7
It’s a little after eight. Wednesday night. Kelly is reading scripts for the ten o’clock show and wondering when Frank is finally going to bring her the bad news. Jeff Pearson, after all, hasn’t spoken to her since Friday, when she abandoned the execution story in Huntsville and drove to Olney. He could be avoiding her on purpose, maintaining distance so it’ll be that much easier on his conscience when he fires her. Or she could be overreacting, especially considering the national exposure she’s brought to the station, which will likely increase local ratings and thus advertising revenue. No GM can argue with those results.
But still, she—
Her phone rings, 212 area code. New York. It’s her agent.
“Hey, Winnie,” she says.
“I keep telling you, it’s Winston.”
This is their ongoing joke.
“Right, Winnie.”
“Okay, I’ll let you win this time. Especially when you hear the news I have. Are you sitting down?”
“Just reading my scripts,” she says.
“ABC called. Diane Sawyer is leaving
Good Morning America.
”
“Already?”
“The network wants to fly you to New York. They want you to audition with Charles Gibson next week.”
She looks around the newsroom. Afraid if she says anything everyone will hear.
“Winston,” she whispers. “Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m not lying.”
“Come on,
GMA
? I’ve only been here for—”
“Kelly, I’ve been getting calls since the
People
interview. I’ve kept quiet because I wanted you to get some solid experience there in Dallas before we exercised the outs in your contract. But this is too big to pass up.”
She sits there for a moment, waiting for an appropriate response to form on her lips.
“Are you kidding me?” she asks finally.
“Good Morning America?”
“Are you interested?”
“Of course I am!”
“Good. I’ll arrange everything with them and get back to you. But don’t say anything to anyone at this point. At least no one at the station. Pearson isn’t going to be happy to lose you a month after he took over.”
8
The newscast is a blur, and afterward Kelly can barely remember anything she read, has no idea what banal, automatic segues came out of her mouth going into commercials or coming back from them, has no earthly clue what joke she and Ted and Troy the weatherman shared. All she can think about is
GMA
and New York.
And Mike.
Because Mike isn’t in New York, and there is only one super collider, and it doesn’t matter that she could make more money than either one of them could spend. What matters is that his job—his life in experimental physics—is here, and the future of her career is not.
She checks her e-mail one last time before shutting off the computer—hoping for but not finding a message from Mike—and then heads for the parking garage. She tries to convince herself that she really knows nothing about Mike, cannot say with certainty what kind of person he is, or if he’ll treat her well, or if he’s someone with whom she could spend a lot of time. She considers the more familiar argument, that to accept the love of another man is to admit the door to James is closed. She imagines herself falling in love, finding herself in a relationship that could truly be
the one,
and at the same time fully aware that she has been here before.
The parking garage is a haze of amber light, and her car stands alone in its assigned space. She curls her way down the spiral drive of the parking garage and then out into the Dallas night. The freeway is mostly empty, and she flies like a missile toward her home in Richardson.
GMA.
What would that pay? A million dollars a year? Maybe even two or three million? These potential salaries are not real numbers to her. And forget about the money, anyway. Imagine the chance to discuss the most important events of the country and the world, imagine interviewing the president. Imagine making a daily difference in millions of lives across the country instead of delivering local news in thirty-second sound bites.
Not until her exit at McDermott do the headlights in her rearview mirror finally strike her as ominous. They’ve been behind her for a while, and this knowledge has been sitting patiently in the back of her mind. But for the car to come this far, to maintain a steady distance behind her and then follow her off at the same exit, this seems odd. Not necessarily a problem, but coincidental enough to worry her.
She drives on, trying not to worry. She doesn’t think about the crazy e-mails she sometimes gets. Specifically she doesn’t think about the most recent messages, the guy who claimed to have seen her at Target. No, she just turns up the radio and sings along with a sappy ’80s song. Besides, her neighborhood is gated. And on top of that her safe room is made of concrete and sealed by a solid steel door that locks from the inside.
The car is still back there.
Up ahead she sees the comfortable and familiar entrance to her neighborhood. Unrolls her window as she approaches the gate and quickly keys in the code. The car behind her seems to increase its speed. It’s a luxury sedan, German or Japanese, and she supposes this should relax her. Luxury sedans are popular in her neighborhood. But still it would be nice if the damn security gate would close more quickly. What kind of gate takes thirty seconds to close? Not a security gate. More like a vanity gate. Sure enough, the sedan makes it through.
And follows her through the neighborhood. All the way to her own street.
She opens the garage door while still several houses away, and the tires squeal as she hurries inside. The door shuts behind her. She breathes a sigh of relief.
Except that from here Kelly can’t see the car at all.
She rushes into the house and to a window and looks across her front lawn.
The sedan is not there.
But it could be farther up the street, something she could see better from upstairs. So she turns and grabs the handrail, taking the stairs two at a time, and is almost to the top when the doorbell rings.
The doorbell. He’s ringing the goddamn doorbell! What the hell is she supposed to do now? Call the cops and tell them someone is ringing her doorbell? Even if she explains that a car followed her all the way from downtown, that she is a local news personality and has reason to fear stalkers, they’ll want to know if the driver has threatened her in any way. They’ll ask if she has looked through the peephole to see who it is.
Which, Kelly supposes, is the answer. Unless the guy has a gun trained on the door, ready to shoot as soon as she approaches, going back downstairs is not automatically dangerous. And once she’s looked outside, she can run back upstairs and call the cops.
But when the doorbell rings again, Kelly wonders if she should just ignore it. Won’t the person eventually give up and go away?
The bell rings a third time.
“Ms. Smith,” a voice says. “I’m very sorry to bother you. If you’re frightened you don’t have to open the door. I only want to ask you about Mike McNair.”
The door is at the bottom of the stairs. She descends to the third or fourth stair from the top—surely higher than the stalker will aim his weapon—and answers.
“Whoever you are, please leave. You’re trespassing, and that’s grounds for arrest. Please leave now, or I’ll call the police.”
“Ms. Smith,” the voice pleads, “I know I’m trespassing, and I apologize. I’m only asking for a minute of your time. You don’t have to open the door. I’m not here to hurt you. I just . . . I need to see McNair. Will you please help me?”
“Mike isn’t here,” Kelly responds. “He works at the super collider in Olney. Why did you come here?”
A long pause. And then, “I have information about the Higgs field that I think he’ll find important. I went to Olney, but there was no way to get past the gate. I thought maybe you could help me contact him.”
“Why me?”
“Because of the interview. Because you helped him explain the Higgs discovery.”
Kelly shifts her weight and sits more comfortably. As frightened as she is, she’s also a little curious to find out where he’s going with this story.
She says, “What sort of information do you have about Higgs?”
Another long pause. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“And what do you suppose I think now? Since you followed me home? Since we’re having a conversation through my front door?”
“You’re right,” the man admits. His voice sounds lucid and clear, if it’s even possible to evaluate such a thing. “Okay. My name is Steve Keeley, and I live in Los Angeles. I survived a near-fatal head injury while on a business trip in Zurich last month. Emergency brain surgery was required to save me, and since then I’ve experienced what I thought were hallucinations of a particle field. Or multiple particle fields. Or God. I don’t know. But when I saw your interview with McNair the other day, I knew that what he described to you, the way the world worked and the theoretical role of Higgs, I knew he was describing exactly what I’m sensing. I believe I have sensed the Higgs field directly. I’m able to detect electromagnetic fields. Who knows what else. I know it sounds crazy, but I promise you I’m not.”
Kelly knows that mentally ill people can appear to be rock-solid sane, but being sick and posing a threat to her are not necessarily the same thing. She descends a step closer to the floor and is about to answer when Keeley continues.
“I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that crazy people can seem as sane as regular people. But I promise you I’m telling the truth.”
Kelly stares at the door. She imagines she can see him through the pressed wood, his sad form slumped against it, disheveled, and she still doesn’t understand why this man is petitioning
her.
“I never saw you before the interview, Ms. Smith. I’m not one of your admirers. I didn’t even intend to come here. I drove twenty-four hours across the country to Olney, but they were only letting press inside the gate.”
Kelly is impressed by his ability to guess her thought process, but that doesn’t mean he’s sane. “Why
me,
Mr. Keeley? Why not call the NTSSC and ask to speak to Mike? Or request an appointment with him? Why drive past Olney, all the way to Dallas, to see me?”
“Because Mike would never listen to me on his own. He’ll resist what I have to say. But I thought you might . . .”
“Might what?”
“Look,” he says. “There’s a lot I’m not telling you, because I don’t want you to immediately discount me. But my ability to perceive particle fields has predictable consequences. I’m sure you must have learned from McNair the same thing I did, how these particles of matter and energy compose the world around us, that radio waves and light are both communicated by photons.”
She says nothing. This is becoming a circle, a shape with no end, and soon there will be no choice other than to call the police.
“But it isn’t just the sun or radio stations that emit electromagnetic energy. Our brains do as well. And lately I’ve been able to sense and decode that energy. Which means . . . which means I can read minds. And also this woman, this woman I knew in Zurich who died the day after my head injury, she has been following me somehow. Helping me. I’m not religious, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’ve begun to believe the universe is more than what we think it is, that perhaps our life force doesn’t die with us, because it’s this dead woman who instructed me to come here.”
Gooseflesh marbles Kelly’s skin. She thinks of her discussion with Mike, about the collective reality, and then pushes the thought away. She’s heard all she is willing to hear.
“Ms. Smith,” he says. “I will prove it to you. When I began speaking to you, you descended to the fourth stair from the top of your staircase. And later you became more comfortable and went down another stair. That’s where you are now.”
Kelly hears a soft cry of surprise emerge from her lips. She’s frozen where she sits.
“How could you. . . . Is there a camera in my house? Are you the one who has been sending me the e-mails? Because I am going to call the police
right now.
This is a horrible invasion of my privacy, Mr. Keeley, and—”
“And now you’re wondering if the money is worth it. You’re thinking that if the attention is this bad in Dallas, what’s it going to be like if you get the job at
Good Morning America
? And now you’re thinking of your first job in Richmond, and how far you’ve come, and you’re wondering how you could’ve believed yourself so ugly when your life has come to this, crazy men following you home, beseeching you on your doorstep, and now you’re wondering how I could possibly know all this, you’re wondering if I’ve bugged your phone at work, you’re wondering if I could possibly have found all this information about you on the Internet, except that you type your own name into search engines once or twice a month and have never found anything so personal as this. And now you’re wondering how I could know
that,
and you’re waiting for me to say something that I could not
possibly
know about unless what I’m saying is really true, and you’re moving closer to the door now, and you’re thinking of your senior prom, when you stayed home against your mom’s appeals to the contrary, because she didn’t want you to grow up successful in work but hopelessly alone, and thank goodness you’re about to open the door, I promise you I am not lying, I just want someone to help me, and I think Mike McNair may be that person, because all this seems implausibly related, and—”
Kelly reaches forward and unlocks the door. She stands there a moment, almost unable to believe her hands are in fact performing these particular actions, that she is about to invite a complete stranger into her home, especially one who may or may not be crazy. And even if he
isn’t
crazy, what he seems capable of frightens her even more. And still she is opening the door. And here stands Steve Keeley, not really disheveled, perhaps a little tired but otherwise a decent-looking man, and she knows that she has opened more than just her door, that allowing him inside is somehow going to change her life.