A little wedge of potato had caused his world to crash down around him.
Oh, Molly, he thought. Forgive me. Your life, changed forever because I was stupid enough to spoon some potato salad into my mouth on a Saturday morning. Your sweet potato salad, a mayonnaise-soaked symbol of all the kind things you’ve done for me over the years.
My sweet, sweet Molly.
The kitchen faded away.
The kitchen they’d redone a year ago, ripping out the old metal cabinets and replacing them with fresh-smelling sandalwood maple.
She’d picked them out. She liked the color.
Oh, Molly …
Molly?
Was that Molly in the doorway now, her beautiful red hair dripping wet, a white terry cloth towel wrapped around her body?
God, she was no hallucination. She was really standing there. Looking down at him, strapping jewelry to her wrists. Thick silver bracelets. Paul couldn’t remember buying them for her. Where did they come from?
Wait.
Why wasn’t she trying to save him?
Couldn’t she see him, choking, trembling, jolting, scratching, pleading, fading?
But Molly simply stared, with the strangest look on her face. That look would be the last thing Paul Lewis would ever see, and if there were an afterlife, it would be an image that would haunt him, even if his memories of earthly life were to be erased. Molly’s face would still be there. Perplexing him. Who was this woman? Why did she make his soul ache?
So it was probably merciful that Paul didn’t hear what his wife said as she looked down upon his writhing, dying body, “Well, this is ahead of schedule.”
ARRIVALS
Executives owe it to the organization and to their fellow workers not to tolerate nonperforming individuals in important jobs.
—PETER DRUCKER
His name was Jamie DeBroux …
… and he had been up most of the night, tag-teaming with Andrea, marching back and forth into the tiny bedroom at the back of their apartment.
What hurt the most, after being awake so many hours, were his eyes. Jamie wore daily-wear contacts, but lately he hadn’t bothered to take them out at night. Without them he was practically blind, and he was too new a father to risk changing a diaper or preparing a bottle of Similac with impaired vision. Bad enough they had to work in the dark, so Chase could learn the difference between night and day.
Sunlight.
Darkness.
Sunlight this morning, which was turning out to be a blazingly hot Saturday in August. Their window air-conditioning unit was no match for it, and Jamie had to get dressed and head into the office. His eyes swam with tears.
Life with the baby was now:
Day
Night
Day
Night
Melting into each other.
Nobody told you that parenthood was like doing hallucinogenics. That you watched the life you knew melt away into a gray fuzz. Or if they did, you didn’t believe them.
Jamie knew he shouldn’t complain. Not after having a month off for paternity leave.
Still, it was strange to be going back on a Saturday morning, to a managers’ meeting led by his boss, David Murphy. Last time he’d seen his boss was late June, at Jamie’s awkward baby shower in the office. Nobody had brought gifts. Just money—ones and fives—stuffed into a card. David had provided an array of cold cuts and Pepperidge Farm cookies, which were the boss’s favorite. Stuart ran to the soda machines for Cokes and Diet Cokes. Jamie gave him a few singles from the card to pay for them.
Being away from that place had been nice.
Very nice.
And now this “managers’ meeting.” Jamie had no idea what it could be about. He’d been gone for a month.
Never mind that Jamie wasn’t a manager.
There was nothing to do about it now, though. What could he do? Change jobs and risk losing medical insurance for three months? Andrea had left her job in May, and with it went the other benefits package.
Besides, David wasn’t so bad to work for. It was everybody else who drove him up the wall.
The problem wasn’t hard to figure out. Jamie’s job was “media relations director,” which meant he had to explain to the rest of the world—or more specifically, certain trade publications—what Murphy, Knox & Associates did. Thing was, not even Jamie was entirely clear on what their company did. Not without it making his head hurt.
Everyone else, who did the real work of the company, formed a closed little society. They put up walls that were difficult, if not impossible, to breach. They were the driving force of the company. They were the Clique.
He was the staff word nerd.
Murphy, Knox & Associates was listed with Dun & Bradstreet as a “financial services office” that claimed annual sales of $516.6 million. The press releases Jamie wrote often dealt with new financial packages. The information would come straight from Amy Felton—sometimes Nichole Wise. Rarely did it come from David, though every press release had to pass through his office. Jamie would drop a hard copy into the black plastic bin on Molly’s desk. A few hours later, the hard copy would be slid under Jamie’s door. Sometimes, David didn’t change a thing. Other times, David would rework Jamie’s prose into an ungrammatical, stilted mess.
Jamie tried to talk him out of it—taking the liberty of rewriting David’s rewrite, and presenting it to him with a memo explaining why he’d made certain changes.
He did that exactly once.
“Repeat after me,” David had said.
Jamie smiled.
“I’m not joking. Repeat after me.”
“Oh,” Jamie said. “Um, repeat after you.”
“I will not.”
“I will not.” God, this was humiliating.
“Rewrite David Murphy’s work.”
“Rewrite your work.”
“David Murphy’s work.”
“Oh. David Murphy’s work.”
So yeah—David could be a tool every once in a while. But that was nothing compared with how the other Murphy, Knox employees treated him on a daily basis. It wasn’t a lack of respect; that would imply there had been respect to begin with. To the Clique, Jamie was just the word nerd.
To be dismissed completely, unless you needed a press release.
Worst of alclass="underline" Jamie could understand. At his former job, a reporting gig at a small daily in New Mexico, the editors and reporters were tight. They pretty much ignored the newspaper’s controller—the bean-counting cyborg. What, invite him out for a beer after work? That would be like inviting Bin Laden home for turkey and cranberry sauce.
And now Jamie was the cyborg. The press release–writing Bin Laden. No wonder he wasn’t exactly rushing back to the office this morning.
Somehow he pulled it together. The memory of Chase, sleeping, reminded him of why.
The air-conditioning quickly cooled the interior of Jamie’s Subaru Forester. The vehicle was newly equipped with a Graco baby seat in the back. The hospital wouldn’t let them leave without one; both of them had forgotten about it. He’d had to run to a Toys “R” Us in Port Richmond, then spent the better part of a humid July night trying to figure out how to strap the thing in.
He looked at Chase’s seat in the rearview. Wondered if he was up yet.
Jamie reached into the front pocket of his leather bag. Grabbed his cell, flipped it open. Held down the 2 key. Their home number popped up.
Beep.
No service.