The Grimscribe's Puppets (20 page)

Try not to think about it, Max resolves this morning. Just turn the knob. Open the door.

Outside, perhaps six feet away, is the neighbor. He doesn’t look surprised to see Max. The man stands there with his ordinary face, giving Max all the time he wants to look back. How could this have been something to obsess over? Max notices the man’s right hand and arm, revealed by a short-sleeved dress shirt, are gruesomely scarred, disfigured by burns. The neighbor finally offers a nod.

Max proceeds toward the elevator, as he does every morning. Some robotic aspect of himself seeks the path easier than stairs, forgetting the elevator’s broken. It’s been broken for years. Some other part of Max reasserts control in time to redirect toward the stairs. Most days Max spends the drive to work thinking about these two minds within himself. The part that day after day seeks the elevator, despite years of futility. The lagging mechanism that recognizes, only slowly, stairs are his only option.

He drives the four miles to Portland’s industrial district and finds the entire Boaz Industries parking lot replaced by acres of fresh-poured concrete foundation. Tractors shift the earth. Cranes lift tilt-up walls as far as the eye can see. This abrupt transformation is unexpected, Max’s position in Boaz management making him privy to all upcoming projects. More than that, it’s impossible, weeks or months worth of construction labor completed in a single night’s darkness. It would take vast a workforce, not to mention organizational planning of the kind normally handled by Max’s own department. He’s heard no mention of this. Not a whisper.

Am I the only one out of the loop?
He wonders briefly, then extinguishes the thought. Implications too awful to consider.

Many employee cars are parked along Lorraine Street, though not nearly enough for Boaz’s six hundred employees. Max finds an opening across from the abandoned brick factory. The return walk takes him past flashing lights, police cars and ambulances surrounding three cloth-draped bodies on the median strip. Police officers regard him suspiciously. One scribbles Max’s license plate number.

The offices are so nearly vacant, Max checks his watch to make sure he hasn’t mistakenly come in on Saturday. A cluster of strangers murmur near the coffee dispensary. Others click away at desks. Overnight, the cubicle grid has been reduced by hundreds of workspaces, compressed into a much smaller area. The reclaimed area, bordering the steelworks floor, is blocked by an intimidating row of scaffolding covered in black fabric.

Max finds his desk in the usual corner of the grid, near Mr. Boaz’s office. At least this much hasn’t changed. He’s too distracted to focus on preparation for his early meeting. What’s going on behind the black scaffold? Plant expansion? He should’ve been in the loop.

Max commands his trembling hands to stop, clenches them into white-knuckled fists.

“Maxwell.” Boaz pops in, too short to be seen approaching beyond the partition.

Max jumps. “Meeting still on, sir?” He grips the seat of his chair with both hands.

“Always. Why wouldn’t it be?” Boaz plays the tips of square, stubby fingers against each other. “No time for second-guessing, Maxwell. What’s business without information?”

“True, sir.” Max concentrates on projecting a look of control, while inside he churns. Surrounding cubicles, though outfitted with computers and expensive ergonomic chairs, remain vacant. He’s alone in the Planning department. Someone’s making plans, just not Max or his team. “Where are my people? It’s after eight.”

“Retasked. Special projects.” Boaz looks down at his feet, despite the company’s mandatory eye contact policy, his own initiative. “Melt shop, most of them. Meeting at nine, as usual.” Boaz spins, retreats to his office in a flurry of tiny steps.

Though he doesn’t know who’ll be attending, having seen none of the management group this morning but himself and Boaz, Max processes the usual sixteen report copies.

Twenty-three minutes left. Still alone in the cube grid, apart from a few milling strangers. Heart pounding, Max picks up the phone, dials Cassandra.

“Everything’s changing here,” he whispers.

She exhales audibly. “Yes?”

“Construction, staff reorg. All my guys gone.” Max pauses. What has he called about?

“Max, I’m working!”

“The guys in the stairwell yesterday...” He trails off, aware she hates questions. She does this intentionally, overreacts so he’ll never question her about anything. “Last week, I saw those same two guys outside, loading something big, covered, into a truck. Maybe another of your scul.... Your furniture?”

“I told you, patrons. They’re taking several pieces.”

He regrets calling, but he’s already interrupted her. “I’m not going to tiptoe around this!” Max catches himself, his voice escalating in sudden urgency. “The truck had a DRG logo. Our competition, Dyno Resource Group. Boaz hates them. Hates. So if you’re using steel I bought you to make sculpture—”

“Furniture!”

He grits his teeth. “—Furniture, with Boaz steel, and selling it to Dyno which is Boaz’s bitterest enemy, he wouldn’t just be mad. I wouldn’t just get yelled at, or merely fired.”

“Oh?” Her amusement conveyed with perfect clarity. “What would he do?”

Visions of the apartment ablaze, a wild clashing inferno. Bodies gutted by the cronies Boaz hints at, but nobody ever sees. The two blackened dead lying there, blood sizzling in ashes.

She giggles.

Max slams down the phone.

~*~

On his way to the meeting, Max passes Boaz’s office at the very moment another taller man emerges. Preoccupied, Max doesn’t register at first that the man’s wearing short sleeves, forbidden at Boaz. Something familiar grabs his attention before Max is fully aware what it is. His neighbor. Those terrible burns. By the time Max looks back, the man’s gone around the end of the cubicle row. Curiosity urges Max to follow, but there’s no time. He races to the conference room. Empty. He sits, waiting quietly, alone.

“Not here!” Boaz stage-whispers from the doorway.

Max grabs the report packets and follows, past empty cubicles, inactive document centers, a vacant break room. Near the edge of the construction scaffold, Boaz stops and opens a janitorial closet. What’s this? Max hesitates, then enters the narrow supply closet. Boaz joins him and shuts the door. High shelves force Max into uncomfortable proximity with his boss. Boaz straddles an empty mop bucket. Max leans back against stacked toilet paper rolls, struggling to avoid encroaching on the man’s personal space. Boaz loses balance and almost falls. Max steadies him by the jacket lapels and Boaz ends up standing on Max’s foot.

“This is the meeting,” Max observes. This should be funny. So why this hollow ache in his stomach?

“Secrecy’s increasingly important. Stakes escalating.” Boaz’s lips narrow. “Gigantic things underway.”

“I see we’re scaling up for something but I—”

“I’m trying to bring you onboard, Max. Make you part of this.” Boaz leans in. “Just seeing if you’re up to it.”

Again Max wants to laugh, an urge quelled by the queasy hint of malign insanity. Every muscle tense, rigid with fear, as if in response to some looming threat. “With a major project underway, shouldn’t we have all hands? The brightest members of my team—”

“Yes, yes, but I have to weigh risks.” Boaz grips Max’s shoulders. “Our people, they’re good boys, most of them, but with the normal tendencies.” His lip curls as if in suppressed revulsion. “To resist radically new ideas.”

Max nods. What to say? “Acknowledging these concerns, sir, how can we ramp up, let alone service existing customers, without our human assets?” Maybe he’s overextending? He almost changes the subject. “Newton’s one our smartest guys, and loyal. And Palomar?”

Boaz seizes the doorknob without turning it. “They’re involved. Most of them, busy in the melt shop. Don’t worry, we’ll leverage everyone’s capabilities. This new thing, it transcends business. Like Manhattan Project, or Apollo. Changes everything!” Boaz wipes beads of oily sweat from his hairless scalp, then rubs slippery palms together. Finally he opens the door.

Returning to his desk, Max tries to calm down. He wants to manage this, take stock of facts. What might all this mean? He keeps feeling this new way of things is something he’ll never understand. That he’s being left out. Still oblivious, walking blindly toward... What?

He wants to call Cassandra. Probably she’s working. The thought makes him angry. Why should he play along with her pretense about furniture? These weird constructs of hers have nothing at all in common with the little tables and chairs she used to make. Next time this ridiculous notion of
furniture
comes up, he’ll force the issue. What exactly are you talking about? Tables, chairs? This makes him so angry. Everything disintegrating, both home and work.

The walls of the cubicle constrict. Max tries to focus on routine tasks, duties which always seemed intrinsically valuable. Yesterday’s priorities feel absurd, distant, faced with an office of empty desks, vacant but for a few loitering impostors. Vast overnight construction, undertaken without oversight by the management team. It’s too much. He’s too far outside the loop to see any way back in. One terrible thought keeps looping, like a broken record:
Maybe I’m left out
.

Max sits at his desk, mind racing, unaware and unconcerned that he appears to be doing absolutely nothing. At that moment someone walks past his cubicle opening. The short-sleeved man. No mistaking the burns this time. It’s Max’s neighbor! He passes, giving no hint of having seen Max, enters Boaz’s office, and shuts the door.

Max tries to stand, knees weak, and almost falls. It’s too much to comprehend. This mystery belonging unquestionably to home, the faceless always-aware neighbor, somehow colliding with this place. The whole world’s flipped. Boaz unrecognizable. Cassandra acting like his enemy. The new neighbor shows up here, today of all days?

Heart thudding, steadying himself against the desk, Max cranes to watch through Boaz’s window.

The man turns, sees Max. Expressionless, he flicks the blinds shut.

~*~

On his way up the stairs, Max tries to fortify his resolve. When did Cassandra’s lies begin? He can’t remember when things changed. Lately when their eyes meet, both of them know something’s broken.Before opening the door, he pauses, the way he always paused on his way out. He needs to confront her. Max takes measure of his emotions. Too angry. Too frustrated, ready to blow. Too raw, made vulnerable by his wanting. The love he still feels, though distorted and fragmented, exerts such force when he tries to deal with her. Cassandra. When he says the name, he still sees the face of the years-ago girl.

Max opens the door. The apartment’s quiet, no stereo blasting, no plasma sizzle. No smoke. Cassandra must be gone. He relaxes, slightly relieved, then hears shuffling papers. In the living room, she’s hurriedly piling design drawings. On top, she places a heavy art book.

He pretends not to notice. “No fires today.” Smiles feebly. Before she turns away, he sees her eyes. Dark circles, skin pale and transparent. “Wait, Cass. We have to talk, then I’ll leave you to it.”

Cassandra faces him, slump-shouldered. “Too much to do. We can eat something, if you want. Maybe around nine.” More than tired; she’s hollowed out. Just reaching for the torch, an obvious effort.

Max crosses the room. “No, we need to talk first.” He jerks the plasma unit’s plug from the outlet.

Instantly feral, she presses up in his face. “Do you realize how easily I could leave you?”

First he backs up, then stops himself, exhales. “I’ve supported your art. What you’re doing affects my career.”

She lunges for the plug. He sidesteps to block. She turns left, reverses right, and frustration boils over. Inchoate rage finds release in a wordless scream. She throws her glove across the room, storms out, slams the door.

Pulsing throb in Max’s temple. Breathing hard. First time she’s threatened to leave. He takes a look around, thinking it’s the first time he’s even been alone in their apartment. Such quiet. Dust motes hover in still air. He’s a stranger in his own place. An intruder. The urge to run, to flee home, pulls hard.

Her pile of drawings are weighed down under
La Poupée
, a book of Hans Bellmer’s surreal puppet photography. Eroticized constructs of mismatched doll parts. Inanimate sexual invitation meets body horror. Concealed under a few of Cassandra’s drawings, pencil sketches of the sort of furniture she used to make, are numerous professional engineering plans not in her hand. These resemble the weird, gangling structures she’s lately been assembling. The names and part numbers mean nothing to Max. One of the plans appears to dictate the assemblage of thousands of moderately-sized components into an enormous whole. An overview depicts a multi-leveled structure tapering from a broad base, each ladder-like rung narrower, something like the Eiffel Tower but vastly larger, judging by tiny human forms provided for scale. Could she really be building something, using steel Max purchased from Boaz, helping somebody assemble pieces into this sky ladder, whatever it is? What if it involves Dyno Resource Group?

At the top of one code-like text document, the name: DIAMOND DUST PROJECT.

A nightmare, like waking up buried under suffocating weight. Too hard to breathe. One dark revelation after another. Level after level of secrecy. At home, at work. Sickness manifesting in her eyes. Cassandra always mentioned a plan. A way out of this apartment. A better future. She never mentioned becoming a cog in some secret machine.

The front door clicks, squeaks open. Max flips back the papers, replaces the Bellmer puppet book, and stands away. Cassandra enters from the hallway. She looks at him. Says nothing.

His chance to speak. How often has he resolved to force some issue? Each decision to bring matters to a head trails off somehow, ends in nothing. An intolerable status quo extends, on and on, his concerns swept aside whether or not he uttered them. Max wants to scream, somehow break through her impenetrability. He’s part of the problem, he knows. Inertia, passivity, when it comes to her, at least. Unwillingness to cut free, even from something he’s no longer sure he desires.