Sandy said, “Now I know you’re not a computer nerd.”
“What?”
“You cook.”
“Oh, yeah. You mean I don’t send out for pizza and have empty pizza boxes and Mountain Dew cans all over the floor.”
“Exactly.”
Tonight, she had not only hurried over, she had brought a large shopping bag that emitted the odors of Thai curry beef and coconut milk soup.
“Now I’ll go to the kitchen and dish out, and then we’ll eat, and you’ll tell me what’s wrong.”
While she was in the kitchen-a very tiny space with one work counter and room for a two-foot-diameter round table and two chairs, Neal edged cautiously to his computer. He touched the keyboard gingerly and looked at the monitor.
Another message. “Ah, much of sadness, more of sin, Inky. I’m going to get even.”
“ Sandy! Come here quick! I’ll show you.”
“What?”
“Look at this!”
She peered over his shoulder. “What, Neal? A message from your boss?”
Sandy said, “You’d better call Beetlejuice.”
He explained what was happening, the vanishing messages, but not the underlying reason. And certainly not the horrible thing he had done that caused all this. He knew he had to tell her eventually, but he had to work up to it. What would she think of him, once she knew? He didn’t want to lose her.
BEETLEJUICE Thomas said he’d come right over.
The man had been named by a mother with an antic imagination. But he thought his name was pretty funny. “Nobody forgets who I am,” he said.
When he burst in the door, he shouted, “You lucky folk, it’s me!”
But seeing Neal’s face, he sobered up.
Neal explained, just as he had to Sandy, what was happening, but not the story behind it.
Beetlejuice sat at Neal’s desk, flexed his fingers dramatically, and said, “Got any Jolt?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Mountain Dew?”
“I think so.”
Beetlejuice clicked keys for several minutes and began to look annoyed.
Neal said, “No luck?”
“Not yet. Why don’t you go get a soda for yourself and let me work?”
“Have you ever seen a problem like this before?”
Hearing Neal’s tacit criticism, he said, “Yes, actually, I have.”
“Did you fix it?”
“I’m researching it.”
“So when was this?”
“A couple of weeks ago.”
“Did you find the problem?”
“I haven’t yet.”
“How is the person who has the problem dealing with it?”
“I haven’t heard from him recently. I’ll have to check.”
Neal paced back and forth. Sandy brought him a glass of grape drink, but he just held it. He felt queasy. He peered over Beetlejuice’s shoulder. Which wasn’t appreciated.
“Go away! Just let me work. I’m restoring the backup of your e-mail data.”
Suddenly, Neal was hit by a thought. “Um-Beetle? When you get the e-mail, do you see it?”
“What?”
“Will you see the actual e-mail?”
“Yeah. Duh. You’re saying if I just find the messages, I shouldn’t open them?”
“Uh, yes.”
Beetlejuice and Sandy exchanged glances.
After a few minutes, Beetlejuice pushed the chair back and worked his shoulders.
“Got it?” Neal said.
“Well, no.”
“Now what?”
“Will you just let me do this? Now I’m going to run a data-recovery utility.”
Sandy sat on the sofa with her hands folded and her back stiff. Neal paced. A couple of times he thought he caught Sandy looking at him speculatively.
Finally Beetlejuice said, “It just doesn’t find them.”
“You mean we can’t tell whether the e-mails were ever sent?”
“Dude, I don’t think they ever came in.”
“But they did. I saw them!”
“Come on, Neal, man. Everybody gets times when they’re overstressed.”
“I did not imagine this!”
“Maybe that crappy boss is getting on your nerves.”
“No,” Neal said. He was not going to get mad at Beetle. After all, the man had come over here to help. Or at least he wasn’t going to show that he was mad. “Yeah-well,” he said.
“You know, Hofstra, there’s no such thing as a ghost in a machine.”
WHEN Beetle left, Neal knew it was time to be honest.
“ Sandy -listen.”
“What?”
“The e-mails are talking about something I did. Four years ago, I was out at a bar with a friend. His name was Berko. We came out later-maybe midnight-and we were halfway down the block when these four guys jumped us.”
“Oh, my God!”
“They said the wanted money, and we gave them our wallets, but they started beating us anyway with crowbars, or tire irons, I don’t know. I pulled out my cell phone, but they stomped on it, and I ran.”
“And you survived.”
“Yes. But Berko didn’t. If I’d stayed there and fought back, he might have.”
“Why wouldn’t you have been killed, too?”
“Uh-I might have been.”
“Honey, it was their fault, their evil, not yours.”
“What I did was my fault-”
“Everybody has something like that in their lives. Guilt is a terrible thing to go on feeling.”
“But I am guilty.”
“These things eat away at you. I know.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’ve had personal experience with this, Neal.”
“Well, you told me about your divorce. But I don’t think that’s the same, no matter how much you may blame yourself.”
“I didn’t tell you all of it. I didn’t tell you the reason for our divorce.”
“People are allowed to have differences-”
“No! Neal, we had a daughter.”
Neal shifted uncomfortably.
“She was four years old. Patricia. We called her Tishy.”
“If it hurts you too much, don’t tell me.”
She went on anyway. “Tishy and I always went to the store together. She loved to pick out things for dinner. She had-we had the proper child safety seat in the car for her, properly installed in the backseat. She always used it. She was such a good girl. She had gotten to the age where she was very proud of fastening the seat belt herself. She’d get in and say, ‘Buckle up.’ When she was younger, she called it ‘uckle up.’ ”
Neal shifted again but didn’t say anything.
“So this Tuesday, we got in to drive to the store. She climbed into her seat and buckled up. I heard the buckle click. I heard it! But she must have pushed it and let it go. We drove down Elk Road. There’s a stop sign going the other way. A driver-a young woman with three fraternity buddies in her car-ran the sign and broadsided us. Tisha was thrown sideways into the left rear door. She died. I only had a bump on my forehead.”
Sandy had not cried until she told how little she had been injured.
“The seat belt was defective,” Neal said.
“No. She hadn’t latched it. I heard a click, but I didn’t check. I didn’t check!”
SANDY left. Neal had said he needed to be alone. He had tried to comfort her, but all the while, he was thinking, You made a careless mistake. I didn’t make a mistake.
I didn’t make a mistake. I made a decision to be cowardly. What I didn’t tell Sandy was-I could have run down the street and found a store open and called 911. But I was afraid they’d follow me. So I ducked into an alley and hid behind a bunch of trash cans until I heard them leave.
Until I heard them leave. Oh, God. Berko was dying by then. He was surely beyond help by the time I found an open liquor store and called the cops.
I am slime.
A new message appeared. It was from Earl Think. It said, You killed me.
Quickly, Neal grabbed up his iPhone and took a picture of the monitor screen. He looked at the phone screen. Nothing.
But it had been there. Really, it had. It wasn’t his imagination or the effect of a guilty conscience.
Except-what difference did it make? He was guilty whether the messages were real or the product of his self-loathing. He had done something terribly wrong and cowardly, and he had killed his friend.