Vaporware (35 page)

“Is
that it?”

He
nodded and put it down on the far side of my desk. “Would you read it for me?”

“Sure,”
I said. “Slide it over.”

“OK.”

I
looked down. The paper was not, as I had initially thought, handwritten.
Instead, it had been printed out in a handwriting font, shrunk down to eight
point and crammed together to be virtually illegible. The words it contained
were Latinate nonsense, the standard space-filler used for printer tests. Lorem
ipsum dolor, sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, and for a brief instant I
realized I was in a lot of trouble. Then something bright exploded at the back
of my head where I’d hit it the day before, and the light—not blue light, I
noticed—washed away everything else.

Chapter 27

It
was dark outside when I woke up, but not in my office. That was lit by a warm,
soft blue glow, one that seeped through my eyelids and prodded me awake.

“Oh,
God,” I moaned and rubbed the back of my head. It was sore, but whatever blood
Terry had drawn had long since dried. The door to my office, I saw, was shut,
and from the looks of things, Terry had locked it before heading out. He hadn’t
wanted anyone—not a coworker, not the cleaning staff—finding me.

And
then there was the glow. I looked around for the source, expecting to find Blue
Lightning there, seated improbably on a piece of furniture not designed for it.
Instead, there was just light.

“Hello?”
I called out. No one answered, and I could hear no other hubbub in the
building. I tried to check the time on my monitor, but the system had crashed,
and only blank, dead pixels looked back at me. I checked the desk phone, but it
was dead, too. There was no way of telling how long I’d been out, only that it
was probably long enough for everyone else to clear out.

Which
left me alone with her.

“Blue
Lightning?” I called out, and opened my office door. “Are you there?”

“I
love it when you say my name.”

I
turned, and there she was, sprawled out on Eric’s desk, a pinup for the digital
age. She was wearing clothes, she had to be, but I’d be damned if I could tell
where they started or ended, or exactly how much of her they covered. Her eyes
were bright, white-hot against the electric shade of her face, and her lips
were the cool blue of frost.

“Hi,”
I said, and stepped out into the hallway. “Did you really need to have Terry do
that?”

She
thought about it for a second. “No, but it worked, didn’t it? And it made him
feel good.”

“I
thought I was the one you needed,” I said, edging backward a cautious couple of
steps.

She
swung herself upright, legs crossed and dangling. I tried to keep my eyes on
her face. “You are. But he’s worked so hard, and I hate to disappoint him.”

“If
he hits me again, he’s going to be more than disappointed,” I said with a
bravado I didn’t quite feel. The back of my head throbbed, and the light from
her flared and dimmed with her words in patterns that made me see shapes in the
shadows.

“Where
are you going?” she suddenly asked and bounced to her feet. In three quick
steps she was standing in front of me. “I finally get you alone, and you’re
trying to run away.”

“I’m
supposed to be seeing a movie with someone,” I said. I felt myself start to
sweat. Maybe Terry had hit me too hard. Maybe this was a hallucination. Maybe—

“With
who?” she asked, and stepped closer. There was an inch at most between us, a
small space filled with the smaller lightning that danced across her skin and
then leaped to mine. I felt the hairs on my arms standing up and the ones on
the back of my neck, too.

“Sarah,”
I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. “My girlfriend.”

“Is
she now?” There was a flash of light and then she was behind me, her breasts
pressed against my back, her voice in my ear. “She’s waited before. She can
wait now.” One of her hands slid along my chest and down my belly.

I
took a lurching step forward, out of her embrace. “You don’t understand. I have
to go home.”

“Why?”
she asked, and it sounded like the most reasonable question in the world. “You
spend more time here. You like it here more. This is where you’re important,
where what you say matters. Why do you want to go home to her, to be nothing,
to be nobody.” She smiled. The tip of her tongue traced her lips. “Were you
thinking about me last night, Ryan? About where my finger touched your flesh? About
where you’d like me to touch you, and where she didn’t.”

“There’s
a lot more to a relationship, to a life, than just sex.” It sounded lame even
in my own ears.

“Oh,
I know, I know.” She advanced on me, a Siamese cat stalking a hypnotized mouse.
“But the sex is so much fun. Just ask Terry. And then you and I would have so
much more to talk about once we were….” She paused, inches from me, and leaned
forward until her lips were against mine. “Sated.”

Her
kiss was cool and warm and electric, all at the same time. I leaned into it,
and then her tongue was in my mouth and I could feel my knees buckling with the
sheer pleasure of it.

“No!”
I said, and tore myself away. “I told you, I have to go home!”

“Isn’t
this home?” she asked, all wide-eyed innocence. “Or have all those long nights
been a tease?”

“Look,”
I said, my voice ragged with desperation. “I’ll finish the docs, okay? I’ll
finish you. But you have to leave me alone. You have to leave everyone I know
alone. You have to leave.”

“Poor
Ryan,” she said, and tsk-tsked at me with lips I was aching to kiss again. “It
doesn’t work that way. If you’re going to complete me, you have to…complete
me.”

“I
can’t do that,” I told her, even as she stepped in close and brushed her
fingers along my groin. I felt myself stiffening under her touch, felt the same
fire from the kiss but a hundred times more pleasurable, and only the wall kept
me from collapsing. “I can’t.”

“You
will,” she whispered in my ear. “You want to.”

“But
I won’t,” I said, and ran. Stumbled, really, staggered past her and down the
hall, lurching pell-mell toward the door. “Ryan!” I heard her call out behind
me, but I ignored her. The door wasn’t far, and once I was through it, I knew
she’d be weaker. After all, I’d taken out the possessed iPhone, hadn’t I?
Outside of Horseshoe, she could be beaten.

Something
hit the back of my legs, sending searing agony along every nerve below my
waist. I screamed and went over, just self-aware enough to break my fall and
roll, and then she was on top of me. The cool tiles of the reception area
pressed against my back as she straddled me. Just out of reach, I could make
out the corner of Dennis’ box. It wouldn’t do me any good now.

“Let
me go,” I said. “Please. I’ll come back after she’s asleep. I’ll work on the
docs. Anything.”

“You
don’t want to go,” she said, wriggling against me. “I can feel how much you
want to stay.” She leaned down closer to me. “Besides, silly man, there’s
nowhere you can run from me. I’m with you. I’m with you everywhere you go, now.
You carry me with you.”

I
started to say “Then maybe we need some space to work on our relationship,” but
the words died in my throat. Instead, I could hear a phone ringing

My
phone. In my office.

I
looked up at Blue Lightning. She was above me, her hands on my chest, her body
bent low to bring her face close to mine.

“You’d
better get that,” she said, grinning impishly. And vanished.

The
ringing continued, long after it should have dumped to voice mail. I fumbled
toward my office, rolling to my side and trying to hoist myself up at the same
time. None of those efforts were entirely successful, but by the time I got to
my feet I was halfway to the door.

The
phone kept ringing. Twelve rings. Sixteen. Twenty.

Weary,
defeated, I stumbled over to it and picked up the receiver.

“Yes?”
I said without checking to see who had called.

“You
bastard. You utter bastard.” Sarah’s voice was a knife of white-hot fury.

“Honey?
What are you talking about? What’s wrong?”

“You
know exactly what I’m talking about, you, you, you lying sack of shit.”

I
blinked, even as a ball of ice formed in my gut and started growing. “Sarah,
you’re going to have to—”

“I
don’t have to do anything,” she hissed. “Do you know what happened when I got
home? I thought, it’ll be nice if I do some laundry. I can get that started
before the movie. That’ll be nice for when Ryan comes home. And you know what
happened then?”

She
paused, clearly waiting for an answer. I gave her the only one I could. “What?”

“I
went to the hamper, and I started sneezing? And do you know why? Because down
at the bottom, wadded up all nice and neat, were your clothes with cat hair all
over them.”  There was another pause, one I dared not interrupt. “We don’t have
a cat, Ryan. As a matter of fact, there’s only one person we know who has one.
And that would be Michelle.” Her breathing was a jagged rasp, a sound like each
word was getting sawed out of a block of ice. “Now why, I ask, would my
boyfriend’s clothes have his ex-girlfriend’s cat hair on them? Could it be
because he spent a lot of time with her at work? Sure, it could be, except that
didn’t explain why there was plenty on his goddamned boxers.”

“Sarah,
I—”

“No.”
She cut me off. “You come home. You come home right now, and you explain to my
face what happened. And then maybe, maybe, if you get down on your goddamned
knees and beg my forgiveness hard enough, I won’t walk out on you.”

The
call ended, brutally, and I found myself holding the receiver in two hands,
well out away from my body as if to protect myself from it.

“Shit,”
I said, and hauled myself up, the better to stumble out, and home, and wherever
there was to go beyond that.

*  
*   *

Sarah
was not waiting in the driveway, nor was she in the front hall. The door was
unlocked, but I shut and locked it behind me before going deeper in to the
house. There was no sense, I thought, in giving myself an easy line of retreat.

“Sarah?”
I called out. “Honey?”

There
was no answer. Upstairs, the darkened hollow at the top of the staircase
beckoned, but downstairs was where there were lights blazing, where it seemed
more likely that I would find Sarah.

“Sarah?”
I poked my head into the kitchen, and there she was, sitting at the table, not
quite sobbing. She didn’t answer me, just hunched over her hands with her
elbows on the table. She’d changed since she’d gotten home. Instead of her
usual work clothes, she was wearing a red t-shirt and jeans, her favorite
movie-watching combo. Her feet were bare, the better for tucking under her as
we cuddled on the couch. Her hair was loose and wild and fell over the sides of
her face. She was hidden from me, with only the soft sounds of her breathing
and the shaking of her shoulders to let me know she was even alive.

Outside,
the light was dying.

“Sarah?”
I crossed to her, my sneakers doing an odd whisper-squeak on the floor. She
didn’t move, didn’t look up, didn’t react to my presence.

“Sarah?”
Gingerly, hating myself for doing it, I reached out and gently placed my hand
on her shoulder.

“Don’t
you touch me!”

Her
hand came across my face with a stinging crack. “I hate you! I hate you!” I
fell back, hands up in front of my face to defend myself as she swung at me,
jabbed at my gut, bulled me and pushed me back. “I hate you! Why, Ryan? Why did
you have to do it? Why?”

“Sarah—”
I gasped as she landed one on my solar plexus that knocked the wind out of me.
“Please. We have to talk.”

“Talk?
Talk?” Her voice went up a half-octave with each word, the shrill cry of an
avenging fury. “What the hell do we have left to talk about?”

“I’m
sorry,” I said, still gasping. “I’m so sorry.”

“You’re
sorry?” She took a step back, hands held high. “That’s all you’ve got to say?
You’re sorry? Every fucking night you’re sorry, but you know what? I don’t
think you ever are!”

“Where
else do I start, Sarah? I messed up, OK? I know I messed up. I got scared, and
then I got drunk, and then I messed up.”

“Yeah,
you did.” An accusing finger came down, the nail jagged and bitten into a
serrated knife edge. “Why, Ryan? Why did you lie to me? All week, you’ve been
the perfect boyfriend, and I was thinking ‘maybe he figured it out’ or ‘maybe
he’s decided I’m important’ or ‘maybe he just kind of grew up.’ But no, you
were lying, and you were feeling guilty, and none of it meant anything.”

“No!
It’s like I told you. I woke up that morning, and I knew I screwed up, and
that’s when I figured it out. That what we had was what was important. That
killing myself for work wasn’t worth it. That I didn’t want to lose more time
with you.”

“You
had a funny way of showing it,” she said. Her hand curled into a fist. “I mean,
I guess I should have suspected something when you didn’t come home or call
that night, but hey, you always stayed out late. It was work, you said. It was
always work. Well, tell me Ryan, was it always work? How many times did you
sneak off with Michelle behind my back and tell me it was because you were
working so very, very hard? Twice? Ten times? Every goddamned time? And I
believed you!”

“Just
this once,” I said softly. “And if I hadn’t seen her—”

“You
saw her every day!”

I
coughed. “Not Michelle. Blue Lightning.”