Remember (42 page)

I start walking down the stairs, and I notice something for the first time. The stairs — different than most — just horizontal slabs of metal sticking out of the wall sustains no raiser tread. The tread narrowness of 0.2 meters and the railing, a type of glass, floats a meter above the stairs. I look for how it stays up, finding it affixed to the wall near the office door, and extremely stable with that one support. The landing of identical material to the other steps hangs outside the office door. I walk around the front of the stairs to Claire’s office and can’t stop looking up.

Claire sits at the sofa near the door, completely disappearing into the sofa with a black jacket just one shade lighter. I come around front and take a seat across from her. She supports her feet flat on the floor, under her elbows propping up her hands, which hold a heavily lacquered wooden cup filled with steaming water. Leaned forward with her face within centimeters of the cup, she doesn’t notice I’m here.

She sits still, statued the entire time, about 5 secs. In the next 5 secs I notice more stuff, her jacket, something she usually wears. The angular pointiness of the lapels contrast with the 7 centimeter radius curves located all over the jacket. The velvety lapels matching against the mate black everywhere else adds another layer. The one button jacket mostly covers the orange full sleeve shirt underneath, whose fabric sparkles to black at any wrinkles or creases. The shirt extends to the base of her neck and all the way to the ends of both wrists. Her pants match the jacket with a folded over leg of the same velvet. Her shoes — black leather flats with rounded toes.

I don’t think she’s going to say anything, but she must know I’m sitting here. I should just get to the point — I can just say what I want to say. “Claire, are you ready for our jog?”

She opens her eyes and looks at me for a sec. “You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be there, just don’t be late.”

“I’ll be there, too.”
Dumb.

She returns a sly smirk. “Thanks for checking on me, Conor.”

“Anytime, Claire.”

She takes a big gulp of the steaming water and abruptly closes her eyes, because she doesn’t want to talk anymore. I just leave the office, move through the conference room headed for the work area with the desks, go through the doory hallway to reach the main hallway, turn left to the elevators, get to my goal on ten, walk down the hall, veering to the right, my apartment just inside the curved section.

I keep my pad on the table, open the closet to find something, get the forest green air-shirt long-sleeve (branch protection from the nature jaunt last time), and an off-white pair of pants with the same air feature. I can just choose any color I want, but it seems fine as is. Air rounds out the options. The clothes can open itself to air with no change in the look. It just feels like the air can come right through. I take this stuff out of the closet as the windows black-out and the lights turn on. I change, drop the old clothes on floor of the closet, while the room reverts to normal. The clothes get collected and stored for me to wash them.

The memory of that one skirt in there. A flat fronted and backed skirt pleated at the sides haunt me with discomfort. My try out of that garment started with tremendous itching between the thighs until numbness takes hold. Everybody has their reasons, from feeling vulnerable, cold, burdened, or feminine. I get my pad and fold it up to fit in pocket — I don’t need it, but I’m just taking it.

I leave my apartment, go straight to the elevators, determined to beat Claire down there, I go down to first, exiting the elevator. The lobby attendant stations herself at the desk to my right, the doors out ahead, Oasis (coffee shop and other beverages like tea and juice) on the right of the doors. I go there often for breakfast — coffee and a small snack, since I’m not into a big breakfast every day. On the left exists Epicenter, supposedly the center of your epicurean world. I think I’ve never been inside with my only experience the tales of others (nothing to write about). Both restaurants frame the front of the lobby in glass. The back wall of both eateries display floor to ceiling windows. The seating wanders out into the outdoors.

I go out into the sunny day — good weather for running with partial cloud cover — to the edge of the grassy street, and see Claire near the opposite end of the seating. She wears a workout version of the same look, a black jacket with a zipper open at the collar and a lime green shirt underneath. The shirt extends all the way to her hands and peeks through the zipper sleeves open to half up the forearm. She leverages a foot on the table for a stretch. I near, noticing, seeing more

Her running shoes resemble racecars. Where did that come from? What are racecars? I don’t know why I thought that. Anyway, green trimmed vents engrave nearly the entirety of the black shoe body. These vents can be enlarged or completely closed off in an attempt to keep the feet dry and at a comfortable temp. A hexagonal vent reveals the front and top of her immaculate toes and a similar opening on the back at the heel. Alongside these vents two smaller square ones lead to channels on either side of the shoe. A mesh cradle holds her feet up against the channels, including centimeter wide round holes across the tread. I know from my shoes shopping that a selectively permeable membrane separates the feet from the open holes below. It allows air both ways. Water and moisture can only leave the shoes. I’m next to Claire. “Are you all ready?”

Claire straightens up. “Stretch and we can go. We wouldn’t want you to a cramp, now would we?”

“Right.” While we were talking, I see she has mahogany glasses on — the first time I’ve seen her with them. They seem familiar for some other reason, but why? They feature the usual red of the wood’s body under an enamel or wax. The deep walnut of the grain makes her eyes look lighter. Her hair seems even darker than it did inside. It’s almost black with a reddish hue to it somehow. I look closer and see that in every six hairs there's a red one. When jogging Claire does something odd at least by my standards, she almost completely releases the tech in her hair (something we all have) so it just stays out of her face, but it blows around free everywhere else and avoids catching or tangling.

Claire moves on to the other leg. I do the same stretch with the anterior portion of my sole on the edge of the table and lean into it — pretty much the stretches we do before each yoga “class”. I do the other leg which isn't as flexible as my right. The next stretch needs my heel on the table. I lean forward again and repeat with the other leg. The next thing is arms. I don’t think that’s necessary. Claire has been waiting for me to finish.

“Ready to go?” Claire bounces on the balls of her feet.

“Yes.”

We walk to a trail entrance on the edge of the courtyard. Mountain Overlook just has trails aboveground relegating the streets down below.

Claire says, “Look at this map of the route.“

I grab her wrist to transfer the route onto my eye screens. Another app transfers for communication like the last jog together. “It sounds good. Is that maintenance road hard to cross?”

She squeezes my shoulder until I react by shrugging off her hand. “No, I can keep both of us safe.” Claire does this sometimes when I can't hold position, squeezing the offending muscle until I notice the issue or the pressure. Must have shrugged or tensed.

“Then, what are we waiting for?”

Wed 8/30/17 5:09 p.m.

B
efore she hears my answer, she’s off jogging. I start behind her at a distance, increase my pace to shorten the gap. The paths in the building corridors stay trimmed down almost to the ground, surrounded by natural growth. In this case, grass over a meter tall. The path meanders through the straight corridors, something unusual to me, but no one seems to even notice. They engineered the plants tender above a height. I still see some of it on the ragged edge of the path. Animals more selectively feed on this area than others. This mutually beneficial transaction goes on in the background. A left turn onto Pike shows up with a label on my tech screen. Four paths meet at one point. We turn onto the narrower Pike from Lake Park, where the Institute is. I finally reach Claire.

“Claire, I never knew you had vision probs.”
I take in the sun glinting of her lenses.

She realigns her glasses self-consciously. “It is just environmental
protection from too much sunlight entering the eyes.”

The sight of Ian's shimmering pupils enters my mind and transposes over my memory of Claire's face.
“Why don’t you just use the tech options?”

“It is nostalgia. I’ve just always had glasses on when running. It also gives some protection from the wind and anything flying through the air. If I trip or something, glasses usually help. Odd eyes freak me out mainly even for a little while. ” She shudders a little.

A gust of wind throws out a lock of her hair. “I never noticed your hair was this black. What’s with the red?”

She examines her hair in the light by grabbing some in front of her face. “You noticed that?”

I look over at Claire with hair streaming in the wind. “Yes, inside I never could.”

“The red mixes with the black to look brown at times. Out here you can clearly see what has been there all along, the black with some red.” She smiles wider as I turn front.

“Why, is all I can say.”

“Like the two layers of anything. Take a book for example. You have the content printed in words. Then, you have why the author chose those particular words. What is the intent, the same with this. If you don’t look too close you see something. By looking closer you find a deeper, richer truth hidden right under the surface.” She sounds like this comes up a lot.

Are you actually like that? If you are, it explains so much.
“Is that really a philosophy you follow?”

“Here look at my sleeve and tell me everything you see.”

She holds up her sleeve.

I try to look at it closely, but we're bouncing up and down too much. Every time I get it focused the sleeve moves. It isn’t working. Even the tech doesn't help. This makes no sense. Why am I indulging her?

“You can just hold onto this.”

She unzips her jacket and tosses it over. I try looking at it and just see black with some green specks, which I try brushing off. The green remains, part of the jacket. I look closer and closer, until I see past the fabric to individual strands of the weave. Some of the black strands fade to lime green and back to black. These are what appeared to be specks on her jacket. I toss it back. We’ve entered the wooded section of Pike Street.

Claire dons the jacket. “What did you see?”

“The black strands fade into green every so often. I suspect you can choose anything you want.”
I go through my tech and switch my shirt to sky blue.
Swatches of blue appear and grow.

Claire zips up her sleeves, carefully folding the inside sleeve as she goes, and leaves the jacket flayed down the middle. Claire likes to be prepared for rain always with high collared jackets or so she said. “So you can finally see and observe.”

We just keep on jogging. The woods on the sides of the path turn dense. Dappled sunlight comes through in places, faintly lighting everything in filtered sun. We just barely make out the surface of the nearby buildings. A shaft of light comes through by a downed tree propped up on the building facade. A lone deer lies in the limited range of the shaft, already looking at us — sees us as no harm and returns to its daytime slumber.

Claire takes a quick look and that's it. “What do you think about becoming the Director of Research?”

I've mentioned it happening but not much more.
“I’m still positive Gary made a mistake. I’ve asked him if he’s sure at least half a dozen times. He is always sure, never any doubt.”

“
So
, are you ready for it?”

Not really, but it doesn't change much either way.
“Yeah, Irena has been great about all this. I should be all set.”

Claire itches her nose with a hooked finger. “Did Gary say why he chose you for this?”

We go onto Morning Way by turning right.
“Yes. It still doesn’t make sense. He thinks I’m his only friend here. He said something like you see me as Gary not Dr. Stephens. I don’t know why he thinks any of it.”

The corner of Claire's mouth twitches a little. “He has always been treated differently. You were apparently the first person to not do that. You must have done something. Did he ever ask you for anything?”

“No."
I comes back right at that moment, he was neurotic about Mekova denying him a promotion, and he asked me about her.
"Wait, I think there was something. He asked me for info on Irena.”

Claire's eyebrows slide up. “What did he want that for?”

I watch my feet negotiate the uneven ground. “He thought he could get around the no promotion gift rule by getting something she actually wants.”

Claire purses her lips a degree. “What did you give him?”

A guilty wave cross my face at even the question. “Nothing. You know Irena. She doesn’t talk about anything but work stuff. She’s opened up to me once. I didn’t see any use of what she told me. I just didn’t give him anything.”

Claire smiles again. “I think you at least gave it a try. That was obviously enough for him.”

I wipe off my probably glistening forehead. “The job starts next week.”

“You deserve it. You were standing with one leg. You still did your job.”

Claire slows down, pulls me back, and off the path. We stand at the back of a wide tree, looking at each other from inches away. My palms start sweating I have no idea what’s going on. Why did we stop? She keeps leaning back and peering around the tree. She looks at me with a piercing gaze that almost frightens me.

Another quick look. “On the next tree over you’ll see why we stopped. It’s on the lowest branch.”

I move to see around the tree. A medium sized bird sits where she said at shoulder height. The green bellied bird wears yellow feathers on its head that turn black at the back of the neck. Black with cells rimmed in yellow cover the wings. The tail becomes blue from the black of the wings down. I move back and can still hear it chirping for something. A wild chaotic fluttering moves up the trail. A group of six or seven birds coming to the call, land on the same tree or nearby, and they all just sit there making many different noises. We take this cue to keep walking.