by J. Thorn
In the summer of 2005, things at the office reached a fevered pitch prior to the buyout. Molly was pregnant with Sara, and Billy was getting ready for kindergarten.
“She keeps giving me strange looks.”
Brian winked. “Oh yeah!”
“I’m married, asshole,” replied Drew.
“So are thousands of other swingers. Molly would never find out.”
Drew shook his head as Vivian came past his desk for the third time in one hour.
“Can we talk?” she asked, casting a dagger at Brian as she spoke.
“I’ve got the Wilson deadline tomorrow. I’m really busy.”
Brian took three steps backward and turned toward the break room. “Catch ya later, Drew.”
Vivian watched him shuffle off while shaking the disgust from her hair. “He’s an asshole.” Drew nodded. “Listen. I know you’re married.”
Drew crouched forward in his chair and began to speak when Vivian cut him off.
“Meet me after work at Sully’s Tavern. One drink, a talk, that’s it.”
“I’m married.” Drew stretched the word out as if Vivian was hard of hearing.
“One drink. That’s it.”
A car blew past the bay window of the living room. The dilapidated muffler tore holes in the early morning and shook Drew from his dream. Daydream, dream, recollection? He was not sure what it might be called when it happened at 3:30 in the morning on the couch with a computer on his lap.
The glowing oasis of the screen floated in a sea of darkness. The orange pall of the streetlamps crept beneath the drawn shades. The cool hand of February cracked the floorboards and shook the loose windows in their sills. As if maneuvered by a hidden hand, the worn refrigerator motor kicked in and rattled the empty kitchen.
He looked down at his in-box and its newest addition, “Tonight”. Drew glanced to the left and noticed that the “sender” field was empty.
Typical spam, he thought. Delete it and go back to bed.
Instead, his right hand positioned the cursor over the subject line and his pointer finger delivered a click. Drew’s hand trembled as he waited for the message window to open. He felt a flutter in the room as if it were exhaling a dusty, old breath. Shadows cast on the living-room wall twitched. Drew could taste the dust blown from the heating ducts of the old house.
The whiteness of the message body almost blinded Drew. He put one hand toward his eyes to diffuse the glare. The “sender” box was empty. The “body” box was empty. The subject line held a single word, “Tonight”. The seven letters stood with resolve, staring at Drew through liquid-plasma eyes.
“Is short.”
Drew almost dropped the company laptop to the floor. He swore under his breath, thinking about the thousands of dollars he would have to cough up should the laptop be damaged outside the office. The concern passed as the two words came again.
“Is short.”
He shut the lid and waited for the blue and orange lights on the keyboard to fade. Drew set the machine on the table and sat in the still darkness, convincing himself that he had mumbled the words. Twice.
One of the shadows hanging on the wall slid toward the floor like a shelf of ice falling into the Arctic Sea. It crept along the baseboards, and the inky black of the form spread into the kitchen and out of Drew’s sight.
He stood and placed a bare foot on the oak floorboards. The coldness of the century-old wood felt like fire on the soles of his feet. He peered into the kitchen, expecting to see the shadow and hoping it was Molly getting a glass of water.
“What’s short?” Drew heard himself ask. His face flushed red in the darkness, an embarrassment to himself. “Who am I expecting to answer that question?”
The cranky heater in the basement coughed and, with a reluctant clang, fired up again as the thermostat dropped to fifty-five degrees. The air shook Drew, and he swore he saw his breath. As quickly as the chill infiltrated his bones, it disappeared.
He turned and looked at the digital clock on the microwave: 4:03.
Two hours if I fall asleep right now, Drew thought as he plodded back upstairs toward the bedroom.
Chapter 3
The reverberating radio voice claimed that the sale ended in only three days. Drew rolled over and fumbled for the silver cancel button in a line of silver buttons sitting atop the alarm clock.
“Hmmmmm.” Molly pulled the comforter over her head and rolled away from the source of the commotion.
Drew sat up and rubbed the stubble on his face before swinging both feet out of bed and onto the floor. He heard the kids and decided to shave before they came pounding on the door. The precious moments of privacy in the bathroom would be all Drew would have during the day.
He went through the rest of his morning ritual, and was on the highway by seven with a coffee in one hand and a cinnamon-raisin bagel in the other. The lull of a steady sixty-five miles per hour reawakened thoughts of Vivian in Drew’s memory.
“Do you love her?”
“I’m married.”
“I didn’t ask you if you were married. I asked you if you love her.”
Drew gripped the frosty mug and wished he could climb inside. “Yes.”
Vivian set her wineglass on the table and slung the thin strap of her purse over one shoulder.
“Wait. I really like you and I don’t want to lose you as a friend, but you can’t ask me to cheat on my wife.”
Vivian smiled and failed to hide the tear running down her cheek. “We could have been really happy, Drew. I mean really happy.”
He watched her turn and dart through the happy-hour crowd. Drew tilted his mug to the bartender, applying liquid salve to an open wound.
***
Drew knew better than to check company e-mail after a night of drinking.
At first he gasped. The language and tone felt wrong, like she had written the message in another language and then ran it through a translating website.
“It’s not true,” he said to Molly.
“Then she has a hell of an imagination,” she replied. Molly never responded positively to things when shaken from sleep, but that night Drew felt he had to be direct.
“She’s been hinting at an affair for months, but I never pursued it, I swear.”
Molly swung a pillow behind her back and stared at Drew through bed-tousled hair.
“We met at Sully’s after work. She insisted, and I knew it was not going to be pretty. I ordered a beer, she asked me to leave you, and I told her no. I told her that I love you.”
Drew’s wife took a deep breath and waited, her fingers clutching and releasing the sheet. “And she sent this to Johnson, too?”
Drew exhaled and slid closer to Molly. “Yes. Vivian isn’t stupid. She knows the company policy on harassment, knows what procedures have to be put in play, and knows the amount of pain this is going to cause.”
“Then you need to get into his office first thing in the morning.”
The blaring horn jarred Drew from the memory. The transparent wax paper lay on the passenger seat like the discarded shroud of the bagel. The cup of coffee in his hand felt warm, the bitter tang no longer subdued by the heat. He pulled up to the intersection and turned right, looking at the dashboard clock and realizing that he had driven the entire route to the office on autopilot.
Probably would be safer if I texted while driving. At least I’d still be paying some attention to the road, he thought.
“Hey, D!”
“‘Sup, Charlie?”
The security guard smiled at Drew from inside the frosted pane of the vertical coffin he called a booth. Drew could see the flickering images of the portable DVD player through the icy glaze of the window.
“Same old shit. When we movin’ to Florida?”
Drew chuckled. “Soon as you win the lottery, my man.”
Charlie smiled and hit the button. The red arm rose with a cranky squeal of half-frozen gears until it pointed skyward. Drew drove through the secur
ity check and toward his office building in the industrial park, glancing in his rearview as the arm came down again with a forbidding shake.
***
“Did you see her today?”
Drew dropped the messenger bag to the floor and looked over his desk. Brian’s eyes sparkled. “No. I’m not looking for her, asshole.”
“You should be. She’s got this tight, black skirt on. Heels, of course. And her blouse dips low enough to sport serious cleavage. I still can’t believe you passed on that.”
Drew turned around toward Johnson’s office and allowed his eyes to drift left, to Vivian’s cubicle.
Nothing wrong with looking, he said to himself. “You oughta hit that.”
Brian squealed like a kid who already knew what Santa left under the tree. “She ain’t into me, man. She’s into you.”
“Did you forget about the whole shitstorm?”
“My penis has a short memory.”
With that, Brian sauntered toward the coffee machine, leaving Drew with a wink and an opportunity to recall the meeting with Johnson and their discussion of Vivian.
***
“I think I’m going to need to see it.”
“Taken out of context, it could cause me a lot of problems.”
“Seems like you already have a lot of problems.”
Drew snarled at Johnson and swallowed his anger like recurring heartburn. “I showed it to my wife and I told her it’s not true.”
“She believes you?”
“Of course.”
“For now.”
Drew stood and considered dragging Vivian into the room. Johnson stepped in front of the office door and closed the blinds.
“I need to know. Don’t hand me any bullshit.”
“I did not touch her. Ever.”
Johnson sighed and nodded his head. “Then we should probably get HR in on this as soon as possible. After I hear Vivian’s story, of course.” Drew smiled with his eyebrows furrowed and a snarled lip. “Don’t do this to me, Drew. You know I have procedures to follow.”
Johnson opened the office door. Drew stepped close enough to smell his cheap aftershave and the remains of greasy hash browns on his face.
“I’ll forward you the e-mail from Vivian, according to procedure.” Drew spit the last word from his mouth like a swig of sour milk. He walked through the rows of cubicles as if in slow motion, seeing every keystroke on a keyboard and every number punched into a phone. Vivian looked up at him and then back toward Johnson’s office. She dropped her head to her chest.
He returned to his desk and Drew looked at the framed picture of his family. He shuddered and wondered if they could ever be them again: smiling, happy, whole. He clicked through the screens until he came to his password-protected desktop. Drew opened his e-mail in search of Vivian’s message. He scrolled through the list, reordered by sender, then by date, and then by status. Nothing. Her e-mail was gone. Drew scrolled through again, line by line. He picked up the phone and dialed the IT desk.
“Frank. Hey, it’s Drew in design. I’ve got a really important e-mail that’s disappeared.”
“They don’t do that on their own, Drewy-boy.”
Drew winced. “Listen to me, Frank. I had an e-mail in my in-box and now it’s not there.”
“Hold on.”
Drew heard the phone clink off a hard surface, followed by pounding keys begging for mercy under the plump fingers of the head of IT.
“Got a retraction on your account.”
“Frank?”
“Right. Dumb it down for ya. Whoever sent that e-mail pulled it back. Our system gives you twelve hours to do that as long as the recipient is on our network.”
“You mean interoffice.”
“Yeah.”
Drew sighed. “Can you tell me if the message was retracted from all recipients, or just me?”
“C’mon Drew. You know I can’t breach privacy—“
“All or just me, Frank,” Drew said, cutting off Frank’s canned response.
“All. Two recipients, two retractions. Don’t bother asking who the other recipient was.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it, Frank. You’re such a champion of privacy.” He heard the huff through the phone before the line went dead.
***
Vivian walked past Drew’s desk. He inhaled her perfume, making the memory of that day visceral. She dropped a manila folder on his desk from an elevation that caused other papers to flutter.
“Johnson needs your signatures on these before the end of the day.”
Drew tried making eye contact with her, but failed. He wondered how many more years it would be before they would speak again. “Thanks, Vivian.”
She paused, opened her mouth, and then closed it before walking back to her desk. Drew flipped through the folder and counted the number of lines requiring his signature before he shut it and walked across the row to Brian’s cubicle. Brian held one finger up to him with a handset tucked under his chin.
“The CSS code. Yep, got it. How about the link tags? Good? Okay. Yep, will do.” Brian hung up the phone and leaned back in his chair.
“Can I talk to you?” Drew asked. Brian twirled his fingers while sipping bottled water. “It’s not work related,” Drew added.
“Never stopped us before.”
“Did you ever think someone was in your apartment?”
“Once I thought I had two women in my bed, but it was just a dream.”
“Never mind,” said Drew as he turned back toward his cubicle.
“Sorry. Sit down, man.” Brian kicked the edge of another chair, which sent it flying toward Drew’s knees. He stopped it with his left hand and sat down at the desk opposite Brian. “You mean like ghosts?”
“Not exactly. A feeling like someone else is in the room with you.”
Brian tilted his head toward the panels of the suspended ceiling dotted with emergency sprinkler heads.
“Honestly, I don’t think so. I remember being scared shitless as a kid when my folks made me go upstairs to bed. We had a family room in the basement with our television and toys. My parents would stay up watching shows and at my bedtime they’d send me upstairs to brush my teeth and go to bed. I used to leap over steps on the way up, convinced something was going to get me. I’d run down the hall and turn on my bedroom light. I felt safer under the covers, but getting there was always a bitch. And it was the same thing, night after night.” Brian paused and smirked at Drew. “You looked serious. I didn’t want to fuck with you.”
“Sorry, man. I’m not used to seeing this side of you.”
Brian shrugged and tapped a pencil on his phone. “What’s going on, Drew?”
Drew took a deep breath and placed his elbows on his knees. He hunched over and looked left to right before replying. “Had a strange feeling last night.” Brian waited, pencil tapping. “I was on the computer around 3:30.”
“First mistake.”
Drew ignored the comment and continued. “It felt like there was someone else in the room. I felt different. The shadows didn’t act like normal shadows do.”
“Gimme the money shot,” said Brian.
“I heard words. Something about ‘short,’ but I fucking heard them, man. I am not kidding.”
Brian whistled and made the loco gesture next to his right temple.
“I knew you’d be an asshole about it,” said Drew.
“What do you want me to say? What if I had come to you with this story?” Brian’s extension buzzed and lights flashed across the surface of the phone. He reached out with the left hand and snagged the receiver. “No. No, I have not gotten to the CSS code yet.”
Brian looked at Drew and shrugged his shoulders. Drew stood and walked back to his cubicle.
***
He cranked the radio the entire way home. As “the big 4-0” came closer, he found himself splitting time between heavy metal and afternoon talk shows, an unthinkable compromise to the teenager he once was. The clouds suffocated the land
scape, swallowing the snow-covered lawns of suburbia. Spring would arrive in less than forty days through the seemingly eternal vise-grip of winter. As the disembodied voices continued to chatter through the stereo speakers, Drew’s mind floated back to her.
“Why did you do that?”
“Retract it?”
“No. Send it. Why did you send it in the first place?”
Vivian pushed a strand of dark hair behind her ear and crossed her legs in the chair. “I was hurt. I lashed out.”
“You could have ruined my career, my marriage, my life.”
Again, Vivian uncrossed and recrossed her legs. Drew caught glimpses of the garter straps at the top of her thighs. He looked around as if he could will another human to enter the break room. The microwave and mini-fridge sat silently, offering no help.
“I’ll be here,” she said.
“You have to let this be, Vivian. Please.”
“You and I are fated, Drew. I felt it the first time we met. You’ll come to me and I’ll be here. I promise.”
She stood and placed a benign kiss on his left cheek. He felt the moist, warm touch of her lips, which made his entire upper body twitch. She let her breath linger on his skin long enough to raise the hairs on the back of his neck, before she tossed her hair to the side, opened the break-room door, and strutted back to her cubicle.
Chapter 4
“You’re sitting in the driveway?”
Drew looked out the driver-side window at Molly, standing there in the snow-packed driveway, her coat pulled tight to her chest with her left hand. The engine was still running, the radio personalities still arguing.
“Yeah. Didn’t want to miss the end of this segment. Interesting stuff on global finance.”
Molly gave Drew a halfhearted smile and then climbed through the snow to the garage door. She kicked the clinging ice from her boots and stepped inside. Drew turned the volume knob to the left and winced at the sting of the little white lie. He turned the ignition off and sat in the car listening to the engine block ping and crack where extreme heat met extreme cold.
