Shimmer (36 page)

“Yes,” I said.

“All of the shadow network. And all of your stock,” he said. “Everything you have.”

“Yes,” I said.

“But if you do it,” he said, “I think it will work.”

And I followed Shimmer as it moved, drifting, building images on the screen. All the pieces, every piece of my shadow network. Each being folded into Core's main systems. The shadow network brought in, no longer separate, now made part of the company. We would expand the capacity of Core Communications twenty to thirty times over. We would bring in the Fadowsky Formula, using it to speed up everything we did. And no one else in the world would have so many satellites, so many mainframes, so many facilities. No one else would be able to work with as many customers as Core. Even Regence would have just a fraction of our abilities.

And it could all be done in just a few weeks.

“Everything,” Perry said. “Every machine, every person, every dollar. You give up everything.”

I watched Shimmer, tunneling down, seeing farther into each piece, each place, each connection I'd built. I closed my eyes. For that moment it seemed that I was actually asleep. A full and rested and wonderful sleep. I said it again. “Yes.”

“I can help you do it,” he said.

I felt myself nodding. Eyes open again. But still in that place, a place like sleep, like rest, so quiet and warm and simple and real. “Thank you,” I said.

“Is there anything more?” he asked. “Anything that Shimmer has not seen?”

I shook my head. I was smiling now, and I reached my hand out to Perry, held his shoulder, staring at the screen. “There's nothing else. Just this. And all of it, all of it can be given to the company.”

He was nodding now, smiling just slightly. But looking at me. “Are you okay?” he asked.

I said it and heard it and saw the words like they were painting themselves across the screen, joining the images of the shadow network as they folded back into Core, Shimmer bringing together these systems and plans and hidden lies and secret places and all of it going back, given up, pulled away from me, and the words I'd said or was about to say or had thought and only now realized hadn't been said aloud, the words circled through me and through Perry and across the screen holding the answer. My answer. My end.

The way to make it work.

“I am wonderful.”

There is the annual meeting then. Held in the tall lobby of our building. Two thousand people jammed into every space. A meeting where the rehiring of all our former employees is announced. A meeting where the senior staff honors everyone in the company for incorporating the now public Fadowsky Formula in just a few weeks. A meeting where we welcome our new sales team from a recently purchased company in Omaha.

A meeting where I announce my resignation.

Without the shadow network, there was no reason for me to stay. That had been my job. And my job was done.

Whitley, of course, the new CEO.

There is a party, then, in that same lobby, these people once more happy, once more focused, once more finding a silly joy in it all.

Fadowsky's revelation of a solution to his formula had assured that the stock would be worth much less than ever before. But the company was profitable, sales were good, our client base grew. Because of the shadow network now folded back into the company. Because of
Shimmer now looking at everything we did. Because of the people who'd been here for so long.

But those aren't criteria for a rapidly growing stock.

Grace is reached. But it amounts to far less than had been anticipated.

No one seems to complain much, though.

The people still dancing, turning, shooting toothpicks through the lobby of Core Communications.

I play putt-putt each day during my final month.

I hold transition meetings in the walkways of the building, moving from floor to floor as I pass off everything I know.

I sleep, every night, from ten till morning. Unbroken and full. Sleeping. Sleep.

And so, in the end, I do walk away from Core Communications. Just as my model, my spreadsheets and plans and Shimmer had all foretold.

But I don't walk away with millions. Instead I walk away with nothing.

Nothing except two years of bills to a New York City escort service. A not inconsiderable sum.

Regence continues to compete against Core. But given that its speeds are no different than ours, few companies are interested in signing up with Regence. Says one financial analyst, “No one much likes them, so customers seem to be saying, ‘Why work with them if you don't have to?'”

Hardly anyone has claimed to be my mother or father in weeks. Those letters that do straggle in are clearly from people who just aren't in the know.

And yet even those that do come, I throw them away. Unread. These images of a life other than mine. These images of a father who would know what I had done. Some way to believe that maybe this— this work and this life and this lie I'd made for myself—maybe it was all just some small and temporary mistake.

It wasn't small. But it is over.

The last of my stock sold to increase the shadow network even more. The shadow network all moved back into the company. All as Perry had described. All done under the cover of Shimmer. The secrets I had always kept track of within Shimmer were now revealed. More capacity, more equipment, than had ever been made clear.

“It makes sense now,” Leonard said.

And Cliff said.

And Julie said it too.

Only Whitley simply stared at me. Smiling slightly. Saying nothing.

And days after I announce my resignation, I start to tell the senior staff the truth. Sitting at a table, Monday morning in what is about to become Whitley's office. All of us pulled up to the new low table she's moved into the room, all of us sitting near the ground in our children's chairs, and I want to tell them the truth. Tell them about the shadow network. My lies. Tell them I am broke. Tell them all the lying is, now, over.

But I don't.

I've taken three years of their lives already. Telling them that all of it had been built on a lie, that would only make them feel like the three years were simply stolen from them.

Really, I'd only have told them to ease my conscience. To receive forgiveness.

And that's not fair to them.

Leonard can look at me for the first time in months. Cliff looks lighter and still and not ready to vomit. Julie no longer seems ready to crush every item within her reach. And Whitley doesn't smoke those invisible cigarettes.

And all of that makes me feel good.

Leonard can look at me again. I shake his hand. I say good-bye. I hold him for just a moment.

Cliff tells me he is going home. At five. Going home, to sleep and eat and play with his kids.

Julie just smiles. She is the shy one, really. And so she just smiles.

And Whitley, she has moved to a new apartment. Has left her marriage.
I see her on a weekend. Dinner, and a movie, and what else we do not know.

Except we know we will see each other soon.

She will need to know the truth, I realize. I'll tell her. Not for forgiveness. Or to ease my conscience.

But because I love her.

In those last days before I leave, I try to find Perry. But of course I can't. His office is cleared out. The lights on, brightness flooding his once darkened chamber, and it seems for a second that maybe he hasn't ever been there at all. Sunlight shining through four large windows along the wall.

I'd never known his office even had windows.

And as I walk into the street in front of the Core building on that last day, I hear it and know it before I even look.
Trevor,
on my phone, calling me now from I don't know where. But calling me.

The phone rings again. The letters blink on the screen, then blink again.

Trevor.

I haven't spoken to him in months.

I finally answer.

I have to answer.

“I have an idea,” he says.

“Why more ideas?” I ask. I look up, toward the sky, far up above the buildings. “You're a rich man.”

“Not really,” he said. “All I have left is some shares of Core Communications stock.”

“I thought you sold it all.”

“I did,” he says. “But then I had to buy it back. Buy it, sell it, and keep the stock price up.”

And I was smiling.

“It seemed,” he says, “like you probably needed a little more time.”

And I am smiling, shaking my head, smiling because Trevor has given up everything too.

“And so I have an idea,” I hear him saying.

“No ideas,” I remember saying.

“But do you want to hear it?” he asks.

“No lies,” I remember saying.

“Can I tell you about it?” he asks.

“I don't even have a place to live,” I say.

“It's a very simple idea,” he says.

“But I'm asking you,” I say, “can you do anything without lies?”

“So you will listen to the idea?”

And I can only shake my head, saying again, “No lies.”

“I'll try,” he says.

“Please,” I say.

“No lies,” he says.

“Are you sure?”

“Actually,” he says slowly, easily, voice near the phone, “actually, I am.”

“Where are you?” I ask him.

His voice goes distant, then close as he speaks, somehow circling through the phone, and I picture him walking through an airport, then sitting in a hotel, then entering an office building, then leaving a conference room, then another building, then another plane, and his voice is quiet now, and I smile some as I replay his words.

“I don't know, Robbie,” he says. “I don't even know what country I'm in.”

“Maybe I can try to find Perry,” I say.

“I already did. He's already there. Down the street. There's a building. And we're waiting for you.”