“Sure.” Kevin tried to let some of the tension go out of him. And then he tried to refocus. The situation hadn’t changed, and he still had questions to ask. “Where’s the other lady?”
The woman shrugged. “I started today. They fired the other company. Everybody’s new.”
Kevin’s was instantly on-guard again. This was too much like the doormen in his building. “Why?”
“They were more expensive, maybe. Who knows?”
Kevin sighed. This was maddening. He tried another approach, waving at the vast area behind him. “Why are you cleaning this place? Why is anyone? They were in here yesterday already. It looks completely clean. It looked clean before they even started.”
The woman narrowed her eyes. Kevin thought she was going to rebuke him for something, but then she tilted her head to the side. She looked puzzled. “Your vocabulary is excellent, but your accent is strange,” she said finally. Then she reconsidered. “No, not strange. It’s just terrible.” She pointed at him. “You sound like a bad movie.”
Kevin stared at her for a few seconds, struggling to understand.
Oh, Spanish. Holy shit.
He tried to respond, but now he was aware of the strange sounds on his tongue, and his own thoughts were getting in the way. He switched back to English.
“Sorry,” he said. “I just learned.”
That’s better.
But now the woman was giving him an odd, disappointed look. A look that said she had not meant to offend him about his accent, but there was no reason to throw down a complete linguistic roadblock. “No hablo Ingles,” she said.
Her words seemed to flip a switch, and Kevin didn’t try to flip it back. The words came out slowly – and now he could hear for himself how flat, how terribly American he sounded – but at least he was communicating.
“I’m working on it.”
She smiled at him again, the relief clear on her face. “It’s fine. I can understand you.”
“Why do you clean here?”
“Why not? Somebody pays the bills, and they pay them in advance.” She gestured to the long rows of empty cubicles. “My boss told me to come up here and clean, so that’s what I’m doing. Who cares if it’s clean already? Easier for me, right?”
“Do you know when they’ll be back?”
“Back? What are you talking about? This is my first day here, remember?”
Kevin nodded, suddenly aware again of how tired he was. He turned and stared out once more at the countless rows, everything so quiet and bare. There was nothing to learn here. The woman from yesterday was gone, probably fired by the same people who had fired all the doormen in his apartment building. The same people who had taken him up to the 20th floor, who had gotten him his current job, his cell phone, maybe even his apartment.
But for God’s sake, why?
He was running out of people to talk to. The last three months of his life were starting to look like a tiny island lost in the Pacific, one he would never be able to find.
“They probably just want to keep it set up,” the woman added.
Kevin turned back to her. “For what?”
“No idea. But something big, right? A place like this, the whole floor, and it’s all hooked up and spic and span. So if you want to get something going right away – some job’s got to get done, or somebody important is coming by – then you can set this office up. Just get the people in and you’re on.”
Right, Kevin thought, and he could feel the panic rising in him again. Just get the people in. And then wait for someone like Kevin Brooks to stroll through the door. Kevin Brooks, who you somehow knew would be coming.
It was a ridiculous thought, and he pushed it out of his head. But he didn’t feel any better. His heart was racing now.
Something you have to do.
“Please be quiet,” he whispered.
Get ready.
“I can speak Spanish!” he shouted, and the woman jumped. He projected his voice out into the empty office, as though trying to inspire a hoard of overworked employees. “That’s not enough? That’s not ready?”
No. Get ready.
He turned and headed back to the elevator, waving his hands around his head as though escaping from blackflies. “Thanks,” he called to the cleaning woman. “I won’t bother you again.”
She gave him a no-problem wave. He was an unpredictable gringo – all that shouting – and his accent was painful, but at least he had learned the language. “Work on your ‘r’ sound,” she suggested to him as he left. “Like this.”
Kevin stepped onto the elevator, and he tried to imitate her. He put his tongue on the roof of his mouth and did his best to make it roll. The doors closed, and he could see her wince and shake her head.
“Still awful,” she called to him from beyond the doors.
What My Big Man Can Do
Kevin ran back to his apartment. It was over two miles and he was wearing his work shoes, but he still covered the distance at a near sprint. He leapt through intersections, dodging taxis and trucks as he dashed uptown. He wasn’t sure why he was running, but the sense of urgency in him had built to an unbearable level. He was supposed to be doing things, preparing for things, and the need to work or study or learn or something was overwhelming.
I can make it stop.
True. When he had been writing his lesson plans the night before… and then earlier today, when he had been reading the Spanish book – absorbing it was a more fitting description – he had felt good. Not only peaceful, but almost disconnected.
Almost sleeping.
Only 8 minutes’ worth, but much better than nothing.
Once in his apartment, Kevin went straight back to the living room. He threw his suit coat on a chair, rolled up his sleeves, and stepped up to the bookcase.
“Andrew!”
“Right here.”
Kevin didn’t bother turning around. He peered up at the shelves, scanning book titles. Really, this bookcase was too big for the apartment. But décor was not his concern, and he realized he was already breathing easier; even the prospect of learning something new was helping the panic subside. “I need something dense,” he said, and he glanced back at Andrew, who was still waiting in the doorway. “Come over and help me look.”
They spread out to either end of the bookcase, both of them scanning, craning their necks, hands going to their chins. Kevin wanted something difficult. Something harder than a Spanish textbook.
And maybe I can put away more than 8 minutes this time, he thought.
“We’re looking for a book that would take a year to read.”
Andrew stepped closer to the bookcase. “Here’s the one,” he said. He tapped a book in front of him, and Kevin came over to look.
“Physics for Scientists and Engineers, Chapters 1-39,” Kevin read out loud. He turned to Andrew and grinned. “Now we’re talking.”
Andrew did not seem to share his employer’s enthusiasm. He frowned at the book and then glanced uncertainly at Kevin. “Surely there’s something in the fiction section,” he suggested. “Something with characters, something with plot.”
Kevin ignored him. He pulled the book out of the case, marveling at its weight. “Feels like an encyclopedia,” he said.
“I’m sure,” Andrew said, and gave the volume another sideways look. He drew air through his teeth, as though sympathizing with any college student who had ever been forced to churn through such a text. “It must be over a thousand pages.”
Kevin nodded happily. “Sixteen hundred and change.” He hefted it onto his shoulder like a sack of grain. “I’ll be in the study.”
“I’ll bring dinner in there, then?”
“Please.”
“Very good,” Andrew said, and managed to convey, unequivocally, that this was not very good. That this was a terrible plan. He headed for the kitchen.
When Kevin got to the study he sat and took out a pen and paper. He opened the book and held his pen up expectantly, as thou
gh preparing to take dictation from a notoriously fast-talking professor.
He felt good. His heart was beating normally, steady and strong. His breathing was regular.
Get ready.
“I am, motherfucker,” he whispered to the empty room, and he leaned forward over the book. “Watch me.”
The room went gray around him, and in the last moment, Kevin Brooks realized he almost felt like laughing.
It was a bad book. Poorly written, and with explanations that were both needlessly complex and yet short on key details; the author skipped entire clusters of steps in most of the examples. A college student using this text would have been miserable.
It was exactly what he needed.
When Andrew came in with a tray of food, Kevin noted with satisfaction that he was only on page 58. Still on chapter 2.
“How long have I been in here?”
Andrew consulted his watch. “About half an hour.”
Two pages per minute. Down from sixty this afternoon.
“Fantastic.”
Andrew gave him a pained look, but he left the room without responding.
Kevin ate quickly, then returned to his work. That sense of calm was still with him. In fact, he was feeling even better than when he had started. He was being productive – he was getting ready, whatever that meant – and yet time was passing at a reasonable pace. Not a normal pace by any means, but definitely better than before. At least he wasn’t standing still, treading chronological water.
There was something else, too. Something wonderful.
He was starting to feel sleepy.
It had to be the subject. The physics. The sheer density of this material was sucking up mental resources, and he could almost feel the energy draining out of his head. He took a moment to look over the mad scrawl of work he had produced so far, a tangled mess of homework exercises that covered page after page, filling every available inch of white paper with algebraic manipulations in thick black ink. He wondered if any professor would ever seriously consider using such a book as an official course text.
And by the way, I’m not in college. And I didn’t study physics. So when did I buy this thing?
Kevin shook his head. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. What was important was that this book was like a balm, it was like a glass of good wine for his supercharged mind, and he wanted to get back to it. Because after another hour or two of this wine, this calming tonic, he might actually be able to use that queen-sized mattress in his bedroom.
Andrew came to get him an hour and a half later, though by then Kevin felt as if he had been working all night long. “Time for a rest,” the man said, and there was a hint of authority in his voice. This was more than a suggestion, more than a friendly reminder. His employer was working too hard.
Kevin nodded his agreement, and he let himself lean back from the desk. He made an effort to do everything slowly, to let the sense of accomplishment, of readiness, stay nestled safely inside him. He got up and shuffled down the hall toward the bedroom, and when he got there he paused only long enough to remove his shoes. Then he crawled into bed without taking off any other clothes. Concepts of electromagnetism – the last chapter he had been reading – swam through his head, and he tried to hold these visions close, tried to let them dissolve into nonsense, into a chaos of random associations that would lead to dreams, to sleep.
He waited. He kept his breathing slow and deep.
Almost at once, he felt his heart flutter briefly in his chest. A flutter of speed.
No. Come on.
He wanted to give himself another minute, but he could already tell it was hopeless. He pressed his eyes shut with frustration, pressed them tighter and tighter until the black and purple blobs on the back of his lids began to distort and crackle like a television picture with bad reception and his face began to hurt.
Then he sighed and opened his eyes.
He emerged from his bedroom dressed for exercise. Andrew appeared from the kitchen, a dish rag in one hand, and his expression turned stern. Disapproving. “This is not the time for a run,” he said. “You should rest.”
Kevin nodded his agreement. The elevator arrived. He shrugged wordlessly, and then he gave Andrew a little wave. Andrew did not wave back.
He started out even faster this time. He was upset now, and deeply worried. Aside from the sheer weirdness of such total insomnia, being awake for this long seemed unhealthy. How long could a person go without sleep? Three days?
Do I have to start worrying about hallucinations? What if I start to go crazy?
He shook his head and tried to pick up his pace. He was aware of a heaviness in his legs, an unfamiliar feeling of fatigue.
No sleep, remember? Recovering from a midnight run doesn’t happen by magic.
He kept running, but now his breathing was growing labored. The homeless man on the grassy expanse behind the Metropolitan Museum waved at him again, and Kevin waved back. They were two insomniacs tending to their respective businesses; companions of a sort.
He ran the 6-mile loop twice.
It was not a good run, and by the end he felt as though he might pass out. As he came out of the park and onto Fifth Avenue, he stopped and sat down on one of the empty green wooden benches by the park wall.
It felt good to stop.
He sat waiting for his breathing to come back under control, and as he did so he watched the traffic go by. The lights switched, and there was a moment of near-silence as the late-night cabs and busses came to a halt. There was no one crossing the street.
And here we go.
Kevin could feel the slowdown happening; he didn’t need a classroom clock in front of him to know the second hand would be sitting there frozen, stuck as if glued into place. He could examine everything in front of him now, could study every detail. Nothing moved. The world waited for him.
There was the sound of a pigeon calling to its mate from somewhere above him in the trees, and that broke it. The world shifted. He felt his breath moving in his chest again. The traffic light swung slowly in the midnight breeze.
Now, from one of the park entrances behind him, a man came shuffling across the sidewalk toward the street. He moved slowly, without purpose. Drunk to the point of stumbling, and probably homeless. Had he been in a bar? Where did he get his drinks? It didn’t matter. He was one man in a city of millions.
Except that Kevin could see a problem developing here.
The man did not seem to realize – or care – that he was walking into the street against the light, and he was definitely unaware that the stopped bus before him was creating a screen, a blinder for the other cars on Fifth Avenue, the taxis and limos that were now approaching quickly from the north. There was a yellow cab coming this way at better than 30 miles per hour, and the driver didn’t see the homeless man crossing, he saw only a bus pulled over at the curb. The drunkard was going to step out from behind the bus at precisely the right moment –
Kevin was up and running before he had time to fully realize there was an emergency. The slowdown had helped him somehow. The world had not stopped – there was sound, there was movement – but there was still a sort of patience happening. Time was crawling, rather than marching. Kevin saw the problem, he jumped up and moved, and then all at once he was standing behind the homeless man, then yanking him by the shoulder, and then the two of them went stumbling backward together, hands out, twisting and looking for balance. The taxi whispered past a moment later. The bus driver gave them an angry honk for getting in the way, and then the bus was gone too.
Now the two of them were alone on the sidewalk, both still standing.
Kevin pulled the man down onto the bench in front of the park wall, and they sat. The man gave him a look that was half confused, half annoyed. But an instant later these feelings seemed to slip away; his expression turned placid as he let himself enjoy the sensation of sitting. Wherever he had been trying to walk a moment ago, the bench now seemed preferable. “Pretty nigh
t,” the man said, in a voice that was surprisingly clear.
Kevin nodded silently.
No problem on the saving-your-life thing, by the way. Don’t mention it.
“I need to get to bed,” the man declared, leaning back on the bench and looking up at the night sky. “Not yet, though.”
Kevin stayed quiet, feeling suddenly jealous of someone who could so casually decide to postpone sleep. To know that it would come when called, like a faithful dog.
The man grinned. “Need to get a lady first.” He bit his lip, then looked left and right as though scanning the area for eligible women. “Might have to clean myself up,” he said, with a sheepish glance in Kevin’s direction. “But I shine up nice. And no sleep’s better than sleep after a lady, right?”
Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) Page 12