Davis, Jerry - Scuba

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file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Jerry%20Davis%20-%20Scuba.txt

S C U B A

Thirty stories up, sitting next to a wall-sized window

staring out at the dirty Chicago rain, Jack sat at a long table

with tense men and women who listened to each other with the

intensity of sharks smelling blood. The rain, the murky air . . .

it reminded Jack of the ocean at 85 fathoms; dark, grey, barren.

The animal life imitating plant life. Jack stared out the window

and tried to pretend he wasn't in a three piece Italian wool suit

that made him chafe and itch.

"Jack," a voice said.

He blinked, and turned toward the people in the room.

Everyone was staring at him. "Yes?" he said.

A few muttered in disgust, the rest looked bored. There were

business suits, long and short hair; blond, brown, black; some

faces had glasses, others had carefully trimmed beards and

mustaches. Eyes darted, roamed, stared un-focused. The man

conducting the meeting had gone prematurely gray, had sharp blue

eyes, glasses, sharp nose and chin. Wrinkles were beginning to

form along his hollow cheeks. "Your department's phone bill," he

said to Jack.

"What about it?"

"You haven't been listening. I would appreciate it if you'd

pay attention here."

"Sorry," Jack muttered. "I've been working late."

"Working late? On what?"

Jack didn't have an answer. It had been a spontaneous lie, he

had nothing to back it up. Long, silent seconds proclaimed his

guilt.

Neil Cromwell smiled. "Go get some coffee and when you're

awake I'll talk to you in my office. You've got . . ." he glanced

at his watch ". . . twenty-five minutes."

Jack felt his cheeks burning. It was like being sent out of

class for being a bad boy. "I'll be okay," he said. "What were you

asking me?"

"No. I'll talk to you later. Go on, you're dismissed."

Jack got up and walked around the table, ignoring the looks

he was being given. Pushing the door open, passing through,

letting it close itself behind him.

He stopped at the coffee machine and noticed the new girl,

the blonde, and realized she was smiling at him. What was her

name? Christie? Looked like a soap-opera princess, all T&A plus

make-up and mousse. "Pour you some coffee?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you." He took one of the company cups, held it

out as she poured.

"You need this stuff really bad?"

"It shows, doesn't it."

"A little." She smiled again, all her pearly whites shining

up at him. This baffled Jack. If she wanted to make it by seducing

key executives, she was picking the wrong guy.

"My wife usually makes me a pot before I leave," he told her,

making an emphasis on the word "wife." "I have a little thermos

and I finish it during the commute downtown."

"Really, you shouldn't depend on coffee so much as a

stimulant," she said. "What you need is vitamin B-12."

"Yeah, I remember B-12. I used to take a lot of vitamins when

I was diving."

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"Diving?"

"I used to be a diving instructor. Scuba diving."

"Oh?" She seemed very interested. "How did you get from there

to here?"

Jack grimaced. "It's a long story," he said, and turned to

leave.

"There's no short version?" she asked, following him.

"Well . . . DGD Corp bought my father's family business, and

I came with the deal."

"They bought your diving school?"

"Oh, no, it was the Harvest division, my father's company.

They wanted him to keep running it, but he was too ill by that

time. I was signed in his place."

"So you've got a contract with the company?"

"Yes."

"So they can't fire you, can they?"

"Not for a few more years, at least. When the contract

expires." He stopped and looked at her suspiciously. "Why would

they fire me?"

"No reason I can think of." She winked at him, then walked

off toward whatever mysterious position she'd been hired for.

He passed through the commons, which was filled with people

in their cubicles, and entered his office. His position rated a

office and a receptionist, but they'd laid his receptionist off.

He now shared a secretary with 5 other men in the sales

department, and all she did was litter his desk with "While You

Were Out" memos. He sifted through them, sending the majority

fluttering into the waste basket. Bill collectors, people wanting

money. They called all day.

Jack closed his office door behind him, sat in solitude at

his desk with his coffee. He was going to have to start seeing the

psychologist again, he could feel the panic coming on. Deep

breathing and meditation weren't enough anymore; he was out of

control. The sensations of sinking and drowning were coming back.

He sat and stared out the window, fighting it.

It was ghosts, he knew. Real ghosts. Ghosts were the cause of

his problems.

Jack knew there was such a thing as ghosts. He could prove

it, he had physical evidence in his wallet. The money in his

wallet, the money he and his wife spent on groceries, it was ghost

money. It was money that wasn't really there.

His wife Peggy, Miss Cameron Cove of 1992, didn't understand.

She saw money in the account, she saw a deposit that was his

paycheck, and she thought they had money and so she would spend

it. She couldn't understand that it was money that was already

spent, already gone. She spent more. He spent more, because he had

no choice; they must continue living. Now checks were bouncing,

bills were going unpaid for months, and still he kept slipping

behind. It was out of control.

Yesterday a nice young woman came into his office and asked

if he were Jack Buchman. He admitted he was --- he felt no reason

to hide anything from her, he took her to be one of his wife's

friends --- and the woman handed him an envelope and rushed out of

his office as if it were about to explode. It was a summons, he

was being sued. His car payments were behind and the finance

company had lost its patience. It would probably be repossessed

any day now.

Jack had an attack right after the woman had left. He felt he

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couldn't breathe, like he was literally drowning. He came to his

senses sometime later, found himself on the floor behind his desk.

He had passed out.

It was $60 to see the psychologist. Cash, up front. His

psychologist knew why Jack was having problems and didn't intend

on become one of them (he said). Jack figured he could be telling

the truth, but really he believed that the $60 was more important

to the psychologist than Jack's mental stability.

Outside his office window it was as murky as Cameron Reef.

Dirty rain poured down on gray concrete leaving gray streaks on

windows, dissolved traces of the building itself. The rain ate

away at the stone, at the pavement; it ate away at Jack's car,

seven months old and already the paint was faded, oxidized from

the acid in the air. Jack stared at the rain, but in his mind he

was seeing Cameron Reef at 85 fathoms, the deepest dive he'd ever

made. At 85 fathoms the ocean was black, the water cold and murky

with plankton and dead matter that drifted down from the surface

to the cold, motionless bottom. The bottom was gray, soft mud

lumped together in shapes from the subconscious mind --- it looked

like the place your soul goes to when it dies, the soul resting

like a lump of mud next to the other lumps of mud, dead,

featureless, undisturbed for millennia.

It was during that dive that Jack had an attack of nitrogen

narcosis, almost killing him. He hadn't gone diving since. He had

fully intended on going back down --- nothing in his mind was

telling him to give up diving --- but this was when his father

sold the company due to illness and had sent for Jack to help. Now

he was here in Chicago, trapped, instead of going back and

challenging the reef. Jack sipped his coffee, staring out the

window. He preferred the reef, narcosis and all; narcosis was, at

least, an enemy that could be anticipated.

Jack's boss, Neil Cromwell, was a giant in his own mind. When

he closed his eyes and pictured himself he saw this enormous,

inflated figure, like a parade float, sitting in a giant chair at

a fifty-foot desk while everyone else in his sight went about

their jobs at his feet. They were tiny, fragile little people who

all scurried about carrying out his will.

When Neil pictured Jack Buchman in his mind, he saw an

anomaly, a misshapen cancerous figure that didn't belong, bigger

than the others but still dwarfed by himself, a flaw in the

perfection of his world. Jack knocked on Neil's door and let

himself into Neil's office, and Neil stared at him the same way

he'd stare at the one last remaining piece of a puzzle that would

not fit into its hole. "You're fifteen minutes late," he snapped

at Jack.

"I'm sorry." Jack looked pre-occupied. He looked sick, there

was no color in his face.

"You know, Jack, you're just not cut out for this job.

There's no reason in the world that you have to stick with it."

"I have a contract that says I have to stick with it."

Neil sighed. "I'm more than willing to let you out of the

contract."

"I thought I came here to get my ass chewed about a phone

bill."

"You're here to get your ass chewed for being a fool. You're

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not doing yourself any good by staying in this position, you're

not doing your division any good, and you're in my way."

"Oh, power games."

"I've got ways of getting you out of here, Jack. I can play

hardball." He stared at Jack intensely, trying to sear him with

his eyes. His stare did not have the desired effect.

"If you got ways, go ahead and use them," Jack said. "I can't

sell my father's stock, and that's it." He shrugged, and was

silent for a moment. "You want to know the truth? I want out as

much as you want me out, but I'm trapped. My father was a very

dominant man, worse than you. I was always fighting to live my own

life, but somehow I always ended up living for him. He's had

absolute power over me all my life, and when he started getting

sick and decided to sell out I thought, this is it, this is my

chance to get out of the way. I was in college studying to be a

marine biologist. But he put me in his place in the contract. When

he was on his deathbed I thought, finally I will be free of him. I

was glad he was dying, it was time for him to die. I thought it

was proper of him to refuse to go to the hospital. But on his

deathbed he tells me, 'Watch over the company,' he says, 'It's

part of me, it's been my life. As long as the company is alive,

I'll be alive.' Then he died. Any other person who dies, dies. But

not him. He's still here. He is this division of DGD, he is

Harvest. He still has absolute power over my life. Still."

"You're talking nonsense."

"He's here. His ghost is here."

"Ghosts." Neil half-chuckled. "You've got more to worry about

than ghosts."

"I can prove to you that ghosts exist."

"Get out of my office," Neil said, suddenly irritable. "Go

on, get out of here." In his mind he saw himself pushing this

little misshapen out of his immediate area, out into the broader

range of his sphere of influence. With Jack out of his office, he

picked up the phone and dialed his new employee. In his mind he

saw his enormous inflated hand nudging a figure with exaggerated

breasts, setting it into action. It made its way though his sphere

of influence to carry out his will.

Jack spent the rest of the day falsifying receipts to turn in

for an expense reimbursement. The woman he turned it in to looked

at it skeptically but made no comment. He ducked out of the office

a half-hour early and headed for his car, only to find that

another car had wrecked into it. He stopped and stood motionless

in the acid rain, unbelieving. He would not have been surprised to

find the car missing, taken by the repo men --- but to find it

sitting there with a giant dent in the driver's side door was a

shock. The car that had hit his was still there, its driver

waiting.

She saw him and got out of her car to talk. It was the new

girl, Christie. She was crying. "I'm sorry. Mine's a rental, it

came with insurance. I'll make sure yours is fixed."

"The whole side of my car is bashed-in."

"I know, I'm sorry. This rain, it made the road slick, and

the front wheels slid. I'm sorry." She walked up and grabbed his

hands, holding them. She stared into his eyes, her expression

asking for forgiveness. She was so earnest that he suddenly felt

bad for her.

"Are you okay?" he asked her.

"I'm really shaken up." He could feel her tremble, it wasn't

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Davis, Jerry - Scuba

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