The Consultant

by Sean Oliver

  Mariana went back to the form, waving a hand at the principal’s door.

  “Two, I think,” she said.

  “Then put two. We gotta have room for sixty of each—kids and us. Plus boxes.”

  “We’ll fit on two buses.” She wrote it on the form and moved to the next part. She stuck out her hand toward Lorenzo.

  “I just need the roster and I can submit this.” He stuck a couple of sheets in her hand and she paper clipped them to the bus forms on her desk. She slid her chair to a file cabinet beside her desk and retrieved an interoffice envelope. She stuffed it, tied it closed with the red string on the flap, and dropped it in a bin on the front counter.

  “What is this trip being called?” Lorenzo asked.

  “Overnight Leadership Camp.”

  “Where’s our staffing at now?”

  “Just got down to sixty,” Mariana said as she turned back to her paperwork.

  “Counting leaves of absence?”

  “She’s gone. We’re good now. Sixty.”

  Lorenzo nodded and went back to his desktop. They worked in silence for a while.

  “You got everything sorted out?” Lorenzo asked.

  They didn’t speak while teachers came in and out, checking mailboxes and circulating paperwork. Some threw an occasional Hi at Lorenzo and Mariana, which was returned. No one on the other side of the counter would be able to sense the tension in the room. But it was crushing Mariana.

  For months she’d been deflecting questions from Lorenzo about a future between them. Though she didn’t let on, she knew there would be one. Lorenzo was vocal about having her to himself one day, despite her husband and kids. But Mariana was staying hard until she sorted this out in her head. Now, those vague instincts about her future seemed to have a date attached to them.

  April 5th.

  When she saw Lorenzo, she thought about the date. When her husband Eddie talked about planning their annual summer vacation, Mariana literally could not think about dates, places, or anything that came up. She feigned a migraine and went to bed. When she forced herself to focus intently on flights and dates for the vacation, she only thought of April 5th. She almost said it a handful of times when Eddie proposed different weeks for the trip. April 5th was everything.

  In the office, she stayed distant and professional with Lorenzo. She still was at war with her feelings, and this tingle was taking control and shoving her toward him.

  “And you?” Mariana finally replied. “You sorted out?”

  “I’ve been waiting for this. For you.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, never looking up from her work. “What about your mother?”

  “My brother can handle it.”

  “From Miami?”

  “He can move.”

  She chuckled. “You go to the bank yet?” He stared at her blankly. “You ain’t got shit sorted out, tigresito.”

  “It’s gonna be fine, Mari. Everything is going to be fine now.”

  “Can you go to the session today?” Mariana asked. One of them always needed to watch the office, so they alternated taking Albrecht’s workshops. While Mariana watched the office, Lorenzo would go down to the library that day and get Albrecht’s instructions for the April 5th field trip.

  SIXTY-THREE

  JARED KEPT FEELING his chest, checking the microphone taped along the back of the button seam of his flannel shirt. It was untucked at the waist so the wire could travel out the bottom of his shirt and into the iPhone in his pocket, undetected.

  He stood alone in the classroom before heading downstairs to the library for Albrecht’s session. The tingles were starting and he knew the Smoke would be flooding him, competing for control of his mind. He needed to start that recording right then, in the classroom. He slid the phone out, opened the recording app, and hit a red button. The counter started—he was rolling.

  He opened the closet door and checked the full-length mirror on the inside. The shirt looked fine, nothing was noticeable. He’d wound the cord taut and bound it with a bread tie. There was no slack to drop out of the shirt and dangle—it ran right out the bottom of his shirt and into his pocket to the phone. He was set.

  He headed downstairs and into the basement. The teachers attending the session were milling about, talking in groups, not yet settled. He wanted to get into a seat, position his body and legs, and try not to move for the next two hours.

  He exchanged a couple of hellos and found a seat. Doris Calhoun emerged from somewhere in the rear of the room and called everyone to order.

  “Okay, folks, let’s get started.” The groups splintered and found seats. Elias Albrecht walked to the center of the room holding a thick, blue binder. Calhoun was beside him holding a plastic basket, into which her students likely dropped assignments on their way out. She probably had ten baskets just like that, all color coded by grade level or something. They both waited for the room to quiet.

  “Good morning,” Albrecht started. “Before I share some exciting details, Ms. Calhoun has something to say.” He stepped aside and offered her the floor. She waddled into the circle.

  “Our work together is centered on a better tomorrow and we will be doing it without the interference of technology and influence of misleading media. Part of our journey to the hacienda will be the cutting of all our cords. You are probably freeing yourselves of ties in your personal lives already, and the next step is to let go of those little things you all have in your pockets.” Jared went cold.

  Calhoun smiled and looked around the room, where most of the teachers were smiling, as well. She extended the basket and walked first to Alan Sweeney, the investment banker turned teacher post-9/11.

  “Now?” he asked, to laughter in the room.

  “Let’s go, buddy,” Calhoun said.

  She was standing two seats from Jared. Was she serious? People were laughing, but they were also taking out their phones. Sweeney pulled out his phone but hesitated.

  “Ms. Calhoun, that’s like taking his thumb,” someone joked from the other side of the circle, getting more laughter.

  “Worse,” Sweeney said. “I may not be able to breathe.”

  Calhoun turned to the group, smiling along with them.

  “And this is exactly the reason we are going to do this,” she said. “This is going to be a big part of our message to our students. This is what’s to come…so we should start getting ready now.” She turned back to Sweeney who reluctantly dropped his phone in the basket.

  Calhoun stepped to the next teacher, now one seat from Jared. The young lady dropped the phone in the basket and waved bye to it, pouting her bottom lip. Calhoun moved to Jared and looked at him expectantly.

  “I left it in my desk,” he said. Calhoun kept staring at him in disbelief.

  “Should I frisk you?” she asked.

  “I’m engaged.” The room erupted in laughter. That deflated Calhoun, who scowled, then moved to the next staff member.

  All the teachers were playfully compliant and it took just a minute for Calhoun to do the whole circle.

  “All your pacifiers will be in the book cart by the door,” she said. “Grab yours when you leave.”

  “Now?” Sweeney joked. Albrecht smiled and took his place in the center of the circle.

  “Self-control is a powerful quality,” he said. “You’ll be better off for having modeled some for your student of choice. You did decide on one, right?” He looked around and the group seemed to all be nodding.

  I guess I chose Amir. It explained the random thoughts about Jared’s star student during last week’s session.

  Albrecht raised the thick blue binder.

  “This,” he began, pausing for effect, “is the hacienda. This is our trip.” He held it against his chest and displayed it for the group. He flipped through some pages—all of which were in clear, plastic sleeves. There were photos of cabins and of expansive fields. It was all in thick woods, from what could be seen. “Everything is here, ready for us and our leaders of
tomorrow.”

  He kept flipping and pacing the circle so everyone could see some of the photos. There were beds in the sparsely furnished cabins. There was a decent size kitchen area, pots and pans stacked on a long counter, looking like they’d just been unboxed. Three cafeteria workers sitting in the circle pointed excitedly when he flipped to that page.

  “Very private,” he said. “Very secluded. Minimal resources. But we will have the best people with us.”

  As Jared looked at the photos, the Smoke began to take him. Fighting it had become harder by the day. But he knew this feeling would come. He’d started recording while still up in the classroom for this reason.

  Music began playing from right by Jared, and people looked around in his direction. It was his phone that wasn’t supposed to be there, receiving a call, and the shock blasted him out of his struggle with the Smoke. It played the Darth Vader march—his ring tone for Deanna. All eyes in the circle were on him now.

  Andy didn’t bother wiping his eyes anymore, they hurt too much. Tears had run down his face for the better part of the past twelve hours and from the scene that day it didn’t seem they would be stopping anytime soon. He’d gone back and forth from Carmen’s room to the waiting room all day long, taking intermittent inventory of his thoughts and life while in each. When things got too crazy and he couldn’t think straight in the hospital room, he’d wander off to clear his head down the hall. He’d sit, pace the room, and get angry at distractions like the daytime court shows playing on the TV overhead or people who just talked too fucking loud.

  He didn’t want to talk to anyone. He avoided the doctors and nurses on the floor, all of who at least flashed a sympathetic smile his way. He just didn’t want to deal with any of them. He needed to deal with what was happening inside himself, try to get a handle on the past day. If he could just be alone somewhere he could think. He could address the vacancy in his chest, the feeling that he’d never feel whole again, and might never stop crying because of it.

  But he was starting to realize that it didn’t matter in which room he sat or how much distraction surrounded him. He was trying to get his mind to patch a hole that opened in his soul when he saw his lifeless baby stillborn that morning. She was beautiful—peaceful and seemingly asleep in the nurse’s hand. He and Carmen knew what was coming. But despite all preparation and prayer, he became someone else when he saw her.

  Gorgeous, blameless her. The second he saw his baby without a name, something had reached down from high above and grabbed every organ in his chest and tore them right up and out through his mouth. How is anyone as they once were, after those two seconds?

  He blamed the myriad things around him as sufficient distraction to head back down the hall to Carmen’s room again. Maybe solace arrived for her. He pushed himself off the plastic couch and watched his feet move him down the corridor, scuffing along the shiny, varnished tiles. The tiles went dark when he entered Carmen’s room. She still had the lights off and was lying on her side looking across the room, out toward the downtown Carson skyline.

  “Why don’t you sit, Andy?” she said, never turning. She was so still—completely internal since pushing what she knew was already gone from her body. She’d been lost in her thoughts for hours. The chaos of last night—the pain, the rushing to the hospital, the absence of a heartbeat—was a tornado. Then, the bloody epilogue, and still nothing from Carmen. This midmorning stillness left everything to be examined and experienced over and over.

  “I can’t,” he said.

  He read the dry-erase board announcing the on-duty nurses for the tenth time. He leaned on the wall and ran his eyes around the room.

  How was there still nothing? How was she neither sad nor angry? Was she in pain? Didn’t seem so. There was nothing.

  Carmen had moments in the last couple of months where she’d seemed distracted and dispassionate. Andy thought it was all part of the pregnancy as the due date came more and more into focus. But in the crisis that began last night the moment Carmen said something was wrong, through the grueling delivery of a baby that everyone in the room knew was dead, Carmen showed nothing.

  Andy thought he’d combust with grief and needed to cry with his wife. But she didn’t. She had this Zen-like placidity that softened her voice and kept her an inch from a smile. It further ripped at Andy.

  He made his way to her bedside and she kept her eyes out the window. He knelt beside her, pulling himself into her line of sight. She turned her eyes to him.

  “Baby, we can try again,” he said and smiled as more tears streamed down his round, stubbly cheeks. “We did everything right. It’s just one of those things.”

  She smiled and nodded at him as she reached out and stroked his cheek. She had an expression like she knew better.

  SIXTY-FOUR

  HE’D GOTTEN SHIT on the recording. Jared was forced to unplug the microphone before recording the directives about student selections and packing boxes of clothing to pre-load on the buses.

  He raised his hand apologetically, stood, and walked to the red basket by the door. He kept his hand in his pocket, grabbing for his phone but also secretly unplugging the microphone jack. He dropped the phone in the bucket and turned back to the group, his heart still galloping. He stood for a moment and watched the circle—some looking at him, some turning back to Albrecht, who was watching Jared from the center of the circle and waving him back to the group. Reluctantly, Jared walked to his seat, rejoined Albrecht’s circle, and sat through the session cast as the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

  This FBI-informant game was over as quickly as it started. He’d text Deanna and tell her the plan wasn’t going to work. He might be able to try and hide the phone during the next session and make sure the damn thing was muted. But they’d be watching him like a hawk.

  He sat there in the library as the session wound down, holding a permission slip for an overnight leadership camp, sweating from fighting off the Smoke. He was to choose one exceptional child and have their parents sign the slip allowing the student to go to the overnight camp on April 5th. Unbeknownst to the parents who signed the form, they would not have their child returned. Each teacher chose one student. That made for sixty staff members, and sixty students.

  Jared looked at his permission slip. He’d decided on Amir, though he was thinking about crumpling it up and dropping the paper right there in the room. But he didn’t think his arms were even strong enough to crinkle the sheet. Fighting off the Smoke had become uncomfortable. It was now like defying something natural for the body, like sleep or taking a leak. His body was begging for something, and it would be soothed upon Jared’s submission.

  But he knew the times he’d allowed the Smoke to take him saw him do things outside his ordinary character. Though his body ached for it, he did not allow the warm tingle to flush through him and blank his mind there in the library. He wanted control.

  How free and clear he felt when it took him, though.

  As the session ended and the room broke apart, Jared forced himself up and started over to the basket to retrieve his phone. From the corner of his eye he saw Calhoun watching him struggle a bit to move. She knew why.

  The teachers were quiet as they got their phones—everyone seemed to be going along with the plan. They’d all choose one student, give them the permission slip, pack their own clothing and bring some boxes in to stack in the library for the field trip.

  “Jared,” Albrecht called from across the room. He was leaning on a chest-high bookshelf, holding up Jared’s phone. Jared didn’t see him take it from the basket. Jared headed over, eyeing Albrecht with caution. Realistically, what the hell was he going to do right there in the library? Some teachers were still by the doorway. They’d be witnesses.

  Jared got to Albrecht who held on to the phone as Jared stood across from him.

  “Seems there is still an certain affair planned for July at the East Bergen Country Club,” Albrecht said. “I wonder why that is.” He wa
ited, giving Jared an opportunity to reply. Nothing came, just a shrug and shake of the head.

  Calhoun appeared to Jared’s right.

  “The feeling you fight—it’s going to win,” she said. “It’s not only going to win, but it will be you entirely. This is why you’re here, Jared.”

  “Starting to think I should have transferred,” Jared said.

  “No, no,” Calhoun said. “Not here, as in the school—but here. You’re running from the very reason you took your first breath.”

  “The fact that you still have a wedding reserved for July is disconcerting,” Albrecht said. “You won’t be here in July. And you know that.”

  “We need you,” Calhoun said. “The children need you.” She stepped closer.

  “What role does she really have in your life?” Albrecht asked as Jared looked up at him. “I know that’s a hard question, but here we are, late in the game. So please listen to the voice inside you.”

  “Let go,” Calhoun said.

  He was ready to drop. His legs were rubbery and his muscles ached like he was running a fever. Jared knew he wasn’t sick, but fighting for the past hour in the session left him feeling like he had the flu. He put his head down.

  “It hurts,” he said to his shoes.

  “Then stop fighting,” Albrecht said. “When you feel it again, let it come in. It will take all that pain away. You’ll be free, Jared.”

  If he hurt enough, eventually he would take the relief. That’s what Jared assumed was happening inside him.

  He was misting up, getting upset by the predicament his body had put itself in. He realized for the first time he was about to cease existing. He reached over and slid his phone out of Albrecht’s hand. He turned for the door and headed out. He was leaving without a recording. He wanted to run and not stop, but his legs could hardly move.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  DEANNA WAS AWARE that she and Jared had sat through dinner without saying more than a word or two to each other. She was also well aware that it was mostly her fault. Since finding the article about the Circle of Tomorrow, she hadn’t been able to open up to Jared. There was still too much that she didn’t understand, and that he didn’t understand.