Convergence

by Michael D. Britton

Convergence

  by

  Michael D. Britton

  * * * *

  Copyright 2012 by Michael D. Britton / Intelligent Life Books

  She never did look good in yellow. Today, especially, she looked like a tall canary about to eat an unsuspecting cat – all smug, surly and self-satisfied.

  Of course, in her own mind, she was a force as timeless as the sun, as bright as a spot light, and as delicate as a field of daisies. Noble, brilliant, and beautiful.

  Right.

  The river of pedestrians seemed to part for her as she stepped out into the street outside her New York City high-rise apartment on the Upper East Side.

  Her car was waiting, as usual. I was standing with her door open, as usual. I knew just where she wanted to be driven to, as usual.

  It helped that I could read people’s thoughts (a strange gift I’d developed after a nasty car accident early in my career).

  I knew today was a special day for Temperance Hall.

  She paused, and then stepped back to the lowest marble step outside her lobby, her diamonds shining on her fingers, wrists, neck, and ears, and her smooth chin thrust out with a defiant air. She was about fifty, but with her smooth skin looked about forty.

  She held her white velvet clutch over her belly with both gloved hands and took a deep breath. The wind was biting – just the way she liked it.

  Although she didn’t think it consciously, I got the distinct impression she got some kind of pleasure out of keeping me waiting at the curb for a few extra seconds.

  Some kind of power trip.

  But nothing compared to what was ahead this morning.

  I listened to her thoughts.

  **Today, Hall Enterprises will get a spring cleaning.**

  “And about bloody time,” I heard her murmur to herself as she finally moved to the shining Cadillac and stepped into its warmth, exposing her smooth slender leg on the way in. As she settled into the deep seat, she inhaled the leather and pulled her gloves off a finger at a time so she could reapply the bright red gloss to her lips.

  I pulled away with a gentle thrust of the accelerator, listening to her almost subconscious thoughts about the firmness of my butt.

  It made me sick.

  #

  A few blocks away, Brad Miller climbed into his black BMW 3-series (the sport version), started it up and opened the sun roof – despite the cold.

  He turned the key back a click and the motor stopped, but the CD played on – the sweet licks of Buddy Guy wafting through the open roof. He caught his reflection in the rearview – freshly cut salt-n-pepper hair, crows’ feet around the blue eyes – and lowered his Oakleys from his head to his eyes to try and wash away the years.

  He stared back across the street at the Porsche dealership, fighting the urge to return and tell the guy he would take the 911. But then his keychain caught his eye, and the photo of his seventeen year old boy Nathan spoke to him: Dad, if you wanna send me to Yale, you gotta quit buying cars – can’t you postpone your mid-life crisis a little longer?

  Brad sighed, started up the beemer, cranked up Buddy and pulled out directly into the path of a green Pinto.

  #

  Margie Wilson had just about had it. It was definitely a Monday: the babysitter had called in sick, the water heater had up and quit, she’d managed to spill coffee down the front of her Denny’s uniform, and her sixteen year old daughter Melanie had chosen this morning to announce she’s pregnant.

  Now all she needed was for the car to break down and her day would be complete. She wiped away a tear and reached for the radio dial to turn up the morning banter, hoping to take her mind off –

  The black BMW came out of nowhere and completed Margie’s day.

  #

  Nathan Miller walked along with his hand wrapped around hers, the other hand carrying her school books. As he passed the Porsche dealership, he let go of her hand and ran his fingers through his wavy brown hair and noticed his old man parked across the street in his black BMW, his blues music wafting through the open roof as he lowered his Oakley shades over his eyes.

  Selfish jerk. Dad was once again considering a new car.

  He turned toward the gurgling noise of a passing Pinto – the muffler was either damaged or missing, and thick black smoke fouled the air downwind where he walked with his girlfriend. His gaze followed the beater as it passed, driven by a distracted-looking woman with watery eyes reaching for her radio.

  The sound of metal crunching on metal was split by Melanie Wilson’s scream –

  “Mom!”

  #

  “Can’t you get us through this?” Hall snipped at me through the little glass divider.

  I wanted to say, “Not unless this limo can transform into a bone-crushing monster truck,” – but instead I said, “Quite sorry, Ma’am. It appears we’re stuck here for the time being.”

  The green Pinto two cars ahead of us had t-boned a black BMW, slamming the German car with serious force and wedging it under a semi truck trailer. Emergency vehicles had threaded their way to the scene and EMTs were pulling out a blood-covered body from the Pinto.

  The BMW driver would need to be cut out. I watched as a pair of firefighters carried over the so-called “Jaws of Life.” Unfortunately for many, they didn’t actually revive the dead – but they sure could cut through a car like hot scissors through butter.

  “We’re going to be late,” said Hall irritably. “Why must these things always happen to me?”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” I said blandly.

  Hall started into one of her self-righteous, indignant little rants, and I tuned her out, focusing instead on the young man and woman at the curb near the ambulance.

  The boy had his arm around the girl, and they both had tear-streaked faces. I could see the ragged breaths they took exhaled as little white clouds in the chill morning air.

  I listened in on their thoughts.

  **Please don’t let Dad be dead. He’s not a bad guy. What’s mom gonna do?**

  The boy looked down at his feet.

  I looked at the girl.

  **It’s my fault. She was distracted because of what I told her at breakfast. I wish I hadn’t yelled at her.**

  I looked at my watch.

  Twelve minutes past eight.

  Hall’s axe party seemed pretty trivial as I watched the shattered lives before me.

  As I wondered who else would undergo a major life change today (that is, which of the Hall Enterprises executives would be getting the chop), I turned my thoughts to Hall’s mind, to answer my own question.

  She was running down her mental checklist of people to fire.

  **James Escher, Legal Counsel.**

  Ooh. She really hated that guy. Came through loud and clear – he was one of the main reasons she didn’t want to be late.

  **Holly Burnett, Human Resources Director.**

  Huh – a lot of blame directed at that lady. I wondered about the back story there.

  **Marcus Gilroy, Chief Financial Officer.**

  Apparently, it served him right for being too friendly with Burnett.

  **Barry Shane, Chief Operations Officer.**

  No hard feelings there, just part of the clean out.

  **Marshall Wilson, Chief Executive Officer.**

  Seems he should never have promised to leave his wife for Hall – it was a lie from the beginning. And now he’ll finally pay.

  **Oh, and that Brad Miller guy, Chief Marketing Officer – total waste of office space.**

  A complete wash.

  No survivors this time.

  But Hall Enterprises would be reborn once again.

  Today was also the day that the company would be receiving an infusion of capital from the federal government �
� all part of the latest economic “recovery” bill.

  A tow truck finally arrived and started to clear a path through the mess. I eased us forward toward the officer directing traffic.

  As we passed the ambulance, I saw the gurney being loaded into the back doors. A woman – the one from the Pinto – was unconscious with a plastic mask over her mouth and nose with tubes extending to an oxygen tank carried by one of the medics.

  I heard Temperance Hall gasp in the back seat.

  I immediately read her thoughts.

  **Margaret – oh Margaret!**

  She knew the victim? I probed deeper.

  Her estranged daughter.

  Huh. I never even knew she had any children. This could be interesting.

  “Follow that ambulance!” she shouted, leaning forward in her seat and waving her finger.

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  The meeting at Hall Enterprises would have to wait.

  The ambulance made its way out through the congestion, then opened up, siren wailing. I floored it, barely able to keep up.

  A real ambulance chaser.

  It was only about ten blocks to St. Luke’s hospital. We pulled in directly behind the ambulance. Despite the urgency of the situation, Hall still waited for me to come around and open her door as if, over the years of being waited on, she’d forgotten how the door latches functioned.

  She walked into the hospital, her head as high as ever, her gait measured, unhurried. But in her head, I knew things were different.

  **I’d started to think I’d never see her again. And now this! Just when I’d placed the memories safely into that hole in my heart.**

  No wonder I never knew about the daughter – she never thought about her.

  **She can’t die! Not the way we left things.**

  Then I heard something I’d never heard in my six years of service to Temperance Hall, eavesdropping on her mind.

  She prayed.

  **Please let her live. If she lives, I promise to patch things up – to be a better mother. To be a mother, period.**

  Making deals. How very much like her.

  I followed a couple steps behind her and stood back as she identified herself at the nurses’ station. She was told that her daughter was in surgery and that she could wait for her upstairs in the post-op waiting area.

  We went into an elevator and I pushed the “three” button. We stood in silence. Little did she know that all the times we had stood in silence, she had been communicating volumes to me. In this case, her mind was reeling back to a time many years ago.

  **Never wanted this – never wanted any of this. Just a fling – some travel. A little fun. That’s all. Of course then I had to fall in love with the jerk. Then, when I was pregnant with Margaret, and he said he’d leave his wife, I was stupid enough to believe him. After she was born – here I was only twenty and still so naive. Kept holding out for him to leave her.**

  We stepped out of the elevator and her reverie continued as we took seats in the stuffy waiting room, surrounded by other anxious people in the midst of their own life traumas. I wondered who the man was – who was the father of Margaret – as Hall carefully avoided thinking about him directly. He was more of a concept in her mind than an actual person. Classic case of avoidance. I kept listening as she bitterly recounted her sad story to herself, as if trying to obtain some kind of catharsis.

  **My family was so ashamed of me – I’d tarnished the great Hall name. For fifteen years they kept me out of the family business. Then when Margaret got pregnant, and we fought, and I kicked her out (or she ran away, depends whose story it is) – suddenly I was back in good graces with the family. Since I’d had the moxy to put myself through business school, they entrusted me with running the Philadelphia plant. And I turned that place around, didn’t I? Of course, I almost never spoke to Margaret. In fact, I haven’t spoken to her since her little girl was ten.**

  A grandmother? I had no idea. The things you learn in times of stress. I observed Hall’s mind flash back to when Margaret was just a girl – and sensed her regret that she’d been so distant from her for her whole life. I listened as she admitted to herself that she’d always resented the child – what she represented. It made me feel sorry for the poor woman now laying on an operating table. I wondered what life was like for the granddaughter.

  I almost stopped listening to Hall’s mind when she started protecting herself from self-recrimination by justifying herself. I always found such weak and selfish thoughts rather sickening. But now that I was learning so much about her, I couldn’t help but keep listening – a kind of morbid curiosity – like staring at a car wreck. I guess this woman’s whole life was a car wreck – though you’d never be able to tell from the outside – so composed, so together, so brimming with almost offensive self-confidence.

  I’d always known it was a façade, but until now, I’d never had such a detailed glimpse of what lay beneath, since she’d always done such a good job of hiding from herself.

  She finally finished with her rationalizations and returned to my history lesson.

  **Since Margaret left, and had her baby, things have been so different from what I ever wanted. I’ve not been a part of my granddaughter’s life. Instead, I’ve built up this empire – the Hall empire – but for what? I’m fifty-two years old, and alone. All I’ve got is this dutiful driver – and he probably hates my guts.**

  I wouldn’t say “hate.” In some ways I actually admire her. But mostly, I find her to be a pitiful, small person. I’ve watched her casually destroy people for her own ends. Even if I understood some of her motives, I didn’t approve of her methods. It was always all about her.

  There was a reason she was alone.

  A nurse about the same age as Hall approached, wearing pastel green scrubs and trying to hide an exhausted expression.

  “Temperance Hall?”

  “Yes,” she said, looking alert.

  “Your daughter has been moved to a recovery room. She’s not awake yet, but you may come see her.”

  As she stood, she asked, “How is she? Is she going to be all right?”

  “You’ll need to talk to Dr. Fisher,” said the nurse as she led Hall to the room with me in tow. “He’ll be in to see you in a few minutes.”

  When we reached the room, I waited at the door as the nurse took Hall inside. A moment later, the nurse came out and closed the door.

  A moment after that, Hall stuck her head out and said, “Henry, please come in. I don’t want to be in here all alone.”

  I stepped in and closed the door behind myself. Hall sat in a hard chair at her daughter’s bedside and stared at the computer readout over the bed. It was understandable that she didn’t look at her daughter.

  Margaret looked awful.

  Her face was one big bruise with a ventilator tube coming from her mouth. One arm was in a cast. The other had tape covering cuts.

  Hall finally looked at her daughter.

  **Oh, Margaret! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I wish things had been different.**

  The door opened, and Melanie Wilson entered after reluctantly releasing the hand of a boy her age.

  She looked at her grandmother as if she didn’t recognize her, then it hit her.

  “You,” she said coldly, approaching her mother’s bed.

  I sensed Hall hold herself back, as she felt an unfamiliar urge to move to her granddaughter and hold her. She knew such an attempt at contact would be rebuffed.

  **I’m just trying to comfort myself, anyway.**

  Wow. That was a rare instance of self awareness on the part of my employer.

  I spotted the name on Margaret’s hospital wrist band ID.

  Wilson, Margaret, T.

  Strange. I assumed her last name was Hall, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she’d been married.

  Hall noticed the name tag, as well, and her thoughts corrected all my assumptions.

  **I was so angry at her for rejecting the Hall name and cha
nging her name to Wilson when she turned eighteen. Taking the name of her father was such an insult to me – it felt like a knife in my back. I wish I’d never told her who her father was.**

  Ah. So that’s how it was.

  I’d have felt awkward witnessing these private moments, but as a personal servant, I was used to being considered a part of the environment – as silent as any inanimate piece of property. It was common among the elite for me to be treated with no more respect or consideration than a piece of furniture.

  But then Melanie, who was used to people being people, spoke up.

  “Who’s this?”

  “My driver, Henry,” she said, sparing a quick glance in my direction, but not meeting my eyes. “I asked him to come in.”

  “Oh,” said Melanie. “How’s Mom?”

  “The doctor hasn’t come in yet to tell me.”

  The door cracked open, and we all expected to see Dr. Fisher.

  It wasn’t him, but a man in a dark business suit – three piece – with graying hair and a handsome, rugged face punctuated by steel gray eyes.

  “I got your email,” he said.

  Hall looked at him blankly. “Huh?”

  “The one in which you called a mandatory 8:30 meeting of the executive team, where you planned to announce some sweeping changes.”

  **Oh, that one.´ How could I have forgotten?**

  “Well, um, I suppose that will have to wait.”

  “The meeting had to be rescheduled anyway, because Brad Miller was in an accident,” said the man. “Then, when I got here, I heard you were here, and I was surprised you would care enough to come see Brad. When I asked around, I was directed to this room.”

  “It’s Margaret,” said Hall.

  The man’s face turned from weary to truly grave, and he stepped quickly toward the bed. “I – I didn’t even recognize her.”