Faller

by Will McIntosh

  A muffled whisper caught his attention. “What was that?” Peter pointed his flashlight toward the wall. Two nervous faces peered out from beneath a blanket between rows of boxes.

  “I’m sorry, you really shouldn’t be in here—” Peter began, guessing they were homeless people who’d somehow gotten inside. He stopped short as he realized it was Jack Raga, their janitor, and Victoria Rivera, one of the facility’s security guards. “Oh, jeez. Sorry.” Peter raised his arms in front of his face, turned to beat a hasty exit, trying to stifle laughter.

  Ugo stormed right up to them. “Get dressed,” he snapped, hands on hips. “You’re both fired.”

  “No, they’re not fired.” Peter tried to keep from bursting into laughter at the thought of these two sixty-somethings sneaking off for a quickie. Jack was divorced ten years, Vicky a widow, so no one was getting hurt. “Come on, Ugo, I’m turning all shades of red here, and I know I’m not the only one.”

  “No, this is completely unacceptable,” Ugo said. “They’re fired.”

  “Don’t be a dick. These are good people. They work hard for us.”

  Ugo stormed toward him. “A dick? Did you just call me a dick?”

  “No. I didn’t call you a dick, I was imploring you not to be one. There’s a big difference.” Peter was still feeling giggly. Definitely too much Zing, too little sleep.

  Ugo got so close Peter could smell the sausage he’d eaten for breakfast. “I am a senior fellow at MIT, the youngest recipient ever of the Heritage Award in Biotechnology. Don’t you ever speak to me like that again.”

  Peter raised his hands in surrender. “I’m sorry. I meant it as a joke. Just trying to lighten an awkward situation.” He turned toward their amorous employees. “We’re going to give you some privacy now.”

  “We’re very sorry, Dr. Sandoval,” Vicky called from under the blanket, sounding so like a teenaged girl caught in the backseat of her boyfriend’s car that Peter had to clap his hand over his mouth.

  “Vicky, did you forget my first name again?” Peter called when he had himself under control. “I have to keep reintroducing myself to you.”

  “Sorry, Peter. This won’t happen again.”

  “No, no, I think it should happen as often as you guys want it to, just not during work hours. Okay?”

  “You got it,” Jack said. “Thank you, sir.”

  They headed back, the only sound the scuffing of their shoes on dirty concrete.

  No way was Peter going to apologize for the dick comment. He and Melissa had both worked a million crappy jobs in high school and college. He knew exactly what it felt like to be treated like shit because you were wearing a white apron, or a Wendy’s name tag with that little orange-haired girl on it. He’d never forget.

  He wondered, not for the first time, how he’d become friends with Ugo in the first place. About the only thing they had in common was a bad childhood. Ugo’s had ended when he was adopted out of a Bosnian orphanage that had done a good impression of a concentration camp. He’d been adopted by Serbians after the war ended, into a life of privilege, evidently as their way of making a point about reconciliation. Peter’s bad childhood hadn’t been nearly as awful as Ugo’s, but the bad part had lasted longer.

  It had been Ugo, not him, who cultivated the friendship at Stanford, introducing himself at a brown bag seminar and suggesting they meet for a drink. Peter couldn’t help suspecting Ugo had been drawn to him because of his rising-star status. Then Ugo had met Izabella, who’d been in town visiting Melissa. Ugo had become family, and Peter stopped having a choice about whether to be friends with him.

  9

  THE ENTIRE world hung above him, blotting out the sky like the underside of a giant plucked weed, spinning into view and then out again as he tumbled. It was a sight reserved for the dead and the doomed, people who had jumped in the early days because they couldn’t stand another day of hunger, and the thousands who’d been thrown. And now for Faller.

  His arms flailed instinctively, seeking something to grab onto to stop his plummet. His screams were whipped away by wind that buffeted him like fists. Some ancient part of him kept expecting to slam against solid ground, even though his eyes told him there wasn’t any.

  * * *

  EVENTUALLY, COHERENT thoughts began to break through the howling panic.

  Daisy must be inconsolable. Had she been peering over the edge, watched him fall, a speck growing smaller by the second? He hated the idea of that. She’d had enough misery since Day One.

  Faller shouted in frustration and slapped his hands to his cheeks. What had happened to the parachute? He’d checked the lines before he packed the chute and left the museum.

  He had all the time in the world to figure it out. Grasping one of the suspension lines still attached to the parachute, he reeled it in and examined the steel hooks where the clamps on the end of the loose lines should have been attached. Then he reeled in the loose lines and studied them.

  They’d torn loose from the clamps. He’d been falling too fast for the knots to hold. How could he have been so stupid? He should have tested the parachute more thoroughly before he jumped. He could have attached something heavy to it and tossed it off the Tower with a long string attached to open the chute from the roof. He’d been so eager to fix the mess he’d made.

  He opened his mouth to curse, immediately closed it. The wind was relentless. When he opened his mouth, it blew his cheeks open wide, made them flap and vibrate uncomfortably.

  Faller craned his neck to look up. The world was the size of an ant.

  He watched it shrink, not wanting to look away, because in every other direction there was absolutely nothing to see. The sky he’d loved so much when his feet were on solid ground terrified him.

  The irony of the name he’d chosen suddenly hit him: it was also the means of his death. Like naming yourself Starver, or Bleed to Death.

  Unzipping his pack barely two inches and fishing around, he took inventory of his meager possessions by feel, not because any of it could save him, but because they were a link to the world. He longed to feel anything solid, anything that belied the emptiness.

  There was an eighth of a canteen of water left from his hike to the top of the Tower. It could have been a barrelful for all it mattered. He also had two clumps of dried dog meat, the toy paratrooper that had started this whole mess, the map, and in his back pocket, the photo.

  Making sure to grip it tightly, he withdrew the photo from his pocket and cupped it in his hands, the howling wind whipping its corners. He studied the woman he’d known before the beginning of time. She was pressing her cheek against his shoulder, looking so shockingly clean her pale skin glowed. She had shoulder-length black hair, freckles splashed across sharp cheekbones, a hard, square jaw, which would be too masculine if not offset by those expressive green eyes. Looking at her face, her bright smile, never failed to fill him with a complex cocktail of emotions he couldn’t begin to decipher.

  How many days had he spent early on, walking the streets, searching for that woman? Enough to know the world was nineteen thousand steps long and ten thousand steps wide.

  The world was a spot, a freckle on the sky. Faller fell through a cloud, and could see nothing for a moment. After he passed through the cloud it obscured his view of the world. He kept his eyes glued to the place where it had been until the cloud drifted by and he could see it again.

  His world had shrunk to the size of a fleck he could only see if he looked to the side of it.

  Then it was gone. No matter how hard he looked, how much he strained, he couldn’t see it. Blue nothing, broken only by clouds, stretched in every direction, and Faller hung at the center. He looked at the photo and tried to banish the cold despair tearing at his guts with the sight of a human face.

  II

  “I THOUGHT we were going to Le Yaca,” Ugo called from the backseat of Melissa’s van.

  “Change of plans,” Melissa said.

  “Change of plans?” Ugo
sighed theatrically. “I like Le Yaca. I was looking forward to the beef tenderloin.”

  “We’re having a murder-free dinner, sweetie,” Izabella said, patting Ugo’s shoulder. “No animals will be harmed in the making of this evening. You’re going to love it.”

  Ugo groaned, planted his chin on his fist. “Wonderful.”

  Peter reached over and squeezed Melissa’s knee. “You’ve got something up your sleeve.”

  She stretched one corner of her mouth, made a clicking sound—a classic Melissa gesture. “Maybe.”

  “Wait a minute, secret surprise plans were made, and I wasn’t in the loop?” Kathleen said from way in the back.

  “It was a last-minute thing,” Izabella said.

  “I don’t care. From now on, unless I’m the one being surprised, I want to be in the loop.”

  Peter glanced back at Kathleen. She sounded semiserious, like she was really hurt that she wasn’t in on whatever Melissa and Izabella had planned. Reaching up, she tapped the ceiling twice, completing some OCD ritual only she would comprehend. “So where are we going?”

  “Kathleen, it’s a surprise,” Izabella said. She looked tired.

  “When did you get back from Mumbai?” Peter asked.

  “Yesterday. I’ll never get used to the breakneck time changes in this job.”

  “I doubt anyone could,” Harry said from the back. “I doubt it’s physically possible. Unless Ugo develops a designer virus that rewires our internal clocks.”

  “Not high on my list of priorities right now,” Ugo said.

  Melissa turned onto Colonial Parkway, heading toward Jamestown.

  * * *

  MELISSA AND Izabella led the way along the dock. Walking in the moonlight together, the two sisters looked so strikingly different: Melissa, skinny, knock-kneed, pale, and freckled like her Scottish father; Izabella small, duck-footed, and bronze like her Mediterranean mother.

  It was so hard, looking at them, to see any vestige of the girls who’d lived in a trailer half a mile from Peter in Gaskill, New York. He and Melissa had discovered each other in chemistry class, both of them out of place, geeks in a redneck world. Senior year they’d practiced together to eradicate every trace of where they’d come from. They stopped saying ain’t, worked on saying milk instead of melk. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere” became “I’m not going anywhere.” They’d laughed so hard at first, because it sounded so weird, so artificial, to speak like the news anchors on CNN. Somewhere along the way, they’d passed an inflection point, and it began to sound weird to say things the way they used to. They could still crack each other up saying something the way they used to say it. They got married and moved to New York City the day they graduated from high school. Melissa wanted to be an actress, and was as surprised as anyone when the weird sculptures she’d been making in high school in her backyard turned out to be her real talent.

  Three triple-masted ships rocked on gentle waves to their left. Peter knew them well from previous visits—replicas of the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, all of which had crossed the Atlantic packed with Jamestown’s settlers in the early 1600s. Each had a spider’s web of riggings crossing their decks. The third in line—Discovery—had her white sails out. Melissa and Izabella stopped at Discovery’s gangplank.

  A red-bearded man wearing period military garb and a long, striking red cape appeared on deck.

  “Welcome aboard,” he called, striding down to unhook the chain running across the gangplank.

  They crossed single file, as six crew members came out from belowdecks, wearing billowing shirts and high socks. They swarmed across the deck, taking their positions as Peter and his companions were led down the ladder belowdecks. Fifty or sixty people had once shared the space, which was about the size of someone’s living room, for a four-month voyage. Now it contained only a table set with antique china and utensils. The rough reddish wood walls and blond planked floor glowed with a cozy hue in the candlelight.

  Tuxedoed waitresses were waiting with wine and scotch. Peter introduced himself to each of them before sitting.

  “Isn’t this better than Le Yaca?” Izabella asked Ugo.

  Ugo waggled his hand, but his smirk gave him away. “All right, maybe it is.”

  “This is incredible. Thank you.” Peter squeezed Melissa’s knee. Above deck, orders were shouted as the ship prepared to set sail on the James River.

  “Scotch?” one of the waitresses asked, holding a bottle for Peter to examine.

  “Absolutely.” He held out his glass. “Thanks, Jamie.”

  Peter looked around the table, warmed by the faces of his friends, so animated, already deep in conversation.

  Despite the remarkable, anachronistic surroundings, it reminded Peter of Stanford, of grad school. How many nights had the six of them spent eating and drinking and bullshitting? It happened so rarely now, with Izabella out of the country so often, and Melissa working odd hours on her sculptures.

  Who would have guessed they’d be here, just four years later? Izabella, a diplomat; Kathleen working in PR for the president, Ugo the biotech whiz kid, and Peter, turning theoretical physics on its ear.

  He watched Harry throw back his head and laugh at something Melissa said. Only Harry had stumbled, when measured against his potential. He seemed happy, though. What was it Kurt Vonnegut’s sister had said, when Kurt pointed out that she was a better writer than he, and was doing nothing with her talent? There’s no cosmic rule that says you’re obligated to fulfill your potential. Something like that. Although in Harry’s case, it had been a nervous breakdown that stopped him from finishing his degree, not a conscious decision.

  Harry saw Peter looking at him. “This place is no good. I can’t bask in reflected glory if there’s no one around to recognize you and consequently be impressed with me.”

  Melissa turned. “What was that?”

  “Harry said he can’t bask in reflected glory here, because there’s no one here to notice.”

  “‘Bask in reflected glory’?” Melissa laughed. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Building your own self-esteem by connecting yourself to someone famous or important,” Peter explained. “Like, if you went to high school with Beyoncé twenty years ago, and that’s the first thing you tell people when you meet them.”

  “About seventy percent of the self-esteem I manage to possess is because I work with Peter,” Harry said. He stuck out his hand for Melissa to shake. “Hi, I’m Harry Wong. I’m a senior assistant in Peter Sandoval’s lab. You know—the world-renowned physicist? We’re friends.” He let go of her hand. “That’s how I introduce myself.”

  “I’ll bet that’s not particularly effective in getting you laid,” Melissa said. “The words assistant and physics are both in that sentence.”

  “It’s not effective for anything, but it’s all I’ve got.”

  Jamie, their waitress, slid a salad in front of Peter. He thanked her, picked up his fork.

  Melissa picked up her dinner fork instead of her salad fork and went to work on her salad. Smiling, Peter switched to his dinner fork as well. When had he gotten all civilized? Where they grew up you were happy if the fork was clean, the tines all pointing in the same direction, rather than melted from a meth cook.

  An image came, unbidden: flashing lights, his father on a stretcher, screaming in agony from chemical burns to his face and hands that made him look like he was melting. In the background, their home, burning.

  At the other end of the table, he heard Ugo holding forth, his drink palmed in one hand. “Freud said it was sex that drove people at the most fundamental level, but he was wrong. It’s power.”

  Peter rolled his eyes. Here we go—the world according to Ugo.

  Izabella tsked, crossed her arms. “Oh, Ugo, you don’t really believe that.” She looked at Kathleen. “He loves to say outrageous things just to shock people.”

  Smiling, Ugo said, “That’s true, I do. But in this case the outrageous thing als
o happens to be true.” He took a swig of scotch. “Most people don’t want to admit they crave power, even to themselves, because it makes them feel ashamed. So they mask it as a desire for respect, success, admiration, sometimes even love. But if you dig down into the psyche, you’ll find it’s all the same: a desire for power.”

  “Love is not a desire for power,” Izabella said.

  Ugo reached out, took her hand. “Not all love. Sometimes love is just love, just as Freud said a cigar is sometimes just a cigar.”

  Peter leaned forward in his seat, began to speak, but Ugo pushed on, not giving Peter an opportunity to interrupt his grand discourse.

  “Freud got one thing correct, though; he said, left to their own devices, people are innately evil. Fear of being rejected or punished by a civilized society is what keeps us in line.”

  Melissa made a face. “I don’t buy that. Most people wouldn’t kill or steal even if they knew they could get away with it.”

  “That’s why when there’s a blackout, everyone is out looting stores,” Ugo said.

  “Not everyone. Most people are home caring for their families, checking on their neighbors to make sure they’re safe.”

  Ugo grunted, shook his head. “In the movies, maybe.”

  “All right, that’s enough nihilist philosophy for one night,” Kathleen said.

  “Yes.” Izabella held up her wineglass. “Peter.” She turned, looked at her husband. “Ugo. Even when I’m sober I can’t follow much of what you do, but I do understand that you’ve jumped way ahead of everyone else, and the world will never be the same.” She turned to Peter. “One day soon the two of you are going to save millions of lives, and I’m proud of you both.”

  They raised their glasses.

  Melissa tapped Peter’s hand. “Have you heard Kathleen’s idea?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve heard plenty of great ideas from Kathleen.” He poured himself another dram of scotch.