Stress Test Ch. 25

By the end of her third lesson, Sandy knew she would never learn to spin.

It was nice to get away with Linda for a little while on Thursday nights. The act of spinning soothed her when she managed to fall into its rhythm.

But she felt queasy the whole time, almost guilty, although she couldn't have said why. Maybe guilt and dread had jumbled her life together. They were the only constants she had, but they lashed her to things that had happened years or moments ago—even things that had not yet come to pass—anything bad that still carried some blame.

Now it was like she was stealing the time from more important things—her studies, her work, Stephen X. She imagined him pacing his apartment, frowning at his wristwatch every twenty seconds, wondering what kept her.

So many urgent things pressed in on Sandy that she couldn't imagine taking six months to make a sweater.

Neither could Stephen X.

"Let's see what you've done," he said the night after her first lesson.

"There's nothing to see yet," she said.

"Come on. I won't laugh."

"I mean there's nothing to see. We haven't done anything yet."

"You were gone all night and you didn't do anything?"

She realized what an indulgence this spinning was. "We'll be on the wheel next week," she said half-heartedly.

"How much are they charging for these lessons?" He clicked his tongue and moved his head through an exaggerated arc.

The calmness of the other women in the class unsettled her. Their constant chatter made her nervous. They were obsessed with television characters. At first, Sandy couldn't tell whether they were talking about the story lines of the shows or the private lives of the actors. Then she saw that the two threads were as tangled as those that wobbled off her wheel.

Most of the women were older than Sandy, but she wanted to scold them the way a mother would. How much precious time had they wasted studying these fantasy lives so that now they could discuss them hour after hour?

It was just as well when Stephen X found her the second-shift job with America Thinks, Inc. "You'll pull down twice the money you're making now and the work is pure gravy," he said. "They need number crunchers, so you'll be running the place in no time."

What they really needed was someone to tabulate endless survey results on every subject from gun control to the ideal shade of blue for soap wrappers.

Mountains of information—most of it useless except as camouflage for the real questions—rose from Sandy's in tray each night. She extracted the tiny valuable part and discarded the rest, like a strip miner working over a nation's soul.

She pictured Americans everywhere, in the malls, on the phone, answering intimate questions from strangers. Nobody ever asked ordinary people what they thought about anything. So when the chance to speak out came along, they were all too eager to spill their guts on any subject, no matter how trivial or profound. In the flush of release, they never realized that their most cherished feelings were being snared to be changed or sold.

After factoring in time for the computer, the pollster and Sandy, the cost to ATI worked out to something like two cents per opinion. Not much of a bargain, as far as she could see.

She started work at the bottom, which was all she deserved. And with Stephen X as her sponsor, she figured she would probably stay there forever.

Wally Conner was Sandy's SDU—Supervisor of Data Uploading—when she signed on with ATI. When Wally turned sideways, only his huge nose and Adam's apple broke the thin line of his profile. A sweep of hair strayed down his forehead like a blond awning for his sad, sunken eyes.

Wally looked like a starving refugee, but acted like a gracious host, eager to make the work shift as comfortable as possible for everyone. He seemed thoughtful in a job that didn't require much thought. His consideration might as well have been a fringe benefit, like sick pay.

Wally got along fine with everyone, so Sandy never expected any special treatment. But as he rose through the ranks to VPI— Vice President of Information—he pulled her along in his tailstream. Nearly as old as Roscoe, he projected a different kind of authority than Jack Gore or Stephen X, or even the ATI patriarchy.

For all its glossy brochures and high-powered presentations, America Thinks, Inc. played to its backroom employees like a low-budget cross between I Love Lucy and The Wizard of Oz. A single, windowless corridor separated the slapstick in-basket struggles of Caroline, Cindy, Marion and Sandy from the grandstanding that came out of the front office.

"We keep a finger on America's pulse," stated the company motto. The employees added, "And a hand in America's pocket." Depending on their mood, they might also say, "And a thumb up our butts."

There was something unseemly about prying into a person's heart, then selling what you found for a penny or two. Sonny Nix, the company's founder and many-titled figurehead, didn't do much to help Sandy feel comfortable with her work.

Her first day on the job, even before Sandy knew what she would be doing, Nix burst through the door. A huge, blustery man, Nix could have made a killing in used cars, except that his bearing would have scattered the customers.

In three or four commanding strides, he crossed the room where the tabulators moved papers from one pile to the next. "Good evening, ladies!" he boomed, bouncing his voice off the walls and low ceiling. "Keep up the good work. We're counting on your counting today."

When he left, Sandy looked around and asked, "Who was that?"

"The CEO," said Caroline.

"The COO," said Cindy.

"The CFO," said Marion.

"The B-O-S-S," said Wally.

The next day, Nix's broad smile and bottomless voice made Sandy feel welcome, as if he were letting her in on some corporate joke so early in her tenure.

Wednesday at five-thirty on the dot, the door flew open and Nix bellowed, "Good evening, ladies! Keep up the good work. We're counting on your counting today."

The scene repeated itself Thursday and Friday, and on into the next week and the next. Sandy realized that Nix himself was the joke, a strutting robot with a limited vocabulary. Every afternoon, the women shook their heads and rolled their eyes when he blew back out the door.

By contrast, bone thin Wally Conner always seemed to be hovering nearby, eager to solve any problem that a Data Input Technician might come up against. For a week or so, it put her on edge to see his sad face reflected in her computer monitor. She thought he was squinting over her shoulder, looking for missed keystrokes or sluggish throughput. But often as not when she turned around he was gazing off somewhere else.

"Yes?" Wally said once when he realized she had twisted around to see what he was looking at. "Have you got it under control?"

"I thought that's what you were going to tell me."

"No, no, you're doing fine." She caught a whiff of his breath mint when he leaned over and lowered his voice. "You're already the fastest DIT we have. You've been processing sixteen point five two percent more forms than Marion each night. It's like doing an extra night's work every five and a half days—"

"Closer to five days, one hour, eleven minutes, forty-one seconds," Sandy said without thinking. She turned a little red while he blinked as if his mind had drifted far away.

"Forty one seconds, huh?" At last he chuckled, like someone not quite sure of the punchline, and straightened up. "Have you got all the supplies you need?" he asked. "Pens? Paper? Calculator?"

When Wally ducked out to get everyone coffee, Caroline hooked an arm around the back of her chair and snapped her gum. "Did you see the look on his face?" she asked. "What the heck did you say to him?"

"Nothing." Sandy couldn't think for a moment. "I told him a number."

"Must have been your phone number. He already knows everything else." Caroline laughed. "You just better hope he don't give it to Mr. Nix."

Sandy felt confusion color her cheeks. Caroline laughed even harder and said, "Don't worry. When it comes to the battle of the sexes, our SDU is MIA."

One night six months after she started her new job, Sandy was the last DIT out of the building. Nothing happened when she turned the key in the ignition. Thinking maybe she hadn't turned the key far enough, she tried again, but with no luck. She turned the knob for the radio and listened hard to the silence, hoping maybe she was only going deaf or crazy and her car actually worked just fine.

The shapes she saw in the shadows up and down Westmore Avenue scared her. She pushed down the lock button and held the steering wheel in both hands—if she squeezed hard enough the car would give up the foolishness and start.

Wally hadn't left yet, but the building was locked and she didn't have a key. She slumped in the seat, kept her breathing as shallow as possible and waited for him to come out.

The wind that had brought the cold change ripped the straggling leaves from the trees. Before long, she thought, this place would be as barren and unforgiving as the moon. Sandy pictured the trash men finding her frozen body locked in the car on Monday morning. They would smear the windshield with their gloves as they tried to see through the icy film that had crystallized out of her last breath. She imagined the red and blue lights of emergency vehicles washing over her poor, dented car. The cops would clap their hands against the cold. Her death would cause a brief flurry of paramedics and paperwork, and that would be the end of it. She pitied the person who got stuck with breaking the news to Stephen X.

A sudden chill which had nothing to do with the temperature ran down Sandy's spine. She scootched up to see over the dashboard and judged the distance to the building. She compared that to how far the threatening shadows were from her path. At least she would have a chance.

She spilled out of the car and ran for the door, losing the cold in her rush. She tugged the handle until the door rattled in its frame. She hammered her car keys on the glass.

"Wally!" she shouted. "Can you hear me, Wally?"

The frozen grass crunched beneath her feet as she circled the building to Wally's second-floor office window. At first she feared the sound would give her away if someone lurked in the shadows. Then she felt relieved that the crunching would alert her if anyone sprang from the hedges.

She saw Wally standing by his desk, talking on the phone. She called his name, but not too loudly—it was probably an important call so late at night. Sandy shivered and hugged herself to hold in her scant warmth.

She wanted to scream his name until the cold, crystal stars shook in the sky. But she knew she had to bargain with the thing that thrashed her heart against the walls of her chest. If she conceded a scream now, she would never be able to contain the demands of her terror again.

She tossed pebbles against the glass, playing the balance between making enough noise to get Wally's attention and shattering the window.

At last, he put down the phone and stared in her direction. "Wally," she said as if he were standing next to her. "I need your help."

He disappeared deeper into the building and she ran back to the door. She pressed her forehead to the glass, straining to see him down the hallway, fogging her view. "Come on," she whispered. "Come on. Come on. Come on."

The air felt so cold it seemed to freeze time in a chunk that she could step back and study. She could see intricate chains of events that had dragged her up to this doorway and then abandoned her. So many threads of her life had been drawn together to tie her to this awful, lonely moment.

As she waited for Wally, she became so lost in her thoughts that she never heard the footsteps behind her.

So when Wally spoke her name she screamed to shake the stars.

_________________________

Go back to Chapter 1 of Stress Test.

Read the next chapter.

_________________________

Complete novel is available on amazon.com.