One Ghost Per Serving (13 page)

“Like you’re not buying things right now on your phone,” Nathan said, then went up to the kitchen island and tapped his index finger on the stainless steel. “You think that buying these things will make you feel secure, but it won’t. When you feel like you need the stimulation of making a large array of purchases, you should go for a run.”

“You and your running. You are no fun at all,” DZ said, looking in the fridge.

“Who, the fridge?”

“No, you. You’re an event horizon of fun. Tell me, what is it like to be you?” DZ went to his desk and picked up his bag. Nathan followed up to his own desk.

“It’s hard to say,” Nathan said.

“You should mix it up once it in a while,” DZ said.

Nathan fiddled with his tie. “I’ll have you know that I do ‘mix it up’. For example, sometimes I vary my flossing order: I’ll do the lower left quadrant first, not the upper right like I usually do; or I’ll floss from the back toward the front, or do a different quadrant with each tooth. When you floss at least four times a day, it’s kind of fun to change your routine.”

There was a stretch of silence as DZ stared at Nathan in horrified speechlessness.

“Sometimes I do one tooth in each quadrant, one quadrant at a time, starting from the back.”

“I’ve heard enough. Pack up, we’re going to Maritimania,” DZ said, and slung his bag over his shoulder.

“I don’t think so.”

“I already bought the tickets,” DZ said.

“The contest –”

“Technology! We’ll work from the road.”

While DZ drove, Nathan filed the quarterly payroll taxes, paid the liability insurance, and reconciled the credit card statement as he struggled to figure out what his employer had ordered. There were twenty-eight separate purchases from FlightMall in the past thirty days, and Nathan had to close his eyes and picture the office to help him match the price to the item.

After they bought the tickets at the park, DZ had lunch and perked up. He took out his phone, checked his email, then watched a video of a cat attacking a cardboard box. A half-hour later, DZ and Nathan were working from a swinging pirate ship.

“This is a great place to attack your to-do list, isn’t it?” DZ said.

Nathan gave him a pained smile. He had popped a Dramamine from the tin that he always kept in his pocket as soon as DZ pulled him toward the ship. Nathan held the bar in front of them with a white-knuckled death grip as DZ tapped nonchalantly on his phone. “What are you doing? And why do we have to do it on a swinging pirate ship?”

DZ gave him a pointed sideways glance. “Since you wouldn’t help me tag Snackerge or get information, I had my new intern do it. I’m tracking Snackerge’s trail where GPS tracking doesn’t reach using an accelerometer, a compass,
and
a barometric pressure sensor. Then I use the data to monitor pretty much everywhere he goes. And I mean anywhere: if he takes an elevator or the stairs, or pilots a submarine, I can track him.”

Nathan took another desperate swig of water from the bottle.

“He’s pretty boring, like you,” DZ said.

Nathan sighed.

DZ checked his notes. “Mostly he just goes to grocery stores, buys the Quantal, and goes to work, either at that crappy diner or the place with the moose heads. He’s been to a house owned by his deceased father-in-law, and to a local school, but in the evening.”

“So he hasn’t piloted a submarine.”

“He hasn’t even taken the stairs, let alone an elevator!”

“If only an international playboy were intent on winning the Quantal grand prize.” Nathan took another gulp from the bottle. He was almost out of water and desperately wanted the swinging feeling to stop. It felt like his insides were undergoing a molecular transfer like on
The Fly
.

“I don’t get it.” DZ typed into his tablet. “I don’t know if you remember, but I rigged the tags in the yogurt packaging to report in when the container is opened. You know, when someone pulls off the lid.”

“Did you buy something that day?” Nathan said, trying not to think about yogurt.

“YES! So you
do
remember.” DZ grinned. “I bought that self-cleaning kitty litter box in the shape of a space pod that can walk itself across the room.”

“Even though you don’t have a cat,” Nathan said.

“Yes I do.”

“No, I’m pretty sure you don’t.”

“Really? Huh.” DZ seemed taken aback that he didn’t have a cat. “Could’ve sworn I did, but that would explain why I haven’t seen it in so long. I figured he probably just keeps to himself in a different wing of the house.”

“The cat wing.” Nathan pressed his forehead harder and rolled it from side to side. Existentially speaking, this pirate ship was agonizing, considering that he wanted to stop, foremost, and had zero control over doing so, but he also wanted to throw up, and now, to strangle DZ until he stopped talking. Nathan couldn’t remember the last time he was so uncomfortable, but he was sure DZ was involved.

“Great idea!” DZ raised a hand for a high-five, then let it go. “Anyway, that’s how I keep track of how much each of the leading contestants have consumed. That allows me to connect sales lift to the contest and figure out how hard it would be to replicate the effects on a national scale. What mystifies me is how this Snackerge clown has eaten so much of the yogurt, yet hasn’t been affected by a commerce spirit. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Nathan made the mistake of looking over the side. The ship swooped down, bringing Maritimania suddenly close in a Vertigo-like effect as it came up from behind Nathan.

“Ew, watch out for the phone,” DZ said, angling away from Nathan.

Later, on the sea creatures carousel, DZ sat a couple of poles in front of Nathan, on a mermaid. His phone rang and he had a brief, hushed, and tension-filled conversation. He hung up and looked back at Nathan. “Snackerge is like a tapeworm I can’t get rid of, or a layer of viscous slime I can’t quite remove without a specialized chemical agent. Anyway, I had our intern –”

Nathan shifted on the carousel whale. “Who is this intern you keep mentioning? I wasn’t notified of any intern.”

“He’s
my
intern, and I keep him pret-ty bus-y,” DZ said. “I had him set up cameras in every store, chain or mom-and-pop, within twenty miles of Snackerge’s house. I’m using face-recognition software and network databases to link Snackerge with his social security number, his credit and debit cards, his addresses, his driving records, and his consumer profile. If he enters any store within that distance parameter, I’ll know. And then I can deploy measures.”

Nathan ignored a small boy watching the carousel who gave him the finger.

“That sounds too invasive, DZ. What about his privacy?”

“What about it?”

Nathan rested his forehead against the pole. Even though he had thoroughly sanitized the pole and the horse before he got on it, he ran a cleansing wipe over his forehead anyway.

Sometimes there weren’t enough cleansing wipes in the world.

On the way to his shift at Sammy’s, Eric rode his bike downtown and noticed his wife’s car parked in front of a cafe, which was sandwiched between a pizza restaurant and a gift store.

Right behind Mark Bollworm’s car.

Eric circled back around, deliberated, then parked and locked his bike. He looked into the window on the very edge. Willa and Taffy were having milkshakes with his ex-friend Mark. That was
his
family in there, having milkshakes with someone who couldn’t even be bothered to stay friends with him. In his text ending their friendship, Mark seemed to have left out:
I am working on making your wife and daughter my family instead, so there is understandably a conflict of interest here.

Mark put his hand on Willa’s and she didn’t pull it away. The world outside of Eric slowed and moved around him like cloudy gel. All of time-space had narrowed to this particular moment. If this was living in the present, he could damn well do without it. Did she just put her thumb over his thumb? Eric paced up and down the sidewalk and a woman of his mother’s generation steered around him with a wary look.

Eric entered through the employee door in back and looked out from the kitchen. Mark was talking to Taffy now. He said something else and she shrugged. Eric heard him order a strawberry milkshake.

“She hates strawberry,” Eric said, baffled.

“What are you doing back here?” one of the employees asked.

“Leaving,” Eric said, wondering if he had gotten sucked into some other hellish universe where this wasn’t his family.

On the way back to his bike, Eric knocked the paper from under a guy’s arm and didn’t bother to look back.

“This,” DZ said, referring to something on his tablet, “is my favorite, my all-time favorite.” Nathan didn’t care. He was just relieved that they had gotten off the pirate ship. He stumbled off, reached a fence, then put his hands on his knees, taking deep breaths. He had already thrown up on the ship, so it was really just dry-heaving.

DZ trotted over to Nathan. “Check this out. My fourteen-pound baby, a personal remote-controlled spy plane.”

Nathan slowly straightened. After a moment, he put a hand on the fence and looked at DZ’s tablet.

“I programmed it with the GPS coordinates of Eric Snackerge’s bus. It even has remote control! I can have it take off and land, all the way from Maritimania!”

Nathan kept his hands on his knees but watched the plane on the tablet, represented by a black dot. It took off from one location – “That’s my plane shed,” DZ said, and put his finger on the first red X – flew through Jamesville, and finally reached the end location – “Eric Snackerge’s bus,” DZ said.

Nathan was shaky but was no longer actively retching. He slowly straightened, then leaned against the fence.

“It’s giving me a feed of encrypted video footage while sniffing his Wi-Fi network and intercepting his cell phone calls to his wife and some local stores. If I wanted, I could have it launch a DoS attack.” DZ typed another command. “And look, infrared cameras.” Multiple small screens showed the view from the front and back of the plane.

With a swipe of a finger, DZ brought up a fuzzy video feed.

“That’s Snackerge eating a sandwich.” Nathan’s tone was incredulous. “And watching TV. A nature show.”