Up In The Air Part 14

I own just one briefcase, and I'm carrying it. I walk into the office, hip-bang the door closed, and look down at a burgundy case with gold-tone hardware that might have been my style a few years back, but not since I started reading GQ GQ magazine. The airline address tag looped around its handle is filled out in my hand, in faded blue ink. magazine. The airline address tag looped around its handle is filled out in my hand, in faded blue ink.

"Is this you in this picture?" Julie is on the love seat, a magazine on her lap. The Corporate Counselor. Corporate Counselor.

"That's me. The one they're hoisting on their shoulders."

"Why are your shirts off? What are all those ropes?"

"We were rock climbing in Bryce Canyon. It's a program. Wilderness Accountability. We ate wild gra.s.ses. We chiseled arrowheads."

"One of those things where you let yourself fall backwards and everyone catches you?"

"Only they don't catch you. On this one they let you fall. And then they step on you."

I heft the case. It's light, but it feels full. I shake it. Paper. The combination lock reads 467. I used to carry an expensive pocketknife-a gift from a Waco oil services firm in grat.i.tude for the lawsuit-free excision of eleven second-tier managers, three of them less than a year from being vested in a pension plan that's since gone under-but it was taken from me by airport guards who measured the blade length and said it broke the law. I could use something like it to jimmy the case. I open my top middle desk drawer and stir the junk around, a lot of giveaway convention bric-a-brac, looking for something slim and strong and pointed, but the best I can do is a silver-plated bookmark snagged from KPMG at the last GoalQuest. The thing is hardly metal, a flimsy wafer, and when I wedge it against a hinge, it cracks.

"Back from the vale of sorrows. Ryan B. His mournful dignity marred by coffee stains insufficiently blotted from wrinkled collar."

This man is not worth elevating my vision for, a conclusion I came to long ago, but he might have a knife in his trousers, so I do. It's the same old a.s.sault on the senses. Flared canine nostrils snuffling for blood trails near the watercooler. Marx Brothers eyebrows, permanently arched and flaked with dead skin that flies off him when he laughs, which he only does with both hands inside his pockets, as though there's a switch near his s.c.r.o.t.u.m he has to toggle. Craig Gregory, Human Issues Group Team Leader, who came to me years ago in the company weight room, reracked the barbell I was struggling with, gazed down into my clear young eyes, and said, "It's a recession, it's official. Axes are falling. Much stench. Much fear of plague. I know you'll want back into Marketing Group someday but right now the king's army needs some undertakers to sanitize the gore. You say you'd love to? Abracadabra: I grant you better insurance, complete with vision care coverage. Go with G.o.d."

Craig smiles at me now, just one hand pocketed. The other will join it the moment I ask for something.

"You stood up our Texas client. And that's okay. Life moves so slowly down in the Lone Star State, beneath those humbling skyscapes, that red sun, that I'll bet you could amble on in a year from now and those lazy cowpokes would still be at their grub. Also, they've written some wobbly checks of late, so I say screw 'em. I say hang 'em high."

I slice a look at Julie, who need not witness this. She stands. The old family telepathy still functions.

"The ladies' room? Do I need a key or something?"

Both pockets now. Craig Gregory locks and loads. It's like him to ignore a stranger's presence until he can actively nullify it. "A pa.s.sword: 'Open sesame, really gotta pee.' "

"Ask my a.s.sistant," I tell her. "My sister Julie, Craig. Proof I was born of woman, not spore, like you."

The two of them brush hands and Julie flees. She'll make it a long one, I trust.

"I'm serious, Ryan, you called it right on Texas. Those boys aren't downsizing, they're capsizing. We don't take Monopoly money at ISM. The full faith and credit of Parker Brothers State Bank just ain't gonna b.u.t.ter our bagel. Old policy. No pro bono until Jesus tells us otherwise."

"Is Boosler still back from his trip 9/21?"

"Affirmative. Caught many tuna. Dallied with many maidens. Sucked much synergistic bigwig d.i.c.k. The question is: when will you you be back?" be back?"

"I'm here."

"Fractionally. I sense brief layover. I'm going to stroll to your love seat over there and sacrifice my commanding height advantage in return for some teammate-to-teammate pillow talk. Walking now. Sitting now. Relating now. What the f.u.c.k's up with you, a.s.swipe? They phoned, you know."

"Excuse me if I don't join you in repose. Fresher air up here. Who phoned?"

"Them. The Brain Trust. Operation Gamma Ray. The Seven. Whatever it is they're calling themselves these days to mask the absurdity of their worthless methods. The Omaha Illuminati."

"MythTech?"

"They swiped our big milky nipple this week, CoronaCom. There goes the lap pool we're building up on nine. There goes the Broncos skybox with the wet bar and honor-system humidor."

"Good for them."

"Good for you, if you join them. 'This Bingham?' they ask me. Bold as that, like we're swapping f.u.c.king baseball cards. 'What can he do for us? Is he a comer? Rate on a ten scale: Emotional lability. Bilateral o.r.g.a.s.mic dexterity. And by the way, since we're speaking frankly now, how does he do taking orders from female Negroes?' "

"Who made this call? This isn't their procedure."

"I am strength and silence. I am Khan."

"Lucius s.p.a.ck?"

"Is that the quiz-kid pederast? The queer little pink guy with the propeller beanie?"

"You don't have a pocketknife, do you, by any chance?"

Craig Gregory licks his lips. They dry out quickly. "No one called."

I set the briefcase down.

"I'm fishing, Ryan. I'm covering my flanks. They raided Deloitte. They're raiding everyone. I'm going up and down the halls today in search of potential deserters. Don't think you're special. We're an old-line firm, and we take pride in that, but we realize that novelty sings its siren song."

"You're lying. I say they did call."

Again, both pockets. Craig Gregory laughs. "This is fun. It's fun, my job. The Art of the Mind f.u.c.k. You'll be at GoalQuest, surely?"

"I'm speaking there," I remind him. "Please come listen."

"Before or after Tony Robbins? During? Sorry, can't make it. Must touch my guru's robes. Must wash big Tony's feet in thanks and praise for turning wormy me into king cobra."

I cross my arms. "What's Faithful Orange? Tell me."

Craig Gregory cups his knees and slowly rises in lobster-like, hinged stages from my sofa. "Behind you," he says. "Your sister. Waiting sheepishly. Intimidated by Gregory's musky pheromones."

I turn. We all look so gray in here. Turn back.

"Faithful Orange. A soda pop, I think."

"Is the Marketing Team consulting for Great West Air?"

"I'd like to think we have corporate Denver covered. I certainly hope we are. Listen, you look like h.e.l.l. Nice boots, but from there on up you're Guatemalan. If I was a f.a.g I'd reach over and fix your hair. And your 'I'm too busy to floss' thing just isn't working. That may go over fine among the Navajo, but this is white America. Colgate country."

"What if I told you I'm taping you right now and sending a transcript to Equal Opportunity? You're going to get ISM sued. You watch your mouth."

"Me? Our first Diversity Training graduate? I'm covered, brother. I have a framed certificate. Sponsor me on my AIDS walk?"

I should quit now. Retrieve the letter from Boosler's desk and read it aloud while standing on my chair. Gather the a.s.sistants. The cleaning staff. The letter has several flourishes I'm quite proud of and would benefit from an oral presentation. If I had my million miles, I'd do it, too. But it's ISM's dime that's going to put me over, and I can't afford to lose travel authorization. I recite the letter in my head.

"Until GoalQuest. Anon. Our desert tribal gathering."

Craig Gregory is going. Walking now. Walking and wagging his a.s.s now. He liked me once. He sent me bursting congratulatory food baskets heaped with blue-veined cheeses and vintage vinegars. Once, he even took a dive for me in a company tennis tournament, vaulting me into the finals. These tokens moved me. Maybe my father was not so loving, after all. Maybe there are holes I'm trying to fill.

"Was that your boss?" says Julie.

"That's never been clear. We use the new, confusing t.i.tles here."

It must be the briefcase I came for, because I have it now and I'm ready to leave and not come back. I stare at my desk and conduct a mental X-ray of its neglected contents. Family photos? I'm not the type who would bring those to the office-I'd prefer they not know the faces of my loved ones here. Voodoo potential. Somewhere, in some drawer, I stashed a small packet of marijuana once, which I used to use in tandem with my sleep machine during particularly hectic trips. It's a fossil now, surely. No drug dog could even smell it. What else is in there? A stapler. Old Vicks inhalers. Some cream I bought once when I couldn't feel my legs, supposed to promote circulation. It caused a rash. Other than that, though, just business cards and tape and microca.s.settes and ISM logo keychains and scads of paper clips that have mysteriously linked themselves together into the sort of puzzle bright children enjoy. Worth holding on to? Anything? Post-it notes?

They give you a lot of stuff when you're first hired and you fully expect you'll use it, but you just don't.

If earning miles were the chief consideration, I would do better driving the rented Volvo at five hundred bonus points per calendar day back to Salt Lake City. In fact, this is the chief consideration, particularly as of 3 P.M. P.M. today, with every other seed I've planted lately gone dormant in the clay. Dwight is backpedaling on today, with every other seed I've planted lately gone dormant in the clay. Dwight is backpedaling on The Garage; The Garage; the Pinter Zone concept, while still alive, feels vaporous; MythTech hovers obscurely behind a cloud bank; and Alex still hasn't called about our Vegas tryst, which I've begun to regret arranging anyhow. If my chilled, sluggish legs are any indication, I doubt I'll be able to muster the blood flow necessary to cap off our evening in my rec-room suite. My a.s.sistant was right; it is a lonely scene, even with a woman in the frame. The jukebox plays Sinatra. The b.a.l.l.s go smack. You say to your date, 'Nice shot.' The hot tub bubbles. And meanwhile, in all four directions, above your head, people you've met or may as well have met but at this point will never meet fan out on late-night business that you're not part of and may never be again. Because you had qualms, and you voiced them, and you're tired. Tired, with cold numb toes. the Pinter Zone concept, while still alive, feels vaporous; MythTech hovers obscurely behind a cloud bank; and Alex still hasn't called about our Vegas tryst, which I've begun to regret arranging anyhow. If my chilled, sluggish legs are any indication, I doubt I'll be able to muster the blood flow necessary to cap off our evening in my rec-room suite. My a.s.sistant was right; it is a lonely scene, even with a woman in the frame. The jukebox plays Sinatra. The b.a.l.l.s go smack. You say to your date, 'Nice shot.' The hot tub bubbles. And meanwhile, in all four directions, above your head, people you've met or may as well have met but at this point will never meet fan out on late-night business that you're not part of and may never be again. Because you had qualms, and you voiced them, and you're tired. Tired, with cold numb toes.

Right now, for the first time in years-the first time ever?-I'd rather not get on a plane, though. You listening, Morse? Your calf has slipped the lariat. He's driving. He's utilizing the public byways. And still earning chits, still indebting you, through Maestro. Besides the miles I'll give to charity in the hope some sick child will come vigorously of age and knife you in the street for pocket change, I think I'll just h.o.a.rd the rest. To keep you owing me.

Julie, too, would rather drive than fly now. She covered much the same route just yesterday, but in the dark, and she wonders what she missed. The trip should take us about eight hours, she estimates, and will be like old times in Dad's Chevy, except we'll eat.

Kara looms. Both bells at the New York Stock Exchange have rung, O'Hare has dispatched a dozen flights to Asia and FedEx Memphis has sorted a million legal briefs and tardy birthday presents, and still no status report for our big sister. I'm sure she finds this unpardonable. I find it racking. The longer we avoid her, the louder she speaks. I hear her voice when our tires stray onto the gravel.

The briefcase, still unopened, is in the trunk. Some truckstop along the way will have a screwdriver. My new theory is that the case is mine, that I left it on board a jet some years ago during one of the strobing, amnesiac flutters that follow intensive bouts of CTC work, and that the case has been sailing ever since in the parallel dimension of Great West baggage. I antic.i.p.ate no epiphanies (Verbal Edge, tape nine, "The Language of Art and Literature") when I crack it. I expect to find socks and boxers and a shirt and perhaps a collection of loose-leaf workbook pages from Sandy Pinter's master-level seminar, the one where partic.i.p.ants wore colored hats representing the Six Cognitive Styles and were asked by the trainer to cross a hotel ballroom without letting their feet contact the floor. It was a daunting task for the non-acrobats and the source of much frustration and puzzlement, until the trainer pointed out to us that our feet and the floor were separated by shoes, an obvious fact that all had overlooked and proof of Sandy Pinter's principle that frantic problem-solving is usually evidence that no problem exists.

Either that or the case contains Morse's tracking device and I can go crazy in earnest once I've jimmied and stripped the bug from the lining. To find a bug-how glorious that must be for those who've done it. To have one's fears credentialed, physically. To hold the little gremlin in one's hand and hear it tick or buzz or hum or whatever it does that tells one that it's operating, then to bellow into the ears of living spies! I'd like to sit down with a man who's had this chance. I think he would have a strong spirit as a result. I could offer to agent him as a corporate speaker.

I let Julie drive. I'm accustomed to being piloted. We head north toward Cheyenne, where we'll meet I-80 west and push up over the hump to the Great Basin in the footsteps of the Mormon settlers. They say you can walk in the grooves cut by the wheels of their wagons and handcarts. We'll pa.s.s the graves of children, the shady encampments where Brigham spread his bedroll. I've never driven this trail, but I've flown over it, and my sense of its contours and hazards is comprehensive. The West gave people so much trouble once, mostly because they couldn't see over its ridges, but now we can, and it's just another place.

This might be the nicest car Julie's ever driven; she's treating it with inordinate respect. Both hands on the wheel, a stiff, cadet-like posture, much attention to mirrors and turn signals. She's scared. This is world-cla.s.s imported equipment, and it's intimidating, especially to those who don't rent cars much and believe that the vehicles are theirs illicitly, as part of a scam or a very special favor. Me, I push these cars hard, without remorse, aware that they've been paid for ten times over and will be sold at a profit on top of that. It's sweet, though, to see the meek, more natural att.i.tude. May it never die out. It's a cushion for the rest of us.

"What if, when we hit Wyoming," Julie says, "we go right, not left? To Minnesota? It seems pretty easy suddenly. Just swerve. The rest might take care of itself. The wedding. Keith. He's already burying wires for that lawn mower."

"That monster you met in my office made you think. Red wagons and cornfields are sounding pretty good."

"It isn't like that now. We have espresso. Good espresso. Mom's hooked on it. Burt, too."

"The Lovely Man on uppers. What is that like? Just more, faster loveliness, or does he growl at people?"

"Burt's family now. You should get to know him, Ryan. He's full of great stories. He's had a long, full life. He drove an armored truck in Mason City before he started his nursery, and someone, a fellow driver, drugged him once and tied him up with string and drove the truck way out into the woods and tried to rob it, except that he needed Burt's key to open it, but when he reached down to take it, Burt bit his ear off. That wild old movie stuff really used to happen. Burt's been around, you'd be shocked."

"He's good to Mom, that's all I care about. I hear lots of stories. True ones, too."

"Burt doesn't lie. He wouldn't make things up. He made a moral blood pact once, he told me. He opened a little vein along one knuckle and squeezed out a whole teaspoonful and drank it, then said the Ten Commandments with b.l.o.o.d.y lips while looking into a mirror."

"That's a fancy one."

"It's because he'd told a man a fib that accidentally killed him a day later. That's how Burt made things right with G.o.d. He's like that."

"Deranged and ritualistic?"

"He just likes pacts. And he keeps them, it's amazing. He swore off sweets-I was there for this, I witnessed it-and ever since I've never seen him eat one, not even sugar in coffee. It's like sweets vanished. He doesn't see them now. He's trained his mind."

"Enough black magic. How's Mom?"

"You know, she's Mom. She moms it up. You'll see."

"It's good to be down here, isn't it? Old sea level."

"That's not a big change for me. You know I'm pregnant?"

This catches me. "No." I'd guessed it, but it still catches me.

"So what's your job, exactly?"

"You said you're pregnant. Let's go back to that."

"Let's work around to it. I'm always amazed by what people do, you know? How many different businesses there are. That's why that year in Chicago freaked me out. No one I met was doing the same thing. This one guy trades gold-in the future. This woman sues doctors-but only heart doctors. This other guy flies around the country telling zoos how to design the cages for different animals. Does anybody still do anything normal? Who's sewing the shirts? Who's collecting all the eggs?"

"I both do and don't know what you mean," I say.

"Kara and Mom and I, we talk about you, but really we're just guessing, we're making you up. We know you do something, something, you've maybe even told us, but it's so complicated it doesn't stick. Is that what's going to happen to my baby?" you've maybe even told us, but it's so complicated it doesn't stick. Is that what's going to happen to my baby?"

My mobile rings in my jacket, the silent-ring feature that tickles my rib cage just below my heart. I ignore it-ultimate issues are at stake here, at least for one of us.

"Is my baby just going to grow up into some . . . fragment? What happened to cowboys, to miners miners?"

"You'd better marry him. I think you at least have to try it."

"Look who's talking."

"She left me," I say. "She gave her ring back. I'll show you. I carry it. It's in my bag."

"You talk about Burt. You're worse."

"How far along?"

"It's like a plum now. Two weeks ago it was a peanut."

My mobile again. To my father, all phone calls that weren't cries for help ranked as impersonal noise, like the TV, and therefore had no claims on him. Things change.

"h.e.l.lo?" An uncertain connection. Rolling static.

"It's Linda. Finally. Where are you now?"

Women always ask this question. Men don't. Men find it sufficient that you're alive and that you're somewhere. They know the rest is detail.

"I'm in a cab leaving SeaTac."

Julie looks at me. Sticklers all. I don't feel I'm lying, though. If this trip had gone the way I'd planned, that's where I'd be now, driving downtown from SeaTac, and frankly I'd rather stick to that. The plan. The plan had beauty, and I wish to honor it. Perhaps, at some level, it's clicking along without me, one of Sandy Pinter's "Artifacts of Consciousness." His example was the lost formulas of the alchemists, which he hints in one book he recovered in a dream.

"That's weird. Someone saw you here," says Linda. "At DIA."

"I flew out of DIA."