Desperate (19 page)

W
e had full attendance for the morning standup meeting. Patrice seemed to be in an extra-chipper mood because it appeared we were ready to test again. This time there wouldn’t be any repeat of the last smoke-filled/fire-tainted demonstration. No, CEO Peter would have nothing to fear. We’d start the timer. Amber II would hold the phone in her unwavering plastic hand like a true champ. CEO Peter, looking distinguished in his signature blue suit, would make his appearance; he’d see time ticking away and he’d smile, not broadly but just enough for us to interpret the look as one of appreciation, like a wink with his mouth. We’d all stand around nervous, waiting for the final nod of approval, and when he announced, “Job well done,” we’d break into rousing applause.

This was going to happen because Matt Simons made it so. He was all done sabotaging the Olympian project.

A standup meeting, or standup for short, provided real-time status updates to team members without a lengthy agenda. The meetings were time boxed, five to fifteen minutes, and we stood as a reminder to keep the meeting short and to the point. Three questions were asked at every standup: What did I accomplish yesterday? What will I do today? What obstacles are impeding my progress? With those three questions we could keep the meeting simple, brief, focused, and effective.

This was the leadership group, so we had one member at the meeting to represent each of the six main project disciplines: engineering, manufacturing, quality assurance, documentation, materials science, and program management, with our leader, Patrice, making a surprise guest appearance. We all looked like marathon runners with the finish line coming into view. Our eyes were elated; our bodies ached for the end. Matt Simons stood in the circle directly across from me.

Throughout the meeting, I kept looking at Matt, making brief eye contact and seeing myself in his shoes. We were not all that different, Matt and I. We both had made questionable choices to do what we believed had to be done. For Matt it meant being in charge of Olympian, forcing Adam out of the way, to ensure project success. For me, I needed to rid myself of Lily and Roy to ensure my marriage, my future.

Maybe Matt felt the end justified the means, but in my case I wasn’t so sure. My heart was broken for Anna because I knew how she’d react once Lily was gone, while I was sure Simons hadn’t lost a breath of sleep over Adam’s plight.

I kept thinking about how what I’d done would impact Anna. The runway to having a baby was illuminated full and bright, and yes, it was Lily flying the plane, but Anna was her copilot who believed we’d soon become adoptive parents. She could help navigate the craft, act as a support and guide for Lily, be her friend and confidante throughout the pregnancy, form a bond that would last a lifetime, but a crash was coming and I was the saboteur.

Even though we had different motivations, mine being far less ignoble, I was still Matt Simons in a different disguise.

Patrice kept silent during the standup, but when her turn came to speak, she stepped into the center of the circle, something she’d never done. She looked like a woman relieved of an incredible burden.

“I have a few words to share,” Patrice said. She wore the uniform of engineering management—jeans and a polo shirt. The wonks doing the heavy lifting, the hard-core engineers, considered themselves dressy if they wore toe-covered shoes to work. Most preferred loud Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts during the hot summer months.

“First, I want you to know how much I appreciate all the hard work you’ve put into the Olympian project,” Patrice began. “I know at times it’s been unbelievably frustrating, the hours long, the task rather daunting. Now that the end is in sight, and I’m a thousand percent confident we won’t see a smoking battery this time around, I want to share a little something with you. This is for your ears only, but as team leaders, Peter wanted you to know what’s really at stake here.”

The air in the room got saunalike heavy. We waited.

“Lithio Systems is in deep financial trouble,” Patrice said.

This came from nowhere—a sucker punch to my gut. I’d assumed the business was healthy. But as a private company, partially funded by government grants, the financials weren’t broadcast to us via Yahoo stock quotes. We simply went about our daily tasks believing every day we came to work the doors would be unlocked and we’d be open for business.

“Project Olympian is going to save the company,” Patrice said, her voice a little flat in an impartial third party observer kind of way. “I’m not spinning hyperbole here,” she continued. “This new product will give us a three-year advantage on the competition at a minimum. We’ve done the due diligence and nobody is even close to what we’ve created. Nobody.”

Girish, a jovial Indian fellow who happened to be amazing on the tennis court, spoke up first. “What if we didn’t deliver on time?” He asked the question I was thinking, the question in everyone’s eyes.

“We were on the verge of filing for Chapter 11, and I don’t think we could have emerged,” Patrice said. “Without Olympian, Peter was considering a wholesale liquidation of the company. Now, because of you and your efforts, we’re talking expansion.”

I swallowed hard, thinking of twenty-five hundred people suddenly out of work, myself included. Some would find new employment, but I doubted it would be in this industry, not with contraction taking place. A lot of the Lithio Systems employees, especially the techies, were the midlife career types, the kind who were getting squeezed out of the workforce by younger people willing to do more for less. The upheaval would be enormous, in a make-national-news kind of way. The thought of the disaster we’d averted put a lump in my throat.

Patrice gave us more financial information. It was a bit like sitting in the doctor’s office, hearing a grim diagnosis for the first time, and wanting to say, “Whoa, Doc, wait a second, that’s waaaaaayyy too much information.”

We listened intently, each of us pondering possible loose ends in our work, something that might derail the project and send Lithio Systems into an irreversible tailspin.

As Patrice answered questions, my thoughts drifted back to Anna. She had called, tickled about how her Humboldt meeting went, and reaffirmed her commitment to take a year maternity leave assuming the deal closed (which it would, she asserted).

“After all that drama with the missing folder, everything went perfectly,” she said.

In the back of my mind, I kept thinking how Roy’s recording could wreck everything if I didn’t do this one thing for him. But something else was bothering me, too, something all this talk of money had stirred in my brain.

How much would Nicky Stacks pay Roy for the job? Two grand? Five? How much did a drug deal pay? Roy owed these cigarette smugglers more than a hundred thousand dollars, or so he said. I was paying him twenty, plus my cut from the deal. Was Nicky Stacks offering us each forty large to make a drop? If so, no wonder drugs continued to be a major problem in America. Maybe Roy had enough to stave off the D.C. guys he owed for a little bit longer. Still, something wasn’t adding up here.

I checked my watch.

Ten in the morning.

In fifteen hours I would know if this new worry amounted to something, or nothing.

A
nna came home later that afternoon. It should have been a sweet reunion, but I was edgy and she definitely took notice. I picked her up at Logan. She offered to take a cab, but I couldn’t wait to see her. I needed to be close to her, hoping her presence would be enough to ground me. In just a few hours, I was going to commit my first and last drug deal.

No matter where I was—working at Lithio Systems or driving Anna home from the airport—it seemed I was still in the alley with Roy. I’d doubled my dose of Adderall to try to get through my workday, but that didn’t help me focus. I was so jacked up on adrenaline, I’d apparently taken in every vivid detail of the alley, memorized each possible escape route with startling clarity, soldering the information into my mind until I couldn’t look at a street without seeing where the deal would go down.

“You shouldn’t have come to pick me up, sweetie,” Anna said. “What time is your train?”

“It’s not until nine,” I said. “But I’ve missed you and thought we could get at least a few hours together before I have to go.”

Anna believed I was going on a business trip (because that was what I’d told her) and that I’d leave for the train right after we ate dinner (lie number two) and I’d be home by dinner tomorrow night (not a lie; I was going to crash at a downtown hotel after the drop with plans to spend the day sequestered in my room praying for forgiveness).

Ain’t I a peach?

Though I wanted to be with Anna, on the drive back to our house I wasn’t much of a conversationalist. Anna didn’t like the change to our natural rhythm.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Is something bothering you?”

She gave me a sideways glance with a dimpled smile, and that one look honestly made me stop breathing. She was wearing a dark pants suit with a silk shirt underneath and her long neck was ringed by a gold chain, simple and elegant. I felt like I was seeing her through a different set of eyes, younger eyes, not yet accustomed to her beauty.

I’d seen Karen in the same exact way when we first started dating. In the beginning, my love for her heightened my every sense—the sight, the smell, the taste, the touch, the sound of her breath, and her speech. It was that way with Anna, too, at the start of our relationship. But somewhere along the way, bogged down by the daily grind of life perhaps, dulled by Anna’s familiar presence, I lost the sharpness, the augmented reality of us, as we settled into something far more sustainable. They call it the honeymoon phase for a reason. I guess it would be impossible to go for a long period of time feeling that primal excitement, the desire to consume my partner whole because I couldn’t get close enough, a desperate yearning to become linked, fall into her arms, lock our lips, join our bodies as we made love.

Anna and I started off as lovers, and became partners somewhere along the way.

For a second, I couldn’t figure out why I was seeing her as I used to. Then it came to me: because of Roy and Lily, I was afraid of losing what I had.

“I’m just thinking how lucky I am to have you,” I said.

Anna reached out and put her hand on my leg.

“I missed you, too, baby,” she said.

I drove us back to Arlington, navigating the heavy afternoon traffic, with Anna’s hand resting on my leg, not in a sexual way but in a connecting way, a reminder of how we belonged together.

As we pulled into the driveway, my throat went dry and I felt cold all over. I had a terrible feeling I was being given another sign. Maybe it was Karen, or even Max reaching out, but something was sending me a clear reminder to appreciate Anna in the way I had those very first days.

Anna was in the shower, and I was leafing through menus trying to decide what we should have for dinner. I had just finished reviewing a one pager on an ex-con named Roy Ripson that Anna’s PI contact had dug up. Everything in Roy’s story matched what he had told me. He did five years in Walpole. A previous residence was listed in Tampa, Florida. He had a few other convictions, but those were misdemeanors. It wasn’t the worst criminal record I could have imagined, but this guy was no Pollyanna either. At least now I knew his last name.

The doorbell rang. I marched down the hall and opened the door without asking who it was.

Lily and Roy greeted me on the front porch. Lily wore a lime green sundress that hid the size of her belly and leather cowboy boots. Roy was wearing a thin leather jacket, black tee, and dark jeans. They looked like a cool, hip couple, friends we’d never have, but I knew their true colors, and the colors of their auras, too.

Lily was holding a brown paper bag emanating a familiar odor. I could even smell Anna’s favorite tofu dish.

“What are you doing here?” I asked in a low voice.

“We saw you come home and thought we might join you guys for dinner,” Lily said, hoisting up the bag of Chinese food. Roy held a smaller bag, showing the pressed outline of a six-pack of beer.

“It’s our treat,” Lily continued. “I got Anna her favorite, so I’m sure she’ll be happy to have us over. Besides, she’s never met Roy. Not in any proper way.”

The blood rush to my head tingled my skin. My hands became fists, my eyes turned fierce. Lily licked her lips, savoring the encounter. My heart was racing. Roy’s sharp-eyed, sly expression told me what they were after. I was going to make them say it, regardless.

“Again, why are you here?”

Roy pushed past me, entering my home uninvited, and Lily followed. My mouth fell open.

“Hey, we don’t want your food.”

From the bathroom I heard the shower turn off and Anna call out, “Gage, is someone here?”

Roy’s eyes narrowed on me, glaring.

“How much did you tell her?” he asked.

I was right. They were here to feel me out. My anger spiked as I gripped Roy’s arm, but somehow I managed to keep my voice down. “You’re not welcome here.”

Roy looked down at my hand clasped around his bicep, and then he lifted his head slowly until our eyes met. His expression darkened, and I knew to let go without his having to waste the words.

“Gage?” Anna called again.

I cleared my throat. “It’s Lily and Roy,” I said. “They brought dinner and wanted us to eat together.” I unfurled my fingers from Roy’s arm one by one.

“Hi, Anna,” Lily called out in a sickeningly sweet voice. “Welcome home. I got you your favorite from Lilac Blossoms. I also wanted you to meet Roy. Since he’s living with me now, we thought it was only right.”

Anna said through the bathroom door, “That’s great. Give me five minutes to change and I’ll be right out.”

Roy’s fingers wrapped around my arm, constricting with incredible force.
His turn.
We locked eyes, Roy’s look meaning to intimidate. “I’ll know if you told her,” he said to me. “I’ll know it within minutes.” He let go of my arm and his expression changed, the way a passing cloud can reveal the beauty of the moonshine it had been concealing. A warm, delighted smile came over his face.

“We’ll set the food out,” he called to Anna. “I’m really looking forward to meeting you.” Like a snake retreating into its hole, the smile slipped back into a sneer. Roy eyed me once again.

“I’ll know it,” he said. “Remember, Nicky is expecting you’re doing the drop. And trust me when I say, you don’t want to go against Nicky Stacks.”