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BACK TO NEXUS BACK TO NEXUS March 7th, 1971 Two years of working with Bunny Smiles and Susan still clocked in at a warehouse. Shut the door too hard and the lights would flicker, leave a radio running too long by itself and whatever station it was on would be, inevitably, subsumed by static. Haunted by the spirits of employees with bosses too cheap to rent out an actual office space for sure. Her and them were comrades in that regard. Better to have some sense of solidarity with the hypothetical ghosts than disdain or disregard- the cold spots were them, not the heating struggling to chug through the entire space. Just wait until the restaurant opens, then the cash will come flowing in! At least Susan still got her anniversary gifts from Cybererfun. That year had been a magnet of the company logo for her fridge and a stuffed Bon which sat in the kitchen windowsill. Cute. Susan’s office- that one always got a laugh from Jack, with the stark reality of its less than temporary ply board walls and the plastic lawn chair from which she lorded over twenty square feet of clutter and paperwork (measures taken two years ago that ended up sticking when she got used to them being around)- was close enough to the main entrance that she could hear it rattle on windy days. Sounded like something unnatural if the weather was bad enough. Fists on metal. Easy to ignore if she turned up the radio and tuned into the catalogues she had to browse through. Cyberfun would foot the bill, with Bunny Smiles as their little subsidiary, and it was easiest for Susan if she was the one making the orders, rather than writing up a whole list and handing it off to Felix to handle. Plenty of small parts she hadn’t realized she needed for the endo frameworks. Thus the mail order catalogues from the two manufacturers which Cyberfun most often purchased from. Almost like browsing through Sears catalogues, wiring and joints instead of shirts and kitchen utensils. In the middle of circling a potential pair of new eyes, a howl of wind rattled the front door hard. It hadn’t looked like rough weather when Susan had first woken up, but the lack of windows kept her in the dark of any sudden changes. Would be funny to walk out at the end of shift- Jack’d left half an hour ago with promises to bring back lunch for her- to see that it had snowed. Nothing to be bothered by. Susan reached out for the radio volume knob, then hesitated when the door rattled again. Couple of seconds between them. Had almost sounded like knocking. Jack had his key on the same ring as his car keys, so he couldn’t have gotten locked out, and it was only him and Susan in today. Couldn’t actually be knocking. Another. Volume down instead, and Susan got up to walk over to the door. Either she’d get a faceful of snow or some Cyberfun representative was making a surprise visit and it wouldn’t do to leave them waiting. Maybe she could ask them to put in a word to the bosses, with neither of them there, to get the heating fixed up. Click of the lock, swing of the door, and shine of the sun through the trees. The person huddled close to the door, in hope of escape from the mellow breeze, was not a Cyberfun rep. Didn’t have the uniform. Knit hat with a puffball on top, mittens pulled over sleeves, and coat down to her knees, Susan was dressed down in her own winter coat. Took a moment of squinting at her face to come up with a guess at identity. “Linda?” Linda Kranken was not a common sight- not at the warehouse and not the nights where Felix insisted on taking them all out for dinner in some attempt at bonding she didn’t get- and Susan felt quite lucky it hadn’t taken her longer to land at that conclusion. She had one hand raised up to knock at the door once more- jerked it down to grab at with her other hand when Susan opened it up- and looked normal enough. A bit of tightness around her eyes, maybe a purse of the lips, but she still smiled politely at her own name. “Hi, Susan. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.” “No,” Susan said, hesitantly, “No, you’re all good. Hi.” She’d left a hand on the doorknob, her body an unintentional wall as she leaned against the doorframe and paged through her words. Didn’t know how to address the sudden surprise. “Is- Is everything okay?” Another polite smile. Linda had enough of an overbite that the top row took up most of it, only the barest shine of anything else between her lips. It was either the mouth or the ear which Susan looked at when speaking to people, if it wasn’t her own hands. “Yes. I just-” Still just a glimpse of the bottom row as she spoke, “-wanted to swing by and ask if Felix has been in today.” Susan blinked. Looked up to Linda’s perfectly composed expression. “What?” It faltered at that. The smile even dropped for a moment, lips a thin line before Linda spoke again. “He’d mentioned possibly taking today off a week or so ago, but he never actually told me if he was or not. I just thought, with him not home, that I should…” Linda trailed off. Susan realized her own confusion was on plain display- more bafflement than anything so mild, really- and she waved one hand in the air in an attempt to physically brush away the sterner look. “No, Felix hasn’t come in all day. He- he called off yesterday evening, said that-” And there, Susan faltered, because she did not know if it was the right thing to say, “Well, that you were ill. Made it out to be a nasty flu or something.” Conversely, Linda looked perfectly healthy. She’d been bundled up nice and warm every other time Susan had seen her in the winter, and she did not so much as sniffle. She felt awkward saying it to her face. (Linda’s face, unobserved, twisted up. Nose wrinkled and brows drawn tight, her own eyes shot over to the side in a sharp glare. With the sudden tensing of her shoulders, Susan would’ve guessed that she looked incredibly taken aback. Downright appalled, even.) Still. Susan glanced to the side, saw how she was still blocking off the entire doorway, and balked. Stepped to the side, quick, and clenched her teeth around prickles of embarrassment. “I’m sorry, you can come inside and sit down. Should’ve offered that sooner.” “No,” By the time Susan looked over at the brittle tone, Linda had settled on a more level sort of expression, “But thank you for the offer, Susan.” Concerned, maybe? But there was an angle to the mouth which didn’t fit. “I should get going.” “Are you okay?” Susan wasn’t sure if that was the right question, but it felt worse leaving the end just like that. Linda stopped- a single half step back all she got- and smiled wide enough for more teeth to show. A breath of a laugh. “I’m not sick, but thank you for the concern. I just think I have to make some calls now.” Her tone had more edge in it at that, but it didn’t feel like it was directed Susan’s way. “We have a phone in here that you can use.” Susan shuffled a half step of her own to widen the doorway gap. “It’s okay, I don’t want to bother Jack by being here when he gets back.” Linda’s smile stretched to the point where it looked less pleasant and polite and more like a force of habit. “But thank you.” Another thank you. Pouring on the platitudes like that, sliding inch by inch away from the person stood opposite of her, Linda was trying her best to wiggle out of the conversation while still seeming polite. A strange situation, all of it. “Just forget about this. I’m sorry for bothering you.” An edge of self deprecation, maybe. Susan thought that she shouldn’t let Linda walk off without a single thing gained from driving out to the warehouse. Didn’t feel very polite, and it didn’t take much to see that there was something unsettled between her and Felix. A strain which went unspoken whenever Susan saw the two of them together, an imperfect twin to the same unsettled sense which hung about whenever he and Jack were in the same room. Would be downright cold to not share anything she knew, even if she was well aware she was stepping over all sorts of boundaries. (Thought she knew, because while Felix was her boss, he was also her friend, and she did not want to think that what she suspected of him was true. Left a bitter taste in the mouth to do so.) “Wait- Linda?” Susan was looking when Linda’s face pinched up at her own tentative tone. An almost-nausea when she wasn’t allowed to trot off into the winter without issue. She was good at tucking it down quick, though. “Yes?” “Can I talk to you for a moment?” Susan didn’t want to do this standing outside. Too impersonal. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in?” “No, Susan. I really should get going-” An aborted point over her shoulder, towards the little black car she and Felix shared. “Okay.” Susan raised a hand, half high, in an attempt at appeasement. Lifted her other up to it to clasp the two together when she realized she had put herself on the spot. It wasn’t a matter of speaking her mind- she did that plenty already with her work, but there she had the assurance of her own knowledge backing her up- but of phrasing. “I think,” And there she leaned in despite herself, and Linda mirrored the movement too, “That Felix has a problem.” Linda did not say a thing. “A drinking one, that is.” Nothing. Susan balked, internally, at the lack of response. Linda’s face didn’t give much more than frigidity. She’d gathered enough evidence throughout the years to lay out a neat, edited list at her feet. “He’s been coming in more hungover than not the past couple months- since October last year?- and I’ve smelled rum on him before. He has a flask,” Susan patted her right hip with one hand, “That he carries around in his coat sometimes. I come back here during the evening sometimes to pick up paperwork I forgot and I’ve found him a couple times. Drinking. He usually forgets to lock the door behind him. He says he’s just stopped in to file a couple things, but it hasn’t ever looked like he was doing any work at all.” That was all the direct evidence. Time for the circumstantial. “He hasn’t been coming in as regularly as he used to. Um- he usually leaves early more often than he comes late.” Susan hesitated for a moment. “I- I don’t know anything about it, but him and Jack haven’t been right for a while. They don’t talk like they used to. I don’t know how long it’s been going on, maybe a couple months, but it’s- well, it’s strange.” “Since Christmas.” Linda said. Her voice was a flat line achieved through vicious stomping, a complete calmative of emotion. “Christmas?” Susan looked up and took in Linda’s expression. Brows sloped down and tight, mouth a hard line, and her eyes the conchoidal fractures of flint. Lined and hard, a downward swirl to an uneven breakage. A whole jumble of parts which fit together into an ugly picture. Linda spoke, barely any motion beyond her lips. “Susan, I know he does.” In the minute eddies of tone, resignation. Linda made an effort at composition- a deep breath in and a moment with her eyes closed before she schooled her face back up into something less great tragedy. Susan hadn’t noticed until that moment, but Linda looked like an actress playing a role. An exploitative role in a shitty, underfunded movie which wouldn’t get a single ounce of recognition beyond stunt actor hospital bills and the fallout of every single personal relationship in the crew by the time opening day rolled around. She was good at working her face. Better at working the stage. Her eyes opened to nothing but coffee brown and stress lines. Not a single bit of flint. She even smiled with all her teeth. “But thank you for telling me. I should go now.” “Okay.” Then, because it was rude not to right after telling her that she thought her husband was an alcoholic, “Take care.” “You too, Susan.” Linda turned and walked back to her car. Susan turned and walked back into the warehouse to spend the next ten minutes before Jack’s arrival with deli sandwiches and bagged chips fiddling with her radio to get it belting out anything but waves of static. She didn’t say anything about Linda and he didn’t point out the new set of tire tracks cut through the dirt driveway. |