Eastern Standard Tribe

The receptionist. Dammit, why was he thinking about the receptionist? "Linda," he said, pulling away. Introduce her, he thought. Introduce them, and that'll make it less socially awkward. The English can't abide social awkwardness. "Linda, meet-" and he trailed off, realizing he didn't actually know the receptionist's name.

The receptionist glared at him from under a cap of shining candy-apple red hair, narrowing her eyes, which were painted in high style with Kubrick action-figure faces.

"My name is Tonaishah," she hissed. Or maybe it was Tanya Iseah, or Taneesha. He still didn't know her goddamned name.

"And this is Linda," he said, weakly. "We're going out tonight."

"And won't you have a dirty great time, then?" Tonaishah said.

"I'm sure we will," he said.

"Yes," Tonaishah said.

Art commed the door and missed the handle, then snagged it and grabbed Linda's hand and yanked her through.

"I'm a little randy," she said, directly into his ear. "Sorry." She giggled.

"Someone you have to meet," he said, reaching down to rearrange his pants to hide his boner.

"Ooh, right here in your office?" Linda said, covering his hand with hers.

"Someone with two eyes," he said, moving her hand to his hip.

"Ahh," she said. "What a disappointment."

"I'm serious. I want you to meet my friend Fede. I think you two will really hit it off."

"Wait," Linda said. "Isn't this a major step? Meeting the friends? Are we getting that serious already?"

"Oh, I think we're ready for it," Art said, draping an arm around her shoulders and resting his fingertips on the upper swell of her breast.

She ducked out from under his arm and stopped in her tracks. "Well, I don't. Don't I get a say in this?"

"What?" Art said.

"Whether it's time for me to meet your friends or not. Shouldn't I have a say?"

"Linda, I just wanted to introduce you to a coworker before we went out. He's in my office-I gotta grab my jacket there, anyway."

"Wait, is he a friend or a coworker?"

"He's a friend I work with. Come on, what's the big deal?"

"Well, first you spring this on me, then you change your story and tell me he's a coworker, now he's a friend again. I don't want to be put on display for your pals. If we're going to meet your friends, I'll dress for it, put on some makeup. This isn't fair."

"Linda," Art said, placating.

"No," she said. "Screw it. I'm not here to meet your friends. I came all the way across town to meet you at your office because you wanted to head back to your place after work, and you play headgames with me like this?"

"All right," Art said. "I'll show you back out to the lobby and you can wait with Tonaishah while I get my jacket."

"Don't take that tone with me," she said.

"What tone?" Art said. "Jesus Christ! You can't wait in the hall, it's against policy. You don't have a badge, so you have to be with me or in the lobby. I don't give a shit if you meet Fede or not."

"I won't tell you again, Art," she said. "Moderate your tone. I won't be shouted at."

Art tried to rewind the conversation and figure out how they came to this pass, but he couldn't. Was Linda really acting this nuts? Or was he just reading her wrong or pushing her buttons or something?

"Let's start over," he said, grabbing both of her hands in his. "I need to get my jacket from my office. You can come with me if you want to, and meet my friend Fede. Otherwise you can wait in the lobby, I won't be a minute."

"Let's go meet Fede," she said. "I hope he wasn't expecting anything special, I'm not really dressed for it."

He stifled a snotty remark. After all that, she was going to go and meet Fede? So what the hell were they arguing about? On the other hand, he'd gotten his way, hadn't he? He led her by the hand to his office, and beyond every doorway they passed was a V/DT Experience Designer pretending not to peek at them as they walked by, having heard every word through the tricky acoustics of O'Malley House.

"Fede," he said, stiffly, "This is Linda. Linda, this is Fede."

Fede stood and treated Linda to his big, suave grin. Fede might be short and he might have paranoid delusions, but he was trim and well groomed, with the sort of finicky moustache that looked like a rotting caterpillar if you didn't trim it every morning. He liked to work out, and had a tight waist and a gut you could bounce a quarter off of, and liked to wear tight shirts that showed off his overall fitness, made him stand out among the spongy mouse-potatoes of the corporate world. Art had never given it much thought, but now, standing with Fede and Linda in his tiny office, breathing in Fede's Lilac Vegetal and Linda's new-car-smell shampoo, he felt paunchy and sloppy.

"Ah," Fede said, taking her hand. "The one you hit with your car. It's a pleasure. You seem to be recovering nicely, too."

Linda smiled and gave him a peck on the cheek, a few strands of her bobbed hair sticking to his moustache like cobwebs as she pulled away.

"It was just a love tap," she said. "I'll be fine."

"Fede's from New York," Art said. "We colonials like to stick together around the office. And Linda's from Los Angeles."

"Aren't there any, you know, British people in London?" Linda said, wrinkling her nose.

"There's Tonaishah," Art said weakly.

"Who?" Fede said.

"The receptionist," Linda said. "Not a very nice person."

"With the eyes?" Fede said, wriggling his fingers around his temples to indicate elaborate eye makeup.

"That's her," Linda said.

"Nasty piece of work," Fede said. "Never trusted her."

"You're not another UE person, are you?" Linda said, sizing Fede up and giving Art a playful elbow in the ribs.

"Who, me? Nah. I'm a management consultant. I work in Chelsea mostly, but when I come slumming in Piccadilly, I like to comandeer Art's office. He's not bad, for a UE-geek."

"Not bad at all," Linda said, slipping an arm around Art's waist, wrapping her fingers around the waistband of his trousers. "Did you need to grab your jacket, honey?"

Art's jacket was hanging on the back of his office door, and to get at it, he had to crush himself against Linda and maneuver the door shut. He felt her breasts soft on his chest, felt her breath tickle his ear, and forgot all about their argument in the corridor.

"All right," Art said, hooking his jacket over his shoulder with a finger, feeling flushed and fluttery. "OK, let's go."

"Lovely to have met you, Fede," Linda said, taking his hand.

"And likewise," Fede said.

15.

Vigorous sex ensued.

16.

Art rolled out of bed at dark o'clock in the morning, awakened by circadians and endorphins and bladder. He staggered to the toilet in the familiar gloom of his shabby little rooms, did his business, marveled at the tenderness of his privates, fumbled for the flush mechanism-"British" and "Plumbing" being two completely opposite notions-and staggered back to bed. The screen of his comm, nestled on the end table, washed the room in liquid-crystal light. He'd tugged the sheets off of Linda when he got up, and there she was, chest rising and falling softly, body rumpled and sprawled after their gymnastics. It had been transcendent and messy, and the sheets were coarse with dried fluids.

He knelt on the bed and fussed with the covers some, trying for an equitable-if not chivalrously so-division of blankets. He bent forward to kiss at a bite-mark he'd left on her shoulder.

His back went "pop."

Somewhere down in the lumbar, somewhere just above his tailbone, a deep and unforgiving pop, ominous as the cocking of a revolver. He put his hand there and it felt OK, so he cautiously lay back. Three-quarters of the way down, his entire lower back seized up, needles of fire raced down his legs and through his groin, and he collapsed.

He barked with pain, an inhuman sound he hadn't known he could make, and the rapid emptying of his lungs deepened the spasm, and he mewled. Linda opened a groggy eye and put her hand on his shoulder. "What is it, hon?"

He tried to straighten out, to find a position in which the horrible, relentless pain returned whence it came. Each motion was agony. Finally, the pain subsided, and he found himself pretzelled, knees up, body twisted to the left, head twisted to the right. He did not dare budge from this posture, terrified that the pain would return.

"It's my back," he gasped.

"Whah? Your back?"

"I-I put it out. Haven't done it in years. I need an icepack, OK? There're some headache pills in the medicine cabinet. Three of those."

"Seriously?"

"Look, I'd get 'em myself, but I can't even sit up, much less walk. I gotta ice this down now before it gets too inflamed."

"How did it happen?"

"It just happens. Tai Chi helps. Please, I need ice."

Half an hour later, he had gingerly arranged himself with his knees up and his hips straight, and he was breathing deeply, willing the spasms to unclench. "Thanks," he said.

"What now? Should I call a doctor?"

"He'd just give me painkillers and tell me to lose some weight. I'll probably be like this for a week. Shit. Fede's going to kill me. I was supposed to go to Boston next Friday, too."

"Boston? What for? For how long?"

Art bunched the sheets in his fists. He hadn't meant to tell her about Boston yet-he and Fede hadn't worked out his cover story. "Meetings," he said. "Two or three days. I was going to take some personal time and go see my family, too. Goddamnit. Pass me my comm, OK?"

"You're going to work now?"

"I'm just going to send Fede a message and send out for some muscle-relaxants. There's a twenty-four-hour chemist's at Paddington Station that delivers."

"I'll do it, you lie flat."

And so it began. Bad enough to be helpless, weak as a kitten and immobile, but to be at the whim of someone else, to have to provide sufficient excuse for every use of his comm, every crawl across the flat... Christ. "Just give me my comm, please. I can do it faster than I can explain how to do it."

In thirty-six hours, he was ready to tear the throat out of anyone who tried to communicate with him. He'd harangued Linda out of the flat and crawled to the kitchen floor, painstakingly assembling a nest of pillows and sofa cushions, close to the icemaker and the painkillers and toilet. His landlady, an unfriendly Chinese lady who had apparently been wealthy beyond words in Hong Kong and clearly resented her reduced station, agreed to sign for the supply drops he commed to various retailers around London.

He was giving himself a serious crick in his neck and shoulder from working supine, comm held over his head. The painkillers weighted his arms and churned his guts, and at least twice an hour, he'd grog his way into a better position, forgetting the tenderness in his back, and bark afresh as his nerves shrieked and sizzled.

Two days later and he was almost unrecognizable, a gamey, unshaven lump in the tiny kitchen, his nest gray with sweat and stiff with spilled take-away curry. He suspected that he was overmedicating, forgetting whether he'd taken his tablets and taking more. In one of his more lucid moments, he realized that there was a feedback cycle at play here-the more pills he took, the less equipped he was to judge whether he'd taken his pills, so the more pills he took. His mind meandered through a solution to this, a timer-equipped pillcase that reset when you took the lid off and chimed if you took the lid off again before the set interval had elapsed. He reached for his comm to make some notes, found it wedged under one of his hocks, greasy with sweat, batteries dead. He hadn't let his comm run down in a decade, at least.

His landlady let Linda in on the fourth day, as he was sleeping fitfully with a pillow over his face to shut out the light from the window. He'd tried to draw the curtains a day-two days?-before, but had given up when he tried to pull himself upright on the sill only to collapse in a fresh gout of writhing. Linda crouched by his head and stroked his greasy hair softly until he flipped the pillow off his face with a movement of his neck. He squinted up at her, impossibly fresh and put together and incongruous in his world of reduced circumstances.

"Art. Art. Art. Art! You're a mess, Art! Jesus. Why aren't you in bed?"

"Too far," he mumbled.

"What would your grandmother say? Dear-oh-dearie. Come on, let's get you up and into bed, and then I'm going to have a doctor and a massage therapist sent in. You need a nice, hot bath, too. It'll be good for you and hygienic besides."

"No tub," he said petulantly.

"I know, I know. Don't worry about it. I'll sort it out."

And she did, easing him to his feet and helping him into bed. She took his house keys and disappeared for some unknowable time, then reappeared with fresh linen in store wrappers, which she lay on the bed carefully, making tight hospital corners and rolling him over, nurse-style, to do the other side. He heard her clattering in the kitchen, running the faucets, moving furniture. He reminded himself to ask her to drop his comm in its charger, then forgot.

"Come on, time to get up again," she said, gently peeling the sheets back.

"It's OK," he said, waving weakly at her.

"Yes, it is. Let's get up." She took his ankles and gradually turned him on the bed so that his feet were on the floor, then grabbed him by his stinking armpits and helped him to his feet. He stumbled with her into his crowded living room, dimly aware of the furniture stacked on itself around him. She left him hanging on the door lintel and then began removing his clothes. She actually used a scissors to cut away his stained tee shirt and boxer shorts. "All right," she said, "into the tub."

"No tub," he said.

"Look down, Art," she said.

He did. An inflatable wading pool sat in the middle of his living room, flanked by an upended coffee table and his sofa, standing on its ear. The pool was full of steaming, cloudy water. "There's a bunch of eucalyptus oil and Epsom salts in there. You're gonna love it."

That night, Art actually tottered into the kitchen and got himself a glass of water, one hand pressed on his lower back. The cool air of the apartment fanned the mentholated liniment on his back and puckered goose pimples all over his body. After days of leaden limbs, he felt light and clean, his senses singing as though he was emerging from a fever. He drank the water, and retrieved his comm from its cradle.

He propped several pillows up on his headboard and fired up his comm. Immediately, it began to buzz and hum and chatter and blink, throwing up alerts about urgent messages, pages and calls pending. The lightness he'd felt fled him, and he began the rotten business of triaging his in-box.

One strong impression emerged almost immediately: Fede wanted him in Boston.

The Jersey clients were interested in the teasers that Fede had forwarded to them. The Jersey clients were obsessed with the teasers that Fede had forwarded to them. The Jersey clients were howling for more after the teasers that Fede had forwarded to them. Fede had negotiated some big bucks on approval if only Art would go and talk to the Jersey clients. The Jersey clients had arranged a meeting with some of the MassPike decision-makers for the following week, and now they were panicking because they didn't have anything except the teasers Fede had forwarded to them.

You should really try to go to Boston, Art. We need you in Boston, Art. You have to go to Boston, Art. Art, go to Boston. Boston, Art. Boston.

Linda rolled over in bed and peered up at him. "You're not working again, are you?"

"Shhh," Art said. "It's less stressful if I get stuff done than if I let it pile up."

"Then why is your forehead all wrinkled up?"

"I have to go to Boston," he said. "Day after tomorrow, I think."

"Jesus, are you insane? Trying to cripple yourself?"

"I can recover in a hotel room just as well as I can recover here. It's just rest from here on in, anyway. And a hotel will probably have a tub."

"I can't believe I'm hearing this. You're not going to recover in Boston. You'll be at meetings and stuff. Christ!"

"I've got to do this," Art said. "I just need to figure out how. I'll go business class, take along a lumbar pillow, and spend every moment that I'm not in a meeting in a tub or getting a massage. I could use a change of scenery about now, anyway."

"You're a goddamned idiot, you know that?"

Art knew it. He also knew that here was an opportunity to get back to EST, to make a good impression on the Jersey clients, to make his name in the Tribe and to make a bundle of cash. His back be damned, he was sick of lying around anyway. "I've got to go, Linda."

"It's your life," she said, and tossed aside the covers. "But I don't have to sit around watching you ruin it." She disappeared into the hallway, then reemerged, dressed and with her coat on. "I'm out of here."

"Linda," Art said.

"No," she said. "Shut up. Why the fuck should I care if you don't, huh? I'm going. See you around."

"Come on, let's talk about this."

East-Coast pizza. Flat Boston twangs. The coeds rushing through Harvard Square and oh, maybe a side trip to New York, maybe another up to Toronto and a roti at one of the halal Guyanese places on Queen Street. He levered himself painfully out of bed and hobbled to the living room, where Linda was arguing with a taxi dispatcher over her comm, trying to get them to send out a cab at two in the morning.

"Come on," Art said. "Hang that up. Let's talk about this."

She shot him a dirty look and turned her back, kept on ranting down the comm at the dispatcher.

"Linda, don't do this. Come on."

"I am on the phone!" she said to him, covering the mouthpiece. "Shut the fuck up, will you?" She uncovered the mouthpiece. "Hello? Hello?" The dispatcher had hung up. She snapped the comm shut and slammed it into her purse. She whirled to face Art, snorting angry breaths through her nostrils. Her face was such a mask of rage that Art recoiled, and his back twinged. He clasped at it and carefully lowered himself onto the sofa.

"Don't do this, OK?" he said. "I need support, not haranguing."

"What's there to say? Your mind's already made up. You're going to go off and be a fucking idiot and cripple yourself. Go ahead, you don't need my permission."

"Sit down, please, Linda, and talk to me. Let me explain my plan and my reasons, OK? Then I'll listen to you. Maybe we can sort this out and actually, you know, come to understand each other's point of view."

"Fine," she said, and slammed herself into the sofa. Art bounced and he seized his back reflexively, waiting for the pain, but beyond a low-grade throbbing, he was OK.

"I have a very large opportunity in Boston right now. One that could really change my life. Money, sure, but prestige and profile, too. A dream of an opportunity. I need to attend one or two meetings, and then I can take a couple days off. I'll get Fede to OK a first-class flight-we get chits we can use to upgrade to Virgin Upper; they've got hot tubs and massage therapists now. I'll check into a spa-they've got a bunch on Route 128-and get a massage every morning and have a physiotherapist up to the room every night. I can't afford that stuff here, but Fede'll spring for it if I go to Boston, let me expense it. I'll be a good lad, I promise."

"I still think you're being an idiot. Why can't Fede go?"

"Because it's my deal."

"Why can't whoever you're meeting with come here?"

"That's complicated."

"Bullshit. I thought you wanted to talk about this?"

"I do. I just can't talk about that part."

"Why not? Are you afraid I'll blab? Christ, Art. Give me some credit. Who the hell would I blab to, anyway?"

"Look, Linda, the deal itself is confidential-a secret. A secret's only a secret if you don't tell it to anyone, all right? So I'm not going to tell you. It's not relevant to the discussion, anyway."

"Art. Art. Art. Art, you make it all sound so reasonable, and you can dress it up with whatever words you want, but at the end of the day, we both know you're full of shit on this. There's no way that doing this is better for you than staying here in bed. If Fede's the problem, let me talk to him."

"Jesus, no!"

"Why not?"

"It's not appropriate, Linda. This is a work-related issue. It wouldn't be professional. OK, I'll concede that flying and going to meeting is more stressful than not flying and not going to meetings, but let's take it as a given that I really need to go to Boston. Can't we agree on that, and then discuss the ways that we can mitigate the risks associated with the trip?"

"Jesus, you're an idiot," she said, but she seemed to be on the verge of smiling.

"But I'm your idiot, right?" Art said, hopefully.

"Sure, sure you are." She did smile then, and cuddle up to him on the sofa. "They don't have fucking hot tubs in Virgin Upper, do they?"

"Yeah," Art said, kissing her earlobe. "They really do."

17.

Once the blood coursing from my shins slows and clots, I take an opportunity to inspect the damage more closely. The cuts are relatively shallow, certainly less serious than they were in my runamuck imagination, which had vivid slashes of white bone visible through the divided skin. I cautiously pick out the larger grit and gravel and turn my attention spinewards.

I have done a number on my back, that much is certain. My old friends, the sacroiliac joints, feel as tight as drumheads, and they creak ominously when I shift to a sitting position with my back propped up on the chimney's upended butt, the aluminum skirting cool as a kiss on my skin. They're only just starting to twinge, a hint of the agonies to come.

My jaw, though, is pretty bad. My whole face feels swollen, and if I open my mouth the blood starts anew.

You know, on sober reflection, I believe that coming up to the roof was a really bad idea.

I use the chimney to lever myself upright again, and circle it to see exactly what kind of damage I've done. There's a neat circular hole in the roof where the chimney used to be, gusting warm air into my face as I peer into its depths. The hole is the mouth of a piece of shiny metal conduit about the circumference of a basketball hoop. When I put my head into it, I hear the white noise of a fan, somewhere below in the building's attic. I toss some gravel down the conduit and listen to the report as it pings off the fan blades down below. That's a good, loud sound, and one that is certain to echo through the building.

I rain gravel down the exhaust tube by the handful, getting into a mindless, shuffling rhythm, wearing the sides of my hands raw and red as I scrape the pebbles up into handy piles. Soon I am shuffling afield of the fallen chimney, one hand on my lumbar, crouched over like a chimp, knees splayed in an effort to shift stress away from my grooved calves.

I'm really beating the shit out of that poor fan, I can tell. The shooting-gallery rattle of the gravel ricocheting off the blades is dulling now, sometimes followed by secondary rattles as the pebbles bounce back into the blades. Not sure what I'll do if the fan gives out before someone notices me up here.

It's not an issue, as it turns out. The heavy fire door beyond the chimney swings open abruptly. A hospital maintenance gal in coveralls, roly-poly and draped with tool belts and bandoliers. She's red-faced from the trek up the stairs, and it gives her the aspect of a fairy tale baker or candy-seller. She reinforces this impression by putting her plump hands to her enormous bosom and gasping when she catches sight of me.

It comes to me that I am quite a fucking sight. Bloody, sunburnt, wild-eyed, with my simian hunch and my scabby jaw set at a crazy angle to my face and reality both. Not to mention my near nudity, which I'm semipositive is not her idea of light entertainment. "Hey," I say. "I, uh, I got stuck on the roof. The door shut." Talking reopens the wound on my jaw and I feel more blood trickling down my neck. "Unfortunately, I only get one chance to make a first impression, huh? I'm not, you know, really crazy, I was just a little bored and so I went exploring and got stuck and tried to get someone's attention, had a couple accidents... It's a long story. Hey! My name's Art. What's yours?"

"Oh my Lord!" she said, and her hand jumps to the hammer in its bandolier holster on her round tummy. She claws at it frantically.

"Please," I say, holding my hands in front of me. "Please. I'm hurt is all. I came up here to get some fresh air and the door swung shut behind me. I tripped when I knocked over the chimney to get someone's attention. I'm not dangerous. Please. Just help me get back down to the twentieth floor-I think I might need a stretcher crew, my back is pretty bad."

"It's Caitlin," she says.

"I beg your pardon?"

"My name is Caitlin," she says.

"Hi, Caitlin," I said. I extend my hand, but she doesn't move the ten yards she would have to cross in order to take it. I think about moving towards her, but think better of it.

"You're not up here to jump, are you?"

"Jump? Christ, no! Just stuck is all. Just stuck."

Linda's goddamned boyfriend was into all this flaky Getting to Yes shit, subliminal means of establishing rapport and so on. Linda and I once spent an afternoon at the Children's Carousel uptown in Manhattan, making fun of all his newage theories. The one that stood out in my mind as funniest was synching your breathing-"What you resist persists, so you need to turn resistance into assistance," Linda recounted. You match breathing with your subject for fifteen breaths and they unconsciously become receptive to your suggestions. I have a suspicion that Caitlin might bolt, duck back through the door and pound down the stairs on her chubby little legs and leave me stranded.

So I try it, match my breath to her heaving bosom. She's still panting from her trek up the stairs and fifteen breaths go by in a quick pause. The silence stretches, and I try to remember what I'm supposed to do next. Lead the subject, that's it. I slow my breathing down gradually and, amazingly, her breath slows down along with mine, until we're both breathing great, slow breaths. It works-it's flaky and goofy California shit, but it works.

"Caitlin," I say calmly, making it part of an exhalation.

"Yes," she says, still wary.

"Have you got a comm?"

"I do, yes."

"Can you please call downstairs and ask them to send up a stretcher crew? I've hurt my back and I won't be able to handle the stairs."

"I can do that, yes."

"Thank you, Caitlin."

It feels like cheating. I didn't have to browbeat her or puncture her bad reasoning-all it took was a little rapport, a little putting myself in her shoes. I can't believe it worked, but Caitlin flips a ruggedized comm off her hip and speaks into it in a calm, efficient manner.

"Thank you, Caitlin," I say again. I start to ease myself to a sitting position, and my back gives way, so that I crash to the rooftop, mewling, hands clutched to my spasming lumbar. And then Caitlin's at my side, pushing my hands away from my back, strong thumbs digging into the spasming muscles around my iliac crests, soothing and smoothing them out, tracing the lines of fire back to the nodes of the joints, patiently kneading the spasms out until the pain recedes to a soft throbbing.

"My old man used to get that," she said. "All us kids had to take turns working it out for him." I'm on my back, staring up over her curves and rolls and into her earnest, freckled face.

"Oh, God, that feels good," I say.

"That's what the old man used to say. You're too young to have a bad back."

"I have to agree," I say.

"All right, I'm going to prop your knees up and lay your head down. I need to have a look at that ventilator."

I grimace. "I'm afraid I did a real number on it," I say. "Sorry about that."

She waves a chubby pish-tosh at me with her freckled hand and walks over to the chimney, leaving me staring at the sky, knees bent, waiting for the stretcher crew.

When they arrive, Caitlin watches as they strap me onto the board, tying me tighter than is strictly necessary for my safety, and I realize that I'm not being tied down, I'm being tied up.

"Thanks, Caitlin," I say.

"You're welcome, Art."

"Good luck with the ventilator-sorry again."

"That's all right, kid. It's my job, after all."

18.

Virgin Upper's hot tubs were more theoretically soothing than actually so. They had rather high walls and a rather low water level, both for modesty's sake and to prevent spills. Art passed through the miniature sauna/shower and into the tub after his massage, somewhere over Newfoundland, and just as the plane hit turbulence, buffeting him with chlorinated water that stung his eyes and got up his nose and soaked the magazine on offshore investing that he'd found in the back of his seat pocket.