Chapter Two
“Nadia,” Diana said, fastening the security bar and door locks, “is me.”
Ashley registered that with barely a blink. “What’s in here?” She sniffed at the package, turned it over, and examined the label.
“It’s my stuff. Something I ordered.” Diana set Ashley’s laptop under the coatrack.
Ashley shook the package. “What stuff? A trampoline?”
Another comedian. “What’s this?” Diana peered into the grocery bag. “Prison rations?”
Ashley pointed to the tip of her nose. On the nose! Like when they used to play charades.
“You shouldn’t have,” Diana said as she carried the bag into the kitchen. It was sweet of Ashley to keep bringing her groceries. But Diana did shop for her own food, even if that shopping was online. She put away eggs, sliced American cheese, whole-wheat bread, and a bag of Granny Smith apples. At the bottom was a pint of rum raisin ice cream, Diana’s favorite.
What had started as a twinge in her head was gaining strength and turning nasty. She shook out a couple of aspirin from an oversize container on the kitchen counter and knocked them back with a cupped hand of water from the tap.
When she returned to the living room, Ashley had already pried open one edge of the box.
“It’s clothes, you twit. What else would it be?” Diana took the package from her. “And did I say you could open it?”
“Mail order?” Ashley made a face, like the concept stank.
“What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you were in L.A.”
“I finished early and got my flight moved up. Took the red-eye. They don’t expect me at work until Monday, so I thought I’d come bother you.”
“Well, you’re succeeding.” Diana laughed. “You sure don’t look like you took the red-eye.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Business-class seats recline and I slept all the way. Thank God for Ambien. Though my throat’s scratchy. And my joints”—she massaged her shoulder and winced—“are really sore. The person behind me coughed and sneezed the whole way. I hope I’m not coming down with swine flu. Or SARS.”
“Or the phage,” Diana said.
That perked Ashley up. “What’s that?”
“A virus. One of the early symptoms is joint pain.”
“Really?”
“Excruciating. Then it attacks your bones and disrupts your genetic code.”
“No kidding?” Ashley’s wide eyes went narrow. “You are kidding.”
“But I had you going, didn’t I?”
“One day I’ll get really sick and then you’ll be sorry.”
“I’m looking forward to it. In the meanwhile, I’ve got a meeting that’s supposed to start in”—Diana checked her watch—“Shit. Four minutes.” She started for her office door.
“You’re having a business meeting in Mom and Dad’s bedroom?”
“So?”
“So, I’m just asking.”
“You know it’s my office now.”
“Yeah, but when are you going to let me see it?”
Ashley had been the one who’d convinced Diana to move back into their childhood home soon after she lost Daniel. Life in the farmhouse where she and Daniel had been living was spartan, and all she’d brought back with her were a few pieces of furniture and the computer equipment that had filled the railway container where they’d worked.
But since then, Diana hadn’t let anyone, not even Ashley, into the safe space she’d created where no one could reach her unless she invited them in.
Diana began to key in her security code.
“You plan to lock yourself in or me out?” Ashley asked.
Diana paused. “What is that? Multiple choice?”
“I mean the house is barricaded enough. Why do you bother with locks on inside doors too?”
“I lock doors.” Diana turned around. “I do a lot of crazy things because it makes me feel safe. Gives me the illusion that I’m in control. I know you think that’s nutty.” She could hear her voice rising, turning shrill, but she couldn’t stop herself. “And I would agree. But I do it anyway. Okay? Okay?”
“Okay!” Ashley held up her hands. “You don’t need to jump down my throat. Hey, it’s your life. You do whatever. It’s just that, you know, it doesn’t make sense.”
“What’s logic got to do with it? You’ve been in therapy. Fear’s not rational. And sometimes, being rational isn’t the most rational thing to be.”
Ashley’s mouth dropped open. She blinked and reared back. “Ouch.” She reached out her hand to Diana. “I only . . .” Her eyes teared up. “I just . . .” And just like that, Ashley turned the tables and she was the aggrieved party.
Diana took Ashley’s hand and squeezed it. “I know, I know. You only want what’s best for me. But let me be the judge of what’s best, would you?”
Diana tried to drop Ashley’s hand but Ashley held fast. “You’re right,” Ashley said. “After all, you never judge me . . .” Ashley held on long enough for Diana to catch the irony.
“You’re impossible,” Diana said, but she was laughing.
“Sorry. I couldn’t resist. You stepped right into that.” Ashley bit her lip and stared past Diana at the locked door. “So, can I at least come in and watch your meeting? I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”
“Ha! You have never, in your whole entire life, been remotely mouselike.”
“Come on.” Ashley held Diana’s gaze. “Sweetie, seriously, don’t you think it’s time you let someone in?”
This time, Diana blinked first.
Ashley gave her a look of mock surprise. “Besides, leave me out here and I might open your package. Or even worse, neaten up the place.”
As Ashley glanced about the living room, still furnished with pieces they’d grown up with, Diana registered the discarded clothing, cereal bowl with congealed oatmeal, a week-old mound of clean laundry that she’d never put away. On the mantel over the fireplace was a simple brass urn that contained Daniel’s ashes.
“If you’re not careful,” Ashley added, “I might even fold your towels and sort your underwear.”
Diana turned back to her office door. She started entering the security code again. The door clicked and swung open a few inches. She could feel Ashley peering in from behind her. It really was past time to let another human being into her inner sanctum.
She held the door wide open and Ashley stepped past her and stood in the doorway.
“Wow,” Ashley said. “I didn’t realize you broke through the wall. This is a great space.”
Soon after she’d moved in, Diana had spent days swinging a sledgehammer, venting her rage on the wall between what had been her parents’ bedroom and her own. It was better than lying comatose for days on end, under a mound of Daniel’s clothing. By the end, she’d been coated with plaster dust, her face streaked pink from tears. She’d patched and painted the walls and ceiling, and pieced together oak flooring to fill the spots where wall had been ripped out.
Ashley continued into the room. “Gorgeous,” she said, running her fingers over the wall hanging that Diana had picked up in Peru when she and Daniel had gone there to climb Machu Picchu. “But this”—she took in the computer equipment—“looks like some kind of command central. And what are these?” She indicated the bank of monitors. “Surveillance?”
“With infrared for night vision. Plus an alarm system. Redundant Internet access. Firewalls. Motion sensors. Welcome to Gamelan Security headquarters. Aka, my office.”
“How did you manage to set all this up?”
“Jake helped me.”
“So all that experience hacking into other people’s systems finally pays off.” Ashley paused, but when Diana didn’t rise to her bait, she gave a brittle smile and asked, “So, how is charming Jake?” Ashley and Jake had gone out on one spectacularly awful date during which he’d spent the whole evening texting.
“He’s good. I think. We’re working together, but I haven’t seen him seen him in months.”
Ashley picked her way past a dead ficus, over an empty can of Red Bull and some open boxes filled with foam packing material. She settled herself in Diana’s desk chair—white fiberglass molded into a tulip shape with a red seat cushion and polished aluminum base. Daniel had given Diana that chair, a period piece from the sixties, as a Valentine’s Day gift a few years earlier.
Before Diana could stop her, Ashley reached for the mouse and jiggled it. The monitor flickered to life. The replica of the room they were in came up. Nadia was frozen in the middle of it. The queue of waiting messages in the lower corner of the screen had grown.
“How cool is this?” Ashley said.
Diana closed the office door. She crossed the room and tapped Ashley on the shoulder. “You mind?”
“Sorry.” Ashley relinquished the mouse and stood. She leaned forward, staring at the screen, her long blond hair falling almost to the keyboard. “OtherWorld?” she read aloud. “So what is this, some kind of game?”
“Game?” Diana choked on a laugh. “No. It’s—” She paused, searching for the word. “Just like the name says, it’s another world. There are stores and other offices here. You can go to parks and hear concerts. I meet with clients.”
“Wow. Video conferencing with cartoon characters.” Ashley snickered.
Diana massaged her forehead. “Sort of. But I don’t get paid in Monopoly money.” She edged Ashley aside and slipped into the chair. “And the cartoon characters are real people.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Reasonably so.”
Ashley gave her an astonished look. “This, from a woman who trusts no one?”
“No one but you, my dear.”
Diana noticed the timer: minus two minutes, thirty seconds. She was officially late. She eyed the message-waiting flag on Skype. Probably Jake, trying to raise a response out of her.
With a few clicks, she transformed Nadia’s hair from short, spiky blond to conservative brown done up in a French braid.
“Meet Nadia,” Diana said as she exchanged her avatar’s leather jacket, jeans, and boots for a dark tailored suit jacket, a short skirt, and ballerina flats. “She’s my alter ego in-world. And this is Gamelan Security’s in-world headquarters. Her office. You can think of it as my very own 3-D MySpace.”
“Or Rapunzel’s virtual tower?” Ashley said.
Diana remembered the green cover of the book of Grimm’s fairy tales, its spine peeled away. Rapunzel had been their favorite. Over and over they’d play out the story, taking turns at being the princess who lets down her long hair so that a wicked enchantress, and later a handsome prince, can climb up to her tower prison.
“Except Nadia doesn’t need rescuing,” Diana said. “Business is booming. And she’s late for her meeting.”
Clients had been lining up ever since Gamelan exposed a young medical student as the mastermind behind the breach of a prominent health insurer. They uncovered a massive theft of patient and physician medical records, though unfortunately not before the hacker’s customers abroad had used the information to manufacture thousands of counterfeit health insurance ID cards and generate thousands of phony prescriptions. After the story hit national and international papers, Diana and Jake had more work than they could handle.
Diana dragged the red cap and wraparound sunglasses back to her inventory. The gold charms that her avatar wore around her neck—just like the real pair of gold Ds that Diana often wore around her own—were barely visible.
“Okay. Here we go.” She swiveled toward Ashley and put her finger to her lips. “Remember”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“you’re a mouse.”
“Where do you want me?” Ashley squeaked.
Diana pointed to a chair. Ashley held her hands like paws in front of her, minced over to the chair, and sat.