The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss

by Max Wirestone

  “As a personal favor,” I said, “I will do this for you.”

  “Dahlia,” yelled Quintrell. “Can you come back here?”

  “Should I wait downstairs?” asked Cynthia.

  I headed back to Quintrell, who was horrified, next to Gary, who looked smug and yet also sort of in shock. Lawrence was sort of draped over the two of them.

  “Something has happened to your lovely suit,” said Gary, who appeared happy to see Lawrence taken down a peg, although unhappy that he should be touching him.

  “Yes,” said Lawrence. “It’s covered in vomit.”

  “You don’t have to sit on us,” said Quintrell.

  “I want to apologize to the two of you,” said Lawrence. “I am sorry. I am so very, very sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” said Quintrell.

  “What did you do?” asked Gary.

  “Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”

  “Are you just saying sorry in Latin now?”

  “Es tut mir leid,” said Lawrence.

  “What did you do?” said Gary.

  “Let’s just say that you don’t need to be so worried about the details of this game you’re making.”

  “What does that mean?” said Gary.

  “We aren’t worried about the details of the game,” said Quintrell. “We are the living embodiments of its hopes and fears.”

  “Yes, well,” said Lawrence. “The company is being sold, and DE is keeping Peppermint Planes.”

  “What?” said Gary.

  “Someone else is going to finish Peppermint Planes?”

  “Possibly,” said Lawrence. “It might just be a cartoon and cereal.”

  “What cartoon? What cereal?”

  “There’s a lot of money in cereal.”

  “What happens to us?” asked Gary, who was pushing Lawrence off him.

  “Dixon is buying us up,” said Lawrence. “It’s a great deal.”

  “For you,” said Quintrell. “What does Dixon make?”

  “Hidden object games, I think,” said Lawrence.

  And Quintrell and Gary, who had now fused into a single super being based upon sheer oneness of thought, finally pushed Lawrence off the two of them, where he rolled along the floor.

  “I say we kill him,” said Gary.

  “I knew this was coming,” said Quintrell, eating doughnuts. “I knew this was coming. I’ve known it since I started here. This game has been doomed. DOOMED!”

  Quintrell collapsed on his desk. He wasn’t crying, but it was hitting him hard, and this was a man who had been pretty upbeat, all things considered, about getting arrested for murder.

  “Our lives are over,” said Quintrell. “Everything I’ve ever worked for is a sham.”

  Gary looked at Quintrell, and he looked at me. Gary seemed on the verge of saying something meaningful, and I sort of hoped that he was going to talk Quintrell down, but instead of saying anything, he picked up his computer monitor and threw it on the floor.

  Lawrence asked me: “Are they grateful I told them? They don’t sound grateful.”

  I did not remark on this, as I was distracted by the monitor, which was connected via cable to what was apparently a very heavy desktop unit, and so it just hung there over the edge of the table. It looked, in a word, sad.

  “Do you know what the worst of this is?” said Gary.

  “That you’re too weak to properly throw a monitor?” I asked.

  “No,” said Gary. “The worst of this is that I’ve suspected this was coming for a week now. I overheard Lawrence talking about it.”

  “Here?” asked Quintrell.

  “Of course here,” said Gary. “I never leave. I don’t have a home—I just wander through the earth like some poor ghost seeking vengeance on a man who’s been dead for thousands of years. Of course here.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “He was all excited to meet with some representative from Dixon.”

  “Maybe it’ll be good for the game,” said Quintrell.

  “Dixon is going to have us make hidden object games. Where is the trident? Where is the coin?”

  “Where is the Christmas tea?” I added.

  “Where is the Christmas tea?” continued Gary.

  “No,” said Quintrell.

  “Yes,” said Gary. “Hidden. Fucking. Objects. They’re not even really games; they’re just activities for old people while they stave off death.”

  I actually like hidden object games, which I feel should be said to someone. They’re a lot of fun. Plus, some of them include mahjongg. But I did not interrupt Gary with my mahjongg counterpoint, because it was not the time.

  Quintrell calmly and decisively began unscrewing the monitor cable so that it could be thrown more thoroughly:

  “Guys—stop.”

  “We are men and we want to destroy things.”

  “Why don’t you go downstairs for a bit,” I said. “Take a walk, get some fresh air, maybe offer to help wash a dog.”

  “Fucking DE,” said Quintrell.

  “Fucking Lawrence,” said Gary.

  “Now let’s go see Tyler,” said Lawrence. “I must repent to him.”

  “Does Vanetta know yet?” asked Quintrell. I initially assumed he was asking Lawrence but then realized: Oh no, he’s asking me.

  “I doubt it. Vanetta’s been a little busy with a situation,” I said. “Actually, I thought she was back here with you.”

  “Vanetta knows nothing,” said Lawrence.

  “Oh God,” said Gary. “Is the journalist coming back here, because I’d like to hit him in the face.”

  “What did he do to you?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” said Gary. “I just feel I should hit someone.”

  Just then, Charice poked her head in, looking even more resplendent than before, and it was at this point that I began to appreciate her train.

  “This place is getting fucking weird,” said Gary as Charice, Radiant Bride of Womanhood, headed toward us. He did not ask who Charice was or why she was here, but just accepted it, as if this were a thing that happened regularly.

  “Dahlia, it’s the phone again. A very strange message. Mysterious, you might even say.”

  Quintrell squinted at Charice. I assume he was wondering if she were some sort of panic-induced apparition.

  “Well, okay. Excuse me, boys,” I said. “Grab Lawrence’s arm,” I told Charice. “We need to get this guy back in the bathroom and out of sight.”

  “I am on a tour of repentance!” he exclaimed.

  “I’ve got him,” said Charice, although I could tell from her face that she quite liked the idea of Lawrence’s repentance tour.

  “So we really have a mysterious phone caller?” I asked, mostly to keep her from thinking about the tour too deeply.

  “Check for yourself.”

  Charice dropped Lawrence on the floor when we got back to my station, and handed me the phone. Over the receiver was an irritating BEEEP-BEEEP-BEEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEEP-BEEEP-BEEEEP. Repeated over and over again.

  “It’s an SOS,” I said. This was technically not true, as it was, strictly speaking, an OSO, which is an SOS delivered by someone who had not looked at their Morse code guidebook since elementary school and had confused their “s”s with their “o”s. But the end result was the same.

  “I figured it was an SOS,” said Charice. “But from whom?”

  “I don’t know, maybe Vanetta?” I ventured, thinking that she would be due for a breakdown at some point soon. “Have you seen her?”

  “No,” said Charice.

  “Perhaps some terrible fate has befallen her,” I said. And it astonished me how naturally I was able to deliver this line, which is, to be clear, a batshit crazy thing to say. Someone is out of my sight for three minutes and I assume that something terrible has happened to them. This is what they call in the detective biz an occupational hazard.

  “Maybe we should go looking for her,” said Charice. “Daniel is going to be her
e soon. He’s renting a tux. When he gets here, I can go looking for her.”

  This was a ridiculous thing to say, for any number of reasons, not the least of which was that the Cahaba offices weren’t that big. For another, I had just realized who was sending the SOS, and it wasn’t Vanetta.

  “Get Lawrence out of sight,” I said. “I’ll deal with our caller.”

  I opened the door to Tyler’s office, and sure enough, Ignacio Granger was discreetly pressing buttons on his phone. Also, Tyler was playing some sort of Native American music on his computer’s speakers.

  “We’re listening to the CoffeeQuest Two soundtrack,” said Tyler.

  Please. Kill. Me, mouthed Igncacio to me.

  “I see,” I said.

  I don’t want to comment on the quality of Tyler’s soundtrack work, other than to say it was more atmospheric than something you would actively listen to and also that it was being played on his computer’s tinny internal speakers, and not any fancy sound system, which was not doing any favors to the music.

  “Cynthia,” said Tyler. “Is Lawrence ready to meet with Mr. Granger now? I think we’ve just about run out of things to talk about.”

  “Sure,” I said, sensing the desperation in both men’s voices. “Just hold on one second.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said Ignacio, grabbing my arm, which wasn’t cool, but sort of understandable in the circumstances.

  “Okay,” I said, walking out of the room with Ignacio literally in tow and no idea where I was going to take him.

  I closed the door behind me and began walking very slowly—exceptionally slowly—toward Lawrence’s office. I could hear vomiting again from the bathroom. This would have worried me greatly except for the fact that the sound was largely covered by the noise of a computer monitor being thrown at a wall.

  “What the hell?” said Ignacio.

  From our vantage point, we saw the computer monitor sail through the air and hit the wall, but we could not see its hurler.

  I wasn’t sure what sort of comment I could or should provide to Ignacio Granger regarding the thrown monitor, but I considered the following avenues:

  I didn’t see any thrown monitor. What thrown monitor? You’re imagining things.

  It’s part of an art installation, very modern you know, and it’s also some kind of metaphor.

  The really genius programmers are all a little eccentric, don’t you think?

  But instead I just embraced the gallows humor and simply said:

  “And you’ll be meeting with those men later.”

  I suppose I was walking Ignacio down to the bathroom to meet with vomiting Lawrence. But as we headed toward my station, I saw that Daniel was there, also looking resplendent, and was in a tuxedo. Charice, mysteriously, was missing, but perhaps Daniel’s presence meant that she had gone out on that Vanetta search party after all.

  I was feeling foolish and insane, and so I said to Daniel:

  “Lawrence, how are you? I, of course, am Cynthia Shaver, the receptionist here.”

  “This is Lawrence Ussary?” asked Ignacio. To be fair, in his tux, Daniel was not someone who looked like Lawrence, really, but was at least vaguely Lawrence shaped.

  “Sure,” I said. “Sure it is. Lawrence, why don’t you go into your office and meet with Ignacio, who is a reporter here to interview you.”

  Daniel managed to take this particular bit of insanity with the delightful nutso spirit it was given.

  “Why, of course, Cynthia Shaver,” said Daniel. “Of course, I will.”

  Daniel, for reasons that remain unclear to me—although at this point, who am I to throw stones?—opted to speak in a ridiculous American accent. It was the American accent that British people used when making fun of American accents, as heard on Monty Python, or “Temporary Secretary.”

  “Why, yessir, I’m always happy to talk to a member of the press. Sure I am! Why don’t you walk me to my office, Cynthia Shaver, since I always like being escorted places, and it’s not unnatural at all for a man to be taken places by his secretary.”

  Right. Daniel had no idea where Lawrence’s office was. I walked him to his office, suddenly feeling giddy and insane, and also having a terrible idea as to where Vanetta had gone. She was probably having the same thought I was having right now. She had probably made a run for it.

  “Why are you wearing a tuxedo?” asked Ignacio.

  “Always wear them,” said Daniel, who was yes-anding his way into a very peculiar character. “Can never be too overdressed. Makes you stand out in a crowd.”

  “I suppose they would,” said Ignacio.

  I opened the door, and Daniel looked in at the glass naked woman statue and the fancy desk and chair and said: “Well, what a beautiful office I have. That’s a rhetorical question, of course—what’s your name, son?”

  “Ignacio,” said Ignacio. “And I think I’m older than you.”

  “Yes, well, it’s a rhetorical question, because I clearly do have a beautiful office. It’s self-evident. Cost a pretty penny too. Now, you’ll have to tell me the story of that name of yours in a second, but I do have a little bit of business here with Cynthia, first. Just sit down anywhere, and make yourself comfortable.”

  Daniel walked to the door and said to me, quietly, “What the hell is this about?”

  I said: “The real Lawrence Ussary has been roofied. Also Vanetta is missing, the computer programmers are throwing actual computers, and Archie is also missing—” As I thought of this, I considered that possibly he and Vanetta were missing together, and also that Daniel didn’t know who any of these people were regardless. “And I assume that the entire building will be on fire soon.”

  I didn’t even mention the financial ruin of the company or that the sister of the murdered woman I had discovered was lurking around the offices in the dog-grooming studio downstairs. Why should I? This was a man who was about to be married and should march into matrimonial life untroubled and happy.

  “So,” said Daniel. “Are you still going to be able to slip away for lunch? We’d really like you there.”

  He was talking about the wedding, I realized, and I was astonished that he was still that focused.

  “At this rate, I assume I’ll be dead by lunch.”

  “Well, how about eleven forty-five?”

  I understood that this was a joke, or at least what Daniel believed was a joke, and I closed the door.

  Honestly, it was going better than I expected.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  I had become unhinged, it seemed to me, but for once I didn’t think that it was entirely my fault. It seemed that everyone had become unhinged, and that suddenly all of us were coming apart like an old hardcover with too many pages and not enough glue. Who could blame these guys? There had been too much madness here and not enough sleep. The day’s reprieve had given us all the illusion of hope and restedness, but it was clear that it was nothing but a cruel, cruel mirage.

  That’s what I was thinking, anyway.

  I had mostly, and somewhat intentionally screwed the pooch by giving Ignacio to Daniel, given that he was impersonating a man he knew nothing about. I suppose it wasn’t clear to me anymore if I was trying to keep the cart on the track or if I was simply driving into oblivion and laughing as I fell into the abyss. Maybe fifty-fifty.

  I should look for Vanetta and Charice and also Archie. Just to keep tabs on them. I should try to calm down Quintrell and Gary. And most immediately, I thought, I should check back in on Lawrence, who was still making loud retching noises from the bathroom.

  I walked in on him. He had gotten a phone, somehow, which I found worrying.

  “I can’t press the buttons,” he said, pawing at his iPhone screen ineffectually.

  Lawrence looked incredibly tired. As tired, perhaps, as I’ve ever seen anyone. His eyelids were not fluttering so much as being pulled down by wet bags of sand. Also, when he moved his hands at me, they zipped about in a bizarre and muppet-like way, like th
ere was a rod attached to them.

  He looked drugged.

  I googled the symptoms of roofie-dum, and rattled them off to Lawrence, just to make sure that he was right and that he wasn’t dying.

  “Dizziness?”

  “Yes,” said Lawrence.

  “Moments of clarity?” I asked.

  “What?” said Lawrence, but he had exhibited clarity earlier.

  “Blackouts?” I said.

  “Not yet,” said Lawrence. “Is that coming?”

  Possibly it was. At least if he blacked out I wasn’t going to have to worry about him running away later.

  “And amnesia,” I said. “You’re probably not going to remember any of this later.”

  Putting that aloud, it made me think that this was a blessing. I wouldn’t have minded being able to forget this day entirely. I wasn’t planning on roofie-ing myself, but the notion of total amnesia was not unappealing.

  “I won’t know tomorrow that Vanetta is pregnant,” said Lawrence. “Oh no.”

  “I never said she was pregnant. No one has said that.”

  “I have to write it down. Cynthia, write that down. Vanetta pregnant.”

  “No.”

  “Are you the ghost of Christmas Past or of Christmas Present?” asked Lawrence.

  I did not know if this was a joke or if Lawrence was just this far gone now, and I never found out which.

  “I am the ghost of Christmas never. Although, come to think of it, did you steal any tea?”

  “Help me take a shower,” said Lawrence.

  “No,” I told him. “Answer my tea question.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll do it myself. I’m taking off this jacket.”

  Lawrence then fell over. It was a strange fall, as he was already on the ground, but he had moved from vaguely sitting up to total Oneness with the Floor.

  “It’s still on me, isn’t it?”

  “Is what still on you?”

  “The jacket,” said Lawrence.

  “Hello?” a male voice called. “Is anyone here?”

  I realized that with Charice wherever she was, there was no one to actually receive visitors at the desk. And a visitor was out there now.