Prey

I slowed my approach, and walked on the carpet. I heard her say, "Yes, damn it, of course I do, but we have to be careful now…"

She looked up and saw me coming. Her tone immediately changed. "Okay, uh… look, Carol, I think we can handle that with a phone call to Frankfurt. Follow up with a fax, and let me know how he responds, all right?" And she snapped the phone shut. I came into the kitchen. "Jack, I hate to leave before the kids are up, but…"

"You've got to go?"

"I'm afraid so. Something's come up at work."

I glanced at my watch. It was a quarter after six. "Okay."

She said, "So, will you, uh… the kids…"

"Sure, I'll handle everything."

"Thanks. I'll call you later."

And she was gone.

I was so tired I wasn't thinking clearly. The baby was still asleep, and with luck she'd sleep several hours more. My housekeeper, Maria, came in at six-thirty and put out the breakfast bowls. The kids ate and I drove them to school. I was trying hard to stay awake. I yawned. Eric was sitting on the front seat next to me. He yawned, too.

"Sleepy today?"

He nodded. "Those men kept waking me up," he said.

"What men?"

"The men that came in the house last night."

"What men?" I said.

"The vacuum men," he said. "They vacuumed everything. And they vacuumed up the ghost."

From the backseat, Nicole snickered. "The ghost…"

I said, "I think you were dreaming, son." Lately Eric had been having vivid nightmares that often woke him in the night. I was pretty sure it was because Nicole let him watch horror movies with her, knowing they would upset him. Nicole was at the age where her favorite movies featured masked killers who murdered teenagers after they had had sex. It was the old formula: you have sex, you die. But it wasn't appropriate for Eric. I'd spoken to her many times about letting him see them.

"No, Dad, it wasn't a dream," Eric said, yawning again. "The men were there. A whole bunch of them."

"Uh-huh. And what was the ghost?"

"He was a ghost. All silver and shimmery, except he didn't have a face."

"Uh-huh." By now we were pulling up at the school, and Nicole was saying I had to pick her up at 4:15 instead of 3:45 because she had a chorus rehearsal after class, and Eric was saying he wasn't going to his pediatrician appointment if he had to get a shot. I repeated the timeless mantra of all parents: "We'll see."

The two kids piled out of the car, dragging their backpacks behind them. They both had backpacks that weighed about twenty pounds. I never got used to this. Kids didn't have huge backpacks when I was their age. We didn't have backpacks at all. Now it seemed all the kids had them. You saw little second-graders bent over like sherpas, dragging themselves through the school doors under the weight of their packs. Some of the kids had their packs on rollers, hauling them like luggage at the airport. I didn't understand any of this. The world was becoming digital; everything was smaller and lighter. But kids at school lugged more weight than ever. A couple of months ago, at a parents' meeting, I'd asked about it. And the principal said, "Yes, it's a big problem. We're all concerned." And then changed the subject. I didn't get that, either. If they were all concerned, why didn't they do something about it? But of course that's human nature. Nobody does anything until it's too late. We put the stoplight at the intersection after the kid is killed.

I drove home again, through sluggish morning traffic. I was thinking I might get a couple of hours of sleep. It was the only thing on my mind.

Maria woke me up around eleven, shaking my shoulder insistently. "Mr. Forman. Mr. Forman."

I was groggy. "What is it?"

"The baby."

I was immediately awake. "What about her?"

"You see the baby, Mr. Forman. She all…" She made a gesture, rubbing her shoulder and arm.

"She's all what?"

"You see the baby, Mr. Forman."

I staggered out of bed, and went into the nursery. Amanda was standing up in her crib, holding on to the railing. She was bouncing and smiling happily. Everything seemed normal, except for the fact that her entire body was a uniform purple-blue color. Like a big bruise. "Oh, Jesus," I said.

I couldn't take another episode at the hospital, I couldn't take more white-coated doctors who didn't tell you anything, I couldn't take being scared all over again. I was still drained from the night before. The thought that there was something wrong with my daughter wrenched my stomach. I went over to Amanda, who gurgled with pleasure, smiling up at me. She stretched one hand toward me, grasping air, her signal for me to pick her up. So I picked her up. She seemed fine, immediately grabbing my hair and trying to pull off my glasses, the way she always did. I felt relieved, even though I could now see her skin better. It looked bruised-it was the color of a bruise-except it was absolutely uniform everywhere on her body. Amanda looked like she'd been dipped in dye. The evenness of the color was alarming.

I decided I had to call the doctor in the emergency room, after all. I fished in my pocket for his card, while Amanda tried to grab my glasses. I dialed one-handed. I could do pretty much everything one-handed. I got right through; he sounded surprised. "Oh," he said. "I was just about to call you. How is your daughter feeling?"

"Well, she seems to feel fine," I said, jerking my head back so Amanda couldn't get my glasses. She was giggling; it was a game, now. "She's fine," I said, "but the thing is-"

"Has she by any chance had bruising?"

"Yes," I said. "As a matter of fact, she has. That's why I was calling you."

"The bruising is all over her body? Uniformly?"

"Yes," I said. "Pretty much. Why do you ask?"

"Well," the doctor said, "all her lab work has come back, and it's all normal. Completely normal. Healthy child. The only thing we're still waiting on is the MRI report, but the MRI's broken down. They say it'll be a few days."

I couldn't keep ducking and weaving; I put Amanda back in her crib while I talked. She didn't like that, of course, and scrunched up her face, preparing to cry. I gave her her Cookie Monster toy, and she sat down and played with that. I knew Cookie Monster was good for about five minutes.

"Anyway," the doctor was saying, "I'm glad to hear she's doing well."

I said that I was glad, too.

There was a pause. The doctor coughed.

"Mr. Forman, I noticed on your hospital admissions form you said your occupation was software engineer."

"That's right."

"Does that mean you are involved with manufacturing?"

"No. I do program development."

"And where do you do that work?"

"In the Valley."

"You don't work in a factory, for example?"

"No. I work in an office."

"I see." A pause. "May I ask where?"

"Actually, at the moment, I'm unemployed."

"I see. All right. How long has that been?"

"Six months."

"I see." A short pause. "Well, okay, I just wanted to clear that up."

I said, "Why?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Why are you asking me those questions?"

"Oh. They're on the form."

"What form?" I said. "I filled out all the forms at the hospital."

"This is another form," he said. "It's an OHS inquiry. Office of Health and Safety."

I said, "What's this all about?"

"There's been another case reported," he said, "that's very similar to your daughter's."

"Where?"

"Sacramento General."

"When?"

"Five days ago. But it's a completely different situation. This case involved a forty-two-year-old naturalist sleeping out in the Sierras, some wildflower expert. There was a particular kind of flower or something. Anyway, he was hospitalized in Sacramento. And he had the same clinical course as your daughter-sudden unexplained onset, no fever, painful erythematous reaction."