Connie Willis - Fire Watch

“Oh, then you want hardware repair. The numbers in your terminal directory,” she said, and hung up.

Janice called up the terminal directory. At first nothing happened. Then the screen clicked once and displayed something titled Project Sally. Janice noticed Lynn Saunders’ name three-quarters of the way down the screen, and Sally Mowen’s at the bottom. She started at the top and read it all the way through. Then she typed in PRINT and read it again as it came rolling out of the printer. When it was done, she tore off the sheet carefully, put it in a file folder, and put the file folder in her desk.

“I found your glove in the elevator,” Sally said when she came in. She looked terrible, as if the experience of finding Mr. Mowen’s glove had been too much for her. “Is the press conference over?”

“I didn’t go,” Mr. Mowen said. “I was afraid I’d run into a tree. Could you drive me over to the office? I told Janice I’d be there by nine and it’s two-thirty.”

“Tree?” Sally said. “I fell out of a tree today. On a linguist.”

Mr. Mowen put on his overcoat and fished around in the pockets. “I’ve lost my other glove,” he said. “That makes fifty-eight instances of bad luck I’ve had already this morning, and I’ve been sitting stock-still for the last two hours. I made a list. The pencil broke, and the eraser, and I erased a hole right through the paper, and I didn’t even count those.” He put the single glove in his coat pocket.

Sally opened the door for him, and they went down the hall to the elevator. “I never should have said that about the moon,” she said. “I should have said hello. Just a simple hello. So what if the note said he wanted someone who could generate language? That didn’t mean I had to do it right then, before I even told him who I was.”

Mr. Mowen punched his security code into the elevator. The REJECT light came on. “Fifty-nine,” Mr. Mowen said. “That’s too many coincidences to just be a coincidence. And all bad. If I didn’t know better, I’d say someone was trying to kill me.”

Sally punched in her security code. The elevator slid open. “I’ve been walking around for hours, trying to figure out how I could have been so stupid,” Sally said. “He was on his way to meet me. At the press conference. He had something to tell me. If I’d just stood up after I fell on him and said, 'Hello, I’m Sally Mowen, and I’ve found this note. Do you really want someone who can generate language?’ but oh, no, I have to say, ’the moon blues.’ I should have just kept kissing him and never said anything. But oh, no, I couldn’t let well enough alone.”

Mr. Mowen let Sally push the floor button in the elevator so no more warning lights would flash on. He also let her open the door of the apartment building. On the way out to the car, he stepped in some gum.

“Sixty. If I didn’t know better, I’d say your mother was behind this,” Mr. Mowen said. “She’s coming up here this afternoon. To see if I’m minimizing your self-realization potential with my chauvinistic role expectations. That should count for a dozen bad coincidences all by itself.” He got in the car, hunching far back in the seat so he wouldn’t crack his head on the sun visor. He peered out the window at the gray sky. “Maybe there’ll be a blizzard and she won’t be able to get up from Cheyenne.”

Sally reached for something under the driver’s seat. “Here’s your other glove,” she said, handed it over to him, and started the car. “That note was torn in half. Why didn’t I think about the words that were missing instead of deciding the message was all there? He probably wanted somebody who could generate electricity and speak a foreign language. Just because I liked his picture and I thought he might speak English I had to go and make a complete fool out of myself.”

It started to snow halfway to the office. Sally turned on the windshield wipers. “With my luck,” Mr. Mowen said, “there’ll be a blizzard, and I’ll be snowed in with Charlotte.” He looked out the side window at the smokestacks. They were shooting another wavery blue blast into the air. “It’s the waste emissions project. Somehow it’s causing all these damn coincidences.”

Sally said, “I look and look for someone who speaks decent English, and when I finally meet him, what do I say? You catched me with your face. And now he thinks somebody named Brad McAfee put me up to it to keep him from getting to a press conference, and he’ll never speak to me again. Stupid! How could I have been so stupid?”

“I never should have let them start the project without more testing,” Mr. Mowen said. “What if we’re putting too much ozone into the ozone layer? What if this bicarbonate of soda fallout is doing something to people’s digestion? No measurable side effects, they said. Well, how do you measure bad luck? By the fatality rates?”

Sally had pulled into a parking space directly in front of Mr. Mowen’s office. It was snowing hard now. Mr. Mowen pulled on the glove Sally had handed him. He fished in his pocket for the other one. “Sixty-one,” he said. “Sally will you go in with me? I’ll never get the elevator to work.”

Sally walked with him into the building. On the way up in the elevator, she said, “If you’re so convinced the waste emissions project is causing your bad luck, why don’t you tell Research to turn it off?”

“They’d never believe me. Whoever heard of coincidences as a side effect of trash?”

They went into the outer office. Janice said, “Hello!” as if they had returned from an arctic expedition. Mr. Mowen said, “Thanks, Sally. I think I can make it from here.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Why don’t you go explain what happened to this young man and tell him you’re sorry?”

“I don’t think that would work,” Sally said. She kissed him on the cheek. “We’re in bad shape, aren’t we?”

Mr. Mowen turned to Janice. “Get me Research, and don’t let my wife in,” he said, went into his office, and shut the door. There was a crash and the muffled sound of Mr. Mowen swearing.

Janice sighed. “This young man of yours,” she said to Sally. “His name wouldn’t be Brad McAfee, would it?”

“No,” Sally said, “but he thinks it is.” On the way to the elevator she stopped and picked up Mr. Mowen’s glove and put it in her pocket.

After Mr. Mowen’s secretary hung up, Sue called Brad. She wasn’t sure what the connection was between Brad and Mr. Mowen’s secretary’s terminal not working, but she thought she’d better let him know that Mr. Mowen’s secretary knew his name.

There was no answer. She tried again at lunch and again on her afternoon break. The third time the line was busy At a quarter of three her supervisor came in and told Sue she could leave early, since heavy snow was predicted for rush hour. Sue tried Brad’s number one more time to make sure he was there. It was still busy.

It was a good thing she was getting off early. She had only worn a sweater to work, and it was already snowing so hard she could hardly see out the window. She had worn sandals, too. Somebody had left a pair of bright blue moon boots in the coatroom, so she pulled those on over her sandals and went out to the parking lot. She wiped the snow off the windshield with the sleeve of her sweater, and started over to Brad’s apartment.

“You didn’t meander on over to the press conference,” Brad said when Ulric came in.

“No,” Ulric said. He didn’t take off his coat.

“Old Man Mowen didn’t either. Which was right lucky, because I got to jaw with all those reporters instead of him. Where did you go off to? You look colder than an otter on a snowslide.”

“I was with the 'gal’ you found for me. The one you had jump me so I wouldn’t go to the press conference and ruin your chances with Sally Mowen.”