IllicitImpulse (11 page)

He blinked. “Right now?”

“Yeah.” She made one last try to collect herself before
standing. “I’m really sorry. Will you let me know if you need anything else?”

He rose to join her. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll let you know.”

She led John across the room to her coat and he took it down
and held it while she slid into it. Once her arms were in the sleeves, he took
hold of her shoulders.

“Don’t run off.” His whisper caressed the exposed skin
beneath her ear and she turned to face him. “You don’t have to run off. Not
like this.”

She wanted something so simple. She wanted to thank him for
drying her tears. No words would measure up, and so she went up on tiptoe to
press her lips to the cool, sweet-smelling smoothness of his cheek. His arms
slowly closed around her and they faced each other, almost nose-to-nose. She
bit her lip and stared at the firm line of his mouth.

He would restore her peace. He would see through all the
chaos and all the mistakes and all the rough places in her heart and make
everything all right.

Then morning would come with the truth.

She lowered herself back onto her heels. She was his best
friend. For now, she was his test subject. She almost became the teary-eyed
little basket case who threw herself at him.

She patted his chest with her hand and he let go of her.

“It’s okay.” She met his gaze and hoped she was convincing
him.

His shoulders lifted in a half-shrug. “Okay.”

“Call me.” She got her purse over her shoulder as he opened
the door for her. “Call me if you need anything.”

“I will.”

She went out into the hallway and looked back at him. They
waved at each other like people who only knew each other through an absent
mutual friend. Then she headed down the stairs, listening for the sound of his
door closing behind her.

Damn.

Grace headed down glistening sidewalks toward the Cuban
place and her car. Her mental defenses weakened as she hurried along. He’d been
only a breath away from her. She could have just brushed her lips over his,
like she had in the hallway so long ago, and let things unfold from there,
without a care for what would come in the morning.

She sucked in a breath of frosty air as she turned the
corner near where she’d parked. She pulled her keys out of her pocket and let
herself into her car. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The whole idea, she’d
thought, was that she wasn’t supposed to feel confused and weird about this.
Everything was supposed to be easier. Why wasn’t it easier?

She tossed her scarf onto the passenger seat, shoved the key
into the ignition, and wrapped her fingers tightly around the wheel. She
couldn’t go back. She’d redrawn the line in the sand, the one that had always
separated them, and now she had to respect that boundary. Still she didn’t
really want to go home. If she went home, she’d just look up at the ceiling and
analyze this until she finally fell asleep.

She started the car and pushed the slide for the heater all
the way to the right. The air coming from the vents slowly turned warm as the
engine ran and she considered her destination.

Tal. He understood the male mind. More importantly he
understood her. He’d help her sort this out.

When she made her first pass by Tal’s, starting her circular
search for somewhere to park, she noticed his place was in darkness. She knew
he was supposed to be out with one of his many female acquaintances, a
classmate or someone who was about to be married. Grace was sure he’d be home
by now. He wasn’t the sort to hang out until last call, not with clients coming
the next morning.

She completed her quest for a parking space in record time
and turned the engine off. Mist gathered on her windshield. Should she walk all
the way back there on the off chance he’d gotten home? That didn’t seem to make
a lot of sense, but neither did going home to make herself crazy all night
long.

She got out of the car and pulled her scarf over her hair.
She’d come this far. She had to be sure he wasn’t home before she left.

Trying to keep out of the chilly moisture, she walked in the
shadows cast by awnings and porticoes until she was across the street from her
destination. Tal and his friend emerged from the dark into the pale light of
the streetlamp in front of his door. Grace smiled. She knew she’d been right to
try this.

Just as she started across the street, she noticed that Tal
was holding his friend’s hand. He’d seemed upset with her the last time they’d
spoken, but Tal could be quick to mend his fences. Good. This way, maybe she
could get a woman’s—

And then he kissed her.

Grace froze mid-step. When Tal’s mysterious friend wrapped
her arms around his shoulders, Grace realized all at once that she was standing
in the road and retreated back to the far side of the intersection, back into
the shadows.

The sight of them mesmerized her. This wasn’t the way Tal
usually kissed. His hands went to his friend’s waist and stayed there. Even at
this distance, she could see that he held this woman as if she would shatter or
evaporate at the slightest provocation. They were so still for so long that
Grace realized she was holding her breath.

She began to back away from them. If they saw her, there
would be awkward introductions, halfhearted invitations—and that was the
best-case scenario. She knew he wouldn’t see her now if she kept moving. Hell,
he wasn’t even looking. But she still didn’t feel safe until she’d shut her car
door behind her.

Grace sat behind the wheel in the dark, her scarf loosely
draped over her hair, her purse on her lap. He hadn’t said anything about this.
They didn’t owe each other anything; they’d agreed on that long ago. They had
promised to tell each other if there was ever another party in the equation
though. It just seemed safer that way.

So how had this happened? When had he planned to tell her?

Had he planned to tell her?

She started the car and numbly pulled the scarf off. Damn.
She hadn’t asked him for much.

Had she?

* * * * *

John stood at the French doors long after Grace had
disappeared into the rainy night and he watched the droplets of water swirl in
the cone of light cast by the street lamp.

Well, now he knew.

After all this, the awkward silence, his respectful
distance, his willingness to leave his comfort zone far, far behind, this was
the beginning of the end.

This wasn’t the first time she’d chosen her own bed over his
place. She was always so careful to make all the right polite excuses about
early-morning appointments, not wanting to impose, wanting to keep out of his
way. He, in turn, would smile and nod like a good friend should, and they’d go
their separate ways until the next time.

Watching her last week had been incredible, but something
between them felt unfinished, even then. Something stretched tightly between
them like a bowstring.

Like the breath they’d both been holding by the door just
then.

He backed away from the window. She’d gone to Tal. Her coat
was probably drying near one of his radiators right now.

John lay down on the couch, gazing up at the ceiling. He
closed his eyes. If he tried, he could just catch the faintest hint of her
shampoo. The memory of her riding Tal hard, the breathy moans she made while he
pumped himself into his own hand in the darkness, all that had gotten him
through the week. She’d surpassed his imagination, and then she’d conquered it.

Are you sorry?

No.

Not really.

He groaned. More than anything that anyone else had tried,
his experiment—and then hers—had proved that Impulse worked. He should be
elated instead of trying to parse how bad the present developments should be
making him feel.

Was he sorry?

He wouldn’t think about it now. He wouldn’t think about Tal
or his radiators or what the two of them were doing either.

That left the audit committee. Tomorrow was his day in the
sun. Plenty to think about there.

He wasn’t supposed to know when the committee was getting to
him. They’d certainly tried hard to maintain the illusion of secrecy, but he’d
figured them out easily enough. Knowing when the bell was scheduled to toll for
him should have made him feel better. His colleagues had spent the week either
worrying about facing them or trying to sort out their documentation.

And
they
didn’t have anything to worry about. He had
to explain how Subject 3258 had gone from hesitant wallflower to vibrant
playgirl overnight. He couldn’t produce Grace’s tapes without revealing what
they’d been up to, but not producing the tapes meant explaining what had
happened to them.

Reluctantly he opened his eyes and looked at his pencils and
notepad on the coffee table, next to his glass. He’d come so far from the days
when he thought everything was under control. He could still account for all
the pills, but that seemed like a hollow victory too.

He slowly rubbed his eyes before reaching for the legal pad
and a pencil. Enough stalling. What had he learned?

He tapped the page with the pencil. First things first. He
wrote,
Ongoing experimentation demonstrates intended results
.

It looked like a lie. He drew a neat line through it.

Ongoing experimentation seems to have produced the
desired results.

Better. He made two columns, wrote the word
Benefits
over the left one. Beneath that, he wrote,
freedom
and
increased
appetite
.

That stuff really makes you crazy, John.

The memory of her voice, describing just how well the pills
worked, only reminded him of her tears. She wouldn’t let him comfort her and
maybe that was a testament to what a world without oxytocin looked like.

And maybe it’s because you’re the asshole who’s turned
her life upside down.

He sighed and looked away from the order of his notes to the
ceiling. He’d started this. He’d put them in this position, on a long spiral to
God-knew-where.

Her tears had burned hot on his fingers. He’d done that.

He faced the stark lines of his handwriting. Everything made
sense there on the page, and that knowledge felt like a kick to his chest.

He drew a single line across the page. Blank space waited
beneath the newly created border and he began to fill it quickly.

He could still make this right.

John stared at the door to his office. Right now it stood
open just enough to admit the occasional sounds of the elevator down the hall
and people headed toward it in pursuit of their weekend plans. He’d have to
shut it if he meant to follow through with his plan to close his eyes for five
minutes. He wouldn’t even have to stand. He could just roll his desk chair over
to the door, push it closed and then roll back to his desk and let the five
minutes begin.

No, he knew better. That five minutes would turn into the
full night’s sleep he’d denied himself last night. He’d gotten through most of
the day on about four hours of sleep, and fatigue wrapped the day in a surreal
hyper-reality. Too-bright colors, right out of a kids’ TV show, assaulted his
weary eyes. The building’s climate control made a loud, steady rumble like the
moving of a distant herd. All day the weightless click of his computer keyboard
had been strangely loud. He yawned and when his eyes watered and burned, he
reached under his glasses to rub them.

By midmorning, the audit committee had fallen behind schedule,
and now at six thirty he was still waiting for his turn with them. No doubt the
committee thought he was a good way to round out the week. At first glance,
nothing in his documentation would even slow them down on the way to the
weekend. They couldn’t know how wrong they were. He just hoped he could keep
his defenses up long enough to get through whatever they had to dish out. In
his condition, he was hardly capable of guile.

He couldn’t stop glancing over at the woven texture of the
envelope beneath his desk lamp. Something about the surface of the paper made
John want to touch it, to reassure himself that it was real and that he really
meant to go through with the plans he’d committed to last night.

He’d finally distilled those plans to a handful of easy
steps. Finish the memo. Sleep on it. Reread the memo. Send Neil the
need-to-talk email. It was almost too easy. Like falling off a log.

Or jumping from a building.

All this waiting complicated things. Waiting to be called by
the committee. Waiting for his boss to respond to his email. Waiting was sleepy
work. At least he’d gotten through most of the day without actually dozing off
at his desk.

A narrow window appeared in the bottom corner of his
computer screen, signaling the arrival of an email from the executive assistant
upstairs. He probably had forty emails from her, all scheduling and
rescheduling his appointment with the auditors. This one had no subject line,
but he could read the two sentences in the little window before it disappeared.
Ready for you. Come on up.

Alertness gradually returned as he rose from the chair and
gathered up his legal pad, some of his notes and the envelope. He went to the
doorway and turned to face his office. Would he still be here next week? John
hadn’t quite managed to shake off the worry before his boss appeared at his
shoulder. Turning to face him was a herculean effort. “Hey, Neil. I was just
headed up there.”

Neil glanced down at his watch. “Damn, it’s late. Why does
stuff like this always run so late?” He leaned against the doorway opposite
John and, heedless of the committee for a moment, they both gazed into the
office as if it were a zoo enclosure. Was the tiger asleep? Hiding? Was he even
there?

“I’m sorry I didn’t get back to you when you emailed me,”
Neil said. “What did you want to talk about?”

“Just this.” John gave him the envelope. “I didn’t want to
email it to you.”

“Hold on,” said Neil, holding it as if it were full of those
spring-loaded toy snakes people used to cram into fake cans of snacks. “What is
it?”

“It’s not a resignation.” John chuckled, but it was a dry,
gallows sound, empty and lifeless. “You might want me to write you one, though,
after you read that.”

Neil sighed and John almost felt bad for him. He’d probably
had a few unwanted surprises this week too. “Can’t you just tell me what it
is?”

John looked at his watch again and shook his head. “I should
go. It’s late already and they’re waiting for me upstairs.”

As he moved off toward the elevator, John could hear his
boss opening the envelope. So much for waiting. “We are going to talk about
this though,” Neil said.

“Yeah, we are.” John glanced back one last time to see his
boss pulling out the memo. “I promise.”

* * * * *

The audit committee was almost exactly what he’d expected.
Almost.

He knew the auditors had taken up residence upstairs in the
corporate conference rooms on the pretext of keeping the cinderblock interview
rooms downstairs reserved for interviews. Over the course of the audit, they’d
ensconced themselves here in the comfortable chairs, with their expensive
lunches and panoramic views of the parking lot. According to the office
grapevine, the auditors pored over all the files at their leisure, adhering to
no discernible schedule, rubberstamping and returning to storage the files that
didn’t generate suspicion or curiosity. The most troublesome of the files ended
up in a set of Bankers Boxes along the far wall of the room, the side opposite
the credenza where the auditors kept their carafes of water and the real
ceramic coffee cups.

Of course the gossip left out the important specifics, such
as just how many files had ended up in those boxes. So when John made his way
past the executive assistant’s unattended desk and pushed open the heavy door,
his gaze shot to the left side of the conference room. For all their trouble,
the committee had only deemed two boxes of files worthy of additional scrutiny.
The idea warmed John in a way he recognized as irrational.

The bigger surprise waited on the other side of the table,
where a man and a woman rose to greet him. He’d expected a firing squad. His
colleagues had reported facing a panel of six. He wasn’t sure what to make of
the fact that his career lay in the hands of two people.

The man, St. Cloud, greeted him with a stentorian voice and a
handshake that was as warm and humid as a garment steamer. The woman introduced
herself as Davenport and offered him a prim, restrained smile and a limp
handshake. John grinned through his confusion and took a seat, not waiting to
be invited. All they needed to know was that he was happy to meet them and to
move through this process. The sooner they began, the sooner this would be
over.

The table was just wide enough for him to make out the
identification numbers on the files. 2463 and 1541—the worst of his problem
children. The third one was no surprise.

Subject 3258.

Davenport started up with an obviously canned routine about
how this was not supposed to be an adversarial process. “I’m sure you know
about what we’ve been working on up here. We’ve been meeting with your
teammates to gather some data about…well, your data. We’re all on the same side
here. We just need you to answer a few questions for us.” Her soft voice only
further convinced John that they’d choreographed this whole setup. Sure. We
were all on a quest together to find the truth, and when it came time to fire
someone, we’d be all smiles about it.

“Now, these are just a…a sample of your files.” St. Cloud
used a dramatic pause for emphasis where another man might have used a shift in
volume. “These are just places we’re finding…irregularities. Not the sort of
thing we’ve been seeing across the board—people in existing relationships,
consistently inadequate reporting, those sorts of things. What we’re finding
here are more unusual problems.”

John smiled. He could play this collegial game too. “Sure.
Anything I can do to help.”

“Great,” said Davenport. Her precise pronunciation made
everything she said sound more formal. “Let’s start with this one.” She opened
the file for 2463 and spread its contents out, removing John’s interview notes
from their clip on the right side of the folder. “This one here. The notes for
her eventually cut off, but before that, they become very sporadic.” She
flipped through the notes until she came to a red tape flag. “And see—here, the
interview is so short.”

“Can I see it?” Davenport slid John the file and he took his
time, trying to ignore the auditors’ stares as he flipped through the pages.
John remembered how frustrated he’d been, the aggravation of being stood up and
the endless rescheduling. He remembered the growing suspicion that she just
didn’t care, the quiet fears that maybe no one would ever care about this as he
did. But he remembered that irritation without reliving it, as if he were
watching himself in a movie.

Was the fatigue causing this? Or was it the knowledge that
his boss was reading and reacting to the memo? Whatever the cause was, John
welcomed the detachment in the wake of all the turbulence.

“Right. This one dropped out—out of school—but before that,
there were a lot of missed appointments. I don’t know what was behind that
exactly, since I don’t know why she dropped out.” John slid the file back into
the center of the table. “We were fortunate to have gotten the sample back.”

The two of them busied themselves with notes for what felt
like several minutes before Davenport asked, “And does this happen often?”

John maintained his poker face, but the urge to be a wiseass
was too much to resist. “Subjects dropping out of school?”

“No,” answered Davenport, looking up from the paperwork.
“Just disappearing with the sample.”

John looked upward at the ceiling and pretended that he had
to try to remember. “No, I don’t think anyone’s ever just left with the sample.
None of mine, anyway.”

St. Cloud gave him a skeptical look before putting the file
back together and stamping the jacket. One down, two to go. He pulled the
second one, the file for 1541, off the short stack. “This subject had…three
interviews.” He unclipped John’s notes and thumbed carefully through them.
“Your notes show she had a total of twenty-four pills.”

John sighed and bit his lip. He’d known this one would be
trouble too. “We did have problems with her. You’ll also see from the file that
those three appointments are each about eight weeks apart.”

St. Cloud frowned at the pages. “Did she…account for each of
the pills when you did see her?”

“That was part of the trouble.” John’s frustration with 1541
rose to mind again. She’d disappeared shortly before Grace came to bail him
out. “By the time she actually made it to an interview, she couldn’t recall a
lot of what had taken place. Her memory of each individual encounter wasn’t
reliable.”

“Did you coach her on the importance of keeping the
interview appointments?” asked Davenport. “Or keeping accurate records?”

“Repeatedly,” said John. “I think things got worse whenever
I raised the subject.”

“Why didn’t you drop her?” St. Cloud asked.

John swallowed his annoyance. “The project has historically
had difficulties retaining subjects,” he explained. “We needed as much data as
we could get.”

“Even unreliable data?” Davenport glared at him. Not so
easygoing after all. But then the prospect of unreliable data would probably
get his dander up too.

“I had no reason to believe all the data was so unreliable as
to warrant discarding it altogether. Earlier data might not be as specific as
the later accounts, but the later material, if you look at it, is more usable.”
They couldn’t be hearing this for the first time. By now someone had to have
mentioned that when the subjects disappeared for a long time, their accounts of
their most recent encounters were usually the most usable. “We’re asking for
very subjective material. The subject’s
memory
of what happened—how she
felt, what she experienced—is often as important as what actually happened.
Sometimes it’s more important.”

“But you have no way of knowing what happened to all the
pills.” St. Cloud put his elbows on the table.

“I never have any way of knowing that. So far as I was told,
she was using each of the pills but couldn’t remember with much clarity what
happened with all of them.”

St. Cloud shook his head in apparent dismay as he put the
file back together, his choppy movements betraying his annoyance.
Welcome to
my world, my fastidious friends.

Then Davenport slid over the file John most dreaded dealing
with, and the strange, detached calm that had settled over him began to burn
away.

“With 3258,” she said, unfastening the interview notes, “it
seems you have the opposite problem.”

Careful not to betray any additional interest, John waited
to see what direction the questions took. Last night, as he’d been making plans
for the day’s events, he’d considered all the possible avenues the auditors
would take, all the worst-case scenarios. Would the interviews somehow look
different when Grace entered the picture? How different would they be?

The memo in Neil’s hands downstairs wouldn’t completely free
him from responsibility for this if things went as badly as he knew they could.
Even with all his efforts in planning and prevention, he couldn’t fight off the
apprehension that made his skin tingle with a sudden chill.

“It seems this subject is one of your most regularly
scheduled,” said Davenport, “but your notes are less complete than with the
others. Here the time stamps you’ve put in your notes reflect a lengthy
interview, but you’ve only got a couple of paragraphs of observations.” She
pointed at one of the tape flags before sliding over a slightly thicker stack
of notes than either of the ones they’d reviewed so far.

She was looking at an interview from before Grace had
started participating, an interview with the original 3258. He hadn’t taken
much down because there hadn’t been much to record. That lengthy interview had
been more like interrogating an enemy agent.

“But then later, the amount of documentation is much higher.
Several pages from one interview, for instance,” St. Cloud chimed in. John
wondered if they’d both always been especially interested in this file, or if
his frustration with the last file was eroding his patience.