Page 40 of The Refusal

I nod at this, studying the patterns more closely. I swivel around to my desk and try to compare the bits she’s highlighted with what I’ve got on my screen.

“This one here repeats over and over again.”

“Yes, and some other ones appear only once.”

She leans over, eyes fixed on the paper. “Let’s spread it out.” She taps her pen against her lips.

An hour later we’ve got paper all over the floor. We’ve identified about a hundred regular patterns and I’m back at my screen writing a program to identify them all but particularly looking for unusual log patterns going back in time.

She stretches and glances at her wrist, and I peer at the screen on my computer. Eleven-fifty. We’ve been at this for hours, ever since I melted down on her in fact. She’s been remarkably unruffled and her calm, quiet clear-headedness makes me feel like I’m filling my lungs with fresh air.

“I need to go into the office,” she says.

“Come back later,” I mumble. “I’ll try to make progress this afternoon, and we can work on it this evening.”

I look up at her to find a broad grin on her face.

“What?”

“Good to have you on the team,” she says.

“In the normal run of things, I’m not a team player,” I mutter into my keyboard, cracking my neck and shifting in my seat.

She just laughs, gathers up her stuff, and blows me a kiss before she leaves.

25

Janus

The floor is strewn with the debris of a long-haul flight—napkins crushed, headphones discarded. We’re an hour out of JFK and the sky is dark with a pale strip of pink along the horizon, the lights of the Eastern Seaboard sparkling like jewels below. I roll my head on my neck, stretch out in my seat, and my spine pops. Jet lag has been my constant companion for years now, and I idly wonder what Jo is doing now, perhaps she’s curled up around her blond hunk of a boyfriend. Ugh. If I go home, I’m just going to pace around the apartment like a caged tiger: I can’t sleep after sitting stationary for thirteen hours. Going into the office doesn’t appeal either.

I’ve only been away a couple of days, but the more I think about the code we put on Fabian’s computer and what I found on his desk, the more unhappy I am with what we’ve done. I feel his loyalty down to my bones. He must have a valid reason for what was on that paper. I drum my fingers on the arm of my chair; maybe I could turn up early and drag him out for breakfast before heading into work? The charming flight attendant who’s been looking after me all flight bustles up asking me if I want more coffee.

Before long, I’m comfortably wrapped up in the warmth of a cab. It’s cold after the spring temperatures of Tel Aviv, and, as the familiar streets whip by, all too soon I’m in among the brownstones and the old factory buildings. New York waking up after the chill of winter is a delight of spring sunshine and people out walking. I stream through some extra emails and Slack messages that have accumulated while I was in the air, and by the time I hit Fabian’s street in Brooklyn, I’m feeling like I’ve got a head start on the day.

The old metal door to the building opens as someone heads out, and I sneak in, crunching the doors of the rusty elevator open. Three floors tick by with a creak and a groan of old machinery coming to life. By the time I reach his floor, I’m grinning to myself at how early it is on the luminous dial on my watch. Fabian frequently pulled all-nighters at college and I’ll bet not much has changed: He might not have even gone to bed. I drag open the elevator doors and in two seconds I’m banging on his door shouting,“Get out of bed, you lazy hippie!” I press his buzzer twice, already grinning at the battered door in front of me. But the silence stretches out and I cock my head, before hammering on the door again. A dog barks in an apartment somewhere below, and I stand still in the eerie calm for a minute, ears on stalks. Behind the door, there’s a distant noise followed by shuffling footsteps getting closer, and some words I can’t make out.

The door is flung open with a muttered curse and Fabian is standing there looking exhausted: hair all over the place, tattoos snaking all over his body—I swear he’s got more of them since I last saw him half-naked. He’s dressed only in his boxers.

“What the hell?” he says, grimacing and running a hand through his hair. “I thought you were in Israel?”

“Morning,” I say with a smirk and push past him into the hallway. How does he know where I was? Has he hacked into my calendar? “Tel Aviv actually, and having just landed, I thought I’d come and take your lazy ass out to breakfast.”

A rustle of movement drags my attention down the hall, and I pause for a second putting two and two together, then turn and give him a knowing smile.

“You got company?”

I don’t think Fabian has women on any kind of permanent basis, and I’ve certainly never met a woman at his apartment. I raise my eyebrows at him. He hasn’t mentioned anyone to me. I thought the car crash at college had put him off relationships for life: Someone staying over is all sorts of interesting.

Fabian is standing stock still with an odd cast to his face, a sudden tightness around the eyes, and he runs a distracted hand down his chest.

“Um …” he starts, and I don’t understand his expression or the strange tone in his voice.

The whole thing happens in slow motion. I turn around as someone appears in the door of his bedroom. Bare legs and red tousled hair and a T-shirt that can only be his. My heart drops like a stone in my chest—down through the floor and all the stories of the building below. Sound washes out like I’m swimming underwater. My hand connects with something solid and I turn to look at it in surprise, frowning at the silhouette of my fingers slapped against a white wall. The world slides sideways. I can feel it when my pulse takes off, and suddenly I’m fighting like a beast to control a tidal wave of nausea that’s rising and rising. My hand twitches with the desire to punch it into the plaster, into Fabian. I can’t stand here; I can’t stay and bear witness to … to … what? Hesleptwith her? Sourness coats my tongue. I have no idea what the fuck to say, except perhaps to release the scream that is building in the back of my throat. I swing round, hands clenching into fists at my side. Fabian flinches as soon as he sees my face and puts his head in his hands. “Fucking hell!” is all that comes out of his mouth.

“Janus!” Jo says. “What are you doing here?”

I can’t look at her again in so few clothes having just had sex with my best friend, so I stay facing Fabian who is slowly shaking his head, eyes fixed on mine.

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