The Glitch_A Novel

by Elisabeth Cohen

  “Thank you.” I yawned. “I’m going to power through. I was just giving myself a brief pocket of…” I trailed off. When you don’t have the energy to lie to your assistant, things are really bad. “What’s going on?”

  She hesitated. “I know you have a lot going on and I don’t want to add to your worries. You got another phone call…”

  I tensed. “Who else has picked up the suicide story?”

  “It’s something else, maybe, um, personal?” she said. “Nothing about Conch. Another weird call. I wasn’t going to mention it, but this morning’s call wasn’t the first. It’s getting relentless. I’m sorry to bring it up.” She looked at me as if she was afraid I was going to get angry she hadn’t told me, or wasn’t sure she should tell me now. Her eyes were downcast, deferential.

  “Prank calls?”

  “Maybe.” She looked uncertain. “They could be.”

  “Obscene?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Threatening? Dangerous? Vulgar?”

  “Yes. She uses bad language.”

  “She?” Despite my own commitment to repudiating gender stereotypes, I had assumed the obscene caller was a “he.”

  “I didn’t want to tell you upstairs,” Willow said. “In the office, where everyone could hear. I thought maybe this was something you’d want privacy for…” She looked into my eyes anxiously. She knew I’m not a big believer in privacy. I don’t have time. It’s like the models stripping off their clothes in the back of runway shows. Just no time to fuss. Although I don’t change in public, of course.

  “I need details, Willow. I’m completely in the dark. I have no idea who she is or what she is calling in reference to.”

  “Her name’s Michelle.”

  I blinked and felt a pressure, like a hand, against my chest. “Oh, right. What does she want?”

  “She doesn’t say what she wants. She’s someone you know, Shelley. She knows your kids, your cousins, she knows so much stuff. She knew the hotels you stayed at last week. I thought maybe she was your half sister or something.”

  I felt fuzzy-headed. “I don’t have a half sister.”

  “I know—it’s just, in the commune we sometimes had…half sisters and they were like cousins we didn’t always know were…”

  “Nope.”

  “You can’t be sure,” she said earnestly. “Anyway, she wants to talk to you. She wants your cell number, she’s very insistent.” Willow unfolded a piece of pink paper from her pocket—a sheet from one of those “While You Were Out” pads. Isn’t it odd that we still order those from whatever legacy supplier still makes them? I wonder if it’s for the nostalgia value. Certainly there’s trivial efficiency savings from not having to bother to write “While You Were Out.” And with modern communications, I’m never really Out anyway, merely equally well connected from a different location. She handed it to me.

  On it was written, in Willow’s loopy, obliging handwriting: “Message: Thanks for the cheeseburger, bitch. Call me.” Below, Willow had written, “S, how should I handle?”

  I stared at it, turned the paper over as if there would be a clue there, turned it around again, and stared at it. I felt a shiver down my spine.

  Willow grew nervous from my silence. “I’m sorry if I should have handled this myself. I know I can’t bring every little thing to you and I need to take ownership and make the call myself, it’s just…I wanted to keep you in the loop in case you…”

  “No, no,” I said. “You did the right thing, you…” It felt suddenly very secondary to the situation, to have to say these managerial phrases of reassurance, to pretend to be even-keeled even though I was not. “When did she call?”

  “Just now. Just while I was upstairs. This is her fifth—uh, sixth—call today. She’s getting angry.” Willow’s eyes got wet with indignation and she looked away, as if she couldn’t bear to look at me. “She called me a corporate whore.”

  “People will attack you for your sexuality as a woman in this business,” I said. “They’ll attack anything you do. You can’t give it the time of day. Though, don’t take this the wrong way, but you might not want to wear that pinafore.” I handed Willow a tissue. “Thick skin,” I reminded her. While she was blowing her nose and washing her hands I peed surreptitiously and silently via strategic use of my kick pleat.

  “She’s crazy, right? I shouldn’t let it get to me.”

  I nodded dully. I found it hard to summon up the word “crazy,” or say anything. Willow’s legs swung off the edge of the bathroom sink.

  “Do you have her number?” I asked. “I’ll handle it.”

  “Yeah, it’s right on the slip. It’s a long one—she’s in, like, Europe or something.”

  A tiny ray of relief burned warmly up my spine. “Thank God,” I whispered. Willow looked concerned, and a bit curious.

  “Do you want me to patch you through next time she calls?” she said hopefully.

  “Not now. I’ll handle it. Don’t give her a second thought,” I said. “You were right to tell me. But I’ll take it from here. If she calls again, tell her I will return her call at my earliest convenience. Make it clear from your voice it won’t be that early. Do not tell her anything. Got that?”

  I could see how much Willow was longing to hear more about this person, about my life. I did not oblige her.

  * * *

  —

  My phone buzzed. A text from Christine: Everything OK?

  I texted back. I’m having delusions (hallucinations?) and my assistant has entered the fever dream.

  That’s not the kind of message Christine and I usually send each other. I stared at my phone waiting to see what would come back. We typically send each other encouraging texts when we’re having tough days. We advise each other on clothing, career, and life stuff. She’s a law firm partner, which is in some ways all the stress of Conch with none of the creative aspect. We were college roommates. We met the semester I returned to school, after a summer in the hospital recovering from the lightning strike. I was exhausted, frustrated, frequently in pain, and upset by how much I’d missed and how difficult even simple things were to do. It was a hard time, but in Christine I found someone who became an instant and lasting friend. Our bond was based on having similar goals and outlooks, being ambitious, sure, but also having a similar perception of things. We were serious in a way our classmates weren’t, but in spite of that, with each other we were able to not take everything so seriously. Now I am so enmeshed in my role it’s hard for me publicly to be anything but earnest, results-driven, fun-loving within the scope of my corporate brand, “all about the Conch.” It’s only with my inner circle that I can continue to be myself, to retain that thread of me that existed before Conch and will continue after. Christine is one of those people who doesn’t come across at first glance as super smart or ruthlessly ambitious. She’s attractive and pulled together, good at deflecting attention and flying under the radar. But that’s very effective for her.

  I love Christine—the return text came immediately. A gratifyingly tall text-bubble. She is an amazingly fast text typist. Yeah, that happens. I find my assistants very readily reify my reality. That sounds like a Stephen Malkmus lyric. It’s the communal brain, under pressure. Plus you’re coming up on an anniversary. My therapist says that has got to be hard. Twenty, right? That’s a big one.

  U have time for therapy?! I texted back.

  I bill the time to my worst client, she wrote. It’s fair, I spend the whole time talking about them. Hang on.

  The phone rang. She was on the line.

  “Hi!” I said gratefully. We so seldom have time to talk vocally.

  “Hey, I just ducked out of my meeting. Are you OK? Shell, don’t let the bastards get you down,” Christine said. In a sterner voice: “Hans, hold that call.”

  I took a beat to assess. “I don’t know. I can’t get a handle on the situation.”

  “It’s coming up, right? The anniversary?”

  “What? W
e got married in the fall, in Napa. You were there.”

  “No—”

  “Remember how it had a harvest theme, with the burlap?”

  “I’m not talking about your wedding. I meant the anniversary of—”

  “Oh, right,” I said, cutting her off. “But I don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Why would it?”

  There was silence and I knew she wanted me to answer my own question and admit she was right. I did not. Finally, she said again, “Anniversaries are hard.”

  “Not for me. Having it happen was hard. The recovery was horrible. But talking about it isn’t hard, I do it all the time. I don’t see why the anniversary would make it any worse.”

  Christine didn’t say anything.

  “Why? You think I should be worried?”

  “It might be difficult. I can see it being a time when your mind turns to…” She changed tacks. “What about that guy you were with? Do you ever think about getting in touch with him?”

  “Walter.”

  “Have you given him a call?”

  Walter was one of my best friends in high school, bookish and irresistibly brilliant. After the lightning strike he was never the same. Not in the same way I was never the same. He still lives in the town I grew up in and works in a tire store. For years my parents bought all their tires there, out of guilt.

  “We don’t keep in touch.”

  Christine tactfully changed the subject. “Anything planned for your birthday?”

  “No big plans. Cullen’s throwing a fundraiser in my honor. For his true love, the ocean.”

  “Do you have a dress?”

  “I do, as a matter of fact. It’s beautiful. It’s silk, this very piercing blue. With an ocean print, kind of sophisticated and Japanese-ish. Coral, fish. I’m making it sound gaudy but it’s not.”

  “Sounds like it could be all right. Send me a pic. It’s not boring?”

  “It is boring, if you mean tasteful. It’s lovely and unusual. One-of-a-kind.”

  “Does Rafe like it?”

  “Rafe’s not into tasteful,” I said. “But what can you do? Anyway, that’ll be fun.” I heard stirring in the background, as if she were getting ready to go into a meeting. “Chris, I just…I just…” I was still sitting on the toilet and I shifted uncomfortably. “The pressures lately. I am having visions. I’m not even kidding. I can’t tell anyone.”

  “Hallucinations?”

  “Sort of. More like one recurring one.”

  “Of what?”

  “Me. But me as a kid. Just before the…That a younger version of me is following me around, trying to derail me.”

  A moment of silence. Then she snorted. “That’s really classic,” she said. “Don’t start psychotherapy, they’ll never let you stop. What’s it about?”

  “It’s about this girl following me around. She’s not a nice girl.”

  “That’s the crux of the problem? If only she were nicer?” A pause, as if she realized this was too blithe a response to my angst. Her tone changed. “It’s about the anniversary, I’m sure,” she said. “It’s triggering reflection. Is this person real or a—uh—apparition?”

  “Fancy word. No. She resists when a pencil is poked at her. She can consume French fries. She’s…”

  “Corporal?” Christine supplied. Lawyers are so exact.

  “Right. That’s it. And she’s a piece of work. She insulted my assistant.”

  “And it wasn’t you, secretly yelling at your assistant to work out your frustration and rage at her? Which would be so understandable, sweetie, because your assistant sucks. Just fire her and start over. It means three bad weeks, but then it’s good. For a couple months…”

  “I would be feeling crazy in a different way were that the case. She’s a separate person. The ghost. That part is clear.”

  “What makes you think she’s you?”

  “She knows a lot of stuff about me.”

  “I know a lot of stuff about you.”

  “Right, but…you were there. I know you. She knows the same stuff but she wasn’t there.”

  “Could she be a sophisticated hacker? Could she have gotten at your data? Could she be a stalker? A new type of scammer or phisher? Somebody hired by Russian cyberthieves? An annoying little cub reporter from the Stanford Daily? All of these seem more plausible possibilities, no offense. Hold on. I’m pretending you’re a client but that client’s on the other line. Let me finesse this.”

  I sat and thought. Why had I assumed she was me? It seemed so loony. There was such relief in rejecting the idea, refusing to accept it as a possibility.

  “I’m so sorry,” Christine said, back on the line, her voice accented in my ear. “Mr. Fugiwa, I will respond to your question as soon as I have consulted with co-counsel. I have to go.” Then, in a rushed, different voice. “Talk later, and I actually mean it.” I put the phone down. The red circle, signifying the end of our connection, pulsed.

  I thought for a second and opened the text app. She has the same eyebrows I had, before I started getting them threaded.

  There was the immediate bing of a new text. Send pics! Christine demanded.

  Chapter 12

  Christine had to be right. Her analysis was simple and clear, and she was right such a large percentage of the time (about my choice of boyfriends, which job I should take, whether I should get bangs) that it was extremely likely she was right this time too. As a data-driven person, I ought to have been completely persuaded. I wasn’t, but I tried to be. The crushing workload and pressure of transactional law had not given Christine much room to be the funny and creative person she once was, and I sometimes felt she had become a little pinched by her job, like a toe stunted by always being in a power shoe. Our grown-up lives hadn’t turned out to be what we had imagined, sitting on our twin beds in our dorm room junior year. I had thought adulthood would be a series of viscerally felt triumphs, like the moment when a plane lifts off, and the stresses of our lives merely gnats in the turbines, but stress had turned out to be the airstream in which we flew. I didn’t think it would be easy, but I had thought it would be different than it is. Though when I heard about Christine’s work life, I was grateful for the latitude of my own, and its inherent pleasures, like making new and better Conches, watching them tumble off the assembly line into wheeled vats, nestle in individual boxes, and stack into cartons bound for ports all over the world. There was something real about that, something gratifying, like when I saw Conch users—part of the Conch Community—at airports or coffee shops or Davos. Plus the external recognition—the interviews, articles, even the silly, gossipy blog posts—that I got from work, which Christine did not. Plus, I live in a beautiful area with unbelievably pleasant weather, and she lives in smoggy iced-over New York and rarely sees daylight. And Rafe is a lot more fun and also better-looking than Jeff, who seems so buttoned-down and angularly serious, with his protuberant nose and his—I’m not supposed to know this—type 1 herpes and predilection for taking clients to strip clubs. (Christine: “It’s hard to be single in your late thirties in New York.”) Rafe is no saint, but on most commonly accepted criteria he’s a better husband. And yet even with these outlets, it was I, not Christine, who was the one having the breakdown. It did not make sense. So taking Christine’s advice to heart, I decided to take control and manage the situation.

  Clutching Willow’s note, I went out of the building to call back the girl. Conch is on a low-slung industrial campus on the edge of the Bay. Across the road is marshland. It used to be a landfill, but now it’s a park where paths weave around low hills, and people bereft of full-time employment come to bike, while their curly-haired dogs sprint alongside them. Along the water’s edge are windblown fern pines, which resemble overgrown versions of the bottle brushes we keep by the sink to get the residual gunk out of Blazer’s baby bottles. Farther in are a few valley oaks, with branches that splay out along the ground, as if in the earl
y stages of their growth there was not enough planning for scalability. It’s very pretty, in the foggy way of Northern California.

  In the courtyard of our building is the Conch meditation/sensory garden. A yoga class was taking place on a grassy quadrangle adjacent—lots of lithe twentysomething marketing and communications and product packaging admins in black yoga pants and brightly colored sleeveless tops, their bare feet swaying in the air, their forearms on the mats in front of them. They were the only ones who had time to take full lunches away from their desks and take advantage of the company’s wellness offerings. Once a year for Wellness Day I wear a zip-up fleece with my dress pants and emphasize to the gathered employees that I want them to take part, and I do, absolutely, assuming their work is done, because fitness contributes to a perception of competency, and everyone needs outlets for stress, but nobody over a certain level was down there in the garden at lunch.

  I dialed the number Willow had given me and tightened my abdominals isometrically as the instructor counted. The number rang and rang. I exhaled and released. I walked in a circle around the garden on the springy mulched paths. In the distance was the mist, and beyond that the mountains. It was cool out, and no one sat on the benches eating Tupperwares of salad or slapdash peanut butter sandwiches. I felt a nervous churn in my stomach and an anxiety that expressed itself in the form of wanting to be closer to a bathroom. It was good I’d just gone—often, I found it hard to remember to. Sometimes I have set a reminder on my Conch, but then I start ignoring it. Not quite ready to have Willow remind me, the way my second-grade teacher used to (I had very focused concentration even then). Nobody picked up the phone. I terminated the call, bit the hard gummy edge of my cell phone case, and tried in imagination to summon up the girl—the length of her hair, the big oblique mouth, her shoulders and flab and presence.