had broken out on Ron's forehead, in spite of the coolness.
"Let's just turn around here," he said. Janie barely restrained herself from running back to the elevator.
Once the old elevator was clanking back up to reality, Janie said, "Sorry about all the coughing."
"Everyone is affected by it," he said. "For some, it's invigorating. But it's okay if you feel otherwise. As a matter of fact, that's a good thing."
"It was just allergies."
"Okay," he said, but it was clear he didn't believe her.
"So if this is actually, you know, a gateway to another world--"
"Not another world. This world."
Janie tried to picture that.
"You felt it," he said. "The crush of possibilities."
"If this place is so, uh, sacred, why isn't it famous?"
"People see what they want to see."
The elevator doors opened.
Essing said, "We're going to have you fill out some paperwork, then we'll get you set up in Trends."
"You still want me to work here?"
He turned to her with a teasing smile. "Your aunt wouldn't lead me wrong."
A blank-faced blonde woman in a taupe skirt and blouse collected Janie from Ron's office like she was picking up milk at the convenience store and escorted her wordlessly down to the second floor. Most of the floor was taken up by an empty ballroom with parquet floors and a grand oak bar. Above the bar, a giant naked lady was painted on the wall. An open staircase led down to the lobby. Adjacent to the bar, a high-ceilinged room was partitioned into three cubicles. Here, the woman installed Janie at a melamine desk with a telephone and computer.
"I'm Janie, by the way."
"I know," said the other woman.
"This is where you're supposed to tell me your name."
The other woman looked her full in the face and Janie almost flinched. The woman's dainty nostrils compressed. "Andrea."
Janie got the impression that Andrea spoke in code, and what she really meant was: Screw off. Had Janie done something to offend her already?
Then Andrea leaned across Janie's space, powered up the computer and launched into a machine-gun description of the job. "Rat-tat-tat-tat," she said. "Rat-a-tat-tat-tat."
Andrea clicked through several screens. Janie tried in vain to track her movements.
As far as Janie could tell, her job was to enter letters and numbers, dates and times into some sort of totally obsolete spreadsheet program, but she didn't have a clear idea of where the figures came from, what they were to be used for, or what should be entered where.
Andrea concluded and stood up.
Janie licked her lips. "I'm not sure I understand."
"It's not that hard." Translation: You're as stupid as you look.
Janie nodded as though that cleared things up for her. Andrea wheeled and left.
The computer screen blurred in front of Janie's eyes. She swiped desperately at the tears on the undersides of her lids.
It was the longest three hours of her life, gazing in bafflement at the computer screen.
Down the hallway beyond the bar, Janie found a cavernous bathroom. The roar of the toilet flush sent her fleeing from her stall. She rinsed her hands under the rusty tap water,
feeling silly. What did she think, some creature was going to lunge out of the toilet bowl and attack her?
Surreptitious glances into the empty cubicles on either side. When the floor creaked she straightened up and banged merrily at her keyboard, as though she were extremely efficient. That brought up an error message. Deliberation on whether to click "OK" or "Cancel".
Her desk drawers were locked. The file cabinet was empty except for her jacket. Dust coated everything.
At 5:01, she fled.
Day two, more of the same. Someone came and rummaged in one of the other cubicles, but by the time Janie got up the courage to introduce herself, they were gone. Over night, her computer had been turned off. At four-thirty, she found the program Andrea Machine-Gun had brought up the day before.
When Janie arrived on the following Monday, didgeridoo music blared from the far cubicle and the office felt lighter, somehow. She turned on her computer, shoved her coat into an empty file drawer.
"Finally!" A curvaceous girl a couple of years older than Janie bounded into Janie's cubicle. She had smooth olive skin, curls and a tiny diamond nestled in the divot of her nose that managed to look sophisticated yet sexy.
She was the exact opposite of Janie's stringy reddish hair, moon face and freckles, her cheap pretend-to-be-a-grownup business suit. Her exhaustion with life. Her tattered cuticles. This girl had...bounce. She was exactly what Janie had always wanted to be.
The girl's pearly teeth gleamed. "When did you start? I was in Portugal. Oh, my god, who trained you?"
"Er...Andrea?"
"Oooh! Ron's daughter!" She touched the delicate little diamond. "I've never met her. What's she like?"
"I think she hates me."
"Well, you'll probably never see her again. Nobody ever comes in here. Well, hardly anybody. I'm so psyched I'll have someone to talk to! The girl you're replacing, Mel, just...vanished, and I guess they were holding her position in case she came back. Is the music too loud?"
Roxy was her name. She was taking a break from college, doing a one-year internship. And she finally explained Janie's job. Andrea had been right. It wasn't that hard.
Janie asked in several different ways whether there was more to the job. No, Roxy told her, just sort these columns of figures into this spreadsheet thingy, except you have to press tab after each digit. The figures came by mysterious means from the cave below the building and were sorted under headings like H2H4 and VP, the meaning of which Roxy had no idea.
"And that's all?" Janie asked for the second time.
"It's important work," said Roxy.
"Why?" Janie blurted.
"Because...we need to know if the effect of the cave is getting stronger or weaker. Too much chaos is bad for people. They, like, can't handle it or whatever. You know, people riot or there are wars, or they just throw their trash all over the ground."
Janie almost laughed before she realized Roxy was serious. Wow, that cave was responsible for a lot! "So the cave causes chaos?"
Roxy started to roll her eyes, then caught herself. "You should have seen this town before we started doing our work. I mean, I didn't, obviously, because I wasn't born yet, but this would still just be a creepy ghost town if we hadn't been, you know...I mean, the only people who ever came here, like, back in the seventies were on the lam."
Roxy arched her back, lifted her hair off her neck, let it flounce back down. The gesture annoyed Janie. Where did Roxy get off being so sexy and confident? And what did she really know about life, anyway? Her parents probably gave her anything she wanted.
After a couple of weeks of sorting numbers, Janie finally started to feel alive again. She'd been a hollowed out shell, shuffling through life since the death of her father and the fiasco with George. Now it seemed like there must be some sort of meaning or pattern, not just to the numbers but to her life, and it was just on the tip of her tongue.
Almost overwhelmed by this sense of possibility one afternoon, Janie decided she needed a break to clear her head. She wandered out to the bathroom to get a wad of damp paper towel, then set about wiping down her work space. It was satisfying to erase the thick dust and fingerprints. She cleaned her desk, the file cabinet, then as a finishing touch, ran the paper towel along the top of her cubicle wall. Something shiny plopped off, clinked to the desktop and dropped to the floor. Janie tossed out the paper towel and bent down. It was a key. She studied it, then sat and inserted it into the lock above her desk drawers. Sure enough, it worked, and inside, Janie found stacks of old mining maps, geological surveys, building plans, newspaper clippings, and printouts of obscure scientific reports.
"I found a bunch of junk in my desk drawer," she mentioned to Roxy a few days later. Maps and stuff. Is there someplace I should file it or something?"
Roxy came into her cubicle, crouched by the drawer and sifted through it. Every once in awhile she whistled under her breath.
Roxy went and found an old file box, loaded it up. "I'll take care of it," she said. Janie didn't think of it again for quite some time.
Every day, Janie drove her dad's old Taurus up to Long Shot, parked in the dirt lot next to the building, walked around and breezed past the wild-eyed man in a bathrobe loitering on the front steps.
Every day, he asked her, "What are you doing here?" When she was in a foul mood this really bothered her for some reason, but when she snapped back he just laughed. The truth was, she had no idea what she was doing. She knew that she didn't fit in, and it seemed like she was living someone else's life. She didn't even know who she was any more.
In the lobby, she usually paused for a moment to joke with Pete the desk guard, who had warmed up again since the day of the interview.
Janie got used to Roxy's music. Even started to wiggle in her chair to the electronic beat.
Half-intelligible yips and exclamations drifted over the fabric divider between their cubicles. Roxy brought in homemade gluten-free vegan baked goods, which mostly tasted like cardboard, but Janie appreciated the effort.
Roxy talked unenthusiastically about her boyfriend and what a nice guy he was. Janie could hear Roxy's half of their phone conversations: cheerful, gossipy, bubbly. But then, afterward, she could hear Roxy muttering to herself. Maybe things weren't that perfect for Miss Perfect. Then Janie felt bad about herself. She should be a better person. Roxy was practically her friend. Other than Pete the desk guard, she was the only person Janie spoke to every day, and she was nice and pretty and smart and charming. And that, Janie realized, was exactly why it was so hard to like her. She even had just enough faults that Janie couldn't hate her for being perfect. She was imperfectly perfect.
Other than the occasional snarky thought about Roxy, Janie was doing really well. Then gradually in September the old lassitude seeped back.
At work, instead of categorizing numbers, she surfed the net and took lots of bathroom breaks. She second-guessed every thought she had, like part of her was contemptuous of the stupidity of the other part, but the stupid part was making all the decisions.
Meanwhile, her social life was just sad. Her salary was just enough to pay the mortgage if she lived on potatoes and canned tuna (part of the reason she was so grateful for Roxy's mediocre baked goods). She couldn't afford to go out, and even if she did, who would she go out with? All of her friends had moved on to college.
Often, she hunched over her cell phone, the screen on George's name. George, her old boss. George, who was married. She trembled to press "send". Didn't. She scrolled through their old text messages. It was like looking at old photographs of good times. But she couldn't call him. What would she say? He had told her he didn't want to see her again, that he didn't love her. Janie had imagined...had imagined a lot, as it turned out. She had built this fantasy world in which they had a future together. She had pictured a little Victorian house on Mapleton. Children. Lazy Sundays reading the paper in bed. But George already had that with someone else.
Lacey was always there when Janie got home, t
ail fanning the air, but now with apprehension rather than the joyful full-body wiggle she used to have. With her reduced life, Janie should have had time to take Lacey for runs, but she just didn't have the energy for that any more. Instead, they watched TV together: Extreme Home Makeover, American Idol, and What not to Wear. Shows where ordinary losers were rescued from their pathetic lives and elevated to something exciting, sublime.
Chapter 15
Roxy's job had something to do with recording and cross-referencing oracles, which, as far as Janie could tell were the stupid things people said when they were in the cave. Every once in a while, Roxy stood and paced around the office, ranting. The usual theme was that the cave should be open to the public, free of charge, that they could change the world, that it was wrong to focus on profit and efficiency.
Janie doubted that was really a problem. She couldn't see how anyone could make a profit out of what she forwarded upstairs on her spreadsheet every Friday, and as for excess efficiency...No...Roxy would have to be doing a REALLY good job to make up for Janie's dithering ineptitude.
One morning, as usual, Janie paused at the security desk to chat with Pete. The lobby was empty except for the two of them, and on impulse, she asked him, "Do you believe?"
He took his time before answering. "You live here long enough, you can't not believe. No, I don't have a problem with believing."
The door swept open and Bathrobe Man breezed into the lobby and up the stairs.
"Aren't you going to stop him?" Janie whispered.
"For what?"
"I mean, do you really want him in here? He's..."
Pete watched her struggle for a word and burst out laughing. "That, Janie, is Jeff, our mighty Oracle."
"Oh my God," Janie whispered. "I thought he was a homeless person."
Pete snorted. "I'll let him know."
"No!"
Down the Throat of the Mountain Page 6
