Authors: Kamy Wicoff
Jennifer looked up at Alicia, astonished.
“What’s that look for?” Alicia asked. “After all you’ve put me through with your bullshit superwoman routine? How about now that we need the real thing?”
“But Superwoman
isn’t
real,” Jennifer said. “She can’t just bust into Bill’s apartment and go through everything in that file box for an hour all by herself. What if there isn’t enough time? What if the payroll reports aren’t in there and we have to look for something else?” Alicia began to shake her head, but Jennifer kept on going. “It takes a village, right?” Jennifer said. “I’ll use the app to break into Bill’s apartment. But you have to come too.”
T
HIRTY MINUTES LATER
, after quizzing Vinita thoroughly regarding her medical opinion of the app’s safety (this after Alicia’s first response to Jennifer’s proposition, which was an emphatic “hell, no”), and after Vinita had left for the office, and after Dr. Sexton had then spent several minutes explaining the physics behind how the app worked, Alicia was still not convinced. Though she did admit that the chances of succeeding in finding something incriminating in Bill’s file cabinet between the time the workmen left the apartment and his arrival back from the airport were far greater if two of them went, rather than Jennifer alone.
“But why do
I
have to use the app?” Alicia asked. “Can’t you just transport yourself and then let me in the front door the old-fashioned way, on foot and all in one piece?” Alicia was tapping the table nervously with her fingers, as antsy and anxious as Jennifer had ever seen her.
“You heard Tim about the security in that building,”
Jennifer said. “How will you get up to Bill’s floor? The elevator requires a key, too, remember?”
Dr. Sexton laid a hand on Alicia’s arm, stilling, for the moment, the tapping. “Alicia,” she said, “I know it seems frightening. But I assure you, a single use of the app will be absolutely safe. It has been tested again and again, and it is completely stable.”
Alicia took a deep breath. She looked from Dr. Sexton to Jennifer and back several times. “How many times have you all used it?” she asked.
“Hundreds,” Jennifer said.
“Thousands,” Dr. Sexton said at the same time, causing Jennifer to shoot her a look of amused surprise.
“And you’ve never gotten smashed up, or scrambled, or stuck?”
“Do I look smashed up or scrambled?” Jennifer asked.
“And no one has ever been stuck,” Dr. Sexton said.
“‘No one’ meaning the two of you, the only two human beings on the planet who have ever used this thing?” Alicia asked.
There wasn’t much Jennifer or Dr. Sexton could say to that.
As was her custom when she was trying to make up her mind about something, Alicia closed her eyes, put two fingers to each of her temples, and rubbed them, as though attempting to summon the spirit guide who would know what to do when the only way to catch one’s corrupt boss was by jumping into a wormhole invented by a woman wearing two different-colored shoes. Dr. Sexton, for her part, had requisitioned Jennifer’s laptop and was clicking away on the keyboard, determining the coordinates for Bill Truitt’s fifty-fifth-story apartment in midtown.
After several minutes, Alicia opened her eyes. Jennifer knew. She was in. She smiled, but Alicia did not smile back. “If
I come out missing any of my parts,” she said grimly, “I and my parts are going to haunt both of you for the rest of your lives.”
“You won’t,” Jennifer said. “I promise.”
“So we may proceed,” Dr. Sexton said, turning Jennifer’s laptop to face them. “As you can see, I have located the proper coordinates.”
Alicia’s phone chimed. She glanced at it. “Tim wants to know the plan.”
“We can’t tell Tim,” Jennifer said.
“But Tim is the one who knows where Bill keeps the key to the file cabinet,” Alicia answered. “And where the file cabinet is.”
“But how will we explain to him that we can get in?” Jennifer asked. “Wait!” she said, turning to Dr. Sexton. “I know. Can you make one of those flashy thingies like in
Men in Black
, so we can explain the plan to him and then wipe his memory clean?” She was half kidding, but only half. Dr. Sexton, however, was not amused.
Dr. Sexton closed Jennifer’s laptop and took a long sip of her ever-present tea. “It is very tiresome,” she said at last, “to hear one’s work described in the language of adolescent Hollywood movies.” Jennifer was going to apologize, but Dr. Sexton went on. “Clearly, Tim needs to be included,” she said, “in order to locate the file cabinet and key. Not only that,” she said, “but I suspect Tim could be very useful as—to borrow from a Hollywood genre I much prefer to science fiction, the western—a lookout. Tim arranged the car to collect Bill at the airport, correct?” Alicia nodded. “So he will have some knowledge of when the pickup is made. Tim will be able to warn you when Bill is on his way home.”
“We don’t need to tell him anything about how we’re going to get in,” Alicia said. “We can just tell him we’ve found a way and it’s better that he doesn’t know about it.”
“Plausible deniability,” Dr. Sexton quipped. “How Nixonian.”
“We should also tell him to go home for the day,” Jennifer said. “We may need to take whatever we find to the office this afternoon, and he’ll never understand it if we bring the files there before five.”
As Alicia texted Tim back, Dr. Sexton picked up Jennifer’s phone. “I deleted your Wishful Thinking appointments for today, my dear,” she said, “as you requested.” Apparently there
was
an
EDIT
button somewhere Jennifer didn’t know about. “But now to make a new one.” Dr. Sexton pulled up Wishful Thinking and tapped the button that had started it all so many months ago:
CREATE AN EVENT
. Alicia circled the table and stood behind Dr. Sexton to peer over her shoulder.
“You ought to see the wand,” Dr. Sexton said, turning to Alicia, unable to resist the opportunity to show off her creation in front of a new audience. “It emerges from two dimensions to three and hovers over the screen! Jennifer found it distracting, but it’s really quite wonderful. I can pull it up quickly if you’d like—”
“Later!” Jennifer said, taking her phone back. She read the entry, which was not in the form she was accustomed to:
Depart home, Thursday, April 7, 10:30 a.m. Arrive 157 West 57th Street, Thursday, April 7, 5:15 p.m. Return home, Thursday, April 7, 6:15 p.m.
She looked up at Dr. Sexton. “We aren’t going to wait until five fifteen? I thought you couldn’t travel into the future,” she said. “Didn’t the guide say that?”
“The laws of physics don’t prevent it,” Dr. Sexton said. “But I thought it wise to dissuade you, or anyone, from using the app in that manner, which would distract from its purpose: to provide individuals overwhelmed by modern life with a means to cope with it.”
“Cope, or cheat?” Alicia asked.
“As you can see,” Dr. Sexton said, ignoring her, “you will
depart at ten thirty, which is fifteen minutes from now. That way you will have time to review whatever you find—and formulate a plan of action—well before Bill’s return.”
Jennifer looked at the appointment again. The return: 6:15 p.m. It was reasonable to assume it would take Bill that long to get back, given that he had to go through customs (though she was sure he had some sort of mogul fast pass) and deal with rush-hour traffic. But still. “What if Bill comes back before six fifteen?” Jennifer asked. “What do we do? Hide?”
“I thought of that,” Dr. Sexton said, smiling. She took Jennifer’s phone and tapped on the Wishful Thinking appointment. Then she pointed to a button in the bottom-right-hand corner that had never appeared there before:
EDIT
. Jennifer smiled. Dr. Sexton had handed her the keys to the car at last, at least temporarily, and she felt much better traveling with them in hand.
“Are you sure this will work? For me to go with her?” Alicia asked.
“Just as long as she is touching both you and the phone, you will both be transported,” Dr. Sexton replied. “I know this because I once traveled with Lucy—my dog—quite by mistake, which was very unpleasant.”
Jennifer pictured Dr. Sexton departing for an evening of tango lessons in Buenos Aires only to find herself trapped in a chic nightclub bathroom with a very disoriented Great Dane.
“I will be here when you return,” Dr. Sexton said. “Which, of course, will be almost instantly after you depart.”
Jennifer stood, stretching. “I’m going to use the bathroom. Always wise before a long trip.”
“You make it sound like we’re driving to the Rockaways,” Alicia said, standing too.
“It’s almost as mundane by now, isn’t it, my dear?” Dr. Sexton said, winking at Jennifer playfully. “But not quite.”
* * *
H
AVING INSTRUCTED
T
IM TO
go home immediately and to notify them as soon as the car picked Bill up at the airport, and having secured Vinita’s help in picking up the boys that day (they’d have to skip their swimming lesson), Jennifer and Alicia regrouped by the kitchen table.
“Are you ready?” Jennifer asked Alicia. Alicia, who was tapping the table again with her bright, glossy nails, nodded.
“What’s it like?” she asked, almost in a whisper. “How does it feel?”
“Like a hot flash on steroids,” Jennifer said. “And then it’s over.”
“And how would you know what a hot flash feels like?” Dr. Sexton asked, laughing. Alicia did her best to smile. “You should both put your hands on the phone now,” Dr. Sexton said, glancing at the clock. “And don’t forget, Alicia—be sure to put one hand on Jennifer too.”
Alicia lifted her hand from the table, ceasing her drumming. Her hand was shaking. Jennifer remembered the first time she’d used the app (the first time she’d used it knowing it was real, anyway), and her heart went out to Alicia. She clasped Alicia’s hand in her own and placed them together on top of her phone. “Think of Amalia,” she said. “Think of Noel.”
“I think,” Alicia said, placing her other hand on Jennifer’s forearm as they watched the clock, now at 10:29, “I will think of Jesus.”
“Whatever works,” Jennifer said. “Because here … we …
go
.”
* * *
J
ENNIFER AND
A
LICIA LANDED
in the middle of Bill Truitt’s vast living room, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows with views of Manhattan only the fifty-fifth floor of a midtown high-rise could provide. “Wow,” Alicia breathed, looking out over the city, Central Park, still mostly bare from the winter months, laid out beneath them. “I’ve never seen the park like that before.”
Jennifer took a quick look, then turned her attention to the layout of the apartment.
“Tim said the office was off the living room,” she said, scanning their surroundings. She pulled up the e-mail they’d asked him to send with his instructions. “He said to look for dark wood double doors.” To the right of the foyer and to the left of a hallway that appeared to lead to the kitchen, Jennifer immediately spotted the doors. The wood was so dark it was almost black, in keeping with the apartment’s austere, modern look. Together, the women walked toward them. Alicia reached for the handle, but Jennifer stopped her. She fished in her bag, took out a scarf, and wrapped it around her hand.
“It’s silly,” she said, “but we probably shouldn’t leave fingerprints. Right?”
“Seriously?” Alicia said. Jennifer, chagrined, put the scarf back in her bag. Alicia turned the knob.
The doors opened. Unlike the bright white, modern living room, Bill’s office was luxurious, old-school, covered in deep mahogany, every inch of it shining as glossily as Alicia’s fingernails. Cabinets and shelves, some encased in glass, were everywhere, lit by perfectly placed recessed lights that pulsed subtly to life when Jennifer pressed the switch by the door. Lining the shelves were what Jennifer recognized from her corporate days as “deal trophies”: Lucite tombstones commemorating the dates and details of deals Bill Truitt Enterprises had done over the years, mini-monuments to massive amounts of
money changing hands, awarded to the men who’d made the biggest financial kills.
“Where did Tim say the key was?” Alicia asked, stepping into the room cautiously.
“Under a vase,” Jennifer said, surveying the contents of the cabinetry. “To the left of a photo of Bill and Tiger Woods.” Sure enough, just as Tim had described, there was, to the left of a framed photo of Bill and a much younger Tiger Woods, an ornately decorated antique-looking vase, the value of which she did not even want to contemplate. “Imagine what Tiger would have done with that app of yours,” Alicia said drily. Jennifer tipped the vase upward as gently as she could and, reaching underneath it with her other hand, probed with her fingers until she found what they sought: a tiny, round-topped key. She smiled. She’d half thought it wouldn’t be there.
“Thank God,” Alicia said. Key in hand, Jennifer walked over to Bill’s desk, which was twice the size of her kitchen table. After wheeling his office chair aside, she got down on her hands and knees and peered underneath it. It was so dark in the room, not to mention under the desk, that it was difficult to make anything out at first. But as her eyes adjusted to the low light, she saw it: a heavy black file cabinet that looked like it was designed to survive a plane crash. It was just as Tim had described.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Alicia said, as Jennifer, on all fours, pulled the heavy cabinet out from under the desk. Just as she did, her phone emitted a loud
ping
, causing Jennifer to start and bang her head against the underside of the desk.
Rubbing the back of her head and standing, she looked at her phone. It was a text from Tim.
Flight just landed
, it read.
Pray for traffic
, she replied.
Alicia knelt down next to her. Having given up on her stealth scarf, Jennifer placed the key into the lock and opened
it. Expecting to see an orderly set of hanging file folders inside, however, Jennifer groaned when she saw what greeted them instead. The cabinet was stuffed to the gills, and there was nothing orderly about it. It looked, in fact, like a miniature storage locker from an episode of
Hoarders
.