Brainstorm Read online

  “Your turn if you want.”

  He seemed to always be interrupting her thoughts. She jumped at the sound of his voice. When she recovered, she was going to say, that’s all right. (She could imagine what his bathroom looked like.) But she really did have to go.

  She nodded an affirmative and went into the bathroom. It was as she had imagined. Perhaps a little worse.

  He stared at the closed door for a moment. He wasn’t that drunk or even so pissed off at her attitude towards him not to realize what she must think of his apartment. But damn if he was going to do anything about it. Yet, when he glanced around the room ─ the Murphy bed left unmade, and the rest of the chaos in the room ─ he could see it through her eyes. And that depressed him. Not because what she might think of him. But what he thought of himself. It was one thing to try to be rational about what was happening to him. And another to feel himself slipping away into madness. When she came out of the bathroom, even after she raised her nose in disgust at him, he was glad she was here. He didn’t want to be alone. At least until he could get up enough courage to face being alone.

  “You want something to drink?” he asked. At least he could try to be polite to her.

  But she didn’t see the offer as being polite. She stiffened her face in anger. “Really. You guys. That’s all you ever think about. Like my last boyfriend disaster.”

  If bristling from annoyance could be heard, the silent air around them would have shrieked.

  “What is it with you?” He knew what she meant. “I mean coffee or some tea or something hot. Jesus! Get off your high horse.”

  She blushed at what she had thought. And what she had told him. (Boyfriend! That wasn’t something she had wanted to admit to him.)

  “No thank you,” she said. Then reconsidered. “Okay.”

  “Which is it?” he asked, still annoyed with her. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee.”

  “Okay.” The word sounded like he was preparing for battle.

  “I guess I better call the taxi company and tell them to phone when they’re here.”

  “Well, if they’re coming soon, then maybe we don’t need the coffee.”

  She gave him an embarrassed smile. “Actually they said it could be up to an hour or so before they came.” She couldn’t help another embarrassed smile. That meant staying here for that long. “Um. Do you want me to make it? I can make the coffee.” She decided she might as well be polite after all the hums of annoyance and disappointments.

  “What? You still think I’m drunk?”

  “No. I just meant ─”

  “I’ll make the coffee.” He couldn’t stop being annoyed with her. And now he wished he could get her to leave and to hell with being alone. “That is if you’re having any.”

  “Yes. If you’re having some.”

  “And if I’m not?”

  Once again, the air vibrated with unspoken irritation.

  “Whatever,” she said and looked for a place to sit down. If it was going to be a long wait, she didn’t want to do it standing up. And as far as what had happened downstairs. Well, she didn’t want to wait in the lobby.

  But where to sit?

  The sofa was flush against the bed so you couldn’t put your feet down on the floor. And anyway, it was covered in books, magazines and newspapers. She chose a chair at the table. The one closest to her. In front of the computer screen. It seemed a neutral enough place to sit.

  Connie was filling the coffee maker with coffee when she sat down. He caught her movement on the fifth measured spoonful. “No,” he shouted. “Don’t sit there.” Seeing her there had given him a sudden burst of memory of last night.

  She jumped to her feet. “What’s wrong?”

  “Huh … It’s broken. Might break apart.”

  Both scanned the room for somewhere else to sit.

  He hastily made the Murphy bed and pushed it up into its cupboard. Then cleared a spot on the sofa by piling what was there at one end.

  “Here,” he told her.

  She sat on the cleared space. He went back to making the coffee. Filling the water reservoir. Closing the filter compartment. And switching the maker on. He remained standing in front of the counter as he stared at the coffee maker. She had watched the whole procedure ─ his back was to her ─ wishing that the taxi would come. Both remained in these positions until the coffee maker began to make burbling noises.

  He turned around to her. They locked eyes for a brief second. There was no communication in the look. Just a sense of recognition. He realized she looked a little like her sister, Megan. And that brought him back, once again, to his university days. To that last year of frustration. To that heady first year of notoriety. She realized why she had been acting so strangely around him. It was all because of the teenage fantasy she had had about him. Choosing her over her big sister. She had forgotten about that.

  “How do you take your coffee?”

  “Milk and one sugar.”

  He nodded. Said a silent, okay. And looked in the cupboard for two mugs. There weren’t any. They were all dirty. In the sink and on the counter. He stood. Considered the dirty dishes.

  Vicky had once again been watching him now that his back was turned towards her. And she couldn’t help commenting. Teenage crush or not. “Don’t you every do your dishes?”

  He decided not to look at her. “Is that a question or a comment?”

  “Both,” she said, adding another hum of disappointment that she just couldn’t suppress. “This place looks like ─” She was going to say, like a teenager’s bedroom not an adult’s apartment. But she amended it to: “Looks a mess.”

  “Yeah.” Now he did face her. “I try to keep it that way. You’re going to have to wait a bit while I wash a few mugs. If that meets with your approval.”

  He washed two mugs and dried them with the dish towel that had been hanging on the stove door. The towel had originally been white.

  The dish towel finally did it for Vicky. It wasn’t that she was a clean nut. But then again, she was sort of a clean nut. Washing her vegetables with a special cleaner. Wiping down the toilet every time she used it. Using disinfectants on every exposed surface. She went to him and took the mugs out of his hands.

  “You washed them,” she said, “and then you dried them with this towel? What else did you use the towel for? Cleaning up your messes on the floor?”

  She turned on tap, pushing the handle towards hot and felt the temperature of the water. It was cold. “My god. You didn’t even wait for the water to heat up.”

  “What are you? My mother or something? It takes forever for the water to heat. I thought you were in a hurry to have your coffee.” That wasn’t why he had washed the mugs in cold water. He never waited for the water to heat up when he was forced to wash a dish.

  Vicky leaned over the sink. Her hand under the water stream. It did take a long time for it to get warm. And it never got hot.

  Connie was about to say, “see,” when she started washing the mugs. He didn’t think the word was worth the effort. He left her to her vices and sat at the other end of the table. Not the chair in front of the computer screen.

  If only he hadn’t gotten drunk, none of this would have happened. None of this being, Vicky/Victoria and the chauffeured drive to his place. Suddenly, that thought depressed him. Depressed the hell out of him. Then there was the way Evie had treated him at the bar and all these psychotic episodes. It seemed that he was either going to go crazy or crash into depression over losing Evie.

  She finished washing the mugs. “Do you have a clean dish towel?” she asked with a glance around the room. It was more of a wish than a question.

  “No.”

  She hummed again and glanced at the coffee maker. It had stopped burbling. She poured the coffee into the mugs. “How do you like your coffee?”

  “What?” He had been thinking he could ask her if she knew a good psychologist. (Any psychologist.) Maybe one of her university professo
rs. If she had taken a course in psychology. Which, when he thought about it, she probably hadn’t. Being a math/computer science type.

  “How do you like your coffee?”

  “Uh. Black.”

  “Here.” She handed him a mug. She went to the fridge and then turned to him. “May I?”

  “Be my guest.” He sipped his coffee. The caffeine would keep him up, but that was good. Anything to put off going to sleep.

  She opened the fridge and looked inside. At the various jars of pickles, jams, relishes, mustards, yogurts, and mystery plates of what looked like chicken parts and some darker, beef-like remnants. Among all that, she found a carton of milk. She took it out. It seemed half full.

  “Where’s the sugar?” She couldn’t tell if the sugar bowl or container was hidden under the dirty dishes on the counter. And really, she didn’t want to look.

  “Uh?” He wasn’t sure.

  She poured some milk into her mug. That is, she started to pour the milk until she saw that instead of a white, liquid stream, a semi-solid yellowish putridity came slurping out.

  “Jesus!” she shouted. (She never swore.) “Don’t you ever throw anything away? Don’t you ever clean out your fridge?” She poured the coffee into the sink and rinsed her mug. Rinsed it very thoroughly. Then she poured herself another cup. The look she gave him when she was finished was what she might have given a two-year-old for doing something really stupid.

  “I guess it’s too much to hope for there being any sugar. Do you have any?”

  “Uh … I don’t think so. Not unless there’s some in the cupboard.”

  She looked in the cupboard above the sink. Then in the other cupboards. They were mostly bare. A few plates. A few cans of vegetables and jars of tomato sauce. Why she should care whether he or she had sugar, she didn’t know. It was more of a habit with her. Once she said something, she liked to follow through. Very much the way Connie thought.

  But there was no sugar and she gave her coffee a disappointing glance. It would have to remain dark with no milk or sugar. It would have to remain. Like all the dirty dishes that she now looked out. If everything between them hadn’t been so irritating. So uncomfortable. She might have started in on cleaning up. She could barely bear being around such mess.

  But she wasn’t about to be a mother hen to him. She wasn’t a Melanie. And glad of it.

  Now it was his turn to be watching her. She wasn’t looking at him. More at the bottom of her mug or the floor. She seemed to be lost in some kind of deep thought. Or maybe disgust over the way he lived, he imagined. She went to the sofa, her mug of coffee in one hand, and sat on the only clear space. He followed her with his eyes. Not worried that she might look up and see him staring at her. After all, this was his apartment.

  He sipped his coffee. She didn’t sip hers.

  The digital clock on the side table by the sofa marked the time during which neither of them spoke. Five minutes. But to each of them, it seemed much longer.

  Vicky breathed a sigh of awkwardness. To pass the time, she had tried to go over the events of the day. Her first job out of university. The apparent confusion of everyone she met because of the people not showing up for work. Tried to think about that but Connie Brinkley always got in the way.

  Connie tried not to think about anything. But Evie and the memory of those hallucinations got in the way.

  “You know …,” he said, suddenly feeling he had talk to someone about what was happening to him. He hadn’t really meant to voice those worries. But they wanted to come out. “You know. I think I’m going crazy.” Now! he sighed. There. It was out. But he immediately regretted it. Confessing something so frightening. So personal to a virtual stranger. Should’ve kept his thoughts to himself.

  “What?” His confession caught her so off guard, she spilled some of her coffee.

  “Oh, forget it.”

  She looked at him. Really looked at him. Not thinking he was a drunkard like her dad. Or her last boyfriend. Someone who would always let her down. Like all men she had ever known had let her down. His eyes seemed distant. Sad. Suffering from something.

  “No, no. What did you mean?”

  “Forget it. I’m just babbling. You know us drunkards. Always seeing pink elephants.”

  “No. I’m not going to forget it. People don’t say they think they’re going crazy for no reason.”

  Boy, that was the truth, he thought.

  “Why do think so?” she persisted.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just forget it.”

  “No!” She stood up and went to him. “I won’t forget it.” Knelt on one knee so their faces would be on the same level. “Tell me. Why do you think you’re going crazy?”

  And ─ after a brief debate with himself of what good it would do to tell someone other than a psychologist what was happening to him ─ he spoke. Told her everything. The dream. The hallucinations. The three points he had tried to work out.

  Everything.

  9

  Connie didn’t like the silence in the room when he finished. But what did he expect? You tell someone you think you’re going crazy. You give her irrefutable details of your craziness. What did he expect? She wasn’t going to laugh it off. He didn’t laugh it off. He had first-hand information.

  What he did expect was that she would stand up and tip-toe out of his apartment. Like she was afraid she might wake up the homicidal maniac in him.

  But she didn’t stand up. Hadn’t moved a muscle the whole time he spoke. There had been a lot of things she had imagined about Conrad Brinkley. How he was revered by all the company employees for the brilliant man that he was. How he would immediately recognize her as Megan’s kid sister. How they would spend private time together. At first because she was helping him solve some software problem. Until the only problem they would have would be how to keep their hands off each other in public.

  She never imagined. This

  She had stared into his eyes as he talked. What she had seen. What she had felt was a resigned sense of sadness. She felt it as if she were sad, too. She didn’t stand and slink out of the apartment. She took his hand. Pressed hers to his. Then pressed it to her breast.

  “You have to see someone,” she said. Her voice barely above a whisper.

  “I know. I’m going to do that tomorrow.”

  “Do you want me to stay tonight?” What she meant was, was he afraid to be by himself tonight. Afraid of the dream. Of waking up alone and defenseless. Having another psychotic episode.

  “No, that’s okay. I think I’m going to be fine.” He laughed. “In the short term, anyway. It feels better. I feel better telling someone. But I’m sorry I had to lay this on you. First you had to deal with a drunkard. Now a crazy person. That’s one hell of an evening. Right?”

  He suddenly felt embarrassed. Shy in front of her. He wasn’t one to bare his inner self to anyone. When he had been a teen, he had confessed to a friend that he thought he might be some kind of genius. The friend had laughed at the suggestion. He hadn’t laughed. And the conservative side of him decided right then and there that he would never reveal anything personal about himself to another person. Ever again.

  He removed his hand from hers and stood up.

  She stood as well. Could feel his emotional withdrawal. “I’m not keeping score, Connie.”

  “Well, maybe you should.”

  “I don’t mind staying. I could sleep on the sofa.”

  “No, no. I’m going to be fine. Maybe there’s some drug they can give me.”

  “I’m sure there is. They’ve made remarkable advances in ─” She didn’t want to finish the sentence. Didn’t want to use the “p” word.

  He finished it for her. “In helping psychotic people like me.”

  They remained facing each other. She gave him a sympathetic shrug. She would have liked to have given him a hug. His expression was so sad. He sure needed it. But, like Connie, she felt shy. Being privy to someone’s fears and intimate feelings. Some
one who was really a stranger to her. It was an uncomfortable position to be in.

  However, each was spared more awkward moments. Vicky’s phone rang. It was the taxi driver. He was in front of the building.

  “Well. I guess I’ll go.” She went to the door and stopped. “You’re going to be all right, Connie,” she told him with absolutely no conviction.

  “Sure. Don’t worry.” He could see that she was worried. “Thanks for being such a good sport and listening to me ─ It can’t be easy. Your first day. Driving a drunk home and then finding out he’s crazy.”

  “No, I don’t think ─”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll be fully sober in the morning.” They exchanged wan smiles. Then he added (with no conviction): “And tomorrow I’ll find a shrink and he or she will patch me up. Good as new.”

  She nodded sadly. Tried to smile. And left.

  When she did leave. When he heard the sigh of the door closing and the latch locking, he felt her leaving as if she had left him in a sealed tomb. And then that would be it. The end of him. He’d fall asleep tonight. He’d have the dream. Only this time, it would be he who would be calling out for help. And when it wouldn’t come, he would die. Both in his dream and in real life. And that would be that. End of story. No more crazy. Just peaceful, quiet, immobile death.

  He thought about that for a moment. Wasn’t sure if he was happy or unhappy about the thought.

  Despite the coffee, he felt sleepy. He pulled down the Murphy bed. Undressed. Had the sense that maybe this was really going happen. His death. He turned off the lights and got into bed.

  So how did that make him feel? he thought. Dying. Well, it was a hell of a lot better than going crazy. He closed his eyes and waited for sleep. Now certain that this would be his last sleep. For a while, his brain wouldn’t shut down. There was Evie and Vicky and lines of code. They all swirled around in his head competing for space. As did a regret that he hadn’t phoned his parents or his sister. Not that he would tell them good-bye. That would alarm them. Just to hear their voices for the last time. He knew he had been a difficult child. Prodigies were. Always too smart for his own good. Too smart for his parents and sister to handle.