“Why?” He sounded scared, clearly aware that something was wrong.
“Just stay there!” she shouted as she hurried into the master bathroom. Craig was standing on the rug in front of the shower stall, toweling off. “He’s here!” Angie said in as low a voice as she could manage. “Patoff’s standing in the front yard staring into the kitchen window!”
Still wet, hair wild, not bothering to put on underwear, Craig pulled on his pants and ran toward the front of the house. “Stay with Dylan!”
Dylan was safe in his room; there was only the one door that opened into the hall, and his window faced the back yard. “Stay there!” she ordered her son again, rapping on his door as she rushed by. “Don’t come out!”
She wasn’t about to let Craig face the man by himself, and she hurried into the kitchen directly behind him. The consultant was gone. He was not at the window by the breakfast nook or peeking in through the window above the sink. Craig leaned over the counter, looking through the glass in both directions. “I don’t see him.” There was relief in his voice but also wariness.
A knock sounded at the front door, a jaunty shave-and-a-haircut tapping on the wood.
She hadn’t expected this to be over, had known the consultant would pop up again, but she jumped anyway.
“Stay back,” Craig said as they passed into the living room. He motioned toward the hallway entrance, and Angie took up a position there, a mother bear guarding her cub. She wished she had some sort of weapon in her hand.
“What do you want?” Craig shouted through the closed door.
The door opened of its own accord. She knew it was locked— she’d checked the deadbolt herself before going to bed last night— but the door swung wide, and through the screen she could see the consultant looking in at them. He had always been an odd-looking man, but something about his appearance this morning seemed even stranger than usual. Ordinarily tall and thin, he now looked even taller and thinner, his usually light brown, almost-orange hair now a brighter orange that matched his bow tie. His mouth was smiling but, as always, his eyes were not. Even through the dusty mesh of the screen door, she could see their hard intensity.
He bowed in a comically formal manner. “Regus Patoff, at your service.”
“That’s not your real name,” Craig said flatly.
He chuckled. “Isn’t it?”
“So I assume you’re registered with the U.S. patent office?”
The consultant took an exaggerated look at his watch. “It took you this long? I’m disappointed.” He leaned forward. “So what does BFG stand for?”
“I don’t know. Yet.”
“If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything. And—tick tock—I’m afraid that your time is almost up.”
Angie’s control was holding, though it was only through a sheer effort of will that she herself had not screamed after the door opened. I should be calling 911, she told herself. I should be calling the police.
“Why are you here?” Craig demanded.
“I just wanted to make sure you were coming in today. I was passing by, on my way to the office, and I thought I’d stop in and check on you. Maybe you want to carpool?”
“No.”
“But you are coming in?”
“Of course.”
“Excellent! Excellent! There are big changes afoot, and I wanted to make sure you didn’t miss anything.”
Craig said nothing, simply stared at the man.
“I’ll take my leave, then.” He looked past Craig at Angie. “You’d better get busy making Dylan’s omelet. A boy needs protein before a test.”
And then he was gone.
He didn’t disappear, but somehow she didn’t see him turn around and walk away, and in what seemed like only seconds after his last words, he was on the sidewalk in front of the house.
Craig closed the door, locked it.
“Oh my God,” Angie breathed. “Oh my God.”
They both hurried down the hall to check on Dylan, who was sitting on the floor, still tying his shoes. “Is it over?” he asked, looking up. “Can I come out now?”
Craig picked him up, and Angie gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You can come out,” she said.
“Is my breakfast ready?”
“Not yet. But I’ll make it right now.”
Dylan looked from her to Craig, and she saw an understanding in his eyes that shouldn’t have been there. “Was it Mr. Patoff?” he asked.
“Yes it was,” Craig said. “But he’s gone now.”
There was a pause. “Is he coming back?”
“No,” Craig said. “I’m going to talk to him today and tell him he’s not allowed to come over to our house.”
The answer satisfied Dylan, who smiled with relief, but when Angie looked at her husband, she saw an apprehension that mirrored her own. Shooting him a supportive glance, she gave her son another quick kiss, then went out to the kitchen to make breakfast.
****
It was mid-morning, and Angie had just finished vacuuming when Craig walked into the house. He’d left for work only a few hours ago, after a whispered fight conducted out of Dylan’s hearing, and she hadn’t expected to see him until the end of the day.
“Did you quit?” she asked hopefully, wrapping the vacuum cleaner cord around the hook below the handle.
“Phil’s giving me a week off.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Is that a reward or a punishment?”
“Who the hell knows?”
“What happened?”
“I went up to see Phil as soon as I got there. I thought I’d congratulate him and sort of…see where he was at, how he was. I should’ve called first because when I went up to Matthews’ office, he wasn’t there, and when I went to his regular office, he wasn’t there. I asked his secretary where he was, but she was crying and packing up her stuff because he’d fired her.”
“Phil?”
“Yeah. In fact, when I got back to my desk, I found an email on my computer announcing that six people from my division were being furloughed, and six others were being cut down to part-time. I called Phil at his old number, left a message on his voice-mail, then sent him an email, asking to talk to him. I went down to talk to the employees who were being cut, but none of them were there; they’d been told not to come in. I called Human Resources but got a voicemail. The programmers were all up in arms, the ones who were left, wanting to know what was going on, and I had to admit that I had no clue. Scott was still in jail, for all I knew, and I couldn’t find anyone who could tell me what was happening.
“Phil showed up, and he was happy, excited, acting as though everything was normal. I tried to ask him about the furloughs, about the hours being cut, about his own secretary, but he pretended he didn’t know anything about it. I said it must be BFG, but he wouldn’t take the bait. He ignored that and only said that he’d call HR and look into it. I played along because he was acting like Phil again—but he wasn’t. It was in his eyes, it was…” Craig shook his head. “It was like he was a pod person or something. He told all the programmers to get back to work, and we walked back up to my office, and he said he had something to do but would get back to me about the furloughs and everything.
“He did get back to me about an hour later. Called me on the phone and told me to take the week off. I asked why, and he said there was some restructuring going on, and all supervisory personnel were being asked to take a short vacation.”
“Maybe you’ll be laid off,” Angie said hopefully.
“Maybe,” he conceded, “but it didn’t sound that way.”
“And you don’t really want that.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Part of it’s because I don’t want to give up; I don’t want to let him win. But part of it’s because BFG will be gone eventually, and if I can maintain contact with Phil, keep him from completely drifting away, we might be in a position to roll back this craziness and do some
good.”
“That’s bullshit and you know it.”
Craig didn’t respond.
“Quit.”
“I can’t.”
Angie started pushing the vacuum cleaner over to the hall closet.
“I have to see this through.”
She ignored him and went into the bathroom, where she started cleaning the sink, shower and toilet. Fifteen minutes later, she came out to find him in the living room parked in front of the television. “Is this what you’re going to do all week? Watch TV?”
“I don’t know. Do you have any other suggestions?”
She stopped for a moment on her way to the kitchen and looked at him. “Send out résumés,” she said.
“Maybe I will,” he told her.
But she knew he wouldn’t, and she wasn’t sure if that made her more angry or afraid.
FORTY
The parking lot was less than half-full when Craig arrived at CompWare a week later, and he found out when he went upstairs to check in with HR that fully a third of all employees were being laid off or furloughed. Michelle Hagen, the woman behind the counter, was the one who told him that, and though she kept glancing up at the camera in the corner, she made no effort to censor herself, and though he didn’t ask, he had the feeling that she was one of the employees affected.
She told him as well, after looking at his file on her computer, that his hours would be changing next week, that his entire division would be working from eight at night to five in the morning rather than from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” he said.
She looked at him levelly. “Nothing does.”
The corridors of the building were curiously empty as he made his way back to the elevators, and the sixth floor seemed almost completely unoccupied. He’d intended to call Phil and hear from the horse’s mouth exactly what was going on, but his friend—
(was he still his friend?)
—was sitting in Lupe’s chair outside of his office when he arrived, waiting for him. “Craig!” Phil said welcomingly. “Glad to have you back!”
Craig motioned toward the empty hallway. “What’s going on here?”
“We’re implementing some of BFG’s suggestions to streamline the company. I really think it’s going to work out.”
“How’s it going to work out when you’re cutting programmers?”
“I told you before, I think we should be expanding into devices. Software’s a limiting market, particularly in regard to your area: games. If we can control all aspects of the gaming experience, if we provide content that is only usable on our proprietary devices and we tap into the gullible public’s endless willingness to shell out for upgrades, we’ll be able to explode our market share. Besides, it’s not like we’re picking on your division. We’re cutting across the board. Sales, my old stomping ground, has been reduced by a third.”
“That makes it even worse. We need people to create product, and we need people to sell product or we won’t be making any money.”
“Oh, we’ll be making money.”
“But with fewer workers?”
“A company is like a machine. All of the parts need to fit together in order to achieve maximum efficiency. What we’re building here is a leaner and meaner machine.”
“Do you hear yourself?”
Phil leaned forward excitedly. “I have a revolutionary idea for a new device aimed at teenage boys. The average 18-year-old has ten to twelve erections every day. We could harness this natural energy and use it to power a handheld device. Each expansion of the penis would generate a charge that would be stored in a battery. They’d never need to plug it in; it would run off their own bodies. For women and girls, we could connect a charger to their toilet. Just as dams are used to generate electricity, each flush would cause the water to turn a turbine embedded in the base, generating electricity that would be used to recharge the battery. We’d be pioneers in the field of sustainable energy.”
Craig looked at him. The ideas were not just ridiculous, they were crazy. He was about to say just that—in as circumspect a manner as possible—when a sharply dressed man with a short clean haircut, a man Craig didn’t know but who looked vaguely familiar, walked up to Phil. “Patel has been taken care of,” he stated.
Craig didn’t like the sound of that. “Parvesh Patel?” he asked.
Phil nodded. “Parvesh has met with an unfortunate accident,” he said, a smile playing around the edge of his lips.
Craig froze. Phil and Parvesh had never gotten along, but he couldn’t believe that his friend would actually cause physical damage to be inflicted on another person, no matter how much he disliked him.
The consultant would.
Yes, the consultant would. And had.
Now Phil had, too.
Things had apparently gone far off the rails in the week he’d been gone.
“Thanks, Anthony.” Phil said. “You can make phone calls if you want.”
The other man smiled, and Craig didn’t like that smile. “My favorite thing to do,” he said, and left the way he’d come.
Was Phil brainwashed? Drugged? Possessed? What could have caused the change in him—a few telephone calls and a long meeting with the consultant? It seemed impossible, but the proof was right there. Part of him blamed Phil, but part of him didn’t, since he knew his friend was being manipulated by a power neither of them could understand.
The Consultant.
Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.
“Let me talk to him,” Craig said.
“Who?”
“You know who. Patoff. Or whatever his real name is.”
Phil’s expression hardened. “Why do you want to talk to him?”
“I have a few questions.”
“You can ask me. I know you resent it, but I am the CEO.”
“I don’t resent it,” Craig said.
“But…?” Phil prompted.
He paused, then decided to answer honestly. “But what do you know about running a major company? I certainly couldn’t do it. And I have my doubts that you can, either. But that’s not what I want to talk to Patoff about.”
“What is it, then?”
Before he could answer, an announcement came over the speakers. “Will Craig Horne please come to Mr. Patoff’s office immediately?” The words seemed to echo in the empty corridor.
Craig looked up at the camera through which the consultant had obviously been monitoring their conversation, then over at Phil, who had paled considerably. He’s afraid, Craig thought, and in a weird way, he considered that a good sign.
The message repeated, and the two of them stared at each other for a moment. Craig asked, “Is his office still on the seventh?”
“As far as I know,” Phil said, and that hint of uncertainty was also a good sign.
They walked into an elevator together, though neither of them spoke. Craig pressed the button for the seventh floor, and when Phil didn’t press one of the other buttons, he assumed they would be visiting the consultant together. But when the doors opened on a dingy darkened corridor, he was the only one to step out.
He turned around, intending to say something to Phil (though he didn’t know what), but the doors closed and he was left alone.
The seventh floor had deteriorated since he had come here with Phil. The hallway, if possible, was even dimmer than before, lit only by occasionally recessed fluorescents that emitted a faint sputtering light. The walls were peeling, the floor torn up. Whereas the hallway had previously appeared to stretch farther than the length of the building, it now seemed far too short, dead-ending immediately to his right and extending to the left only as far as room 700, the consultant’s office.
The strange organic sounds that had pulsated behind the walls, above the ceiling, beneath the floor, were still audible but muted, as though the body in which he found himself was dying.
Craig walked down the shortened hall toward the office, stepping s
lowly and carefully over the broken floor, trying not to trip, keeping an eye out for that cat thing that had been slinking around here before.
The door opened before he reached it, and he thought, absurdly, of Willy Wonka. In the Gene Wilder movie, the door to the chocolate factory had opened in the same way. It was not through any mechanical means but magically, and Craig had the sense that the same thing was happening here. He hadn’t set off any motion detector; this wasn’t an automatic door. It was a regular door, and it opened because the consultant had made it open.
The waiting room had changed. It no longer looked like part of a doctor’s office. Gone were the chairs and magazines, replaced by a jumbled pile of discarded office supplies. Drawn on the walls, in tiny obsessive detail, were flowcharts and organizational diagrams so complicated that it was impossible to tell what they were supposed to represent, or where one ended and another began.
The old secretary was nowhere to be seen, the frosted window in front of her work station closed, but the door next to the window swung open of its own accord, and Craig walked back to the consultant’s office, skirting the edge of the absent secretary’s circular desk and passing through an open doorway into a well-lit room the size of a school auditorium. At the far end was a window, and in front of the window a small nondescript desk, behind which sat the consultant. Other than that, the room was empty.
Except for the blood.
There was blood on the floor and on the walls, a tremendous amount, an impossible amount, some of it dried but most of it fresh and wet, and he had to walk through it to reach the consultant’s desk. He considered not doing so, staying where he was, forcing the consultant to either come to him or shout at the top of his lungs in order to be heard, but even as the thought entered his head, he was being drawn forward, a force not unlike magnetism pulling him toward the far off desk. His shoes almost slipped in the blood, and the smell was nearly overpowering, but he managed to stay upright and not vomit as he approached the consultant.
From somewhere far off came the sound of singing. A children’s song of some sort.
He reached the desk. Wearing a crimson bow tie that matched the shade of the splattered walls and floor, the consultant nodded at him. “Thank you for attending this meeting.”
The Consultant Page 36
