The Consultant

by Sean Oliver

  “Where the hell is her address?” she said to herself.

  “The invitation lady?”

  “Don’t worry, I got it. Go back and stand there in the hallway like a zombie. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.” She found the invoice and folded it, then headed out and past Jared.

  “I meant school,” he said. She didn’t slow her pace—grabbing her purse, stuffing the paperwork in it, and taking a last look into the hallway mirror.

  “What are you even talking about?” she asked.

  “Everything is just a little intense this year. I’m having a hard time going back after the break.”

  “Why? You’ve been teaching for six years.”

  He thought, nodded. Then shook it off.

  “Forget it.” He walked to the hallway table beside the front door. He slid his keys out of the small drawer. “Come on. Let’s pick paper.”

  “You sure? Don’t wanna stand over there while I go do this?”

  “No. I wanna stay busy.” He was the first one out the door—way out the door. It was already slamming closed before Deanna could get through it.

  She wanted unpredictable.

  TEN

  DORIS CALHOUN STOOD naked at her bathroom sink. She didn’t think to grab a towel. There was so much going on in her mind she had to hum show tunes all evening just to stay on the planet. The bathtub drained behind her while Gert, her black-and-white cat, peered over the edge. Doris saw her flirting with danger from the mirror.

  “You won’t like it, Gertie.” The cat turned her head and took heed in the tone of Doris’s voice. She pranced over and rubbed against Doris’s legs, purring and swirling in and out.

  Doris was transfixed on her own reflection. She observed her eyes, her skin. She was seeing details of herself she’d never taken the time to consider before. But she did now. She was becoming much more aware of herself, in a physical sense. She was to orchestrate tomorrow’s day of professional development sessions in her library—hosting what she knew would be the first of some very crucial sessions in this most crucial year in that school, and in her life.

  She kept her focus on the mirror, on her body. She was taking intimate inventory—moles, malformed patches of excess weight. There were random hairs misplaced across her body. She shaved her armpits, her calves. But she never really took stock of what was going on in other areas.

  She started looking intently after getting out of the shower, and that feeling started again. She’d been getting it for the past few days—starting in the middle of her back and rolling up. Wafting, really. Like smoke inside her body. Not noxious, putrid smoke. More like a thick, creamy, blue smoke—a clean, rolling smoke.

  When it got into her shoulders it would roll down her arms, up her neck, through her head. It didn’t hurt. It felt like an injection spreading up through the body. And after it started, she moved without thinking; she operated without conscience.

  She left the bathroom sans towel and crossed to the living room. There were still eight or ten shelves with books. She could finish packing them up another time. Boxes and boxes of books were stacked around the living room. Each one was taped up and stacked in giant stalactites around the carpet. It looked like someone was moving out. Or in.

  But she was doing neither. Doris Calhoun was clearing her mind, getting ready. The new year was here.

  While she stood looking at the boxes, Gert appeared again and looked up at her, meowing a plea. She was hungry. Doris deliberately hadn’t filled Gert’s bowl since the night before. She was quite hungry and would probably devour whatever dinner she was given without even coming up for air. Doris knew it would be eaten in seconds.

  She went to the kitchen, still nude and expressionless. There was too much to do, too much of a commitment to make this year. She lived alone—who cared if she was wearing a bathrobe not?

  She ran a can opener around the rim of a can of wet cat food. The gourmet cat food was almost three times the cost of the standard fare the supermarket served, but this was Gert—the one living thing into which Doris poured every ounce of humanity. Teachers saw Doris a woman against the world, but she knew better. It was Doris and Gert against the world.

  Gert was barely able to contain herself as she heard the sounds from the counter above her, as she sat by Doris’s feet. She was catching wafts of the food as Doris scooped it onto the plate. Beside that plate, a plastic mousetrap sat with its top pried off, exposing the inner workings. Inside the plastic contraption lay a single green block of Bromethalin. Mice headed into the plastic traps, ate some of the nervous-system poison, left, and died.

  Doris was numb as she worked at the counter, coolly preparing to rid herself of yet another earthy entanglement sitting at her feet.

  Arlene held up a dusty pink jacket and turned to her cousin.

  “Yes,” Ellie said. “Yes, yes, yes.” She was sitting on the edge of Arlene’s bed beside a pile of clothing, some still with tags dangling down the sides. Everything was stylish and newer, if not outright new.

  Arlene handed the faded pink jacket to Ellie, who then placed it on the pile.

  “Actually,” Ellie began, “can I have this one first? The jacket?”

  “Yes.” Arlene was already back in the closet, sliding around hangers and dresses, unearthing more treasures. It was her own closet, for God’s sake. She just never realized how many damn clothes she had and had never worn. Some of the clothing she did wear had become buried, and she was now taking the time to rekindle her love for them.

  Spring cleaning, just early.

  Ellie placed the pink jacket on a far smaller pile on the other side of the bed. Her little stash.

  “I think that’s it,” Arlene said from a mile away, somewhere in the closet.

  “It’s a lot.”

  “Good.” Arlene emerged. “We can have some fun now.” She smiled at Ellie. “I want everything worn at least once. We have a few months to get it done.” She held out a hand and Ellie tapped her a high-five.

  Ellie picked up the pink jacket and held it on her chest. She looked across the room into Arlene’s mirror above the dresser.

  “Cute,” Arlene said to her.

  “I like it. I’ll wear it tomorrow.”

  “God, I haven’t even thought about which one to start with tomorrow.”

  A male voice interrupted the playtime. “Not like you have anything to choose from,” said Alan, Arlene’s husband, from the doorway.

  “What can we do for you?” Arlene asked playfully.

  “Just passing by,” he said.

  “Ah, okay. Who’s winning?”

  “Winning what?”

  “Isn’t there a game on? I’m sure there’s some game you can watch.” She blew him a kiss. He smiled and headed out, closing the door.

  “He must think you’re crazy,” Ellie said.

  “He hasn’t seen anything yet. There’s lots I have yet to do in the bedroom.”

  Ellie bugged out her eyes and gasped.

  “Ellie, I’m getting it all in—the clothing, my man…all of it.”

  “You’re making me feel boring for getting excited about a cute pink coat.”

  “You can have the coat. Now go home and rock Steve’s world, girl. It’s the new year.”

  ELEVEN

  DEANNA WAS IN the doorway of the teachers’ lounge. She could still back out of the room, unseen, probably unheard. She could turn and just head back into the hallway, pretend she hadn’t gone into the room and seen Mary Edison standing on the window ledge.

  How was this even possible? If she had to wager, Deanna would have bet against Mary’s frame even being able to get up there. Did she hike up her ankle-length skirt to her waist and throw her big leg up on the sill? It was above waist level, no small feat even for Deanna, who was young and trim.

  But there was Mary—almost pressed against the windows, looking out. She was so still, like a sentry guarding the room. And there was Deanna, about to share the space with this action.

&nb
sp; And, God, she had to pee.

  “Mary, can I get something for you?”

  “No, thanks.” Mary didn’t turn. She didn’t laugh at being caught in a jam or anything like that. And she didn’t explain. She stood there, looking out the second-floor windows across the rooftops of battered two-family houses and apartment buildings, out to the housing projects on the other side of Martin Luther King Drive.

  That’s all that was out there, right? Was Deanna missing something? Was there a shuttle launch in Florida today that was somehow visible in New Jersey? Some comet named after a European guy that flies by every hundred years?

  Deanna strode past the scene and into the restroom. Maybe it would all be over by the time she was done and out of the bathroom. From her stall she heard another voice enter the teachers’ room. Obviously, they saw Mary, too. Deanna was relieved. There would no doubt be some explanation and she wouldn’t have to deal with the uncomfortable Q and A herself.

  Actually, standing in a window or not, she would have preferred not to talk to Mary. No dislike, they were just so very different. And if you were considerably different from her, Deanna preferred not to deal with you at all.

  “Good morning,” the other voice said from the teacher’s room. Jen? Maybe Lissette? It was a soft voice.

  “Sure is,” Mary said. She was obviously down from the window by now, having not given the other teacher a stroke upon entering. Sounded like regular, boring chatter from the crew with color-coded lesson plans and clip art on their binders.

  “Is he here yet?” the other woman said.

  “No,” Mary said. “But he’s coming.”

  “Wow, man.” Jared probably said that a few times thus far, since opening Amir’s laptop and launching a file that the middle schooler had named “Glitchy.exe.” The kid was so excited with his discovery that he actually came in before first period to show his teacher. Jared sat at his desk as Amir stood beside him, guiding the action.

  “All of the login information is showing up there, Mr. Arden,” Amir said with a touch of Pakistani accent that lay classily on his tongue. The boy’s file was mining data from a random website, and it looked to be users’ login data.

  “Very interesting,” Jared said, watching a list of usernames and passwords being compiled before his eyes. “And probably very illegal.”

  “No, it’s not. The file is just a tool. What you are doing with my tool is illegal.”

  Jared looked over at his rather advanced student. “Like breaking into a car with a screwdriver.”

  “Yes. You are blaming my screwdriver, Mr. Arden.”

  He was.

  “Did you code this to read passwords?”

  “No.” Amir stepped back, offended. “I would never do that. I discovered that part by accident because I left this running when my father was using this laptop. He went on some website and when I opened the computer later, Glitchy had all this login data in the bottom window.”

  “Relax, I believe you.”

  “It’s the truth. The code I wrote for the project was for a game I play.”

  “An online game? What data were you trying to mine?”

  “Secret codes to unlock new levels. Kids enter them on the game website all the time and I created this code to list what was being entered by other kids.”

  Jared nodded. “Seems like a flaw in the security of the game site.”

  “And the site my father went on.”

  “And this one I’m testing.”

  “I actually know the flaw, too.” Amir cowered a bit as Jared turned to him.

  “Go on,” Jared said.

  “Well, Glitchy works on this site because you have an account with a valid password and you are logged in. Once you are past that level of encryption, you can run Glitchy.”

  “So only members of the sites can hack them.”

  “Yes. The web designers are all worried about the Russians, but not their customers.”

  “It’s very cool, Amir.” Jared said as he slipped a flash drive into the laptop. He dragged Glitchy onto it, removed the flash drive, and closed the laptop. “You can never use this, though. You’d get into trouble. If you ever left this running and your dad logged into his bank website they’d see the hack attempt and probably know which user account was running it. Then they’ll drag him to jail.”

  Amir laughed. “Good!”

  Jared opened his work laptop, launched Google Docs, and opened the file called “Wedding Music.”

  “Thanks for showing me,” Jared said. “Now I gotta work on this or I’m going to be in more trouble than your hacker-father.”

  Amir smiled and threw on his backpack. He bounced out of the classroom with his laptop under his arm.

  Deanna blew into the empty classroom like a whirling dervish—couple of bags, a purse, her coat over the arm. Jared reminded himself a few times a day that he was getting married. Deanna usually reminded him, actually, when asking about this or that detail. Planning was in full-force, all the time. His fiancée had lots of ideas. She sometimes even asked Jared’s opinion.

  “I can’t even,” she said, throwing herself down into a student chair. “You wouldn’t believe what I just saw.” He was looking down at his laptop, sorting song titles while browsing for more in an adjacent window. Jared was so socially uncomfortable, Deanna often asked if he’d prefer to spend the day with his laptop. There were days he would.

  He loved having Deanna around, though, and she loved being around. They didn’t always need or want interaction from each other. But he knew it was shit like this—and shit like his entrance to yesterday’s assembly—that was annoying to her. He sensed it.

  “Busy,” he said, eyes on the screen. “Some autocrat with a nice ass is making me go through old music for a wedding.”

  “Finish the list, bitch. Better be done when I see you after school.”

  “You mean nine forty-five.”

  “What?”

  Now he was looking up at her. “We have our first workshop with Albrecht at nine forty-five.”

  “Jesus. We just got back from break. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Yeah. I’m not the principal.” He gave her a look. She returned with a coy smirk.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what I just saw before I came in here?”

  “Yes, I forgot. Go ahead.”

  Deanna looked at the doorway and lowered her voice.

  “Mary-freaking-Edison…in the teacher’s room…standing…standing…on the window ledge, looking out the window.” Jared twitched.

  “God. Was she jumping?”

  “If she was trying to then it would have been the greatest fail in the history of suicide because all the windows were closed.”

  “Maybe cleaning?”

  “Jared—standing. She was standing like a statue in her big, long skirt and grandma shoes, staring out the window.”

  “Probably a good thing she had the long skirt up there.” She reached out and swung at his head. He buckled, laughing.

  “I don’t know about these people. Maybe I’m the one messed up. I just don’t fit into all this.” She got up and strolled toward the hallway.

  “How many years will you be saying that?” he asked.

  “Till I’m doing something else.”

  “Till you’ve been here long enough that you don’t feel that way anymore?”

  “No way, Jose.” She stopped at the door. “Ain’t gonna be my story. So, are we ditching this workshop today?”

  Jared paused. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Ugh. Really?”

  “Yeah. I have to go.”

  Deanna sighed. “See you there, I guess.” She was off.

  Jared slid down in his chair. He leaned forward and put his head into his hands. His desk buzzed. His cell phone was displaying a text notification from Doris Calhoun. He clicked into the group text.

  He’s here.

  TWELVE

  SCHOOL SECURITY OFFICER Arthur Moore walked back to the security de
sk and hit the buzzer for the front door. The light on the push bar turned green, and the waiting guest pulled it open. Moore had retirement on his mind and always tried to stay standing for as much of his shift as possible, even when not doing rounds. When assigned to the front desk, he’d wander a little from his station—stand at the back of the auditorium, watch whatever was going on in there. Sometimes he’d just hang in the doorways of the first-floor classrooms. He could hear the buzzer if a guest hit the button.

  All that was getting a bit boring, to tell the truth. He was temporarily reassigned to P.S. 21 from his usual post in “one of those” downtown schools. Officer Carmen, the regular front-end security guard at P.S. 21, was out on maternity leave. Moore was plucked from his downtown perch and dropped here, up in the sprawling part of the city known as The Heights, to share building duties with Officer Alexis, the other full-time guard at P.S. 21. Things moved much more quickly back downtown—lots of hellos and question after question from the helicopter parents in Carson’s burgeoning hipster part of town made the day fly by.

  Arthur Moore walked those very same downtown streets with a pistol in his pocket for protection in the 1970s. Amazing how far some investment by the big banks on the waterfront could go. After 9/11, many of the megacorporations in Manhattan suddenly fancied a more secure view of NYC from just across the Hudson River. The city of Carson was quick to cut some sweet deals on their decrepit waterfront and accept redevelopment pledges in return. Before you could bat an eye, there were skyscrapers reaching twenty and thirty stories into the air and cafes with outdoor dining. Flats became lofts, Needle Park became Freedom Park—and welcome to downtown Carson. You can walk little ones to school now; everything’s been repaved.

  Moore watched as the front door swung open and a man with a larger-than-average frame entered. He was over six feet, his hair was slicked back, and his clothing was prep-school neat—gray slacks, shirt and tie under a short-sleeve, V-neck sweater. He was wide and walked with a slight forward hunch. His pronounced brow and lumbering gait struck Moore as something Cro-Magnon. It was in odd dichotomy with his smart attire.