Lesser Creatures Page 7

Stacy spun toward the men. “Oh, Mr. Allen. I was just helping Mon—”

  “Thank you,” Frank Allen said. “You can head back to the phones now.”

  “Right away,” she replied, then hurried from the room.

  “Pastor Lingk,” Frank said, “I’d like you to meet Monika Janus, the new member of our team.”

  The man from the night before stepped forward and placed a small white box adorned with a red bow on the desk. “A gift,” he said, “for you.” Then he took her hand in his and kissed it, something she’d never thought a living person would dare. She eased her hand from his, trying not to let her fear show, then tentatively reached for the gift.

  “Open it,” Lingk said.

  She slipped off the bow and raised the lid from the box. Inside, a small plastic disc attached to a v-shaped set of wires. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place the object’s purpose.

  “It plays music,” the man said gently. “Here, let me help you.” He took the item from the box, placed the nub-ends of the cords in her ears, and pressed a couple buttons on the thin, round base.

  The music, that wonderful song from the night before, filled her head, and the room bloomed radiant. No flowers or wall art, despite Stacy’s best intentions, could decorate the room better than now.

  She looked into the man’s—the pastor’s—eyes, and saw a kindness there she hadn’t experienced since death; perhaps never even in life. She loved him, too. Not the same way she loved Eric, but the emotion bore similarities nonetheless. A kindred connection she couldn’t articulate mentally.

  Her thoughts rarely came in words anyway; rather, feelings and colors and images, not so unlike words. She took the wires out of her ears and flattened a hand against her chest.

  Lingk turned to Frank. “I think she likes it,” he said, then laughed. He returned his attention to her and carefully demonstrated how the magical music machine worked. It was simple, like the push-button automation of her apartment, and she caught on fast.

  After a couple demonstrations, and one more time listening to the song as the two men patiently smiled at her, Lingk said to Frank, “Now it’s your turn to teach me something.”

  * * *

  Frank swallowed the dry lump in his throat. “What would you like to know?” he asked.

  The pastor crossed his arms over his chest, then glanced at the second-lifer before turning back to Frank. “A demonstration of how you plan to use this angel.”

  “She just started today.” His lips quivered, his smile faltering. “We haven’t prepared—”

  “I might be a somewhat discredited man in the public eye this morning,” Lingk said. “But I still have connections. I’d hate for your special project to lose Blue.”

  This gambit had swung to hostile environs, and as Frank looked into Lingk’s narrowing eyes, he saw something he hadn’t suspected before.

  Insanity.

  This man was more than a fringe mouthpiece. He actually believed his lies. He was a bona fide crusader and a dangerous entity with the ability to turn vicious or gentle on a dime. Frank considered himself an expert when it came to motivation but was powerless in the presence of a lunatic.

  “It will take us a few moments to ready the pitch room,” Frank said. “But a little demonstration shouldn’t be a problem.”

  Bellowing laughter, the pastor slapped Frank on the back. “Good man. Lead the way.”

  * * *

  “We’ve historically used this facility for focus groups,” Frank said. He flipped a switch and lights flickered alive on the other side of a wall of glass.

  “Focus groups?” Lingk asked.

  “We study a wide demographic. Pay people to sample our client’s pre-market concepts. The separation”—Frank tapped the glass—“is so we don’t influence the study. Window on this side, mirror on the other. They consume, they weigh in, we watch. But focus group marketing is a dead art. Luckily, the setup fits our new approach.”

  In the adjoining room, a door opened, and Ted Mallory walked through with Monika. Frank and Lingk watched as Ted led her into a chair at a table facing a large video monitor. Ted plugged a box with two buttons—one red, one blue—into a cable beneath the desk, then looked up. “Everything ready in there?” he asked.

  Frank bent before a small microphone. “We’re a go,” he said.

  “Why the archaic push buttons?” Lingk asked. “Looks like something from a game show.”

  “Exactly. Touch screens are far too sensitive and commonly produce a false positive or negative. We feared that issue would be exacerbated by the poor dexterity of a second-lifer—”

  “Monika,” Lingk snapped.

  “Excuse me?”

  “She has a name, and I beg that you use it.”

  “Of, of course,” Frank stammered. “The buttons we’ve placed before Monika take pressure to activate. Red is negative. Blue is positive. We run the thirty-second ad and she has two minutes to decide.”

  “What if she doesn’t?” asked Lingk.

  “Then the spot is registered neutral and cycled through retesting. If negative, the spot is removed from testing for three months. If positive, the spot is recycled more frequently until we have enough data for a recommendation.”

  “But you never throw anything away?”

  Frank shook his head.

  “Interesting. Why is that?”

  “Anything has the potential of becoming an asset in time.”

  Lingk chuckled. “Anything and anyone.”

  “I suppose,” Frank said.

  In the other room, Ted sat next to Monika, explaining the process with animated hand gestures, as if he were trying to break through a simple language barrier rather than the veil between life and death. His words registered as indecipherable chatter through the control room speakers. She nodded, pressed both buttons once, the responses registering as flashes—one red, one blue—on a digital board above the control room window. Ted gave a thumbs-up, and Frank said into the microphone, “Cuing test spot.” He then pressed a few buttons, bringing up a three-year-old ad for Taco Cabana.

  “This spot is for a taquería chain that’s been out of business for two years,” Frank said.

  “Why not play something current, give her a real test?”

  Frank glared at his self-invited guest. “Because Taco Cabana isn’t around to sue us if they find out I showed you an unlicensed commercial.”

  “Fair enough.”

  They all watched a cartoon taco with a bottle of whiskey in its white-gloved hand. In a high-pitched voice, the thing raved about a “new value menu” as a poor imitation of mariachi music played and the taco danced.

  Lingk rolled his eyes and groaned.

  Frank laughed. “Yeah, I know. They crashed and burned trying to understand the second-life market.”

  “So inelegant.”

  “Hey, it’s fast food, what do you expect?”

  “A little dignity.”

  “Well, we all have a dream.”

  Monika’s face remained expressionless as her hand hovered over the buttons. Finally, she pressed the blue one and smiled.

  “Well, what do you know?” Frank said.

  “What?” the pastor asked.

  “Who knows, maybe we cracked the code a minute too late for those half-assed taco peddlers.”

  “Lovely.”

  Frank sat down in front of the control board and gestured for Lingk to do the same, but the pastor remained standing. “Have you seen enough?” Frank asked.

  Lingk nodded.

  Again into the microphone: “Hey, Ted, go ahead and show Ms. Janus back to her office, please. Thank you.”

  Soon the lights buzzed dead in the test room, and Frank swiveled to face the pastor. “Well, what do you think?”

  “The process is simple enough to work.”

  “That’s the board’s thinking. We’ve been beating our heads against the wall for long enough.”

  “I don’t like the girl being on the testing side of th
e glass, though.”

  Frank leaned forward. “Pastor, how do you think she might have responded if we’d been in the room? Hell, we both showed negative reactions to what she saw—couldn’t help ourselves—and we both know she’s practiced in compliance. Even if we’d kept our mouths shut, our body language would’ve betrayed us. One of the only reasons I can’t take that test seriously is that Ted was in the room with her. He loves tacos, not to mention dumb shit.” Frank laughed. Lingk didn’t.

  “So you don’t believe a second-lifer can demonstrate free will?”

  “My beliefs have nothing to do with this project,” Frank said, “I simply know she’ll be more likely to share her opinion without the rest of us egging her on. If our opinion was worth anything, we wouldn’t need her.”

  “It is progress, and I like the ease of the approach. Hard to imagine this plan was hatched by committee.”

  “This plan was hatched by desperation.”

  “I suppose the ends justify the means. I’m concerned, however, the girl may come to feel isolated.”

  “Feel? I didn’t realize they could feel.”

  “There’s a lot people don’t realize yet. Ours is a time of great ignorance. I just don’t want Monika to be treated like cattle.”

  “With all due respect, tell that to the decontamination crews. We’ve given her more dignity than the government ever would have.” He almost added: More than your church ever has. But thinking about how valuable the account was, he held his tongue.

  The pastor smiled and proffered a hand. “Okay, you sold me.”

  They shook. “Glad to hear that.”

  “So I’ll sit down with Cooper on Monday and—”

  “I don’t know if I can promise that,” Frank said.

  Lingk pulled his hand away. “Can you tell me why?”

  Frank stammered for a moment, trying to construct a lie, but eventually, afraid that it would get back to the board he’d botched the deal over lack of transparency, he settled on the truth, telling an abbreviated version of Eric’s story.

  Lingk listened, eyes growing wide.

  Frank felt like every word was a betrayal of an employee’s confidence, but the stakes were too high to care about that, and he didn’t even know if Eric would stay with the firm. Besides, Eric’s performance had been shit the last two years.

  “…so he’s taking the weekend to consider his options,” Frank finished.

  “That’s…incredible.”

  “Strange is more like it. Trust me, Cooper is a magnet for tragedy. You’d be better served by Lyle and Marcia Reed. No kids. On call day and night. Dedicated to their clients. And they’re young, full of energy.”

  Lingk walked to the door, opened it, then looked over his shoulder. His face was severe, miles from kind and no longer curious.

  Frank suspected he’d made the wrong decision choosing the truth.

  “I want to see Eric Cooper in my office on Monday.”

  “Pastor, I can’t—”

  “Have him bring a new contract. If he shows, we’re in business. If he doesn’t, then I’ll assume AdCorp isn’t serious about my needs. And please don’t send that insipid brother and sister duo to my church.”

  Frank stood. “Pastor, we have others who—”

  “Eric Cooper.” A sly smile cracked Lingk’s face. “Noon. Monday.” He walked through the door, then slammed it.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eric Cooper, the nameplate outside the office read. Monika opened the door and entered. The space was almost the same as the one she’d been assigned, maybe a little smaller, but that could have been because of the clutter: file cabinets, papers on the desk, black-and-white photographs of city images on the walls.

  Sidling behind his desk, she became aware she shouldn’t be here. This was some kind of violation, a breach of privacy. Too great, however, was curiosity.

  She picked a stack of envelopes from the desk and looked through them until she found one that seemed to bear a home address. It was from the city. An electric bill. And it showed an apartment number rather than a suite. Eric Cooper was the labeled recipient.

  She slipped the envelope in her suit jacket. Then, moving as fast as she could, she exited the room and slipped back into her office.

  For a few minutes she did nothing, just sat behind her desk, then she got up and stared at the city through the room’s sole window. Rain pattered the glass, the sky gray, and she watched myriad blurs shuffle below. Some of those distorted shapes were like her, dead, and others were like Eric, real people, but thirty-nine floors away she couldn’t tell the difference.

  Distance, like death, had a funny way of equalizing the human condition, and this brought a fleeting smile to her face. She was struck by a troublesome question, one she hadn’t stopped to ask in the confusion of her strange day.

  Would Eric love her again?

  That didn’t seem likely. Not in her present condition. And thinking back on his reaction to seeing her, which she had somehow dismissed—or, more likely, had been distracted from—she worried that she might never see him again.

  Then she remembered the envelope in her jacket and slid her fingers into the pocket to make sure it was there. Something like relief registered as she felt the crisp paper edge, confirming she hadn’t imagined the theft from Eric’s desk. The way her mind worked, a thing she didn’t understand, she often had problems with time. A minute frequently seemed like an hour, or an hour like seconds.

  Whiskey helped with that, and she needed a drink. The clock on the wall read five ’til five, and for some reason she thought five was quitting time, although she didn’t know if that was a holdover from her former life or part of the AdCorp orientation session.

  A knock sounded at the already-opened door. She turned to see Stacy standing there.

  “Hey, hon,” Stacy said, “just letting you know the car is outside waiting when you’re ready. I can walk you down if you like?”

  Monika nodded her approval and followed Stacy through a maze of cubicles, then down a long hallway to the elevator.

  “It’s raining outside,” Stacy said. “Do your kind enjoy the rain?”

  Monika shook her head, and Stacy chuckled. “Hell, most of us don’t, I guess. Not me, though. I love rain. Grew up in the country, an old farmhouse, and I’d sit on the porch when it stormed. Momma would just yell at me, ‘Stacy Ann, get back in here, girl. You’re gonna get struck by lightning,’ but I never minded her. I’d sit out there for hours until Daddy came home from…”

  Monika looked away from the chatty girl and realized they were already in the elevator, halfway to the lobby. Distractions played with time, memory, awareness, and it was often impossible for her to pay attention to more than one thing at any given moment.

  The elevator reached its destination and the doors whooshed open. Stacy was still talking, but Monika, self-conscious about her movements and the many eyes on her in the lobby, didn’t have the capacity to listen. She wanted to wrap her mind around Eric again, but that wasn’t possible, either. She knew she had a lot of thinking to do and was anxious to be alone.

  People apparently weren’t accustomed to seeing someone like her in nice clothes, walking through a fancy building. Some glared. Others looked away. Most were just frozen in awe.

  After she and Stacy passed through the turnstile, they stopped below an eave. Fast passing cars splashed torrents of rainwater onto the curb, by which the same type of black sedan that had picked her up in the morning waited, engine running.

  “Well, here we are,” said Stacy.

  Monika did her best to convey gratitude with her eyes. Her neck was stiff from nodding all day.

  “I enjoyed getting to know you,” Stacy said. “See you Monday.”

  Monika got into the car, which slowly started moving after Stacy said another goodbye and shut the door. Again, she was alone with the sound of rain and her thoughts.

  She pulled the envelope from her pocket, focused on Eric’s name the same way she ro
utinely did with red dots.

  But this wasn’t imaginary. This was the first thing she could be sure was real since she’d died.

  * * *

  Eric woke on the couch with a gasp. Beginning to piece together the bizarre dream, he sat up and ran his palms over his face and took a deep breath.

  Out the windows, the sky was gray, and he didn’t know if it was morning or night. A glance at his watch told him it was neither, just a few minutes shy of six p.m. He ambled to the kitchen and quickly drank two glasses of water from the tap. He trembled as he started placing the tumbler back in the sink, then it slipped from his loose hold. Acting on instinct, he tried to catch the glass before it hit the metal basin, but it shattered around his hand from impact and the pressure of his sudden grip.

  Pain.

  He winced as he yanked a shard of glass from his palm, his hand quickly pooling with blood.

  This was madness, he thought. Neither angry nor sad, he felt drained more than anything, tired but not sleepy. He rinsed the cut below the faucet, which made it sting all the more, then walked to the bathroom where he snatched a roll of gauze from the cabinet below the vanity. The gash was deep, the flesh separating like the waiting lips of a lover, his palm already filling once more with blood, some of it dripping to the floor. He didn’t care enough to get it stitched at the emergency room. Besides, he thought, another scar would fit right in.

  He wrapped his hand until the roll was spent, then headed back to the kitchen, quickening his pace. He opened the cabinet above the stove and pulled down the only bottle there. Cinnamon schnapps. He hated the shit, but Melody loved it, so they’d picked the bottle up one night at the liquor store around the corner. He twisted off the cap and took a long drink, cringing as the syrupy liquid sluiced a hot trail down his throat, then he glanced at the piano in the corner of the living room.

  He didn’t know why he’d held on to the monstrosity, a forgotten possession of the condo’s former owner. When he’d closed on the place a year earlier, still recovering from the crash, he’d agreed to let the piano stay, thinking he’d sell it eventually. When he started dating Melody, she insisted it made the place look “elegant,” and even though it wasn’t her place to determine his décor, he’d agreed. Still did.