Disclosure_ A Novel - Michael Crichton [44]
Nothing to eat. Nothing in his own damned refrigerator. Hopeful, he lifted the lid of a Tupperware container and found a partially eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich, with Eliza’s small toothmarks in one side. He picked the sandwich up and turned it over, wondering how old it was. He didn’t see any mold.
What the hell, he thought, and he ate the rest of Eliza’s sandwich, standing there in his T-shirt, in the light of the refrigerator door. He was startled by his own reflection in the glass of the oven. “Another privileged member of the patriarchy, lording it over the manor.”
Christ, he thought, where did women come up with this crap?
He finished the sandwich and rubbed the crumbs off his hands. The wall clock said 9:15. Susan went to sleep early. Apparently she wasn’t coming down to make up. She usually didn’t. It was his job to make up. He was the peacemaker. He opened a carton of milk and drank from it, then put it back on the wire shelf. He closed the door. Darkness again.
He walked over to the sink, washed his hands, and dried them on a dish towel. Having eaten a little, he wasn’t so angry anymore. Fatigue crept over him. He looked out the window and through the trees and saw the lights of a ferry, heading west toward Bremerton. One of the things he liked about this house was that it was relatively isolated. It had some land around it. It was good for the kids. Kids should grow up with a place to run and play.
He yawned. She definitely wasn’t coming down. It’d have to wait until morning. He knew how it would go: he’d get up first, fix her a cup of coffee, and take it to her in bed. Then he’d say he was sorry, and she would reply that she was sorry, too. They’d hug, and he would go get dressed for work. And that would be it.
He went back up the dark stairs to the second floor, and opened the door to the bedroom. He could hear the quiet rhythms of Susan’s breathing.
He slipped into bed, and rolled over on his side. And then he went to sleep.
TUESDAY
It rained in the morning, hard sheets of drumming downpour that slashed across the windows of the ferry. Sanders stood in line to get his coffee, thinking about the day to come. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Dave Benedict coming toward him, and quickly turned away, but it was too late. Benedict waved, “Hey, guy.” Sanders didn’t want to talk about DigiCom this morning.
At the last moment, he was saved by a call: the phone in his pocket went off. He turned away to answer it.
“Fucking A, Tommy boy.” It was Eddie Larson in Austin.
“What is it, Eddie?”
“You know that bean counter Cupertino sent down? Well, get this: there’s eight of ’em here now. Independent accounting firm of Jenkins, McKay, out of Dallas. They’re going over all the books, like a swarm of roaches. And I mean everything: receivables, payables, A and L’s, year to date, everything. And now they’re going back through every year to ’eighty-nine.”
“Yeah? Disrupting everything?”
“Better believe it. The gals don’t even have a place to sit down and answer the phone. Plus, everything from ’ninety-one back is in storage, downtown. We’ve got it on fiche here, but they say they want original documents. They want the damned paper. And they get all squinty and paranoid when they order us around. Treating us like we’re thieves or something trying to pull a fast one. It’s insulting.”
“Well,” Sanders said, “hang in there. You’ve got to do what they ask.”
“The only thing that really bothers me,” Eddie said, “is they got another seven more coming in this afternoon. Because they’re also doing a complete inventory of the plant. Everything from the furniture in the offices to the air handlers and the heat stampers out on the line. We got a guy there now, making his way down the line, stopping at each work station. Says, ‘What’s this thing called? How do you spell it? Who makes it? What