Chapter 3
An inexplicable pang of sadness shot through him as he’d shuffled past all the desks and out the door, waving to the other tech writers as he went. On the sidewalk he faltered, puzzled. Why on earth should he feel bad about leaving this place? It was only temporary, a vacation and a chance to clear his head while at the same time clearing up his record.
Before he got to his car, the feeling had vanished, leaving only a trace of confusion in its wake.
At home, Carl went straight to the warped and scarred oak desk he’d brought with him when he moved from Morgantown two states away. In the third pigeonhole from the left, a crystal-clear image told him, were two envelopes full of check stubs from Garland and Omega. He’d assembled them for his income taxes one year, but when it turned out he hadn’t needed them after all he of course had swept the whole affair under a mental carpet and never thought of it again.
Until now.
Annoyed at his own forgetfulness and remembering a dozen other similar lapses running all the way back to grade school, he hurried to his desk, almost stumbling on the frayed throw rug Shelly had given him to wipe his shoes on after the freakish snow storm that had, somehow, been totally missed by every TV weatherman in the state.
Beginning to relax, he emptied the pigeon hole, gratified to see there were enough loose papers and ragged envelopes to cover a decade, never mind a single year.
Minutes later, his annoyance and relief turned into a growing nervousness. The check stubs weren’t there. The envelopes he’d been certain contained them were simply empty. The others were filled with stubs, all right, but they were all from the paper mill that handled Harry’s payroll.
“Damn,” he said softly, leaning back in the chair. Where had he put them? He hadn’t imagined them. He’d touched them. He’d tucked them away.
He started at the far left and searched all the pigeonholes again, all the drawers, every possible crack.
And did it all again, this time reading each and every piece of paper and writing down the dates of every pay stub, wondering if the cut-rate outfit that did Harry’s payroll had screwed up in some way, getting his records mixed up with someone else’s, which of course was even more ridiculous than being completely forgotten by people he’d worked with for years.
After two more tedious searches, he gave up and accepted the inevitable: There were no Morgantown stubs, just an assortment of odds and ends from his eight years here: clippings, postcards from co-workers on vacations, long-expired cents-off coupons, paid-up utility bills, unsorted and unverified bank statements and canceled checks, pictures from last year’s neighborhood block party, souvenirs from his drive through New England a couple of summers ago. Every single item was from the past eight years. There were no old letters, no old pictures, no canceled checks, no bills, nothing from Morgantown. Nothing from before he’d moved here—
It was like his life had started only eight years ago.
Without warning, a memory surfaced, erupting into his mind like a pocket of air bubbling up through the otherwise placid surface of a lake.
Suddenly, he felt like a total fool. All the Morgantown records had been stuffed in a single box—the box the movers had lost! How could he have forgotten?
“The movers. Of course.”
But no, that was impossible! He had rented a trailer and loaded everything himself! Hadn’t he? He’d been going to hire movers, but a look at his bank account had changed his mind, and it wasn’t that far of a move, Indiana to Wisconsin.
Squeezing his eyes tightly shut, he shook his head vigorously, as if to bully his mind into behaving itself.
And he remembered.
It had been an earlier move that he’d rented the trailer; the time when he’d just relocated across town and hadn’t needed to hire a mover. A trailer and a couple trips were all it had taken, not like when he’d come up here, from two states away.
Satisfied his recollections were in check, he stood, the missing box and the careless movers fixed firmly in his mind.
But what now?
Call somebody? Call who? Someone at Omega or the non-existent Garland? Fat lot of good that would do. He didn’t remember the titles or names of anyone in authority, let alone the number for the department responsible for screwing up personnel records.
He glanced at his watch and realized with a shock that it was past four. He’d wasted more than six hours in his idiotic search, which meant it was past closing time in Morgantown’s time zone even if he did know who to call.
No, there was no point in calling, no point at all. A better idea would be to call some of the people he’d worked with. Yeah, people who’d remember him even if he had been forgotten by—or never even been entered in—the damn computers. He could probably find a Morgantown phone book at the library.
Tomorrow.
The library closed at five on Fridays, and he wanted to spend a little time there. Besides, the phone rates would be lower on Saturday. Relieved to have a plan, Carl went to the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and stared sightlessly into the brightly-lit interior. A few wisps of mist formed as the cold drifted out around the warped door of the freezer compartment into the humid air of the kitchen. Unexpectedly, he shivered.
Grabbing a bottle of 7-UP, he slammed the refrigerator door shut and pulled the opener from its magnetic mooring near the top of the door. The cap came loose with an unusually loud warning hiss, and he was just able to get the bottle to his lips to catch the fizz before it spilled over.
Back in the living room, he flipped on the TV. Nothing worth watching, of course, not at this time of day. None of the stations he could get would have any news for another hour, at least. Maybe someday the town would get around to approving a cable contract, but until that unlikely day he was limited to what he could get with the ancient rabbit ears perched on top of the set.
Funny to be home this early, he thought, a touch of uneasiness returning, setting the skin on his back a-tingle. Turning the volume down to a low murmur, he crossed to his threadbare couch, set the bottle on the stack of Time magazines on the coffee table and sat, sprawling with his head against the cushion. The flickering, nearly silent images of some soap opera followed by a Gilligan’s Island rerun seemed to calm him for some inexplicable reason. Soon he was yawning, his eyelids drooping, and, to his own surprise, he found himself actually looking forward to the fog-filled dreams that most certainly would plague him again, as if some part of his mind saw them not as a threat but as a haven.
***