Brainstorm Page 3

  “Worried about him?” Why should she be worried about him?

  When she saw the look of jealousy on his face, she added: “I mean, it’s unlike him not to tell anyone he’s not coming in.”

  “Yeah. And Tamara didn’t come in either,” one of the males said. Followed by a sly glance at another male.

  Now it was Evie’s turn to look jealous. “What do you mean by that?”

  Connie didn’t see her expression. He was trying to think of something clever to say. To make her laugh. Which he had always been able to do when they were together. But he couldn’t. It was that damn headache again. Poking at his left eye. It was hard to have a thought under the pain.

  “Well, I am worried,” she said to no one in particular. Then she looked at Connie as if to say, You still here?

  He was still there. Tongue tied. Really what he had wanted to say to her in private was to ask her for the name of the doctor she had mentioned for him. That and, of course, a few other private things about them. But he wasn’t going to ask her about the doctor in front of these hormonal coders.

  There was a hierarchy in the company ─ aside from the team leaders and the suits. There were those coders who were considered special. Above the rest. Eurekas, they were called. The ones who pushed the boundaries of software development for the company. Money went along with this title. (Sometimes triple what everyone else was being paid.) Also company privileges. A suite at the annual sales conferences. (Always in exotic, five-star locations.) Invitations to speak at conferences around the world. (Plus honorariums and substantial per-diems.) Sometimes even a company car. (Maintenance and gas included.)

  The trouble was, with Connie, he didn’t like to play the Eureka game. Wouldn’t speak at conferences. And after the first sales conference he went to ─ observing the male and female suits and reps running after each other like rabbits in heat ─ he refused to go to anymore. So he was an unofficial, company Eureka. That meant prestige but no additional pay or benefits.

  Connie walked back to his table. His teeth clamped despondingly shut both for his head ache and Evie’s rebuff.

  “Was it that bad?” Marlene asked.

  “No,” he half lied. “I just have a headache.”

  Vicky moved to get out of the both. “Here. You can have your seat back.”

  “No, no. It’s no big deal. I’ll just sit on the edge.”

  He sat down and then realized he didn’t want to sit next to a girl. Any girl. He didn’t want to look at any girl.

  “Is that my beer?” he asked without looking up from the table.

  “Yes, dear. Unless Vicky wants another one.”

  “No, that’s okay. I haven’t finished this one.”

  Connie took several gulps. Marlene watched him with compassionate eyes. Vince watched Vicky with something more basic than compassion. And Vicky. She just watched her glass. Feeling awkward and wondering when she should leave.

  “I think she and Hal are having a thing together.” He looked up from his beer. At Evie’s table. Listened but couldn’t quite hear their conversation. Other than the bursts of male laughter.

  “Well, honey.” Marlene followed his gaze. “Have you just figured that out?”

  “What? You knew?” He looked past Vicky at Marlene. Vicky didn’t know where to look.

  “Hell, Connie, most of the company knew. I mean, she advertised it like it was going to be on the Super Bowl.”

  He took several more gulps of beer until the glass was empty. “And you never thought to tell me?” He signaled a waitress for two more beers.

  “Would you have believed me?”

  “Probably not.”

  Connie and Vicky’s eyes met. Accidently. Yet there was unintentional intensity in their looks. He had been gazing at her half-finished glass of beer. Not really seeing it. She had looked up when she realized what he had been staring at. And he had looked up when he felt her eyes on him.

  “Do you want the rest of my beer?” she asked in an attempt to hide how uncomfortable she was feeling sitting next to him.

  “No, no. You have it. I can wait.”

  They exchanged two weak smiles. But kept staring at each other. It was her brown eyes that held him momentarily. It made him think of his nightmare dream girl. Not that she looked like her. She didn’t. Her face was too young. Too round. Her hair a light brown page boy. Not black. The dream girl’s face was long with a firm jaw. And the dream girl’s eyes, besides being hypnotic, were hard. Life weary. Not soft and vulnerable like this girl’s.

  It was just that ─ along with his pounding head ─ she made him think of his dream. And the fact that he’d have to go home sometime and deal with it. To sleep or not to sleep, he thought. It was a battle he had faced every night. Hell, he said to himself, turning his head away from this new girl and back at Evie’s table. Hamlet didn’t know the half of it.

  4

  Connie was drunk and Vicky missed her ride.

  Several more people had joined their booth. That was after Vicky had left to go outside and wait for her ride. They were all arguing now. A sophomoric argument that Marlene, being the only adult there, refused to join in. Like the tree falling in the forest conundrum. Only it was about “sleeper code.” It was similar to malware or a virus. Secretly inserted by a coder to run if and when that person entered a distinct word or phrase into the app. But if the coder, for some reason, disappeared (died, etc.), the code might never be executed. So, the argument went: did the lines of code really exist? If they were never executed?

  It was a drunken argument. And no one really cared whether there was an answer or not.

  Connie sure as hell didn’t care. He sat back in the booth. Eyes half closed. Half-closed staring at Evie’s table. Pressed between Marlene and a young guy from the basement floor. The mailroom. A wannabe coder who was going to night school.

  “Dead soldiers,” Connie said as he picked up one of his empty glasses and saluted Evie’s table.

  Marlene turned to him. The noise in the bar now was thunderous. It was hard to hear. “What did you say?”

  “Dead soldiers. All of them.” He touched each empty beer glass in his reach as if he were counting them.

  “Honey, you better get someone to drive you home.”

  “I have no home. And if I did, I don’t need anyone to drive me there. I’m quite … I’m quite culpable. Capable. Of doing that myself.”

  It was at that moment that Vicky came back to their table.

  “Hey, Vicky,” Vince shouted when he saw her. “Vicky, Vicky. My good friend, Vicky!”

  She ignored Vince. “I missed my ride,” she said to Marlene.

  “Oh dear. Honey, where do you live?”

  Vicky glanced at Connie’s drunken appearance. “In Middleton.”

  Just then, the others at the table, except Marlene, gave out a communal laugh. Connie added his own guffaw, not sure what it was meant for.

  “Where did you say, dear?”

  Vicky leaned into Marlene. In front of Connie. “In Middleton.”

  “Why that’s across the bridge. You can take the subway, dear. No worries.”

  Vicky’s face became strained. “Oh. If I do, that means two buses from the station. That’s why I …”

  “Well, honey …” Marlene gave Connie a disapproving look. “I’ve got a simple solution for you. You can drive my inebriated friend here home. He lives on the other side. And then you can take a cab from his place. You have money. Don’t you?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know. Maybe I’ll just take a cab from here.” She stood by the booth. Poised to leave except she was looking at Connie.

  “The trouble is, Marlene,” Connie said to her. “The trouble is … What’s the trouble? Oh, yeah. The trouble is … there’s no stick-to-it-ness anymore. People jest flit, flit, flit. FLIT. Flitter their lives away.”

  “Connie, dear. Vicky is going to drive you home.”

  “What?”

  Marlene spoke in his ear. “Vicky’s goi
ng to drive you home.”

  “No, she’s not. I told you. I have no home. But if I did, I can drive myself there.”

  “Really, Marlene. I can take a cab.”

  “Nonsense, dear. No, you can’t, Connie. You can’t drive.” She gave his arm a rough squeeze.

  “No, I can’t,” he mumbled. He poked the mail guy beside him. “Move. Gotta pee.” The guy slid out of the seat and Connie followed him. “Gotta pee,” he told Vicky. Then staggered his way to the men’s room.

  The room had a free-swinging door. Like the ones into restaurant kitchens. Out of necessity for the urgency that men had when they drank. A suit came through the doorway. Connie knew him. A V.P. of something or other.

  “Gotta pee,” he said to the suit.

  “It happens,” the suit answered back.

  Connie paused at the door until it stopped swinging. Then he gave the door a hard push and watched it swing some more. Back and forth. “Gotta pee,” he said to the door. Then went inside the room.

  The urinals were free. That was good. He had trouble peeing hip to hip with other guys. His pee often didn’t come out fast enough in front of other men. What was he supposed to do then? Stand there holding his penis while the other guys peed? While they wondered what the hell was he doing just holding on to his dick?

  But the room was empty.

  He went to one of the urinals. He unzipped his fly and waited for his stream to start streaming. With all the beer inside him, he didn’t have long to wait. He sighed the sigh of a man who had to pee badly.

  The beer had at least helped his headache. (Though there was still a tightness behind his eyes.) But not his mood. The beer couldn’t dull that. There was Evie treating him like yesterday’s trash. Along with the realization that he couldn’t take much more of these nightmares ─ these sleep-deprived nights ─ without completely falling apart. If only Evie and he were still together. He needed someone to snuggle up to. Someone to soften the night.

  He started to zip up his fly but stopped with the thought that he’d have a few more beers. Maybe that would help him pass the night more peacefully.

  His head began to feel dizzy so he stood in front of the urinal for a moment. To wait out the feeling. Maybe he had had too much to drink. The wall above the urinals had been plastered with stippled paint to discourage graffiti writers. But there was still the odd scratched missive. His vision was too blurry to make out their words so he counted the dots of raised paint, hoping that by concentrating on something, that would make the queasiness go away. It didn’t.

  “You talked to Eddie?”

  The sound of a man’s voice jerked his head around. Time to quit staring at the wall, he thought.

  But there was no one there.

  “No, not yet.”

  He looked over his other shoulder. No one there. But the voices had sounded so close. So present. He shook his head. A drunkard’s shake. Like that would get rid of all the pink elephants.

  Must be in the stalls, he thought. Time to go, now that he wasn’t alone. Topsy-turvy stomach or not.

  “I don’t like that he should be talking to the Jersey mob.”

  He froze on the sound of the voice. Jerked his head to the right from where the voice came. There was no one there.

  “Yeah. I don’t trust those guys.”

  He jerked his head to the left. No one there.

  Hearing voices, he looked behind him. All the stall doors were open. There was no one in the room but him. Too much to drink. He shook his head several times, trying to shake away the illusion. And he shook it again, not for what he thought he had heard, but from this sudden tingling sensation that ran up his neck to the top of his head. He shivered a shiver like someone had just run their fingers across a blackboard.

  But that wasn’t all he felt.

  Hip to hip. Shoulder to shoulder. There were two men beside him. One on either side. Suits, from what he could see on the edge of his vision. They had appeared so unexpectedly it seemed as if they had always been beside him. Crazy! Maybe he shouldn’t drink so much.

  He turned to one of them. To make some smart, drunken comment. Like: Fancy meeting you guys here. Only when he looked to his right, there was no one there. No one on his left either.

  Whoa! That was it. No more beer for him tonight.

  He checked to see if his fly was done up because in his drunken state he couldn’t remember if it was. It wasn’t.

  Then he had that creepy feeling again. An uncomfortable tingling. The hair on the back of his neck rising in anticipation of something. Some horrific something. For he suddenly had the distinct sensation that there was someone behind him. A menace of a someone. One of the suits? He looked over his shoulder. Ready to defend himself. But there was no one there.

  Okay, that was enough with the crazy. Yet, when he turned back to the wall, to zip of his fly, the creepy feeling returned. It was the urinals. Something about the urinals. Something crazy. They weren’t the ones he had just used. Oval bowls hanging on the wall. These went all the way to floor. Big porcelain ones with a steady stream of water cascading down.

  Wow! That was crazy. Seeing things that weren’t there. That wasn’t good for a person’s mental health. Worse than talking to yourself. Even answering yourself.

  Now he had two fears to contend with. The hallucination of the urinals and the unreasonable feeling that there was someone behind him. And crazier still, the idea that maybe if he didn’t turn around, it would turn out that it was only his drunken-fuelled imagination. But there was no one behind him. No one on either side of him. And it was just his imagination that the urinals had grown in size.

  Then it happened. As it had before. An overpowering feeling of dread and depression suddenly blackened his mood. His head began to pound painfully. His stomach began to heave as well. And that powerful urge returned. Get out of there or end it. That was the only way to escape these feelings of repulsion and fear.

  Crazy! he had managed to think in between the pounding in his head.

  That’s when he heard a cry. A cry of alarm. “Aaaah!” The sound filled his head. Over and over. Until with a frightening shock, he realized the sound came from himself. Crazy, because his mouth was tightly shut. Crazier still, because it wasn’t his voice. Not his at all. It was the dream-girl’s. And with each breathless gasp of her cry, his insides shook with such a nauseous sensation that his face broke out into a cold sweat. His hands felt like ice. His lips were tightly shut. And numb.

  Then it happened. As it had before.

  Only this time, there were no waves rolling across his vision. No dream girl’s face. Just this gelatinous glowing surface. The wall in front of him suddenly blistered apart, bubbling up and into jelly that began to spit at him. Gobs of foul smelling bursts that struck his chest and legs. “Like desert sands,” the dream-girl’s voice whispered in his head. For when these splats struck his body, they immediately turned into grains of sand. And like sands of time, they slowly fell to the floor. One grain at a time.

  That’s when he knew. When he remembered what had happened the night before. When he saw the wall’s surface become white hot. Its lava-like particles flying out from it. That’s when he remembered. The waves. The face. The hopeless pleas.

  The memory jolted him as if his head had been punched. Indeed, he jerked back from the wall, now bulging out towards him. Now engulfing the urinals so that they were no longer distinguishable.

  He fell backwards. But slowly. Like a movie’s slo-mo. Falling towards the floor in an arc that seemed to take minutes rather than fractions of a second to reach its end. He landed with a soft thump. As if the tile floor was a cushion of quicksand ooze. Which it had become. The same jelly-like substance of the wall. Enveloping him in its softness. A last caress before he went under.

  Then this jolt of memory happened again. The waves. The girl. They cry. Then another jolt. And another. And another. As if he were having a seizure. His body writhing with each memory. Repelled by what he remembere
d. Horrified at what he saw now. Felt now. Smelled now. The wall ready to gush its now molten blobs at him. The floor sucking him down. The odor of it all. More nauseous than a rotting carcass.

  How he found the strength and determination. The will to back away from this terror that seemed to breathe as if it were alive. How he managed to scurry on his backside to a hard portion of the floor, he didn’t know. For everything inside of him. His thoughts. His muscles. His organs. Everything that was him had become resigned to his fate. To be consumed. To be one with this turbulent mass.

  “Help me. Please,” the voice whispered. Only this time it was his own voice that had cried out.

  5

  Not a dreamless sleep. Not unconscious to the real and imagined world. This time images swirled in his sleeping head. Eyes and lips. Bubbling surfaces. Jelly-like arms wanting to caress him. Faces. The dream girl’s. The two men ─ hip to hip with him. They all swirled and twirled as his sleep-self tried to climb out of this stupor.

  When he opened his eyes ─ after minutes, not hours ─ he was staring up at the ceiling. And he knew where he was. The men’s room. Flat on his back. And he knew what had happened. Or at least what he thought had happened. The knowledge more like impressions than real memories.

  He focused his eyes on a bare incandescent bulb. It brightened as he awoke. His back hurt. He twisted his spine to assess the damage. He could move it with normal pain. He could move his legs and toes, too. No spine damage. He wasn’t a cripple. He waited until he had the strength to move.

  Then, it happened again. As he tried to sit up. Another memory jolt. Like a blinding, migraine aura. What had been vague impressions of what had been happening to him, became vivid memories. The waves. The dream-girl’s cry for help. His cry for help. And what had just happened. Jolt after jolt.

  He remembered it all. Like it was some fast-edited coming attraction. Image after image. Emotion after emotion.

  Think!

  He had to think. He had to figure out what was happening to him. Was he having some kind of a schizophrenic breakdown?