ERNIE, YOU ARE NO MURDERER!
Nobody believed in me. Was that their first mistake? It isn’t like what I proposed was rocket science or brain surgery exactly, but it might as well have been. I mean, judging from the way they looked at me this afternoon in the executive conference room. It was the way Clemson cocked his head, and the rest of them just folded their arms in silence. Not in “I’m thinking it over” silence, but in “Is this dude crazy or what?” silence. All of them except for Crystal.
Maybe you expect a girl with a name like Crystal to be more receptive, more imaginative, more intuitive anyway. A better listener, for sure. But still, I was crushed.
” That sounds amazing,” Crystal said in that kittenish voice of hers, emphasizing ” amazing”. Well, it is, or rather it was, amazing. “The Forever Cup” –a super recycled cup with none of those microplastics and other nasty chemicals that are doing us in. . A cup that could be produced for next to nothing that would save baristas millions, a cup that would never disintegrate, a cup that would never die. Imagine, I told them, that cup you bought in college at 18 would still be in your hands at 88! Image, after a lifetime and gallons and gallons of Earl Grey, hot chocolate, cappuccinos, and flat whites! Even better, I had worked the process out down to the last microfiber. I, Ernest Delaphane, hotshot grad student at MIT, and now the low man on the corporate totem pole at Clems and Hughes Nanotechnology Institute. I had a get-rich secret. But it wasn’t the only secret I had.
I had killed someone. Ok, not here in downtown Salinas. And probably not anyone here would know, or miss, but still. A human life, well, I think it was a human life. It was hard to tell in the middle of the night. It all happened in a dream. Not once, but every night.
It was beginning to wear on me.
“Do you want to grab a beer?” Crystal was giving me that sad puppy look, that only fat girls (sorry, plus-sized) seem to have mastered. She had stopped winding and rewinding the rubber band around her index finger. “I’ll pay.”
“Sure. Niyama Mamma’s?” As much as I hated the stupid chichi name, Mamma’s was a pretty, no-pretense, no-frills bar, and at 2 PM, it would be empty except for the usual out-of-work freelance engineers and a few stray creatives. Mamma was an aging lesbian who taught hot yoga upstairs in the mornings and on the weekends. Sometimes, in her tie-dyed sari, she even tended bar.
“You look stressed”. Crystal stuck her tongue into the foam on her beer and then began twisting the cocktail napkin around her thumb.
“I don’t understand why they were so cool to your project. I thought it was inspired.”
“ Ok, well, unfortunately, you’re not in charge of new projects, Crystal. They don’t seem to believe in me.”
“You’ve only been here 3 months. You’re a newbie. It took 3 months before anyone even invited me to lunch. Look at me, I’ve been here 2 years, and nobody believes in me, really. They shot down my first project, you know that AI tool for training pet birds. It was a lot of work. You didn’t even make the meeting.”
“Sorry, Crystal. I might have been out sick that day. It was the middle of winter, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not some $20 an hour administrative assistant, I’m a damned data engineer. Maybe if I was thinner or prettier, they’d notice me. Misogynist pigs.”
“Oh, it’s not that.” I said (without much conviction). Crystal was still north of 35, and she might have been farther along in the company, as tightassed as it was, if she had lost that muffin top and worn a damn skirt once in a while instead of baggy army fatigues, and those goofy combat boots. What the hell, girl! And she thought using AI to train your dumb budgie was inspired? Whatever.
“Is that all that’s wrong, Er-knee?”
Er-knee . I hated the way she said my name. It made me feel like some geezer with a Miami Beach tan and frosted tips. She was inching closer to me. I could smell the fabric softener on her T-shirt.. She was wearing a scarf around her throat that had slipped down to one chubby shoulder. There were some dark red marks, like recent bruises, on her neck. Did she have an abusive partner? I didn’t want to know. I had enough shit to deal with.
“Well, frankly, Crystal, since you asked. I’ve been having these nightmares where I kill this guy I can’t see. His face is always hidden. And he doesn’t speak. I kill him with my bare hands. I wake up in a complete sweat with my heart pounding.”
“Oh, Er-nee , it’s just a nightmare. You are no murderer!.”
She took a long gulp of her beer and gave my hand a motherly pat. “You are no murderer.”
..
“Gotta run. “ Crystal gave me a half smile and slid out of the booth. “Have you tried Ambien? Or maybe a nice long massage before bedtime?”
After a long-ish and not-so-nice day of work and those two (or was it three) beers? ,I stretched out on my bed which hadn’t been made for two or three days, and closed my eyes. Maybe I could take a nap without a nightmare.
And suddenly it was dark, I was in a deserted park, and I was lying in wait behind the bushes for that guy again, the one I had killed last night.
“I am not a murderer.I am not a murderer,” I woke up shouting and sweating like a pig. I was on the floor next to the bed. I started to cry as I remembered having my hands around the stranger’s throat.
I couldn’t even remember dressing myself, but I was in the last place I wanted to be after another terrifying night. The weekly project managers meeting.
A black folder marked “confidential” had been set in front of each one of us. Had they decided to give my project a second chance, to give me a second chance?.?
Everyone was there, all 9 of us… all but Crystal.
There was a black curtain draped over the screen at the top of the room. Alice hadn’t even come around with coffee.
“We have to open with some tragic news.” It was CEO Chuck Clemson, a short, stout, and fairly heartless SOB . The rumor was that he had had his Great Dane put down because she wouldn’t take commands. That kind of SOB. He cleared his throat and tried to put on a tone that suggested mourning. “ One of our own, one of our treasured team members Crystal Hemmings, was found dead last night. Foul play is suspected. Next to her, the police found a report marked “confidential” from this company, the kind of reports that never leave the building. As you all know.”
“How did she die?” asked a team member, beating me to the question.
“It appears she was strangled by a stranger. Who had been following her home for several nights. The police are actively looking for this man.”
“It’s a man?” I heard myself asking.
“Oh, definitely. She may have taken this project report out of the building to sell to one of our competitors. I am sorry to have to add this, given the savage nature of this crime.”
“What project was it?” I had to ask. Beyond the glass door, I could see what looked like two of the men in blue.
“Well, Ernie, as it happens, it was your project report.” Clemson had already lost his grieving expression. It was back to business as usual. “ The team had decided to give your project another look.
Maybe it was a mistake not to put more faith in you the first time.” He caught himself before lapsing into that default smarmy smile.
I bowed my head. I felt sick.
“ And don’t look like that, Ernie.”
What did he mean?
“You are one of us. You are no murderer. Now, let’s have a moment of silence, shall we?”
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