Brainstorm Read online

  But, of course, thinking doesn’t always make it so. Just after two, he had the dream again. Exactly as it had come to him before. Every detail the same. He awoke with a start. His undershirt soaked in sweat. And he was very much alive. Very much the way he had always been on waking from this dream. Fearful. Depressed. His stomach flipping over. His head hurting so much that the pain meds he took didn’t calm it.

  10

  “Oh, what a mess out there, folks.” It was the DJ’s voice from his car radio speaking. “I’m glad Marilyn, you and I are cozy in our booth. I wouldn’t want to be out there this morning.”

  Connie wasn’t glad to be out there. He was on the bridge. Motionless. Bumper to bumper. Somewhere on the first third of its 563.5 feet span.

  “Well, Dennis,” a woman’s radio voice said, “here is the traffic report short and sweet.” Connie could almost feel her smile at his misfortune. She wasn’t stuck in this damn traffic jam. “The lights are out at Fifteenth and Beverly. On Highway 175, a tractor trailer has overturned and lost its load of new cars.” “You got to be kidding, Marilyn,” the voice that was Dennis chuckled. “Time for all you folks to pick up a good used car.” “Well, maybe not so good, Dennis.” “You got me there, Marilyn.” Dennis and Marilyn had a laugh over that.

  Connie didn’t laugh.

  “And you should see the Memorial Bridge,” Marilyn continued. “What a mess. If you’re on the bridge, people, I hope you’ve brought along a good book. You’re going to be there for a while.”

  Connie turned off the radio. He thought about Evie and the apartment they had had together. Her apartment. If they were still together, he wouldn’t be on the bridge. And maybe all those weird visions would have stopped by now.

  The morning hadn’t been any better or worse for him. He had awakened at three. He hadn’t turned on his computer. Didn’t want to tempt fate. He had showered, shaved, and gotten dressed without a psychotic happening. Then, after pushing the Murphy bed back into its cupboard, he had sat on the sofa waiting for the sun to come. Afterwards, he would leave for work. Before the traffic got bad. Only while the sun had begun to rise, he had fallen asleep. Slumped to one side of the sofa. Half sitting up. Half reclining. He awoke an hour later. And left at the height of rush hour. Head, still pounding. Stomach somewhere between heaving and queasy.

  He turned the radio back on and searched for some music. But all he could find. All there was that morning was the usual raucous commute music and inane chatter. All intended to keep drivers alert and awake. He didn’t need that. His headache served that purpose.

  He waited without the radio. Without moving his car. Still bumper to bumper. Waited patiently with all the other drivers. Surprised, like the other drivers, when the car in front of him began to move. He put his car into Drive and followed. He hadn’t much hope left in the reservoir of where he kept his hope. But he hadn’t had another psychotic episode that morning and the line-up of cars was finally moving. There was a sense of hope in that.

  “One small step for mankind,” he said aloud to the car in front of him.

  Slowly, he followed. Thought about Vicky and what he had told her. Wondered, too, what she’d be like when he got to work. Leary? Interested? Gossiping about him?

  His “hope” didn’t last long. When he reached the crown of the bridge, the car in front of him stopped. As he did. He waited a few minutes before putting the car into Park. (As long as it was in Drive, there was some hope.) Then wondered whether he should turn off the engine. It was bad enough polluting the air when driving. But he didn’t have to do that when idling. Unless, of course, he was going to move soon.

  But he didn’t turn off the engine for several minutes. Until it seemed as if moving was more of a dream than a reality. Most of the other vehicles had already turned off their engines. Those were the drivers who had had previous experience with the traffic jams on the bridge.

  It was a civil affair. Being stuck on the bridge. Despite that most of the drivers, if not all, were going to be late for whatever person or event to which they were travelling. They were not so much apathetic as patient. If you commuted over the bridge at this hour, you expected delays. If you didn’t want delays, you didn’t go over the bridge.

  That’s why Connie was surprised when he saw someone moving in his side-view mirror. Surprised that anyone would get out of their vehicle. Besides it being dangerous if the traffic began to move, it wouldn’t do them any good. Trying to see what the holdup was wasn’t going to make it go away.

  He couldn’t tell who it was. Man or woman. All he could see was something blue occasionally appearing in the mirror. Probably a man, he thought. Blue being a man’s color. Getting out of a car being what an impatient man might do. Probably a BMW driver, he thought. Bridge rage.

  He opened his glove box to look for the bottle of pain killers he kept there. What he had taken in the morning had worn off. Not that they had helped that much. But it had been something. He found it and opened the bottle. He would have taken a few pills out but at that moment he had an “aha” epiphany. Maybe he had a brain tumor, he thought. He wasn’t going crazy. He was just ill. Maybe that’s why he had a sense he was going to die. Because something in his head wasn’t right. Was going to maybe burst.

  The possibility was comforting in a sort of uncomfortable way. He’d rather see a neurologist than psychologist. If it was physical instead of mental, that meant he was still himself. Even if he should die, it wouldn’t be because he had gone insane. Then again, he wasn’t sure there was any comfort in that. But it was an idea.

  These were very sobering thoughts so he didn’t see the person standing beside his door. Didn’t realize anyone was there until he heard a fist banging against the window. The sound woke up his senses. His fear and flight senses. If he hadn’t been strapped in by his seat belt, he would have jumped off his seat. Would have jumped out of his skin when he heard the person shout at him. A woman. A middle-aged woman in a blue top and jeans.

  “Help me, please. Please help me.”

  She continued to bang on his window and then ran to the car in front of him and did the same thing. Banged on the window. Shouted, “Help me, please. Please help me.”

  For a creepy moment, he thought he was back in his dream. The same words. The same plea. But at the same time, he knew he wasn’t. This wasn’t a hallucination. Wasn’t a dream. He was sure of that.

  When he got out of the car to go after the woman, she was already several cars ahead. He could hear her screaming for help. Pathetic cries like she knew she wasn’t going to get it. Maybe she was right. No one but he had gotten out of their vehicles. They all thought she must be crazy. Why he had, he didn’t know. Didn’t really think that deeply about it. Maybe instinct to help someone in need. Maybe something else. Like he was being pulled out of his car by her plea. She, the flame. He, the moth.

  He went after her. Feeling this strange sensation. Almost like déjà-vu. As if he knew what was going to happen and he was going to try stop it. Only he didn’t know what was going to happen. All he had of that sensation was that it seemed familiar to him. Not so much the woman ─ she was nothing like the girl in his dream ─ just the cry for help.

  The woman was running now. Having given up pounding on the cars’ windows. He ran after her. A sense of horror crept into his scalp. For the woman or himself, he didn’t know. Crazy, he thought. Like everything that had happened to him these last weeks.

  “Lady,” he shouted. She had moved across the lanes of traffic to the edge of the bridge. “Lady, wait. What seems to be the trouble?” She looked back at him. He looked into her frightened face. “Lady, what’s wrong?” By the time he reached her, she had climbed up on the rail. “Lady, for chrissakes, wait. Don’t!”

  All eyes in the other cars and trucks were watching the drama. But none of their doors opened. No one came to help him or the woman.

  Connie stopped a few feet from her. She was balancing on the rail. One hand on a suspension cable. He had t
he sense not to rush her. To spook her in any way. Her face was spooked enough.

  “Lady, what’s the problem? What’s the trouble here? Is somebody after you? Do you want me to call the police? I have a phone. I can call them.”

  He waited for her to say something. Her eyes were wide open. Fearful. Dark rings around them as if she had been up for days. Her lips grey as well. Like she was suffering from hypothermia.

  He suddenly had the weird sense that if he could save her. Save this woman. Save her from whatever was terrorizing her, he could save himself. This whole nightmare psychosis would end.

  “Lady, just get down from there and we’ll see what we can do. There’s nothing to be afraid of. I’m not going to hurt you. And whatever you’re afraid of, we can deal with it together.” He looked over his shoulder at the other vehicles. To see if anyone was coming to help him and her. But all he saw were the people’s faces. Curious. But dispassionate.

  He turned back to the woman. “Lady?”

  “Help me, please,” she whispered to him. Then she jumped off the bridge. Fell without a cry or a shriek. Fell silently into the river below.

  Connie rushed to the edge of bridge and looked down. He didn’t see the blue blouse and jeans resurface. Not for a few minutes. Not until he saw a body farther down the river. Moving with the current away from the bridge. A dark blue mass against the green-blue of the water.

  And all the while, no one else had gotten out of their vehicles. Even to look or to offer some kind of condolences to him. Or to the woman.

  He sat down at the foot of the bridge from where she had jumped. His legs went limp with shock. Not only from witnessing someone’s death. A suicide. But from something more profound. More disturbing. This wasn’t a hallucination. This was like Mai Lin’s death. There was a real body. A real death. Already, he could hear police sirens. Someone must have called 911.

  No. This was something other than shock. Something was going on here. Something other than a psychotic episode. It was more than a coincidence that the woman had spoken the same words as the girl in his dream. Word for word. Those kinds of coincidences only happened in books. Not in real life. It didn’t take the so-called genius in him (former genius) to deduce that.

  His neck tingled from that realization. He shook with a sense of fear that was real this time. Not part of his imagination. Something wasn’t right here. And he made that point number four.

  Think!

  11

  The police had managed to get through the blockage on the bridge. They arrived about fifteen minutes later. Connie saw them. Their dark blue figures weaving in and out of the vehicles. He was still sitting on the ground. Leaning against the guard rail. He had gone from thinking about coincidences to being in shock.

  It was a helpless feeling. The stunned shock he felt. Helpless because he kept seeing the woman’s fall. In slowed down time. Like the fall he had taken in the men’s room. Helpless because he felt he should have been able to do something for woman. He was that close to stopping her. And the feeling made it difficult for him to talk to the police. They had helped him to stand up. But they couldn’t help him for the way he felt. Not with all the questions they had asked him. None of which he could answer.

  No, he didn’t know the woman.

  No, he never saw her before.

  No, he had no idea why she had jumped.

  No, he didn’t know what she had been afraid of.

  His only “yes” was for the request to show them some ID. He had lots of it. Driver’s license. Company security pass. Ownership papers. Credit cards. Bank cards. Hell, he knew who he was. But the more he explained to the officers who he was, the more he felt that he should know something about this woman. Maybe because he had been that close to her. He had looked into her frightened eyes. And she had looked into his. As if both of them should have known the other.

  It had started to rain. The clouds and the precipitation had come up suddenly. Roaring up the river as if it had had an invitation and was late in arriving. That had put an end to the interrogation. At least for the officers. Connie went back to his car, unanswered questions still pestering him.

  He had no intention of leaving the car. Unlike the other people in the vehicles around him. Now that the real drama was over, they had scrambled out. Despite the rain. Some with umbrellas. Some with a newspaper or something handy over their heads. Scrambled and pushed and shoved their way to the edge of the bridge. Where the woman had jumped from. To get a look at the divers and boats in the river. This was an event they could deal with. Now that there was no chance they could get personally involved.

  But Connie didn’t need to gawk. He had been personally involved. That’s what he thought when he noticed the gaping crowd. And it was that thought that had frightened him. Like the fear he had felt in and coming out of his dream. He felt his life was becoming surreal, yet frighteningly real. For himself. For that poor soul who had jumped into the river. For Mai Lin as well. Horrific and real.

  He sat and waited for the traffic to move. For nearly an hour. Sat and stared out the windshield at the car in front of him. His thought wandering around possibilities and answers to his questions.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  There were suits in the main lobby when he arrived. Also two police officers.

  He stopped just inside the revolving entrance door of the building when he saw the police. The sight of them brought him back to the edge of the bridge. Just as the edge of the moving door struck his back. He jumped forward. And at the same time, had the dizzy sensation that it was he who was falling off the bridge. A sensation so real, when he looked down at the floor, he expected it to rise up and smash into him.

  He staggered into the building instead of his normal easy step. His stagger got the attention of the police and the suits. He looked up into their curious faces once he regained his footing. He gave them ─ or anyone who was interested ─ a humble smile and walked over to the reception desk. The last thing he wanted was for anyone, especially the police and these suits, to think he was odd. Leon, the desk’s sentinel and security guard would know why the police were here.

  It was still drizzling slightly when he had walked from the car park across the street to the building. Connie had forgotten to take his umbrella out of the car. He wiped some of the mist off his head.

  Leon gave him a raised eyebrow and a tilt of the head towards the two officers who were being escorted to the exit door by Dan Suzuki, the CEO and President of the company. The other suits, three VPs, had hung back. They stood in a huddle near the elevators giving each other worried looks.

  Connie looked in the direction of the officers, too.

  Normally, he would have asked Leon what was going on. But once again the sight of the officers placed him back on the bridge. Back there in his memory. The woman falling. The faces of the officers who had talked to him. Concerned in an official manner with both the death of the woman and the reason Connie had been on the bridge.

  When he went to ask Leon, “what’s going on,” but he couldn’t get the words out ─ so stuck was he in those memories, all he could do was stare. Mouth open as if he was about to say something. But Leon was used to the geeks in the building. He filled in the missing question with an explanation.

  “It’s Hal,” Leon told him. “He’s gone missing.”

  “Oh,” Connie managed to say. And the sound of his voice brought him back to a memory or two away from the bridge. Of Hal and his roving blue eyes. Always checking out the women he would encounter during the day. Casual glances, like the ones he had given Evie over the last few months. Casual but inviting.

  “Yeah. His wife phoned the police this morning after he didn’t come home last night. After she phoned here and found out he never came to work yesterday.”

  Leon gave him the male nod of knowing. A subtle flick of the head. Like only they knew the real truth of the matter. Connie nodded back. And with the gesture felt more like his regular self. If a pounding headache was his
normal self. As if witnessing someone throwing themselves to their death would ever make a person feel his regular self.

  “I want to talk to you,” the voice of the CEO and his hand tapping him on the shoulder made him jump from the touch. He gasped and then when he saw who it was managed to croak out, “What?” But inwardly, he shook with that familiar sense of fear.

  “Later. Not here.” The CEO looked at his watch and then at the suits. “What do you have on this morning?” he asked one of the suits.

  “I’m meeting with Elroy’s team at ten.” It was nearly ten. “And then there’s the Fraser Group flying in at noon.”

  “Okay,” the CEO briefly considered. “Ben can deal with Elroy. Be in my office ─” He looked at Connie. “Let’s make it a quarter after ten. You guys come as well,” he added to the other suits. The CEO didn’t wait for Connie to say anything. He and his suits got into the executive elevator (one of three elevators in the lobby) and were gone.

  Connie watched them until the elevator door had closed. His only thought. His goal at the moment was to get somewhere to be alone. To try to sort out the noise in his head. He had a bottle of pain killers in his office. That under the surface headache he had had while on the bridge had blossomed into a migraine.

  The lobby was empty except for the people sitting on the chairs in an area reserved for company visitors. They faced a coffee table that had never known anyone to read the magazines, carefully arranged on its top. Four chairs on either side. Connie was used to visitors so he didn’t glance at them while he waited. Two of them, a man and a woman. Dark patches under the eyes of the man. The woman wore sun glasses.

  He had pressed his ID, security tag against the “up” symbol, but he pressed it again. He waited. Looked over his shoulders several times at the people in the chairs to see if any of them was going to join him. Not something he wanted. Which was to be left alone.