A lump filled her throat at the memory. Dating had never gone well for her. Even dating with Kent, who had dropped her on her seat at the slightest hint of commitment. She would do well to remember that.
What had she been thinking,
chasing
after him? She no more needed a relationship now than she needed a bout with lupus.
On the other hand, he might call.
Week Eight
HELEN TOSSED and turned, and even in her sleep she could feel her eyes jerking behind closed lids. Slapping feet echoed through her head, sounding like a marathon runner who had taken a wrong turn and ended up running through a tunnel. A tunnel called Kent's life.
The feet beat onâ
slap, slap, slap
âwithout pause. Heavy breathing chased the slapping. The runner pulled deliberately against the stale dark air. Maybe too deliberately, as if he or she were trying to believe that the breathing was all about flooding the lungs with air, when actually it was just as much about fighting off panic. Because steady sounds do thatâthey fight off uncertainty with their rhythm. But this runner seemed to be losing that battle with uncertainty. The deliberate breaths were sounding a little ragged around the edges.
The slapping feet had made frequent visits to her mind in the last week, and that bothered her because she knew they were saying something. She just hadn't been able to decipher their message. At least not all of it.
She knew they were Kent's feet. That Kent was running. Running from God. The running man. She'd heard of a movie called that once.
The Running Man
. Some gladiator type running for his life through a game show.
Pastor Madison didn't like her calling this a game, but here in her own mind she could call it whatever she wanted. And it felt like a serious game show to her. The stakes were death; the prize was life. But in a cosmic sort of way, that prize wasn't so different from winning a Kenmore refrigerator with built-in ice maker or a '64 Mustang convertible, now, was it?
She took a deep breath and tried to refocus her thoughts.
Lighten up, Helen. Goodness, you're going off the deep end. We're not playing
Wheel of Fortune
here.
Her mind sank into the dungeon again and listened to those slapping feet. How long could a person run like that? Another sound bounced around in the dark. A thumping sound. A pounding heart to go along with the heavy breathing and the slapping feet. Which made sense, because her heart would certainly be pounding if she ran.
She imagined herself running like that.
The thought came like a sharp jab to her solar plexus.
She caught her breath.
Now there were only two sounds in the tunnel: the beating feetâ
slap, slap, slap
âand the pounding heartâ
thump, thump, thump.
The breathing had stopped.
Helen bolted up in bed, suddenly awake, a single thought now whispering through her skull:
That breathing stopped when you stopped breathing, sister! That's
you
in there!
She snatched her hands to her chest. Her heart pounded to the same cadence she had heard in her dream. In the tunnel. The only thing missing was the slapping feet. And no matter how weird things were getting, she knew that she certainly had not been running up and down her hall in her sleep.
Helen knew the point of it all, then, sitting in bed feeling her heart throb under her palm. If she was not actually in the game, she was
meant
to be. Her feet were
meant
to be slapping along the floor of that tunnel. This insane urge to walk was not just some senile thing; it was the pull of God on her spirit.
Walk, child, walk. Maybe even run. But at least walk.
It might be Kent in there running for his life, but she was in there too, breathing down his neck! Praying for him. She was in the game too. And her part was the intercessor. That was it.
Helen threw the sheets off and stood beside her bed. It was 5 A.M. She should walk, maybe. The thought stopped her cold for a moment. She was not a walker, for heaven's sake. The doctor had wanted to put new knees in her legs less than a year ago! What on earth did she think she would do now? Hobble up and down the driveway until the neighbors called the police about the lunatic they saw out their windows? Walking back and forth on her plush carpet in running shoes was one thing. Taking a prayer trek through the streets like some prophet was another thing altogether.
And more important, why on God's green earth would he want her to walk at all? What did walking have to do with this craziness? God certainly did not need on old lady's walking to move his hand.
Then again, neither had he needed old Joshua and his cohorts traipsing around Jericho to tumble the wall, now, did he? And yet he had demanded that. This was not so different.
Well, yes, this
was
different. This was different because this was now and that was then and this was her and that was Joshua!
Helen grunted and made for the bathroom. She was up. She might as well get dressed. And there was another reason why this was different. This was different because this was mad! What would Pastor Madison say? Goodness!
She stopped midstride, halfway to the bathroom.
Yes, but what would God say? Was that God talking to you back there, telling you to walk?
Yes.
Then walk.
Yes.
It was settled then, in that moment.
Twenty minutes later Helen stepped from her house wearing her white Reeboks and over-the-calf basketball socks below a swishing green dress with yellow sunflowers scattered in a pattern only the original designer could possible identify.
“Oh, God have mercy on my soul,” she muttered and stepped from the landing to the sidewalk. She began to walk down the street with no destination in mind. She would just walk and see.
And she would pray.
KENT ROLLED through the hours with all the constancy of a yo-yo those first two weeks. One moment consumed with the audacity of his ever-clarifying plot, the next blinking against memories of Spencer or Gloria. To say that he was unstable would have brought the textbook definition into clear focus.
The ideas came like weeds, sprouting in his mind as though some mad scientist had spilled super-growth formula on them. It didn't even occur to him until the end of the first week that the twisting and turning up there did not stop when he fell asleep. In fact, his best ideas seemed to sneak their way into his mind then, when he tossed in fitful sleep. In his dreams.
Just as the vagrant had flashed his tongue about and told Kent just what he thought of the situation, other voices seemed to be suggesting other opinions. He could never quite remember their precise words or even the overall context of their suggestions, but he seemed to wake each day with an eagerness to explore a vague notion. And regardless of why his mind seemed to favor the night, Kent did not complain. It was the stuff of genius, he thought.
The meeting with Lacy nagged at him occasionally, but the growing prospects of his new life overshadowed the strange encounter. Several times he pulled her card out, intending to call. But he found things confusing once he attempted to clarify his reason for contacting her.
Oh hi, Lacy. How about a nice romantic dinner tonight? Did I tell you that my wife and son just died? Because that's important. I'm a free man, Lacy.
Gag! He was certainly in no mood for a relationship.
On the other hand, he was starving for friendship. And friendship was relationship, so in that sense he was growing slowly desperate for a relationship. Maybe even someone to tell . . . Someone to share this growing secret with. But that would be insane. Secrecy was his friend here.
Life at the office began to take on its own rhythm, not so different from the one that had once marched him through the days before his world had turned upside down. And the nights. It was the night routine that Kent began to methodically add to his work regimen. He needed his coworkers to be thoroughly accustomed to his late nights at the office again. His whole plan depended on it.
It was impossible to lock or unlock the building without triggering a signal that notified the alarm company of the event. The entries were posted on the branch manager's monitors each morning. So Kent made a point of entering and leaving through the backdoor, creating a consistent record of his work habits, and then offhandedly reporting the progress he'd made the previous night to Borst.
What they could not know was that the debugging he accomplished in those late hours while they slept took only a fraction of the time indicated. He could produce more clean code in one hour than any of the others could in a day. He not only possessed twice the gray matter any of them did, but he was working on his own code.
Not his own code as in AFPS, but his own program as in refining ROOSTER and the way ROOSTER was going to wreak its havoc on the world.
Cliff made a habit of poking his head in each day, but Kent did his best to minimize their interaction. Which simply meant knowing at all times what the zany snowboarder was working on and staying clear of his routines.
“You seem awfully well adjusted for having just gone through such loss,” Cliff stated at the end of Kent's first week back.
Kent scrambled for a plausible explanation. “Denial,” he said, turning away. “That's what they say, anyway.”
“Who says that?”
He had not been to a shrink. “The pastor,” Kent lied.
“You're kidding! I had no idea you went to church. I do too!”
Kent began to regret his lie immediately.
“So how long have you been a Christian?”
“Well, actually I'm really not that well connected.”
“Sure, I can understand that. They say 80 percent of churchgoers are disconnected beyond Sunday services. So I hear that your wife was a strong believer.”
Kent looked up. “Really? And who told you that?”
“I just picked it up somewhere.”
“Somewhere like where? I didn't know it was common knowledge around here.”
Cliff shrugged uncomfortably. “Well, from Helen, actually.”
“Helen? My mother-in-law's been talking to you?”
“No. Relax, Kent. We talked once when she called in.”
“And you just happened to talk about me and my wife? Well that's real sweet of youâ âPoor Kent, let's gossip about his faith, why don't we? Or should we say, his lack thereof.'”
“We're Christians, Kent. Some things are not as sacred as others. Don't worry, it goes no further than me.”
Kent turned away, angry without knowing exactly why. Helen had her rights. Gloria was, after all, her daughter. He began to avoid Cliff then, at the end of his first week back to work. Although getting away from the pineapple-eating grinner was easier said than done.
It took Borst most of two weeks to buy into Kent's reformed attitude. But a daily dose of soothing accolades administered by Kent greased the wheels to the man's mind easily enough. Kent had to hold his nose while smearing the stuff on, but even that became easier as the days passed.
Borst asked him about the schedule once after Kent had handed him the fix to a bug that Borst himself had attempted and failed to remedy. It had taken Kent exactly twenty-nine minutes the previous night to locate the misplaced modifier responsible.
“You got it, huh? Gotta hand it to you, Anthony. You sure can crank this stuff out.” He lifted his greasy head. “You seem to work best at night these days, don't you?”
A flare hissed white-hot in Kent's mind. His heart flinched in his chest, and he hoped desperately that Borst was not catching any of his reaction. “I've always worked best at night, Markus.” He'd discovered that Borst liked to be called Markus by his friends. He lowered his eyes. “But since the deaths, I'm not crazy about being alone at night with nothing to do, you know?”
“Yeah, sure. I understand.” He waved the pages in the air. “You did all of this last night, huh?”
Kent nodded.
“What time you pull out of here?”
Kent shrugged. “I came back at, oh, maybe eight or so, and left at midnight.”
Borst smiled. “Four hours? Like I said, you're good. You keep working like this, and the rest of us will run out of things to do.” He chuckled. “Good work.” He'd winked then, and Kent swallowed an urge to poke his eye out.
Instead he smiled. “Thank you, sir.”
The
sir
brought a flare of pride to Borst's nostrils, and Kent left, determined to use the expression more frequently.
He resumed his friendship with Will Thompson within the first few days. As before, their shallow talk led to nothing of substance, which was fine by Kent.
“I just can't believe you're back after what they put you through,” Will told him, walking to lunch the third day. Taking time for lunch sat rancid in Kent's gut, but he was on a mission to appear as ordinary as possible, and the occasional lunch would fit the image well.
“You know, if Spencer had not passed away, I don't think I would be here. But when you lose the ones you love the most, things change, Will. Your perspectives change. I just need to work now, that's all.” He looked across the street to Antonio's Italian Cuisine. “Who knows? Maybe once things have settled I'll move on. But now I need stability.”
Will nodded. “Makes sense.”
Touché, Will. Indeed it makes sense. Everything needs to make sense. You remember that when they question you about me.
Betty Smythe became just another office fixture again, smacking her lips at the front desk, handling all of Borst's important calls and constantly scanning her little world with the peeled eyes of a hawk. It made little difference to Kent, who simply closed his door. But when the poop hit the fan, hers would be the most active mouth, flapping nonstop, no doubt. He wanted her gabbing to favor him, not cast suspicion his way. So he began the distasteful task of working his way into her corner.