The Consultant (24 page)

“What’s your name?” Craig asked.  

“Martin,” the observer said, still focused on his screen.  

“Well, Martin. Stay out of my way and don’t annoy me, and we should have no problems.”  

He’d intended to sound commanding and authoritative, wanting to intimidate the young man, but the consultant was having none of it. “Arrive on time, work your allotted hours, do your job, and
then
we should have no problems.”  

Martin finally looked up and met his gaze. There was hostility in his expression, and the unexpected belligerence threw Craig off guard for a second, but anger quickly replaced surprise. “Put that chair back where you found it.”  

“I put it here because—”  

“I put it
there
because that’s where it belongs,” Craig told him. “You will move it back in front of my desk. You may sit on it until I have visitors, at which point you must either sit on the floor or stand. I don’t really care which.”  

“I am authorized to—”  

“I don’t give a shit what you’re authorized to do,” Craig declared. “Do it or get the fuck out of here.”  

“You can’t—”  

“I can kick your ass,” Craig said.  

Smiling, the observer entered something on his tablet, and Craig knew that he’d stepped in it. Still, his anger had not abated. “I’m taking this up with your boss,” he said.  

“Mr. Patoff’s in a meeting,” Martin said.  

“We’ll see about that.” Craig stormed out of his office. “Get me Mr. Patoff,” he ordered Lupe. “Now.”  

Todd looked up. “Mr. Patoff is in a meeting,” he said.  

Craig ignored the observer. “I want to talk to him,” he told Lupe. “Put it on speaker.”  

She pressed a button. He heard a dial tone, then four beeps as she called the consultant’s extension. A woman answered. “Mr. Patoff’s office.”  

Lupe gave him a questioning look, and Craig nodded. “Hold for Mr. Horne, please,” she said.  

Craig moved next to her desk, leaning over. “This is Craig Horne in Programming. I’d like to speak with Mr. Patoff.”  

“I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said. “Mr. Patoff is in a meeting,”  

Todd smirked. “Told you.”  

“I told you, too,” Martin said from the doorway of his office.  

Craig ignored them. “Do you know when he will be in?”  

“His schedule’s full today.”  

“Well, please have him call me back when he gets a chance. My extension’s 358.”  

“I will relay the message,” the woman said. Was there a smirk behind
her
voice? He didn’t get a chance to probe further as the connection was cut and the dial tone returned. Lupe pressed a button, and it was gone.  

Craig grabbed one of the chairs near his secretary’s desk and placed it next to Todd. “This is your chair,” he told Martin.  

The observer stared at him, unblinking.  

“Do I have to physically move you?” Craig threatened.  

Typing on his tablet, Martin emerged from the doorway and sat down. “I will report what you’re doing,” he said, still not bothering to glance up.  

“You can report when I’m in my office and when I’m not,” Craig told him. “That’s
all
you can do.” He met Lupe’s eyes, shooting her a look of apology, but she smiled back, understanding, and he left her out there with the two of them, closing the door behind him as he returned to his office.  

**** 

After his mom gave him a quick hug, dropped him off at school and, as always, told him to “have fun,” Dylan ran immediately to the playground. But because he’d taken too long to eat his breakfast, he was a little late this morning, and the bell rang before he even found his friends. Disappointed, he walked over to his classroom and lined up with everyone else in front of the door. Andy and Brian shoved themselves behind him.  

Mrs. Higgins was usually right on time, but the classes on both sides of them had already gone inside by the time the door opened and their teacher came out. Distracted, she ushered them into the room, where they each took their seats. After attendance and the pledge, instead of starting on math, the way they usually did, Mrs. Higgins stood next to her desk and asked for their attention.  

“I want you all to be on your best behavior,” she told them. “For the next few days, there will be a man coming in to watch our class. He’ll be taking notes on what we do and how we learn. He may even ask you questions. During the next three weeks, he’ll be visiting all of the classes in school.”  

“Why?” Laurie Connor asked.  

“The district wants to help us become better teachers, so that all of you will learn more.”  

“
I
think you’re a good teacher!” Juan Florez piped up.  

Mrs. Higgins smiled. “Thank you, Juan. But remember, next time raise your hand.”  

Behind them, the door opened, and the principal walked in, followed by a tall, thin man wearing black pants, a white shirt and a rainbow-colored bow tie.  

The man from his dad’s work.  

The one who’d thought he was a girl.  

Dylan stared straight ahead, unmoving, but the man placed a hand on his shoulder on his way to the front of the room.  

“Hello, Dylan,” the man said, and he was smiling. “Nice to see you again.”  

TWENTY  

TO: All Employees

RE: Blood Tests  

As you know, drug testing is mandatory for all of CompWare’s new hires. Beginning this Monday, April 22, quarterly blood tests will be required for all salaried, hourly and temporary employees. Blood will be tested for drug use, alcohol abuse and infectious diseases. A temporary clinic will be set up on the campus for this purpose, and employees may arrange appointment times or line up on a first-come-first-served basis during open testing periods.  

Any questions regarding this change in policy must be submitted in writing to CompWare’s Human Resources department before the end of business hours today. Reading this email constitutes acknowledgement and acceptance of the policy change. 

Thank you. 

Regus Patoff  

Regus Patoff  

BFG Associates  

For Austin Matthews, CompWare CEO  

TWENTY ONE  

“All right, Jenny. We’re up.”

Jenny Yee shut off her terminal. She’d asked members of the accounting unit she managed to let her know when it was time for the blood test, and now all six of them stood in front of her cubicle. Picking up her purse, she gave the go-ahead and followed them out the door and down the hall. She remembered seeing a
Seinfeld
episode where Elaine tested positive for opium because she’d eaten a poppy seed muffin, so she’d done some online research and for the past two days had made sure to eat nothing that could mimic the presence of any illegal substance. She’d never taken drugs in her life—she did not even drink—but Jenny was paranoid that the results of this test would be used as an excuse to get rid of her.

She didn’t trust the consultants.

No one from BFG had done or said anything that would lead her to believe she was a target, but ever since the retreat, she’d been walking on eggshells around the consultants. Murdering a dog and then serving it to them for dinner? That was seriously sick and had completely freaked her out. She’d had nightmares every night since. Last evening, she’d dreamed that Mr. Patoff, the head consultant, had been slinking through her apartment like a snake, or, more accurately, like the Grinch when he was stealing personal effects from Cindy Lou Who’s house. The consultant had been whispering a series of numbers, and they were Hurley’s numbers from
Lost
, and somehow she knew that if he repeated those numbers fifty times, she would die in her sleep, and if he repeated them a hundred times, she would never have existed and all traces of her would be wiped from the earth. It had scared the hell out of her, and the emotional response generated by the nightmare had stayed with her, even as she recognized that its specifics were ridiculous.  

The blood tests were being given in a room on the seventh floor, and Jenny and the other accountants went up in the elevator.  

“You know,” she said, watching the floor numbers light up as they rose through the building, “we already had to take a drug test. So what are they testing us for now? Are they looking for genetic markers so they can lay us off before we get sick and they won’t have to pay for insurance?”  

“That’s illegal,” Jim Rodman said.  

“That’s my point. This is an invasion of privacy. Has anybody checked with Legal to see if we really have to do this?”  

“It wouldn’t’ve gotten this far if it wasn’t legal,” offered Francis Pham. “They vet all this stuff before it filters down to us.”  

“But what if they didn’t? What if people are walking in like lemmings to be tested because no one made the effort to question it? You know, about a year ago, my apartment building had a blackout. I did what I always did and waited for the lights to come back on. They didn’t, and I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning, the power was still out, so I called the electric company. They didn’t even know about the power outage.
No one had called it in
. Everyone had assumed that someone else would do it, so no one did it.”  

Jim looked at her. “So you want us to—?”  

Jenny shook her head. “No. But I’m going to ask about it before we let anybody take any blood.”  

The elevator had reached the seventh floor, the doors sliding open. The corridor looked dim, though all of the overhead lights appeared to be on, and she wondered if it was due to some sort of power-saving program. They walked down the hall to the left, seven of them, on the seventh floor, looking for room 777. The accountant in her couldn’t help but notice the unlikely probability of such a correlation, and it triggered in her mind nonsensical associations.
The seventh son of a seventh son… the seven seas…the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad…the Seventh Seal…
 

“That’s where I had my interview with the consultants,” Francis said, pointing to a door marked 713. Her voice was subdued, and Jenny remembered the unpleasant oddness of her own inter-view—the negative things Mr. Patoff had tried to get her to say about her team.  

They all walked quickly past the closed door. Something about the seventh floor seemed different than the other floors in the building. She wasn’t sure whether the corridor was too wide or the doors were in the wrong places or the walls were painted the wrong shade of white. Maybe it was just a trick of the dim lights. But something was off here, and the askew perceptions they shared made each of them walk more quickly and silently down the hall, looking for room 777.  

They found it halfway down a side corridor that dead-ended in a flat wall where there should have been a window overlooking the campus. The door was open, and the room behind it, large and high-ceilinged, had been subdivided into smaller sections separated by white sheets and curtains. Mr. Patoff himself greeted them at the entrance, and before Jenny could say a word, he spoke up: “The blood test you are about to take is mandatory and entirely legal. It is
not
an invasion of privacy, and any employee who does not consent to be tested will be terminated.”  

She thought of the cameras that had been popping up all over the building. Had there been one in the elevator? There must have, because he knew exactly what she was going to ask. She met his eyes and saw nothing there, only a flat blankness.  

“In order to
maintain
your privacy, in fact, each of you will be issued a number corresponding to the blood sample taken. If there are any issues or concerns on our part, you will be called in for an individual conference using that number.”  

Jenny was expecting to receive a printed number at the conclusion of the test, one copy given to her, one affixed to her blood sample, but Mr. Patoff motioned her forward, then leaned in, his mouth next to her ear. “Four, eight, fifteen, sixteen, twenty-three, forty-two,” he whispered to her.  

Hurley’s numbers
.  

Gasping, she took a step back. He smiled knowingly, and she was paralyzed by the thought that he knew about her dream.  

How was that possible?
 

She didn’t know.  

But it was.  

Shaken, she stepped forward as Jim moved up behind her. Mr. Patoff whispered his number, and, looking back, she saw the accountant’s face blanch.  

What number had he been given, and what did it mean to him?  

A woman in a nurse’s uniform lightly grasped her wrist and pulled her further into the room, down a makeshift passageway formed by two hanging sheets, until she was in a small square space containing a chair and a table, atop which sat a row of syringes, a box of Band-Aids and a pile of large adhesive bandages.  

Behind the table stood a man in a bloody butcher’s apron, holding a rusty knife.  

The floor and the surrounding sheets were spattered with splashes of deep red, some dried, most wet.  

“What’s—”  

—
going on here?
Jenny intended to say, but the nurse’s grip tightened on her wrist, her other hand grabbing Jenny’s elbow, straightening the arm and presenting it to the blood-splattered man, who used his rusty knife to slice the skin. The nurse collected some of the welling blood in a vial she withdrew from a pouch in front of her uniform, then capped it, dropping it back into the pouch before picking up a bandage and slapping it on the wound. She grabbed one of the syringes and gave Jenny a shot. “Tetanus,” she explained. “So you don’t get infected.” The nurse let go of her. “You’re through, now. Get out of here.”  

Stunned and in pain, holding the bandage on her arm in place, Jenny walked back between the sheets until she was out of the room. Seconds later, Jim emerged, dazed and holding onto his own bandage. Within five minutes, all of the accountants were finished with their tests.