Devil's Plaything - Matt Richtel [51]
It has come from the home office.
Clumsily, hurriedly, I extricate myself from the couch. I hustle into the home office.
Grandma stands beside the metallic desk. The Macintosh computer lies on the ground beside the desk, as if it has been swept there.
“I lied,” Grandma says.
Alcohol is dimming my capacity to make sense of this. “Did the computer fall on you?” I ask. It’s an inane question. Grandma has tossed the computer to the ground, or pushed it from the side of the desk.
“I lied. I lied. I lied. I lied.”
She’s shaking. Now her head is hung. She’s not looking at me.
“Grandma, what did you lie about?”
“I have two sons. You know that. That’s the truth. My father drove a Chevrolet. Irving did not wear a uniform to our wedding. I know these things to be true.”
“Okay.”
I put my arms around her and she drops a head to my shoulder.
I feel Pauline standing behind me. “I’m sorry. I’ll pay for the computer.”
“Don’t be silly,” our host responds.
“We should go, Polly.”
She considers this. “You can’t drive.”
She’s right. I can’t drive, or think, or make sense of Grandma’s outburst.
“If you have a bed or couch Lane can lie down on, I’ll take the floor. I need to be near her.”
“Sure.”
“We’ll finish the conversation later,” I say.
She smiles thinly. “Maybe.”
She leads us to a guest room on the third floor. Grandma takes the bed, I curl up in a heavy blue comforter at her feet on the carpeted floor.
I wake up nine hours later to find that I’ve crawled onto the bed. And I’m cold. I’ve slept on the edge, uncovered by a blanket, while Grandma nestles next to the wall.
I wake to see Grandma looking at me. “Bugs in a rug,” she says.
“Peas in a pod.”
“Pigs in a blanket.”
“You’re the only one with a blanket.”
We both laugh. She’s always most lucid when she’s rested.
I stand and stretch.
My cell phone buzzes. I extract it from my pocket, and discover two missed calls. One is from G.I. Chuck, asking me to call. He wonders if I’m okay and says he tried the phone I’d given him but I didn’t answer.
A second voice mail is from Betty Lou.
“I have the file,” says Betty Lou, whispering her message. She tells me to meet her at the same time as yesterday in a park near the home.
“Is it the right time of day for pancakes?” Grandma asks.
“Exactly the right time.”
“Okay.”
“It’s Halloween.”
“That’s nice.”
“It sure is. Because we’re going to wear costumes,” I say.
That’s how we’re going to sneak into Biogen.
Chapter 27
I catch a quick shower, and find that Polly has left me an XL T-shirt from a web promotion she did earlier this year. It hangs loose but at least it’s clean.
Draped over a leather recliner in the bedroom, Polly has left Grandma a short-sleeve yellow blouse and a beige cashmere sweater that buttons up the front. Grandma, professing enthusiasm for her “new clothes,” needs only the slightest help from me with the buttons.
In the kitchen, on a yellow pad lying on the black slate countertop, there’s a note: “Help yourself. Drink fluids. Regret nothing. File three blog posts.”
It is signed “Polly.”
Below her name, it reads: “PS: CHANGEME.”
I haven’t the foggiest idea what she means and make a note to ask her about it.
I pour myself dark coffee from one of Polly’s mildly eccentric amenities, a drip coffeemaker she found on eBay that ostensibly was used by the forward generals in Europe in World War II. Grandma drinks grapefruit juice and looks at pictures of dresses in a recent issue of Vogue.
I turn gumshoe.
I call Biogen and ask for Lulu Pederson. Again, I get her voice mail: “You’ve reached Adrianna Pederson in Biogen’s Advanced Life Computing department. I’m not available right now; leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
I call the company again and ask to be transferred to the Advanced Life Computing department. The operator transfers me to Adrianna’s voice mail.
Adrianna seems to be the sole employee of the Life Computing department. Adrianna tried to contact me with a titillating secret note, and then disappeared. Grandma