Nick smirked, dragging the rake through the Zen garden I wanted to overturn on his head. “The moving water from the pond out there helps us charge everything. Keeps costs down.”
“Still doesn’t make sense to keep a bunch of useless computers around.” I gestured around the empty office vibrating with the electric buzzing of all his unused equipment. “Unless you only have them here to make it seem like you’re a bigger corporation than you are. If you’re even a corporation at all.”
He looked up at me, and for the first time his smile didn’t seem phony, like something he’d learned to do by studying a diagram in a book. “Your line of questioning is awfully aggressive. Are we having a bad day?”
“Tell me, what kind of asshole plans a business that capitalizes on people’s grief?”
“The kind of asshole who likes money. You wouldn’t work for free, would you? And I don’t see you paying anything for my valuable services.” He pushed back from the desk, swiveling his chair to meet me head-on. “Tell me, were you always this way, or is this a new development?” He cocked an eyebrow. “I could see how Carissa dying might have given you a personality overhaul.”
He’d used her name as if it was some kinky double entendre, like it was some secret I wasn’t in on. I wanted to kill him for having the balls to even call her by name. He’d probably trolled through her emails, all her texts and Facebook messages, that knowing way he’d mentioned her. For all I knew, he’d probably spoken to “Carissa” the same way I was. Somebody had had to test the software. He could have been at this since I started, recording each and every phone call, printing out text transcripts he could peruse at his leisure. Probably scrolled through every picture she’d ever taken on her phone. Even the dirty ones. I suddenly hated myself for constantly asking her for shit like that.
“Fuck you.”
He continued as if I hadn’t said anything, dragging the rake in a circle through the sand, a musing expression gripping his features. “There’s a kind of beauty in all your pain, though.”
“And what the fuck’s that supposed to mean?”
He didn’t answer but his cold smile was back, creasing his face, accentuating the lines around his reptilian flat gray eyes.
A distant slam echoed down the empty corridor, but Nick didn’t pay it any mind, didn’t lift his probing stare away from me.
“Szechuan Palace was a nightmare,” Jess called, puffing into the office, sweaty plastic bags dangling from her wrist. “Oh, hey Ben.” She unloaded her spoils and waved a carton under my nose, the feathery ends of her black hair crackling with static. “Moo Shu Pork?”
Nick disentangled a Styrofoam container from the plastic bag and pressed a nauseatingly long kiss into Jess’s pale neck. “Gotta get back to work.” He took two backward steps. I couldn’t tell if the look he wore was appraising or something more along the lines of come at me, bro. “Nice to see you again, Ben.”
I flipped him off behind the dividing wall of the cubicle so Jess wouldn’t see. He saluted me with his lunch container and turned his back, plodding along the corridor and hooking a right down a hallway I’d never entered.
“Your boyfriend’s a dick,” I told her once I felt certain Nick was long gone, watching her snap chopsticks apart.
She sighed like a disappointed mother, pushing the Zen garden out of her way, rearranging her desk to make room for her lunch. Only when she adjusted her computer monitor did I get a good look at the item lying next to the screwdriver that Nick had pulled out of his pocket earlier.
“I get that a lot. Sure you don’t want anything? I bought loads. I always think Chinese food is better the next day.”
I stood up abruptly, my heart in my throat, stuffing my hands in my pockets. “I have to get going. Nick already asked me questions about how voice calling’s working out. No problems. I need to get back to work.”
Her red lipstick left stains on her wooden chopsticks as she withdrew them from her mouth. “Um. All right then. Call me if you have any questions, okay?”
I’d taken a few steps when I heard her chair creak, her feet hit the floor. “Are you all right, Ben?”
I pivoted on my heel, taking a few backward steps, and tried smiling. It didn’t seem to work. She looked more confused than ever.
“I’m fine. I’ll see you later.”
“Thanks for stopping by.”
I felt the burn of every winking red camera on me in the foyer as I left the building as quick as I could, hating myself just a little for my haste, since it would probably give Nick the satisfaction of knowing he’d rattled me. I could so easily imagine him in some dark back room, stuffing orange chicken in his mouth, snickering as he watched me bolt out the door.
The chill from the pulpy charcoal sky was nothing compared to the cold snap I’d felt when I’d finally seen what Nick had removed from his pockets earlier. It was a glass eyeball, a vacuous pupil inside a blue iris surrounded by a bleach white oval spliced with spindly, barely-there pink veins at the edges.
I felt contaminated, sitting alone at my kitchen table, like Nick’s cameras had followed me home. I wanted to call Carissa, but if Nick was recording conversations, I didn’t want to give him any further opportunities to listen in. And questioning Carissa on the subject would only tip Nick off that I’d gotten wise to him if he was indeed eavesdropping, though I had no idea what his endgame could possibly be. Maybe he was just an annoying voyeur, his only thrill listening in without my knowledge.
But having met him, having examined his icy smiles and blinkless stares, I couldn’t convince myself that that was the case. That glass eyeball kept blooming in full flower whenever I closed my eyes. I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew I didn’t want any part of it. Not least because the blue of the iris was unnervingly familiar.
I steeled myself, chewing on my lips and staring at my phone, because this could very well be the last time I called Carissa’s phone number. I’d have to grieve her all over again, albeit in a vastly different way. This go-around wouldn’t cut so deep, but it would shear off some scar tissue, feel infinitely more permanent, especially when I knew she’d always be there, one phone call or text message away. It would take a different kind of cold-blooded strength to say goodbye to her this time, one more blow that might break me.
I didn’t respond to her initial hello, cutting straight to the point. “Have you ever spoken to anyone apart from me? The first time you called, you mentioned being tested before you could be cleared to talk to me. Did you talk to a person, or was it automated testing?”
“Well, yeah, it was a human. Is that a bad thing?”
“Who did you talk to? Was it a male or female?”
“It was a woman.”
My shoulders sagged with relief, though in the back of my mind where that glass eyeball watched me, I knew Nick could have still been listening in. The fact that Jess had been the one to test the software didn’t mean anything, not really. Maybe it hadn’t been Jess at all. What the hell did I even know about the company?
“Did this woman give you a name?”
“Jess. She only spoke to me for a few minutes. What is this about?”
“What exactly did this ‘testing’ consist of? What kinds of things did she ask you?” I started when Dexter hopped onto the table out of nowhere, shoulders undulating and purring at full force as he moved closer. I stuck out a hand to stroke him automatically.
“Not much. Did I know my name, how old was I, stuff like that. Could I give her the following day’s weather report and did I know my Facebook URL. Why are you asking me all this?”
Dexter bashed his face into my open palm, guiding my hand over the back of his neck. “I think the guy running this program is listening to our conversations. Taping them or actively eavesdropping. I don’t know which.” Or why.
“Is that a big deal, or something?”
“Yes,” I said, harsher than I’d intended, my hand pausing on Dexter’s back mid-stroke. “Yes, it’s a big fucking deal. I
hate that guy, and even if I didn’t, I wouldn’t want to be spied on. That doesn’t piss you off?”
The longest pause we’d ever had in a conversation—while she was living and dead—followed, until she finally said, “I really don’t know how to answer that question.”
Of course she didn’t. She had no frame of reference to being spied on, didn’t know or care who Nick was. Machines didn’t bother themselves over silly little things like privacy. It was a stupid question to ask her. All it did was hammer home the fact that she was really dead, gone forever, unreachable. It was like seeing her coffin lowered into that dark six-foot hole all over again.
I gazed into Dexter’s ocher marble eyes, knowing he was my last real, unmanufactured link to her left on earth. I should have been spending my time spoiling him with treats the way she would have, doing things with Kylie that Carissa would have done. Not talking to a useless imitation who could regurgitate her words and mimic her tone without any tangible emotion behind it. She knew all the lyrics but she could never feel the music; she was as cold and unfeeling as the body lying in the grave beneath the headstone I’d purchased way back in July.
My Carissa would have been incensed by this revelation she was being spied on. Her eyes would have flashed dangerously; her mind would have sparked into overdrive, hatching some plan to catch Nick red-handed. She wouldn’t have stood for this, written it off as just one of those things.
“Ben?”
“What?”
“Nothing, I was just wondering if you were still there.”
Yeah, I was. But for how long would be a different question entirely.
I felt like a huge piece of shit, seeing Joe’s speedy answer to the first text I had sent him in weeks. I’d suddenly become one of those fair-weather friends my mother had told me to steer clear of back in high school. I’d turned into some asshole who blew off his friends for telling the truth, however unwelcome it had been at the time, and once I was in shambles, who did I ask for help? If I were Joe, I would have written me off, told me to go perform a sex act on myself. Maybe I had had a personality overhaul; fucking Nick, get the hell out of my head. Take your stupid eyeball with you.
Can you meet me today? I’d texted after hanging up with the Carissa who wasn’t Carissa, gripping my forehead with one hand, pecking at keys with the other.
His rapid response: When and where?
My house after work?
I’m glad you got in touch, buddy. I’ll be there with some Jack Daniels.
And I’ll be here with my bruised ego and a groveling apology, I wanted to say.
T he first words out of my mouth when I pulled the door open for Joe that night were “I’m sorry.”
He brushed it off, sidling past me to the table, unloading a brown paper bag that had Long Drunken Night written all over it. He slid the bottles by the glasses I had waiting and looked at me with cavernous brown eyes.
“You don’t need to be sorry. Are you okay?”
I pulled out a chair, and he did the same. “I do need to be sorry. I was an asshole.”
He unscrewed a bottle of whiskey and pushed it toward me. “It’s not like I don’t get it, Ben. I always did get it. But are you okay?”
The bottle chattered against the rim of my glass because my hand wouldn’t stop shaking. Joe untangled my fingers from the whiskey and poured out two doses himself.
“You gotta answer me, Ben, you’re freaking me out.”
“I’m fine” rose to my lips automatically, a knee-jerk response. Then I shook my head, pinching the bridge of my nose until pain erupted behind my eyeballs. “Well, I’m physically fine. But signing up for this shit was the worst idea in the world.”
He didn’t say I told you so, not with his mouth or his eyes. “It’s understandable why you did it. A lot of people would’ve. They’re going to make a killing once they roll this out to the public. It’s disgusting.”
How much money would this business venture garner Nick, I wondered dully. And how much whiskey would it take to get that glass eyeball out of my head?
I knocked back the entire glass, making my eyes water so much it felt like tiny needles had rained upon them. “Kylie heard me talking to her and that wasn’t even enough to get me to stop. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
“Heard you talking to her?”
I traced the rim of my glass with a fingertip to avoid his penetrating stare. “They have voice technology, too. It sounds just like her.” Every perfect, painful syllable an exact match for Carissa. I wouldn’t call her again, not even for a final goodbye. Hearing her voice one more time might sap me of my conviction; I might not have the strength to ever stop listening.
Joe’s eyes were twin tiny teleprompters, bold-type thoughts racing across them, but he didn’t voice any of the things I could feel him burning to say. “But you’re done with it now, right? This is it, the end, you’re never going back?”
“I have to go back one more time, just to tell them I’m out, to get her phone, whatever.”
“What did Kylie say when she heard you?” he asked, but I knew he already knew the answer.
I laughed without humor. “Wanted to talk to her. Of course. I said no, but that didn’t go over well. I made a seven-year-old promise not to rat me out. One of my shining moments, let me tell you.”
“Kids are resilient. She’ll forgive you. Just tell her it’s over with for good, that you made a mistake. She’ll respect that you’re being honest.”
Kylie would forgive me. Would I forgive myself?
I poured myself another helping of whiskey since my hands had stopped trembling. “I just made everything worse. Set myself back six months. It’s like she’s died all over again.”
He drummed one finger on the table, watching me take a deep slug. “Look, all of this is fixable. You can still get your closure. Tell these people you’re done and focus on helping Matthews, if he’ll have you. I know he was a douche to you in the beginning, but at the end of the day, he was only doing his job. You guys’ve got a common goal, here. Find the prick who killed her—that’s your closure. Teaming up with some vultures who prey on grieving people won’t get you anywhere.”
I thought about that for a moment, what seeing the guy who did it finally behind bars would feel like. It used to be all I thought about. Now it was like some half-remembered dream, vaguely familiar but floating almost out of sight on the foggy periphery of my mind.
Joe drank from his own glass, eyeing me over the rim. “I’ll go with you to their office. Moral support or whatever. I won’t intrude or anything, but you shouldn’t go there alone.”
“Thanks,” I said, smoothing out the wrinkles in my forehead, “but I don’t want you to see that place, meet those guys. It’s creepy.”
“Do you honestly think I care if it’s creepy?” Exasperation made his pitch climb higher, his eyes shine brighter. “I don’t care if the place is decorated with skulls and crossbones, I just don’t think you should do this by yourself.”
“I feel like it’s something I should do alone. I started it that way. It should end that way, too. I’ll do it after the holidays.”
I didn’t want Joe anywhere near that office; I didn’t want him contaminated the way I was. To so much as set foot over the threshold felt like a deal with the devil, with Nick playing the role of satanic maître d.
C hristmas dawned blindingly bright, illuminating the snowcapped trees, turning the houses on my block into gingerbread cottages.
I walked out my side door and almost met my death from a sparkling icicle, which impaled the frosty stoop like a dagger. Hopefully that wasn’t an omen of how the day would play out.
The drive into South Boston was hell. Highways turned into clogged, arrhythmic arteries, side streets clotted veins, and an hour after I left my house, I pulled into my mother’s apartment complex.
After helping her load about a million tightly tinfoiled casserole dishes into the car, we were off, heading out toward Natick.
“Did you bring anything?” my mom asked from the passenger’s seat, looking mildly apprehensive.
“Never show up empty handed,” I offered, repeating the mantra she’d instilled in me years earlier. “There’s a case of beer in the trunk. Frank’s favorite.”
She looked relieved, tucking a limp strand of bleached hair behind her ear, making her jingle bell earring tinkle. “Let’s hope he hasn’t started with the booze early this year. Alanna’ll kill him.”
A car swerved into my lane unexpectedly, forcing me to slam on the brakes. My seat belt snapped taut against my rib cage. “Fucking Christmas spirit is alive in Boston,” I yelled, flinging my arm out to keep my mother from smacking into the dashboard. “Really gets you into the holiday mood, doesn’t it?”
After a forty-five-minute passive aggressive drive, we pulled up in front of Alanna’s house. The car groaned with relief as we unloaded our spoils, and Frank came out to greet us, already holding a beer, and with Kylie in tow.
“Starting early?” I hefted three dishes into my arms, jerking my chin at his beer.
“It’s the holidays, I’m allowed.” Frank laughed. “Where’s your Christmas spirit?”
“Lost it on the drive. Traffic sucked.” I staggered onto the sidewalk. “Hey, princess. Get any good gift certificates this year?”
“Only one,” she said, in the driest tone I’d ever heard from a seven-year-old.
She fell into step beside me as we headed inside. Once Frank and my mother were out of earshot, I said, “I have another present for you, actually.”
She held the door open for me. “What is it?”
“No more phone calls. I stopped.”
We stood there in the threshold for so long, time almost felt like it had suspended, me looking down at her, her looking up at me, LED color-changing lights worming around the doorway dyeing her glasses in shades of red and blue.
Lingering Page 10
