Shimmer (32 page)

This was not guilt-ridden or scared. This was not giddy or fun. In those moments, we had safety.

Safety. Safe. Complete.

Please don't let this go.

I held on to Whitley now. Silent in the dim light of my office. Silent here on the couch where I'd spent all these years trying to sleep.

I had nothing to say. She had nothing either. Even though, all day, we had talked to one another—about the stock, Regence, survival. Even though we'd been working together since six
A.M
. Even though we knew each other so well. We had nothing to say.

Safety.

No one wanted to admit that the party should be canceled. The lobby was full again, the mezzanines crowded with a few hundred people from inside and outside the company. The music rolling upward from the lobby, circling in the darkness above everyone's heads.

But, really, we shouldn't have been here.

It was nine o'clock on a Friday. People arriving through the building's front doors. And people coming down from upstairs. Working late on this Friday like every Friday.

I could not find Perry, like me usually a bystander at these parties. I called him, then e-mailed him from my phone, but there was no response.

I sat with Cliff now, the two of us quiet. Cliff in a chair with his feet against a table, legs bent, arms wrapped tightly around his knees, hands firmly under his arms, captured as he gnawed his lip, tapped his teeth. Clearly grinding numbers in his mind. Unable to stop. Cliff with his own internal model of the finances of the company. A model that, like the shadow network, was changing impossibly fast. The two of us had talked very little tonight. Both of us knew we had to be at the party. But neither of us wanted to talk to anyone. And so we'd been sitting silently, watching the party in motion in front of us.

In some ways it seemed that the people had come to the party because they wanted to watch. To see. Outsiders, I think they came to see if it was true. To see if Core really was threatened. The people who worked here, I think they came to watch people from other departments, to see if they looked different or the same.

But ultimately, everyone came to see if this, this company and everything they'd put into it, was still real.

There were people who drank too much. There were people who cried. There were people who got angry, who argued with friends and coworkers, who yelled at their managers, who left in anger. But most people just stayed. Just stayed at the party. Smiled some, laughed. Stayed close to their friends.

“I'm going to have to give you some more numbers,” Cliff said, not
looking at me. It was the first time we'd spoken in nearly an hour. When I turned to him, I saw he was still gnawing his lip, still sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees. His position had barely changed all night.

“Numbers,” I said.

“More,” he said.

In a moment, I realized and said to him, “Okay.”

“They'll have to be let go immediately,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“Another two hundred?”

He nodded.

“Okay,” I said.

He was still nodding, still tapping his teeth, still gnawing his lip.

The noise in the room was rising, a blurry, wooden sound, louder now, but muffled, distant, tired.

“I'm sorry,” he said.

“No,” I said carefully. “Don't be.”

“I wish,” he said, then stopped. Nodding. “I wish I could see another way.”

“There isn't one,” I said.

“I wish I hadn't let this happen,” he said.

I sat forward. Turning to him. Pushing my hand across my face, wanting to sink in my chair, wanting to melt away. Because it was a conversation I'd had with Julie two days earlier, with Whitley that morning. “You didn't cause this,” I said. “There was nothing you could have done.”

He nodded slowly.

“Cliff,” I said, “there's no one to blame but me.”

He nodded. And for the first time he moved his arms, his body. Leaning forward. Slowly picking up his drink, a light-brown fluid looking warm and pale. He took a small sip. Nodding again. He sat back, once more finding his familiar position, hunched up and staring, though now with a warm drink in his hand.

“It's not,” I said, starting, then stopping. Waiting a moment. “It's not your fault,” I said.

He nodded. Slowly. We were quiet for a minute, the party rolling on in front of us. Then he tapped me on the arm. “It'll probably be three hundred,” he said.

There were people who drank too much. There were people who cried. But still, a few hundred people were here at midnight. Standing close to one another. Smiling, laughing some. Staying close to their friends.

I found myself standing. Walking along the edges of the group. Cliff still sitting in his chair, still wrapped up tight.

I couldn't find Perry. Hadn't heard from him in days. Hadn't seen him in a few weeks.

Leonard wasn't here. Leonard was still upstairs.

I moved along the edges of the crowd, the noise, the groups of people. People who looked so tired. And worn. And sad.

And I found myself near the door. The main entrance from the street. The street I hadn't been on in so many months.

Whitley was beside me. Saying something that was nothing. Talking briefly, standing next to me, saying words, and I spoke back for a moment, and we stood there, looking toward the door, and what I wanted was for her to hold me.

There was dancing, midnight, then one o'clock, and I was still moving along the edges, from first floor to mezzanine, sometimes finding Whitley, or she would find me, and we'd talk nothing words again, and stay beside each other as long as it would look okay.

And Julie found me now, and pulled my arm, and said only, “Dance.” I was with her, and walking into the group now, and not dancing, but Julie smiled, and said, “Dance,” and so I followed her. Into the noise. The people. The talking. Motion.

And people touched me now. They touched me on the arm. They touched me on the shoulder. I thought they were joking, some joke orchestrated by Julie, who still pulled me through the crowd. But there was no joking. There was just each touch. Sometimes they said
words, things I couldn't hear, the music rising, turning, falling onto itself again. But I could see what they were saying. They were saying we would make it. They were saying they would not give up.

They were saying they didn't blame me.

I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept.

They said they didn't blame me.

I followed Julie, I saw Cliff in his seat, I felt Whitley next to me for a moment in the crowd, I wished Leonard was not still working. I wished so much that I could find Perry. I wished so much that I could see my cousin, Trevor.

They didn't blame me.

They didn't blame me.

And I circled. I followed Julie. Saw Cliff. Watched Whitley near me again. Felt each person touch me. And wished I could touch each one of them.

They didn't blame me.

They only should have.

“Lie down here,” I said.

“Here?”

“Lie down quietly. Next to me.”

“Next to you.”

Half dressed, next to me. A face I didn't know. A body I'd never touched.

“Don't move,” I said. “Don't touch. Just lie there. Still.”

“Don't touch.”

“Don't move.”

“Okay.”

Whitley out of town. But, even then, Whitley wasn't this. This was something else.

“Lie here. Still. And pretend.”

“Pretend.”

In my mind I was thinking just one thing.

“Pretend you're staying.”

“How?”

Repeating in my mind.

“Just pretend.”

“Okay.”

Over and again.

“Quietly. Pretend you're staying. Pretend you live here.”

“Okay.”

Trying to stop it but it wouldn't.

“Pretend you're staying. Pretend you're happy.”

“Okay.”

This is what I needed.

This is all I'd had.

This is what had kept me sane.

“Pretend you're happy.”

“Are you crying?”

And this could only stop if I were free of Core.

“Pretend you're happy. Pretend you love me.”

Repeating it. Over and again.

This can only stop if I am free.

He feels like he has disappeared.

He can't remember when it happened. But now he knows he's disappeared. From the world of the people around him, the rooms he is in, the computers and phones he touches all day.

He moves through it all, watched and watching and not really there.

Not really here.

He thinks it will end, this life. He thinks it all is moving toward an end. But he can't see that end. He can't tell when it will come.

And he doesn't know what it means for it to end.

Why would a company find itself having meaning?

How could work, a job, turn into such a place?

Core is his life.

What a silly thing to realize.

There are moments of slowness in the best parts of his day. A stillness in the fray. Over the phone, in a darkened office, in a conference room. There is stillness.

And there is a waiting, people looking at him and waiting. Waiting for what he will do or say.

And there is arrogance in this. There is.

He's never really cared enough about grace. About what it means to everyone else.

There is arrogance, and presence, and aura, and waiting, and watching, and hoping, hoping that he will have an answer for others

There should be a better way.

In the dark, in the night, awake, looking up.

There should be a better way.

It was hard to take him seriously. Some brightly mysterious man talking circles in my ear.

“You answer your own phone,” the man said, his English accent very narrow and distant.

“Who is this?” I asked absently.

“You answer your own phone,” the man said again.

“Usually,” I said, phone held away from my mouth. “Although sometimes I just let it ring and ring. Who is this?”

I was staring at Shimmer.

“I assume this phone line is secure,” the man said.

“Secure enough. Who is this?” I asked, barely paying attention to the call. Not sure why I continued to listen. Yet somehow finding comfort in the annoyance of his overly enigmatic tone.

“A package has just been delivered to your assistant,” he said.

I was staring at the spreadsheet. Counting up programs to cut. Efforts to end.

People to fire.

“This package contains a very important gift.”

“Gifts are nice. Who is this?”

“What do you think this gift is, Mr. Case?”

“A letter bomb, maybe?”

He did not respond. I thought I could hear him mumble a question, maybe to someone else in the room.

This was a man without any sense of irony.

“Who is this?” I asked, annoyed and absent and yet surprisingly happy to let this call go on forever.

“This package contains a very important item,” he said, apparently having decided it was best to ignore my comments, his voice already regaining its lulling rhythm, seeming to return to a predefined script. “It contains an address. A hangar number.”

I smiled slightly. “A hangar? You're sending a plane for me? I don't even know you.”

I turned back to my computer now, e-mailing my assistant.
Call SWAT. Ask them who this caller is.

Paranoia or curiosity, I'd never decided which, but for the past two years all of my incoming calls had been traced, even those that tried to be untraceable.

He spoke. “You will fly without your entourage.”

“I don't have an entourage,” I said.

“You will fly alone.”

“I don't have an entourage.”

“I am instructed to tell you that you must come alone.”

“You're dwelling on that, which is interesting to me,” I said, for the first time taking my eyes off my computer. Glancing now toward the windows around me, the sky that seemed to have been there, around me, for days, unbroken. When had it last been night?

“I am instructed to ask that you come with an open mind.”

Salaries, benefits, day care.

All would be cut.

“Where am I going?” I asked.

“To a meeting.”

“About?”

“I cannot say.”

“With whom?”

“I cannot say.”

“Where?”

“To a place where all your questions will be answered,” he said warmly, simply, and I imagined him shrugging, confident in the finality of his words.

“Who is this?”

“Again, I have been instructed not to say.”

“What?”

“Are you able to do this, Mr. Case?”