H2O: The Novel Part 13

I didn't want to leave.

Xavier's ringtone warbled in my purse, stopping my fork halfway to my mouth.

"Excuse me," I said, embarra.s.sed to have interrupted the family's meal.

"Take the call; it's no big deal," Tom said, dismissing the interruption with a wave of his hand. "Use the galley." He pointed behind me to the tiny kitchen. We filled their microdining room, also used as a chart and tackle room. Until now.

I jerked the loud interruption out of my purse and tapped the Answer icon, pressing it to my ear as I pushed back from the table. "Xavier?"

"Where in the world are you, Kate?"

No "h.e.l.lo, how are you?" or "I miss you." Just the demand. Vintage Xavier. I rushed through the hatch into the privacy of the small cooking area.

"I'm at dinner. With friends. Why?"

"You left the office early."

"Yes. I had an appointment."

"I hope you're at a meeting with a client, because we're all still here at the office, and you're the only one who's not pulling with my team. I'm disappointed."

"It's nearly eight o'clock, X. Who's at work at eight on a Friday night?" I could almost see him glancing at his watch, ever vigilant of time.

"We all are. After you left for one of your afternoon siestas, we received the Request for Proposal from Riddle Corporation that we've been waiting on-for a big purchase. They dropped it off around five."

"On a Friday night?"

"On a work night, Kate. Revenue. Sales. Profit. That's what this is all about."

"I know what an RFP means, Xavier. What I meant was that it's Friday."

"And the Kate I remember would relish a chance to dive into a proposal. Why lose the weekend? The response is due next Friday. We're working tonight. 'We' means all of us. So get down here. Now."

"I'm at dinner, X."

"Then swallow and leave."

I held the phone away from my ear and stared at it, jerked back into the real world from an afternoon in Shangri-la. As Xavier continued to rant, I powered off the phone.

The family was chatting away as I returned to the galley, Liam with a left hand locked on his new wooden chain, and his right hand shoveling food. They stopped in unison when my long face entered the room.

"I have to go," I said. "Business. The team is working tonight on an important proposal."

"The fish are running," Tom said with a smile. "Wake up and put out a line." Liam laughed. He understood the metaphor.

Liam's chortle brought a smile to all three of us adults. These were working people, and they understood the dynamics of "do it now." That made me feel better.

"It's a big fish, and a great deal of money," I said, gathering up my things. "I'm sorry that I have to leave so suddenly. This afternoon has been a great vacation for me."

All three of the family stood up. Xavier never did that for me.

"Don't apologize, Kate. You made our day special. We hope you'll come back soon." Tom turned and smiled at his son.

Gloria led me to the gangway to say good-bye. I could smell the approaching storm, the air laden with the warm, wet feel of rain. It made my skin crawl, and I wanted to run. Her hand lingered on my arm a moment before she let me go, like she could read what was going through my mind. " Tom meant what he said back there. We hope you can come back. Often."

I nodded, in a hurry to get going. She didn't let go and pressed her point.

"If there's something we can help with, we're as close as a phone call." She handed me one of Tom's cards, her eyes locked on mine. "Don't be a stranger, okay?" She released her hold on my elbow, but I didn't leave right away. I stared in silence into her gaze. I felt like she understood the storm that roiled inside me, the worry that I might indeed be losing my mind.

Gloria smiled, as if she'd read that very thought. "Remember, Kate. You're not alone."

You're not alone. That's what Dr. Lin had said.

How could she possibly know?

"You have to cooperate to graduate," Xavier said late that night as he leaned with one hand on the huge office copier while I fed originals into the yawning mouth of the tree killer.

Xavier picked the dumbest metaphors sometimes, and this was one of those occasions. Nevertheless, I understood his point. Gramps would call his comment a "warning shot across your bow." In a matter of days, I'd gone from being the boss's sweetheart and his winning Technology Commercialization Director to a woman desperate for change. Desperate for a new relations.h.i.+p, and desperate to get my mind back.

I pulled papers from the collator and tucked them into a bundle in my crossed arms like a 'sixties schoolgirl. I made brief eye contact with X but said nothing. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that he'd hit home. He'd made it abundantly clear in that last comment. There was no way to keep my job, other than to yoke myself to him. The implications of staying with Xavier made me gag.

"Don't threaten me, X. And I do intend to 'graduate'," I said, pulling my shoulders back and making myself as tall as I dared. "The main question is, do I help your team win, or help someone else's?"

That return shot registered, and X stood speechless. I walked out of the copier room and headed for the proposal center, our hub for the production of this latest bid. I could hear X pounding down the hall about five heartbeats behind me. Something in me said this would be the defining moment of my career at Consolidated Aerodyne. The footsteps accelerated, and I smacked my stilettos even louder as I walked. The staccato fire of my heels in the corridors late on a Friday night was like a series of gunshots. Bullets aimed at my soon-to-be ex-lover.

"Kate." One word, the tone of which was certainly not a "can you help me?" or "over here!" message. My name had become a verb, a synonym for "stop." I kept walking, smacking heels all the louder. He demanded again, and I pounded my stilettos into the cherry floor so hard they surely made dimples in the wood. The proposal center lay a few strides away, and I wanted the protection of others around me. I'd heard his tone before. The tiger had been riled.

One stride short of the open door into our little proposal war room, Xavier grabbed me and tried to hold me back. I was moving too fast to stop, taken by surprise. While I balanced on those tiny Fendi heels, his firm grip about my right elbow spun me like a top. His iron fingers shot darts of pain down my arm, and bent me in two as I cascaded to the floor. Then he let go-at the worst possible time. With my head lower than my waist, my back arched, and Justus and Andrea upside down in my vision, the back of my head hit the floor with a smack.

There wasn't any water this time, just the sharp blow to my head and stars in my eyes, followed by blackness.

Everything hurt.

"She fainted again," Xavier said somewhere in the dim reaches of my consciousness. My eyes didn't work, but I could hear. I could smell Andrea's distinctive perfume and felt her gentle touch. It felt better, just knowing that she was there.

Fainted? Is that what he said?

I tried to mumble but it came out gibberish.

"I tried to grab her when she went down," Xavier said. "I raced to catch up with her, even yelled her name to get her attention, but I reached her too late."

I couldn't see him, but the voice towered over me. Typical.

I shook my head but Andrea gripped my forearm. I heard her whisper, "Shhh." Her breath warmed my ear. "Don't worry. We saw it."

I squeezed my eyes closed. If I put my mind to it, this nightmare would end. My boss and erstwhile boyfriend telling people he'd tried to help me.

But had he?

Maybe I did faint. I felt Andrea's hand slide under my back and I opened my eyes. Xavier stood silently above me, with not a word to say. Andrea put her lips close to my ear again as I got my bearings.

"He's a snake," she whispered. That sealed it. The fall was his fault.

"Here," Andrea said, moving in front of me. Before I knew what happened, she smothered my face with a damp cloth.

"This will make you feel better," she said as the cool rag touched me. For a brief interlude, the wetness was refres.h.i.+ng. But the cloth soon morphed into a suffocating veil, and I tried to turn to avoid the contact. Andrea daubed at my face with motherly intent, but her wet care sparked vivid explosions in my brain.

I lay in a well, deep in the ground, looking up. The shaft stretched out above me so far that only a tiny point of light shone above me. Yet, the tiny beam shone brilliantly, almost heavenly. It radiated a sense of peace, of caring. It was a strong light, almost like a rope that I could grab and hold to pull me up. But I had no hands. I rippled and dripped as a clay flask dropped into me and was filled. A thin cord pulled at the flask and jerked it out of me. I tried to hold on, but my watery liquid fingers dripped off the braided line as the flask disappeared into the heavenly light.

I could hear voices far at the upper end of this deep vertical tunnel. One Voice spoke strong, slow, and full of love. I wanted to see the face that declared words with such authority, but I could see nothing of it, my sight clouded again by another flask dropping into me, draining away more of me to fill the clay vessel. I tried in vain to hold on to the flask but dripped off as it ascended. Part of me went with the flask, but that part no longer claimed me once it left. My soul remained locked in the bottom of the well, wedded to an eternity deep in the earth. I yearned to rise up and be free. The Voice, though nearly a whisper so deep in the ground, rang clear in my fluid ears, calling me upward.

The Voice infused me, as though its hands had formed me long ago. I knew this Voice somehow, like I'd heard it many times before, calling to me, knocking at a door long unanswered. The words rang clear, and they spoke about me, a watery grave deep in the ground. "Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again," the Voice said, the strong utterance of a patient man. "But whoever drinks of the water I give him will never thirst."

A flask fell into me a third time, and I leapt into it, br.i.m.m.i.n.g over the clay lip and screaming in tinkling tones to "take me." I wanted to be that special water he spoke of, to touch him, to be held by the Voice. He called me, pulled at me with a rope of love. I wanted to be with the source of that call, but the flask departed, and again I dripped away.

The Voice dimmed, and I lay wet and cold at the bottom of the shaft. No more flasks came to me, only the faint sound of a woman yelling to someone in the distance. "Come! See! A man who told me everything I ever did!"

I awoke. My eyes snapped open, but I shut them again, trying in vain to recapture that Voice, that warm, loving spirit I'd felt so keenly in the solitude of the deep and dark. I wanted it back. For the first time since my mind had led me down dark paths, I wanted to be back inside my head, not in the real world. My heart ached, the woman's words echoing inside me. Perhaps those were my words. Perhaps that was my voice echoing from the top of this deep well.

I became aware again. I was sitting up, with Andrea holding the cloth and her other hand on my shoulder. My heart felt like it would break, and I couldn't understand why until I looked up-into the dark eyes of Xavier, their blue no longer inviting. The words of the Voice reverberated inside me, radiating distant memories of that brief but glorious glimpse of peace.

I doubled over, breaking eye contact with a man I now despised, desperate to learn more about the One I'd just heard but could not see. A man who had once proclaimed that he loved me had now thrown me down, and the Other whom I craved to know better had just disappeared beyond my reach.

I lay broken, beyond hope.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

MONDAY.

THE LETTER fell from my hands at the kitchen table. Its words screamed at me from where it landed on the floor. "Due to corporate downsizing and unfavorable results from our quarterly audit, we regret to inform you that your position has been eliminated effective immediately. Consolidated Aerodyne values its relations.h.i.+ps with its loyal employees and regrets this sudden notification. In keeping with our long-standing policy of 'Employees first!' we wish to offer you a generous twelve-week severance package, less any debts outstanding on corporate accounts."

I looked at the form letter where it lay at my feet. The small print at the bottom, too tiny to read from so far away, had tattooed itself in my memory. "Please return your computer and retrieve personal effects at our security office during normal working hours. Your IT account has been disabled."

Fired.

How long had it been? Less than seventy-two hours since Xavier knocked me off my feet at the office Friday night, and now it's Monday afternoon and there's a letter waiting in my mailbox after I get home from work. It must have been mailed on Sat.u.r.day, even Friday while I was at the office, to reach me so soon. No hints all weekend while we slaved on a critical proposal, no notice about what was about to transpire when we went to work today, as I helped him to win this new bid. This had the marks of Xavier all over it. Tossed out before I could blame Friday's fall on him, tossed out before I could jump s.h.i.+p for another company.

Tossed out before I could cause him any more grief.

What had he said that night, in his "shot over the bow"? "You have to cooperate to graduate, Kate." He had tested me then, giving me my graduation exam. In his mind, I'd failed.

But I didn't care.

My cell warbled, and I pulled it from my jacket pocket. If it had been anyone but my one-and-only girlfriend, I'd have never answered.

"Andrea?"

"Kate, I just got home. Guess what letter bomb waited for me in my mailbox?"

"It probably looks like mine," I said, my heart sinking for my friend. She didn't deserve this. "'We value our relations.h.i.+ps with our loyal employees . . .' Something like that?" My spirits sank as I talked. My friend had gone down with me.

"The same. Gosh, I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't know they got you, too."

"I'm the reason we're gone, Andrea. You were swept along for the ride."

"Don't be too sure," she said. Andrea sounded confident, almost c.o.c.ky. Not like her.

"There's more?" I asked.

"Lots more. It's dirt, and you won't like it."

"All ears," I said, my anger on the rise.

"Remember the j.a.panese deal that fell through? The guys who flew to town but you were unable to meet with them?"

How could I forget? After I'd collapsed with a vision, I lost track of time, all because of the stupid hallucinations. The water's fault. My fault. Losing my mind made me lose my job.

"Get this. Xavier managed to reel them back in. He contacted them without telling you and convinced them to return to the States the next week. Paid their way back first cla.s.s with the corporate card, along with a boatload of gifts, which sparked the corporate audit. The same audit you were told had been poking into your corporate card expenditures. That was just a cover for the real problem."

She paused and I tried to get a word in, but she cut me off.

"All his money and talk won them over. They wrote a contract on the spot for a thousand airline seats. A five-airplane deal, with options on ten thousand more seats and fifty more airplanes. Very generous pricing for us, a big profit for Xavier, and non-negotiable terms. Among them? You had to go. It was Xavier's idea, by the way, not theirs."

"How'd you learn all this?" I asked, trying hard not to scream.

"Xavier's been 'sampling the candy' at the office, girlfriend. None of us knew until Friday. Justus ran some e-mail filters and caught a message he wasn't supposed to see. He approached the woman about it, and she talked to me at the proposal center after you went home Friday night." She paused again. "They've been seeing each other for a long time. Justus found out, and that exposure put us all on the street." Her voice cracked. "It's not fair."

Screams died in my throat, and I choked. No more anger, just pain. Deep bleeding rawness. How long had he been jumping beds? For days? Weeks? Months?

A tear formed at the corner of my eye. I could feel its wetness, a warm globule welling up, ready to roll. I held my head still, knowing what would surely come next. I moved the sleeve of my jacket to catch it, but it jumped as another tear replaced it. Dripping down my cheek, the liquid pain worked its illusion, and the first wild image danced in my mind.

Lakes and rivers, then gurgling brooks, rainstorms, and tossing white-capped waves. A mind full of water imagery.

I clawed at the tear on my cheek, ripping at it with the edge of my jacket sleeve. d.a.m.nable water, ripping out my sanity drop by drop. Water that had distracted me from the j.a.panese meeting. Water that felled me too many times in the past days, water that eroded the foundation of my career. Everything pointed back to water. Water in my mind that made me think for a moment that someone out there knew me, knew everything I'd ever done; a commanding Voice of authority who cared for me, even forgave. All of it just a hallucination.

I was no one, jobless . . . and crazy. An unemployed woman with nutty images dancing in her head every time she got wet.

I don't remember saying good-bye to Andrea. At some point, I simply pushed the Hang Up icon and turned the phone off. The world turned me off, so I returned the favor. No more world. No more water.

It was time for action, on my terms.

I would recapture my sanity by controlling my environment.