Shattered: Chapter 1
Note: This is the first chapter from Shattered, the sequel to Like Glass. It does contain some strong language, and it’s also still in the “editing room” — it’s subject to change without warning. In the mean time though, please enjoy.
This was bliss. Caitlain in bed, a tumbler of scotch with just enough ice in one hand, a freshly lit cigarette in the other hand, sitting on the back porch under only the stars to light the sky.
Okay, Rob Jackson thought to himself, pulling his jacket in a little tighter, it’s very cold bliss. The temperature was hovering in the upper thirties, fairly normal for December in Washington, but the scotch would take care of that in another glass or two. And besides, the cold brought out the scent of the pine trees like nothing else could, made the air fresher and more vibrant. He smiled, took a drag off his cigarette, sipped some of the scotch, and tried to relax.
It was Sunday, the night he needed the scotch the most. Sunday nights brought Monday mornings, and tomorrow was worse than normal. Tomorrow was supposed to see him in Jason’s office with the presentation on where the company was falling behind, a presentation that (and Rob snorted at the irony) was nowhere near complete. He still needed another week, and he’d told Jason that the deadline was too soon when the task was given to him. Did Jason listen?
Of course not.
Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke, Rob said to himself as he sipped some more of the scotch. Hell, joke ‘em if they can’t take a fuck. He laughed out loud and finished the rest of the tumbler off at a draught, coughing slightly at the burn. He snuffed his cigarette out and went inside to pour himself another glass, careful to keep his eyes away from the picture on the refrigerator door, the one he’d never had the heart to remove.
He sat back down, treading carefully around the pang of guilt he normally felt with his second glass of the night. Only temporary, he reminded himself. Just until she’s completely gone. When he didn’t think of her anymore at night, he’d quit; it was already probably getting out of hand, but she still came to him. He’d found out the scotch kept her away quite by accident, having had one too many at Marty’s one night and getting the best night sleep he’d had since he’d buried Janet and her son (his son, too; he still had problems thinking of the kid that way, even though it’d been almost a year since he’d found out).
Janet.
Did he think that? Or whisper it out loud? He couldn’t tell – and not from the alcohol, either. Her name came to his mind so frequently, and to his lips almost as often, that he’d stopped paying attention most of the time.
So he drank.
Not too much. Just at night, mostly, to take the edge off of life, off of her presence. Just a tumbler or two. Or five. It really just depended on how strongly he felt her around.
She was around tonight. He could feel her, her breath in the cold night air, whispering soundlessly in his ear. Her fingers played lightly at his hair with each breeze. Her eyes…
He stopped the thought with another drink, then lit a cigarette to drive the silence home. He needed something else to focus on, or else he’d drive himself crazy.
Work. Work was always good to distract himself with. He could think of work. He could think of the project that was supposed to be done tomorrow morning – actually supposed to have been done Friday afternoon and presented tomorrow morning.
He took a deep sigh, another drink of his scotch, and shook his head. He needed to go to bed, it was already getting late – at least ten o’ clock, probably closer to eleven. He didn’t feel like looking at the clock though. He wasn’t tired yet, and he needed another drink to get the edge of the night dulled enough so he could sleep. He looked at his glass, finished it off, and went inside for another.
Monday morning was almost as bad as he’d expected. Jason was pissed, of course, and everyone else just glared at him during the meeting where he was supposed to be giving his presentation. Without the presentation, they moved on to other topics and the meeting was quite short.
“You had three weeks to get this done, Robert,” Jason said after the meeting. His office was much nicer than Rob’s cube, of course; one of the perks of being vice president was you generally didn’t have to stare at gray cloth all day. “Would you mind explaining to me why we’re talking about this, instead of figuring out what to do about the company’s bottlenecks?”
Rob sighed. “I told you it was going to take longer than three weeks Jason. I had to wait to get numbers from each department, and you know that no one ever jumps right up to do stuff like that. They’re already swamped; they don’t have time for this.”
“That doesn’t matter. It was your job to convince them that this was more important than day-to-day ops.” Jason sat down and turned on his computer. “We only have three weeks before we start the next release and you know that your evaluation is a key part of getting everything ready.”
“I know, Jason, I know.” Rob fidgeted while Jason stared at him.
“Do you really? Because I’m beginning to sense a pattern with you. This is the third time you missed a major deadline – a very generous deadline, I might add – and it’s getting annoying Robert. That’s not to mention the ‘normal’ projects we give you.” Jason typed something and stared at the monitor for a couple of seconds, then nodded. “We’ve already given you verbal warnings, and we’ve written you up twice.”
Rob’s breath caught as he realized where this was going. “Am I being let go?”
“You’ve left us without a choice, Robert.” Jason’s voice was calm, almost apologetic now. “I mean, seriously, how long did you expect us to put up with it? We invested a lot of man power into bringing you up to speed, and you wasted it. We gave you several opportunities – more than we normally give people, because we saw a lot of potential in you. But…” he waved his hands. “We can only go so far, and you were supposed to meet us halfway. You didn’t.”
“Look, I can change, I can fix it.”
“Robert, you had lots of chances to ‘fix’ it. I’m sorry.”
“Seriously, I’ll do better.”
“We’ve already hired your replacement. I just got the word right now,” he said, pointing at the computer screen. “We didn’t find much point in letting you know we were interviewing anyone in case you somehow pulled through today. You didn’t, and Roger made his decision as you were struggling to defend yourself this morning.” Roger was the head of HR, and not a very pleasant person. It didn’t surprise Rob in the slightest that Roger had been the one to pull the trigger.
Rob nodded. “Okay, then. I’ll um… I’ll clean out my cube.”
“I hope you understand, Rob. It’s nothing personal.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry it didn’t work out.”
“Me too,” Jason said, turning back to the computer.
With his newly opened Monday, Rob found himself sitting at Marty’s pub. He was the only one there, of course, other than Marty himself.
“Man, that stinks Rob. Sorry to hear that,” Marty said as Rob finished explaining a version of what had happened. Of course he’d left out most of the details, explaining only that he’d screwed up on a couple of projects – regularly missing deadlines wasn’t something he was going to discuss with pride.
“Yeah, well, it happens. I was getting tired of the place anyways.” He sipped the scotch that Marty had given him on the house as a consolation for his poor fortune.
“So what ya gonna do next?”
“Don’t know. Just keep my eyes open, I guess.”
“Yeah…” Marty’s eyes grew a little distant. The jukebox came on and the song it played put Rob even deeper into the poor mood he was trying to hide. Marty recognized it immediately as well, and knew Rob well enough to get up and turn the volume down before Jimmy Durante had even gotten to explain that a kiss was still a kiss.
“Sorry, I keep meaning to take that damned CD out of there.”
“No problem.” Rob finished his scotch and stood up. “I’d better get moving anyways.”
“Sure, sure. Hey, stop by anytime, you know that. You want to just shoot the shit or something, I’m here.”
“Yeah, of course. Thanks Marty.”
“No problem. See you around.”
Rob sat at the piano, waiting for something to happen. Like missing deadlines, this was another pattern that he’d started not long after Janet’s accident – sitting on the bench, staring blankly at the piano more out of force of habit than out of actually wanting to play. He’d try forcing the notes out, but it always sounded lifeless, mechanical. There wasn’t anything behind the music anymore.
He’d tried playing everything, too. Rachmaninoff and Chopin. Beethoven and Mozart. Jazz standards and ragtime. Classical music and rock and roll. Nothing. The notes were there but the passion was gone. In fact, he was playing better than ever from a technical standpoint, playing pieces like Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody or Rimsky-Korsakov’s Flight of the Bumblebee almost flawlessly. Even Rachmaninoff’s third piano concerto, touted by some as one of the most challenging concertos around, was almost up to tempo – he had some problems with the first movement cadenza and some of the third movement, but no one would be able to tell that he’d taken eight years away from the piano by listening to him play.
Today he tried to flavor the music with alcohol, a rare event, as the only times he really drank was when Caitlain was in bed asleep and the piano would easily waken the child. It didn’t bring life to the music, but at least he didn’t care as much. He played for well over an hour, staring expressionlessly at the keys as his arms and fingers ran through their familiar motions. When he started to feel his arms getting tired, he closed the piano and went outside to smoke.
The day was beautiful at least. A rare sunny day in winter, the late afternoon sun casting a golden hue over everything. It was still quite cold though – he figured it was probably in the upper forties, maybe lower fifties. He couldn’t smell the trees quite as much as the night before, but the scent of pine was still a light undertone to the soft breeze. The phone rang as he lit his cigarette and he sighed. He went inside to get the cordless phone and was surprised to see Lisa’s number on the called ID. He quickly answered it.
“Hello?”
“Rob? Where the hell are you?” She definitely was not happy.
“I’m at home, why?”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Uh…” he looked at his watch. Four-thirty. “Oh crap.”
“Exactly. Do you know where Caitlain is?”
“At school?”
“No, she’s not. She’s here with me. Can you tell me why I received a call from the school telling me that there was a six-year-old standing around waiting to be picked up?”
“I’m sorry. I had a bad day, and it slipped my mind. I’ll explain later.”
“You bet your ass you will. I have a six-month-old baby to take care of and I don’t need to pack everything up into the car and go pick up your kid because you had a bad day!” By the time Lisa hung up on him, Rob had the phone almost at arm’s length and was still able to hear her perfectly fine.
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Good chapter, Matthew. I’m glad you decided to put it up.
I couldn’t help but think of an ex-girlfriend when you wrote about not taking the picture from the ‘fridge down. Hit home, man.
Thanks Jeff, I’m glad you enjoyed it — and sorry if it brought stuff back
–Matt