Duncan Pryor recovered first. To his enormous credit, he put the cap back on his marker.
"Maren," he said gently. "Are you all right?"
I sat up. A sticky note had attached itself to my cheek. Rafe reached over and peeled it off without comment. It said SLEPT.
"I'm fine," I said. "I'm great, actually."
This was true, which made it worse. I felt like I'd had a glass of cold water and a long walk. My eyes were clear, and my thoughts had straight edges.
"I was up late. With a, um. A project."
"A project," Duncan repeated.
"A home project."
Eleven people nodded slowly, the way you nod at someone holding a ladder wrong. Duncan looked at me a moment longer. He had kind eyes, a little pink around the edges. They held the specific worry of a man who has once taken a first-aid class.
"Let's take five," he said. "Everyone. Coffee."
Nobody needed coffee. Everyone went anyway, quickly, like a fire drill with a bakery at the end.
Rafe did not go for coffee. Rafe sat down in the chair next to mine and pulled a fresh pad of sticky notes from his pocket.
"Okay," he said. "Talk to me."
"I fell asleep."
"You dropped. One second you were nodding at the forecast, then your head went down very slowly, like a drawbridge."
He demonstrated with his hand. "It was honestly kind of graceful."
"Rafe."
"And then four minutes later you opened your eyes and looked like you'd been to a spa." He narrowed his eyes. "What did the hypnotist say your word was?"
I hadn't told him the word. I hadn't told anyone the word. It was mine, like a PIN number or a middle-school diary.
Rafe didn't wait. He turned and studied the whiteboard. Item sixty-four sat at the bottom, still glistening. FISK DISCOUNT?
"No," he said softly. "No way."
"Don't."
"Is it 'Fisk'?"
"No."
"Is it 'discount'?"
"Rafe, I'm begging you."
He looked at the header of the whiteboard. Then he looked back at me with the dawning joy of a man solving a crossword in pen.
"Oh, Maren," he said. "Oh no."
I called Dr. Harrow from my car at lunch. I parked it first, and said the word in my head very carefully, the way you'd carry a full cup of soup.
Nothing happened. Apparently my own voice was safe when I didn't mean it.
She picked up on the second ring. I explained. There was a pause on the line.
"Interesting," she said.
"Is it?"
"Very. I'm sorry, Maren, this must have been mortifying." I heard a page turn. "How long were you out?"
"Four minutes. My coworker timed it."
"And how did you feel afterward?"
I considered lying. Then I remembered the license on her wall that I had read twice.
"Amazing," I admitted. "Like I'd slept a whole night. I answered nine emails in twenty minutes. I fixed a pallet spec that's been wrong since March."
"Interesting," she said again, with real delight. "So the cue generalized. Your body heard the phrase from someone it trusts, in a room where you feel safe, and it took the invitation."
"It's my boss. I don't trust my boss."
"Do you think he'd let anything bad happen to you in a meeting?"
I thought about Duncan, holding the cap of his marker like a baby bird. "No," I said. "He'd park it."
She laughed. It was a nice laugh, warm and low. Then she was all business.
"Here's what I need you to know," she said. "First, you're safe. When we built the cue, we built in that you only rest when you're settled. Seated, or somewhere secure."
"So not while driving."
"Not driving, not on stairs. Your body is smarter than that."
"Okay."
"Second, anyone saying your name clearly will bring you up. And third, I can change the cue. Easily. One short session."
"Great. Today?"
"I'm leaving for a conference in Lisbon tonight. I'm presenting on sleep and memory, if you can believe it."
Another page turned. "I'm back in twelve days. I'll see you the morning I land."
"Twelve days."
"In the meantime, the simplest fix is to tell your boss. Ask him to use a different phrase."
I looked out the windshield at the Corvel parking lot. A man was trying to fit a pickup truck into a compact space. He had been trying for a while.
"I'll think about it," I said.
"Maren."
"I'll think about it very seriously."
"And keep a log, if you can. Time, place, how long, how you feel after. It'll help me."
Rafe was thrilled to keep a log. He asked my permission first, which I appreciated. Then he made a spreadsheet and color-coded it, which I appreciated less.
"Column A is time," he said. "B is location. C is duration."
"And D?"
"How you feel after, from one to ten. Column E is what you did next."
"Why do you need Column E?"
"Data's data."
I made him promise not to name the file anything obvious. He named it Q4 Pallet Projections. Nobody at Corvel had ever opened anything called Q4 Pallet Projections. It was the safest place in the building.
I decided not to tell Duncan. I had reasons. I wrote them down that night, in bed, before saying my phrase and sleeping nine hours like a felled tree.
- It was humiliating.
- It was only twelve days.
- Duncan feeling terrible was its own kind of weather, lasting weeks and affecting everyone.
The list was short and very convincing. I was asleep before I could add a fourth reason.
The twelve days began badly.
On Tuesday, Duncan stopped by the copier while I was making packets. He was chatting with Raj from logistics about a late shipment of glue. "Let's park that till Thursday," he said, cheerfully.
My body did exactly what Dr. Harrow had promised. It found the nearest secure position, which was the carpet. I sat down neatly beside the copier, tucked my knees up, and leaned my head against the paper tray.
I woke to the copier beeping and a cardigan draped over my shoulders.
It belonged to Loretta Bixby. Loretta was sixty-three and had been Corvel's office manager for thirty-one years. She owned a cardigan for every season, including some seasons I didn't think were real. She also carried a cough drop for every crisis.
She was standing over me, unwrapping one.
"Here," she said, and handed it to me. Cherry. "Low blood sugar?"
"Something like that."
"Mm-hm." Loretta had the face of a woman who had heard every excuse at least twice.
"I found Gary from accounting asleep in the supply closet in 1997. That was the holiday party. You're not even close."
"Thank you, Loretta."
"Keep the cardigan till Friday," she said. "It's my October one. It's lucky."
Rafe logged it that afternoon.
Location: copier. Duration: 4:00. Feeling after: 9. Did next: finished the Brannock competitor analysis two days early.
On Wednesday it happened in the breakroom, in a vinyl chair. Duncan had parked the question of the second microwave for the third time. I fell asleep holding a cup of yogurt and woke up still holding it, perfectly level.
Feeling after: 10. Did next: rewrote the Halvorsen proposal. They accepted it by 4 p.m.
That evening Rafe turned his monitor toward me and tapped Column E with a highlighter.
"Notice anything?" he asked.
"That you've used four colors on a spreadsheet about my naps?"
"Five. Lilac is new." He scrolled. "Every single time, the thing you do next is the best thing you do all day."
"That's a sample size of three."
"That's why it's called a log, Maren. Logs get longer."
On Thursday afternoon, Duncan called a quick all-hands in the open-plan area. I took the precaution of sitting down in advance, on a filing cabinet, like a woman bracing for weather.
"Big news, folks," Duncan said. "Harlan Fisk is coming in person. Next Thursday, ten a.m., for the renewal."
There was a murmur. Harlan Fisk was seventy-one and had never once, in eighteen years, set foot in our building.
"It's our biggest contract," Duncan went on. "Maren's going to lead the presentation. I'll be running the meeting myself."
He beamed at me. I smiled back with every muscle I had.
"And I've already started a list," he added, tapping a folded sheet of paper against his palm. "There are a lot of things in this deal we're going to need to—"
Behind me, Rafe launched himself across two desks.
Up next: Plain Talk Week
Continue to Part 3 →