It was always the music. I could now name it and enjoy it. After my dinner with Dad, I’d driven home and pulled my Lanvin shoe box from the top of my closet. I had also pulled the last jam jar from the fridge, sat on the floor, and thrashed a spoon around its farthest edges. It was delicious.
I turned again. The bedroom was set. Books on the bedside table straightened and every drawer cleared out. The living room, the bathroom, and the small alcove that served as my office—one desk and one chair—were cleared of every broken pencil, every leaky or dry pen, every unnecessary scrap of paper. Three garbage bags and four boxes for Goodwill. Two bags for the Dumpster.
Six hours to clean an apartment. Six hours to ready it to move across the country. Six hours to ponder Dad’s question.
Are you running?
Nathan had asked the same question. Do you ever feel like running away? Isabel had asked it too—Isabel had lived it. Are we always between moments of running away?
Are you running?
I answered the question. Not enough.
I grabbed a pair of shorts and my San Antonio Marathon T-shirt from the perfectly organized drawer, changed quickly, and headed to the Town Lake Trail, my usual route along Lake Austin—which was really a renamed section of the Colorado River. I turned south on Exposition Boulevard, relishing the burn of every hill, and dropped down onto Lake Austin Boulevard to pick up the Town Lake Trail under MoPac.
I passed the Stevie Ray Vaughan statue. Single-handedly revived blues in the 1980s. Dad loved that statue and always gave it a salute when we passed. I wondered if Nathan had seen it. He’d love it . . . I ran on.
I cut back over the river on the Congress Avenue bridge, right over those two million bats. They, too, would be moving soon. They’d head south to Mexico City; I’d travel north to Boston.
It felt as if everyone and everything was on the move. Gertrude. Nathan. WATT. Dad. Time was not static.
I stalled at the end of the bridge. Large white canvas umbrellas covered the patio at the Four Seasons Hotel. They reminded me of Braithwaite House. It felt very close and, in the same breath, a lifetime ago.
And that’s when they flew. I looked up as almost two million bats rose into the sky. They came out in waves, an undulating pattern rather than a steady stream. It made me think of Golightly and the power problem. It made me think of WATT: all these individual bats working at the same time, in the same direction. A surge of them rose in the air so tightly I couldn’t make out the individuals; it was just a mass of black.
The stream slowed, dark descended, and I ran home.
Chapter 27
The first thing I noticed was the hum. I’d been in my apartment all weekend—the upstairs guy had moved on from Macklemore to Hoodie Allen, my AC unit had chugged away to keep the apartment below eighty degrees, and MoPac had provided its ever-present white noise. But it was here at work that I felt it inside me. There were a variety of computers operating at different frequencies, the AC units, soft chatter drifting in the open space above our cubicles, even a radio somewhere playing Carrie Underwood.
And it was Monday. I secretly loved Mondays. People worked hard at WATT, and it wasn’t until Friday they loosened up and relaxed across the cubicles or in the break room or headed to a brewpub to unpack the week. On Mondays we were warming up, heads down and serious, full of promise. This was the week something great would happen.
I felt displaced as the morning passed by. Moira wasn’t at her desk. No one needed me. No one stopped by. It was a typical Monday, but I no longer felt in the mix. I had no projects to pursue. This was what I’d wanted, why I’d sent Craig an e-mail, and yet . . .
After about an hour staring at my wire animals, I began cleaning out my desk. It took no time, but more Skittles than my apartment had. Without Dad’s controlled distribution system, I power-chomped my way into my third bag before I cleaned my stash from my bottom desk drawer and dropped it all on Moira’s neat and still empty desk.
By midafternoon I was stir-crazy and on a sugar high.
“I heard, and not from you, by the way.” Moira draped herself over the divider between our cubicles as she always did upon arriving to work. Her now copper-colored hair puddled on my top shelf. “I hate you.” Her tone held notes of sarcasm and bravado. Her eyes held hurt.
“Where have you been?”
“I had meetings downtown. I would have told you, but you aren’t supposed to be here and you’re certainly not supposed to be quitting.”
I twirled a finger at her hair. “In my honor?”
“As if. I’m doing nothing in your honor. Copper is simply a good fall color.” She hiked her chin. “Everyone was talking about you Friday. Word got out about your e-mail. Really, Mary? An e-mail?” She reached over the wall and dangled a Starbucks cup in my face. “I brought you this. An afternoon pick-me-up. I shouldn’t have. But I did, so drink it.”
I took the cup, set it down, and walked out of my cubicle and into hers. I hugged her.
She hugged me back. “What’s going on? Why’d you do it?” She dropped into her chair and scowled at the packs of Skittles. She didn’t comment as I perched on her desk.
“We can’t talk here,” I said. “We’ll talk tonight. For now, let’s say I need a change.”
“Seems to be a thing around here. We all got called into the staff meeting Friday to say good-bye to Nathan.”
“Nathan was here on Friday?”
Moira narrowed her eyes. “Why does that surprise you?”
“Later. But I thought he was finished here a week ago.”
Moira nodded. “He came in to wrap something up, but he’s gone now. I think. He and Craig were closed up all Friday except for that good-bye meeting.” Then she smirked. “He got cake.”
“Word is Dottie got me one too. Ten minutes with Craig and cake.”
Moira scoffed. Craig’s eccentricities bugged her at times. “One of his best employees quits and he only gives you ten minutes? He probably won’t even ask why you’re going. Why are you going?”
“Later,” I reminded her. “And you know him; I’m honored to get ten whole minutes. If he didn’t respect me so much, I might only get two.”
Moira matched my sarcasm. “Whatever.”
“Hey . . .” I shoved at her shoulder. The gesture reminded me of Nathan and his constant happy shoulder-bumping. My false buoyancy faltered. “It’s for the best.”
“Whose best? You love this job. No one else has got your geeky enthusiasm for everything about this place.”
“Mary? Mary?”
I stood. Moira stood too. We found Benson standing in my cubicle looking around as if he might find me hiding.
“He does,” I whispered to Moira before calling out, “Over here.”
“Oh . . .” He blinked. “Can I talk to you?”
“Sure. Be right there.” I turned back to Moira. “Are you busy tonight?”
“All yours.”
I put my hand on my heart and left her cubicle. “I’m touched.”
“I still hate you.”