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They say you don’t know anything that happens to you in there, but that isn’t right. Or maybe it’s Irving who’s wrong, and everyone else really does come out a blank slate. He’s still figuring that out. What he knows for sure is that the long hall with the red light that haunts his dreams and comes pouring out through his art is real. He can taste it as he paints, the stale air and metallic fear. He doesn’t know what’s down that hall, but he knows it’s a nightmare.
Something else he knows—a more recent knowing, but no less sure—is that inside, Burt Goodman means something to him.
***
It hits him in a coffee shop. He normally makes his own, but he’s out walking Radar on a cold day and thinks, why not. He could use the warmth and besides, it’s going to be another long night. He might as well get a head start on his caffeine intake. So he orders his Americano with two extra expresso shots and ignores the surprised look from the barista.
“At our age, that stuff will kill you.”
The voice comes from behind. It’s unfamiliar, and yet immediately, Irving’s heart speeds up. When he whips around, he’s confronted with a face he knows and doesn’t know, and knows again. Knows, because he’s spent many hours pouring over every scrap of information he can find about every Lumon employee, and the man in front of him—Burt Goodman, he knows that—is a Lumon employee.
Doesn’t know, because he is sure they’ve never met before. Knows again, because he is equally sure they have. He feels it like he feels the hall, knows it in the hook of his gut.
It’s so startling, he forgets entirely what they’re talking about.
“All that caffeine, and so late in the evening,” Burt supplies when Irving stares at him. He raises his own paper cup, decorated with snowflakes to mark the season. “That’s why I stick to tea.”
“Oh.” Irving forces a smile, only to realize it isn’t forced at all. It’s real and joyful and that’s when he knows for sure that inside, this man is a friend of the dearest sort. “I could never warm up to tea.”
Burt laughs, and the sound makes Irving want to paint in color for the first time in years. “Warm up. Because it’s tea. That’s funny.”
Irving holds out his hand, “Irving.”
Burt takes it, shaking. The touch feels like home, and maybe Burt agrees, because he relaxes his grip but doesn’t pull away. For a moment it’s like they’re holding hands; in that moment, the world is put right.
Then Burt smiles and drops his hand. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Irving.” And then he turns and leaves, and Irving is alone again.
Only he’s not. Because he’s sure, sure in a way he never has been before, that he’s not alone in there.
***
When he goes home that night, he paints a room full of plants, green leaves opening wide. He can smell it: the fresh soil, the warmth of greenhouse lights. As welcoming and safe as the hall is dark and dangerous.
When he finally goes to sleep, it’s with renewed determination. Because now he knows something else, something more important than foreboding halls: he’s not just fighting for himself.