Undetectable (Great Minds Thriller) (11 page)

“One of those, please,” Kevin said, pointing.

The man looked up. Without breaking the rhythm of his dance, he turned smoothly and retrieved the item Kevin had asked for. Kevin paid, took his little box, and was gone.

Once back in the apartment, he opened the package and read the label carefully.

Andrew saw what he had bought, and he appeared a moment later with a glass of water.

Kevin shook one – no, two – of the Tylenol-PM sleeping pills into his hand, and then he used the water to gulp them down.

He waited for a moment in the entryway, as though expecting or perhaps hoping
to fall down unconscious
instantly, on the spot. When nothing happened, he instead went into the living room and sat down on the couch. He was not going back to that silent, solitary bedroom where Father Time was evidently taking some sort of vacation. Here, on the other hand, there was the comforting presence of Andrew, who was still gliding back and forth from the dining room to the kitchen, tidying things up and shining things and dusting things… and all of those little chores took time,
had
to take time, so this was the place to be.

Suddenly he was aware of silence. It worried him.

“Andrew?”

He was there in a moment. “Sir?”

“Where’d you go?”

Andrew hesitated. “I thought I would busy my
self in the kitchen for a while, s
o as not to disturb you.”

“No. I want you doing stuff where I can see you, or at least hear you. I need distraction, not quiet.”

“You
want
noise?”

“Right. Or you could even just walk back and forth through here. I need maybe ten minutes of that.”

Andrew considered. “There are still things that need doing in this portion of the house,” he said. “I will address those first.”

Kevin relaxed back into the soft cushions of the couch. He waited ten minutes, but he didn’t feel anything. Another ten. Andrew was doing his best to draw out the chores, but Kevin could tell that the living room and dining room were nearing a state of maximum order. The Queen of England could have visited these two rooms now without complaint.

T
en
more minutes
.

Now it had been a half-hour since taking those pills, but the only thing he could feel was a dull throb in his head. As if he had had too much to drink.

“This is ridiculous,” he said, and stood up. “Andrew, do I have a study or something?”

Andrew stopped and pointed. “First left off the hall. I put your papers there, the ones you brought home this afternoon. Your textbooks are there as well.”

Kevin walked out of the living room and found the
study. It was a beautiful room
with deep red wallpaper and a wide, well-lit desk in the middle. There was a little leather open-top box of good pens at one corner of the desk, and a short stack of clean white paper in a slot under the top dr
awer. He sat down in the sturdy
,
spindle-backed chair and opened the Algebra I book that was lying there. He leafed through his lesson plans – there were just five of them – and then he turned to the chapter in the book that came next.

He took out a pen, grabbed a fresh sheet of paper, and started writing.

He was not sure how much time had passed – it was probably useless to guess, given his track record with clocks today – but at one point he looked up and discovered a small sandwich
on a plate next to him on the desk.

L
ong enough for Andrew to make me a sandwich
, he thought.
That’s pretty good.

He ate quickly, and then he went immediately back to work. He filled page after page with notes. Finally he sat back in his chair and looked at what he had done.

The book was complete. He had written out
something like nine solid month
s
’
worth of lesson plans.

“Andrew!”

Faintly, from the back: “Sir?”

“What time is it?”

He heard Andrews quick footsteps. The man did not like to yell. When he had reached the study, he answered
,
“Nearly twelve-thirty.”

Kevin sighed. He was not going to write out lesson plans for computer programming; that information was tucked securely in his head
, and
w
riting it out would have been like writing himself notes on how to walk. Which meant that he had done all the work he could possibly do to prepare for his current job.

It had taken him just under two hours.

“Not bad,” he said quietly.

Actually, it was better than that. It was incredible. His mind had not wandered for an instant while he was working. More important, he had not felt panicked or worried in the least. Not for one second.

But what do I do now?

“Sir, I was hoping – ”

Kevin looked up. Andrew was still there. He was hesitating. “I would
normally retire to my quarters at this point,” he said gently.

Kevin was ashamed. “Of course. I’ll be fine. I’ll put on the television.”

“And you’ll get some rest?”

“I hope so.” Kevin thanked him again, and then he remembered to ask one last thing. “I
do
have a television somewhere?”

“In the cabinet in your bedroom.”

Someone Cleared Them Out

It was a gigantic television. The built-in cabinet in his bedroom did a good job of making it unobtrusive, but with the doors open the machine dominated the room. He found the remote and retreated to his bed, sat down and began flipping through channels. It looked as though he had… all of them.

He chose a movie he had seen a hundred times, then climbed back in between the sheets.

Time passed as it was supposed to, but he didn’t fall asleep. When the movie was finished he went looking for a different channel. He needed something numbing.
He found a 24-hour religion channel.

Perfect
.

There was a priest
giving a sermon
at the pulpit,
and
Kevin settled in. This was better than sleeping pills. No one could possibly endure this kind of speech for very long.

He checked the digital clock on the cable box: it read 3:30 AM.

I can still squeeze in two or three hours of sleep.

But the priest’s sermon did not have
the effect Kevin had hoped for.
He began listening to the words, listening to the actual message the man was delivering. He couldn’t help it; he seemed to have developed a sort of automatic instinct to focus
all
of his attention on whatever was in front of him.

When he paid attention, everything else went away.

So now there was only the priest and his voice, this voice that sounded not tired or lulling but accusatory. He sounded angry and urgent. “Who are you?” the priest demanded, raising his head and looking out at the unseen audience. “Who does God want you to be? Have you heard Him? Have you listened?”

Kevin pushed himself back into the pillows behind him. This man was not making him sleepy. He felt as though he were enduring a pep talk.

“Why are you on this earth?” the priest said, and now the camera moved in for a close-up. The high definition of Kevin’s enormous television made the priest seem life-size, made him seem to lean forward and shout right into the bedroom. “What is your purpose?” the man bellowed, and little flecks of spit were collecting on his lips. “When you realize who you are, will you be prepared? Will you be
ready
?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kevin whispered. He grabbed the remote and turned off the television, and then he went quickly to the dresser. He opened the top right-hand drawer, which is where he would ordinarily find –

Yes. Exactly where he would have chosen to put all his exercise clothes.

Right where he
had
put them all, he supposed. Though he had no memory of such a thing.

He dressed quickly, grabbed his keys, and was out the door. In the lobby, the night doorman did not bat an eye. Did not ask why Mr. Brooks had decided that 3:45 in the morning would be a good time for a jog. He opened the door and said “Good morning” without a hint of irony in his voice.

Kevin headed straight for Central Park. If sleeping pills wouldn’t work, if writing over a hundred lesson plans, watching an old movie and, for the love of
Jesus
, listening to an actual
Catholic sermon
wouldn’t work, then he would physically run himself into the ground.

He went out fast
–
too fast, on purpose – making
his way to the
10-kilometer loop
that
went winding
through the park itself
.
H
e was only half-shocked to see a scattering of other people already on the road. It was a city with all kinds of folks on all kinds of schedules. People got their exercise when they could.

What
was
shocking was
that
he did not seem to be slowing down.

He pass
ed
over the hill on 78th, and now he was coming up on the Metropolitan Museum. There was a homeless man on the grassy expanse there on the right, tending to his collection of worldly goods in bags and a shopping cart. The man looked up as Kevin passed, and he gave Kevin a little good-morning wave.

Kevin put up a hand and kept going, still waiting for his breath to grow short. Still waiting for his legs to start feeling heavy. He had been a good
, quick
quarterback in his time,
b
ut he had never felt like this. He was not a runner, after all. He was not built for endurance.

Somehow it
was easier now. He felt not only stronger, but lighter.