The Virus

by Janelle Diller

  34

  I LOGGED IN. Fifty unread emails popped up, a third of them about some data loader issue that looked like Greek to me. I scrolled through them fast, deleting as quickly as I read the first few lines. Of the half-dozen that required my attention, none was critical.

  I didn’t know what I was doing there. But I was billable. Hooray.

  The day dragged. I had three meetings to endure, one with the CEO. I didn’t think I could suffer one more conversation about how to communicate a slip in the go-live date. They took two-hour lunches; they hadn’t done their homework; they had an incompetent woman running the show who spent more time on her hair than managing her team; and the CEO thought with his penis. Those were the reasons, and I was tired of finessing the story any more.

  Somehow, I muddled through the day. I called home every hour, on the hour. When the answering machine clicked on, I hung up. I tried Pete again just before lunch and left a message to call and give me an update on Eddy. If he knew something had happened, I desperately hoped he’d call back and give me clues. If Eddy had, in fact, left town, I prayed Pete would call, curious about the cryptic message. He didn’t call.

  I didn’t have a scenario for that.

  By five, I couldn’t take it anymore. I packed up my stuff and stopped by Michael’s cubicle to try one more time to talk him into going to meet Sanjeev with me. Although not actually short with me, he’d bordered on it the other three times I’d asked him. No, he wouldn’t go with me, and yes, I was a fool for contacting Sanjeev again. He wasn’t at his desk, which was just as well. I didn’t want to be talked out of this trip. I left, hitting the thick of rush-hour traffic as I headed to San Jose. I didn’t care at all, even when we came to a five-minute dead stop around the San Mateo Bridge.

  I got to San Jose a few minutes after six thirty, intentionally parking the car a couple blocks away and walking to Greens & Beans. I didn’t think I’d been followed, but if I had been, they’d have to get a little exercise. From time to time, I stopped to window shop, using the pause to see what other people around me did. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, but what did I know? I was a communication consultant, not a private detective.

  Maybe it was the walk, or maybe I’d used up all my nervousness the night before, but tonight I felt surprisingly calm, although “empty” might have been a better description. Last night’s pounding heart had slowed to a soft throb.

  When I got to the restaurant, I ordered a piña colada smoothie and a veggie pita since I didn’t truly expect Sanjeev to join me for a real dinner. The place looked like I remembered it. The walls were painted like luscious lettuce leaves and the brightly painted tables like beans. About half of the tables were full, but I found one with a well-thumbed newspaper in a quiet corner where I could watch the place without anyone accusing me of staring. I hadn’t really remembered the clientele from before, but somehow tonight it looked a little more cleaned up, like a real suits crowd. Most of them dined alone and were reading books. I’m not sure what that told me about vegetarians, but I was pretty sure it told me something.

  I paid special attention to those who followed me into the restaurant. Most of them ordered carry-out and didn’t so much as glance in my direction. Only an older, frizzy-looking hippie type stayed and ate. But she didn’t have anything to read and was gone within twenty minutes, well before Sanjeev was supposed to show up. Others drifted in and out, but no one paid any attention to me and no one hung out.

  No Indians showed up, either.

  The clock ticked slowly. I nibbled on my pita and savored the smoothie, trying to drag both of them out long enough that no one would chase me off my table. The newspaper was already a day old and a local paper at that. I didn’t really care much about the mess the local school board was in or the new billion-dollar hospital complex that was nearing completion, but I was glad for the chance to look distracted. My head was anything but. I knew all along it was a long shot for him to show up, but I had to believe he would. Otherwise, I didn’t have a clue what to do next.

  By seven forty-five, Sanjeev still hadn’t arrived. I tried not to think about what that meant, but I was pretty sure I knew anyway. The waitress came and cleared off the table and I pretended to ponder the dessert options. Again. The place had cleared considerably, so with the light inside and the dark outside, those of us inside were as obvious as if someone had been watching TV. Still, I stuck it out. I’d spent my own day in hell wondering about Eddy. Surely, Sanjeev could give me ten minutes.

  I ordered a coffee.

  At eight thirty I knew he wasn’t coming. Actually, I’d known it since the night before, but I finally knew I couldn’t pretend anymore. The waitress came over one last time to see if I needed anything. I shook my head and said, “I was waiting for a friend, but I guess he couldn’t make it.”

  She pulled a loose strand of wildly curly hair back and gave me a half-smile. “An Indian guy? Tired eyes, on the short side?”

  “Yes,” I said, probably too eagerly.

  She nodded casually. “He was in here earlier this afternoon. Left something for you. He said he couldn’t make it tonight but we should give it to you, only he never said who to give it to. I guess he figured we’d know when we saw you.”

  “And you did.” I smiled. It was all I could do not to throw my arms around her and sob in relief.

  She brought me the bill and a small, sealed envelope. “Sorry I didn’t know it was you, or I would have given it to you when you ordered.”

  “No problem. Thanks.” I slipped the envelope in my purse. “Can you point me to the restroom?”

  She tilted her head towards the kitchen. “First door on your left.”

  I left a twenty, which was nearly double my bill. I didn’t know if that would buy her silence or trigger her memory of my face in case anyone asked about me, but I bet on the former. After all, it was a vegetarian restaurant. If vegetarians couldn’t be discreet, whom could you count on?

  I slipped out of my chair and headed to the restroom, but instead of stopping, I proceeded through the kitchen and out the back door, waving as I invaded their space. They only smiled and waved back, so we must have been friends. I wished I’d known that earlier, too.

  The back side of the restaurant had a small, low-watt bulb by the door, which illuminated a pile of neatly stacked garbage bags. Once I made it beyond that dim circle of light, I was in the dark. I cut over a street and then zigzagged a couple of blocks until I found my car, my footsteps echoing in the empty evening. As far as I could tell, no one followed me.

  Now my heart pounded. I fumbled with the key, then locked the door as soon as I closed it. I slit open the envelope with my key and pulled out a single sheet of typing paper. Tight cursive words filled the page, but the writing was too small to make out in the dim streetlight. As a final insult to the evening, I’d have to go buy reading glasses or find better lighting. At least he wrote something, I kept telling myself as I circled a few blocks looking for a gas station. My fingers trembling, I pulled out the paper for the second time.

  Please, please, please do not contact me again. I tried to tell you the first time to leave this alone, but since you didn’t, I’ll make it clearer for you. I am being watched constantly. My phone is tapped. My children are followed to school and to their friends’ homes. Why? Because they want to make sure that I do not tell anyone the details of what Zaan did at CDC. As far as the company is concerned, we weren’t there. Everything has been expunged from Zaan records. If you don’t believe me, check for yourself. If you still do not believe you should stop nosing around, then maybe this will convince you. There were 3 lead software developers on the project designing the new software. In the past month, one was killed in a traffic accident, another died from a heart attack, and the third one is in intensive care with smallpox. They do not think he will live. I saw him with my own eyes. It is a terrible, terrible disease. They all should have obeyed the rules. They were warned. I am very sorry about this doctor who ha
s been arrested, but I cannot risk my family or my future.

  If you try to contact me again, I will have to tell the Homeland Security people. They will come after you, but I will do it to keep them from coming after me. I am sorry. I really am.

  It was worse, far worse than I’d thought. I read the note again, mostly in disbelief. I’d not only reached a dead end, but for good measure, the road back had been napalmed, as well. If the Feds killed the developers to keep them from talking, how much more desperate must they be to arrest Eddy? My throat thickened—I just couldn’t go there without totally melting down. If Eddy had disappeared on his own, he had to stay disappeared. Forever.

  I began sobbing.

  I don’t know how I made it back to my hotel. Exhaustion and tears blinded me. I crept along in the right lane, fearful of every car that didn’t pass me, fearful of the ones that raced around me. Back in my room, I crumbled on my bed and reread the note. Just before I fell asleep, I tried our home phone again, mostly just to hear Eddy’s voice on the machine. It might be the only way I’d ever hear his voice again.

  CHAPTER

  35

  IN THE MORNING, THE WORLD WAS STILL THE SAME. Only worse because the little sleep I got came in restless waves of dreams.

  Still, I went in to work.

  All I can say is that this “gotta be billable” mentality was a Zaan disease. On 9/11, I was working at a client site in Maryland with another Zaan consultant. When the first plane hit the World Trade Center, someone poked his head into the office where we were working and told us what had happened. We stopped for a few minutes and stepped into another office to watch the morning news and footage of the plane hitting the tower over and over and over. Then we went back to work. It was a freaky accident, nothing more.

  When the second plane hit, the same guy stuck his head in our office and said, “You’re not going to believe this.” Once again, we went to watch. Coincidences being what they are, we knew this wasn’t one of them. We knew it was a terrorist attack. But my colleague, who was the classic manufacturing curmudgeon complete with a gravelly voice, pulled me away from the TV and said, “We’re billable. We need to be working.”

  Our world had just turned upside down. Perhaps there would be no tomorrow. Who cared whether we billed five hours or a hundred hours that week? Our life as we knew it had ended. But what did I do? I went back to my spreadsheet and tried to concentrate—in spite of the sad reality that I still planned to fly home that afternoon.

  Even now as I thought about it, I couldn’t believe I was such a robot. It was only after the third plane hit the Pentagon, less than fifteen miles away from where we sat, that I told my colleague I was done for the day. I drove back to my hotel and spent the evening in a haze, hypnotized by the scenes repeating on TV: strike, explosion, collapse; strike, explosion, collapse.

  Every consultant I knew identified with the people in the plane. It could have been us.

  It could have been me.

  Without realizing it, I’d just repeated that mindless behavior. In the face of a crisis, I’d kept right on working. The show must go on. The client must be billed. Zaan must make the Wall Street analysts happy.

  I wasn’t even late to work.

  I logged in and checked email to see if someone from Baja Breeze had dumped a mini crisis on me to solve, quickly punching my way through the several dozen emails that popped up. The only thing pressing that surfaced was an email from the CEO, who wanted my help with a couple of PowerPoint slides for a meeting he had at one o’clock.

  I hesitated about how to respond to him, trying my best to come up with a professional response. In that minute, a gtalk flashed at me from the bottom of my screen. My heart stopped: EddytheWebMan was pinging me.

  I laughed out loud and opened his gtalk. Life could go on again.

  EddytheWebMan: Hi, Maggie.

  Hi, Maggie? What happened to mz m? And what was up with the capital letters and punctuation?

  MRiderZAAN: Eddio!! What happened????

  EddytheWebMan: What do you mean?

  I paused. The back of my neck tingled. I wasn’t talking to Eddy. That knife blade I’d been carrying around in my stomach for thirty-six hours? It suddenly twisted.

  MRiderZAAN: Where were you yesterday? I tried calling.

  It was all I could do to keep my fingers steady on the keyboard. Who was this in our house on Eddy’s computer?

  EddytheWebMan: Did you? I must have turned the ringer off. Sorry, Sweetheart.

  Sweetheart?

  MRiderZAAN: No problem.

  It was the understatement of the century. My head was exploding. How did this person hack into Eddy’s computer? The man had a gazillion passwords to get through.

  EddytheWebMan: Call me, okay?

  MRiderZAAN: Sure. Give me a minute.

  This was too bizarre. Where was this headed? Why would this pretender want me to call? To track me by my cell phone position? That would be simple enough to get without my having to make a phone call. I hesitated another minute, then hit the speed dial on my cell phone. The phone rang and rang and rang. The answering machine didn’t pick up.

  This was quite a game we were playing.

  MRiderZAAN: What’s going on? I called but you didn’t answer and the answering machine didn’t come on.

  EddytheWebMan: That’s what I was afraid of. I don’t know what the deal is. The phone must not be working. Call me on my cell phone.

  Ahhh. My light bulb moment. The pretender wanted Eddy’s cell phone number; from there Eddy could be tracked as easily as if he carried a tracking signal in his pocket.

  MRiderZAAN: Sure... Only one problem.

  EddytheWebMan: What’s that?

  MRiderZAAN: You don’t own a cell phone.

  I didn’t even wait for a response.

  MRiderZAAN: Who are you? What are you doing in my house? How did you hack into Eddy’s computer?

  EddytheWebMan: Signed off at 8:33 a.m. PST.

  CHAPTER

  36

  SO WHAT WOULD THE NORMAL PERSON DO?

  Phone the police. Tell them to fly to my house and catch the intruder while he still had his sticky fingers on Eddy’s keyboard. Oh, and by the way, find out where Eddy disappeared to.

  The only flaw? I wasn’t normal anymore. Even if I’d maintained a thin veneer of normalcy in my past life, at 6:00 a.m. Monday morning, Mr. Greggen, the TSA Nazi, shattered it. By midnight Monday, the news of Tina’s arrest crushed the remaining slivers of trust that might have survived.

  No police would be invited to my home. I didn’t know how far the cancer had spread its mutated cells throughout the government. I’m sure there were still very honest cops out there—most of them probably were, in fact. But it only took a single bad one in the right place to be cooperating with the Homeland Security people.

  I felt violated, desecrated. Worse, there was nothing I would do to stop the intrusion. Whoever it was could be there for hours, days if he wanted. It was creepy, sitting thirteen hundred miles away from my home and knowing that someone was in my house, rifling through files, pawing through drawers and closets, digging through boxes to find—what? What would they find? The only slightly anarchistic aspect in our lives was Eddy’s website, and they could see that from any computer in the world.

  What could they be looking for?

  Maybe they were like me. Maybe they were looking for Eddy.

  My head buzzed and my skin tingled. I was caught between the sickening knowledge that some stranger—or more likely a group of strangers—had an unobstructed day to examine the things in my life in minutia and the flush of relief that confirmed Eddy wasn’t trapped in some Homeland Security federal penitentiary nightmare.

  The day dragged. For the moment, I lived in a tar pit. My feet couldn’t move. My hands fumbled. My head traveled in a fog. Somehow I knocked out the PowerPoint slides for the CEO and began working on the intro for the project monthly newsletter. Truthfully, instead of writing something new and fresh
for Baja Breeze, I searched through all the newsletters I’d done for other companies and plagiarized. Who would know? Who would care? I looked productive, but a fifth grader could have done it while watching MTV.

  At noon, I made a to-go salad in the cafeteria and realized I’d miss the Baja Breeze potato salad more than anything else when I rolled off the project. What does that tell you about the people I was working with? I returned to my cubicle to keep hacking away at the newsletter, translating the techno talk into English—as if anyone would care. This was a company of shoppers, not readers. I was sorry Zaan wasn’t billing a higher hourly rate for my time.

  Among my friends, I’m known as the comma queen—which is certainly better than being known as the colon queen. Anyway, what requires enormous concentration from the average person is more of a reflex for me. Half my brain added and deleted punctuation while the other half kept thinking about Eddy, Eddy, Eddy. Early afternoon, someone knocked tentatively on my cubicle frame. I turned around to see a slightly heavyset Tom Hanks look-alike standing just outside the invisible entrance to my space.

  “Hi. Are you Maggie Rider?”

  I nodded.

  He reached out his hand as he introduced himself. “I’m Mario Seneca.”

  The name didn’t register. But I met new Baja Breeze people nearly every day. He looked older and tidier than most. He must have been a new hire.

  “Do you have a minute?” He smiled.

  I had but I wasn’t inclined to give him details. I nodded.

  “Mind if we step into a conference room?” He motioned with an open hand.

  I should have thought through that one a minute, but the Baja Breeze folks were always looking over their shoulders. They seemed to think they had important secrets to tell me. Usually it involved someone else on the project team. Besides, there was that tar-pit-brain-fog thing going on. I had no common sense left.

  I followed him around the corner and into a vacant conference room.

  “How can I help you?” I asked.