Jack pivoted and retrieved the cardboard cube. He disappeared with it through the pizzeria’s double doors.
“What’s in there?” Fiona asked Maggie. “More jeans and t-shirts?”
Maggie nodded. “Plus my formal sweats. You know, for special occasions.”
Fiona sighed in exasperation. “I’m only trying to help, you know. Your mother would have wanted that. She was always so beautiful. So elegant.” She looked meaningfully at Maggie’s cutoff denim shorts. “Not a rivet in sight.” Fiona took Maggie’s elbow and led her away from the door. “I want to talk to you about your father.”
Maggie didn’t respond. In Maggie’s experience, I want to talk to you about was a phrase never followed by something positive.
Silence settled into the empty spaces between their words like cloud cover. Maggie could feel herself slipping behind it, disappearing into the fog. Her personal Penn & Teller act performed in hopes that she could make her emotions disappear.
“What’s up?” Maggie heard herself say. Her own voice sounded small, far away.
“It looks like he might lose the restaurant.”
Maggie sagged against the bar as if she’d been hit in the gut. “I thought things were going better, that he wouldn’t have to close it if I started sending home money.”
“I’m not talking about closing the restaurant, dear. I’m talking about losing it, building and all, to the bank.”
Maggie’s mind refused to process this. “What do you mean?”
“Your father took out another loan. Just until things picked up. He’d already borrowed against the house, so he had to use the restaurant as collateral.” She shook her head, then grabbed a paper napkin out of the dispenser and blew her nose.
Maggie bit her lip. Of course he had used the restaurant as collateral. He’d mortgaged the house when her mother had gotten sick, when hospital bills started tiling the counters. Borrowed again to send Maggie to the college of her dreams to land the job of her dreams. What else did he have left to leverage?
Fact was, the restaurant had become her father’s whole life. Built in the shadow of her mother’s death, it had been a tombstone marking not just her passing, but the loss of his job when he’d missed too many days of work caring for his dying wife. It was dated and kitschy with three-star food and two-star service, but it was his.
It was him.
Fiona sighed. “We just got off the phone with the bank. They’re going to foreclose. It’s all but done.”
Maggie straightened her back. She’d already lost one parent. She sure as hell wasn’t going to let another one fade away, bled dry by loan payments and late notices and worry. “No,” she said. “I’m not going to let that happen.”
“But what can we do, dear? The bank wants him to start making payments immediately. Your father doesn’t have the money.”
“I’ll take over the payments,” Maggie said.
Fiona clicked her tongue dismissively. “Don’t be silly, Magnolia.”
Maggie mentally cringed at the sound of her full name. Her father had wanted her to be a traditional Margaret, but her mother’s South Carolina roots won out. Maggie knew she’d never live up to the name’s Southern gentility.
“I’m serious,” Maggie said. “My salary’s good at Rxcellance, and my rent isn’t much.”
“But what about food?” Fiona protested. “Electricity? Besides, you’re brand new at your job. Who knows how long you’ll keep it.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Fiona. But I’m doing well. Maybe I’ll even get a promotion, a raise. I’m doing this, Aunt Fiona. Just don’t tell Pop I’m covering all the payments. Say the restaurant is doing better and leave it at that.”
Maggie grabbed her purse off the counter and rummaged around for her checkbook. After forcing Fiona to tell her the amount, she made out the check and pressed it into Fiona’s hand.
Fiona hesitated. “I don’t know…”
“I do,” Maggie said. “Please.” She folded Fiona’s hands around the rectangle of paper. “For Pop.”
Jack reappeared, brushing imaginary dust from his hands. “Guess that’s the last of it. No need for long goodbyes. It’s not like you’re moving across the country.”
Maggie could see her father calculating the distance between Greenville and Collinsburg. He smiled. It slipped. Then returned too brightly.
She knew how much he missed her mother. How alone he felt.
A week after her mother died, Maggie thought about swallowing bottle after bottle of pills until everything—the pain, the guilt, the regret—had been numbed away. But she didn’t. Part of her worried she’d go to Hell. The rest of her felt she had no right.
Her grief wasn’t big enough, important enough, to warrant suicide. If anyone had been entitled, it would have been her father. He was the clear winner of loss. Haunted. Empty. A ghost dosing himself with equal parts of Bushmills and boxing as he sat in his harvest gold recliner, reeking with the unspoken suggestion that her grief was smaller like the “less than” alligator facing the larger number.
You hardly remember her.
You didn’t know her like I did.
We had a life of our own before you came into the world.
So Maggie put the pills away. She found new and improved ways to tranquilize the monster that fed on her insides. She applied a carefully made tourniquet to her heart, tight enough that no messy emotions would leak out, loose enough that she wouldn’t lose all feeling. Then crammed a batting of witty repartee and myopic ambition down her throat to stanch any leftover tears.
She escaped into movies. Into running. Into school. Into a career that would one day allow her to kill the cancer that had stolen both mother and wife. She’d bide her time, work her way up the pharmaceutical ladder. Then cut out the tumor of grief that had sunk its greedy tentacles into her life.
That was the idea.
She gave her father a hug, holding him tightly for a moment. Then she kissed Fiona on the cheek. Her skin was cool and papery, a leaf at summer’s end. Maggie gave Fiona’s arm an extra squeeze and looked into her eyes. Fiona nodded her secret assent.
“I’ll be back again soon, I promise,” Maggie said.
The three of them stood there awkwardly, committing the moment to memory. Marking the removal of all of her possessions, the last seconds Maggie would call this place home. Trying to decide how much to make it matter.
Constantine cleared his throat and sidled up to the trio. “I’ll walk you out, Mags. I’m trying to get in three minutes of exercise every day anyway.”
Maggie blew Jack and Fiona a kiss and pushed through the green door pocked with flaking paint. She looked up at the small office perched above the restaurant, suddenly wistful for the life and the people she was leaving behind.
She had already moved. Had over a week on her own under her belt. Getting the last of her boxes just seemed so…permanent.
She slid behind the wheel of the Studebaker and cranked the window down, then grabbed Constantine’s hand through the open window. “I don’t want to leave,” she said softly.
He crouched down and put his chin on the window’s rubber seal. “Of course you do. You have a great new job with one of the hottest companies in the industry. You’re probably on your way to your first ulcer right now. It’s fantastic.”
“I know, but…but…” Maggie floundered, trying to identify what she was feeling. “But what about you?”
“Me? Oh, I’m excellent. I’m glad I got laid off from Zeitgeist IT. The downtime has given me time to reevaluate my career goals. Besides, your father needs me. He likes witnesses when he shouts at the TV.”
Maggie squeezed his hand tighter. “You’ll call? Help me with my phone thing? Make sure I don’t get lonely or forget the best lines from The Godfather?”
Constantine smiled, chocolate eyes crinklin
g into half-moons. “I love to enable your cinematic Tourette’s. Your inability to stop yourself from blurting out movie quotes has its own special charm.”
Maggie grinned and pulled Constantine’s head through the window. She hugged his neck tightly. “I think I’ll miss you most of all, Scarecrow.”
He hugged her back. “Thanks, Dorothy, but I won’t give you a chance to.”
Maggie turned the key and the engine came to life. She gave a final wave to Constantine and to Jack and Fiona, who stood motionless in the doorway, their silhouettes cardboard cutouts against the restaurant’s neon glow.
Chapter 5
Maggie peered at her computer screen and groaned. She’d only been in her Thursday check-in meeting for an hour and already her inbox was clogged with fifty-eight new emails, not counting an invitation to enlarge her penis and a notice that Russian brides wanted to meet her.
It had been a good week. A great week. She’d been awarded the PrePharma Foundation award, one of the highest honors for pharmaceutical grads, and word had spread quickly through the company. Her boss was impressed. Jon gave her new responsibilities, and she’d made a breakthrough on the acne drug. Yet more responsibility meant more hours. Maggie was exhausted.
Maggie sighed and grabbed the chipped mug she’d brought from Pop’s. Maybe caffeine would help stave off the fatigue tugging at her brain.
Maggie walked into the deserted second-floor mini kitchen and filled her cup to the two-thirds mark. She wandered around for a few minutes, picking through the shelf-safe non-dairy creamers, skimming posted memos, half-heartedly scrubbing an unidentifiable stain in the microwave with a paper towel, then glanced at the door.
No sign of Bar Guy Ethan.
She had crossed paths with him a few times earlier in the week, running into him twice in that very kitchen and once in the hall. He’d even stopped by her desk on his way to her supervisor’s office to ask if she needed anything, making her feel like she had a seat at the cool kids’ table.
There had been no sign of him today. Maybe he’d taken off early for the weekend?
Maggie silently cursed herself for trying to engineer an accidental meeting. Sure, their conversations had grown warmer, his hand alighting on her forearm, barely touching and gone within seconds, as he talked and laughed. But he was just being friendly, trying to make her feel welcome. Mistaking his friendly overtures as flirting was pathetic.
Maggie dumped two pods of hazelnut creamer into her cup and trudged up the stairs back to her floor, feeling hot and sweaty and annoyed with herself. She wound her hair into a topknot and stuck a pencil through it, determined to get down to business.
Her phone chimed. A bicycle bell. Maggie slid it out of her old nylon purse. She looked at the display. Frowned. An icon she’d never noticed before was illuminated, a tiny “1” next to it.
Maggie squinted. The icon was shaped like a Post-it note. “Reminder” was printed in faux pencil across the top.
The meeting reminder app? She certainly didn’t remember any icon with her first reminder. She wasn’t exactly focused on those kinds of details when a stranger showed up on her phone.
A sense of foreboding settled in the center of Maggie’s chest. Hunkered down. Squeezed. Her heart began to hammer.
She told herself she was being silly.
So what if she had another reminder? It was just an artifact from her unwiped phone.
No. Big. Deal.
Except last time, the person she was supposed to meet ended up meeting with death.
Maggie tapped the icon.
A man’s smiling face filled the display. Maggie felt her hands grow cold and moist with fear. Another reminder for a meeting she didn’t schedule with someone she didn’t know.
The reminder appeared to have come in late last night after she’d turned off her phone. It wasn’t something she typically did, but she didn’t need her phone robbing her of much-needed sleep with alerts of new Facebook posts or incoming emails.
Maggie flexed her hand to get the blood flowing then lightly rubbed her thumb across the face of her phone, smudging the man’s laughing face with the whorls and ridges of skin newly slicked with sweat. He was early thirties with smiling eyes, skin the color of burnished mahogany and a shaved head. Not skinhead shaved or desperately-trying-to-hide-male-patterned-baldness shaved. Cool guy shaved. Mr.-Clean-getting-his-groove-on shaved.
She tapped the screen.
MEETING REMINDER
TIME: Friday, 1:30 a.m. – 3:30 a.m.
It was the same as before: No name. No contact information. No meeting place.
Maggie set the phone down and tapped her fingers.
Same as before. Same as before. Same as before. The thought drummed through her head, keeping time with her fingers and heart.
Suddenly there was a knock on the faux walls of her cubicle. She started, then looked up at the man who had arrived at her cubicle as if by Star Trek transporter.
Roy Hubbins, Lead Supervisor. Her boss Jon’s boss.
Fiftyish with a compact muscular build and sensible Supercuts hair, Roy looked like a TV dad. Dependable. Wise. Sweater-vested, even in a heat wave. He wore a broad grin and a red-checked shirt. Maggie thought he could double as a picnic table.
“Hey, Maggie,” Roy said, a Southern accent rounding his vowels. “Are you getting all settled in, learning the ropes?”
“I sure am.” She thought about the state-of-the-art equipment. The warm welcome she’d received. The friendships that seemed to be blossoming. “Everything is going great.” She pointed to the stack of papers Roy held in his hands. “Is that for the project I’m working on?”
“Actually, no. I found this on the printer. Plans for the rollout of Pollonexe, the new antiallergen.” Roy’s smile was intact. The accent homespun and down-to-earth. But his gaze was direct. Penetrating. “Didn’t realize you were working on that.”
Maggie was confused. “I’m not.”
“No?” Roy’s brows knit as if he were trying to diagram a sentence. “Not sure why you’d trouble yourself to print it out then. Printer indicated that it came from your machine right there. Seems strange you’d be accessing and printing out documents for a project you’re not working on.” The drawl was long, deliberate. Maggie felt like she was in an episode of Matlock.
“Roy, I have no idea—”
“You’re new here, so it’s not your fault you didn’t know. At Rxcellance we pride ourselves on keeping confidential information confidential. We work on our own projects and mind our own business.” He flashed white teeth, the thousand-watt smile not quite touching his eyes. “That’s not going to be a problem for you, is it?”
Maggie opened her mouth to defend herself, then thought better of it. She swallowed hard, pushing down the acrid taste that had seeped into the back of her throat. “No. No problem.”
Roy looked at her for a moment, then clapped her amiably on the shoulder. “Didn’t think so.” He turned on his heel and walked down the hall to his office. She heard his office door slam shut.
Maggie stared at her computer screen. How could she have printed something she’d never even seen and didn’t even know about? She checked her printer log. It showed that PollonexePlan1.doc had indeed been printed from her computer. Maggie stood and peered over the wall of her cubicle. Her coworkers were a paragon of industriousness, fingers tapping keyboards, heads bowed over reports.
Maggie sank back into her chair and rubbed her shoulders. It didn’t make any sense. How could this have happened? And oh, God, what did Roy think of her now?
Maggie grabbed her purse, rummaged around and produced the film canister that served as her portable medicine cabinet. She popped it open and threw a couple of Advil into her mouth. She swallowed with lukewarm coffee.
She felt like the walls were closing in. She had to get out. Get some air. Distract herself
from the strange encounter with Roy and the feeling of dread that had lodged in her throat after the second meeting reminder.
Maggie shoved her feet in her running shoes, took the elevator to the first floor and headed out the door.
The hot, sodden air of midday Collinsburg wrapped itself around her like a living thing. Maggie rewound her hair into a higher, tighter bun and surveyed her surroundings. She spotted a dirt path at the perimeter of the pharmaceutical property.
The trail was longer than she had expected, paralleling great swaths of chain-link fence and dipping into little grottos of untamed vegetation. Overhead, clouds, sullen in their lack of productivity, drifted aimlessly over a patchwork of grass, cement and brick that blanketed the Rxcellance campus.
Maggie walked briskly. Within ten minutes, her cotton blouse clung to the small of her back and beneath her arms. Maggie pulled the damp fabric away from her sweat-slicked skin, silently chastising herself for not bringing exercise clothes. She needed to cool off before she was drenched.
Maggie spied a tree stump shaded by the boughs of an old silver maple and made her way to the makeshift bench. She sat on the rough wood and palpated the front of her right knee, her forefinger tracing the scar of the ACL reconstruction she’d undergone four years earlier. She took a long drink from the water bottle, then closed her eyes, relishing the solitude, drinking in a quiet interrupted only by cicadas droning from watchtowers of aspen and pine.
Her phone chimed. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the device. A text from Constantine.
We never finished talking about your phone. Chat over lunch tomorrow? I’ll be in town.
Relief washed over Maggie. She’d not only get to see her best friend, she could tell him about the latest reminder and hopefully get some answers. Or at least get the reminders to stop.
She texted back: Perfect. There’s been a new development. Pick me up?
Her phone pinged with Constantine’s reply. New development? Curiouser and curiouser. See you at noon.
Protocol Page 4