The Starving Years (26 page)

“Is this Mr. Logan’s secretary?”

“Aw, shit, did he…? Uh, sorry. The last two numbers of her extension are the same as mine, but switched. He transfers a call to me at least every other day—and then half the time the call drops when I send it back over.”

“Can you give me her direct number? I’m calling from The Daily Gazette and I’d hate to bother Mr. Logan again.”

A pause. “You’re from The Daily? For real?”

“That’s right.” Nelson wouldn’t have read anything into the inflection of Javier’s voice if they didn’t know each other. But now, having spent some time together, he could totally picture a look of excruciating caution on his face, a kind of “why on earth are you asking?” expression.

“Listen,” Arthur said, “you didn’t hear this from me…what is it they say?” The sound quality changed, as if the speaker had ducked into a small, enclosed space. “Oh yeah, off the record.”

“Sir….”

“There’s a job fair next week on Eighth Street. Something interesting might happen there. Real interesting.”

A long pause in which Nelson could imagine Javier hanging up, since Arthur in shipping sounded suspiciously like a paranoid crackpot. Instead, he responded with subdued encouragement. “Go on.”

“You really wanna know?”

Nelson quelled a smirk at the thought of Javier being strung along by a guy who was obviously bursting to brag about some dirt he was privy to. “If you think it’s relevant,” Javier said, affecting a tone of boredom rather than frustration. “Otherwise, just give me the number for Logan’s secretary and—”

“Oh, it’s relevant all right.”

“Well? What is it, then?”

“You heard anything about the recall?”

Keys clattered as if one of them was typing on a computer. “I don’t show anything on a recall.”

“Right. That’s right. Because no one’s talking about a recall.”

“But you have knowledge of a recall that’s taken place.”

“My whole third shift worked overtime last week on orders that came down from corporate—screwed up my whole schedule for the next two weeks, but what do they care? Went out and rotated the stock at twenty, thirty different stores. And not just the short-dated manna.” A dramatic pause. “All of it.”

“And this is unusual?”

“Look, pal, would I give two shits if it wasn’t?”

Javier went on, dry as you please. “So the stock was removed and replaced in a number of stores…did these vendors have anything in common?”

“You bet your ass they did. All the boroughs are part of my territory. But every single place that got cleaned out and re-stocked was in Manhattan. Only Manhattan.”

“What does this have to do with the job fair?”

“You don’t think I been sittin’ here waiting for a reporter to call me out of the blue, do you? I took things into my own hands. Told some people who might do something about it.”

“Who did you tell, the police?”

“Police? Ha! What’re they gonna do? Rotating stock ain’t against the law.”

“Then who—?”

“Whistle Blower Brigade. That’s who.”

Spectacular, Nelson thought. The first person who seems to actually know something, and who does he take that information to? A bunch of slime-flinging knuckleheads.

“In your experience,” Javier asked calmly, “why would an entire batch get recalled? Wouldn’t the product be tested for contaminants
before
it shipped?”

“How would I know what they test for?”

“Mr. Arthur, is it? Would you be willing to meet me at—”

“Are you kidding? You know how fast they could fire my ass if they knew I was telling anyone about this? I’m set to retire in three more years.”

“But the stock—wouldn’t it have accumulated in the shops over a period of time? Why arouse suspicion by replacing it all? Why not focus on the particular batch that had an issue? Mr. Arthur? Hello?”

Javier tapped the netbook’s trackpad and turned off the player. “He’d already hung up.”

Nelson hardly heard him. The notion of this covert switcheroo taking place had dug its hooks in his brain—and the possible reasons seemed endless. Maybe a competitor had gotten wind of Phase 1, the precursor to Manna-Lean. Maybe they needed to tweak the formula. Maybe, maybe, maybe. He would have loved to make a list just for the sake of seeing how many crazy scenarios he could come up with…but a little voice inside him was insisting that if he could understand how the mechanism worked, he’d have a much better chance of figuring out why they would recall it.

Randy stared at the netbook, uncharacteristically silent. Marianne just shook her head, and muttered, “Corporate assholes.”

They drained their coffees and stood up from the table, and Tim ushered them into the big office, where the printer was blinking again, hungry for a fresh ream of paper.

“You dopes should’ve said something this morning,” Randy said, as they all stared at the hastily arranged stacks of printouts. “Think of how much of this we would’ve already gone through.”

“So what is it exactly that you’re printing?” Marianne asked.

“Everything,” Tim said.

Marianne walked up to one of the piles and took the sheet off the top. “Okay. This is the break room policy for Canaan’s Nashville office.”

Tim looked chagrined.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t eventually go through it all,” she went on, “but what if you stopped this printing job, drilled down your results to certain keywords, and started there.” She warmed to her own idea, circling the stacks of paper as she spoke. “There was a bunch of colored stock in the other office. You could print out different searches on different colored paper.
Manhattan
on one, trucking schedules on another. That way you wouldn’t be stuck with…well…” she gestured at a particularly forbidding pile of white paper. “With this.”

Randy had left the room before she’d even finished explaining her idea. He came back with four reams each of green and yellow paper while Tim worked through the most efficient way to perform a search through the various types of documents and data, targeting Manhattan, and shipping, and Manna-Lean, and Phase 1.

Nelson took the Nashville break room policy from Marianne, because his mind was already circling the formula again, and he wanted to draw it out for himself so he could feel it, touch it. The back of that printout was as good a place as any to get started. He followed up with a quick kiss on her cheek, and whispered, “I totally knew you’d rock.”

Chapter 24

Once Tim had tweaked the operating system’s search function to hit certain strings of characters and wildcards and then add its findings to the print queue, he dawdled at the computer longer than he really needed to, since it could very well continue sorting and sifting without him sitting there.
All of it?
What had he been thinking? Maybe he’d been so distracted by the memories of the night before that he hadn’t been thinking anything at all.

Randy had pages of spreadsheets arrayed across the conference room table, rows and columns of numbers and calculations so meaningless they made Tim’s head spin. But, like Nelson and his formulas, Randy seemed to think he could extract some kind of meaning if he looked at Canaan Products’ budget hard enough.

Javier and Marianne sat in the far corner of the big office, on a facing set of chairs that looked like they’d been placed there merely for show, chairs that had been sat in maybe a dozen times before, or less. Documents were spread in a semicircle around them, and they spoke in low tones, analyzing, scrutinizing, strategizing.

And Nelson. He’d found a bunch of castoff documents—lunch menus, packaging patents, requisitions for office supplies—and he’d scrawled on the backs of them with a pencil, and a black pen, and a blue pen, and a red dry-erase marker where he circled squiggles and symbols that must have been important.

There was probably something equally important Tim could be doing, even while the computer sorted, but he felt so tapped out that he didn’t have the strength to do anything more than check his email.

A dozen custom scripts sorted and color-coded Tim’s inbox before he even saw it. His mother, three words only,
Are you okay?
Tim shot a quick reply,
Fine. Busy. Talk more later.
They probably wouldn’t, but it seemed like the polite thing to say. Some online acquaintances from chat who only knew him as “VoR.” They could wait. They should have taken his site update as evidence that he was fine. An overdue notice from the library.

An email from his ex.

Tim wouldn’t have noticed it if he’d shuffled the folder to the bottom of the column like he’d been meaning to, but there it was, right on top, with a bold numeral 1 beside the folder labeled “Phil.” His heart started pounding as if Phil had just caught him rolling around naked with Javier and Nelson. But so what? So what if he had? Phil had left him ages ago, nearly three weeks now, and the only time he’d emailed before was to ask Tim what laundry detergent he used, because the new one Phil bought gave him a rash.

He paused with his finger over the delete key. Swallowed. And then decided it would nag at him if he didn’t at least look at what Phil wrote. After all, Phil might be in trouble. Might need him.

Tim opened the message.

What’s with that picture on your site? What are you trying to prove?

That was all. No hello, how are you, are you hiding in a trailer because the cops outside are bashing in heads first, asking questions later? In a dozen words, Phil had managed to bring every last defeated emotion Tim had felt in the past month surging back to the forefront.

Tim nearly deleted the email, but then he considered it one more time, changed his mind, and replied,
I’m fine, thanks for asking.
He hit send. Then he stared at his inbox for a moment, hardly seeing it, and closed the program. He felt sick. Exhausted. Completely and utterly drained.

All around him, the people he’d just met went on with their tasks as if nothing had changed. Tim stood. They didn’t notice. “I’m just gonna go, uh….”

Everyone else was so engrossed in what they were doing, not one of them bothered to even look up. Tim staggered out of the office, sprawled on one of the conference room couches, and fell into a fast and shallow slumber.

It seemed shallow, anyway, in that he was vaguely aware of the gentle hum of the printer, the shuffle of papers, and the sound of the trailer pinging as the temperature dropped outside and the vinyl siding flexed. But maybe he’d been more deeply asleep than he realized, since the next thing he knew, he felt the unmistakable weight of someone straddling his hips.

He opened his eyes to darkness, but the tiny red light on a nearby surge protector illuminated pale, sun-bleached tips of longish hair. Nelson.

It was really difficult to give a damn what Phil did or didn’t write to him with Nelson Oliver perched on top of him.

“Shh.” Nelson placed a fingertip on Tim’s lips. Tim felt a shock of sensation that began at the point where Nelson’s finger touched his mouth, then crept down his spine and coalesced deep in his nuts. They shifted, and his dick felt heavy. Just from that touch. And probably the fact that someone as hot as Nelson was
straddling
him.

Nelson leaned in, put his mouth to Tim’s ear, and said, “Just listen.”

Tim nodded. What would he say?
Please, don’t stop?
Or even worse, what he’d almost said to Javier earlier…that incriminating phrase was straining to bust out, too.

“Tim…you’re a great guy.”

Oh.

Uh oh.
 

“I like you,” Nelson said. He pushed himself up and touched Tim’s forehead in the dark, and traced the shape of his brow. “I do.”

This isn’t going to be pretty.

Tim held his breath…because breathing might result in begging Nelson not to say whatever he was building up to, and making an even bigger fool of himself. Maybe he projected that need desperately enough that Nelson somehow felt it, because instead of going on, of adding the ubiquitous “let’s just be friends” line—which Phil hadn’t even bothered to give lip service to—Nelson leaned in again, closed the narrow gap between them, and covered Tim’s mouth with his.

Nelson’s lips pried Tim’s open effortlessly, and his tongue slid in, sure as always. It roved along the edges of his teeth now, snuck in for a taste of his tongue, exploring with a gentle touch. Tim felt his breath catch and willed it to just be normal and not give him away. Because nothing was more pathetic than going all sappy over a “thanks, but no thanks” type of goodbye kiss.

Nelson cupped Tim’s jaw as he drew away from the languid kiss, and sighed to himself. Tim steeled himself for the words, hoping they’d be as gentle as the kiss had been, but knowing that no matter how carefully Nelson chose them, they’d still sting in the fresh wound that Phil’s email had left behind. And Nelson said, “I’m not a total dick, you know. You and me, this is….” He paused, searched for a way to put it, then went on. “I was thinking you’d call me later, we could hang out and stuff. After whatever’s going on out there…whatever this cluster-fuck outside is…sorts itself out. I mean, if you even want to. No pressure.”

Tim replayed the words in his mind to make sure he’d heard what he thought he heard (
the
Nelson Oliver
asking him out?
) and he said, “Yeah.” He even sounded normal. Probably.

“Okay.” Nelson ran his fingers over the curve of Tim’s shoulder, down the front of his shirt. Grazed his nipple—again, as if by accident. As if Nelson had sex-seeking magnets in his fingertips. Tim started getting hard—and Nelson obviously felt it. He smiled to himself and shifted his hips to settle himself more firmly on the bulge. “I have a rubber on me, y’know.”

Tim’s breath caught. “I don’t think, without lube….”

“Which is where your first aid kit comes in. Antibacterial salve? That’s a no-no, breaks down latex. Antibacterial cream, though…that’ll work.”

Nelson dug in the pocket of his flannel shirt and held up a small tube. Too dark to read it, but Tim was sure he knew what he was talking about. And also, Tim realized….

He’d been planning this.

Why? Beyond the fact that Nelson didn’t know the meaning of the word
inhibited
. Not that Tim would ask. It would sound like he was fishing for a compliment. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder.