Warp (19 page)

The library was just the way they'd left it, with the two armchairs still turned in a little towards each other. Farther down the hall was the study, and the pink bathroom where Peters had hidden before, and the cheap Monet print of the haystacks on the wall.

When he turned the corner Hollis noticed a little dim light coming from behind one of the doors. He walked towards it, skimming his hand along the wallpaper; the pattern on it was slightly embossed, and he followed it with his fingers. He was humming something over and over again under his breath, though he couldn't remember where it came from or even what the lyrics were. He crept up to the door: a low rushing, hissing noise was coming from inside which he couldn't quite identify. The light was tinted a little, candy colors—yellowish, greenish, pinkish.

Will this fantastic voyage never end?

He listened, but all he could hear was the rushing noise. After another minute he pushed the door open a little farther.

It was a billiard room. The pool table was in the middle of the room, precisely centered along both axes. A lamp with a green glass shade hung low over the green felt. The balls were all stowed away underneath, and the table was empty except for a few gouged-out cubes of light-blue chalk. The air in the room smelled like tobacco smoke; Hollis noticed an extinct cigar butt in an ashtray on the edge of the table, and he nudged it fastidiously with his finger.

In one corner was a kitschy diner-style jukebox, with glowing pink and yellow tubes running up the sides with little air bubbles rising up inside them. The tubes filled the room with a faint pastel wash. A record was turning on the turntable; the song was over, but the needle was still down, and the speakers were just playing static. The record was “Jailhouse Rock.”

A little dorm fridge next to the jukebox turned out to have a flat bottle of gin tucked away in its freezer, encrusted with ice. It was so cold that the gin was slightly viscous, but Hollis poured out a capful and tossed it back. It burned going down. He put the bottle back.

Peters was waiting for him at the head of the stairs, leaning on the railing, studying a painting.

“Anything?” he said in a stage whisper.

“Nothing worth getting too worked up about,” said Hollis. “I found some booze—there's a bar in the pool room.”

“Ruh-roh,” said Peters, in a Scooby-Doo voice. “Well, maybe it'll speed up your reaction times. What do you think of this painting?”

It was an old-master-style portrait of an English noblewoman, blond and petite, in a blue dress with a high neckline.

“Remind you of anybody?”

Hollis peered at it in the half-darkness. She was sitting by herself on a chair in a drawing room, very erect, with a slightly blank expression on her face.

Downstairs the grandfather clock chimed again.

“Help me out here,” said Hollis.

“Oh come on, Hollis, it's
Eileen.
Look at it. She's a dead ringer.”

Hollis bent down to look closer and sniffed.

“Give me a break,” he said. “Listen, I'm going upstairs. The suspense is fucking killing me.”

“I'll be waiting. Stay out of trouble.”

He trotted back downstairs, and Hollis waited till he was gone before he went around to the next flight.

This time he didn't bother trying to hide, and he walked through the gallery at the top of the stairs without paying much attention to it. Things didn't look very different from the second floor. He thought about taking off his shoes, to make less noise, but he decided he might need them for a quick exit.

It was a race to the edge of space.

Hollis worried about getting lost in the narrow corridors, but somehow he couldn't quite work up the energy to keep track of them. As he strolled from room to darkened room, he blew into his hands. He noticed a little lump in the lining of his overcoat, and while he walked he wrangled it around until he could get it out: it was a superball. He held it up to the dim light: it turned out to be the transparent kind, with multicolored sparkles floating in it. He chucked it down at the floor as he walked, and it bounced up off one wall and down back at him off the ceiling. He snagged it one-handed, but when he tried it again he missed the catch, and it went off his foot and bobbled away somewhere back down the darkened hallway.

He was examining a set of sepia-tinted baby pictures that looked like they might have been taken in the nineteenth century when a pair of headlights flashed in through the front window and swept across the room. He flattened himself up against the wall, out of the light, as they went by.

They'll never take me alive.

The car went past without stopping.

He sighed shakily and ran his hands through his hair.

I can't work under these conditions.

Down at the far end of the hall, where it turned a corner, a large wooden cabinet stood against the wall. Its shelves were crammed with an incredible assortment of knicknacks: blown- and colored-glass animals, ornamental beer steins, Indian-looking brass figurines with many arms, polished marble eggs, miniature square copper lanterns with glass windows. A huge ornamental serving dish made out of silver or pewter sat by itself on the top shelf. It had a historical scene molded into it.

Even from where he was Hollis could see a thin band of golden electric light reflected in its surface.

The friendly lights of the village still glowed along the shore.

Hollis stood there looking at it. A phone rang somewhere in the house.

Away team to
Enterprise.
This is an emergency. Come in,
Enterprise.

He walked toward the cabinet until he could see his own reflection in the dish, blurry, elongated, upside-down. The parquet creaked under him, and he winced. A little caption engraved in a waving banner along the bottom identified the scene as the Raid on Harpers Ferry. He peered around the corner and saw a door, painted white. Light filtered out from under it, and along the side where it was open a crack. Hollis's palms were sweating, and he wiped them on his jeans. He had to go to the bathroom.

The phone rang again, and again, and then on and on. There were two different phones somewhere not very far from him, both ringing. One of them had an actual old-fashioned metal bell in it, and in the silences between the rings he could hear it keep on resonating.

There was a plastic
click,
and somebody picked up.

Hollis was still wearing his overcoat. He felt in the pocket, just in case: the blackjack was still there.

Little health insurance.

A woman's voice answered the phone. She spoke in a neutral tone, nicely modulated but indifferent, like a computer counting down a self-destruct sequence.

“Hello?”

There was silence, and a sound like somebody shifting in a chair.

“Yes, I'll accept.”

Hollis walked up to the door. He put his hand on the glass knob and pushed it a little farther open. Suddenly he felt afraid, and everything around him started to take on a slightly jumpy quality, like a piece of cheap animation, or as if he were seeing it by the light of a very fast strobe light.

He leaned forward and put his eye up to the opening.

“Don't move,” he whispered, soundlessly. “Don't you move, motherfucker, or I'll blow your motherfucking head off.”

His eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and now the light was painfully bright. Even squinting he could hardly make out the room in front of him: there were red carpets, some high book-shelves, a massive wooden desk. It looked like an office, or somebody's study. A dark-haired woman was sitting at the desk with her back to him, in a plush black leather office chair, talking on the phone.

As he crouched there looking at her, she reached over and with a little high-pitched grunt of effort pushed open one of the windows a crack. Immediately the air pressure changed, and a gust of warm air blew down the hall from behind him, lifting some of the papers lightly off the desk and scattering them on the floor. Before he even noticed what was happening, it blew the door in front of him wide open.

The woman swiveled around in the chair.

I'm trying to think who that girl reminds me of. Somebody famous.

It was Xanthe.

She didn't look surprised. She met his eyes with her own large, dark eyes, and with her free hand she covered the mouthpiece of the phone.

Hollis didn't move. For some reason, he didn't know why, his eyes filled with tears.

“Just a second,” she said evenly. “It's a long-distance call.”

She turned away from him, and he watched her for a second, looking at the back of her head above the padded leather chair, her stockinged foot pointing its toes. Then he walked across the room towards her, slowly, like a sleepwalker. As gently as he could, he took the phone out of her hands and laid it aside on the desk. She didn't resist him. He bent down and gathered her hands together in both of his hands. Then he closed his eyes and kissed her, very, very lightly, on the forehead.

 

CHAPTER 12

STARDATE 45652.1

At three in the morning Peters came upstairs wearing a chenille bathrobe with a Park Plaza monogram on one of the pockets. His face was pink, and his hair was wet and wavier than usual. He had a white towel around his neck.

Hollis was in the library, and Peters knocked, softly, before he came in.

“There's like a whole gym in the basement,” he said. “Check it out—now's your chance to get in some extra reps.”

Hollis didn't look up from the magazine he was reading.

“You're such a tourist,” he said.

Peters dropped into the armchair facing him and unwound the towel from around his neck. He shook it out with a flourish and draped it gracefully over his face.

“Ate it,” he said.

His voice was muffled by the towel. He burped.

“Drank it. Watched it. Played with it. Bathed in it.”

The lights were all out, and Hollis had lit candles. They stood all along the long rectangular room, on different shelves and niches, dripping wax onto ashtrays and sheets of blank stationery. The flames reflected off mirrors and windows and in the glass panels of cabinets and the polished wood of the bookshelves. Hollis cupped a huge glass brandy snifter a third full of red wine in both hands. An open bottle stood on the floor next to him, and there was an empty one lying on its side on the rug, along with an empty six-pack of Corona and a third of a ravaged-looking lime.

“Try some,” he said, holding his glass up to the light. “It's expensive—they left the price tag on it.”

“I'd rather have some whiskey—I think there's some in the bar downstairs. I hope you didn't drink all that yourself?”

Hollis gave a half-snort, half-laugh.

“Xanthe took care of most of it. She's somewhere upstairs, sleeping it off in one of the guest bedrooms.”

Peters pulled the towel off his face.

“I must say, her showing up here was kind of a surprise, in this quarter. Why the hell didn't you tell me about her?”

“Jesus, do you think I knew she'd be here? Before tonight I had no idea if I'd ever even see her again.”

“Mmm.” Peters mused silently, joggling his knee up and down. “So what's going on with you guys, anyway?”

Hollis sipped his wine again before he answered, staring down into the depths of the glass.

“What's ever going on with anybody?” he said. “She has to get back to the city in the morning, early. She's working.”

“How'd she get out here in the first place?”

“I think she has a car.”

“You guys should go on a talk show: ‘Women who swim with sharks, and the men who love them.'” Peters looked around the library. “You know, it looks like that Sting video in here—what's it called? With all the candles. ‘Wrapped Around My Finger.'”

“That was the Police. They were still together then.”

“Oh, listen, I totally forgot to tell you. Guess where Basil's going? Atlanta. We were talking in the car on the way home last night, and he told me all about it. He's getting out of Beantown for good. He thinks Atlanta's the next big scene.”

“Why does he think that?”

“I don't know. He didn't say. He probably saw it on
Entertainment Tonight
or something.”

“I hope he stays there,” said Hollis.

“Oh, he's not that bad.”

“He's horrible. I hate that guy.”

Peters levered himself up out of the chair and went over to the window. The blinds were down so the neighbors wouldn't see the lights. He peeked out.

“Coast is clear,” he said. “Hey, it's snowing.”

“What?”

“Just a little bit. God, what a relief. I thought it would never snow.”

“You know, I wish my parents were that rich. As rich as Basil's are.”

“Well, they aren't that bad off, are they? Or are they? Do they send you money?”

“They used to.” Hollis finished his snifter of wine and set it down on the rug. “I think I took it too far, that one time in New York. They had to bail me out of that hotel, you know, and then after that they quit. I guess I ate the goose that laid the golden eggs.”

With an effort, Hollis rocked the plump leather armchair back on its hind legs.

“But my, was it scrumptious.”

He leaned forward again and poured some wine into a tumbler for Peters. There was a big TV standing against the wall, hooked up to a Nintendo system. The sound was off, and the screen showed static. Various game cartridges lay scattered around it on the floor. The screen cast a pale gray light over the room, and Hollis stared blankly into it.

“Speaking of which,” he said, “I wish there was more food.”

“There's like a million more frozen pizzas in that freezer in the pantry. I checked.”