Robert Bennett - The Company Man

“Yes,” he said.

“What happened to you? My God, what happened?”

Hayes walked forward and embraced her without a word. She drew back, shocked by the display of affection. Then she slowly embraced him back.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What? Where’s Donald? Mr. Hayes, where’s Donald?”

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

She began shaking in his arms. “What are you doing? What’s happened? What’s going on? What’s happened, Mr. Hayes?”

He did not answer. He just kept holding her.

“Please,” she said. “Please tell me. Please, you just have to… You just have to tell me! Please, just tell me, please!”

He kept holding her. She kept asking questions, one after the other, but she knew the answers now. Eventually she collapsed and sat on the floor and sobbed, rocking back and forth. Hayes sat with her and waited, patiently. After a while he shut the door.

He gently led her to a cab and directed the driver toward the downtown cradle. She leaned against the cab window like a drugged woman, hands limp in her lap.

“We shouldn’t leave,” she said.

“I know.”

“We should see him buried. I should at least see him.”

“It’s dangerous. He wouldn’t have wanted you to be in danger. And you are the last good thing in my life,” said Hayes. “I won’t risk you. You are too precious to lose.”

“We should… find the men who did this and…”

“No,” said Hayes. “No more. No more of that.”

She shut her eyes and began crying again.

When they got to the cradle he led her to the central lift. They climbed inside and stood in the glass tube, the windows wreathed with condensation, the street traffic just below their toes. Something hissed above and they began to rise up, floating up above the shops and the cars, then above the crinkled rooftops of the houses, then finally above the sodden tops of the office buildings, gray and wet and graveled. Finally they were in the cradle itself. Men and women in starched suits and sharp dresses strolled about the tiled platform, smoking and casually speaking to one another as though they were on the deck of a cruise ship. In the distant heart of the dawning sky they could see the nose of the airship approaching, slowly swiveling to position its passenger cell for the center of the cradle. It would only be a few minutes.

“Where are we going?” she asked quietly.

“You’re going to Los Angeles,” he said. “From there, who knows? It’s up to you. Your purse has more than five thousand dollars in it, so you can go where you’d like.”

“Five thousand?”

“Yes. That should support you. It should get you where you need. Do me a favor and go someplace warm. Somewhere with sun.”

“You’re not coming?”

He shook his head. “No, Sam. I’m not.”

“Why not?”

“I think I have a lot to do now.”

Samantha turned to look at the airship. The docking arm eased out and snatched it to hold it still and men in overalls moved forward to secure its many trusses. Then a steel-and-rubber staircase unfolded and rose to meet the side of the passenger cell. People began trickling out to greet their loved ones or hurry downstairs or just stare at the city laid out around them.

“And… and you’re just going to send me away?” she asked. “While you stay here?”

“Yes. I want you to go and leave this behind, Sam. Someone needs to. Someone needs to go on.”

Samantha looked at the airship for a moment longer and then turned and walked to the corner of the cradle where children and tourists gathered to look out at the city. She stared out at the rooftops and the streets and the cars, then looked back at him, eyes glinting. “What did you find out there, Mr. Hayes? What’s happened to you?”

“I just… I’ve just seen something. Or had something shown to me.”

“What was it? Who showed it to you?”

Hayes tried to articulate what had happened but could not. He simply shook his head.

Her face softened. She sighed and sniffed and said, “Well. I can see you haven’t changed that much. You’re still a remarkably silly man.”

“What? What do you mean?”

Samantha turned back to the city. “Do you honestly think you can just send me away? Just shove me on a ship and have done with it?”

“Sam, it’s dangerous, and I-”

“I know it’s dangerous. It’s always been dangerous. And once I would have said yes, that we should go, and forget all this. But I can’t now, don’t you see? I can’t. We can’t just leave it, just leave all this to die.” She sniffed again and turned to look him over. “What did you see, Mr. Hayes? Did you find something? Did you find out what happened to Skiller, or the boy?”

“I did. I found the boy.”

Her breath fluttered. “What… what happened to him?”

He considered telling her, wondering whether she could be burdened with yet another awful truth. But his strength failed, and he found he could not tell her what he had done. He could barely accept it himself. And besides, the boy had died, in a way, when he touched the thing in the basement, and what he became after was not Jack at all. And so Hayes simply shook his head, and said nothing.

Samantha shut her eyes. “Then it’s as we feared. I should have guessed.”

“I don’t think he died in pain, if that’s of… of any help.”

“It isn’t. I had hoped we could take just one thing away from this. That we could save one thing innocent, or good.”

“If you leave, we can,” he said. “You really won’t consider it?”

“No, Mr. Hayes. No, I won’t.” She looked at him. “Can’t you tell me anything? Anything about what you found?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know how to tell you what I saw.”

“Then tell me what you plan to do, at least.”

He hesitated, then told her. As he did the waiting passengers boarded the airship. Then finally it broke truss and began to drift away. People gathered on the cradle to wave goodbye and all the people in the passenger cell of the ship gathered at the blue-green windows to wave back. Once it had drifted far enough out the engines whirled and spun until the ship found the right angle of ascension, and then it began to rise straight up, its skin shining gold in the morning light.

When he was done talking Samantha thought it over. “What will you do with it?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it’s a start, at least. It’s got to be a start.”

“And what do you need from me?”

“From you?” he asked.

“Yes. You’ve always needed someone sensible around. What can I do? What can I give you?”

He frowned, thinking, and then he said, “Lamps.”

“Lamps?”

“Yes. Lamps,” he said. “I need lamps.”

“But what do you need lamps for?” she asked.

“To light the way, of course,” he said.

“Is that all you need? Can’t you get those yourself?”

“Sam, are you coming or not?” he asked irritably.

She turned to watch the airship float away until it disappeared into the clouds above. Then she nodded. “All right,” she said.

They took the lift back down to the ground. People gave them a wide berth, thinking Hayes some maddened transient. Then they walked out into the street, heading southeast. Hayes followed Samantha, not thinking, just watching the city around him.

Down at the cabbie stand old men in worn knit caps and thick coats leaned up against the wooden posts. They smoked filthy cigarettes and watched the world go by with hangdog eyes and mournful shakes of the head, forever disapproving of the modern way and speaking of the past. Of forgotten wars, of legendary baseball players, of the city as it had been and never would be again. One man described the fire in great detail, his double-jointed fingers forming crooked flames that he spread out along an imaginary horizon. Then he shook his head and put his finger on his chin and they all mimicked the pose, staring into the sidewalk and trying to set the world to rights.