Brainstorm Read online

  19

  Connie needed to be alone. To work in the lab. To think. To shove aside this notion of “too fantastic.” To look at everything objectively. Logically. Dispassionately. And try to build up some defenses for when the next “episode” happened. (And he was sure it was going to happen.)

  After he had seen a clinic doctor, had x-rays, had a cast put on, gulped down a few codeine pain killers, he had insisted Vicky drive him back to work. Insisted because she had insisted that she drive him home. Like the doctor had suggested. Take a few days off to let everything begin to heal. But if Marlene couldn’t bully him with her motherly affection, Vicky wasn’t able either.

  When he and Vicky got out of the elevator on the twelfth floor, a reception committee was waiting for him. Marlene naturally at the front. (Leon had alerted her.) They all wanted to sign his cast, but he refused. He hadn’t broken his wrist. Just torn some ligaments. Torn ligaments didn’t deserve cute remarks even if he did have to keep the cast on for three months. He brushed past the assembled, including Marlene, and went directly to the lab.

  But he had a hard time avoiding Marlene. She was no respecter of the sign he put up on the lab door: “Do Not disturb. Do Not Enter. This means YOU!” She was anxious about the appointment of the team leader. Anxious that when Nabil returned, Connie would have lost his chance. Connie was anxious to be left alone so he agreed to email Suzuki and ask for the position. That satisfied Marlene enough to leave him alone. For the present.

  And as for Vicky. She felt like she had been left at the altar. Connie had abandoned her as soon as they had gotten out of the elevator. She was stunned by what she thought was his cavalier attitude towards her. And hurt. He did think of her only as someone he could rely on for help. And that was all. Though during her lunch break, she shoved aside her hurt and knocked on the lab door. But the knock and her baleful eyes didn’t rouse Connie. When he heard the knock and saw her standing there behind the glass, he waved a regal wave ─ barely moving his hand from side to side as if it tired him ─ and went back to staring at the notes he had made.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  “Well?” Marlene asked him after eating her lunch at her desk. She had opened the lab door and pushed her head through the doorway. She was the only one on the team that dared do that. Probably the only one in the building besides Suzuki who wasn’t intimidated by Connie’s brilliance.

  It was her second “Well?” The other one was an hour earlier.

  His not yet to her after-lunch well? ─ that’s what he had said to earlier Well? Both times she had nodded and smiled. And both times she had added, “Let me know when it’s official.” Both times, he had answered, he would. And both times, he lied. Because he hadn’t emailed Suzuki yet. (But he would. Before he left for the day.)

  The difficulty he was having after Marlene’s second “Well?” After he had spent several minutes staring alternately at the beaker containing his cells and at his notes. The difficulty was to work out how to communicate to something that wasn’t really alive. At least in a human, homo sapiens sense.

  The beaker was offering no solutions. Nor were his notes.

  He had already tried various things to prod the cells into communicating with him again. Electric shock. Heat. Cold. Vibration. Stirring. And just plain swearing. But nothing happened.

  The cells were suspended in a neutral medium that made it appear that there was actually something in the beaker. A greenish, semi-liquid, semi-solid substance. In reality, the cells would be impossible to see without an electron microscope or the molecule counter he had invented that was immersed in the beaker. The hope was, of course, that with his remote lines of code, he could command the chips imbedded in the cells to produce enough divisions for the cells to become the dominant substance in the beaker.

  Failure led him to a new strategy. One that was not going to produce results immediately, but maybe with the whole team working on it … Maybe this was answer. He’d have to wait tomorrow to present his idea, without telling them why. And that would mean putting up with Marlene’s insistent curiosity.

  What he thought was: It wasn’t any use trying to stimulate the cells. They seemed to be isolated from everything he tried. What he needed to do was alter the DNA coding instructions of the chip inserted into the cells in order to try to create a neural gene. No easy task, for sure. But he thought it possible. And if that didn’t work. Well, he could use some of his own neural cells. Tests had already shown that by breaking apart the neural DNA gene, a person’s memory could be stimulated. Perhaps that would be a way to communicate to these cells.

  After several hours, he hadn’t gotten very far. Flow chart outlines hastily drawn. Mostly rejected. A few lines of code, written in successive moments of what he thought were inspirations. All rejected.

  It was past seven when he decided to give up for the day. Although giving up meant going home and he was reluctant to do that. To leave for his apartment. His apartment meant he’d be faced with another wakeful night. Another dream. Just because now he understood why he was having them, that didn’t make having these dreams a comforting prospect. The emotions that the dream wrenched out of him were real enough. Hard enough to cope with.

  Maybe he should take the beaker home with him, he wondered. It was a tempting idea. He picked up the beaker and brought it up to eye level. “You bugger,” he said.

  If he hadn’t been so dedicated to pure science, he might have flushed everything down the drain. And that would serve the cells right, he thought. Who was to be the master? A handful of cells or the 37.2 trillion cells in his body?

  “So? What have you heard?”

  He groaned at the beaker. It was Marlene.

  “Uh … nothing yet.” He gave another groan for not having emailed Suzuki.

  “Leon said he saw him leave around four.”

  “Well, that’s probably why I haven’t heard anything yet.” Connie was a good liar. As long as you didn’t look him in the eyes. Fortunately for him, Marlene was too far away to see his eyes clearly.

  “Are you going to share with team what you’ve been doing all day. Or is it a secret?”

  “Uh … share …Yes. Once I work everything out.”

  “You know, I don’t like secrets. We’re supposed to be a team, remember?”

  “Right.” He knew he wasn’t a good team member. He liked to work alone.

  “Zoe and Mason have a prototype for the remote. But the code isn’t ready yet for beta. I have a print-out on my desk or you can get it in the Review folder. Or do you want me to bring it now?”

  “Uh … no … Tomorrow.” He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he had already written the code for the remote. That’s what he was using now in his preliminary and vain attempts to create a neuron DNA strand. Poor Zoe and Mason ─ and Marlene. They had all been trying to perfect the code for over two months.

  “Coming down to Eddie’s after you’ve had enough of your genius?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I’ve got a few more things to do.”

  “Okay.” Marlene wasn’t in a hurry to leave him. “Everything all right?”

  “What? Sure.” Damn that Marlene, he thought. She could always tell when he was off his feed. “No. Everything’s fine. Except for this lame wrist.”

  “What exactly did happen to your wrist?”

  “Oh. Just clumsiness, you know. I was ... I was trying to lift something … heavy.”

  “Heavy,” she echoed, not believing in the word. “Well, okay. See you tomorrow. Suzuki better answer your email or I’m going to contact the Board. I’d rather have my alcoholic brother ─ wherever he is ─ run this team than Nabil.”

  “Yeah.” He tried to give her an encouraging smile. Like he knew it was a no-brainer that Suzuki would make him team leader. But his lips didn’t quite reach their maximum grin.

  “Okay. Well, goodnight. See you tomorrow.”

  “Right. See you tomorrow.”

  “If you change your mind, I’ll save yo
u a seat. It’s going to be crowded. It’s Omar’s farewell party.”

  “Oh, right. Well, give him my farewell.”

  “I’ll do that. Okay. Goodnight.”

  When she left, he knew everything wasn’t okay. In more ways than he wanted to admit.

  First, he better send that email.

  He opened his personal mini-computer and called up his email program. God, he hated to do this. Ask Suzuki for the position. He’d already turned it down once. He knew he wasn’t good at official leadership. He was too self-directed. Too much of a loner. There would be endless meetings with the suits and investors. Conference presentations. Papers in journals. Not that Hal was very good at those things (except being one with the suits), but he did them. No more drinks at Eddie’s. Only suits like Hal and Nabil, on the prowl for female flesh, ever went there. And that was infrequently. No, the suits had their own “Eddie’s.” A private club near City Hall. There they could connect with the powers that be. He hated the powers that be.

  “I missed my ride.”

  Damn. Another interruption. Another head poked itself through the open door. Vicky’s. When he looked up at her, he couldn’t help frowning. He was trying to come up with the words for his subject line. And the only thing he could think of was: Missing Persons. That was for Hal and Nabil. But he decided it was too cryptic. And he only typed it because he hated to type what should really be there.

  She was prepared for rejection. But it hurt. That’s what she thought she saw in his face. Rejection. She had waited past the time her ride was to come. Waited at her desk pretending to work when she had no work to do. Marlene on her way to the elevators had tsk-tsked her disapproval. And added a shake of her head when Vicky told her she still had some work to do. She knew why Vicky was still there.

  “I missed my ride,” she said again. It was a lame excuse, she knew. Only partially true. She missed it because she had phoned her friend and told her she had another ride home.

  Connie took a moment to consider. Missed her ride? Well, that meant she was looking for a ride. Okay. He could do that. She wasn’t like Marlene. She knew when not to talk. She certainly had helped him and at the same time let him be. And ─ she was easy to talk to.

  “Well, stick around for a bit. I got a few more things to do.”

  She walked into the room but her steps were tentative. She realized she was pushing herself at him. “If it’s too inconvenient, I could always ─”

  “No. Not inconvenient. And I promise not to be drunk. Or crazy.”

  Finally, he gave her a smile and that lit up her emotions. “Are you still working?”

  “No. Actually I’m about to put a noose around my neck. Or maybe it’s a straight jacket.” He looked at her with another smile. “Funny, huh? Me always thinking I’m going crazy. Well, this might seal the deal.”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “All right? You sound like Marlene.”

  That deflated her emotions. “I don’t mean to be a ─”

  “Forget it. Take a seat. I’ll only be a ─” He looked at the screen. At the blank subject line. “Shit,” he murmured and began to type.

  She sat on one of the stools at the counter that was closest to the door. Connie was behind the counter closest to the windows.

  “Is it still raining?” he asked without looking up from the screen. Of course, all he had to do was turn around to answer that question. But he never considered that.

  “I think so. It looks like it.”

  “Yeah,” he said more to himself than to her.

  She watched his face as he typed. He wrinkled his nose every so often and that made him look like a little kid. His swearing, though, wasn’t childlike. That’s when he would hit the backspace key. Striking it several times like he was crushing an insect that was unwilling to die.

  She coughed once. A coughing fit, really. In her growing nervousness, because of the lie she had told, she had felt it necessary to gulp. Only the gulp went down the wrong way. But when he asked her if she was okay. Looked at her and smiled. Her heart soared once again.

  Minutes went by. Many minutes. Many curses. Many backspaces.

  “There,” he said to the screen when he was finish writing the email to Suzuki. “And into the breech.” He clicked on the “send” icon and looked up at Vicky. “Have you had dinner yet?”

  Her soaring heart which had been on hold while he typed, soared a little more. “No.”

  “Neither have I but I don’t want to go down to Eddie’s.” She shook her head as if to say she agreed. “Actually, I found a good restaurant in the wasteland of my burb. In a strip plaza of all places. We could go there if you like and then I could drive you home.”

  “Sure. Are you all right to drive, do you think?”

  His screwed up his face, the way he did when Marlene was badgering him about his well-being. Vicky saw the look and cringed.

  “That’ll be no problem.” He held up his injured, casted arm. “And I’m perfectly sober.” She tried to smile at his feeble joke but she felt more intimidated by his attitude than amused. “You like Lebanese food?”

  “Uh … yeah.”

  “Good. Then Lebanese it is.”

  20

  There’s a silence between people that isn’t a silence at all. An expectant quiet filled with the sounds that you can’t hear. Emotional sounds. Or barely hear. Sighs. Sniffs. As well as the rustle of clothes. Or, in this instance, the strain of seat belts. Both Vicky and Connie felt it. Vicky reveled in it. Connie didn’t want to go there.

  He had parked in front of Vicky’s house. Her parents’ house. She had a private apartment in the basement. She had told him that at dinner. She hoped to move as soon as she saved a first and last month’s advance on an apartment of her own.

  Connie didn’t want intimacy with Vicky. Only friendship. Someone he could confide in. (And hell, he needed to vent to someone or really, he was going to go crazy.) Anything more, he felt it would be a betrayal to Evie. To what he thought he and Evie had. Which, of course, was ridiculous given the facts of her betrayal to him. He knew that. But there it was. That’s how he felt.

  “Do you want to come in for … coffee?” Vicky was surprised by the tone of her voice. She had tried to sound casual. Like coffee in her apartment with nothing besides the milk and sugar. But she purred the words. And made the invitation sound like an invitation. Something more than coffee. Which it was in a way. A hopeful way. Although, she was trying not to admit that to herself.

  “No,” he said maybe a little too quickly. “No thanks. I got some things I want to do. And … uh … I wouldn’t want to get between you and your parents. Maybe like Megan, they’re still pissed off at me.”

  “I’m sure they’re not. And besides, Megan’s got a serious beau. You’re out of the picture as far as she’s concerned.”

  “A serious beau? That’s quaint.”

  Vicky wasn’t good at being teased. She bristled. “I mean, she’s almost engaged. Actually, I think she is engaged.”

  “You mean, you don’t know, Vicky/Victoria?” he continued to tease.

  Now the silence in the car wasn’t pregnant with any intimate emotions. It crackled more with awkwardness as each thought of something to say.

  “So, no coffee?” Vicky inwardly cringed at letting the offer slip out again. But she couldn’t help it. She wanted him to come in.

  “No. That’s okay.” Refusing once more turned his discomfort to relief. And yet, he had the thought ─ contrary to what he believed was his good sense ─ that if she made the offer one more time, he’d accept. Very typical of him. A practicing existentialist. He’d let fate decide his fate.

  There was more silence as each waited for the other to say or do something.

  Vicky didn’t want to get out of the car. That would end the evening. Dinner. Shop talk. Even some laughter. All with Connie Brinkley. Just the way she had imagined it.

  But she didn’t offer him coffee a third time.

&nb
sp; “Do you think it’s safe,” she said. “Taking that … uh …thing. Safe taking it home with you?” Shop talk was safer, she had decided. She didn’t want him to think of her as a younger Marlene. Or for that matter, one of the girls in the team that was always trying to make up to him.

  “I can’t see why not. Maybe if it’s close by, it’ll look more kindly on me. You know. Like a pet.”

  She had to smile at that.

  “I know that sounds crazy. Pet DNA. I don’t know what I’m doing here. Just reaching for straws. Hoping to grab the brass ring.” He paused and chuckled. “How’s that? Two clichés in one sentence. Oh, actually, two sentences.”

  “You talk as if it’s intelligent.”

  “Well, it’s something.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Finally, she let herself open the car door. She wasn’t sure if she was disappointed that he wasn’t coming in with her or relieved. If he did come in and she began to act like a silly girl with a school-girl crush, he would probably run out as soon as he could. Making a pass at someone on the rebound wasn’t a good idea. Rebounds are bound to rebound again. And if he came in, she knew, that her good sense wouldn’t stop her.

  “Well, goodnight, Connie. It’s been … thanks for dinner.”

  “No problem.”

  “And the ride home.”

  “No problem.”

  He was being as noncommittal as he could be. Seeing that fate wasn’t going to bring them together. In a biblical sense.

  “I hope you don’t have that dream again. You need your sleep.” She bit her lip on the comment. There she was again. Sounding like Marlene.

  “Yeah. Well. Maybe forewarned is forearmed. We can only hope.”

  “Yes. Well, goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.”

  She held on to the door after she had gotten out. One last offer? she thought. And then thought not. She smiled. Closed the door. And he was gone, along with his car, before she had a chance to wave.