Device Free Weekend, page 4
“This helps.” Ryan raised the joint. “Less than it used to, but it helps.”
Which wasn’t quite an answer. To look at him the way most people did, you wouldn’t even know he was sick. Stephen had so many more questions. How far has it spread? What’s the prognosis? But it didn’t seem like the time to ask. Also, the rooftop had tilted back the other way, and now it was starting to spin. He closed his eyes.
“Look, don’t spill to the others,” Ryan said. “Not even Emma. Not yet, okay? Let me tell them my way, when I’m ready. It’s fair to say I’ve been planning this awhile.”
“She’ll know something’s up.” Stephen kept his eyes closed. Mayday. “If I noticed, she noticed.”
“Either way, this weekend’s about to get weird. And as long as you’re skipping ahead, I could use your help.”
“What can I do?”
“Just go with the program,” Ryan said. “The others will look to you and Em. If you two set the tone, you know they’ll follow your lead. Keep everybody together: that’s my one dying request. Please tell me you you’ll grant it.”
Stephen found that he had no choice but to grip the arms of his lounge chair to keep it from spinning off the roof with him in it. What was he supposed to say to this? “I promise I’ll try.”
“Thanks. You don’t look so good, by the way.”
“Said the guy with cancer.”
Ryan laughed. Stephen heard him get up out of his chair. “Okay, Cheech. Time for beddy-bye. It’s getting cold out here anyway.”
“I’m really sorry, man.”
“I know.” Ryan took his arm gently. “Come on, I’ll steer your weak ass back inside.”
CHAPTER 6
SATURDAY MORNING, STEPHEN woke with early sunlight flooding his room. He sat up on the edge of the bed and held his head in his hands. The wiring that connected the lobes of his brain felt disconnected; Ryan’s thousand-percent completely organic turbo weed, on top of all that wine and whiskey, had been a thousand-percent completely terrible idea.
It was the last thing he remembered: sitting up on the roof, passing the joint back and forth like old times.
Then their conversation all came back at once.
Shit.
It was the only way to describe starting a day this gorgeous having learned what he’d learned. It was also what his mouth tasted like. Stephen noticed a glass of water waiting for him on the nightstand. A glass of water and a packet of Alka-Seltzer.
Nice touch.
As day carried on breaking outside the crystal-clear, floor-to-ceiling windows, he tore open the tablets, got the plopping and fizzing started. He shambled into the bathroom and relieved his aching bladder, then stood at the east-facing window and drank his medicine. There was a light mist over the water, clear pale sky above. He could just make out the faint outline of the Whidbey in the far distance, a low silhouette along the horizon. They were miles from anything out here.
He chased the bicarb with a glass of flat water, splashed some more on his face, then wandered down the hall in his socks, toward the stairs.
The others were still down below, sacked out where they’d fallen. Beau was snoring like a one-man logging operation. Emma was beginning to stir. He saw her head lift, register his presence, then slowly sink below upholstery level again.
“Morning, sunshine,” he whispered on his way past her couch, following his nose toward the smell of coffee brewing in the kitchen.
“Mmmph,” she said, flopping an arm over her face. “Sooo… much… wine.”
Stephen scared up a pair of mugs and filled them both: black for him, a shot of milk for her. She padded in while he was doing that, yawning and blinking, hair afly. “Too good to sleep in a pile like the rest of us, huh?”
“I got abducted,” he told her. “Cigars on the roof. Sort of.”
“With Ry?” She slumped onto a stool, yawned wide enough to swallow her own face. “I’m glad. You two needed some one-on-one time.”
Already he felt guilty, desperately wanting to tell her everything he knew. How could he not?
Instead, he deposited the café au lait on the breakfast bar in front of her. “I guess he’s up early. Getting the worm and so forth.”
Another big yawn. “I haven’t heard anybody moving around yet but you.”
“Somebody made the coffee.”
“I think it’s on a timer. The beeps woke me up.”
“Over that?” Stephen jerked his thumb back toward the sound of Beau, still cycling away with circadian regularity. His snore pattern ranged from not-intolerable at the low end to comically extreme at the peak.
“You stop hearing it after a while.” She encircled the mug in both hands, placed her face directly over the steam, and breathed in deeply through her nose. “Sweet baby Jesus, that smells good.”
Stephen leaned against the counter as Emma took a careful sip, sighed, and sat with her head on a hand. “So, what’s on the roof?”
“An elevated view of all creation. And a pretty nice pool.”
“You guys talk about anything interesting, or just puff stogies like strong silent types?”
“I dunno. This and that.” You gave your word, the voice in his head advised. But the voice in his head was making his stomach hurt. He could already feel himself cracking. “Just catching up.”
“How did he seem to you?”
Stephen sipped his coffee. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Emma said. “He looks thin to me. A little dark under the eyes.”
“He was never a sleeper.”
“That’s true. Still, he doesn’t quite seem to have that Hi-Pro Glow. Do you think?”
“I don’t know, Em. It’s been years since I saw him. He seemed to be having fun.”
Will wandered in then, scratching his chest with one hand, his ass with the other. “I smell coffee.”
“Coming right up.” Stephen found another mug and filled it black, grateful for the rescue. Maybe a little disappointed—it was nice having coffee alone with Emma first thing in the morning again. But mostly grateful. “How’d that chair sleep?”
“Didn’t notice. Mornin’, Em.” Will kissed her on the head and plunked down on the stool beside her. “Where’d Ryan go?”
Stephen handed him his coffee. “Go?”
“I thought I heard the boat.”
“When?”
“Dunno. Early.” He yawned. “Coulda been Beau, I guess. Man, that guy can snore.”
Before too much longer the others began to straggle in, one at a time. Everybody looked about the same: deeply hungover. Except Beau, who seemed almost chipper. “Anything to eat in this joint? I’m starved.”
Emma said, “How is that possible?”
Beau shrugged, plucking a fresh pear from the bowl on the bar. He polished the fruit on his shirt, took a bite. “Clean living?”
“Well, don’t eat anything else,” Lainie said. “I’m sure Ryan’s got something big planned.” She stretched like a cat, then made a shampooing motion with her fingertips, bunching up her hair. “Somebody come out on the balcony with me, I want to smell the ocean. Clean the cobwebs out of my brain.”
It was still chilly out, so they all grabbed jackets and took their coffees through the big sliding glass door off the living room. There were chairs out there, so they sat and woke up a little, enjoying the view, nobody saying much of anything important. Morning sun glinted on the wavelets. A hundred yards out, a group of seabirds took turns dive-bombing the water, also looking for breakfast.
After a while, they came back inside and spent the next hour getting ready for the day, whatever it might hold. Everybody showered, put on fresh clothes, generally put themselves back together. Stephen dressed in jeans and a pullover and headed back down for one more cup of joe.
Still no Ryan.
A search of the house found the master suite empty upstairs, bed neatly made. When nine o’clock rolled around and their host still hadn’t shown himself, they took a trek outside to the eastern bluff. They followed the footpath all the way to a set of heavy iron stairs leading down to the boathouse. Here they discovered that Will had been right: the VanDutch was gone.
“Maybe he went for donuts,” Perry said.
Just go with the program. Stephen was starting to get annoyed. Whatever Ryan was up to, it was almost ten o’clock in the morning. By the time they got back to the house, his annoyance had turned into a bad feeling. Screw it, he thought. “Guys, I’m probably overreacting, but there’s a chance…”
But no, that didn’t really make sense. As soon as he’d opened his mouth, logic kicked it in. Why was that always how it worked?
Emma said, “A chance of what?”
Stephen sighed. “Like I said, probably overreacting. But there’s a chance he could be having some kind of medical issue.”
This caused a stir: What do you mean, medical issue? What are you… Where did you… What? Emma seemed especially irked to learn he’d been holding out on her. He could hardly blame her.
“This is stupid,” Will said. “Maybe we should call his cell.”
Beau said, “With what?”
“Oh. Right.”
“Where did he put the phones?” Lainie said. “Did anybody see?”
“Living room,” Beau answered. “That little Danish-looking cabinet thing. I watched him do it.”
They all went back inside.
The cabinet was locked.
“Stand aside,” Beau said.
Lainie looked horrified. “No! Don’t you dare harm this man’s furniture.”
“It’s a medical emergency. You heard Rollie.”
“No, no.” Stephen shook his head emphatically. “No. I said he could be having an issue, and I shouldn’t have said even that. He wouldn’t just…”
“Stephen, what’s going on?” Emma said. “What did he say to you up there?”
“Up where?” Lainie wanted to know.
Stephen retreated to the kitchen, but they followed him like pigeons. He tried to find his way into an explanation without betraying his promise, but now that he’d dropped a crumb, everybody wanted more. They stood around squabbling for a minute. You had one job, he thought to himself. So much for keeping everybody together.
Then Will said, “Guys?”
They all looked.
He’d stayed behind at the cabinet. The doors were now open.
Lainie said, “How’d you do that?”
“The drawer locks the doors,” Will said. “You just push it in a little, and the mechanism gives. My grandparents had one like it. We have it now.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” Beau was already heading back toward the cabinet. “Let’s call him.”
“I agree,” Emma said. “If we can. He said there might not be a signal.”
“There’s a signal somewhere,” Beau assured her. “There’s always a signal somewhere.”
But when they all regrouped around Will, they found him holding an empty wicker basket.
Well, no. Not empty. Just no phones.
In their place: a touchscreen tablet of unknown make, cased in some kind of rubberized, shock-resistant frame.
At the sight of it, Stephen’s bad feeling dissipated immediately. The annoyance came back. Will removed the tablet from the basket, returning the basket to the spot where he’d found it. He turned the device around so they all could see the screen.
“It just came on when I picked it up,” he said.
On the charcoal-colored screen: six blank white entry squares above a numbered keypad. Below that, a geometric clover insignia. Below that, two words:
Unlock Me!
CHAPTER 7
IT’S A GAME,” Lainie said, clapping her hands. “Ha! Wily devil. Leave it to him, right?”
“Unbelievable,” Stephen muttered. Yes, leave it to Ryan Cloverhill. This was his big plan? To disappear and leave them solving puzzles?
“Oh, come on, it’s fun. Now.” Lainie leaned forward to better scrutinize the tablet screen. “How do we start?”
Will used his pointer finger to indicate the instructions a foot from her nose: Unlock Me!
“Obviously,” Beau said, “but what’s the code?”
Perry had already caught on. “You mean you don’t know?”
“Try his birthday,” Lainie said. “No, wait. Too easy. Try our birthdays. Start with Emma’s.”
“Nope.”
“Well, what then? Wait: 827828. Either that or 828827.”
Will said, “What’s that?”
“Our addresses. From the duplex: you guys were 827; we were 828.”
“Oh, yeah,” Will said. “Nice pull, Lainie.”
“Wait, don’t enter it,” Beau said. “Is this thing going to lock us out if we guess wrong too many times?”
“He wants us to get in,” Perry said. “But you’re still ice cold.”
“Then warm us up!”
“Just think a minute. Even you can get this one, Beauregard.”
“In support of Beau,” Will said to Perry, “you’re being extremely annoying right now.”
This earned Will a fist bump from his old dorm-mate. “Thank you.”
Even Emma looked stumped.
Stephen couldn’t believe it. She was smarter than any of them. Except maybe Ryan, the self-absorbed prick. He almost chided himself for being so harsh, but no: The guy had always been this way. Even before he was dying. Utterly, willfully deluded.
Then her eyes brightened. She’d tipped to it.
Lainie saw this, too, and stamped her foot in frustration. “I give up! What is it?”
“The invitations,” Stephen said impatiently, stealing Perry’s thunder, hearing Ryan’s voice in his head: I’ve been planning this awhile. He pointed around the room: first at Emma, then himself, then the rest of them in order. “One two three four five six.”
Faces bloomed with sudden understanding. “Ahhhh,” Beau said. “He is a wily devil.”
Lainie said, “Right?”
“Punch it in. One two three four five six.”
“It can’t be that easy.”
“Never know ’til we try…”
“Last time you said wait don’t enter it!”
“I have an idea,” Will said. “Anybody mind?”
Perry looked at Emma, then Lainie. Emma shrugged. Lainie shrugged.
Beau said, “Go for it.” Then, just as Will began tapping away, Beau said, “Wait, what number are you entering?”
It didn’t matter. The tablet responded by playing a game show fail horn.
Will looked up, his face gone scarlet. He turned the tablet again. The screen had gone dead black, reflecting their faces in the glass.
“Well, shit,” Beau said. “Even our Link account gives you three tries.”
“Wait a minute.” Emma pointed. “Something’s happening.”
Even as she said it, the screen popped back to life, showing them a readout of their results. The graphic on-screen appeared to be a progress meter, shaped like none other than…
“Barksley!” Lainie cried.
Indeed. Barksley the Badger Hound. Stephen had no idea how their alma mater had ended up with a floppy-eared dachshund for a school mascot. A founder’s loyal companion, maybe? The institutional literature revealed only that dachshund translated from German as “badger dog,” hence, Badger Hound. The joke banner that had gone up on campus every homecoming weekend read: “Welcome Back to Bardsley College—Home of the Fighting Wiener Dogs.”
The hound on-screen was an empty white outline. The words above said:
0% Correct—Try again!
“Oof,” Will said. “Sorry, everybody. I guess I was way off.”
Perry said, “Now what?”
Will tapped the screen. Nothing happened. He tried swiping right, tried swiping left. Still nothing.
“Try the collar,” Emma said.
Stephen had already noticed what she was talking about. The collar’s clasp was the same clover insignia they’d seen before: on their invitations, on the helipad outside, on the home screen of this very tablet.
Will followed her suggestion and tapped the clover. Sure enough, the tablet played a happy success chime as the clover turned green.
The next screen showed a faded photograph of the seven of them, all crammed together on one of the futons in room 205, Anders Hall. Stephen hadn’t seen this photo in at least twenty-five years, but he recognized it immediately; they were mugging like idiots, half on each other’s laps, their limbs tangled like knobby vines.
“Oh my God,” Lainie gasped, covering her mouth with one hand. “Look at us.”
Perry covered his eyes instead. “We look like the fucking cast of Friends.”
Will laughed. “Why are our clothes so baggy?”
“I remember taking this picture,” Emma said. “We balanced that little camera of Will’s on those milk crates you guys kept all your CDs in, and it kept falling over right as the timer went off. We had half a dozen pictures of blurry CD spines when the prints came back. Do you remember?”
The text above the photo said:
Hmm. That was piss-poor.
Perhaps you are not the people in this photograph after all.
To continue, prove yourselves.
Beneath the photo, Stephen saw six white ovals in a row.
“I know this one,” Beau said. Before anyone could respond, he reached out and pressed the pad of his right thumb to the first oval.
Success chime. The white oval turned into a green clover.
“Yes! Way to go, honey.” Lainie reached out and copied him. Now there were two green clovers. “Everybody get in here.”
One by one, Emma, Perry, and Will entered their thumbprints, until a single white oval remained. Stephen’s turn. Everybody looked at him.
He sighed. Pressed his thumb to the screen.
“For Pete’s sake,” Emma said. “What’s with you this morning? If you know more about this than you’re telling us, spit it out already.”
How the hell had he managed to put himself in this position? Stephen didn’t know what to say or not say. He only knew that if Ryan were here, instead of wherever the hell he was, he might be tempted to wring his neck.
