As Luck Would Have It (31 page)

Three days passed this way, with hardly anyone saying a word to me, and during which time I didn’t produce a gram of work.  The entire office seemed very quiet to me, without much activity, without much life actually.  Management had to be thinking about getting rid of me by now; what other explanation could there be?   I was bored, but with our Florida and Caribbean vacation just ten days off, I reread the cruise literature one more time and arranged for the shore excursions that Joseph and
I
wanted to
take.

I wished that Michelle and Joseph’s boyfriend could come along, but selfishly I was glad to be able to spend time alone with Joseph and have him attend to me, which he never seemed to mind doing.  We would both be 60 years old by the time we left, but it often seemed as if we were still the same teenagers running around together, exploring our secret world, a modern day Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, our adventures endless, if in our own minds at least.  This would be yet another one of those
voyages
, not down the Mississippi River, but down the Intracoastal Waterway instead.  Samuel Clemens, pay heed if you can hear
me
, relive the days of your youth, Clifford and Joseph will paddle their way down the river, searching
for Injun Joe, or Becky Thatcher, or whoever may find a path into our world.  My fantasies were interrupted suddenly just then; Brent
Farnsworth
was standing at the door to my office.

I wondered how long he had been there for and whether my imaginary adventures had made any sort of an impression on him.  He had somehow managed to entirely miss the blow-up with Iris and now he wanted to know what had happened.  I couldn't imagine how he could not have heard it; his office was only a short distance from hers.  I better be careful here, I thought, this entire business made no sense and Brent had never initiated a conversation with me in the five years that I had known him.  I looked at him and had a curious thought; what combination of conditions, experiences, genetics and circumstances converge in an individual like Brent to create a person with such an obvious lack of leadership awareness and social grace, and given that question, how did he wind up here in my office asking me
about a person that I hated and he
emulate
d
?

I didn't say anything at first; better to watch his body language and let him talk a bit and possibly figure out what was really going on here before I said something that might backfire later on and cause who know
s
what kind of distress.  He just stood there giving me strange looks like I was from some foreign country whose language and customs he couldn't quite comprehend.  So I asked him instead; what do you want to know?  She's missing, no one has see
n
or heard from her for days, her family is worried and now the police are investigati
ng
her disappearance; an officer will be her
e
later to talk to some of us, they will have a few questions for you, I'm sure. 
How would I know where she is?  I want to know what you said to her; she's my friend.

So it took something as serious as an unexplained three-day disappearance of a friend and co-worker for him to bother to approach me, and when he did, it was with an accusatory tone that I did not particularly appreciate.  Let me see if I'm getting this right; your friend Iris has a nuclear meltdown in the office, then goes AWOL, and you're accusing me?  Maybe you should go look for her yourself if you are so
concerned,
and if you find her, do me a favor and ask her why she forced Christine to quit.  He turned a deeper shade of red, but wasn't walking out just
yet;
he asked me if I knew what happened to her.  How the
hell
would I know, she was still in her office raging when I left; I don't keep tabs on your friends.  You're responsible for this Andrews, I know you hated her.  You have to admit Brent, she wasn't the most endearing person in the office; it's not like she sent me birthday greetings or chocolates on Valentines Day.

Though I had been happy with the fact that Iris had not returned to work, this news was disconcerting.  Three days was a long time for an adult to be missing, without even contacting friends or relatives.  And there would be no escaping the fact that I was the likely catalyst to push her over the edge, or wherever it was that she went.  When the investigator was seated in my office
l
ater that
afternoon
, I asked most of the questions and learned that they had little to go on with no real leads; at this point at least, she appeared to have just vanished.  Troubling also was their conclusion that she never went home after leaving the office that day, she didn't pack a bag and decide to take an unscheduled trip to see her mother, or visit her girlfriends to plan their Super Bowl party.  I loathed Iris, but
I
didn't like the look of this one bit.

Since they had no leads and no real suspects, I had to be considered a person of interest, given what many of my co-workers witnessed and certainly testified to.  I was contacted a couple of days later by a more senior investigator, who asked if I would be willing to come to their station to answer some more questions.  I debated it for awhile and wondered if I should talk to a lawyer before subjecting myself to further interrogations, but I had nothing to hide and ultimately decided to cooperate to the fullest extent possible, although I had no information and knew absolutely nothing about what could have happe
ne
d to her.  The second interview was less cordial than the first; there were actually two investigators in the room with me and I was questioned for
nearly an
hour.  I told them that my relationship with Iris had been limited to our work, that I had never socialized with her and didn't even know where she lived or what she did outside of the office.

They asked a lot of probing questions and were somewhat antagonistic once I described the confrontation that had occurred that afternoon, but there was no getting around the fact that they had nothing to go on as far as I was concerned; no body, no motive, no witness, no blood, no weapon, no fingerprints, no criminal history, no mental disorder, no threats, nothing at all other than the fact that I readily conceded that I did not like the bitch.  Officers, as you might imagine, and may have concluded based on your discussions with others, I was certainly not unique in that respect.  I do indeed hope that you find her and that she is OK, I would not feel good about any harm coming to her.
  They said they might need to talk to me again and that I should probably not leave the state.  Sorry gentlemen, I'm off to a Caribbean cruise in just six more days, but the ship returns to Fort Lauderdale on December 19
th
and I promise to be back after that; my best friend will be getting married
in Januray
and unless the ship were to go down, I will definitely be there; I'm his best man.

The ship did not sink and it did in fact return to port right on schedule, except I wasn't on it.  As you have already learned, the wedding did not go as scheduled either.  Perhaps you are trying to figure out by now why none of our carefully made plans came to pass.  Maybe Clifford did have something to do with Iris' mysterious disappearance, maybe he was arrested, you might be guessing.  No, he would never do anything like that; I don't believe it.  Well, he hated her and was furious about what she did to Christine, he might have followed her after work, it was dark and no one would have seen, there would be no clues.  Are you suggesting that Clifford killed her; that's
crazy?
  Why do you think the police questioned him again and told him not to leave the state, who else would have done it?  You can guess and speculate and draw inferences all you like, but I'm getting on that plane to St. Petersburg no matter what.  By the time I get home, Iris will be back, I'm sure.

Iris never did come back and her body would not be found until late January, when two boys discovered her hanging
from
a tree in the woods surrounding their neighborhood.  I did come back, but I would never be the same once I did.  And by then, I had more pressing concerns than Iris' decision to end her life even before the Super Bowl event she had been planning could go off
,
and the game played on February 7
th
when the Baltimore Ravens upset my favored Chicago Bears, a game I watched in despair and with a major headache that had started even before the national anthem did, only to get worse when I
watched in disbelief as the Baltimore running back faked a reverse and ran 80 yards on the first play from scrimmage in overtime for the winning touchdown.

I took an Oxycodone, closed my eyes and dreamed I was on a cruise ship off the coast of Aruba, a weird and twisted nightmare where Joseph had
fallen
overboard and was swimming along side the boat like a dolphin, when Iris appeared out of nowhere screaming at me again before she grabbed the lifeline and tossed it to him in the water.  It jolted me awake and I stared at the TV as they showed the dreaded replay over and over again.  The grogginess from the narcotic was fading now as the excited Ravens players and coaches were interviewed one after another, hugging and high-fiving each other in celebration. 
Even though I was supposed to refrain from drinking any alcohol,
I found my highball glass with some ice still in it, poured myself a shot of Scotch, and said a silent toast to Iris.  Here's to you, wherever you might be, I hope you enjoyed the game if they have TV
there,
it was an exciting one even if we lost.  You can't
win them all
, luck isn't always on your side, I'm learning that now.  I downed my drink and tu
r
ned back to the post-game show.  They interviewed a couple of the Bears players with tears in their eyes; mine had misted over as well thinking of everything that had happened.

Many of us experience a fear of flying, which based strictly on statistics and probabilities is largely an irrational anxiety.  We have nightmares of fiery crashes and decimated fuselages, images of terrorized and screaming passengers, sensations of massive impacts split seconds before the lights permanently go out.  Why do we
afflict
ourselves this way when the number of fatalities per mile traveled on commercial jets is somewhere around three deaths per ten billion passenger miles flown?  Fewer people have died in America in commercial airplane accidents over the entire history of jet aviation than typically are killed in auto accidents in a period of just three months.   We are more than ten times safer flying than taking a train, 19 times safer than when driving.  I am not afraid of flying, though I get carsick easily and now I realize why that is.

Joseph, however, hated to fly.  He had even come up with the idea that we could drive to Fort Lauderdale to hook up with our cruise ship and our nine-day excursion around the Caribbean.  Was I really going to have to talk him out of his crazy idea?  Do you realize that each time you get on a plane, the odds of you being killed are only one in seven million?  I know, but I just can't stand being cooped up in a plane and would rather drive.  You'd rather be cooped up in that Civic of yours for 20 hours fighting traffic and enduring the curses of other drivers instead of sitting comfortably in a plane for two hours being served drinks and salted peanuts?

But the trip to celebrate our 60
th
birthdays was all set and we were flying out of O'Hare on December 8.  I checked our reservations again and noticed that we were flying on an Airbus A320, the world's safest airplane currently flying, with a rate of just .13 fatal events per million miles flown.  Only a few more gloomy days at work and then we were off.  Sitting in my office on that December morning and looking at the literature the cruise company had on their website was the last thing I
remember
ed
until I woke up as if out of a deep sleep nearly a week later.

The infallible A320 plunged into Lake Michigan after just 16 minutes in the air.  I had absolutely no recollection of ever being on the plane or even driving to the airport.  Retrograde amnesia, the loss of memory of all events for a period of time immediately prior to sustaining a head trauma, is how the doctors would later refer to it.

What I did remember was being in some strange room, but what in God's name had happened and
where
was this place?  Everything was a blur and I could not make out much of my surroundings.  As hard as I tried to focus on the people in front me, I was unable to.  Their movements were fluid and their features seemed smudged like they were finger painted on.  I moaned and tried to call out to them but I could not hear my own voice and nothing I did seemed to elicit any response from whoever it was in the room with me.  I saw blinking lights on some sort of machine I was connected to and knew that I was laying down, but everywhere I looked appeared covered in a dark dense fog, through which I was not able to make out any details
.

Help me please, where am I?  Help me!
 
I tried moving my arms but they felt heavy and weighted down.  My legs felt cold and numb and I tried kicking them to get some attention, but that seemed to go unnoticed as well.  Was I paralyzed?  My mind wandered to crazy thoughts of dark tunnels with me free falling through them unable to grab onto anything as I plunged through their
emptiness
.  It felt like I was tumbling out of control and spinning endlessly into some deep space never previously encountered.  I closed my eyes hoping that the falling sensation might cease, and then mercifully it was quiet again and still.  Help me
, someone
, can you hear me?  Why don't you answer?