The Fearsome Particles (5 page)

To Gerald, the dearth of new product initiatives after the failure of the Teflon screens had always seemed a tidy cause-and-effect package that required no explanation or apology. “So I take it,” he said, “you’ve got some new craziness in mind?”

“I do.” Sandy smiled, almost seductively. It was a look, Gerald calculated, of ravishing confidence, fed by aspirations powerful enough to cause her, an assistant sales and marketing director ten months out of university, to stay late one night, or perhaps many nights, in order to examine old files in her boss’s office. “I think it could change everything.”

Gerald was just about to pick up a spec binder, was actually touching the plastic-cool spine of one of them with an index finger, when his office door opened and Bishop appeared in the doorway. The older man had his hands sunk into his trouser pockets. He looked rather dolefully over at Gerald and Sandy sitting at the small table in the algae-dyed light of the tinted window, then sighed and seemed about to turn away.

“Bishop?” called Gerald. “Did you need something?”

His boss stood there for another moment and drew a flattening hand down the length of his blue and silver tie. He shrugged.

Gerald rose from his chair. “I think, Sandy –”

She snatched up her pad and pen. “I’ll come back.”

“I don’t want to interrupt anything,” Bishop said as his lean, six-two frame made its way into the office. Bishop’s was the kind of body that in 1958 would have made a high school kid a
basketball star, though he’d stopped moving like one long ago. “It’s not that important.”

“Not at all,” said Gerald. A soft, soapy breeze hit him as Sandy moved past with her yellow pad filled with crazy, world-changing ideas tucked snug against her ribs. “We’ll pick this up later, all right?”

“Oh yes,” she said, with a glance back that promised, not trouble, but something that Gerald thought would probably feel like trouble.

“I didn’t mean to barge in on you,” said Bishop, once Sandy was gone and Gerald had led him to the small round table.

“Is it Susan?”

Bishop was turned toward the window. Outside, one storey below, a twenty-foot cube truck was pulling away from the loading dock. Bishop watched, and Gerald watched too, as it swayed over the speed bumps and then rumbled off toward the South Service Road that would lead it to the highway which would take it east to Montreal, because according to the schedule in Gerald’s head this was the shipment of two hundred thousand square feet of .03 gauge screening bound for Deschamps Fenetres Inc. As Gerald turned back to Bishop, it was these schedule thoughts that made him seize on the image of Kyle, and the realization that he should probably be on the road at this very moment to pick him up.

“I just got off the phone with her,” said Bishop. “They can’t seem to figure out what’s wrong.”

Gerald nodded and sighed with a sympathy for Bishop that was heartfelt, though his mind was congested with images of
his son waiting, alone and forgotten on a gritty, windswept tarmac because he, Gerald, had failed to leave when he should have. What time was it? How late was he? It was difficult to know. Other offices had clocks on the wall in full view. Not Gerald’s. He cursed the day, four years ago, when he’d moved into this office and, in the course of introducing a few decorative touches, such as the framed pictures of the Nova Scotia coastline that he found calming, had passed so blithely on the wall-clock option.

Bishop was slowly shaking his head. “If those doctors in Cincinnati can’t solve the problem,” he was saying, “I don’t know who can.”

Over on his desk, Gerald’s computer screen had the time. Right now, the time was displayed in blue 24-point type and he couldn’t see it. His desk with its computer screen was like a mainland of wealth and abundance, and he was trapped on an island of scarcity with no boat. And whose fault was that but his?

“Those people down there are top-notch,” said Bishop wistfully.

There was always his watch. Bishop was still looking out the window, though the cube truck had long since disappeared, and Gerald’s own left wrist lay below the table, against his thigh; he could swivel his wrist and glance down in one smooth motion. But it was a dangerous operation, because when a man was telling you about his wife’s medical problems, you stayed engaged and involved; nothing was more important. Looking at your watch when a man was sharing his troubles was the kind of thing, if he happened to see you, that could shake the foundations of trust. You didn’t screw around with trust. Especially
when it was the sort of hard-earned trust produced by six dedicated years of ambition-restraint.

On the other hand, there was the matter of unpredictable traffic.

“What’s
wrong
with me?” Bishop demanded.

Gerald had just begun to turn his wrist and glance down – his gaze had made it to the edge of the table – and now Bishop was looking directly at him.

“I haven’t done a proper day’s work in a week!”

Gerald kept his gaze fixed on the table edge, as though only the seam in the laminate could help him address Bishop’s concerns, until it seemed safe to relax and look up.

“Bish, no one expects you to stop thinking about Susan.”

“I’m here, but I’m not here, if you know what I mean.” Bishop looked away to the window and sighed. “I should have gone with her.”

Eleven. That’s all he got. He looked quickly and caught the liquid crystal eleven. Which was, of course, useless to him, because he knew it wasn’t as late as twelve. But he caught the wrong digits and now he would have to look again.

“She’s got family in Cincinnati, doesn’t she, Susan?”

Bishop nodded. “Her sister’s in Cincinnati.” He pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Martha.”

“I’m sure she’s fine then.” One more glance down would get the second set of digits. He knew the procedure now, it was just a matter of shifting his focus. “Just as long as she has family with her, that’s the important thing.”

Bishop swallowed, and his expression turned sardonic. “Martha,” he said, “is a hopeless alcoholic. Her husband left her
years ago. The woman is a complete mess. So, you know, for all intents and purposes –” he passed a hand over his face and massaged his eyes “– Susan is down there taking care of
her.”
Fifty-nine. It was 11:59! Gerald was so shocked by the second set of digits that he couldn’t help staring at them. Soon only luck would get him to Trenton on time.

“Guess I’m keeping you from something, am I?” Bishop was looking at him, one half of his face paled with aqua light, and his eyes had a new heaviness that told Gerald he was offended.

“I’m sorry, Bish, that was – it’s just I have to pick up Kyle pretty soon.”

“Oh.”

“Please. Go on.”

“No, it’s fine.” Bishop leaned forward and pushed himself out of his chair like a man twenty years older than he was. Gerald rose with him.

“When do you expect Susan back, end of the week?”

He was making his way to the door and didn’t turn. “Something like that.” At the entrance to Gerald’s office, Bishop put a hand on the painted metal door frame and looked back. “Your son’s home from Afghanistan, is that right?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a hell of a place, Afghanistan. Your son see any trouble over there?”

Gerald tried to smile. “Not sure, actually.”

“Guess you’ve been worried about him. Guess you’ll be glad to have him home.”

Gerald worked hard to return Bishop’s steady gaze. “Yup.” The urge to look at his watch again was almost overpowering; he barely felt man enough to resist it. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with Susan, okay?”

Bishop frowned. “What could you do?”

Gerald hesitated, shrugged, drowned. “I don’t know. Anything.”

His boss nodded slowly and let his hand drop. “Right.” He rapped a knuckle against the door as he walked away.

D
o you know how sometimes you get yourself into a situation, and even as it’s going on you’re thinking, “Huh. This is pretty crazy. How did I get myself into this?”

I had one knee the size of a pumpkin pressing down on my chest, cutting off my air. That belonged to Lieutenant Jayne. One of my wrists was being pinned down against the nubby carpet of the airplane by Sergeant Leunette (decent guy), the other wrist was being held by the
COF-AP
deputy project manager, Mike Oberly (asshole). And as you could expect, it was Oberly doing the shouting.

“You will not be getting up, Woodlore! Not until I see some self-control!”

One of my legs was jammed against something, but the other one was loose, so I tried to swing it to wrench myself free, but I only ended up hitting the hard plastic corner of one of the seat arms and that hurt like shit. They don’t give you much room for wrestling in the aisle of a
CC
-150.

“I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!”

“Ease off him,” said Leunette. He pushed Jayne back with a forearm.

As the air started to come back into my chest – now that about six hundred pounds of military force wasn’t trying to turn me into some kind of pressed flower – Oberly stuck his thorny white eyebrows in my face.

“You don’t go into the cargo area. That’s a regulation. The cargo area is off-limits. You hear me?” It was only when he repeated the last bit even louder than the first that I realized he was actually waiting for an answer.

“I heard somebody,” I said, looking up into Oberly’s upside-down face. “I thought maybe it was God, so, that’s kinda disappointing.”

I tried to get my left arm free but Oberly leaned down on it with two hands and his face went fierce as if it was his own personal mission to keep me pinned. There seemed to be a smile in there too, but Oberly was the type to look grinnish when he was exerting himself, so I didn’t take that too personally.

“We can stay like this for the rest of the flight. Have no concerns there.”

“Well no, now, you can’t.” Behind and above me I could see a flight attendant corporal, with straight, tied-back hair, slashing a line in the air with her finger, meaning the aisle. “I need to get through here.”

So how did I end up getting pinned to the floor and causing all this trouble? It comes down to military planes being different from regular passenger jets. In military planes, at least the ones I’ve been on, only part of the interior is for passengers; the front
third or half is used for cargo and supplies. A bulkhead keeps the two areas separated, but there’s a narrow hatch you can open and step through if you’re a pilot or a flight attendant. For the first couple of hours of the flight home I watched people go in and out through that hatch, so I didn’t realize it would be such a big freaking deal if I did too.

All I’d wanted was to find a movie to put on. I kept asking the corporal: What about the movie? When’s the movie starting? Are you going to show a movie? She wouldn’t give me a better answer than “soon,” and when “soon” never seemed to arrive, I figured I’d go look for one myself. I mean … Shit! Planes are supposed to have movies, aren’t they?

So, after the corporal just stopped responding to my questions I turned to my seatmate – this dark-haired
COF-AP
woman I didn’t know who I sat beside just so I wouldn’t have to sit next to Oberly and listen to him lecture me on “paths” and “organizing structures” – and I asked her, “Is that cargo area up there where they keep the
DVD
player?”

She just shrugged. “I don’t know. It might be.” And she studied me for a second as if she knew something. “Boy, you
really
want to see a movie, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“They’ll get to it eventually, I guess.” Then she reached into the canvas bag at her feet and pulled out a couple of old
Chatelaine
magazines. “You can read these if you want.”

“No thanks,” I said. “That doesn’t work.”

Believe me, I held off as long as I could. I really
tried
not to care about the movie. But I’d been sitting there for, like, two
hours, staring at the stupid little screen, waiting for it to give me something else to look at, and my chest was starting to cinch up, and finally it just seemed like it was time to go look for those
DVD
s.

I opened the hatch door and got one foot over the lip in the bulkhead when somebody grabbed my arm from behind. Of course I tried to shake him off, as you’d naturally do if you weren’t thinking about regulations. But, of course, this is the military, so there are always regulations. And when you’re on an armed forces plane, and you’re Officially Fucked Up, and you’re heading toward an off-limits area in the direction of the flight cabin, shaking off a soldier is a pretty stupid thing to do. I mean, that’s clear to me now. And when a couple of guys try to grab you and pull you back, it’s not the smartest thing to start wrestling with them and swinging at them and shouting at them to fuck off, fuck off, fuck off. All things considered, I have to admit that. I mean, I’m not an idiot.

Obviously I wasn’t adhering to my own
whatever
plan, so I have some work to do on that front. I even tried to get some practice in right there on the airplane floor. They were hurting my wrist, and I was doing my best to give in and let it happen. But it’s not easy. It’s not. So I finally said, into this huddle of hard-breathing men, “I think my wrist is probably crushed enough now.”

Oberly leaned down on me, and some of the white hair he kept slicked to his head flopped over, which just added to his standard, marginally crazed look. “I want some kind of signal from you, Kyle, that you get what happened here, all right? You
went someplace you’re not allowed to go. Then when somebody tried to stop you, you became violent. That’s the kind of thing gets charges laid on people, all right?”

“Sure.”

“This isn’t funny.”

I’d only smiled to show him I was surrendering. Now I rubbed the back of my head against the hard carpet as a nod.

“Behave, Kyle,” said Lieutenant Jayne, “or you sit on my lap the rest of the way.”

“Aye-aye, captain.”

Sergeant Leunette was the first one to get off me completely. He had one boot and a foreleg still caught in the cargo hatchway from when they’d first wrestled me to the floor, but once he shook his foot free and found his cap he smacked Jayne on the back – “Let him up” – and Jayne grabbed the blue seat arms on either side of the aisle and wedged himself vertical. Oberly was the last to get off and he held out a warning finger at me until I was sitting up on the floor with my back against the partition. When the flight attendant was finally able to make it past, she exhaled through her teeth and disappeared into the forbidden realm of cargo.