The Ruby Pearl

It was unspeakable, Chris thought-- an unspeakable spectacle, an unspeakable torture. Only five minutes in, he was fighting the urge to cry out in misery. He looked at the faces across the table from him. To an innocent observer, their expressions might have seemed calm, but he knew better. Beneath their placid smiles, he saw anguish, the same anguish that was now eating at him.

Weekly strategy meetings, he thought. They would never get any better.

"Horizontal integration is key," say Mr. Harris, Chris's manager, walking back and forth before the cornflower-blue PowerPoint projection, calm as a wave that advanced and retreated. "View problems in their full context in corporate society, and formulate solutions accordingly."

This is hell, thought Chris. This is a war crime.

Chris studied the faces across from him, trying to find something to distract from Harris's endless lecturing. Susan Somerhalder, a cute, neatly-dressed blonde from human resources, was sitting across from Chris and to his left. She seemed to be silently gritting her teeth as she stared down at her itinerary.

Chris let his eyes rest on Susan for a moment. They'd spoken a few times in the corridors of the building and last week at the company's Christmas party. Apparently, neither of them had had anything better to do on Christmas evening than come down to Pierce & Pierce corporate headquarters and drink nonalcoholic eggnog out of plastic cups. Chris tried to bring out the details of his memory of the conversation: Susan said she liked Nabokov. Chris had tried to pass himself off as a fan of the writer, too, and felt he'd probably succeeded.

Susan's hands were wandering, like tiny creatures independent of the rest of her body. They picked up a pen, uncapped it, capped it again, and put it aside.

Chris knew she was feeling the full weight of Harris's sermonizing as badly as he was.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Harris went around the table, gathering status updates from everyone. As always, the updates were blandly optimistic and so general as to be almost totally useless. Harris's eyes moved along the row toward Chris.

"And you, Mr. Corwin?"

Chris straightened in his chair. "Most of accounting and finance's manpower is currently being devoted to the Alghamdi account. We're working closely with their people, and we're feeling pretty confident that a mutually profitable deal can be reached."

Harris continued to look expectantly at Chris. Chris shifted uncomfortably.

"I expect we'll have finished drafting an agreement within the week. I feel optimistic."

"Good!" said Harris, nodding as if some parcel of grand and unexpected new information had been revealed to him.. "A positive attitude is nine tenths of what it takes to succeed in business."

"Excellent," said Chris. Harris continued on down the line. After a few minutes, when all attention had definitely subsided from him, Chris let his attention wander back toward Susan, who continued to sit, fidgeting slowly and methodically.

Susan's dress was neat, but it had a certain stylish flair that Chris found hard to pin down. Around her neck was a fine silver chain that dangled a single, silver-clasped pearl between the folds of her pinstriped collar. Even desperately bored, she was self-assured. Confident and well-groomed. Chris decided to catch her after the meeting and tell her how much he liked her necklace.

And, suddenly, the meeting was over. Chris hoped he hadn't missed anything important, but he wasn't really worried. He shuffled his papers into his mahogany-colored messenger bag and made his way toward the meeting room door, trying not to look like he was rushing.

At the door, Chris filed through next to Susan, who had made her way around the opposite side of the table. Chris flashed her a smile.

Susan looked at him, the silver chain bobbing along with the movement of her neck. "Didn't I see you at the office party?"

"Oh, yes!" said Chris, as if it had just occurred to him. "We talked about, uh, Nabokov, I think."

"Right," said Susan, and now she smiled too. "Yes, the literary buff. I remember you." She glanced over her shoulder. "God, but that party was a downer, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yeah," said Chris, feeling a little punch of disappointment, "terrible."

"I mean, not, uh, because of you, of course," said Susan. "No."

She hesitated for a moment and Chris tried to think of something funny or literature-related to mention.

"Well, look," said Susan suddenly, "I have to go. I have a thing I have to be at. But you keep your chin up."

"You too!" replied Chris, and Susan swept off down the hall toward HR.

On the bus heading back home, Chris was sandwiched up against the window by a stout man reading a copy of one of Anne Rice's legion of indistinguishable vampire books. The library, Chris thought. The library. He should go there and pick up something by Nabokov. Apply for a card, then pick up something by Nabokov. Maybe even bring it to the office. What had Nabokov even written? Chris resolved to Google the writer later on.

The bus squealed to a halt off the corner a few blocks down from Chris's apartment. Chris smiled at the driver and disembarked. He stood on the sidewalk for a second, crumpling his transfer in his hand. To the library? No, Chris thought. The Internet would be a better tool to familiarize himself with some of Susan's favorite work.

Chris balled up his transfer and tossed it to the ground. Then he stopped.

Growing out of the bare dirt next to the sidewalk was a small flower with tapered, feather-like petals of a brilliant, velveteen red.

Wow, thought Chris. That's pretty. Beautiful.

He bent down on his knee to look at the flower. It was perfect, totally unlike a supermarket rose. There were no dents or gray spots. On an impulse, he dug his fingers down into the ground around the flower and, feeling no resistance of roots, scooped it up.

Something about the flower made him think of Susan. He didn't know her all that well, he had to admit, but there was something about the plant that reminded him immediately of her.

Chris walked back to his apartment with the flower in his hands.

Before the silvery glow of his laptop screen, Chris Googled "red flower," "bright red flower," "crimson flower." The plant itself sat in a glass on his nightstand. Something in the soft red petals fascinated him.

Glancing aimlessly over a backpage of the Google Images results for "ruby red flower," Chris's eyes caught on a familiar shape. Graceful, fluted, and red. It was the flower, pictured growing in a lush dell. Chris clicked the picture.

"The Ruby Pearl (Somnus necare) grows primarily in the temperate American northwest. Though supposedly once prolific, it has been relatively unseen in recent history. S. necare has traditionally been used in Choctaw religious ceremonies."

That was it.

After a further hour's fruitless searching, Chris shut his laptop and fell onto the bed. The rays of the fading sun passed through the petals of the Ruby Pearl, S. necare, glazing the room faintly red.

A moment, or a few moments later, Chris was asleep.

Chris knew he was asleep, and was disappointed, he'd done nothing with his evening.

Susan. Chris saw her as he floated above the bed. He remembered her polite brush-off. "I have to go." She smirked in his face. "I have a thing I have to be at."

Chris wondered if he could see himself sleeping if he looked down at the bed. He looked down, and the bed was empty, uncreased.

The cup on the nightstand was empty and clean. He hated the apartment. He hated the picture of himself he kept on his desk, and he hated the tacky decorations he'd bought in an attempt to entice more visitors. No one but Chris had entered the apartment in almost a year.

Chris hated the apartment. Suddenly he was moving, straight out the window, watching it shrink away into the squat gray building that disappeared into the geometric human hive. He moved away and away.

Was he even Chris? Was that his dream character, or was he someone else? Why could he fly?

Suddenly, Chris was moving again, moving to another, a nicer and cleaner part of the city. He remarked mentally that he didn't know where he was going, but it was a lie-- he knew where he was flying for.

Almost two hundred glowing compartments in the condominium building downtown. He knew which one she was in.

The window was shut. He hovered against it, feeling its soft, obstructing weight. The room inside was decorated tastefully. A big bookshelf on one wall with big, old books on it, not supermarket bestsellers.

He hovered against the window, jostling it a little, and soon she came into the room. She was dressed in the same striped blouse she'd worn to work that day. She looked unsure.

For a second she stood, squinting out into the darkness just above his head.

Please, please he thought, straining not to scream with unendurable longing.

And she opened the window.

He swept into the room, seeing her six times, from six different angels, like through the facets of a jewel. He flew through each of them, punching out their insides and weaving them into new patterns.

Hell, hell. The room was an explosion. There was movement outside. Someone had heard. He still didn't know if he was Chris or someone else, and he floated out the window, letting the building shrink and shrink until he knew he was totally invisible to them.

Next in his mind was a picture of Harris, windbag Harris.

But in the next moment, Chris was awake.

He sat up. The dream was already falling away from him. The emotions were left over: a sense of daring and exhilaration, along with guilt. Chris had had those feelings many mornings after unremembered dreams.

Chris turned his head to the clock. Eleven p.m. He still had the rest of the evening to relax and shake off the weird, adrenaline-kick feeling of the dream.

Chris sat up. There was something warm on his hands.

He looked down at the slick red-blackness coating his hands and his forearms below his rolled-up sleeves. he turned his hands over, and the palms were dark too. In one was a small silver chain. On the end was a single slick pearl.