Crossing Paths

by Dianne Blacklock

  ‘Don’t be a dickhead, Will, it’s her thing.’

  ‘Yeah, well how come no one takes my “thing” seriously?’ said Will. ‘Mim can waste her life in an ivory tower writing poems no one’s going to read, but I’m treated like a fool when I want to follow my dream of being an actor.’

  ‘You’re being a jerk, Will. Mim isn’t wasting her life. That’s unfair and you know it.’

  Mim Bannister had won a swag of poetry prizes in Australia, as well as some overseas, and her work had been published extensively, but it was hardly a lucrative industry. Most people in her situation would be teaching at university, but Mim was far too timid.

  ‘No one’s treating you like a fool, Will,’ Joe went on. ‘You can follow your dreams and still do your share with Dad.’

  ‘Unlike you, or Hil, or Corinne. You all get off scot-free.’

  Joe sighed heavily. ‘I wanted to stay. You know it was Dad who insisted that I go.’

  ‘Yeah, because what you do is so “important”,’ said Will, making the quotation marks with his fingers.

  ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Joe muttered, picking at the label on his bottle.

  ‘But Dad is,’ said Will. ‘Whereas he thinks I’m just wasting my time.’

  ‘He loves you, Will. He’s only worried about you.’

  ‘He still treats me like the baby.’

  ‘He’s your dad, he’s never going to stop worrying about you. That’s his job. And your job, if you don’t want to be treated like the baby, is to start acting like a grown-up and take some of the responsibility from your sister.’

  Joe took a swig of his beer. God he hated when he realised he was lecturing, such a typical big brother thing to do, and he slipped into it so easily around Will. He looked across at him. He was a man; Joe had no right telling him what to do. ‘Okay, end of lecture. That’s my one and only, I promise.’

  ‘Thank Christ for that,’ Will muttered. ‘So when are you heading up home?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Wanna come?’

  Will sighed, considering. ‘I’ll give you a few days, might join you later.’

  Joe nodded, taking another swig of his beer. ‘So, what’s going on for you? Been treading any boards lately?’

  Will launched into a scattered account of the past few months: this audition, that call-back, helping out a friend who was making a short film, plans for an amateur theatre company he and a bunch of other actors were attempting to get off the ground. Joe knew he was only giving him the edited highlights, and that a lot of Will’s time was spent sitting around consuming alcohol and other substances and bemoaning the lack of funding for the arts in Australia. Which was probably a fair point, but it was unlikely to change any time soon, so Joe just wished he would get over this and get a real job . . . God, that really was his inner big brother talking.

  As Will rattled on, Joe found his mind drifting. Her friend was an actor, she’d said, the girl in the elevator. He wondered if Will knew her, had ever come across her. That would be a weird coincidence. He wondered where she was now. Had she woken up? Surely she had by this time. He hoped she was feeling all right, he should have called the office to find out. Maybe he still should? Would she remember him . . . she must remember him, but what would she remember about him? Would she be self-conscious, upset, outraged? He wondered what she was thinking right this minute . . .

  5:17 pm

  Jo opened her eyes suddenly, blinking. She’d woken herself up with a snore. Her mouth was open, her throat felt dry, though there was a little dribble spilling over the edge of her lip. Her cheek was pressed against a smooth, leather-like surface. Or more like stuck. Jo moved her head slowly to allow her skin to peel off. Where was she? She squinted, blinking some more. She rolled over onto her back, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimly lit room.

  Was this Leo’s office? Jo sat bolt upright, but then she felt light-headed. She swung her legs off the couch and dropped her head to her knees, breathing slowly and deeply till the sensation subsided. She lifted her head again, gradually this time, and looked around. This was Leo’s office. What was she doing asleep on the couch in Leo’s office?

  Images slowly began to come back to her. The elevator, it broke down, and the scruffy man. The big, scruffy bear of a man. He was nice though, she remembered, he was kind to her . . . they were talking . . . lying on the floor, looking up through the shaft . . .

  Then what happened? How did they get out? She couldn’t remember anything more. She closed her eyes tight, as though she could squeeze the memory out, but nothing came. Go back to the beginning. She got in the lift. The man was already there, he held the door for her, but he said sorry anyway. One ninety-five centimetres tall, ninety kilos, checked shirt, old jeans, blue eyes. Very blue eyes. Why did she look so deeply into his eyes? That’s right, she started having a panic attack, he knocked out the ceiling panel and . . .

  He drugged her!

  Oh my God! Jo’s heart started to race. He drugged her! She remembered taking the pills from his hand. Okay, so he didn’t exactly force them on her, but what were they anyway? They must have knocked her out cold . . . What happened after that?

  Jo jumped to her feet, checking herself over frantically. She was fully dressed, everything seemed to be in place, her shirt wasn’t on inside out or anything odd, her buttons were all done up properly. She noticed her bag on the floor by the couch and she snatched it up, rummaging through the contents. Her wallet was still there, cards, cash, everything, her phone. She sank back into the couch, staring out in front of her, trying to remember . . .

  Where was Leo anyway? What time was it? She glanced at her watch but her eyes were still hazy and she couldn’t see the hands clearly in the dim light. Was it nearly half past two, or ten past five? Surely it couldn’t be . . . she’d lost a whole day? Doing what? Lying here on Leo’s couch? Lying on the floor of an elevator? How did she get out? A repulsed shiver ran through her. She hated the thought that she had been watched, that people had gathered around, that someone had hoisted her up, maybe two people, one holding her arms and one her legs, with her slung between them like a hammock . . .

  Enough. She stood up, straightening her clothes and smoothing back her hair. She had to find out, and if that meant some amused looks, raised eyebrows, even sneers, then so be it. She couldn’t hide in here forever. She picked up her bag and walked briskly to the door.

  ‘Oh, you’re up!’ said Judith, swivelling around in her chair as the door opened. Judith was Leo’s perpetually good-natured and highly efficient assistant. How she remained so determinedly sunny working directly under Leo had always been a mystery to Jo.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.

  Jo cleared her throat. ‘Fine, I’m fine,’ she said, crossing over to Judith’s desk. ‘Um, how long . . . Have I been out, um, asleep, for long?’

  ‘Yes, most of the day, Jo,’ Judith said brightly. ‘You must have needed it, after your move, that’s all I can say. Exhaustion catches up with us all. You can’t outrun mother nature, I’ve always –’

  ‘Judith,’ Jo interrupted.

  She looked up, eyebrows raised, waiting.

  ‘Um,’ Jo began, rather cluelessly. She wanted to know how she had got to the couch, but she also didn’t want to know. ‘Where is Leo, by the way?’ she asked instead.

  ‘Long lunch,’ said Judith with a conspiratorial nod. ‘You know what it’s like with old friends. We won’t be seeing him back at work this afternoon. That’s why he suggested his office was the best place to let you sleep it off.’

  Jo nodded. That didn’t tell her anything. There was nothing she could do but just come out with it. ‘Well, here’s the thing, Judith, I’m a bit unclear as to how I even got there . . .’ She waved her hand vaguely towards Leo’s office.

  ‘Oh, he carried you, of course.’

  ‘Leo?’ Jo was stunned. Leo was not a big man. In fact, Leo was a small man. Bigger than her, of course, that was no feat. How on earth had he managed to
carry her?

  ‘No, not Leo.’ Judith was clearly amused by the idea. ‘Leo could never pick you up, let alone carry you all the way through the office. Not that I’m suggesting you’re heavy in any way,’ she was quick to add. ‘Of course not, Jo, look at you, you’re just a petite little thing, but your friend’s quite a big fellow. “Built” I think they call it, don’t they?’ She almost swooned. ‘He carried you through here like you were barely more than a child in his arms.’

  Jo felt nauseous. ‘He’s not my “friend”, I don’t even know him, he’s a total stranger,’ she blurted.

  ‘Oh, I hardly think you can call him that. After –’

  ‘After what?’ she said indignantly. ‘I don’t know what he told you, but nothing happened, absolutely nothing. We just talked, that’s all, filled in time. That’s all there was to it. And as I’m a trusted long-time employee here I think it’s my word that should be taken over anything he might have said.’

  Judith looked a little perplexed at her outburst.

  ‘Anyway,’ Jo went on, composing herself. ‘I barely remember him and I have no interest in remembering him. I don’t want to talk about him, I just want to know why I had to be . . . carried, exactly?’

  ‘Because you couldn’t be woken, of course,’ Judith said matter-of-factly.

  ‘So I was asleep?’

  ‘Well, yes . . . no, not asleep as such,’ she said. ‘Mr . . . um – the person you don’t want to talk about – explained that he gave you some pills to help you calm down.’

  Jo groaned inwardly. She saw a circle of her colleagues, people she still had to work with, standing around as he regaled them with her panic attack, perhaps even acting it out, everyone laughing hysterically . . . But he wouldn’t do something like that, would he?

  What the hell did she know? Nothing, she knew absolutely nothing about the man. And she’d taken drugs from him, drugs that had knocked her out cold and erased her memory. Or part of it. She had to find out what he had given her. And she had to find out how many people had seen her wasted and probably drooling, slumped in his arms as he carried her through the office.

  ‘He left a note,’ Judith was saying, holding up a scrap of paper.

  ‘What?’ Jo stirred, snatching it from her a little too eagerly. But there was just two words written on it: multisyllabic, virtually unpronounceable pharmaceutical terms. Inexplicably, her heart sank.

  ‘That’s the name of the pills you took,’ said Judith. ‘He thought you should know, so you can look them up on the Net, reassure yourself. He said you should check with your doctor if you’re not feeling right though.’ She paused. ‘He did seem genuinely concerned . . . and really, well, very nice.’

  And all he’d written on the note was the name of a drug.

  ‘Jo, is everything okay?’ Judith asked.

  ‘Sure, I’m fine,’ she said vaguely. ‘Um, I’d better go, get some work done.’

  ‘Leo thought you wouldn’t be up to it,’ said Judith. ‘And it is nearly five-thirty. But he did want me to tell you that obviously the meeting had to be rescheduled, so it will be at nine sharp tomorrow morning. I think he said take the stairs if you have to. But I’m sure he was only joking.’

  Why was it obvious that the meeting had to be rescheduled? He wouldn’t have rescheduled it just for her, never. Unless he planned to make some kind of example of her. That would be just like Leo.

  But she’d been trapped in an elevator, what kind of an example could he make out of that? Maybe taking the stairs wasn’t a joke after all.

  Jo caught the lift to the floor below, and wandered listlessly across the news floor maze to her desk. The place was almost deserted. It was only Thursday, the pressure wasn’t on yet, it would start getting frenetic tomorrow when everyone realised there was only one more day after that to pull the paper together. By Saturday it would be mayhem. But now there was just the odd person working quietly away, oblivious to Jo passing by. She plonked down on her chair and stared at her computer monitor for a while, before it occurred to her to turn it on. She sat back, her mind drifting, inevitably, to the man in the elevator. A little more detail, some flashes of conversation, were coming back to her. His job, they’d talked about his job. What did he say it was? Something unusual, a private investigator . . . an actor maybe?

  She looked down at the scrap of paper still in her hand. Two words in block letters, so she couldn’t even discern much from his handwriting. The lettering was large and the hand heavy; you’d assume it was probably written by a male, but that was about all you could assume. Couldn’t he have added something a little personal? Even ‘Regards . . .’ What was his name? Had he said?

  No names, no pack drill. Jo had insisted that, she remembered now. But considering how things had ended up, couldn’t he have left his name and phone number on the note, in case she wanted to contact him about the drugs? Would that have been such an invasion of his privacy? Or was he just relieved he could remain anonymous and get the hell out of there before she woke up?

  Jo looked up as the computer screen came to life. It suddenly occurred to her that he probably did leave his details with Judith. Of course he did. He didn’t have to write them on the piece of paper, Judith had already taken them down, as a matter of course. He’d only written the name of the drug to save spelling it out to her. Why hadn’t Judith just said she had his name and phone number?

  Because Jo had told her to stop talking about him.

  So, if she went back now and asked Judith for his details, would that seem odd? Maybe if she waited till tomorrow . . . She could look up the drug now, she decided, typing the words into Google. And tomorrow she could go casually to Judith and say she had some questions she wanted to run by him.

  Jo sighed as the results appeared. The references ran into the millions; she doubted there was going to be anything sinister about it. She clicked on the first listing, which led to pages of information. It was a mild form of Diazepam, used to treat anxiety, amongst other things. It was also an effective pre-med, known to induce sedation or amnesia prior to certain medical procedures. Well, there you go.

  She read on, unsurprised to learn that she had had what was described as an overreaction to the drug. Jo had realised from an early age that she was never going to be a user, recreational or otherwise. She was highly susceptible to drugs; even Panadol had been known to make her drowsy. She’d never even gone through a pot-smoking phase in her youth because the couple of times she’d tried it she just passed out. For some reason alcohol didn’t have the same effect – praise the Lord – so it had remained her one and only drug of choice.

  Jo closed the page on her computer screen. She didn’t need to contact him for information. She wouldn’t ask Judith for his number tomorrow. What she would do was leave well enough alone.

  But she felt odd . . . bereft, somehow, that she wasn’t going to see him again. Why? She had only the vaguest memory of him; he was very tall, and okay-looking, though a little unkempt for her tastes. He had been extremely kind to her, really, very gallant. She probably wouldn’t have got through the episode without him – not that she would admit that to another living soul. But they’d spent barely an hour together, she estimated. She knew nothing about him. They were ships pausing in the night . . .

  Where had she heard that expression before?

  This was not like her. Jo was not a romantic, not in the least, she prided herself on that. She was pragmatic, ruled by her head not her heart, persuaded by facts, not swayed by emotion.

  And the fact was, the man in the elevator was only intriguing because she wasn’t going to see him again. There, that was it. It was easy to think favourably of someone who was, for all intents and purposes, unknowable; to fantasise, to build him up to be something he wasn’t. That was what celebrity worship was all about. And holiday romances. That was it, Jo had had a holiday fling, but it had only lasted one hour.

  She leaned forward, chewing on the end of her pen. Maybe there was a column in this .
. . Her mind drifted back to the elevator, and she felt an uncomfortable pang in her chest. She was getting flashes of conversation that were a little unsettling, about Belle, about her marriage, about having babies even . . . but surely she didn’t go there with a total stranger? She must have had some weird dreams lying on Leo’s couch.

  Clearly she wasn’t going to be able to achieve anything productive today, she might as well just answer her emails. But as she scrolled down her inbox, nothing caught her eye, nothing inspired a response, until she came to ‘RE: the 29th’. Jo frowned. What was it about the 29th? The email was confirmation of an interview she had set up for next week, but that wasn’t it. There was something else about the 29th. Or the number 29 . . .

  Sonnet 29, that was it.

  Jo went back to Google and found it immediately. She sat with her chin resting on her hand as she read it.

  When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

  I all alone beweep my outcast state,

  And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

  And look upon myself and curse my fate,

  Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

  Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d,

  Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

  With what I most enjoy contented least;

  Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

  Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

  Like to the lark at break of day arising

  From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

  For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

  That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

  What had he said? It was about true love and passion . . . and risking everything . . . or was that Romeo and Juliet? How had they come to be talking about Shakespeare? Jo sat there, staring at the computer screen, but she couldn’t see the words, she could only see his face, becoming clearer, those eyes . . .

  What the hell was she doing? She closed the page and quit all the programs. She was obviously not going to get over this weirdness till she left the building and re-entered it fresh tomorrow. She switched off her computer, picked up her bag and headed out through the office to the lift bay. As she stepped into an elevator, she had an overwhelming sensation . . . was it déjà vu? No, that wasn’t quite right. Her heart started beating faster as the doors closed, sealing her in.