with his clenched fist.
Sherry from Operations suddenly burst into tears.
“Stop it, stop it now! Jesus stop it! ” she shrieked. “I can’t take it anymore! I can’t eat. I can’t sleep, and I sure as hell can’t stand listening to you morons!”
Dave noticed with a shock the fist-sized bruise on her cheek. She caught him staring at her face and, covering the bruise with her hand, shouted, “It’s none of your goddamned business! ”
“Wha’d I say?” asked Dave with an innocent shrug.
“ That’s it! ” Jeff shouted. “You’re fired! All of you! Every damned one of you!”
The entire staff turned and looked at him, seated at the head of the table. His face was flushed; his eyes were bulging. In the moment of stunned silence that followed, everyone in the room became aware of the hum, but Dave was the first to mention that he thought it had changed subtly. Now he told them there was a discordant clanking sound. It was still just at the edge of hearing, but it was penetrating.
“The music of the spheres,” Sherry whispered in a tight, warbling voice. “It’s the music of the spheres.” Her voice scaled up toward hysteria. “The harmony is gone. The center cannot hold. Something’s gone terribly, terribly wrong!” With a loud, animal wail, she got up and ran from the room with tears streaming down her face.
Mike swallowed hard, trying to control his frustration. “What the hell’s she talking about?”
“Go on home! All of you! I’m closing the office until the authorities figure out what this sound is.” Jeff’s fists were clenched, and his body was trembling as though he were in the grips of a fever. “If I don’t, I swear to God I’ll have to kill every single one of you assholes … unless you kill me first.” He grinned wolfishly; then he slumped down in his chair, pressing the heels of his hands against his ears as he lowered his head and sobbed quietly.
Dave and the others left the conference room without speaking.
That afternoon, Dave drove home, mindful not to do anything that would irritate anyone on the road. Sitting on the sofa in the living room as he waited for Beth to get home, he couldn’t help but listen to the pervasive hum. He thought about what could possibly be happening but couldn’t come up with a reasonable answer.
When Beth finally came home, Dave said, “Sit down. We have to talk.”
She looked at him warily, and the mistrust he saw in her eyes hurt him.
“What’s her name?”
“What?” He realized what she meant and shook his head. “No. No. It’s nothing like that.” He took a breath. “Look, Beth, I’m trying to save us here, not break us apart. Listen to me, okay?”
Beth nodded as she took a breath and held it. He could see she was trying to pull the last shreds of her patience together, and he felt a powerful rush of gratitude and love for her. It was so good to feel something pleasant that, for a brief moment, he could forget all about that damned hum.
“Jeff closed the office today. Fired all of us.”
Beth stared at him as if she didn’t comprehend.
“This sound is getting on everyone’s nerves, and he’s afraid we’re all going to end up killing each other. He’s probably right. I was thinking—we should get out of here.”
“Get out?” The expression on her face indicated that she barely comprehended what he was saying.
“Let’s go up to your folks’ place … up in Maine … or anywhere--somewhere, just as long as it’s far away from here and all these people.”
“But the news says this hum is everywhere. All around the world. There’s no escaping it, Dave,” Beth’s face contorted with barely repressed panic, but she clenched her fists and struggled to regain her self-control. “Besides … what’s the point of going anywhere?”
“Maybe there isn’t a point, but I … I feel like we have to do something . We have to try. I don’t want us to end up another murder-suicide statistic.” He took her
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