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Cancel My Suicide

by Henry Slesar

art by corey wilkinson

Quiton, Chevron Islands, October 13.

My mother is proud of me. She tells all her friends how I started with nothing and now I owe five million dollars.

So that's how I begin this journal, with an old joke. The only trouble is, it's the truth. Mitch Woods and I started our software company on money borrowed from relatives, and after ten years of riding the winged horse of the computer business, we suddenly came crashing to the ground. When we picked ourselves up and looked around with a dazed expression all we saw was a bank manager waving a loan statement in our face. Did I say five million? Make that ten.

How did it happen? Less than two years ago, Normonics Inc. was showing a nice steady growth rate. Then we made some mistakes. We held on to an obsolete word processing program and patched, patched, patched to make it seem new and exciting. We rushed three beta products to market and none got more than two-star reviews. We tried cross-platforming our accounting application and made a mess on both ends. Sales dropped, debts piled up, the Bank got nasty. I blamed Mitch, he blamed me. That's what partners are for, to blame each other when things go wrong.

But there was an up side to having partners. There was a smart move we made at the outset to protect the company if something happened to either one of us. It's called Partnership Insurance, and that explains how I lost the Barracuda and ended up living on an island with less than six hundred inhabitants, a third of them traumatized by too much sun and ganja, and no woman worth looking at twice. Barracuda was a symbol of my success, a 40-foot sportfisher with sleek lines and a jazzy power plant, and I had to scuttle her for the sake of keeping the company afloat. As you see, I'm still making jokes. What do they call it, gallows humor?

I don't remember who came up with the idea. Mitch and I were sitting in his corner office chewing on the cud of misery after an all-day meeting with the money boys, their faces as stony as the Easter Island gods, trying to work out a survival plan. The conclusion had been that we needed at least six million to hold them at bay and get our house in order. It might as well have been sixty million. There was no place to turn. The only rich relatives we had were our ex-wives, and they made their money in alimony.

We were looking hopelessly at the outstanding bills when one of the items jumped off the page and smacked us in the eye.

"Insurance," Mitch said.

The face value of our policy was twelve million. We paid a hefty premium for it, but it was drawn at a time when the orders were rolling in, when we had twenty employees and a brash confidence in the future.

Twelve million dollars. It was all ours, if one of us obligingly died.

At first, we told macabre jokes. Flipped a coin to determine which one of us would make himself a human sacrifice. Then coming up with a more reasonable alternative. What if one of us died just long enough to collect the money? Stayed dead long enough for Normonics to develop some new killer app, to get back into the zeitgeist, maybe even go public? So what if the "dead" man's reappearance forced the return of the principal? By that time, the well would have been primed. We'd be back in business. We'd be resurrected! It had happened before in the industry, why not to us?

We were excited. Too excited to come up with a viable plan. That took another two days, especially because we had to answer the Big Question. Which one of us Plays Dead?

We tried to approach the question logically. Mitch had a better business head than I did. After six years of writing code in a cubicle at Microsoft, I had a better grip on programming. Mitch was divorced with no children. I had a new wife, fifteen years younger, who pouted if I didn't bring home a gift every night. To me, the choice seemed obvious. But we ended up flipping a coin, and I lost.

"Besides," Mitch said cheerfully (why wouldn't he be cheerful?) "you've got the perfect setup. You've got that boat of yours! How many times did the Coast Guard have to rescue you from sleeping with the fishes?"

"Only once," I snapped."And it wasn't my fault. The crewman I hired screwed up the fueling and we went dry in the middle of the ocean."

"But you're on record as a screw-up. And if you had another accident, if you got lost at sea, fell overboard, they'll just say you were a lousy sailor ..."

"Maybe they won't believe it was an accident," I said. "They'll probably think it was a suicide because of what happened to the company."

"Let 'em think what they want," Mitch said with a grin. I never noticed how wide Mitch's grin was; he practically had a third row of teeth. "There's no suicide clause in the policy, and even if they denied the claim on that basis, they could never prove it." By now, he was jumping around in his seat with excitement. "Marty, it's perfect! You can hide out on one of those little islands you keep telling me about! You can laze around all day in a hammock on the beach, with a rum drink in one hand and an island babe in another ..."

"And what about Vanessa?"

"Vanessa has to play Grieving Widow," Mitch said sharply. "I'm not even sure we can let her in on the truth. You know how women are-"

"We're married less than a year, for pete's sake! Look, you're a bachelor, you can fall off a boat as easy as I can! What if we both took a little trip, and you get soused, and the deck is slippery ..."

"They'll never buy it, Marty, you know they won't. These insurance companies will smell a rat. Maybe demand a polygraph or something ... You'll crack, and probably end up in jail ... A lot of good you'll be to Vanessa behind bars."

I was starting to groan. I was ready to back off the whole idea, and Mitch knew it. He clapped his arm around my shoulder.

"Okay, okay. We'll tell Vanessa the truth. She'll understand. Vanessa understands business. I just won't tell her until after it happens, so she doesn't say the wrong thing at the wrong time into the wrong ear. Does that sound right to you?"

It didn't, but I was already feeling he heavy weight of inexorability. And asking myself on which island I wanted to spend the next few months in jittery isolation.

October 28.

I meant to write in this Journal every day, but as you can see I've gotten lazy. Who wouldn't be lazy in this heat, this motionless air, a silence so pervasive that even the surf murmurs its way onto the beaches?

The last time I was on Quiton I had some notion of writing an article about the inhabitants, but it's a hopeless enterprise. They're vaguely Asian, some even more vaguely Hispanic, but they speak in a pidgeon that's unintelligible. Mostly, they laugh. They meet on a road and laugh at the sight of each other. They use chuckles instead of paragraphs, giggles instead of sentences. Best of all, they're the most incurious people I've ever encountered. No one has even asked me my name. Sometimes I'm addressed as "mister." A few-mostly the ones who want to sell me something-call me "boss."

I did have to give my name to one person, the only "authority" on the island, his powers evidenced by a faded khaki uniform and a badge that had rusted into anonymity. He gave me a white card, and I filled in the name "Christopher Bailey," profession, Journalist, and gave a fictitious address in Milwaukee. He didn't even glance at it. Just dropped it in a drawer that contained other white cards, probably the one I filled out on my first visit, a good ten years ago. There was no longer a hotel on the island, but the official obligingly recommended a woman called Mrs. Mobley. She giggled when she saw me, and offered me one of three "guest houses," a one-room bungalow facing the beach. It had a bed, a table, a chair, and a ceiling fan.

Oh, yes. The Barracuda.

I didn't really scuttle her, despite the agreement I had with Mitch. He wanted to make my demise more palpable by sinking her in the Pacific, or setting her on fire, or best of all, creating an explosion that might be seen from shore, on the theory that I had switched fuel tanks ineptly and created a spark that ignited them. But at the last minute, I decided to simply set her adrift, to paddle my rubber raft onto the quiet dark shore at an hour when there were only two or three lights visible on the entire island. It was easier than I could have imagined. I felt like an espionage agent on a dangerous mission, although I suppose an espionage agent's luggage contained a short-wave radio rather than a laptop computer and a change of underwear.

After burying the deflated raft, I spent the night on the beach. The next morning, I showed up at what they called Government House and signed in. After moving in with Mrs. Mobley I paid a visit to the one-room office of Q-Tel, the local telephone company, and applied for service. There were only twenty-four phones on the island, most of them cellular, but I opted for a regular line. I needed to plug in the laptop's modem to connect to the Internet. Thank God for the Internet. Thank God for the anonymity of E-mail. It was my umbilical cord to the world.

In Mrs. Mobley's guest house, I hooked up, got on line, and plugged into my electronic mailbox. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw the message from Whizbang, Mitch's screen name.

Sincerest condolences on your demise. See WestNews.com.

I checked out http.www.WestNews.com, and found the article almost at the bottom of the headline list. My ego slightly wounded, I clicked on the story.

FEAR SUICIDE IN BOAT MISHAP

Nov. 4. Cupertino. Software executive Harvey Norman has disappeared from his sportfishing vessel Barracuda found adrift near Alston Bay by the Coast Guard Tuesday morning.

Mr. Norman's company, Normonics, Inc. has been rumored to be in bankruptcy, and officials fear that his disappearance was an act of suicide. Mitchell Woods, Executive Vice-President, told police that his partner had been despondent, but he felt certain that his apparent death was the result of an accident.

Well, so far, so good.

I logged on every day after that, but it was almost a week before there was another message from Whizbang.

Scrooge agrees to extend grace period. Lamp putting up a struggle. Say hello to Tondelayo.

"Scrooge" was the First Pacific Bank. "Lamp" was our insurance company (their logo). "Tondelayo" was Mitch's name for the imaginery island beauty he assumed I was cuddling.

I decided to answer. What about Vanessa?

Ten days passed without a reply.

Slowly.

I had brought three papeback books with me, but they became waterlogged and unreadable. The jet-prop transport plane that arrived once a month only brought two newspapers, both in Japanese. If I mentioned "book" to anyone he just laughed uproariously and shook his head.

On a website, I found transcripts of old novels. I read two Tarzan books. Hell of a guy.

I went to the beach every morning and got red as a lobster. I don't tan well.

Some days I just lay in bed and stared at the ceiling fan. It turned too slowly for any cooling effect. Lazy flies rode on its blades.

November 22.

Finally, the next message from Whizbang.

Lamp is lit.

My heart pounded like a jungle drum. I assumed that meant payment was forthcoming. Twelve million dollars! We would write off most of our loan, hire the Broadbeam Brothers (two programmers we had been wooing for months) and start making joyful noises in the trade press. With any luck, we'd be launching new product in the next thirty days. I was so excited I sent Mitch a wordy message.

Congratulations. How about Vanessa does she know I'm alive and well Let me know if the Brothers still on track maybe offer them a signing bonus. Have Vanessa E-mail me tell her I'm bringing back lots of gifts hope she likes coconut.

I know. My punctuation is terrible, but it's not like a formal letter, right?

I waited another five days, but there was no reply. Mitch still isn't convinced of the security of E-mail. I flamed him angrily, telling him to have Vanessa contact me immediately. I know he was antsy about her, afraid she might spill the beans to one of her ninety-five girlfriends from the model agency, but I had to be sure she didn't think she was a widow. I said if I didn't hear from her in the next twenty-four hours I was hopping the next boat home.

In the morning, there was this message:

Dear Martin,

Mitch explained everything to me and I think it was a terrific idea. He's doing wonderful things with the company and I'm sure it will be successful even after you have to refund the insurance money. You were so brave to do what you did and I love you for it. Hugs and kisses,

Vanessa.

I stared at the message a long time. Vanessa had only written me half a dozen times since we met, most of them notes on greeting cards. They all started the same way. Dear Mutt. It was her nickname for me. Never Dear Martin. Dear Mutt.

Of course, Mitch didn't know that.

After a while, my apprehension faded. Since Mitch had sent the E-mail, she had obviously typed the message in his presence. She probably didn't feel comfortable about using tbe pet name. Sure, I told myself. That was the explanation.

Of course, there was another one. What if Mitch still hadn't told her I was alive? What if Mitch composed the letter himself? That was one thing E-mail lacked. Handwriting. Forgery was a cinch.

Then I had an idea.

Dear Vanessa, I wrote. Miss you. Do me a favor. Going nuts trying to remember name of your parakeet. Please let me know soonest. Love, Mutt.

Actually I knew the name. It was Roger. I hated the bird, but Vanessa loved it.

The response took three days.

Dear Martin, it said. Don't know why it's so important, but parakeet name is Roger.

And my name was still Martin.

I realized I hadn't proved anything, Mitch could have simply asked her for the name of the dirty bird.

December 16.

I've been driving myself crazy trying to get relevant news about the company. Normonics was too small for major attention in the trade journals. But finally I got this out of PC World's website:

NORMONICS TO MERGE WITH WEBFOOT

December 14. CEO Mitchell Woods of the Cupertino-based Normonics, Inc. announced the pending marriage of the company with Webfoot, Inc., a developer of Internet software. The announcement follows the death of Prez Harvey Norman, and the appointment of John and Kevin Broadbeam to Vice-President. The new company will be called Woods & Webfoot.

Merger? Woods & Webfoot? Yes, we had entertained the idea once, but Ernie Johnson, who ran the Internet company, was a weasel of large proportions. The thought of him sitting in my big leather chair ... But no, Mitch was in my corner office now. Mitch had promoted himself to CEO. It was logical, of course, since there was a vacancy, since the former CEO was at the bottom of the Pacific.

I fired off another salvo via E-mail.

For pete's sake, why didn't you consult me about this merger? You know Ernie is a skunk! What's going on? Reply soonest or you'll have to give me the answer in person.

This time Mitch was prompt.

Cool it. Doing my best to keep this company together. Ernie works well with the Broadbeam Brothers. Quickest way to expand the company in preparation for your return from the dead. Okay?

I was mollified, but not completely satisfied.

Okay, but return date must be soon. Suggest a "Christmas Surprise." My amnesia gets cured by hearing "Deck the Halls" on a radio. Friendly natives ship me back home to warm reception. There won't be a dry eye in the house.

And there wasn't any reply.

Every day I searched the websites of our trade press, but there wasn't another word about the new company.

December 21

Finally, a mention of the company in Computer World. Not in an article, but in the caption of a photograph. It was a photo spread of industry Christmas parties. Bill Gates giving his billion-dollar smile to the employees at Microsoft. Happy faces at Intel and Dell and Adobe and half a dozen others, including a small select group at Woods & Webfoot toasting their future with champagne. The smarmy smile of Ernie Johnson. The nerdy faces of John and Kevin Broadbeam. And of course my grinning partner Mitchell Woods, his arm around a gorgeous young ex-model, in a low-cut black dress, giggling with delight. Vanessa never looked better.

January 2.

I don't know which is worse. The monotonous image of the empty beach outside my bungalow or the rectangular window of my laptop. I've been staring at both of them for almost three months, and I may never vacation in the tropics or look at a computer screen again.

Of course, I'll have to look. My whole life is composed of pixels, and when I get back to Cupertino the screens will be a whole lot easier on the eyes. So will the balance sheets of Normonics, Inc-excuse me, Woods & Webfoot. I'd better get used to the new name, and Woods and Webfoot better get used to me. I missed the Christmas Surprise, but I'll be a January surprise, assuming that the freighter Carolina doesn't make too many stops between here and San Francisco. When I booked passage, the Captain estimated no more than fourteen days at sea. He warned me that the accomodations would be minimal, and hot. The only available cabin was adjacent to the engine room.

Now I'm sitting here with my bags all packed, wearing a brand-new tropical suit purchased at the Quiton general store for all of a hundred and ten dollars. I've been busily erasing all the E-mail messages that might be incriminating, including the last one.

Mitch - here's the story. I didn't drown. Barracuda had engine trouble and the radio went dead so rowed ashore on QuitonIsland in a rubber raft. Unfortunately, had a bad fall when I landed and woke up with a head injury and no idea of who I was or why I was there. On Christmas day, some kind native brought me a portable radio and let me listen to the carols, and sure enough my memory returned! Talk about miracles, huh? Anyway, I'll be home soon, and ready to go back to work. Partner.

I had to grin when I sent the message off. I doubt that Mitch was smiling when he read it.

Hell of a noise outside. I recognized the clacking of the helicopter that sometimes delivers tourists to Quiton from one of the larger islands, but this whirlybird is landing right on my beach. Yep, here come the tourists. Three of them, all men. Business suits, sunglasses. Maybe real estate developers. One of them looks familiar. Looks a lot like Mitch. That same jaunty, sloping walk. Taking off his glasses. What the hell. It is Mitch! The guy finally decided to do the right thing. I won't have to be at sea for two weeks. I won't have to put up with the steamy confines of that cabin. I was flying home in style! But one thing peculiar. The copter has four seats, one for the pilot. Maybe the two other guys aren't passengers. But they're both walking with Mitch, flanking him. Their hands are in their pockets. I don't like the looks of those guys. They're too big, too wide. Heading right for my bungalow. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were

NMM

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