By Joule K. Zelman
Eugenia was trying to listen to what her boss, Peters, was saying, but the floating head outside the window wouldn’t stop pulling faces.
It was a woman’s head, held in the air outside the 89th-story window by a pulsing corona of black hair. The dark eyes, each the size of a giant squid’s, usually peeped over the sill. But sometimes it would bob high enough to show it had nothing below the neck, as if the body had been cleanly erased. The rubbery mouth, when Eugenia saw it, moved in a constant babble, the thickness of the glass neutralizing any sound.
Peters was soliciting Eugenia’s personal thoughts on the performance of each of her team members. The fiscal year was closing disappointingly, and the company had a tradition of axing the bottom ten percent performers even in better times. Eugenia fixed her eyes on her superior’s polo alligator, trying to blur the corners of her vision so the floating head could seem like a weird cloud or a giant drone.
She said, “Marcin was able to make some improvements to our model. Shahzad was invaluable as a liaison to product management…” She was aware, as she listed off each of her collaborators, that she was descending in order of defensibility, and soon she’d come to the ones she might not be able to save: Liam, who was smart but kept messing up out of nerves, and Stephanie, who was frankly just erratic and weird, though liked. Eugenia faltered.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just that that thing outside the window…”
Peters twisted round and looked at the head, which at that moment rose several feet, glaring down through the window.
Peters turned back around, frowning. “You’ve got to keep in mind that when you’re in this building, you shut out all distractions. It’s a matter of will.” He slouched, as if his own were so indisputable, he could get away with sloppy posture. Eugenia didn’t dare bring up that she was expected to work without distractions outside the building as well. In the Uber, at home, visiting her parents on the weekends—
Peters relented. “Mrs. Head shows up every once in a while and takes a liking to somebody. Guess you’re the lucky one.”
“Who is she?”
“Does it matter? She’ll get tired of you eventually. Last one it happened to was this guy in Cloud. Great-looking guy, popular. And even he…” Peters paused and looked thoughtful. “Well, that’s kind of a bad example. But usually she’ll just go away.”
“What happened with the uh…the Cloud guy?”
“Well,” said Peters. “That time, she stopped coming after he died. Now, you were saying. Shahzad did fine. What about this new girl, Stephanie Patacky?”
* * *
The first mystery, which she didn’t dare ask Peters to explain, was what exactly had happened to the guy in Cloud. The second: why, despite having started at Syndocens Inc. five months earlier, hadn’t she heard anything about the floating head?
The head trailed after her until she managed to reserve a meeting room with no windows, where she stayed for the rest of the afternoon with no company but the CC camera winking overhead.
There was nothing waiting for her outside when she emerged and took the elevator down to the 86th floor. The shaft ran down the side of the glass skyscraper. She saw only gulls and biplanes over Lake Union. She waited at Cloud’s smoked-glass wall until the heat signature scanner finished with her face and the door slid open. She and Amol had never hung out except on breaks, but they had bonded at a company party over their love of that cheesy old show The Prisoner.
She found him wedged in his cubicle behind an army of bobbleheads. He was wearing the same roomy black t-shirt as always, along with a flock of colorful barrettes holding back his hair. He was tweezer-feeding bits of cricket protein to a small carnivorous plant, pulling his hand sharply away each time the green jaws folded. He didn’t notice Eugenia until she was close enough to watch each tiny tooth interknit over the prey.
She read the question in his eyes: why hadn’t she just pinged him? Because, she realized, she instinctively hadn’t wanted to leave a trace on the company channels.
She asked quietly, “Hey, do you remember a guy who worked in Cloud? And died?” She felt weird about it but added anyway: “A good-looking guy. Popular.”
“When?” said Amol with no change of expression.
“Before my time, I guess. It seemed he was having a…I guess…a distraction problem,” she said.
Amol spent a good ten seconds rubbing his finger thoughtfully over the barrettes. “I guess I know who you’re talking about,” he said. “Leigh. Couple years back. I had been here only a week when it happened. Why?”
“What happened?”
He looked her square in the face. Then his eyes moved over to the empty window. And back to Eugenia.
“He fell,” he said.
“Off the building?”
“How would he do that? You can’t open a goddamn window in here.” He seemed to notice he was touching his barrettes and forced his hands down, started fiddling with a bobblehead. “It was just outside. He kept staying later and later, and one night he stayed way, way past everybody else. On his way out apparently he tripped and fell on the steps.”
Eugenia nodded.
Amol sighed deeply through his nose.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Let’s have coffee tomorrow.”
“Sure, I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“No. Let’s go somewhere else for a change.”
* * *
Eugenia booked her ride home and waited in the lobby until the car showed. She hunched her shoulders and gingerly descended the steps, only daring to look at the sky once she was in the backseat. Was there a comet-like object circling the upper stories?
When she got to her apartment, the sky out the picture window seemed huge. The clouds over Puget Sound looked solid, but anything could be using them as cover. She drew the blinds. She set the Roomba going, just to have some noise, and sat down on the floor with her laptop.
Leigh still had a Facebook profile and picture, a tall man in spandex and a harness clinging to the side of a cliff. Blond hair was tucked in a bun under his helmet. He was grimacing with strain as he stretched one arm out, but he looked happy.
He’d died at the base of a few shallow concrete steps.
Eugenia brewed a ginger tea for her nausea. Her phone, which she’d dropped on the kitchenette counter as she walked in, was bubbling up notifications like an oblong cauldron. She sent a message to her team asking to convene for another meeting in two hours, then microwaved dinner as the Roomba trundled over the carpet.
They always have those light-colored carpets all over in condos, a friend who’d helped her move in had said. That way every bit of food or coffee you drop comes out of your deposit.
Nine o’clock, everyone was gathered on Slack, except for Stephanie Patacky, who, when prodded, only replied in the group channel that she was having dinner with her girlfriend’s parents.
Eugenia sighed and dropped her head into her hands. She felt responsible for her whole team. Half of them had been at Syndocens Inc. longer than she had. But if Stephanie was so determined to make herself the sacrificial lamb, why stop her?
Eugenia opened a voice channel and was about to set the order for the evening when something clunked heavily against the window, behind the blinds. She caught her breath.
“Hello?” Marcin’s voice came over the laptop speakers. Children were shouting in the background. “Are we starting?”
* * *
Taking Uber to and from work was getting expensive, but she could afford it. So what if the change dragged her metabolism down and made her heart feel small and squeezed? There would be plenty of time to get back in shape eventually. Besides, it was too hot out for any exertion between the air-conditioned oases of home and office.
But that morning, she had the SUV drop her off at a place called Coffee/Bytes. She only saw Amol and his black t-shirt when she came in and ordered her iced doubleshot; he was staring into space and shredding a napkin into confetti.
They greeted each other quietly. Amol brought something up on his phone and handed it to her. It was another Facebook profile of a man, one Anthony Bernini, a wiry guy in a button-down shirt and sunglasses.
“Him too,” he said. “He tried complaining to HR.”
“Why? It’s not as though it… she’s part of the company.”
Amol took a drink. “That’s what the company said. HR got irritated with him.”
Eugenia braced herself to ask the next question.
“What happened to him? Don’t tell me he…”
“He couldn’t handle the stress, and he quit. I don’t know what he’s doing now. I have the impression he can’t afford the city anymore. Poor bastard’s probably out in Sultan.” The ice rattled in the bottom of his cup. He took his phone back and swirled his index finger over the screen. Now he was showing a photo of a gray-haired woman in a puffy jacket. “She died, though. Hana Kinoshita. I heard that she had heart trouble. Mrs. Head was following her around for weeks, just shouting things, not even letting up when she went home.”
He was already pulling up another profile. Eugenia and said, “I get the idea. Why don’t they warn us about this?”
“It hardly ever happens and there’s no way to prevent it.”
“It’s happened at least four times before!”
“Out of what, 300,000 employees? This wasn’t just in our building. Hana was at South; I didn’t even know her. Anyway, correlation not causation, and whatever.” He managed to look grim despite chomping noisily on the ice. “That’s the company line, anyway.”
“Any suggestions?”
“Dunno. Maybe you could distract her somehow, throw her off your trail. Or just leave?” He started wriggling out from behind the table, which was pulled in too close to his sturdy torso. “Hey, I know this is shitty, but I’d rather we didn’t come into the building together.”
“Just a sec,” said Eugenia. “Why me? Why am I so attractive to Mrs. Head?”
He paused, leaning his elbows on the corner. “She shows up in bad years,” he said. “I don’t have a way of being sure, but…Were you feeling stressed? Maybe some self-doubt? More than average?”
Eugenia was silent. Amol grabbed his backpack off the floor and left.
When she followed him a few minutes later, Mrs. Head was hovering over a lamppost across the street. The moment Eugenia emerged, Mrs. Head rolled in the air, plummeted several feet, and swooped up just before she could hit the sidewalk. If she was speaking, the sounds of traffic drowned her out.
Eugenia began to run.
* * *
The only available room for the team’s afternoon meeting had a long bay of windows over the rise of Seattle’s tamed hills. Liam stood in front of a PowerPoint that barely showed up in the outside light. Everyone was trying very hard to listen to his proposed changes to the project roadmap. They treated the persistent soft tap of Mrs. Head’s lips on the glass as if it were the assault of some soft insect.
“Great, Liam,” Eugenia said when he finished, and he smiled wanly. “Okay, who’s up. Stephanie? Can you tell us what you’ve been working on?”
Stephanie plodded to the front of the room. She was younger than most of the team except Liam and Eugenia, but she moved like an old woman. Under the table, Eugenia picked furiously at the buttons on her shirt cuffs.
The presentation lasted all of five minutes. After an awkward moment, Eugenia said, “Okay, cool. Great. Is there more?”
“Yeah, of course,” said Stephanie. “I put it all on the server. You all said that you saw it.”
“Right.”
Mrs. Head couldn’t be said to be kissing the glass; just smashing her lips against it. She left imprints of moisture every time she drew back. Her eyes remained fixed on Eugenia.
Eugenia said, “I’d appreciate it if we could go over your edits in more detail in person.”
Stephanie nodded. “Or, or maybe, people could just ask questions on anything they don’t understand. Sorry, sorry. There’s just a lot of stuff I gotta get to this afternoon.”
Eugenia answered carefully, “We all have things we need to do, and we’ve all spent the time to keep our teammates updated. This isn’t a new procedure.”
“Right, but I mean…” Stephanie put on what she seemed to think was a winning look. “Isn’t that part of the problem? If we all just trusted each other to read all the reports and the changes, maybe we’d have time for real lives at home, you know?”
No one looked at her. No one looked at Eugenia. Except for the tiny spherical camera in the corner of the ceiling, and, of course, for—
Thwock. That was not just soft tissue but a bony forehead hitting the glass. Eugenia shoved her chair back and stalked over to the window. Mrs. Head, in her black-hair aureole, was hovering at such a height that Eugenia could meet the enormous eyes dead-on, or at least one of them. She stared into the pit-like pupil, ignoring the silent chatter of that gargantuan mouth.
She willed Mrs. Head to hear her thoughts. You won’t get me. And you won’t make me quit. I’ve got ninety thousand dollars in school debt, you think I’m scared of you?
Maybe the head heard, because she stopped babbling and pulled back her lips to show a full set of healthy teeth, each as big as a brick.
“That’s a great point, Stephanie,” said Eugenia without turning around. “Why don’t you put it in writing? This is something Mr. Peters should hear.”
* * *
Rage propelled Eugenia through the rest of the day. The head kept following her, but she was, gratifyingly, too angry to care much. To think she’d refrained from pointing the finger at the one weak link when, in this shitty year, all of them were at risk! Marcin had three kids; Shahzad could lose his visa if he lost his job; Liam, the baby, might be crushed by being fired from his first position. Stephanie? Apparently content with half-assing it!
But then the thought occurred: Maybe Stephanie really didn’t know. Maybe she had actually listened to her aging mom or dad’s advice to leave work at work. To think frequently of her future self’s regrets for all that time with your legs crammed under a desk. Maybe insinuations and implications and unspoken assumptions had simply flown over her head, and she had no idea that being booted was a possibility.
In which case, someone ought to warn her.
Eugenia would wait to tell Peters, then. It was only fair. Fairness was important.
When it was time to take the elevator down the eighty-nine floors, she felt the dread well up again. Between the office building and the rideshare, there were those shallow concrete steps. And then there was the long drive home wondering what was flinging itself through the air overhead.
She messaged Amol, offering him thirty dollars to buy her a toothbrush and some toiletries and one of those cheap blankets from the drugstore. She wouldn’t be the first to have spent the night. Maybe if Leigh from Cloud had done so, instead of leaving an empty building in the dark, he would still be alive.
* * *
Around 4 am, Eugenia lifted her head from her desk and looked straight into the eye of the CCTV camera.
Look at me, Mr. Peters, she thought. You want me free of distractions? I live here now.
The felt blanket still over her shoulders, she went to the kitchenette, really just a cubicle with a water boiler, to make tea. At this time of night, with the lights on inside, she couldn’t see Mrs. Head as anything but a dark-against-dark silhouette.
A lump suddenly blocked her throat. She found herself wandering to the elevator and taking it to the eighty-sixth floor, her back steadfastly turned against the outside. If body heat signature scanners could experience confusion and suspicion, this one would have a few questions.
When the doors silently parted, she turned on the bank of lights in Amol’s corner of Cloud. Behind the ranks of bobbleheads, the green plant waited for meat. She picked up the ceramic cup that was its home. It seemed like it was waving at her. She almost smiled.
Mrs. Head had followed her down. Eugenia began to hear her, despite the thickness of the skyscraper glass. The noise was at first like the soft clacking of a thousand keyboards, or rain hissing on hot pavement. Eugenia listened, trying to hear past the silence stuffing her ears, as her hand tightened on the ceramic.
Words began to coalesce. Another report I’m behind as it down eight percent year-over-year don’t see how I’m singlehandedly supposed to fucking headache can’t keep my eyes open should have finished by when will this meeting somebody not me tell them this won’t work oh god oh god shut up shut up shut up shut
Eugenia flung the plant at the window. Dirt scattered into the air conditioning vents.
No, she wouldn’t hand Stephanie over to Peters. Not yet. Not when Stephanie could be the bird that got two stones off her back.
Eugenia took out her phone and opened the app used to reserve meeting rooms. Since she was up earlier than anyone else, she could claim the most coveted kind: one with windows on two sides.
* * *
When the sun came up and the other employees began straggling by ones and twos, but mostly ones, into the eighty-ninth-floor offices, Eugenia hid the blanket in her desk drawer. After a disheartening attempt at freshening up in the bathroom, she sent a message to Stephanie. When she opened the door to the meeting room, the skies were spotless.
Eugenia prepared by dragging away all chairs but one. She wasn’t sure whether she ought to be standing and Stephanie seated, or vice versa, but in the end, she decided to do what Peters would and lounge. It felt unnatural, especially when Stephanie arrived and her mouth half-opened at the chairs haphazardly crowded into the corners.
“Hello!” said Eugenia, with cheer as obviously fake as she could manage. “I’d just like a couple of words with you about your performance.”
“Hi. Okay.”
Eugenia steepled her hands as if in supplication, pressing her elbows into the chair’s plastic arms. “Stephanie, you’re clearly smart. You obviously wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. But I do have one small concern.” She waited.
“Sure, dude. Go ahead.”
“You don’t seem to care about completely fucking the rest of us over.”
Stephanie’s plump cheeks flooded with red. She turned her head toward the window. That irritated Eugenia.
“I’m saying this, so don’t look,” snapped Eugenia. “When you’re here, there are no distractions. Without work, there are no girlfriends’ parents. There are no girlfriends. Okay? Outside these walls, there’s just empty air.”
Eugenia was pleased with her speech so far. Stephanie was shaken. Her mouth still hung open stupidly.
But Mrs. Head hadn’t shown up. The whole plan depended on Amol being right, stress being some sort of invitation for her to home in shark-like on the most satisfying meal.
Stephanie pulled a chair from the corner and sat down. She spoke with a calm that opened a sickening hole in Eugenia’s stomach.
“Look, dude, obviously you’re going through a hard time. I’m not, like, an expert, but I think you should call out sick. Even geniuses have to rest, you know? The rest of us can go slow and steady, but… Get some sleep, talk with your family…hell, ask for a vacation. You deserve it. A floating head is right twice a day, yeah?”
Eugenia stared at her in horror.
“I mean obviously it’s not cool that she’s following you around without your consent,” said Stephanie. “You could try praying to Saint Barbara. Might not hurt.”
“What?”
“Was that weird? Sorry. I’m not even religious. Channeled my grandma for a second—Oh, geez, here’s the Mrs. again.”
Eugenia’s phone buzzed in her pocket, and she took it out mechanically, tore her gaze away from the guileless face of her inferior.
Amol had written, Hey, I found my plant in the vents. I heard you were here overnight, do you know anything about it?
Another buzz. Because if so…not cool…
“It wasn’t my fault. It was the head,” she blurted out. And Stephanie nodded, with that maddening light of kindness and understanding in her eyes.
Eugenia leaped up. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs. Head bob up with her. She couldn’t help but turn and gaze full into those glossy squidlike pupils.
She saw no malice. She didn’t see much of anything.
You have to leave, said Mrs. Head.
Eugenia had to leave.
Not the elevator—not a descent eighty-nine stories with those nothing-filled eyes following her. There was a stairwell that ran down the center of the building.
Stephanie was saying something. Eugenia ignored her. She crashed through the emergency double doors and only hesitated for a second in the puce light. Unlike everything else in Syndocens Tower, the stairwell didn’t look new. Each step was just a narrow plank of metal with the texture wearing off.
Plenty of opportunities to lose your footing down eighty-nine stories.
But down she ran, swinging around the corners, like a falling leaf as the stairs whirled her around, getting dizzier and dizzier. It seemed impossible for the descent to be so long. It would take her the whole workday. Maybe she had utterly mistaken up and down, and the pull of gravity was really the pull of the empty sky, and she’d soon stumble onto the roof and launch into the void. To be nothing but a head with a mouth full of meaningless noise.
Then, to her shock, she thrust through a door marked EXIT. Caught herself in front of the shallow concrete steps. The bottom of the steps that had killed Leigh. She took them cautiously, mincingly.
The exhaustion arrived late and nearly crushed her, but she forced her eyes wide open and staggered forward. Her phone was hundreds of feet above, gone blank on Amol’s accusation. Maybe this town still had taxis you could flag. She raised both hands, imploring someone, anyone, to come find her, and ran into the road.
Just before the car ended her headlong flight, she had time for one final vision: Mrs. Head hurtling toward her, mouth stretched open in a warning scream.
* * *