The Fearsome Particles Part 2

Bishop was turned toward the window. Outside, one storey below, a twenty-foot cube truck was pulling away from the loading dock. Bishop watched, and Gerald watched too, as it swayed over the speed b.u.mps and then rumbled off toward the South Service Road that would lead it to the highway which would take it east to Montreal, because according to the schedule in Gerald's head this was the shipment of two hundred thousand square feet of .03 gauge screening bound for Deschamps Fenetres Inc. As Gerald turned back to Bishop, it was these schedule thoughts that made him seize on the image of Kyle, and the realization that he should probably be on the road at this very moment to pick him up.

"I just got off the phone with her," said Bishop. "They can't seem to figure out what's wrong."

Gerald nodded and sighed with a sympathy for Bishop that was heartfelt, though his mind was congested with images of his son waiting, alone and forgotten on a gritty, windswept tarmac because he, Gerald, had failed to leave when he should have. What time was it? How late was he? It was difficult to know. Other offices had clocks on the wall in full view. Not Gerald's. He cursed the day, four years ago, when he'd moved into this office and, in the course of introducing a few decorative touches, such as the framed pictures of the Nova Scotia coastline that he found calming, had pa.s.sed so blithely on the wall-clock option.

Bishop was slowly shaking his head. "If those doctors in Cincinnati can't solve the problem," he was saying, "I don't know who can."

Over on his desk, Gerald's computer screen had the time. Right now, the time was displayed in blue 24-point type and he couldn't see it. His desk with its computer screen was like a mainland of wealth and abundance, and he was trapped on an island of scarcity with no boat. And whose fault was that but his?

"Those people down there are top-notch," said Bishop wistfully.

There was always his watch. Bishop was still looking out the window, though the cube truck had long since disappeared, and Gerald's own left wrist lay below the table, against his thigh; he could swivel his wrist and glance down in one smooth motion. But it was a dangerous operation, because when a man was telling you about his wife's medical problems, you stayed engaged and involved; nothing was more important. Looking at your watch when a man was sharing his troubles was the kind of thing, if he happened to see you, that could shake the foundations of trust. You didn't screw around with trust. Especially when it was the sort of hard-earned trust produced by six dedicated years of ambition-restraint.

On the other hand, there was the matter of unpredictable traffic.

"What's wrong wrong with me?" Bishop demanded. with me?" Bishop demanded.

Gerald had just begun to turn his wrist and glance down his gaze had made it to the edge of the table and now Bishop was looking directly at him.

"I haven't done a proper day's work in a week!"

Gerald kept his gaze fixed on the table edge, as though only the seam in the laminate could help him address Bishop's concerns, until it seemed safe to relax and look up.

"Bish, no one expects you to stop thinking about Susan."

"I'm here, but I'm not here, if you know what I mean." Bishop looked away to the window and sighed. "I should have gone with her."

Eleven. That's all he got. He looked quickly and caught the liquid crystal eleven. Which was, of course, useless to him, because he knew it wasn't as late as twelve. But he caught the wrong digits and now he would have to look again.

"She's got family in Cincinnati, doesn't she, Susan?"

Bishop nodded. "Her sister's in Cincinnati." He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Martha."

"I'm sure she's fine then." One more glance down would get the second set of digits. He knew the procedure now, it was just a matter of shifting his focus. "Just as long as she has family with her, that's the important thing."

Bishop swallowed, and his expression turned sardonic. "Martha," he said, "is a hopeless alcoholic. Her husband left her years ago. The woman is a complete mess. So, you know, for all intents and purposes " he pa.s.sed a hand over his face and ma.s.saged his eyes " Susan is down there taking care of her." her." Fifty-nine. It was 11:59! Gerald was so shocked by the second set of digits that he couldn't help staring at them. Soon only luck would get him to Trenton on time. Fifty-nine. It was 11:59! Gerald was so shocked by the second set of digits that he couldn't help staring at them. Soon only luck would get him to Trenton on time.

"Guess I'm keeping you from something, am I?" Bishop was looking at him, one half of his face paled with aqua light, and his eyes had a new heaviness that told Gerald he was offended.

"I'm sorry, Bish, that was it's just I have to pick up Kyle pretty soon."

"Oh."

"Please. Go on."

"No, it's fine." Bishop leaned forward and pushed himself out of his chair like a man twenty years older than he was. Gerald rose with him.

"When do you expect Susan back, end of the week?"

He was making his way to the door and didn't turn. "Something like that." At the entrance to Gerald's office, Bishop put a hand on the painted metal door frame and looked back. "Your son's home from Afghanistan, is that right?"

"Yes."

"That's a h.e.l.l of a place, Afghanistan. Your son see any trouble over there?"

Gerald tried to smile. "Not sure, actually."

"Guess you've been worried about him. Guess you'll be glad to have him home."

Gerald worked hard to return Bishop's steady gaze. "Yup." The urge to look at his watch again was almost overpowering; he barely felt man enough to resist it. "Let me know if there's anything I can do to help with Susan, okay?"

Bishop frowned. "What could you do?"

Gerald hesitated, shrugged, drowned. "I don't know. Anything."

His boss nodded slowly and let his hand drop. "Right." He rapped a knuckle against the door as he walked away.

5.

Do you know how sometimes you get yourself into a situation, and even as it's going on you're thinking, "Huh. This is pretty crazy. How did I get myself into this?"

I had one knee the size of a pumpkin pressing down on my chest, cutting off my air. That belonged to Lieutenant Jayne. One of my wrists was being pinned down against the nubby carpet of the airplane by Sergeant Leunette (decent guy), the other wrist was being held by the COF-AP COF-AP deputy project manager, Mike Oberly (a.s.shole). And as you could expect, it was Oberly doing the shouting. deputy project manager, Mike Oberly (a.s.shole). And as you could expect, it was Oberly doing the shouting.

"You will not be getting up, Woodlore! Not until I see some self-control!"

One of my legs was jammed against something, but the other one was loose, so I tried to swing it to wrench myself free, but I only ended up hitting the hard plastic corner of one of the seat arms and that hurt like s.h.i.t. They don't give you much room for wrestling in the aisle of a CC CC-150.

"I can't breathe! I can't breathe!"

"Ease off him," said Leunette. He pushed Jayne back with a forearm.

As the air started to come back into my chest now that about six hundred pounds of military force wasn't trying to turn me into some kind of pressed flower Oberly stuck his th.o.r.n.y white eyebrows in my face.

"You don't go into the cargo area. That's a regulation. The cargo area is off-limits. You hear me?" It was only when he repeated the last bit even louder than the first that I realized he was actually waiting for an answer.

"I heard somebody," I said, looking up into Oberly's upside-down face. "I thought maybe it was G.o.d, so, that's kinda disappointing."

I tried to get my left arm free but Oberly leaned down on it with two hands and his face went fierce as if it was his own personal mission to keep me pinned. There seemed to be a smile in there too, but Oberly was the type to look grinnish when he was exerting himself, so I didn't take that too personally.

"We can stay like this for the rest of the flight. Have no concerns there."

"Well no, now, you can't." Behind and above me I could see a flight attendant corporal, with straight, tied-back hair, slashing a line in the air with her finger, meaning the aisle. "I need to get through here."

So how did I end up getting pinned to the floor and causing all this trouble? It comes down to military planes being different from regular pa.s.senger jets. In military planes, at least the ones I've been on, only part of the interior is for pa.s.sengers; the front third or half is used for cargo and supplies. A bulkhead keeps the two areas separated, but there's a narrow hatch you can open and step through if you're a pilot or a flight attendant. For the first couple of hours of the flight home I watched people go in and out through that hatch, so I didn't realize it would be such a big freaking deal if I did too.

All I'd wanted was to find a movie to put on. I kept asking the corporal: What about the movie? When's the movie starting? Are you going to show a movie? She wouldn't give me a better answer than "soon," and when "soon" never seemed to arrive, I figured I'd go look for one myself. I mean...s.h.i.t! Planes are supposed to have movies, aren't they?

So, after the corporal just stopped responding to my questions I turned to my seatmate this dark-haired COF-AP COF-AP woman I didn't know who I sat beside just so I wouldn't have to sit next to Oberly and listen to him lecture me on "paths" and "organizing structures" and I asked her, "Is that cargo area up there where they keep the woman I didn't know who I sat beside just so I wouldn't have to sit next to Oberly and listen to him lecture me on "paths" and "organizing structures" and I asked her, "Is that cargo area up there where they keep the DVD DVD player?" player?"

She just shrugged. "I don't know. It might be." And she studied me for a second as if she knew something. "Boy, you really really want to see a movie, don't you?" want to see a movie, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"They'll get to it eventually, I guess." Then she reached into the canvas bag at her feet and pulled out a couple of old Chatelaine Chatelaine magazines. "You can read these if you want." magazines. "You can read these if you want."

"No thanks," I said. "That doesn't work."

Believe me, I held off as long as I could. I really tried tried not to care about the movie. But I'd been sitting there for, like, two hours, staring at the stupid little screen, waiting for it to give me something else to look at, and my chest was starting to cinch up, and finally it just seemed like it was time to go look for those not to care about the movie. But I'd been sitting there for, like, two hours, staring at the stupid little screen, waiting for it to give me something else to look at, and my chest was starting to cinch up, and finally it just seemed like it was time to go look for those DVD DVDs.

I opened the hatch door and got one foot over the lip in the bulkhead when somebody grabbed my arm from behind. Of course I tried to shake him off, as you'd naturally do if you weren't thinking about regulations. But, of course, this is the military, so there are always regulations. And when you're on an armed forces plane, and you're Officially f.u.c.ked Up, and you're heading toward an off-limits area in the direction of the flight cabin, shaking off a soldier is a pretty stupid thing to do. I mean, that's clear to me now. And when a couple of guys try to grab you and pull you back, it's not the smartest thing to start wrestling with them and swinging at them and shouting at them to f.u.c.k off, f.u.c.k off, f.u.c.k off. All things considered, I have to admit that. I mean, I'm not an idiot.

Obviously I wasn't adhering to my own whatever whatever plan, so I have some work to do on that front. I even tried to get some practice in right there on the airplane floor. They were hurting my wrist, and I was doing my best to give in and let it happen. But it's not easy. It's not. So I finally said, into this huddle of hard-breathing men, "I think my wrist is probably crushed enough now." plan, so I have some work to do on that front. I even tried to get some practice in right there on the airplane floor. They were hurting my wrist, and I was doing my best to give in and let it happen. But it's not easy. It's not. So I finally said, into this huddle of hard-breathing men, "I think my wrist is probably crushed enough now."

Oberly leaned down on me, and some of the white hair he kept slicked to his head flopped over, which just added to his standard, marginally crazed look. "I want some kind of signal from you, Kyle, that you get what happened here, all right? You went someplace you're not allowed to go. Then when somebody tried to stop you, you became violent. That's the kind of thing gets charges laid on people, all right?"

"Sure."

"This isn't funny."

I'd only smiled to show him I was surrendering. Now I rubbed the back of my head against the hard carpet as a nod.

"Behave, Kyle," said Lieutenant Jayne, "or you sit on my lap the rest of the way."

"Aye-aye, captain."

Sergeant Leunette was the first one to get off me completely. He had one boot and a foreleg still caught in the cargo hatchway from when they'd first wrestled me to the floor, but once he shook his foot free and found his cap he smacked Jayne on the back "Let him up" and Jayne grabbed the blue seat arms on either side of the aisle and wedged himself vertical. Oberly was the last to get off and he held out a warning finger at me until I was sitting up on the floor with my back against the part.i.tion. When the flight attendant was finally able to make it past, she exhaled through her teeth and disappeared into the forbidden realm of cargo.

I sat there for a while breathing in the dry airplane air, feeling the engines' hum against my spine and looking at the knees of the people sitting in the first row of seats there were three dancers coming back from entertaining personnel some place in the Middle East (a big secret where, because they weren't saying) who'd had to connect through to Canada at Dubai. Two of them were wearing jeans and one a sort of flowy skirt. I didn't look up at their faces probably they would have been a bit upset by what happened but they had some pretty nice knees.

"I just wanted to see what kind of movies there were," I said.

"What movies?" said Oberly, standing in the aisle with his long arms noodling down from his hunchy shoulders. "What are you talking about?"

I tilted my head back and pointed at the tiny screen above me, embedded in the part.i.tion. "Aren't they supposed to show movies on these?"

Oberly shook his head, which made his loose hair wave around. "This is a military plane. If you were military you'd know they don't always show movies. Just like you'd know not to go b.u.t.ting into off-limits areas and to stop dead when you're ordered to!" See, Oberly was ex-military. I think he got as high as Chief Warrant Officer. He was always talking like he was still in the loop.

From partway down the aisle, Leunette called up, "Oberly. Go tell 'em to put on a friggin' movie."

"It's not our decision, Sergeant; it's the crew's. They might not even have any."

Leunette shook his head in disgust. I liked Sergeant Leunette. I didn't know him that well, but he felt a bit like a friend because Legg had liked him. They used to play poker all the time and I got invited to play a fair bit. He smelled like a chimney from spending a lot of his off hours in the smoking tent outside the kitchen at Camp Laverne, but the way he dealt with people seemed clean. "They must have some sorta shows up there," he said. "The kid's just trying to get through the friggin' flight. What's the problem?"

Oberly's arms went all c.o.c.keyed. "We just had to tackle him to keep him out of a restricted area, and now you want to reward that behaviour?"

Leunette waved him off like gnats. "Whatever, he's your guy." He yanked a thumb at Jayne to get him out of his seat so he could slide over to the window. "Just seems to me like the decent thing to do."

"Yeah, well, I'm sure we'd all like to see a movie. But it'll happen when the flight crew wants it to happen." Oberly swept his hair back into place with one hand and pointed me to my seat with the other. "Go sit down, son."

The hiss of air in the plane sounded like sand blowing across a field, and Oberly kept pointing to my seat as though the seat had done something horribly wrong and he was making an example of it. It's seats like this one causing all the trouble! I stood up with my back to the cargo area door and my hands in my back pockets. And that's when it occurred to me that it wasn't just movies that were entertaining all the commotion of the past twenty minutes had managed to keep my mind off things pretty effectively.

I slipped my hands out of my back pockets and found the door latch behind me. "f.u.c.k you," I said to Oberly, and then I opened it again.

6.

There were few things worse than a jumbled inventory. Vicki, conscious of the fact that by now Gerald had probably arrived at the airport to pick up their son, but keeping that fact in an anteroom safely off to the side of her attention, made her way, clipboard in hand, around the sharp cabinet corners, past the stacks of boxed linen, and through the upturned chair legs sprouting like river reeds. Thankfully all her country oak and pine furniture (useful for filling out those three-thousand-square-foot finished bas.e.m.e.nts) was exactly where it should have been, including the nineteenth-century fruitwood lambing chair she adored, the useful three-panelled oak settee, and the four small pine pot cupboards that did such admirable work as pedestals for large topiary and the occasional Carpeaux bronze. She was relieved to find as well that the dining sets, mirrors, and drum tables were all properly stored. However, four of the bedroom suites were stationed along the east wall, not the west, the salon pieces were in the wrong corner, the bureaus and credenzas were in each other's places, and the boxes of pewter, ceramic, and miscellaneous accent pieces were catastrophically misarranged.

This was what came of leaving things to h.e.l.la, her parttime a.s.sistant, which she had had to do this morning during the disa.s.sembly of the Gainsmore Road house because it had been necessary to meet with Avis at Lightenham Avenue. Not that h.e.l.la wasn't good at many things she was a true G.o.dsend when it came to the a.s.sembly phase, taking a firm hand with the moving crews when Vicki was elsewhere engaged and showing real talent with window treatments and linen layering (anything that required spreading or smoothing seemed very much up her alley). But she had proven herself untrustworthy in disa.s.sembly and pack-up, not seeming to appreciate the importance of being able to lay hands on a given item in the warehouse at a moment's notice. If it was discovered, for instance, one hour before a showing, that because of some subtle shift in a new home's foundation a thin vertical crack had appeared in the plaster seam between the wall and the fireplace mantel, then it was vital to be able to immediately locate and install the taller set of Flemish fire irons and perhaps even the Tunbridge ware bellows as an attractive camouflage. h.e.l.la didn't seem to understand that it was this sort of taste-appropriate response upon which Vicki's clients had come to rely, and which had contributed to Vicki's status as one of the top real estate stagers in the city. Vicki, of course, accepted some of the blame for h.e.l.la's lack of awareness in this regard, because she was loath to make h.e.l.la feel anything but loved; although in itself, this was hardly a failing.

For twenty minutes she rummaged among the warehouse shelves, through the boxes of accents. She was able to check off the soft toys and the equestrian accessories (the helmets, boots, whips, and riding trophies that she used in the Ralph Laurenlook guest bedrooms). She found the barometers and hearth clocks, and everything to do with the dining room (decanter sets, tea sets, the silver milk jug, the George III III mahogany table cellaret with spirit bottles, and so on), the decorative kitchen fruit pieces (a dozen rustic pears and seventeen apples, formed in high-gloss papier mache at 150 per cent scale), which she displayed in bowls and placed on open shelves to bring colour and culinary intimations to white or off-white kitchens these were safe and sound. And the boxes of everything silver and everything treen were eventually located. But though she searched the entirety of her accent collection, and then the remainder of her eight thousand square feet of warehouse s.p.a.ce, with all the lights on, she could still not find her Meissens. mahogany table cellaret with spirit bottles, and so on), the decorative kitchen fruit pieces (a dozen rustic pears and seventeen apples, formed in high-gloss papier mache at 150 per cent scale), which she displayed in bowls and placed on open shelves to bring colour and culinary intimations to white or off-white kitchens these were safe and sound. And the boxes of everything silver and everything treen were eventually located. But though she searched the entirety of her accent collection, and then the remainder of her eight thousand square feet of warehouse s.p.a.ce, with all the lights on, she could still not find her Meissens.

When she called h.e.l.la at 2:08 p.m., about the time she imagined Gerald would have begun to drive back with Kyle, the hand that held the phone to her ear was shaking as if she were cold. "h.e.l.la, sweetheart," Vicki purred, "I'm here at the warehouse and I can't seem to find the Meissens."

"Which?"

"The Meissens, darling. They were in a grey box all to themselves." She always treated the Meissens with extra care, because the porcelain tureens with the blue-onion pattern and the two candlestick figures represented the beginnings of what she had made of herself. Her mother, Patricia Dealing, had loved antiques and built up an impressive collection, much of which was now incorporated into Vicki's inventory. But her mother's job, in a very real sense, had been her marriage to Marshall Dealing, the airline executive; antiques had been merely a hobby. It was Vicki who had seen the potential in what the antiques, in their ideal arrangement, represented an accomplished past, an appreciative present, the clarity of mind and the contentment of spirit that came from all things happily in their place. This was something, Vicki sensed, that people would pay money for, and the Meissen candlesticks were prized as her first find with that objective in mind, bought twenty-three years ago with her mother's approval as a bargain at $285 for the pair.

"Oh, you mean the china bowls and all that? They're in with the treen now. I thought it would be good to pack the wood and the porcelain together, for safety."

"So," said Vicki, turning around to survey the boxes arrayed on the deep shelves before her, "in the box marked treen treen, I will find the Meissen porcelain?"

"Yes."

"And that includes the two candlestick figures?"

"Yeah...I think so."

"All right. Now" she located the box marked treen treen "I want to say that was a very clever idea, to think that the treen bowls could act as an extra layer of protection, in case the Styrofoam and bubble wrap wasn't enough " "I want to say that was a very clever idea, to think that the treen bowls could act as an extra layer of protection, in case the Styrofoam and bubble wrap wasn't enough "

"Well, wood's a lot stronger."

"Of course, yes." Her heart thumping, Vicki shifted the heavy treen box to the edge of the shelf, eased it to the floor, and crouched down to open the flaps and begin lifting out the contents, item by item, as she shrugged the phone snug to her head. "But do you see why that might not be the clearest way to package things? I mean, if I'd needed to find the Meissens in a hurry "

"I should have written Meissen on the box too, I guess." Vicki could tell by the turn in h.e.l.la's voice that she felt terrible about the mistake. And perhaps h.e.l.la was thinking too about having not used enough Styrofoam packing chips around the Meissens, because that had been obvious to Vicki as soon as she'd opened the box. "I don't know, it was just, like, we only had the movers for three hours, remember? For both floors!"

She lifted out the four treen bowls first (these she was using less frequently lately because modern treen bowls had become so popular at crafts fairs her two-century-old walnut antiques were too easily confused for something just carved out of a stump of maple). The ingenious little Meissen inkwell was next. And by the time she had set the two blue-onion Meissen tureens carefully on the worn plank floor, it was obvious that the thing she feared had happened had, in fact, happened.