Elevation Read online

  It was this tossed-off tagline that had actually gotten him the job. Design skills were one thing; inspiration and clever sloganeering were another; when they came together, you had something special. He was special, this was his chance to prove it, and he intended to make the most of it. Eventually he would be working with an ad agency, he understood that, and they would tinker with his lines and graphics, but he thought that slogan would stay. Most of his basic ideas would also stay. They were strong enough to survive a bunch of New York City hotshots.

  He double-clicked again, and a living room appeared on the screen. It was totally empty; there weren’t even light fixtures. Outside the window was a greensward that just happened to be part of the Highland Acres golf course, where Myra Ellis had played many rounds. On a few occasions, Myra’s foursome had included Scott’s own ex-wife, who was now living (and presumably golfing) in Flagstaff.

  Bill D. Cat came in, gave a sleepy miaow, and rubbed along his leg.

  “Food soon,” Scott murmured. “Few more minutes.” As though a cat had any concept of minutes in particular, or time in general.

  As if I do, Scott thought. Time is invisible. Unlike weight.

  Ah, but maybe that wasn’t true. You could feel weight, yes—when you were carrying too much, it made you ploddy—but wasn’t it, like time, basically just a human construct? Hands on a clock, numbers on a bathroom scale, weren’t they only ways of trying to measure invisible forces that had visible effects? A feeble effort to corral some greater reality beyond what mere humans thought of as reality?

  “Let it go, you’ll drive yourself bugshit.”

  Bill gave another miaow, and Scott returned his attention to the computer screen.

  Above the barren living room was a search field containing the words Pick Your Style! Scott typed in Early American, and the screen came to life, not all at once, but slowly, as if each piece of furniture were being picked out by a careful shopper and added to the whole: chairs, a sofa, pink walls that were stenciled rather than papered, a Seth Thomas clock, a goodwife rag rug on the floor. A fireplace with a small cozy blaze within. The overhead fixture held hurricane lamps on wooden spokes. Those were a little over the top for Scott’s taste, but the salespeople he was dealing with loved them, and assured Scott that potential customers would, too.

  He could swipe and furnish a parlor, a bedroom, a study, all in Early American. Or he could return to the search field and furnish those virtual-reality rooms in Colonial, Garrison, Craftsman, or Cottage style. Today’s job, however, was Queen Anne. Scott opened his laptop and began picking out display furniture.

  Forty-five minutes later, Bill was back, rubbing and miaowing more insistently.

  “Okay, okay,” Scott said, and got up. He went into the kitchen, Bill D. Cat leading the way with his tail up. There was a feline spring in Bill’s step, and Scott was damned if he didn’t feel pretty springy himself.

  He dumped Friskies into Bill’s bowl, and while the cat chowed down, he went out on the front porch for a breath of fresh air before going back to Selby wing chairs, Winfrey settees, Houzz highboys, all with the famous Queen Anne legs. He thought it was the kind of furniture you saw in funeral parlors, heavy shit trying to seem light, but different strokes for different folks.

  He was in time to see “the ladies,” as Doctor Bob had called them, coming out of their driveway and turning onto View Drive, long legs flashing beneath tiny shorts—blue for Deirdre McComb, red for Missy Donaldson. They were wearing identical tee-shirts advertising the restaurant they ran downtown on Carbine Street. Following them were their nearly identical boxers, Dum and Dee.

  What Doctor Bob had said as Scott was leaving (probably wanting no more than to end their meeting on a lighter note) now recurred, something about Scott having a little trouble with the restaurant ladies. Which he was. Not a bitter relationship problem, or a mysterious weight-loss problem; more like a cold sore that wouldn’t go away. Deirdre was the really annoying one, always with her faintly superior smile—the one that seemed to say lord help me to bear these fools.

  Scott made a sudden decision and hustled back to his study (taking a nimble leap over Bill, who was reclining in the hall) and grabbed his tablet. Running back to the porch, he opened the camera app.

  The porch was screened, which made him hard to see, and the women weren’t paying any attention to him, anyway. They ran along the packed dirt shoulder on the far side of the Drive with their bright white sneakers scissoring and their ponytails swinging. The dogs, stocky but still young and plenty athletic, pounded along behind.

  Scott had visited their home twice on the subject of those dogs, had spoken to Deirdre both times, and had borne that faintly superior smile patiently as she told him she really doubted that their dogs were doing their business on his lawn. Their backyard was fenced, she said, and in the hour or so each day when they were out (“Dee and Dum always accompany Missy and me on our daily runs”) they were very well-behaved.

  “I think they must smell my cat,” Scott had said. “It’s a territorial thing. I get that, and I understand you not wanting to leash them when you run, but I’d appreciate you checking out my lawn when you come back, and policing it up if necessary.”

  “Policing,” Deirdre had said, her smile never wavering. “Seems a bit militaristic, but maybe that’s just me.”

  “Whatever you want to call it.”

  “Mr. Carey, dogs may be, as you say, doing their business on your lawn, but they’re not our dogs. Perhaps it’s something else that’s concerning you? It wouldn’t be a prejudice against same-sex marriage, would it?”

  Scott had almost laughed, which would have been bad—even Trumpian—diplomacy. “Not at all. It’s a prejudice against not wanting to step in a surprise package left by one of your boxers.”

  “Good discussion,” she had said, still with that smile (not maddening, as she might have hoped, but definitely irritating), and closed the door gently but firmly in his face.

  With his mysterious weight-loss the farthest thing from his mind for the first time in days, Scott watched the two women running toward him with their dogs loping gamely along in their wake. Deirdre and Missy were talking as they ran, laughing about something. Their flushed cheeks shone with sweat and good health. The McComb woman was clearly the better runner of the two, and just as clearly holding back a bit to stay with her partner. They were paying zero attention to the dogs, which was hardly neglect; View Drive wasn’t a hotbed of traffic, especially in the middle of the day. And Scott had to admit that the dogs were good about keeping out of the road. In that, at least, they were well-trained.

  Not going to happen today, he thought. It never does when you’re prepared. Yet it would be pleasant to wipe that little quirk of a smile off Ms. McComb’s—

  But it did happen. First one of the boxers swerved, then the other followed. Dee and Dum ran onto Scott’s lawn and squatted side by side. Scott raised his tablet and snapped three quick photos.

  * * *

  That evening, after an early supper of spaghetti carbonara followed by a wedge of chocolate cheesecake, Scott got on his Ozeri scale, hoping as he always did these days that things had finally started going the right way. They had not. In spite of the big meal he had just put away, the Ozeri informed him that he was down to 210.8 pounds.

  Bill was watching him from the closed toilet seat, his tail curled neatly around his paws. “Well,” Scott told him, “it is what it is, right? As Nora used to say when she came home from those meetings of hers, life is what we make it and acceptance is the key to all our affairs.”

  Bill yawned.

  “But we also change the things we can, don’t we? You hold the fort. I’m going to pay a visit.”

  He grabbed his iPad and jogged the quarter mile to the renovated farmhouse where McComb and Donaldson had lived for the last eight months or so, since opening Holy Frijole. He knew their schedule pretty well, in the offhand way one gets to know one’s neighbors’ comings and goings, and th
is would be a good time to catch Deirdre alone. Missy was the chef at the restaurant, and usually left to start dinner prep around three. Deirdre, who was the out-front half of the partnership, came around five. She was the one in charge, Scott believed, both at work and at home. Missy Donaldson impressed him as a sweet little thing who looked at the world with a mixture of fear and wonder. More of the former than the latter, he guessed. Did McComb see herself as Missy’s protector as well as her partner? Maybe. Probably.

  He mounted the steps and rang the doorbell. At its chime, Dee and Dum began to bark in the backyard.

  Deirdre opened the door. She was dressed in a pretty, figure-fitting dress that would no doubt look smashing as she stood at the hostess stand and then showed parties to their various tables. Her eyes were her best feature, a bewitching shade of greeny-gray and uptilted a bit at the corners.

  “Oh, Mr. Carey,” she said. “How really nice to see you.” And the smile, which said how really boring to see you. “I’d love to invite you in, but I have to get down to the restaurant. Lots of reservations tonight. Leaf-peepers, you know.”

  “I won’t keep you,” Scott said, smiling his own smile. “I just dropped by to show you this.” And he held up his iPad, so she could observe Dee and Dum squatting on his front lawn and shitting in tandem.

  She looked at it for a long time, the smile fading. Seeing that didn’t give him as much pleasure as he had expected.

  “All right,” she said at last. The artificial lilt had gone out of her voice. Without it she sounded tired and older than her years, which might number thirty. “You win.”

  “It’s not about winning, believe me.” As it came out of his mouth, Scott remembered a college teacher once remarking that when someone added believe me to a sentence, you should beware.

  “You’ve made your point, then. I can’t come down and pick it up now, and Missy’s already at work, but I will after we close. You won’t even need to turn on your porch light. I should be able to see the . . . leavings . . . by the streetlight.”

  “You don’t need to do that.” Scott was starting to feel slightly mean. And in the wrong, somehow. You win, she’d said. “I’ve already bagged it up. I just . . .”

  “What? Wanted to get one up on me? If that was it, mission accomplished. From now on Missy and I will do our running down in the park. There will be no need for you to report us to the local authorities. Thank you, and good evening.” She started to close the door.

  “Wait a second,” Scott said. “Please.”

  She looked at him through the half-closed door, face expressionless.

  “Going to the animal control guy over a few piles of dog crap never crossed my mind, Ms. McComb. Look, I just want us to be good neighbors. My only problem was the way you brushed me off. Refused to take me seriously. That isn’t how good neighbors do. At least not around here.”

  “Oh, we know exactly how good neighbors do,” she said. “Around here.” The slightly superior smile came back, and she closed the door with it still on her face. Not before, however, he had seen a gleam in her eyes that might have been tears.

  We know exactly how good neighbors do around here, he thought, walking back down the hill. What the hell did that mean?

  * * *

  Doctor Bob called him two days later, to ask if there had been any change. Scott told him things were progressing as before. He was down to 207.6. “It’s pretty damn regular. Getting on the bathroom scale is like watching the numbers go backward on a car odometer.”

  “But still no change in your physical dimensions? Waist size? Shirt size?”

  “I’m still a forty waist and a thirty-four leg. I don’t need to tighten my belt. Or let it out, although I’m eating like a lumberjack. Eggs, bacon, and sausage for breakfast. Sauces on everything at night. Got to be at least three thousand calories a day. Maybe four. Did you do any research?”

  “I did,” Doctor Bob said. “So far as I can tell, there’s never been a case like yours. There are plenty of clinical reports about people whose metabolisms are in overdrive—people who eat, as you say, like lumberjacks and still stay thin—but no cases of people who weigh the same naked and dressed.”

  “Oh, but it’s so much more,” Scott said. He was smiling again. He smiled a lot these days, which was probably crazy, given the circumstances. He was losing weight like a late-stage cancer patient, but the work was going like gangbusters and he had never felt more cheerful. Sometimes, when he needed a break from the computer screen, he put on Motown and danced around the room with Bill D. Cat staring at him as if he’d gone mad.

  “Tell me the more.”

  “This morning I weighed 208 flat. Straight out of the shower and buck naked. I got my hand-weights out of the closet, the twenty-pounders, and stepped on the scales with one in each hand. Still 208 flat.”

  Silence on the other end for a moment, then Ellis said, “You’re shitting me.”

  “Bob, if I’m lyin, I’m dyin.”

  More silence. Then: “It’s as if you’ve got some kind of weight-repelling force-field around you. I know you don’t want to be poked and prodded, but this is an entirely new thing. And it’s big. There could be implications we can’t even conceive of.”

  “I don’t want to be a freak,” Scott said. “Put yourself in my place.”

  “Will you at least think about it?”

  “I have, a lot. And I have no urge to be a part of Inside View’s tabloid hall of fame, with my picture right between the Night Flier and Slender Man. Also, I’ve got my work to finish. I’ve promised Nora a share of the money even though the divorce was final before I got the job, and I’m pretty sure she can use it.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Maybe six weeks. Of course there’ll be revisions and test runs that will keep me busy into the new year, but six weeks to finish the main job.”

  “If this continues at the same rate, you’d be down around 165 by then.”

  “But still looking like a mighty man,” Scott said, and laughed. “There’s that.”

  “You sound remarkably cheery, considering what’s going on with you.”

  “I feel cheerful. That might be nuts, but it’s true. Sometimes I think this is the world’s greatest weight-loss program.”

  “Yes,” Ellis said, “but where does it end?”

  * * *

  One day not long after his phone conversation with Doctor Bob, there came a light knock at Scott’s front door. If he’d had his music turned up any louder—today it was the Ramones—he never would have heard it, and his visitor might have gone away. Probably with relief, because when he opened the front door, Missy Donaldson was standing there, and she looked scared half to death. It was the first time he’d seen her since taking the photos of Dee and Dum relieving themselves on his lawn. He supposed Deirdre had been as good as her word, and the women were now exercising their dogs in the town park. If they were allowing the boxers to run free down there, they really might run afoul of the animal control guy, no matter how well-behaved the dogs were. The park had a leash law. Scott had seen the signs.

  “Ms. Donaldson,” he said. “Hello.”

  It was also the first time he’d seen her alone, and he was careful not to step over the threshold or make any sudden moves. She looked like she might leap down the steps and run away like a deer if he did. She was blond, not as pretty as her partner, but with a sweet face and clear blue eyes. There was a fragility about her, something that made Scott think of his mother’s decorative china plates. It was hard to imagine this woman in a restaurant kitchen, moving from pot to pot and skillet to skillet through the steam, plating veggie dinners and bossing around the help while she did it.

  “Can I help you? Would you like to come in? I have coffee . . . or tea, if you prefer.”

  She was shaking her head before he was halfway through these standard offers of hospitality, and doing it hard enough to make her ponytail flip from one shoulder to the other. “I just came to apologize. For De
irdre.”

  “There’s no need to do that,” he said. “And no need to take your dogs all the way down to the park, either. All I ask is that you carry a couple of poop bags and check out my lawn on your way back. That’s not too much to ask, is it?”

  “No, not at all. I even suggested it to Deirdre. She almost snapped my head off.”

  Scott sighed. “I’m sorry to hear that. Ms. Donaldson—”

  “You can call me Missy, if you like.” Looking down and blushing slightly, as if she’d made a remark that might be taken for risqué.

  “I would like that. Because all I want is for us to be good neighbors. Most of the folks up here on the View are, you know. And I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, although how I could have gotten off on the right one, I don’t know.”

  Still looking down, she said, “We’ve been here for almost eight months, and the only time you’ve really talked to us—either of us—was when our dogs messed on your lawn.”

  This was truer than Scott would have liked. “I came up with a bag of doughnuts after you moved in,” he said (rather weakly), “but you weren’t at home.”

  He thought she would ask why he hadn’t tried again, but she didn’t.

  “I came to apologize for Deirdre, but I also wanted to explain her.” She raised her eyes to his. It took an obvious effort—her hands were clenched together at the waist of her jeans—but she did it. “She’s not mad at you, really . . . well, she is, but you’re not the only one. She’s mad at everybody. Castle Rock was a mistake. We came here because the place was almost business-ready, the price was right, and we wanted to get out of the city—Boston, I mean. We knew it was a risk, but it seemed like an acceptable one. And the town is so beautiful. Well, you know that, I guess.”

  Scott nodded.

  “But we’re probably going to lose the restaurant. If things don’t turn around by Valentine’s Day, for sure. That’s the only reason she let them put her on that poster. She won’t talk about how bad things are, but she knows it. We both do.”