Rift (3 page)

“I'm not saying I don't believe in God, Misty. I'm just not sure.”

“I can't believe I'm hearing this. We've been going to church together for thirteen years!”

I don't know how to respond. I'm certainly not going to admit that the only reason I go to church is to please her.

“Cameron, don't you shut me out. I want to know what you mean.”

We've stopped at a red light, and just ahead I spot the blue-and-white logo on the side of our two-story brick building:
NEUROSTOR
—
FLASH MEMORY FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM
. A nervous lump lodges in my throat. The car idles, awaiting my answer to Misty's theological question.

“All I meant,” I reluctantly say, “is that I have questions. Don't you? Don't you sometimes wonder if life is just a cosmic accident? That we're only here because the universe happened to evolve that way?”

“So this is why you're lost. All along I thought it was me, but I've been beating myself up over nothing. Without God, your life will never have meaning.”

The light turns green. Misty moves the car forward at a snail's pace.

“Did it ever occur to you,” she says to me, “that your soul might be lost in the transmission? That even if you come out on the other side looking like you, it might not actually
be
you? Spiritually, I mean?”

“No, that never occurred to me.”

“Well, it should have. I think it's a real possibility.”

I suppose I should have seen this coming. Misty's shift to stronger religious beliefs has been gradual but steady. Luke's death was the beginning, but until three or four years ago, she was mostly a Sunday Christian, much to the chagrin of her fundamentalist mother, I should add. Then she joined the church choir and met a woman, Julia Perry, who also had lost an only child. Julia had turned her life around by giving it over completely to Jesus. She had been Born Again. When I once tried to tell Misty that she had already turned her life around without having to be Born Again, she cried and claimed I didn't understand. I didn't say anything about it after that.

What bothers me the most is that Misty has always been embarrassed by her mother's extreme beliefs. Many times, early in our marriage, she expressed a desire to act in ways that her mother
never
would. And I believed her.

We met at the University of Texas during a rally occasioned by the appearance of
Playboy
on campus. A group of do-gooders materialized to protest the “sexism” and “misogyny” perpetrated by the evil “porno magazine,” led by a troupe of women who staged a buff-bare run through campus to show they weren't opposed to nudity but rather the way
Playboy
presented it. These running women were mostly a camera-unfriendly lot, and I've always believed that many of them would have eagerly jumped the proverbial fence had they possessed
Playboy
-caliber bodies. Anyway, I found myself bumping hips and elbows with a girl in the pro-
Playboy
crowd, whose chestnut hair and brown eyes kept distracting me from the cause I was there to support. Finally one of the conservatives challenged the women in our group to apply for the pictorial they were so eager to defend, and when the chestnut girl turned to me and asked if she should do it, I answered the only way a self-respecting college dude could—I told her to go for it. Her picture appeared in
Playboy
six months later, but by then I knew Misty's naked body better than what you could see in that airbrushed photo.

You'd think a relationship borne out of a common desire to defend sexual freedom would have a better chance than most to preserve its own romance. Sadly, this has not proven to be true. Certainly our failure to produce another child did not serve to increase the frequency of our sexual encounters, but it seems to me that Misty's passion for religion may have robbed enthusiasm from other areas of her life. We have not made love, in fact, in more than two years.

I suppose stronger spirituality is often a function of increasing age—the closer you come to death, the more relevant afterlife becomes—but today our differences in belief (or the difference between our
intensity
of belief) divide us like never before. As NeuroStor approaches quickly on our right, this separation grows so strong it's like a third passenger in the car with us. And while it hurts me to consider the possibility that Misty is no longer the woman I married, that I am not the man she fell in love with, what the hell are we supposed to do about it?

         

Misty steers crookedly into a parking spot and slams on the brakes, her nerves obviously confusing her reflexes. I push open the car door and claw my way out. Is it just me, or do all marriages eventually become more about getting away from your wife than about staying close to her?

I grab my luggage from the trunk and meet Misty as she emerges from the open driver's side door. She takes the suitcase and leaves me with the golf bag. As we reach the sidewalk, a tall, well-built black man dressed in a very expensive Italian suit approaches us. This is our director of security, Stephen Gates. He was drafted as a tight end for the San Francisco 49ers a couple of years ago but (rumor has it) forfeited his signing bonus and initial year of pro eligibility when he tested positive not once but three separate times for a controlled substance. General managers in the National Football League can be remarkably forgiving when it comes to evaluating players who can help their franchise win a Super Bowl, especially when those players come cheap because of past transgressions, so my only guess about Gates is that he lost either his desire or ability to play football, because, well, here he is.

“Mr. and Mrs. Fisher,” he says. “We're glad you could make it.” He takes the suitcase from my wife and asks us to follow him inside.

I've entered this building innumerable times before, sometimes tired, often bored, but this is the first time I've ever experienced the front lobby of NeuroStor with such a strange combination of scorching fear and nervous excitement. The eggshell-colored walls and thick brown carpet observe our presence in silence, and since today is Saturday, the usual traffic of white-collar professionals and clerical staff is nowhere to be found. Gates leads us past the greeting desk, through a maze of cubicles (there goes my old desk on the right—Misty has never seen it before, but I realize this is not the time for a guided tour) all the way to the rear of the building, where the office narrows to a short hallway with a door on either side. The only people who ever come back here (or so I've always believed) are the maintenance staff and the hard-core IT guys. These two rooms, after all, house orphaned office furniture (left door) and our network servers and data storage facility (right door). I, of course, have never been inside either one.

Gates produces a key chain and unlocks the door to the computer room.

“Nervous?” he asks.

“Should I be?”

“Not if you ask me,” Gates says. “I think you're a lucky man. Certainly a very rich one.”

Next to me, Misty glares at this man with contempt, a glare that would make anyone squirm.

Gates ushers us into what looks like a large meeting area (not a computer room after all, I see) equipped with a long rectangular table and videoconferencing equipment. At first I wonder if he's going to ask us to sit down, but instead we walk past the table. The fear in my throat rises briefly as I try to figure out why he has led us into the back corner of this empty room, but then I notice we have gathered in front of another door. This door is different from most at NeuroStor in that its surface and frame (and even the knob) have been painted the same eggshell color as the walls, which is why I didn't notice it right away. Someone has made a small effort to conceal the door, at least from the casual observer, and I have to admit that it works better than I would have expected.

Gates flips through his chain to find the correct key and unlocks this door, as well. Aside from posting armed guards throughout the office, it's obvious Batista is taking no chances with security, even when no other NeuroStor employees are present. He motions us through the door, where we find a steep set of concrete stairs descending many feet below the ground floor of what I've always thought was a two-story office building. Misty takes careful steps downward, and I follow her. Behind us, Gates pulls the door shut with authority and locks it.

At the bottom of the stairs stands Batista.

The man is imposing, there's no question about that. He stands at least three inches taller than me, maybe six four, and I'm sure he weighs over two hundred and ten pounds. His skin is the shiny, golden brown of a Hispanic man who has known nothing but the high life since childhood.

“Cameron!” Batista yells cheerfully. His perfectly groomed hair shines black beneath the white fluorescents, and the contrast of remarkable orthodontic work against his dark skin is striking. He's a single man, and I imagine he must make women swoon wherever he goes.

“And you must be Mrs. Fisher,” he says to Misty. “I'm Rodrigo Batista. Cameron never told me you were so beautiful.”

“Thank you,” she deadpans.

Whatever pretense I operated under previously, however I convinced myself to tolerate Batista's personality and behavior before, is gone now. Disappeared into oblivion. There are a number of reasons I dislike this man, but perhaps the most unnerving or disheartening to me is not his Harvard education or the undeserved wealth from which he springs, but that he is barely twenty-six years old. To a lifelong middle-class accountant such as myself, Batista's youthful brashness, his absolute assumption of unquestionable power, is pure evil. What does he know of real work? Of countless hours of meaningless toil for faceless corporations who suck the life out of their slaves and then toss them into the garbage heap of inadequate retirement benefits? He has paid no dues. He has done nothing but talk a bunch of moronic investors into sponsoring this . . . this . . .

He regards us for a moment and then clasps his hands together. “You are right on schedule, and so am I. Why don't we head on back and get started? This is all very exciting.”

My hands have begun to sweat. I discreetly wipe them on the cotton fabric of my pants and then take Misty's hand in my own. She squeezes a little too firmly. I wonder if she can feel my pulse, feel the blood in my hand throb as adrenaline turns my heart into a thundering machine.

“Hot out there in Arizona,” Gates says as we proceed down another narrow hallway. Ahead, Batista marches to his left and disappears through an open door. Farther down, at the end of the hall, stands a door labeled
TERMINAL
. That's where it's going to happen, I guess, where I'm going to put my life on the line in the name of—

“This way, Cameron,” Batista says. He's standing inside a hospital-white room, motioning for us to follow him inside. A short, solid woman wrapped tightly in a white lab coat stands waiting. Her navy slacks aren't quite long enough to cover a pair of alarmingly thick ankles, but she doesn't seem to mind.

“This is Judy,” Batista tells us. “She'll be performing the neurological evaluation.”

An examining bed is pushed against the wall on my right, and on the left, beyond a secretarial-style desk, stands a short, androidlike machine that reminds me vaguely of my optometrist's office.

Judy holds out a folded hospital gown. “Please put this on,” she says and points to a door behind her. “Change in there, and we'll get started with the exam.”

Batista and Gates are discussing something about Arizona when I open the door and step back into the room. The gown is oversized and drafty. My hands feel for the back to make sure everything is secure.

“Did I hear something about Arizona?”

“I was just telling Mr. Batista about the desert climate in Phoenix,” Gates says. “And how hot it gets.”

“Even in September,” Batista adds.

“Yeah, but—”

“But it's a dry heat, right?” Gates laughs.

I respond with an obligatory chuckle, but Misty's serious expression doesn't change at all. Her face might have been cast in plaster.

“Let's get started,” Judy barks. She gestures toward the examining bed. “Stand there.”

I do so.

“Hold your hands out like this,” she says, and extends her arms outward, even with her shoulders, parallel to the floor.

“Great. Now, while keeping your elbow outstretched, bend your arm and touch your nose with your index finger.”

This seems easy enough.

“Okay, now close your eyes and do the same thing. Great. Now do the same with your left hand. Great. Now . . .”

She runs through a standard neurological physical examination—measuring my ability to sense pressure, vibration, and temperature; evaluating my gait, balance, and reflexes—and then we move to the android.

“This instrument will evaluate your vision by surveying different areas of the eyeball—the cornea, iris, lens, conjunctiva, et cetera—and then by measuring your response to moving visual stimuli.”

She makes a few adjustments to the machine and then instructs me to follow a point of yellow light as it dances through a black void. By my watch, the test lasts less than three minutes, but somehow it seems to drag on for hours.

“That's great, Mr. Fisher. We're almost done here. All I need from you now is a urine sample, and then we'll measure your height and weight. You'll find specimen cups above the sink in the bathroom, which is across the hall. Are you currently taking any medications?”

“No.”

“Very well then.”

The spectators part as I walk toward them on my way into the hall. Misty's face reads pure exasperation. She doesn't say anything, however, and neither do the two suits. I trudge across the hall and—

“Mr. Fisher?”

It's Judy. She has followed me into the hall.