Gwendy’s Final Task

35

THERE ARE FOUR OF them at the table when Gareth Winston bounce-walks his way into the cafeteria. Gwendy is sitting next to Adesh Patel. She looks younger and livelier than the reflection she saw in her bathroom mirror minutes ago. She’s just finished telling Kathy Lundgren and Bern Stapleton all about Boris the scorpion’s impressive display in the Bug Lab. At the conclusion of her story, she jumps to her feet, exclaiming “Maar!” and lunges across the table toward her former training partner. Bern Stapleton nearly screams and spills half a cup of apple juice, which floats in front of his jumpsuit. He’s still trying to catch it with a ball of napkins when Gwendy spots Winston.

Please keep going, she thinks. Please sit somewhere else.

But of course he doesn’t. Squeezing his considerable bulk onto the chair, Winston settles with a grunt. He immediately reaches for his food tray, detaches it from the magnet holding it to the table, and floats it over to him. He peers through the thin mesh, nods approvingly at what he sees, opens the diagonal zip in the center of the mesh with a thumbnail, and begins to eat pasta in greedy gulps. A few drops of red sauce float in front of him. To Gwendy they look like drops of blood.

“Not bad,” he says, finally looking up at the others. “It’s not Sorrento’s in the Bronx, but it’ll do in a pinch.”

“I’m so glad you’re pleased,” Kathy says. “Perhaps TetCorp can hire the head chef from Sorrento’s to handle meal preparations for their Mars shuttles.”

“Now that’s an idea,” Winston says, pointing a finger at the flight commander and chewing noisily. He looks over at Adesh. “They even have a vegetarian menu for people like you.”

The entomologist leans close to Gwendy and whispers, “People like me, don’t you know.”

“There’s a lovely Italian restaurant in Maine called Giovanni’s. You ever heard of it, Mr. Winston?” It’s an innocent enough question, but something in Gwendy’s tone causes the others at the table to turn and stare at her. Only Winston doesn’t seem to notice.

He shakes his head. “Can’t say I have. Where is it?”

“It’s in a little town in Maine called Windham, about forty-five minutes north of Castle Rock. They make a stuffed shrimp a la Guiseppi to die for. It’s been written up in all the foodie magazines.”

“Hmpph.” He takes a drink of lemonade and belches into his hand. “I’ll have to check it out sometime.”

“I’ve actually been meaning to ask you,” Gwendy says. “Have you spent much time in Maine during your travels?”

“Not really. Visited a couple of times. Once to go moose hunting in the Allagash. But the trip was a bust.”

“My wife and I went camping at Acadia National Park the summer after we got married,” Bern Stapleton says. “Beautiful place. I’m pretty sure we conceived our first child inside that tent.”

“TMI,” Kathy says. “Way too much.”

“Adesh,” Bern says, “please have the birds-and-bees talk with Commander Lundgren. I think it’s time.”

Kathy whacks the biologist on the shoulder. Laughing, he gets up from the table and collects his tray. “Off to get some work done. Be good, kids.”

“I’m right behind you,” Adesh says, standing and clearing his place. “I have a Zoom conference to prepare for.”

“Good luck,” Kathy calls as the two men walk away.

“I’m surprised you’ve seen so little of my home state,” Gwendy continues, once again staring at the billionaire. “With all that money, I figured you’ve been everywhere twice.”

“Well, excuse me for stating the obvious,” he says, “but with all that money, I wouldn’t exactly call Maine a desired destination. Paris, Tortola, Turks and Caicos, now those are a different—”

“Have you ever been to Castle Rock?” Gwendy asks, cutting him off. “How about Derry?”

“No and no,” he snaps, letting go of his fork. He quickly snatches it out of the air in front of him when it begins to float up toward the ceiling. “I’ve never been to Castle Rock and I’ve never been to Derry. Now, can I finish eating my dinner in peace?”

“Of course,” Gwendy says, slipping on her Patsy Follett smile. “Just one last thing—I wanted to thank you for returning my notebook. Lucky for me you found it.”

“Yeah, well, you ought to be more careful.”

She starts away, then stops and turns back. “Maybe you should be, too.”

A flush rises in his cheeks. Gotcha, Gwendy thinks.

A few minutes later, while scraping their plates into the vacuum receptacle at the other side of the cafeteria, Kathy asks, “What in the hell was that all about?”

“What do you mean?”

“C’mon. You were poking at him.”

“I was just curious.”

“About what?”

“How he’d respond to a poke. Did you see that flush?”

Kathy frowns. “I didn’t notice.”

Gwendy watches her walk away, thinking: Test or no test, she still doesn’t trust me completely. Well, I’ve got news for you, lady. The feeling is mutual.

On the way back to her quarters, Gwendy makes a brief diversion to the weather deck to check on the latest readings. She knows that some staff members back in the down-below—maybe even most of them—don’t expect her to perform much more than a lick and a promise when it comes to her climate monitor duties. But that just makes her want to exceed expectations and prove them all wrong; it’s how she’s always been wired.

Her laptop is back in her room, so she scribbles a couple of notations in a Moleskine ledger and returns it to its place in the top drawer of the desk. When she’s finished, she writes a reminder note about tomorrow’s video conference with faculty members from the University of Maine and sticks it right in the middle of one of the monitor screens. No way can she forget that. She hopes.

When she gets to her room a short time later, she makes a beeline for the sofa. She’s suddenly exhausted and all she wants to do is lie down and rest her brain. It’s strange, she thinks. She watched a video earlier this afternoon of her husband being murdered—not to mention the four odd creatures in yellow coats and their mile-long ugly green car (if it even was a car, she thinks)—but after shoveling a bit of shit in Winston’s direction at dinner, she feels a little more in control of things. In fact, she feels surprisingly steadfast. For the first time in days, she’s not even thinking about the button box and its magic bag of tricks and treats. Eyes growing heavy, she props a pillow under her head and gets comfortable. Just before she dozes off, she notices her laptop sitting open on the coffee table and thinks: Wait a minute, didn’t I close that before I left? And put it away?

Probably she didn’t. She’s gotten so forgetful. Then her eyes slide the rest of the way shut—and she’s sleeping the dreamless sleep of the innocent.