by Colin Gigl
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Alice hissed at her sister, who was lying on her stomach as she talked on the phone.
Carolyn eyed her carefully before saying “Hold on one sec?” sweetly into her phone. She pressed the mute button on the phone screen and looked at Alice. “What?” she asked in a much harsher tone.
“What do you mean, what? Were you trying to make Dad feel like a total ass?”
“Hey,” she said flippantly, “I’m not the one who was lying to him about a piece of friggin’ meatloaf. Lying to make someone feel better, or whatever it is you were trying to do there, is still lying. Honestly, the only person who made him feel bad today was you.” She left those words to hang there before adding, “Get over yourself. Seriously.”
A string of responses nearly jumped out of Alice’s throat, but she swallowed them before any could escape. Arguing with her sister now would only make things worse and she knew it. With a scathing look that nearly transcended her usual death stare, Alice shook her head and closed the door, hard. A few steps down the hall and she was in front of her own room. The lights were off as she shuffled in, and off she left them. The dim screen of her computer monitor bathed the room in an otherworldly glow. Her shoulders dropped as she pushed the door shut and, with what felt like the last reserves of her strength, made her way to her bed and flopped on top of it. Alice lay there, motionless.
She’d barely eaten in weeks, and who knew how long it had been since she’d gotten even a decent night’s sleep. All at once, the frayed edges of her mind collapsed. The nearly empty document open on her computer screen taunted her from across the room. Nothing was right—hadn’t been for a while—and tonight was just more evidence that she was losing the ability to pretend like it was. Without any warning, she broke down. The little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike had finally given up, bringing tears that simply wouldn’t stop. She felt so completely and utterly wrong.
Alice Spiegel lay on her bed and cried long into the night.
CHARLIE
* * *
THE INSTITUTE
No matter how many times Charlie used his key to travel to and from the Ferryman Institute proper, it was always an odd feeling coming back. The door he’d entered out in the middle of the desert had brought him back to his office, a spacious room with a high ceiling and bright walls. Charlie called it his office mostly due to it being within the Ferryman Institute, but in truth it was designed to be a comfortable living space—he was just stubborn and chose not to see it that way. He strode noiselessly across the floor, the plush carpet absorbing the sound of his uncovered feet and, given the long, dark trail that marked his path across the room, also all the crud he’d accumulated.
Attached to the office was Charlie’s private room, a space that was more or less the size of a large walk-in closet divided into two sections. Off to the left was a modest bathroom complete with a sink, vanity mirror, and an unassuming shower stall outfitted with a frosted glass door. To the right, two long rows of clothes hung neatly on hooks. His wardrobe was composed mostly of suits, but there were some more casual outfits mixed in, even if a few were several years out of fashion.
That was the way of it for Charlie—always a few years behind, it seemed. Granted, almost all Institute employees fell at least somewhat out of the loop as far as pop culture and current affairs went. That was pretty much a given living in the micromanaged bubble that was the Ferryman Institute. There was no way of getting news, no Internet access or the like to speak of. Not that the Institute was completely devoid of technology, just that it had all been retrofitted to be used solely for Ferryman purposes. By letting new employees use the tools they’d utilized during their previous lives, the Institute managed to establish a sense of continuity and familiarity, even for men and women thrust into a completely new way of life.
Despite its rather closed-off nature, the Institute knew better than to try and be completely self-contained. Employees were given vacation time, which—unlike Charlie—they could enjoy freely. While workers didn’t have free rein to do whatever they pleased—keeping the secrecy of the Ferryman Institute intact was always of paramount concern—the range of activities was so extensive that either no employees noticed or they just didn’t care. It was generally during that time that the Institute’s staff caught up with the goings-on of the world. News spread by word of mouth as employees filtered back from their breaks, and while perhaps not the most efficient means of staying up-to-date, it worked on the whole.
On the other hand, while Charlie had permission to leave the premises, it came with the caveat that the Institute was to be informed of his whereabouts at all times. Strictly for emergency purposes, of course. Just in case.
Unfortunately, he quickly discovered that the Institute had a very flexible rubric for what it considered an emergency.
Charlie’s officially sanctioned time away evaporated as emergency assignments piled up the moment he walked out the door. So he began stealing his time in secret when he could, sometimes ducking out to catch a quick movie (even in the medium’s infancy, he’d always found an inherent escapism in film), visit a museum, or jump off a few cliffs. Standard relaxation fare. With such limited time away, he’d fallen behind the curve as far as contemporary standards went, and with a quirky best friend who felt more at home in the nineteenth century, he held little hope he’d ever catch up.
Charlie left the private room’s door open as he walked in, not caring as he removed his tattered shorts, and hopped in the shower, randomly twisting the knobs until the pressure was strong. It didn’t matter to him how hot or cold the water ran—being a Ferryman meant that all temperatures felt perfectly comfortable. It was originally a fun little perk—how many people could say they’d trekked across Antarctica in a Hawaiian T-shirt and flip-flops?—that Charlie now found only irritating.
He’d just started lathering up when he heard the main door to his office open and slam shut, followed shortly by the familiar cadence of three-inch heels thumping across his floor. Each small thud came in a rhythm he’d come to know instinctively, which meant it’d only be a moment before—
“Charlie? Is that you in there?”
The voice belonged to his manager, Melissa Johnson. If her tone was any indication, she was unhappy, and Charlie was willing to bet he knew why.
“Nope,” Charlie replied casually as he ran the soap under his armpits. “Ghost of Churchill.”
His comment was promptly ignored. “Jesus Christ, Charlie, where have you been? You’ve been gone all day.”
He found it somewhat remarkable that Melissa was confounded by that. After five years of being his manager, Charlie figured she’d have moved past being irritated by his frequent disappearances. That led him to conclude she was either naively optimistic or had medium-term memory problems. For her sake, he sincerely hoped it wasn’t a combination of the two.
“I’ve been out and about,” he said. Charlie decided it was best to leave out the bit about diving into canyons and whatnot.
Melissa, however, seemed less concerned with the what or where of it all than she was with the why. “I called you at least ten times!” she cried, exasperated. “Why didn’t you pick up?”
Charlie grabbed the shampoo. “I lost my phone,” he said. This was a semitrue statement. He was trying a minimalist approach to answering his manager’s questions this time around to see if maybe he could avoid some of her wrath. Based on the empirical evidence, the answer was no.
“I keep telling you, you can’t just disappear like that. It’s my responsibility to know where you are at all times. What if there was an emergency? And how the hell did you lose your phone again?”
“Well . . . ,” he began, unsure of whether he should make something up or just tell the truth. He wanted the former, but his brain wasn’t up to creating a plausible cover story that didn’t end with him looking like an asshole. That left Charlie with the latter, which unfortunately he already knew ended with him looking like an
asshole.
“I may or may not have thrown it off a cliff.” In his defense, the constant ringing was getting really annoying. Charlie hated that Ferryman phones deliberately came without a Do Not Disturb setting, but he supposed he was also the perfect example of why they didn’t. On the flip side, throwing his phone off the cliff had provided a far better reason for not calling back, so perhaps it wasn’t a total loss.
A long silence followed. The last bits of dirt and detritus from his earlier adventures flowed down the drain, most likely with what little respect Melissa still had for him. When she finally replied, her voice managed to combine equal parts utter shock and complete resignation into one impressive, two-word question.
“You what?”
Charlie turned the shower off, knowing full well his sarcasm was escalating to dangerous levels and yet feeling completely powerless to stop it. “I mean, it might still work,” he said. “I’ll be honest, though, I couldn’t find enough of the pieces to check. How durable was this last one supposed to be?”
There were times Charlie was his own worst enemy.
He drew a squiggly line on the shower door. Beyond the condensation, he could make out the vague form of his manager. Her shoulder-length blond hair and long athletic legs were what most people first noticed about Melissa, but her affable personality and generally easygoing demeanor usually took center stage shortly thereafter. She was certainly the friendliest manager he’d ever had, that was for sure. Yet it was her seemingly unending supply of patience that Charlie appreciated most.
At least, that’s what she was like when he wasn’t busy making her job miserable. Charlie sincerely hoped her patience was actually unending.
She stood, stock-still, one arm across her chest, the other covering her face. When she spoke again, her voice had lost its edge, as if her anger had finally collapsed under the realization that she simply couldn’t win. “I swear, Charlie, you will be the death of me. I don’t know how, but being your manager will most definitely kill me.”
Charlie noted the difficulty of such a feat, seeing as it was impossible for either of them to die. “Am I that bad to work with?” he asked.
“Worse.” There was no hesitation in her reply.
“Oh.” He paused. “Can you toss me a towel?” The quiet thumping of her heels marching away provided his answer.
Fifteen minutes later, Charlie emerged from his private room transformed. His hair had a look of controlled chaos about it, a step up from its previous iteration of pure chaos. It danced to its own rhythm atop his head, a wave of chestnut with a mind all its own. The shorts had been swapped out in favor of a snappy black suit tailored to his modestly broad shoulders, a conventional white button-down underneath. An elegant wristwatch wrapped around his left wrist. The final flourish, which he was fiddling with as he walked out, was a silver tie he was exceptionally fond of. An inch shy of six feet tall, Charlie Dawson possessed a casual strain of good looks that bordered on ruggedly handsome—trim but fit build, baked-in layer of stubble, and inquisitive eyes. He was no lady-killer—nor in his occupation did he have any particular desire to be—but he caught the eye when he entered a room.
Yet the silver tie wasn’t the only new adornment fastened around Charlie’s neck as he reentered his main office space. He could feel the albatross strung around his neck like a physical thing, forged of heavy guilt and ponderous regrets. The intervening time had taken the thin veneer of humor off the brief conversation he’d just had with Melissa. Charlie always felt guilty after he walked out of the Institute unannounced, but this time he’d blown off his manager in fantastically sarcastic, if not downright insulting, style. It wasn’t the first time he’d done that to a manager, but it was the first time he’d laid it on that thick with Melissa. It wasn’t sitting well with him, which probably meant it had curdled several times over with her.
She was currently seated on his couch with her legs crossed, a dainty black heel dangling from the toes of her right foot. Though he was trying to avoid her gaze, he’d caught a glimpse of the I’m still not happy with you look currently aimed in his direction.
“Ah, the crown prince finally graces me with his presence,” she said.
Nope, definitely not sitting well with her, either.
“I, uh . . . I owe you an apology,” he said, keeping his eyes focused on his tie. “I was just—”
“Stop. Right there, just stop. You always say that,” she said. Each syllable she spoke was granite. “You’re sorry for this, you’re sorry for that. Every time this happens, I get myself all worked up and bent out of shape over your disappearing act, only for you to waltz back in here like it’s no big deal. It makes me feel like I’m the bad guy for trying to do my job. This is not the person I like to be, Charlie. And you know what makes me even more upset? You already know that.”
Charlie found himself with a sudden and desperate need to fiddle with his watch. He couldn’t think of another time he’d seen Melissa this upset. Now that he really pondered the matter, though, he had been doing a marvelous job piling metaphorical straw on his manager’s back for years. Putting just one more piece on top right now was, in hindsight, a really shitty idea.
He tried some more of plan A. “You’re right,” he said, finally looking up. “You absolutely are. And I’m sorry.”
Melissa rolled over that one, too. “You say that, but what have you done about it? It drives me crazy when you do this. And yet, for some reason, I always end up forgiving you. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because beyond this, everyone here loves you.” She sighed, brushing her fingers through her wheat-colored hair. “Look, I’m not saying you can’t leave the Institute, Charlie—believe me, I’m not. This isn’t some prison. I can understand needing time away from this place. I just need to know where you are in case we need you. It’s part of the job. Why is that so hard for you to do? Why can’t you do that?”
The grimace was flush on Charlie’s face before he could do anything about it. He tried to hide it, but he was willing to bet Melissa saw it.
Why can’t you do that? That was the real question, wasn’t it? All the other where were yous and what were you doings all boiled down to that fundamental why. So it had been with most of his former managers—the fairly recent ones, anyway—and so it was now.
Why, Charlie Dawson, are you continually breaking the rules? Why are you being such an asshole?
The answer was simple enough, really: because otherwise he’d have to tell them the truth.
Charlie was primed to serve Melissa another heap of bullshit-laden vagaries when the office door swung open and a short, slightly round man with an armful of papers ambled in. Dirkley Dupine made it halfway across the room before he noticed that something seemed amiss between Mr. Dawson and Ms. Johnson. His eyes darted back and forth between the pair as if he were unsure which one was going to attack him first.
He cleared his throat. “Umm . . . should I come back?”
There was an exchange of glances between Charlie and Melissa—an unspoken assertion on her part that the current discussion was merely being postponed—before she slid over on the couch, patting the seat next to her. “No, not at all. We were just going over a few last-minute things.”
“Oh, perfect. I have a few of my own,” he said, still a bit leery of the atmosphere as he meandered over to the newly opened space next to Melissa. He plopped down next to her, shooting her a quick, admiring glance as he settled in.
Dirkley was the third and final piece of Charlie’s team. All Ferrymen worked on teams of three: the Ferryman (which, despite its gender implications, was actually a neutral term that could mean male or female; the -man ending was an anachronistic throwback and/or an exercise in brand management, depending on who you listened to), the manager, and the navigator. In addition to his portly build, Charlie’s navigator was balding slightly, his nondescript brown hair fading away in patches. Thankfully, it would never get worse than that because, as with all members of the Ferryman Institute, Dirkley di
dn’t age. Charlie often wondered if being stuck in a perpetual state of almost balding was Dirkley’s own little curse. Then again, he also wouldn’t be surprised if Dirkley never even noticed. The man’s wardrobe seemed to suggest that personal appearance was rarely a foremost concern of his.
“So,” Charlie said, grateful for the chance to change the topic, “how are we looking for tonight?”
Dirkley quickly riffled through some of the papers he was holding. “Not too bad. Believe it or not, the last report I received from the front desk suggested a quiet, if ordinary, Sunday night. I’m a little unsure as to its accuracy—historically speaking, the month of May is a very busy time, so I’m a little suspicious.”
“Noted.” Charlie looked over to Melissa. “Anything to add?”
Charlie was surprised to find her already looking at him, like there was something written on his face that she was desperate to read. It wasn’t an intense look necessarily, just oddly thorough. When Charlie caught her eye, she looked away. Perhaps thinking better of that, Melissa stood up.
“Nope,” she said curtly. “I’m actually going to head to the control room. Have to go organize a few things. I’ll see you guys out there.” Before either man could say anything, she wandered out into the hallway beyond.
Charlie watched Melissa stride away, all the while wondering if these were the last moments they’d share as a team before she inevitably quit in frustration.
With a short whistle, Dirkley extricated himself from the couch. “Was it me or did Melissa seem . . .” His right hand absentmindedly drew circles in the air while he searched for the word.
