CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I spent the night dreaming about “Moss & Shuler Investigations” or at least about how good it would look on a door—painted in black, maybe Arial small caps, maybe Helvetica, but something with dignity. It’d be the kind of pane of glass that you’d want to throw a guy through. I don’t want to make too much more of this, because I also had a less relevant dream in which Marilyn Quayle had inexplicably been elected president, except that we were also on a boat somehow, and the boat was also America. So it’s not like the dream was a prophecy, is what I am saying. (Although, if by the time you are reading this Marilyn Quayle has become president, perhaps it was.)

This was my third, count them, third day at Cahaba, and I already felt like I had worked there for thousands of years. I did not particularly want to go in, which is usually the sign that you are now a veteran.

Of course, also weighing on that decision was the fact that I was going to have to deal with Ignacio Granger, Irritating Journalist, and also the fact that apparently the company had been sold down the river. Probably that was going to come out into the open soon, if not from Cahaba, at least from Tyler, who did not strike me as the sort of person who could sit on secrets for a long period of time.

My bag of pastries trick had done the job earlier, and so I decided to redouble my efforts now, swinging by La Patisserie Chouquette for what was undoubtedly an epic haul of baked goods. I wanted a bag of pastries that would cover financial ruin, betrayal, and another murder, should they come up.

And as it turns out, I would need it.

Unsurprisingly, I was not the first person in the office, despite getting in twenty-five minutes early. Gary and Quintrell had both spent the night, again, and it’s hard to get there earlier than people who never leave. I was somewhat, if not terrifically, more surprised to find that Vanetta was there, having also spent the night, and that even Tyler had come in a bit early.

I walked over to Quintrell’s and Gary’s desks, which had at this point merged into a single station of exhaustion and half-eaten pizza, and asked:

“What gives, you guys?” I asked. “The deadline is over. It’s like you have Stockholm syndrome.”

“We have to make this work,” said Quintrell. “It has to be perfect.”

“It has to be functional,” said Gary.

“Is it perfect?” I asked.

“It’s functional,” said Gary. “But yeah, we should have gone home.”

I was feeling a knot in my stomach just looking at these two. They had been working so hard—so very hard—at code that was going to be taken away from them. Or just thrown out. All this time they believed that what they were making would outlast them, and it’s just ephemeral performance art. But they didn’t notice my concern. Why would they? They hadn’t slept.

“Old habits are hard to break,” said Quintrell. “And I think I was beginning to freak out about getting arrested.”

“Just now?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Quintrell. “It sort of hits you slowly.”

Freaking out over getting arrested was not the sort of thing that would hit me slowly. It would hit me suddenly, like a shovel to the face. But Quintrell and I were obviously very different people.

“I’ll tell you when it hit you,” said Gary. “At 2:34 last night. You just started shaking.”

“That was the caffeine,” said Quintrell.

“It was also the caffeine. But it was the arrest, too, because you kept talking about it,” said Gary. “You wouldn’t shut up about it. I mean, I didn’t mind except that you weren’t making a lot of sense.”

“I wish I’d been there,” I said, in a mercenary combination of empathy and a desire for clues. “Why did the police arrest you?”

“They found some pills in my desk and they thought it was methadone.”

“It wasn’t methadone?” I asked.

“Of course it wasn’t methadone,” said Quintrell. “Why would I have methadone?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What was it, then?”

In retrospect, this is an impossibly personal question, but at the time I threw it out there with no regrets.

“Not methadone,” said Quintrell.

“He’s shy,” said Gary. “It must be something embarrassing. What is it, Viagra?”

“No, it’s not Viagra,” said Quintrell, for once actually irritated.

“Propecia?” I guessed.

Quintrell just looked at me. “I’m already bald. Why would I be taking Propecia?”

“What’s the mystery pill that the police thought was methadone?”

“Dulcolax,” said Quintrell.

“What’s that?” I asked, although after I posed the question, I realized that any drug with the word “lax” in it is probably none of my business.

“If you must know, it is a stool softener. I keep them unlabeled in my desk, because I don’t like everyone knowing that I need a stool softener.”

“Is that why you cry in the bathroom?” asked Gary.

“Damn your eyes,” said Quintrell.

Despite having initiated this conversation, I felt it was very important to end it now, before it got any more terrible. Thankfully, I had presents for Gary and Quintrell.

“Coffee,” I said, presenting a gallon’s worth of coffee in a cardboard box, courtesy of La Patisserie Chouquette.

“We have coffee here,” said Quintrell.

“Arguably too much of it,” said Gary.

“But this coffee comes in a box,” I told them. “Which makes it better.”

“I do like the way you bring us things,” said Gary.

“Also, I have doughnuts,” I said. At which point I was literally attacked by Gary and Quintrell. Okay, fine, figuratively attacked. But it was like feeding chum to sharks. The ideal feeding situation would have involved handing them doughnuts through a protective cage.

The frenzy was interrupted by Lawrence Ussary—Lawrence—who was also, apparently, in early.

“Why is everyone here early?” I asked. “Was there a time change I didn’t know about?”

“We are dedicated to our work,” said Lawrence, at which point Gary fake-coughed while simultaneously saying something like “doughnut thief.”

“Why are you back here, Lawrence?” asked Quintrell. “It makes me anxious. You don’t come back here to where normal people work.”

“He’s here for the doughnuts,” said Gary. “He’s here to steal the doughnuts of the proletariat.”

“Not just that,” said Lawrence. “But to partake of some of this cardboard-shaped coffee.” He shook his empty coffee cup in the air.

“Vanetta’s called for a staff meeting at nine,” said Quintrell.

“How fun for you,” said Lawrence.

Lawrence looked as though he had something else to say, or at least, as though he expected one of us to ask him something, but he didn’t say anything, and no one asked. He just kept looking at Quintrell and awkwardly moving his coffee cup. He looked a bit like a beggar. I mean, a really rich and well-dressed beggar, but with the shaky mug he definitely had an “alms for the poor” vibe.

“Well,” he said, when he was done with that bit of acting, “I’m off.”

This whole interaction was weird, but it was early, and so I poured some coffee myself, figuring that with caffeine the world might make more sense. It worked, sort of.

“Quintrell, I think that was your apology from Lawrence,” Gary explained.

“What, that stagecraft?” asked Quintrell.

“I think it was,” said Gary. “Lawrence is a man of great subtlety.”