Here & There

by Joshua V. Scher

  Only she was right.

  Reidier was on to something.

  And this isn’t a story at all.

  Somewhere along the way, while Psynaring, Hilary found some echoes that started to make their own echoes. Bouncing off the walls of Reidier’s basement, the diluted pings led Hilary right into the labyrinth, and the Minotaur got a whiff of her scent.

  His story became her story. And now it’s becoming mine.

  Too bad for me, it ended up being true.

  I’m not paranoid, but the fact of the matter is they were watching Reidier. It makes sense that they were tracking Bertram. So how do I not conclude that they were following Hilary too? I mean, why else did she go to all the trouble of hiding this damn report?

  Maybe that’s why she was so hush-hush with me. I mean, yes, government secrets and all that classified protocol. But why she didn’t even mention her trips to RI? The further she held me at arm’s length, the safer for me. She was just being a protective mother. Silence of love.

  Then again, she did leave me a trail of breadcrumbs right into the bees’ nest and then handed over a briefcase full of inedible honey.

  What I’m trying to get at is I think they’ve found me.

  Of course, the Department always knew where I was. I’m not some superspy escape artist. I work at Anomaly, and my apartment address is in the phone book.

  They found the carriage house. They tracked me to Hell’s Kitchen.

  I think.

  Christ, I really am paranoid. I mean after writing the previous two lines I just stopped, and listened. Like what? Like I’m going to hear the bugs? I’ll tell you, the best thing I did was not bring any electrical gadgets into this place. Card table, chair, lamp, bead necklace hanging on the wall, leather briefcase, and inside it, the report.

  No computer. No landline. No cell phone. I even take the battery out of my cell when I come here.

  These weren’t precautions. I just can’t handle interruptions. I’m too easily distracted by phone calls, texts, IMs, the internet. If I had to jump back and forth from the real world to this one locked inside these folders, my brain would concuss until it was a gelatinous ooze and pour out from my ears.

  That’s why Toby’s become so frustrated with me. He can never reach me anymore. He has to stalk me. Literally.

  Maybe that’s it. Maybe they followed Toby. I’m always so careful coming here. Diving down into subway tunnels. Slipping in out of back doors in bars. But Toby. I bet he just walks right up. Probably takes a cab here.

  It happened a little over a week ago.

  I was going over Reidier’s lecture again. Seeing if I could make heads or tails of it. See what I missed. Widen my scope a little and see what I find beyond the tunnel vision.

  It’s still pretty dense stuff, but I’m getting into it now. Not the science of it, by any means, but the concept of it. How was Reidier thinking? What were his givens? Sort of like how I can’t even begin to explain the intricacies of nuclear bombs, but I get that there’s a lot of power binding a nucleus of atoms together and splitting that apart releases it.

  Anyway, I was focused. Sitting down in the bottom-floor bedroom that’s sunk halfway beneath the concrete courtyard, trying to wrap my brain around how quantum computers dance around Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle . . .

  BUZZZZ!

  I didn’t know what the hell it was at first. Jarring electrical sound like a drunk fire alarm sat on by a fat guy. Muffled, but piercing. I froze. What was it? It came from upstairs? What’s upstairs?

  Second floor = kitchenette, empty living room.

  Top floor = a bathroom and a bedroom with a mattress resting on the floor.

  What made—

  BUZZZZZZZZZ!

  It blared again, scaring me to my feet. It definitely came from upstairs. I stood there a second, searching the room for a weapon, a pipe, a piece of wood. Anything. But all I had was my card table, lamp, bead necklace, leather briefcase, and the report.

  I snuck upstairs as quietly as I could. The stairs go up six steps, then you hit a landing, shift over, and go up another six back in the direction you came from. I stopped at the landing and listened.

  Nothing. Six more steps up, and I looked around the empty living room. No sound. No object. Nothing even out of place. I tiptoed over to the kitchenette and poked my head around the door frame. Cabinets closed. Refrigerator hummed quietly. The old analog clock set into the oven from 1985 whirred a little. It didn’t seem like these things were responsible for the disruption.

  Must be on the top floor, I figured.

  BUZZZZZZZZZ!

  The sound shot around the room and ricocheted right into my brain.

  Fuck!

  It was coming from the corner where the living room met the kitchen. Just to the right of the entrance to the kitchen, hanging on a white wall between the two rooms, was an eggshell-colored plastic phone that must have been installed the same year as the stove.

  It had always been there. I’d seen it before and thought it was a vestigial appliance. Apparently it was the door buzzer, so someone could ring you from the street, and you could ask who the hell it was and had they followed Toby there or me?

  So I stood there, staring at the phone. Beads of sweat dotting my brow. Do I answer it? Do I not?

  I reached out, put my hand on the receiver, and finally noticed an off-white button sticking out beneath a three-inch video screen. Rundown carriage house, in the middle of the block, at the ass bottom of Hell’s Kitchen—this shit isn’t still supposed to be functional.

  It took a minute for the screen to warm up, but it worked. A crisp black-and-white image of the sidewalk in front of 357 West 39th. And there he was. My stalker. White guy, mid-to-late forties, a bit overweight but nothing grotesque (at least as far as I could tell, seeing as how he was wearing a puffy down coat—you know the Michelin Man kind of jacket), large square-framed glasses, and a knit stocking cap that was way too big and pulled up way too high so it looked like the reservoir tip of a condom dangling off the top of his head.

  It was the stocking cap that got me. He looked like a tourist. A stray sheep who had somehow wandered away from the flock milling about in Times Square and found himself on the wrong side of Port Authority.

  He danced from foot to foot to keep himself warm. Then leaned up against the glass door. Raised his gloved hand to cover his eyes, and try and peer through the glare off the window. He scrunched up his face, clearly not able to see much. Then he pressed buzzer number five again.

  BUZZZZZ!

  I didn’t realize how loud that thing was. You really get an earful standing right in front of it.

  The guy took a couple steps back and looked up at the building. Maybe he was searching for someone who might be surreptitiously peering out his window. Clearly, this guy didn’t see the camera. Or didn’t think it worked either.

  Finally he scowled at the door and took off, heading east on 39th. And that was it. He was gone.

  I mean, sure, it could’ve been some lost tourist. Or maybe he was visiting someone else in the building and got the wrong buzzer. Or the buzzers could have their wires crossed. (Nope, not that one. I just went out, propped all the doors open from my place to the front door, and pressed number five and heard the buzz blare out of the carriage house.) Or he just had the wrong building.

  Or maybe he worked for the Department and figured the perfect cover for a reconnaissance mission was to look like some doofus tourist from the Midwest.

  All I know is, it freaked me out.

  And Bertram Malle was right to be cautious. Clearly, though, he wasn’t cautious enough.

  * * *

  “Still, the connotations do conjure some very specific ideas, don’t they?” Bertram says, picking up the elliptical thread. “Planetary orbits for one.”

  “How so?”

  “All orbits, I believe, are elliptical.* Regardless of the trajectory taken and the distance traveled, there’s the inevitability of a return. Like
Reidier into my life.”

  * * *

  * Orbits are in fact elliptical as described by Kepler’s laws of planetary motion. The degree of the warping, however, varies with each planet. The earth’s is in nearly a perfect circle, while Pluto’s is a longer and thinner ellipse.

  * * *

  He swallows another mouthful of Half-Crazed beef.

  “So you always knew he would come back?”

  “Not in any conscious way. I wasn’t awaiting Reidier per se but was unsurprised when he came back into my daily life.”

  I liked Bertram, and more and more found myself veering off course, sometimes enjoying the direction of the conversation and forgetting the focus of my inquiry.* “If I remember correctly, ellipses are differentiated by their degree of eccentricity.”

  * * *

  * So apparently Hilary’s back to injecting these little personal touches. I thought we were done with that. Guess it’s just subject to the tides of her process. Is this merely a personal observation, something she’d edit out of the final draft, or within this is some clue?

  * * *

  “I think you’re right. How wonderfully accurate. Kerek obviously would have had a very eccentric curvature.” Bertram pauses in revelation. “Ellipses also have two foci. Two forces fighting for the center position.”*

  * * *

  * Mom ought to know all about that.

  * * *

  I ask the obvious question. “What were his?”

  “His work and his family. The two pulls he felt on himself, sometimes in opposition while other times in conjunction.”

  “And that’s where you came in?”

  “I suppose it is.”

  Reidier had approached Bertram about testing and possibly diagnosing Ecco. To both fix Ecco and help Eve. Was this Reidier’s true motivation in seeking out his old friend? Was Stage 4 an official cover?

  “Who was Ecco?” I ask.

  “At home or not at home?”

  The question gives me pause. “Was there a difference?”

  “I guess the more accurate question is who was Ecco with his family, and who was he on his own? The environment itself precipitated drastically different results from the boy. The simple act of observing him seemed to impact him.”

  “As if he were performing for you?”

  Bertram fidgets with his silverware, ignores my question, and avoids eye contact. It’s the first time I’ve ever detected any nervousness from him. “I initially misdiagnosed him. At first glance, he was a textbook case for a savant.”

  In the footage,82 Bertram’s first afternoon “testing” Ecco couldn’t have seemed less probing. It was framed as a Saturday afternoon barbeque.

  The boys play outside in the backyard, while Reidier and Bertram drink ice teas at a distance. They gossip about old classmates, discuss the beauty of Victorian architecture and the hassle of upkeep that goes along with living in a historical landmark, tease each other about how soft a science psychology is or how physics is merely philosophy for math geeks who can’t write well.

  Eve is happy for the distraction. She goes back and forth from harvesting mint from her herb garden for the tea, to pumping Bertram for embarrassing stories about Reidier from their college days.

  Bertram obliges with a story about how Reidier ended his brief career in collegiate a cappella. For the Parents’ Weekend concert, Reidier wanted to amp up his group’s wow factor and came up with an idea to electromagnetize the stage in Burnham Hall so that the group could have “floating microphones.”

  “You can do that?” Eve asks.

  “Of course.”

  “Sort of,” Bertram amends Reidier’s assertion.

  “It worked.” Reidier smiles proudly at his wife.

  “It did,” Bertram concedes. “For almost ten seconds.”

  “I told everybody, no metal of any kind,” Reidier defends himself.

  “Like with an MRI?” Eve asks, enjoying how Bertram teases her husband.

  “He did. He was very thorough, I saw the list he passed out to the group.” Bertram attempts to maintain a serious tone. “No watches, rings, pens, belts, tie clips, glasses.”

  Eve stands, hands on hips, wanting more.

  A practiced raconteur, Bertram takes a long sip of ice tea. “You’re right, Eve; this mint mixed with the lemon balm really gives the tea a zing.”

  “Bertram,” she scolds him in her French accent. “What ’appened?”

  Bertram raises his eyebrows to Reidier and nods for him to tell Eve.

  Reidier sighs, eyes cast down, and quietly mutters one word, “Zippers.”

  Eve leans her head in, repeating what she thinks her husband said, “Zippers?”

  Reidier nods. Bertram’s face contorts with contained laughter.

  “What ’appened with ’ze zippers?” Eve asks, letting out a little laugh.

  “It was a very powerful electromagnet. Khaki and denim are only so strong,” Reidier sighs.

  A look of surprise and horror rises in Eve’s face.

  “It was a very different kind of wow factor,” Bertram manages to get out before he explodes in laughter.

  Eve likewise disintegrates into hysterics.

  “Everybody panicked after their pants ripped,” Bertram says. “One of the guys accidentally kicked over the mercury arc, which blew the whole system, blacking out the entire building, all of campus, and half of the city.”

  “Not to mention the mercury spill,” Reidier adds.

  Between laughs, Eve manages to ask if anyone was hurt.

  “Eight seconds in to the all-male a cappella rendition of Flash Dance, and Kerek’s stardom had burnt out.”

  “’Zay kicked you out?”

  “The school banned him from any and all performance spaces.” Bertram collapses onto a bench and tries to catch his breath.

  The afternoon continues on with similar levity. Bertram seems to act as a foil for Reidier and Eve, essentially as a medium through which they can connect to each other. Sporadically, throughout the afternoon, they become affectionate toward one another: a hand on the small of the back, leaning against each other, hooking a finger in the other’s belt. The tension that has pulled at them for the past few months seems to have been cut free. Perhaps in helping them recollect the past, Bertram has coaxed them back into the present.

  It’s not until Eve finally picks up on how the two keep maneuvering, facing one way, and then another, that she realizes they are taking turns surreptitiously observing the boys. “All this time, I thought we were ’aving a nice leisurely afternoon. How silly of me not to take note that you two are ’ard at work.” And with that she retreats to the wicker bench on the veranda.

  Reidier shrugs and shakes his head, murmuring, it seems, some sort of explanation to Bertram.

  Eve attempts to force herself to read. Her gaze, however, keeps drifting above the edge of her novel toward the men in the yard. Finally, in an anxious flurry of motion, she retreats into the house, calling for Otto to come help mommy in the kitchen.

  It’s Bertram, not Reidier, who seems concerned with Eve’s exit. He suggests that maybe they should talk to Eve. Apologize. Reidier dismisses the idea with the slightest of shrugs, and mumbles something about how she only sees through cucumber eyes.83 The awkwardness dissolves into silence.

  What had been a social Saturday afternoon, full of anecdotes, cold drinks, sunshine, and the laughter of children becomes an impromptu lab experiment. Bertram and Reidier standing on the lawn, staring at the sandbox. A pair of lost UFO hunters searching for crop circles in the carpet.

  The two scientists have shed all of the familiarity and affection that was between them. Instead of teasing each other, they stand together in antiseptic observation. Mirror images of each other, staring at Ecco. Perhaps they’re afraid of disturbing the experiment. The friendship has molted off, leaving only a raw sense of purpose.

  As Heisenberg himself could have predicted, their hypnosis is ultimately broken by the subject itse
lf. Ecco, sensing the attention, breaks away from his play and looks back at them. The three consider each other. Ecco is unfazed by their gaze. Quite the contrary, he seems more fascinated with it than the toys and sand he was playing with.

  Bertram begins to move, but Reidier stops him with a quiet, “Wait.”

  The three remain in this quiet abeyance for several minutes. They watch him, and he them. It’s not aggressive. Nor is it play (even though it might sound like a staring contest). Ever so subtly, Ecco begins to move. His right elbow circling. His finger tapping against his thigh. It takes a while for Bertram to realize Ecco is mirroring Reidier’s absentminded fidgeting.

  Bertram describes it best after almost ten minutes. “I feel like we’re in a scene out of Gorillas in the Mist.”

  Reidier nods with an mmhm.

  “Only he’s Diane Fossey.”*

  * * *

  * Sounds a lot more like Children of the Corn, drawing crop circles in the sandbox. What is wrong with this kid?

  * * *

  “What do you make of it?” Reidier asks.

  “It’s remarkable focus. An unerring curiosity.”

  “In you or him?”

  Reidier and Bertram laugh.

  The spell broken, Ecco mimics them with his own laugh. So adept is he at matching up his own laugh to theirs in both timbre and rhythm, it startles them into silence. For a moment they all stare at each other. Finally Ecco’s hands drift back into the sand, and he again excavates the silt into abstract patterns.

  The manner in which these two old friends approach the Ecco question couldn’t be more revealing about the differences between them. Bertram is excited by the uniqueness of the child and content to observe him for as long as possible. Reidier instead is consternated, eager to classify his child’s deficiency, and determined to map out his psychological trajectory. Bertram watches, Reidier studies. Bertram wants to see, Reidier must sequence. One wants to understand, the other to master. Still, despite disparity in their methods, anyone who watches them can detect a similar sense of purpose. If one merely looks past Bertram’s soft-bearded smile and considers his eyes, he’ll find a fiery excitement. Reidier stands just to his left, his eyes dancing with the same spark. It is a look of longing, drawn out by the curiosity to know, driven by the arrogance to grasp. The two of them stand together fueled by Promethean ambitions.