Brainstorm Page 5

  7

  “Where do you want me to park the car?” Vicky asked him. She had driven into the drive-through entrance to the building and had parked in front of the door. The light from the inside of the building ─ from the lobby ─ spilled out its fluorescent cast. But Connie’s face remained in shadow so she couldn’t be sure if he was asleep or not.

  He hadn’t fall asleep. He had sat up straighter once they had gotten off the freeway. “In the parking garage. Underground. Just drive on through and it’s on your right. Just press the gizmo on the visor. The door will open.”

  “I hate underground parking lots.”

  “Well, bully for you.”

  She hadn’t meant to say that. Hadn’t meant to say anything about herself. All she wanted to do ─ what she had decided once they had gotten off the freeway, was to leave him the keys when they were parked. Phone Marlene. Phone for a taxi. And wait for it to come in the building’s lobby. She hadn’t meant to reveal anything of herself. Not to this Conrad Brinkley.

  “Just leave the keys in the car. I can park it, Victoria.” He was still drunk enough to have attitude. Contempt for all the lowly mortals, her included. Unlike his rarefied self.

  The sound of his voice annoyed her. Though she didn’t admit that to herself. She just felt it, she spoke without thinking. Without filtering her emotions. “Drunks are pathetic creatures. But I guess you should know. They’re never sober enough to drive.” She didn’t switch off the car.

  “Soberly sober enough as long as there are no mad BMW drivers in the parking garage.”

  She didn’t switch off the engine. “I better call Marlene. She wanted to know if you got home safely.”

  “Did I get home safely, Miss Victoria prim and proper?”

  She hummed her note of irritation. “Are you always this annoying or just when you’re drunk?”

  He had to think about that. And while he thought, she sat rigidly. Her hands gripping the steering wheel like she wanted to crush it. He waited for what he thought was a reasonable lapse of silence between them before speaking. “Do you mind giving me the keys? I can take it from here. I can assume you, assure you, that I’m sober enough to park my car.”

  “You know. People look up to you,” she said with emotion, looking out the front windshield and not at him. “Conrad Brinkley. Boy genius. You and your Kreutzer’s Third Theorem. Unsolved for over a hundred years and you did it before first-year midterms. At university, you were some kind legendary character. That’s all I ever heard when I got to school. The hallowed brain of Conrad Brinkley.”

  “And your point?”

  Now she did look at him. Took her hands off the steering wheel. “You used to date my sister,” she said and then flung the keys at him. After yanking them out of the ignition switch like she was pulling off a limp. She got out of the car and started walking to the front door of the building.

  “Hey,” he said. The word came out of his mouth twice. Once when the keys struck his chest. And again when she left the car.

  He opened his door and slid his feet out and onto the pavement. Started to walk quickly after her, but ─ even though his head was beginning to sober up ─ his legs didn’t seem to share the same opinion. “Wait a minute,” he shouted at her.

  When he reached her, she spun around as if to give him a “piece of her mind.” Which she did.

  “You know, you geniuses ─” She pronounced the word with as much distaste as she could. “You geniuses are all alike. All bravado and snob-appeal. Resting on your laurels just because you had one insight. But you’re really like my dad. Your laurels are really in the bottle. And you treat everybody like you treated my sister. I thought you were different. Even after she broke up with you.”

  “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Your sister. What’s your name?”

  “Vicky. I told you.”

  “No, no. Vicky what?”

  “Vicky Carlson.”

  “Vicky Carlson.” He thought about her name. “Megan Carlson? That’s your sister?” She nodded. “Wait a minute. How did I treat your sister? We were never even going together. I think we went out a few times. But they weren’t dates. I never dated in college. We just went out to a few so-called parties in res. Had coffee and drinks sometimes with some of the usual suspects. That was all.”

  She stared at him as if she were trying to smother her emotions. Her face wrinkled into a frown.

  “Hell,” he said. “What’s your problem?”

  She didn’t want to say what her problem was. “You were supposed to taken Megan to IPAM in Los Angeles. To present your paper on the Kreutzer solution.”

  “Jesus! Not that damn Theorem again. So? I never went.”

  “I know. But you told Megan you had an extra ticket and she could come with you.”

  “I did? I never said that.”

  “She waited at the airport where you said you’d meet her. Only you never showed up.”

  He studied her face while he thought about that. That and his university days.

  He had been Lord of the Manor then. Boy genius for sure. Living off his reputation after having solved the Theorem. That damn Theorem. Didn’t work much after that. For those five years in school. Didn’t have to. Came out with an M.A. in theoretical mathematics. They had begged him to go on. His profs and the dean. But he had had it with school. With mixing potential insights with more than the occasional drink when he was preaching to the masses. Got away with murder. Did most of his course work either orally or by writing and publishing some brilliant insight monograph.

  And as for Megan Carlson. He might have told her something like that. Only, if he had, he had meant it as a joke. He didn’t want to admit it (especially to himself) but until Evie, he was suicidally shy when it came to being alone with a girl. Always hid behind his genius bravado. (It was Evie who had opened up his heart.) And besides. He never went to L.A. Sent the paper instead. There was no way he was going to get up in front of all those prof types and speak. He was okay in class. Among his admirers. Comfortable enough holding court in the student union or in one of the off-campus bars. Especially if he had a few drinks inside him.

  And as for being a drunk. Well, he had pretty much given up drinking in his last year. Pretty much became a loner. His only companions were his school work and the list of unsolved math problems he was working on. None of which he was able to solve.

  Vicky’s face, now twisted up into annoyance, reminded him of those years. That was how he had looked every time it became evident that the boy genius couldn’t repeat his Kreutzer epiphany. Cursing Kreutzer for his Third Theorem.

  “I better call Marlene.” She began looking in her purse for her phone.

  “I’ll call her if you want. Then she’ll know I’m still alive and well.”

  She hummed her note of annoyance. “Okay. I’ll call for a cab.”

  “Be my guest.” He didn’t have a sound for annoyance. But annoyed, he felt. Suddenly at everything. Himself. Evie. This prissy Victoria girl. At his possible descent into madness.

  “So?” he said. She stopped scrolling through a list of taxi companies and looked at him. “I didn’t promise to take you as well, did I?”

  “You came over the house a few times. And you and dad ─ You and dad would have drinks and ─”

  He remembered the father now. An oaf of a guy. All he wanted to do when he came over was to talk football. And a quiet mother who served scones and coffee. And Megan who helped her mom and waited patiently for the football talk to end (and the drinks) so they could leave.

  God, he had forgotten all that.

  “Were you the kid in braces and a ponytail?” he asked, half joking.

  “No.”

  Right. Now he remembered. A kid with long hair sitting quietly in a far corner of the room. Skinny. That was it. Her dad used to call her “bean pole.” And when he did, she’d get up and leave the room.

  “You don’t remember me, do you?”

  “Yeah, I do. Sort of.” />
  After a silence, while they stared at anything but the other person. While Vicky hummed her notes ─ now of disapproval ─ she went back to her phone. “I’m going to call for a taxi.”

  “You do that.” He glanced inside the building. At the lobby. There were three men there. They sat on the two sofas. On the backs of the sofas, really. Two on the back of one, their feet on the sofa’s cushions. And the other one on the other sofa’s back. They were boys, really. Late teens. They didn’t look familiar to him. Didn’t look too gentlemanly, either.

  “You going to wait outside or in the lobby?”

  She surprised by his question. Like she was surprised by everything about him. “What’s it to you?”

  “Listen. What is your problem? What did Megan tell you about me? Hell, we only went around together my first year. And not even as a couple.”

  She ignored his question and went back to her phone. “Yes,” she said into it after tapping on a taxi app. “Can you send a taxi to ─ What’s the address here?” Connie told her and she repeated it into the phone. “Oh,” she said after listening for a while. “No sooner? … Uh, yes. I guess so … Sure.”

  Connie watched her while she had her ear to the phone. The frown on his face was for the effort of trying to remember something about her other than ─ He couldn’t even remember the than. Whatever the than was. Let alone what she looked like when he had gone to Megan’s house.

  “Thank you.” She ended the call and gave him a questioning look.

  “What?” he said to her with a shake of his head. She hummed again. He countered her hum with raised eyebrows. After a glance at the boys in the lobby, he walked to his car. Got in. And drove to the entrance of the parking garage. Still annoyed at her annoyance of him. It had been a long time ─ since his early days in high school when his math and science teachers would get annoyed with him for asking too many questions ─ a long time since someone didn’t think he was this brilliant mind.

  When Vicky watched him walk away, and then drive away, her annoyance only increased. He hadn’t unlocked the front door for her. Or even said he was grateful to her for driving him home. Hadn’t even invited him up to his apartment to wait for the taxi.

  It was a warm spring night, so it wasn’t about being left out in the cold. Unless you included how she thought how he thought about her. Which, she had decided, was not at all.

  So once again, she hummed her note of irritation and scrunched up her face as she waited for the taxi. Waited by walking a few feet away from the front door and then to the door. Back and forth.

  “You want to wait in my place?” Connie had come out of the elevator and opened the front door for her. That was after the three boys and he exchanged curious looks. Those curious male looks of bravado. Really more aggressive than curious. They were odd looking, he thought. Dark circles under their eyes and ashen faces. Like they spent too much time sitting on the backs of sofas in fluorescent lit lobbies.

  She jumped at the sound of his voice. But she wasn’t so startled to answer immediately. Even if what she told him wasn’t what she wanted. “No. No thank you. I’ll wait out here.”

  “Fine. Suit yourself.” He didn’t want her up in his apartment, anyway. “It was just a drunken suggestion.” He smiled at her indignant face. “Fine, it is. Vicky/Victoria.”

  He shook his head as he walked to the elevator. Pressed the “up” button and the door to one of the two elevators opened. Pressed “5” and watched her on the other side of the glass entrance door until the elevator door closed.

  At the fifth floor, he got out of the elevator and walked to his door. Uncertain. Uncertain about a number of things.

  Foremost, his apartment. His body ached with weariness. But his apartment meant sleep. Or trying to sleep. And sleep meant the dream. And the two in the morning jolt out of sleep. Another night of that and he didn’t know what he was going to do. (And that didn’t include his psychotic episode last night and tonight.)

  Then there was Vicky downstairs. Vicky/Victoria. And her inexplicable anger towards him. What had he ever done to her? Or really to her sister? And all that business about taking Megan to L.A. Honestly, he couldn’t remember ever saying that. But the trouble with this Vicky was that she reminded of his university days. A time, especially the last year of failed attempts to solve another famous problem, he had shoved down deep into his thoughts. What a waste it had been. The whole university thing. And that damn Kreutzer’s Third Theorem. That one stroke of brilliance always mocking him. Well, if you’re such a genius, why can’t you do it again? But no one at the company knew about that. He was just an Eureka man. A clever code developer. Evie’s man. Which probably did more for his status than any brilliance he displayed. And now this Vicky/Victoria. She was going to tell everyone about him and he’ll have to live that damn Kreutzer’s Third Theorem all over again.

  And finally, as he turned the key in his lock, there were those three boys. Up to no good. Likely. Downstairs with Vicky Victoria. Not a good match up.

  Once inside, he opened the coat closet by the door and took out his baseball bat. His favorite bat. The one he used when playing in the company slo-pitch league.

  He returned to the elevator with the bat. Pressed the “down” button. And went back into the elevator that had delivered him to his floor.

  On the main floor, when he got out of the elevator, he wasn’t surprised at what he saw. Vicky/Victoria outside in front of the entrance door. She was surrounded by the three young males. None of them looked like they were discussing what movie to see.

  Now, although he might have been a bit of a masculine woos when it came to not liking blow-em-up, shoot-em-up movies, he had never hesitated to defend himself or someone else who was being bullied. Even if it was obvious that he was on the weaker side of force.

  He pushed open the front door with adrenaline-fueled energy. “Which one of you guys wants their heads smashed in?” He raised his bat.

  Vicky transferred her shock of fear from the boys to Connie. The boys transferred their smirks to Connie.

  “Three to one, mister,” one of the boys said.

  Connie grabbed Vicky’s arm. “Get inside.” But she was too overcome with alarm to move. Connie had to yank her arm and push her behind him. The boys stood a few feet away from Connie. Wary of his bat but smiling like the macho guys they were. Connie’s foot had kept the door from closing. He gave Vicky another shove and she went inside. The door closed with a pneumatic sigh.

  For a moment, the boys and Connie stared at each other. Connie’s eyes never left their faces. Their eyes went from the bat to Connie’s face. Back and forth while they tried to decide their next move. Finally, the boy who had spoken repeated their advantage. “Three to one, mister.”

  Vicky watched and held her breath. She had never been involved in anything more violent than watching a shoving match by the players at a university basketball game. Her alarm still made it difficult for her to breath. As much for herself ─ even though she was safe behind the locked door ─ as it was for Connie.

  The two other boys laughed at the odds. “You got that, Benny,” one of them said. “three to one don’t give you much of a chance, mister.”

  Connie didn’t wait for the boys to have another laugh. He swung the bat and caught one of the boys in the hip. The boy went down with a howl of pain.

  “I make that two to one now,” Connie said.

  “Fuck,” the boy called Benny yelled. He and the other boy still standing turned around and ─ without a glance at their injured friend ─ ran away.

  “Hey, you,” Connie called to the boy on the ground. “Get the hell out of here or I’ll smash your other side.”

  The boy struggled to his feet and limped after his friends.

  Vicky had watched what had happened as the fear she was feeling turned to shock. So much so that when Connie unlocked and opened the entrance door, she didn’t move out of the way. The door bumped against her chest.

  “So,”
he said. She had stepped aside for him to enter. “Do you want to wait in the lobby or what?”

  She didn’t know what she wanted. She was still overcome from what she had seen. “Are you always this violent?”

  Connie gave her an incredulous look. “No. Only when I’m rescuing Vicky/Victoria from a fate worse than death.”

  “My god. You might have killed the boy.”

  His face went several shades beyond incredulous. “Shit, girl. What the hell is your problem with me? Whatever you think I did to your sister, I didn’t. I’m not even sure we even held hands.”

  With that, he went to the elevator and pressed the “up” button. It opened. He got in. When he pressed the number “5,” Vicky walked in beside him. The door closed. Each listened to the mechanical vibrations as the elevator went up to the fifth floor.

  Vicky hadn’t wanted to be left alone in the lobby. Connie wasn’t sure what he wanted at that moment. But surely not this girl in his apartment.

  8

  His apartment was how he had left it that morning. A jumble of dirty clothes. Dirty dishes. Pages of more than yesterday’s paper strewn about. But he hadn’t expected visitors. In fact, since moving in, he had never had a visitor.

  Vicky stood by the door after he had closed it. After he had said to her, “Excuse me” because she was blocking his way and went into the bathroom.

  What a mess, she thought. Not anything like the image of Connie Brinkley that she had held in her mind. Megan had mentioned that he had seemed to grow more strange in his last few years at school. Or at least more aloof. Keeping by himself. Or when he was with other people, play acting at being the boy genius. She had expected a little stuck-up-ness. But not this. Like he was some college freshman living alone for the first time. Getting drunk every night and never picking up after himself. She would have thought he had become more of an adult. And as for the baseball bat. There were a lot better ways to deal with those boys than with violence.