The God Particle (8 page)

Or maybe he’s being too hard on himself. The levitation incident was, after all, a “traumatic incident,” as his mother likes to call it. Maybe all her worrying has gotten the better of him.

Four days ago, as he waited in the business-class line for American’s Zurich-to-L.A. flight—waiting as his mother and father badgered each other about who was going to sit next to the window—the impending thirteen hours on a jet with them had seemed like eternity. But he’d been wrong. He’d slept during the flight. And when he hadn’t slept, he’d kept the headphones on, eyes closed, pretending to sleep. Steve, after all, isn’t stupid. Not stupid, but not that smart either, because when they arrived in L.A. he somehow agreed to let his parents stay with him for a couple of weeks.

They arrived on Thursday. Steve considered going in to work for a little while on Friday, his first full day back, but his mother had drawn a deep line in the sand over that one.
You’re jet-lagged,
she said.
Jet-lagged and tired from this experience and you have no business going in to work. Have you lost your mind? Jack, tell him he’s lost his mind.

His father had uncharacteristically agreed with her. And considering Mannheim didn’t expect him anyway, Steve allowed his parents this victory in exchange for opportunities to triumph in other arguments. But it didn’t work out that way at all. On the issue of breakfast he lost—three days in a row—forgoing his usual bowl of whole-grain cereal for a plateful of eggs and bacon and hash browns that left an oil slick in its wake. When he wanted to drive over to the country club and hit a few balls at the range—something that always relaxed him—his mother complained so bitterly that he gave up without a fight.

Steve loves his parents. And he can handle his mother in Nebraska, in the house where he grew up, because during those visits he doesn’t mind being mothered. The badgering, the oft-repeated axioms (“A watched pot never boils, Stevie”), the endless hours of pulling weeds. Somehow the old house allows this sort of regression, as if he isn’t really a well-paid executive for an auto parts manufacturer but instead a scrawny teenager. In his own home, though, the aggressive parenting is simply too much, and yesterday he was in the middle of a reprimand for mowing the lawn when his mother finally gave up.

“Well,” she told him. “I guess it isn’t my place to give you a lecture like this. I guess I’m out of place. I surely
feel
out of place. Did you know this is only the second time I’ve ever been to this house, Stevie?”

“That’s because I only moved in thirteen months ago.”

“Thirteen months,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ve been to my son’s brand-new house only two times in thirteen months. Do you even want me here now?”

“Of course I do, Mom. You can come any time.”

“You never invite us, Stevie. The only other time we visited was when you moved in, and I asked if we could come see the big, fancy house our son had built. You haven’t invited us once since then.”

“I’m sorry. I get busy. Work is crazy. And then Janine and I were . . . well, you know how it is.”

“I hope she’s worth it,” his mother admonished. “I hope the job and all this is worth it. Living this far away and all.”

“Mom.”

She stepped away, hands on her hips.

“I know you don’t like me babying you. I just . . . I always felt like I was going to lose you. I don’t know why. When you were born I thought it was going to be crib death, and when you were older I thought you were going to ride your bike into a busy street and get run over by a car. Don’t ask me why. I just always thought I was going to survive you, and there is nothing more awful or terrifying in this world to a mother than to lose a child.”

“Jesus, Mom—”

“And then you abandoned the church and moved off to California and every day I worry, and then I get this call from Switzerland, from a
hospital
—”

She began to cry, and Steve went to her. He was surprised at how insubstantial she seemed in his arms. He couldn’t remember the last time he had really embraced his mother. Maybe not since elementary school. How could that be?

“Mom,” he said. “It’s okay. I’m better now. I know it must have been horrible, but I’m fine now, okay?”

“I know you are,” she said, releasing him. “And you’d be better off without me bugging you.”

“You’re not bugging me.”

“I am, and I know it. I see it in your eyes. Your dad is telling me all the time. Just a minute ago, before he went on his walk, he said we should go back to Grand Island and leave you to your life. To Janine and your work.”

There it was, what he wanted, and Steve hadn’t been sure how or if he should take it.

“I’ll call the airline. We can fly out tomorrow. We’ll get a cab to pick us up so you don’t have to drive us to the airport.”

“Mom—”

“But you can call me anytime, Stevie.” She took his hand in hers and squeezed it. “If you need anything, just call and I’ll come back, okay? Maybe you’ll be fine. You’re a grown man. Just know that I’m always here for you. Just know that you can call me anytime.”

He loved her for that. In spite of the nagging and complaining, he loved her. For her unconditional support, yes, but also because he had lied, everything
wasn’t
okay, and Steve knew that if he told her the truth she would take him into her arms and make him feel like everything was.

But it isn’t.

It isn’t okay when you can’t shake the overwhelming feeling of being followed—followed or perhaps watched. It’s around him, everywhere, something to which he can’t quite assign a name. A presence that is at once infinite and infinitesimal, something both ethereal and human. It could be following him south on the 5, or he could be driving through it, this field that lies like fog between hills brown and green, between the hills, within the hills, woven through the fabric of reality, even the uncountable cars and trucks all crawling through numerous, parallel lanes of traffic.

And now the interchange approaches, a curved, multilevel structure of concrete that moves travelers from one road to another. Steve wonders how they are going to manage the flow of traffic when cars are no longer confined by gravity to the surface of the road. And while he ponders this it occurs to him that he’s in the wrong lane, that he needs to be farther right if he wants to get on the 405. The 405 is how he’ll get to Westwood. But no one will let him in. Well,
there
is a spot, a little gap he could dart into if he times it just right. And then horns blaring and tires screeching as he cuts off a Volkswagen Jetta that he didn’t see, that he
completely
missed, and how the hell did he miss it?

Traffic on the 405 isn’t quite as bad. Steve nudges the Infiniti up to sixty-five and relaxes his grip on the wheel. The day is perfectly clear, the cloudless sky shiny and antiseptic. He’s got to get control of himself. “Traumatic incident” or not, in less than an hour he’s going to walk back into the office after a month-long absence, and it’s imperative that he bring off this first day back without a hitch. Of course there is still the issue of Serena—he’s not exactly sure how he’s going to negotiate that minefield—but right now she’s the least of his worries. If Jim Mannheim doesn’t think he’s back to one hundred percent, after all, whatever chance Steve still has to land the VP job will dissipate into the field like waves fizzling on the pristine beach of some uncharted Pacific island.

And then what will he do?

4

The garage attendant, an aging fellow with bushy white hair, waves to him as he drives by and into amber darkness. His parking spot on the first floor is only steps from the elevators. Soon he stands in front of three sets of doors, each accompanied by a green digital readout, and waits as the middle elevator whines and descends toward him. A motorized lift bears little resemblance to the floating mechanism of the field, brute force instead of energy reallocation, pulling against gravity instead of neutralizing it, and—

And it’s frightening the tricks your mind can play on you.

Maybe insanity is reality that no one else can see.

A small lobby separates the elevators from AE’s main office, and the wall directly across is a plate-glass window through which he can see the reception desk. Marsha, the fortyish woman who greets all visitors, spots him even before he can make it through the door. She catapults out of her chair and slingshots from behind the desk. A gale of White Diamonds perfume assaults him with comparable velocity.

“Steve!” she cries and hugs him.

“Hi, Marsha.”

“Oh, we were so worried for you.”

“Thank you. It’s good to be back.”

She releases him and steps backward, a look on her face almost like awe.

“They said you fell three stories. Is that true?”

Before he can answer, another woman appears from around a cubicle corner. This is Elaine from accounts payable. She crosses her arms over her chest and remains several feet away.

“Steve,” she says. “Why are you back so soon? I thought—”

And then it comes, the crowd, single-file rows of his coworkers pouring forth from various entrances in the cubicle maze. They approach and surround him, a gauzy, welcoming haze, and while a few shake his hand or pat him on the back, most keep a respectable length of industrial carpet between themselves and Steve. He feels like a soldier returning from battle. A soldier who has lived through what they never want to endure, who has glimpsed what they hope never to see. In their eyes he sees respect for his courage, horror at his withered physical appearance, and, perhaps, just a touch of fear.

Somewhere beyond the crowd he can sense Serena, standing there, smiling the biggest, sweetest smile she can manufacture. Waiting for him to acknowledge that he turned down her advances, and that the penalty for such rejection was very nearly his life. Somehow he feels as if they all know what really happened, and it makes him want to run from this place. Now that he’s back here, it seems absurd to think that he would return to a normal life. That he would continue this charade. This illusion of reality.

Because now his eyes are open.

Now he knows the truth.

5

“I didn’t expect you back so soon, Steve.”

Jim Mannheim sits across the desk, fingers laced behind his head as he smiles at Steve, eyebrows arched with inquiry.

“I’m fine,” Steve lies. “Really.”

“You can have any time you need to recover. You know that.”

“I appreciate that, Jim. I do. But I can’t just sit at home, not when there’s work to be done.”

Mannheim absorbs this information by unlacing his fingers and then crossing his arms over his chest. Steve can just make out the real point of conversation, the marketing VP job, hovering in the field between them.

“Your mother is a sweet woman,” Mannheim says.

“She and my father were both really worried for me. You can imagine how she might exaggerate the severity of my accident.”

“You were in a coma, Steve. For four days.”

“I know. But the doctor says I’ve made remarkable progress.”

“And here you are,” Mannheim admits. “We’re thankful to have you back.”

“Thank you.”

“What about Janine? How is she taking all this?”

Steve grins stupidly. Though it was easy not to think about Janine in the alien environment of the hospital, ignoring her during this attempted return to familiarity has been something altogether different. But to discuss Janine with Mannheim is to introduce even more instability, something Steve doesn’t need before his interview.

“She’s fine,” he says.

“She must have been really upset,” Mannheim adds. “Especially since you guys have been talking about getting married.”

“Of course.”

“A double-edged sword to love a woman so independent, you know. Earns her own money and develops business contacts. Hell of a one-two punch you guys are. But then again, considering how much AE values mobility . . . the next step after VP will likely be something overseas. You know this, of course.”

“I do.”

“And that’s okay with Janine? Turning her firm over to someone else so she can follow you to Europe?”

A fleeting interruption in his consciousness. A sliver of time. A Zurich-bound Boeing 777 sailing above the clouds, polluting the sky with thousands of gallons of jet fuel exhaust. What sort of craft, he wonders, could be fashioned to move passengers across oceans and through the field without burning inconvenient fossil fuels?

“She welcomes the opportunity,” Steve says.

Janine’s smiling face as she might have accepted his ring.

“Good,” says Mannheim. “So what are your plans for the week?”

Serena’s heaving breasts.

“Catch up on e-mail, of course. Evaluate the download rate from the MX launch and the BMW subsite. Reschedule the Monday staff meeting for tomorrow so I can actively participate.”

The blinding white presence.

“Maybe you should push the meeting back to Wednesday.”

“Why? Do you want be there?”

“No,” Mannheim says. “But I was thinking, if you’ll be ready, we could hold your interview tomorrow. At ten. What do you think?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Wolfgang Rix is in from Zurich this week. The boys back in Switzerland like to evaluate all officer-level candidates, so it’s a great chance to move this thing forward.”

“The sooner the better,” Steve says. “I know you guys wanted someone in place by now.”

Mannheim smiles. “But sometimes things change. Don’t they, Steve?”

Regression of the field into periphery. The office emptier than it was just moments ago.

“Yes, sometimes they do.”

He smiles as he rises to shake Mannheim’s hand, viscerally aware of the receding field, of sanity drifting in to fill the void.

Steve leaves Mannheim’s office and heads to his own. Any moment now, he knows, the field could return with reinforcements. Come streaming down out of the HVAC system. Follow him from its hiding place in Mannheim’s office. Or slide, snakelike, out of Serena’s cubicle, wrap its body around his leg and jerk him back, toward her, toward the night in Zurich when everything went wrong. He ducks into his office, where he plugs in his laptop and decides the daily routine is maybe welcome after all.