Up in the Air (20 page)

“I don’t want to think. I want to see your face. There, my tram just left. Terrific. Great.” I roll my eyes at Julie, who whispers “What?” and tightens her grip on the bag of fuzzy pet toys she bought for no reason at a stand upstairs. My sister feels ill at ease, I’m learning, if she goes for more than an hour without a purchase. I wish she’d put them away, though—I don’t like stuffed things.

“I have a solution,” says Dwight. “The Salt Lake Marriott. Tomorrow. For a very early lunch. We’ll buckle down and wrestle with this idea of yours and see if we can’t get an outline we’re both proud of.”

“It’s down to an outline now? That’s all you want?”

“The Marriott at ten. Frankly, I find this hugely preferable. They’re practically booting me out of this hotel. This works for both of us?”

It will have to work. Our flight to Phoenix is boarding; we’ll never make it. Julie, whose appetite Airworld has revived, bites off a chunk of caramel-coated soft pretzel and eyes me in a childish sugar daze. What’s next? I wish I could tell her.

“At ten. Agreed?”

“Fine. I’ll see you there. This doesn’t thrill me. If this is how your profession operates . . .”

“I don’t represent a profession; I’ve never claimed that. I’m a bookman, Bingham. Just a bookman. If you find our little fraternity too casual, too fallible, too dog-eared—”

“I’m not saying that.”

“Good. Because this idea of yours is strong.”

“As strong as
Horizoneering
? Morse’s book?”

“Odd you should ask.”

I listen. Nothing. “Why?”

“Just odd, is all. I’ll tell you a little story at lunch tomorrow. And bring an appetite. Their buffet’s first rate.”

“Where are you—
really
? La Jolla still? New York? Or do you just
pretend
to move around? What’s a tennis commitment? That’s a
game
.”

“Only for those who don’t play it well,” Dwight says.

“I want you to
guarantee
me you’ll be in Utah.”

“Guarantee you? Now how would I do that?”

f
old certain itineraries in the middle and the halves are mirrors of each other. I’ve taken such trips, a yo-yo on a string, staying in the same places on my way back that I stayed in, the other day, on my way out. At the outermost point of such journeys, before the pivot, there’s a moment of stillness, of poised potential energy. To begin the rewinding all I have to do is pick up my change and wallet from the nightstand, tuck in a shirttail, sign a credit card slip. But what if I don’t? It’s always tempting. Rebellion. What if I step aside and let the string snap back without me? I’ll be free then, won’t I?

The next flight back to Salt Lake leaves in an hour, and there is another two hours after that. Julie wants my decision. She licks a yogurt cone speckled with crystals of red cinnamon candy and leans on the rail of the rising escalator, watching her brother sort through his bad options. I’ve begun to suspect she’s pregnant and not telling me. Her face has that dependent bottomless softness and her appetite for junk seems driven, hormonal. She’s filling out like a moon before my eyes.

“How would you like to see my office?”

“Sure. I thought you’d quit, though.”

“That’s still in process. We’ll rent a car. We’ll drive.”

I need to get out of the airport. All airports. Now.

My Maestro Diamond card cuts through the formalities and ten minutes later we’re buckled up and cruising, watching the Denver skyline climb the windshield and swaying in our seats to Christian rock. Julie has always been up for anything—the source of most of her problems. She rides along. Her beauty arises from her readiness, and Keith, if he’s really the lump she’s made him out to be, will never drink from its source. That’s fine with me. There are parts of her that I’d rather strangers not handle.

I’m a dead man at ISM but they don’t know that yet; the parking attendant thumbs-ups me, lifts the gate. We drive down into a catacomb of Cadillacs and take my empty spot, still stained with coolant from my poorly maintained Toyota. When we get out, a man that I know from the hallways and lobby and who I’ve always assumed is at my level—though how would I know?—stops dead and palely stares. He raises a hand in a lame half wave, then fusses with his tie and turns and goes. There’s the flash of a shoeshine, the echo of hasty steps. I lock the car doors remotely, with the smart key, and lead Julie into the elevator and up.

“You’re sure we should be here?” she says. “You’re not in trouble?”

“Why?”

“Your shoulders. Roll them back. Now exhale. Slowly.”

“Massage school,” I say.

“It stays with you. It trains your eye. Back there in the airport, the compression of people’s spines? It’s like they’re all six inches shorter than they should be.”

“You’d think they’d walk taller there.”

“They’re munchkins. Crabs.”

The point of this errand is still waiting to reveal itself. We walk out onto my floor and nothing’s changed except the art. Artemis Bond, the apostle on our board, donated to us a trove of wildlife oils said to be worth millions, though I’d be shocked if that were true. The bugling bull elk and treed pumas and flushing quail rotate through the building, floor by floor; I know it’s September now by all the waterfowl. The art is our only connection to natural cycles here. An energy-saving coating on the windows cuts out the heart of the spectrum from the light and turns people’s skin the color of old dull nickels. It makes paper explosive, too bright to look at, and assistants have actually left us over eyestrain. One even filed suit, and may have won. Such victories don’t pay. The CTC cases I’ve known who’ve wrangled judgments for wrongful termination are spacemen now, in orbit, in exile, unwelcome back on earth.

Julie trails me past a gang of cubicles glowing with junior executive ambition to a partitioned warren of larger offices that means we’re approaching the operational heart of things. The air swirls and eddies with all the old polarities—fear of the lion’s den just down the hall, the hope for an unmolested interlude at the copier or fax machine, the seductions of fresh-brewed decaf in the snack nook. My assistant looks up from his desktop—I’ve tripped some wire—and reformats his self-presentation appropriately, jerking taut the slack around his eyes.

“It’s you,” he says.

I point Julie to my office, which has a love seat. A foreshortened sofa, actually. It’s never been used for courtship, that I know of.

My assistant rolls back his chair two caster-turns. I’m a sight, it seems.

“Any messages?”

“Just one or two. Your hotel in Las Vegas is covered. The Mount Olympus. They’re crowded, so I had to take a suite. They said it has a jukebox and a pool table.”

“Nice.”

“You think so? It kind of gave me chills. Mr. Bingham alone in some hotel room, practicing his bank shots, playing records.”

“Who else. Did a woman named Alex call?”

“Don’t think so. Just that airline lady who sounds like Catwoman. She calls every couple of hours. She wants your mobile. I’ve been guarding your privacy.”

“Linda. What does she want?”

“Wouldn’t tell me. Is that voice an act?”

“I’ve never noticed it. Give her my number next time. Nothing about that meeting in Omaha?”

“No, but your briefcase came from Great West baggage. I stood it up next to your chair. Your tie is twisted.”

I own just one briefcase, and I’m carrying it. I walk into the office, hip-bang the door closed, and look down at a burgundy case with gold-tone hardware that might have been my style a few years back, but not since I started reading
GQ
magazine. The airline address tag looped around its handle is filled out in my hand, in faded blue ink.

“Is this you in this picture?” Julie is on the love seat, a magazine on her lap. The
Corporate Counselor.

“That’s me. The one they’re hoisting on their shoulders.”

“Why are your shirts off? What are all those ropes?”

“We were rock climbing in Bryce Canyon. It’s a program. Wilderness Accountability. We ate wild grasses. We chiseled arrowheads.”

“One of those things where you let yourself fall backwards and everyone catches you?”

“Only they don’t catch you. On this one they let you fall. And then they step on you.”

I heft the case. It’s light, but it feels full. I shake it. Paper. The combination lock reads 4–6–7. I used to carry an expensive pocketknife—a gift from a Waco oil services firm in gratitude for the lawsuit-free excision of eleven second-tier managers, three of them less than a year from being vested in a pension plan that’s since gone under—but it was taken from me by airport guards who measured the blade length and said it broke the law. I could use something like it to jimmy the case. I open my top middle desk drawer and stir the junk around, a lot of giveaway convention bric-a-brac, looking for something slim and strong and pointed, but the best I can do is a silver-plated bookmark snagged from KPMG at the last GoalQuest. The thing is hardly metal, a flimsy wafer, and when I wedge it against a hinge, it cracks.

“Back from the vale of sorrows. Ryan B. His mournful dignity marred by coffee stains insufficiently blotted from wrinkled collar.”

This man is not worth elevating my vision for, a conclusion I came to long ago, but he might have a knife in his trousers, so I do. It’s the same old assault on the senses. Flared canine nostrils snuffling for blood trails near the watercooler. Marx Brothers eyebrows, permanently arched and flaked with dead skin that flies off him when he laughs, which he only does with both hands inside his pockets, as though there’s a switch near his scrotum he has to toggle. Craig Gregory, Human Issues Group Team Leader, who came to me years ago in the company weight room, reracked the barbell I was struggling with, gazed down into my clear young eyes, and said, “It’s a recession, it’s official. Axes are falling. Much stench. Much fear of plague. I know you’ll want back into Marketing Group someday but right now the king’s army needs some undertakers to sanitize the gore. You say you’d love to? Abracadabra: I grant you better insurance, complete with vision care coverage. Go with
God.”

Craig smiles at me now, just one hand pocketed. The other will join it the moment I ask for something.

“You stood up our Texas client. And that’s okay. Life moves so slowly down in the Lone Star State, beneath those humbling skyscapes, that red sun, that I’ll bet you could amble on in a year from now and those lazy cowpokes would still be at their grub. Also, they’ve written some wobbly checks of late, so I say screw ’em. I say hang ’em high.”

I slice a look at Julie, who need not witness this. She stands. The old family telepathy still functions.

“The ladies’ room? Do I need a key or something?”

Both pockets now. Craig Gregory locks and loads. It’s like him to ignore a stranger’s presence until he can actively nullify it. “A password: ‘Open sesame, really gotta pee.’ ”

“Ask my assistant,” I tell her. “My sister Julie, Craig. Proof I was born of woman, not spore, like you.”

The two of them brush hands and Julie flees. She’ll make it a long one, I trust.

“I’m serious, Ryan, you called it right on Texas. Those boys aren’t downsizing, they’re capsizing. We don’t take Monopoly money at ISM. The full faith and credit of Parker Brothers State Bank just ain’t gonna butter our bagel. Old policy. No pro bono until Jesus tells us otherwise.”

“Is Boosler still back from his trip 9/21?”

“Affirmative. Caught many tuna. Dallied with many maidens. Sucked much synergistic bigwig dick. The question is: when will
you
be back?”

“I’m here.”

“Fractionally. I sense brief layover. I’m going to stroll to your love seat over there and sacrifice my commanding height advantage in return for some teammate-to-teammate pillow talk. Walking now. Sitting now. Relating now. What the fuck’s up with you, asswipe? They phoned, you know.”

“Excuse me if I don’t join you in repose. Fresher air up here. Who phoned?”

“Them. The Brain Trust. Operation Gamma Ray. The Seven. Whatever it is they’re calling themselves these days to mask the absurdity of their worthless methods. The Omaha Illuminati.”

“MythTech?”

“They swiped our big milky nipple this week, CoronaCom. There goes the lap pool we’re building up on nine. There goes the Broncos skybox with the wet bar and honor-system humidor.”

“Good for them.”

“Good for you, if you join them. ‘This Bingham?’ they ask me. Bold as that, like we’re swapping fucking baseball cards. ‘What can he do for us? Is he a comer? Rate on a ten scale: Emotional lability. Bilateral orgasmic dexterity. And by the way, since we’re speaking frankly now, how does he do taking orders from female Negroes?’ ”

“Who made this call? This isn’t their procedure.”

“I am strength and silence. I am Khan.”

“Lucius Spack?”

“Is that the quiz-kid pederast? The queer little pink guy with the propeller beanie?”

“You don’t have a pocketknife, do you, by any chance?”

Craig Gregory licks his lips. They dry out quickly. “No one called.”

I set the briefcase down.

“I’m fishing, Ryan. I’m covering my flanks. They raided Deloitte. They’re raiding everyone. I’m going up and down the halls today in search of potential deserters. Don’t think you’re special. We’re an old-line firm, and we take pride in that, but we realize that novelty sings its siren song.”

“You’re lying. I say they did call.”

Again, both pockets. Craig Gregory laughs. “This is fun. It’s fun, my job. The Art of the Mind Fuck. You’ll be at GoalQuest, surely?”

“I’m speaking there,” I remind him. “Please come listen.”

“Before or after Tony Robbins? During? Sorry, can’t make it. Must touch my guru’s robes. Must wash big Tony’s feet in thanks and praise for turning wormy me into king cobra.”

I cross my arms. “What’s Faithful Orange? Tell me.”

Craig Gregory cups his knees and slowly rises in lobster-like, hinged stages from my sofa. “Behind you,” he says. “Your sister. Waiting sheepishly. Intimidated by Gregory’s musky pheromones.”

I turn. We all look so gray in here. Turn back.

“Faithful Orange. A soda pop, I think.”

“Is the Marketing Team consulting for Great West Air?”

“I’d like to think we have corporate Denver covered. I certainly hope we are. Listen, you look like hell. Nice boots, but from there on up you’re Guatemalan. If I was a fag I’d reach over and fix your hair. And your ‘I’m too busy to floss’ thing just isn’t working. That may go over fine among the Navajo, but this is white America. Colgate country.”

“What if I told you I’m taping you right now and sending a transcript to Equal Opportunity? You’re going to get ISM sued. You watch your mouth.”

“Me? Our first Diversity Training graduate? I’m covered, brother. I have a framed certificate. Sponsor me on my AIDS walk?”

I should quit now. Retrieve the letter from Boosler’s desk and read it aloud while standing on my chair. Gather the assistants. The cleaning staff. The letter has several flourishes I’m quite proud of and would benefit from an oral presentation. If I had my million miles, I’d do it, too. But it’s ISM’s dime that’s going to put me over, and I can’t afford to lose travel authorization. I recite the letter in my head.