Ascendant: The Complete Edition

by Richard Denoncourt

  He watched the top of the staircase as he caught his breath. The masked man was coming; he’d heard the footsteps, the urgency in his voice, the way he’d been breathing like a drowning man sucking down air. Like he’d been waiting all night to assault Jack.

  But there was no sign of him. Jack saw only sky, heard only wind entering the station’s inner spaces, the way it whistled against the angled rooftops overhead. The man’s horrible smell was gone.

  Jack got up slowly, eyes on the top of the stairs the whole time. When he was sure the man wasn’t going to make another appearance, he took out his wallet and pulled out Kelly’s picture.

  There she was, as usual, smiling at him from inside that tiny square of meaningless space where nothing existed except his painful memories, a past he would never be able to undo, despite what the masked man had said. There was no saving anyone.

  There was only this life, which Jack would continue to live one step at a time, one hour after the next, because the motions were all he knew—the motions that would take him out of this world and into Hell, where he belonged.

  He noticed something odd. There were raised patches on the glossy surface of the picture, right across Kelly’s face, as if something had almost punctured it in several places. He flipped it over and saw strange markings on the white space. Like scrape marks made by a sharp stick, each line a cluster of scratches grouped together to form numbers.

  Jack recognized them at once. His heart leaped in his chest and his pulse quickened until he could hear it rushing in his ears.

  The numbers were a time, the same time he recognized from having checked his watch immediately after each of his blackouts.

  1:20.

  With shaking hands, he slipped the picture back into his wallet. Then he took the nearest cab to Brooklyn.

  PART I

  THE BURNT MAN

  I had a dream last night that I looked in the mirror and my arms were missing. It was terrible. When I woke up I knew I’d find them and everything would be OK, and yet I can’t get rid of that feeling—like I’m missing a part of me and there are phantoms in place of the real thing. I guess now that Kelly’s gone I’ll feel like this forever.

  – From Claire Devins’s diary, Entry 163

  Chapter 2

  Needles of rain fell into the gray city, forcing Jack to hurry along the slick streets. He was running late again. It wasn’t the first time, either. He’d been having trouble sleeping since the blackouts started.

  He took the elevator up and made his way through the corridors in time to hear a chair groan as the overweight woman stationed in the cubicle outside his office sat back and laughed. The sound was a combination of a squawk and a howl—a vile hoooo-ack! hoooo-ack!—so common on this level of the building that not a single head turned to look at her. She and the woman she’d been speaking with saw Jack coming and watched him, eyes narrowing in disapproval.

  He avoided eye contact altogether. The woman who had laughed was his boss’s personal assistant and wielded enormous influence at Sterling, Melsner and Toole. She had bright orange hair cut short like a boy’s and a habit of scarfing down a single, chocolate-glazed donut every morning at the same time—always chocolate glazed with multicolored sprinkles. Her name was Becki (“with an i, don’t ask why,” she liked to tell people she was meeting for the first time) and word around the office was that she’d been spreading rumors about Jack—saying he was a drunk, a schizophrenic, a manic depressive—and that he deserved to be let go.

  It didn’t help that Jack hardly spoke to any of his coworkers unless he had to, and never about personal matters. He was cultivating a reputation for being “difficult” to work with, a “loner” with personal problems. He couldn’t blame Becki completely.

  When he was safely inside his office he closed the door and let out a relieved sigh. The dull patter of raindrops against his window reminded him of how long his mornings always were until lunchtime, when he could get a few drinks into his system. He pressed the power button on his Mac, pulled a folder out of his hard-copy inbox, and dropped it onto his desk, his mind unfocused and fuzzy, trying to sort out what he needed to do.

  He sat that way for a full minute when a knock came at his door.

  Oh shit.

  “Come on in,” he said, rearranging his posture to look at least somewhat productive.

  The door swung open and Bret Melsner waltzed in. He gave Jack a sly wink, and then turned and made a come-hither motion to someone standing outside. A pretty, shy-looking girl who could have been eighteen or twenty-four shuffled across the carpet with the slow, self-conscious steps of someone about to be interviewed for the biggest job of her life. Jack had the feeling, based on how Melsner was leering at her, that she had already gotten the job, whatever it was.

  “This is Alicia Perkins,” Melsner said, flashing his palms at her like an announcer at a carnival. There was an expression on the man’s wolfish face that puzzled Jack. It was either a look of fatherly pride or the self-satisfied expression of a man about to get laid who was fully aware of the fact.

  “Mr. Devins,” the girl said. “I’m a big fan of your ads. That commercial you wrote for Mustang was sooo good.”

  “Well, I wasn’t the only writer on that one,” Jack said. “But thank you, Alicia. Bret? Is there something I can do for you?”

  Bret Melsner was a small man with the slight build of someone who had been sick often as a boy, a quality his artificial tan failed to hide. His moist lips were prone to meaningless fits of smiling, making it difficult for Jack to take him seriously. And yet there was a keen perceptiveness about his eyes, which were as gray-blue as the blade of a knife. They were the eyes of a hunter.

  “Uh huh,” Jack said, as Melsner went through the girl’s credentials, throwing in a few winks and flirty comments here and there. Jack heard the words “Dartmouth,” “absolutely gosh-wow portfolio,” and “starts tomorrow morning.”

  “Sounds good,” Jack said automatically. “Glad to have you on board.”

  Alicia flashed her smile around the room, chirped a few good-byes, and left. As soon as the door clicked shut, Melsner looked at Jack and grinned.

  “I’d let her sit on my face any day.”

  “Christ, Bret.” Jack shook his head and sat back. “What is she, twenty-two?”

  “I hope so. We keep getting older and they just keep getting younger, right?”

  Melsner rubbed his palms together as he made his way toward the leather seats arranged before Jack’s desk. He sat with an audible plop and released a manly sigh of accomplishment.

  “So, Devins, what’s new?”

  “Well, I’m uh—I’m working hard on this campaign for—”

  “I wasn’t referring to anything work related.” He said work as if it were an inside joke.

  Jack clasped his hands together on the desk. “What did you want to talk about, exactly?”

  He kept his gaze level with Melsner’s and tried not to blink too much. A tight feeling rose in his chest; one could never tell by the look on Melsner’s face if he was bringing good news or bad.

  “Why do you always assume I want to talk about something specific?” He gave a light shrug. “Look, Jack, I know you and I don’t go back a long way, but I don’t see why we can’t be friends. I get this feeling sometimes that I intimidate you. There’s no reason why account people and creative people can’t get along, even if I am”—making quotation marks with his fingers—“technically a superior. I mean, honestly, you and I are in the same boat. We’re light years ahead of any of these other stiffs. You got the touch—creatively, I mean—and when it comes to understanding a client’s philosophy and targeting it, no one can touch you. And me? Well, I’ve always been a people person. I play well with others. That’s just my side of the business. You understand, right?”

  “Sure, sure. I’m just a little—confused about the point you’re trying to make. Everything’s OK, right? With our clients?”

  Melsner’s smile hung i
n place as if someone had nailed it to his jaw. A slight shiver along one side suggested an urge to frown.

  “Jack, let me preface this by saying that I’m well aware of the pain you’ve been through, and unlike everyone else I’m not going to pity you. You were strong enough to get through it back then and you’re strong enough to get past it now—and keep producing those fantastic words you’ve been giving us for, what is it, ten years now?”

  “I’ve been a copywriter for six years. Before that I was on the hunt, like you.”

  “Right, that’s right. Senior Copywriter, then Creative Director, in only six years. You really had something going there.”

  “Why do you say it that way? You think I’m slipping?”

  Melsner’s brows gathered in mild confusion. He was still smiling that greasy smile.

  “No, no, no. See, Jack? You’re misjudging me. I’m not ah-gainst you here. I’m not your en-emy. I came to make sure everything is all right. Hell, I was thinking about taking you out for a drink after the meeting. Since I know it’s going to be a victory. We’ve got those Chronia guys in our pocket, don’t we.”

  And there it was. Jack nodded the tiniest bit. “Of course we do.”

  Melsner winked at him and began to inspect his surroundings. Jack got the impression the man was taking mental notes of what he saw.

  “I’m glad that’s covered,” Jack said, looking down at the papers on his desk. “Anything else?”

  There was a moment of silence in which Melsner picked something off his sleeve and inspected it. He flicked it away and his gold cufflinks caught the light. “I gotcha, Jack. You’re a private man who doesn’t like bullshit. I respect that, which is why I won’t take up any more of your time. But Jack?” Melsner got up and made for the door. He spoke in a dramatic way over his shoulder. “I have feelings, too, and it hurts that we’re not better friends.”

  “OK, Bret. I appreciate it.” Jack gave the man a smile so fake it made his face feel like a mask. “Let’s have that drink later.”

  Melsner fluttered his hand in a wave.

  “It’s a date!” he called out, not closing the door behind him in typical Bret Melsner fashion.

  Jack sat back and released his breath in a drawn-out sigh. He glanced at his computer, at the little numbers in the corner that gave the time.

  1:20 PM, they said, right above the date.

  “What?”

  Jack leaned over the keyboard, reached out to touch the screen. As if there was something stuck to it that made the numbers look like that. He rubbed his finger over them, but nothing changed.

  1:20 PM.

  He pulled out the power cable and the computer blinked off. He rebooted, and when the desktop loaded and he saw the numbers 9:55 AM, he felt no relief at all.

  Chapter 3

  “Hey, Jackie, you listening?”

  Murray Esposito blinked at him. They were having lunch at one of the fancier restaurants near the agency, where abstract paintings hung on the clean white walls; pictures of strange floating shapes and moody wisps of color. Jack couldn’t bring himself to stop glancing at a picture of a round, black hole against a gray background. It made him think of a tunnel leading to a place without memory.

  “Say again?” Jack said.

  Murray lifted an eyebrow and gave one of his sly smiles. He was one of the most honest men Jack had ever met, and yet he couldn’t smile without looking like a mischievous, dark-haired womanizer from a Latin American soap opera—one in his forties who was a tad overweight.

  “I do the pictures, you do the words, remember? And I can’t do mine without yours. So whaddaya say?”

  Murray tapped one of his thick fingers against the tablecloth. Though he did art for a living, his hands were the toughened mitts of a construction worker, or someone who carved things for a living. They formed a stark contrast against his delicately gelled hair and polished smile.

  “The copy will be on your desk by four,” Jack said. “That’ll give you an hour or two to get started, unless you decide to sneak off again at 4:30, like you did yesterday.”

  Murray chuckled at that.

  The waiter set down beer bottles and frosted glasses. Jack and Murray filled the glasses, clinked them together, and drank.

  “So,” Murray said, smacking his lips. “How’s life otherwise?”

  “Terrible.” Jack took another, deeper swallow. “I think Claire wants to leave me.”

  Murray sat back in his chair and his shoulders sagged. He obviously wanted to avoid the topic of Jack’s marriage and made no effort to hide it. If there was one thing about Murray Esposito everybody knew, it was that his body language always said what his mouth didn’t.

  “Forget it,” Jack said. “Don’t really feel like talking about it anyway.”

  Murray sipped his beer. “What about Danny? He’s at a new high school, right? He switched or something?”

  “Transferred. A place in Brooklyn called St. Mary’s. He hates it there, says they brainwash people.”

  “Catholic school?”

  “Yeah.” Jack picked up his glass, looked at it for a moment, and then finished the rest of the beer in four gulps. Murray watched. As Jack’s eyes rose to meet his, Murray looked away.

  “What’s the deal with the account?” Jack said to break the silence. “What are the art people saying?”

  “Same thing we’re always saying. The company’s going down the pipes. We lost the Cleppman account, and Plumpex is hanging by a string. Not to mention the Chronia people, but you could save that one if you really wanted to.”

  “Me and what miracle?” Jack’s voice sounded flat, like he was only pretending to care. The truth was that he cared more than he wanted to admit. That was the last straw right there. If he were to lose his job at a time like this…

  Murray passed a hand over his shiny hair. “My father had a saying. He used to say, ‘Let sleeping dogs lie. If and when they wake up, shoot ’em in the fuckin’ heads.’ Then again, I think he might’ve been crazy.”

  “What does that mean, anyway?” Jack said. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”

  Jack motioned to the waiter for another beer. The man gave him a disapproving look.

  “Something about letting go of the past,” Murray said. “I don’t even know.”

  “I figured as much.” Jack scowled. The drink had only made him feel worse. “Look,” he said, “if you have something you want to say about my daughter’s death, just say it.”

  “Alright, then. I think you need to do some serious thinking.”

  “About?” A confrontational tone had settled over his voice.

  “Your job, Jackie. Your family. You got a son you need to look out for. We keep losing accounts and you and I will be out of a job in no time. You got that? You gotta get over what happened. It’s been almost a year.”

  “It’s been six months, Murray.”

  “I’m sorry. Six months since the funeral. But six months is an awful long time in this city. Things move fast here and people are replaceable. You know I’d always take your side, but—”

  “You think they would let me go after ten years? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “All I’m saying is you gotta kick it up a notch. That’s all. I don’t mean to get you worried, but people are talking.”

  “You mean about me.”

  “About you, themselves, Bret Melsner, who’s just itching to fire someone. You know what I heard? We’re recruiting on college campuses now. Soon old guys like you and me are going to end up being replaced by Johnny Twinkle Toes from Golden Boy University, fresh out of college and smart as a whip, the son of a bitch.” He let out a long sigh. “It’s only a matter of time, Jack. Mark my words.”

  The waiter came back with a fresh beer and a glass. Jack poured one into the other, brought the glass up to his lips, and was about to drink when a thought struck him.

  “What time is it?” he asked Murray.

  Murray checked his watch.

  “12:45,” he s
aid with an uneasy frown. “What, you got a date? Someone you have to meet?”

  Jack set down his drink.

  “Do the numbers 1:20 mean anything to you, Murray?”

  Murray smiled a little suspiciously. “I don’t know. Is that the new happy hour or something?” He lifted his beer and drank a few gulps. Then he smacked his lips and set down the glass. “I gotta use the boys’ room,” he said, and patted Jack’s shoulder on his way to the back.

  Jack shook his head in self-loathing. That was all he needed right now; for his only friend at the agency to think he was going crazy. He had to keep his mouth shut about what was happening. He had to pretend everything was OK.

  Chapter 4

  It was 7:30 in the morning.

  Jack had gotten up earlier than usual so he wouldn’t be late again. He turned on the mini-television by the microwave and flipped to the news channel. The coffee machine coughed out a puff of steam that sounded like someone’s dying breath. Jack passed his hand through it and rubbed the moisture into his palm as he listened to the news.

  “Thomas Quentin and Gregory Klemtrotsky, the killers responsible for yesterday’s tragic shooting at a South Carolina high school, were best friends known for their gritty short films and dry senses of humor. Sixteen students and teachers were wounded in the massacre with eleven dead, including the attackers, who turned the guns on themselves. The attack is the latest in a string of copycat school shootings taking place across the country since last November’s…”

  Aerial shots showed a group of industrial, box-like buildings resembling a prison out in the desert. Students ran toward the street by the dozens only to be swept up by armored cops wearing riot gear and shields. Seeing the kids running like that, arms lifted over their heads as if the sky was falling in sharp pieces, reminded Jack of how little he and Danny had spoken in the past six months.