Brainstorm Read online

  He screamed another, “NO!” as he kept trying to open the door. He was beyond desperation now. If there was such a reaction. He could feel himself being weighed down by all the voices inside. More were rushing inside. Every time he opened his mouth to shriek. To shout “no.” The noise of which rattled his teeth and hurt his ears.

  He yanked and he pulled on the door handle. He tried to twist it so fiercely that he could feel something give in his wrist. But he wouldn’t let go. Wouldn’t stop or give up. And just as he was about to collapse. As he was about to succumb to the shrieks inside him that were cutting off his breathing. As the darkness surrounding him was about to become his darkness, he gave one super-human pull. A desperate jerk on the handle without any sense of what he was doing. With the illogical notion that a locked door could be opened if only you tried hard enough. His instinct was to escape this terror. His terror battling with his logic. With his last hopeless twist, when he pulled on the handle, it and the locking mechanism to which it was attached came away suddenly. In his hand. He fell backwards onto the floor. The door handle, the lock mechanism and shreds of the door clutched in his grip. And what had been the edge of the door was now a ripped hole as if the Jaws of Life had cleaved it apart.

  A beam of light, as bright as a CO2 laser beam, came through the opening. It blinded him and he had to look away. And as suddenly has the handle had broken free of the door, so did the voices begin to vanish until they were one last chorus of shrieks. Descending. Dropping down into the stairwell dark. And as they did so, one floor at a time like they were being sucked into a black hole, the lights in the stairwell came on again. The widows displayed the morning light. And Connie took a deep breath as if he had just come up for air.

  The door slowly creaked opened, letting in more light. Natural light now. He glanced at his hand and mechanism. His fingers still tightly around the hunk of metal and brass that had been the door handle. Scraps of the metal door were attached to it. For like all the doors in the stairwell, it was a fire door. And like all fire doors, it was made of steel.

  He stared for several minutes at the metal in his hand. Unable to let go. Wanting to do so as if it were burning his skin.

  What the hell! he thought. What the fucking hell!

  Like it was a putrid piece of human flesh, he suddenly flung the mass of metal away. It hit the floor with a thud. A real thud.

  He looked at the jagged hole in the door. At what was left of the door handle. This was no episode. No insane imagining. This was real.

  Something wasn’t quite right here.

  15

  It had taken Connie several minutes to calm down. To come back down to Earth ─ which is what he had thought had happened. Like he’d been transported to another world. Another world that belonged in some apocalyptic novel. All too crazy to believe in except for that piece of metal he had torn from the door. What that had meant, he couldn’t imagine. Didn’t want to imagine because it was too crazy to consider. Even crazier than his sense of being crazy.

  The pounding in his head had lessened as soon as the shrieks had begun to die away. But its pain had been replaced by the throbbing in his wrist. He had staggered to his feet. Staggered through the doorway in a hallway on the tenth floor. And then did more staggering, like he had taken one drink too many, to the elevators. Relieved that he saw no one. And relieved when the elevator remained empty but for himself all the way to the twelfth floor. He had met Marlene coming out of the elevator. She had been waiting for him.

  “My goodness. What happened to you?”

  What hadn’t? he thought.

  “Connie, don’t run away from me. Exactly, what did Suzuki say?”

  “Nothing’s been decided. Nabil went home because he felt sick.” He didn’t stop to add more explanations. He could imagine what he looked like but didn’t. He was trying to keep his imagination under wraps. There still remained in him that prey, flight emotion. And his wrist was beginning to hurt like hell.

  “What’s wrong with your wrist?” She was following him as he went up one of the aisles of carrels. His good hand holding onto his injured wrist.

  “Nothing. Where’s Vicky?”

  “Vicky? I think she’s with Stuart and Jocelyn. They’re showing her around. What’s wrong with your wrist?”

  “I said nothing. I … nothing.” He poked his head over one of the partitions. At a woman typing something on her keyboard. “Have you seen Vicky or Stuart?” The woman shook her head.

  “Why do you want to see Vicky?” Marlene asked.

  “Marlene, quit following me.” He continued on, looking into this and that carrel.

  “What’s up, Connie?”

  “Nothing’s up. I just want to ─”

  “You haven’t been drinking, have you?”

  Marlene was a dear friend, but she could get on his nerves with her motherly concern. “Do I look like I’ve been drinking? I just ...I just had a little … accident.”

  “To your wrist?” He kept moving. Looking for Vicky. “Well, you look like hell. How’d you hurt your wrist?”

  “Never mind. I just want … I just want to remind Vicky of something. Now let me be.” He had stopped in the middle of an aisle so that his words would stop her from following him. But when he turned around to continue on his way, his sore wrist banged against a photocopier. The impact produced a cry of pain. Spoken before he had a chance to smother the sound.

  “Honestly, Connie.” She took hold of his sore hand. Gently, but he still winced. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “Really, nothing. Just … you know … my usual clumsy self. Don’t worry. It’s nothing.”

  “Well, you seem like you’re in a lot of pain. Maybe you should see a doctor. Get an x-ray or something.”

  “Or something. Maybe I should. Maybe I’ll get Vicky to drive me.”

  Marlene shook her head. “You young pups. Don’t you ever think of anything but the opposite sex?”

  “Marlene, don’t Mother Hubbard me. It’s not like that.”

  She sighed. A hopeless sigh for all the hopeless relationships she had seen come and go among the coders and suits. “It’s not like that, is it? Well, not at first. Do you want a piece of advice?”

  “Do I have any choice?”

  “Don’t hook up with someone from the company. Find yourself someone who doesn’t know a byte from a corn beef sandwich. Otherwise it’s going to be one Evie after another. Girls. Did you hear that?”

  “God, Marlene. Give it a rest. And it’s not like that.” He turned away from her and continued his search. “Maybe they’re in the lab,” he muttered to himself. Once again holding his sore wrist. Then he stopped and turned back to Marlene. You couldn’t leave someone like Marlene hanging. You had to put an end to the conversation or she’d follow you to hell and back to get what she thought you had in you, out of you. And she was the last person ─ even if they were the only two left on Earth ─ to recount what had just happened to him.

  “Listen. Don’t worry about Suzuki and Nabil. I’ll make a formal request with HR for the team leader.”

  “If you don’t die first from gangrene.”

  “Right. Okay? That way, the Board will hear about it.” Marlene smiled. “And don’t give me your Mother Hubbard smile. This is nothing.” He started to hold up his wrist, but the pain was too great. “And I already have a mother when I need one. She’s with my dad in Florida.”

  “Honey. Even if you had a whole squad of mothers, they wouldn’t do you any good. You’re going to do what you’re going to do.”

  “Right.” He walked to the end of the aisle. He didn’t have to glance over his shoulder to check if Marlene was still following him. He knew she wasn’t. Her advice, which she gave away like a Wi-Fi network without a password, always ended a conversation.

  Circling the aisles of carrels were the rooms with outside windows. Connie’s, Marlene’s, what had been Hal’s sanctuary ─ as well as conference rooms, team strategy/work rooms, supply roo
ms and, where Connie ended up, the Lab. It ran the entire width of the floor, some fifty feet with another thirty for depth. A lab was a suitable description because it resembled more a bio/med lab than something to do with computing. The room had the highest security in the building. Only its glass door gave you a view into the area. Its walls looked like textured wall board, but they were solid. So much so you needed a jackhammer if you wanted to break them down. Its glass door was bullet proof. Its lock required the proper ID tag, which only senior members of the team had.

  Stuart and Jocelyn were senior members, so Connie wasn’t surprised to see them through the glass door. They were showing Vicky around the lab. He pressed his ID tag against the lock.

  The lab had two long counters running most of the length of the room with some breaks in between ─ passage ways. One counter was covered in lab apparatuses. The other had a mixture of lab equipment and computer terminals and screens. The outside windows were polarized so when the westerly sun shone, its glare was reduced. Vicky, Stuart and Jocelyn were standing between the two counters. Outside it was cloudy with sprays of rain hitting the windows.

  “Hey, Connie,” Stuart called to him when he came into the room. “I was just talking about you to Vicky here.”

  He greeted Connie with a wave. Connie didn’t wave back. Jocelyn smiled. A shy smile. Like most of the unattached women on the team. That type a smile a person has for someone they would really like to know better than a handshake or a smile.

  But when Vicky turned in his direction ─ when she heard Stuart call his name ─ she didn’t smile. Not when she saw his face. His tousled hair. The strain around his eyes and mouth. The hunch of his body. None of which was asking for a smile. Instantly, she knew something was wrong. And among the three of them, she was the only one who noticed.

  “Vicky,” Connie said, coming into the room and ignoring Stuart and Jocelyn.

  “Yes?” Vicky answered as if Stuart and Jocelyn weren’t there. Like she and Connie were sitting across a table having a quiet drink or coffee.

  “I was just showing Vicky the DNA module,” Stuart said as if he wasn’t aware of some sort of bond between Vicky and Connie. Which he wasn’t. “We were wondering if you could give her some sort of a demo. So she’d better understand where we’re all going on this project.”

  “Uh …” Connie eyes slid over to Stuart with a questioning look that ended up vacant. “Vicky, could you do me a favor?” He needed to talk to someone. To try and sort out, to put into some kind of rational context, what had just happened to him. What he had done to the door. That’s what he had decided going up in the elevator. And that thought had made him think of Vicky. Of the way she had looked at him in his office. Of wanting to help.

  Vicky quickly glanced at Stuart. Then at Jocelyn. What she wanted to say to Connie. What she had to tell him couldn’t be said in front of them.

  “Sure,” she said. “Anything.”

  “Uh … Well, it seems I have hurt … I’ve injured my wrist.” He tried to lift the hand up to her but when he did, it hurt too much.

  “Oh, no,” she cried. “What happened?”

  “Uh.” He glanced at Stuart and Jocelyn. His eyes squinted in caution. “Nothing much. Really. But … I wonder … Could you drive me to Emerg?”

  “To Emerg!” She nearly reached out a hand to him but stopped because they weren’t alone. Would have stopped anyway because that would have revealed too much of how she felt about him. “Sure. My god, are you all right? Do you think it’s broken?”

  “I don’t know. But it hurts. I should at least get it x-rayed. Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “Can you drive?”

  “Yes. Sure.”

  “Good.”

  There was a moment of silence among them. Awkward silence. Connie and Vicky had been talking as if they were the only two in the room. Stuart missed the inference. But not Jocelyn. A woman could tell when another woman was attracted to a man.

  “So, you’re not going to do the demo?” Stuart asked.

  Jocelyn gave him a look as if to say, how dumb can you be? You’re missing the point. Which he was. The look Connie gave him was more to shut him up than to acknowledge his thick headedness.

  There was another session of unease. More for Stuart who was slowly getting “the point.”

  “Well, should we go?” Vicky asked Connie when she, too, began to feel awkward.

  “Yes.” Connie turned around without a glance at Stuart or an answer to his question. He walked back to the door, through one of the gaps in the outward counter. Vicky followed. Also without looking at Stuart. Or Jocelyn’s raised eyebrows.

  Outside the lab, once Vicky had exited, Connie closed the door to the room. And ─ force of habit ─ made sure it locked.

  “My car’s in the lot across the street. I just got to get my coat. The last time I looked, it was raining.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I could see it out the windows.”

  “Yes.”

  She blushed when she realized how intimate their voices sounded.

  “I’ll meet you at the … in front of the elevators.” He didn’t blush. And he had no thought ─ other than the raging questions in his head ─ of any intimacy between them. He just needed some help. As vague as the idea of help seemed to him.

  “Sure.” She watched him walk away. Still a bit hunched over and now favoring the side of his body that belonged to his injured wrist. Concern masked how she really felt about him. Yet she wanted to rush to him. Like the lover she wished she was.

  She had heard some of the girls talking about Connie and Evie. How broken up he had seemed after they had split. How unapproachable he had always been when it came to anything but work. Even on those rare occasions when he joined them on the company slo-pitch team. She thought about the only advice sister Megan had ever given her about the dating scene ─ when she had been old enough to need advice: Don’t be a rebound girl. Those relationships never worked out.

  Connie couldn’t put on his rain jacket because when he tried, his wrist hurt something awful. Instead, he draped it over his good arm, the hand of which supported his wrist as he walked. And as he walked, ignoring the friendly looks of some of the coders, he made his way down aisle and to the elevators. He tried to add some humor to the very humorless situation he was in: What kind of super hero hurts his wrist when he’s doing super-human tasks? But the humor didn’t work. By the time he reached the elevator, that all too familiar sense of foreboding was winning out. Once again, he felt he was being watched.

  “Shit!” he said to himself. Then looked behind, both to be reassured there was no eyes watching and to see if anyone had heard his curse. There was no one anywhere near him. Just the usual suspects father down one of the aisles. The less obsessive coders who liked to gossip as much as they liked to work. And Vicky wasn’t among them.

  He thought about that. Not seeing Vicky when he pressed the “down” button. Then the thought became tinged with some of this “foreboding.” And added to that, a tincture of the paranoia he had felt in the stairwell. Irrational, he tried to tell himself. But was it? Maybe she wasn’t coming. Maybe she had telephoned HR to say he was acting strange. Maybe they had come to get him. Maybe they were already here. Behind him. Ready to pounce on him.

  There was someone behind him. Vicky. When she touched his shoulder to announce she was there. Touched it gently so as not to startle him. He was startled. Jumped a foot away from her and cried out. Nearly collided with the elevator door.

  “Connie, it’s me. Are you all right?”

  Her voice didn’t calm his racing heart. His prey animal racing heart. But her face did. At least in the sense that it wiped away his feeling of being watched.

  “I got to get a grip on myself,” he blurted out as if she understood what he meant. Then he looked around again to see if anyone else had heard him.

  “Connie, please. What’s wrong with you?”

  “Not here. We
got to talk.”

  His eyes were wild with emotion. So much so, for a moment he forgot where he was.

  “I know.” She reached out a hand to touch his good shoulder. Barely creasing the cloth of his shirt. “I know. We got to talk. I found something else that you might be interested in.”

  “Yeah? You don’t know the half of it.”

  He noticed she was carrying a manila envelope. She noticed the rain coat over his arm. And that his eyes couldn’t stop roving. Like they were constantly on the watch.

  “Are you in some kind of trouble?”

  The elevator door opened but he didn’t get in. Didn’t answer her.

  The thing was, he thought, there was one way to prove that what happened happened. That it wasn’t all just a psychotic twitch in his brain. Words weren’t going to do it. No matter how sympathetic this girl ─ this Vicky/Victoria ─ was. And unless he had landed in the middle of some TV rerun ─ where the hero goes back to show the police the evidence only it has vanished ─ the door handle he had broken off and the gap in the door should still be there. If not? Well, he decided, that “if not” should be proof enough that he should check himself into mental institution.

  The elevator door closed. Vicky had remained by his side not sure whether she should get into the elevator or, as the door was closing, hold it open. Or at the very least, say something to Connie, who seemed to be in some kind of crisis.

  “Listen,” he said. They were both staring at the closed elevator door. “I want to show you something.”

  She looked at him. He didn’t glance at her. Suddenly feeling that if he did, the sight of her face would shake all the emotion out of him. Like he was some kind of blubbering idiot.

  “Okay,” she said after waiting for him to continue. “Sure.” A moment passed when she wanted to take him in her arms.

  “Come with me.”

  He started down the hallway that led off from the elevator doors. At the end was a door with an illuminated “exit” sign above its frame.