HOSTILE TAKEOVER

All of a sudden, Brenda realized she had achieved next-level mindfulness. The proof was the shift in sound. The usual backdrop during meditation class was the percussion of early evening traffic. That was her first complaint to Myra, the instructor. The room was not the silent, sterile environment she had envisioned, which, Brenda insisted, would have been much more conducive to concentration; instead, it was a former dance studio with creaky wood floors and a long mirror along one wall. Her classmates often assessed their reflections when they were supposed to be meditating, like restless children during Sunday school prayers. She knew they cheated because she tended to catch them while sneaking a peek herself.

Now, the cymbal crash of metal chassis on manhole cover, the trumpeting of horns honked in frustration each time the stoplight turned green, and the baseline rumble of trucks had dissolved into a rhythmic thrum, like that of a train. This must be what Myra was alluding to when she said—with that hyper-empathic expression that implied she forgave you in advance for your many spiritual transgressions—that if a distraction arose during meditation, you should simply incorporate it into awareness.

Brenda's phone vibrated, breaking her concentration. She squinted at the screen, expecting to be called back to the office for a last-minute strategy session ahead of the next day's negotiations. She was surprised to see a text from her friend Jen.

Jen, who was sitting on the cushion next to hers. Jen, who--

Brenda caught a glimpse of the floor—no longer polished wood planks, but a blue and turquoise industrial-grade linoleum in a pattern meant to hide scuffs and spills.

Her eyelids flew open like cartoon window shades, and a visual recon confirmed that she was indeed on a train, in a compartment with two sets of facing seats, and no evidence of other voyagers. The blue fabric, imprinted with artsy turquoise triangles, matched the linoleum. This wasn't the Long Island Railroad, and it wasn't the Hudson River Line, and it certainly wasn't the 1-2-3, the subway that delivered her each day from her cramped apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side to her spacious office in the Freedom Tower. She tried to assess the scenery flying by, hoping for some hint as to location, but it was dark outside, and the lights in the compartment only reflected back her own image: a 32-year-old with large brown eyes, her chin-length blond hair gathered in a ponytail, wearing her harem-style charcoal-hued yoga pants, her spiffy black sports shoes, her white sports bra, and a fitted white t-shirt that showcased her carefully toned biceps. She could feel the lace string on her thong underwear creeping up her backside. Except for that one detail, she might have concluded she had died. Surely, in death, one was spared the discomfort caused by one's fashion choices.

Jen's text pinged again.

Brenda messaged back.

She clicked off the phone and shoved it in her pocket. None of this made sense. Jen was still in class, had only just now realized her friend was missing, yet somehow in that brief timeframe, Brenda had supposedly slipped into a trance and sleepwalked onto a train without anyone noticing, without a gatekeeper demanding a ticket. One of Myra's favorite mantras was, "As long as you're alive, your breath is always with you." Brenda inhaled deeply and exhaled slowly. Her breath was with her; therefore, she really must be alive.

Brenda's journey into meditation began a few weeks ago, when Warren Buffett claimed on his Twitter feed that meditating increased the speed at which the brain processed data, which gave you an edge in business. Subsequently, the most ruthless competitors on the Acquisitions playground were turning up for class after work, lapping up instruction from Myra, the original Earth Mother, for whom, in the daily course of business, they wouldn't so much as hold the door if she were sprinting for the elevator.

If Myra suspected that for half her students, mindfulness was a competitive sport, she never let on. Her guided meditations implied that they were all there with the intention of becoming one with the universe. Brenda's intention was to master her thoughts, to learn to purposefully slow her heartbeat while she went for a competitor's jugular at the negotiating table.

Brenda plotted her next move: open the sliding compartment door and step out into the corridor. Maybe there were others on the train. She could find a conductor, find out where they were headed, what time the train had departed the station, and construct a logical explanation.

As she reached for the brass handle, a figure hurtled down the corridor. His slim silhouette rushed by in a blur, but in that instant, Brenda recognized the shoulders rounded in the tall man's stoop, the hand running through the mop of brown hair in a gesture of despair. It was Darvin Kerr, her designated foe for the next day's negotiations. In meditation class, theirs was a silent competition, and although they sat on opposite sides of the room, with many lotus-positioned posturers between them, she was sure he'd been as constantly aware of her presence as she was of his.

The message didn't register as 'delivered.' Jen—obedient soul that she was—must have switched off her phone.

A shadow presaged Darvin's return. Moments later, he flailed across the threshold with his usual assortment of odd physical tics: the shifting within his clothes as though they pinched and constrained him, the chin stretch and shoulder roll, the ever-present grimace. He indicated the seat opposite her and said, "May I?"

"Uh, sure."

He flopped down across from her, his long legs opening and closing like an accordion, telling the tale of his anxiety. "Look. Where are we exactly?"

She shifted her eyes upward.

He pointed at her. "You're lying."

"I didn't say anything yet."

"You were on the verge of lying."

During their training, negotiators were drilled to keep their eyes on their foe, and never never never to let one's expression give away true thoughts. Glancing up and to the right was a tell, just like in a game of poker, that the person was about to bluff. Brenda stared into Darvin's intense blue eyes, holding her head perfectly still like a drill sergeant, and not allowing her gaze to wander. "I was in the meditation studio and next thing, I opened my eyes and I was on this train."

"Yes!" said Darvin. "That is my circumstance as well."

“Jen texted me, said my Zabuton was empty.”

“Your what?”

“My meditation cushion.”

She thought for sure he’d roll his eyes, but he maintained control and said, “What about mine?”

“You use an ordinary couch cushion, don’t you?” She thought for sure that would get a rise out of him, but he kept a steady gaze and sat silently. Interesting technique. By allowing her words to linger unchallenged, he made her sound petty. “Jen’s last message before signing off was about Myra.”

“Myra! With her frangipani woo-woo. Think she plotted this?”

“I don’t even know what this is.”

Darvin lurched to the window and cupped his hands around his eyes, peering into the darkness, trying to decipher the swiftly moving landscape. “Where the hell are we?”

“Do you smell incense?” said Brenda. He shook his head. “Just that new-car smell, right?” He breathed in and nodded. “So we’re really on this train.” They sat in silence for a moment. “Did you see anyone else?”

“Not even a conductor.” He flung himself back on his seat.

“Listen, we’ve got to be dreaming. Don’t you imagine? This is a dream.”

Darvin shook his head and pointed at the illuminated sign in the corridor. “What’s that say?”

“Umm... ‘Exit’?”

“Exactly. You can’t read in dreams.” Doubt was etched on her face; he addressed the unvoiced objection. “Believe me, I studied Lucid Dreaming. That’s how you tell if you’re awake. You can’t read words in a dream.”

Brenda glanced down at her phone’s screen. She could still clearly read the text messages.

“Please tell me you called 9-1-1,” said Darvin. He might as well have added, 'you idiot.'

She shrugged, prompting him to lunge across the compartment, his large hand outspread to grab her device. She jumped up and held it at arm’s length. “Nuh-uh. I have state secrets on this phone.” He flung himself back on the seat. “Anyway, what would you tell the dispatcher? We’re on a train somewhere, going someplace?”

“They might pinpoint our location by the cell signal.” His defeated tone acknowledged what they both knew: they weren’t important enough for a police hunt. After a moment of silent contemplation, Darvin sprang up and paced the compartment. Brenda had faced him down once before in negotiations, several years ago before he began working for JULES, and it was these extreme mannerisms that actually made his intentions hard to read. He stopped and pointed at her. “This is MEGA’s doing, isn’t it?”

“That’s funny. I was just thinking it was JULES. What’d you do, drug me, kidnap me? Anything to avoid conceding defeat.”

“If we get what we want out of the deal, I would hardly call that ‘defeat’.”

“And just what do you imagine you want out of the deal?”

He smiled to say, ‘nice try’, and she smiled back to say, ‘you can’t blame me for trying.’

Darvin resumed pacing, then held the door open. “Come on. Let’s find out who’s driving this train.”

“Okay, but you go first.”

“Sure. I was just being polite.”

“Thanks for the chivalry.”

They staggered down the corridor, their arms extended for balance. The train was moving rather fast and on a slight incline. The other compartments were exact duplicates of the one Brenda had awakened in, but all were empty. They checked the overhead luggage bins: available. The toilet: vacant. And just as Darvin had claimed (Brenda figured he was bluffing till she saw it for herself), there was no one in the conductor’s station. With no access to the locomotive from the passenger cars, they could only assume someone was driving, but they had no proof, and all negotiators were taught the mantra, ‘Never assume. When you assume, you make an ASS out of U and ME.’

Darvin cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, exuding despair. Brenda thought that if JULES was behind this strange situation, they had obviously not informed their employee of the plot.

“This is the compartment I landed in,” said Darvin, pointing to the car behind the engine. “But let’s go back to yours. If this is a runaway train with no one at the helm, we need to be as far as possible from the point of impact.”

Brenda thought his reasoning was infantile, the same judgment she leveled at fellow airline passengers who jockeyed for the ‘safe’ seat. Her attitude was, if there was going to be a crash, the passengers were doomed, so why worry? Apparently, Darvin was one of those people who calculated percentages and determined that the middle of the plane’s tail section was statistically his best bet for survival. There were all kinds of implications. She was operating from a position of abundance, and he was operating from a place of scarcity. She mentally opened a Darvin file, and tucked that piece of information away for later use.

He led the way back to the rear of the train. She humored him and followed. When they were seated opposite each other once more, she said, “You know, I was thinking this was like an Amtrak cross-country train, but I think it’s more like a TGV.”

“Translation?”

“Train Grand Vitesse.” The French are très exact in their descriptions. TGV means ‘train great speed’ in other words, ‘very fast train.’ Cute, huh?”

“Adorable.”

He looked uncomfortable, and it occurred to Brenda that he might be insecure about his education, or perhaps he hadn’t traveled much and felt at a disadvantage. She added that tidbit to the Darvin file, just in case she could leverage that to needle him during tomorrow’s negotiation. If there was going to be a tomorrow, that is.

“So you think we’re in France?” he said.

“I’m just saying they have very fast trains there, and this is a very fast train. Plus, they’re five hours ahead, so it would be logical that it’s night.” She glanced up at the Exit sign. “But then the sign would say ‘Sortie,’ so--

“You’re being too literal,” said Darvin. “I don’t think we’re anywhere at all. I think we’ve slipped into a dimension of our minds.”

“How does that work?”

He shrugged. “Like lucid dreaming, all roads lead to pure conscious awareness. Isn’t that what we’ve been striving for?”

“I think we both know why we signed up for meditation.”

Darvin seemed unwilling to admit it out loud. He crossed his legs, entwined his ankles, and wrapped his arms tightly around his long torso. Brenda noted the body language of defensiveness, which in a negotiation, would signal that he had just handed his opponent the upper hand. Here and now, Brenda felt no victory in seeing her foe subdued. She needed him at his best.

“Pull yourself together,” she barked. Darvin uncrossed his limbs and forced himself into a more confident posture. Just as they’d been trained to control their facial expressions and eye movements, so they had been taught to exude confidence, even when they didn’t feel it, and body language was the quickest way to achieve the desired effect.

“We’ve got to think,” she said. “Who would want to kidnap us?”

“It has occurred to me that you’re not actually here. I mean, what are the odds that I wind up with my competitor?”

“I’m here. But maybe you aren’t.”

“Okay. Now we’re getting somewhere. Because nobody else from the class got stuck in this time warp. And I find that just a little suspicious.”

“What’s your theory in that case?”

“That I’m still sitting on my Zofu--”

“The Zofu is the little one. The big cushion is the--.”

“—my ass is on the pillow, but my mind got stuck, sort of like the way your eyes can stick if you cross them.”

“Eyes don’t stick. That’s a scary story adults tell little kids.”

“Actually, no, because it happened to me. I had to have surgery.”

Brenda chalked up another personal detail that could be weaponized later. At a crucial point in the negotiation, would he fall apart if she crossed her eyes? She said, “Okay, let’s say that we’re both still sitting on our pillows, but we're brain dead. Why us?”

“Myra figured out we weren’t sincere, and she used some kind of Reiki hocus-pocus to rat us out to Shiva, the Destroyer of Worlds. He’s now at the controls of this train, a modern day Charon ferrying us across the River Styx.”

Brenda added another fact to the Darvin file: he knew something of mythology and Eastern religion, which implied a kind of book learning that she didn’t have. When she was in college, Classics had always seemed like a colossal waste of time. Besides which, the guys in the Classics department made for awful dates because they were nerdy and lived too much in their heads. She’d heard them sparring in the campus café often enough to know that intellectual references were like catnip to these types. Now she wished she’d studied the subject so that she’d be able to derail Darvin’s train of thought at a crucial moment in tomorrow’s negotiation. Maybe there were some Cliff Notes she could access on her phone when they got back in range.

Darvin snapped his fingers. “Hello! Are you still in this dimension?”

Brenda almost said, ‘sorry’ and only caught herself at the last moment. The word ‘sorry’ was never to pass a skilled negotiator’s lips and would have put her at a distinct disadvantage. “Your position is that we weren’t sincere in our pursuit of meditation, which somehow landed us in some kind of mystical limbo. My counter-argument is that half the people in that room aren’t sincere. So I’ll ask again. Why us?”

“Because we’re top of the class,” said Darvin. “Because we aced it.”

Brenda agreed that she and Darvin were standouts in the meditation room. The others, even the ones from MEGA—hell, even the ones from her own team, were little more than run-of-the-mill business school graduates, who thought going for the jugular had something to do with beer.

“Okay. Maybe you’re onto something. Aced what, though? Let’s try and remember what led to this moment.”

They both sat in silence while the train hurtled along through the night, replaying the meditation session in their minds. Unconsciously, they folded their legs into the lotus position. Brenda imagined the details of the studio. The overlay of incense and the undercurrent of sweat. The squeak of yoga shoes on the polished wood floor. The mirror that showed students how fiercely they rocked their gear. And then there was Myra, who cried out for a makeover, with her frizzy gray hair and unadorned skin, who maybe was much more okay with her fertility goddess body type than she should have been. And Brenda could see the other students, too, and she turned to look in the mirror, and there she was, sitting on her deluxe Zabuton pillow, the one she’d specifically bought to intimidate Darvin, and--

“Oh! Holy crap!”

“What?”

“I was there. I was back in the studio.”

“But how?”

“I imagined it, and I was there.”

Darvin opened his mouth and closed it several times, like a gasping fish. “You’re going to leave me here, aren’t you? You’ve figured out the return trip, and you’re going to abandon me on this train to hell. That’s your strategy for tomorrow.”

Brenda was surprised at how genuinely upset he seemed. Surprised, but not moved. After all, they were killers, though she was beginning to suspect that far from being the worthy opponent she’d imagined, he was that worst of all things a person could be when their career was in Leveraged Buyouts: a crybaby. “There’s still a missing piece, though. I don’t know what process got me here, and I’m not sure what mental gymnastics took me back.” And then, all at once, she did know.

When Darvin glimpsed her expression of triumph, he put his face in his hands and sobbed. “Don’t leave me!”

Brenda sat down next to him and placed a comradely hand on his shoulder. “I’ll tell you,” she said. “I’ll tell you what it was. And then I’ll wait, and let you go first. Make sure you make it back safely, and then I’ll follow.”

“You’d do that?” he said, with an involuntary intake of breath, like he was a child with a skinned knee.

“Of course, sweetie. And you know what? We can trade information.”

Darvin sat up straight. Awareness flooded his eyes. He really did have the most expressive blue eyes. The kind of eyes that gave too much away, that were too much of a window into the soul. He knew what she wanted, and she knew he was going to give it to her, and that he wouldn’t lie.

In a voice barely above a whisper, the voice of true confessions, she asked, “What’s the lowest JULES will go?”

He murmured, “One hundred twenty-five a share.”

It was all Brenda could do not to gloat. Her lips wanted to smile broadly, but she maintained her poker face. She returned to her seat and drew her legs up to the lotus position. He mirrored her actions.

“Okay, I want you to focus on your breath,” she said. “Focus on the breath wherever it’s most vivid for you, whether it’s the nostrils, or the abdomen, and just follow each breath from beginning to end.” Brenda had never guided a meditation before, but she was a quick study, and besides, if Myra could do it, how difficult could it be?

Several minutes passed. When Brenda could tell that Darvin’s breathing was deep and regular, she said, “And now I want you to consider, where is this place you call consciousness? Is it behind your eyes? Is it in the center of your head? Imagine for a moment that you have no head. Allow awareness to expand. And just for a moment, I want you to look for what’s looking. To observe the observer.”

She could have droned on, she was really getting the hang of this, but Darvin vanished. No doubt he was already back on his tattered cushion in the meditation studio. Others might have noticed he was gone, and maybe even have witnessed him reappear, if they weren’t too busy tending their own egos, and she wondered how they would explain that to themselves. Would they run to Earth Mommy and demand an explanation? Now it was Brenda’s turn. She took one last look around the train compartment before she focused, hearing her own narration inside her head. The key was, “observe the observer.” As soon as she murmured those words, as soon as she looked for what was looking and visualized herself meditating, she too, was returned to her cushion, to the meditation room, to her reflection in the mirror.

The class was ending. Jen, who assumed that Brenda had engaged in a grown-up version of hide and seek, playfully punched her on the arm and called her a trickster. Men and women stood and stretched. The true believers radiated calm. The imposters wore the self-satisfied expression of go-getters who had checked another chore off their to-do list. Brenda caught sight of Darvin, shuffling towards the door. Rather than stash his cushion in his locker, he was taking it home, a sign that he would not be coming back. Before leaving the room, he turned and searched for her, and when his eyes found hers, what she read there was resignation. She couldn’t resist one last dig: she crossed her eyes. When she uncrossed them, he was gone.

The next morning, Brenda dressed with care. She wore her royal blue power suit, the one with the pencil skirt and the superhero shoulder pads, the one that demanded unconditional surrender.

When she arrived for the negotiation, there was a new guy sitting across from her. Darvin had abruptly resigned, much to the chagrin of his superiors. Brenda allowed herself a moment of personal disappointment since she had collected such useful data, but she wouldn’t allow it to unsettle her resolve. She mentally dragged Darvin’s personal file to the trash and turned her attention to the short, doughy mediocrity with the used car salesman’s haircut. He was an unknown quantity, but it was really no great matter.

Brenda knew how low he would go, and that’s all she needed to crush him.