Moondance (29 page)

Of course, she knew what was happening to her. It was obvious that she was dreaming.

Either that, or she was going insane.

She pinched herself to wake up. When she didn’t, she tested her
newfound sensitivity from person to person like an underwater explorer
. There was desire and love, like the young man, but his gentle energy was rare. More often people emanated darker emotions, hidden intentions, fear, mixed with a shattering amount of anger, bitterness, and blame — there was so much there beneath the surface, below the external expressions of calm.

She surveyed the car and noticed a woman with blonde, bobbed hair, large diamond earrings and pursed lips. The woman was beautiful,
with too-blue eyes and as Althea stared, the woman blinked and caught her own, and Althea felt her ugliness, her cruelty and had to look away, and in that moment, she was open to everyone on the train, the feelings upon her like an overwhelming flood. The intensity was debilitating, a searing emotional assault, attacking her core. She trembled, her eyes squeezed shut. She retreated mentally, desperate to wake up.
Doesn’t feel like a dream
.

Wake up
, she thought
enough
, and she pinched her arm until her skin protested in an eruption of purple welts. Instead of waking up, the intensity of the feelings devoured her heart, took away her breath STOP she screamed silently, please STOP NOW.

To her surprise, the feelings retreated and she held her concentration there, like a shell around her, shaking with the effort
wake up wake up wake up
she thought, biting the inside of her cheek, tasting blood, watching each station pass painfully into the next as the train headed toward the center of the city.

• • •

WHILE EXITING UNION STATION, which seemed busier than she’d ever remembered, she tried again to wake up from the dream without making a spectacle of herself, but when her thoughts turned away from protecting herself, she was flooded with emotions so intense she couldn’t walk. Hunched over, she fought nausea until the crowds passed.

Althea arrived at White Light hollow and exhausted, her stiff neck screaming, her heart reeling. She walked quickly toward her desk, feeling a sharp pang as she passed by Vince’s office, which wasn’t Vince’s office any more.

She arrived at her desk, annoyed at the pile of files that had been dumped on her chair in her absence. On her computer screen was a post-it note from Mike Foster notifying her of a meeting that had already started. Was Exeter in charge? She didn’t know. She hadn’t spoken with Phyllis since the funeral.

Althea entered the boardroom, avoiding the others’ eyes, and sat down without saying a word. Stefan stared as she walked in. She felt unreal and light-headed and she wanted the dream to end. When it didn’t, her eyes followed whoever was speaking and she discovered that her consciousness could move around the room independently of her physical attention. She was gaining control of her newfound skill.

Ralph was talking about White Light’s business plan. Althea worked to appear attentive, nodding when appropriate, taking cursory notes.
She then focused and
felt him
and was overcome with sadness and defeat.
Though Ralph’s voice was steady and efficient, his thoughts and feelings, his essence, was with his wife of thirty years, who had just been admitted to hospital for her third round of chemotherapy. His grief
seeped into her, like an achy bruise in her chest, radiating into her groin.

Little by little, she backed out of Ralph, as if moving too quickly would create more damage within him. She felt him resist. He was frightened to be alone. He was using most of the energy he had to keep track of what was being said in the meeting and the rest to hold on to her. As she left him, he rubbed his right temple.

She observed Sandy, a short, stout woman with mousy hair and a short-sleeved blazer, whom she just learned was Exeter’s marketing vice president. Sandy was talking about the non-fiction pipeline, the books that were in the works, the marketing budgets, the launch dates for the upcoming year and projected sales for each. A couple of the authors she spoke about were White Light’s, including Ivana. Others were Exeter’s, and household names. Althea watched Sandy’s colorless lips move as she talked, her body still, wrapped in tired beige linen, and then
felt. Laurie
. The name came to her like a long-buried secret.
Resistance
, like an iron fist on her chest.

What about Laurie
, she thought, and when Sandy’s resistance dissolved, Althea fell, and it was like being sucked down an elevator through a spinning funnel of water laced with shame, guilt, hatred and unsettling calm and then she knew. Laurie was Sandy’s lover. They had grown up together. Laurie had experienced a near-fatal injury at age twenty-eight in a car crash which had left Laurie in a wheelchair. Sandy had been driving. Sandy was pulling at her now
come further, further down, come see
.

Althea was afraid. Sandy’s voice was moving further away, but her consciousness pulled Althea closer.
Hatred
. Althea felt a thin sharp sting on the inside of her arm. Under the table, she pressed her hands together to stifle the pain, which she felt, though the pain wasn’t hers. Sandy ritually cut herself with a razor. She believed she was responsible for Laurie’s injury.
Penance
.

Being inside this woman was horrible. She preferred Ralph’s grief, for his pain was also mixed with love. She had to find a way out.

Stefan interrupted Sandy and Althea exited from her suddenly, with one burst of concentration and entered Stefan who was at once sensuous and alien. At least six feet five inches tall on a slim frame, Stefan was perfectly bald, with flat metallic eyes and a soft, measured tone. Althea could not take her eyes off his hands. Folded neatly in front of him, they were huge, with impossibly long, slim manicured fingers. She played
felt
, meeting his eyes as a bolt of cold stabbed her forehead.

Acting.

Not just in the meeting, but in life.
The perfect mimic
. Instead of being
enveloped in emotion, she was sucked into a void.
White cold
. This wasn’t loneliness. This was an emptiness that had no soul.
Psychopath
.

Her hands tightened in her lap, her nails bit into her palm. Did he know what she was feeling? She struggled to maintain a neutral expression. She didn’t think so. At least, not consciously. He may be a psychopath, but that didn’t make him telepathic.

Being inside Stefan was like being inside a vacuum with no light, alone with invisible creatures that infected with malice and killed without hesitation. She struggled to pull out of him, but instead he pulled her deeper, his resolve cold and insatiable, his utter absence of humanity unlike anything she could have imagined. He didn’t want her to leave.
This is what insanity feels like
, she thought.
Not a dream. This isn’t a dream
. Her panic rose.

She had to get out of Stefan.
Now
. She gathered her strength. His words were indistinct, they no longer mattered, all she could think about was escaping his vacuum, the void with small pointed teeth. She fought him, pulling backward, purposely avoiding his eyes. She was losing strength, he was so strong, and just as she felt she could no longer hold on, Stefan stopped talking and for a split second, his pull weakened.

Foster was talking now and she turned to him, because nothing could be worse than this, not Ralph, not even Sandy. She absorbed Foster’s voice, the softness of it, the gentle lilt, an oasis,
one two three
and as she pulled out of him, Stefan resisted violently and just as suddenly, he let go
Playing with her
and as she tumbled into Foster, it was like emerging from icy lead into a soothing bath.
Human
.

Althea was faintly aware that her breath was uneven. Her eyes locked
on Foster. She struggled to appear composed, taking him in with all of her senses, an inventory, his relaxed posture, his pen poised over the financial statements in front of him, his words careful and precise.
Calm
. She sat still for a while, immersed in his voice, perched just inside him, infused with his energy. Then she felt further, wanting more of his composure, his rationality. As she moved inside him, a barrier gave way, crackling like a crisp sheet of paper. His rationality was displaced like surface dust and underneath was sadness and resignation.

But it wasn’t Ralph’s depth of grief, not harsh like Sandy or inhuman like Stefan. Foster’s sadness was gentle and she could stay here for a while.
Still. Lonely
. Foster was passive, as if receiving a reward at the end of an exhausting journey: one he did not covet.

The feeling wasn’t uncomfortable, it was warm and ethereal and she was drawn to it, so she went in, past the numbers of which he spoke, past his calm resignation, until she met with the red flesh where his numbers transformed into desire, trapped with nowhere to go. Circling his heart and hovering at his temples, was a tender blue light.
A child singing a lullaby
.

Her eyes stinging with tears, she moved up, closer to his surface, but not as far as his external personality and she didn’t have a name for what she was feeling, so she focused on his voice, the company’s debt load, cash flow projections for next year, fighting the desire to sleep, resting in a dream within a dream.
Maybe she could stay here
.

Stefan’s voice was like a rusty siren.

“Althea, if you’re awake, how far along are we with Ivana’s launch plan?”

This was the second time he had asked. She willed herself conscious. Nothing.

He was so cold
.

• • •

ALTHEA MOVED THE PILE of files on her chair, and dumped them unceremoniously on Foster’s. She hated this, it felt horrible to her. She was impatient and drained, and she wanted the nightmare to end. She felt rather than heard Foster coming up behind her. As he spoke to her, she checked her email, avoiding looking at him. Foster chuckled.

“Sorry about the files.”

“Right.”

“Stefan wants to see you.” Althea felt a stab of terror at Stefan’s name. She couldn’t even remember what she had said to him at the meeting. She also didn’t know if she had the energy to fend him off. But how could she explain that to Foster?

“Do you know why?”

“No I don’t.” Althea turned to face Foster.
Lying
.

“I think you do.”

“Well, imagine if I did, what do you think would happen to me if I told you.” Althea looked into his eyes. He was telling the truth.

He’d eat you alive
, she thought.

Althea knocked on Vince’s door. Stefan was sitting at Vince’s desk. Ralph sat beside him. He wasted no time.

“Althea, we’ve decided to sever our relationship with you, effective
immediately.” He explained the terms, and as he did, Milena’s face swam
before her.
It’s happening again. You gonna take it this time?
Feeling slightly masochistic, she probed him a bit, his white cold biting at her. She hovered just between his eyebrows, ensuring that she was out of his reach. When he stopped talking and offered her his pen, Althea accepted it, carefully avoiding touching his fingers. Hating her own cowardice, she signed the termination agreement, leaving her copy behind, exiting the office quickly in case he tried to shake her hand.

• • •

MICHAEL LEANED ON A window ledge in the front lobby, his eyes on the elevator. He knew what was happening in Stefan’s office. As Althea had fumbled an incoherent response in their meeting earlier, Stefan’s eyes had turned reptilian and Michael knew. Althea wasn’t supposed to be let go until next month, but Stefan decided to move that date up. Sandy would pick up the slack.

At the meeting, Althea had been drifting. It was like she was at the meeting physically, but mentally she had checked out. Her body was rigid and her eyes darted, vacant and glassy. At times, she seemed
short of breath, as if she was about to faint. Because she wasn’t wearing
makeup today, her fair complexion looked stark. Michael wondered if she drank or did drugs.

Or maybe she was pregnant. Lara had looked like that when she had morning sickness.

Althea’s secrets.

When Michael went over the financials, he noticed that she was staring at him, first at his face and then at his chest. Her face had softened then, no longer nauseous, but she seemed sleepy, as if she had been up most of the night.

Insomnia?

Perhaps. He knew what that was like. Through Althea, maybe he was witnessing what he used to look like.

As Michael waited for Althea, he wondered if he could muster the curiosity he once felt for her. Over time, she had become more and more of an enigma. First, the distracted woman on the side of the road, then smiling and dimpled, holding her martini glass high in celebration. Then all business.